It’s official, Blogtown: We can now retire the Emily Harris drinking game.
While the daily format of OPB’s morning show Think Out Loud ensures a valuable range of local news and arts coverage, host Emily Harris had an on-air persona that was frustrating at best, unintentionally hilarious at worst. Her sidekick Dave Miller, on the other hand, has always offered a measured, thoughtful counterbalance, and the occasional show he’d host provided a model of how good Think Out Loud could be in the right hands. Or will be: OPB announced this morning that Harris “has left and is pursuing other opportunities,” and that Miller will be taking over as host.
While I’m very pleased to see the deserving Miller take over, it does beg the question: What am I going to do with all the aggression I used to get out by shouting at the radio every morning?
(Oh, for an alternate take, the WWeek writes: “It’s a huge loss for OPB: Harris, an Oregon native, had years of experience at NPR and brought professionalism and common sense to her work there.” Okey doke.)
It’s true: there was something oddly satisfying about the frustration I experienced in waiting for her to ask relevant questions, say. Or wait for her to stop grunting and gurgling, finally interrupting her guest and then saying, “No, go ahead.”
Now it’s just gonna be another coffee talk show hosted by some guy who doesn’t make you nervous to listen to him. Damn.
When I saw the headline, I literally shouted out loud, “Oh, Thank God!”
Harris just killed what could be a great hour.
Yay! Now I can listen to that show again. Great topics, amazingly horrible host. I always said as soon as Emily “ah ah ah ah ah ah ah” Harris was gone, I’d give the show another shot. Here’s hoping Emily got a great new job far, far away from a microphone.
Th-th-th-thank God!
I actually avoid the 9am slot because I can’t help getting road radio rage due Emily Harris’s interview skills. I am gonna miss the drinking game………
Miss the Emily Harris drinking game? Just tune into KPOJ and play the Thom Hartmann drinking game instead! That’s when you drink every time Thom starts to make a point but then his ADD kicks in and he goes off on some tangent or gets caught up in some detail that’s completely irrelevant to his original point. Drink every time he goes more and more off-topic.
This makes me feel much less crazy, I felt like a dick for not liking her.
They should let ME have a radio show! Then everyone can have the best drinking game based on an A.D.D.-riddled, stuttering, mis-informed host EVER
I could never make it through Think Out Loud (my reflexive screaming at the radio was too much energy when I would catch re-runs in the evenings), but my favorite local radio show with an awkward host is the Grateful Dead show around noon on Saturdays on KBOO.
At first I was indignant that I was being forced to listen to this show (I don’t even know anything about Grateful Dead and related bands). Then I came to love the rambling, incoherent chill passion of the DJs (apparently more than one, although they had blended into one uber deadhead for me until recently). I also love when there is empty air. Ahh, community radio. We need more. I suppose I ought to give them some money…
Wait a minute catbot: you were “forced to listen to this show”? What did they do to you? WHO HURT YOU? ANSWER ME!
Anyone else remember “Oregon Considered”? That was a good show.
I would have preferred Allison Frost; she’s like the white Emily Harris. (I’ve just always assumed Emily Harris was black)
I fear, rich bachelor, that my poor husband lured me into the depravity that is the Grateful Dead Hour, or whatever it is called. It has oddly grown on me like (insert something here, I am failing to come up with a good simile).
The poor husband is informing me that is the “Grateful Dead and Friends” and is more than an hour. How time flies…