Day Of The Zombiez

This blog has two great pieces of news today.

The first piece of news is about today's Self Help Radio, which will air from 4:30 to 6:00pm CST on 91.7 fm KOOP Austin, also on the web live at koop.org. (I'll archive it this weekend so you can listen, if you want, over the Halloween week.)

1) The show is about zombies. I have more songs about the living dead today than you have brains for zombies to eat. Word.

2) I have very special guests today. They are none other than the illustrious Kim & Philip from the King Philip XII & Kim-rific Hour on KVRX Tuesdays. I am a fan of their show, & they've promised to bring lots of information about zombies up to the show today & make me feel kinda dumb.

The second piece of news is something someone asked me to do a while ago & I finally got around to doing it, & I hope to do it fairly regularly (monthly to start), which is this: make a mix that is not as radio-oriented as Self Help Radio - a CD-length series of songs that sound good & taste swell on your ear buds.

Introducing: Self Help Radio EXTRA!.

It's a mix of music I've been digging lately, a lot of it new, all of it awesome. It's saved as a single mp3 so you can just listen to it as a mix - without any of the airbreaks, radio spots, or other interruptions that makes radio the truly fucking annoying medium it is. Wait. I shouldn't say such things!

Please have a taste of Self Help Radio EXTRA!, & look at the lengths I'll go to get some friends off my back.

& please listen to Self Help Radio today! It'll scare the week out of you, just in time for the Halloween weekend!

Wash This Space

I regret that I never learned how to scratch. It looks & sounds like a lot of fun. I have pretty big hands, though, & I'm old, old, old, &, as they always taught us, scratchin' is a young man's game.

God, I was such a snob when I first heard scratching. I'm actually still somewhat snobby - although I call it being OPINIONATED - but not uppity - & one way I am still snobby is I can be very dismissive of things because of context. I totally think that's valid, by the way - there's time enough to prove me wrong if you give a shit what I think, baby.

But I was like thirteen when I first heard that Grandmaster Flash song & it pains to remember my sniffly, "That's not music!" I probably also said "Hrrumph!" just like that, because I had read it in a Richie Rich comic & thought people actually said "Harrumph!" when they were indignant. What a maroon. Why didn't I get beat up more - or at all?

Anyway, this has nothing to do with what I want to tell you, but I'll tell you tomorrow. I have TWO things to tell you tomorrow. But that's tomorrow. Today - well, I'll dream that I learned how to scratch.

Whither Zombies?

The zombies will be here any minute. I have only a little time to write. To anyone out there who gets this message - Austin Texas is overrun by zombies!! & it's not even South By Southwest!

This is how we heard that it happened: It seems that, a week ago, at one of those "humorous" driver's ed classes they convince you to take to not have to pay more insurance, a group of fundamentalist evangelical born-again college Republicans & a slightly terrified group of bored hypersensitive acne-scarred virgin physicists & biology majors from several Austin universities - all of whom just happened to be there - got into a conversation about "creating life" & "the Endtimes" (a witness there said that it was like watching two groups of people who spoke different languages talking & acting like they understood one another). They apparently really hit it off.

Armed only with ideas, a Bible (curiously, that was out of ideas), & the keys to a chemistry lab, the science nerds first cooked up some meth, then, with the born-agains praying & egging them on, they apparently discovered a way to make inanimate objects come back to life. When the meth lab exploded (as meth labs must inevitably do), the bodies were mixed with the formula, & soon there were zombies rushing throughout the entire campus.

This unholy group had soon consumed most of the city below the river (which, you know, the city could totally live with), but a blockade at the bridges over Ladybird Lake failed when the zombies found a way to use the little paddleboats to cross. Also, due to a recent reenactment of the Charles Whitman shootings, & the beginning of Hunting Season, the city was experiencing a shotgun shortage.

I am currently locked in my offices, but there are zombies at the door. I've managed to meet a beautiful woman & I was thinking that, with the end being so near & all, she might be interested in some kind of relationship, but it turns out she's more attracted to my girlfriend. Just my luck. I have however managed to build a homemade taser. I am totally ready to make a run for it.

Please do NOT come to Austin unless you can help. Right now, the plan is to lead them up I-35 & get them to Georgetown where we hope they'll be meet the people who live them &, noticing all they have in common, will blend in with the population & settle down to enjoy the strip malls & chain restaurants & the endless waiting in cars in between buying stuff & sleep.

Rats! They've broken down the doors! Got to go!

Preface To Zombies: Are We Dead Yet?

I was asked by the woman with whom I live (is she a girlfriend? is she a partner? why would we give a shit about such labels?) while previewing songs for my show this week, which will be about zombies, why the songs keep mentioned shopping malls in relation to zombies. All I could say is that, in the zombie movies I've seen, the people being chased by zombies end up a lot in shopping malls. I don't know why that is. Except that it might be handy - food & weapon-wise - to be in a shopping mall when one is being chased by zombies.

Also, there is the ironic note that most shoppers in a mall are zombie-like - as close to being zombies while still alive as possible - so zombies are quite at home in a mall because it's made for zombie-ish beings.

I feel I should also point out that I've never been involved in a zombie walk. Not because I didn't want to, but because I've never been asked. But maybe I shouldn't wait to be asked - I should just get involved.

I have nothing really to say in this preface except I haven't been in a mall in probably a decade. Mostly I miss the nachos. & the bored & cute goth girls at the Body Shop. Where are their zombies, like Prince Harmings, coming to take them away?

Why do a show about zombies? Ask me tomorrow.

My Teeth Seem Unhappy

I had two or three comments about our dying republic, but I was instead reminded that you don't care any more - that you have in fact lost the will to want more - & also you had some interesting black & white photographs you wanted me to want you to sign - all to the tune of particularly tiresome 80's rhythm & blues - the type with lots of plunked bass sounds created by synthesizers made almost entirely out of cheese - so I decided instead to eschew the regular rant in famous of something that holds as much water as a healthy kidney: self-promotion.

Is it promotion if I just tell you what it is that I do regularly? Does it offend you if you knew I'd do it anyway?

Here it is: I do this show, about which this blog is loosely based, & every week I take this show, about which this blog is tightly biased, & archive it on a website, which was created for that purpose. That website is called selfhelpradio.net & there you can find last week's show (the theme of which was "Go!" & during which I became slightly intoxicated thanks to a strange mis-use of calomine lotion) there. It should cheer you up, or, if you're sufficiently cheered up, it should depress the hell out of you.

Don't believe me? Then go listen. I'll be here when you return with your tail between your legs.