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Show Details
Owner:
Marc Porter Zasada
Copyright:
KCRW 2008
Feed updated:
10/3/2009 @1:46 AM CT
Tags
california
games
games & hobbies
hobbies
kcrw
kcrw fm
kcrw s urban man
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Show Details
125 days ago
KCRW's The Urban Man
Newest Episode: Tue November 10, 2009. 02:44 AM
Every week 'The Urban Man' sets out to fathom Los Angeles: its mystery its poetry and its beautiful conundrums. Along the way Marc Porter Zasada often gets personally involved with his subject and fraternizes with the natives.
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Tue November 10, 2009. 02:44 AM
Last week, I found myself at a 35th anniversary celebration for Hello Kitty. No kidding, Hello Kitty: that unspeakably cute Japanese cartoon figure with the round eyes, button nose, red bow, and three whiskers each side. In Japan, Hello Kitty is a national obsession, and more than 25,000 different products feature that face: purses, clocks, radios, towels, toasters, tea sets, you name it. I hear it?s socially acceptable for a Tokyo executive to have a Hello Kitty startup screen on his cell phone. The licensing company makes billions...

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Tue November 03, 2009. 02:44 AM
Like everyone in L.A., I try never to be content. I know it's crucial never to succumb to job satisfaction or a general sense of happiness. That would be a crime against ambition. Worse, to be content would be to agree to type-casting: you know, where an actor has to play the same character over and over again...

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Tue October 27, 2009. 02:44 AM
I don't know about you, but I have never actually won a political argument. No one has ever said to me, "You know what? Now that you put it so clearly, I see I was wrong." Not once. Not ever. Not when I marshal facts, not when I quote Jefferson, not by Socratic inquiry or blunt force of will. Even though, you know, I am often right...

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Tue October 20, 2009. 02:44 AM
Here in L.A., everyone thinks they understand the mathematics of
beauty. You know, Clothes. Faces. Legs. Our eyes expertly rove an
afternoon mall or a midnight bar, evaluating the smooth, the tight...or
at least, the fashionable Tonight the Urban Man finds himself standing in line outside a dance
club just off Hollywood Boulevard. It's about 11:30, and the line is
composed mostly of women 22 to 26, all trying hard to look beautiful...

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Tue October 13, 2009. 02:44 AM
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Tue October 06, 2009. 02:44 AM
The other morning, as I sat in Starbucks with a friend, the Urban Man suddenly became unduly optimistic. It happened as I was surveying a large throng of latte-drinkers bent over their glowing laptops. "Remember The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," I asked my friend, "where that woman is sitting by herself in a café, and she comes up with the answer '42,' just before the earth is wiped out?"

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Tue September 22, 2009. 01:44 AM
I don't know about you, but the Urban Man tries hard to take
responsibility for his mistakes. You know, like all the therapists and
self-help books say, "Don't blame fate, don't blame your mother. Don't
lay your problems on mysterious forces beyond your control...not even
on your friend Pete..."

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Tue September 15, 2009. 01:44 AM
I don't know about you, but even after living several decades in L.A.,
I wonder if I'm really, you know, home. I'll be driving down a
particularly random boulevard or crossing a beat patch of desert, and
I'll think: "No way. Stop kidding around. This can't really be my
home..."

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Tue September 08, 2009. 01:44 AM
Special for Labor Day, 2009

Today is Labor Day, intended as a holiday of rest for working folks, and a celebration of labor itself. It's a quaint relic from a crazy time when Americans thought of work as a good thing. No kidding, they really did. For a while, they thought there was some kind of human dignity and even spiritual reward to be derived from road building, tractor driving, or pipe fitting. You can read about this brief romantic period in a history book...some people claim it accounts for our early success...

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Tue September 01, 2009. 01:44 AM
Don't tell anyone, but the Urban Man often tries to organize real life
into a music video. It's a bad habit, I know ? but I'll be sitting,
say, in a vegan Asian fusion restaurant, listening with apparent close
attention to the important conversation of a lunchtime companion, when
the background track on the sound system, barely audible above the
general hubbub, suddenly catches my ear...

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Tue August 25, 2009. 01:44 AM
Sigmund Freud wrote a famous book called Civilization and Its Discontents in which he said people could never be happy: not with civilization and not without it.  Sure enough, most folks will tell you they're pretty discontent with civilization. They claim they've had it with restless freeways and tall glass buildings...

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Tue August 04, 2009. 01:44 AM
Like most Angelenos, the Urban Man is the master of many games not played at the Olympics. I drive the 405 Freeway at 5:04. I deliver 30 second pitches during 20 second elevator rides. And yes, I can move as deftly as an NFL tackle among the round crowded tables of a large fundraising dinner.

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Tue July 28, 2009. 01:44 AM
After all, it applies to everyone you meet. Your turbaned taxi driver may actually hold a PhD in biochemistry or have a hot Punjab memoir already in the can. That dapper exec may actually be betting his last nickel. That shining star may yesterday have started her descent....

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Tue July 21, 2009. 01:44 AM
I don't own a dog. It's true. I resist owning a dog despite the urging of friends who insist it's more gratifying than raising a family, or embracing a lover, or maintaining close relatives. It's a mass trend. I read that both Seattle and San Francisco now have more dogs than children; that 80% of dog owners now refer to themselves as their pooch's "mommy" or "daddy;" and some 45 percent say that having a dog is a superior experience to having a child...

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Tue July 14, 2009. 01:44 AM
Here in L.A., it's important to express your personal freedom. Maybe you don't dance. Maybe you don't play the sax. But practically anyone can drive the freeways fast and late with all the windows open and loud music screaming into the night...

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Tue July 07, 2009. 01:44 AM
Last week the Urban Man drove down to Hollywood Boulevard and joined the crowds hoping to see the afterglow of pixie dust around Michael Jackson's star. To protect myself, I wore my darkest sunglasses...

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Tue June 30, 2009. 01:44 AM
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Tue June 23, 2009. 01:44 AM
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Tue June 16, 2009. 01:44 AM
You may or may not have noticed, but chaos has been in fashion for some time. You have your art expressing confusion and death, your t-shirts featuring dangerous words and half-formed images, your leather jackets decorated with skulls and iron crosses. Then you have your nihilist lyrics, your deconstructionist architecture, your torn jeans, your misogynist rap, your New Yorker short stories, your video games set in smoking ruins, and of course, performance art. Even if you peruse the recent release aisle at the video store, you'll notice that 90 percent feature some form of grim horror...

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Tue June 09, 2009. 01:44 AM
When happy endings come to modern films or novels, they often come like this: An orphaned character, beset by evil-doers, finds an unexpected family among a ragtag collection of fellow travelers, unanticipated neighbors, animated toys, or funny forest creatures...

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