Self Help Radio 082418: Girl With...

(Original image found here.)

Detractors of Self Help Radio might say that the show suffers when the themes explored are phrases or recurring words or verbs instead of concrete things, like cars, or ovens, or smoke, or cheese.  Although I guess I did do a show about cheese.  Anyway, I disagree with that imaginary detractor (since you need a listener base to have detractors, & the show has neither) because when some element is noticed - for example, that there are a lot of songs that feature a girl with something - & that is explored, a fun & interesting show is often the result.  For example, today's show!

Sure, I'm biased, since I picked all the music, but I liked what I played on the show very much.  You can just glance at the playlist below.  In addition, there are silly interviews & other silly things, you know, like usual, but I am particularly happy with the songs, & all the things that you'll find on the show today with the girls: sandy blonde hair & a swingin' derriere, golden braids, grey eyes, green eyes, eyes like you, the loneliest eyes, light in her eyes, cars in her eyes, gun (& specifically machine guns), guitars, a synthesizer,  a sunny smile, a curious smile, an attitude problem, a Northern soul collection, a white stuck, boys' names, boyfriends, rainbow conversation, &, well, everything!  & even the sad things they have: a past, a halo, no body, no boy.

Hey!  Having something that isn't is having nothing.  Girls with nothing still have nothing.  Think about it.  Get really high & think about.  It'll feel like first semester philosophy all over again!

The show is now at Self Help Radio's web site.  You know about the ol' username (SHR) & the password (selfhelp) by now, right?  Great.  You're really with it.  Like some of the girls on this show.

Self Help Radio Girl With... Show

"The Girl With Sunny Smile" Pale Sunday _A Weekend With Jane_
"Girl With A Past" Jimmie Heap & The Melody Masters _Release Me_
"The Girl With The Sandy Blonde Hair" The Perpetuated Spirits Of Turpentine _Aliens Psychos & Wild Things Vol. Fore_

introduction

"The Girl With Eyes Like You" The Pristines _Teen-Fraud, Pop-Whore_
"Girl With Grey Eyes" Big Country _Steeltown_
"The Girl With The Guitar (Says Oh Yeah)" The Three O'Clock _Arrive Without Travelling_
"Girl With A White Stick" Sekret Sekret _Inner City Sound_
"Blind Girl With Halo" Hefner _Breaking God's Heart_

interview with Bingham Killkid

"Something For The Girl With Everything" Sparks _Propaganda_
"The Girl With Everything" Tot Taylor _Jumble Soul_
"The Girl With The Loneliest Eyes" House Of Love _Babe Rainbow_
"A Girl With Cars In Her Eyes" Cleaners From Venus _On Any Normal Monday_
"The Girl With The Light In Her Eyes" Michael Shelley _Too Many Movies_

interview with curator David Fruchter

"La Ragazza Con La Pistola" Nino De Luca _Easy Tempo, Vol. 2: The Psycho Beat_
"Girls With Guns" Tender Trap _Dansette Dansette_
"Bikini Girls With Machine Guns" The Cramps _Stay Sick!_
"Girls With Guitars" Spearmint _Intercontinental Pop Exchange No. 5_
"Girls With Boys' Names" TeamMate _The Sequel EP_

interview with Marge Most

"The Girl With The Curious Smile" The Wedding Present _Search For Paradise: Singles 2004-2005_
"The Girl With The Attitude Problem" Dead Famous People _Arriving Late In Torn & Filthy Jeans EP_
"The Girl With The Northern Soul Collection" Club 8 _Spring Came, Rain Fell_
"The Girl With No Body" Momus _20 Vodka Jellies_
"The Girl With Rainbo Conversation (feat. Brian Scott)" Drug Boyfriend & Holy Worm _The Girl With Rainbo Conversation_

an attempt to talk some calls

"The Girl With The Swingin' Derriere" Chubby Checker _Let's Limbo Some More_
"The Girl With The Golden Braids" Perry Como _You Are Never Far Away_
"Girl Without A Boy" The Forum _The River Is Wide_
"Girl With A Synthesizer" Rachel Sweet _Fool Around_
"Girl With Green Eyes" The Doctors Children _King Buffalo_

conclusion & goodbyes

"Girlfriend With Boyfriend" Spaghetti Anywhere _Birdsongs,Beesongs: Eardrums Spring Compilation 2009_

Whither Girl With?

(You type in "girl with" in Google & it gives you - or at least it gave me - "Girl With Pearl Earring" first.  Image from Wikipedia.)

Boy, that "Whither Girl With" looks weird.  I was wondering if I should, like yesterday, write, "Whither 'Girl With'?" with the extra quotation marks around girl & with, but I've never really done it before & I'm kind of irritated that I did it yesterday so I said no.  No!

Anyway, you know what the show's going to be: songs that feature the phrase "girl with" somewhere prominently in this.  Like "Girl With Pearl Earring."  I hope the whole "girl with" thing doesn't seem too sexist.  I'll also try to include some "woman with" songs.  & maybe pluralize it, too, songs with "girls with" for girl power.  Woman power.  You know what I mean.

There are a lot of songs with that construction.  I wanted to see how many I could find.  My results will be available tomorrow at the Self Help Radio website.  At noon.  See ya then.

Preface To 'Girl With': That Dragon Tattoo Book

No, I've never read it.  I saw the trilogy of Swedish movies, & maybe the American version of the first movie, but I can't remember a thing about it, except I thought Noomi Rapace was completely beautiful.

But look, here's an interesting thing about that book.  The three that were written by their creator, Stieg Larsson, were all finished before his death, at age fifty, of a heart attack.  That's crazy.  I mean, think of his poor editor - how do you make requests for changes of a dead guy?

The other thing is this: there are more in the series, written by other people.  I guess when something is popular, that's what happens.  It shouldn't surprise me - I'm a huge fan of comics (some might say nerd) & of course a million people have written & drawn Superman since Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster created his first adventures.  How weird would it be to have ownership be such that only their stories were allowed?  Or what about songs - what if only the original artists could sing their songs?  Musicians who make money off of covers (like Bob Dylan) wouldn't get that precious green, nor the exposure of more-popular artists presenting their songs to a bigger audience.

I don't really remember much about the films except for bits & pieces.  So it would be lost on me to read any sequels.  Unless they have some kind of "previously on..." section in the books.  Books don't do that.  Television shows & some comic books do that.  Not highly acclaimed suspense novels.  Which is a shame.  We could all use a "previously on..."

Do You Ever Dream Of Vin Diesel?

Because I do.  He finds his way into my dreams.

There has to be some kind of trigger, though.  Usually it's that some Fast &/or Furious movie is on the television right before some other show I'm going to watch, & I just catch a glimpse of him & then that night, boom, he's in my dreams.

Some dreams are banal enough.  I had a dream recently where I went to my favorite Tex-Mex restaurant in Austin & he was there, next to me, at the buffet.  I said to him, "Hey."  He said, "Hey."  He seemed impossibly tall.  But when I was eating I didn't see him anywhere, & assumed that there was a kind of Celebrity Room I would never be invited to where people like Vin Diesel ate.

But other times he's an important part of the dream.  One time I dreamt I was visiting an unnamed Eastern European country, & he was showing me around.  That was a great dream because it became cinematic & Vin Diesel was soon one of the locals & I soon found myself involved in what seemed like rebellion or treachery against the unnamed Eastern European country's dictator, although I was wholly innocent & even ignorant of what the situation there was.  After spending some time in the countryside, I had to be rushed to the capital city because of a small emergency - I hurt my foot - Vin Diesel took me - but although I had been there before, the whole atmosphere of the town had changed, & indeed, at the hospital, I saw Vin Diesel in military get-up & realized he had been framing me for some unspecified sedition & soon I was thrown in jail.  (They never treated my hurt foot.)

Listen, I know dreams are boring, but this one ended well: I came to realize I was in an actual novel written by an unnamed Eastern European writer who had escaped some dictatorship & once I did, I was able to limp out of prison unmolested.  Then I realized that the book had a series of scholarly essays at the end & I didn't want to read them, so I woke up instead.

The point is, I saw Vin Diesel in something in passing on the television tonight.  Which means I'll probably find him later in my dreams.  Will he simply be a bystander, or maybe on a billboard or television in the dream?  Or will he play a main part - like, will he & I be in a speeding car doing daredevil driving?  I hope so.

But whatever happens, I think I'll probably dream of Vin Diesel tonight.

Don't Let Me Get Too Melodramatic About It

But the Pledge Drive continues!  I'll be standing on the streetcorner at 89.3 fm tomorrow morning from 7-9am with my hat out hoping my stupid singing & dancing will get a few coins thrown at me.

Apparently a storm Saturday night knocked out the phone lines, so there's been a couple days where people couldn't call in to pledge.  Surely they could've done it online!  Maybe if you do that, the Pledge Drive can end tomorrow & we'll be done until the leaves that haven't already been burned off the tree fall.

Okay, Gary.  Get a better attitude!  You believe in this station, you believe in true community radio, in independent voices on the fm dial.  Let's do this.

See ya in the morning!