Fables being what they are - sleepy, mistrustful, metrosexual - it should come as no surprise to the modern consumer that the Great American Cheese Belt is undergoing a fashionable makeover in order to compete with the cooler (eg, chain-smoking) Overseas Cheese Markets. This documentary will show you how.
"Now THAT's what I call a gangbang!" was the way President Bush (no offense) described it to his "fuckwit pals" in the agricultural community last Thursday while touring a midwestern air pollution factory which, sources close to this reporter - but frankly closer to my wife, with whom they went to school - have confirmed, is the number one producer of air muck & filthy in all the kingdom. The President, who later consumed an entire dwarf while laughing heartily at an entire season of "30 Rock" shown simultaneously on 32 plasma TVs, praised American ingeniousness & also, for some reason, Michael Caine.
Michael Caine could not be reached for commitment.
But if you like people whose voices trail off as they get that look in their eyes that suggest unspeakable dread, you'll absolutely adore the 2008 Swarm Chili Deployment. The wonders of the space age make a slight return with this hip & ghetto fabulous way to feed everyone who believes in Jesus & who can't afford a too, too Hollywoodish high colonic. Spokespeople for the groove have been dispatched to every suburban white flight checkpoint & will report back weather permitting.
We know you've been sharing your holiday snapshots with a community of grim rueful failure, but did you know you can caption those same photos in the privacy of your own head? No more will antagonistic family members wonder what national freak of nature you're standing in front of as they count your chins & wet themselves online. A spellcheck is placed within a mouse click, but only for the lucky winners (chosen nightly) who can correct identify a local prostitute, City Council member or a relative from a series of Google Cloud Photos.
Which way, you may well ask, is the Self Help Radio way? The experts will be releasing the highly anticipated sequel to their 2005 report, What Says Hunh?, which mentions the show obliquely if at all. After the fulmination & the letters of apology to all the available media outlets, as well as the video game/pornographic novel, the results may be reviewed THIS FRIDAY & EVERY AVAILABLE FRIDAY on Self Help Radio from 4:30 to 6:00pm. Online is listened live. There is furthermore no excuse.
Next week: why do you look so sad? I don't think that's appropriate.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Leave My Husband Alone!/Waiting For The Coffee To Download
What has he ever done to you? In strange regalia, the modern radio listener approaches, all wires & field mice, to start the busiest of loafsome days. He's not a strong man - he's a tender man, a man of love, a lover not a fighter. Like tender strips of moss-flavored skin he or she makes a democracy with his her choice of music slash infotainment. I don't know why you can't just leave him alone. Like hands held for prayer or "tell it to the judge" a morning of warm woe begins for this listener, this listener who has chosen to give it all up for embarrassing, homocidal or syruply mediocre. I mean, what has he ever done to you?
Why is this? Does it make you feel like a big person to pick on someone who can't defend himself? Perhaps the next-door neighbors put flyers up for their most recent suicide pact. Do you think it'll make me want you? There's a chance a promotion at work just netted free cigarettes or free cigarette burns. I could never love someone like you. It's true, local music never was what it used to be, but the local dailies & weeklies, monthlys & yearlys are still trying to convince everyone there's something to write & read about. I want someone like him - someone who may get the shit kicked out of him by cads & bullies like you, but someone who has a heart & a brain & not what you have instead - two fists! It's important to remember the names of the roadies & bouncers, because they're the ones who'll get you drugs & backstage dawdling. Just stop it! If you doze during the live DJ set, you might get to see the club owner beat up his "partner." You'll kill him! If not, well - thank god your work is next to the plasma center. You asshole he's not fighting back!
As a child, you wanted to play "junkie & dealer," & now, as an adult, you want to play "child." So you'll hit me too? Returning phone calls may be easier than ever, especially since phones are ubiquitous as assholes with phones, but you are being frisked at the convenience store for weapons & viruses, & all you really wanted was small talk & perhaps advice on how to keep the flintlock on your musket clean. What a strong, strong man you are, picking on two people weaker than you, people who obviously DO NOT want to fight you. While you're booking the mariachi band for your own funeral, it hits you: like an embarrassing drunken Facebook photograph, you've been automatically saved & backed-up. You know the police call this assault.
Which doesn't explain your radio choices, even if it informs them. Stop it stop it stop it stop it! You'll need to see if there's a greeting card with a stranger's name in the candy aisle so you can begin sucking up again. You're killing him! You'll feel only slightly bitter, especially since you can't hear anything anyone says, & most of us are no better off than you. God damn it I said stop it why can't you stop it! But shouldn't we feel sad about it all? Oh god oh god oh god look at all this blood! Isn't there something we can at least say we'll do to make a change? Leave me alone leave me alone! Or is it really enough - the emptiness, the repetition, the callous over your heart, the radio you "listen" to? Oh my god someone help me! I believe you. Someone help me! I hope you believe you.
Why is this? Does it make you feel like a big person to pick on someone who can't defend himself? Perhaps the next-door neighbors put flyers up for their most recent suicide pact. Do you think it'll make me want you? There's a chance a promotion at work just netted free cigarettes or free cigarette burns. I could never love someone like you. It's true, local music never was what it used to be, but the local dailies & weeklies, monthlys & yearlys are still trying to convince everyone there's something to write & read about. I want someone like him - someone who may get the shit kicked out of him by cads & bullies like you, but someone who has a heart & a brain & not what you have instead - two fists! It's important to remember the names of the roadies & bouncers, because they're the ones who'll get you drugs & backstage dawdling. Just stop it! If you doze during the live DJ set, you might get to see the club owner beat up his "partner." You'll kill him! If not, well - thank god your work is next to the plasma center. You asshole he's not fighting back!
As a child, you wanted to play "junkie & dealer," & now, as an adult, you want to play "child." So you'll hit me too? Returning phone calls may be easier than ever, especially since phones are ubiquitous as assholes with phones, but you are being frisked at the convenience store for weapons & viruses, & all you really wanted was small talk & perhaps advice on how to keep the flintlock on your musket clean. What a strong, strong man you are, picking on two people weaker than you, people who obviously DO NOT want to fight you. While you're booking the mariachi band for your own funeral, it hits you: like an embarrassing drunken Facebook photograph, you've been automatically saved & backed-up. You know the police call this assault.
Which doesn't explain your radio choices, even if it informs them. Stop it stop it stop it stop it! You'll need to see if there's a greeting card with a stranger's name in the candy aisle so you can begin sucking up again. You're killing him! You'll feel only slightly bitter, especially since you can't hear anything anyone says, & most of us are no better off than you. God damn it I said stop it why can't you stop it! But shouldn't we feel sad about it all? Oh god oh god oh god look at all this blood! Isn't there something we can at least say we'll do to make a change? Leave me alone leave me alone! Or is it really enough - the emptiness, the repetition, the callous over your heart, the radio you "listen" to? Oh my god someone help me! I believe you. Someone help me! I hope you believe you.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Whither Traffic?
I take a bus. Or should I say, the bus takes me? I don't drive to work. I drive only when driving is the only way to get somewhere. Like a liquor store at 8:50pm. Or a latenight rockshow. I love to drive don't get me wrong. I just don't drive. So what do I know about traffic?
I have not trafficked drugs. I have trafficked with demons, though they were minor demons (meaning under the age of 2100 years) & they wanted drugs from me, so they went away empty-horned. My bus, which is neither really my bus nor even the same bus daily (I check the numbers), is often stuck in traffic, & the bus driver will swear like a demon. Also, there's this one driver who has horns, or she wears her hair weirdly, which could be the same. Or different.
About a year ago, I did a show about driving. Two years ago I did a show about the effects of saltpeter on the central nervous system. That show was seized by Homeland Security. I miss that show. I hear it entertains no one at Guantanamo Bay. Three years ago, I tried to do a show about steering wheels, but it revolted against me & it became a show about steering committees, & I refused to air it, instead rerunning a show I did about the great Cheese Strike during the war on sailing. That one won a Tony. Sorry, scratch that. It won a Tony The Tiger Award. Because it was grrrrrrrrrrrreat!
I was talking about my favorite bus, whose name (not coincidentally) is Tony, & how one day we were stuck in traffic, & the underpaid bus driver dude was having an acid flashback, & three giggly girls in the back were humming Shangri-Las songs out of tune, & out of order, & Tony said, "Traffic sucks!" & I was saying to myself, as I always do when a bus talks to me, "Thisisn'treal thisisn'treal thiscan'tbereal this-is-not-real." But then Tony said, "You should do a show about traffic."
Suddenly, I realized that life was a dream & the only way to be free of suffering was by following the Eightfold Path. Then I looked down, saw that I hadn't yet finished the sudoko puzzle du jour, & the acid flashback bus driver drove straight over an old VW bug to make the exit ramp. That was then, this is this coming Friday.
I have not trafficked drugs. I have trafficked with demons, though they were minor demons (meaning under the age of 2100 years) & they wanted drugs from me, so they went away empty-horned. My bus, which is neither really my bus nor even the same bus daily (I check the numbers), is often stuck in traffic, & the bus driver will swear like a demon. Also, there's this one driver who has horns, or she wears her hair weirdly, which could be the same. Or different.
About a year ago, I did a show about driving. Two years ago I did a show about the effects of saltpeter on the central nervous system. That show was seized by Homeland Security. I miss that show. I hear it entertains no one at Guantanamo Bay. Three years ago, I tried to do a show about steering wheels, but it revolted against me & it became a show about steering committees, & I refused to air it, instead rerunning a show I did about the great Cheese Strike during the war on sailing. That one won a Tony. Sorry, scratch that. It won a Tony The Tiger Award. Because it was grrrrrrrrrrrreat!
I was talking about my favorite bus, whose name (not coincidentally) is Tony, & how one day we were stuck in traffic, & the underpaid bus driver dude was having an acid flashback, & three giggly girls in the back were humming Shangri-Las songs out of tune, & out of order, & Tony said, "Traffic sucks!" & I was saying to myself, as I always do when a bus talks to me, "Thisisn'treal thisisn'treal thiscan'tbereal this-is-not-real." But then Tony said, "You should do a show about traffic."
Suddenly, I realized that life was a dream & the only way to be free of suffering was by following the Eightfold Path. Then I looked down, saw that I hadn't yet finished the sudoko puzzle du jour, & the acid flashback bus driver drove straight over an old VW bug to make the exit ramp. That was then, this is this coming Friday.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Preface To Traffic: Steve Winwood Is My Summer Romance
Self Help Radio, the most breakfast cereally of all radio shows, has its good themes & its bad themes. A show I once did about sorghum may have netted me tremendous praise from the National Sweet Sorghum Producers & Processors Association, not to mention a couple of scary people who drink sorghum beer, but since it only featured one song, the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Sorghum" (which isn't even a real song), & eighty-six minutes of me trying desperately to talk about sorghum, well, that show is widely considered the nadir of a radio program built on extremely low expectations. By contrast, the "free money" theme was well received, & only cost me four thousand dollars.
This week, our theme will be "traffic," which may or may not be annoying if you're listening in a car on I-35 getting completely fucked up on the fumes of the semi in front of you. I frankly don't care. What I do care about is that you people stop writing me & asking me if I will feature any factoids about Steve Winwood. No! No I won't! & I don't care that I once received a handjob from a priest in a confessional while he was humming "Higher Love"! I'm not proud of that. I'm not even Catholic.
I will, however, slake the thirst of you Winwoodians by telling my favorite Steve Winwood in the world. I know, everyone has their favorite Steve Winwood story, like the one about him dressing up as a priest & giving unsuspecting boys handjobs in confessionals, but this is not one of your average Steve Winwood stories. This one does not feature Jimi Hendrix or Ginger Baker or Eric Clapton or Malcolm X or Stephen Fry or Bunny Wailer or Dick Cheney or Kay Parker or Marc Chagall or Giorgio Moroder or Parker Posey or Marianne Faithfull or Lou Dobbs or Richard Hatch or Pepper Anderson or Roy Clark or Steve Ditko or Audra Lindley or Richard Hilton or Bobby Trendy or Arturo Sandoval or Rodney Allen Rippy or Dave Brock or Joe Mannix or Joe Montana or Josephine Baker or Ahmed Sékou Touré or Richard Dawson or Muff Winwood or Woody Herman or Estelle Getty or Trina Robbins or Kiki-la-Doucette or Jim Corbett or Bradley Whitford or Farrah Franklin or Mary Jane Parker or Saint Anastasia the Patrician or Steve Doocy or Casper The Friendly Ghost or William Tecumseh Sherman or Los Huracanes del Norte or Alf Landon or Barry Bonds or Ali Larter or even, now that I think of it, Steve Winwood. Yes, it's the only Steve Winwood story that I can think of that doesn't actually involve Steve Winwood. There won't be a reference to one of his songs, or one of his bands, or his mental problems, or his famous letters to Penthouse Forum, or his inability to form a complete sentence since quitting cocaine in 2004. In that sense, this is truly a great Steve Winwood story.
& that story is, frankly, too painful for me to tell right now. I will also need to ask my mother how she feels about it. So. Maybe tomorrow. Now, leave me alone, you Winwoodsuckers. There'll be no Winwood on Self Help Radio this Friday. Nor will there ever be any Winwood on Self Help Radio! I mean it!
This week, our theme will be "traffic," which may or may not be annoying if you're listening in a car on I-35 getting completely fucked up on the fumes of the semi in front of you. I frankly don't care. What I do care about is that you people stop writing me & asking me if I will feature any factoids about Steve Winwood. No! No I won't! & I don't care that I once received a handjob from a priest in a confessional while he was humming "Higher Love"! I'm not proud of that. I'm not even Catholic.
I will, however, slake the thirst of you Winwoodians by telling my favorite Steve Winwood in the world. I know, everyone has their favorite Steve Winwood story, like the one about him dressing up as a priest & giving unsuspecting boys handjobs in confessionals, but this is not one of your average Steve Winwood stories. This one does not feature Jimi Hendrix or Ginger Baker or Eric Clapton or Malcolm X or Stephen Fry or Bunny Wailer or Dick Cheney or Kay Parker or Marc Chagall or Giorgio Moroder or Parker Posey or Marianne Faithfull or Lou Dobbs or Richard Hatch or Pepper Anderson or Roy Clark or Steve Ditko or Audra Lindley or Richard Hilton or Bobby Trendy or Arturo Sandoval or Rodney Allen Rippy or Dave Brock or Joe Mannix or Joe Montana or Josephine Baker or Ahmed Sékou Touré or Richard Dawson or Muff Winwood or Woody Herman or Estelle Getty or Trina Robbins or Kiki-la-Doucette or Jim Corbett or Bradley Whitford or Farrah Franklin or Mary Jane Parker or Saint Anastasia the Patrician or Steve Doocy or Casper The Friendly Ghost or William Tecumseh Sherman or Los Huracanes del Norte or Alf Landon or Barry Bonds or Ali Larter or even, now that I think of it, Steve Winwood. Yes, it's the only Steve Winwood story that I can think of that doesn't actually involve Steve Winwood. There won't be a reference to one of his songs, or one of his bands, or his mental problems, or his famous letters to Penthouse Forum, or his inability to form a complete sentence since quitting cocaine in 2004. In that sense, this is truly a great Steve Winwood story.
& that story is, frankly, too painful for me to tell right now. I will also need to ask my mother how she feels about it. So. Maybe tomorrow. Now, leave me alone, you Winwoodsuckers. There'll be no Winwood on Self Help Radio this Friday. Nor will there ever be any Winwood on Self Help Radio! I mean it!
Monday, June 11, 2007
Learn How To Have A Good Time All The Time
Guess what happens to me today? No, I'm not going to become one of the painfully deluded lefties who have volunteered to keep Hugo Chavez's nutsack clean & smooth - & for that, you know, he may try to take me off the air - nor am I going to be getting my weekly audio accu-beating during Magic ELJ's Soul Vaccination - that guy has it in for me! - no, I am visiting a medical professional & I'm getting a blotch removed from my personality.
I know, I know. You're like, "What? Isn't it your blotches that make you who you are?" Oh, I agree. But it turns out that this blotch may be pre-cantakerous. I'm just too young for that. So my metaphysician is doing a personality adjustment, & removing a small portion of my charm, simply because it was looking a little discolored & it was causing people to doubt my charisma. Imagine! They were thinking I was a painfully deluded leftie who couldn't wait to volunteer to shave & shampoo Hugo Chavez's ballsack! That blotch has got to go.
I believe it was Tim Magazine (or was it Newweek?) that reported that graphic, amusing descriptions of your fucked-up sexuality is the new sarcasm, but this blotch (I am told) sits somewhere between sweetly-faked honesty & the organ that generates a "hunh, life doesn't suck so bad right now" feeling when someone tells me they like my show. I may find these feelings lacking afterward, but I could retain as much as 90% of both. I just wish the blotch were sitting on top of my sleepiness. I'd say, cut it all out!
I hope I will be well enough tomorrow to expound upon a show about traffic, but if not, I'll double-team you on Wednesday. Just remember, I might be a little different. But at least I won't be sacrificing my intergrity & morality just because another blowhard dictator is paying lip service to some ideals I may believe. Yay!
I know, I know. You're like, "What? Isn't it your blotches that make you who you are?" Oh, I agree. But it turns out that this blotch may be pre-cantakerous. I'm just too young for that. So my metaphysician is doing a personality adjustment, & removing a small portion of my charm, simply because it was looking a little discolored & it was causing people to doubt my charisma. Imagine! They were thinking I was a painfully deluded leftie who couldn't wait to volunteer to shave & shampoo Hugo Chavez's ballsack! That blotch has got to go.
I believe it was Tim Magazine (or was it Newweek?) that reported that graphic, amusing descriptions of your fucked-up sexuality is the new sarcasm, but this blotch (I am told) sits somewhere between sweetly-faked honesty & the organ that generates a "hunh, life doesn't suck so bad right now" feeling when someone tells me they like my show. I may find these feelings lacking afterward, but I could retain as much as 90% of both. I just wish the blotch were sitting on top of my sleepiness. I'd say, cut it all out!
I hope I will be well enough tomorrow to expound upon a show about traffic, but if not, I'll double-team you on Wednesday. Just remember, I might be a little different. But at least I won't be sacrificing my intergrity & morality just because another blowhard dictator is paying lip service to some ideals I may believe. Yay!