Point Taken: Watching The Sausage Being Made

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I had an opportunity to be in the audience for the taping of the debut of "Point Taken", a new weekly PBS television show produced by WGBH in Boston, which promises to deliver reasonable dialogue about current events without all the noise. If you've been following my blog, you know by now that I am all about that, so I was pleased to accept the invitation.

I'm always interested in seeing how the sausage is made, and the invitation required only that the audience be prepared to sit still for at least two hours (which meant that bathroom breaks or early departures were out of the question). I can do that.

The premiere show, edited down to thirty minutes, was airing at 11 PM that same night, and since a lot of things were at stake here - like potential or continuing sponsorships, and syndication - the producers were under a considerable amount of pressure (and a hard deadline) to get it right.

Left to right: Monica Mehta, Tom Shattuck, Carlos Watson (host), Matt Welch, and Isabel Wilkerson

Left to right: Monica Mehta, Tom Shattuck, Carlos Watson (host), Matt Welch, and Isabel Wilkerson

We (the audience) were seated very specifically by some optics-algorithm I was unable to comprehend. Once seated, we were directed to practice laughter and applause by the stage manager, as other production folks got their camera shots and angles just right. This all took the better part of an hour, until the director, hidden away in another room, was satisfied. The host, Carlos Watson, appeared, the guests were seated and introduced, and after a couple of false starts and re-takes, the show began. When I watched it later on television at home, the production was flawless.

The question on the table was "Is the American Dream dead or alive?"   Guests Monica Mehta and Tom Shattuck argued Yes, and Matt Welch and Isabel Wilkerson argued No. And Carlos Watson kept them (and the thirty minute show) on track and in focus. The audience voted prior to and after the show, using clickers, and it looked like the "No" vote was larger than it had been prior to the show. So Monica and Tom prevailed. Good dialogue, among four bright in-touch people who know better than to shout over one another

I recommend "Point Taken" to you - it's available to stream here.  

And look for me - I'm the tall guy with the white hair in the second row, on the right hand side of your screen. For about two seconds.

 

Good Night Sibby Sisti, Wherever You Are...

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When Brendan Boyd and I wrote The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading And Bubblegum Book, we needed some kind of coda at the end - something in line with the smartass tone we'd created, mixed with equal measures of snark and nostalgia. Sibby Sisti replaced Mrs Calabash in the old Jimmy Durante exit line, and just like that, we had our coda and the book rode off into the sunset.

But we never expected that line to stick in so many readers' minds, to the point where it still comes back in comments and reviews of the book, especially since it was re-issued as a facsimile edition Kindle Book in 2015.

The other thing that's come back is the question about whether/when a sequel to the original book will appear. The answer to that question is "soon, I hope". Work is in fact under way on a sequel that will apply the same blend of snark and nostalgia in the original book to cards of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, and will include a first-hand take on the ways in which the business of baseball cards has changed - for better and for worse.  

Stay tuned...