The Daydreaming Traveler Dozes In The Spring Sun Somewhere On I-75 Between Lexington & Cincinnati

When I drive, I dream of driving. & since I've driven through mountainous places - Southwest Texas, Arizona, Utah - if it's dark outside when I'm driving, my brain fills in the darkness with giant walls of rock that loom over me.

It's dark on I-75 between Cincinnati & Lexington. & in the rain, a driver isn't entirely sure he or she is driving on a three-lane highway. A highway that never seems crowded, well-maintained, used a lot now for people fleeing the midwest to places like Texas, where the highways there, once ostentatiously spacious, are now choked with cars.

I drove to Cincinnati & back last night to see the great Todd Barry. The opening act was someone I'd never seen before, Brendon Walsh, who was amusing, & the show was actually closed by Neil Hamburger, whom I don't find particularly funny but whom I stuck around to see in case there was some kind of prepared performance at the end. It's been a while since I saw that kind of performance art type thing, a fellow in character for that long.

But you can't really talk much about a comedy show. I like the Southgate House, the venue where I saw Barry & where last week I saw Darren Hanlon & where in two weeks I'll see the legendary Kinky Friedman.

I didn't dream about the comedians, though. I dreamt about driving in the rain up I-75.

Make A Plan, Watch It Go Wrong

The ironies did abound this week for Self Help Radio. After a show about plans, I discovered that I myself hadn't planned well & let my domain lapse. So I planned to wake up this morning, only to discover that my website didn't exist any more. Zounds! So I had to scramble to pay for registration (what if some actual self-help radio group wanted the URL?!) & had to wait all day for what I suppose is the internet's version of the paperwork going through for the site to reappear. It did, at last, tonight. Sigh.

SO. The show. I should say congrats to Andrew for winning the My Morning Jacket tickets. It was fun to give stuff away again. I hope WRFL lets me do it some more.

Um, what else. The songs of the show are below. The show is at the (thankfully in good health) Self Help Radio website. There are two mp3s, of almost equal length, which are "part 1" & "part 2" of the show, although the division is for length, not for content. The entire show is good, is what I'm trying to say. You can listen to part one by clicking here of course & you can listen to part two by clicking here.

Thanks for listening I need to sleep. xo

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(part one)
"Let's Make Some Plans" Close Lobsters _Forever Until Victory_
"Making Plans For Nigel" XTC _Fossil Fuel (The XTC Singles)_

"I Guess I'll Have To Change My Plan" Bobby Darin _Love Swings_
"Heaven's Plan" Mark Wynter _UK Teenage Jamboree, Volume 1_
"That's My Plan" Beat Boys _Joe Meek Rarities Vol. 2: The Beat Groups Era_
"Plan B" Wally Pleasant _Music For Nerds & Perverts_
"The Plan" Richard Hell & The Voidoids _Blank Generation_

"Who's The Man (With The Master Plan)" Kay-Gee's _Master Plan_
"The Plan" Poets Of Rhythm _Practice What You Preach_
"Master Plan" My Morning Jacket _It Still Moves_

(part two)
"Masterplan" Sinister Rouge _The Age Of Separation_

"Making Plans" Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton _The Essential Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton_
"What Have You Got Planned Tonight Diana" Merle Haggard _Down Every Road_
"The Plans We Made" Jon Langford & Sally Timms _The Executioner's Last Songs, Vol. 1_
"Plan B" Dexy's Midnight Runners _Searching For The Young Soul Rebels_
"According To No Plan" Broadcast _Work & Non-Work_

"The Plan" The Terrible Twos _Jerzy The Giant_
"Dayplanner" Free Loan Investments _Ever Been To Mexico?_
"Big City Plans" Some Velvet Sidewalk _Whirlpool_
"Plans Get Complex" All-Time Quarterback _All-Time Quarterback_
"If Everything Goes As Planned" The Heartworms _A Gift From Sing Sing_
"A Long Term Plan" Acid House Kings _Sing Along With Acid House Kings_

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Plan To Listen Tonight!

You really should plan to listen to Self Help Radio tonight, because the show is about plans. You see, even if it doesn't fit in with your plans, the plan to not listen is also a plan, & so the show is about your plans, too, whether or not you've planned to listen. Therefore avoiding Self Help Radio is next to impossible.

I didn't plan it that way.

However, I do plan to give away a pair of My Morning Jacket tickets for their show Sunday at Memorial Coliseum, so if you'd like to win them, you should plan to listen.

How do you plan to listen? You can listen live on 88.1 fm in Lexington, or anywhere on the computer at the WRFL website. You can listen tomorrow when the show is archived at self help radio dot net, but the tickets will have already been given away. Silly!

Whither Plans?

Durn it, I explained the show yesterday! I planned to do it today. I suppose instead I can share with you some quotes about plans.

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." John Lennon sang that, unaware that life had other plans for him.

"Without goals, & plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination." Someone named Fitzhugh Dodson said that. He apparently didn't enjoy recreational sailing.

Lao Tzu, on the other hand, said, "A good traveler has no fixed plans, & is not intent on arriving." Chinese philosophers were quite well paid in those days, however, so dawdling wasn't expensive.

One web page tells me this is a "Norwegian proverb": "The lazier a man is, the more he plans to do tomorrow." It reminds me, I have a lot to do tomorrow.

Here's something a snappy politician might have said, "He who fails to plan, plans to fail." Does that include improvisational comedy troops?

I've seen one phrase attributed to many folks, but one web site says that Woody Allen said this: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." It doesn't sound like Woody Allen to me. There's also a more pithy one: "Man plans, god laughs." It's never clear what God does when woman plans.

Will Rogers said, "Plans get you into things, but you got to work your way out." Seems sensible enough.

Horace, the Roman poet so famous he was known by his first name, said, "Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans; it's lovely to be silly at the right moment."

Robert Burns wrote, in a poem called "To A Mouse," "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft agley." It has been translated into understandable words as "The best laid schemes of mice & men/Go often awry." One anonymous snark wrote, "The best laid plans of mice & men are usually about equal." That seems a little insulting to the mice.

Dwight Eisenhower, former Grandfather Of The United States, once said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Then he bought the entire country a comic book & some candy.

Bakunin, my favorite anarchist, said, "Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary." Then he bombed something.

There are lots of quotes about plans. Alan Watts, the Zennest westerner of all, said, "No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now." Greta Garbo - who had a pretty large capacity for living, countered, "There seems to be a law that governs all our actions so I never make plans." & trying to be head off the religious at the pass, Mary Daly said, "[The term] 'God's plan' is often a front for men's plans & a cover for inadequacy, ignorance, and evil."

But I leave you with something inspiring, which I almost never do: "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood & probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope & work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die."

Daniel H. Burnham said that. He never noted whether little plans have any magic to stir women's blood. I wonder why.

Preface To Plans: How Plans Change!

It's true, plans change. As the beloved Close Lobsters always said, in a song I shall most definitely be playing this week, "Let's make some plans 'cause they can go wrong." This week's show, if you checked the website as recently as a week ago, was supposed to be "crawl." What happened? Why did the plans change?

It's very simple. WRFL got some tickets to the My Morning Jacket show at Memorial Coliseum in Lexington. Here's the official press release. WRFL doesn't usually do giveaways, as the management has decided that giveaways are not FCC compliant, & although I am in complete disagreement with management, I am a good soldier & will abide by the rules because I love the station.

Furthermore, Self Help Radio has been chosen as one of the shows to give away a couple of tickets for the show. Hooray!

Except, as I thought about it, I could not recall a single My Morning Jacket song about crawling. No matter how much I scrunched my brain. When I became resigned to having to change the show's theme - because how could I give away My Morning Jacket tickets without playing one of their songs? - I thought, "Oh well, change of plan."

Then it hit me - My Morning Jacket have a song called "Master Plan." The show which required me to change my plans could be about plans!

There you go. Listen this week for a chance to win My Morning Jacket tickets. I'll give them away when I play the song - but won't tell you when that will be. Mainly because I don't know yet.