Staying in tonight, we’re going to see Chuck Manning at the York tomorrow. Been listening to ancient radio comedies all week. Amazing how weird and conceptual and hysterically funny this stuff was, TV comedy has rarely come close, and never gotten beyond it. The mind’s eye can visualize so much more than our meager real eyes, so radio was a canvas limited only by the reaches of the imagination. This Fred Allen stuff is particularly nuts. It was hugely popular in its day, millions listened regularly. Probably more people listened to this than watch any television show today, and that in a country with a population a third of today’s. Listening now, it’s hard to believe this is from the thirties—1933, ‘34, ‘35. Radio was scarcely a decade old. I’m sitting here in a living room where nearly ninety years ago the original occupants once sat in front of a large radio listening to this very program, laughing and laughing.