war of the worlds. ooh. im scared.

it was 10pm two weeks ago at an internet shop in laon laan. i was in front of the monitor, my chin was resting on the palm of my right hand, headphones were stuck to my ears, and i was smiling. i'm sure it's not because of someone i'm talking with over yahoo! messenger. moreover, not because of the boys celebrating dota victory late at night. (though they sure hell are funny! don't they have classes? they're still in uniform!) anyway, it was because of some old audio clip i was listening to over the net. at first, i thought it was nonsense. i mean, COME ON! aliens? get real, baby! they had all these effects on air: panic, panic and panic. i was getting pissed by their, should i say, innocence(?). all the while, i thought it was for real. mind you, i was really raising my eyebrows! i thought it was an authentic-super-panic-aliens-are-here-to-take-over-our-planet-Earth kind of radio broadcast. but, no. it was a radio play (props to Google for this!). if i hadn't searched for a background of the clip about four days later, i would've proved myself correct that it was the 30's men being gullible again. and so i have also found a script of the program. i took a second round on the mp3 file. no more brow-raising this time! and it's now that i didn't have the last laugh. here are my critics: on events presented, it was timely. very. since this was played on the 30th of october in the year 1938, eve of halloween, people were, i bet, vulnerable to the idea of celestial beings (especially those that come in big steel egg-shaped whatevers). sure, you can let aliens mingle with draculas and headless dead. how easter bunny-like cant they get? *smiles sarcastically* there was even a line in the radio play that said, “this could be the last broadcast on radio…we’ll be here ‘til the end.” save me from the drama, please! also, consider that this was the time when people were warned of the outbreak of the second world war. so yeah, save them from the drama! according to a newspaper article, a week after the broadcast, people in new jersey (setting of the play) did actually go out of their houses. some were still in their pj’s even considering that this was aired at 8pm. i bet actors of the radio play (orson welles and the mercury theater) had fun while doing this but i also bet they felt bad after putting on much more worry to families in homes now that everyone’s under the scare of world war ii. on presentation of events, it wasn’t very different from how they would usually do broadcasts, especially in emergency situations. they did have live music from orchestras and those breaking news (think: “this just in…”), which was an unobvious plus for the scare factor! according to a website i checked (sorry, i forgot the exact address), writers of the program, who adopted “war of the worlds” by h. g. wells written 40 years prior to the radio play, intended their script to be like an actual broadcast! so duh, it was scary (at that time) and ridiculous (now). but sadly, this broadcast, that website also stated, diminished the public’s trust for radio since they were—hmm—fooled? on the presenters of the events, the characters are fit for the play: a field broadcaster who dies, an on-studio broadcaster who also dies, a professor who gets lost and is suddenly found after what they say ten minutes or so but is actually just about two minutss, an emcee who does not panic much and a crowd that goes ballistic inaudibly. this might hold sarcasm but i did appreciate the role of each. they were “really there.” i mean, how they presented the script and acted out their parts with matching thugs and oh-i’m-going-to-die-but-i’ll-fight-for the broadcast. you can say it was surreal (taking our generations context) but it WAS good. all good. sadly, just good. critically, there you go. and more… little did i know that music then was played live and it was played by an orchestra. very different from now, music is played straight from computers and no matter how daunting situations can get, they’d still play the tango song. i didn’t know they actually visited guests for the show, not invite them over to the studio. well, maybe they did, but not for this one. plus, i didn’t know radio plays dated back to the 1930’s. listeners weren’t interacting with the announcers not like now when we could text message or call the announcers, even befriend them! but of course, back then, they didn’t have that innovation. maybe (again). i also wondered if they had fm and am radio stations. (what does fm and am mean, anyway?) all in all, if i were on of the listeners who tuned in to their broadcast, i’d probably go out in my pj’s and panic along with my neighbors. this is the eve of halloween and we’re at the brink of world war ii! now, you’re telling me that aliens are thinking of having a forever sleepover? no way, jose! yet again, it’s just a radio broadcast. no, i’m sorry. IT IS THE RADIO BROADCAST that proved the worth of the radio industry for emergence with its created illusions aided with music, ideas that are life-inspired and merely the purpose for mass communications.