When I bought my MINI Cooper this past spring, it came with a free one-year subscription to Sirius/XM radio. At first I thought big deal, canned music. Then Husband turned me on to a station that runs classic radio shows from the forties and fifties. I have to admit that I am a whore for noir and all the tough guy talk and floozy banter. The lost art of radio melodrama is one that has left a large hole in interactive public entertainment, one that people don’t miss because they have no memory of it. That includes me, having been born in the fifties at the same time as television for the masses. Today’s blockbuster mega-movies think they offer something so real the audience feels right in the action, especially with IMAX and 3D, and those venues do entertain. Where they miss the point is that it doesn’t take any imagination to watch something catch fire, even if you feel like you’re burning too. Old time radio shows draw you in simply because there are no visuals. You hear a scratchy sound and then a hot sizzle and know you’re listening to the detective strike a match and light a cigarette. He inhales deeply, then breathes out his next line coated with gritty smoke that you can hear so plainly it’s right in front of your eyes. Classic radio shows make you feel like you’re seeing with your ears. It’s like mental multitasking, and it’s nostalgic and uber cool at the same time.
The half-hour show I heard yesterday while driving around on errands was “Death is a Double-Crosser,” one of the Inner Sanctum shows that aired in 1951. A diamond cutter’s housekeeper alerts her recently paroled husband, Harry, that her employer is about to cut the King Midas diamond worth over $100,000. Their plan is to wait until the old man has it scored for the final cut and then murder him, after which Harry will cut the diamond himself since he’s such a talented guy he’s spent half his life behind bars. But Harry’s so worried he’ll cut the diamond wrong and make it worthless that his hands shake uncontrollably. Mrs. Harry gets pissed and yells for him to cut the damn thing already; they didn’t plan all this for his nerves to screw it up. Harry gets even more anxious and then slightly psycho so he turns on the Mrs and slashes her neck with the cutting blade, then walls her body up in the basement. The police close in on him, but I can’t tell you if Harry gets the chair or not because I arrived at Trader Joe’s and went inside to buy blueberries. Not to worry though; even if he only got fifty years he’s dead by now, so carry on.
Today’s Rhymes with Orange sounds like gumshoe paw prints in a dark alley
You also don’t have to trouble yourself anymore about those three siblings who went on a crime spree last week that spanned half the country. The Dougherty kids, a sister and two brothers all in their twenties, led police on a high speed chase in Florida and exchanged gunfire, then robbed a bank in Georgia. I became aware of the story a few days later when I saw their mom on TV, her face obscured, giving them some motherly advice. “Only mom knows what good people you are inside,” she said. “Please prove me right and everybody wrong by doing the right thing now and turning yourselves in.” Husband and I looked at each other like, “Yeah, that ship left the port a long time ago,” and not to cast aspersions on anyone’s parenting skills or make gross generalizations, but a household that turns out three youngsters with lengthy rap sheets and a Dillinger mentality is not a place I’d ever send my kids on a play date. The Dougherty siblings, whose mug shots look like Facebook photos, were captured yesterday when they crashed into a police roadblock in Pueblo, Colorado. I know we mothers always think the best of our children, but really, WTF??
Continuing our crime wave broadcast, another missing tourist has been reported in Aruba, the site of Natalee Holloway’s disappearance and presumed murder. Another extremely attractive blonde woman has gone missing, this time reported by her male travel partner, not to be confused with her boyfriend, who was for some reason not on the trip. The male friend said his companion went missing as the two were snorkeling. Aruba’s police force refused to allow the man to leave the island since parts of his story sounded hinky. This was an excellent decision on the part of law enforcement there since they had released their main suspect in the Holloway case only to enable him to murder a young woman in Peru a year later. What made the male friend’s account so suspicious was 1) no witnesses saw them go snorkeling, and 2) the woman’s boyfriend said she would never go snorkeling in the first place because she wouldn’t want to ruin her makeup or get her hair wet. That’s good enough for me. Guilty all the way.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos have something to say All Around the Town
taboo
mac people
water tower blast off
plastic yarn balls
caged hawk