Rejected by This American Life

In case you missed the season premiere of The Simpsons this past...

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:01:04 -0400

In case you missed the season premiere of The Simpsons this past weekend, here is Ira Glass’ cameo:

Sedaris' 'Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk': Aesop, Rated R

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 13:22:55 -0400

Sedaris' 'Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk': Aesop, Rated R:

NPR’s review of the latest David Sedaris book ’Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk’

Cannot wait to pick this up!

Recommend REJECTED BY THIS AMERICAN LIFE

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 12:14:00 -0400

Recommend REJECTED BY THIS AMERICAN LIFE:

Hey kids, if you wouldn’t mind recommending this tumblr I would be forever yours. The more people that know about it, the more likely we are to get submissions! Hazzah!

Ira Glass has a cameo in the season Premiere of The Simpsons!

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 10:05:18 -0400

Ira Glass has a cameo in the season Premiere of The Simpsons!

Ira Glass Likes Excess and Giant M&Ms

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:17:50 -0400

Ira Glass Likes Excess and Giant M&Ms:

New York Magazine’s interview; “21 Random Questions” with Ira Glass

FABULOUS

Famous Authors’ Rejection Letters Surface From NPR: Jack...

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:33:00 -0400

Famous Authors’ Rejection Letters Surface

From NPR:

Jack Kerouac, George Orwell and Sylvia Plath are just a few of the authors whose books were turned down by the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house. Researchers going through the Knopf archives have come across their rejection letters, as well as a few others.

Liane Hansen speaks to Richard Oram at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, where the archives are held.

Rejection letter #4

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:36:48 -0400

Awhile back, I posted a link to rejection letters received by Leah (http://leahj.blog-city.com) but was unable to get in contact with her to actually get a copy of the essay “It’s Not Easy Being Green” that she submitted. Well glory be to the powers of the interweb, for Leah stumbled upon this blog and reached out to me! So here again is her letter from TAL, and also her essay. Leah says she submitted about 5 years back and ended up finishing the piece this last year for another outlet. I for one, love this essay and think she should resubmit it to TAL. Enjoy!

Dear Leah,

Thank you for your recent submission to This American Life. I’m writing to say that the material you sent isn’t quite right for the show.

Please know that we reject a lot of material that’s perfectly good work but that simply doesn’t fit the idiosyncratic constraints of a radio show, or the idiosyncratic needs ofThis American Life.

Apologies for this form letter. Because we get so many unsolicited tapes and stories each week, and because our show is produced by such a small staff, we can’t respond individually to everyone who sends in material.

Thanks for your interest in the show.

Sincerely,

Stacy Tiderington

I was 15 the first time I told a guy I loved him and heard, “I love you, too” in return.He was two years older than me, six inches shorter and drove a yellow Toyota pick-up truck with manual transmission. He would drop it into neutral two blocks frommy parent’s house and we’d cruise silently into a parking spot fifteen minutes beforecurfew… then sit in the truck and talk… or, you know, make out.

If we weren’t listening to Classic Rock on WZZQ, we had Extreme’s newest in thetape deck – Pornograffiti II.

That big song from that album was everywhere that year.

“But if you only knew

how easy it would be to show me how you feel

more than words is all you have to do to make it real.”

It played in the truck almost every trip from my house to his and back. Blaring in thegym, during weight workouts for swim team. In the art studio, where Michael and Imet and started dating.

It. Played. Everywhere.

I was Michael’s first kiss. He took me to my first formal dance. The Harvest Moon.And, as I said, my first “I love you.”

If this was a Hollywood coming of age story, he would have also been my first inbed. But it isn’t and he wasn’t. And after I said no to him at age 15, I was doomed tospend the next 15 years saying no or being turned down by men around the world.

I said no to Guillermo in the bathroom of the hostel in Argentina. The bathrooms arethe only rooms with locks.

I was turned down by a fellow college sophomore who, at 19, said, “since you’vealready waited SO LONG, you should wait for your husband.”

I said no to an Italian locksmith and the bruises he left on my arms showed that helistened to me.

I was turned down by the best man at a wedding, because sex would be too intimate,but could we titty fuck anyway.

Trading no’s went on for years. Long past virginity being a badge of honor or achoice and into a world where it became a bad habit like hitting the snooze buttonor smoking. A bad habit that I couldn’t break, no matter how hard I tried or howmany men I dated…

It also became a movie starring Steve Carrell that I refused to see. I was afraid that

when people laughed at him, they laughed at me. This was NOT the Hollywood I waslooking for in my life.

Finally, a few years ago, a man walked into my life on his way through town. He hadan accent, an open tab at a bar and a fancy hotel room. When we walked in to thewell appointed room, he pointed out that he was already live-streaming the BBC onhis laptop and that I should take it as a good sign. That I could trust him.

It was the Shipping Report.

South or southwest 4 or 5, occasionally 6 at first in Irish Sea, veeringnorthwest 3 or 4 for a time. Slight or moderate, occasionally rough in Soleand Fastnet. Occasional rain, fog patches. Moderate or good, occasionallyvery poor.

From there it is a classic first time story. A quick CVS run for condoms. Safely settingour blackberries on the bedside table. Drunk fumbling with clothes and condoms.Skipping foreplay. Being underwhelmed and far from orgasm. A few days later agirlfriend even met me to ride our bikes across the city to celebrate over Blizzards atDQ.

I listened to him snore and stared at the ceiling missing the hours of naked fun,fooling around and, yes, orgasms that come with saying no. I thought of men I’drather be with and I felt relief knowing I could finally see The Forty Year Old Virginand laugh.

In the book Random Family author Adrian Nicole Leblanc writes, “unlike good looksor real fathers or money, virginity was democratic. Even skanky girls who had it –while they had it —- possessed something tangible and clean. For boys, catching avirgin as an accomplishment. It was like winning the dice games—hope skimmingthe sidewalk, playing calculated odds. Getting a virgin, they told one another, meanta lifelong open door: girls always held a soft spot for their first.”

I hold a soft spot for my first love and wish he’d been my first. Instead of beingoffered $20 for a cab, I would have been driven home, in a yellow Toyota pick-uptruck, while we listened to More Than Words.

It's an Ira life for me!

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:01:00 -0400

I am back dear readers and ready to have another go at gathering up forsaken stories.

Admittedly, I found myself getting a bit discouraged by other people’s “discouragedness.” Rejection royally blows, I think we can all agree on that point. The wall I kept hitting over and over was a reluctance by people to share their stories and rejection letters. Are we embarrassed? Ashamed? Some kind of toxic combination of both? I understand.

But people, it takes a lot of time and effort to put together a submission for TAL and I believe even the rejected ones deserve to be read! The producers say it themselves in EVERY REJECTION LETTER: “Please know that we reject a lot of material that’s perfectly good work but that simple doesn’t fit the unique constraints of a radio show or the idiosyncratic needs of TAL.”

So, rejection does not = bad.

Send me your stories, send me your friends’ stories, send me your friends friends’ stories…

For it is time to share.

Cheers.

rejectedbytal@gmail.com

“Starlee & Arthur Review Stuff” is quite...

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 12:30:49 -0400

“Starlee & Arthur Review Stuff” is quite possibly the most amazing, yet mind blowingly unknown web video series. Get on this NPR!

It’s a Hard Knock (This American) Life: An Interview with Starlee Kine

Tue, 25 May 2010 16:32:29 -0400

It’s a Hard Knock (This American) Life: An Interview with Starlee Kine:

An amazing article about Starlee Kine, former TAL producer, regular contributor, but most famously…the girl who contacted Phil Collins to ask for help writing a break up song in the well loved TAL episode “Break-Up.”

Rejection Letter #3:

Mon, 24 May 2010 13:56:34 -0400

Thank you for your submission to The American Life. Your piece “Hoosier Hospitality” stood out to me as having some really good writing and thought provoking moments. Although I enjoyed it very much, I’m writing to say that the piece isn’t quite right for our show at this time.

I would encourage you to keep writing, and if you choose to submit stories or ideas to our show in the future, on thing that may be helpful is to listen to a speech that Ira occasionally gives…*insert (will post this speech in future)

Please know that we reject a lot of material that’s perfectly good work but that simple doesn’t fit the unique constraints of a radio show or the idiosyncratic needs of TAL. Also know that your work falls in the minority of submissions that we feel merits a detailed response (almost all submissions get a standard form letter).

Again, thanks for sending it, and thanks for your interest in the show.

Good luck,

Kevin Clarke

A Note from the author:

“No matter what I accomplish in life, I will always feel like a failure. This is because my one goal is to be on the radio show “This American Life.” A while ago, I sent them an essay, which earned me the nicest rejection letter I’ve ever received. The piece has hung out in “My Documents” ever since, lonely and unread.”

(Obvious dramatization aside, we’ve all felt this, no?)

“Hoosier Hospitality”

My worst brush with discrimination was a measure brought before the Lafayette, Indiana city council.

How dry. A city council measure. It’s boring even to look at the phrase. And yet, it was different from all my previous experiences of being harassed.

Not that the other things weren’t really bad. Years before, some boys from my high school class called my house and said “We’ll kill you, dyke, and your dog, Smokey, too.” College, which had promised to be “a witness protection and relocation program for teenagers,” was actually worse than high school. Freshman year, my RA (accompanied by half of the residents of my dorm, a.k.a. “torch-bearing mob”) used her key to open the door to my room in the middle of the night in order to prove that my girlfriend and I slept in the same bed. I moved out of the dorm to avoid further torment, only to have somebody spray paint the words “Kill Fags” on the concrete wall outside of my college apartment. I joined a campus LGBT group and started giving speeches to educate the campus about gay issues (because the bumpkins clearly needed some schoolin’), and at least once we had to be escorted in and out of the building by security guards because of threatened violence. Despite our caution, a little flaming friend of mine got beaten up in a restaurant featuring “Burritos as Big as Your Head.”

But still, I’m going to go with the city council as the worst of the worst. In each of the previous cases, the people attacking me and my friends might have represented the general sentiment of people in our town, but nonetheless, their attacks were rogue, illegal actions that we could report to the authorities.

The city council measure, however, proposed to sanction discrimination against gays and lesbians in the areas of housing and employment. There would be no calling the police, no reporting to anyone. It would be legal. The explanation behind the proposal was something like this (add terrible accent): “We must protect business owners and landlords from the gay agenda, because once the homo-sex-uals infiltrate there will be no recourse.”

Huh? The implication was that the giant real estate machine that owned my dilapidated apartment building was powerless against me and my two roommates. If they only knew what a threat we were: I was long-haired, extremely depressed, and pretty sure that sweater-dresses were a good look; my roommate was a butch Asian rave DJ who spent her days in a darkened room slurping down cans of Ensure and jogging in place to an endless stream of techno beats; my best friend was a black drag queen who had recently been arrested while dressed as Supergirl.

At the time, it had seemed a sure thing that the measure would pass easily in our very conservative town, but the day of the vote, I decided to make a statement anyway. As we entered City Hall, I looked closely at the pro-discrimination camp. Who were these straight people who cared so much about taking away my rights that they would come here on a school night? Small children wore entire outfits that advertised their anti-gay stance. I didn’t even know what “gay” was until the age of 18 when a friend flat-out told me that “gay” was me. “So that’s it!” I thought. Then, pausing, I asked, “What’s that? Like, homo-sexu-al?”

It turned out that the majority of speakers were against the measure and made reasonable arguments about civil rights. I used my moment at the mic to talk about my mom. She had every reason in the world to be proud of me, but instead she was spending her days feeling ashamed of my coming out and her nights worrying that I would be assaulted and left for dead, hanging from a fence post somewhere in Tippecanoe county. I ended with a cheesy statement about the futility of the whole argument in a world with so many other problems. It’s still embarrassing. It’s also still true.

The miracle of the night was that the council heard our pleas. Two of the members switched their votes at the last minute, and the measure was voted down. Much to my mother’s dismay, I was prominently featured on the front cover of the local paper and on the 11 o’clock news not just in Lafayette, but also in Indianapolis, where my parents (and, critically, all of my parents’ friends) live to this day. I wasn’t actually quoted, but there I was, leaping four feet off the ground: long-hair, sweater-dress, unflattering wide-whaled corduroy pants, and an expression of complete joy smeared across my face. My faith in humanity had been temporarily restored by a bunch of conservative Christian Republicans.

Unfortunately, the victory, however beautiful, hasn’t stuck with me as much as the threat. Something about the experience made me more outspoken and, paradoxically, slightly more guarded than I would have been otherwise. I think it’s because I am still not quite positive that my civil rights are a sure thing.

Rejection Letters #1 & #2!!

Fri, 21 May 2010 16:19:07 -0400

Rejection Letters #1 & #2!! :

Here are our first rejection letters (besides mine) Glory Hallelujah! I’ve been trying to get Leah to send me her “It’s Not Easy Being Green” essay, so hopefully I’ll be able to post that in the future.

Please notice something very important for it is the whole reason behind this project:

Please know that we reject a lot of material that’s perfectly good work but that simply doesn’t fit the idiosyncratic constraints of a radio show, or the idiosyncratic needs of This American Life.

I would add to that, the rejections they make are because stories fail to fit the themes they are currently working on. A submission may be perfectly suited to This American Life, but not fit into any of of episodes they have in play.

Rejection blows, especially when it comes from such a well known institution. Take heart though, these stories are good and deserve to be read.

Enjoy Leah’s, and send me yours! rejectedbytal@gmail.com

Themes!

Thu, 20 May 2010 21:22:00 -0400

Ira asks all his intern applicants to suggest a theme idea for an episode. Which seeing as how they’re past the #400 mark on episodes, takes some digging deep down into the ol’ think tank.

On my application I suggested “Awkward Moments” and since those stories probably wouldn’t require the usual 10-20 minute acts, I thought it would be cool to do it in the style of “20 Acts in 30 Minutes” which is one of my all time favorite episodes.

What are some themes you’d want to hear the TAL gang tackle?

Stop it Ira. You’re spoiling me rotten! Ira Glass explains...

Wed, 12 May 2010 11:35:45 -0400

Stop it Ira. You’re spoiling me rotten! Ira Glass explains the features of the This American Life iPhone App. If you don’t have it…you are missing out. Like whoa.

This is one of my favorite segments from the This American Life...

Mon, 03 May 2010 12:59:26 -0400

This is one of my favorite segments from the This American Life TV series. What are some of yours?

"Sadly, one of the problems with being on public radio is that people tend to think you’re..."

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:32:00 -0400

““Sadly, one of the problems with being on public radio is that people tend to think you’re being sincere all the time.”
Ira Glass”

-

Ira Glass talking about storytelling.

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:27:00 -0400

Ira Glass talking about storytelling.

Don't Be Shy

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:19:47 -0400

OK so I’ve been lax in this endeavor as of late. But no more! Now is the time for frequent posts and shameless blog/project promotion.

If you love This American Life, then help me out here. Forward this to your friends who love TAL, and tell them to forward it to their friends and their friends friends, and friends friends parents and grandparents and mail men. Hundreds and hundreds of TAL submissions are made every week, you more than likely know someone who has sent in a submission. Let’s get them out in the open!

Get ready people. I’m gonna come at you like a spider monkey!

Bess

send me your original This American Life submission and rejection letter: rejectedbyTAL@gmail.com

"This American Life" Parody, Episode 2: "Phantom High School"

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:08:01 -0400

"This American Life" Parody, Episode 2: "Phantom High School" :

More This American Life inspired hilarity, brought to you by Kasper Hauser!

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/042210/art_616543207.shtml

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:04:11 -0400

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/042210/art_616543207.shtml