I was listening to This American Life on NPR a while ago, and Ira Glass was talking about the time he was watching The O.C. and they mentioned This American Life. Apparently, a guy was sitting in his dorm room, talking to his girlfriend on the phone (oh yeah, sorry, I don't know names because I have never watched even one minute of The O.C.), and the girlfriend overheard through the phone another female talking in the dorm room. The guy told her he was listening to This American Life. The girlfriend said, "This American Life? Isn't that the show where yuppie hipsters talk about how amazing ordinary people are?" Or something to that effect. Ira Glass played the clip, after which he exclaimed, It's like they said my name! It's like a fictional character on television said my name!
I had my own such moment the other day. In case you didn't know, I'm a bit of a Joel Achenbach fan (see the link to his blog on the right side of the page). The bus stop I use for work is one block away from the Washington Post. Now that I live and work in D.C., I dream of running into him on the street. Yes, I'm a huge nerd because I idolize a science journalist who has written columns for National Geographic and blogs about science and politics (among other things) on the WaPo website. I'm sure he has no idea who I am, but if he were to put my blog on his blog roll, I think my head would explode. He's also a rather amusing and insightful writer, so if he were closer to my age and not married with kids, I think I'd be in love. Anyway, the other day, he blogged this post: A Planet of Corn, in which he admits that his one journalistic obsession is Ag Policy. The post coincided with his article in the Post about the USDA's decision to allow farmers participating in the Conservation Reserve Program in parts of the recently flooded Midwest to start grazing their cattle on land previously set aside for conservation. My work these days is Ag Policy and land conservation and corn for carbon sequestration and ethanol, and so I had a "He said my name" kind of moment. Not that I had anything at all to do with anything in that article, it's just cool when someone you admire uses some of your personal key words.
