November Calendar

Here is the November calendar - no TOTM shows this month (yet), so there's none listed (yet). Feel free to hire us, the contact info is hidden somewhere near the bottom in very tiny print. Whew. Got this one in just under the wire(less)!

This is Burns and Allen. George and Gracie. George Burns. And. Gracie Allen. She actually did run for President (sort of) in 1940, as a member of the "Surprise" party.

Would You Let A 16-Year-Old Fly Your Plane?

Another in our series of Radio Membership Cards - the Jimmie Allen Flying Club card! This popular series ran through the 1930's, and starred 40-year-old John Frank as the 16-year-old pilot, Jimmie Allen. The Hi-Octane Hi-Flying Sponsor was Skelly Oil:

"Mom! Dad! We just passed a Skelly Oil Station! We HAVE to go in so I can get my membership forms to join the Jimmie Allen Flying Club! PLEEEEEASE?!?!? It's free..." (Father sighs), "Yes, Little Willie, I guess we can stop in. Might as well get some ethyl, too, as long as we're there."

And ring up another sale, thanks to the bright idea of marketing your adult product to the children of those same adults. Thank goodness this idea has come and gone, hm? Now I'm off to McDonnal's for a Shrec-themed Happi-meal...might as well get some "food" for myself, while I'm there...I'm loathin' it!TM

Er, print out the card, fill in your name, and put it in your wallet. Show the card at your friendly neighborhood Skelly Oil dealer - it's good for a FREE gallon of gas! (nudge nudge wink wink)

The Shadow's NOSE

Here's an ultra-rare premium - a 1943 GLOW IN THE DARK Shadow pinback. Okay, so it's not really a radio premium (it's a Shadow Comic premium), but when you see the Shadow, you think radio show! I believe this one recently sold for more than $1,000 - so keep an eye on what you're cleaning out of the "junk" drawer, hm?

Mastering Dialects

So you want to put on your own audio drama? GOOD FOR YOU! Do it. Maybe you'd like to utilize some dialects in your show, in order to keep your listener's interests piqued, or to help keep the characters separate.

Here's a few pages from the 1943 book "Manual Of Foreign Dialects For Radio, Stage, And Screen" (my copy was evidently owned by Judith Krauss, somehow associated with the Will O Way Playhouse, according to the signature on the flyleaf). Be sure to familiarize yourself with all of the phonetic symbols (click each picture for a larger, easy-to-read version) before attempting to read the Irish dialect passage that I've included here:

WHEW! Did you try it out loud?

This book is a really, really rough read! No easy thing to do, learning dialects from a book - but if you were in radio or theater, having a big list of dialects on your resume meant getting more work. Nothing like doubling or tripling your salary by reading multiple parts in the same show, hm? I wonder what kind of money Paul Frees made when he performed EVERY ROLE in the OTR show "The Player"?!?

Of course, I have to mention to everyone that's interested in producing their own audio drama (or "radio shows", whether they are heard on the radio or not) how important it is to study what went before. There's a reason why the (good) old shows are as good as they are, even after 60 years or so: these writers and actors and sound effects men were all PROFESSIONALS. They made their livings doing this. If they weren't up to snuff, they didn't have a job!

So isn't it your responsibility to research the past? Pick up books and scripts that are related to Old Time Radio, and soak them up. As with any profession, you must first learn the rules before you go out and break them. There are tons of old "how to" books out there about radio writing, production, direction, and sound effects - pick up a few and LEARN HOW IT'S REALLY DONE. Besides, the books, just like the old radio shows, are a window to a different time...certainly not very politically correct, worth a nervous laugh or two (I'll post another book snippet later about why women are just not cut out for careers in radio!).

MAH'r LAY/uhr!

("More later!") 8^)#

Okay, here's a bit of TOTM history for you - an original piece that we did our first year (izzat NINE YEARS AGO?!?). Be forewarned: this is NOT one of the newer, mindblowing pieces that we're working on right now, but a rather flawed amateur production...there's plenty wrong with this one, but there's also plenty that's cool.

"The Seven Dogs Of Death" was written by Shawn Fitzgerald, and features several of the current TOTM members, plus Heidi Feldkirchner and Mark Kettner (full credits at the end of the show...and I still wince because I badly mispronounced Heidi's last name - sorry!). Done in the harder-to-edit analog tape days, this horror tale hasn't been heard (live or recorded or otherwise) for many years.

Give it a listen. Leave a comment. Use it as a way to measure how much we've improved, once you hear the newer stuff.

It was tons of fun to do. Now I'll have to dig up "Dear Old Dad", a horror monologue that we did before this one. That one's so bad it's good. Yeah, man, where'd I put that cassette? What do you mean, "What's a cassette?"?

CLICK HERE to hear it, or right click and "Save Link As" to save it.

October Calendar

Here's the brand-new calendar for the brand-new month! Be sure to check out Saturday the 13th - that's our next show! A fundraiser for the Waukegan Public Library! Waukegan being Jack Benny's home town, you can check out the bronze statue of him just a few blocks from the library, right across the street from the now-fabulously-redone Genesee Theater. Click HERE for a few pics of the statue from the Hughes family - hmm...somehow Karen has made Mr Benny's ghost appear, and he doesn't look a day over thirty-nine!

HERE is a map to the place, in case you didn't already happen to know where this internationally famous library sits.

This is early enough in October to NOT be completely classified as a Halloween show. There will be some scary stuff, and some funny stuff. And maybe some cool historical stuff...and possibly some literary stuff, but don't worry, we'll crush it up and mix it with some honey in a spoon so it's more palatable.

Print this calendar and put it up on the fridge so you don't forget to come to the show - THANKS!

Here’s a picture of the 1937 Radio Orphan Annie Silver Star Member "Secret Message" Ring. Way back then (gee, seventy years ago!) in order to achieve Silver Star status, young consumers, er, listeners were supposed to tell at least three friends about the benefits of drinking Ovaltine, and get each friend to give them an inner seal from an Ovaltine container, and then mail in all the seals. These special members received an official folder of "Special Secrets". Each year there was a slightly different silver-plated Silver Star ring. If you happen to have one of these in your drawer at home, take care of it – it’s worth several hundred dollars these days.

Use your 1937 Radio Orphan Annie "Sunburst" Decoder Badge to solve the secret message on the ring. If you don't happen to have a 1937 decoder, you can probably figure it out with a pencil and paper, plus this decoding primer that I lifted from somewhere (I forget where). Here's a helpful hint: the secret message starts off with: "I am a Silver Star Member".

How to solve a cipher

Solving substitution ciphers might seem hard at first, especially when you have no clues to go by, but it's not as difficult at it seems.

The key is to look for familiar elements. For instance, look for two-letter words, which most likely will be words like an, so, it, to, is, etc.

Also, look for double-letter combinations within words, which most likely will be oo, ss, ee, etc.

If you see the same three-letter word combination more than once within a phrase, chances are it will be the word "the", although other words are possible.

It also helps to remember the frequency with which we use letters of the alphabet. Here are the top 10 letters of the alphabet in order of frequency: E T A O N R I S H D. In a cipher, if you see one letter used often, chances are it's E, T, A or O.

The best thing to do is just plunge ahead with a hunch and see if it leads you anywhere. For instance, if you think a particular letter equals E, put down E on all those letters and work from there. You might have to backtrack and use other letters, but that's part of the fun of solving ciphers.

Facts to remember:

Most common 2-letter words - of to in it is be as so we he by or on if me my up an go no us am

Most common 3-letter words - the and for are but not you all any can had her was one our day get has

Most common 4-letter words - that with have this will your from want been good some time very when come here just

Most frequent letters - e t a o i n s r h l d c u m f p g w y b v k x j q z

Most frequent double letters - LL EE SS OO TT FF RR NN PP CC

*

More than 50% of all English words begin with: T, A, O, S, or W.

* More than 50% of all English words end with: E, S, D, or T.

* When F is the final letter of a word, the letter before it is usually O.

* When H is the final letter of a word, the letter before it is often G.

* When G is the final letter of a word, it is frequently part of ING.

HAPPY DECODING!

Building Better Bickersons

We prefer to present a relatively true-to-life Old Time Radio experience when we perform - utilizing real-world music (that's the multitalented Virginia Fitzgerald on the keyboards) and live sound effects wherever possible (not pre-recorded). And although the major impetus of our shows is that the audience has FUN, a secondary objective is that we actually educate - presenting little-known information and dispelling common myths about these great shows from the past.

Although sometimes we will make some changes to the old shows: for instance, a typical television comedy of today is paced with something like two laughs per minute. The typical OTR comedy had much more space between laughs, something like two to five minutes, depending on the show. For a Jack Benny Center fundraiser years ago, we decided to do a Drene Time "Bickersons" recreation. Now, the Bickersons (starring Kenosha, Wisconsin native Don Ameche and Frances Langford) are some of the funniest radio comedy shows ever done, especially since just about all of the adults in the audience can sympathize with both John and Blanche Bickerson, the snappily-married couple. But we thought that the pacing seemed to be just a tad slow for such hilarious bits to go over as well as they could. So our resident actor/scriptwriter Shawn Fitzgerald went ahead and created a hybrid episode, editing together the funniest bits from a dozen or so Bickersons shows. He somehow made these handfuls of unrelated comedy situations flow together as if they were originally written that way, even throwing in a few zingers of his own.

So what our audience heard that night was not actually a standard Bickersons episode, as they may have thought. It was (dare I say it?) BETTER - it had that one-two punch of multiple repeated laughs, one after the other, through the entire show...much more akin to what today's television-minded audience is used to.

So we broke our own rules a bit, to improve the show. Please don't be upset. We did it for you...you did enjoy it, didn't you? Thought so.

Doctor WHO?!?

Here is an example of why the word "MINDLESS" is part of our name. My sister, Laura, had some trouble with the line: "...just like Doctor Watson with Sherlock Holmes." This is a tiny excerpt from our recent recording sessions, from the upcoming adventure serial "Enigma, Incorporated".

The serial is definitely NOT a comedy like this blooper might suggest, but a science-based mystery/adventure for the grown-ups: think a mix of Doc Savage, I Love A Mystery, and Pat Novak (gosh, that IS setting the bar pretty high!). We're shooting for some REAL science, along with heavy mystery and action, and some smart-mouthed characters to lighten the mood along the way.

COMING TO A BLOG NEAR YOU SOON (this one, of course!)

Tip 'O' The Fedora

And a nice big tip-of-the-hat to William Spears who just added TOTM (that's us!) to his blog, "Lit Between The Ears". In addition to scores of links to other audio drama groups and other information, the site also offers books of scripts of audio adaptations of the classics - much of which is there to read...also an interesting section on "Definitions And Usage", interesting terminology used in radio/audio drama production.

Here's a nice 1930-something ad for the "Buck Rogers" radio show: voted most popular radio program - something that we'd ALL like for our own shows, I'm sure...but where would you go to vote?

Mmmmm...Chesterfield!

Click here for this wonderful audio download - a crisp, refreshing 1940's ad for Chesterfield cigarettes. Gosh, they make them sound so APPEALING! And then there's this cutie in the magazine ad waving that checkered flag with her un-ciggied free hand...it makes me want to RACE down to the corner stand to buy some Chesterfields! What ingeniously insidious, iniquitously interesting, and interminably intoxicating marketing. But we're much too sophisticated to fall for that type of advertising in this day and age, right? RIGHT?!? Yeah, right.

Some Audio

Okay, now I'm cooking with gas - I've got a little tasty TOTM audio tidbit for you all! One of our short original ads from one of our shows at the Jack Benny Center For The Arts in Waukegan...done in (*gasp*) 2006! This one has Christopher Wild as the announcer, and stars versatile Virginia Fitzgerald (she plays live keyboard AND acts up a storm) as "Mom" and Laura Jansen (my sister who also acts up a storm, and writes up a few nice cloudbursts) as "Dottie". I'm even in there at the end for a quick line as "Dad".

Click Here for LyeCo Ad

Enjoy!

COMMENT!

Calendar Page

Here's a cool way to keep track of your upcoming appointments (and our upcoming shows!). Simply print out this calendar page, and put it somewhere that you happen to frequent. I'll try to have some interesting and unusual radio-related pictures as backgrounds, so you'll come back for more. I'll also try to post a new one about every month...ENJOY!

Time Travel

Okay, and just in case some of you might like to do some time-travel of your own, here's a nifty Dick Tracy Radio Club card from the 1930's. Print it out, fill it out, and become a Junior Detective!

WELCOME!

Hullo, there!

Welcome to the "Theatre Of The Mindless" blog. First off, please remember that the idea behind this blog is some discussion: monolog/dialog/weblog...see? So for now, first off, it's just a monolog - I'm the only guy saying anything. But once you reply, we can begin to have a dialog.

I'm still working out the main direction that I'd like for the blog, but mainly, it will be about the audio performance group "Theatre Of The Mindless" (or TOTM for short!). Posts about our upcoming shows, how we prepare, tips on writing audio drama, tips on recording, etc.

Firstly, some info about the group: we've been doing this for almost ten years now, in the far north suburbs of Chicago. We've all got day jobs (of course!), but really enjoy doing the radio on stage thing. It's almost like time travel, with the 1940's costumes, antique microphone props, and real old radios on stage!

The older folks in the audience enjoy the show mostly for nostalgic reasons, I think...and most of them only got to hear the old shows, not actually see them being performed. The younger folks have only the slightest inkling of what old time radio (OTR) was, so this is all new to them (!). And the youngest folks, the kids, enjoy it for what it mainly is: storytelling. A lot of the little ones go home and put on radio shows of their own. Now that's a compliment. No need for OTR to completely die out...we just need to fan the flames a bit!

Okay, that's it for openers. Seen us? Comments? Questions? Please reply - THANKS!