Friday, February 13, 2009

A Valentine's Geegaw

Because I love you, please visit the Self Help Radio Website tomorrow for a special Self Help Radio show & Self Help Radio Extra mix - the show will be nothing but a continuous blast of music for about ninety minutes featuring nothing but songs about boyfriends. No annoying Gary blathering, just lots of songs about loving your boyfriend, hating your boyfriend, wanting a boyfriend, not wanting a boyfriend, your boyfriend cheating on you, you cheating on your boyfriend - all for Valentine's Day. What luck! What fun!

I hope to have it up for you first thing tomorrow, but you know, the best laid plans of the worst laid men... Or how does that go?

So even if you don't have a valentine - & I can't anymore, because I'm married - you can have a Valentine's Day show from Self Help Radio. Yay! It'll be like chocolate, only without all the teeth-rotting.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Whither Boyfriends?

Because it's Valentine's Day & I have to do a show about SOMETHING.

That's the straightest answer you'll ever get out of me. & yeah, what the hell, we'll do girlfriends next year.

That kinda came out the wrong way. You knew what I meant.

Damn.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Preface To Valentine's Day 2009: Boyfriend No More!

If I am no longer a boyfriend can I successfully do a show about boyfriends? No! Because the minute I got married, all the memories of being a boyfriend vanished! Wait, that's not true. Yes! Because all my years of being a boyfriend added up to the experience of being trapped into marriage! Damn, that makes no sense. No! I am boyfriend no more! Yes! I was boyfriend before husband, & lo I could be there again!

But I'll try. I'll try to remember the blissful uncertain unmarried state called "Boyfriendliness." "Boyfriendship." "Significant Otherness." "Significant Otherwise." "Insignificant Otter." Stuff like that.

& it's not so hard, in the end, because there are lots of songs about it. That's helpful. There are many more songs, in fact, about the travails of being a boyfriend than the travails I went through as someone or other's boyfriend. For example, I was never another boy's boyfriend, & I have some songs about that. So. My own experience is useless. It is the songs that speak through the mighty megaphone that is "Self Help Radio." Huzzah!

Still, being a boyfriend isn't all that different from being a husband, except, of course, the chains are a lot heavier. Also, the gruel is less salty. Then there's making the bed. That is the worst. [Voices trails off, spouting ridiculous & embarrassingly sexist oversimplifications.] [So you know what to expect this week.] [Just saying.]

Monday, February 09, 2009

Valley Churl

I'm so busy I feel sleepy all the time. Actually, that's not only true, that's the introductory dialogue for a series of pharmaceutical arias I am composing for the "Drug Opera" I am writing thanks to my grant from Pfizer. Who says art is dead? Pfizer says art is dead!

Where was I? Oh, I spent the weekend down at the ranch in Self Help Radio Valley, population wow. Did my show from there live, actually, to the emus that live next door after they escaped from someone's failed get-rich-quick plan or another's cockeyed scheme. They're very nice but tone deaf. & they don't so much dance as come at you menacingly & steal your cheese fries from your hand. They're not nearly as melancholy as the cattle, though. Those damn Morrissey-worshippers get mad if I play anything peppy. & let's not talk about the goats & their obsession with metal. (That's a pun.)

Anyhoos, you can listen to the show at Self Help Radio Dot Net. You have an official invitation. Also to my ranch in Self Help Radio Valley. If you can find it. & if you bring cheese fries.