192: Meet the Pros
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A few years back, a science fiction writer and fan named Stephen Golden was preparing for an upcoming sci-fi convention and he thought that it might ease some of the awkward situations that he had seen at conventions in the past if he would just write up a few simple guidelines for the fans on how to act when they get to meet one-on-one, some of the professional writers who they admired so much. Some of his tips, I'll help them here. Don't delay the pro on his way to the restroom and try to start a long conversation. If a pro is involved in another conversation, do not interrupt, wait until a break. In talking to a pro, keep it light. If you want a detailed philosophical discussion, make an appointment. Don't be a sponge. Buy your fair share of drinks and meals. 23 different rules. Standing with the most important, don't insult the pro. Why would rules as basic as this even be necessary? The science fiction fans are usually the people who have been sort of the social outcasts when they were growing up in school. When everyone else was out playing sports or going to parties, the fans were in their rooms reading and so they didn't develop a lot of the social skills their peers did and they grow up being introverts and so when you get to a science fiction convention, you get a convention of introverts, which is a very strange social phenomenon. Have you seen fans try to follow the pros to the bathroom? I bring all this up to say that it is not just science fiction fans who need simple guidelines like these. Reading Stephen Gordon's 23 rules online, I realized to my embarrassment that if we need to get this week's radio show, we have violated 8 of the 23 rules. 8. This week we visited with a variety of different kinds of pros and we monopolized their time, we interrupted, we got into detailed philosophical discussions uninvited, we did not pick up the check. Welcome to WBEC Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life, I'm our Glass. Today's show, Meet the Pros, stories of amateurs hurtling themselves at the professionals whose jobs they would like to have for better or for worse. Our show today in three acts, act one, crispy with a rock, the star of what is arguably the world's greatest sneaker commercial, and whether it is possible for our corresponding little grasshopper to grab the basketball from his hand. Act two, no one to walk away, no one to run, in which I explain how I went to the World Series of Poker as a reporter and came away completely obsessed with the game, reading about it, playing online to an extent that I have not completely admitted to my own family until this very hour. Act three, Martha, my dear, David Rakoff goes behind the scenes at Martha Stewart Living to find out the answer to the question, if his hobby became his job, would it still be fun? Stay with us. Act one, crispy with a rock. This is the story of two amateurs meeting the pros, one of the amateurs, a teenager in New Jersey, the other, our correspondent, Joe Lovell. Before we get started, I should say that today's show was first broadcast in 2001, and so the amazing TV commercial that they're talking about in the story is something that aired back then. Okay, here's Joe. This is the sound of me dribbling a basketball. Now this is Lewis De Silva dribbling a basketball. Lewis is in the Nike commercial freestyle it's called that ran on TV throughout the NBA playoffs this past spring. If you haven't seen it, the commercial features a bunch of NBA stars and some WNBA stars and a bunch of street ball players, guys with names like Speedy and A Train and The Future, performing a series of spectacular tricks dribbling and passing and twirling basketballs sort of like the Harlem Globetrotters, but a lot faster and a lot cooler into this incredibly infectious hip-hop beat. So their dribbling sounds like music. In May and June, the ads were airing in pretty heavy rotation, and I found myself spending a lot of hours watching games I didn't really care about.
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