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Flash Presentation (5 mb) An executive-style presentation, timed to the audio, with photographs, talking points and analysis. (Requires the FREE Macromedia Flash Player) |
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Lawnmower Race Photo Gallery Believe it or not, there’s more…. |
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Notes from Brendan Greeley
This piece was an accident. I was in Germany for a wedding last May and scheduled a day to spend with friends in Hamburg who, upon my arrival, put me in the car and drove me to the World Championships of Lawnmower Racing. (I have to capitalize it because a small town owns the copyright. This is in the piece.) I arrived with a vague plan to drink beer and nap in the grass and left with a way to explain the messy, intimate relationship I maintain with my German friends and their country. This is how I told this story, as an anecdote, and it’s why, I guess, Jay Allison at Transom told me to leave myself in the piece when he produced it for radio.
I’m glad I got this on record last fall; I have since moved to Hamburg and spend a lot of my time debunking conspiracy theories about U.S. foreign policy, so this would probably sound angrier or more defensive if I had written in the last month. The point in the piece about the obsessive German need to have an opinion has been confirmed for me, but it’s also still true that Germans actually do know how to be funny.
Tech Info
I recorded all of the interviews on an Olympus DM-1 digital voice recorder, without an external microphone. I use it for print work, but the sound quality is evidently not good enough for radio. This is a shame, because it fits in your shirt pocket, comes with software to upload digital sound to a computer as a wav file, and with a 128MB SmartMedia card holds 22 hours of sound. Missing from this piece are the sound clips where I drop the Olympus into the mud and then drop a mustard-covered sausage on top of it, so it travels pretty well, too. The phone interviews were recorded using a $5 Radio Shack microphone that attaches with a suction cup to the back of the receiver.
I have never recorded a radio piece before – this
started as a PowerPoint presentation for one of John
Hodgman’s Little Gray Book lectures. Ted Lebouthillier
at Big Dog and Hat
turned the PowerPoint slides into a Flash presentation,
and Jay Allison at Transom produced the piece and recorded
my voice at his studio. Jay dealt with poor sound quality
of the clips by making the dictaphone itself an integral
part of the text of the piece; he couldn’t hide the
Olympus, so he flaunted it. Ah, my little Olympus.
About Brendan Greeley
I work as a freelance print journalist and now, God willing, as a freelance radio journalist. I’ve published features and opinion pieces in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal Europe, and I have produced miles of text about the reinsurance industry.
Additional support for this work provided by
with funding from
This piece is another product of Transom’s Irregular Artist in Residence program. Brendan Greeley came up and worked in the cottage a couple of times. On the second trip, we thought he might not leave. He would seem to go and then his car would just appear again out front and the lights would be back on in the cottage. We think he’s in New York now. The cottage is dark anyway.
While he was here, Brendan had revelations while encountering ProTools in the studio, like how you can make two sounds play at once and fade in and out and stuff. Prior to this, his audio production experience was pretty much confined to his Olympus DM-1 portable dictation machine.
I should say that the dictation machine is not the only "executive style" device Brendan has turned to creative use. He has also shown particularly clever employment of PowerPoint. In fact, we found out about Brendan’s lawn mower story from former Transom Guest and host of the Little Gray Book Lectures in NYC, John Hodgman, who said that Brendan’s work convinced him that PowerPoint presentations could be an art form. Or FUN, at least.
With the help of Ted Lebouthillier, Brendan took the radio piece we made and adapted his "executive style" PowerPoint presentation to Flash. He apologizes in advance, but he’s calling it a Flashumentary. It is a highly recommended accompaniment to this piece. Check it out via the SHOW page, and let’s discuss…
While our brothers and sisters at Transom work out the link at SHOW page (above), I just want to say I loved this.
I am working on a PowerPoint story myself — presentation at 11pm — but I just loved what the people of this island in the Elbe had to say.
Following the immortal words of Margaret Mead (anthropologist: "I needed to find a people of my own"), how do you find these people, at this place, at this time?
My wife is half Suissedeutsche. I am going to play this audio until she cries.
The Krautsander national anthem, complete with bouncing ball and simultaneous translation in a separate Flash/PowerPoint presentation
I just watched the flash version and I have to say that you should just take the audio version down! the flash is great great great!!!
I love this piece! Its so damn funny – and the powerpoint works amazingly well..
now that we are all unemployed or working jobs that might as well list "lots of downtime to screw around on the internet" in the job description, this format really is something to contend with!!!!
I have to ask – is the fact that there are 2 three o’clock beers a messup or not – either way.. its funny!!!
I don’t know what Jay did to the sound – but I listened with head phones on my computer and it sounded GREAT!
keep up the good work!
First of all, thanks and I’m kind of relieved that the presentation works. I had a moment of panic after we finished it that I had cluttered up the story, but people seem to like the Flash better than the audio.
As to the two three o’clock beers, so far, bw, only you and my mom caught that on the first listen. I decided I was going to award my last Krautsand/Elbe bumper sticker to whomever picked up on that (if I can find it now), so email me an address.
Did anyone feel like the presentation dragged toward the end? Particularly during the letter? You really have to listen to the letter to get it, so I didn’t want to add anything there, (and I didn’t have any appropriate material anyway) but I wonder, once you get used to the text and pictures flashing by, if you get annoyed when they stop for a bit.
Anyway, this has been kind of an extraordinary experience, though I am feeling a little sheepish at having commandeered Jay’s cottage.
I think the flash/audio worked together well. The text reinforced the audio in places–which is great when you’re dealing with a foreign language, but it also provided subtext which is so often missing from fast-moving radio pieces. Just this morning, I was listening to a very good story by Ivan Watson about prisoners in Iraq. One minute he’s talking to a kid who just got released from a month in prison, left outside the gates an hour from his home with no money, no ID, and dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit. Immediate question: how’s he going to get home? No time to ask that in the story, we’re just suddenly transported to his home in Kirkuk with his family all gathered around. My guess: the journalists gave him a ride. Plus the guy phoned ahead to say he was coming, because the relatives were all waving photos of other relatives who are still in prison, not the kind of spontaneous thing that just appears at a homecoming scene (unless one knows journalists are going to be present).
Of course, I know why a 4-minute Morning Edition feature elides all these facts, or whatever actually happened, but imagine how much better it would be if it were a flash/audio piece with a sense of humor! Plus we could see how quickly the guy managed to get out of that orange jumpsuit…
I think you’re forging the new frontier, Brendan. Keep it up.
I was privileged to be a fly-on-the-wall during some of the construction of the audio side of this piece, but even so, i was unprepared for how much cooler it is with the Flash.
I think it works on two levels: one, it’s just inherently funny to have something so weird presented in a typical business-like bullet-point format; and two, it’s crucial that the titles were giving subtext and sly asides, not just reinforcing the audio. Of course it’s interesting to have visuals of what you’re discusssing, but the descriptions were vivid enough that it wasn’t crucial. But having the meta-commentary alongside really put it into another orbit. nice work.
And i’m glad to know Jay had trouble evicting Brendan from the cottage, I was afraid I’d be saddled with the rep of the guest who wouldn’t leave. It’s good to know it’s not just me…
And I’ll apologize if the after-effects of Brazillian liquor had anything to do with the inclusion of multiple 3pm time-stamps. Sorry!
I really enjoyed this. I’m not sure I have much to add that hasn’t been said, but I think the delivery is great and you benefit from a perfectly wonderful storyline. Seems like there’s some room for comparison or discussion here b/w this piece and the cof-fay piece a while back.
Great line about the guy with the Rooster tail helmet. I may have missed it if you hadn’t had that in there. And, it just shed more light on the sense of humor the piece was embracing, which carried throughout.
Nice job.
Chris
First of all, OddTodd is a master of the arts of timing cues and nailing visual jokes, hem of his garment, stuff like that.
But second, to Jeff and Julia’s comments, I think you’re both right about subtext and asides. It comes down to a basic rule taken from watching hours of execrable corporate PowerPoint presentations (and a couple of brilliant ones): you have to decide, between you and the presentation, who gets to be Jerry Lewis and who has to be Dean Martin. Remember that inscrutable series of PowerPoint slides that got leaked from the Defense Policy Board about attacking Saudi Arabia? We read the Lewis, but we never got to hear the Martin. (At least, didn’t it kind of seem like a joke?)
A PowerPoint has to 1)run you through a series of points, and 2)answer the question "Why am I here and not downstairs in the bar? Most bad presentations give you Martin and Martin, two straight men. One on the screen, and the other standing in front of you repeating what’s on the screen. Solves 1), but you could just as easily print it out and skim it yourself on the plane home.
But it can be just as pointless to present as Lewis and Lewis. Punch lines, background and asides are difficult if there’s nothing moving the story forward, and there’s no lasting impression, no story or point or moral, when you’re done.
What I tried to do on this is let the audio be Martin – providing the motion and the through-line, taking longer pauses to sing songs – and make the presentation Lewis – feigning ignorance and making snide asides. Most good presentations are concieved the other way – Martin is up there on the screen, moving through his bullet points (hopefully with grace and economy) and Lewis is standing in front of him, improvising, filling, telling anecdotes, makin’ ‘em laugh.
So that’s my Very Important Theory on presenting.
Greeley gets an extra t-shirt for his critical analysis of the Art of PowerPoint.
I think you’re right that the Flash piece drags a bit during the letter. That’s because the eyes are greedy. We abhor that quality, which is why we work in radio.
The guy who ran the Gettysburg Address through the Autocontent Wizard of PowerPoint told me that whenever he is giving a PowerPoint presentation these days, when he wants his audience to remember something, he *never* puts it in a slide.
I agree with the Martin and Martin critique, and I admire how you managed to squirrel 13:07 of a/v into a 9:17 slot. There is a nice back-and-forth between what we see on the screen and what you say.
Delightful all around. And by way of concurrence (as the CIA now says): When my sister-in-law — a slightly long-in-the-tooth opera singer who lives near Frankfurt — was last here, she was knitting socks for both her husband to be and her ex.
Brendan (no doubt of Irish extraction — why do I have a profound sense of where your sequel will come from?):
You offer one of the finest, most meaningful, heartfelt, cogent and even — dare I say it? — apt comments about irony (c. 12:25 in your 9:17 piece) ever uttered by someone other than Shakespeare.
But then, the Germans love Shakespeare, too.
I will be quiet now.
First, I must start by stating that Mr. Greeley has done a great job on his first radio production. I really enjoyed the story. While listening to it, I felt that the story allowed me to vicariously experience the warm camaraderie of a small town’s idiosyncrasies intertwined with goofy male bonding. Cultural eccentricity is ubiquitous. I liked that the piece led me to ponder the many laughable quirks of my own culture.
Greeley’s voice worked quite well too. His conversational, yet ‘don’t take me too seriously’ tone instantly had me smiling, preparing myself for a funny radio piece.
Unfortunately, I played the Flashumentary first. Had I known the PPT was going to present the story in its ENTIRETY along with captions & pictures, I would NOT have clicked the mouse! The Flashumentary impeded my overall radio experience.
When good radio is occurring, the story not only flows freely, but the voices, tones, sounds and music completely capture my attention and open my thoughts to wonderful imagery. My mind creates the characters, objects, surrounding, landscape, colors, etc. The auditory input stimulates the visual and kinesthetic areas of my brain and the whole story comes to life, permeating my imagination and emotions. This is why I LOVE radio.
The Flash presentation did little for my imagination. I found myself distracted by the pictures and bullet points, and not listening to the story. It was like viewing a busy sideshow or a home movie with captions. It cluttered my thoughts with questions about what I saw and read.
I like PowerPoint. It is useful in my work and presentations. But I would not use it for radio. For me, mixing the two media doesn’t feel right.
Everyday I am inundated with powerful and mundane images from billboards, magazines, the Internet, newspapers and of course, television. Radio is my escape from all the forced imagery. Radio should remain image free.
So my final words. Flashumentary: visual aid or audio interference? Definitely interference.
Hi,
I agree with Dao about the power point. I wish I had listened only to the audio because it is so gratifying to rely on your imagination. ( I am also a terribly slow reader so this also hampered me.) My anxiety levels were sky high as I struggled to keep up with everything–though a double dose of Jerry Lewis would leave me equally anxious. That said, Brendan, your deconstruction of Power Point is beyond T-shirt worthy!
So, I’ve just listened to your piece without the slide show and I took so much more in. In listening to it I realize that without the power point you already have the Lewis/Martin dynamic established. Thruought the piece there are numerous times when you say something and it is then repeated by an actuality. e.g. "So he decided to name it ‘Big Willy’." Then you cut to the fellow saying "Big Willy." For my simple palate this is plenty. The humor is there, no need for garnishing.
Since you didn’t set out to make a radio piece that day were there moments when you thought ‘oh, I wish I had gotten that on tape?’ Or did you benefit from having a limited amount ? Did that make it easier for you to focus? Did you compensate for unrecorded moments with narration? I ask only because whatever you did it sounds seamlessly complete. It’s really admirable how you did that.
Many thanks, Chelsea
Thanks a lot for your praise of the audio, and I’m perversely satisfied that you didn’t like the Flash; it means that the radio that Jay and I cut works. He suggested that we set drop the presentation, make a radio piece that can stand alone, and only then come back to the slides.
That’s also the reason why it seems a little cluttered in places. When you give a presentation live, you can watch and judge how slides land, and time them to whatever reaction you get – you don’t move faster than your audience takes it in.
Here, though, we finished the audio and then treated it like a found document, leaving it intact and working around it with the flash. So in places where a presenter would leave a longer pause to take in the slides, the radio piece moved forward to keep from losing its audience and the flash got crowded.
But it’s also true, I guess, that once one of your senses gets a little bit of food, it loses the ability to forage. This is why talking dolls never last as long in play rotation as the silent ones; if a doll has a voice box that says "Mama," that’s all the doll will ever say. But if the doll says nothing, you can make it say anything you want it to. So pictures limit radio and this is why, as Jay pointed out, the flash dragged during the letter – once we got used to seeing new stuff every five seconds or so, we got a little anxious or bored when it disappeared. I think, when you see the same frame for so long during the letter, your brain is going "That doll sucks, all it ever does is say ‘Mama.’"
I think this may be a seriously flawed analogy, but I’m going to post it anyway.
Which means, as you might guess, "Well, yes and no."
When I was gathering material in Krautsand, I worked like a print journalist: record interviews to make sure you get the quotes right, and take notes on what you see and hear. This is why I have every word of every person I talked to, and why you get to hear the words "Big Willy" and "Internet." What I learned, though, later, in the Transom cottage, was that the most interesting sound was the accidental stuff and the transitions; I didn’t anticipate at all that I’d need to establish cues to indicate where the interviews took place. So the accidental clip of the dog yelping, for some reason, turned out to be a winner, as did the guys in the sound booth roaring their approval. I certainly didn’t get either of those on purpose, and I wish I’d gathered, for example, the sound of a lawnmower starting, or the sound of those two guys tinkering with the chassis before the race.
For the same reason I cut some great stuff that came out of phone interviews after the fact, since the phone voices, Jay pointed out, seemed kind of disembodied and had nothing to do with the day.
The time stamp ("The time is now… we are drinking beer number… thank you") was a complete accident. I did that so I could make a mix tape later for Knut and his girlfriend, and I have a lot of sound of Knut and me, discussing the relative values of Wham! and Bonnie Tyler, both of whom came on the radio in the car that morning. (I never did finish the mix.)
Then, when Jay was going over the script with me last October, he said "What I’m missing here is some sense of progression, a way to help us understand where we are in the day. Do you have, like, a time stamp?" I swear now, for the rest of my life I’m going to ask every single person I interview what time it is and what they’re drinking.
I am both flattered and sceptical that the world has wanted for trenchant comment on irony ever since 1614. That out of the way, what does Shakespeare say about it?
Also, I am half Irish, half WASP, and yes, I am trying to figure out how to pitch a piece about marketing Ireland.
Ok, that’s it, sorry about the novel’s worth of posting today.
Hi, great piece. I liked the corky narration that was able to be descriptive of the event but not without losing the humor necessarily attached to racing lawn mowers. I also liked the use of stating the time and beer number; it paced the story and helped to create a story-line. I thought you handled the letter well, in fact the entire scene in the timing tower.
I’ll admit though, I was a little disappointed you didn’t concentrate more on the actual race. I thought that was the most intriguing aspect, just mentioning something like a lawn mower race acts like a vortex sucking in the listeners attention. When you finally made the nexus between the plight for independence and the race (too late in the piece IMO) I felt cheated that you didn’t focus on that entirely. What came before (crazy Germans, dogs, and beer) was good and worth listening to, but the independence/race is a real gem. Do have enough material to make the connection between the two more vivid?
Over all, very good and inspiring. Thanks!
Shakespeare didn’t have to say anything about irony; the ironical (or the ironic, if you prefer) is to my mind almost the subject of a quest; it lurks somewhere in the realm of motivation. People rarely talk baldly about irony — that’s what I meant by the prior hyperbole — fewer still talk about it well.
And your piece is a wonderful example of how irony must never be confused with the mere snarky or sardonic. I come away liking everyone in the story, even the Swedish diplomat, who could have said nothing at all.
Maybe Atlantic Public Media could buy up that old beer garden and turn it into a centrally located radio camp?
BTW, what are the words to the Krautsander national anthem? You don’t have to include them in your story — at least I don’t think you did — but don’t national anthems reflect our self-perceptions and aspirations as nations? Why would the Krautsander be any different?
But otherwise very little can diminish the pleasure I experienced upon seeing and hearing this important story again.
I think the flash works very well, though it is true that the audio could stand on its own. On yet another hand, I also can stand on my own; does that make it wrong for me to walk with a silver tipped sword cane?
Many thank yous to Brendan, Jay, and to the little flash elf who made it possible for me to hear that inspiring song every day.
I have been meaning to write for so long. Forgive me.
That is all.
Jh
There are two competing opinions about the virtues and vices of powerpoint in the latest Wired magazine. I think the article will be on-line in a few days. Briefly, David Byrne has been having fun playing with the conventions and cliches of the program, while the opposing position is that it’s a numbing and stupifying way to present info.
hmmm…. both arguments sound familar!
very fine piece. the following comments refer to the audio, not flash, version:
I find the on-location lawnmower parts way better than the intro and outro. i woulda cut all that Why I Love Germans intro, and launched right into the that great tape (about 1:15 in) of Knute talking about Father’s Day.
why?: i know lotsa people like that "Why Luv Germans" rap, i do too — it is written well. however, i prefer not to be told what to think, but rather to find stuff out myself — in concert w/ the writer/producer. everything the Intro explains is implied in the lawnmower sections — and i just find it a nicer experience when things are empirically revealed (a revelation), rather than expounded.
another reason: starting right off what that Knute tape would be such a great way to begin: puts the listener in an intriguing state of confusion, but not for long, as we quickly learn we’re in Germany, it’s Father’s Day, and we’ll soon mix alcohol with lawnmowers.
I would have also cut the ending follow-up phoners to Queen and Court. this part is deadly boring compared to the rest. while there are a couple nice moments, they are nowhere near worth the time it takes to get to them.
I would have preferred the piece end at with "8pm . and we are drinking?" Knute: "wine" (about 10:55). then tag on that song-over-phone bit (11:55), but without all the narration. aka, ending w/ "…played it better if he’d had a glass a beer." then let the phone-song ride in clear to the end (this would also provide a nice bed for a radio Host to talk over at end of story).
the ending narration about German irony and humor was already well developed in lawnmower-racetrack sections — and the narration does not add, so much as categorize and qualify what we already should have gotten. the outro & intro narrations are fine. i just don’t think they sparkle quite like the gem-of-a-story&sounds told trackside.
so, Brendan & Jay, you must have thot of above — ie, just using the in-Germany lawnmower parts. i’d be interested to know why you decided to keep the several minutes of surrounding narration.
It’s a pretty simple answer, actually; the piece was written to be read aloud, live, to an audience. The text drove the story and the sound clips were meant to be fun asides – when we edited the script for radio, we left it this way. We never really discussed it, we just did. Perhaps Jay has a truly wise reason that he didn’t share with me, in which case I’d be interested to hear it.
Maybe radio’s not so different from prose; you learn when you write fiction "no telling, no summing up" which is basically the same advice that Barrett offered about the lawn mower piece.
I think also, to be honest, I was a little in love with the writing I did, particularly at the close, and it always hurts to get rid of stuff you’ve fallen in love with. Jay, to his credit, really chopped the intro before we recorded it to keep it from dragging. Or from dragging too much.
First off, some pieces on Transom get no editing help. We take ‘em as they come. Others get a little help; others get a lot. We always describe which is which in the SHOW pages.
In cases where we give a lot of help, like this one, the Transom editing style is still a little less ruthless than it might be for the air. Often, we post pieces that we know are a little long or a little rough, partly to lure out postings like Barrett’s.
We also have no wish to develop a "Transom Style" or to echo some version of "Pubic Radio Style." We want pieces to sound the way the maker made them, and then talk about what works and what doesn’t. As this topic proves, some things work for some people that don’t work for others. One man’s cut is another man’s darling.
In working with Brendan or anyone else, we try to let the producer’s voice come through, let his approach to narrative be featured. In this case, I liked the preface and the denouement, especially with the Flash. I agree that the piece is a little long here and there, but we also like to leave some room for editors at national radio shows to work their own magic, you know?
I agree with Barrett that the story would have been stronger had the cuts mentioned been made. Save one. I really liked the phoner at the end and felt like _more_ was needed in that regard. IMO it caps a narration that is very intriguing; it gives a new and syncopated portrait of the people. The two story lines (lawnmowers and succession) compliment each other nicely and create a much more dense picture of the island than would a simple “got drunk and raced lawnmowers” kind of story.
Nice point, CM Lane. In the amount of ground you cover in a drive from New York to Buffalo, in Europe you can pass through — not just three or four (or five, if you time Lichtenstein just right) countries, but three or four language groups. Brendan’s story is a beautiful illustration of that aspect of Europe that continues to fascinate Americans: borders and frontiers everywhere of all kinds. And while Europe is edging ever so slowly toward a kind of United States of Europe, here are these people who want to declare independence from Germany.
I agree with CM, too, on the effects of the double layer of story. There are numerous built-in yucks with the beer and the landmowers. The history lesson is the stone dropped in a well — it adds depth to the narrative. And it allows you to explore irony, which is nothing if not deep.
about PowerPoint as a radio heavy/lite experience. We’ve got Brendan using the medium (sure, it’s flash); we’ve now got David Byrne’s PowerPoint discussed in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/arts/design/17VIEN.html
and then we have a quarter of a billion people around the globe using the program to facilitate their communication with others.
A couple of questions strike me: is PowerPoint really cheaper than television? What stories would images have actually helped? (case in point: Robert Krulwich’s story about the Babylonian tiles. It would have been cool to see the Babylonian rental ads. Indeed, an interesting slide would have portrayed how much UAW labor would have afforded the cost of a slave and her daughter. Imagine the bouncing ball following the translation of the house and its environs. What a fabulous graph!
And then there is Jay’s curious comment about images being greedy. Of course, if my history is true (and it isn’t, necessarily) it was the ancient Chinese who put the value of the image at 1000 words — roughly four pages, double-spaced. It was not Bread or Badfinger or Three Dog Night. (Jay, you haven’t been listening to Bread recently, have you?)
If you go by Edward Luftke, the failure of PowerPoint is not the picture, but the noise. When people repeat verbatim texts on a slide, they aren’t enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio of the image — far from it. One of the nice things with Brendan’s piece is that what appears on the slides offers a counterpoint to the narrative — whether it’s in words or in pictures. It is, curiously, what PowerPoint has promised, but what it rarely delivers.
Any takers out there in Transomland?
Well, it’s fun to hear something completely unexpected.
I essentially borrow a computer and don’t have access to flash yet. Please excuse me if my questions are answered in the flash version.
I wonder about the title… if they want independence, it was the most UN-german day ever, wasn’t it? or the most Krautsand day. A name that really sounds made up. the most Kraut day.
Or the most "northern German day?" I wonder.
Before hearing this, lawn mowing struck me as something so American, so un-German. The parts of Germany and Europe I know about feature gardens, not lawns. Those parts are more likely to be made of tight cities, surrounded by cultivated fields, surrounded by grazed hills. In fact, there’s been talk of the rapid loss of the alpine views as fewer cows graze up high (with fewer farm subsidies?) and seedlings are quickly growing into trees. The alpine views of green velvet hills in front of snow-covered cliffs will give way to dense trees a la New England. Unless — unless – perhaps these lawn mowers can go south and up mountains to save the day!
I wonder whether Germans are allowed to relax and have goofy time because they don’t have to spend all their social time making fundraisers for desperate friends needing medical care or for arts organizations needing help.
I’d like to hear a piece on debunking conspiracy theories about U.S. foreign policy. How do you feel about becoming, unwittingly or not, a spokesperson for the U. S., its people or its government?
When I was in Germany two years ago, the regional Munich paper ran a photograph of a modern, domed facility that was casually labeled as the place in England from which the U.S. gov’t monitors European business exchanges, phone lines, etc., for its advantage. Do you believe it? Would Americans be surprised?
hey brendan,
i got a big kick out of your story. i for one enjoyed the beginning, especially with the music. i thought it set the piece up well. it put me in the mood.
and i liked the phone tape… "we have some errands coming to us" that cracked me up!!!
mad props! i havent seen the powerpoint yet but im looking forward to it.
best,
rene
I read the piece on David Byrne and I was struck by this quote:
"It started as a parody. ‘I was doing mock sell presentations, using mock PowerPoint slides as visual aids,’ he says. ‘That’s how I learned the program originally. But then it evolved into something else. It was no longer enough to make fun of the corporate stuff. I realized that PowerPoint was a limited but a valid medium.’"
Why does David Byrne have to validate PowerPoint? Storytellers exist in the corporate world – we who work for the media don’t have a lockdown on narrative. I’ve been entertained and engaged by PowerPoint presentations and disappointed and annoyed with art exhibits. This is a medium that gets validated every day, all over the world, by people who use it to move other people to commit to spending tremendous amounts of money. How is that different from the movie industry?
The other thing that the article misses (and that you lose in the lawn mower piece) is that PowerPoint is LIVE PERFORMANCE. If you put it to a soundtrack and set it on loop, like Byrne did in his exhibit, it’s just a movie or a documentary. But PowerPoint works in many ways like theater; you have a real, live, breathing human up there, part of you wants to like him just because he’s taken the risk of performing, and the actor listens to the audience and makes choices every time he performs.
Also, farther down in the piece:
‘"It’s very reductionist," says Nancy Halpern, a PowerPoint specialist at the Strickland Group, an executive development firm in New York. "There is a crude linearity to the way the program works. Unlike a book or a Web site, you can’t flip around the pages. It’s more like a teleprompter."’
The article understands Halpern by her comments to be a "critic" of PowerPoint. It’s true, PowerPoint is linear, but what of it? Are we disappointed by the crude linearity of film or theater? We flip around on the web because we’re alone; we’re acting as our own film editor. When we watch a movie or a play, however, we allow the director to make choices for us, to tell the story at the right pace, in the right order. Why should we be any less patient with a PowerPoint presenter?
We aren’t legitimizing PowerPoint by using it for art. Storytelling is storytelling, whether the story is "In the end, Ingrid Bergman leaves" or "This complex product is going to make your working life easier." I saw David Byrne give a live PowerPoint in New York about a year and a half ago, and it’s great, what he’s doing, but I’ve seen boardroom presentations that move the story better. PowerPoint is already one of the most popular mediums of live performance on the planet, and we can learn a lot from the business people who do it well.
I feel fine about it, to be honest, and I’m quite witting. Say what you want about this administration or any other, we are not a country run by, or overrun with, gun-toting, racist, militaristic yahoos. Yet this is often the picture presented by the media abroad, as beholden to their own biases as we are to ours. I can’t speak for other countries, but Germans are often desperate to believe the worst about America, and this says more about them than it does about us.
I spend a lot of time in Europe (I’m typing this jetlagged, at three in the morning in Nuremberg), but I don’t think they have it all figured out. You can argue about the utility of subsidized medical care; I’m for it, but Germany is finding it painfully expensive right now. As for arts funding, there’s a lot to be said for private money and the market. German actors and directors are beautifully trained and produce beautiful work, but also I’ve seen some long, offensive, indulgent theater in Germany, by artists with no incentive to keep people from never coming back. Europe, just like the United States, is just a collection of constantly flawed attempts at getting democracy right.
Jackson’s right, it is interesting that Krautsand’s edging toward independence as Europe edges toward union. This isn’t a coincidence; it’s happening all over. Scotland, Bavaria, the Basque region – they’ve all become more prominent in the last decade, not least because the European Union actively promotes and subsidizes regions. Why not Krautsand, too? Additionally, as the European Union grows and consolidates, it legislates and regulates; the products of an ever-closer union aren’t necessarily good for everyone who’s getting unioned.
This is, admittedly, a little tangential to this message board, but I’m bringing it up because I addressed it in a paragraph that got cut from the lawn mower piece (the news was no longer current) when we edited it for radio.
"Krautsand feels passed over, but it is not alone. Elections in Germany, France and the Netherlands this year registered decisive protest votes against the major parties; many Europeans feel that the things being decided for them are beyond their control."
There was a lot of talk about how the success of Pim Fortuyn and Jean Marie Le Pen meant that Europe was flirting with its nationalist past, but what a lot of papers missed in the states was that both were popular in part because they were willing at least to openly talk about immigration, which is a problem and a subject worthy of debate no matter where you stand. Democracies (and small islands) revolt when they smell platitude – this is true right now for Krautsand, the Howard Dean clan in New Hampshire, Germany and a lot of Europe.
Having an operatic sister-in-law who is undoubtedly funded by the generous subsidies of the German Federal system, my instinct, like yours, is to let the private market work its course. I imagine the old and infirm in the German equivalent of nursing homes. "Ach! Nein! Are again the American Indian stories not!"
Of course, for those who shelled out $9.50 US to see the latest Charlie’s Angels contribution to the oeuvre, private enterprise doesn’t necessarily mean the mustard will be cut any deeper, either.
My sense is that the Krautsanders need to find their roots in the Norse, the Vikings, or the zany, mad-cap Visigoths to get grants that will allow for the archeological proceedings to proceed for many years. I know the owner of Big Willy means well, but let’s face it: a dozen Charlies (or Klauses) armed with hammers and picks and trowels will eventually lead to the defeat of the occupying army, even as we head into the comfortable castles of the east, where sense can become strangely familiar.
thanks for answering so thoughtfully
I like your line about both countries trying to get democracy right…
This story, "The Most German Day Ever" rings through my memory on a daily basis. I think of the sounds from the race, the close up "I’m now drinking…wine", the diatribe from the man with the diabetic mother-in-law and many more whisps of sound memory gathered from your story. I listened to it over a month ago and it continues to resonate. When I am frustrated with FLASH, I think about producing a sound story such as yours and my fist pulls away from the monitor! I shared this story with my German class and it is now a link on the class webpage…everyone loves it! Thank you for having the forsight to document a classic event such as this. It tickles not only the funny bone but inspires as well. Danke! Danke!
Speaking on behalf of Transom, I like the fact that we are narrowcasting to German classes now.
In a related story, we had a request last week to have Transom stories broadcast on the in-house radio station of a Scottish hospital.
This made us happy. We like playing at new frontiers in media distribution.
Heidi, thanks! Great to know this made it into the classroom; when I took German in high school we had this series of tapes about Axel and Manon, and Axel and Manon were always doing the lamest stuff, like ordering tea and organizing ping-pong tournaments.
Man, we hated Axel and Manon. There’s a story idea; I wonder what Axel and Manon are doing today? I’ll bet they resent all that time they spent playing ping-pong.
and talk about their love for Blondie?
I know as a child of a teacher who participated in the creation of a French language educational device in the US, Ecouter et Parler — there are countless couples on either side of the Maginot Line who wish they had different names.
For every French hostage in a textbook who said, "Tant pis! Viens aux bois," there was some unhappy Gunther who proclaimed, "Ein posit!"
Brendan:
You’ve opened up an intriguing radio domain: the region of language and country as domain. I swear I have a cousin in Hamburg — Johnny B, you know who you are — who deals in the white slave trade. But there are so many linguistic frontiers, no US educational courses will reveal this little — fill in the blank — to the wider reaches of the European Community.
jb
I never thought the day would come where Krautsand would become an internationally recognized town! I thought that I was the only American that could ever locate it on a map. My mother and I were born there and we came to America when I was a child about 20 years ago. Yes and some of those crazy lawn mower racers are all somehow related to me. And much of the farmland is owned by my father who still lives there. Thank you so much for doing this piece and putting Krautsand on the map and recognizing it for the special place that it is
sincerely,
Ann-Christin Herrmann
can anyone write out the words and the translation for "ein posit". I would also like some history on the song. Is it a toast? What is the chant at the end of the song?