Self Help Radio RERUN: May 14, 2012 - Bows & Arrows

I tried to find a show I had done on May 15 - I've done Self Help Radio since 2002 - but for some reason, never a show on May 15.  I did find a show that I did on May 14, 2012 - three years ago - & it was on WRFL!  So it's not completely unfamiliar to anyone unfortunate enough to have heard this show since I came to Lexington.  (There's even an old write-up about the show on this here blog!)

I did the show on Monday mornings then, & it was only ninety minutes long.  The show is very music-heavy - I hadn't yet had the bright notion to invite my funny friends onto the air with me - & rather diverse, as it's not too terribly easy to find songs about archery, bows & arrows, stuff like that.  I didn't completely hate listening to the show - but I'm glad there'll be a new Self Help Radio next week, as it makes me really uncomfortable to revisit old episodes.  It baffles me that anyone would want to listen to my radio show!

For the next week, the show will be at the top of the Self Help Radio website.  Remember to look for login/password information!  The songs I played almost exactly three years ago are listed below.

Remember!  A new Self Help Radio next week!

(part one)

"Arrows & Baloons" Robert Pollard _Moses On A Snail_
"Cupid's Bow" Rodney Allen _Take The Subway To Your Suburb_
"Quiver (Arrows In My)" Bow Wow Wow _When The Going Gets Tough The Tough Get Going_

"William Tell Overture" Sounds Incorporated _Hazy Memories Vol. 2_
"Arrow In A Bow" The Go-Betweens _Send Me A Lullaby_
"Arrow Of Love" Six Teens _A Casual Look: The Flip Recordings_
"Fallen Arrow" Ida _Ten Small Paces_
"Arrow" Jeffrey Lewis with Jack Lewis & Anders Griffin _It's The Ones Who've Cracked That The Light Shines Through_
"The Flint Arrowhead" Johnny Cash _From Sea To Shining Sea_

"Broken Arrow" Neil Young _Neil Young Archives, Vol. 1: 1963-1972_
"Broken Arrows" Jose Gonzalez _Veneer_
"Broken Arrow" Chuck Berry _Johnny B. Goode/His Complete '50s Chess Recordings_

(part two)

"Days Of The Broken Arrows" The Idle Race _Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts From The British Empire & Beyond, Vol. 3_
"Slings & Arrows" The Wooly Ones _Scarey Business_

"Robin Hood" John Strachan _Songs From Aberdeenshire_
"Robin Hood" Dick James _Hello Children Everywhere_
"Little Arrows" Leapy Lee _Little Arrows_
"Me & My Arrow" Harry Nilsson _The Point!_
"Blue Arrows" Mick Harvey _Two Of Diamonds_
"Love Is An Arrow" Aberfeldy _Young Forever_
"Arrows" Mitch Hedberg _Mitch All Together_
"Zen Archer" Todd Rundgren _A Wizard, A True Star_

"Poison Arrow" ABC _Lexicon Of Love_
"Poison Arrow" Sonic Youth _The Eternal_
"Love Is Swift Arrows" Be Bop Deluxe _Axe Victim_

Change Of Plans

Well.  I guess I knew there was a chance of this.  But.

Before I say anything, please consult your favorite adage or proverb or quote about plans.

"Unless commitment is made, there are only promise & hopes… but no plans."

"The best laid plans of mice & men often go awry."

"Plans can fall through as so often they do."

"If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans."

& then there's this:



"Let's make some plans, 'cause they can go wrong."

Which is a goofy-ass way of saying that all the plans my wife & I have made for the past couple of months - plans to move from Lexington, plans to live in Los Angeles, plans to find a new radio station for Self Help Radio, even plans for the summer Self Help Radio podcast - they've all gone for naught.  My wife has decided not to take the job in Los Angeles for reasons both of us thought were good.

I apologize for all the bombast - for the "last shows" - for my sentimental need to say goodbye in the most maudlin of fashions.  I understand I will have to sit out the summer on WRFL - I wouldn't have left if I hadn't had a degree of certainty.  I regret that now, but it wasn't until this week that our plans, as I emphasize above, changed direction so dramatically.

I apologize to Lexington & all of Kentucky that I'll be sticking around.  Your loss is California's gain!

I'll post one more Self Help Radio "rerun" tomorrow, & there's be a new episode next week.

Preface To… Another Rerun?

I asked the other day on this radio show's Facebook page if anyone listened to the "rerun" I put up last Friday.  Honestly, if you didn't listen to it, I understand - I listened to it myself & was deeply embarrassed about the whole thing.  According to my web hosting provider, a total of four people clicked the link - which doesn't guarantee that the show was listened to.  Just that it was clicked on.  Maybe downloaded & never listened to.  Maybe download just to be thrown away!  Okay, I did that.  What is wrong with me?  Masochism.

I was hoping that I had previously done a Self Help Radio episode on another May 15th.  I mean, I've done hundreds of these damn shows, & there are only 365 days in the year*, so surely I've done a show on the fifteenth of May.  Have I?

I haven't.  I don't know what it is about the fifteenth of May, but for some reason, despite doing Self Help Radio on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, & Fridays, I've managed to avoid that date.  I did, however, do a show on the fourteenth of May twice.  One of those times, I did a show about children.  It was in 2003, & although I am certain that I have a copy of the show on cassette tape, I don't have a digital copy.  (& if I am certain that I have a copy on cassette tape, I'm not certain I know where that tape is.)

I did another show on May 14, 2012 - just three years ago, so on WRFL - about bows & arrows, & I just listened to it, & it doesn't suck nearly as bad as the previous "rerun," so I think I will feature it at the top of my page on Friday.  Will anyone listen to it?  Nah.

But I gotta do something!

* Fun fact: I've done a show on February 29.

Kids Are Clumsily Mean To Me

I was just hanging with the dogs in the backyard when I was called by the kids at the day care next door.

"Mister! Mister!" they cried.

"What?" I said.

One of them excitedly called to me, "If frozen water, if frozen water is iced water, what is frozen ink?"

Before I could try to make some sort of ridiculous response to this old childhood trick-insult, one of the other kids just screamed, "YOU STINK!"

& they ran away laughing.

One Last Late-Night Shift

This morning, I did my last show on WRFL.  What?!? I hear you say.  I thought the last Self Help Radio was on May 1st!  Oh, hold your radio horses!  The last Self Help Radio was in fact ten days ago.  I did my last freeform radio sub show this morning.  It was from three to six am, when you were asleep no matter which time zone in the United States.

Over the past couple of years, I've come to enjoy the late-night slots on WRFL.  I'm sure I've said this before - I found them meditative.  Unlike Austin, a city three times the size of Lexington, where I would get weirdo calls at 3am, virtually no one reaches out to the station in the wee hours in the Horse Capitol Of The World.  (I get more action from my Twitter account, since it is happening all over the world.)  It really does feel like I am playing music in secret, perhaps to a shy, lonesome person who can't sleep.  Who might be driving from place to place trying to outrun a chronic insomnia.  But who has turned the dial to WRFL, unsure what might be found there.  & it's me!

The station is moving locations temporarily while the UK Student Center, where it's located, is renovated, so most of the posters + stickers have been torn off the walls, & this morning - my last ever in that space - most of the vinyl & all of the CDs had been boxed up, making the shelves eerily empty.  Some WRFL members have decided to desecrate the walls further with slogans + drawings, which is perfectly WRFLish, but despite still being well-appointed in the manner of broadcast radio booth, the place felt a little abandoned.  Which made the experience all the more lonely.  Perfect for me!

Not a single phone call, not any acknowledgement that I was behind this board picking + choosing music in exactly the opposite way of pretty much every radio station on the dial.  In short, nothing terribly different from any other late-night slot I've been doing in Lexington for the last five years.

There is one person who used to call late at night, about whom I'll talk at some later date.  I worry that something has happened to him, actually - he used to be quite reliable in his middle-of-the-night calls.  One thing that may have dissuaded him is that the station finally got caller ID in the past two years, & overnight deejays learned not to answer the phone when he called.  He may have been a bit troubled, but I think he could sense when he was being ignored.  I confess I did it a couple of times, myself.

I wasn't entirely sad when I left the station for what was the last time for sure.  I won't have time to sub another show, & once the station moves, I won't have access to it, as I am not an active programmer any more.  The morning was quiet & cool, with only the weirdness of UK employees, who work on a "smoke-free campus," sitting at the bus stop (technically city property?) puffing away at their cancer sticks.  Because the employees of the Student Center have been relocated, & because school is over, the parking lot was more bare than usual.  However, I believe the fast food restaurants will remain open for a while; it was those workers who took respite from low-wage drudgery to shorten their lives in the nicotine-tar manner.

My puppies, who slept while I was on the radio, welcomed me home, & I walked around our backyard in the soft dawn.  I wrote in this perfunctory journal I keep that I'll miss my home most of all.  My wife loves this place, & has made it very comfortable to live in.  I hope I can express that to her adequately - she really has made this the most pleasantly cozy place I've ever lived.

Good bye, WRFL!  I can't thank you enough for making my time in Lexington as nice as it was.  Good bye, quiet late-night WRFL listener!  I know you exist, even if you're quite sure you don't!