IPR: Irrational Public Radio

March 29, 2007 11:06 AM

IPR: Irrational Public Radio"We love NPR, PRI, & MPR. We are fans of All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Car Talk, This American Life, Fresh Air, and Prarie Home Companion. We like the commentaries, the features, the independent member station programs. We love them all dearly. But we also think they're begging to be made fun of. So here we are."
posted by jdroth (31 comments total)

I call NPR "noise pollution radio". It's not that I object to its content — it has good stuff — but I cannot fathom listening to it constantly like my wife does. I can't hear myself think!

Anyhow: I thought this series of NPR parodies was pretty funny. They actually made me snort with laughter, which is not a pretty thing...
posted by jdroth at 11:09 AM on March 29, 2007

There's also this.

I can't wait to get home and listen to these. As great as NPR is, it's just as formulaic as the other guys, if not more.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:12 AM on March 29, 2007

The site I linked to is slightly NSFW.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:13 AM on March 29, 2007

Still my favorite NPR parody.
posted by Greg Nog at 11:37 AM on March 29, 2007

I kind of .... get annoyed when I...

try to...

listen to NPR because every....

single announcer or.... DJ



leaves these

weird pauses and puts emphasis where no normal person...

would think it...




belongs.
posted by drjimmy11 at 11:45 AM on March 29, 2007

Haha thanks Greg Nog, I had completely forgotten about that.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:58 AM on March 29, 2007

The pauses are annoying but what aggravates me the most are the nasal and somewhat effeminate male voices that have popped up lately. It started with This American Life and spread down to the local level. I guess public radio listeners find traditional "radio voices" too patriarchal or something. Ira Glass clones are being grown in vats now.
posted by brundlefly at 11:59 AM on March 29, 2007 [2 favorites]

Oh, and thanks! I listened to the demo and it's funny as hell. I just subscribed to the podcast.
posted by brundlefly at 12:00 PM on March 29, 2007

Thanks for this! The Andrei Codrescu parody alone was enough to make my day.
posted by maryh at 12:03 PM on March 29, 2007

I call NPR, National Pentagon Radio. I can't remember who made that up though.
posted by serazin at 12:08 PM on March 29, 2007

I always think of it as a spanish verb, enpiar - to discuss the issues of the day in a quiet, soothing voice.
posted by straight at 12:29 PM on March 29, 2007 [14 favorites]

The pauses are annoying but what aggravates me the most are the nasal and somewhat effeminate male voices that have popped up lately. It started with This American Life and spread down to the local level. I guess public radio listeners find traditional "radio voices" too patriarchal or something. Ira Glass clones are being grown in vats now.

I find this complaint hard to take seriously given the big giant smiley face dots you've put on your i's.
posted by srboisvert at 12:29 PM on March 29, 2007 [2 favorites]

Man, this is about as much fun as real public radio...
posted by Ogre Lawless at 3:41 PM on March 29, 2007

drjimmy11 your so right. I can't listen to NPR anymore, I just can't.
posted by nola at 4:21 PM on March 29, 2007

lol @ "The Fluckner Foundation"
posted by smoothvirus at 4:24 PM on March 29, 2007

Sorry, but it's not an NPR parody without the word "Nee-cah-lah-goo-wah" somewhere in there.
posted by elmwood at 5:19 PM on March 29, 2007

Ira Glass makes me want to punch a wall. The program (TAL) screams 'Hey! I found something really *interesting* when I decided to write my radio segment on X', where X is some very ordinary thing, like washing up or walking your dog in the park. And then the music which punctuates it screams 'wasn't that last comment so damn insightful, let's just savour it'. I mean you could try to make a parody of it, make a so-terribly-insightful segment on what-i-discovered-about-life-and-reality-when-I-went-to-the-dentist, but it would just end up being the show.
posted by snoktruix at 6:47 PM on March 29, 2007

I don't know what the CBC spends its billions of tax dollars on, but I know one thing: they spend some of it on giving each show a 2-minute theme tune. And lord, does it make the CBC sound a lot less empty. NPR is so... bare. It's as if TV news was filmed in an empty room with the anchor sitting on a wooden box. Can NPR not afford 120 seconds of bumper music? 60 seconds?
posted by GuyZero at 8:03 PM on March 29, 2007

This is awesome stuff. Considering that I listen to NPR every frickin morning before I go to work, this sendup really... uh, sends me. Yeah. I had to say it.

A guy named Fernandinande LeMur has been taking NPR shows and editing them to capture the true essense of lies embedded within them. Awesome work. Unfortunately when I tried to find linkage, the best I could find was Norel Pref and Ivan Stang which as you can see just muddies up the waters a bit. I guess the best way to hear LeMur's work is to listen to the Hour of Slack which is available online, or wherever very strange college radio stations are not sold.
posted by ZachsMind at 8:24 PM on March 29, 2007

"Nee-cah-lah-goo-wah"


...i don't get it.
posted by ZachsMind at 8:25 PM on March 29, 2007

I think it's Nicaragua pronounced the annoying way they say it on NPR. (Yes, yes, probably the correct local pronounciation, but still annoying because you don't say Paryee for Paris.)

I think.
posted by Mid at 8:39 PM on March 29, 2007

Shouldn't that be Nee-coe-rah-goo-wah?
posted by maryh at 8:58 PM on March 29, 2007

Hey now, step off the Ira Glass.

(He said, in a nasal, effeminate voice.)
posted by the jam at 9:24 PM on March 29, 2007

ZachsMind, I've heard those on Hour of Slack before, but they don't seem to make a convincing case, regarding NPR being a source of lies. There are certainly more lieful, less slackful channels out there, both on the radio and on TV.
posted by JHarris at 10:20 PM on March 29, 2007

Convincing case, JHarris? Being a SubGenius isn't about convincing anyone of anything. For example, we still believe the world's going to end in the summer of 1998. If you need further convincing of what's so plainly obvious, there's simply no hope for you.

Ira Glass is a Nerd Triumphant, and therefore a potential emergentile SubGenius if he ever gets around to sending thirty dollars to Bob. But you don't have to take my word for it.

I still pronounce Puerto Rico as poo-air-toe-ree-coh even though nobody else does - especially people who actually live there. Everyone else says port-oh-ree-coh which I think is patently absurd. There's a "U" in Puerto Rico for a reason. Effin' use it.

I tried to watch the new Showtime version of This American Life on the Internet, since I haven't paid for cable TV since the late 1990s, but it keeps freezing up on me, making the pregnant pauses even more pregnant, and I didn't think that was physically possible without re-engineering Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
posted by ZachsMind at 10:40 PM on March 29, 2007

...there was something about a cow on a front lawn that some hicks skinned and then cloned. That's as far as I got before I said the hell with it. I'll wait for the DVD.
posted by ZachsMind at 10:43 PM on March 29, 2007

That was funny.
posted by zardoz at 11:10 PM on March 29, 2007

Stick with it, Zach. The ending to the hick/bull story is hilarious.
posted by Optamystic at 2:20 AM on March 30, 2007

snoktruix, I've actually heard not only a TAL parody, but a program in which Ira gave hints to an improv troupe on the proper way to deliver things TAL-style. It was recent, too, but I'll be damned if I know where the link is.
posted by WCityMike at 8:26 AM on March 30, 2007

Mid writes "Yes, yes, probably the correct local pronounciation, but still annoying because you don't say Paryee for Paris."

Also Deutchland/Germany, Nippon/Japan, etc. I guess a country has to be in S. or C. America in order to be referred to correctly.
posted by brundlefly at 11:12 AM on March 30, 2007

what aggravates me the most are the nasal and somewhat effeminate male voices

What, no one got the memo that Ira Glass is a sex symbol?
posted by kittyprecious at 2:12 PM on March 30, 2007