Old radio and cylindrical devices
Kam's parents are members of the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto; last night, the museum sponsored a show performed by Broadcast Legends, a group of Bay Area radio people who get together regularly to talk about the old days of radio. The show last night was both a description of various old radio programs (and commercials) and a reenactment of snippets of same: they did the origin of the Lone Ranger (the guy who did Tonto's voice slipped a little into a slightly Peter Lorre sound, but that was fine), and the intros to a bunch of shows (soap operas, The Shadow, etc), and they closed with an excellent abridged version of Orson Welles's famous War of the Worlds broadcast (which I hadn't quite realized I had never heard). Their sound effects guy didn't do many live effects (most of their effects and music were pre-recorded, presumably from the original shows), but he did do horses' hoofbeats using two plungers on his chest. They almost all had great voices—mostly men, mostly basses. Seems like the golden age of radio was also the golden age of the bass voice. One guy in particular, Fred LaCosse, had the most perfect Radio Announcer Voice I've ever heard—I don't know how he did it (I'm pretty sure it wasn't his normal speaking voice), but it was just about the archetype of the Radio Announcer Voice.
Kam's parents teased us about not having heard the originals (though Kam's mother grew up with TV instead of radio), but when I was a kid I used to check out tapes of old radio shows from the Palo Alto library. A lot of Jack Benny, among other things. Good stuff. And I have a five-CD set of assorted radio-show recordings, though I haven't listened to 'em in years. Maybe if I get a bigger iPod I'll start carrying them around.
Anyway, good stuff, highly recommended if you have any interest in this stuff, and especially if you remember the originals. I gather they did a similar show last year (but with a Lone Ranger episode instead of War of the Worlds); if I hear about another one, I'll let you know.
Speaking of retro elegance (but otherwise unrelated to the above):
Jeremy F posted a comment here a couple weeks ago pointing me to information about the Curta, an amazing old calculating device. I commented that they're totally cool but that I can't quite justify spending that much money on something I would never actually use. (Though I suppose I could think of it as a piece of art.) That's still true; I mention it because I've now added another item to that small category of small extremely elegant cylindrical devices with rotating rings that I would buy in a minute if I had a million dollars: the Cryptex.
Apparently the idea comes from the book The Da Vinci Code (I haven't read it), where it says that the device was invented by Leonardo (though I gather that's only sort of true): a cylinder with rotating rings that let you specify a combination that unlocks the cylinder, and then there's something inside. So this guy Justin Nevins loved the idea and started making them, by hand, in real life. Out of wood, marble, brass, granite, and/or polished aluminum. And they're totally gorgeous. And you can specify what kinds of letters you want on the rotating rings (he did one in Elvish letters, of course), and the typeface; the letters are laser-engraved. The cheapest ones cost $300 and it goes up from there, so I won't be getting one anytime soon, but wow.
I assume it's not a very good security device: if someone wants what's inside, presumably they steal the Cryptex and smash it open with a hammer. (I gather in the book there was some kind of setup that would destroy the contents if you tampered with the device.) But regardless, they're lovely.
