- Jeff & Brad,
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- I'm sending this message to both Jeff and Brad since
I believe it will be of special interest to you both as well as to the
listeners.
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- Recently I was listening to one of your Friday Jeff and
Brad programs from the archive and found myself quite entertained and intrigued
with your discussion and experiences with the old time LINOTYPE newspaper
printing machines. Jeff had seen one of the monstrous mechanisms in a museum
and christened it, "the Wulitzer from hell!" Brad related his
personal involvement with this incredible, antique mechanical contraption
in the early days of his career.
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- This past July 4th, I happened to be watching the SciFi
channel's Twilight Zone Marathon late at night and to my shocked amazement
I hear Burgess Meredith declare that he's an expert linotype operator!
The episode is titled, "Printer's Devil" and in Marc Zicree's
book, "The Twilight Zone Companion" he says that they actually
acquired a real linotype machine from a printing house for the episode.
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- You must realize that I have seen every Twilight Zone
episode ten times over since I was a kid but it had never occurred to me
what this huge mechanical marvel actually was had I not heard the two of
you reminiscing about it. Brad remarked that he actually dreams about his
days involving the linotype often. I'm sure other listeners would love
to see this thing in actual operation. There are plenty of wonderfully
magical B&W shots of it chugging away with belts, pulleys, gears,
levers and a host of indescribable widgets whirling around in a coordinated,
clanking mechanical concert. You see Meredith typing news stories frantically
as the metal type lines drop and slide into a mounted tray.
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- Meredith's crooked cigar smoking character actually turns
out to be the devil intent on gaining the soul of the newspaper owner.
He modifies the linotype machine so that anything typed on it comes to
pass. Meredith plays the most colorful devil character I've ever seen!
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- When my wife Susan and I got home I wanted to show her
the episode which I have on DVD so she could see this mechanical monster.
Now get this! I'm watching the scene where the devil and the editor are
in the office, and the devil slowly closes all the window blinds while
continually huffing and puffing on his crooked cigar and then proceeds
to use a unique psychological approach to capture the soul of the newspaper
editor's soul. A weird idea suddenly flashes through my mind. I think to
myself, I'll bet if I slow this scene down and watch it frame by frame
I may see a devil face in the puffs of smoke from the crooked cigar which
is prominently featured throughout the episode. This particular scene is
when the devil (Meredith) is at his fiendish best. Sure enough, when we
went back and stop framed that scene when the devil baits his soul trap,
a DEMONIC DEVIL FACE did develop and appear out of the smoke clouds!! A
trick of light and shadow, or something else.....?? We both clearly saw
it so it wasn't just my perception.
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- I think it may have been you Brad that said you thought
that these appearances of faces and images in fire and smoke may not all
be just coincidental light and shadow effects. There may be more to some
of them.
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- Feel free to share this with the listeners if you wish
as I'm sure many would love to see the linotype machine which is such an
important part of our history as well as possibly try the above smoke experiment.
I am going to try to capture the image on the computer. If I can, I'll
send you a jpg if you wish.
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- By the way Brad, recently you mentioned that you and
Sherry have been experiencing a weird phenomena yourselves. It kind of
got skipped over and left me wanting for more information since this is
happening to you right now. You called it by a Scandinavian word "vardoger"
(sp). Sounds of arrival before the actual person arrives! Could you go
into that further? Is there a common term for this phenomena. I tried researching
it on the net with no luck. Very interested!
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- Great shows. Please keep them coming. I certainly appreciate
all the tremendous work you both do.
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- Thankfully,
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- Phil Ricci
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- Here's the original one we saw in the upper left corner
looking a lot like the 1st one! Horns long chin inverted widow's peak
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- Here is a better view of the devil face just above his
cigar. Weirdly enough It looks very similar to the first image we saw which
I will try to send also.
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- Once you make out the face it will hit you like a ton
of bricks. There are 2 horns on the head a widow's peak and what looks
like hair on the sided of the skull like face a long chin and a trident-like
beard.
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