Self Help Radio 082016: A Distant Show

(Original image here.)

Oh man.  What an almost-complete disaster this show has been!  Not only was it ill-timed - I was nowhere near ready enough to put a show together after just being a new town for two weeks! - but I promised to have it done at noon Friday & as I write this it is after 2pm Saturday.  During the recording of the airbreaks - which I did after listening to each set of songs, simulating the radio experience - I forgot to save a couple of them, which means I had to re-record them, so the show will probably sound even more out of joint.  & then!  As I was putting the show onto my website, I noticed: I've already done a show about distance.  It's been six years, but I do play a lot of the same songs.  It's a bit embarrassing.

Because I know my memory will fail me more & more as older I grow.  I do.  I created that page, in fact, to help me make sure I don't duplicate themes. But what good is a resource like that if I don't check it now & again?  Good grief.

But hey!  Here's the first Self Help Radio from Fort Worth, Texas.  Available now & anytime at the Self Help Radio web site.  Remember this: username = SHR | password = selfhelp .  & though there's a list of songs below, there's also interviews with a writer named David Fruchter & with my spiritual advisor the Reverend Dr. Howard Gently, & a report on podcast rules in Fort Worth by Marge Most.  & two distinct airbreaks completely out of joint!

Still, I hope you listen.

(part one)

"Distance" The Kit Kats _Distance_
"Distance" Acid Drops _Messthetics # 101_
"Distance" Beach Fossils _Face It + Distance EP_

"Distant Drums" Roy Orbison _The Monument Singles Collection (1960-1964)_
"The Distant Man" All Cats Are Grey _Chance_
"Distant Creatures" The Daysleepers _Drowned In A Sea Of Sound_
"Distant Thunder" Heidi Berry _Heidi Berry_

"Respectable Distance Away" R. Dean Taylor _Motown Unreleased 1963_
"Lurking With A Distance" The Embassy _Tacking_
"Glutton For Distance" The Worriers _Imaginary Life_
"No Distance Left To Run" Blur _13_

"Distant Stations" The Mountain Goats _All Hail West Texas_
"Distant Station" Mixel Pixel _Let's Be Friends_

(part two)

"Distance" Editors _The Back Room_
"Distance" Makthaverskan _II_
"Distance" Glowfriends _A Farewell To Fair-Weather_

"Comfortable Distance" Casino Ashtrays _Just Like Me E.P._
"In A Distant Place" Poprace _Hanggliding At Sea_
"Long Distance" Go Sailor _Go Sailor_
"The Loneliness Of A Middle-Distance Runner" Belle & Sebastian _Jonathan David_
"Longitude & Latitude" Tom Glazer & Dottie Evans _Space Songs_

"Almost In Walking Distance" Shoc Corridor _Holding Treasure_
"Those Distant Lights" The One AM Radio _A Name Writ In Water_
"The Distance Between Us" Arrogants _Nobody's Cool_
"Shimmering Distant Love" Robyn Hitchcock _Eye_

"Long Distance Dedication # 1 (live)" Negativland _These Guys Are From England & Who Gives A Shit

Whither A Distant Show?

Yes, yes, finally!  Tomorrow there'll be a new Self Help Radio!  & since I've traveled some distance to get from there (which was in Kentucky) to here (which is in Texas), I thought a show about distance - whether it be miles or personal space - would be appropriate.

We're always some distance away from each other, you & I, when I do these shows, & maybe now we're even further away.  I am in fact only relatively close to my cats at the moment.  They're awful close to me.  I think perhaps I should ask them to keep their distance.  They're annoying!

Anyhow, it behooves me to get to work!  A show must be prepared before noon tomorrow.  That's another distance: time.  Sometimes I wish I could slow down the rate at which I travel that distance.  Especially if it means more sleep.  I could always use more sleep.

Yes, yes, all right.  Tomorrow.  A new Self Help Radio podcast.  This time for real.

Don't Say I Didn't Tell You So

Sigh.  I don't have my shit properly together.  (In fact, most of my CDs are still in boxes.) So I won't have a new Self Help Radio for you by noon tomorrow.  I'm sorry.  I'll definitely have it ready by noon Saturday.  I hope it remains relevant.

But!  I hope to always have new podcasts by Friday noon!  That's my weird promise to me, & by extension, you!  Tonight, though: I unload boxes & boxes of CDs.

Preface To A Distant Show: What's Going On With Your Radio Search, Gary?

(Image from Google Maps.)

First of all, I want to say that I am extremely unprepared for this week's Self Help Radio.  I haven't spent nearly enough time on it & my wife has scheduled me to take the car in for a check-up on Friday at 1pm so if I have the first new podcast up by noon that day (which is my plan) it will be because I scrambled at the last minute to get it done.  Therefore you have been notified of its almost inevitable shabbiness.

Second of all: I've met with nice people at KTCU & KFTW this week.  Here are my brief reports:

KTCU is the most immaculate college radio station I've ever been to.  (Remember, at WRFL, even guests feel obliged to leave their mark on the walls.)  The Station Manager is not a student, but a faculty member, & while I feel like we had a nice meeting, after chatting with me for an hour or so, he asked me if I had any references.  Well, I did!  I sent them to him the next day.  I liked the place & hope there might be a home there for Self Help Radio but if not I hope I can help out some.  College radio is in my blood.

The charming couple who run KFTW met me today at a local coffee jernt where I had a delicious soy latte & thrilled to hear the voice of a deejay from my youth.  The founder of the station is a giant in Metroplex radio, & it was a joy to listen to him talk.  I hope both of them liked me, but, as I suspected, since they feature one-hundred percent local music, it would be difficult to do SHR there - although the suggestion was made to "re-tool" it for the station, so not impossible - but I think I have a lot to offer anyway.  They had lots of cool ideas which we'll be exploring I hope in the weeks to come.

Interestingly, we had already sort of "met" the night before, when we passed in the neighborhood while they were walking their dog & the wife & I were walking our four.  The two girls - Pauline the beagle & Yoko the chihuahua - barked at them, for different reasons: Pauline wants to be friends, Yoko wants to be mean.  That's one of the reasons I feel Fort Worth is a small town masquerading as a big city.

As for KNON - no response yet.  But I've decided to go visit them sometime next week, like I did with KTCU, just drop in, see if there's any volunteering I can do, put an ugly face to my application.  & then, on the way home, get take-out Ethiopian from my favorite Ethiopian restaurant in the Dallas area.

There!  That's what's going on.  Are you glad I'm keeping you in the loop?

These Are Weird Things About House Hunting/House Owning

Here is a weird thing about owning a house: owning trees.  If the lot on which the house you own has trees, you are the de facto owner of the trees.  I have owned three houses now (not simultaneously) & all three have had trees.  I was the owner of trees.  Still am, I guess, since I still own a house in Lexington which is currently on the market.

Not only was am I an owner of trees, I watched a tree die.  In Austin, one of our trees died.  It died.  Trees have lifespans.  A tree I owned died.  In Lexington, a tree we owned was too close to the house, its roots possibly damaging the house's foundation, so we killed it.  Well, we didn't kill it.  We hired someone to do it.  Someone killed our tree for us.

Isn't that strange?  A human being can own a tree.  A human being can watch a tree he or she owns die helplessly.  A human being can murder a tree he or she owns.  Isn't that sad & weird & strange?

We're looking for a house to buy in Fort Worth now, & here's a weird thing about looking for a house: you get to go into houses where people still live & look around.

For example, a house we looked at yesterday had literature by the bedside from Al-Anon.  Here's what that organization does.  That seemed an awfully personal thing to discover about a stranger.  Not only that, but my wife, myself, & our realtor stayed in the house, where they had something cooking in a crock pot, for almost an hour talking about the house, sometimes saying unflattering things.  Imagine!  People coming into your home, noticing extremely intimate things from which they might draw any number of conclusions, & then being critical about it while still in your home.

That seems like a very strange way to do things.

Today we went to a house (which my wife liked very much) & asked the realtor about the previous owners, who we knew had recently died.  She quickly said to us, "They didn't die in the house!"

Neither my wife nor I are superstitious, & of course everyone has to die at some point, but it seemed something of an indignity that a deceased person must suffer (even though, of course, they can't be offended, since they're dead) if they had the bad fortune to not only die, but to die in their own home.

& if they did, the realtor's probably going to lie about anyway.

Not only that, but if the person died & there's stuff in the house, whoever's responsible for the estate - their children, or grandchildren, or bankers, or whoever - they've got to either sell or throw away that stuff.  So you're looking at all the stuff from a person's life that they quite literally couldn't take with them.

Oh, listen, I understand, there's often circumstances that make it impossible to empty a house before it's put on the market - & it's equally weird to go into those houses that are "staged" with cheap furniture & the inevitable tables with glass fruit on them - but even if the owners are still alive, I feel like I'm going into a house after a murder.  I should be carrying scientific equipment with me.

These are weird things about looking to buy a house.  I always feel so ill-prepared for this adulthood I entered decades ago; but even if they had taught this in school, I would've thought they were blowing it out of proportion.  Like gerunds.  A whole section on gerunds?  Really?

Oops I'm Doing It Again

(I took that image from here.)

FIRST.  I need to apologize.  This doesn't matter to you, but it does to me, so let me apologize & you can roll your eyes all you want when my back is turned, but the last post I published, last week, wasn't the - what was it? - 2400th post.  Y'see, if you start a post on Blogger, then you get distracted by, say, a page about a monkey on a horse, then forget you started a post, then start another one, the "draft" (as it is called) counts as a post.  So I just noticed that I had two "drafts" in my collection of posts, which means this is the 2399th post, & so the previous post was 2398.  No big deal for anyone but me, as I've said, but full disclosure is the name of the game.

Or is it?

SECOND.  I am still shopping around for a radio station here, but because I can't help myself, I am going to start doing Self Help Radio as a podcast, & there'll be a new episode this Friday.

That's right!  A new Self Help Radio this Friday!  Hooray!  Huzzah!  At noon Texas time!  Huzzay!  Hoorah!

Now.  I suppose I should start working on it.