It was the spring of 98 and I was into my third or fourth week in US. Had tasted the sound bytes from NPR to become an instant fan of Kojo Nandi show. A few days back, in that spring of 98, i had also bought a Sony Dream Machine; an alarm clock/radio.
I was tired of waking up to the annoying monotonous buzz of my old alarm clock, and was on the look out for an alarm clock which could wake me up with a random pick from amoung my favourite music. I was hoping i would be able to find a cd player/alarm clock, put a cd in it, set the alarm and wake up to one of my favourite songs. But in the country where i found to the dismay of my small town indian eyes; the front glass doors of the stores which automagically flung open as you approached them, in anticipation possibly of you flinging open your fat vallet; and McDonalds drive throughs which served you big fat super sized Mac with double cheese, and coffee without sugar and milk in under a minute; and the freeways where you had to pay to drive and the criss crossing even and odd numbered interstate highways full of free thinking people with pink hair and piercings and
street sweeper trucks; and airports with escalators and restrooms with faucets which opened, if and only if, you did break dance on your left foot; for the life of me, i could not find a cd player which had an alarm clock. The fact that i had to rely on public transportation, didn't really help my cause either. So i settled down for the next best thing, Sony Dream Machine, which was not exactly my
dream machine.
I set my alarm, tuned the radio to 87.3, which was the only station that i was familiar with at that time. Alarm was set for 10:00 ( which was really early morning for me by Saturday standards ) so that i could get up at 10, snooze the alarm, sleep a bit more snooze it again, sleep a bitter more and snooze it again and sleep a bittest more and finally get off my twin bed by, say around noon.
A minute or so after 10 that saturday morning, this abnoxious, loud, dragging laughter came screaming out of Sony dream breaker machine, which woke me up. Disgusting I must say, the laugter was, but what followed the laughter wasn't. That was about 8 years back and have tried not to miss
cartalk on saturday mornings since. ..and So i was listening to it this saturday and was driving and decided to blog to my uncontrollable blogging itch's content on how i accidently became a fan of car talk, sort of a tribute to the great work by Tom and Ray.
At the end of every show, the Click and Clack brothers, give credits to their actual staff and then to some of their ficticious staff. Here are some of my favorites. (
..Complete Listing)
..Our
Musical Theater Critic from the Bombay Office - Jaswant Singh ( Just Won't Sing ?)
Russian Chauffeur - Picov Andropov ( Pick up and Drop off? )
Self Esteem Coach - Mia Culpa ( really !? )
Statistician - Marge Innovera ( Margin of error ?)
Swedish Attorney - Bjorn Liar ( Born Liar ? )
Staff Butler, from the Car Talk Bombay Division - Mahatma Coat ( ..hmm )
I leave you off with the cartalk puzzler from last week..
What is the longest English word, that remains a valid English word, as you remove its letters one at a time?
