Wow who'd a thunk it? -- David Goren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/fashion/06POSS.html?_r=1&oref=slogin The New York Times January 6, 2008 Possessed Comic Relief via Shortwave By DAVID COLMAN THE great joke of our era is that this is called the information age, said the actor and humorist Harry Shearer. In other words, if information is free, you get what you pay for. Since childhood, Mr. Shearer has tried to get the genuine article, even if that has meant spending a little time and effort to do so. It was at the peak of radios popularity that Harry Shearer was born in 1943 in Los Angeles. He tuned in quickly: not only was he a child actor whose first gig was on Jack Bennys radio show (I was passing as a child, he said), but he had a feverish fascination with radio itself. As a boy, he looked down on the Art Deco carved-wood radio console in his familys living room, preferring the more sensitive RCA model in his room (an early vomit-green plastic radio), which he fiddled with nightly like a junior Marconi. I would try and find the most distant station possible, he said. I knew something happened when it left Hollywood and then came bouncing back from across the country a half a second later. It sounded weirdly magical to me. If there was stuff in the air, I wanted to receive it. Today the vomit-green RCA exists only in the Smithsonian of his memory. A dedicated hobbyist in the radio tradition, Mr. Shearer has gone through 40 to 50 radios: a Hallicrafters table-size shortwave, an early Sony ICF and countless others, big, small, portable and pocket-size. He even forsook the exploding world of television in the 60s for the increasingly anarchic world of radio. I never saw I Dream of Jeannie, he said. I think of it as an enhanced childhood. Even today, though he writes and acts as prolifically as he always has, it is his voice (of a dozen or so characters on The Simpsons) that is probably most familiar to us. Although he gets romantic talking about his lifelong love of the medium, it is always his latest radio that gets pride of place in his heart and on his desk. I didnt call any of them Steve, or get attached to them as an object, he said in the anchorman deadpan for which hes known. If they stopped working, I didnt keep them. For some eight years now, his flame has been a Sangean, model ATS-909, a digital shortwave radio. The 909 may not have the reach of fancier shortwave radios, but for Mr. Shearers purposes, it is nearly perfect. It is simple enough to involve little in the way of instructions, yet allows for the obsessive tinkering and tuning that is the hallmark of the radio hobbyist. (An optional 30-foot shortwave antenna boosts it to another level of sensitivity.) Its not the most attractive radio on the market, but Mr. Shearer does not care. We have a Tivoli, we have a Bose, all the famous radios, he said, ticking off high-design brands. This is my companion. Ive always been more about functionality over looks. This has all the buttons I need and not much else. There is one that says Page, and Ive never pressed that. I dont know what would happen. Though he loved searching out new music back in the 60s, he has settled comfortably into the armchair of the fanatical global-news enthusiast, for which the Sangean is ideal. Though the BBC stopped broadcasting shortwave to North America in 2001, a move that still pains shortwave fans, he has figured out how to receive the transmissions on his own radio via the Internet. Getting his news from the most reliable (and often most remote) sources, Mr. Shearer said, gives him great satisfaction. As even a cursory overview at the Information Age will tell you, nothing is really free: you pay the price when you dont get the real story. _____________________________________________________________ Looking for insurance? Click to compare and save big. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2121/fc/Ioyw6i3m275qF6g0WdWqa7dfLYjtAZ3MBSgVK1tUUSXV50XlLuhgac/
_______________________________________________ Swlfest mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swlfest To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], or visit the URL shown above. For more information on the Fest, visit: http://www.swlfest.com http://swlfest.blogspot.com
