Sometimes, This American Life can be just too…too precious. I always found the show excellent, overall, but its weakest segments seem to be the ones where the show’s producers and writers get autobiographical, revisiting childhood memories (often guided by the show’s host Ira Glass). I tend to think that they were created to fill in a gap in the story budget, although that is not, by itself, a reason to dislike these segments.
When the story is about the show’s makers, it often seems that their own stories are not quite up to par with the rest of the show’s materials. That is, I find the delicate nature of their circumstances to be a little bit too contrived. (Of course, that’s aside from the outstanding monologues and short stories produced and written by the show’s staff or regular contributors, like David Sedaris. Yes, my grievances are also somewhat contrived.)
Put aside the fact that this week’s episode, “Fear of Sleep,” seems to be an hour-long commercial for the This American Life movie, Sleepwalk with Me, (which I understand is pretty good, by the way,) there was one segment that really struck home for me.
Like TAL production manager Seth Lind, I too saw The Shining when I was about six, and it affected me as well. (Listen to the segment here.) Of course, I wasn’t bothered as dramatically as Seth, but I guess it wouldn’t make for such good radio. Maybe I was just self-unaware through most of childhood, but I tend to think that some folks, particularly such folks what end up working for TAL, are more likely to take part in the sort of post hoc navel gazing that turns a few Kubrick-induced nightmares into dramatic tales the Terror of My Childhood and other bits of existential angst.
This is all contrived nonsense for me to share one fun anecdote from when I was about six or seven. One day, at the local Lutheran church’s Vacation Bible Schoolâ„¢ (we were Catholic, but good day camps are hard to find), I painted–in garish poster paint– the scene where blood pours out of the elevator. You know the one. It seemed to have stuck in Lind’s head as well.
This floor, Phlebotomy, Nightmare Fodder.
The day before we had to paint a memory that scared us (I had painted Darth Vader chopping Luke’s hand off). However, I didn’t quite listen the next day, when we were told to paint something that made us happy, so went with a variation on the previous day’s theme. (To mix public radio programs, “the memory of the smell of art supplies in a Lutheran Church basement” could be a good throwaway line for some Lake Woebegone monologue.)
I can only think that today I would have been sent to a therapist…unless I blocked that out too…as it was, I the teacher just looked at me funny.
(My only other beef with This American Life: the Torey Malatia joke at the end of each episode sometimes eats up the show’s accumulated store of good will.)