4 Shows To Go!

Omigosh! We're in the final stretch! Only four shows to go!

I am going to resist listing famous foursomes - no Fantastic Four, nothing about calling birds - & instead warn you that the best is yet to come. You heard me! You might just fucking love to listen to Self Help Radio on your boring-ass ride home from your sanity-crippling job, & you may be relying on it on Fridays in the same way you used to need to visit a prostitute to be spanked for being very, very bad - but it'll soon be gone, my friend. There'll be another KOOP program. It won't be Self Help Radio.

But even though I'm pretty sure the KOOP program that will occupy the timeslot then will be fine & you'll barely remember, weeks from now, how Self Help Radio loved you long time, I will just let you know - as a kindness, as a public service - it could be an admonition, it could be a promise, it could be a simple piece of information - I must let you know that Self Help Radio is nowhere near meeting its potential. You heard me! The best is yet to come!

You'd hate to miss it, now, wouldn't you?

So make sure you either bookmark the Self Help Radio home page or send me an email to be reminded of the podcasts. Because you will regret missing it, in the same way you regret that last glass of whiskey every night around 2:30 am. Or you'll regret it the way I regret that last glass of whiskey. It tastes so good but it hurts so bad.

If you must listen on the real radio with real radio waves, then fine: today at 4:30, a show about cheese. Delicious!

Does Humor Belong On The Radio?

Dunno, but you're not as funny as you think you are. Nor am I as funny as you wish I were. Or will be. Or may be. Or.

Once upon a time - not too long ago - seriously, it's what they call "the recent past," which is I suppose the antonym of "the near future" now that I think about it - anyway, a programmer (who may or may not have actually been a medical professional) called Dr Debra did a novelty show. She did it mainly on the interwebbing, but fortunes changed, stations caught fire, & she got an fm slot on Wednesday late mornings.

Alas! Life takes its toll! The whims & phlegms of fate sadly forced the doctor to move her practice to the untamed wilderness some have called Oklahoma. What to do? Well, some valiant KOOPers have attempted to take her place until the end of the season. & God help me, I am one.

You can listen to my sub show from yesterday at the Self Help Radio home page site thing. There are songs about medical conditions, songs about bananas, & a song about a famous Basset Hound, among other things. Ha ha! I say. Ha ha!

Will I be asked to step in again? Is there any penalty for impersonating a funny doctor? Who knows? Oh the winds & phlegms of fate!

Whither Cheese?

Seriously, you have to ask?

You've obviously never heard my radio show.

Preface To Cheese: The Rot That Changes Lives

Oh, it's true. You can smoke your own cheese. But making it? Is making your own cheese what you really want to do?

The way (not the whey, thank you) I feel about cheese is similar to the way most people who eat meat (I don't eat meat) feel about killing animals themselves. Most every meat-eating human you know could never, never, never kill a cow & process it to make themselves a burger. They just couldn't. Luckily, they can go to their local McWendy's-In-The-Whatabox King. Someone else somewhere else did the dirty work & even better, it doesn't look anything like a cow!

Similarly I with cheese. I couldn't make it. It would be hazardous to my eating of it. & I love cheese. Not all cheese types, & not all the time, but cheese as a delicious idea oh yes I love.

Hey! I might be able to make processed cheese, if all it took was mixing human-made chemicals in a test tube & then baking some possibly edible polymer. Mmm. I'd color it funky colors, too. Neon blue cheese anyone?

Damn, talking about this makes me hanker for a hunk o'cheese!

A Layman's Guide To Videos About Sleep On Youtube

I am sitting here at work trying to get some project-related stuff done & for some reason I am listening to Woody Guthrie. It's making me feel weird. Partially because it's tropical outside. Partially because it's always weird to hear someone call Jesus Christ "a working man" in a song. That dude never worked a day in his life. He lived off the trust fund his dad set up for him.

Anyway, there are three things to say today, & the first of them is to say there are three things to say. Wait. That can't be right.

The second is: if you missed last Friday's television theme song spectacular, you can hear it again (as I've been saying) in reruns (har har) over at selfhelpradio.net. I call it the TV Show but it's really just a bunch of weird covers of television themes. It's like remembering your childhood with a lot of other people's memories.

I also wanted to make sure that YOU know that after I finish my run of Self Help Radio on KOOP, I am continuing the show as a podcast. How will you know? You never come to this blog! You don't write me anymore! When was the last time you invited me over to your house for drinks & dancing? Since we're obviously not as close as we used to be, maybe you should send me an email & tell me to remind you when I post new podcasts. One lousy email. & I don't drink all your whiskey.

I swear there were three things I wanted to say. Maybe the last was me saying that there were three things but obviously I'm dumb & I forgot the last one. Or maybe I just thought it was three because it's handy to have three things to say at any given time. Oh well. Back to Woody Guthrie. Damn these dust storms!

5 Shows To Go!

That's right. One more show in KOOP's Membership Drive, & a month's worth of shows after that. There, there. Stop your sobbing. Or I'll send Ray Davies. He's a real prick when people are crying.

Self Help Radio won't end! You can always go to the Self Help Radio website & there'll be new shows until I land elsewhere! & probably until I die! After that, not so much. Send me an email, I'll make sure you're notified when a new show is posted.

Meanwhile, KOOP Membership Drive goes on. Listen today & make a pledge at koop.org, or call in when I'm on the air live, Texas time, 4:30 to 6pm. The station that makes uncomfortable programming like Self Help Radio possible needs your help.

I need a shower & a shave. See you at 4:30!

March Madness!

Is it still March Madness? Does that have anything to do with the great actor Frederic March? Am I total geek or what?

I am happy to write that, although it's almost April, I have posted this month's Self Help Radio Extra. It's a CD-long mix of awesome tunes without any talking from me at all. Well, I might be a voice in your head. I can't help that.

So please visit the Self Help Radio website for a special mix from me to you. Because I am fond of you. There. I said it.

Whither The TV Show?

The Self Help Radio website says this week's theme is "The TV Show" but that's bit misleading. It's not going to be a show about television. It's going to be a show featuring covers of television theme songs. It's just that "The TV Show" sounds so good, I thought it better than "The TV Theme Song Show," which would have been far more accurate but doesn't really roll off the tongue.

So, a show about television theme songs. Should be fun, right? Wrong! It'll be FUN. All caps. Unless you're one of those weirdoes who doesn't watch television or - oh God it's too much to contemplate - worse if you're one of those people who DIDN'T WATCH TV AS A CHILD. I remember a moment - a rare moment - when, as a kid, I was talking to a girl - I think her named was Tracy - & I was talking about something I saw on a TV show the nice before, & she said, "My parents don't let me watch television." I was horrified. I felt like I should perhaps call Child Services or something. Unbelievable & cruel.

My love of music inevitably meant some of my favorite songs in the world would be television themes. I want to say a sad goodbye in public to the television theme song, by the way. Most network shows these days don't have theme songs, because the amount of time (now nearly twenty minutes per hour) given to advertisers means there's barely any time to spare, so new shows generally now have an intro screen & run the credits over the first few minutes of the show. Not on cable, though - HBO shows still have credits, for example. Maybe my show is also a eulogy & funeral service for the Network TV theme song. It died young!

I hope I didn't confuse anyone, at any rate. I just like to say "The TV Show." It sounds good.

Preface To The TV Show: Insert Something About TV On The Radio Here

Do you wonder where weird verbal habits you get come from? For example, when you say something rude or ridiculous or self-deprecating & you say, as your friends or whoever's around is laughing (you hope), "Did I say that out loud?" I do that occasionally, & it gets chuckles, & of course I've seen it on television & in movies, but I can't remember the first time I ever heard it. Maybe it didn't have much effect on me when I first heard it, but repetition made it more desirable to add to my idiom vocabulary.

One thing I say - like, way too much - is a play on the phrase "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it." I like to say, "We'll burn that bridge when we get to it," which was, I thought, my clever way of mixing up the two phrases, the one above & the phrase "Don't burn your bridges behind you." Man I thought I was cool.

About two years ago, I was watching Nick At Nite or something & they were playing old episodes of "Three's Company." I watched that show straight through my childhood, even watching the "sequel" "Three's A Crowd," such was my devotion. So imagine my surprise when one of the characters - probably Chrissy - used the phrase, as an obvious mistake, worthy of a double take, "I can burn that bridge when I get to it."

How could I not have gotten that phrase from that particular episode?

It's time like this when I wonder what kind of personality I would have if it hadn't been for television. Discuss among yourselves.

X-Ray Isis

No, I don't know what the title of today's blog entry means. It came to me in a dream. A dream about a city being slightly scrubbed & left to dry in the warm Spring sun. Until - you know the rest - dragons!

That one dreams about dragons (or pimps, for that matter) shouldn't be much of a concern in this, our HBO universe. But should one brings one's dreams' inspirations to other aspects of their lives? I believe the answer may well be found in some of the most recent dream research research, which has found that people who spend a lot of time listening to other people's dream are mostly bored stiff. However, the small amount of folks who choose to pay attention (or "interpret") other people's dreams have an interest proportional to the amount of money being paid to them. & indeed, if the answer is there, the answer could be anywhere.

But scientists & people named Flower (who are never allowed to be scientists) have instead found that the answer to nearly any question can in fact be answered by people who are drinking tea. This astonishing discovery is not in the least diminished by the fact that the same could be said about most drinks (excluding buttermilk), & in the spirit of dreams & tea & also dreams, Self Help Radio explored tea in a dainty matter on last Friday's show. The subject of which was tea.

It's available to be listened to at selfhelpradio.net. I suggest you bring milk & sugar if you like that with your radio shows. Also, we're all out of cookies. Sorry. They went like cookie cakes. Is that the right expression?

6 Shows To Go!

Six is a magic number. It is the number of beers, sodas & wine coolers in an appropriately-named six-pack. When two sixes are together, they can be a retired age or a famous route. Also, if three sixes are near each other, they signify a beast. This doesn't apparently happen with four sixes, which is a time in the distant future when the United States finally gets out of Iraq.

Six is the number of the shows I have left on KOOP. Do I have to keep saying that I plan to continue Self Help Radio as an obscure podcast? (From an obscure radio show to an obscure podcast! Ha!) Okay, I won't.

I should continue to remind you that KOOP is having its Spring Membership Drive, so you most certainly should be giving money to this fine radio station. If you do it during Self Help Radio (which is today, you know, from 4:30 to 6pm), it'll be a small salve to my damaged self-esteem, but if you do it during any other time, I don't mind - the money is for non-commercial radio, not my booze fund.

Listen! It'll be a tea party!

Talk To The Bears (In The Bear Suits)

I had the great pleasure to talk to Iain & Jan of Norwich England's proudest children, Bearsuit, when they were stranded here last weekend for SXSSSSS. Much thanks to that precocious little peanut, Lace, for letting me interrupt Ear Candy for the interview. If you want to hear the chat we had, along with a few Bearsuit tunes, you can listen in the usual place: selfhelpradio.net.

I remind you: soon I won't be on the radio & will only exist as a disembodied podcast. If you want to be reminded when my new podcasts come around, send me an email & I'll put you on a list. I'll be glad you care.

Whither Tea?

Why thank you! I will have a cup of tea. Two sugars please. Thanks so much.

This isn't herbal tea, is it? Ah, good! That's not really tea, now, is it? No, it's just some twigs & leaves disguised as tea. You & I know the difference, don't we! We don't just enjoy tea - we're not just tea enthusiasts, are we, no! We're lovers of tea & scholars of tea!

Quick! Name the four kinds of tea! You got it! Black tea, oolong tea, green tea & white tea. Say! Are those cookies over there? Don't mind if I do.

Do you know, some people don't even know where tea came from. Imagine! You can try to tell them that tea was enjoyed in China for thousands of years before any white fellow with a British accent sipped it in some manicured garden & they'll act as if you've called Jesus Christ a filthy cocksucker! It's true. But why deny this delicious beverage its true lineage? How does that denigrate it for the likes of us? Not at all, you're right! & yes, I'll have another cup!

No, tell even a relatively smart person that tea came to England through a marriage to a Portuguese princess & they'll get huffy & perhaps daydream about hitting us. Or try this: mention that the rise of tea in England parallels the rise of sugar consumption from the slave fields of the Caribbean - & note that the sweetest tea in the world is still drunk today in the American south - & they'll screw their faces up like they either having a stroke or a painful bowel movement. All this over tea! What an important libation!

Oh you know I would love to stay to have another cup, but I must be off. I don't mind this lackadaisical consumption of tea in a button-down setting, but I will let you know I prefer a more - shall we say - structured approach to my tea. So I am inviting you to my next tea party! I will be combining some Japanese & Chinese methods of preparation & service to some rituals I have been dreaming about lately, given to me in my sleep by FBI Agent Dale Cooper of television's Twin Peaks & by Stephen Strange, also known as Marvel Comics' sorcerer supreme, Dr. Strange. Please bring an appetite & protective headgear!

& thanks so much for the tea!

Preface To Tea: Is There Any More Sugar, Sugar?

All this talk about hot beverages has made me thirsty.

Here is a sentence that just popped into my head: "Emile Zola drinks the blood of a goose." It's important for you to understand that sentences like that just pop into my head with frightening regularity.

I have nothing personally against Emile Zola. Everything I know about doing laundry in the late 19th century I learned from him. But my head seems to want to spread malicious rumors about him in the present tense although he's very very dead.

What's worse, just now, I've been wanting my head to cause other ridiculous sentences to come into existence (with a pop!) but my head, as if it has performance anxiety, refuses to comply. What's up with that? Instead of sentences that are weird, here's the most recent sentence it has produced: "I'm sleepy." It followed that with "When I get home perhaps I should nap."

My head apparently will not perform on demand, so I must try to think of something else to get it to unwittingly do something that I need it to do if I every want you to believe that my brain creates odd sentences at random. So now I need to go back to my thirst, which will not & cannot be slaked by hot liquids.

What? You're as crazy as my head! They can put ice in tea? & they call it Iced Tea? & it's very common in the American south?

Well, fuck me.

Didn't you notice already?

Last week's stimulating show (har, har) about coffee is sitting on the burner waiting for you to have a cup over at selfhelpradio.net. Please to download.

Hey, & while you're listening, do notice that we're talking about something called a "membership drive." That's the name we give to our twice-yearly event when we ask for the support we need to survive. So while you're listening, scootch over to koop.org & help us out. Pretty please.

7 Shows To Go!

& nearly half of them are Membership Drive shows. So today you may not only tune in to hear at least ninety minutes worth of caffeinated talk & songs about coffee, but also you'll hear us ask nicely for money for the station's continued support. You can call during Self Help Radio today & make me feel loved, or you can visit KOOP's web site to donate online. Keeping independent radio independent - don't you wanna?

Yes, today's show is about coffee. Tune in! Only seven more chances to do that here in Austin! Live at 4:30 pm on the 91.7 frequency, or online at koop.org. Archived later at that web page I have.

Listen! Call! Give! Have a cuppa joe!

Be My Guest!

A nice fellow who happened to be female who also happened to be named Camille sat with me as we rescued a stranded hour of radio yesterday from 11am to noon. That show, in which I out my own mother as a necrophile, is available for listening to over at selfhelpradio.net. Do not tell my mother.

Also, as I am leaving the radio station soon, I am hoping you'll want to continue listening to my ridiculous show as a podcast. If that is the case, send me an email at shrpodcast at gmail dot com & I will put you on a list notifying you when new podcasts are uploaded. Doesn't that sound swell?

Whither Coffee?

According to facts that I "researched" online, Americans drink more 300 million cups of coffee a day - a third of the water consumption of Americans - basically one cup of coffee for every American, although of course YOU drink more. You stink of java, buddy.

Should we drink less coffee? Didn't I hear something about anti-oxidant levels in coffee? Or was that in an issue of Aquaman? Yes, it was. & no it wasn't. Stop reading & pay attention!

Some smarty-pants scientists with their data say coffee appears to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, & the gout. But these benefits seem to come from coffee's caffeine content, & you know what? Drinking caffeinated coffee affects the arterial walls, & if you drink too much you can suffer from something unpleasantly called hypomagnesaemia (it hurts in the pants), not to mention coronary heart disease.

Coronary heart disease? Hey! I said not to mention it!

Students everywhere claim it helps their memory. I'll need another cup to remember where I read that.

When I was a kid, I thought coffee was like hot chocolate, because my mother always drank it with lots of sugar & cream. ("You want some coffee with that cream & sugar?") I still associate the smell of sweet coffee, & the pale swirly brown in the cup, with fond feelings of my mother on cold mornings. But I associate the bitterness of coffee with unhappiness in my twenties, especially espresso, which I used to cure my meth addiction. Only to get addicted to espresso. Damn it!

I want to do a show about coffee because I know how much you like it. I can do a show about Aquaman later. Your wet suit isn't going anywhere!

Preface To Coffee: Decaffeinate Me, Bitch

Coffee grows on trees. It's true. Look it up. Coffee does not just grow in houses owned by people named Maxwell. That's a damnable lie!

Coffee is loved by many people, most of whom are not famous. People like Voltaire & Balzac loved coffee, & they were famous. Now, of course, they're dead. Not all coffee lover are dead, either. Now that I think about it, they were also French. But please don't get me wrong - I don't think all coffee lovers are dead famous French men. I think, for example, some unknown French women have loved coffee.

I lost my train of thought. Do you know what scares me most about coffee? The way it stains things. Like coffee cups. Or teeth. Staining things is scary to me. But not staining. Although maybe staining.

When is the last time I had coffee? Don't ask me that! My dirty little secret this week is that I'm not a coffee drinker. I get my caffeine from beets. You heard me! I eat beets for their caffeine! What? Beets have no caffeine? Foiled again!

I must go. I leave you with: death by caffeine!

Eyes On The Side Of My Head

My shortest blog entry ever:

My show on Friday was my SXSW show. It's available for downloading & listening to selfhelpradio.net.

Do it. Do it now.