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"Car Talk" is a worldwide call-in radio program on NPR.
As of June of 2000 it's the single most popular show on National Public Radio. For an
hour a week Tom and Ray Magliozzi -- aka Click and Clack, also aka The Tappet Brothers --
entertain their ever-growing audience. I listen to them because I was a call-in
guest on their show in about 1990 and I keep hoping they'll mention me again. Be warned that "Car Talk" is shot through with running jokes, some of which go back to the beginning days of the show. Newbies will need a couple of Saturday mornings to catch up, but it's painless. Tom and Ray have a way of bringing out the best, or the worst -- but always the funniest -- in their call-in guests. And it's either Tom or Ray (I can never keep them straight) who has one of those laughs that makes you want to laugh, even if you don't get the joke, which not everyone does. The Puzzler. Another reason I listen to them is to hear the "The Puzzler" (which, according to the hosts, takes a vacation each summer "because it gets tired"). Each week in the first Puzzler segment, Ray restates the previous week's Puzzler and then gives the answer and explains it. In the second Puzzler segment each Saturday, Ray gives the new Puzzler. If you send in the correct answer and your entry is chosen, you win some lousy prizes (their words, not mine). You need to judge for yourself whether you like the puzzles, either by listening on Saturdays or by going to their Web site and reading previous PUZZLERS.
Four-Week Contest. Every so often the Car Talk Guys hold a different sort of listener-participation event -- one that lasts a few weeks in a row and isn't so much of a puzzle as it is a contest to see who can come up with the best whatever, such as the best poem or the best story. In early 1992 they started a contest to see who could come up with the best collective nouns. (Collective nouns, also called nouns of association or nouns of assembly, are special names for groups of specific things, such as a herd of cattle or a coven of witches or a school of fish. And now that I think of it, a litter of cats is cutely paronomasiacal) The two examples they gave originally were "a lot of car
dealers" and "a shortage of jockeys," both of which are pure and witty
examples. Anyway, you can read that letter, and from there you can listen to a two-minute wav file of the Magliozzis' on-air reaction to it.
Tom Magliozzi died on November 3, 2014, of complications of Alzheimer's
Disease. The radio show is in re-runs as of this writing, March 14,
2016. |
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