Episode 107, January 18, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Marathon, Part 1 - Airchecks

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to airchecks. This week and in the following weeks,
we will be featuring Gene Shepherd from w r in
New York City from the nineteen fifties through nineteen seventy seven,
where we are going to play all episodes. Gene Shepherd
always told good stories on the air. These stories were
also featured on A Christmas Story and a Christmas Story too,
as his voice was the narrative. The first one that

(00:40):
we're going to play is called I Libertine, which became
a literary hoax. Here is what Bob Kay said about
the story behind I Libertine. Let me start by saying
that I am a musician and not a writer. I
hope you forgive my humble attempts at relating this great story,
but someone had to do it. The info that I
am about to relate is pretty much for batim, as
I called it. From a January nineteen sixty eight tape

(01:01):
of Shep being interviewed on the Long John Nevill Show
on War in New York. When Geene Shepard first came
to New York from the Midwest, he had a very
different idea about what radio should be. At that time
and especially now, radio was highly formatted. Back in the
early fifties, there were still radio dramas held over from
the forties, but mostly DJs were the prevailing format. Shep's

(01:22):
idea of radio was to treat it like a blank
page in which to express his ideas about whatever. The
fact that he was on all night was a strong
influence on how the show developed. Up until then, the
twelve to five a m. Slot was for background what
would today be called elevator music. War didn't think it
paid to even keep the studio open, so they put
Shep out at the transmitter in Carteret and Jay Well.

(01:45):
This was the very beginning of what became known as
black comedy. Satire was unknown. Comics like Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce,
and Shelley Berman were not on the scene. Yet Shep
was a true revolutionary in this medium anyway. As Shep said,
New York was a city that was entirely run by lists.
Nobody dared go to the theater without reading ten reviews first.

(02:06):
If Clive Barnes said the show was good, it was good.
Even if you fell asleep in the first act, you
somehow felt that it was your fault. Did it ever
occur to you that lists are compiled by mortals. When
the Oscar is awarded for best Picture, was it really
the best picture? Well, everyone is influenced by these critics.
You may laugh at the people who read the daily news,
but then you believe in the New York Times. Did

(02:29):
ever occur to you that the guy responsible for compiling
these lists was some little guy who was stuck for
four years doing obituaries. Now it's his job is to
call bookstores and find out what's selling this week. Well,
Fred Applearrot recently bought five hundred copies of Who Shot John?
And he still has four hundred ninety seven copies on
the shelf. The guy calls and asks, what's hot? Who

(02:49):
Shot John? Big hit? Well, the little guy puts it
on his list, and soon everyone goes out and buys it.
At three a m. The people who believe in lists
are asleep. These are the people who get all the
latest head show tickets. Any One still up at three
a m. Secretly has some doubts. There are only two
kinds of people us in them, and they don't know

(03:10):
that we exist. It was about this time that Shepard
created a term which became part of the language, like
hot diggity dog or gosh. He said that there were
two kinds of people. First, there was the guy who
believed in daytime. He felt most alive from eight to
six meetings, lunches, deals, that was his thing. When he
came home and flopped in front of the TV with

(03:31):
a beer, it was dead. Time over to sleep. Then
there's the other guy. His time is at two or
three a m. He might still have to get up
at seven a m. But at three a m. That
is when he is in his own private world. He
is a night person. The point was that these two
types rarely meet or know much about the other's world.
Shep was given credit in the American Dictionary of Slang

(03:54):
and Usage for creating the terms night people and day people. Now,
these two groups are constantly battling, but they don't know
that they are the day people truly believe in lists
and prices. A twenty dollars ticket has to be better
than a one dollar ticket. The top ten movies must
be better than the second ten. Now, when this guy
turns on my show, he thinks we're crazy. What is

(04:15):
that idiot talking about? Then he puts on pat Muzak,
the opiate for the masses. At about two a m.
One night, Shep said to his listeners, let's all go
to the local book stores tomorrow and ask for a
book that we the night people no doesn't exist, since
it was a communal thing. He asked the listeners for
suggestions for a title. Finally, at about four thirty a m.

(04:37):
Someone came up with I Libertine. Shep then created an author,
Frederick rr Ewing, formerly a British commander in World War II,
now a civil servant in Rhodesia, married to Marjorie, a
horsewoman from the North Country. He was best known for
his BBC broadcasts on eighteenth century erotica. He was published
by Excelsior Press, an imprint of Cambridge University. Who's going

(05:00):
to argue with that British Cambridge a wife named Marjorie?

Speaker 2 (05:04):
So what's next?

Speaker 1 (05:05):
The first guy walks into the store and asks for
I Libertine. The owner says he never heard of it.
Man number two walks in asking for it. Now, he
says it's on order. The next guy comes in. Now
he's on the phone to the distributor. Well after, three
hundred and fifty more guys ask for it. Publisher's Weekly
is in shambles. You must remember that the listeners knew

(05:26):
that this was a non existent book. By the next day,
reports started to come back. One guy said, for years,
this guy in the Eighth Street bookshop had me buffaloed.
You got the feeling that he actually wrote Kirkgard that
he was behind Spinoza. If I mentioned Proust, he would
say the trouble with Preust was that he never matured.
So I asked him about Eing, and I libertine, it's

(05:48):
about time the public discovered him. I had him. It
was great. A woman at her Bridge party mentioned it. Immediately,
a discussion broke out and three women decided that they
hated it. Airline pilots who were listeners started asking for
it all over the world. Then a kid who was
going to Rutgers wrote, shep, I'm taking this course in
the history of English writing. I did my term paper

(06:09):
on fr Ewing, British historian, with footnotes and quotes from
the BBC broadcasts. I got to be plus and the
professor wrote, superb research. My god, maybe there was no Chaucer.
It could have been some guy four hundred years ago
putting on the whole world. Then in Earl Wilson's column
appeared a blurb had lunch with Freddie Ewing Yesterday. The
p R people who fed the columns were also SHEP listeners.

(06:32):
It was even reviewed by one of the major book
supplements of the time. The reviewers were also fans, and
SHEP told all the listeners to put your little hooks
in wherever you can. As SHEP said, I felt like
a guy at the bottom of a mountain who threw
a couple of pebbles up and suddenly a four hundred
trillion ton avalanche falls on him. Comments continued to appear
all over in newspapers. One guy's boss asked him what

(06:54):
he thought of the book? Did he read it? What
could I say? SHEP said he was afraid that the
press president would mention it. Then I wouldn't believe in anything.
There were articles in Life, Newsweek, and Time. However, the
ultimate was yet to come. It was placed on the
proscribed list by the Archdiocese of Boston. Banned in Boston.
At the end of the seventh week, it was on

(07:15):
a nationwide best seller list. It was now a best
seller in Rome, Paris, London. Remember the people asking for
this new that it didn't exist on a hot hume.
At August day, Shep got a call from a reporter
on the Wall Street Journal. He told him that he
thought it was time to break the story. He said,
go ahead. The following day the story came out front page,

(07:37):
middle section. It hit the news stands at about three
p m. At three oh one pm, about six countries called.
It became a worldwide story. It was also one of
the only stories that was reprinted word for word by Pravda.
Remember that at no time was there any pr done
for this. As Shep would say, it was the beginning
of an attitude that people have had up to today.

(07:59):
People up until the never questioned politicians or big government
like they do now. There was an amazing follow up
to this tale. After the story broke, Shep was having
lunch with the late great writer Theodore Sturgeon. Ted said
that Ian Ballantine was running all over the world looking
for the paperback rights to I Libertine. I told him
I'd introduce you to him. Well, they all got together

(08:20):
over lunch. Shep with Ted Sturgeon knocked out the book
and it really then became a best seller. Incidentally, all
the profits went to charity I happened to be lucky
enough to find a copy years ago in a used
book shop and still have it autographed by Shep No less,
the cover was illustrated by Kelly Frius, who you might
remember as one of the main Alfred E. Newman artists

(08:42):
over at matt As Shepard later said, few touched on
the real point of the story. Most papers got it
wrong and said things like disc jockey Cell's non existent
book to listeners. It was the listeners who sold a
non existent book that a world. Only the Wall Street
Journal and the overseas press got it right. The people
didn't like being had. The London Daily Express wrote of

(09:03):
it as one of the greatest hoaxes of all time.
Well there you have it, at least what I know
about it. You see, there's more to Gene Shepherd than
nostalgia Christmas stories. Judging from the response that Jim Sadder
and I have been receiving from our Shepherd pages, maybe
someone out there would consider playing on the air or
selling some of those old radio shows. Lots of folks

(09:23):
would sure be interested. Keep your knees loose, Gang Bob
k June eighteenth, nineteen ninety six. Here's both parts of
Gene Shepherd's Eye Libertine.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
Lady you will you will join h.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
Hi there we're back again. My name long John Neville.
We're around a lot of times during the day, and
I've invited a good friend of mine who one time
we worked together, and he's been on with me at
this station and then times. His name Jeene Shepherd, and
Gene is responsible for a lot of words in playborn

(12:07):
and in books, and certainly millions of words on radio.
He's a broadcaster, actor, author, and in fact, you're rather
fortunate if you didn't have the finn to go out
and buy the hardcover book. You can go for an
ace now, actually a little less. You can go for

(12:27):
six bits seventy five cents and you can have the book.
And I'll tell you one thing now, because he's here.
It's really a great book. It's titled in God we
Trust all others pay cash and you know this is Shepherd.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
At is best.

Speaker 4 (12:43):
So we hope that you could able to pick up
your copy. And it's a Bantam book. Well, let me see,
we were sitting no, you were sitting judging the beauty contect.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
John an evil man. Yeah, you know, I think that's
one of the reasons why you're so successful, because I
knew the I think evil men win in the end,
they always do. I thought it was the nice one.
Oh that's the old days. Sure we all know that
now evil pays off almost as well as push ups.

Speaker 4 (13:19):
Well, push ups do nothing except to give you a muscle.
And then what can you do. You can go over
to a guy who is weak but wealthy and has barbells,
and he can't lift them up to let the maid
dust underneath them, so you can pick up a jumper
licking the bar bells.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
That's all you can do. It was muscle. How long
has it been since you kicked sand in the face
of a bully at the beach? I was always the
guy with the sand in my eyes.

Speaker 4 (13:41):
You were the guy with the girl in the blanket,
that's right, And he took my girl away from me.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
So Charles Atlas student came over, kicked the sand in
your face, right, that's right, And I wound up being
a howard.

Speaker 5 (13:51):
Baya of the night people. See, I understand a.

Speaker 4 (13:56):
Young lady called you today because she called me afterwards
and she went to know what my sleep habits were.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
I just was wonder isn't that a little person? Well, yeah, yeah,
some ways it depends on what she asks about your sleep.
I say, wow, she acquired I mean, whether it's a solo.

Speaker 4 (14:14):
She told me that she had talked to you about
a half an hour before she talked to me.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yes, that's right. She asked me whether or not I
thought whether I knew anybody who suffered from insomnia. That's right.

Speaker 5 (14:29):
That's her opening line with me too. I think she
had it on tape.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
And I said, what do you mean suffer? I think
people who have insomnia are fortunate because they sleep less
than most people, and hence they live more lives, they
live more time.

Speaker 4 (14:41):
I wish I could have called you first and got
the line and give them the tour myself.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
It's a beautiful line. Well, I think it's true. I
think I think a guy who sleeps twelve hours a
day literally sleeps half of his life away, actually sleeps
half A good morning. Nice to say it, nice to
could get up just well out now, Yes, the teller
we're just talking about in some youa hemus recommend that
does not suffer from it. No I have cos but

(15:06):
you know what that is? He's right out there is
that you. Well, that's one of them our meetings. Bob
Kotchy Rabbit Cotch sand an editor. He's a writer, managing editor.
I know what that means. It's the worst kind idea
with him all the time.

Speaker 5 (15:25):
Fine, fine, well, I'm glad that you could join us too.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Honored.

Speaker 5 (15:30):
Here we are, all of us, and now will bow
our head and a moment and then a.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Few moments of spirit will appear in the table right
and will be in business. The trumpet is never a
trumpet when you're talking about spiritualists. Isn't that the Hindu gaf? Oh?

Speaker 6 (15:47):
No, No, that's done by many people in the eighties
and the seventies right here in the York They there
are many spiritualist meetings that are conducted right here in Manhattan.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
And check this later. Well, John, I've heard your show
described as a form of spiritualist meeting. Really tell me
about that, kind of a mystical gathering of free spirits
of one kind or another. Every night they commune and
mostly with their navels. It was kind of exciting.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
Do you know, did you have the Garu or whether
it's today today rush Garu and everybody's going to him.

Speaker 7 (16:29):
Guess who he sent down interview him this morning, Reverend
David Poland. Yes, when religionists talks to another religionist.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
You know, I've been listening to him, and everything he
says sounds like the stuff that used to be on
the bottom of the calendars that my mother had. You
will be kind, Yes, that ends like I think good thoughts.

Speaker 5 (16:50):
Was that from Father John's medicine?

Speaker 2 (16:52):
No, actually no, it was Saint Joseph's white sab Oh yeah, yeah, solid,
solid off.

Speaker 5 (17:00):
And I said the first time I got my.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Boy scout night.

Speaker 4 (17:02):
Well, Jeremy kind of means sixteen of those metal containers
of the great sad which took the.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Pain from a bion.

Speaker 4 (17:10):
And also if you burn yourself, to scald yourself with
hot water or anything like that, instead of using ordinary.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
Buttery, to use white salad. And that's, of course that's
Cloverine white sad.

Speaker 5 (17:20):
Hey, you're right, You're right, it is Cloverine.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Right. It was trying to got a daisy beanbie them,
but never could I went for the pony did Never
made it, did, sirrup. I was couldn't say the whole
heartest never made it. You're talking?

Speaker 5 (17:35):
You got any more of the Sad left because I could,
you know, buy a future.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
And I sent off that coupon that appeared in the
Hurst paper in Chicago, you know, the Chicago Herald Examiner,
I believe it was in those days. And it was
in the funny papers, and no at the bottom of
the funnies it said, kids win a pony, so white
Cloverine Sad. And this is one of the first chramatic
experiences I ever had in the world of salesmanship. It

(17:58):
was at that moment after I got up my white
clovering Sab and I made my first tour of the neighborhood.
And you know, they had this little blurb that said,
your friends and neighbors will be excitedly awaiting the arrival
of you with your white clovering Sad because they all
need it for the loumbago they used me ad. I
never have met anybody with lombago. But I went out
with my white clovering Sab and the temperature was five

(18:21):
a long. I had a pony in your mind, pony
in my mind, and I went up to mister Brunner,
knocked on the door and I said, I've got white
clovering Sad to say He looked at me, I don't
want note and the door closed and what next door
there was missus Anderson and knock on the door, and
I'm here with your white clothing sap. They even sent

(18:43):
you a salesmanship bookplet It says, never say to people,
do you want white clovering sad? You say, I'm here
with your white clovering sad. And she looked at me
and she says white. What I said, cloveringe sad? She said,
I thought you said Oleomarjorie. She says, what do you
do with it? I says, well, it's for Lombago. She

(19:04):
says he doesn't live here anymore. Gosh, I only saw
the Saturda evening post. You know. As a matter of fact,
my old man got so bug. He sent the rest
of the case back to the white clover and sad people.
And when he discovered that I was trying for a pony,
he gave this wrong look at me and says, if
you win a pony, I'll break your neck. Did you

(19:25):
live in an apartment at the time.

Speaker 5 (19:30):
Did you ever read his book?

Speaker 4 (19:31):
And god no, I haven't. Really it is excellent. It
is excellent.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
I got the original, we got the highcover.

Speaker 5 (19:38):
This is the paperback, and not because Gene is here,
but they really did you ever read any of the
things in place?

Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yes?

Speaker 5 (19:45):
Well, a lot of this.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
This, the manuscript of this novel was first seen by Playboy,
and the pieces you read in Playboy, the chapters out
of the novel. Oh, I see, that's the whatever said
that in play Yes they did. Oh yeah, yeah, two
of the two of the chaps in the centerpole, they
don't say anything in the Senate. The centerfold says all
it has to say. You just shake that magazine and

(20:10):
it comes flopping it. That's right. You don't even have
to open place.

Speaker 7 (20:14):
Do you do you take these or do you write them?
I've often wondered whether, oh, no, they're written. Are you
ever seen a tape transcribed?

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (20:21):
No, but I've heard you too, you know, for hours
out of stretch. No, you know one of those sounds right?

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Well, you see. Uh. That's That's something that I've always
aimed at in writing, is to get I feel that
writing is a substitute for speech. No matter how you write,
you're really substituting for a man talking to you. Even
in the case of of of a so called classical writing,
you're using a kind of that's supposed to be a conversation. Though, no,

(20:51):
that's not the same speech. Conversation implies a give and take. Uh,
it's a monologue. And I have worked in my writing.
It's taken me a long time, actually a professional writing
ten twelve years to attempt to get the same feel

(21:12):
as a man literally a well actually talking to you.
And so a lot of people reading it they said, well,
you must have taped that, but this is the last
thing you can do.

Speaker 7 (21:20):
Well, I thought, my first thought when I when I
read some of the Playboy stuff, is that you taped
it first, and then not a transcript.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Then went a little bit of it. No, As a
matter of fact, with the way I write, if I'm
going to write, say a short story that doesn't have
any connection with something before and after a specific piece,
I'll think of an idea, and it's usually a story
that I may have tried on the air just to
get the feel of it myself. And then after that

(21:50):
I'll I'll first write a loose a very loose running
I suppose you can call it a draft, and then
I begin to expand it. And then after I expand
the draft until it gets to be maybe five hundred pages.
I cut it back for the original eight.

Speaker 7 (22:10):
To eight pages from Yeah, you must not worry about
your own feelings.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
Oh no, I'm ruthless. I rather have a problem.

Speaker 7 (22:21):
I was just I'm very happy to give whatever I
write to somebody else, to another editor who can chop
it down and it and it hurts me to see
somebody else got to rather hint do it than me.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Well, you know, I found I found that many writers
are that way and the way I am fortunate, and
that I work so hard at editing my work that
I have never yet had a piece appear in Playboy.
And I've had maybe fifteen pieces so far in Playboy,
major short stories, and I've never yet had one piece

(22:50):
that the editors edited. Have you ever had one word removable?
That's remarkable, But that's usually an editor, because I am
one now will edit it. I say that in the introductions.
Now you don't have to do that.

Speaker 7 (23:07):
Minds of Wanders minutes ago that you're talking down. Really,
editors do have a tendency, regardless of the perfection of
the pros. If they get they still want to get
their blue petts.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
I have. I have a remarkable editor. It's a guy
at UH at Playboy named Murray Fisher. He's a senior
editor there. And uh Murray said, and when we first
started all this work and he found that I was
that way. I don't like to see myself writing something
that's secretly inside my mind.

Speaker 8 (23:44):
If I were an editor, I would cut out that way.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
You know. That's so when he when he discovered that,
Murray said, look, he said, he said, you just do it.
And he said, if I want any cuts made for
space problems that make can see what they arise, he says,
I'll simply send your your proofs back and you do it.
He says, I don't want to mess with it. He said,
because the rhythm of speech that you get into your

(24:09):
work is something that you can do. He said, I
can't do it. He said.

Speaker 7 (24:13):
I wonder how Thomas Wolfe felt then, when you know
he gave a manuscript to his agent as editor forgot
Max Max Perkins in a ten thousand pages and had
it cut down to the bare bone.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
You know, I don't think what Max Perkins did really
was editing. What I thought he did was organizing. I
think he took a whole mass of stuff and just
simply threw him downstairs or something. Well, yeah, he just
cut out like greams of it, but didn't change it.
And the editing is changing the beat in the rhythm,
but also cutting or condensing in some cases in lodging
or embellishing the editors do. That's a good question. I'd

(24:52):
like to you know that. I think there's two parents editing.
I think there is the cutting and the snipping editor,
and then there's the editor. He says, why don't you
use hot diggity dog instead of oh Shaw? Well that's
what Uh, that's a writer, that's right. Well, Ross, So
the New Yorker did that.

Speaker 7 (25:12):
He was he was known, he was I guess most
people considered him one of the greatest editors. But he
would do a lot more than either cut or condense
in some way. He would change words. Well, you know, personally, though,
I think this is why that magazine always has had
a kind of I think to me and I enjoyed

(25:33):
a lot of stuff that's been in The New Yorker,
but they've always had a kind of homogeneous sound.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
That's very true that they want to be white. Yeah,
but I as a writer, that would bug me. I'm
writing for Playboy, for example, I'll appear in one part
of the magazine, and then the next part right next
to me, it will be a short story by say
herb Gold. Yeah, and they want that difference. But yeah,
they want that instant, dynamic difference between each piece.

Speaker 7 (25:57):
The New Yorker, of course, they've got a stable of
people there. And when you're a New Yorker writer, when
your type is a New Yorker writer, you're always a
New Yorker writer.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, it's usually a lady with three names or an Italian's.

Speaker 7 (26:11):
Well, of course, what what bothers me most about New
Yorker stories is that I have to wait until the
end to find out who wrote it.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
Really, look, you always look. Yeah, that's not that's cheating.

Speaker 7 (26:21):
You know, you're supposed to figure out in the first
couple of paracasts who wrote it.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Well, you can always tell a John Cheevers story always.
His story is almost always concerned with the same people.
The typical ending of the John Cheever story is and
the seven fifteen pulled into yan dot circle and mister
Smothers slowly mounted the steps period period, and you can
see you can read the whole story. You don't even

(26:46):
have to read. That's right, this whole thing, you know,
mister Smother's sad. Mister Smothers, his life has been wasted.
Now he's in love with the babysitter.

Speaker 9 (26:54):
You could always tell a Sja Perlman story too, by
the usually it's the.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
News clut as beginning, Yeah, takes off well. Perman's style
is really different than anybody disturbing you, mister.

Speaker 4 (27:05):
I'd ask you for just a moment to permit me
to take care of some business, but.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
That's still being filed by large numbers of lady librarians
all across the country under religious books. I'm serious. I'm
right next to Matt mcgandhy in the valley of the
Dolls' religion are David Polling, the great religious Dave Polling writer.

Speaker 4 (27:29):
No reverend is a swinger, really, you know, he's a
delightful gentleman.

Speaker 5 (27:37):
He uh, he's really done an awful lot.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
For the work that he's keenly interested in. True, very true.
I talked with him for four or five hours, was
never able to discover what it is dedicated more than
most people, a little like Judge Puffles, very loyal the ideas.

Speaker 5 (27:58):
That's that's that's one whole word.

Speaker 4 (28:00):
I'm glad to employed that tonight to describe the great
day of Phone.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
We're all very big.

Speaker 5 (28:06):
Fans of and some night we hope that you will
be able to.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
Join us when he is delivering one of his spiritual messages.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Like the spiritual message. He speaks with tongues, Yes he does.
I like bread too. All right, we'll have some of
that little lady mustard on a good spiritual message. Marinate it.
That's right. You have it all made, You have it
all made. Just catch you.

Speaker 5 (28:28):
This is your goal and opportunity to.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Do what I was just strucking my mustache. That's about
all you can do. No.

Speaker 7 (28:36):
We were mentioning during the break and something I couldn't
understand about the way Playboy structures its magazine that they
seem no matter what kind of material is written, they
always put in front of it say Jeane Shepherd, and
then as a slash, and it says humor, and then
some Harbard Gold slash fiction, somebody else slash article. It

(28:59):
seemed to me that anybody who reads it is going
to know without telling me. I don't have to be
told that you're going to write humor. I don't care.
I'll read it and I'll judge for myself whether its
humor or one thing or another. Why would they do
a thing like that.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
I really don't have any answer to that, Bob. I've argued,
In fact, that point has come up a couple of
times in discussion with my editor as to what they're
going to put over a piece, and I think it
goes back to the to the early days of the magazine.

(29:31):
It's a thing that was put in very early when
Playboy consisted in the earliest days. Now, if you've ever seen,
you know, some of the early Playboy issues, like issue
number one or two are really expensive collector items today.
They really because we call them any worths. Well, there
weren't many printed, and of course Playboy's going on to

(29:51):
become a worldwide from and it is really a valuable
collector's item now. But if you'll go back to those magazines,
you'll see that they have these blots. But the reason
they used them then was because the magazine was new
and they couldn't even afford you might say, new writing,
and so they would publish a classic exactly, so they

(30:15):
would put things over the top more or less. To
describe why they're using it. They would have a rebeled
classic and it would be remoti song. Then they would
have something like Great Interviews and it would be a
reprint of an interview that appeared somewhere, because in the
early days nobody must cared what was written in the Playboy.
And we'll see happen. There's a very sentimental type. Curiously,

(30:38):
he really is, and a thing like that. I heard
him described in many ways, but I'm sorry, I know
him very well. It runs through his magazine.

Speaker 9 (30:48):
Where do you find sentimentality in Playboy?

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Well, have you ever read my stuff? That's you, Jane.

Speaker 9 (30:54):
He's publishing it, yes, but he's publishing Jane Sheppard.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
But the New Yorker wouldn't. All right, the New Yorker
may not. New York publishes, but not sentimentalis. But I
don't think. I think there's no, absolutely no. To me,
Allan is his hardcore gagsville, And to me, that has
nothing to do with with human emotions one way or

(31:20):
the other. It's a a whole series of he she jokes,
great job you've got well, some are.

Speaker 7 (31:26):
He deals with reminiscences from time to time. I don't
know how true they are, but they always seem to
be based somewhere in the past. Well, maybe that's sentimentality.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
No, we're not discussing my work. We're discussing Heffner and
I and I think that in my work. I think
this andy sentimental. As a matter of fact, if you
ever really read it, you realize that it's a put
down of all the things which most people think it
stands for. It's Andy nostalgic writing. Well, sure, he loves it.

(31:58):
Why would this suppression get up that Heckner is this
kind of ignorant slobody could do what he's done. No,
I mean he understands what he's doing too. Yeah, but
he's Look the impression that I have of you.

Speaker 9 (32:10):
Heffner is one of the great business minds of our
time in the journalistic field, a man has become a
multimillionaire not only with a magazine, but with merchandising.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Every possible aspect of the magazine.

Speaker 9 (32:21):
He's he's taken a formula that's been around, you know,
basic form the Girls and Off that started out today.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
They pay more perfection than anybody else. And I say this,
I'm sorry, Sandy, you know, I think this is a
subtle form of putdown because you got to put down. Yes,
it is because you would never say about Harold Ross
that he's a great businessman, because, after all, the Chef
magazine became a fabulous commercial success during his day. Ross
as editor. Well, he wrote, he created the magazine just

(32:49):
like theF created the Playboy. But the kind of subtle
putdown of a Heffner would be, well, he's a great businessman.
He was, essentially and again as a man who created
a magazine and that magazine became successful because it was
a good magazine.

Speaker 7 (33:05):
What made it good at need it's good now, but
it was good then.

Speaker 9 (33:09):
I had until about two years ago we talked about
the early issues of Playboy.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
I had a classic collectors item.

Speaker 9 (33:14):
With somebody's wife front me, including the portfolio of nude
shots of Ante Eckberg.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Remember that the sculptor. Don't confuse the magazine with its photography.
But originally it got didn't get the coverage. I'm sorry.
There were a thousand. This is one of the great
myths around. There were dozens of girly magazines around at
the time played and by the way, even magazines it
went much privent as far as nudity. That's that's true.

(33:41):
So the idea that it made it on the girls,
it only made it with people who didn't read it.
And so the people who read the magazine know that
they didn't buy it for the girl. But the people
who saw the magazine and didn't read it assumed it
was the girls that after start off procical story that
he started off with like a thousand or two thousand dollars.

(34:03):
Do you have any idea that is really true? I'll
tell you exactly how I started. Hefner was working. He
worked a couple of places in Chicago. And by the way,
most of the people who created the magazine are from
and around Chicago. My old friend Shelley Silverstein, Leroy and

(34:23):
Eman the artist Chicago. No. Spec came with the magazine
comparatively late in his career. The magazine already was a
raging success when Spec chaned it. Helf of course, Jack
Kessey the editor under Hefner, and when he started this magazine.

(34:45):
Hefner was working at the time. At the immediate time,
he was working for Esquire in the Chicago office, and
he had a lot of He felt that the magazine
was old fashioned. Esquire's constant reiteration of the Fitzgerald the
Hemming way. It was in love with the thirties, which,
by the way, it still pretty much remains. You read

(35:06):
the magazine and he said, this is not the thirties,
and there are a lot of writers writing around today
but just not being published because they're today. So he
got he had around six thousand dollars of his own money.
He borrowed another tool, and he created the magazine and
the first issues were laid out in the living room

(35:27):
of his house on the northwest side of Chicago, all
over the floor. He turned them up. And you know
he works that way today. I read that, Yes, in
his room in the Heffner mansion. His room really in
a sense is it's just where he does his work,
and you see all over the walls or anytime you visit,
heth he's got the next issue of Playboy when he's working.

(35:50):
I currently ten on.

Speaker 5 (35:51):
The walls the same way as I do and never
but I don't have a mentioned.

Speaker 4 (35:55):
In the twenty three room penthouse, right next to Bob
kotsay sixty three room, I have all these things out.

Speaker 5 (36:02):
They're all dimmed up on the wall, ready to be
put to.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
The man of such beast output as you've got.

Speaker 4 (36:11):
Jack Keane is just ready to put them all together
as off for back again. Robert Kochner's with us, Samford
Teller and Jeane Shepherd.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
My name long John Nevile.

Speaker 4 (36:21):
So I'd like to remind you, although I haven't seen it,
somebody told me that this Sunday, there's a piece in
the New York Sunday News by Ben Gross, who's the
dean of radio and the TV editors, the man who
wrote the book. I looked and I listened. That was
published by a random house, and and the story is

(36:42):
going to be in Sunday's paper.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
You know, Ben, Ben is a real New York landmark.
Oh yes, he really is. Man. He's of that that
that whole crew that New York has produced. He's he's
fantastic columnists over the years, guys like O McIntyre Gross, Yeah,
old crowd, he's one of them. You know, I was
talking the other day with somebody, a young man.

Speaker 4 (37:09):
See this will even hurt you, Bob, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
You know.

Speaker 4 (37:15):
We usually talk about young man, you know, of thirty
thirty five, but I'm talking about a younger man. He
was mentioning something about ambitions, and then another young man
came in to see me today, Duke Ausler. That's Willson,
and he is a reporter on a Bridgeport newspaper.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
And I guess Duke is about.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
In twenty two, twenty three something like that, and a
couple of summers.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
Duke used to work for me.

Speaker 5 (37:43):
Remember's come in during the summer months and.

Speaker 4 (37:45):
Work at nights, and with Paris, you know, with Paris,
and a couple of the others abound. But the point
I'm trying to make is this that it seems so
many guys and maybe because I am the old member
of the group tonight, every night, I'm the older member
of the group, You're getting to notice that. That's right,

(38:08):
So many guys make excuses. You're talking about hefton. This
is what reminds me always. You know a lot of parents,
and I think the parents make this mistake. They'll tell
their their children, their sons. In particular, you got to
crawl before you walk. And you know you've got it made.

Speaker 5 (38:26):
You know you're a you've got your whole life ahead
of you.

Speaker 4 (38:28):
Well, I imagine that some guy seventy or seventy five,
who may be seated opposite me as a guest one
night and he would say to me, You've got your
whole life ahead of you.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
You're a kid.

Speaker 4 (38:40):
Well, I am a kid compared to a guy seventy five.
But I think that Heftor was a man who I've
never met. Incidentally, I think Hefnor had something that only
successful guys had, and that is a dry to do it.

Speaker 5 (38:56):
He was not going to be conned or lulled.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
Into the same you know, look easy.

Speaker 5 (39:02):
You know you crawl before you walk. Start and you're
and yeah, start small and you're young. You got the
whole world.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Ahead of you.

Speaker 5 (39:11):
Well, I wouldn't even say this to a sixteen.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Year old kid, that he has the world ahead of him.

Speaker 4 (39:15):
Because today, when we had Robert Metzon, who was with
the New York Times, he writes a financial column for
the New York Times five days a week.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
And he was on the other night with us, and
he was telling me.

Speaker 4 (39:26):
Some things that were pretty exciting to me that in
the mutual fun market today there are about three or
four guys. There's one rather old man who has been
successful in the last year and a half.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
He's thirty two.

Speaker 4 (39:41):
The other two guys, one is twenty five and one
is twenty seven. I'm not talking about guys who've got
a few bucks together and that I'm talking about guys
mutual funds. So there you sit opposite me, this older man,
this managing at a time, and instead of being out

(40:01):
there hustling, and.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
You wind up being a Samford teller. I planned to retire.
You know how fortunate he would be. He's gone far.
Remember one thing, you're missing the point here, John, he
is on the Long John Show. That's right, thank you.
That's true. Four men who've been on the Long Jun
Show in the last five years have been assassinated, So
I would not make it true. I think a minute, Sandy.

(40:25):
I think to be assassinated is the ultimate compliments assassination
in said of murder, right, you do know how to
assassinate Charlie Apple, that's you kill him.

Speaker 4 (40:38):
But I think this is this is one of the
reasons why why there are Heffner's and uh, you know
there's another guy that I think of it. And don't
you know, say, just because this old man had a
few bucks, actually there wasn't a fortune. It was a
fortune compared to what we may have at the present time.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
That's Howard Hughes.

Speaker 4 (40:57):
You know the whole Howard Huston, I think it was
about one hundred.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
Compared to what he made. He took it.

Speaker 5 (41:05):
Now, this was a guy that didn't play games.

Speaker 4 (41:08):
He was going to make it. And whether that was
a hang up with him or what it was, I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
I'm not you know, John, when you use may, I
interrupted here from you use in. You know, I think
that Hefner and people like that type. Hefner and Hughes
Howard Hughes that type. But these people are when you
say make it now, I think the average ordinary walking
around citizen. When when you use the word make it

(41:35):
to take money, he thinks in terms of money. I
don't well talk. You know, we got to explain terms
here that a guy like Hefner to him, and it's
it's going to sound very strange to a lot of
people who think that way. Uh, money is no consequence
to him. It's the games playing. It's the He's so
fascinated and excited by all the things he does, and

(41:57):
he does them so well. He is, truly, by the way,
business genius. He knows how to do these things, and
so the natural increment of it is money. It's like
a gambler he plays with chips. He doesn't think it
pends with money. And and and so a guy like
Hughes is he loves this whole big game. It's like
it's like they're they're they're in a way, they're very

(42:19):
much like the character that Ian Fleming created. They're James Bonds. Uh.
These are adventurers. And and as a matter of fact,
Heckner Hepner. One night, I remember we were sitting around
in the kitchen. He loves to come down at four
o'clock in the morning and sit there unshaven, wearing his
bathrobe and sitting around with a few of his old

(42:40):
friends who were with the magazine in the early days.
And one night he said, I was sitting there eating
pumpkin pie, which he happens to have a thing for
him where he says, he says, you know what I
really enjoy, He says, I enjoy guys who will well, well,
we'll risk it all, he says, you know, he says,

(43:01):
I will. I will go for a guy he's I
like people who will say, why write for the Chelsea
Shopping News. I'm going to send it into He'll risk
horrible humiliation. And and and I and I said, well,
hef You know, anybody that will go out on the
kind of financial limbs that Heffner will, he'll look like

(43:22):
you started to remember show business illustrations. Y I really yeah.
But the point is he will, he will, and he'll quit.
You see, he'll lose a half a million dollars or
anything like that. Maybe a million. Yeah, I know, you
think it. You think a lot of money. This draft
are a lot of men with help, and he says, well,

(43:42):
you win some, you lose it.

Speaker 10 (43:44):
Though, John pointed out about about it maybe a year
ago that if Joe's shows the Court of Grocer goes
into bankruptcy for fifty let's say, five hundred dollars or
one thousand dollars, it's hard him to get credit. But
if an international financier, you know, he dropped ten million
in his bankrupt he gets it.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Again.

Speaker 4 (44:01):
Always his partner is in line to be with this
guy because he was an operator who could who could
build leffa you know.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
John, Oh, there are certain guys though, I when I
say Howard Hughes or a or a Hefner, how about
a Ralph.

Speaker 4 (44:16):
Kaufman or a Petty especially Yeah, Ralph Kaflan and Cleveland
yet is one one.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Now you see that there's a difference between these men.
And he cares about money though, well wait a minute.
You see Getty cares about money because money represents the
chips that show he's won the game. And I think
that we shouldn't confuse that. You confuse these guys with
guys will come along and briefly make a big fortune,

(44:46):
let's say, in the construction business, over extend themselves, and
twenty minutes later they're either in jail or they're back
in Indianapolis with their high cart stands. Now, a guy
like Hefner works in all directions. In short, he's liable
to tomorrow morning say you know what we ought to do.
We ought to start uh an airline. And he will

(45:09):
throw two million dollars into this thing. He's done that.
He's bought a plane, he brought a commercial jet plan.
I won't be surprised if he doesn't come up with
an airline. I would not get you right now.

Speaker 4 (45:18):
That reminds me of my director, Howard Beya. Howard bea
for a long while when he was taking people on
the tories, right. You see, he just decided he wouldn't
do it. Until the uniform was getting tighter and tighter
and tighter, and then he, you know, he decided to
discard it and he worked his way up to the

(45:39):
top your show for a while running amen, ah, here
we are, yes, unless you're real good, Here we are
with our guests.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
One of his favorite, one of my favorite lines of
his is this one, raceless friends, I want you to
just reach out now, lay your hands on that radio.
That's what I said. Your hands on that radios and
you feel that heat coming up to your knuckle bones,
coming up to your elbow joints. Friends, that is electronic love.

(46:20):
I'm sending out your way. I'm digging right now. Something
we've got to go. Hair screens.

Speaker 4 (46:30):
A stone's throw from the famous Mountain Valley Spring in
the health resort region of Hot Springs, Arkansas, there's another
spring whose water is delicious.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
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there's something exceptional about Mountain Valley wall. And if you
said it was and sodium or the natural purity of
Mountain Valley water, you wouldn't have all the answer.

Speaker 5 (47:08):
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(47:34):
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(48:12):
the whitest in America. Now, I would like to send
you a booklet that'll give you all of the facts
about Mountain Valley water. Just put Mountain Valley on a
card and send it to me. Long John nebll WNBC,
New York, ONEO to O. Do that today, please, and

(48:33):
I'll send you a brochure. There's no cost no obligation.
Or you can pick up your phone right now and
dial Plaza seven seven to one oh pl seven seventy
two ten.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
That's an answering service.

Speaker 5 (48:48):
Do that now.

Speaker 4 (48:49):
I'll put your name an address in a card and
send it to me. Long John nebll W NBC New
York one too oh.

Speaker 8 (49:01):
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Speaker 4 (49:07):
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(49:32):
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Speaker 2 (49:52):
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Speaker 5 (50:10):
So some people get up in.

Speaker 4 (50:11):
The morning and they claim it's going to rain today,
without even listening to Big Wilson, without even looking out
the window.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
They based this on the fact that that.

Speaker 4 (50:24):
Corn, that little sore aching corn on the small toe
hurts this morning.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
That means it's going to rain.

Speaker 4 (50:32):
Well, if that's the only way you can tell what
the weather is going to be, keep your corn. Or
you may have a callous in the ball of the foot,
or a bunion that throbs with pain just like that
of a toothache that you you really can't stand the
weight of a bed sheet on it. Well, when you
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(50:52):
what it's going to rain today. Well, one thing you
can do, you can walk with pleasure, because you'll beware
shoes that have secret inner moods.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
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Speaker 4 (51:07):
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(51:29):
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the facts.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Here.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
We are back again with our guests, and we have
Samford Teller with us of samfor Teller public Relations and
Communication Communications proper already.

Speaker 5 (51:57):
There it goes well, bad back a Rudder and fan
Robert Kotteer. Now that you getitor a newspaper Enterprise Association.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
How's that air?

Speaker 4 (52:07):
We in fact, we have Dick Raskin who joined us
tonight thick us from California and he plays a little
guitar and a couple of other things.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
And we've got Gene Shepherd.

Speaker 4 (52:17):
Jean wrote the book and God We Trust All Others
Pay Cash, which was published by Double Day but now
available in paperback by Bantham Books.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
You know, I think the.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Worst publicists, except for maybe half a dozen, are people
with book publishers.

Speaker 5 (52:37):
There's a free outstands.

Speaker 4 (52:38):
Sonya Levinhal of McGraw hill, Letty Cotton Bernard Geist, Jane
Boot of Double Day. Yeah, there's Abby Brown and her
husband Tom Cassidy. Terry Garrity does a great job. Mostly
Lisa Cane from Harper and And I don't like to

(53:01):
leave anybody out.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
I may have probably not couple.

Speaker 4 (53:04):
There are so many you would take an hour and
a half to say, those that have no idea, that
have never been to a show, that have no idea
what happens at the show?

Speaker 5 (53:14):
Who mislead the authors.

Speaker 4 (53:16):
I don't think they do it intentionally, but they have
an idea because maybe they've heard very gray and they
figure if you're on at night, I must be doing
the same show there. And they send the author up
for twenty minutes. And a guy comes up and you say, well,
I be able to get a cab and he says, yeah,
I really don't know. We'll try to help you when
we leave in the morning. Well, I have to catch

(53:36):
the twelve thirty seven from Grand Centro. Yeah to me
and the guy he's not putting me on, you know
what I mean. He's not trying to be a wise
guy or anything. But he was told that he would
be on for fifteen or twenty minutes. Alf At the
top of the show, and that's the end of.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Even worse is to run into a pr person from
a publishing house who has not read the book. And
furthermore completely, I've seen some very embarrassing moments like that
around radio stations where a publicity person will come in
and start talking about a book to somebody and the

(54:13):
guy I'll turn in to what isn't like that at all?
I read it. The guy who's explaining it to knows
more about it than he does.

Speaker 7 (54:19):
I always think that the extent of book promotion, generally speaking,
is sending a book to a reviewer.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
That's as far as it goes. Well.

Speaker 9 (54:25):
I've been around, you know, every time John gives me
a chance to go through some of the books coming
just to see what the release is, press releases look like,
and things of that story. I'm a paul that a
major publishers will send out a major book with a
form letter pitching it for all radio.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
And TV, and is it fought? I mean, it is
so bad. Some of them are zero.

Speaker 5 (54:47):
And then and then they'll put dear mister Nele or
dear John.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
You're broadcaster. How they do I communicate it? You're a broadcaster?
And it says, we know this book will will be
of interest to your particular audience. You know another one.

Speaker 4 (55:03):
Can you imagine a show like we do in the
person will send if you would be interested, uh, contact
us and tell us when you would like the author
and will send you a book.

Speaker 5 (55:14):
In the meantime, they send you the jacket, the.

Speaker 4 (55:17):
Jacket copy man and they and they want to know
whether you're going to be interesting. Of course, the jacket
has nothing to do with the author. The author has
had a thing to say about the jacket, and it's
it's really there's another gal by the name of Jia
Moon Jean. Is that it Ga Moon Jean? Yeah, I
don't know what it is, but she is. She does

(55:40):
a very very fine job for Grosset and Dunlap and.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
A couple of others. She's a very town guy.

Speaker 4 (55:46):
But the gal who really has it and who is
in business for herself, uh is Terry Garrett.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
She doesn't great great.

Speaker 4 (55:58):
I think we should go into one thing that a
lot of people are completely unfamiliar with.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
I mean they you know, some people have been listening
to you, maybe for shooes for.

Speaker 4 (56:08):
Five years, but a lot of people don't know about
eye Libertine and I'd like to have your rehab that story.

Speaker 5 (56:14):
We've never done it on the X. No, I don't know,
we've never had and that that is a great story.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
Are you familiar with the eyelaberteam? Start. I'll have to
be refreshed by over do it. How the whole thing started.
That's quite a story, I mar. This is very strange.
It was a progression of peculiar events that led to
an international in factor, worldwide story. As supply as you

(56:40):
don't remember it, maybe you will remember it when if
you're refreshed on it. But when I first came to
New York, I was on all night on w o R.
And in those days, yeah, you started from eleven fifteen
to eleven thirty. Well, that was very briefly.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
But actually when I put it, the Handy Sandy, Andy
and the Jawbreakers out.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
But when I really got started in New York, I
mean I got on and I was on all night. Really,
I was on from midnight till five in the morning.
And well, actually John played a role in that event.
It was a very interesting event. And I was on
late at night. I was broadcasting from the transmitter at
w r R. Yeah, and in those days. This this

(57:29):
really was a turning point in radio, although at the
time nobody really knew it. In those days, radio was
a very, very formatized form of entertainment. It was format
all the way down the line and the formats. There
were disc jockeys and they had they had a stranglehold
on the industry, and it really radio already was an

(57:51):
adjunct of the music business. And then there were a
few newscasters on it. That was about the extent of it.
And I had come out of the Midwest, and I
had an idea that radio as a personal form of communication,
of personal artistic media, and it was to use radio
to say things and to do things which have a

(58:13):
very personal meaning. For me. I'm not plugging Pat Boons
records or interviewing some lady who draws pictures on velvet
of cats. That I used radio the same way that
the writer uses a sheet of paper to say what
he has to say about the world. Well, this is
very peculiar. It has not ready been done. And I

(58:35):
was on late at night, and the time was a
very peculiar time. It was during the time of Eisenhower,
and there was a lot of it was the beginning
the very beginnings of what later became known as the
black comedy period. In America, satire is unknown. There was
a lot of comedy today we call comedy satire. There

(58:57):
is really still very little satire around. Most people today
call a comic a Saturdays. Not so. And also, I
don't consider a man who does political gadge a Saturdays.
That's often called a Saturdays. He's really just a polemicist.
But I'm on late at night. I'm doing this stuff

(59:18):
and working away seven days a week. And it was hot.
It was the middle of summer, and I had become
I was new in New York, and I suddenly became
aware that New York is almost entirely a city that
really does run on lists. The first time I really
ran into the hit syndrome that if Brooke Sackinson, who

(59:42):
was writing in those days, said a show was a hit,
it was a hit. If he said it was good,
it was good, even if the people who went to
see it fell asleep and they thought they they were failing.
Book Sakinson. I was fascinating by this. You see, and
in New York, the the ten best dressed people are

(01:00:04):
talked about on the radio all over New York and television,
and they don't even think about this in Cleveland and Cincinnati.
It's a New York phenomena. And it just began to
interest me. And one night, late at night, I'm on
the air and I said, you know, has it ever
occurred to your currens that these lists are compiled by
mortals and that they are human just like you are,

(01:00:28):
and in fact, they have many more access to grind
than you. Now we all laugh and say that the
Academy Awards, have you ever been asked to vote on
the best movie? Only those sit when somebody hands somebody
else's statue and that's the best movie of the year.
I said, is it really you? Is it really just

(01:00:48):
for us to think that way? I know it, and
I'm doing this stuff late at nights and I said now,
I says, Now, I'll carry it even further. I said,
no matter who you are in New York, you're influenced
by these lists. I says you. Now, you may laugh
at the one that's in the daily news because you
read the Times, and somehow if it says the top

(01:01:09):
ten best sellers in the New York Times, you really
can think you may never even seen a copy of
those bestsellers because it's in the Times, it's authentic. I said,
is it acrid to you that there's a little guy
who is bug because the four years he is on
obituars and he's always had this dream of being Waler
Lippmann seventeen years and now he's got his desk and

(01:01:30):
all he does every Monday is call these little shlock
book dealers around. Thomas says, how what's selling this way? Meant?
And I says, now, let's take it even further. You'll
read this little thing at the bottom says, this is
a list that is made up of let's say, four
hundred and twenty two authentic books. He said, let's go
back to the book healer. Say, we go into the

(01:01:52):
bookstore and here's this guy, Fred Applerott. He's the book
bias see and he brought five hundred copies of Who
Shot Yo? Yes, three months ago and he's got four
hundred and ninety seven of them. Yeah, so he says
to mister so and so, who calls why who Shot John?
Is moving there? I'll tell you there's nothing. I said.

(01:02:13):
Four or five other guys said the same thing. And
the next thing, you know, who shot John is number four,
and all the people who believe in, who believe in Listen,
rush up like mad and buy it. And then it
becomes an authentic listens. True. First it's true. Well, people
were calling up and they said, this is ridiculous, how
can this be? What do you mean? You know who?
This is an authentic whist? And I says, all right,

(01:02:34):
I'll tell you what. Let's do a friend. And this
is three o'clock in the morning. I says, Now, the
people who believe in this are asleep. I said, because
they get up at seven o'clock, right and bushy tail
to run down to the agency. They buy all they get,
showed get you know, the greedy love, Barbarius, Dreisland and
all this. And I said, And anybody who's sitting up

(01:02:57):
here at three o'clock in the morning secretly has doubts.
I mean, it's because a lot of us still got
to get up at eight o'clock in the morning. And
why you're sitting here at three o'clock in the morning
listening to me, I says, there's only two kinds of
people us and that and they don't know who exist.
We're back again, back to the story a higher than

(01:03:18):
the team. You really want to hear this. It's so
great because I don't you know, I don't like to
take over the microphone. They were all sitting around hitting
around tonight. But that story talking a lesson, Bob, And
I'll never forget that. They taught a lot of people
a lesson because I was just sitting here talking about things.

(01:03:40):
You know, it was a theoretical thing. I remember. This
is ten years ago. When people did they accepted things
like bestseller list is actually authentic? The top forty tunes.
To a person listening, he says that, yeah, that must
be the top forty. And I had learned a lesson
earlier on that. I remember a guy once in Cincinnati
who who by public relations one thing and another. He

(01:04:05):
had a record on the top thirty tunes in the
quote Bible of Showbiz. But what was even published had
never even been published here. It was number eight. So
all the disc jockeys across the country, you see, would
get this bible and say, well, it must be big
in Pittsburgh. I haven't gotten my copy yet. Well, sure enough,

(01:04:27):
when they've turned it out, every DJ in the country played,
They played the pants off this record. Because it was
number three and then it became number one. Authentically. Well,
the public, I guess, is not aware of the chachinery
that goes into these lists and what they do mean

(01:04:47):
to books and they mean the films one thing another.
There's millions writing on that, and you and I all
know that when millions are writing on things, that's when
the operations get big. I'm doing this thing late at night.
And that was simultaneously, Bob at the time that I
created a term. You know, it's kind of an airy

(01:05:09):
feeling to have created a term that has entered the language. Now,
you know, you read terms like hot diggity dog. Can
you imagine the guy that first said that? Well, no,
I mean the one who first said it. He created
something that has entered the language, like, oh gosh, somebody
must have said that the first time. Well, I actually

(01:05:33):
created a term that you see on billboards, you read
it and paid papers all the time. And it came
about on that show This is three o'clock in the morning.
I said, look, it just hit me out of the blue.
I says, you know, there's two kinds of people. I
just just been thinking about this. Really, there's the kind
of guy who believes in the world of the office.

(01:05:56):
He really believes in bilecandids. He believes in life. He
believes that the day, the time from eight am to
six in the evening is the time he's alive, the
phone call, the launch, the appointment, and the time after

(01:06:17):
that is just deadtime. He flops down in front of
the TV set, He drinks his beer, he goes to sleep,
just waiting for the next day. I said, now, that
is a day person. His world is the day world.
But there's the other guy whose world begins the minute
he gets out of that office, and his time is
at four o'clock in the morning, two in the morning.

(01:06:40):
He's his own private world. He's a night person. That's
I created the term night person, and you will find
it in the American Dictionary of Slang and Usage, and
they credit me with it. And I said, and of
course the opposite number is the day person. And they're
constantly battling, only they don't know that they are. So
you're sitting in this sales meeting, and here is this

(01:07:02):
guy sitting over here, and he's got this light of
ecclesiastical fervor. He believes in operation dynamo that you're about
to foist on the public. He believes in it. See,
and you're sitting there all away in mccarmick. Yeah, that's right,
Jill McCormick. And you're a circoveredy. Is this guy seriously
really pleases it? And you try to make a funny
with him. He says, well, you know, remember what happened

(01:07:22):
to Operation over the Top, and he looks at Youren, Well,
of course, if it hadn't been for Fred and accounting,
that would have gone over. Well. Two, there's the battle,
you say going on. And I said, now, let's face it,
it's the day people who buy lists. They are statistically oriented,
and they will not go to a hit show unless

(01:07:44):
there is a line of over one hundred in front
of that box office. I mean, it could be the
worst turkey in the world. If they read in the
paper it cost twenty dollars to get a ticket. That's
better than a one dollar ticket. They're oriented to money.
One thousand dollars car must be five times better than
a one thousand dollar car, even if the transmission is

(01:08:06):
made out of boss of wood, it's got to be better. Now,
that's the statistical mind, and he is the day man.
So I said, Now, if you think I'm kidding, I said,
I tell you what I said. The day man is
not listening to us. He can't. He thinks we're nuts.
He says, he's listening to me, and he says, what's this?
Not talking about it? And he goes off and he
gets wpat on, you know, with that nice Mantovani record,

(01:08:28):
you know, the opiate for the masses. See, I said,
I said, Now, I say, I'll tell you what let's do.
I said, if you think I'm kidding, I said, what
do you say Tomorrow morning, each one of us walk
into a bookstore and ask for a book that we
know does not exist. We're going to create it here.

(01:08:51):
It does not exist. Walk into a bookstore and ask
for a book that we know does not exist. We're
going to create it here. It does not exist. Let's

(01:09:11):
just see what happens, because the day man will believe
that it is. And let's see how it works. I said, Now, look,
since we're all in this together, what do you say? Now,
we're going to make this a communal affair. And I'm
not you give me a suggestion for a title, just
call it in And millions, of course, they were coming

(01:09:33):
from you know, at night to fifty thousand watch station.
At four in the morning, I'm getting calls from Alaska,
and these guys are giving me all the suggestion for titles.
And finally at four thirty in the morning it was
getting so late I had to go off. At five
point thirty, I said, okay, okay, it's closed. I've picked
the title. And some unknown guy called in this title.
I Libertine said that sounds like a book. I mean,

(01:09:58):
it could be almost anything. I comma Libertine. I said,
now I'm gonna create. You've got to have an author.
Because of today. You know, most people are going to say,
if you've read the newest Falkner Jacqueline Suzanne's a big deal.
You know, you've got to have an author, or right,
I'll create an author. And I sat for a min
and just hit me the name, I says, okay. The
author's name is Frederick Ewing, Frederick Rowland Ewing. He's British.

(01:10:25):
He was a lieutenant commander in World War Two on
the North Atlantic from Therman's Run. He is now a
civil servant in Rhodesia. He is married to Marjorie, a
horsewoman from the North Country. He writes extensively for The Observer,
and he is known primarily for his pre World War
II broadcast on the third program of the BBC Eighteenth

(01:10:48):
Century Erotica. And he's a scholar. And I Libertine is
the first volume of a trilogy on eighteenth century English
court life. And by the way, mister Ewing is quite
surprised that the success his book is enjoying, since it
was written primarily for scholars. Of course, people do not

(01:11:09):
misunderstand certain chapters that are there for the purpose of
scholarly research. And I said, just go in and say
I would like Ewing's I Liberty, I says, And if
anybody asks you, it was printed by Excelsior Press, which
by the way, is a subsidiary of Cambridge University Imprint.

(01:11:31):
There is not a bookseller in the country that can
argue with Cambridge and a British author who's married to
a lady named Marjorie. I says, now you go in
and don't crack a smile, don't do anything. And when
the man says to you the first thing, I says,
he's also bound by lists. The first thing he'll do.
You will walk in and say I would like to

(01:11:52):
have a copy of I Liberty by Frederick Ewing, and
he'll say who published You say, Excelsior Press. Of course, yes,
I'm just a moment dumb. And he'll take out a
list and he'll look it up and he'll see that
it is not listed. He will turn to you and say,
there's no such book. He said, well, i'll go to

(01:12:13):
double days then then leave. Well, the next guy that
comes in and asks but this, he'll say it John Order.
And the third one that comes in, he's going to
be on his phone. You're calling the distributor, and the
distributor's going to say to him, you're out of here, bird,
fred you're being put on. There's no such book. I've
got the big list here and there's nothing like that. Well,

(01:12:36):
if four hundred and twenty two bookstores call in, he's
going to be calling Publishers Weekly, And within twenty minutes,
Publishers Weekly has collapsed in a pile of red. And
remember it's a six ninety five book. They don't laugh
at a seven dollars book. He says, Now get out
and go, and we'll sit back and see what happens. Now, Remember,

(01:12:57):
every listener knew that book did not exist, and they
knew it didn't exist. I says, now, I remember it
does not even you know this, and let's see what happens.
And I says, you let me know tomorrow morning, and
the day after that, give me reports and I will
give them out to the listenings. What's happening. Sure enough,
the next day, Guy says, you know, He says, for

(01:13:19):
for years, this guy in this ah Street bookstore with
this beard has had me totally buffaloed. I mean, he
stands back of that cash register and you have a
feeding that he wrote Kirka Guy that he was behind
Schopenhauer when Chopenhauer wrote this stuff. And he says, you know,
he used to say things like this. I'd go in
and I'd say, you know, there's something about Marcel Perst

(01:13:42):
And he says, well, of course Pruce never matured. And
he says, you know, he says, I went in there
today and I said to this guy, I'd like a
copy of Eye Liberty by Ewing. And he says he
looked up for behind the cash register and said, Eweing,
It's about time the public discovered him. He says, the

(01:14:03):
scales fell from my eyes. He says, I learned something,
and I'm getting these calls from people up it. One
woman wrote in and you know the two days later,
she says, she was sitting in her bridge party and
she just casually mentioned JIB and reading I Liberty, and
three ladies started to discuss it. They not only had
read it, they finished it, and two of them didn't

(01:14:24):
like it. She says. All that, she says, and then
I got a letter from a kid at two weeks later.
They're coming in from all over the country seeing what's
happening is that people are hearing this. You know, airline
pilots were listening. It was spreading the Paris Rome, jipip
every place else. And a guy wrote me a letter,

(01:14:45):
he says Shepherd. He says this is He says, don't
say anything about this. He says, look at this and
he enclosed in this envelope. He says, I'm a student
at a university which I shall not name. It's in Jersey.
I'll pick up ten names. Let's think of some funnymed Rutgers.
He was a student at this non existent school called Rutgers.
And he says, so, he says, I have I'm in

(01:15:08):
this English, this this History of English writing course, and
he said, I wrote a term paper on fr Ewing,
eclectic historian. And it was about a nine page paper
with footnotes, quotes from Ewing's earlier BBC broadcasts, references and

(01:15:30):
the thing he said it to me, and it had
a big red thing on the front of it. It
said superb research. He got a B plus. And the guy,
you know, and the guy said, he says what he says,
my whole education is probably phony. He said, but there
wasn't even a chaucer. I said, you know, this could
have been some guy four hundred years ago, you know,

(01:15:52):
putting the whole world on so all of it. And
I says, wait, let's sit back. I said, don't say anything,
just keep asking, well, do you know with him? Four
weeks there was a piece appeared in the Earl Wilson column.
It said, had lunch with Freddy Ewing on his way
to India with his wife Marjorie. So, you know, and

(01:16:15):
I begin to get frightened, you know, because it's like
a guy who stands at the base of the mountain
and he says to himself, gee, I wonder what would
happen if I threw a pebble up there, and he
throws one up there, and the next thing you know,
he's got a four hundred and twenty trillion ton avalanche
coming down on him. You know, it's just incredible at
this thing pyramided. And so I began to get all over.

(01:16:38):
Do you know that at the end of the sixth week.
One of the funniest things that happened that one of
the book supplements at that time there were three book
supplements published was Sunday Newspapers in New York. There was
the New York Times book supplement, and there were two others.
One of the book supplements had a review of I Liberty.

(01:17:00):
That have happened. Well, now here's what I said. Now
wait a minute, that goes into later. Now this is
the truth. I've got it all in clinic. Now. How
it happened was my listeners all over the place, even
book reviewers, were poised to get on people. They were
calling up betters, I'd like to review this new book.
And they see listeners were beginning to throw there, and
I says, any place you can throw your little hooker in,

(01:17:20):
let's do it and see what happens. So some pr
man wrote to one of the columns. The next thing,
you know, they having lunch with Freddy. Freddy Ewing's well,
these these comments about Ewing began to peer all over
in the newspapers, and the final upshot of it always
I'm getting letters people, I says. You know, the other
day my boss asked me if I read it. That's

(01:17:42):
what I say. My boss reads all the book club books,
and he's waiting for the common the book club, you know,
and the boss all this stuff, and one day, the
final one it scared me. I Libertine was on the
proscribed list. It was banned by a very prominent church

(01:18:06):
who's your remain nameless? I'm not kidding, And by the
Boston crises. No, this this blew the gaff, I said.
And my listeners are staging know what they and what
do you think? At the end of the seventh week,
it is on a nationwide best seller list. But change answer,
jeck one, do you mean that it's possible? As several

(01:18:27):
times I'm telling you what happened?

Speaker 9 (01:18:28):
But several hundred people then no, but ex communicatady the book.

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
That's right, let me, they see you're killing the story.
But that that I'm telling you what happened. This is
not a thing for gags. This is just exactly a
historical thing. And I'm sitting back and all this stuff
is happening. See. And about i'd say two o'clock on
a on a it was I think it was a
Wednesday or Thursday morning. And this has been going for

(01:18:53):
eight weeks now that it is now a bestseller in Paris,
in Rome, they're asking fort and bookstores, they're asking for
it in places like Honolulu, everywhere all over. And the
people who are asking for it, remember, know that it
doesn't exist. That's the important point. They are sitting back
and watching the repercussions. And here it is. You know,

(01:19:17):
there's mentions of the book in all kinds of columns
everywhere of people who think it does exist, I says, remember, Prince,
they think it does. And when we were banned in
Boston by a very prominent church, I mean our whole
world was crumbling, you see. I mean by now I

(01:19:38):
was a little afraid. The next thing, you know, the
President's gonna mention that you know that he loves this book.
S then I wouldn't believe in anything, you know. And
about two o'clock in the morning, I got a telephone call,
and this guy gets on the phone on the phone
very funny voice, and he says, look, he says, he said,
he says, you know, you're right. You're touched on something

(01:19:58):
very important, the kinds of people in this country, the
believers and us. And he said, I am a reporter
for the Wall Street Journal, and he says, I've listened
to this thing from the beginning. He says, it's incredible.
And by the way, we had even had a an editorial,
an editorial in life, and he said, this is fantastic.

(01:20:23):
And he says, don't you think it's about time to
spill the story? And I said, yeah, I think so.
I said, this is getting on a hand. And so
he came down to the office and I showed him
all this documentary proof, and he went back to his
office and he worked on this piece. And on Wednesday afternoon,
on this August hot August day, it appeared front page,

(01:20:48):
middle two, three column banner. It says, gigantic literary hoax
shows the real phoniness behind and a lot of the
things that people believe in, like lists and so on.
And he had the whole thing documented well. That came
out on the newsstands at three o'clock in the afternoon,

(01:21:09):
and I was sitting in my office. It was fantastic.
At three oh one, I would say with it. Between
three oh one and three oh five, there were six
countries on the phone calling me about that. Melbourne was calling,
Rome was calling newspaper editors, Figaro, the German newspapers, everywhere.
It was a fantastic story. And that story, it's probably

(01:21:32):
one of the very few stories that has ever been
printed word for word, taken out of the Wall Street
Journal and reprinted in Pravta. It was printed exactly word
for word. Well, well, this thing just blew to the
point where people were calling from all over and then
it was never, at any point was there any pr involved.

(01:21:54):
It was a whole series of forces that came together.
And I think that time, that particular year, was the
beginning of the whole new attitude that people have today
towards things which they never questioned. People today question politicians.
They never did, really they used to say things about it,
but today the ready question, uh, people look at things.

(01:22:19):
And it was the beginning. And I'm not saying that
started it. I'm saying that was the beginning of a
whole thing. After that, mort saw grew and money bruce
and the whole the whole thing changed over almost almost
in that period. Overnight, it just began to mushroom. Isn't
there more to that story about the book? Oh there's
much more, but we we don't have that time. Am

(01:22:40):
I crazy? Or did I read that somebody eventually wrote
a book? No? Later then you see when it was
a you're going ahead again? Then then uh. One day
a friend of mine, a writer, Ted Sturgeon. Ted Sturgeon
called me one day and said, listen, he says, you know,
he says, there's this publisher who he says, he's a
paper publisher, and he says, you have got I'm taking.

(01:23:02):
He said, this guy is going around all over the
world trying to get the paper back rights on I Liberty.
And so he says, let's have lunch for them, and
he said I kicked. So I sat down with him,
and he says, if we were eating lunch, and he
turns to him and he said, listen, he says, would
you like to meet the publisher was Ian Valentine? Valentine,
would you like to meet Ilberty? Would you like to

(01:23:23):
meet Fredd? Ewei and Ian is very innocent type guy. Yes,
says I certainly would. He says, I've been very interested
in meeting him, and he says where he is right here,
And that lunch we decided, he says, well, let's turn
out I Liberty and all the day people will buy it,

(01:23:44):
the night people will know, we'll find it. And we
turned all that we took, we took all the prophets
I think, by the way, and turned it over a
charity because you're interested, I did. Oh yeah, it was
not a commercial deal and in any sense of the word.
So we put this baby on and sure enough we
were together, he and I. We we banged this thing
out and we're like and it became a best seller

(01:24:06):
genuinely after that. But the whole, the whole progression of
this thing now in America, this is and then I
had the further lesson that all of my listeners learned
was the way it was reported in the press. It
says things like a disc jockey uh sells non existent
book to listeners. Exactly the reverse. The listeners saw the

(01:24:30):
non existent book of the world the very and they
went on, you know, they didn't want to admit they
had well, no, no, not that they got took that.
The thing was a comment on the entire structure of
the official critic, the official layer down of the eight
best dressed people. Newspapers go for this kind of stuff,

(01:24:53):
the ten best seller books. There's the finally happens today
though it still does je oh wait now excuse me now,
now don't go into that. We know that it still
goes today. But I'm saying this is why it was
never reported and analyzed for what it really was, except
overseas that the British press loved this, and just a

(01:25:14):
few years ago that story which you don't even remember. Interestingly,
it's been forgotten in America, but all over the world
it is recognized as a real comment on the public
relations world, the world of the glib newspaper writer, the
whole thing of the official lists. And the Daily Express

(01:25:38):
of London a few years ago picked the fifty greatest
hoaxes of the twentieth century up to that time, which
was nineteen sixty two or sixty three, and I Libertine
they gave it a great, big spread. Was one of
the great hoaxes of all time. So it wasn't just
a little gag that agot No, it had a had

(01:26:00):
over overseas. And now many times we've heard the story
of somebody who creates a non existent thing and gets
little plugs in the paper and all that, but that's
not what we did. This was very different. And when
your book is banned, that's something else that reviewed. It's yeah,
and and and by the way, if all this is

(01:26:21):
documented Time magazine, I remember the story in life. This
was all afterwards, you know, on the on the actual story.
But none of them really touched on the meaning of
the story because that was still too early. If this
thing had happened today with the I think people are
much more aware, even the writers and you know, they
would make the moral of this thing. But the moral

(01:26:43):
was never mentioned in any of the pieces except in
the Wall Street Journal and outside the country, Yeah, and
outside the country. But it was it was a fantastic story.
It's a great story, and uh it it uh it.
I think a lot of people who are involved in it,
I'm talking about listening and so on, who are involved
during that whole progression of events, never were the same

(01:27:05):
in their lives after that. They never could seriously sit
and watch the Academy Awards or even polls. You know
they read the Harris Pole it says Charlie Brown leads
Fred Applerot by two tenths of a percentage point. These
things like you pick up TV Guide and it says
Ed Sullivan has thirty seven point nine years. It shook

(01:27:29):
everybody only in America. By the way, we place such
importance on these these abstract numbers as to whether Bonanza
is two tents of a point higher than the Smothers brothers.

Speaker 7 (01:27:41):
Not only that number is right through government. Do you
remember that book ten to fifteen years ago, How to
Lie with Statistics?

Speaker 2 (01:27:46):
Well, people aren't lying, They're just totally fallacious. They don't
it's not a matter of lying.

Speaker 8 (01:27:54):
January twenty ninth, Bill Maser invites you to a radio
premier week on WNBC New York. I don't know if
you believe in flying saucers or not, but a very
good friend of mine, Frank Edwards, has written some of
the great books, and incidentally, for your information in case
you're unaware of it, well, one of the most sensational

(01:28:18):
sellers in the Flying Saucer field, it was on the
best selling list for so many weeks, was a book
written by Frank Edwards titled Flying Saucer Serious Business. Right Now,
a brand new book has been published, Frank Edwards Flying
Saucers Here and Now.

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
Now. This book brings you up to date with the
new and startling developments in the Unidentified flying Object's mystery
since January nineteen sixty six. There is no book on
the market today that is as up to date as
Frank Edwards new book titled here and Now. Let me
take a moment of your time to tell you about

(01:28:56):
some of the goodies in this book. In this book,
Frank Edwards documents EUPHO sightings by a Florida governor, by
scores of police officers, a Maryland newspaper editor, a New
Orleans colonel, two Australian constables, eight members of the Royal
Canadian Air Force, Sightings by psychologists, astronomers, airline pilots, scientists,

(01:29:23):
and by top executives of the largest commercial air craft
companies in the world. Now included there are a group
of what I would like to label it as just
sensational photographs. These were taken by observers ranging from teenagers
with polaroids to astronauts with the Space program's most sophisticated

(01:29:46):
camera and many of these are published for the first
time this information, and I would like to have you
go to your favorite bookstore and get a copy of
Frank edwards new book, Flying Saucers Here and Now. It
contains a wealth of information. Questions are answered, such as

(01:30:10):
where do the uphos come from? That's right, Frank answers
it in the new book titled Flying Saucers Here and Now.
Is it true that uphos are not tracked on radar? Well,
read the book and you'll find out. Do we ever
get pieces of uphos? Yes? Those questions and many others
are answered in Frank Edward's new book, Flying Saucers Here

(01:30:35):
and Now. May I suggest to you to go to
your favorite bookstore today and ask for Flying Saucers here
and Now by Frank Edwards.

Speaker 4 (01:30:48):
Let me take just a moment to remind you that
a few happen to get a copy of the Sunday News,
which I have not got it yet because it isn't Sunday,
But I understand that Ben Gross has written a story
about the show, and many of our listeners might be
interested in reading it. Ben Gross is the dean of
radio and TV editors he's the man who's response for

(01:31:10):
one of the best books ever written on the subject
of radio and TV, titled I Looked and I Listened.
So it's in the issue dated January twenty one, New
York Sunday News This Sunday. If you have a chance,
you might want to look at it. And now back

(01:31:34):
with our guests. Stamford Teller is with us. Mister Teller's
a public relations consultant, and we have Robert Kochner, who's
managing editor a newspaper Enterprise Association. And Dick Raskin, who
was a college student and uh also a pretty good

(01:31:54):
man and guitar. And we have Gene Sheppard who's a
well known broadcaster and act and an author and in fact,
his book and God We Trust All Others Pay Cash,
which was published by Doubleday, is now in softcover paperback edition.

Speaker 2 (01:32:12):
John, By the way, I'm glad you mentioned that Er,
I'm going to go back into uh you you remember
I did Voice of the Turtle. You recall say, yeah, sure,
how is that? I'm going to go back into the
theater more this coming year. I've got all kinds of
plans and several people have been talking to me about
I haven't had time since I've been doing all this writing.

(01:32:32):
You know. That's why I really kind of put down
my acting career. But I love acting. I enjoyed tremendously,
and I'm going to do some stuff this coming for
something in particular that I can't yet. I can't say
anything yet, just suffice to say, John, I'm sharpening up
my tap dancing very good. Yes, you're doing off to

(01:32:58):
Buffalo Break. Oh no, no, no, this is more interpretive dance.
Oh pardon me, pardon me, lights and the tights. You're
not going to be in Martha Graham company. I no,
he's not allowed to divulge at the moment. What he
is going to be doing. This is a secret, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:33:15):
Dick raskin Uh was a listener of yours and a
fan of yours when he was going to high school.
And of course then he went out to the coast
for a while and he just came back and he
got hooked. Recently listening to you again, when did you
first start to listen to must have.

Speaker 2 (01:33:29):
Been in nineteen. Can you got closer that day.

Speaker 11 (01:33:33):
In fifty nine when you were first on, when you
were on before long, John was on yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:33:37):
Yeah, well that was later when John took over the
all night trick on WR. I took it all fifty six. Yeah,
my show.

Speaker 11 (01:33:44):
I had a show from eleventh fifteen till midnight, till midnight. Yeah,
that was the one I used to get scared to death.
He did the End of the World one night, I think, yeah, scared.

Speaker 2 (01:33:52):
Well, well I I I did the real End of
the World the way it really would be, as opposed
to the science fiction way. I said, can you imagine
it's the difference. Well, there's a big difference because it
seems to be very innocent when you read it and
kind of exciting when you read it in science fiction.
But I did a show one night based on can
you imagine what would happen if the world really was ending?

(01:34:14):
And you were there? And I reproduced it. By the way,
Dick John says, you play guitar and you're on on
the coast, what do you think of the coast as
opposed to the East Coast since you're uh living and
have living in both places.

Speaker 11 (01:34:31):
I love the coast. It's uh, it's a different kind
of thing. It's a little bit to me easier going.
It s even in school and not too involved in,
you know, the life anywhere. I guess academically, you get
out of what's really happening. You come back to New
York and all of a sudden things seem to speed
up again, and trying to get involved in it. Uh,
it's a little difficult because I've been gone. Your pace

(01:34:51):
has changed too. On the coast, they talk fast here. Yeah,
I can't understand it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:57):
What school do you go to? A valley college there? Valley,
it's a junior college.

Speaker 11 (01:35:03):
He's got a fantastic system. It's better than New York.
I like the educational system out there, and I don't know,
I like the coast better than New York. Everything has
its good points, you know, let's safe. This is on
a few points scales better. It's strange to be back
in New York. But it just to see places, see
the changes. It's a to me.

Speaker 2 (01:35:22):
It's an amazing city New York always has been. But uh,
they're just the theater. The one thing is a aculiar
mistake in New York. It really is.

Speaker 11 (01:35:31):
It's funny, you know, you talk about going back into
acting again when I came out here. The theater in
New York can't be beat. I mean, there's no place
in the world because I love theater. I was raised
in New York to go to Broadway and see a
good show. You know, not necessarily because the critics of.

Speaker 7 (01:35:47):
All kinds of things to do don't see many good
shows nowadays. Though, do you on Broadway or off Broadway?
I don't you see the theater in New York. I'm
wondering if it's really the place where things are happening
in its Well, Bob.

Speaker 2 (01:36:00):
They've always said that about New York theater though. You know,
it's funny if you go back to the eighteen nineties,
you read editorial saying the theater is dying, and in
any given year.

Speaker 7 (01:36:11):
Oh yes, you hear that again and again. But I'm
just wondering if this there's something I've never said. The
theater is dying in New York. I don't know if
I'm prepared to, But I've seen theaters outside the city
of repertory companies, for example, what's his name? And the
one in I think in Milwaukee is one that's a Washington,
the Guthrie Theater and the Washington.

Speaker 2 (01:36:33):
Well, Bob, maybe it's a matter of definition. I think
the New York theater isn't really theater, it's showbiz. This
is a very different thing. What David Merrick is doing
is really we have to make that differentiation between theater
and showbiz. And New York is after all, millions ride
on shows in New York and they don't in Milwaukee.

(01:36:56):
And I'm certainly not condoning the showbiz miss steak in
New York, but it is showbiz. And when you bring
a show in that costs two hundred and ninety seven
thousand dollars just to get on a stage, you're not
as much concerned with art as you are with box office,
because you have a lot of people to answer.

Speaker 7 (01:37:14):
Why is it that so many of these two and
ninety seven thousand dollars shows failed in the first few days.

Speaker 2 (01:37:19):
Well, because they're not good. Because you see this, even
if they only pay twenty four dollars to put the
show on, they might fail. That money is no criterion
of it. But this is a this is a big
roulette wheel here in New York. And showbiz really has

(01:37:40):
taken over much greater in nineteen sixty eight than it
was say, prevalent in nineteen fifty eight. We'll say, because
costs have gone up, and the whole that no longer
is there such a thing as the little show. It's impossible.
So you take you even if you see a a
show on Broadway that there's only two characters. These two

(01:38:03):
characters are drawing down very heavy cash, the rent on
the theater, oh, the whole thing. So there's no such
thing as bringing in a show for twenty three thousand dollars.
Not on Broadway, Ze, not on Broadway. Sure we're talking
about Broadway.

Speaker 9 (01:38:18):
We just changed the subject here because of a telegram
that came in, Long John. This is from an old
friend by the way of the show and name that
she will remember.

Speaker 2 (01:38:26):
Long John.

Speaker 9 (01:38:27):
Shep is also a beautiful draftsman, would appreciate some of
his comments in the current art scene and signed Arnold Bergier.

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
Oh thank you meat. He's referring to the fact that
one of my activities I also I'm a line I
hesitated word use would use the word artists to use that.
But I do line drawings, and I've done stuff for
the Voice and for Double Day. And Idol is a
fine sculpture, excellent, and Idol, I can say what art scene?

(01:38:58):
What about? Let me ask you what you would comment
about Andy Warhol. Oh, well, I don't think. Let's not
confuse popularity with art. No. In other words, Warhol today
is commercial. I'm not saying it's art. Are you saying
it's not art? Well, there's that age old argument is
what constitutes art. And like a lot of other words

(01:39:20):
in our language, the word art has gone through a
rapid transition in maybe ten years, and today the word
art people use it to even describe insurance selling. They'll
call it the art of a sales rusship, art of love.

(01:39:41):
Everything is an art today. So when you talk about
Warhol you have to say Warhol is also a product
of this time. That anything is art if you want
to call it that, and if enough people say it is,
then for them, briefly, for that time, it is. But
I say that that that this stuff is because you

(01:40:01):
look at a Warhol today, Warhol is strangely old fashioned.
Warhol soup cans. No. No, I don't mean his content.
I mean the concept Warhol is is out of date.
Believe me. As a September morn somebody else said that
about it. Well, it's true on the show too. That's
the thing with pop culture. See, pop culture is transitory. Culture.

(01:40:25):
It has no genuine base. It's transitory. It's like a
pop song. I often wonder, you know, you hear all
these hit records and everybody says, you know, they're all
going on. I wonder what a pop record fan does
with last year's records. Some people must have two hundred
and twenty seven thousand records that they never conceivably play.

Speaker 9 (01:40:45):
How would you classify the Beatles in all of this?
Is there any kind of lasting power to the Beatles?
The kind of records that you might have five years
and not play five years.

Speaker 2 (01:40:54):
The personally, I don't think so. Yeah. See, we're making
a great today pop the word pop, and I'm in
a pop medium. And incidentally, I know Marshall mcluhem McLuhan
has written about my show, So I'm in that world. Uh,
And I think today we're getting very self conscious about

(01:41:14):
pop art, and so the most popular of the pop
art is always considered great art, hence forever, Hence it's
supposed to have great lasting value. Well it's kind of sad, uh.

Speaker 7 (01:41:29):
But you know, on the other hand, it would seem
that not until not until recently, did people actually seriously
look at the pop culture. I don't know whether, but
that still doesn't make it any the less or any
the more transitory. I've noticed that that that you take,
you take people like the Beatles and so on. I

(01:41:50):
noticed that their earlier records are never played, which means
then that their art, really, even within their own miliear,
is transitory.

Speaker 2 (01:42:00):
Of course, the other thing is the other explanation as well.

Speaker 9 (01:42:02):
Now they've developed into art, you see, which they had
their origins five years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:42:07):
Now it is art. Well, now you're saying then that
what they're cutting now you will hear ten years. I'm
not saying that. That says to be seen. See, it
ain't give them time. I under say that. Look, I've
had the same argument over and over again, Sandy with people,
and I keep saying to them, you know, there's no
way for you to know. I remember one time having

(01:42:29):
an argument with somebody in a radio station about Bill Haley,
and everybody said, well, you know, this is such a
fantastically popular thing. It's really going to go on or not. Well, whoever,
here's of Bill Haley today.

Speaker 1 (01:42:43):
That was both parts of Gene Shepherd's Eye Libertine from
May second, nineteen fifty nine. Shepherd praises the gagamobile at length,
a cheap Dutch auto. Ronald Metzger said it for all
of us back an alien cry evilie.

Speaker 2 (01:42:57):
I said, what did he do? Ma? She'd say nothing,
and then she'd start to sing.

Speaker 12 (01:43:01):
I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air.

Speaker 2 (01:43:06):
And the water, and run like mad. And you'd hear
the coffee drums, the coffee grounds bobbing up and down
there in the sink strainer. They don't have sink strainers anymore,
by the way, have you noticed that? Not real sink strainers,
those big, those big white porcelam types with the holes
in them, with the black rim around the edges, triangular
shape fitting the edge of the sink was always loaded

(01:43:27):
with with potato peelings and slivers of fells napped the soap,
that brown soap with ground right into the soap, the
coffee grounds and the grainy things and all the rest
of it, threads and little bits of hair and wool
and stuff. I'm forever blowing bubble. She'd look out there
at old Brunner, and Bruner was always fooling around on

(01:43:49):
the back porch. He always was looking down in the
hedges he would grow hedges all the time around his porch,
and he figured that tobacco juice was good for him. Ah,
forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the head they flies.
The only point that I'm making here is that these

(01:44:10):
are the things truly in our lives. These little things
are the things that we get the satisfactions from. Like I,
for some reason or other, get great satisfaction in stopping
in the in the horn and hardart, just stopping and
having a cup of coffee and just sitting over there
by the edge and reading a magazine or something. And
I'm drinking this, which is good coffee, and I'm just

(01:44:32):
sitting there looking out at the crowd, and I enjoy this.
Why do I enjoy this more than going to some
jazzy place in the afternoon with some guy for French
pastry and demitas. I just sit there and I get
up and go. And it's sad because we're such godlike creatures.
Why do we settle for this.

Speaker 13 (01:44:53):

Speaker 2 (01:45:00):
This is the first time I've been on at this
time ever, in all my years in radio. You know,
this is the first day that we're on from twelve
to fifteen until two, and it's peculiar. Suddenly I have
to at least reorient my entire thinking. For the last
two years almost I've been on from ten to fifteen
until noon every Saturday morning. And now there is a

(01:45:25):
tremendous difference, you know, really a tremendous philosophical and physical
difference between those two hours ten fifteen and twelve fifteen.
You know, really it's a different kind of people. And
everything you see out there, all the people with the
flower dresses twelve fifteen, you know, the kind of people
the afternoon people are out, all the matinee people that

(01:45:49):
the Westchester dairy enn People's a completely different crowd. And
I have to totally read The sun looks different, the
air is different. Well, Brunner gets pleasure from it, So
don't say anything about it, Billy, after all, and you
know what was so beautiful about it, what was implied

(01:46:10):
in what she said. We all have such a short time,
So don't get angry because somebody gets pleasure from it.
I mean, he's you know, I'm forever blowing bubbles pretty
bubbles him in the air. Like this kid writes to me.

(01:46:30):
He says Shepherd. So you're looking for candidates. This is
a kid, remember now listen, a sixteen year old kid.
So you're looking for candidates for the brass vigligy with
oak leaf cluster. Well, maybe you don't get invited to
as many events as Pegeine, but I know you will
appreciate the significance for our time of the following message,

(01:46:51):
which stares out at the palpitating throng at the Hayden Planetarium,
which is of course one of the meccas of Norman
Rockwell type kids of my generation. It reads, and here
is a sign that you can see at the Hayden Planetarium,
and this kid spotted it. Remember this sixteen year old kid.

(01:47:12):
A big sign, a great big sign. And the top
line says solar system and restrooms that way. That's a
fantastic sign. That's wonderful. It took a kid to see

(01:47:37):
that solar system and restroom. Big arrow points that way.
This is the one world department. Also the ridiculous and
the sublime solar system and restrooms. Do you understand the juxtaposition?
Think about it for crying out loud things about that.

(01:48:07):
Think about that. And while you're thinking about that may
I insert an insidious message. If you girls listening are
counting calories or maybe just watching them slip by, then
we've got fantastic news for you, and then uses Vegemato
Vegemato fresh vegetable juice cocktail Solar System that way, this

(01:48:28):
is a blend of tomato and vegetable juices. It comes
in a can, and it's different from anything you've ever tasted. Baby,
Just imagine a juice that has a livelier flavor, more
zing than tomato juice. Why you can't imagine a thing
like that, more zing than tomato juice. Just imagine it's
richer and heartier than any vegetable juice ever been concocted before. Well,

(01:48:51):
that's vegemato. It's nourishing, low in calories, and it's got
sock perfect way to ward off that mid morning droup.
What do you mean mid morning group, it's vegemonal. Look
for the name Vegiemono. Take a few cans home, serve

(01:49:11):
it to your family, and I'm sure that you will
thank me for recommending it to solar system. That way,
you've seen the middle of in the middle of paradise
loss throwing in a plug for the Ford Company. And

(01:49:35):
this kid goes on to say, He says, you know what.
The kid goes on to say, He says, I've been
a devaitee ever since that day you heckled a mob
at Queen's College a couple of years ago. Oh, that
was a wild afternoon. I'd like to go out there again.
I found that of all the colleges that I've been,
the most fistfighting crowd of all is at Queen's. I mean,
they slug it out, he says, every Saturday morning. My

(01:49:57):
father asked me what you're talking about. Well, of course,
you see, some fathers are a different breed. It's a
completely different crew. And you know, there is something that
happens to a person after a certain point in life
has been passed. We will not discuss it. That follows
next semester, next semester. Just put a note down on

(01:50:21):
the notebook. That'll come up, he says. And I'm hard
pressed to tell him, even though I use trite phrases
like quote describer of the passing scene, quote the poor
Man's John Wingate. The fact is, however, he listens anyway
and intermittently scowls at the world of Harold monolith, keep
up the fight against pre taped lives. It's a sixteen

(01:50:43):
year old kid. You want to hear another kid list
of this kid out there fighting it out. A few
weeks ago, you read on the air a letter describing
this teenage chicks room with the picture of Jesus right
there in with Elvis, Ricky and whoever else happened to
be popular the time. The point of it all being
that Men has finally elevated himself to the level of

(01:51:05):
his gods. Well, do you remember the scene A kid
wrote me a letter about his little cousin who's fourteen
years old. He went into her room one day to
get something, and he walks in there and he says,
on her wall were all these pictures of the current
teenage heroes. There's Ricky, there's Dick Clark, there's Kookie, there's Fabian,
and right down there in the corner is a picture

(01:51:27):
of our Savior looking exactly the same as they're all looking,
with the same look over the whole business. It was
a picture sent to her by some lumber company on
a calendar, and she had put it on them with
Ricky and the whole crowd. And the kid says, he
turned around and he left the room, and he's walking
downstairs and he's thinking about that man has finally done it,

(01:51:48):
has finally elevated himself to the status of gods. Really,
it's a wild picture. Well, the kid goes on to say,
this current kid, who is nineteen by the way, he says,
he's done it again. Man has from a Time magazine
article about audio visual education, and we quote Marshall mcluan,
English professor at Saint Michael's College, the University of Toronto,

(01:52:11):
in a splendid flight of pedagogical rhetoric. Added and we
quote the dialogue between man and machine will replace the
guided tours of data provided by the book. You catch
the significance of that the dialogue between man and machine
dialogue means a two way conversation. The dialogue between man

(01:52:36):
and machine will replace the guided tours of data provided
by the book. For in the dialogue there is no
maintaining a point of view, but only the common participation
in creating perpetually new insight and understanding in a total
field of unified awareness. This is not gobblybook what he's saying.
And the kid goes on and say, oh, yes, Man

(01:52:58):
through discussions with his machine, is going to reach mutual
understanding with them personally. I feel that nothing will come
of this. The machine, having been created by man, will
inherit all of man's sicknesses, and thus no understanding of
any kind will ever be reached. So now that God,
man and machine are all part of the same cosmic

(01:53:20):
caste caste, man has nothing to worship except himself, which
I suspect he has been doing all along. Anyhow, of course,
this is part of the cult of psychiatry today. Go
to worship at the image of the ego, the id
and the super ego, the all enveloping circlement of self.

(01:53:45):
This thought occurred to me a few days ago. Yes, so,
I mean, you know, don't stand still. I want to
show you the parallel now between these two. And here's
a letter from a male man type adult type type
human being who says almost the same thing. He says

(01:54:08):
he works on a newspaper. Says, this morning, I was
working in the old bullpen here at the paper, taking
some copy by phone from the Wattanabbe drive in theater,
when I stumbled upon the story of my life. Mister Wattanabbi,
who owns the drive in said quote. By the way,
Charlie put the second feature in lower case, it runs
at nine thirty. Only do you realize that most of

(01:54:33):
our lives are second features that run as the second
half of a double bill. We go through life in
lower case with a few caps sprinkled through the copy
here and there. The worst part of this revelation is
that we're shown at nine to thirty. Only Frank and
Gina up there in the first feature get a second chance,

(01:54:55):
but relatively few of us ever reached the big time.
If anybody comes in, let they never knew how we
began and never understand our plot. Yes, give me the

(01:55:15):
last chorus there? Please again, will you please? Tony? You
have to we have to get the cleaner. He gets
pleasure out of it. He gets pleasure. Don't say those

(01:56:01):
unkind things. He gets pleasure out of it. Please, and
we hear such a short time. I mean, really, you know,
I mean you look up, you look up at that
spinning sun, and you look over there at the milky Way.
How long has it been since you've seen the milky Way? No, seriously,

(01:56:25):
have you have you seen the milky Way recently? Is
it still out there? It was there when I was
a kid. I know, I figure it must be. They
talk about it on Long John Show a lot. No, No,
I mean it can't. Is it the same as it
used to be? No? One one of the things that

(01:56:45):
I'm going to kind of have to admit here now
there are certain things you don't ever want to really admit,
and you're is the milky way still there is the
big difference still there. Well, when I was a kid,
I can remember very distinctly a very clear image of
a thing that was, in a sense, one of the

(01:57:06):
most humiliating of all my troubles that I had. When
of course, as as Sean O'Casey said, occasionally, if you
take backward glances at the events that made you, you
will find, in many instances they are not the things
that the analysts talk about. You know, I've had a
little experience in this field. I've studied it from time

(01:57:30):
to time, and I often feel that the real things
that change in our lives are not often the things
that Freud talked about. Here, for example, is a scene. Now,
I'm this boy Scout. I'm in Scout Troop forty one.
I'm in the Moose Patrol. I am assistant patrol leader.
I am a second class scout. Yes, I'm second class

(01:57:54):
scout retired, by the way, I retired with that life rank.
Sad a second class scout. Even at that age you're
giving this terminology. You can't picture, I mean, you can't
picture Gregory Peck ever being a second class scout, can you?
I mean second class? And so I'm the second class

(01:58:17):
scout and we are out on a field trip, on
a hike, and we had this guy named mister Tompkins
who was our boy Scout leader. And mister Tompkins had
thick glasses, horn rim glasses, and he was kind of
balding on the top. And he was also at the
same time a barber, and so every couple of weeks
he would put on his scout suit, we would put

(01:58:38):
on our tacks and so on. And one of the
big problems, by the way I had was this was
during the depression, and we would get Open Road for Boys,
and all these kids in the Open Road for Boys
magazines had these beautiful scout uniforms, and all I had
was a pair of high water pants. You know, what
is it? A high water pants? They did they ever
call that? Those pants? Now? That's that's strictly a Midwestern,

(01:59:01):
isn't I guess, well, I'll leave it go with that.
I'll let you left your imagination work on that one.
I had a pair of high water pants, and my
uncle had given me a pair of World War One
leggings which I put around my legs and they laced
up the sides. And I had a pair of shoes
brown dyed brown, which I wore as my boy Scott uniform,

(01:59:24):
and a neckerchief, which was the only piece of equipment.
I had a big thing that hung around your neck.
And so we would go out on these field trips,
and mister Tompkins would say, about ten o'clock at night,
when we were sitting around the campfire, he would say,
we are now going out on a constellation tour. And
we would go out into the woods and we would
look up at the sky, and we were supposed to

(01:59:44):
identify constellations, and he would say, now, which one of
you can identify the big bear? Now point out the
big bear to me. And I looked, and I never
once saw a constellation. I just saw stars of f
all those stars, and I never could see the constellation.
And so I would I would add lib of course,

(02:00:04):
you would say, and now, Jeane, would you please point
out the three little sisters to us? And I'd say, ah,
over there, of course, I'm pointing at the sky. It's
up there. Somehow I was always able to get by
with it. But I wonder whether anybody ever has seen
the constellations or whether they just figure everybody else does,

(02:00:28):
and so they add libit. It's like the whole world
add libs the erroneous philosophy that they enjoy picnics, you know,
the Pleiades. Oh but that's this is a ridiculous. I mean,
the solar system and the restrooms are that way. There's
the sign. There's no problem. You can find it. Just

(02:00:49):
go on over there now, Quit quit shoving, quit pushing,
always pushing aways shoving. It's like it's like this picture
that I saw in Life magazine. I couldn't help the
but recognize that. But these things just keep popping up
or you can't stop it. There was a picture in
Life magazine a couple of weeks ago, in fact, it

(02:01:10):
was March seventh, was the issue that showed a group
of salesmen had gathered at a dinner and they were
honoring the headman of the of the of the company
or the department, and somehow somebody made a mask, one
of these printed masks up of his face, and the
whole crowd of them, about four hundred of them, if
luck flag in the picture, had their picture taken wearing

(02:01:32):
the face of their boss. Awful thought, and there wasn't
a single des center in the crowd. I looked at that,
and the first of course, I just figured I was
looking at a picture of the typical group of twenty
century men. And then on second thought I realized that
I was. It's like this little, uh little ad. Do

(02:01:54):
you ever look at one ads? Sometimes when you look
at one ad, you can see the real tragedy of
the human rights. This is the little want ad in
the Examiner, the San Francisco Examiner. Get that a San
Francisco paper that was mail to me from San Francisco
by a guy who picked this up. And he says,
you can't miss a shepherd. You gotta look at this.

(02:02:15):
Listen to this ad, and it's very serious. Under positions
wanted common women. Lady wants to entertain you and cheer
you up, playing piano and singing in four languages. Also
teaches English to immigrants, improve your French, Dutch, German and
dancing lessons, singing in piano lessons. If no answer, call again,

(02:02:38):
the lady wants to entertain you. Wouldn't it be wonderful
to hire this girl to sit in the corner and
sing to you and play her lute. It's like the
old days, like the minstrels. Lady wants to entertain me.
How about in the halls of Tara. This this wr

(02:03:01):
radio your station for us? You are tuned to seven
ten on your radio dial. Use as a viper a viper? Oh?
Use as a viper? Use is a viper? I don't know.
I don't have any druma in my delivery. Use is

(02:03:24):
a viper? Use? Is a viper? Well, of course this
all comes back again. It comes back as clearly and
as brilliantly as if it were inscribed in my memory,
etched in the most indelible of inks. Speak of indelible.
Do they still make indelible pencils? When I was this kid,

(02:03:45):
there was a rumor that used to travel around among
kid you know, kid folklore. I noticed that they've come
out with a book about kid folklore, the things that
kids believe and how it travels from one generation of
kids to the next. And one of the things that
we used to believe when I was this kid was
that if you got indelible pencil on your pan, on

(02:04:07):
your tongue, you know, if you licked it, it was
a deadly poison and would undoubtedly result in death eventually.
And I don't know if I ever really knew a
kid who died of indelible indelible pencil poisoning, but there
was always this rumor that just absolutely persisted that if

(02:04:28):
you got indelible pencil on your tongue, it was the
jig was up. It was all there was to it.
And I used to look at indelible pencils. I don't
know whether they still make them or not, but they
were purple when you'd lick them. And I used to
look at an indelible pencil and it had a kind
of menacing fascination, the way a snake has. And there

(02:04:51):
used to be bottles in our medicine cabinet that had
skulls and crossbones on them, you know, like iodine things
like that. You look in there and you'd see that
scuss bone and look out at you and somehow death
to a kid was always just right around the corner.
I mean, it's just the slightest misstep. It was the
it was the old, well, the old mystical belief that

(02:05:13):
there was such a thing as a live wire laying
around on the wires were just called live wires. Any
kind of wire. You'd get to see a wire and
you'd suspect that it was a live wire. Wires were
alive with the life of their own. And of course
we had another one too, which should be reported at
this time, and it was that inside of every golf

(02:05:34):
ball there was a liquid, a kind of liquid that
was terribly explosive and poisonous tool. And if you ever
started to unpeel a golf ball, you know, unwind all
that rubber band stuff, that it was a terribly dangerous
thing to do. And if you ever threw it in
a fire, it was all up. It would explode with

(02:05:55):
a tremendous report. And there was it was an acid
they said was in these things. And there was another
thing too that we were afraid of, and that was
this that if you threw old milk cans, you know,
the kind of cans that they have for evaporated milk
that if you threw an old milk can into a fire,
it would explode. And if it exploded, well, of course

(02:06:17):
the whole neighborhood would go up. And that is all
very closely connected with the quicksand problem. I will award
the brass Figlicky with oak leaf palm to anyone who
can tell me who used to say use is a viper?
Use is a viper? To whom was this person referring

(02:06:44):
and under what circumstances did this occur? It was the punchline.
Do you remember Tommy, use is a viper? And what
was the name of the comic strip that it appeared in?
Why do I recall these things? I mean, what am
I trying to do? What kind of hash am I

(02:07:05):
trying to make of myself? I'm coming through Times Square
the other day and I see they're taking down that
big Coca Cola bottle or pepsicola. It's a big pepsicola
bottle that they're taking down. You know, those two big
bottles that they had overlooking Times Square and they're lowering
them to the ground. Let me tell you, ever since

(02:07:27):
the Great Pyramid at Giza was constructed, there have been
few such awesome sites as the site of a crane
lowering about a forty five foot high pepsicola bottle to
the ground on Times Square. It was fantastic. I missed
three appointments. I just stood there and watched this thing
because for a long time, just like most people, I

(02:07:50):
kept I was impressed by these things. They kept standing
up there and I could not help. But remember, there
were things that they used to have in drug store
windows when I was a kid. I don't know why
the coupling here, why the connection, but they used to
have things in drug store windows that were big globes
that had colored liquid of some kind in them, red

(02:08:10):
liquid or green liquid, and it always looked as though
this liquid was some kind of very sweet or very
strange liqueur, or some sort of medicine that could be
drunk or tasted. And somehow I coupled it with these
big bottles, because at the same time there were also
big mock up bottles in many drug store windows that

(02:08:34):
were phony bottles, like a phony coke bottle or a
big phony bottle of some kind of patent medicine. You know,
these couplings, and they were lowering this gigantic thing down,
and all I could say was the solar systems that way,
and the restrooms too. Of course down there, turned left

(02:08:54):
there you'll see the sign. And I saw that man
in his pursuit of these things, man was assuming a godlike,
a godlike aspect that was second to know God in
the universe. And while we're speaking of aspects, we would
like to point out we have with us this morning,
Ying and Yang, which is one of the really fine

(02:09:15):
restaurants in the metropolitan area. As a matter of fact,
oh well, it's one of the very few commercials. You know.
The thing that I would like to point out about
commercials is it, generally speaking, most people kind of feel
as though they are rather an intrusion upon their lives.
But I would like to say this about a restaurant

(02:09:35):
spot that I have found that in and out and
throughout New York, there are you know, for a city
this size, there are remarkably few really good restaurants. I'm
always impressed by the lack of really good restaurants. That
many times I have been right here in Midtown Manhattan
on a Sunday afternoon looking for a place to eat,

(02:09:58):
and there just hasn't been an interesting, good restaurant to
go to. Oh, there are a lot of workaday restaurants,
you know, the kind of places where you just go
and get something to eat. But I mean a really
special restaurant. There aren't many of them for a city
this size. It's kind of appalling. As a matter of fact,
I know it half a dozen cities in the United
States that have better restaurants of this type, you know,

(02:10:21):
the unusual, interesting restaurant than New York has. I can't
explain it or why this is true, but it just
seems to me that it is. And when I found
out about Ying and Yang, it was a good thing
to know about. And I would like to point out
to you if you haven't tried this restaurant, it is
one of truly good restaurants in the Manhattan area and

(02:10:42):
is on Third Street in the village. It's eighty two
West and it's very easy to find. You know, many
people when you mentioned the village too, of them immediately, oh,
the village, Well, I can't find the village. It is
just as easy to find things in the village as
anyplace else. This is one of the New York bits
of folklore. I immediately found out upon being involved in

(02:11:03):
this section of town with just so much folklore. But
you can get a cab anyplace and just tell them
you want to go to Third Street in the village,
eighty two West third Street, and it's right near the
NYU campus. It's very simple to find, and you will
find that the Ying and Yang Restaurant is a small restaurant.

(02:11:23):
It's a very special restaurant, and it's truly an aficionado's restaurant.
As a matter of fact, Gluemet magazine here a few
months ago a single Ying and Yang is one of
the absolute finest Chinese restaurants in the entire in the
entire United States. This is quite an honor. It is

(02:11:43):
a superb restaurant. And you'll find also that it is
extremely reasonable for the quality of restaurant that it is.
The service is fine, and it's an exceptionally good restaurant.
Might be a way another interesting little thing. I was
talking to Bill Chan, who run is Ying and Yang,
and incidentally, you're interested in what does Ying and Yang mean?

(02:12:04):
It is an old Eastern philosophy of the opposites. In
a sense, it is kind of roughly connected with Newton's
law of physics that says, for every action there is
a reaction. This is an entire, entirely a whole philosophical
structure is based on that. That is the structure of

(02:12:26):
the opposites. That for every good there is an evil,
that for every and it is necessary for the good
to exist. You see, we could go into this ying
and yang that sour does not exist without sweet, that
good weather does not exist without bad, that men do
not exist without lemon, nor vice versa. And this is

(02:12:50):
the philosophy of the opposites. And in connection with food,
of course, the Chinese make of their philosophies generally a
whole thing. In other words, all their life. All this
is the true Chinese philosophers, that their whole life is
based on that. You know, there was every aspect of
their life. And so in the foods that they prepare,

(02:13:11):
Yin and Yang plays a part, and that is the
wheet and pungent philosophy. For every sweet there must be
a pungent, For every bland there must be a sharp,
For every sour there must be a sweet, and so
on down the line. And this is the kind of food.
It's magnificent food. And they specialize in both northern Chinese

(02:13:33):
and Southern Chinese cooking, which are two different types of food.
This is Yin and Yang at eighty two West thirty
to one. Another little interesting thing. I was talking to
Chan down there the other day and he told me
just he didn't even want this to be mentioned, but
I'm going to mention it anyway, that Yin and Yang
contributes fifteen percent of their Monday gross, and Monday is

(02:13:57):
one of their big days, by the way. Down there,
they contribute fifteen percent of their gross to a Chinese
orphanage which was set up in Makoa, which is a
Portuguese port set up for Chinese girls who were running
away from and who were kind of emigrants from the

(02:14:18):
Chinese communist state. They contribute fifteen percent of their month
for one solid year. They're doing this for this orphanage
for the youngsters who have been the victims of Chinese communism.
Very interesting little sidelighte. But this is Ying and Yang
at eighty two West third Street, and I think you'll
find an exceptional restaurant. And for those of you who

(02:14:41):
are interested, there is a bar so you can do
the works there, you know. And speaking of funny thing
about how we and food. I've often thought about this
that since almost time immemorial, taking in of food has
been a ceremonial occasion for human beings. Don't you, seriously,

(02:15:05):
don't you look forward to your next meal? In a sense,
you kind of look forward to it. And the taking
of a meal has become in the United States the
chief forms of going out, one of the chief forms
of social intercourse. It has become a very important thing.
And yet in some of the far eastern countries, you know,
the taking of a meal is a very very private thing.

(02:15:29):
I mean that you would never think of inviting people
to watch you or to have anything to do with it.
It's a very very private thing. If you know anything
about the eating habits of the Tibetans, for example, you'll
realize this is true. They eat with their face to
the wall, very very privately. But here in the United
States it's a big operation. I've gone pretty much across

(02:15:51):
the world, and I find it in many areas going
out for a meal is not the big thing that
it is here, And in fact, it's very rarely done
and has looked upon as a sad thing. When you
have to do it, and so stick with it, you're
going to get that kited up yet, We'll be back
in exactly sixty seconds. This is wr Radio, your station

(02:16:14):
four News. Well, I guess it comes from listening to
too much Jack Armstrong when I was a kid. Or
maybe it's because I spent too much time listening to
somebody named Jimmy Allen? Or or was it what was
the name of the green Hornets? The green Hornets faithful Servant?

(02:16:42):
And what was the name of his automobile? Aha? Yes,
you see. The trouble is I remember both of these things.
I remember both of them, and once in a while,
when things begin to get a little tough, when they
began to gather around, and the storms began to lash,

(02:17:02):
and the great crashes of lightning thunder over my head,
I repeat to myself, Humphrey Dumpty sat on the wall.
Humphrey Dumpty had a great fall. All the King's horses
and all the King's men couldn't put Humphrey together. Again.
I wonder what nationality Dumpty is? It sounds uh, but

(02:17:29):
after all he was an egg I mean, and well,
he sounds Scotch to me. Humphrey Dumpty sat on the wall.
Humphrey Dumpty had a great fall. And I can hear
the sound of that green Hornet's cars. You remember the
sound that it made. What was the name of that car?

(02:17:50):
What was the name. You've got to find that name.
Red Sails in the Sun said. Lot of these oddments,
these sundrys, and these fragments, these notions, are our lives made.
It's as though each one of us is a vast
woolworth containing all sorts of cut rape merchandise of one

(02:18:15):
kind or another. It's like when I was because you
find out these things very early in life. You do now,
don't don't sit out there and say, this guy is
talking gibberish. I am not. Your life is made up
of those bits and pieces, those little those little patchwork quilts,
those little ends of string. When I was a kid,
we had this dime store in our town, and it

(02:18:35):
had traditional dime store woodwork. You know, the kind of
woodwork that dime stores have, that deep maroon sort of
mahogany colored varnished woodwork that all dime stores. Think about it.
You mean, you don't even remember the color of the
woodwork in the dime stores. You don't remember the dime
store smell. There is a dime store smell that is

(02:18:56):
composed of cheap perfume, band aids being peanutted, hot dogs
being hot dog a lot of people, the oil that
they rub on floors, goldfish canaries, the whole business. The
other day. You know, I'm standing, I'm standing in the
wool Wars right down here on Seventh Avenue, and they've

(02:19:17):
got a little collection of canaries there. And these canaries
have a sign under them. It says guaranteed to sing
do if you have a feeding that you've got a
sign under you that says the same thing. You don't

(02:19:37):
remember the cover of the woodwork, well, I'll tell you
it was mahogany, and it was deeply varnished. And in
this time story, they had in the toy department a
thing called the Special Prize grab Bag that had a
great big sign over it, the Special Prize grab Bag
twenty five cents. Any prize is yours. Pick any package

(02:19:58):
for a quarter, any package it all. And this was
right in the middle of the toy department. The toy
department had all these wonderful things. It had big little books,
you know, little orphanani and Daddy Warbucks books, Mickey Mouse books.
It had things like like like guns that went to
the holsters. It had Buck Rogers zap guns. How many

(02:20:20):
of you remember a Buck Rogers zap gun. It had
Buck Rogers zap guns. And it had, you know, all
the stuff the toy departments have, which were wonderful at
that time. But the most important thing that this toy
department had was the grab bag. And of course I'm
this kid and brunner and I keep going down there
on Saturdays looking at this grab bag until one day

(02:20:40):
we both have a quarter to spend and we plunk
it down on the grab bag. We give our quarter.
This is you know, it's terrible how you get yuchered
into life. It's awful how the traps are laying there
and we create them ourselves, we want them to be.
You know, if you won every day on a horse race,
you would have no interest in horse races, not at all.

(02:21:01):
And if you were told that you were going to
live forever, absolutely without question, you were going to live forever,
something would go out of your life. You'd like to
gamble on the chance that you will live. For everybody secretly,
you know, has a suspicion that he is going to
live forever that the last minute, this guy in a
white coat is going to rush in. They have just
discovered the serum and he's going to make it, you know,

(02:21:25):
forever and ever. So I'm down there with Brunne and
here is this grab bag. We both plung down our
quarters and we go over and we look in. Of course,
here are the packages. There are all different sizes. There's
little ones, and there's big ones, and there's flat ones,
and there's round ones and square ones. You see, this
is all part of the trick. This is all part
of the Ucher game, the great shell game that most

(02:21:48):
of us are involved in in life. That these things
come in indefinable shapes, and almost all of them look good.
Almost everything that traps us in the end looks really good.
So we're looking at all these big shapes and finally,
this is a true incident. By the way, I finally
picked a great, big, long, flat one because somehow it

(02:22:08):
looked very efficient, you know, it didn't look cheap, this package,
and they were all wrapped, and I gave her my
quarter and I could hidly wait to get out. They
didn't want to open it in front of her. I
get out of the store and I rip open the
package and it turns out, oh gee, when I think
of it, it turns out to be a book of
Shirley Temple cutout dolls with dresses. Oh boy. And I

(02:22:34):
had a package of Shirley Temple dolls and I couldn't
stand Shirley Temple in person. And here I got a
doll cutout book with her dresses and everything else in it.
And so I'm riding on the streetcar home and Brunner
is sitting next to me, and Brunner Bruner got a

(02:22:55):
knockdown dollhouse made out of cardboard. You know that you
put I get. At least he could salvage something. He
could pretend it was a garage. But what are you
gonna do with a Shirley Temple doll? What are you
gonna pretend she is? And it wouldn't do you any
good anyway, It's only cardboard. And so I'm sitting in
the street car and I stuck it down in between
the seat and the side of the wall. I didn't

(02:23:17):
want to come home with a Shirley Temple doll. I
just would and didn't want to bring it home. And
I can remember the fantastic depression that I had over
this thing. It's just a tremendous depression. And I went home.
I sort of moped around, and my mother says, what's
eating you nothing? Well, didn't you go downtown with Bruner today?
Did you have a good time? Yeah? Well, what's eating

(02:23:41):
you nothing? Two weeks later, I had compiled another quarter.
What do you think I did with it? That's right,
I am down at the dime store standing next to
the grab bag counter again. Do you think that I

(02:24:03):
bought a big little book that I wanted, a buck
Roger book? Nope? Did I buy a model airplane, a
model of a spad nope? What do you think I
came home with that time? Are you interested in hearing? Well,
I'll tell you what I bought. I put down my quarter.

(02:24:27):
I'm standing there, and I said, I'm going to pick
something small this time, something small, because I understand that
good things come in small packages. We are so full
of these trite aphorisms. So I gave her my quarter.
I'm looking through this messus and I pick out small
package and I open it up when I get outside,

(02:24:49):
and what do you think? It turns out to be
a string of beads, a string of red beads. All
of my life, I am standing next to grab bags.
All of my life, I have been reaching in and
hoping that it's going to work out. And if it
hasn't worked out for you, friends, we would like to

(02:25:09):
recommend that you fly the coup via luft Hansa. Luft
Hansa Airlines, they'll get you out of it. They'll take
you direct to Central Europe, directly to Frankfurt, and from
there you can go to you can go to Munich
and from there it's a short train ride to Vienna,
and from Vienna it's a short a short hopped istam
bull and from there no one will ever catch you

(02:25:32):
from there on in your in, I mean you're in.
Wouldn't you like to be riding the Orient Express tonight
really found for Damascus and from then from that point,
from Damascus points east, well, you can do it via
luft Hanse. I'd say consult your travel agent and ask

(02:25:52):
them about luft Hansa's rates special fly the coup rates
are available for one way ticket purchasers. Guys who want
to really make it. Lift hanset the German airlines where
they really put it on. There's the thing I wanted
to do here, Just hold on them right, Better not

(02:26:13):
do it. Better not do it, because you know I'm
going to do it, George, I'm going to do it.
I wish I had some cheap American mood music to
play behind me. You know, I have a feeling about
this mood music. I think that there are symptoms in
the air, really of fantastic decadence going on around us,

(02:26:37):
so great that we can't even we can't even begin
to understand it all. I mean, how is Marshmallow going
to understand? Marshmallows just isn't It isn't possible. And you
go up and down the radio dial, you listen to
what's going on, because this really is, you know, a
voice of America. As much as you like to say,
oh the radio or all the television, no, I know,

(02:27:01):
it comes out of us. And this endless, endless, endless
series of a terrible thing is that we are constantly
listening to and watching and being part of this great,
great escapist movement that is so much part of the
twentieth century. You know, I have a feeling that in
one hundred years, this period that we're living through right

(02:27:23):
now is going to be known as the period of
the Great Escape, and of course the sad truth of
it is that there is no escaping at all. Ever,
there never has been, never will be. That the barbarians
when they are at the gates, they are at the gates,
you know, and there's no turning back. And the sound

(02:27:43):
of the Montavani albums rises and rises and rises.

Speaker 1 (02:27:47):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:27:47):
There's an interesting a lot of interesting things are happening
in our time that I wonder whether many sociologists are
really putting them down, you know, really really making records
of them. For example, now, I'll give you one brief example.
Have you looked in many of the record shop windows
lately in the Times Square area, Well, you know what

(02:28:09):
they're selling right openly now these days in the in
record shop windows, they're selling what used to be known
as party records openly now, I mean openly. I mean
they're right out there along with the Elvis Presley discs,
the Fabian discs, and the Kooky discs and all the
other great cultural achievements of our time. They're being sold

(02:28:30):
out there just on the same basis, just hanging there
in the window. I mean, these are real party records.
And I'm the other day, I'm walking along sixth Avenue,
and you know, there's a lot of little gift shops
and places where they sell not sixth Avenue, know this
happened to be seventh Avenue as a matter of fact.
And it's up in the fifties there walking along, and

(02:28:53):
they have all these little stationary shops or where they
sell greeting cards and one thing and another. And I'm
looking in the window at some of the greeting cards
and this is pure, unadulterated, completely not even double ntone pornography,
but real pornography. And it's right there in the window,
along with Valentine cards, little cards with lace and hearts,

(02:29:14):
and Christmas cards and all the other things that we
pretend that we believe in. And right there in the
middle of it is this pornography, I mean, real pornography,
the most the most low base sort of pornography, the
really bad taste, not even cleverly done pornography, you know,
but just completely out and blatant and miserable pornography. And

(02:29:38):
there it is, right there in the middle of the
gift connor and that people are buying and selling it
on a very very accepted level. Just the way you
buy a card for Valentine's or Christmas. In fact, most
of them are involved in Valentine I might point out,
but this is an interesting thing, and I am certainly
not Victorian, and I'm like this. I'm merely that there

(02:30:00):
is a great decline of public morality that's going on,
that there's little or note with the radio and the
television industry, which everybody's making a lot to talk about.
You know, I think if there's anything that's wrong with
radio and television, it's a little too prissy, it's a
little too namby pamby, and will not admit to the
facts of life that exist. But my gully, you know,

(02:30:24):
you look around, and the intriguing thing is that nobody
seems to be saying anything about this. Has it been
how long has it been since you've listened to the
top thirty? Will you sit down and listen to some
of these times? And this is, by the way, listen
to mostly by teenagers. This is all teenage stuff, most
of it, And for that reason, most people don't even

(02:30:46):
notice it. They just say, oh, it's a kid records
and they walk away. Do you know that most of
these teenage records that are being played today would have
been called borderline party records four or five, maybe ten
years ago. That a lot of this stuff it is
also unadult traded pornography and means only one thing when
you listen to it, that this kid is singing to

(02:31:08):
another kid, and he's singing about only one thing, and
you know what it is. And it's fourteen fifteen year
old kids. And this is a fascinating thing that's happening
to us. And it's happening on all levels and all fronts.
Everywhere you look. It's beginning to it's beginning to show.
And the intriguing, the intriguing aspect of it, of course,

(02:31:29):
is that it has also permeated most of our most
of our mass mediums. I saw a play here a
couple of weeks ago, which shall go unnamed, that was
not in any sense. It was not an obscene play
and nothing to do with obscenity. It had nothing to
do with with pornography per se. But it was making

(02:31:51):
something that we elicit and totally i might say, dishonest,
appear beautiful, and on the basis of the beauty involved,
it accused the transgression of a major law. This is
pretty serious stuff, you know, when you're dealing with this
and I'm watching all these various things that are going
on and thinking, by George, you know, old Nero must

(02:32:14):
be putting in another string somewhere, getting ready to play
maybe the coda. He's finally approaching the end of his song.
And all the while, as you go back and forth
on the dial, you begin to see that there is
a kind of faceless anonymity to so much of it
you hardly well. Here is an example. There's a major
radio station here in town that has recently made a

(02:32:37):
rule that there will be no talk other than straight
news on their station of more than twenty seconds in duration.
Think about that for a minute. Yeah, we are becoming
so much afraid of hearing the human voice that we've
got to constantly disappear into this music. And now what
they have done is that even when they give the

(02:32:57):
weather forecast and the news and so on, they have
to put music behind it. The weather forecast has music
going behind it. Somehow it becomes a show. Oh, Hurricane
Fie has become part of the great big hit parade,
you know, the all business. And this is real to me,
a genuinely fascinating phenomenon all of this stuff to watch

(02:33:20):
this go on. I'm listening to one radio station the
other day, and all they do on this radio station
is give their call letters, play a record, read an announcement,
give their call letters, play a record, read an announcement,
give the time, give their call letters, give the temperature,
read an announcement, play a record. Their entire programming consists
of giving their name, and they give their name about

(02:33:41):
forty different ways. They sing it. They play it on drums,
they send it out on morse code, they have a
chorus dance to it, you know, the sort of thing.
It's what's called dynamic radio. Now, it would be as
if every thirty seconds I would say this or wr
wr yes to your flum station. Wr wr wr weather

(02:34:03):
now thirty nine degrees, w R time, ten minutes after twelve.
And now here's the wr hit tune of the week.

Speaker 14 (02:34:11):
It's WR sung by Eddie w R bah bah blah
bah bah bah bah.

Speaker 2 (02:34:16):
And it goes on. I'm like this, you know, on
and on and on and on, and that's all they
ever say all day long. It's as though mankind has
nothing to say in our time. You know, radio is
actually one of the the prime method of communication in
the world today, whether or not you as an America

(02:34:36):
know it. Do you know that all of China one
of the great weapons in China today, unfortunately is the radio.
That for the first time in all history, all of
China is being united by radio. That everywhere in China
people listen to the radio and they are all learning
one language. It's the first time this has ever happened,

(02:34:57):
I mean's being done by radio. That that teven percent
of the people in Russia do not have television, they
only listen to the radio. Then almost all of Europe
is constantly involved in listening to the radio. And wherever
you go all over the world, you hear people saying
things on the radio. A lot of the things they
say are bad, a lot of the things they say

(02:35:18):
are good, depending on your viewpoint. But they're saying things.
You listen to the BBC, they're saying things on the
radio they really are you know. You listen to Radio Luxemburg,
you find they're saying things. You know, the best radio
programming I've heard in many years was when I was
in Munich. I was in Munich here a year or

(02:35:41):
so ago, and I was listening to a portable radio
I brought with me because I'm fascinated by what people
are saying on the radio, all of it. This is
where you really hear the voices of these nations. You know,
not on television, but you hear the voices of all
the nations going on all over the bands. That's why
shortwave radio listening is so exciting. You know that some
of the best radio your programming I have ever heard

(02:36:02):
was on of all the Voice of America coming out
of radio out of Munich being broadcast to all of Europe.
This were radio programs all produced by America, by American
radio performers and so on, and it was being broadcast
to Europe and it was not even recognizable as American radio.
You really listening to the fantastic programs, wonderful shows. And

(02:36:25):
if there was a radio station an America that was
doing this kind of stuff, people would listen to the radio.
You couldn't get it anywhere else, you know, there it was.
It was really good radio. And I'm not talking about
for a minority. It was good radio because most of
the people in Europe listen to the American radio stations
over there. You know, there are about three big radio
stations that are run mostly by Americans, and they are

(02:36:48):
really listened to. But here, when you're back in the States,
you tune across the dial, and all you hear, all
you hear back and forth across the dial is music.
And I don't care what kind of music you're talking about.
And I think a station that plays nothing but classical
music is as bad as one that plays nothing but
pop music. It's the same thing as just a record,
you know, And you can say one is better than

(02:37:10):
the other, but it still is escaping from that human voice.
No matter how you cut it. That the human voice
seems to be anathema to American radio and certainly television.
You don't hear any commentators of note on television. I mean,
one escape is programmed after the other, and every Sunday
afternoon there's a collection of panel programs where guys sit

(02:37:32):
around and mediate and kind of smooth each other's ruffled feathers.
And that's about the end of it. But there's really
there's really not much to listen to. There's so much
noise going on, and so many lights and sounds and
flashes and signs going up in front of us. But
very little and very little to hear go back and forth,

(02:37:54):
back and forth. You hear nothing but the music going
on and on and on. And I think this is
an interesting sociological phenomenon. I'm not certainly lashing out of
the radio people or the television people, because this is
what unfortunately America wants these days. And you're going to say, oh, no,
we don't have a choice, but you do. You know

(02:38:14):
that this is a development of our of our time.
It just is. And it's a fascinating thing that I
do feel that today that we have advanced so much
technically that we no longer have any real contact with
one another. It's fascinating that they've worked in the opposite,

(02:38:35):
you know. Instead of bringing us closer together, I think
all of this technical communications equipment has taken us further
apart as individuals. And I'll never forget the sight of
this little, short fat man I saw a couple of
days ago walking along forty seventh Street with a radio

(02:38:59):
stuck in his breast pocket. Yeah, he has this little
vest pocket radio and he's got it plugged into his
ear and he's walking along down the street and he
has this thing turned all the way up and you
know how these little earphones rattle, and I could hear
this rock and roll to him. It must have been
rocking through his head at about nine hundred DB's w

(02:39:20):
n un un. This was a grown up man and
his wife is walking alongside of him, absolutely stone faced
and silent. They had nothing to say to each other,
just the way two people sitting in front of a
television set watching Palade and have nothing to say to
one another, and the endless roar of the Elvis's and

(02:39:42):
the Kookies and the Fabians go on and on and on,
and once in a while the announcer breaks in and says,
w R.

Speaker 14 (02:39:48):
Time seven fifteen, w R temperature thirty nine, and now
here is the WR.

Speaker 2 (02:39:53):
I'm using our call letters because thank heavens, we're not
one of those one of those people caught into it.
We don't do this, and I'm not taking kicks at
other people because probably we will be led to do
it ourselves before long, who knows. While we're on the
subject of doing it, we have with us the Electronic Workshop.

(02:40:17):
If you would like to repair some of that equipment
that keeps you keeps you safely away from conversation. We
would like to point out that the Electronic Workshop at
twenty six West A Street in the village is really
one of the finest high fidelities organizations that I've ever
had any dealings with. And I would like to point
out that I have had some background in hi fi.

(02:40:38):
I used to be a jazz writer and critic for
one of the High five magazines as long ago as
nineteen fifty four. I was involved in the formation and
the promotion of the first audio show that was held
in Philadelphia back in nineteen fifty one. I did go

(02:41:00):
on and on one thing I did do. I did
the first program in recorded radio history that was based
entirely on disseminating and giving out high fidelity information. Back
in the days when high fi was a term that
was used only by engineers. You know, there was such
a day. It's hard to believe now, isn't it, when
they have subverted the term high fidelity that even little

(02:41:23):
five inch radios made in Japan that are purchased for
twelve dollars and ninety five cents are called high fi.
It's funny, but if you want to know about an
honest high fidelity organization, really, an honest high Fi shop
that is based purely on the premise that they are
going to be in business for a long time and
that customers come back. You will find them at twenty

(02:41:44):
six West ah Street. It's the Electronic Workshop. And believe me,
with the ownership of High Fi at such a high
level as it is today, to know about an honest
place where you can get really a good deal on equipment.
But more than that, they stand behind at them elves,
not just this little trick. Guarantee comes in the package.
It says send it back if the materials are defective

(02:42:06):
within one year. These people will install equipment for you
if you buy a High five system, and they will
give you their personal guarantee that it will continue to work.
And that's good to know. They have an excellent service department.
You know, most of these High five places here in
town don't even have service departments. If you think I'm kidding,
try to take it back to some of these big

(02:42:26):
places and tell them you want to pick it up Friday.
This is the Electronic Workshop at twenty six West eighth Street.
And if you have any High five problems that you'd
like to investigate, If you have any any service problems,
you'd like to trade in any equipment. They do trade
ins there by the way, many of them don't do that.

(02:42:47):
You will find it the twenty six West A Street
and their number is Grammar C three one four oh.
It's a good number to call. It's Grammar C three
one four oh. And while we're on the subject of
people who are picking up the tab, we have also
with us the paper Book Gallery, which is also down
in the village, and I would like to say that

(02:43:10):
they still have some copies left of the new catalog
which they have recently turned out. Now, paper books are
a major thing in our time, and I think one
of the really plus things that has come along in
the past ten or twelve years. And the paper Book
Gallery is one of the organizations largely responsible for the

(02:43:30):
great success of quality paper books in the United States.
They really are a big swinging group. And if you're
going to make the village scene this week, I would
suggest you visit Sheridan Square. If you're going to be
down in one of the off Broadway theaters and you'd
like to spend an hour or two in something that
really has strange atmosphere world all of its own, try

(02:43:53):
the paper Book Gallery. They're on Sheridan Square at tenth Street,
just where Seventh Avenue South and tenth Street converge, right
across Nixon the Village, and it's the paper Book Gallery.
You see. It's downstairs, kind of a downstairs corner place.
They have a great big display sign up above them
so you can't miss them. And there's another paper book
gallery over on Third Street at just back of the

(02:44:15):
NYU campus on Third Street. This is the paper Book Gallery,
and they have a few copies of this excellent this
excellent catalog that we talked about a couple of weeks ago.
It briefly is this that they have a ninety page
catalog which is a catalog of all the quality paper

(02:44:35):
books from all over the world that are carried by
the paper Book Gallery, listed by subject, say, art, literature,
and so on down the line. And it's ninety pages.
It costs them sixteen cents just to have printed, and
the mailing is around six or seven cents, and the
handling is well over what you'll have to pay for it.
They will send you a copy of this for a quarter.

(02:44:57):
Just drop a quarter into an envelope and address to
paper Book Gallery, Box six, oh New York twelve, New York,
and you can buy anything you want from the paper
book gallery by Mayo as well as by person. Just
follow the sign you see the solar galleries or is

(02:45:19):
it the Solar Room or is it the solar or
is it the Solar system? Or is it you see?
It all gets part of the same fruitcake. Harold Marmolith Here.
We'll be back tomorrow night at five minutes past nine.

Speaker 1 (02:45:33):
From March twenty sixth, nineteen sixty twelve, fifteen p m
To two pm, the first Gene Shepherd Show on a
Saturday afternoon. I'm Forever blowing Bubbles. Two letters from kid
listeners are read. The Solar System and Restrooms A five
and dime grab bag. Shep complains about American radio and
compares it to radio services around the world. The Mutual

(02:45:54):
Net News at one o'clock p m. Has been deleted.

Speaker 2 (02:45:57):
I'd say, what did he do, Ma, She'd say no,
and then she'd start to sing.

Speaker 12 (02:46:02):
I'm forever blowing bubbles, preathy bubbles in the air, and
the water had run like mad, and you'd hear the
coffee drums, the coffee grounds bobbing up and down.

Speaker 2 (02:46:12):
There in the sink strainer. They don't have sink strainers anymore.
By the way, have you noticed that not real sink strainers,
those big, those big white porcelam types with the holes
in them, with the black rim around the edges, triangular
shape fitting the edge of the stint was always loaded
with potato peelings and slivers of fells napped the soap,
that brown soap with ground right into the soap, the

(02:46:36):
coffee grounds and the grainy things and all the rest
of it, threads and little bits of hair and wool
and stuff. I'm forever blowing bubble. She'd look out there
at old Brunner, and Brunner was always fooling around on
the back porch. He always was looking down in the hedges.
He would grow hedges all the time around his porch,

(02:46:56):
and he figured that tobacco juice was good for him.
I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air. They flies.
The only point that I'm making here is that these
are the things truly in our lives. These little things
are the things that we get the satisfactions from. Like I,

(02:47:18):
for some reason, rather get great satisfaction in stopping in
the in the horn and hardheart, just stopping and having
a cup of coffee and just sitting over there by
the edge and reading a magazine or something, and I'm
drinking this, which is good coffee, and I'm just sitting
there looking out at the crowd, and I enjoy this.
Why do I I enjoy this more than going to
some jazzy place in the afternoon with some guy for

(02:47:42):
French pastry and demitas. I just sit there and I
get up and go. And it's sad because we're such
godlike creatures. Why do we settle for this.

Speaker 13 (02:47:54):

Speaker 2 (02:48:00):
This is the first time I've been on at this
time ever in all my years in radio. You know,
this is the first day that we're on from twelve
to fifteen until two. And it's peculiar. Suddenly I have
to at least reorient my entire thinking. For the last
two years almost I've been on from ten to fifteen
until noon every Saturday morning. And now there is a

(02:48:26):
tremendous difference, you know, really a tremendous philosophical and physical
difference between those two hours ten to fifteen and twelve fifteen,
you know, really it's a different kind of people. And
everything you see out there, all the people with the
flower dresses twelve fifteen, you know the kind of people
the afternoon people are out, all the matinee people that

(02:48:49):
the Westchester Dairy enn People's a completely different crowd. And
I have to totally read. The sun looks different, the
air is different. Well, Brunner gets pleasure from it. So
don't say anything about it really after all, and you
know what was so beautiful about it, what was implied

(02:49:11):
in what she said. We all have such a short time,
So don't get angry because somebody gets pleasure from it.
I mean, he's you know, I'm forever blowing bubbles pretty
bubbles him in the air like this kid writes to me,

(02:49:31):
he says, Shepherd. So you're looking for candidates. This is
a kid, remember now, listen, a sixteen year old kid.
So you're looking for candidates for the brass figligy with
oak leaf cluster. Well, maybe you don't get invited to
as many events as pegein, but I know you will
appreciate the significance for our time of the following message,

(02:49:51):
which stares out at the palpitating throng at the Hayden Planetarium,
which is of course one of the meccas of Norman
Rockwell type kids of my generation. It reads, and here
is a sign that you can see at the Hayden Planetarium.
And this kid spotted it. Remember this sixteen year old kid.

(02:50:12):
A big sign, a great, big sign. And the top
line says solar system and restrooms that way. That's a
fantastic sign. It's wonderful it took a kid to see that.

(02:50:39):
Solar system and restroom. Big arrow points that way. This
is the one world department. Also the ridiculous and the
sublime solar system and restrooms. Do you understand the juxtaposition?
Think about it for crying out loud, think about that.

(02:51:07):
Think about that. And while you're thinking about that, may
I insert an insidious message. If you girls listening are
counting calories or maybe just watching them slip by, then
we've got fantastic news for you. And then uses vegematto vegemato,
fresh vegetable juice, cocktail, solar system that way. This is

(02:51:29):
a blend of tomato and vegetable juices. It comes in
a can and it's different from anything you've ever tasted. Baby,
Just imagine a juice that has a livelier flavor, more
zing than tomato juice. Why you can't imagine a thing
like that more zing than tomato juice. Just imagine it's
richer and heartier than any vegetable juice ever been concocted before. Well,

(02:51:52):
that's vegemato. It's nourishing, low in calories, and it's got sock.
It's the perfect way to ward off that mid morning group.
What do you mean mid morning group. It's Vegemono. Look
for the name Vegiemono. Take a few cans home, serve

(02:52:12):
it to your family, and I'm sure that you will
thank me for recommending it to Solar system. That way,
you've seen the middle of in the middle of Paradise
Loss throwing in a plug for the Ford Company. And

(02:52:36):
this kid goes on to say, says, you know what.
The kid goes on to say. He says, I've been
a devaitee ever since that day you heckled a mob
at Queen's College a couple of years ago. Oh, that
was a wild afternoon. I'd like to go out there again.
I found that of all the colleges that I've been
the most fistfighting crowd of all is at Queen's I
mean they slug it out, he says, every Saturday morning.

(02:52:58):
My father asked me what you're talking about. Well, of course,
you see, some fathers are a different breed. It's a
completely different crew. And you know, there is something that
happens to a person after a certain point in life
has been passed. We will not discuss it. That follows
next semester, next semester. Just put a note down on

(02:53:21):
the notebook. That'll come up, he says. And I'm hard
pressed to tell him, even though I use trite phrases
like quote describer of the passing scene, quote the poor
man's John Wingate. The fact is, however, he listens anyway
and intermittently scowls at the world of Harold Monolith. Keep
up the fight against pre taped lives. It's a sixteen

(02:53:43):
year old kid. You want to hear another kid list
of this kid out there fighting it out. A few
weeks ago you read on the air a letter describing
this teenage chicks room with the picture of Jesus right
there in with Elvis, Ricky and whoever else happened to
be popular at the time. The point of it all
being that men has finally elevated himself to the level

(02:54:05):
of his gods. Well, do you remember the scene the
kid wrote me a letter about his little cousin who
was fourteen years old. He went into her room one
day to get something, and he walks in there and
he says, on her wall were all these pictures of
the current teenage heroes. There's Ricky, there's Dick Clark, there's Kookie,
there's Fabian, and right down there in the corner is

(02:54:26):
a picture of our savior looking exactly the same as
they're all looking, with the same look over the whole business.
It was a picture sent to her by some lumber
company on a calendar, and she had put it on
them with Ricky and the whole crowd. And the kid says,
he turned around and he left the room and he's
walking downstairs and he's thinking about that man has finally

(02:54:47):
done it, has finally elevated himself to the status of gods. Really,
it's a wild picture. Well, the kid goes on to say,
this current kid, who is nineteen, by the way, he says,
he's done on it again. Man has from a Time
magazine article about audio visual education, and we quote Marshall
mcluan English professor at Saint Michael's College, the University of Toronto.

(02:55:11):
In a splendid flight of pedagogical rhetoric, added and we quote,
the dialogue between man and machine will replace the guided
tours of data provided by the book. You catch the
significance of that the dialogue between man and machine dialogue
means a two way conversation. The dialogue between man and

(02:55:36):
machine will replace the guided tours of data provided by
the book. For in the dialogue there is no maintaining
a point of view, but only the common participation in
creating perpetually new insight and understanding in a total field
of unified awareness. This is not gobblybook what he's saying.
And the kid goes on and say, oh, yes, Man,

(02:55:59):
through discussions with machines, is going to reach mutual understanding
with them. Personally, I feel that nothing will come of this.
The machine, having been created by man, will inherit all
of man's sicknesses, and thus no understanding of any kind
will ever be reached. So, now that God, man and
machine are all part of the same cosmic caste caste,

(02:56:24):
man has nothing to worship except himself, which I suspect
he has been doing all along anyhow, of course, this
is part of the cult of psychiatry today. Go to
worship at the image of the ego, the id and
the super ego, the all enveloping circlement of self. This

(02:56:46):
thought occurred to me a few days ago. Yes, so,
I mean, you know, don't stand still. I want to
show you the parallel now between these two letters. And
here's a letter from a male man type adult type
type human being who says almost the same thing. He

(02:57:09):
says he works on a newspaper, says, this morning, I
was working in the old bullpen here at the paper,
taking some copy by phone from the Wattanabbi drive in theater,
when I stumbled upon the story of my life. Mister Wattanabbi,
who owns the drive in said quote. By the way,
Charlie put the second feature in lower case, it runs
at nine to thirty. Only do you realize that most

(02:57:33):
of our lives are second features that run as the
second half of a double bill. We go through life
in lower case with a few caps sprinkled through the
copy here and there. The worst part of this revelation
is that we're shown at nine thirty only Frank and
Gina up there in the first feature, Get a Second Chance,

(02:57:56):
But relatively few of us ever reached the big time.
If anybody comes in late, they never knew how we
began and never understand our plot. Yes, give me the

(02:58:16):
last chorus there, please again? What do you please? Tony?
You have to we have to get the cleaner. He
gets pleasure out of it. He gets pleasure. Don't say

(02:59:02):
those unkind things. He gets pleasure out of it. Please,
And we hear such a short time. I mean, really,
you know, I mean you look up, you look up
at that spinning sun, and you look over there at
the milky Way. How long has it been since you've
seen the Milky Way? No? Seriously, have you have you

(02:59:27):
seen the milky Way recently? Is it still out there?
It was there when I was a kid? I know,
I figure it must be. They talk about it on
Long John Show a lot. No. No, I mean it can't.
Is it the same as it used to be? No?
One one of the things that I'm going to kind

(02:59:47):
of have to admit here now there are certain things
you don't ever want to really admit. And you're is
the Milky Way still there? Is the big difference still there? Well?
When I I was a kid, I can remember very distinctly,
a very clear image of a thing that was, in
a sense, one of the most humiliating of all my

(03:00:10):
troubles that I had. When of course, as as Sean
O'Casey said, occasionally, if you take backward glances at the
events that made you, you will find, in many instances
they are not the things that the analysts talk about.
You know, I've had a little experience in this field.
I've studied it from time to time, and I often

(03:00:33):
feel that the real things that change of our lives
are not often the things that Freud talked about. Here,
for example, is a scene. Now, I'm this boy scout.
I'm in Scout Troop forty one. I'm in the Moose Patrol.
I am assistant patrol leader. I am a second class scout. Yes,

(03:00:54):
I'm second class scout retired by the way, I retired
with that life rank sad in the way second class scout,
even at that age you're giving this terminology. You can't picture,
I mean, you can't picture Gregory Peck ever being a
second class scout, can you? I mean second class? And

(03:01:16):
so I'm the second class scout and we are out
on a field trip, on a hike, and we had
this guy named mister Tompkins who was our boy Scout leader.
And mister Tompkins had thick glasses, horn rim glasses, and
he was kind of balding on the top. And he
was also at the same time a barber, and so
every couple of weeks he would put on his scout suit,

(03:01:38):
we would put on our tacks and so on. And
one of the big problems, by the way I had
was this was during the Depression, and we would get
Open Road for Boys, and all these kids in the
Open Road for Boys magazines had these beautiful Scout uniforms,
and all I had was a pair of high water pants.
You know, what is it? A high water pants? Did
they ever call that those pants? No, that's strictly a Midwestern,

(03:02:01):
isn't I guess, well, I'll leave it go with that.
I'll let you left your imagination work on that one.
I had a pair of high water pants, and my
uncle had given me a pair of World War One
leggings which I put around my legs and they laced
up the sides. And I had a pair of shoes
brown dyed brown, which I wore as my boy Scott

(03:02:24):
uniform and a neckerchief, which was the only piece of equipment.
I had a big thing that hung around your neck.
And so we would go out on these field trips
and mister Tompkins would say about ten o'clock at night,
when we were sitting around the campfire, he would say,
we are now going out on a constellation tour. And
we would go out into the woods and we would
look up at the sky and we were supposed to

(03:02:44):
identify constellations, and he would say, now, which one of
you can identify the big bear? Now point out the
big bear to me. And I looked, and I never
once saw a constellation. I just saw if they're all
those stars? And I never could see the constellation. And
so I would I would add lib of course, you

(03:03:05):
would say, and now, Jeane, would you please point out
the three little Sisters to us? And I'd say, ah,
over there, of course, I'm pointing at the sky. It's
up there. Somehow I was always able to get by
with it. But I wonder whether anybody ever has seen
the constellations, or whether they just figure everybody else does,

(03:03:29):
and so they add libit It's like the whole world
add libs, the the erroneous philosophy that they enjoy picnics,
you know, the pleiades. Oh but that's this is a ridiculous.
I mean, the solar system and the restrooms are that way.
There's the sign. There's no problem. You can find it.

(03:03:49):
Just go on over there now. Quit quit shoving, Quit pushing,
always pushing, always shoving. It's like it's like this picture
that I saw in Life magazine, and help but recognize that.
But these things just keep popping up or you can't
stop it. There was a picture in Life magazine a
couple of weeks ago, in fact, it was March seventh,

(03:04:12):
was the issue that showed a group of salesmen had
gathered at a dinner and they were honoring the headman
of the of the of the company, of the department,
and somehow somebody made a mask, one of these printed masks,
up of his face, and the whole crowd of them,
about four hundred of them a luck flag in the picture,
had their picture taken wearing the face of their boss.

(03:04:36):
Awful thought, And there wasn't a single des center in
the crowd. I looked at fat and the first, of course,
I just figured I was looking at a picture of
the typical group of twenty century men, and then on
second thought I realized that I was it's like this little, uh,
little ad. Do you ever look at one ads? Sometimes

(03:04:57):
when you look at one ad, you can see the
real tragedy of the human race. This is the little
want ad in the Examiner, the San Francisco Examiner. Get
that a San Francisco paper that was mail to me
from San Francisco by a guy who picked this up.
And he says, you can't miss a shepherd. You gotta
look at this. Listen to this ad, and it's very serious.

(03:05:20):
Under positions wanted Comma women. Lady wants to entertain you
and cheer you up, playing piano and singing in four languages.
Also teaches English to immigrants, improve your French, Dutch, German,
and dancing lessons, singing in piano lessons. If no answer,
call again. The lady wants to entertain you. Wouldn't it

(03:05:42):
be wonderful to hire this girl to sit in the
corner and sing to you and play her lute. It's
like the old days, like like like the minstrels. Lady
wants to entertain me. How about in the Halls of Tara.
This is w R Radio, your station for us. You

(03:06:04):
are tuned to seven to ten on your radio dial.

Speaker 15 (03:06:07):
Use as a viper a viper? Oh, use as a viper?
Use is a viper?

Speaker 2 (03:06:20):
I don't know. I don't have any druma in my delivery.
Use is a viper? Use? Is a viper? Well, of
course this all comes back again. It comes back as
clearly and as brilliantly as if it were inscribed in
my memory, etched in the most indelible of inks. Speaking

(03:06:40):
of indelible link, do they still make indelible pencils? When
I was this kid, there was a rumor that used
to travel around among kid you know, kid folklore. I
noticed that they've come out with a book about kid folklore,
the things that kids believe and how it travels from
one generation of kids to the next. And one of

(03:07:01):
the things that we used to believe when I was
this kid was that if you got indelible pencil on
your pant, on your tongue, you know, if you licked it,
it was a deadly poison and would undoubted a result
in death eventually. And I don't know if I ever
really knew a kid who died of indelible indelible pencil poisoning.

(03:07:25):
But there was always this rumor that just absolutely persisted
that if you got indelible pencil on your tongue, it
was the jig was up. It was all there was
to it. And I used to look at indelible pencils.
I don't know whether they still make them or not,
but they were purple when you'd lick them. And I
used to look at an indelible pencil and it had
a kind of menacing fascination the way a snake has.

(03:07:50):
And there used to be bottles in our medicine cabinet
that had skulls and crossbones on them, you know, like
iodine things like that. You look in there, you'd see
that scuss bone and look out at you. And somehow
death to a kid was always just right around the corner.
I mean, it's just the slightest misstep. It was the
it was the old, well, the old mystical belief that

(03:08:14):
there was such a thing as a live wire laying around.
The wires were just called live wires. Any kind of way,
you'd get to see a wire and you'd suspected it
was a live wire. Wires were alive with the life
of their own. And of course we had another one too,
which should be reported at this time, and it was
that inside of every golf ball there was a liquid,

(03:08:38):
a kind of liquid that was terribly explosive and poisonous tool.
And if you ever started to unpeel a golf ball,
you know, unwind all that rubber band stuff, that it
was a terribly dangerous thing to do. And if you
ever threw it in a fire, it was all up.
It would explode with a tremendous report. And there was

(03:08:58):
a it was an asset, they said, it was in
these things. And there was another thing too that we
were afraid of, and that was this that if you
threw old milk cans, you know the kind of cans
that they have for evaporated milk, that if you threw
an old milk can into a fire, it would explode.
And if it exploded, well, of course the whole neighborhood

(03:09:19):
would go up. And that is all very closely connected
with the quicksand problem. I will award the brass pig
nicky with oak leaf palm to anyone who can tell
me who used to say use is a viper, Use
is a viper, to whom was this person referring and

(03:09:45):
under what circumstances did this occur? It was the punchline,
do you remember Tony use is a viper? And what
was the name of the comic strip that it appeared in?
Why do I recall these things? I mean, what am
I trying to do? What kind of hash am I

(03:10:06):
trying to make of myself? I'm coming through Times Square
the other day and I see they're taking down that
big Coca Cola bottle or pepsicola. It's a big pepsicola
bottle that they're taking down. You know, those two big
bottles that they had overlooking Times Square, and they're lowering
them to the ground. Let me tell you, ever since

(03:10:27):
the Great Pyramid at Giza was constructed, there have been
few such awesome sites as the site of a crane
lowering about a forty five foot high pepsicola bottle to
the ground on Times Square. It was fantastic. I missed
three appointments. I just stood there and watched this thing
because for a long time, just like most people, I

(03:10:50):
kept I was impressed by these things. They kept standing
up there and I could not help. But remember there
were things that they used to have in drug store windows.
And I was a kid. I don't know why the
coupling here, why the connection, but they used to have
things in drug store windows that were big globes that
had colored liquid of some kind in them, red liquid

(03:11:11):
or green liquid, and it always looked as though this
liquid was some kind of very sweet or very strange liqueur,
or some sort of medicine that could be drunk or tasted.
And somehow I coupled it with these big bottles, because
at the same time there were also big mock up
bottles in many drug store windows that were phony bottles,

(03:11:35):
like a phony coke bottle or a big phony bottle
of some kind of patent medicine, you know, these couplings,
and they were lowering this gigantic thing down, and all
I could say was the solar systems that way, and
the restrooms too, of course. Down there turned left there
you'll see the sign. And I saw that man, in

(03:11:59):
the pursuit of these things, man was assuming a godlike,
a godlike aspect that was second to know God in
the universe. And while we're speaking of aspects, we would
like to point out we have with us this morning
Ying and Yang, which is one of the really fine
restaurants in the metropolitan area. As a matter of fact,

(03:12:20):
Oh well, it's one of the very few commercials.

Speaker 1 (03:12:23):
You know.

Speaker 2 (03:12:23):
The thing that I would like to point out about
commercials is it, generally speaking, most people kind of feel
as though they are rather an intrusion upon their lives.
But I would like to say this about a restaurant
spot that I have found that in and out and
throughout New York, there are you know, for a city

(03:12:44):
this size, there are remarkably few really good restaurants. I'm
always impressed by the lack of really good restaurants that
many times I have been right here in midtown Manhattan
on a Sunday afternoon looking for a place to eat,
and there just hasn't in an interesting good restaurant to
go to olth There are a lot of workaday restaurants,

(03:13:05):
you know, the kind of places where you just go
and get something to eat. But I mean a really
special restaurant. There aren't many of them for a city
this size. It's kind of appalling. As a matter of fact,
I know it half a dozen cities in the United
States that have better restaurants of this type. You know,
the unusual interesting restaurant than New York has. I can't

(03:13:27):
explain it or why this is true, but it just
seems to me that it is. And when I found
out about Ying and Yang, it was a good thing
to know about. And I would like to point out
to you if you haven't tried this restaurant, it is
one of truly good restaurants in the Manhattan area and
is on Third Street in the village. It's eighty two
West and it's very easy to find. You know, many

(03:13:48):
people when you mentioned the village too, of them immediately, oh,
the village, Well, I can't find the village. It is
just as easy to find things in the village as
anyplace else. This is one of the New York bits
of folk I immediately found out upon being involved in
this section of town with just so much folklore. But
you can get a cab anyplace and just tell them

(03:14:10):
you want to go to Third Street in the village,
eighty two West Third Street, and it's right near the
NYU campus. It's very simple to find, and you will
find that the Ying and Yang Restaurant is a small restaurant.
It's a very special restaurant and it's truly an aficionado's restaurant.
As a matter of fact, Gumei magazine here a few

(03:14:31):
months ago a single Ying and Yang is one of
the absolute finest Chinese restaurants in the entire in the
entire United States. This is quite an honor. It is
a superb restaurant. And you'll find also that it is
extremely reasonable for the quality of restaurant that it is.

(03:14:52):
The service is fine, and it's an exceptionally good restaurant.
Might the way, another interesting little thing. I was talking
to Bill Chan, who it runs, Ying and Yang, and incidentally,
you're interested in what does Yin and Yang mean? It
is an old Eastern philosophy of the opposites. In a sense,
it is kind of roughly connected with Newton's law of

(03:15:15):
physics that says, for every action there is a reaction.
This is an entirely whole philosophical structure is based on that.
That is the structure of the opposites. That for every
good there is an evil, that for every and it
is necessary for the good to exist. You see, we
could go into this Ying and Yang that sour does

(03:15:38):
not exist without sweet, that good weather does not exist
without bad, that men do not exist without lemon, nor
vice versa. And this is the philosophy of the opposites.
And in connection with food, of course, the Chinese make
of their philosophies generally a whole thing, in other words,

(03:16:00):
all their life. All this is the true Chinese philosophers,
that their whole life is based on that in O
there was every aspect of their life. And so in
the foods that they prepare, Yin and Yang plays a part,
and that is the wheat and pungent philosophy. For every
sweet there must be a pungent. For every bland, there

(03:16:21):
must be a sharp. For every hour there must be
a sweet, and so on down the line. And this
is the kind of food. It's magnificent food. And they
specialize in both Northern Chinese and Southern Chinese cooking, which
are two different types of food. This is Yin and
Yang at eighty two West thirty to one. Another little
interesting thing. I was talking to Chan down there the

(03:16:42):
other day and he told me just he didn't even
want this to be mentioned, but I'm going to mention
it anyway, that Ying and Yang contributes fifteen percent of
their Monday gross and Monday is one of their big
days by the way down there, they contribute fifteen percent
of their gross to a Chinese orphanage which was set

(03:17:06):
up in Makoa, which is a Portuguese port set up
for Chinese girls who were running away from and who
were kind of emigrants from the Chinese communist state. They
contribute fifteen percent of their monthly for one solid year.
They're doing this for this orphanage for the youngsters who

(03:17:30):
have been the victims of Chinese communism. Very interesting little
side life. But this is Ying and Yang at eighty
two West third Street, and I think you'll find an
exceptional restaurant. And for those of you who are interested,
there is a bar so you can do the works there.
You know. In speaking of funny thing about how we

(03:17:51):
and food, I've often thought about this that since almost
time immemorial, that taking in a food has been in
a ceremonial occasion for human beings. Don't you, seriously, don't
you look forward to your next meal? In a sense
you kind of look forward to it. And the taking

(03:18:12):
of a meal has become in the United States of
the chief forms of going out, one of the chief
forms of social intercourse. It has become a very important thing.
And yet in some of the far eastern countries, you know,
the taking of a meal is a very very private thing.
I mean that you would never think of inviting people

(03:18:32):
to watch you or to have anything to do with it.
It's a very very private thing. If you know anything
about the eating habits of the Tibetans, for example, you'll
realize this is true. They eat with their face to
the wall, very very privately. But here in the United
States it's a big operation. I've gone. I've gone pretty
much across the world, and I find it in many

(03:18:53):
areas going out for a meal is not the big
thing that it is here. And in fact, it's very
barely done and has looked upon as a sad thing
when you have to do it, and so stick with it.
You're going to get that kite up. Yet, we'll be
back in exactly sixty seconds. This is wr Radio, your

(03:19:14):
station four news. Well, I guess it comes from listening
to too much Jack Armstrong when I was a kid.
Or maybe it's because I spent too much time listening
to somebody named Jimmy Allen, or or was it what

(03:19:35):
was the name of the green hornets? The green hornets
faithful servant. And what was the name of his automobile? Aha? Yes,
you see. The trouble is I remember both of these things.

(03:19:56):
I remember both of them. And once in a while,
when things begin to get a little tough, when things
begin to gather around, and the storms began to lash,
and the great crashes of lightning thunder over my head,
I repeat to myself, Humphrey Dumpty sat on the wall.
Humphrey Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses

(03:20:17):
and all the king's men couldn't put Humphrey together again.
I wonder what nationality Dumpty is. It sounds uh, But
after all he was an egg I mean, and well,
he sounds Scotch to me. Humphrey Dumpty sat on the wall.

(03:20:39):
Humphrey Dumpty had a great fall. And I can hear
the sound of that green Hornet's cars. You remember the
sound that it made. What was the name of that car?
What was the name? You've got to find that name.
Red sails in the sun, said Goda. Of these oddments,

(03:21:02):
these sundrys, and these fragments, these notions are our lives made.
It's as though each one of us is a vast
woolworth containing all sorts of cut rape merchandise of one
kind or another. It's like when I was because you
find out these things very early in life. You do now,
don't don't sit out there and say, this guy's talking gibberish.

(03:21:24):
I am not. Your life is made up of those
bits and pieces, those those little patchwork quilts, those those
little ends of string. When I was a kid, we
had this dime store in our town, and it had
traditional dime store woodwork. You know, the kind of woodwork
that dime stores have, that deep maroon sort of mahogany
colored varnished woodwork that all dime stores. Think about it.

(03:21:48):
You mean, you don't even remember the color of the
woodwork in the dime stores. You don't remember the dime
stoes smell. There is a dime store smell that is
composed of cheap perfume, band aids, peanuts being peanutted, hot
dogs being hot dog a lot of people, the oil
that they rub on floors, goldfish canaries, the whole business.

(03:22:11):
The other day, you know, I'm I'm standing in the
wool wars right down here on Seventh Avenue, and they've
got a little collection of canaries there, and these canaries
have a sign under them it says guaranteed to sing
if you have a feeding that you've got a sign
under you that says the same thing. You don't remember

(03:22:38):
the cover of the woodwork, well, I'll tell you. It
was mahogany, and it was deeply varnished. And in this
time story, they had in the toy department a thing
called the Special Prize grab Bag that had a great
big sign over it, the Special Prize grab Bag twenty
five cents. Any prize is yours pick any package for

(03:22:59):
a quarter, any package at all. And this was right
in the middle of the toy department. The toy department
had all these wonderful things. It had big little books,
you know, little orphanani and Daddy Warbucks books, Mickey Mouse books.
It had things like like like guns that went to
the holsters. It had Buck Rogers zap guns. How many

(03:23:20):
of you remember a Buck Rogers zapp gun. It had
Buck Rogers zap guns. And it had, you know, all
the stuff the toy departments have, which were wonderful at
that time. But the most important thing that this toy
department had was the grab bag. And of course I'm
this kid and Brunner and I keep going down there
on Saturdays looking at this grab bag until one day

(03:23:40):
we both have a quarter to spend and we plunk
it down on the grab bag. We give our quarter.
This is you know, it's terrible how you get uchered
into life. It's awful how the traps are laying there
and we create them ourselves. We want them to be.
You know, if you won every day on a horse race,
you would have no interest in horse races, not at all.

(03:24:02):
And if you were told that you were going to
live forever, absolutely without question you were going to live forever,
something would go out of your life. You'll like to
gamble on the chance that you will live. For everybody secretly,
you know, has a suspicion that he is going to
live forever, that the last minute, this guy in a
white coat is going to rush in. They have just
discovered the serum and he's going to make it, you know,

(03:24:25):
forever and ever. So I'm down there with brune and
here is this grab bag. We both plung down our
quarters and we go over and we look in. Of course,
here are the packages. There are all different sizes. There's
little ones and there's big ones, and there's flat ones,
and there's round ones and square ones. You see, this
is all part of the trick. This is all part
of the yuchre game, the great shell game that most

(03:24:48):
of us are involved in life. That these things come
in indefinable shapes, and almost all of them look good.
Almost everything that traps us in the end looks really good.
And so we're looking at all these big shapes. And finally,
this is a true incident, by the way, I finally
picked a great, big, long, flat one because somehow it

(03:25:08):
looked very efficient, you know, it didn't look cheap as package,
and they were all wrapped, and I gave her my quarter,
and I could hardly wait to get out. They didn't
want to open it in front of her and to
get out of the store. And I rip open the
package and it turns out, oh gee, when I think
of it, it turns out to be a book of
Shirley Temple cutout dolls with dresses. Oh boy. And I

(03:25:35):
had a package of Shirley Temple dolls and I couldn't
stand Shirley Temple in person, and here I got a
doll cutout book with her dresses and everything else in it.
And so I'm riding on the streetcar home and Brunner
is sitting next to me, and Brunner Brunner got a

(03:25:56):
knockdown dollhouse made out of cardboard. Now that you put together.
At least he could salvage something. He could pretend it
was a garage. But what are you gonna do with
a Shirley Temple doll? What are you gonna pretend she is?
And it wouldn't do you any good anyway, It's only cardboard.
And so I'm sitting in the street car and I
stuck it down in between the seat and the side

(03:26:17):
of the wall. I didn't want to come home with
a Shirley Temple doll. I just would and didn't want
to bring it home. And I can remember the fantastic
depression that I had over this thing. It's just a
tremendous depression. And I went home and I sort of
moped a road and my mother says, what's eating you nothing? Well,
didn't you go downtown with Bruner today? Did you have

(03:26:37):
a good time? Yeah, well, what's eating you nothing? Two
weeks later, I had compiled another quarter. What do you
think I did with it? That's right? I am down
at the dime store, standing next to the grab bag counter.

(03:27:03):
Do you think that I bought a big little book
that I wanted, a buck Roger book? Nope? Did I
buy a model airplane, a model of a spad nope?
What do you think I came home with that time?
Are you interested in hearing? Well, I'll tell you what

(03:27:24):
I bought. I put down my quarter. I'm standing there,
and I said, I'm going to pick something small this time,
something small, because I understand that good things come in
small packages. We are so full of these trite aphorisms.
So I gave her my quarter. I'm looking through this
messus and I pick out small package and I open

(03:27:48):
it up when I get outside, And what do you think?
It turns out to be a string of beads, a
string of red beads. All of my life, I am
standing next to grab bags. All of my life, I
have been reaching in and hoping that it's going to
work out. And if it hasn't worked out for you, friends,

(03:28:09):
we would like to recommend that you fly the coop
via luft Hansa. Luft Hansa Airlines. They'll get you out
of it. They'll take you direct to Central Europe directly
to Frankfurt, and from there you can go to you
can go to Munich and from there it's a short
train ride to Vienna, and from Vienna it's a short
a short hopped istaun Bull and from there no one

(03:28:32):
will ever catch you from there on in your in,
I mean, you're in. Wouldn't you like to be riding
the Orient Express tonight really found for Damascus and from
then from that point, from Damascus points east, well, you
can do it via luft Hanse. I'd say consult your

(03:28:52):
travel agent and ask them about luft Hansa's rates special
fly the coupe rates are available for one way ticket purchasers.
Guys who want to really make it lift hanset the
German airlines where they really put it on. There's the
thing I wanted to do here, Just hold on, better

(03:29:13):
not do it. Better not do it, because you know
I'm going to do it, George, I'm going to do it.
I wish I had some cheap American mood music to
play behind me. You know, I have a feeling about
this mood music. I think that there are symptoms in
the air really of fantastic decadence going on around us,

(03:29:37):
so great that we can't even we can't even begin
to understand it all. I mean, how is Marshmallow going
to understand? Marshmallows just isn't it isn't possible. And you
go up and down the radio dial, you listen to
what's going on, because this really is, you know, a
voice of America. As much as you like to say,
oh the radio or all the television, Oh no, I

(03:30:01):
don't know, it comes out of us. And this endless, endless,
endless series of a terrible thing is that we are
constantly listening to and watching and being part of this great,
great escapist movement that is so much part of the
twentieth century. You know, I have a feeling that in
one hundred years, this period that we're living through right

(03:30:24):
now is going to be known as the period of
the Great Escape. And of course, the sad truth of
it is that there is no escaping at all ever,
There never has been, never will be. That the barbarians
when they are at the gates, they are at the gates,
you know, and there's no turning back. And the sound

(03:30:44):
of the Montavani albums rises and rises and rises. You know,
there's an interesting a lot of interesting things are happening
in our time that I wonder whether many sociologists are
really putting them down, you know, really really making records
of them. For example, look, now I'll give you one
brief example. Have you looked in many of the record

(03:31:04):
shop windows lately in the Times Square area, Well, you
know what they're selling right openly now these days in
the in record shop windows, they're selling what used to
be known as party records openly now, I mean openly.
I mean they're right out there, along with the Elvis
Presley discs, the Fabian discs, and the Kooky discs and

(03:31:27):
all the other great cultural achievements of our time. They're
being sold out there just on the same basis, just
hanging there in the window. I mean, these are real
party records. And I'm the other day, I'm walking along
sixth Avenue, and you know there's a lot of gift
shops and places where they sell not sixth Avenue. Know

(03:31:48):
this happened to be seventh Avenue as a matter of fact,
and it's up in the fifties there walking along and
they have all these little stationary shops or where they
sell greeting cards. And one thing and another. And I'm
looking in the window at some of the green cards
and this is pure, unadult treated completely, not even double
antonue pornography, but real pornography. And it's right there in

(03:32:10):
the window along with Valentine cards, little cards with lace
and hearts, and Christmas cards and all the other things
that we pretend that we believe in. And right there
in the middle of it is this pornography, I mean,
real pornography, the most the most low base sort of pornography,
the really bad taste, not even cleverly done pornography, you know,

(03:32:33):
but just completely out and blatant and miserable pornography. And
there it is, right there in the middle of the
gift Connor, and that people are buying and selling it
on a very very accepted level, just the way you
buy a card for Valentine's or Christmas. In fact, most
of them are involved in Valentine, I might point out.

(03:32:55):
But this is an interesting thing, and I am certainly
not Victorian, and I'm like this, I'm merely saying that
there is a great decline of public morality that's going on,
that there's little or note with the radio and the
television industry, which everybody's making a lot to talk about.
You know, I think that there's anything that's wrong with
radio and television. It's a little too prissy, it's a

(03:33:16):
little too namby pamby, and will not admit to the
facts of life that exist. But my gully, you know,
you look around, and the intriguing thing is that nobody
seems to be saying anything about this. Has it been
how long has it been since you've listened to the
top thirty? Will you sit down and listen to some

(03:33:38):
of these times? And this is, by the way, listen
to mostly by teenagers. This is all teenage stuff, most
of it, and for that reason, most people don't even
notice it. They just say, oh, it's a kid records
generally walk away. Do you know that most of these
teenage records that are being played today would have been
called borderline party records four or five, maybe ten years ago.

(03:34:00):
A lot of this stuff is also unadulterated pornography and
means only one thing when you listen to it, that
this kid is singing to another kid, and he's singing
about only one thing, and you know what it is,
and it's fourteen fifteen year old kids, And this is
a fascinating thing that's happening to us, and it's happening

(03:34:20):
on all levels and all fronts. Everywhere you look. It's beginning,
it's beginning to show. And the intriguing, the intriguing aspect
of it, of course, is that it has also permeated
most of our most of our mass mediums. I saw
a play here a couple of weeks ago, which shall
go unnamed, that was not in any sense. It was

(03:34:44):
not an obscene play and nothing to do with obscenity.
It had nothing to do with with pornography per se.
But it was making something that we elicit and totally
i might say, dishonest, appear beautiful, and on the basis
of the beauty involved, it excused the transgression of a
major law. This is pretty serious stuff, you know. When

(03:35:07):
you're dealing with this, and I'm watching all these various
things that are going on and thinking, by George, you know,
old Nero must be putting in another string somewhere, getting
ready to play maybe the coda. He's finally approaching the
end of his song. And all the while, as you
go back and forth on the dial, you begin to
see that there is a kind of faceless anonymity to

(03:35:30):
so much of it you hardly well. Here is an example.
There's a major radio station here in town that has
recently made a rule that there will be no talk
other than straight news on their station of more than
twenty seconds in duration. Think about that for a minute. Yeah,
we are becoming so much afraid of hearing the human

(03:35:51):
voice that we've got to constantly disappear into this music.
And now what they have done is that even when
they give the weather forecast and the news and so on,
they have to put music behind it. The weather forecast
has music going behind it. Somehow it becomes a show. Oh,
Hurricane Fie has become part of the great big Hit parade,

(03:36:12):
you know, the whole business. And this is real to me,
a genuinely fascinating phenomenon, all of this stuff. To watch
this go on. I'm listening to one radio station the
other day, and all they do on this radio station
is give their call letters, play a record, read an announcement,
give their call letters, play a record, read an announcement,

(03:36:32):
give the time, give their call letters, give the temperature,
read an announcement, play a record. Their entire programming consists
of giving their name, and they give their name about
forty different ways. They sing it. They play it on drums,
they send it out on Morse code, they have a
chorus dance to it, you know, the sort of thing.
It's what's called dynamic radio. Now, it would be as

(03:36:55):
if every thirty seconds I would say this or wr
wr Yes, your FLM station, w w o R w
R weather now thirty nine degrees w R time, ten
minutes after twelve, And now here's the WR hit tune
of the week. It's WR sung by Eddie w R.
Bah bah bah bah bah bah bah. And it goes

(03:37:17):
on like this, you know, on and on and on
and on, and that's all they ever say all day long.
It's as though mankind has nothing to say in our time.
You know, radio is actually one of the the prime
method of communication in the world today, whether or not you,
as an America know it. Do you know that all

(03:37:38):
of China one of the great weapons in China today,
unfortunately is the radio. That for the first time in
all history, all of China is being united by radio.
That everywhere in China people listen to the radio and
they are all learning one language. This is the first
time this has ever happened. I mean's being done by radio.

(03:37:59):
That ninety seven percent of the people in Russia do
not have television, they only listen to the radio. Then
almost all of Europe is constantly involved in listening to
the radio. And wherever you go all over the world,
you hear people saying things on the radio. A lot
of the things they say are bad, a lot of
the things they say are good, depending on your viewpoint.

(03:38:22):
But they're saying things. You listen to the BBC, they're
saying things on the radio they really are you know.
You listen to Radio Luxemburg, you find they're saying things.
You know, the best radio programming I've heard in many
years was when I was in Munich. I was in
Munich here a year or so ago, and I was

(03:38:42):
listening to a portable radio I brought with me because
I'm fascinated by what people are saying on the radio,
all of it. This is where you really hear the
voices of these nations, you know, not on television, but
you hear the voices of all the nations going on
all over the bands. That's why shortwave radio listening is
so exciting. You know, some of the best radio programming
I have ever heard was on of all, the Voice

(03:39:05):
of America coming out of radio out of Munich being
broadcast to all of Europe. This were radio programs all
produced by America, by American radio performers and so on,
and it was being broadcast to Europe and it was
not even recognizable as American radio. You really listening to
the fantastic programs, wonderful shows. And if there was a

(03:39:27):
radio station an America that was doing this kind of stuff,
people would listen to the radio. You shouldn't get it
anywhere else, you know, there it was. It was really
good radio. And I'm not talking about for a minority.
It was good radio because most of the people in
Europe listen to the American radio stations over there. You know,
there are about three big radio stations that are run
mostly by Americans, and they are really listened to. But here,

(03:39:51):
when you're back in the States, you tune across the
dial on all you hear. All you hear back and
forth across the dial is music. And I don't care
what kind of music you're talking look about. And I
think a station that plays nothing but classical music is
as bad as one that plays nothing but pop music,
it's the same thing as just a record, you know,
and you can say one is better than the other,
but it still is escaping from that human voice, no

(03:40:14):
matter how you cut it. That the human voice seems
to be anathema to American radio and certainly television. You
don't hear any commentators of note on television. I mean,
one escape is programmed after the other, and every Sunday
afternoon there's a collection of panel programs where guys sit
around and mediate and kind of smooth each other's ruffled feathers.

(03:40:38):
And that's about the end of it. But there's really
there's really not much to listen to. There's so much
noise going on, and so many lights and sounds and
flashes and signs going up in front of us, but
very little and very little to hear. Go back and forth,
back and forth. You hear nothing but the music going
on and on and on. And I I think this

(03:41:00):
is an interesting sociological phenomenon. I'm not certainly lashing out
at the radio people or the television people, because this
is what unfortunately America wants these days. And you're going
to say, oh, no, we don't have a choice, but
you do you know that this is a development of
our of our time. It just is, And it's a

(03:41:21):
fascinating thing that I do feel that today that we
have advanced so much technically that we no longer have
any real contact with one another. It's fascinating that they've
worked in the opposite, you know. Instead of bringing us
closer together, I think all of this technical communications equipment

(03:41:41):
has taken us further apart as individuals. And I'll never
forget the sight of this little, short fat man I
saw a couple of days ago walking along forty seventh
Street with a radio stuck in his breast pocket. Yeah,

(03:42:02):
he has this little vest pocket radio and he's got
it plugged into his ear and he's walking along down
the street and he has this thing turned all the
way up. And you know how these little earphones rattle,
and I could hear this rock and roll to him.
It must have been rocking through his head at about
nine hundred DB's wine.

Speaker 13 (03:42:21):
Un un.

Speaker 2 (03:42:22):
This was a grown up man and his wife is
walking alongside of him, absolutely stone faced and silent. They
had nothing to say to each other, just the way
two people sitting in front of a television set watching
palad and have nothing to say to one another, and
the endless roar of the Elvis's and the Kookies and

(03:42:43):
the Fabians go on and on and on, and once
in a while the announcer breaks in and.

Speaker 14 (03:42:48):
Says, w R time seven fifteen, w R temperature thirty nine,
and now here is the WR.

Speaker 2 (03:42:54):
I'm using our call letters because thank Heavens, we're not
one of those one of those people caught into it.
We don't do this and I'm not taking kicks at
other people because probably we will be led to do
it ourselves before long, who knows. While we're on the
subject of doing it, we have with us the Electronic

(03:43:16):
Workshop if you would like to repair some of that
equipment that keeps you keeps you safely away from conversation.
We would like to point out that the Electronic Workshop
at twenty six West A Street in the village is
really one of the finest High Fidelities organizations that I've
ever had any dealings with. And I would like to

(03:43:36):
point out that I have had some background in hi FI.
I used to be a jazz writer and critic for
one of the High Five magazines as long ago as
nineteen fifty four. I was involved in the formation and
the promotion of the first audio show that was held
in Philadelphia back in nineteen fifty one. I did what

(03:44:00):
we can go on and on one thing I did do.
I did the first program in recorded radio history that
was based entirely on disseminating and giving out high fidelity information.
Back in the days when high PI was a term
that was used only by engineers. You know, there was
such a day. It's hard to believe now, isn't it,
When they have so subverted the term high fidelity that

(03:44:23):
even little five inch radios made in Japan that are
purchased for twelve dollars and ninety five cents are called
high fi. It's funny. But if you want to know
about an honest high fidelity organization, really an honest high
fi shop that is based purely on the premise that
they are going to be in business for a long
time and that customers come back, you will find them

(03:44:44):
at twenty six West A Street. It's the Electronic Workshop.
And believe me, with the ownership of high fi at
such a high level as it is today, to know
about an honest place where you can get really a
good deal on equipment but more than that, they stand
behind find it themselves, not just this little trick. Guarantee
comes in the package. It says send it back if

(03:45:05):
the materials are defective within one year. These people will
install equipment for you if you buy a High five system,
and they will give you their personal guarantee that it
will continue to work. And that's good to know. They
have an excellent service department. You know, most of these
High five places here in town don't even have service departments.
If you think I'm kidding, try to take it back

(03:45:26):
to some of these big places and tell them you
want to pick it up Friday. This is the Electronic
Workshop at twenty six West eighth Street. And if you
have any High five problems that you'd like to investigate,
if you have any any service problems, you'd like to
trade in any equipment. They do trade ins there by
the way. Many of them don't do that. You will

(03:45:48):
find it the twenty six West a Street and their
number is Grammar C three one four oh. It's a
good number to call. It's Grammar C three one four oh.
And while we're on the subject of people who are
picking up the tab, we have also with us the
paper Book Gallery, which is also down in the village,
and I would like to say that they still have

(03:46:11):
some copies left of the new catalog which they have
recently turned out. Now, paper books are a major thing
in our time, and I think one of the really
plus things that has come along in the past ten
or twelve years, and the paper Book Gallery is one
of the organizations we argually responsible for the great success

(03:46:32):
of quality paper books in the United States. They really
are a big, swinging group. And if you're going to
make the village scene this week, I would suggest you
visit Sheridan Square. If you're going to be down in
one of the off Broadway theaters and you'd like to
spend an hour or two in something that really has
strange atmosphere world all of its own, try the paper

(03:46:54):
Book Gallery. They're on Sheridan Square at tenth Street, just
where Seventh Avenue South and Tenth Street converge, right across
Nixon the Village, and it's the paper Book Gallery. You see.
It's downstairs, kind of a downstairs corner place, and they
have a great big display sign up above them so
you can't miss them. And there's another paper book gallery
over on Third Street, at just back of the NYU

(03:47:16):
campus on Third Street. This is the paper Book Gallery,
and they have a few copies of this excellent this
excellent catalog that we talked about a couple of weeks ago.
It briefly is this that they have a ninety page
catalog which is a catalog of all the quality paper
books from all over the world that are carried by

(03:47:38):
the paper Book Gallery, listed by subject, say, art, literature,
and so on down the line. And it's ninety pages.
It costs them sixteen cents just to have printed, and
the mailing is around six or seven cents, and the
handling is well over what you'll have to pay for it.
They will send you a copy of this for a quarter.
Just drop a quarter into an envelope and address it

(03:48:00):
to paper Book Gallery, Box six h, New York twelve,
New York, and you can buy anything you want from
the paper Book Gallery by mayo as well as by person.
Just follow the sign. You see the solar galleries or
is it the Solar room or is it the or

(03:48:22):
is it the solar system or is it you see?
It all gets part of the same fruitcake Harold monolith here.
We'll be back tomorrow. Night at five minutes past nine.

Speaker 1 (03:48:33):
Well, that's it for air Checks this week. We will
have more Gene Shepherd next week. I can't always tell
how long each episode is going to be, but we
keep on doing this until we hit the last episode
in nineteen seventy seven. Airchecks is normally a three hour
podcast uploaded weekly and can be heard every Sunday on
the k TI Radio network. See you at the same
time and same channel.

Speaker 3 (03:49:04):
That's that's s

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Episode 107, January 18, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Marathon, Part 1

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 107, January 18, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Marathon, Part 1