Movies Of All Sizes

(image from the IMDb)

We had a delightful visit this week from our friend Chuck - Self Help Radio's resident cinephile - who, apropos this week's theme, "sizes," talked to us about movies featuring kaiju - which the Wikipedia tells us means "a Japanese genre of films & television featuring giant monsters. The term kaiju can also refer to the giant monsters themselves."

You didn't listen?  There's no excuse for that.  Do so now at either the Self Help Radio website & at the KBOO website.  Then, if you want more information, here are some links that can help!

Here's Chuck's IMDb keyword list from which he chose what to watch.

Chuck made a Letterboxd list of the films he watched, & here are his reviews.

Chuck wants you to see these films!  So, here is a YouTube playlist & an IMDb list of films you can stream elsewhere for free.

Follow Chuck on Twitter!  So you know when he's on next!  Spoiler alert - he's on next week's show too!

The Size Of Books

(images from Goodreads)

If we're very lucky, our favorite librarian Carole stops by Self Help Radio to talk to us about some books relating to this week's theme.  She was here for this week's show, which had the theme "sizes," & which you can listen to at either the Self Help Radio website or at the KBOO website - Carole's interview happens early in the show, just past the first half hour I believe - & you should listen because she talked about the three books above!

Once you've listened, find out more at these links!  Here are the books she talked about:

I'm The Biggest Thing In The Ocean! by Kevin Sherry

Capybara Is Friends With Everyone by Maddie Frost

(The capybara is the largest rodent, you see.)

Ninita's Big World: The True Story Of A Deaf Pygmy Marmoset by Sarah Glenn Marsh with illustrations by Stephanie Fizer Coleman

(The pygmy marmoset is the smallest monkey.)

Thanks to Carole, you can grow your library by listening to the radio!

Reflections On The Number 4,000

(image from here)

Oh no, you're thinking, is he going to start writing in this blog six days a week? That's just so much more to ignore! I am not. No, I've been thinking about what I mentioned in this post, which is, I have past four thousand posts on this blog.  It seems like a lot.

But is it?  Four thousand days is just under eleven years (if there were no leap years, eleven years would count as 4,015 days).  Self Help Radio turns 20 next week, & this blog began in 2006, so if I wrote in this blog every day, I would've hit four thousand posts around 2017 or so.

But four thousand years is a lot of years.  Look at that map up there of the what the world looked like around 2000 BCE.  (Four thousand years ago would be 1978 BCE or maybe 1979 BCE since there wasn't a year 0. I have simply forgotten how to properly math.)  That is astonishing.

Human were everygoddamwhere except New Zealand & some very northern places.  (I don't know about Polynesia though & am too lazy to look that up.)  It was the Bronze Age & that would last until around 1200 BCE.  & you can see most of the world was not really working with bronze.  & good for them!

There were only a few Bronze Age cultures, many of which I am ashamed to admit I don't know much about - they're in orange up there.  Fewer still were "state societies" - the Norte Chico in the Andean area, the Egyptians, the Minoans, the Syrians, the folks in the Indus Valley, & Ur III.

According to the Wikipedia page about 2000 BCE, we seem to know most about Egypt, probably because their records were saved in the desert environments, but two things stick out:
1) "The last woolly mammoth goes extinct on Wrangel island."
2) "Horses were tamed & used for transport."
Both seem a bit sad in their way.

Would I like to visit back then?  Hell yeah.  But only if I could bring my own food & drink.  I'm sure I'd get cholera right away from the water.  & I'm sure I'd be very sad to see the abject misery.  & of course everyone would smell terrible. But there's so much about that time we'll never really know. Like, what did their music sound like? Hearing someone sing back then & play music would be incredible.

& it was just four thousand years ago. That's mind-blowing, isn't it? Like, we know quite about about what happened two thousand years ago. But double that? Precious little.

That's what the number four thousand made me think of. Stuff much more interesting than almost anything written in the over four thousand posts on this blog!

Self Help Radio 092722: Sizes

Like the graphic above (which features a picture of the Willamette in the background that I took on a very cold day this past winter), Self Help Radio came in all different sizes this week.  It's like someone said, "Hey! Pick on someone your own size!" & Self Help Radio said, "But I am all sizes!"

Just a point of clarification: the radio show can't actually talk back to you. I've had a caller or two in my time who seemed to want to argue with a song I've just played, but generally speaking recordings can't communicate with you unless your brain is wired to receive such things, & we think of that as a form of mental illness.  I was only speaking with my revoked poetic license.  Also, I wanted to use the phrase "pick on someone your own size," maybe because I've never used it ever in my life.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, lots of sizes.  That was what the show was about.  Sorry, I used all my brainpower this morning/afternoon creating that dumb graphic up there, so I simply can't think of anything else to say.

Except!  You can listen to the show now at its KBOO page or at the Self Help Radio website.  If you go to the show's website, remember you'll need to use SHR as a username & selfhelp as a password.  But you can download the show there!  Everything that happened is below.

Sighs.  I mean, size.

Self Help Radio Sizes Show

"He's Just My Size" Lillie Mae Kirkman _Raunchy Business (Hot Nuts & Lollypops)_

"She's Just Good Huggin' Size" Tommy McClennan _Big Joe Williams & The Stars Of Mississippi Blues_

"Large Size Mama" Ruth Wallis _For Sophisticates Only_

introduction & definitions

"Giant Sized Baby Thing" Bow Wow Wow _Your Box Set Pet (The Complete Recordings 1980-1984)_

"The Size Of A Cow" The Wonder Stuff _Never Loved Elvis_

"It's Not Just The Size Of A Walnut" The Soft Boys _1976-81_

"A Girl Your Size (How Could I Not Miss)" Martin Mull _Martin Mull & His Fabulous Furniture In Your Living Room_

"Love Comes In All Sizes" The Chi-Lites _A Letter To Myself_

our favorite librarian Carole stops by

"Size 12" Don Cornell _The Hits Collection 1942-58_

"King Size Papa" Julia Lee _I'm A Bad, Bad Girl - Seven Dozen Dusky Divas 1939-1953_

"Try On My Love For Size" Chairmen Of The Board _Everything's Tuesday: The Best Of Chairmen Of The Board_

"Dogs Come In All Sizes" George Carlin _More Napalm & Silly Putty_

"Shoesize Of The Angel" Momus _Ping Pong_

interview with shop owner Josie Little

"King Size" The Trials Of Jayson Hoover _King Size_

"Kingsized" Dressy Bessy _Kingsized_

"King Size" Peach Kelli Pop _Gentle Leader_

"It Ain't The Size Of The Ring Finger" Dave Foley _Relatively Well_

"Size 9" Alpinestars _B.A.S.I.C._

interview with shop owner Karen Hardy

"Man Sized Job" Denise LaSalle _Making A Good Thing Better: The Complete Westbound Singles 1970-76_

"Man-Size" PJ Harvey _Rid Of Me_

"The Size Of Our Love" Sleater-Kinney _The Hot Rock_

"Plus Size Models" Andy Kline _Vintage_

"Super-Size It" Half Japanese _Hello_

interview with tallest person in American Jasper Johnson

"I'm Looking For A Saxophonist Doubling French Horn Wearing Size 37 Boots" The Artwoods _Steady Gettin' It: The Complete Recordings 1964-67_

"My Size Side" The Homosexuals _Astral Glamour_

"House The Size Of Mars" The Dentists _If All The Flies Were One Fly: A Collection Of Rare & Unreleased Dentistry 1984-1995)_

"Three Different Sizes" Sarah Silverman _Songs Of The Sarah Silverman Program - From Our Rears To Your Ears!_

"Kingsize (You're My Little Steam Whistle)" Haircut 100 _Pelican West_

"You're Just The Right Size" The Salsoul Orchestra _The Salsoul Orchestra_

our resident cinephile Chuck stops by

"Medium-Sized" Jerold Crews _Drive In Presents: Easy Tune Vol. 3_

"Half The Size Of Nothing" The Bluetones _A New Athens_

"High Rise Towers In Medium Size Towns" Darren Hayman & The Secondary Modern _Pram Town_

"Pocketsize" Voice Of The Beehive _Monsters & Angels_

"In A Town This Size (with Dolores Keane)" John Prine _In Spite Of Ourselves_

conclusion, phone call with Mr. Spellman, goodbye

"My Size" Jackie Cohen _Zagg_

"Super Size Me" Magnapop _The Circle Is Round_

"Just My Size" Tuscadero _The Pink Album_

"Your New Twin Sized Bed" Death Cab For Cutie _Narrow Stairs_

Whither Sizes?

 (image found here.)

Self Help Radio listeners come in all sizes (I'll assume).  But are they - are you - interested in a show about size itself?  I'll find out tonight!

My last foray (I think) into the world of sizes on the show was the "giant show" from a little over two years ago.  As I said on the blog about that show,

Quite simply, it means a show about giants & giant things.  Quite complicatedly, it means that the original intention was songs about giants but at some point in the collection of songs about giants the songs about giant things had also amassed & some of them were really good & it was like, "Why exclude these things because they're giant too just not giants."  Quite Germanly, ich kann wirklich kein Deutsch. Ich habe einen Online-Übersetzer verwendet, um dies zu schreiben. Meine deutschen Vorfahren würden sich zutiefst schämen. Naja. Darf ich auch hinzufügen, daß ich drei schöne Hunde habe?

Something in me - thankfully it doesn't appear to covid - because I tested! - told me it was time to do another show about scale.  But just "scale"?  Should it be "a tiny show"?  "A fat show"?  "A medium show"?  I began to feel I was developing a kind of antipathy - maybe even a prejudice - for all sizes, including my own, which is "large & unpleasantly lumpy."  I was becoming size-ist!

To keep me from going down difficult roads, I settled on a show about size.  All sizes!  Because while it's true that one particular size doesn't matter, size itself matters.  Plus, it doesn't mean in the future I can't do a tiny, fat, medium, or even large & unpleasantly lumpy show.  Why use up all possible words & themes?  I mean, English has so few of them as it is.

Listen! Tonight! Midnight to 3am Portland time! KBOO! 90.7 fm! kboo.fm! It's just your size!

Preface To Sizes: How Tall Or Fat Is 4000?

(image from here.)

The show this week will have the theme "sizes."  Which should be fun.  But guess what?  I missed a milestone a couple of days ago, which was: the four thousandth post on this blog!

My first post was written Tuesday, September 12, 2006 - approximately sixteen years ago.  The show was almost four years old, I was 38 years old, & I had no idea that I would still be doing Self Help Radio in 2022 or if I would even be alive.  Almost all the animals I had at that time are gone - only my good friend the black cat Bolan remains from that beautiful menagerie.  I was single then, living with a woman who I think just had a master's degree but no PhD.

Since I didn't take many pictures back in the day, I don't have any specifically from September 12, 2006, but my girlfriend & I had just come back from visiting Chicago, & this is a picture from then:

There's very little gray in that beard. The next couple of years at KOOP would change that!

Anyway, I didn't mean to hijack this post, I just felt like I should note - sixteen years of nonsense on this blog, four thousand posts, & next month it'll be twenty years of Self Help Radio.  Someone needs to make me a cake or something.

Or I'll just do it.