36 hours of audio: An Audiolink Mix

[Pointing to Chicago and/or South Africa, Babe Ruth style.]

OK, if I had an MP3 player and two 18-hour flights to kill, I would download and listen to:

Well, if it were me, I'd probably just put all of this awesome fansite's VIC AND SADE shows and the V&S audio interviews and discussions on my player and be done with it. [But this isn't really for my player, not until the repair shop mails it back to me.]

A baker's dozen of suggested introductory V&S shows, which can be listened to in any order:

40-12-23 - A Letter From Aunt Bess - 1937 (10:08) Sade discovers a three-year-old letter from her sister in one of Vic's rarely used suit pockets; she is not nearly as amused by this as Vic and Rush become. Paul Rhymer pulled a lot of gold from Sade's passionate-to-the-point-of-sometimes-irrational concern with the family staying in touch with her sister in a nearby town [who writes almost hypnotically banal letters about her life and family] without it being gimmicky.

41-01-21 - Death of Bernice (10:27) Rush and Sade talk about the sudden passing of Howard's sister in a surprisingly touching and funny way. It's an inspired way to tell a story about a young man's first exposure to death without being "A Very Special Episode Of ..."

41-03-31 - Rush Wants His Interest (9:37) Vic and Rush talk about Rush's various debts and desired purchases. There's something amazing in how Rhymer works an almost incantation-like rhythm in a lot of his scripts, most effectively when it's Rush repeating whatever wonderful fragment of a sentence is stuck in his craw -- in this case, it's "blinding flash of light." I haven't heard this show in weeks and probably seen or heard hundreds of dramatic works since then, but I'm pretty confident that I can still quote chunks of this one from memory.

41-05-02 - Vic's Picture on Quarterly Cover (10:10) A good example of how Vic's love of whimsy and Sade's inability to do math often makes Rush look like the most sensible member of the family without it being the usual sitcom bullshit of genius kid and idiot parents.

41-11 - Playing Hooky (11:08) Sade is talking with her best friend when all of her menfolk -- Rush, Vic and her Uncle Fletcher -- come in to get warmer clothes. They're playing hooky from school and work to go with Fletcher to go watch the facade of a building downtown get cleaned. In November. I can't imagine that this wasn't just as much of a surreal/mundane/sublime story hook in 1941 as it is now.

41-12-25 - North Dakota River Bottom Revel (14:44) This one was probably The One that sold me on Paul Rhymer's genius. Eight of Vic's friends over at the Bright Kentucky Hotel are fixing to stop by his house on their Revel just before midnight, tumbling out of their cars and swooping in the Gook's house amid a swirl of snow and toss 116 pounds of Rush in the air. Yes, I wrote this from memory. I love how Rush and Sade gently make fun of/recount the concept, but only after Vic leaves so they don't hurt his feelings more than they've been bruised. "Y.I.I.Y. .... Y.I.I.Y. ..... Y.I.I.Y."

42 - Lodge Speech Rehearsal (9:48) Vic is hilarious when he gets his dander up. Hank Gutstop got ejected from their lodge more than Billy Martin got fired from the Yankees.

42 - The Thunder Storm (9:45) Vic and Sade sit on the porch and wait for the rain to start. Rhymer could write a great script about anything. Or nothing, depending on your view.

42-07-16 - A Gross Of Gravels (10:42) Sade's best friend Ruthie Stembottom can't stop her husband from whittling Sade a gross [144] of gavels for Christmas, to conduct her Thimble Club meetings. Sade calls them "gravels," despite Vic correcting her for years; Rush struggles to set her straight. Vic's wheezy resignation and how he says "gravels" to make it clear that he's parroting how she says it always make me laugh.

42-03 - Mis' Appelrot's Petition (11:02) The Thimble Club ladies put Sade on circulating a petition to finally tear down the Bright Kentucky, even though she could care less and Vic agrees it's a terrible idea. Rush will not sign. Never.

41-04 - Fourteen Days in Grovelman (9:29) One of Vic's lodge brothers, who lives in South Carolina, ["the geographical center of the United States"] invites the Gooks to come stay with them for a 14-day vacation. Only it's not 14 consecutive days.

41-06-30 - Who's Who In Kitchenware (10:36) Vic's writing an autobiographical sketch for a WHO'S WHO trade book. Sade and Rush "help." Victor R. Gook: Ah, the name itself is music -- too beautiful, too beautiful, too beautiful!

41-02-24 - Uncle Fletcher To Meet One O'Clock Train (10:02) I wanted to include a Fletcher & Sade episode that's just him struggling to remember something about a fella he knew who went into some half-wit business or the other, married a woman 23 years old and later died, but I don't remember it either. What struck me about that show is displayed almost as beautifully here: As nutty as Uncle Fletcher is, he's a human being and Vic, Sade and Rush almost never fail to treat him as such.

We'll call this two hours of audio.

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Even if I wasn't me, if I had 330-odd megs of free space on my drive I would fill it with all 52 episodes of THE LIVES OF HARRY LIME, an Orson Welles-driven radio prequel to the Graham Greene and Carol Reed classic film THE THIRD MAN. Some of the recordings are downright unlistenable, but when Welles [who wrote several episodes] is cooking as Lime, it's genuinely exciting, showing how seductive his voice could be -- one of the rare instances where the show creator/producer/lead actor could get the girl and you buy it without hesitancy -- as well as what a giddy barnstormer he was at heart. The one drawback is that, with a half-hour runtime, the plots don't much of a chance to twist and turn like they should.

This one comes in at around 25 hours, but nobody wants to listen to just Vic & Sade & Harry, so let's call it four hours. Six total.

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INFORMATION PLEASE is the best quiz show, ever -- instead of answering the questions, contestants mailed their own questions in to stump a panel of experts and a guest, usually a celebrity who was able to think as well as speak. From this page, I would cherry pick the episodes with Fred Allen, Alfred Hitchcock, Groucho Marx Alexander Wolcott and Mayor Fiorellio Laguardia.

There's three more hours, taking us to nine total.

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Again, I would just download all of the MERCURY THEATRE ON THE AIR episodes from this marvelous page and be done with it, but cherrypicking:

Dracula
Three Short Stories: I’m a Fool, The Open Window, and My Little Boy
The Man Who Was Thursday [My favorite of the season]
Hell On Ice
War Of The Worlds

That's five hours: 14 hours total.

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Sticking with Welles, there's also THE MERCURY SUMMER THEATER he did with Fletcher Markle. If only loading a few onto the player, I'd definitely pick:

"The Hitchhiker"
"Life With Adam" [favorite]
"The Moat Farm Murder"
And maybe take a shot on "Moby Dick," "The Apple Tree" [possibly the same file as the LADY ESTHER version below] and "King Lear." How/why they tried to do DICK and LEAR in a half-hour is beyond me.

Let's call that two hours. 16 hours total.

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The LADY ESTHER program had a some great ones: The APPLE TREE file is a definite keeper, I would give "Shredni Vashtar - Irishman & a Jew" and "St Lukes,Chesterton, Happy Prince" a shot. Even though I'm pretty sure it's from Welles' earlier ALAMAC show, "The Interlopers-The Song of Solomon-I'm a fool" is good listening. It's a shame Welles was such a prude; he had a powerfully seductive voice when he was willing to use it that way.

I assume that these are 30min files. Two hours, 18 total.

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Enough Welles -- let's add some more comedy. Bob & Ray are reasonably awesome, more or less. You really could just pick a dozen of the files here at random and be happy. So, let's just say that's what we did.

Two more hours, 20 total.

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Let's see, more comedy -- hey, Jack Benny! My favorite Benny sequence is the month of March ... 1943 ... when Jack was very ill .... and didn't actually appear on the show ..... and was "replaced" with .... Orson Welles. Yeah. More Welles. Chinga tu madres.

The Welles shows + his Fred Allen & INFORMATION PLEASE appearances + any random month of Jack Benny from 1943 = four hours. 24 Hours.

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One last Welles file, honest: If you're going to download just one, it should be "Between Americans," Norman Corwin's play written for the December 7, 1941 episode of THE GULF SCREEN GUILD THEATER. Talk about timing! But there's something about Corwin's poetic iconography and Welles' mixing his Important radio voice with just a little Midwestern twang that makes the play a permanent resident on my MP3 file, despite me never listening to it except on trips.

Speaking of Corwin, his play THE PLOT TO OVERTHROW CHRISTMAS is a lot of fun, even though it ends a bit abruptly. Download that too.

25 hours.

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If, for some deranged reason, a person wants something with now-obsolete ethnic humor, done in broad dialect, may we suggest downloading some LIFE WITH LUIGI [eye-talians] and THE GOLDBERGS [teh jews]. The choice of what episodes get downloaded and listened to is entirely on someone else's conscience, not mine. [Actually, I just don't remember either show well enough to recognize titles of good eps.]

Two hours of each takes us to 29 hours.

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A little something for bedtime: LIGHTS OUT!
Just about anything from 1938, especially "Chicken Heart" "The Dream" and "Valse Trieste" [the latter two featuring Boris Karloff, who traveled East from Hollywood just to work with LIGHTS auteur Arch Oboler. Also great: "Visitor From Hades," "Meteor Man," "Profits Unlimited" and "Ghost On The Newsreel Negative. Also, that DROP DEAD LP I may or may not have reposted a while ago.

Four-ish hours takes us to 33 hours.

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Finally, everyone loves a good blooper, even if a number of them are recreated/faked for Kermit Schaefer's pioneering work in collecting gaffes and flubs made before live microphones. Here are a few of his PARDON MY BLOOPER LPs, via the wonders of Adam Gott's ThriftShopAudio: Volumes One, Two and Three [warning: Rapidshare downloads].

OK, there are enough flextime options in the above that we've passed 36 hours for sure. HURRAY! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! I'M CHARLES FOSTER KANE!!!1!!!! BAD-LANDS!!!



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In case there is any time left or we need a few less old-timey radio alternates:

DOWNSTAGE CENTER

WIRED FOR BOOKS

THE SOUND OF YOUNG AMERICA, the podcast that interviews people who make things, which I will eventually dig through and point out specific episodes that I thought were particularly good.

It's been an unfortunate month for THE ADAM CAROLLA PODCAST, and his site doesn't host episodes older than that, but it's worth monitoring for a good guest. I keep hearing that Adam has a weekly car-centric podcast but something about that site makes my eyes cross and my IQ drop another 40 points, so I haven't found it yet.