Hello girls and guys ,
I'm deep deep in my bed, feverish and sorethroatish ... drinking pints of hot tea with lemon and honey but I don't forget you !!!
Here is the new site I recommend you today :
http://www.radiodiaries.org/radiodiaries.html
This is a great site to practise written and oral comprehension since you have both script and MP3 format recording for each topic ! The topics deal with little stories, testimonies, anecdotes, diaries of famous and ordinary people :
Here is a funny example :
Gibtown
Produced by: Joe Richman
Broadcast on SoundPrint and NPR's All Things Considered (1995)
LARRY MASSET, HOST: Welcome to SoundPrint, I'm Larry Masset. Here you are on a crowded highway, crawling through a strip of shopping malls, fast food joints, multi-plex movie theaters, gas stations. Somewhere behind the mall are suburbs with names like Maplewood and Ravencrest. The questions is where are you. The answer is anywhere in America. Maybe if there are snow-peaks on the edge of town you might be in the Rockies. If it's corn, could be Iowa. But it's much the same anywhere you go. In the old days, people tell, towns were different. Each one had a character of its own. X was slow and friendly, Y was fast and mean, Z was just plain goofy. And Gibsonton, Florida - where producer Joe Richman takes us now - Gibtown they used to call it, that was... well let's take a look.
JOE RICHMAN, REPORTER: Melvin, the human blockhead, lives with his wife, Joyce, in a small trailer home just outside Gibsonton. In their living room, there are eight clocks, all set five minutes fast, and a porcelain sign on the wall that reads, `God bless this mobile home.'
[sound of TV and chatting]
RICHMAN: One thing to know about Melvin is that if you want to visit, the best time is in the afternoon because, he says, he doesn't like the soaps.
MELVIN BURKHART, HUMAN BLOCKHEAD: I watch The Price is Right in the morning and then we have the- Judge Wopner, you know. And then I watch Perry Mason. See what else is on tonight. Oh, Picket Fences. Yeah, I won't be watching no movie tonight. That's one I- one I really like, Picket Fences.
RICHMAN: Melvin Burkhart is 86 years old and for most of his life on carnival midways across the country, Melvin was known as the human blockhead. Being a blockhead means tilting your head back and hammering nails, spikes and ice picks up your nose.
Mr. BURKHART: You want to see that?
RICHMAN: I'd love to see that.
Mr. BURKHART: OK, watch. Here's a 20-penny spike, 50 cent hammer and a no sense head. I'm going to drive this spike in my head. Watch. [sound of hammer hitting spike] You can see that it's only entering a little bit there. But then, as you hit it and control that hitting, it's going further and further, see?
RICHMAN: Oh, gosh.
Mr. BURKHART: You've got it in there now and then you just control actually how far it's going to go.
RICHMAN: How far is it in now?
Mr. BURKHART: That far.
RICHMAN: What's that, about four inches?
Mr. BURKHART: I'd say we're near five. You want us to measure it? [laughs]
RICHMAN: The spikes are real. The trick is they go from Melvin's nose down into his throat passage. As a teenager, Melvin was an aspiring boxer, but after no wins and six losses, Melvin's nose required an operation. Thirteen bone fragments were removed. It ended his boxing career, but Melvin says it allowed him to become not just a good, but a great, human blockhead.
Mr. BURKHART: Everybody else now tries to imitate me. Don't get me wrong, I'm still considered the top, see, of the human blockheads.
Here is the audio file:
http://www.albany.edu/talkinghistory/radiodiaries/rd-gibtown.mp3
And this weird character inspired one great American photographer , Joel-Peter Witkin , fascinated by Surrealism and freaky people (learn more about him here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel-Peter_Witkin
