Putting Everything Into Boxes

Why does a house look empty even when it's filled with boxes?

The strangest thing I do - I'm sure some others do, but how the hell would I know? - is take things, like, say, a pile of papers related to a particular time period, & stick them in a drawer.  So when one is, for example, packing things up in anticipation of a move, one finds a few months' worth of strange memorabilia.  A drawer or shelf thus filled, a new pile emerges someplace else.

So I've relived today parts of the six years I've lived in Kentucky in bits & pieces as I pack stuff away.  Here are cards sent to me on every possible occasion by the dear sister that died last years, one of which says something like, I hope you know how much I enjoy our conversations.  They always put a smile on my face.  Over here are forms & stickers relating to some period at WRFL or another.  Still here are items that go back even further, to my time in West Virginia, when I tried to work for a literacy program.  Our minds often don't need to form memories, they know they're stored in the bits & pieces of life we save on scraps of paper, opened letters, saved notes or flyers.

Some friends from Lexington are coming over tonight.  I hope it goes well.  I have much such nice people here, & I know at the end of the night I'll wish I were less introverted & spent more time with them.  Once a loner, I wrote somewhere, probably imitating or ripping off someone, always alone.

Damn, I have a lot of CDs.  I hope I have enough boxes!

Self Help Radio 072616: Fashion

(Original image here.)

The next-to-the-last episode!  What excitement!  Like a fashion show!  Wait a second.  Nothing like a fashion show!  More like a garage sale!  Or standing outside waiting for movers to come!

Still, I'm sure my hard-hitting investigative radio show about fashions shook Los Angeles, New York City, London, Paris, & Tokyo to the core.  That Tim Gunn fellow probably woke up in a cold sweat last night.  Skinny runway models everywhere suddenly got hungry & ate two slices of pizza before their handlers forced them to regurgitate it.  Normal, everyday Americans suddenly felt good about shopping for food in their sweatpants/pajama-top combos.  A victory was struck, even if it were temporary, & I woke up with a simulacrum of the head of Cindy Crawford carved in vegetable fat at the bottom of my bed this morning.  I got the message.  & I will stop - but only because, you know, I have to do a different show with a different theme next week.

But the world got a taste of the power of Self Help Radio, & wisely found it lacking.

What else?  Nothing, really.  I hope the show was a lot of fun.  It's now at the Self Help Radio web site.  You know about the passwords & stuff by now.  The show's in two parts, an hour each, & the songs in the parts are listed below.

(part one)

"Fashion" David Bowie _Scary Monsters (& Super Creeps)_
"Dedicated Follower Of Fashion" The Kinks _The Kink Kontroversy_

"Fashion Is Danger" Flight Of The Conchords _I Told You I Was Freaky_
"Fashion Hurts" Xex _Group : Xex_
"Fashion Rules!" Chicks On Speed _99 Cents_
"Old Fashion" Baxendale _The Revenge Has Just Begun: The Story So Far_

"Fashion Concious" The Fresh Windows _Chocolate Soup For Diabetics, Vol. 1_
"Fashion" Otway & Barrett _The Wimp & The Wild_
"Fashion Street" The Get Quick _See You In The Crossfire_
"What Are You Wearing?" Kahimi Karie _K.K.K.K.K._

"Fashion Chant" Noh Mercy _Noh Mercy_
"Crimes Of Fashion" The Frenchmen _Sorry We Ruined Your Party_

(part two)

"The Fashion Plague" The Exits _This Is Mod, Vol. 2: More Rarities 1979-1981_
"It's Fashion" Girls At Our Best! _Pleasure_
"Fashion Show" The Shrubs _Take Me Aside For A Midnight Harangue_

"Fashion Forward" The Telephone Company _Panda Brain_
"Off With His Cardigan!" The Lucksmiths _What Bird Is That?_
"High Street Fashion" The Hepburns _The Last Thing I Saw Before I Said Goodbye_
"Fab Fad Fashions" Proctor & Bergman _Give Us A Break_
"Fashion Parade (ft Noddy Holder)" Misty's Big Adventure _Fashion Parade 7"_

"Fast-Fashion" Supermoon _Playland_
"Fashion Crisis Hits New York" The Frank & Walters _The Best Of The Frank & Walters_
"Fashion Zombies!" The Aquabats _Charge!!_
"Vagaries Of Fashion" Fujiya & Miyagi _Artificial Sweeteners_

"Boys Of Fashion Magazines" Kuruki _TV Scape_
"I Fell In Love With A Fashion Victim" The Rosehips _The Rosehips_

Whither Fashion?

(I found this picture here.)

Look, no one is less equipped than I to do an authoritative show about fashion.  I have never been & surely will never be fashionable.  It was just never meant to be.  Because I wish I could say, "It's not for lack of trying," but - I never tried.

But from the outside looking in, I suppose, I can make some observations, which I will do today.  Not just me!  I'll be talking about L.A. fashion with our man in Hollywood, Mark Miller, & I'll be talking with a real fashion designer, the great CJ Buchanan.  In the interests of fairness, I will talk to one David Fruchter, who crusades against fashion, & in the interests of spirituality, I'll ask my spiritual advisor to weigh in on the spiritual side of fashion.

Come to think of it, with all the music & guests, there'll probably be very little time for me to display my ignorance of fashion.  That's for the best, I'm sure.  Folks will tell you the most excellent Self Help Radio episodes are usually light on the "Gary" content.

Plus, it's the next-to-the-last Self Help Radio on WRFL!  It's on from 4-6 pm on 88.1 fm in Lexington & wrfl dot fm in the fashion world.  I certainly hope you're well-dressed enough to listen!

Preface To Fashion: Embarrassment Averted!

(This image from a website called superfashionable dot com.)

Getting older, one supposes, might bring wisdom & shit, but our own experience with old people suggest otherwise: things get messy.

This is especially true with my own brain, which discards information without bothering to ask me whether or not I want to keep it, like my mother throwing away all my papers & drawings one day when I was at school true story!  Oh god I think my brain might be my mother.

Sometimes, though rarely, I plan for just such an occasion.  For example, I made a page on my website listing all the themes I've done.  I'm pretty OCD but I don't actually double-check, when I think of a theme, if I've already covered it before.  I rely upon my memory ha ha ha urgh.

Anyhoo, a few weeks ago, I was all like, "Hey! Let's do a show about suits!" & I went about thinking of songs about suits, collecting them, saying "la la la" as the days passed & my life slowly got shorter.  Then, just last week, actually - after I announced that "suits" would be the theme next week on the show - I was looking for songs, & discovered one that was tagged "Self Help Radio."  Oh no, I thought.  & then I looked.  Oh yes.  I had actually done a show about suits almost exactly three years ago.

One big problem is that I had already recorded a bit with one of my collaborators.  Luckily we didn't talk about suits the entire time (when do they ever talk about the show's theme exclusively?), so I quickly checked to see if I had done a show about fashion - I had not! - & I changed the listing on the web site & thanked my lucky stars I have a kind of system of checks that prevents me from stupidly accidentally revisiting old themes.

But boy, would it have been embarrassing if my penultimate show were a kind of repeat!

The Most Important Question

(This is not me, these are not my CDs; it's a picture from here.)

There is a question folks like me - musicophiles, you could say, sub-category: deejays - must answer quickly once a move is planned: When do I pack up my music?

"My music" is of course primarily understood for folks in my advanced middle age as "vinyl & CDs," although I must include my computer, since I digitize & rip music onto that for each show.  The computer is probably the thing I will pack last, since I do so many things on it - although we'll not have internet access on our last day, having taken the equipment back to the cable company.

Let's see: I have a show on August 2, two days before I leave.  Do I really want to come home from my last show on WRFL to pack up hundreds of CDs?  No.  I need to plan better.

Because I am less than two weeks out, & I have made no plans at all.