Things have been rather busy. Regardless of what I accomplished or didn’t. It has been a busy month.
One item of note, sort of a call for help in a way: As many of you know, I really like old radio shows. Enough to have amassed about 16,000 of them and I sometimes play them into a small transmitter in order to tune them in on an antique radio. Well, October 30th of this year marked the 80th anniversary of Orson Welles’ famous broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” …For those who have never listened to it I will not spoil the details, but I will chastise you for never having sought it out before. Go find a copy and play it. You will thank me. And while you are at it, go listen to the live recording of the 1937 crash of the Hindenburg. (in fact, play this actual news event first, then the War of the Worlds.) Then you will have learned something as it pertained to the application of voice for effect in a radio program. So now the call for help…
1998 was the 60th anniversary of that broadcast. Our local Public Radio station used to do a radio play program on Sunday nights. That year, they did one based upon the War of the Worlds. No. They did not air the original show. They created a new one. No. Not a rehash of the same original like Hollywood keeps trying to do with all our favorite old movies. They took a different approach and produced a sequel. The premise was based upon the fact that although most long, medium, and short-wave broadcast radio signals are refracted by our ionosphere and sent back to earth (enabling long distance communication around the globe) and a large portion are simply absorbed, some actually do manage to escape into space. Those signals are, to this day, continuing to radiate outward from the earth at the speed of light where perhaps they will one day be received. (you did watch the movie “Contact” didn’t you? …if not, there’s another assignment for you….pay particular attention to the opening sequence as they illustrate this in the most wonderful way.) So…here we are. Many years after the CBS Mercury Theatre On the Air presented Orson Welles and his production of HG Welles’ classic, “The War of the Worlds.” And… Some of that broadcast signal had made its way out of Earth’s atmosphere and on into space. Where it was then received by an intelligent alien race. A space faring race. A species who heard parts of this broadcast and interpreted it to mean that we were in fact being attacked by beings from Mars. ….and so, like any good and responsible citizen–rather than say, “I didn’t want to get involved.” they instead acted by coming to rescue us. Well, that is the premise of what they created as a program in 1998. It was a neat premise upon which to base a sequel to the story. Unfortunately, I do not know how well it was executed as I did not get to hear it when it was aired and have not been able to locate a copy…..hence my distress call to the universe. If you have a copy or know where I can get one, please kick it my direction.
Another recent item of note. There was this election in the US on the 6th of November. Leading up to this, I was working on a project for a new client and was based in Charleston, West Virginia for a couple of weeks prior to the election. Since I knew I’d be gone, I made a point to get an absentee ballot taken care of prior to my trip….because, well…that whole responsible citizen thing, combined with some specific irritation about some local issues that needed to be voted upon. I mention the election at this point because of something I observed which is no doubt familiar to those in the region I was visiting but which was completely foreign to me. The ads. Now, of course I have seen political ads before…we get inundated with such lies no matter where we are….but what I witnessed while in Charleston was the direct result of a quirk of geography that I, being from Alaska, was unfamiliar with….. Charleston, WV is located in an area that is relatively close to Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, and Indiana. A location whose close proximity to the other places made reception of their local broadcasts a far greater certainty than an alien species coming to rescue us from the 1938 Martians. So, in addition to the various crooks running for offices in West Virginia, it was possible to see ads for the various crooks running for various offices from the surrounding states. I say possible, but really it was impossible not to unless you avoided any and all television…which I made a good effort to try to do. And even being unfamiliar with their specific issues or candidates, bullshit is bullshit and once you understand this you will recognize it no matter who it is coming from or where you are. It all smells alike. And, if having your free breakfast in a hotel where a tv is on and a back to back series of such ads runs…well….it is good business for the hotel, as you are sure to lose your appetite and not eat as much. In exchange for this, however, patrons and employees of any leaning get to hear people like me calling such BS out for what it is because if you feel you must interrupt my morning coffee and sacred strips of bacon with a crook on tv trying to convince me that the other guy on tv is also a crook then you are deserving of my unfiltered responses to such provocation. No politician, in physical or electronically enhanced apparitional form, should ever come between a person and their morning coffee. A true crime against humanity. Just. Don’t.
The work traveling was interesting and rewarding, similar to work I’ve done before but with a much better schedule….very good…in spite of the airport headaches that delayed my return by an extra couple of days. (that little gem may be worthy of a post of its own sometime) And now, having survived my thanksgiving turkey induced coma and also having caught up with my shop cleaning and paperwork chores (well, mostly) ….I am now gradually wrapping my head around the idea that I will actually still have time to work on other projects that I want to work on before going back on the next duty rotation. Wow! Some money AND some time to make use of it. …very cool. Cooler than the other side of the pillow! …and way cooler than the weather I found upon my return. It’s almost December….and it is raining here. Santa better get floats for that sled.