Radio Child

Should I become so enamored of my own timeless prose that I decide to further clutter the internet with a fourth blog, I will steal my title from Brent McKee. He's a Canadian. He lives in Saskatoon. What a grand name for a city. I wonder if Canadian comedy writers have used city names as effectively as Jack Benny's writers did with Anaheim, Azusa and especially the town with a wacky sounding name, Cucamonga. While searching for the correct spelling of Cucamonga I found this song about those three towns made famous by Benny's writers. When I was in Havre, Montana I listened to Canadian radio weather reports for Flin Flon, Moose Jaw and Saskatoon. There are lots of songs about Saskatoon. I'll bet Brent knows my favourite. (I put the "U" in there for my vast Canadian readership.)

What a de-light when I think of the night that I met you on, in
Sas-ka-toon, SAS-KATCH-E-WAN;
Oh, what a thrill was the spill down the hill I upset you on, in
SAS-KATCH-E-WAN;
Swift as the breeze was the race on the skiis I would bet you on - in
Sas-ka-toon, SAS-KATCH-E-WAN;
I'd walk a-head while you rode on the sled that I'd fetch you on, in
SAS-KATCH-E-WAN

Heavenly days, what wonderful rhymes. And all dreamed up by three American songsmiths, Irving Ceasar, Gerald Marks and Sammy Lerner.

Oops, I got all caught up in that and forgot where I was going with this. Brent's blog is "I am a child of television." I recommend it. It's here.

My blog number four will be "I am a child of radio." Of course. What else?
I read almost no fiction and I know next to nothing of the great classics that everyone should be acquainted with. I love Harry Heuser's highly literate blog. Broadcastellan. I don't always know what he's talking about but I sure love the way he says it.

I don't read fiction becauase I have little patience with the stuff without which it wouldn't be fiction.. I skip right past the description, characterization, scene setting, situations and all that adds up to the author's style. Give me dialogue. I want to hear voices. Give me a Hammond Organ barking and biting transitions and scene settings as only a tone-wheel Hammond can do. I don't want somebody drawing word pictures for me. I am quite capable of doing that for myself in my head, thank you. William Conrad's voice gives me a perfect mental picture of a marshal in the old west. John Todd, no more Indian than I am, was the ideal "Tonto" to the Lone Ranger on radio.

So I'm ignorant of stuff I should know about. I was raised on radio. It's radio's fault.