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Valentines day 2013 was an all around bizarre day. That was the day that Oscar Pistorius allegedly murdered his girlfriend, that day the an SWAT team came to Angel Hall, the day that people were going a bit crazy lamenting over how much the day sucked.So this episode of This American Life was fittingly titled Valentines Day 2013, even though the stories that were told did not occur on that day. Each segment told a piece of the craziness and weirdness people will put up with for “love”.
When I was listening to the program I didn’t really know what to do with myself- where was I supposed to direct my face, what was I supposed to do with my hands, could I be doing other things while trying to listen? I tried to be on my computer, but I found myself easily distracted by everything online especially during the duck story, which did not hold my attention at all.Then I tried just laying down and listening, but I found myself drifting off to sleep. Whenever I had listened to the radio in the past, I was driving, my attention was to the road and my hands were on the steering wheel.
I really enjoyed the first segment and the last one. The first one segment about the physicists calculating the potential number of women available to them reminded my of a scene from A Beautiful Mind, where Russel Crowe’s character uses game theory to ensure that he and the rest of friends wind up with dates.
Mike Birbiglia’s final segment about his girlfriends boyfriend was great. It was both funny and serious with the ending moral of the story, “sometimes when you want to be in a place so badly, you’d do anything”. Sleepwalk With Me has been in my Netflix instant queue for months, I hope to get around to it soon.
Sam Says Stuff 