Friday, January 30, 2015

More time

Undershirt, JJJJ Stunbolt, always shovin' themselves into everything, head shaped like a banana, Razorscum, 'til who laid the chunk, throw your shoes over the People's Bank building, Golfbake, gravels, Brainfeeble, Dirtshirt, Kneesuffer, Walter, slippery as an owl, Claysnort, Kidneyslide, Dejectedly, Boo Boo, dentists, violins, pianos, Hunkermanlystoverdelmogintoshfer, portrait, fifty centses don't grow on trees, calistoker, drummed out, barefoot, lawn mower, thunderstorm, got his lil' sack, Royal Throne, Little Tiny Petite, big old monstrous, Caribbean flute, Homer Heck, boxing department, Dr. Sleetch, Number 7 is a bicycle, parcel post to Detroit Michigan, average American citizen, I'll have a haircut and a baloney sandwich, Hank Gutstop, Hermie Wermie, Dirty and Bertie

Five more minutes

Hit by a fast passenger train, YY Flirch, telephoning long distance promiscuous, East Brain, armed guard for the Home for the Tall, Funk's Grove, Dizzy Dean, Link, Rooster, fruit jars, stripped, Four-fisted, Chicago, Volume VII, fish dinner, Dismal Seepage, Grovleman South Carolina, Rishigan Fishigan from Sishigan Michigan, went into the powdered rabbit business, heavily veiled and greatly agitated, my overalls are wrinkled, Gov, little daily love story, Greek junk, pickled watermelon, lah dee dah, Mis' Donahue, Ruthie, Fred, Lolita di Rienzi, BB Baugh, Western side of Lester, Sweet Esther, later died, Burglars?

The five minute word association that choked Billy Patterson

Barbers, hats, cornets, Russell Honey, shoe laces, watch fobs, Christmas cards, boring letters, lodge rituals, Robert and Slobert, garbage wagon, porch swings, baseball, boiling beef, brick mush, indoor horseshoes, telephone's ringin', Mis' Applerot, Mr. Chinbunny, Bluetooth, rummy, maple ice cream, salted peanuts, warm lemonade, Howard, Bright Kentucky, free cole slaw coupon, postal card from Sunday School teacher, Uncle Strap, Rotten Davis, Bijou, The Greek's, weighing yourself, yellow envelope, R.J. Konk, dog gone the dog gone luck, fat men playin' handball, Plant 14, Tatman's vacant lot, underwear section, Nicer Scott, inventors, he didn't have any more job than a rabbit, I was impressed as a horse, You have an alarm clock record that is absolutely spotless, that choked Billy Patterson

Question

From 34-10-31 Too Many Pictures, Too Little Wall Space:
Vic arrives home as Sade's working at hanging Uncle Fletcher's picture so it'll be in place when he stops by on his way to Washington, D.C.
Why was Uncle Fletcher heading to Washington DC?

Thursday, January 22, 2015

New ice cream?

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Uncle Fletcher Is Coming!

Uncle Fletcher may have been the greatest character in radio or television history.  See how he arrived.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Busy

This physical rehab junk is messing things up.  I am exhausted now and even as I try and put together something for the blog, it's just not working out.  I'm going to be busy with household stuff tomorrow and Wednesday brings more physical therapy and shopping.  Hopefully by Wednesday evening or Thursday I can get something done.

The good news is, after two pt sessions, I do feel better.  It's a long road, though.

Friday, January 9, 2015

Things will slow for a bit

I have a physical ailment that requires physical therapy.  For the next two months this will happen three days a week.

There's no doubt that this will slow me down a bit.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Who chose the scripts for the Mary Frances Rhymer book?

Do you ever wonder who chose the scripts for the Mary Frances Rhymer book?

Follow along here. It's 1972. People are starving for material from the collection you own - the collection of scripts you can choose from to write a book.

You decide to write a book (that is, all you pretty much have to do is pick out a bunch of scripts and put them in a book). That's pretty easy, because your husband was Paul Rhymer. He wrote the best radio show ever.

So, all you have to do in order to sell bazillions of books is to pick out 30 or so great scripts. I'll say it again - that's pretty easy, because your husband was Paul Rhymer. He wrote the best radio show ever.

That book came out in 1972 when there was very, very little information about the show floating around. Here it is, 43 years later and we many scripts at our beck and call - just like Mary Frances Rhymer did. Except she had anything and everything to choose from - thousands more than we have.

So, you sit down and you start choosing scripts to put into a book. Certainly while reading these scripts you must be thinking - I'm going to choose the very best of these! Right?

How in then world do you put 35-01-01 New Year's Day - Rush Has Three Jobs in there? It's not horrible, but it's not special. Half of the book is like that.  Quaint.  Rhymeresque.  Some are very different than what we are used to.  But are they the 30 scripts that tell you what kind of a radio show we all love?  Are they 30 of the best scripts?

The fact is, there really are some wonderful scripts in her book.  But what makes you squash your eyebrows is where are all the scripts that should be there and aren't?  Did whoever choose the scripts ever listen to the show?

The coal heap that killed Billy you-know-who


39-08-25 Two Tons of Coal #3: Is Sade 'out to get' the boys?

Monday, January 5, 2015

An interview with Paul Ford

JIMBO - Mr. Ford, thank you so much for doing the interview.  Please tell us a bit about yourself and your website.

PAUL - I’m a writer and programmer who lives in Brooklyn. I have a number of websites, and a few more on the way. Right now I do most of my writing for Medium at https://medium.com/@ftrain and various other publications online and off.

JIMBO - How old were you when you found old-time radio and what were some of the shows you enjoyed?

PAUL - I grew up Philadelphia, and they used to play them on the radio—I can’t remember which station. I was about ten or eleven years old, and this was in the mid-1980s. I particularly remember The Shadow, and Fibber McGee and Molly. As a kid I liked the way that they were very well-written and acted, but also a little goofy and very accessible. You could do the voices yourself.

JIMBO - Tell us about how you discovered 'Vic and Sade'?  What were your first thoughts about the show?

PAUL - Vic and Sade is interesting because if you're interested in historical audio everyone talks about how big a show it was, and how weird it is that it's now mostly forgotten and doesn't make much sense to modern ears. So after I'd read about Vic and Sade for years, and about how important it was, I finally figured I needed to hear for myself. I went poking around online--this was a couple years ago--and I was taken aback by how deep the characters were, the way that their world was fully fleshed out with friendships, hobbies, annoying habits, and the like.

JIMBO - Tell us some of your favorite Vic and Sade episodes you've come across.

PAUL - Anything involving the Drowsy Venus Chapter of the Sacred Stars of the Milky Way cracks me up. I'm just a sucker for that world of lodges and societies and appreciate the way that Rhymer made it both affectionate and ridiculous, and also the sheer amount of paraphernalia that is involved with Vic's membership--all the elements of costume, the heavy books and so forth. It's very consistent and very funny.

JIMBO - Which character is your favorite and why?

PAUL - It's such an ensemble show, but I'll go ahead and say Vic, as portrayed by Art Van Harvey, for the way he veers between kindness and crabbiness, and the fact that he gives in to his enthusiasms so easily. He's key to the show for me because he really is a stabilizing, moderating influence (except of course when he's not) and he seems to enjoy himself so much at the same time.

JIMBO - Being the software guy that you are, I have to ask... what do you think about how I've used Google's 'Blogger' to preserve 'Vic and Sade'?

PAUL - Love it! So glad to see this blog. One good thing about Blogger is it's likely to be around for a long time.

JIMBO - What are your impressions of writer Paul Rhymer and the fact we probably will only see and hear perhaps only 30-35% of his work?

PAUL - He was such a subtle writer. He had to work fast, and he came up with a little world of Vic and Sade and just kind of kept coming back to it, day after day. Which is an incredible task!

JIMBO - You've already eloquently demonstrated in your piece, "Lesson", that Rhymer can send multiple messages to several generations with his very simple Midwestern chit-chat.  Would you explore this more deeply?

PAUL - People should just listen to the shows and make up their own minds. Besides, I think Jean Shepherd really nailed down why Rhymer matters in his foreword to the collected plays at http://paulrhymer.net/scripts.cgi?s=34

JIMBO - How do you think Rhymer stacks up against other American writers of his era?

PAUL - I'll nod again to Jean Shepherd; can't improve on his take: "Another thing that amazes me is Rhymer's wild and subtle imagination. Wild in the sense of being totally unpredictable, and subtle in that he touched at times on the faint vein of madness that run through all of us."

JIMBO - Anything I should have asked and didn't?  Any last words?

PAUL - I can’t think of anything! Thank you so much for checking in; it was my privilege.

Is it warm enough to go swimming?

35-05-24 Local Lodge Leader Takes First Dip used to be what I thought was a pretty useless episode.  That is, the notes for it were sparse and there was little revealing info. 

But having the script for the episode changes everything.  I am able to pour over tiny details (for instance, I found 3 new 'nicknames for Rush' that we didn't have.)  Lots of other stuff too.  The script is almost as good as having the audio.

This episode is an important one for Vic R. Gook fans.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...