A Quote by P. J. O'Rourke

I'm here as a radio journalist but am not even sure which part of a tape recorder takes the pictures. — © P. J. O'Rourke
I'm here as a radio journalist but am not even sure which part of a tape recorder takes the pictures.
When I was a boy, I had a grand, big tape recorder, and I made late-night radio shows with glasses of water and funny voices. I just loved radio plays.
Maybe I'll start from the initial idea, what motivated me to do that. In 1953, I had access to a tape recorder. Tape recorders were not widely available. There was no cassette tape back then. It was a Sears Roebuck tape machine. I put a microphone in the window and recorded the ambience.
I am an idealist. I often feel I would like to be an artist in an ivory tower. Yet it is imperative that I speak to people, so I must desert that ivory tower. To do this, I am a journalist - a photojournalist. But I am always torn between the attitude of the journalist, who is a recorder of facts, and the artist, who is often necessarily at odds with the facts. My principle concern is for honesty, above all honesty with myself.
In the '60s my friends were interested and we were hearing electronic music coming in on community radio from Europe, so that's where it started. And I had a tape recorder and started making things with it.
I mean, I haven't been around very long. I can't expect everyone to have seen 'The House Bunny'. Oh God. I am having such waves of internal embarrassment, which now I'm admitting on a tape recorder. This is so one of the things I should keep in my head.
I bought a tape recorder and some stuff and went to Europe for three months when I was 18. The puppeteering was only there as a hobby. I wanted to be a journalist. When I was 19, and after I had spent about a year in college, Jim Henson asked me to come out and try puppeteering for awhile.
I think there is an enormous diference between speaking and writing. One rereads what one writes. But one might read it slowly or quickly. In other words, you do not know how long you will have to spend deliberating over a sentence. ... But if I listen to a tape recorder, the listening time is determined by the speed at which the tape turns and not by my own needs.
I could have been a top notch spy. People confess the most amazing secrets to me, even when I am not fishing for those nuggets. I must look trustworthy because I sit there with a video camera or a tape recorder while the stories pour out.
I ran to get my cassette recorder and sang 'We Got the Beat' into the recorder to document it. I knew I had written something special. It took two minutes. I didn't labor on the lyrics. It's a simple song, which goes back to the '60s, when I had my ears glued to the radio for the Stones, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys.
The draft that finally goes to my editor doesn't get into her hands until I have read it out loud innumerable times - sometimes into a tape recorder - to make sure that it sounds right.
My first songs, I would just record them on this little tape recorder, and then I didn't start recording songs I really liked until my friend gave me a 4-track (recorder) and that's when my ideas really started coming together.
With my recovery programme, I have to do a daily inventory of how my day has been. I am terribly dyslexic and have attention deficit disorder, so I have to carry a tape recorder everywhere I go.
Radio dramas have disappeared. What we do have now is books on tape, which I find wonderful. I've done some of those. Otherwise, radio acting is now gone.
I taught myself how to use a multi-track tape recorder, which was the first time I recorded myself.
I wanted to be a broadcaster, sportscaster, or gameshow host from a very early age. I did my first broadcasting when I was 10 or 11 - into a tape recorder for my brother's football game, and for local events. A local radio station was experimenting with high school disc jockeys for rock and roll shifts - I applied - and got the job.
I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.
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