UAVH H.L. Mencken, Scopes Trial – Tennessee in the Frying Pan (11 of 13)

Tennessee in the Frying Pan

Intro. song: Great White Way Orchestra “Yes! We Have No Bananas”
Outro song: Oliver Naylor’s Orchestra “Roaring Twenties”

Notes:

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UAVH H.L. Mencken, Scopes Trial – Genesis Triumphant (10 of 13)

Battle Now Over, Mencken Sees; Genesis Triumphant and Ready for New Jousts

Intro. song: “The John Scopes Trial”
Outro song: Vernon Dalhart “The Prisoner’s Song”

Notes: Someone just wrote me the following interesting note…

Have you read the book Panzram: A Journal of Murder? I just got done reading it and thought you might find one of my notes interesting which has to do with Mencken…

*Henry Lesser (Jewish prison guard) sent panzram’s written material to H. L. Mencken who wrote him a letter in return saying “This is one of the most amazing documents I have ever read.”

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8578795-panzram

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UAVH H.L. Mencken, Scopes Trial – Malone the Victor (9 of 13)

Malone the Victor, Even Though Court Sides with Opponents, Says Mencken

Intro. song: Bernard Ette “Yes! We Have No Bananas”
Outro song:

Notes: “I realize what life must have been in Judea 1925 years ago. No wonder the Romans finally bumped off the son of Joseph. After an hour on the main street, listening to the bawling, I feel like loading a cannon with the rejecta of the adjacent hogs (Sus scrofa) and letting fly. The thing is genuinely fabulous.
I have stored up enough material to last me 20 years.”
-From a letter my HLM regarding the Scopes Trail

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UAVH H.L. Mencken, Scopes Trial – Darrow’s Eloquent Appeal (6 of 13)

Darrow’s Eloquent Appeal Wasted on Ears That Heed Only Bryan, Says Mencken

Intro. song: Paul Godwin “Yes! We Have No Bananas”
Outro song: Art Landry “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue”

Notes: No notes that I can think of at the moment. Help spread the word about these podcasts, will ya?

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UAVH H.L. Mencken, Scopes Trial – Souls Need Reconversion Nightly (5 of 13)

Yearning Mountaineers’ Souls Need Reconversion Nightly, Mencken Finds

Intro. song: The Pied Pipers “Yes! We Have No Bananas”
Outro song: Chick Straun “Don’t Bring Lulu!”

Notes: I’m least satisfied with the recording of the Mencken piece in this episode. I’d recorded it entirely 3 separate times and the 3rd was shortly before I posted it (the first episode to not be posted right after midnight the day of). I had to record it hastily because I’d blown out the levels on all the prior recordings, but this one suffers from plosive problems (the mic picking up the breath of air when you make “p” sounds, etc.) and various “mouth noises”. Because this is one of my favorite reports, I may rerecord it at a later date and update the file, but this’ll have to do for now.

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UAVH H.L. Mencken, Scopes Trial – Trial As Religious Orgy (4 of 13)

Mencken Likens Trial to a Religious Orgy, with Defendant a Beelzebub

Intro. song: “Can’t Make a Monkey Out of Me”
Outro song: Sippie Wallace “Devil Dance Blues”

Notes: In the intro to the Mencken piece, the joke is that the book became a huge success, and the film is completely lost. Nerdy, yes, but the jokes just go downhill from here.

The two songs featured in this episode were supposed to be on the next one, but in all my arranging it seems I’ve switched them around. Not that you’d know that without me mentioning it here.

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UAVH H.L. Mencken, Scopes Trial – Impossibility of Obtaining Fair Jury (3 of 13)

Impossibility of Obtaining Fair Jury Insures Scopes’ Conviction, Says Mencken

Intro. song: Sam Lanin “Yes! We Have No Bananas”
Outro song: Eddie Cantor “If You Knew Suzie”

Notes: Starting with this episode, I have “jokes” about corrections for the local newspaper. All of them are pulled from the paperback “Press Boners”, edited by Earle Temple. It was printed in 1967, a paperback original from Pocket Books.

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UAVH H.L. Mencken, Scopes Trial – Sickening Doubts About Publicity (2 of 13)

Mencken Finds Daytonians Full of Sickening Doubts About Value of Publicity

Intro. song: Green Bros. Novelty Orchestra “Yes! We Have No Bananas”
Outro song: Lee Morse “Yes, Sir! That’s My Baby!”

Notes: Thanks to AmSci, ChristianChildAbuse, Diabologue and Cosmodromium and everyone on facebook who “shared” the show link for the support. Please blog, tweet, “share” and digg these shows.

I haven’t given historical background info in the blog posts because I’m working under the assumption that visitors/listeners will at least have a basic understanding of the event. If not, or if you wanted to know more, they just recently invented a research tool called “the internet”, it’s cool, I’m on it.

I do want to make one additional note though. I just obtained the first 5 issues of H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan’s “The American Mercury” (Jan. – Mar. 1924) . In Vol.1 No. 2 there is an article debunking osteopathy, and it began with the following quote:

Despite our remarkable advance of knowledge, nonsense is ever becoming bolder and more rampant: it is pre-eminently a time of fads and crazes, and the question as to how people are to be brought to their senses grows urgent. - W. Duncan McKim

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Clocks and Owl Cars – Ben Hecht

Kevin I. Slaughter reads an excerpt from the book “A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago” by Ben Hecht.

YouTube video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0quag1z47M

Audio file attached for podcast subscribers.

UA Variety Hour – The Satanic Wedding / HR Giger

Underworld Amusements Variety Hour

2009 Halloween Special

Your host tells the real story of a relationship that begins on 6-6-06 and culminates in a Satanic Wedding that starts in Baltimore on 9-9-09, and ends in at the HR Giger Museum in Gruyère, Switzerland, featuring an interview with dark surrealist artist HR Giger!

(podcast is above, though some rss readers may not display it, please visit the original post to listen)

In the interviews aired so far, I’ve usually edited them, sometimes heavily. This was the first interview done in person, and it was recorded with a single portable recorder (Blue Microphones Mikey attached to an iPod classic), and it’s not as easy to edit as the phone interviews where the two voices are recorded separately. So, you’ll hear a minimally edited interview, warts, nervous laughter and all.

Baltimore

Switzerland

We had plans to release the first episode proper on Halloween, but the story and interview that it leads up to take up a whole hour by themselves, so we ditched the 30 minutes of other stuff to release another special!