--Monty Python

Not much of import happened on Sunday.

I spent much of it listening to public radio, as is my wont on Sundays. Having slept in and missed Will Shortz's puzzle of the week, I began with A Prairie Home Companion, which has been growing on me over the past few weeks. Particularly the ketchup commercials. :-) It's a bit of an acquired taste, but worth acquiring.

From there to Selected Shorts, a program devoted to readings of short stories. Their readers tend to be quite good. I only half-listened to it this time around, though, being otherwise occupied on the 'Net, as I recall.

Next up was This American Life, with a longish segment from my very favorite correspondant, Sarah Vowell. On getting advice on insomnia, yet. Needless to say, I loved that segment. Then came a Dan Savage segment cut from a previous episode, which I'd already heard (on the uncut version of said episode, on their website), and, um, I forget what the last bit on the show was.

Then came The Infinite Mind, which, this week, was on the intelligence used by body parts other than the brain, particularly the heart and liver, as I recall. I turned off the radio partway through that, resuming sometime during On the Media, which, among other topics, discussed how the Israeli elections are covered in Israel, and the backlash against that big toy commercial that's coming out soon in the movies. You know, Star something-or-other.

(As an aside, I am still amazed that Mel Brooks hasn't already unveiled Spaceballs: Special Edition. He must see the potential there...)

Then there's New York Kids, which basically serves the purpose of killing time until Idiot's Delight comes on the air. Which, this week, included host Vin Scelsa reading The Giving Tree on the air.

As for that... fact is, the last time I saw any discussion of The Giving Tree online, it was a few years ago, when I was last in Israel, reading rec.arts.books.children pretty regularly. And a few posters said that they loathed the book, as being as patriarchal as all-get-out. The maternal tree finds fulfillment in sacrificing herself for the boy, after all. I disagreed at the time, but the more I think about it, the more I suspect they're right. At any rate, I've never seen the book the same way again.

Ah, well.