Garrison Keillor is an American author, storyteller, humorist, columnist, musician, satirist, and radio personality. He is known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion (also known as Garrison Keillor's Radio Show on Britain's BBC 7, as well as on Australia's ABC and in Ireland).
Keillor's show on Public Radio is one of it's most popular. No, he's not a political commentator at all. If I had to pick a word to describe him it would be humorist. As noted in the description of his show below, he tells stories about his hometown in Minnesota called Lake Wobegone. He describes the residents of the town as "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." If you want an entertaining hour each week, tune in Prairie Home Companion. I think you csn get it on the internet. I know that you can download it free as a Podcast and listen to it on an iPod. That's the way I do it.
A Prairie Home Companion debuted as an old-style variety show before a live audience on July 6, 1974, featuring guest musicians and a cadre cast doing musical numbers and comic skits replete with elaborate live sound effects. The show was punctuated by spoof commercial spots from such fictitious sponsors as Jack's Auto Repair and Powdermilk Biscuits, "the biscuits that give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done." Later imaginary sponsors have included Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery ("If you can't find it at Ralph's, you can probably get along Pretty Good without it"), Bertha's Kitty Boutique, the Catchup Advisory Board (which touted "the natural mellowing agents of ketchup"), the American Duct Tape Council, and Bebop-A-Reebop Rhubarb Pie ("sweetening the sour taste of failure through the generations"). The show also contains parodic serial melodramas, such as The Adventures of Guy Noir, Private Eye and The Lives of the Cowboys. After the show's intermission, Keillor reads clever and often humorous greetings to friends and family at home submitted by members of the theater audience, in exchange for an honorarium. Also in the second half of the show, the broadcasts showcase a weekly monologue by Keillor entitled News from Lake Wobegon, based in part on Keillor's own hometown of Anoka, Minnesota. Lake Wobegon is a quintessential but fictional Midwestern small town "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." A Prairie Home Companion ran until 1987, when Keillor decided to end it; he worked on other projects, including another live radio program, "The American Radio Company of the Air"--which was virtually identical in format to "A Prairie Home Companion"--for several years. In 1993 he began producing A Prairie Home Companion again, with nearly identically-formatted programs, and has done so since. On A Prairie Home Companion, Keillor receives no billing or credit (except "written by Sarah Bellum", a joking reference to his own brain); his name is not mentioned unless a guest addresses him by his first name or the initials "G. K." However, some sketches do feature Keillor as his alter ego, Carson Wyler, which is a play on his name.
Keillor is also the host of The Writer's Almanac which, like A Prairie Home Companion, is produced and distributed by American Public Media. The Writer's Almanac is also available online and via daily e-mail installments by subscription.
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