Offbeat

Update:

Charlie Sheen might be #winning after all.

After a universally panned show at the Detroit Fox Theatre on Saturday, Sheen has apparently retooled his "Violent Torpedo of Truth" tour, earning him a standing ovation from a Chicago audience.

From the Huffington Post:

After being heckled and booed in Detroit, Charlie Sheen made some changes to his road show Sunday night – and this time, it ended with a standing ovation.

Sheen used a talk show-style format at his Chicago show, with a master of ceremonies asking the actor questions. The interviewer, who didn't identify himself, kept Sheen on track and gave the actor a chance to make some snarky comments.

Some audience members said the second performance on Sheen's "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not an Option" tour wasn't outstanding, but at least it had amusing moments. And Sheen drew cheers throughout the show, which began and ended with a standing ovation.

Mackenzie Barth, 19, said it was a "weird" show. "At least no one was booing," she added.

One commenter on Huffpost said, "I can only conclude that the people of Detroit have better taste than those in Chicago."

What do you think?

And you thought flying with a hole punched in the roof of your plane was scary.

Earlier today, a plane had to abort its takeoff due to fears of wind-shear.

Wind-shear refers to a drastic change in wind direction over a relatively short distance, and can cause serious problems for airplanes taking of or landing.

NPR has a tradition of releasing an April Fool's Day story every year.

They're not obvious about revealing the joke, so they end up fooling a fair number of people every year.

Morning Edition goes 3-D

Here's this morning story from "Jen Sands-Windsor" about people opting for eye surgery so they can improve their 3-D movie experience:

People were definitely fooled.

Michigan Radio's Rina Miller said she was "hollering while driving about that stupid woman risking her vision for the sake of 3-D movies. Got me!"

And Facebook fan Barb said, "Boy, am I gullible! I was complaining to my husband about this crazy surgery. Guess I gotta keep my radar on today. :)"

And Jim West wrote about it on his blog - telling people to check the story out as a sign of the times:

When NPR reported this today I thought for sure they would end it with ‘April Fools!’- but they didn’t.  Which can only mean that people are getting crazier by the minute...What craziness rules these days.

Someone let Jim know it was a joke to which he responded, "i had that feeling but since they never ended with ‘april fools’ …. well, it’s npr. i trust them. im gullible."

Marketplace gets in the game

Our Facebook fan Brian W. pointed out another April Fools story from the Marketplace Morning Report.

David Brancaccio brought us this report "France's new measure of well-being: Boredom."

Brancaccio reported:

In addition to new measures of well-being in his country, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said today there must be balance, calling for new, regular government surveys of public levels of "ennui," or boredom. Sarkozy said the intention is to "Keep France French" by insuring that Anglo-American-style happiness does not get out of hand.

Take a listen:

Here & Now producers get into the game with its Twitter Time story

The producers fooled host Robin Young with this fictitious story (it's wonderful to hear her surprise when she discovers the whole interview was a joke).

They set Young up to interview a radio station manager who was turning his airwaves over to Twitter as a way to attract a younger audience.

The Tweets, he tells Young, are converted to audio using special computer software.

Station Manager @smittyd tells Young it's "a world that is happening right now, Robin - not however many hours ago as the traditional media might report it."

From the Here & Now:

A small public radio station on the Eastern Shore of Maryland is taking social media to the next level. The station, WAFD-FM, in Pocomoke, Md. has turned over its airwaves to Twitter.

From 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on weekdays, listeners will hear a constant stream of “tweets” to the station.

I hear Pocomoke is lovely this time of year.

Listen to Tweets turned to audio here. "You gotta develop an ear for it."

You can also hear the bleeped out tweets. The offending words are replaced with "NPR News."

On Here & Now's comment section Jesse wrote:

I'm thinking, "this is the dumbest idea I have ever heard." Then, boom! Ya got me!

NPR's True Gem

While we're at it, don't forget to pick up the wonderful 40th Anniversary CD collection of NPR's best funding credits.

When is fast food not fast enough?

Well, last night in Detroit, one unlucky drive-thru-er found out.

From the Free Press:

A drunk driver got so impatient in the all-night drive-through line at Burger King that she intentionally bashed into the car waiting for food in front of her, police said.

Flying Dog Brewery, a Maryland-based beer maker, is suing Michigan's Liquor Control Commission for violating its free speech rights.

The Brewery applied for a license to sell its 20th anniversary commemorative beer "Raging Bitch" in 2009. The beer's label included the following text:

Two inflammatory words... one wild drink. Nectar imprisoned in a bottle. Let it out. It is cruel to keep a wild animal locked up. Uncap it. Release it....stand back!! Wallow in its golden glow in a glass beneath a white foaming head. Remember, enjoying a RAGING BITCH, unleashed, untamed, unbridled- and in heat- is pure GONZO!! It has taken 20 years to get from there to here. Enjoy!

According to Business Wire, the Michigan Liquor Commission barred the sale of the beer claiming the "beer's label — designed by renowned British artist Ralph Steadman — is 'detrimental to the public health, safety and welfare.'"

Michigan is the only state, of the more than 40 states where the beer is sold, to ban it.

The culture of texting is making its mark on our language. There are some surprising new entries in the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

From the Associated Press:

LONDON (AP) - OMG! The exclamatory online abbreviation has won the approval of the Oxford English Dictionary. The term - short for "Oh my God" - is one of dozens of new entries in the authoritative reference book's latest online update.

Other Internet-inspired expressions given the stamp of approval include LOL, "laughing out loud"; IMHO, "in my humble opinion"; and BFF, "best friends forever."

The dictionary says that although the terms are associated with modern electronic communications, some are surprisingly old. The first confirmed use of "OMG" was in 1917.

The new update, released Thursday, includes "flat white" - a type of milky coffee - and "muffin top," defined as "a protuberance of flesh above the waistband of a tight pair of trousers."

Some other gems making it into the dictionary include "FYI, and " WAG," according to CNN.com.

"WAG" is a new one to me, so I definitely fall outside of the Oxford English Dictionary's requirement "that the word is used and understood by a wide audience" requirement.

"WAG" is an abbreviation for "wives and girlfriends" used in reference to partners of soccer players - definitely a British thing.

It's a good thing LOL is now in the dictionary. Now confused parents can look up the meaning of the term before making a few glaring instant message faux pas.

For more on the confusion over "LOL," listen to the hilariously sweet story by Adam Gopnik from the Moth Radio Hour - you need to sign up for a free PRX membership to hear it, it's worth it! - the story comes at 13:08.

A community organizer is asking tens of thousands of people to help him create a video promoting Grand Rapids. Rob Bliss is known around Grand Rapids for putting on one-of-a-kind, free events and he's announced his latest idea. He’s planning to make the video crazy enough that it’ll go viral.

Lip-dubs are like a music video featuring regular people lip-singing and dancing to a song they all know. They’re usually not edited – meaning they have to shoot the whole video in one take.

Bliss says lots of high schools and colleges have been putting together lip-dubs to promote their schools lately.

“But no one’s really made a truly city-wide professional level production like this kind of thing. And I think that’s really what’s exciting about this, is that it’s really attempting something that – at least to me – feels nearly impossible."

Which, to me, is sort of strange. Bliss has pulled off all kinds of crazy events. For ArtPrize once he made thousands of colored paper airplanes and flew them off skyscrapers downtown. He’s attracted thousands of people downtown for a massive pillow fight, a world-record-setting zombie walk, sidewalk chalk floods, and the ‘world’s largest inflatable waterslide’ which stretched two city-blocks down a steep street.

The nine minute long video (set to the tune of a live version of Don McClean’s “American Pie”) will be a continuous, single camera shot with no edits. Bliss says it’ll take a whole day and thousands of residents to set up and shoot. 

 “We stuff it full of all of this crazy, crazy, crazy stuff. Weddings, marching bands, motorcades with police officers hanging out the windows singing the songs, pillow fights, kayakers in the grand river, lighting parts of Pearl Street Bridge on fire, helicopter take-off out of downtown; ridiculousness really.”

Bliss has hired a professional production company for the video shoot. He expects to spend between $25,000 and $35,000 on it. He’s now hiring some part-time staff and looking for volunteers to help with and be in the video.

The big day for the video shoot is Sunday May 15th with a rain date the following weekend.

A package containing a bomb was held for three weeks at the McNamara Federal Building in downtown Detroit. From the Detroit News:

A security officer at the McNamara Federal Building stored a suspicious package that turned out to contain a bomb for three weeks before alerting authorities, said a spokesman for a union that represents guards at the site, who called the incident "a total embarrassment."

"He apparently set it aside," said David Wright, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 918, which represents the Federal Protective Service (FPS) employees, who guard the McNamara and other federal buildings around the country.

"It should have been left in place and he should have called in a canine detection unit to see if they could make a determination about it," he said Tuesday.

The package was eventually placed behind two dumpsters behind the McNamara Building on Michigan Avenue downtown around 10 a.m. Friday. The Detroit Police Department's bomb squad collected the device from there and moved it to Belle Isle, where it was detonated.

An FBI official said yesterday that the device had gone to FBI headquarters in Virginia for additional testing.

Detroit expected to get grim news from the U.S. Census bureau. But the results are, in fact, far worse than expected. They paint a picture of urban devastation unlike any in our nation’s history, a snapshot of the depopulation of a major American city.

Consider this: Since the Republican National Convention in 1980, Detroit has lost half a million people. In the thirty years before that, it lost even more -- another seven hundred thousand.

For years, the term “white flight” had been synonymous with what was happening.  Today, it’s mostly about black flight. The black population of Detroit declined by more than one hundred and eighty-five thousand people during the last decade.

What that indicates is that the middle class of both races has given up on the city, in large part because the schools are perceived as being so bad. There have been a number of stories in recent months speculating that, for the first time, the census would find that the percentage of Detroiters who are white was increasing.

Optimists believed that the city was attracting a new generation of young urban pioneers, who were returning to Detroit from the suburbs, living in lofts and creating an artistic and urbane lifetstyle.

The census shows that this was a complete fantasy. Sure, there may be a few kids doing those things. There are also a few people who vote for the Socialist Workers’ party. But both groups are statistically insignificant. Nearly half of what white population remained in Detroit in 2000 vanished over the next decade.

There are now only about fifty-five thousand people in Detroit who identify themselves as white. Sixty years ago, when the city celebrated its 250th anniversary, that figure was one point six million.

That means that more than ninety-five percent of the white population has disappeared.  That’s not to say that Detroit’s troubles are solely due to the fact that the whites left. In fact, one-quarter of the black population left over the last decade as well.