Here are some shitty things about traveling over Memorial Day weekend:

1. Getting up at 4:30am on a Saturday morning to catch an early train to Boston;
2. Not being able to score a seat in the Quiet Car on an early train to Boston and, consequently, spending four hours listening to screeching children;
3. Getting a seat in the Quiet Car on the way home and having everyone else pretend it is not actually the Quiet Car;
4. All public bathrooms in all train stations, everywhere.

Here are some awesome things about traveling over Memorial Day weekend:

1. Polishing off one novel and one fantastic nonfiction anthology plus the latest issues of The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and a chunk of the Sunday Times;
2. Exquisite steak tips fresh off the grill;
3. Nine to eleven hours of uninterrupted sleep per night;
4. Going laptop-free for nearly three days;
5. Non-Christmas, non-wedding family gatherings;
6. Coming home to a bitey cat and his less-bitey owner, who thoughtfully ordered Chinese food so that we might all collapse on the couch and watch Discovery Channel until bedtime.

<stl> Want to hear something shocking?
<emma> I do
<stl> There has only been one update to caoine.org in May, and that was three weeks ago.
<emma> I know, I know
<emma> I am a terrible person
<stl> It’s not that I’m saying you absolutely must update with the frequency of years past, but you know I just can’t ever get enough emma.
<emma> I will endeavor to satisfy your cravings
<stl> Fabulous.
<emma> I used to have time to mostly do that stuff during the day
<emma> I no longer do
<stl> Actually I had been blaming Twitter.
<emma> I think if it weren’t for twitter I would produce no content at all
<stl> That would cause much sadness.
<emma> Maybe I will just post this whole conversation
<emma> By way of explaining things
<stl> It’s too bad that I’ve said nothing witty or profound.
<emma> There is still some time if you act quickly
<stl> Sometimes I drive into Hollywood at 4 AM to get a handjob from a transsexual prostitute.
<stl> Wait.
<emma> Scene!

I’m no longer sure exactly how I found out about This American Life — I suppose someone or several people must have recommended it, because a couple years back I subscribed to the podcast version. It remains one of only two podcasts from which I have never unsubscribed, and which I listen to every week. I’ve caught up on dozens of older episodes, too, from the pre-podcast days; I feel confident in saying that it’s by far my favorite offering from any of the various public radio organizations.

So when I happened to hear a few weeks ago about some sort of This American Life live show that was happening at one of the NYU theaters, I bought tickets without thinking twice. I wasn’t really sure what a live stage version of a radio show would be like, but I figured it was bound to be worth seeing.

The show was last night, and I can confirm that it was, indeed, worth seeing. You may have heard about it, actually, if you follow technology news, because one of the interesting things about it is that it wasn’t just a stage show. It was a stage show that was broadcast, live and in HD, to movie theaters all over the country. The sheer technical logistics required to pull this off are pretty daunting if you think about them, and certainly we as the audience were aware that we were watching something unusual when we saw that the theater was full of pretty serious brodcasting equipment. Outside, there were a couple of trucks with their own wifi network my iPhone picked up and an oversized satellite dish.

But once the show actually got underway, I didn’t think much about the cameras except when a guy with a Steadicam wandered onto the stage once in a while, or the house lights would come up so they could get a shot of the audience. Because as it turns out, Ira Glass is exactly as capitvating on stage as he is on the radio, once you get past the deeply unsettling feeling that results from hearing a familiar radio voice coming out of an utterly unfamiliar head.

Much of the discussion was about the process of translating the radio show to television, as the second season of the Showtime series is starting on Sunday. I don’t subscribe to Showtime, but I did buy the first season when it became available in the iTunes store, and after the clips I saw last night I’m really looking forward to the second season. So to the extent that the event was probably at least in part designed to get us excited about the television series again, it was certainly a success. But I just enjoyed soaking up my favorite radio show in a completely different format, and I hope they do something like it again soon.