Quickshow

Quick!  A show about quick!

Quick!  It's now at the Self Help Radio website!  The shows I played are also listed below.  If you need to listen quick, click here for part one & here for part two!

The show is a two-hour long quickie!

Thanks for listening quickly!

(part one)

"Quick!" The Magnetic Fields _Love At The Bottom Of The Sea_
"Quickly & Quietly" Boat _Songs That You Might Not Like_
"Quick, Painless & Easy" Ivy _Apartment Life_

"Quicksilver" Elton Britt & Rosalie Allen _Country USA 1950_
"Get Rich Quick" Little Richard _Ham Hocks & Cornbread_
"Quick Change Artist" Soul Twins _The Golden Torch Story_
"Quickie" George Clinton _Greatest Hits_
"Quick Before They Catch Us" Klaus & Gibson Paddy _The Avengers & Other Top Sixties TV Themes_

"Quicksand" Don Schroeder _Teen Town U.S.A. Vol. 10_
"Quicksand" Martha & The Vandellas _The Complete Motown Singles: 1963_
"Quicksand" Hellfire Sermons _Hymns, Ancient & Modern (1988 - 1993)_
"Quicksand (demo)" David Bowie _Hunky Dory_

"A Quick Note About The Olympics" Stephen Colbert _I Am America (& So Can You!)_
"You Sold Me Quickly" Robert Pollard _Lord Of The Birdcage_
"Stepping Off Too Quick" Wire _Behind The Curtain_
"The Dead Only Quickly (feat. Neil Hannon)" The 6ths _Hyacinths & Thistles_
"New Way (Quick Wash & Brush Up With Liberation Theology)" Big Flame _Rigour (1983-1986)_

(part two)

"A Quick One, While He's Away" The Who _BBC Sessions_
"Quick & To The Pointless" Queens Of The Stone Age _Rated R_

"Kiss Me Quick" Georgia Yellow Hammers _Serenade In The Mountains: Early Old-Time Music On Record_
"Kiss Me Quick" Eilert Pilarm _Greatest Hits_
"Kiss Me Quick" Sparks _Pulling Rabbits Out Of A Hat_
"Love Comes Quickly" Memphis _I Dreamed We Fell Apart_

"Quick Joey Small" The Cramps _How To Make A Monster_
"Quick Step" The Adverts _The Wonders Don't Care_
"Quick, Before It Melts" Cinerama _Torino_
"Quick As Rainbows" Kitchens Of Distinction _Capsule (The Best Of Kitchens Of Distinction 1988 - 1994)_

"Quick As White" Kasai Allstars _Congotronics 3: Kasai Allstars_
"PRS Yearbook - Quick The Drawbridge" Half Man Half Biscuit _Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road_

Whither Quick?

A quick show today -
Though it will last two hours -
Let's hope time will fly!

Hey! Wait a second!
Why am I writing haiku
Instead of plain prose?

I wonder if I
Contracted that foul disease
Called pretentiousness?

'Cause what I'm writing
Shares nothing in common with
Haiku poetry:

Pithy descriptions
Wisdom & truth from nature
Clear, simple beauty

Just five syllables
& then seven syllables
& lastly five more.

There's no haiku on
Today's Self Help Radio
Just songs about "quick."

Please listen today!
Four to six in Lexington!
Also: anywhere!

Rats!  I cannot fit
RFL's web address in
The haiku framework.

So it's here: wrfl.fm

Also I should mention it's 88.1 fm on the Lexington radio dial.

Four to six in the afternoon Eastern time.

& there are people who love haiku who now want to beat me up.

Preface To Quick: Slow Slow Quick Quick Slow

Most of the time I have no idea what or why or where I came up with what happens on Self Help Radio.  The process seems to begin with something like an insight - hey! I should do a Self Help Radio show about rabies! - & if that insight is remembered - most of them aren't - then the next step is to create a folder in a folder on my desktop on my computer with the name of the theme.

The folder in which I keep the folders in which the songs I might play for any giving them is called "extras."  It makes no sense why it's called that - why not call it "self help radio theme ideas"? - but now I know that's where I put ideas & that's where I'll find them.

In each idea folder is a BBEdit file where I write down song ideas.  Sometimes, when I'm away from my computer, I'll email ideas to myself, often without context, so I might get an email with the subject line "asshead" (I'm not very nice to myself in my emails) & the body will just say, "Stupid Rabies Song by the Cranberries."

If I am not feeling well, emails like that will totally screw me up.

Sometimes people send ideas to my email address or even to my Twitter account & I decide whether I can pull such a show off.  Like one person might suggest a show about rabies.  How many songs are there about rabies?  Besides that stupid one by the Cranberries?  Not a lot, I'll tell you.

It can be disappointing, asking me to do a theme.  I probably shouldn't solicit.

Anyway, that being said, I know exactly where I got the idea for the theme to this week's show.  It's from this song:



You might think to yourself, "Why am I reading this blog?"  If you're not thinking that, you might be thinking, "That song is called Floorshow.  What does it have to do with anything quick?"

Let me tell you: in the middle of the song (& again at the end), the lyrics go something like:

See them shimmy, see them go
See their painted faces glow
Slow slow quick quick slow
See those pagans go go go go go!

I like the way Andrew Eldritch (real name Andrew Taylor, of course) says "slow slow quick quick slow."  Thinking a slow show might be too easy, I opted for a quick show.

It wasn't all that hard, though.

Stumbler, Into Quickstone

Quicksilver is another name for the element mercury, which is silver & I assume is also quick.  It's also the name of a Marvel Comics super-hero who has super-speed powers.  There are a lot of speedster super heroes.  Don't get me started.

Quicklime is another name for lime.  For those of us who like to add an extra syllable to a word to draw out interesting conversations about lime.

Quick bread is two words but it should be one.  Let's make it one.

Quickbread is a bread made with a leavening agent so that it bakes quickly.

Quick-freeze (look, it needs the dash) is a process by which food is very rapidly frozen, to preserve freshness, or also perhaps to kill the demons that live inside all processed food.  Look it up.

Quick-witted is a word no one's ever used to describe me.

Quickgrass, the dictionary tells me, is "the couch grass, Agropyron repens."  Couch grass?  The couch is one of the places I am the least quick!

Quicktime is a rate of marching - seriously? - yeah! - 120 thirty-inch paces a minute!  (It's also something I use to watch movie files on my computer, but that doesn't march or anything.)

There are others, too.  Under "quick" in the dictionary.  But there's no "quickstone."  I just made that up.  I couldn't help myself!  I wish you'd start using it too, especially online, like on Tweeter or something.  Something like, "Only buy a house with a good quickstone base!"  Or, "Lava formations in this area resulted in massive areas covered by quickstone."

Just so a snooty geologist can sniff at you & say, "There's no such thing as quickstone."

You can laugh in his face!

Spring!

Spring has finally arrived in Lexington.  I know this because the insects have returned.  Did you know?  In places where there's winter, the insects mostly go away for the cold season.  I understand that, if you live in a place where there's heat, like an apartment building, insects might still be active, staying like you where it's warm & crawling all over you at night.  But my wife is very cheap so our house is pretty chilly during the frozen months, & insects find no safe haven here.

You might ask, as the folks at the Smithsonian have, where do insects go in the winter?  If you did ask, like I did, there's a web page that tells you.  It will teach you a word that I didn't know existed.  That word is "overwinter."  Not as in, "I am so over winter."  Which I was.  Snow in March?  What the hell?  No, "overwinter" means "to pass, spend, or survive the winter."  The site has subheadings like "Overwintering As Eggs" & "Overwintering As Pupae" but an online dictionary uses the word for humans, as in "to overwinter on the Riveria."

I talked to someone in Minneapolis today & she said they're expecting snow there this week.  Snow!  In April!  She said they don't expect spring until May.  In Austin, spring gave the city two or three gloriously mild weeks usually in March, although during my time there I adamantly refused to turn on the air conditioner till May, with many sweaty April nights.  The snow does not appear to be coming close to Kentucky, but it'll still drop temperatures at the end of the week to the 50s.  (It was in the 80s today.  Glorious!)

Yes, spring.  People had their shirts off & were wearing shorts today where only a couple or three weeks ago there was snow on the ground.  It has certainly changed my attitude.  For example, I am no longer daily searching online for information about mental illnesses.