Comments on Our Saturday Morning Ritual

Why do you hate Italians?

Actually I've always liked the Car Talk guys with their warped sense of humor. But I'm rather strange in my NPR taste--I even listen to Garrison Keillor if I'm home or in the car on Saturday afternoon.

Of course absolutely nothing beats This American Life. Ira Glass is a genius.

They are far too self-enamored, and you can tell the thinly veiled contempt they have for their callers when they immediately go from gravelly cackle to a clipped and vaguely bored sounding, "What's up?"

"Car Talk" is the best thing on the radio. Are you nuts? They're hilarious, and real, and absolutely NOT contemptuous or self-enamored.

I do the same.
thank god for kplu. even if they spend ten minutes on sports(??!?).

I do the same when I hear your pointless ramblings on the radio.

Sorry Dan, it can't be all showtunes all the time. Car talk rules.

I'm with you on this one, Dan. I used to listen to "Car Talk" years ago, but I just got tired of both their gratingly cheerful banter and the leaden sameness of the format.

In fact, these days the only reason I leave my clock radio tuned to NPR on Saturday mornings is specifically because it forces me to get out of bed, and shut it off promptly when it goes off at 9:00 a.m.

They're so funny! And they hate SUVs almost as much as Erica. I can't believe you don't like the car talk guys!

car talk good. dan savage new voice of evil.

Id rather listen to my parents have sex than those fucking god awful nasaly fuckbags.

Yeah, but dude, your parents are HOT.

I like 'em. They enjoy themselves, which seems rare after the amount of time they've been doing the deal for. They still sound connected to the actual car diagnosis end of things, which could have easily slipped over into them simply merching their 'product'. Plus, who knew that maybe it's not your fuel filter but the line that runs into it that could be the actual problem?

NPR is the Devil. Its evil is strong even here.

Sigh. It's good to know I'm not the only one.

Oh man, sometimes you remind us how gay you really are. I agree with the showtunes crack.

Perhaps if they pretended they were skinny guys in their underwear you would like them better.

I agree with Grant. I can't stand the sterile smugness of the public radio set.

I like Car Talk, however I wouldn't be upset if Click and Clack edited out some of their laughing. The cackling seems a touch overdone.

Of course, TAL rocks the world, and I have to say, not to be a total suck up, but I do like it when Dan is on. I think he does a good job.

Just curious though, has the TAL show on Showtime done well? It looked like it could do OK, or totally tank when TAL was in town last year showing off early cuts.

I don't think the problem is Car Talk, Dan, I think the problem is that Car Talk is what wakes you up every Saturday morning, thus unfairly focusing your ire on an otherwise reasonable show. Switch your alarm clock radio to KEXP or something. Then you'll have an irrational hatred of Mongolian throat singing, or something, but that's fine, whatever's on KEXP at 9 AM Saturday is guaranteed to suck anyway.

@17:

My smugness is juicy and dirty and luscious. Just so ya know. In case Ira Glass ever, you know, asks about me.

Car Talk is hilarious! And informative!

Furthermore, I resent the implication from #2 that A Prairie Home Companion is anything short of the best thing to ever come out of Minnesota.

Yeah, Car Talk was fun for like three seconds fifteen years ago, but I agree with everyone else who has turned against NPR as a rule (a couple of decent shows notwithstanding). Like so much of the so-called liberal media, they devote way too much time to asshole-republicans, but in a very insidious way that makes the asshole-republicans come off as kind of reasonable and perhaps even nice (we can generally refer to this as the "Mike Huckabee Model" which as the New York Times is proving can be very effective indeed).

@18: I'm pretty sure I recently heard someone at a party recently talking about how TAL had just finished production of season two for SHO, and she wasn't drunk or anything, so I was inclined to believe her. She was complaining, however, that the television show stories often lacked a narrative "arc," which I had to agree with but whatever, it was still better than 96 percent of the crap I subject myself to on television.

Umm, sorry about using "recently" twice in like five words in the above comment. But I felt compelled to add @21 that Garrison Keillor is -- in Dan Savage's own words -- a "fucking motherfucker" whose so-called "satire" of gay family life and follow-up "apology" on Salon revealed him to be an asshole of epic proportions, a truth that has always seeped through every syllable of his whispery voice on his creepy show. See http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/03/fuck_garrison_keillor

Dan, I shouldn't be surprised, given your general distain for the automobile, but you are wrong. Those guys are funny. I mean, come on. Think about it. Is there anything more ridiculous that trying to diagnose car problems over the phone? These guys are brilliant. They hate SUVs and love Subarus. They should be lesbians.

Say what you like about the show, Ray is a great mechanic and good guy. He kept my ancient Camry going for seven years during grad school in Boston - something I will forever be grateful for.

It wasn't so much that he worked cheap, but that he was good at coming up with minimal fixes that lasted.

And at least Car Talk is way less stale than "This American Get a Life" :-) Middlebrow slacker sensationalism is so 90's....

I too was a big Car Talk listen many many years ago. But then I realized that 1) I don't have a car so a lot of the info wasn't immediately useful to me, and 2) Hearing people laugh so much actually is depressing. So I stopped listening and moved on to other, better things.

I'm starting to fall out with Wait Wait Don't Tell Me for a similar reason. All the laughing drives me nuts. I guess there are many happy people in the world who gather together and laugh their heads off, but hearing the group on the show do this just reminds me that I'm never involved with such laughing craziness. Also, one of the Wait Wait guys is a cackler who should be banned from the show. Paula Poundstone always rocks though. But she's more about making laughs in others rather than laughing it up herself.

I like the Car guys even if they never took my call.

@26, yeah I agree with you on all the laughing on WWDTM. It does get old. Altho I'd still pay money to have Carl Kassell on my voicemail. Well, maybe $10.

Gay Recluse: Thanks for linking to that piece on Keillor where Dan makes a fool of himself. I love how when Keillor references stereotypical gay behaviors, he is "fucking motherfucker", but when Dan gets a letter from a parent referencing some stereotypical gay behaviors of her 6-year-old, he doesn't hesitate to assert that he's certain the kid will grow up to be gay. Love than double standard, Dan!

I still like Car Talk. It has that Law & Order predictability that I find soothing.

What's great about Click and Clack is that they are truly happy, non-ironic, no-bullshit people. They manage to tell people what to do without being pushy, opinionated jerks.

Their voices are ugly. If I couldn't reach the dial but I had a pen knife, I'd ream out my eardrums.

I work at 9am on most Saturday mornings, and Car Talk is part of what gets me through that first hour. You gotta have quite a subconscious hatred of other people having a good time to hate this show. The only thing that gets to me is the quiet snort when they stop laughing.

I love NPR. I thought Car Talk was really funny TWENTY YEARS AGO. Then fifteen years ago I still thought it was pretty good. This century? Not so much.

I love Garrison Keillor (as a White Bear Lake, MN native I'm sort of required to by law), but his Salon piece was a rare but serious misstep from a normally extremely articulate and liberal writer. I understand why some people based on this don't want to read anything else of his, ever; yet if you are on the fence you might want to try some of the "News of Lake Wobegon" stuff on mp3.

I have the same reaction (actually it begins with the "music interview/performance" section on Weekend Edition), but a friend has convinced me that the show is good, it's just KUOW's decision to air Car Talk at the unsensible hour of 9 am that makes the cackling auto advice so unbearable.

Really, I suspect that KUOW hates the notion of people sleeping in past 9 am. They force a panic radio shutdown during the week with Weekday or whatever that wretched Steve Scherr show is called.

Why don't you just turn to 90.7 KSER and listen to "Let the Twenties Roar" on Saturdays at nine, Dan? That show eradicates 17 days' worth of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Or do you not support community radio?

so hating npr is the new cool thing to do among the cap hill types. good thing cap hill types are so out of touch with anything enjoyable or interesting that they can safely be ignored.

npr is solid gold even if you've grown too awesome for it.

What the HELL are you guys doing up at 9:00 on Saturday morning?

@35, are we supposed to be able to pick up KSER in seattle? It doesn't come in for me. And yes, I know I can listening to its online stream, but I want actual radio.

Fuck Car Talk man, on Saturday mornings I groove to the Amy Goodman podcast (AAA: Amy, Anytime, Anywhere). While I'm doing that I check to see if any recent Republicans've been caught tickling their tallwackers with same-sexers, and since there's usually at least one instance of said, I blog about it for a few hours. Then I go ride my bike and thank fucking God WHO DOESN"T EXIST that I don't have a car so I don't have to listen to those fucking Car Talk guys. Just your average Saturday morning, I guess.

@38, stinkbug, I listen to KSER 90.7 FM on my radio at home and I'm in the city of Seattle. I don't know how well KSER's signal is received in south Seattle areas like High Point or Seward Park, but north of the ship canal I get it fine.

I have XM radio, and I listen to "The Agenda" from the HRC on Saturday mornings.

"GLBT radio" sounds cringe-worthy at best, but that show is actually pretty good.

I mostly gave up on KUOW several years back, except for Sat nite's "The Swing Years". I used to give them a lot of money too. I attended the recent local live show of "Says You" and sadly it was just dismal. I'd say the aging demographic is getting tired, literally...

ditto

Every Saturday morning at 9 AM, without fail, we scramble over each other to get to the radio and turn the fucking thing off once those “Car Talk” guys start cackling.
Gay.
Being able to reason from effect to cause is close to the heart of every real American. Why do you hate Yankee ingenuity?