Where is Alex Dimm?

Where has Alexander Dimm been? I've been busy.

I continue to work for a telecommunications company. I have not changed positions, although I have applied for other positions within the company.

I am still a school board member, although I am up for relection this year.

I am still married to the same wonderful woman I married twenty years ago. I love her so much.

I still have three children, although one is a senior in high school and getting prepared for college and another is getting married. My son appeared in a local theatre production this past summer.

I lost my father this fall. It still hurts.

I still go to church and I still love to write.

Beyond that, nothing much has changed. I hope to get back to blogging regularly, although my blogging will be shorter. Fewer long essays and more said.

I have missed blogging and hope that I hear from you. I can see that you have continued to check in while I was gone. Thank you.

So, why did I stop? Lots of reasons. Most of them stupid, so there is no sense dwelling. Let's just hope I am back for a long time.

Thank you for your patience. Talk to you again soon.

Your friend, Alexander Dimm

Sabbatical

Shortly after the first of May I predicted that my postings would become fewer and farther between. I did not expect to take more than a week between posting, but here it is Monday, May 21st and I have not posted since Wednesday, May 9th.

It has been a busy couple of weeks. Our new dog is settling down. We have had several band concerts and other school and church functions. Nothing terribly disturbing has come into our lives during this time.

I have been sad, however. My creative flow has been stunted. It has made me down and nearly unlivable. I find I need to write to survive. Therefore, I am still searching for the best time of day to develop my thoughts, but I am committed to writing on a regular basis once again.

Thank you for your patience. We’ll talk again soon.

The Return of Roger Ebert

Back in the 1970s, WTTW, the public broadcasting channel in Chicago experimented with a program they called “Coming to a Theatre Near You”. The project involved two men who wrote movie reviews for the local newspapers.

The program received local praise and the network decided to take in national. They renamed the show “Sneak Previews”. The set was the seating section of a movie theatre. On one side sat Gene Siskel, who played the snooty, white collar, classy, opinionated critic. On the other side sat Roger Ebert, who played the everyman. He was maybe a little more blue collar, but appreciated film from more of the “regular joe” perspective.

Both men knew movies. Once they did a show debating whether Woody Allen or Mel Brooks were funnier. You can guess which critic took up which case. Each had an angle that was special, but if there was a bad movie out there, both knew it. If there was a great movie out there, both knew it. The biggest arguments were about the movies “in the middle”. Listening to the two men debate was fun.

Through the 80’s and 90’s, the show went commercial and elements changed. Occasionally the two men were asked to do prime time network specials. They were frequent guests of Johnny Carson and David Letterman. Both were excellent spokespeople for the city of Chicago.

Then we lost Gene Siskel. He seemed too young at the time and he is sadly missed.

Roger Ebert seemed to transform through the years. He became less blue collar and more like a college professor. Each year he hosts a film festival weekend in his hometown Champaign, Illinois. The ninth annual event began last night. He often has big names appear on stage with him to discuss their work and film in general.

Ebert has been fighting cancer in recent years. Last night in Champaign, he made a public return after a long absence. There were no speeches and there won’t be for awhile. Still it is good to see him up and around and able to appear before a crowd.

Roger Ebert has become a part of the family through the years. Most of Illinois, if not the world, hopes he can get past this and continue to teach us about great film for years to come.

Kurt Vonnegut

The master has slipped away.

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Kurt Vonnegut was an exceptional novelist. He had a view of life that has gone missing in much of today’s modern literature. To say he wrote science fiction is to say that Ernest Hemmingway was a reporter. Vonnegut wrote about life.

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He appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart within the past year. Stewart was great with what was obviously an older, slightly befuddled man. He was not the great wit and intellectual that we will remember, but he did have his moments. Stewart made him look good.

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Recently Mr. Vonnegut took a fall. The reports are that his death was due to the injuries. Maybe that is befitting of a man whose characters rarely just passed on quietly.

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Vonnegut has been welcome on my bookshelf since I discovered “Slapstick” in the mid-seventies. He retired from writing only to publish twice more. It is possible we may hear about one more unfinished manuscript. Somehow I hope so.

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Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut for Kilgore Trout and your messages of the painfulness and pointlessness of war. Thank you for introducing us to twisted people and their twisted lives and reminding us that we are a little twisted ourselves.

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God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut. May you rest in the peace you sought.

The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd

Imagine for a moment an older scientist with a freakishly small head. Give him a fairly normal sidekick and a walking computer companion. Are you with me so far?

Now consider that this scientist is the most intelligent person on the planet. He has designed, not one but two, “Time and Space Travel Devices”. Now one would be enough, but just like in the recent movie “Meet the Robinsons”, a second needed to be built in order for one to be stolen by an evil mastermind.

There you have the basic plot behind “The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd”. Grant Baciocco and Doug Price have brought back the imagination of radio that had faded years ago. The program is available by podcast at their website found off to the left, and at I-Tunes.

The program has been around now through five seasons. The most recent episodes are available at no cost. Otherwise, you can download the previous episodes for $0.99 at I-Tunes.

The program is reminiscent of “Beany and Cecil” and “Bullwinkle and Rocky” of years past. The writing is crisp and the voices are engaging. Even though the program is silly, you are pulled in and want more.

The program is billed as “family friendly” and there is no mistake about that. There is very little of the bathroom humor that I deplore. The humor is found within the characters and the situations that present themselves.

Without spoiling anything, the two leads, Dr. Floyd and Dr. Grant, are chasing Dr. Steve throughout time. Dr. Steve wants to steal historical artifacts to sell in our time on e-bay. Dr. Floyd and Dr. Grant are doing what they can to avoid Dr. Steve causing havoc with history.

Along the way, they run into historical figures including Galileo, George Washington, Annie Oakley, etc. Just as Boris and Natasha were constantly foiled, so are Dr. Steve and his sidekick Fidgert.

The images conjured by Baciocco and Price and wonderful and they move at a swift pace. Each episode runs six to eight minutes so you do not get bored. Schoolteachers have begun to include Dr. Floyd in their curriculum to get students interested in history. I would believe that high school English teachers would include the program to give students an example of creative writing.

The program is winning awards throughout the podcasting world, including the Parsec award in 2006 and the Podcast Peer award two years running. It has attracted the attention of many people. Celebrities have begun lending their voices to the show, including the great and wonderful June Foray, Emmy award winner Jeffery Tambor, and Saturday Night Live veteran Don Novello.

If you have not heard of “The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd”, now is your chance to get acquainted. Click on the link and download one or two. Beware! If you are not immediately hooked, you may be accused of not having a sense of humor!

Thank you for reading. We’ll talk again soon.

Cassette Tape Recorders

Over the past year, I have been writing more. Not just by creating these blogs, but writing for a local newspaper, writing a newsletter for my workplace and helping to write the history of my church.

Now that a year has passed, I am considering dropping some projects. The history writing is nearly done. Because of some political changes at the local newspaper, I am considering dropping my assignment there. I want to try my hand at longer form articles featuring interviews with people who have stories to tell.

In order to be effective as an interviewer, I decided I wanted a new cassette tape recorder. Just a small handheld model with those little cassettes was all I was looking to find. It would be something I could sit on a table and record my conversations, or something I could take to a meeting if necessary.

One of the best Christmas’ I remember growing up was the year our family got our first cassette recorder. My brother, sister and I used it constantly. We recorded music. We recorded our voices. I recorded the television (this was before VCRs). It was a wonderful device.

So far, I have been unable to find a tape recorder at any price. I found cassette tape player at Radio Shack for twenty dollars, but it does not record. I can find MP-3 players that have recording features that cost seventy or eighty dollars. It did not appear that anyone makes cassette tape recorders anymore.

You are right; I can probably find a thousand such recorders on eBay. I have nothing against eBay, but I would rather find one at Target or Circuit City. Even looking online, there are explanations at Wikipedia as to what a cassette tape recorder is, but not very many places, outside eBay, sell them.

There is a website that has audio recording devices they are marketing as “spy devices”. I am not going to spy on anyone. Arrgh.

Finally, I went to Amazon. I like Amazon better than eBay. I would still like to see one at a store location rather than purchasing one on-line, but I was happy to find a selection.

There they have players with radios attached; walking devices that only play, boom boxes, dual cassette players and recorders, and so on. Some devices have handheld remotes! Some are new and some are used. Some are made by big names manufacturers such as Sony and Panasonic. Others are made by companies I have never heard of and am afraid to mention here for fear they are a disreputable company and I will them credibility by accident.

The next question is how to buy cassettes to use. The only one I have found is $23.30 new and $19.97 used. Why would I buy a used cassette? Why would I save three dollars to buy a used cassette?

The bottom line is that I now understand that cassette tape recording devices are not a thing of the past. They still exist, but are no longer marketed to the mainstream. They are tucked away online.

Today, computers and gaming devices fill that same role for young people, but I will always remember the first cassette player. The search for a new one will continue.

Thank you for reading. We will talk again soon.