illustration by Troy DeShano

“When you improvise a plan… sometimes you hit a speed bump,

and sometimes you hit it so hard that you soar through the air, far beyond your initial expectations.”

First person to guess who said this gets a cyber-five!

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Austin City Limits has to be one of the best and most important TV shows ever (yes, TV can be important)

Considering the long history of the show, I’m a relative newcomer to the audience. The first episode I ever saw was a Widespread Panic. (must have been around 2000-01?)

It was like I had tasted first blood.

Now a decade later, I have so many great memories watching the show…

It used to air late at night when I was working late-nights in a Montana ice rink. I’d park the Zamboni, kick out the hockey guys and their contraband PBRs, lock up the doors, head home and watch ACL for a bit to unwind.

Some artists I discovered on ACL, like Guster and Ray Lamontagne, and basically all my favorite artists have performed on ACL, but a few particular performances—for whatever reason—have been seared in my memory… Ben Folds, Sufjan Stevens, The Swell Season, Wilco, The Flaming Lips and more recently when Ben Harper joined Pearl Jam for their performance this past year.

But of all the seasons and all the performances there is one that for me stands apart from the rest. There is one that takes music-on-tv to a whole other level.

My all-time absolute favorite episode is… Arcade Fire.

I try not to tell people what to do, but in this case I say “watch it.”

Watch it over and over.

If you don’t like Arcade Fire, watch it over and over and over until you do. You won’t regret it.

I met ACL producer Leslie Nichols via Twitter and come to find out her most favorite of all time episode is a little more classic (and western) than my suburban-modern-rock favorites.

It’s the 1994 Songwriter’s Special that featured Willie Nelson, Rodney Crowell and Lyle Lovett. Leslie says it’s the “quintessential” episode—”3 songwriters trading songs and quips like they’re in someone’s living room or the back room of a bar.”

I’ve never seen that one, but now I want to.

Leslie’s been an Austin City Limits producer since 2000, after working at another Texan film production company that she proudly says “gave the world Witchfire starring Shelley Winters and the sequel to the ground-breaking martial arts comedy They Call Me Bruce, entitled They Still Call Me Bruce.”

Leslie makes me giggle, obviously.

So now instead of doing grunt work for [insert adjective yet-to-be invented] movies, she’s hobnobbing with amazing musicians like those slated for this season (which besides the unbelievable few she mentions below, just happens to include one of our family favorites – Brandi Carlile)

Thanks Leslie. Glad you could stop by.

Tell us one of your favorite odors

Honeysuckle

What is it about that particular smell?

Reminds me of being a kid. We used to run wild all over our neighborhood, trespassing without a care on everyone’s property. My favorite “yard” had a huge fence just covered with honeysuckle vines. I swear we spent hours pulling the stems off and drinking the nectar.

What experience makes you feel alive?

I love our taping days. Everyone working together with a common goal and how it’s a unique experience every time based on which artist we’re taping and the kind of music and personalities involved. And at the end of the day, no matter what has happened, we have a show.

What fears do you have?

The usual, heights (or to be more accurate, edges) and being buried alive.

What have you learned about yourself over the past year?

I’d rather be kind than interesting.

Are you working on anything cool right now?

I’m a producer at Austin City Limits– I’m always working on something cool Actually, I’m getting ready for our busiest taping week of the year which always falls around the ACL Music Fest. This year we’re doing shows with Monsters of Folk, Sonic Youth, Band of Horses, The National and the Black Keys. I’m doing production advance on all of them except for Sonic Youth who is being handled by our producer Jeff Peterson.

Do you find your creative work a spiritual experience? In what way?

I’ve never thought about this before. Honestly, I just recently began thinking of the work I do as creative, but it definitely is and it’s deeply satisfying on a personal level. So yeah.

What tunes have you been hooked on lately?

I’ve been on a bit of a nostalgia trip so it’s been a lot of Cheap Trick and Cars on the stereo lately. Do you remember how awesome a song “Candy-O” is? [note: if you don't remember, you could be listening along via the Strong Odors playlist right now]

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I just started watching God in America, a PBS Frontline documentary mini-series that’s been airing all week.

That guy who played Ben Linus on Lost is Puritan leader John Winthrop.

Freakiest Puritan ever!

This shot is actually from a really interesting scene about the trial of the colony’s rabble-rousing woman Anne Hutchinson, who was eventually banished for openly sharing her personal theology.

I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the series online.

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The scene:

A woman, late in her pregnancy freezes mid-stride to announce to her partner that her water has just broken

(possibly a wisecrack about peeing her pants or another character slipping and falling in the fluid).

The couple race to the hospital barely making it in time to start pushing.

Somehow in the midst of the mother’s bloodcurdling screams and insults at her doofus husband, the doctor has the presence and expertise to recognize… the baby is breech!!

Luckily that doesn’t matter at all and after one more push the couple has a beautiful 2-month-old newborn kicking happily in their arms.

Enter color character for comedic line to alleviate the tension  (this may happen earlier in the timeline, in which case color character opens door to find himself face-to-face with the birth canal… then turns and exits without comment, faints, or leans in for a “better look” suggesting the woman’s gaping crotch sexually exciting) *cue laugh track

Cut to scene of mother at home (looking sexy in her hollywood body) feeding baby her bottle.

Cue soundbite “Awwwwwww”

Roll credits.

To anyone who has ever watched prime-time T.V regularly since its inception this scene should be pretty familiar…

Pretty much any sitcom birthing experience follows this template. (Just replace the “funny” moments with an emergency c-section, rapid baby heart rate, wrapped umbilical cord and you’ve got yourself a 10 p.m. drama slot).

That is why last night’s episode of The Office was so groundbreaking.

Absolutely the first time I’ve ever watched a “delivery” episode without a single eye-roll from my wife.

In fact… she even cheered when Pam stood up for herself to the nurse casually suggesting that she’d give the baby a bottle in the nursery…

YES!

Whoever wrote this thing (IMDB credits Greg Daniels and Charlie Grandy)… you’ll probably never read this, but…

I’m sure it took some guts to stand up to whomever was (I’m willing to bet) insisting on the above tried-and-true format, and I’m really proud of you.

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A few years ago I spent some time as an intern at a year-round Christian camp. As part of the training, I wrote weekly journals about what I was learning. One week I wrote an entry called “Most Everything I Know I Learned from Sesame Street.”

I noticed a few years later an episode of Scrubs with the same theme. I don’t know if they’d been reading my journals or what.

In celebration of Sesame Street’s 40th today I’m posting that journal entry… you’ll have to forgive the lack of editing and my just-finding-my-voice writing style (anyone detect a hint of Carrie Bradshaw?)

Most Everything I Know I learned from Sesame Street

May 10, 2005

I have always hated school.

Sitting in a classroom, wearing shoes, taking notes… I hated it all. On the other hand, I have always loved learning.  I absorb information and skills wherever I go.  The tension has always been strong for me, from kindergarten through college, because I enjoyed growing smarter, but hated the method.  It is not because school is frustrating for me, in fact I am pretty good at it.  Pop quizzes and tests I forgot to study for usually resulted in still-pretty-good grades for me.  I probably could have been one of those kids who never once got anything less than an “A,” but let’s face it… that would have been more work than it was worth.

I had big plans to finish college and grad school in double time (and my Ph.D. by the time I was 26), not because I wanted to feel like I was someone special or smarter than others, but primarily because I just wanted to get it over with.

Of course this did not happen, and being absent from school has been quite as wonderful as I had imagined.  The only problem is that I have had to find alternative means to assessing the amount of knowledge to keep my thirst quenched.  This was not hard, because I have always found learning possible in venues other than school.

I am a strong believer in the power of TV.

I was not the type of child that sat in front of the TV in my room for 24 hours a day.  I loved shooting hoops, building forts, Legos, reading, etc.  However, I definitely watched my share of TV.  Probably a lot more than The Authoritative Book on how to Rear Children would have recommended.  I still do watch more TV than I probably should.  I do not think that I risk rotting my brain though (just not getting some other stuff done).  In fact, I believe that TV has played a tremendous role in my being who I am.

A couple years ago, I began watching Sesame Street for the first time in twenty-some years.  I was fascinated by the quality of the show and the sly way it teaches kids without their realizing it.  I also came to an eye-opening realization that much of what I now know I learned from Sesame Street.  All my foundational language, math, and social skills can be directly traced to 3 minute sketches performed by Big Bird, Ernie, Kermit, and Oscar.

You automatically recognize those individuals by first name—they are some of the most iconic characters in our culture—and they are puppets!  They probably have played a much more crucial role in your life than you realize too.  Sesame Street was just the beginning though. I can recognize throughout my life how I learned about our world through TV, and I have retained more of that information than any classroom learning I have ever received.

Whether it was other cleverly disguised educational programs on PBS that I watched through my upper childhood, pre-teen semi-soap opera/sitcoms as a Jr. Higher, or MTV as a teenager, I have been picking up information all along the way.  I can see how a child saturated with media can become an adult with misplaced values if he has not the proper lens to filter all the information he receives.

I was blessed with a family and church and school and peer group that provided me the tools I needed to process the information I was gaining from TV and understand it in light of truth (even though now I realize some of that “truth” was distorted too).

It is funny that I have come full circle and am back to watching PBS—and being tricked into learning something new. Not only during Sesame Street in the morning, but through different documentaries, etc. in the evening that I find entertaining and walk away from having (sometimes unsuspectingly) learned something new.

My time here at camp has come full-circle too. In this late-spring weather I am now back to doing the same activities that I did my first week on the grounds last fall.  Yet now it is with a different library of knowledge that I perform the activities.  I have observed much and soaked up a great deal—much of which will not be fully realized until I am a distant memory to the camp.

And much like TV, the learning I gained most from my time here was not from reading, or sitting in a classroom, or writing, or practicing my arithmetic.  It has been primarily from just watching.  And that works out wonderfully for me.  I can stand still and let the world bustle around me, and just watch and learn.

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Editorial Note: This original post was written in 2009, during Zev and Justin’s first appearance on The Amazing Race. I’m excited they’re back in 2011 and glad more people are discovering the same hope that I discuss in this article.

Individuals on the Autism Spectrum have never had a voice in the media.

Of course there’s Rain Man (everyone’s first reply when I say “my son has Autism”)…

And the occasional savant on 60 Minutes or something… (which of course results in everyone’s second reply “so is he super good at math or the piano or something?”)

And that is about it.

There’s never been occasion in media where a character with Autism was actually a person… you know what I mean?

That is why I consider this season’s Amazing Race to be groundbreaking…

Because Zev Glassenberg is someone to watch.

As far as I can tell he is the first person ever in popular media to represent individuals with an Autism Spectrum Disorder.

While watching this weeks episode…

I chuckled knowingly when he’s concerned about getting his shoes wet while traveling through knee-deep floods in Vietnam…

and I felt so proud… like he was my own son… when he masterfully shepherded a flock of ducks during one competition…

and gave his jacket to a man who had none…

and my heart cheered when his team came in 2nd at the finish line for that leg of the race…

But the thing that really gets me emotional…

is that he’s got a friend.

a real friend.

Because I know I’m in for a lot of heartbreak over the next decade as I try to watch my son relate to his peers… and none of them will really understand him.

But seeing Zev with his buddy Justin gives me hope… just a little hope… that someday my boy can have a friend that understands him and appreciates him the way I do…

a friend who loves his sense of humor and is humbled by his unselfish spirit and touched by his sweet personality and…..

You can follow Zev and Justin on the race via their webpage (which is mostly twitter status updates of funny stuff Zev says on the show)

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