In the ridiculous set of rules I laid out for myself for Self Help Radio, one of them was, "Don't repeat themes." I'm sure this was initially a challenge, to myself certainly, but also to other deejays who repeated theme-based shows - especially on holidays. One deejay in Austin would play the almost exact same show every Thanksgiving. I said to myself, even if I did do a show for holidays - like Valentine's Day - I would pick a different theme based on the holiday each year but never repeat that theme ever again.
Except - yeah, there are always exceptions - I decided in 2008 I would, around the time of the show's anniversary, revisit an old theme then & there. & I have - sometimes I almost forget, but I've managed to do that. (I also have used episodes of Self Help Radio in other radio shows I've done - like with the Dickenbock Report, where for example the last show I did, I played songs from the Self Help Radio episode about kissing, which for some reason I didn't do on Valentine's Day. Although I mostly used songs from the KNON Tuesday Morning Blend show I did in 2018 around Valentine's Day which used the old Self Help Radio show about kissing as its base. The point is, I'm not averse to revisiting themes in other contexts - especially when I am doing three different radio shows on three different stations.) I simply didn't want to re-do shows on Self Help Radio, it was a rule, except during anniversary shows.
Except - & this wasn't an exception I thought about until it happened - what if someone requests a show you've already done but couldn't have heard it? For example, someone in Portland who likes bees who asked you to explore bees but you already did a show about bees? It seems like that would be a good reason to do another version of the theme. & why not? The people who did the same shows over & over did them in Austin, & whatever reason I decided not to do that - envy, perhaps, or spite - shouldn't apply in another place in the future. I don't archive all my shows. They're not always accessible. (That's mainly because who would want to listen to them? The last year of shows I've done is always available on my website & nobody ever listens to them.) & sometimes someone wants to hear a show I've already done.
Except - this is perhaps a rule about re-doing shows that I've never articulated - I'm doing new interviews & I'm going to play songs I didn't play on the previous show. Because there have been new bee songs in the past four years, either recorded since or discovered by me since.
That's what's happening this week, & why. I guess I should've saved this for tomorrow. Oops.
Saturday, February 22, 2020
Friday, February 21, 2020
Something I Wrote About Bees
This week's show - next week's show - whatever - is kind of a rerun. I'll do it live, but I once did a show about bees, four years or so ago. More on why I am re-doing a show tomorrow. But I never really re-run things I've written on this blog because, well, one, they're not that memorable, these things I write, & two, there's hardly ever a reason to repost them. But here's something I wrote about bees in May of 2016
_________________________
In a couple of the fake interviews for this week's shows - these are parts I might have edited out, because I tend to edit out my own contributions, whittling them down to more or less pertinent questions for my funny friends/guests* - I mentioned that I was allergic to bees. But I have a confession to make: I don't know if I am. I have never been stung by a bee.
Why would I say, & actually believe, that I am allergic to bees? Because once my mother told me I was. That was it! I'm sure she was telling me that I had a dangerous allergy because she wanted me to be safe, & not to fuck around with bees, creatures that might sting me if I stupidly put my hand into their hive or something. My mother is pretty much afraid of everything, & that fear was quite easily passed down into all her children.
& you know what, it worked! It worked so well that I have never been stung by a bee. I remember watching in awe as a middle-school friend not only got stung by a bee (I was so freaked out I almost cried) but calmly took the stinger out of his skin. He looked briefly at it as if it were as threatening as a splinter & tossed it away.
As threatening as a splinter! My mother once told me I absolutely had to get splinters out of my skin as soon as possible because otherwise they'd continue traveling downward, get into the blood vessels, & make their way to your heart, where one tiny splinter could stab & stab & stab you until you fucking died.
If she felt that way about a splinter, imagine what horrors a bee sting could inflict! Honestly, I don't even know if my mother knew about allergic reactions or going into anaphylactic shock or any of that shit. She just erred on the side of being terrified of the entire world & made sure to burden us with her suspect wisdom at every opportunity.
The weird thing is how long it took me - well into adulthood - to figure out how bogus it was. Take, for example, fire ants. Fire ants would bite you until you died, said my mother, & that's why you should be careful walking around them. Only, my little brother once stood in a fire ant hill, got bitten all over his legs, was in a lot of pain, was covered in calamine lotion for a night, & didn't die.
It's a testimony to how much a child relies upon the parent that I didn't call my mother out after my brother lived. Because when I saw those ants crawling all over him, I thought he was going to die.
Anyway, bees. I'm still afraid of bees, & actually most insects that are larger than a dime. & who knows? Maybe I should carry an EpiPen with me. For all the hell I know, out of the thousands, if not millions of things my mother told me that turned out to be hysterically wrong, she might be right about this.**
* I am only replaying one of the old interviews from the original show, so this might not come up at all.
** I've still never been stung by a bee.
_________________________
In a couple of the fake interviews for this week's shows - these are parts I might have edited out, because I tend to edit out my own contributions, whittling them down to more or less pertinent questions for my funny friends/guests* - I mentioned that I was allergic to bees. But I have a confession to make: I don't know if I am. I have never been stung by a bee.
Why would I say, & actually believe, that I am allergic to bees? Because once my mother told me I was. That was it! I'm sure she was telling me that I had a dangerous allergy because she wanted me to be safe, & not to fuck around with bees, creatures that might sting me if I stupidly put my hand into their hive or something. My mother is pretty much afraid of everything, & that fear was quite easily passed down into all her children.
& you know what, it worked! It worked so well that I have never been stung by a bee. I remember watching in awe as a middle-school friend not only got stung by a bee (I was so freaked out I almost cried) but calmly took the stinger out of his skin. He looked briefly at it as if it were as threatening as a splinter & tossed it away.
As threatening as a splinter! My mother once told me I absolutely had to get splinters out of my skin as soon as possible because otherwise they'd continue traveling downward, get into the blood vessels, & make their way to your heart, where one tiny splinter could stab & stab & stab you until you fucking died.
If she felt that way about a splinter, imagine what horrors a bee sting could inflict! Honestly, I don't even know if my mother knew about allergic reactions or going into anaphylactic shock or any of that shit. She just erred on the side of being terrified of the entire world & made sure to burden us with her suspect wisdom at every opportunity.
The weird thing is how long it took me - well into adulthood - to figure out how bogus it was. Take, for example, fire ants. Fire ants would bite you until you died, said my mother, & that's why you should be careful walking around them. Only, my little brother once stood in a fire ant hill, got bitten all over his legs, was in a lot of pain, was covered in calamine lotion for a night, & didn't die.
It's a testimony to how much a child relies upon the parent that I didn't call my mother out after my brother lived. Because when I saw those ants crawling all over him, I thought he was going to die.
Anyway, bees. I'm still afraid of bees, & actually most insects that are larger than a dime. & who knows? Maybe I should carry an EpiPen with me. For all the hell I know, out of the thousands, if not millions of things my mother told me that turned out to be hysterically wrong, she might be right about this.**
* I am only replaying one of the old interviews from the original show, so this might not come up at all.
** I've still never been stung by a bee.
Thursday, February 20, 2020
These Times Without Radio
There was only, for me, one radio show this week - Self Help Radio. On the way to the show on Monday morning, I got an ominous warning in my Prius & it turned out our battery had died. This is apparently exceedingly common in Priuses, although no one ever told me, & I took it to a nearby dealership after the show to deal with it.
It would take a couple of days to diagnose the problem which meant I couldn't get to XRAY to do Sugar Substitute the next night/morning, so I didn't get to do that show. A different XRAY show ran in repeat instead of mine. Sad face emoji.
This left me resigned to only doing one radio show this week until! Look! There's a 4 to 6 am slot on Freeform open! I think I'll do that!
Tomorrow morning, 4-6am, me just playing music & talking about nothing on Freeform. I'm saved from just one show a week!
Good lord, how did I do this a year ago?
It would take a couple of days to diagnose the problem which meant I couldn't get to XRAY to do Sugar Substitute the next night/morning, so I didn't get to do that show. A different XRAY show ran in repeat instead of mine. Sad face emoji.
This left me resigned to only doing one radio show this week until! Look! There's a 4 to 6 am slot on Freeform open! I think I'll do that!
Tomorrow morning, 4-6am, me just playing music & talking about nothing on Freeform. I'm saved from just one show a week!
Good lord, how did I do this a year ago?
Monday, February 17, 2020
Self Help Radio 021720: Intent
(Of course, this is based on the title card of this television show.)
Boy, this show felt like a mess. Was this show a mess? I'm very sleepy. I feel like I'm about to go to sleep after unleashing a mess upon Portland. This was not my intention.
Something I learned from this show: it's better when I have guests. Terrible guests are better than just lots of Gary.
Something else I learned from this show: intent & intention kinda mean the same thing. They are both used in each other's definitions. That seems lazy of dictionaries, doesn't it?
One other thing I learned right before this show: you can be driving along in your Prius listening to Kinky Friedman & an alert will flash & tell you CHECK HYBRID SYSTEM STOP THE VEHICLE IN A SAFE PLACE IMMEDIATELY. & you might say, fuck it, I need to get to a radio station to do a show & if the car explodes or catches fire you'll want to be close so you can abandon it as close to the radio station as possible.
Maybe that makes a radio show a mess? I felt like I compartmentalized it pretty well.
Anyway, for all intents & purposes, the show as it happened is as it happened. It's over at the Self Help Radio webpage as we speak. You can see what you might hear below. Remember: username SHR, password selfhelp. It wasn't my intention to make such a mess. But I have no intention of cleaning it up!
Self Help Radio Intent Show
"Intent" The Creeping Nobodies _Stop Movement Stop Loss_
"Intent" Lunch Duchess _Nervous Breakthroughs_
"Pure Intent" Empath _Active Listening: Night On Earth_
introduction & definitions
"Intentions" Ed's Redeeming Qualities _Big Grapefruit Cleanup Job_
"Intentions" Bill Ding _And The Sound Of Adventure_
"Intentions" Film School _Brilliant Career_
"Right Intention" William Hope _Buddhism Plain & Simple by Steve Hagen_
"Signal Your Intention" Hodges, James, & Smith _Incredible_
let's watch a YouTube video on the radio!
"Letter Of Intent" Ducktails _The Flower Lane_
"Statement Of Intent" Bis _Intendo_
"Statement Of Intent" Chris Knox _Seizure_
"Almost Unintentional" Alistair Hulett _In The Back Streets Of Paradise_
idiom time
"Good Intentions" Kitty Kallen _Warm & Sincere_
"New Emotion, Good Intentions" Mondial _The Sound Of Young Sweden Vol. 2_
"Good Intentions" The Dudes _Brain Heart Guitar_
"Good Intentions" Marika Hackman _I'm Not Your Man_
"Good Intentions?" Rocketship _Here Comes... Rocketship_
Ned Dry interrupts!
"Get Up Off Your Good Intentions" Charley Pride _She's Just An Old Love Turned Memory_
"Good Intentions" Ex Norwegian _No Sleep_
"Best Of Intentions" The Spook School _Could It Be Different?_
"Introducing John Stanley Hart/He Entered The Bar With The Best Of Intentions" William S. Burroughs _You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With_
"Good Intentions Heal The Soul" Mansun _Kleptomania_
producer Bob interrupts!
"You've Got Bad Intensions" Bobby "Blue" Bland _I Pity The Fool: The Duke Recordings, Vol. 1_
"Bye Bye Badman" The Stone Roses _The Stone Roses_
"Cool Intentions" Islands _Taste_
"Cruel Intentions" Shlomo Franklin _Apt. 16_
conclusion & goodbye
"(Do You Intend To Put An End To) A Sweet Beginning Like This" Fats Waller _1935, Vol. 2_
"I Don't Intend To Die In Egyptland" Joshua White _Goodbye Babylon_
"Gran Intento" Monica Giraldo _Putumayo Presents Cafe Del Mundo_
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Whither Intent?
(Image from here.)
It wasn't ever my intent to make a radio program about intent. It was never intended, I should say. I didn't have the intention. & yet, here we are, less than a day from a Self Help Radio about intent. How in the world did that happen?
It had been so long since I had been in a tent. It must've been years, actually. A tent, you know, a camping tent. Not a giant tent-like structure that might house a farmer's market or a religious revival. & yet there I was, in someone's tent. & by the way, it was in a camping situation, not in a houseless person situation. Here in Portland you see a lot of tents, often on sidewalks, or along the highway. It's a big problem here, how to deal with them. This was not that. I was in someone's tent, somewhere where they were camping.
Oh shit, I forgot to mention, this was in a dream. Yeah, I wasn't just wandering around some natural area, saw a tent, & went in. No, this was a tent in a dream. That was important, I'm sorry. Yeah, I was dreaming I was in someone's tent. But whoever's tent it was, that person wasn't someone I knew. Just someone who had, previously in the dream I guess, invited me into their tent. & like you do in dreams, they were talking to me about my radio show.
"Have you ever done a show about tents?" this person in my dream asked me.
The truth is, I couldn't remember, so I tried to look up my website on my phone, to see what themes I'd explored before. But my phone couldn't find the website. This happens to me a lot in my dreams, I try to find out information that I honestly don't know so I try to use a computer & because my brain doesn't know the information, it makes my computers not work. In the dream I was embarrassed I didn't know if I had done a show about tents, & also that my web page didn't seem to exist, so I said, "I might have."
The person in the tent - & I couldn't describe them, I don't even know if I saw them, their tent was tidy but there was only one light, a Coleman lantern, just hanging in the center, illuminating camping gear & an unrolled sleeping bag - the person said, "In tents! Intense! In tent! Intent!"
Perhaps sensing I might be harmed, I started to leave the tent. The person said, "Do a radio show that's in tent in tents! Intent intense!"
& I can't tell you how I knew the person wasn't just say "intense" or "in tents" over & over - somehow I figured out they were playing with the words.
When I woke, I tried to explain the dream to my wife, who was immediately bored by it, because it was, frankly, a boring dream. (At some point in the dream I got to feed a deer, but that's not important to this story, but gosh! what a thrill!) But there was a part of me that thought my mind was daring me to do a radio show that would be weird to do, so I decided - without looking around for songs - to do a show with the theme "intent," as a way to answer the challenge. You'll have to wait till tomorrow to see how that worked out for me.
Yes, tomorrow - Monday morning - 6 to 8am on Freeform Portland, 90.3 & 98.3 fm, freeformportland.org.
Listen, as I may never let my dreams dictate a show theme ever again.