From CNN: Award-winning comedian George Carlin dies

Carlin had a profound effect on me…in my misspent youth, I listened to his albums so often I memorized them voices and all - to this day, I can recite “The Hair Poem” in its entirety (including the, “See my beard?” coda), do a passable riff on birth control pills (”Gee, you are a good sport, aren’t you?”), and of course know the “Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say on Television” (although some of them are now occasionally heard even on network TV). He also, on The Tonight Show a few years ago, gave me a line I have quite literally used in raising my daughter, the way I hope to be remembered by my child: “Good Father. Bad Example.”

Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available.

Fringe; Fox, Tuesdays 9:00 PM

Strap on, kids…it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

The latest J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost) series with what promises to be an epic (and, if Alias is any indication, confused and contradictory) mythology is Fringe, airing this fall on Fox. The only problem is…we’ve seen almost all of this before, and unfortunately, much better.

The two-hour pilot opens with a passenger on an international flight needing to use his insulin pen-injector, which for no good reason causes his skin to sloff off…and for good measure, everyone else on the flight is affected as well. After some…er…jaw-dropping special effects (oh, c’mon, you knew I couldn’t resist that one) and the opening credits, the focus shifts to a bedroom where co-workers and FBI agents Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv, Australian series The Secret Life of Us) and John Scott (Mark Valley, Boston Legal, Keen Eddie) are busy gettin’ busy when their cell phones go off.
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If you are an AT&T (bellsouth.net) subscriber to the Digest, you can forget about receiving it. AT&T has decided the Digest is spam, and is currently rejecting it.

I apologize, but there is absolutely nothing I can do about it - please complain to your customer service department, or consider finding another provider who doesn’t treat a confirmed opt-IN discussion list as spam.

EDIT: It has now propagated down to ameritech.net as well.

EDIT: AT&T servers are rejecting all mail from our server, so I cannot even respond to those who have written in. The following domains are no longer receiving the OTR Digest:

ameritech.net
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More as I know it…

EDIT: As others have noted, the blocks seem to have been removed. I’m still trying to contact admins at AT&T mail to find out exactly what caused the block, but so far, no luck. As usual, the big systems tend to ignore the “little guys” (I’ve been through this before with AOL and others).

From The Register: AVG scanner blasts internet with fake traffic

I stopped recommending AVG after the last update and their incessant advertisements for the paid version. Here’s another reason for home users to select another freeware anti-malware scanner, like PC Tools AntiVirus Free Edition or avast! antivirus.

An episode of Suspense from March 9, 1950; “Banquo’s Chair.” This episode was recently discussed on the Internet OTR Digest, where there was a specific request for the show to be made available. Since we’re always looking for requests, here ’tis!

You may stream the show using the player below, or download it with the link. Remember, by subscribing to this blog with any podcasting client (Juice, iTunes, etc.) the shows will be automatically downloaded to your computer or MP3 player!

 Suspense - Banquo's Chair [29:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I got an early Christmas present not long ago from Jerry Haendiges, of The Vintage Radio Place. He sent some programs, suggesting I “broadcast” some here…thing is, many of the programs he sent I’d never heard, and some I’ve never heard of, even as long as I’ve been in the hobby. So over the next several months I’m going to run some of the shows he sent in low-bandwidth MP3 format - even at 32kbps mono, these shows are some of the best-sounding shows you’ll hear. But remember for even better sound, these shows (and a few bazillion others) may be purchased from Jerry in either audio CD format, or ultra-high-quality MP3 format.

Today’s program is an episode of “Studio X,” starring “America’s most versatile actor,” Paul Frees. Frees’ radio, film, and television voice credits are legion; from his many Disney roles in theme park rides and animated programs most notably the voice of Donald Duck’s nutty Uncle, Professor Ludwig Von Drake, to the voice of Rocky and Bullwinkle’s nemesis Boris Badenov, roles in the Christmas classics “Frosty the Snowman” and “The Little Drummer Boy,” even the Pillsbury Doughboy and Toucan Sam. Nostalgic television fans remember him fondly as the voice of the never-seen John Beresford Tipton in “The Millionaire.”

This 1948 syndicated series is better-known by the title used for the bulk of the surviving episodes, The Player, but for at least two of the surviving episodes, the series is referenced as, Studio X. As in all of the episodes, this story, “Frozen Justice,” is a tour de force with Frees performing all of the roles, his voice shifting and changing between characters effortlessly.

You may stream the show using the player below, or download it with the link. Remember, by subscribing to this blog with any podcasting client (Juice, iTunes, etc.) the shows will be automatically downloaded to your computer or MP3 player!

 Studio X - Frozen Justice [17:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As recently discussed on the Internet OTR Digest, here is one of the nine surviving episodes of Empire Builders, sponsored by the Great Northern Railroad and according to Elizabeth McLeod’s Documenting Early Radio page, discovered in the mid-1980s in their corporate archives. This episode, “Spike Wants the Girl,” aired February 16, 1931.

Our thanks to both Ken Stockinger and Jim Widner for providing the copies of these historical programs for the podcast!

You may stream the show using the player below, or download it with the link. Remember, by subscribing to this blog with any podcasting client (Juice, iTunes, etc.) the shows will be automatically downloaded to your computer or MP3 player!

 Empire Builders - Spike Wants the Girl [28:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download