Coming Up Tomorrow On The Dickenbock Report: National Hospital Day

(One of my absolute favorite moments from Community)

May 14 is National Hospitals Day. A good day to be in the hospital? No! It's never a good day to be in a hospital! People die there! But it is a good day to listen to the Dickenbock Report.

Join us tomorrow as we report on hospitals including a book report, oral reports, & of course musical reports. If we're lucky we won't get any long stories about Dick Dickenbock's time in hospitals. A person his age has spent a bit of time in the hospital. But how many stories about jello & mean nurses can one take?

Join us for our second afternoon show, Sunday, May 12, noon to 1pm, on XRAY FM - 91.1+107.1fm & online at xray dot fm.

As always, consult your doctor if the Dickenbock Report makes you violently ill.

This Week In Self Help (May 5 + 7 2024)

People love unicorns in Portland. & why wouldn't they? Unicorns live here in the Pacific Northwest. I am only surprised that they don't have a regular radio show about them!

Of course, they were the theme on this week's Self Help Radio. Lots of unicorn songs & conversations. Did you miss it?  Well! Here's a direct link to the episode. As always, you will need the username SHR & the password selfhelp to access.

If you'd rather listen to the show on the KBOO website, here is that link. No password needed.

The KBOO link also includes this week's episode of Corporate Standardized Programming (which follows Self Help Radio). On that show, I played lots of new releases. If you'd rather listen to it/download it from the Self Help Radio website, here is the link for that. Same username & password for Self Help Radio apply.

The Sunday before all that was The Dickenbock Report, a show about lemonade on National Lemonade Day. It was the show's debut at the Sunday noon timeslot. I have no idea how it went - you wanna listen & tell me? It is on the Self Help Radio web page linked here, or if you'd like you can listen at the XRAY web page.

Or wait - maybe not tell me. It probably went terribly. & I don't need to know that!

Books & Movies About Unicorns

Hey! We had some great guests on this week's Self Help Radio, including our favorite librarian & our resident cinephile! Let me list for you for what the latter two shared on the show this week - which was about unicorns. Listen to that show at the Self Help Radio website or at the KBOO website - & then explore these links:

(all images from Good Reads)

Carole (our favorite librarian) talked about three books:

The Very Short, Entirely True History Of Unicorns by Sarah Laskow & Sam Beck

Unicorns 101 by Cale Atkinson

& Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great ( & its sequels) by Bob Shea

Read them all for more unicorn understanding & then visit the links by our resident cinephile Chuck.

(image from the IMDb)

(Chuck's links are more complicated than Carole's)

Chuck's Youtube playlist.

Chuck's Letterboxd list.

Chuck's Letterboxed reviews.

IMDb list of films available to stream for free elsewhere.

IMDb keyword list.

Chuck on Bluesky.

Chuck on Twitter.

Gosh I hope there's a lot of unicorn enjoyment to be found here!

Self Help Radio 050724: Unicorns

How I hope this show was as magical as its subject! I'm a big unicorn fan from way back - I think maybe the first time I read about them in a creative way was in Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders Of Pern series. But you couldn't really avoid them - & they're so freaking cool.

Luckily my librarian friend Carole was around to talk about books about unicorns & our cinephile friend Chuck was around to talk about movies featuring unicorns. Plus I talked to a unicorn hunter & to a person intimately familiar with unicorns - because (as you doubtless know) there are plenty of unicorns here in the Pacific northwest!

You can listen to the show now at the Self Help Radio website. Use the username SHR & the password selfhelp to access. You can listen also on the KBOO website. It's all magical. Everything that's on the show is listed below.

Please enjoy the unicorn magic!

Self Help Radio Unicorn show

"The Unicorn" The Irish Rovers _The Best Of Shel Silverstein His Words His Songs His Friends_

"Always Be A Unicorn" Helen Austin _Always Be A Unicorn_

"I Was Born (A Unicorn)" The Unicorns _Unicorns Are People Too_

introduction & definitions - featuring Mythos The Historian

"She Was Born To Be My Unicorn" Tyrannosaurus Rex _Unicorn_

"The Last Unicorn" Swirl _The Last Unicorn_

"The Iceberg & Unicorn" Cleaners From Venus _Back From The Cleaners_

"Unicorns" June Tabor & Martin Simpson _A Cut Above_

our librarian friend Carole stops by!

"Unicornio" Mercedes Sosa _Mercedes Sosa_

"Unicorn" 'Weird Al' Yankovic & Wendy Carlos _Peter & The Wolf/Carnival Of The Animals - Part II_

"The Unicorn" Tele Novella _Poet's Tooth_

"Unicorn" The Dodos _Grizzly Peak_

our resident cinephile Chuck stops in!

"Unicorn Man" The Aardvarks _Stax '68: A Memphis Story_

"Behold The Indian Unicorn" Robin Williamson _Mirrorman's Sequences 1961-1966_

"The Unicorn" Donovan _HMS Donovan_

"Unicorn Tolerance" The Mountain Goats _Goths_

interview with unicorn hunter Pete Bachmann

"There Should Be Unicorns" The Flaming Lips _Oczy Mlody_

"Unicorn Song" Veronica Lipgloss & The Evil Eyes _The Witch's Dagger_

"Mr. Unicorn" Brown Hornet _KVRX Local Live Volume One: Cooking By Strobelight_

interview with Patty Birch, who's had many experiences with unicorns

"Hornless Unicorn Anthem" The Mathletes _#$@% You & Your Cool_

"Gay Unicorn" Gay Against You _Muscle Milk_

"The Lion & The Unicorn (BBC Session)" Skip Bifferty _The Story Of Skip Bifferty_

"The Lion & The Unicorn" The Men They Couldn't Hang _The Domino Club_

conclusion & goodbye

"Gryphons & Unicorns (feat. Marjolein Teepen)" Ton Scherpenzeel _The Lion's Dream_

"Unicorn Harpoon" Pink Skull _Zeppelin 3_

Whither Unicorns?

Why is the show today about unicorns? Why does there need to be a reason for someone to do a show about unicorns? Why aren't all radio shows about unicorns?

But of course there's a reason for unicorns being the theme tonight. & it's because I made a mistake.

My mistake was that, while I was planning shows for The Dickenbock Report - the other theme-based show I do - I accidentally looked for themes on the days that Self Help Radio was on. April 9 is Unicorn Day so I planned a Dickenbock Report about that. The problem was, The Dickenbock Report was on April 7, not April 9 - April 9 was a Self Help Radio day. A different show was planned for that day. & I had to find a different day to explore on the Dickenbock Report.

Man was I bummed. Then I thought, hold on. I can just do a show about unicorns on Self Help Radio! Why the hell not? So I planned for tonight's show.

& that's why the theme is unicorns!

Tune in tonight - really Tuesday morning - from midnight to 2am on 90.7fm & kboo dot fm for a radio show about unicorns! Guests galore! & the next intro premieres!

Preface To Unicorns: Who Doesn't Like Unicorns?

(comic by Ellis Rosen)

Is it because people associate unicorns with little girls & with hippies that some people don't like them? I told a couple of folks that I was going to do a show about unicorns & eyes were rolled at me. Imagine that!

While I don't think I went through a "unicorn phase" where I obsessed about them, I was always happy to see them/read about them. But I was very happy when introduced to Lady Rainicorn in Adventure Time.

My wife was so enamored with her that I put that name for her on my phone, which has caused more than one person to ask, "Why Lady Rainicorn?" Or maybe it's just happened once. With our vet in Fort Worth. She had never heard of Adventure Time. It was a bit embarrassing. Anyway.

The story of the unicorn show is good one. Come back tomorrow & I'll tell you it.