Boston is the second city to get Aereo, the new “DVR in the cloud” service that puts local broadcast TV over the Internet. I’m giving it a try, and there is nothing rough or difficult about it at all. It’s slick, smooth, and clean. It works great on the Roku, but that’s not where I see Aereo being the most compelling. Where I’m really impressed is on the Acer netbook I’m using right now, with its 11.6″ 1366×768 screen. I’ll leave it to you to look up all of the details of the Aereo service, and the lawsuit by broadcasters.
In the first row, second from the left, is Charles M. Schulz at Camp Campbell, Kentucky, in 1943. Schulz was in Company B of the 8th Armored Infantry Battalion, which is why I picked this cartoon by Sparky’s good buddy Bill Mauldin.
This week Fresh Air re-ran a fascinating 1998 segment with Ray Manzarek talking about the Doors and the creation and development of Light My Fire.
[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2013/05/RayManzarek.mp3|titles=Ray Manzarek on ‘Fresh Air’]
In 1967, when I was eleven years old, Light My Fire was a huge hit on 77 WABC radio, the leading AM station in New York. One day, while at Calf Pasture Beach in Norwalk, Connecticut with my family, I happened to hear the complete song for the first time. Before that moment the concept of an “album version” of a song hadn’t existed. Unknown to me at the time, at the start of 1967 an FCC ruling had taken effect, forcing radio stations with simulcasted AM and FM signals to offer unique programming on their FM stations, and so “underground” FM radio was born.
That first time I heard the complete version of Light My Fire I declared to my brother Jeff, “this is the greatest song of all time,” and my opinion hasn’t changed since then. To this day if I come across Light My Fire on the car radio I let it play through.
Yesterday we attended the Japan Festival at Boston City Hall Plaza. As you would expect at an event like that, there were lots of balloons and children… and a lot of popped balloons. With memories still fresh of the Boston Marathon bombing five weeks ago, I wasn’t the only who one jumped when balloons went *POP!*
The Japan Festival was incident-free but then, mid-afternoon, sirens could be heard. A lot of sirens. They were for a Japanese scientist who was the victim of a traffic accident while riding her bicycle in another part of the city. She was pronounced dead at the scene. As soon as I heard the news, I wondered if she was on her way home from the festival.
