Shep of the Day

December 27, 2011 8:37 PM

Here is the Shep of the Day podcast: bringing you something that Jean Shepherd said this day on the radio. (Actually, sometimes a whole show.)
posted by JHarris (17 comments total)

SO finally saw A Christmas Story this holiday season and said he thought it was lazy and sentimental tedium.

I had to stop myself from looking up state divorce procedure,
posted by The Whelk at 9:08 PM on December 27, 2011 [5 favorites]

Man, I was expecting some John Noakes action.
posted by w0mbat at 9:12 PM on December 27, 2011

I had no idea who Jean Shepherd was; having looked him up this sounds like it'll be interesting.
posted by arcticseal at 9:32 PM on December 27, 2011

Most people know him these days from A Christmas Story, but Shepherd was a radio figure for a long time, and wrote two collections of stories, In God We Trust All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories And Other Disasters. There's been a few previous posts on him: The Jean Shepherd Archives (which site is dead, unfortunately), The Jean Shepherd Project (likewise deceased), and The Story of 'I, Libertine'.

There are actually a couple of sequels to A Christmas Story, although they all use different actors from the original (if you're going to make a sequel to a movie with a kid, you've got to do it quickly or account for his aging): Ollie Hopnoodles Haven Of Bliss and It Runs In The Family. Shepherd narrates both I believe.
posted by JHarris at 9:49 PM on December 27, 2011

It's mentioned in one of the other posts, but you can grab a bunch of the stuff from The Brass Figlalee at the Internet Archive.
posted by sleepy pete at 10:01 PM on December 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

On Sunday nights in the late 60's in Seattle, KRAB FM used to play tapes of Jean Sheperd for a couple of hours. He had a following here. And, then at some point in the 70's, PBS ran a summer mini-series of something along the lines of Jean Sheperd on the Road, which was memorable for the episode entitled Beer with the take away shot of Jean Sheperd raising a glass, reverently saying, 'Beer, the Mother of Us All.'
posted by y2karl at 10:42 PM on December 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Was hoping for a podcast in which they just post "I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite podcast on the Citadel" every day
posted by NoraReed at 11:17 PM on December 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Flick lives!
posted by zaelic at 12:42 AM on December 28, 2011

Donald Fagen on Jean Shepard. Yes, that Donald Fagen.
posted by Man-Thing at 3:43 AM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Streaming Shep, 24/7.
posted by JanetLand at 5:32 AM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm a Shep fan because of my father, who went so far as to turn up reel-to-reel tapes and giant transcription discs (we were nerds with a compatible turntable at home) to give me my primer in the craft of the only radio novelist. I've accumulated about 15 gigs worth of his work in a more modern format, and the only thing that stops me from listening nonstop is the worry that I'll just mutate into a Jean Shepherd impersonator.

A Christmas Story is great, but it barely touches the surface of a very deep pool of storytelling. Amazing character, Shep.
posted by sonascope at 6:16 AM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'd also put in a plug for the biography Excelsior, You Fathead! by Eugene Bergmann, though one needs to listen to the archived radio shows for a while before digging into his history.
posted by sonascope at 6:20 AM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ah, upon reflection, I realized that the PBS series was entitled Jean Sheperd's America.
posted by y2karl at 10:01 AM on December 28, 2011

See also
posted by y2karl at 10:33 AM on December 28, 2011

I have to take a moment now to bask in the only reflected glory that Hammond, Indiana ever produced and say that Jean Shepherd and I are from the same city. Hammond is a rustbelt nightmare for those of us not privileged enough to be raised in its better parts (which would be the areas around Forest Avenue, Knickerbocker Parkway and maybe parts of Robertsdale); Shepherd was from the Hessville neighbourhood, so a bit east of my stomping grounds near Edison School. But he was from Hammond, wrote about Hammond (well, he called it "Hohman") from the working class perspective of a boy raised in the shadow of the Pullman-Standard plant, and I cherish him.

Thanks.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 10:36 AM on December 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Thanks for this. I'm primarily familiar with Jean Shepard through his written work. My father was a big fan - he subscribed to Car and Driver magazine in the 70's primarily because Sheperd had a regular column (He let it lapse when Sheperd stopped writing for them). I also remember some time in my early teens feeling incredibly grown-up when Dad would lend me a copy of Playboy to read the Jean Sheperd article.
posted by gamera at 10:35 PM on December 28, 2011

Shep's gearheadiness is part of why I love him—the guy owned a Goggomobil, for pete's sake.
posted by sonascope at 8:56 AM on December 29, 2011 [1 favorite]