3 Shows To Go! (Slight Return)

Yes, there are three more Self Help Radio shows on KOOP. I'm doing the last two. Today, the wonderful Justin from the House Call fills in with a show all about tools. Do tune in at 4:30 pm Austin time on the 91.7 frequency & online at koop.org. It'll be awesome!

& I'll be back for my penultimate show on KOOP next week. Have a lovely weekend!

Self Help Radio vs The World

What an amazing title! Imagine, this tiny little radio show taking on something so big & scary & full of pollution like the world! That includes you, & every animal, & every hotel, & every bottle of Coca Cola! Why would this tiny little radio show want to do something like that?

Oh it isn't. It's just being grandiose. The main mouthpiece behind Self Help Radio, that queer fellow called Gary, he - & by he I mean I - subbed KOOP's world music show World Beat on Sunday. That's all. It's now available for your listening pleasure.

Where in the world can you listen to it? I bet you know! Yes, it's over at selfhelpradio.net. Like it always is. Every damn time. Go! Enjoy! Have fun!

Whither Tools?/Whither Indiepop A To Z # 14?

This is a two tracked explanation of the two Self Help Radio shows which will happen this week. Please do not adjust your browser. Everything is working exactly as planned. Take it away!

I am allowing the young Justin to handle Self Help Radio this week because a) he is able & b) I can't do it. But I can't go a whole week without a radio show. Damn my work! That would be madness. It's one of the last Self Help Radios on KOOP & my work says "No! Gary's gotta be here to justify his bureaucratic existence!" I also haven't visited my never-ending Indiepop A To Z series since late last year. They're so hateful here. It seems entirely appropriate to do so now, for two reasons: 1) to do a radio show when I cannot, in the form of a podcast, & 2) to do something of general interest so as not to "compete" with the Self Help Radio show subbed by Justin. My heart is broken. His show will be listened to by the regular Austin listeners. Yet my heart is heartened (after all) because I think Justin will do a fine job hosting Self Help Radio. My podcast will be downloaded by a drunk guy in Ukraine looking for free mp3s of Cinerama songs. I have requested that he do a show around the subject of "tools." & then quickly forgotten. Why is that? But isn't Self Help Radio really radio for people like me, people who need radio primarily if it is radio prepared & created by them themselves? Because, frankly, Justin is a manly fellow, with fine muscles & strong shoulders. If not that, what is it? & frankly I am a girly boy, with too much pretty hair & a slightly womanly walk which accentuates my wide feminine hips which, in a different world, would bear beautiful children. I cannot say, I am too close to the subject matter, in the same way a koala cannot be critical of the eucalyptus, or the way a walrus cannot talk shit about the rocks on which it suns. I am a little afraid around the implements which the more masculine of my gender use to make & repair things. But I will make my podcast, & I will load my podcast. My entire life I've been a little too afraid to ask about them. I just fucking dare you to download & listen to it. I have secretly conspired therefore to have Justin educate me without exposing myself as the sissy I fear the world sees me as. I just fucking dare you! Justin will vindicate me! I just hope my daring you isn't too pushy. So you had better pay attention. I do expect people to download my silliness.

Preface To Tools/Preface To A New Podcast

What do I talk about this week? Do I talk about the excellent young Justin's doubtlessly excellent covering of Self Help Radio (he's doing a show about tools)? Or do I talk about a podcast I will be making because I can't not make something like a radio show for even one little week? Or should I just show a video of what looks like a kitten with a theremin?

Instead, I think I'll take this moment to address what many in the Self Help Radio community are calling "tax day." As someone who has never failed to pay his or her taxes every other year or so, I find myself troubled by the turncoats & pests who feel that taxes are bothersome or otherwise cumbersome to the loathsome & the winsome. Surely our Founding Brothers & Sisters, who wrote extensively on the subject, never conceived of "taxation with representational art" as unfit for projects & protests! It's right there in the Constitution! Article you know, Section of course!

But this points even further to a more difficult conception of American society today in the 21st century today. Which is this: with all the consumer options we have before us, who really would choose to buy the governmental services on offer with the standard tax dollar? Very few of us, save some of the elderly without disposable income, as well as those for whom a nationwide flat tax appeals to their flat heads. Indeed, it's the crux of the material! Yet by requirement we save the embarrassment of unrequited requitedness. Quite!

I haven't got the hair nor the breadth to discuss the argument that goes on between bald Libertarians & shaggy-maned Contrarians, but you can well imagine that the hours spent on community radio alone making grand pronouncements, not to mention the money spent on shampoo & conditioner, could fill a phone book. I wanted rather to alert you, on this Taxing Tax Day, to the iambic pentameter being spent by the greatest truly minds of our or the next generation. For more information, please see a kitten possibly playing a theremin.

Man! Sudafed makes you have the coolest thoughts!

Home Sickly

A weird spring cold in Texas gave me a weird spring cold in my head so I am home today doped up on things to make me sleep & not sneeze all the time. How appropriate that the week I can't do a show, my body lets me get sick. Hurrah!

So instead of wasting time wondering what sort of nonsense I might write of a Monday, go listen to last Friday's show about gravity at selfhelpradio.net. I know you're a fan of Isaac Newton. You need not be ashamed any more.

Achoo. Groan.

3 Shows To Go!

I know, you're all planning your big "end of the show" party, like you did at the end of "M*A*S*H," "Seinfeld" & "The Big Valley." (Where I come from, "Big Valley" parties were fucking awesome!) But can I point out there are three big differences?

1) My show isn't ending. I'll continue with delicious podcasts dispensed at selfhelpadio.net. I'm just leaving KOOP. They'll be fine. I'll be fine. Nothing is ending. It's just changing.

2) You can be reminded about the podcasts by reading this blog or by sending me an email to remind you when a new show is posted. Think Hawkeye Motherfucking Pierce would have done that? Or that Kramer guy? Nope. Both of them would've used the n-word, although Alan Alda would make it seem like it was Groucho Marx using it.

3) I am only doing three more Self Help Radio shows, but there will actually be *four* more Self Help Radio shows! That's right, the dashing & handsome Justin who does the House Call before my show, will be subbing for me next week, doing a show about "tools." Ha ha! Can you imagine there being three more "M*A*S*H"s, but someone stepping in & adding a fourth? You can't! That's because we're so damn weird!

4) Did I say there were three differences? I guess I did. I don't know why I've numbered this as "4)" but I suppose it's a difference. Next week, I'll make a podcast. You heard me! So there'll be two Self Help Radio shows, one on the radio, one on the computero. Insert snarky comment about Lee Majors &/or Barbara Stanwyck here.

So tune in to Self Help Radio today at 4:30. Learn about gravity. From someone who has no gravitas at all. & who is famous for falling down all the time.

Aren't You Funny

I know, these sorts of things are just someone's opinion (I for one would have had a LOT more Mr. Show & a LOT less Saturday Night Live) but if you want to be amused, do have a look at nerve.com's 50 greatest comedy sketches of all time. It's an amusing distraction.

What would I have included that's not there? The possibilities are endless, really. For one, the Chicken Lady sketch from Kids In The Hall I would have added is not the one they pick. I like the one - which is the first Chicken Lady sketch I ever saw - with the blind date with Dave Foley. "I'm a chicken lady & I love life!" "I didn't think you meant it literally..." But so much of what they did was so absurd that it's only funny because it's so damn weird. That's awesome.

Which reminds me - League Of Gentlemen, anyone?

As for Mr Show - I have so many of those episodes memorized, it would be hard to say. But I'd leave out a couple of those dull SNL sketches for Thrill World & Druggachusetts because, frankly, they're funnier.

I can't believe they missed the single funniest SCTV sketch ever - Night School Hi-Q. Lugubrious!

& there's nothing from the Ben Stiller show? Really? I think that the "MTV Music News" sketch (I said kill Doug Szathkey!) would have been a great companion piece to the In Living Color Vanilla Ice parody. & what about Die Hard 12? Oliver Stone Land? Woody Allen's Bride of Frankenstein? Cape Munster?

Lists like this are always woefully incomplete, because tastes are different. But maybe you'll find some funny there for yourself.

Whither Gravity?

Here's what a weirdo Isaac Newton was: Read ten strange facts about Newton. Are they that strange? I mean, come on. It was, what, the seventeenth century? Shit was fucked up then. Everyone I've known who was able to see the world a different way than everyone else was completely batshit crazy. It makes sense that, in a world where there are a substantial number of batshit crazy folks, a handful would be brilliant. Sadly, the majority of them become religious or political. Luckily some of them become scientists.

I like that gravity is not completely understood. I like that it's a fundamentally weak force, if only because, when you explain that to astrologers, they get all vexed. (You know, "If gravity's so strong why can this little magnet counteract it so simply?") I like those drawing of gravity lines around massive objects illustrating the "space-time continuum." I love listening to the dreamers who imagine we'll beat the speed limit of light by using gravity to "bend" space. Forget all that nonsense about sin & redemption - that's just about control of your thoughts & your person. Close your eyes & imagine a gravity well dipping into a black hole drawing out incredible energies. Hell, close your eyes & imagine launching yourself into orbit on a small moon. You're a super hero in space!

Most songs about gravity are about gravity as a metaphor - either of "attraction" or of rebellion against physical laws. But there are songs, too, celebrating that batshit crazy Newton dude & what he thought up while the city of London was dying of the plague. Yay! One of the last Self Help Radio shows on the radio will be a science show!

Preface To Gravity: What Comes Up Must Not Be Discussed

Yes, it was a picture of a dog barking at Jesus. The dog is a beagle named George. Jesus is a plastic statue in a graveyard. Please stop writing me poems about it!

That's the thing: I don't really mind poems. I like them. I write them myself, in my skin, with a razor & a bottle of Softsoap. & oftentimes, yes, I write them about pictures of dogs barking at kitschy representations of old-fashioned deities. But I don't send them to anyone. I certainly wouldn't send them to you.

For example, why would anyone send this to anyone, especially me:

   You don't love me Jesus
   Because I am a hound
   So I'll continue peeing
   On your hallowed ground

But Gary, is this so bad? Yes. It's bad for two reasons. First of all, George is himself an accomplished poet (as well as an accomplished urinator), so he can write poems from his own point of view when necessary (although he prefers to write from an "everydog" perspective). He simply doesn't need you to write poems from his vantage point. Secondly, it's not a very good poem. It doesn't really capture the essence of the photograph & it doesn't really explain why the dog thinks Jesus doesn't love him. Frankly, it doesn't scan.

What about the free verse poems I'm getting? As always, the free verse is worse:

   Beagle orphaned on crisp sunny day
   Lack a day! Lackadaisical!
   Alone, alone, but wait! alone,
   with nearer my god to thee
   porcelain plastic messiah!

I know, what the fuck?!? (By the way, "lackadaisical" comes from "lackaday," smart guy. What've you been doing, reading the Word Detective or something? Sheesh.) I would have been more impressed if the writer had rhymed something with "lackadaisical."

Enough! The three or four people who read this blog read it to find out if I have gone completely off the deep end, not to hear your poetry about photographs on blogs. Now please, let me write about the topics I'll cover on my show, & leave your poetry to other radio shows that deserve them. That one about the Lake in Minnesota, for example. Write to them.

Now I've got to go & explain this to George...

Torso Pants

My month of April has gotten off to a grand start, how about yours? I am of course talking about the wildflowers! What did you think I was talking about? A hundred thousand dollar bar? Or maybe a grand piano?

I offer, for your edification, a dog in a cemetery full of wildflowers, barking at Jesus:



I should also mention that Self Help Radio started the month of April off with a show entirely about cheese. Mmm, cheese. Did you miss it? Or would you like seconds? Well, the cheese buffet is open over at selfhelpradio.net. Dig in!

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?