Life, 1928-05-24 · page 25 of 38
Life — May 24, 1928 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two distinct satirical pieces: **"The Radio" Column:** A humorous essay about KDKA, Pittsburgh's pioneering radio station. The author mocks Arctic Circle settlers who receive personal messages via broadcast, comparing it to eavesdropping on someone else's phone calls. He also satirizes a Lions Club dinner where humorist Milt Gross self-aggrandizingly listed his credentials before joking that he'd been hired merely to address envelopes—a self-deprecating deflation of his own importance. **"The More the Merrier" Comic:** A brief joke about a woman declining a date to see "Tristan and Isolde" (Wagner's opera), then being told to bring the opera along—absurdist humor mocking opera's lengthy, all-consuming nature. **Bottom Cartoon:** An underwater scene where fish Mr. Pickerei questions Mrs. Shad's activities. Mr. Bass explains she's spreading "birth control propaganda"—likely satirizing contemporary anxieties about women's reproductive rights advocacy, treating the concept as comically absurd even in a fish context.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
MB LLL) aati | ee os : 4 4) a 1f@) This Is Station KDKA KDKA in Pittsburgh was the first com- mercial broadcasting station in this country. Contradict me, if you want to, but I ‘still think I am right. And it is| one of the few stations that retain any | individuality. One of its best features is its weekly broadcast of messages to the white sctllers up in the Arctic Circle. It bi thilii it sounds terrible, but it isn’t. I don’t know | & what the men are doing up there; I don’t know why they don’t move to a better | are disgruntled | dimate. Maybe they cynics who invested in Florida real estate a tew years ago. However, I do know a lot about the family affairs of Our Frozen Friends. | know, for instance, that Gertrude sends | her love to Bill Hisk and wants him to| know that Aunt Hattie died last No- vember. And Mother and the girls tell Jack Hiffle that they miss him very much and Cousin Louise has a new baby. It’s all as much fun as listening to a tele-| phone conversation that isn’t intended for you. And it carries with it a sense of adventure for us poor stay-at-homes who kick if the heat is turned off before May 1. So if you are the type that enjoys reading the “personal” columns of news- pee I advise you to tune in on KDKA te Saturday evening. Recently KDKA broke all records by broadcasting a public dinner that wasn’t an insult to American Womanhood. The Lions Club party was a charity affair for the benefit of the blind. Unealy the only worthy thing about dinners of that sort is the cause. Mr. Milt Gross was a speaker of the evening, and now Mr. Gross may step Tre More tHe Merrier He: Come on up to our house tonight. Sue: I can't—I'm going to see “Tristan and Isolde.” “Well, bring ‘em along!” alongside Will Rogers as a man that ac- tually can be funny before the micro- phone. The toastmaster introduced Mr. Gross as “humorist, columnist, magazine writer, newspaper man, wit, etc.” Where- upon Mr. Gross jumped to his feet with, “I am also a notary public.” And then he went on to boast that he had been invited to Atlantic City to address six thousand envelopes. People who retell jokes from banquets are bores, aren’t they? I thought so. Well, let’s change the subject and talk about the weather. The weather reports from KDKA are the best in the Eastern am. district. For one thing, they are discour- agingly accurate. Well, for those who play golf or garden, they are twice as im- portant as the Stock Exchange quota- tions. Weather reports may mean noth- ing three hundred and sixty-four days out of the year, but when you want them, you want them something terrible. . . ° Now that I am in a mellow mood when anything pleases me, let’s pass on to WOR or, rather, to the whole Columbia chain of stations. These stations, quite naturally, are concerned with selling phonograph rec- —<t toa De ae A DY, Mr. PicxereL: What's the big idea? Mr. Bass: Oh, that’s Mrs. Shad, spreading Birth Control propaganda, comicbooks.com