"We interrupt this broadcast..."

…to bring you my first podcast from 1949.

I got that box and microphone from a novelty catalog back in 1949. I was eleven and becoming proficient in building model airplanes, little cars with gas engines, and assemblages that I called time machines and smallizers. A smallizer, when perfected, would make adults tiny; then you could deal with them, but only those who needed it. The folks sitting around the armoire-sized radio didn’t need it as they were the kindest folks I’d ever met; my dad, my grandmother and my aunt Mickey. But they were, at the moment, unaware of a fine joke I was to play on them in a few minutes. “A riot of fun,” as the box promised. The box sides also proclaimed “At last, be the talk of your friends with your fun provoking, Home Broadcasting!” and “Great fun fooling your friends over your own radio!” These people were onto something; they probably invented Meta years later. Twitter. Riots of fun.

I had installed the mic per instruction sheet to the wires and tubes of the radio, somehow without electrocution or blown fuses, and concealed myself behind a sofa next to the radio. I keyed the “Vogue Sheridan Electro Corp Mike” and read from a typed sheet of paper (my first radio script; there would be many others over the ad years):

Only the equipment has changed…oh, and the price of admission…

“We interrupt this broadcast to bring you an urgent news bulletin!” Then, between giggles and various distortions of my voice trying to deepen it, I described a car theft (theirs, an old Green Dodge) from an address (theirs) by Willie Sutton (the famous bank robber) and said the KCPD was in hot pursuit.

My grandmother said, “My word! What will we do for a car, now?” And various exclamations followed. Mickey said, “I don’t think it’s so old.” My dad said, “Something’s fishy here,” and scooped me up from behind the couch. The jig was up, and I was discovered, but a certain Riot of Fun had prevailed for a few seconds.

A podcast or two later…to about the same size audience, I’m using more sophisticated equipment (Anker and Shure) and my actual voice on a few trial runs with various guests and I must admit, the ROF factor (Riot of Fun) hasn’t diminished all that much. At least for me. Stay tuned. I’ve got some interesting guests in mind, most people being interesting if you take the time to listen to them. Over to your left are a sprinkling of podcasts that are quite good; This American Life is the classic Big Dog.

Bramfords: Flexible, with insoles and stretchy laces that stay tied…

These shoes were made for walkin’…and so was I, apparently. It gets me up from the welder and the computer six or eight times a day for 15 or 20 minutes at a stretch. Then ancillary walking (doing laundry, picking up lawn trash, etc) it adds up, to well over 10,000 steps a day. I’m closing in on 20 million (19,145,710 at this moment) which I’m told is once around this haggard globe.* I’ve trashed four pairs of Timberlands, and began to look around for something that didn’t pick up gravel and clay in the lug soles that track in all over the house.

 I saw a commercial (link) on Youtube for Bramford “minimalist walking shoes” with a wider toe box; the Timberlands were hell to break in to where they were comfortable due to a narrow front and stiff leather. That, and they came untied now and then. Annoying on a walk. These never come untied. So I have ordered a pair of these flexible boats, and if they’re as great as I think they will be, I’ll be a walking commercial for these folks. Literally. I will chronicle them from Day One, good or bad, but I expect good. BTW, I almost always skip the commercials on Youtube but this one drew me in. (See video at bottom of website) And they’re $50 less than the Timberlands.

What I’m reading: Almost finished with Braiding Sweetgrass, still recommend it; it’ll empathize us bob-war fencing, tree-clearing, lake-poisoning “settlers” with an indigenous population who treated Mother Earth with deep respect and always did well by her before we showed up. (It has 15,000 5-star reviews but it is not a fast read.) I read a Sally Rooney book (Beautiful World Where Are You?) to see what the fuss was about, and I decline to recommend it. Unless you like long texts and emails and wondering about yourself to the point of anomie. And I’m re-reading Tom Hennen’s Darkness Sticks To Everything, great (!) poems with a trenchant foreword by Jim Harrison, who says if you write three good poems in a lifetime you’re ahead of the game. (Which puts me right smack in my place—and could give many a poet pause.) Anyway *”haggard world” comes from Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech at Westminster College, and it seems to fit right in nowadays. But cheer up, it’s a new year, and here’s to its magnificence. xo, G