Month: July 2020

A Progressive Meal

After my freshman year of high school, until I left for college in Western Massachusetts, I mostly listened to WBCN, the legendary alternative radio station in Boston at 104.1 FM. ‘BCN was where I first heard David Bowie, Ten Years After and Captain Beefheart, along with the comedy troupes Firesign Theatre and Monty Python. Progressive music was well-represented on WBCN, and I remember enjoying this King Crimson record in particular.

Wiseman’s Radio Menace

One of my favorite comic books as a kid was Dennis the Menace. I had a favorite Dennis artist, but I didn’t know his name was Al Wiseman until I was an adult. With the exception of a couple knobs for dials, this is an accurate drawing by Wiseman of a 1924 RCA Radiola AR-812.

The AR-812 is significant, because it was the first set available commercially to include the invention that made radio broadcasting a practical medium — Edwin Armstrong’s Superheterodyne circuit.

I Remember…

… Iron Butterfly, Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath. But do you remember BLOODROCK?? “We were flying low, and hit something in the air.”

There’s a really obvious splice in there from where the album version was cut down for the single. If four-and-a-half minutes of somebody being “self-aware” they’re dying isn’t enough for you, here is the classic “D.O.A.”

All the News That’s Fake to Print

Workers wearing protective gear bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island in New York City on April 9.

Trump hasn’t been saying “the failing New York Times” lately. Even his most devoted fans must realize the Times is still in business. He’s been relying on his catchall expression “fake news,” but even that seems to be falling flat, with the sudden resurgence in coronavirus cases.

The New York Times explains how epidemiologists estimate the number of unconfirmed Covid-19 cases, to determine a death rate that is perhaps less than 0.5%. At this link. That doesn’t mean, as Trump claims, the virus is “99% harmless,” but at least it’s based on something valid.