Slashdot Mirror
NPR's "Car Talk" Glides To a Halt
stevegee58 writes "After 25 years on the air, Tom and Ray Magliozzi (aka Click and Clack, The Tappet Brothers) are calling it quits in September. With their nerdy humor, explosive laughter and geek cred (both MIT alums) Tom and Ray will be sorely missed by the average NPR-listening Slashdotter." How many garages have names as cool as "Hacker's Haven"? I've long thought that someone should assemble a compilation featuring nothing but hours of their laughter. (Which will be available for sampling, since they will continue to play archived material for a long time yet.)
Nooooooo! These guys were brilliant!
Sad day indeed.
Goodbye and good riddance to radio's most irritating show. What people saw in it I do not know. Two guys laughing like hyenas at everything each other says whether it's funny or not. Gimme a break!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
At least we still have Crazy Ira and The Douche, right?
Right?
This makes me feel sad. They were a great part of Saturday mornings. I know they are up at retirement age, but I hope they find some other projects that help them share their wit and wisdom. Click and Clack Rock.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
Why stop now...? Were they unready to embrace Electric Vehicles? "Too" ready...?
Technologies change... perhaps a new generation must take over the helm, when they do...
Perhaps the next generation of commentators (eg, for EV's) will come from Stanford, or another West Coast university... farthen from Detroit, closer to Japan / China and the Silicon Valley...?
Or... maybe smart people just need to move-on to other interesting work...
I first listened to them on WBUR, before they were picked up by NPR. "Cartalk Plaza" was located on Commonwealth Avenue, not in "Hahvuhd Squayah", and "our fair city" was Boston, not Cambridge. Been a long time since I wandered those haunts. Click and Clack weren't going to last forever, guess it's that time to move on.
I'm amazed they didn't get arrested by the TSA or FCC or DHS. Or at least get hatemail from the same people who spammed a magazine that said "How to Hack your Computer" on the cover.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I think that when they saw the Dodge Dart was coming back on to the market, they decided to get out of the business.
I just discovered the joys of podcasting their shows, which is a great way to consume non-news radio. This is terrible news.
I'll really miss Tom and Ray. I even thought they were great in their Nova special on the car of the future
Sorry, nothing too insightful to say other than how sad I am! Can we do a /. funeral? We could hire the Donwanna Behere funeral home.....Yea, lame I know - -
see? we need them!!
will work for dragon quest localization
Yeah, but then they'll get reasonably priced health care and some time off work. In a Conservative world, they would be shit-canned immediately to save on medical care costs, probably tossed to the street, and a Mexican would be hired to do their work shittily but cheaply. The company would go bankrupt, the excutives would cash out with golden parachutes and stash the money in the Caymans, and start another shill company hiring back the employees of the first one but with fewer benefits and 70% wages.
The mouth-breathers see "NPR" and have flooded every forum on the internet with their ass-hate "libtard yuck-yuck" comments. It's a great show, more for entertainment value than anything. Oh yeah, and NPR listeners are bar none the most well-informed news consumers in this country.
My local station plays the show at 7 or 8 Wednesday nights which is when I usually catch it.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
After recommending muriatic acid to remove concrete overspray from a cars paint they added the advice to "test it out on a neighbors car first". I will really miss these guys.
Haywood Jabuzoff
Why stop now...? Were they unready to embrace Electric Vehicles? "Too" ready...?
Why now? Because they are 74 and 63 years old.
I hate it when good radio programs go away. Dr Dean Edell, now this. I don't know what it is, but I've always felt a stronger connection to radio than TV. I guess it's that I'm an old fart. But radio is so much more personal with less glitz, extraneous distraction. At least I still have As It Happens.
I know there some mix feelings about the show, some people don't get it.
Well I do and I like them. I just wish they had found some kind of successors carry on things instead of getting re-mix of old and unaired material.
I called in once to see about getting a diagnosis on a car issue. They took the info, and said they would get back if they found it interesting, but if they did, then the whole phone call would be essentially scripted. They would do (or have done) a diagnosis off air, then pretend to figure it out all in the span of a few hyena-larious moments on air.
Experts my ass.
Why stop now...? Were they unready to embrace Electric Vehicles? "Too" ready...?
Technologies change... perhaps a new generation must take over the helm, when they do...
There's definitely something to that. The show was really great back when people had bizarre problems with something like a 1982 Suburu, and it turned out to be a vacuum hose leak. Now it's all "should I buy this used car?" and "take it to a dealership and have them read the codes".
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Makes Me Sad - I'll Really Miss Them!
I've been listening to them since 1994 and loved every show they've done.
They haven't lost a step, being just as funny, witty, and informative now as they were in '94.
They deserve a long, fruitful, and fun retirement, cruising around in Tom's Triumph.
Oh, wait, there is no such thing....
Well, best of luck fellas and thanks for all the tips and laughs over the years!!!!
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
Here's how it worked:
- You call the 800 number, describe your problem, if it sounds interesting the producer (Doug Berman) called you back and scheduled you for the show. So the problem is already known.
- About Thursday afternoon before the weekend broadcast you called in to essentially a conference call a few minutes before your slot and got to hear the end of the previous caller. I suppose this is to get you in the mood, all it did is make me come down with a bad case of flop sweat.
- You're on, you talk to the guys for five or ten minutes. They (correctly) guessed the solution to my problem pretty fast, primarily I think because they saw it before in their garage. My time was edited down a bit, but it was mostly verbatim.
- They do not send you a copy of the broadcast, the only way I have one is because I recorded it off my local NPR station when it hit the air.
That's the scoop. This is Tom from Michigan with a mysterious oil leak in his Z28 Camaro signing off.
You really never listened to their show. Your 'all' example is pretty far off the mark. They won't be stopping until October, listen to at least one show and try making a more informed comment again later.
Because they're a COUPLE OF KNUCKLEHEADS! I'll miss 'em. I'm not sure which I like more, Wait Wait or Car Talk, but one follows the other, so who cares? Well I do, about them both. Ah, this does suck, but they gotta take some time to relax. Hey... wait a minute....
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I always enjoyed listening to Car Talk, Wait Wait, and Sound Opinions on the weekends. I guess nothing can last forever. I hope they do reruns, I'm sick of being bombarded with news.
To be honest, I find listening to them banter about people's husband/wife problems and "the puzzler" to be intolerable. When someone calls in with an old (usually foreign) car that the guys know back-and-forward it still can be entertaining, but they really don't have much to say about someone's 1999 Civic.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
From wikipedia, but I remember when this happened:
"In addition to at least one on-orbit call, the Brothers once received a call asking advice on winterizing a couple of "kit cars." After much beating around the bush and increasing evasiveness by the caller, they asked him just how much these kit cars were worth. The answer: about $800 million. It was a joke call from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory concerning the preparation of the Mars Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) for the oncoming Martian winter."
I just don't get this decision at all. Can someone please explain it using a software engineering analogy?
The show will continue on NPR, drawing from the past 25 years of national syndication. They have actually been inserting a few older calls into "new" shows for quite some time, so little is going to change for the average listener. No, you won't be able to call them anymore, but it wasn't a live call-in show anyway...you called the 1-800 number and got a scheduled time through the week, and then your call aired on Saturday's episode.
So no biggie for me; my Saturdays will still be all about Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know on NPR for the foreseeable future. And oh yeah, Weekend Edition, if I happen to get up that early on Saturday.
:q!
This news is BO O O O GUS.!!! What will Bongo Boy Berman do now?
Who will the astronauts on the Space Station call for Advice?
I've long thought that someone should assemble a compilation featuring nothing but hours of their laughter. (Which will be available for sampling, since they will continue to play archived material for a long time yet.)
The problem there is that it's almost definitely still legally copywritten material and therefore it would be a violation of copyright to sample their laughter and distribute it in any way, shape, or form without the express consent of the content owners, most likely being NPR... (standard slashdot disclaimer, IANAL, check with a lawyer, yadda yadda yadda.)
Oh, and apologies for fueling a copyright flamewar/trolling in advance...
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
NPR-listening republican checking in.
What were you saying?
I called in once to see about getting a diagnosis on a car issue. They took the info, and said they would get back if they found it interesting, but if they did, then the whole phone call would be essentially scripted. They would do (or have done) a diagnosis off air, then pretend to figure it out all in the span of a few hyena-larious moments on air.
Experts my ass.
Sorry, that's a lie. I was the assistant chief engineer for WBUR for 8 years, and I sat in on the recordings of many of their shows. I've also consulted for Car Talk, fixing their network and computers, and have stayed at one producer's house in New Hampshire.
The producers screen the calls (they get hundreds each week), but Tom and Ray know nothing about each call. They're presented with the person's name, city, and car type, and that's it.
Mind you, the recording of the show is over 2 hours, and then gets edited down, but no - the calls are not scripted, they haven't pre-diagnosed the problem, and yes, they figure it all out during the phone call. That call may be edited from 20 minutes down to 5, but it's still their first (and only) crack at the problem.
I'm not sure why you'd lie about something like this, but it's probably some sort of mean joke like your sig, because of your own personal insecurity and desire for attention. Just as I hope others don't believe this, I hope your wife sees your posts.
"NPR is *shite* liberal commie bullshit radio for idiots who have never read any Rand or even a basic economics textbook."
Actually you are wrong. And you are also a stupid little closet fascist if you think
Ayn Rand's writings are a blueprint for a healthy society.
NPR is and has been for years a propaganda station for Israel. This came about
as a result of the federal government cutting funding for NPR. When that happened,
the American Jewish lobby stepped in and made sure NPR always reported in an
absurdly biased manner on anything having to do with Israel. As a result of this, no one
I know who is actually intelligent listens to NPR as a news source. It's got nothing to do with
whether it is "liberal" or "conservative", and everything to do with an extreme bias which
results in what you hear on NPR not being "news" but being what certain special interests
want you to hear.
Click and clack have done 25 years of persuading Americans that the American suburban culture built around the gasoline burning passenger car is OK.
As the years of the program went by, the program went from saying something serious and important every now and then to never saying anything of a serious, important or critical nature. They never had any guest of any status ever: No Ralph Nader, no critics, no real mechanic.
That is the nature of mass media. Car Talk has been facilitating the acceptance of American automobile based culture for 25 years.
Despite a series of really big cultural shocks, and ignoring some small and constructive changes in cultural direction, Car Talk has been selling acceptance of the status quo.
I have been fixing my own car and my family's cars for 40+ years. I do everything except tires and smog certificates. I operate with a split between a radical '60s social change interest and accepting compliance with the status quo and it's comfort. The time and money economics of automobile based society are really hard to beat. http://lessco2essay.blogspot.com/2010/03/found-linear-regression-data-from-los.html
Yes, I think it is funny.
you forgot the relationship advice.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
He'll never be able to call the Car Guys again!
They should call him or friend him on Facebook.
Wow... I would'a thought you'd be too busy running your Presidential campaign... thanks for giving a little of your time Governor Romney.