Like Living In A Basket Of Henna

I think I'm the only other person besides John Phillip Sousa who has written songs specifically for old people renewing their vows or otherwise getting remarried. I hesitate to mention this because I am a modest man with an Amber Alert, but I am also an accomplished singer slash songwriter (I sing, & I slash songwriters) who is suffering now, not for my art, but against my better judgement. I want to be able to promote my business on my radio show, but I cannot. The FCC doesn't allow it. My mother frowns on it. My cult leader Wiggles 1 says it's bad for my Hobbit Karma, & the woman I love won't let me buy spots on late night television. She's afraid they'll compete with her "hot sex line!" spots.

They used to say, "In for a cuddle, in for a snog," but that didn't play well after reruns of "Gilligan's Island." So we sewed a hole in the cave & made out for the Big City with sneezes ablaze. Our GPS powered by a drunken attempt to find the fastest way via Yahoo Maps in the dark led us straight to the obligatory horror film casting call. I couldn't shriek with so many corn nuts in me, so I got to play the gay ranger. You got to skinny dip in a South Dakota prison while humming an MC Hammer tune (which, technically, means you were humming a Rick James tune) & the killer (played by James Spader) caught you, tied you up, & removed your bridgework. We made fifty dollars that day & fed it to the local rabbits.

An Appalachian firehose told us stories of riches & treasures downstream in the Pisgahs, so we rented a jalopy from Archie Andrews & made quick time (our musical interlude was only two minutes). Alas, though we were armed with a Richard Gere quarterstick & a half-drunk bottle of Martini & Rossi, we were still bested by the clans of roving Elf-Fuckers who patrol the other side of those old hills. They only let us leave when I kept kicking their ass at Trivial Pursuit. & you didn't want to bring it!

What I am meaning to ask is, can we forfeit time? What happens to a dream demured? As I remember the delicious way they killed realtors - slowly, with great care, in empty houses with great resale possibility - I try not to reflect on future failures. Instead, I wil file a lawsuit. If you'd like to be a co-plaintiff, or if you'd like to be sued, I know a guy who knows a girl who knows this family in Washington DC who knows this bathhouse which is run by this dude he knows who keeps videos of all the patrons & the number-one biggest "rubber ducky in the bath" client is none other than former head of the Soviet Union Raymond Burr!

If you don't believe me, at least listen to my radio show. It's like a ninety-minute long song, broken into ear-sized chunks.

The Critics Are Quick To The Draw

My post yesterday was a widely anticipated attempt to mix internal rhyme ("doggerel") with external rhyme ("Dylanerrel") to capture the fresh new sound of our post-Global-Warming culture. But reactions were decidedly icky:

Paul Walker Poot in the Stalon Onlin (yeah, they spell it without an e - whaddaya gonna do?) - said, "Once again, a radio personality (if you can call him that, which I can't, although I just did) attempts to meld their mundance audio experience with the flights of poetic fancy. The results literally made me weep tears of blood."

The usually supportive Maryann Serialkiller over in Spate said, "Though I am usually supportive, I feel as though the liberties this deejay takes are embarrassing & overindulgent. More music, sir, less poesy."

My old middle school Texas History teacher, the late Papa Jim Burns, when I read the piece to him, told me via the Ouija Board: "Your feet are flat. Stop making cheese with your mind. Knit socks stopped the last ice age. Give me two pennies with a kiss."

The film critic known only as 1975 said on his blog, "I was going to start reviewing more than films, but the first blog I found was an obviously self-hating homsexual attempt to rebuild his closet from the moans & groans of his 'listeners.'"

On a more cheery note, on the blog called "Living With Advanced Phlegm Deficiency," the brave soldier named DryMouth763 said, "If I never had to read shit like this again, I could die happy." It's so wonderful to see someone come to grips with what is obviously a very disgusting disease. I'm pleased I could play a part.

However, this bodes ill for advanced reviews of tomorrow's show, & I would like to point out that the staff of writers I employ for Self Help Radio - the Blog - are not the staff of writers I employ for Self Help Radio - the Radio Show - but only because I don't have a staff of writers. Instead, I have some magic Darren Aronofsky tree bark which I eat a little bit of, dream I am a bald Hugh Jackman, then I settle down & do a radio show. The tree bark is what makes all the difference.

The only drug I take before I write these blog entries is fear. Fear, & a little oxygen. I'm sorry I have failed you so.

Whither Parades?

This is the fourth iteration of my explanation why there's such consternation about the association of my radio station & the word "parade." Once again, I must explain, though I admit it cause me pain, I would fain let you sustain one more drop of rain of the confusion which has lain about the wreck of train that is my disdain (what a sorry refrain!) I have for those who, in the main, cannot but crane their necks to obtain reasons why I am doing a show about "parades."

Why do you need to know? Is it because I tell you so? You wouldn't search high or low, no, you are lazy & you are slow, but to a computer you will go & with some "browser bookmark" in tow, you find the link to my show, & then to the blog to feast on my woe, though never must you look too long to find out why my theme is what my theme is that week.

But I don't think you really care. Oh yes I dare to say so, where you once thought I was timid, now I rise from my chair, making the hair on your neck bristle back there - it's not fair that I, fully aware, spend all this time to bare my soul to apathetic you, in your lair, as you stare or blink or say, "Gare, that's not true," then drift off, it's not rare, it's the disinterst you wear when you lazily glare at my blog as I write something else about my show.

I love my radio show & I want you to like it so I continue to write these things even when I lose my "rhyme time." "Rhyme Time" is a factory-authorized time of day when you are allowed to rhyme to your heart's content. People who sign up for "rhyme time" are not allowed to rhyme continuously for any time other than rhyme time. Otherwise, they may destroy the space-rhyme continuum. I would have loved to continue the poem. But my time is up.

Parades this week. Parades are fun. Parades might get you laid. Ooops. Forget I rhymed that.

Preface To Parades: Whatever Float Floats Your Boat

Madchester Martin, in his impotent history Parades & The Fancy Men Who Love Them, forwarded the astonishing thesis that parades were a metaphor for parades themselves, making the idea of parades a simile, & the sound that parades made a self-fulfilling onomatopoeia. This is why he was later voted king of France, but in his early years, supervising the clean-up crew at the Pigeon Towers, he often wondered why parades were the way parades were though parade uniforms looked silly at any time of year besides Halloween. He also dreamed of a never-ending parade that only stopped when he woke up.

The last time I went to a parade, it was kinda gay. Actually, it was very gay. It was a Gay Pride Parade. I was not the only straight person there, nor was I the only straight person there getting some hot gay sex. But being at a Gay Pride Parade doesn't make you gay. It doesn't even make you a paradophile. It just means you're prideful. Chew on that, Voltaire!

Voltaire, by the way, did not invent parades. If it's just one crazy French guy marching down the street making bugle noises with his mouth, that's not a parade. That's just goofy. So too the saying, "Be my parade!" is incorrect. You need at least ten people & two floats to have an official parade (this is in the Oxford University Parade Rules Handbook, New Millenium Edition). People who tell you you must have animals are liars. Probably they work for the Parade Animal industry. Those bastards will say & do anything to get work.

I know many of you are afraid that I am just a shill for the Parade World myself. This is not so. For example, when I did my show last week about addresses, I made it perfectly clear that I myself had an address. During the show I did about owls earlier this year, I made it clear that I owned four owls & was an owl-breeder who sold owls on OwlBay. I have always been upfront about my financial, social, or sexual relations with the topics I explore on my show. So even though the International Big Parade Conglomerate (funded by UNESCO & the World Bank, at least until Wolfowitz is fired) has bought me new clown shoes & an official baton from Boca Raton, I don't feel I am doing them much of a favor by having an entire show about parades. Indeed, they'd prefer I leave the topic alone. Every year I do a Christmas show, fewer people celebrate the holiday. That's known as the "Self Help Radio Curse."

Tomorrow: President Truman on parades: "We must have them here so we don't have to have them there."

Cemetaries are for LOSERS

I was talking to this dead dude the other night - yes, it was a dream - & he was telling me that, even though his soul is able to soar free & do what it wants - & believe it or not, he tells me that looking at nekkid girls all the time gets boring because they hardly ever do things like in pornographic movies when they're alone - a lot of them fart most of the time, he says, & he's one of those shades who can also smell stuff which just sucked on a level that seemed impossible past death - he said that he couldn't be truly free until his body rotted away. That's the sadness about our burial system, he said. It traps spirits on Earth. Which meant that dead folks like him, who died young, had to hang out with dead racists & Nazis & other ignorant folk whose bones were still around. He also said it was very uncomfortable because there were a lot of "pre-humans" like Lucy around & they were dull, dull, dull. "Evolve!" he used to scream at them.

Anyway, I woke up realizing that that dream was completely unhelpful. I know, I should be one of those exciting pseudoscientists who buy into dream interpretation & who sleeps with crystals shoved up my nose & who changes the aroma of my bedsheets to match my next day's needs (does anyone really do that - hot dog! I invented a pseudoscience!), but I'd prefer that, if my dreams wanted to help me, they be direct. Don't have some dumbass corpse making shit up to amuse me - & I dreamed I was laughing my head off - but instead, have the corpse come to me - it could be anything, it's a dream, so let's say, a rabbit - the rabbit come to me & say, "Hello buddy. Here are the reasons your radio show sucks. Here's how to fix it."

I learned this phrase from Sam Harris: "too cute by half." He said, "that zen koan was too cute by half." But I am saying now that my dreams are too cute by half. By three quarters, even. My dreams are too cute by six bits. & that's got to stop. Or I'll be forced to huff paint until I pass out.

I am publicly telling my mind: shape the fuck up. You totally blew it when we tried lucid dreaming. You still let me obsess about dumb stuff way too much. Let's start with settling down the flights of fancy in my dreams & being more constructive. & I promise, in return, to put more drugs into you than I have been recently. I know you love that.

Speaking of love, you might love listening to last Friday's episode of Self Help Radio. It exists in sexually provocative mp3 podcast form for all your digital music needs. Get it now! Before you die! Because all music when you're dead sounds like the Doobie Brothers!

Home Invasion (Version)

No one wakes up this early on a Sunday morning unless there's a church that needs forgiving. I am into my second week of Having To Walk The Dogs. The dogs are in their second week of Making That Human Walk Us Early In The Morning. I also have to confess I dream about When It's Time To Mow The Lawn. Also, I think it's just sinking in that the Arm broke up. Did I get a fucking phone call? What happens when phone calls fuck? Are their children disposable cell phones?

It's Mother's Day so naturally thoughts turn to matricide. I think Freud said it best when he wasn't talking. To get back to me, I am not entirely sure why I never made a living as a torch singer, but I do know I got in a lot of trouble when I brought the torch into banks, restaurants, & the occasional bus. "Why not a candle?" a kindly maitre'd might say. "Or one of those nice little lights that children & thieves put next to their beds at night to scare away monsters & the East German secret police?" "Would you like to hear our specials?" he would add.

The difference between you & me, I believe, is continuity. I spent so long - I still spend so long - I may continue spending so long - cramming my head full of stuff that I naturally forget about things from time to time. (Sorry, Fiji!) I remember one time when I was talking about the first girl to kiss me - someone who's name one shouldn't forget - & I couldn't recall it. (Sorry again, Fiji!) I remember it now, of course. I also vaguely remember what she kissed like. It's not the first time you've heard this, but: she kissed like a polka.

Here's an unfair thing about googling for men. If you're googling, say, the first girl you ever kissed, just, you know, to find out what the hell happened & how many children she's stuck with for the rest of her lousy life, you might not be able to find her because she'll more than likely have changed her name. Maybe more than once! How unfair is that? Any girl who cared can always find me on the critical list of people who need new livers, but I can't find out how many times they've had to go to court to bail their sprog out of juvie.

Speaking of my mother, I do owe her a debt of gratitude (& about nine hundred dollars) for always being there when I arrested for screaming at cheese with a household pet. (That's on the books in Garland, Texas - look it THE FUCK up, skeptic.) Some might say it's flattering to share a felonious condition like that with such notables as Thomas Jefferson (arrested in Paris in 1778 for hollering at a brie with a twelve-year-old poodle) & Emile Zola (arrested in Virginia in 1899 for "arguing with a wheel of cheddar" while two golden retrievers looked on), but years of therapy & the humiliation my friends so gladly put me through (a featurette on ESPN-6 was grueling & only looks good on my resume) makes all that an ambivalent experience at best.

I raise a toast of actual toast (it is morning) to my mother & my mother everywhere. I wish I had some jelly to wash it down with. The things one does for love of king & mother!

Finding New Bob Dylan Quotes (In Your Grandma's Old Bible)

Lookit! It's a Friday & a Friday is & has been for the past year a Self Help Radio day! If you're happy & you know it, clap your blog!

I remember being a Tuscan wench at the age of nine who was amused by the phrase "boxing of the ears" whilst reading nor rereading Botticelli & his children's literature ho ho. For indeed, what is most punishful about that, putting a box on the ears? Ah ha, the children cannot hear. But no! I asked my pal Romeo McGreavy (who was also a Tuscan wench but two years older) & he didn't TELL, he SHOWED me. Boxing ears is bad like shaking baby is bad. Perhaps we shouldn't even WRITE about it. Ouchy.

I must confess, even though I flinch now, I do miss the random, amusing violence of childhood. Looking back, I am now aware that most of my insecurities, my sexual hang-ups, my inability to cope with darkness & small places that smell like cafeterias, my pronounced stutter when I am amorous, my lack of feeling in three of the fingers on my left hand, my fear of trough toilets, my sense of nausea when someone scratches on a big chief tablet, my mind's weird habit of repeating the calvary charge bugle in my head every time I walk through the door of an institutional-looking building, my need to be handcuffed to a chalkboard at least once a year, my habit of calling any woman with big hair "mom," my emptiness at not getting recess twice a day, my anxiety about jello in beige plastic cups, & even my dangerous joy in letting Elmer's glue harden over my eyes, nostrils & mouth, I know these were probably caused by the random, amusing violence of childhood. But so what? I can still miss it. I can miss it like an abusive spouse.

WHY DO YOU TRY TO TELL ME WHAT I CAN & CAN'T THINK? You're worse than the CIA. At least they have prescribe governmental parameters about what you can think. But they also spring for little radios to implant in your ears. I know, I used to have one. Until Romeo McGreavy boxed my ears & disconnected it forever. I have been alone since.

Here's a list of dos & don'ts for today's Self Help Radio:

1) DO listen.
2) DO keep listening even if I make you sick to your stomach.
3) DON'T vomit in your car. Pull over & lean your head out.
4) DON'T drive for a while if you're still sick.
5) DO keep listening, though. Some people eventually develop a tolerance for Self Help Radio.
6) DO call me if you think you'd like to talk. I am not allowed to convince you either way, but I have had training at an Energy Crisis Hotline.
7) DO make your friends listen by calling them & holding your cellphone up to the speakers.
8) DON'T be friends with them if they don't like the show.
9) DO ignore rule 8 if you want to have sex with the friend.
10) DON'T tell me if you have sex, though. My girlfriend's in DC for two more weeks.

I hope you'll listen!

You Shouldn't Judge A Blog By Its Blogger

Two random thoughts: 1) "myspace" is kinda cynical. I understand the desire to promote yourself until your balls are a bright blue, but still, I find it weird that people who have to know I don't play them on my show want to be my "friend." Is it too much to ask why you want to be my friend? Because I am on the KOOP myspace page? You make me sad. 2) Who do I have to blow to get on the blogger "notable updated blogs" blurb that's always there when I log on. Do they tell you when you're notable? Is there a cash prize? I make myself sad.

No one has noticed (apparently) that my radio show is sporting a whole new set of teeth. That cost a pretty penny, but I will point out, when one's radio show can convincingly sound like a character in an Erskine Caldwell novel, it's time to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Unless, of course, you're supposed to be an old fart country music show. Teeth get in the way of yer chaw! Spit out the bicuspid, grammy! We're having biscuits made mushy in hot white gravy!

Speaking of local bands, I can't sleep at night because I am afraid of local bands of ruffians that wander my neighborhood & break into my house & steal my stuff. I worry more because I don't own my own gun. I own a timeshare for an AK-47 that a friend in New York is using to renegotiate a contract. It just so happens I am disarmingly disarmed while my girlie, who has all the mad Lemur Fu skills in the family, is away in the nation's capitol walking slowly behind FBI agents to see if they care. I hope my poor sleeping skills do not affect my poor radio skills. But something always suffers, whether it's people who remember Roger Staubach or people who cut their teeth with a sieve.

I will be spending tonight rehearsing my line for my radio show (the line is this: Gary! Don't fuck up your radio show!) (I don't read that line on air) (the FCC doesn't like that kind of language, especially coming from me), so I'm sorry I can't return all your call. Maybe we can simply pretend our outgoing answering machine messages have coded replies to our queries? Or do you not like the word "query"? Do you think it's kinda gay?

I was going to offer you a present, but I am going to pay for reminding everyone of Roger Staubach. Since he doesn't give me any money, I can only hope he's not up tonight, googling his own name while smoking fine Moroccan hash & daydreaming about the time we held hands at a Dallas nightclub. He didn't tell me he was married. Nor a quarterback!

I must go now. I want to be a loner.

Whither Addresses?

I have forgotten where you live. Also, I have lost that little book I use to remind me where you live. As well, I don't appear to understand the general abbreviations for byways & other paths which are generally part of descriptions of place where people like you live. Dr. Ave. Blvd. Rd. Cir. Ln. Str. They confuse me. I don't apparently know where the hell I am.

Do I really think a radio show about addresses will help me? I once did a show about kissing, & no one kissed me for a month. Not even my cat. & she's a kissing slut. I believe that science has shown that religion will tell you that logic fails when reason is ignored by spiritually-motivated myths & fables. It takes a grain of salt to power the quantum mechanism that proves beyond a shadow of a fact that my show is the radio equivalent of "opposite day."

Also, people say I am nothing at all like William Shakespeare.

I was trying to misspell "contraindicated" one day many years ago (or last year) when someone asked me what my address was. I wanted to be funny, you know, like Bugs Bunny dressed up as Lincoln talking to Yosemite Sam & saying, "Look me up at my Gettysburg Address," but I apparently said something like, "I can't believe you're such a fucking freak," & now that person is suing me for defamation of a cartoon character. Nevertheless, it hit me: if people knew where I lived, they could write me letters, or come visit me. Pizza delivery folks would be able to bring food to me. People who walk around neighborhoods selling stuff could come to my door. I would have a presence in a telephone book. I would be able to say, as I haven't much of my life, "I have a place where I sleep." It seemed so magical that I cried, I broke down & cried, right then & there, in the dentist's chair. I know that James Joyce & Meryl Streep would call that an "epiphany," but I don't know anything about prostitution in the Bible, so I'll just say it was a life-changing moment & leave it at that.

Now I think I'll ruin it by doing a radio show about it.

That's this Friday. You might want to iron your shirt & stock up on spices. Just sayin'.

Preface To Addresses: How To Use Online Maps To Find Treasure!

From this point on, please, stop talking to me about pirates. Not only does it not make any sense (the only pirates you should be afraid of are love pirates), but you're just trying to cash in on Pirates Of The Caribbean Part 90: Keith Richards Is A Vampire Pirate! I liked you better when you were interested in hobbits.

I take as my text this week The United States Book Of The Phone, written in 1884 by Old Mother Bell. With an afterword & an afterthought by a fellow called Zip, whose code you might be familiar with. It's easy to crack. Let us take an example. Give me a series of five digits. What? 23432? Dude, you're in Suffolk, Virginia!

Those codebreakers from World War Doo have nothing on me.

This week's show will feature such feats of fancy. It's sponsored in part by imaginary parts of the United States Postal Pistol Service & of course Mapscomp, the famous map makers that got me out of many a tight jam with their 1000 page map booklet I always keep in the glove compartment of my wallet. Ha ha, the sheriff in Algodones, New Mexico, didn't know who the FUCK he was dealing with when he tussled with me & my boyz. Bam! Mapscorp says Los Colonias runs parallel to Los Romeros & it was a brief ride through someone's yard to BYE BYE overweight lawmarm.

We lost Toby that night, though. He was a good man. He was shot in the ass mooning a deputy. The medical examiner said the bullet travelled up the colon into the skull. It made us all feel bad for the all the times we called him "shit for brains."

Nowadays I've retired from my life of fun to enjoy a weekly radio show & my postpunk postcard collection. For those who are curious about my little patch of wheat: I lost it to the chaff parasite. But I managed to get inoculated, so we'll try it next year. Thanks for all the cards & letters. I burned them with my tears.

Do you remember where you live? I plan to find out tomorrow.

A Brief History Of My Great Love For England Dan & John Ford Coley

I'd really love to see them tonight.

But what really burns my butthole is that "Dan Seals," once the swingin' seventies were over & no one wanted to listen to his grooves, decided to go over to the dark side of music, "contemporary country" & fucking totally discarded the name "England Dan" because I guess he thought country fans would dismiss him as royalty or something. Selling out motherfucker.

That doesn't make me hate the good stuff, though. I mean, let's put it this way: twelve hundred Americans die every year choking on grapes (a fact I just made up, but it sounds good) & yet I don't hate listening to jelly. Especially when it's settling. They say Debussy conceived his most beautiful pop records while listening to jelly settle. & he didn't just settle for jelly either: he listened to whatever was in a jar. He even listened to jarred things as they agitated. Agitate is what my brain just told me is opposite of settle.

I like to do stuff regularly, but I also like to mix it up. That may explain some things, but it doesn't excuse others. An example: the Hotel Vietnam, located in Parsley, Kentucky. What were the Joneses thinking? They weren't. They weren't thinking. & now Jeffrey is going to need even more crack to treat his PSTD. It was like picking a baby's name from a random page in the phone book. With explosions.

I'm tickled pink to announce that, despite the evil mechinations of the Adversary, last Friday's show makes its podcast-sized debut on selfhelpradio.net. Just click here to get to the page that has the show on it. I can't remember doing it, but the recording seems to have me on it, so I guess I was there. It reminds me of the four times I might have lost my anal cherry before I actually did. The good news is, my dentist at the time will be in jail until 2009. The bad new is, I THINK I HAVE A CAVITY!

Changing Your Life, One Comb At A Time

The text messaging revolution has found its way to our iron-clad shores. Alas, I am without a legend. Can someone tell me what IWIWAUNL means?

In a few short hours (two, actually) or in a lot of long minutes (120?), there'll be another Self Help Radio & won't you be sad you made fun of my dad. I'll be making noises into a radio-quality microphone that will resemble the same sort of English that Will Rogers once spoke, only with a little less stammering & a mouth not full of tabacky. If you can understand what I am saying, I will have achieved one of my goals for today. The others include:

12) Find a lot of money in a dead man's pockets.
15) Write a great poem in my head while driving & forget it forever.
21) Learn to drink in my sleep.
23) Make out with dog(s).
27) Boogie until head wet with sweat.

The full list, which is modified daily, is available for downloading online through RSS feed once I figure out how to do it. A popular drinking game in Singapore nightclubs involves reading my "daily goals," then drinking a lot until they're translated into Singaporese, then drinking some more as drinkers realize I have boring goals. Caning is not the only way to end such a night, but how bad can it get?

Meanwhile, as the waves of time beat against the chest of existence, you've been distracted enough for me to put last week's show for your downloading pleasure over at selfhelpradio.net. Warning: do NOT listen to this mp3 podcast recording while listening to Self Help Radio live. It will bend space & time & you'll have to live through middle school all over again.

See you when you hear me, pilgrim.

Whither "Keep On"?

As I write this, much later than I normally write this nonsense, there's a magnificent storm happening in Austin. I had to drive through about two feet of water tonight, past cars who were in deeper than I was - & where *I* could have been, if they hadn't blundered there first. I love these kinds of storms, especially when I am more or less safe & dry, but I also think the power could be shut off at any moment, so I should type fast.

By the way, there were people there helping the stuck-in-the-water cars. I'm not that self-absorbed that I wouldn't have stopped. I don't live in the middle of nowhere.

Also, I am the only person in Austin who doesn't have a cell phone. My pets have cell phones, I don't. Someone had called a tow truck.

Which reminds me, I saw a tow truck today with a Jesus fishie on it. I know that businesses put those Jesus fishies on their logos, etc., to let Christians know they're a Christian business (whatever that means), but I wonder, do they know that it makes some people go, "Eew!" Isn't that the opposite of what being a business is all about? Also, what makes a Christian tow truck different than, say, a Muslim tow truck? More forgiving of debts? Would someone like to try that one out?

So the show in barely two days has the theme "keep on." Once again, I noticed that phrase almost peripherally & wondered how many songs repeat the phrase. There were a lot. I said, "I'll form a show around it." I took my medication. I had a nice sleepie. The days came & went. Soon, my schedule told me that I had to do that show. Now I will do it. But first, I'll take my medication. Then I'll have a nice sleepie.

Or maybe I'll go play in the rain.

Preface To "Keep On": I Want To Be In An Urban 1970s Sitcom Please

This week on Self Help Radio, a team of stinky linguists will decontruct the phrase "keep on." Then, the rest of the time (89 minutes) will be devoted to a long exposition of my painful childhood. & why not? Everyone thinks this "theme" is filler. I hear your sneers. I feel your squeals. I taste your haste. I see your inability.

Here are things I'll be discussing when I am not cussing:

1) How one learns that the pretty girls say very bad words & also fart when they think one is a deaf-mute.
2) How the same action that gets you cred in the second grade - say, bringing your favorite comic books to school - can have the opposite effect in the eighth grade.
3) How cruel youth can be when they're beating the living shit out of you.
4) How trying to be as inconspicuous as possible during twelve long years of schooling can make it impossible to reconnect with your old friends thirty years later on "classmates.com."
5) How easily one can be convinced that being locked in a closet on weekends can be a good thing for a child with an active imagination, especially when one's mother has a silver tongue.
6) How sex can't be explained through pornography or the colorful expressions your friend Kirk uses, even if they seem descriptive enough.
7) How falling off a motorbike can make you bleed a lot, & how the laughter of your fellows compares with a calm, drug-heavy ride in the back of an ambulance.
8) How much one can add to one's sleep requirement by sitting in the back of the room.

Oh, I can keep on doing this for a long time. I may keep on doing it all day Friday. Will you keep on listening? I will keep on hoping that you do.

When Pirates Dance!

As April ends, I want to remember the fourth month I experienced in 2007. It seemed gloomy, rainy & sad, but also weirdly sunny, bright & warm. I may have lost fourteen dollars this month. But I also may have gained a new tooth. As April ends, I am forced to wonder: was I involved with April at all? Or did I simply just mow the lawn a couple of times & then sleep fitfully?

In April, I found out the bees are dying. My own experience with bees has been that, while they appear to be listening, they really retain nothing. After I patiently explained the difference between sugar, high fructose corn syrup & aspertame to a very sweet worker one afternoon, she still wanted to make out with my diet soda. Then she stung me & died, which I found a little too much. My mother used to guilt me like that.

If there's one lesson we should take from April, it's that daylight savings time is taxing. Oh shit, that's like a pun. Ha ha! Or, we can say that tax day saves you everything but daylight. No, that's not true. I know. That the only thing safe from tax day is sunlight. Unless you deal in solar futures. Then, never mind.

I promised last April that I would keep a running tally of the number of times I clipped my nails this April, because I had dreamt that Sid Caesar told me that your fingernails grow twice as long but your toenails twice as slow in April. Or maybe I had dreamt that April Stevens had warned me about the Ides Of March last month, because that's when Caesar died. Or maybe I was just daydreaming while watching HBO's Rome. Did that end this April?

April's not over yet! There's still time to win the lottery, grow a goatee, nail 95 theses to your church's wall, become a vegetarian, design a series of stamps that commemorate McLain Stevenson, bag a thrush, help a friend learn her vocal scales, care for a particularly sickly tree, crawl from the wreckage, reject a telemarketer's advances, get lost in someone's eyes, hit it but don't quit it, & possibly squeeze in a good cry with a friend.

But hurry!

Oh, & if you're interested in what was happening in the middle of April with Self Help Radio, my Black Cassette show is available for your listening pleasure.

What To Expect & When To Expect It

Because I am on the radio, people expect me to know virtually everything about everything. I surprise them because I do. Ta-da! I know virtually everything about everything. It's just how you define "virtually." & "about." & "everything."

Much buzz has been generated in my own head this past week about my triumphant return to the airwaves to do Self Help Radio once again. Sure, many lives were lost in the crazy coup d'etat my foes from NPR & the "Everything 99¢" chain stores waged to get me off the air. They're still cleaning all the blood & raisins out of the carpet at KOOP. But though I was forced to retreat for a week, I am returning this Friday, like MacArthur to the Phillipines. & everyone agreed that the radio show MacArthur did the night of his return was the best radio show of his long career.

Not many people have written me to ask, "Gary, do you forgive your enemies for their ridiculous attempt at depriving the world of your genius?" Of course not. They are my enemies & we have an agreement. Besides, it's come to my attention that many religious figures urged forgiveness, & none of them ever had a radio show. There's a correllation there if you squint hard enough & have someone tap you incessantly on the forehead at the same time. I won't be drowned in the mistakes of the past, any more than I'll be clotheslined by the errors of the present. Right now, my concern is for the catastrophic boo-boos of the future.

Tomorrow is the new tomorrow; yesterday is yesterday's yesterday. The days of the week shall be renamed with the names of species of bees that are dying off. Please let me know when they announce the end of the world - I will therefore be able to start smoking again with impunity.

Ah, Self Help Radio. You are again safe, protected & loved. Let us converge in twenty-four hours, at the four-thirty time slot, & see what we can see. Embrace me! Embrace us all!

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 8

Why make lists at all? Why best ofs and worst ofs & top tens? Could there be something wrong with it all?

The first "best of" list was not, as many have supposed, the Top Ten Best Laws Of The Land by Hammurabi, who, & many people don't know this, was also a disc jockey on the weekends. No, the oldest & among the best "best of" lists was a series of rocks, flower parts, animal guts & strangely-shaped twigs, made by none other than Lucy - the fossil of her "best of" list was found with her fossil, meaning she was probably obsessing over something when she died. Who's to say?

But is the Indiepop A To Z a list or merely an attempt to make some kind of "encyclopedia"? The folks over at twee.net probably didn't think their list of indiepop bands was definitive. They just wanted people to see what an example of indiepop was. Leave it to a freak like me...

Someone has probably guessed right now what the whole point is: it's a chance for a lazy deejay (me) to show off what a large record collection he has (duh) by following some dumb list. I'm sure someone's done it for all kinds of genres. I just happen to be doing it now. & even though it's a sign of laziness, BOY is it exhausting.

I thought of something funny just now. If you collapse "record collection," you get "recollection." Isn't recollection just a collection of records? I so want to become Andy Rooney right now.

Where was I? Oh yeah. I continue a hopeless task on Friday. Tune in. We won't finish the Bs, but we'll get mighty close.

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 8: Eight Times The Charmer!

Hello. Self Help Radio returns this week with the eighth installment of our popular "Indiepop A To Z" series. We last left off with a band called Brincando De Deus, so, as you can imagine, we're going to start - if not finish entirely, although I truly doubt that - the Bs.

This will be a return to Self Help Radio after a week off. If you must know, I was forced off the air by a brief but bloody military coup in my own home. If you heard Self Help Radio last week, you might have noticed the show was programmed by what sounded like very fat & lazy beagles. That's because our dogs found a way to lock me in the bathroom, eat everything in the house & then rush to do my show. I spent the weekend cleaning up after them. But I was able to reassert control when they realized they couldn't use my credit card. They're my dogs, so there's obviously a family resemblance, but in the photo on my credit card, I am clean-shaven. Foiled!

By the way, it's very obvious to me the dogs didn't think of this themselves. But the cats kept their paws clean. Or, if their paws were dirty, they cleaned them carefully before I noticed.

Anyway, I am committed to continuing the Indiepop A To Z for the time being, so let's put all the unpleasantness of the past week behind us & forge ahead. Eventually there'll be a gigantic audio documentation of indiepop from a to z which will be like a giant Ken Burns documentary - saved in someone's collection but never listened to.

Viva!

Whither A Self Help Radio Without Gary?

I should title this "Whither Death & Taxes," as that is the theme this week, but since I won't be doing it, I am concentrating on my absence. As you should. For what is my absence but the lack of my presence? Surely I woke up this morning expecting to be there, & you should be expecting me to wake up next to you every morning. Wait. What? I mean, you should expect that I am on the radio when I am supposed to be on the radio (you know, like we're supposed to be happy), & when I am not there, you should be thinking, "But where is Gary? Could he be (as we might assume he be) in a mess o'trouble? For he ain't got a lick o'sense! But maybe he'll find a bit o'luck, & we'll see him when we see him." You should be thinking that, by the way, in a bad Southern accent. If you're thinking it in a good Southern accent, you're missing the point.

Instead of preparing for my show in (what is it now?) nine days - & this show will change everything you think about dope dealers & greeting cards, I promise you - I have been watching the Larry Sanders show. If only Self Help Radio could be the Larry Sanders Show. This is my fictional invitation to a fictional talk show host played a person who has the beautifulest of all names, Gary, but spells it with two rs as if to say he's better than those Garys who spell with only one r. & he is. But he's the only one. Take that Garry Fucking Marshall! I didn't need you to finance my movie anyway.

So the show won't have me this week, but you will have the show. Except the show won't be hosted by me, so, although I am certain Art Baker will do a fabulous job, it won't quite be the show that I do. You know, the show that I do to you. For you. Because it is just me & you, my love, & the problems of one very minor radio celebrity & one completely oversexed listener don't amount to a hill of beans in this laser-hair-removal world. What are those problems? Well, I'd suggest we start at the Potsdam Conference & work our way down.

I'm hungry. Want to grab a bite to eat? Cool.

Preface To A Self Help Radio Without Gary: What If It Becomes A Habit?

Dearest Friends,

I am sorry I cannot be with you this week. Self Help Radio has been, alas, the victim of a buyout. A hostile takeover. Evil corporate ethics at their worst.

So this week, Art Baker of Jamaican Gold has kindly decided to step in to be a place-holder (& to do a damn fine show, I suspect) while the dust settles. While the lawyers fuck. While the money is counted.

This probably means a great deal to you, the shareholders. After all, you urged me to go public in October. You were all like, "Gary, your show is a public treasure! Let's all own a piece of you!"

The blame is partially my own, of course. I have a gambling problem. My problem is, I don't know how to gamble. I am completely incapable of learning the rules to any particular game. The cards need to add up to 21? How can they do that without calculators? The little ball goes where? Okay, I've put my coin in, why doesn't the machine move? Tens are wild? Is that like saying "nines are frisky but ones are dull"?

In any event, I lost even my controlling share in Self Help Radio. Next week, I will be an employee of the show, not the owner & proprietor. Which reminds me, I need to get a new shingle to hang out front. Anyway.

I can't be at the show this week, but please tune in to hear Art Baker talk about "death & taxes" & play songs about it. I'll be back the next Friday with a continuation of the Indiepop A To Z series, but, alas, you'll hear these chilling words - the death rattle of a show killed by commerce:

"Self Help Radio, a fully owned subsidiary of Bloat Enterprises, Worldwide. All rights reserved."

Sigh.