Look! Since I've stopped doing the Saturday shows, I can start doing my "preface" posts again. I've sure missed them. I never get to write prefaces for books & stuff, so the idea that I can write prefaces for my blog pleases me. By the way, I still sometimes mispronounce "preface" in my head. I used to pronounce it "pre-face" instead of "pref-iss," probably because it helped me remember how to spell it, but I got corrected for saying it that way many times in middle school, so I started pronouncing it correctly. Except in my head.
I did the same thing with the word "reprise," which I thought sounded like "reprisal." Does anyone pronounce that word "re-preez-al"? I still think it's fine to pronounce the word "re-prize." But, I was corrected in middle school, so.
Also, I was corrected for pronouncing "ascertain" wrong. I didn't really know what it meant but I had a quote which used to word in a paper I wrote - I think it was Ben Franklin quote, & the meaning was pretty obvious in context - & I pronounced it "a-certain" not "ass-er-tane."
Come to think of it, the same person corrected me every time in middle school. It was my American History teacher Helen Lane. She was quite old, she's probably no longer with us. I got an award from her at the end of eighth grade & hugged her on stage when I accepted it. I caught some shit from my schoolmates from that, let me tell you.
I was going to write "my friends," but I didn't really have a lot of friends in middle school. Thinking about it, I had a somewhat close friend in fifth & sixth grades whose name was Phil Claunch, who moved away when his parents got divorced when he & I were in sixth grade, & it occurred to me I don't really remember what he looks like. That seems strange, doesn't it? We biked to school every day for most of fifth grade, & we walked to middle school together, but I don't have any idea what he looked like. I don't think anyone ever took any pictures of us together & I don't have school pictures from that time period. Oh wait! I still have my middle school yearbooks I think. He might be in the sixth grade volume. If he didn't move away before pictures were taken.
I'd go look for it, but they're in boxes upstairs. Not curious enough to go through the trouble, I suppose. Ah, well.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
Silly Blasphemies
In five posts - that is to say, on the post which I will post on Tuesday - I will have reached one thousand posts on this blog. Imagine that! I should make a big deal about it but I won't.
Here's what I wrote nearly five hundred posts ago, on this blog's 500th post:
I want to celebrate this ridiculously arbitrary moment by offering you something. You can claim it by doing the following: send an email to me with an address to which you'd like me to send you stuff. What will I send you?
I will send you the Self Help Radio Self Help Love Yourself Self Pack! It will include (probably) a Self Help Radio tee-shirt, a Self Help CD, some miracle sand I got in the Holy Land (or is that for my religious show?) & other stuff. Just send me an email that says "Happy Anniversary!" & that's it. It's my way of saying, "Just like my birthday, I have to buy other people stuff to celebrate my anniversary."
No one wanted it. I can't imagine that wouldn't change now, two years & a thousand miles later. Not to mention five hundred posts! Do you want something from me to celebrate writing a thousand separate entries in this nonsense blog? Tell me before too late. I'm not waiting up.
Here's what I wrote nearly five hundred posts ago, on this blog's 500th post:
I want to celebrate this ridiculously arbitrary moment by offering you something. You can claim it by doing the following: send an email to me with an address to which you'd like me to send you stuff. What will I send you?
I will send you the Self Help Radio Self Help Love Yourself Self Pack! It will include (probably) a Self Help Radio tee-shirt, a Self Help CD, some miracle sand I got in the Holy Land (or is that for my religious show?) & other stuff. Just send me an email that says "Happy Anniversary!" & that's it. It's my way of saying, "Just like my birthday, I have to buy other people stuff to celebrate my anniversary."
No one wanted it. I can't imagine that wouldn't change now, two years & a thousand miles later. Not to mention five hundred posts! Do you want something from me to celebrate writing a thousand separate entries in this nonsense blog? Tell me before too late. I'm not waiting up.
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Love Me, Love My Robot
It's that time of year again, when I play the stuff I've listened to & liked most this year - in the electronica genre, this week. I know, I keep saying this, but I want to hammer it home that don't think this is a "best of" - I'm not qualified enough to say that & I assume I've missed a lot of good releases this year - so take this collection as simply what I enjoyed best & realize that in three weeks &/or three months I'll discover something very great that I didn't know about at this time. Until every artist in the world sends me all their stuff on a regular basis, that's how it's going to be.
The show is now available for your audial consumption at self help radio dot net. I am not allowed to give away my "home made" CDs like I usually do (it's against station policy on WRFL), so instead I share some mp3s (without my airbreaks or any radio show trappings) for a couple of weeks in a zip file at this link here. It includes a lot more music - 25 songs - than I could play on a ninety minute show. Here is a list of the bands/musicians featured: Bruce Haack, The Books, Gold Panda, Four Tet, Nils Frahm & Anne Müller, Brian Eno, Oval, Flying Lotus, Mount Kimbie, Pantha Du Prince, To Rococo Rot, ISAN, Mrs Jynx, Arandel, Boy Is Fiction, Röyksopp, Faux Pas, The Flashbulb, Autechre, Baths, Grasscut, Deru, Caribou, Bonobo, & Emeralds.
Enjoy!
The show is now available for your audial consumption at self help radio dot net. I am not allowed to give away my "home made" CDs like I usually do (it's against station policy on WRFL), so instead I share some mp3s (without my airbreaks or any radio show trappings) for a couple of weeks in a zip file at this link here. It includes a lot more music - 25 songs - than I could play on a ninety minute show. Here is a list of the bands/musicians featured: Bruce Haack, The Books, Gold Panda, Four Tet, Nils Frahm & Anne Müller, Brian Eno, Oval, Flying Lotus, Mount Kimbie, Pantha Du Prince, To Rococo Rot, ISAN, Mrs Jynx, Arandel, Boy Is Fiction, Röyksopp, Faux Pas, The Flashbulb, Autechre, Baths, Grasscut, Deru, Caribou, Bonobo, & Emeralds.
Enjoy!
Monday, December 06, 2010
Ain't That A Kilt In The Head?
Today's blog entry, despite its title, has nothing to do with Scotland or the Scottish. Whom you shouldn't call "Scotch" because, as Wikipedia points out, it is "a largely obsolescent adjective meaning having to do with Scotland & usually now considered pejorative unless related to food or drink." Obsolescent? Pejorative?
Unless, one supposes, one uses the phrase Scotch-Irish, which, it turns out, is a pretty specific description of a group of immigrants & not, as some might have been taught in high school in the 1980s, "a lot of the white people who came to America in the 1800s."
Strangely, the disclaimer at the beginning of today's blog entry has actually gainsaid itself, since the disclaimer, by being two paragraphs long, is at some level about Scotland &/or the Scottish. The same holds true with this sentence, which expresses its own paragraph-length surprise at the irony of it all while continuing to refer to Scotland &/or the Scottish.
It has been a custom of the Self Help Radio blog to have nonsensical titles in the same manner that the blog's author has entitled emails to friends or girls with whom he wanted to be more than friends. Even the occasional work email has had a non sequitur or random word or phrase or even an obscure song lyric as a title, although that proved to be counterproductive. Below are some actual email "subject lines" from 1998 which the author of this blog used as titles of emails sent to a girl who almost but not quite became more than a friend & then, suddenly, ceased even being a friend:
Hamlet, pow! pow!
futnucker
Discursive Melancholia
swimmingly
slushily
sinfully
The Surreal Blonde
Lose E Anna
pools in eyes
purloined
Up-to-the-minute minuet
Two of those are references to song titles, one is a spoonerism for a possibly made-up obscenity, & four (or more) are puns. None of them refer in any way to the contents of the emails. Which, it must be noted, had nothing to do with Scotland &/or the Scottish.
One thing has changed from those girl-chasing, goofy-email-subject-lining days (besides the obvious - the author of those emails & this blog is now married & is not allowed to chase girls, whether in real life or on the internets, under full penalty of Wife's Law), which is that sometimes the author of this blog will think of a title first & then write a blog entry about the title. This is very much how Stephen King writes his encyclopedias. As has been continually pointed out to a ridiculous degree, this is not the case with this blog entry.
No, this blog entry is simply here to announce that tomorrow morning will be Self Help Radio's penultimate show of the year. The author of this blog (who is also the programmer of the show) & his aforementioned wife will be visiting the antipodes for the last two weeks of 2010, which means, alas, & it is sad to tell you this, there will be no A Very Self Help Radio Christmas this year. It could not be helped. A vacation was desperately needed & it's summer down under.
Tomorrow's show is entitled "Gary's Favorite Electronica 2010." For reasons explained elsewhere, it is not a "best of." The programmer of the show ("Gary") is nowhere near qualified to make such a preposterous claim about his taste. Instead, it's the music he's most enjoyed in the electronic vein during the year.
It airs, as it has all these last few months, too early in the morning tomorrow on 88.1 fm WRFL, but will be archived as soon as possible later in the day at the Self Help Radio website. Further reminders will be available on this blog as well as on the show's Facebook page. The show no longer has a myspace page & of course no one misses it or has even noted its passing.
Very well then. Please listen when you can. That would be most disarming.
Unless, one supposes, one uses the phrase Scotch-Irish, which, it turns out, is a pretty specific description of a group of immigrants & not, as some might have been taught in high school in the 1980s, "a lot of the white people who came to America in the 1800s."
Strangely, the disclaimer at the beginning of today's blog entry has actually gainsaid itself, since the disclaimer, by being two paragraphs long, is at some level about Scotland &/or the Scottish. The same holds true with this sentence, which expresses its own paragraph-length surprise at the irony of it all while continuing to refer to Scotland &/or the Scottish.
It has been a custom of the Self Help Radio blog to have nonsensical titles in the same manner that the blog's author has entitled emails to friends or girls with whom he wanted to be more than friends. Even the occasional work email has had a non sequitur or random word or phrase or even an obscure song lyric as a title, although that proved to be counterproductive. Below are some actual email "subject lines" from 1998 which the author of this blog used as titles of emails sent to a girl who almost but not quite became more than a friend & then, suddenly, ceased even being a friend:
Hamlet, pow! pow!
futnucker
Discursive Melancholia
swimmingly
slushily
sinfully
The Surreal Blonde
Lose E Anna
pools in eyes
purloined
Up-to-the-minute minuet
Two of those are references to song titles, one is a spoonerism for a possibly made-up obscenity, & four (or more) are puns. None of them refer in any way to the contents of the emails. Which, it must be noted, had nothing to do with Scotland &/or the Scottish.
One thing has changed from those girl-chasing, goofy-email-subject-lining days (besides the obvious - the author of those emails & this blog is now married & is not allowed to chase girls, whether in real life or on the internets, under full penalty of Wife's Law), which is that sometimes the author of this blog will think of a title first & then write a blog entry about the title. This is very much how Stephen King writes his encyclopedias. As has been continually pointed out to a ridiculous degree, this is not the case with this blog entry.
No, this blog entry is simply here to announce that tomorrow morning will be Self Help Radio's penultimate show of the year. The author of this blog (who is also the programmer of the show) & his aforementioned wife will be visiting the antipodes for the last two weeks of 2010, which means, alas, & it is sad to tell you this, there will be no A Very Self Help Radio Christmas this year. It could not be helped. A vacation was desperately needed & it's summer down under.
Tomorrow's show is entitled "Gary's Favorite Electronica 2010." For reasons explained elsewhere, it is not a "best of." The programmer of the show ("Gary") is nowhere near qualified to make such a preposterous claim about his taste. Instead, it's the music he's most enjoyed in the electronic vein during the year.
It airs, as it has all these last few months, too early in the morning tomorrow on 88.1 fm WRFL, but will be archived as soon as possible later in the day at the Self Help Radio website. Further reminders will be available on this blog as well as on the show's Facebook page. The show no longer has a myspace page & of course no one misses it or has even noted its passing.
Very well then. Please listen when you can. That would be most disarming.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Whither Gary's Favorite Electronica 2010?
Sometimes listening to other radio shows makes me think I do too many airbreaks. Sometimes, though, some radio shows I listen to make me wish that the deejays did more airbreaks. Every radio show I listen to I have to listen to once the deejay is on the mic. That's true. If a deejay's talking, I have to listen, which is why I hate listening to talk radio - or even the news - in the car, especially if someone wants to talk to me while we're listening. I just can't tune out the voice on the radio if it's a noram talking voice. I have to listen to it. Um. Was this what I wanted to talk about?
Like last year, I still have tons of electronic releases that I've only listened to once, which I planned to listen to again, which is the sort of criteria for my show - "it's my favorite stuff I've listened to this year, which means I listened to it more than anything else" - I don't know why I put that in quotes, I don't believe I've written it exactly like that before - so technically because I haven't listened to it more than once, it shouldn't really qualify as "favorite electronica." But then again, there's always a chance I missed something. I am pretty sure I have.
Is it somewhat obsessive that I will try to find others' "best of" lists to see if there's something there that I missed? I suppose I am always relieved that most list-making folks don't have the same taste as I do. If I did share so many people's tastes, I might be a better fit for commercial radio, not the independent voices left of the dial. Not that I don't share some people's choices. Most electronica fans, for example, really liked Four Tet's record this year. I did too. But I don't share the modern electronica maven's love of dubstep, & I still tend to avoid dancey electronica as I always have.
It's really all about me, it's true. So what else is new? The best I can say is that it was an awesome year for electronica. The worst I can say is that it's my radio show that I'll be presenting it on.
Like last year, I still have tons of electronic releases that I've only listened to once, which I planned to listen to again, which is the sort of criteria for my show - "it's my favorite stuff I've listened to this year, which means I listened to it more than anything else" - I don't know why I put that in quotes, I don't believe I've written it exactly like that before - so technically because I haven't listened to it more than once, it shouldn't really qualify as "favorite electronica." But then again, there's always a chance I missed something. I am pretty sure I have.
Is it somewhat obsessive that I will try to find others' "best of" lists to see if there's something there that I missed? I suppose I am always relieved that most list-making folks don't have the same taste as I do. If I did share so many people's tastes, I might be a better fit for commercial radio, not the independent voices left of the dial. Not that I don't share some people's choices. Most electronica fans, for example, really liked Four Tet's record this year. I did too. But I don't share the modern electronica maven's love of dubstep, & I still tend to avoid dancey electronica as I always have.
It's really all about me, it's true. So what else is new? The best I can say is that it was an awesome year for electronica. The worst I can say is that it's my radio show that I'll be presenting it on.