contact us

Use the form on the right to contact us.

You can edit the text in this area, and change where the contact form on the right submits to, by entering edit mode using the modes on the bottom right.​

         

123 Street Avenue, City Town, 99999

(123) 555-6789

email@address.com

 

You can set your address, phone number, email and site description in the settings tab.
Link to read me page with more information.

Adirondack---More-Rides.jpg

Latest Work

search for me

Filtering by Category: Radio

James-Bonding with Kempenaar & Larsen on Filmspotting No. 563

Chris Klimek

1963's From Russia with Love is still my favorite 007 flick on most days.

1963's From Russia with Love is still my favorite 007 flick on most days.

It's been a few years since I sat in on an episode of Filmspotting, the great Chicago-based radio show and podcast devoted to dissection of movies new and old, famous and obscure, foreign and domestic. But now I can reveal that earlier in the week, founding host Adam Kempenaar sent me a highly classified diplomatic cable inviting me to join him an regular co-host Josh Larsen for the Top Five segment of this week's SPECTRE-themed show, devoted to Favorite Bond Things. I regret only that I did not refer to Diana Rigg's character from On Her Majesty's Secret Service by her full name, Contessa Teresa Di Vincenzo.

I supposed I might also have expounded more insightfully on how the big parkour chase at the top of Casino Royale (v. 2006) isn't just one of the most fluidly choreographed, masterfully shot-and-edited action set pieces of the 21st century; it shows us plenty about the brutal, clumsy nature of this film's younger, less seasoned 007, too. Or how my favorite "Bond girl," from that same film — Eva Green's British Treasury official Vesper Lynd — is Bond's equal not only in resolve and intelligence, but ultimately in cunning. She's playing him, the same way Bond uses sexuality to manipulate women in just about every Bond adventure to follow. (And they all follow this one.) Had I mentioned the marvelous cold-open car chase from Quantum of Solace, that would've been another chance to stick up for that oft-maligned sequel. But I already did that in my S.P.E.C.T.R.E. essay in The Atlantic last week.

Listen to the episode here.

Radio Radio: On Downtown Boxing Club, for Metro Connection

Chris Klimek

Trainer Dave White

Trainer Dave White

The thermostat at Downtown Boxing Club read 43 degrees -- Fahrenheit -- the Sunday afternoon I spent reporting this story for Metro Connection. It felt strange to be in a boxing gym and not be moving around. I've wanted to go train at this place for years; a couple of the guys I train with off and on have told me good things. Anyway, I'd better get on it: Downtown Boxing Club will have to move this year, for the third time in its 15-year existence.

You can hear the piece here. I was sorry to have to lose the part where trainer Dave White says that to land a punch you have to be quick enough to catch a penny.

Radio Radio: On Donald Tillery, for Metro Connection

Chris Klimek

I have a story on today's episode of Metro Connection about Donald Tillery, a DC music legend who played with the Soul Searchers for 15 years. He's a fascinating man, and I hope I'll be writing about him again at much greater length this year. You can hear the piece here.

My thanks to DC music historians Eli Meir Kaplan and Kevin Coombes. Eli suggested the story, and Kevin provided insight as well as the promo shot of the Soul Searchers. Eli profiles figures from the city's soul scene on his blog, Soul 51. Kevin's site, DC Soul Recordings, is also indispensable.

Let's Do the Numbers! Talkin' Yuletunes on Marketplace

Chris Klimek

My face betrays the intense concentration required to form sentences in real time.

My face betrays the intense concentration required to form sentences in real time.

I'm not allowed to post the video of my Dec. 10 appearance on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper, (here's its blog accompaniment) and I don't have a photo from my appearance on Marketplace yesterday. So here's a screen cap from the CNN bit and a link to the Marketplace segment, wherein host Kai Ryssdal asks me a question for which I am completely unprepared.

Is there hope for a new classic Christmas song? | Marketplace.org.

I'll be wrapping up my talking-about-Christmas-songs tour with a segment on KPCC's AirTalk this afternoon at 3:30 Eastern. I heard that show a lot when I lived in Southern California circa 2000-2005, so I'm excited for that. UPDATE: Hear that segment here.

And of course, if you haven't grabbed my latest yulemix, Children, Go Where I Send Thee!, that awaits your loving attention here.

Merry Christmas!

Talkin' Yulejams on Word of Mouth

Chris Klimek

Thanks to Virgina Prescott and Word of Mouth for having me back on yesterday to talk about the dearth of new Christmas songs and make a few recommendations of less-familiar old ones. They were awfully nice about it when the battery in the borrowed phone I was using died mid-interview.

You can listen to the segment here.

Radio, the Final Frontier, or To Go With Some Reasonable Measure of Boldness Where I Myself Have Not Personally Managed, Entirely, to Go Before

Chris Klimek

My first radio story will be broadcast today. You can listen to it here right now. The process of assembling and editing it was not all that much different from making these. Although in this case I had expert help -- WAMU managing producer Tara Boyle -- to make the piece sound better. The piece is about the starship Enterprise. That is, the impressively large, now-49-year-old model that appeared in every episode of Star Trek, 30 years before computer graphics became Hollywood's defacto visual effects methodology.

I initially imagined this segment as a Daily Show-style news package wherein I would feign indignation that an artifact as significant as the civilization-seeking, boldly-going Enterprise rates a spot only in the basement of the National Air & Space Museum. (Apparently they also have some spacecraft there that have actually flown in space.) That approach proved to a be little ambitious for my first time out of the gate.

I haven't spent enough time with the various spinoff series to get much of a read on them, but original-flavor Kirk-Spock-McCoy Star Trek is a thing I love. My favorite formal thing about the story is that I managed to use, chronologically, music from three eras of Trek: Alexander Courage's 1966 theme for TV series, two snippets of James Horner's score for The Wrath of Khan from 1982, and finally, Michael Giacchino's theme from the 2009 Trek reboot directed by J.J. Abrams.

Read More