Comedy

A Pelican’s Life

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

For reasons that bore me, I am one of those (un)lucky, (un)happy few whose brain does not retain jokes. Neither knock-knock groaners nor shaggy-dog tales stick in this cranium; there are not many punchlines that are still connected to the matching set-up in my thinker.

In itself, this is sort of a joke, as I have written and performed radio comedy on and off for as long as I have been an adult. A quarter of a freaking century.

Each Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. (alert: this is tonight), the Magnificent Glass Pelican half-hour is broadcast on 88.7 FM WFNP (“The Edge”) in the Rosendale-New Paltz, New York, area. The Pelican is a live half-hour radio comedy show that my friends and I have written, produced, and acted in since 1990. Lately, it has been an improvised half-hour, produced by us and scripted live on-air. We have an unwritten rule that no rules should be written.
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An Actor’s Life?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I am a self-conscious actor, yet I sometimes work at it half-heartedly. Now and again. Half-hearted and hesitant—I blush easily, which makes radio the perfect venue for the experiment (and if you write for that type of character, a blushing, stammering sort, I’m your man).
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Insert Important Words Here to Attract Attention

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Son. May I call you that? No? Complete stranger, they say ‘you must give it away to keep it,’ and while I do not know what they mean by ‘it’ or even who ‘they’ might be, I just know that they keep telling me this. Again and again and again. But what do I have to give away? Pray tell, what? My wisdom, that’s what. My easy-won wisdom. And my encouragement.

“They also tell me that life should be worn like a loose Garmin, which I do not pretend to understand. Is it loose on the dashboard? That might be dangerous. You have to keep your GPS on a mount of some kind. You should wear your life like a fully charged GPS or phone—don’t want to get too hung up on terms and technology, because it is the philosophy I am getting at here that is important—wear your life like a portable device that you keep charged up and then hide in the glove compartment when you leave your car in a public parking lot. So don’t wear it at all. Carry your life like an electronic device that requires a two-year contract for you to use it, one that you would consider purchasing a protection plan for, but you ultimately do not, and you chance it.
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