The Greatest Love Story of the Twentieth Century

Weekends are the time to relax--even on a blog.

A friend and I recently saw "Walk the Line," the Johnny Cash biopic.

For the most part, I'm not a country western fan, but I really wanted to see this film. My interest had been stimulated by a segment on NPR's "This American Life" that was first broadcast back on 9/19/03. Sarah Vowell narrated the ten-minute piece which she entitled "The Greatest Love Story of the Twentieth Century."

For those of you not familiar with public radio or Sarah Vowell, I pulled the following from her biography on www.imdb.com: "Sarah Vowell is best known for her bits on public radio's This American Life . . . The New York Times has commended her 'funny querulous voice and shrewd comic delivery.' As a critic and reporter, she has contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines, including Esquire, GQ, Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, Spin, The New York Times Book Review and McSweeney's. She is a former columnist for Time, Salon.com and San Francisco Weekly. Hip, irreverent, and with a voice that NPR fans of This American Life instantly perk up to, Sarah makes both readers and listeners laugh out loud with her wry, comic observations on everything from politics to pop culture." She's also the voice of the daughter, Violet, in the 2004 animated movie "The Incredibles."

The format of This American Life is to select a subject each week and then do several segments with different stories on that subject. The subject of Episode 247 in 2003 was "What is this thing called love?" Sarah Vowell's piece was the last act closing the episode. She told the story of Johnny Cash and June Carter's romance, which spanned a period of forty years. It is funny, sad and inspirational. It was so popular, it's been rerun multiple times.

I'm including the link below if you'd like to listen to it. Click on the blue and black "RA" symbol for Real Player Audio on the left hand side of the link's page. Remember, it is the last ten minutes of an hour-long program:

http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/03/247.html

Enjoy!!