Self Help Radio 082016: A Distant Show

(Original image here.)

Oh man.  What an almost-complete disaster this show has been!  Not only was it ill-timed - I was nowhere near ready enough to put a show together after just being a new town for two weeks! - but I promised to have it done at noon Friday & as I write this it is after 2pm Saturday.  During the recording of the airbreaks - which I did after listening to each set of songs, simulating the radio experience - I forgot to save a couple of them, which means I had to re-record them, so the show will probably sound even more out of joint.  & then!  As I was putting the show onto my website, I noticed: I've already done a show about distance.  It's been six years, but I do play a lot of the same songs.  It's a bit embarrassing.

Because I know my memory will fail me more & more as older I grow.  I do.  I created that page, in fact, to help me make sure I don't duplicate themes. But what good is a resource like that if I don't check it now & again?  Good grief.

But hey!  Here's the first Self Help Radio from Fort Worth, Texas.  Available now & anytime at the Self Help Radio web site.  Remember this: username = SHR | password = selfhelp .  & though there's a list of songs below, there's also interviews with a writer named David Fruchter & with my spiritual advisor the Reverend Dr. Howard Gently, & a report on podcast rules in Fort Worth by Marge Most.  & two distinct airbreaks completely out of joint!

Still, I hope you listen.

(part one)

"Distance" The Kit Kats _Distance_
"Distance" Acid Drops _Messthetics # 101_
"Distance" Beach Fossils _Face It + Distance EP_

"Distant Drums" Roy Orbison _The Monument Singles Collection (1960-1964)_
"The Distant Man" All Cats Are Grey _Chance_
"Distant Creatures" The Daysleepers _Drowned In A Sea Of Sound_
"Distant Thunder" Heidi Berry _Heidi Berry_

"Respectable Distance Away" R. Dean Taylor _Motown Unreleased 1963_
"Lurking With A Distance" The Embassy _Tacking_
"Glutton For Distance" The Worriers _Imaginary Life_
"No Distance Left To Run" Blur _13_

"Distant Stations" The Mountain Goats _All Hail West Texas_
"Distant Station" Mixel Pixel _Let's Be Friends_

(part two)

"Distance" Editors _The Back Room_
"Distance" Makthaverskan _II_
"Distance" Glowfriends _A Farewell To Fair-Weather_

"Comfortable Distance" Casino Ashtrays _Just Like Me E.P._
"In A Distant Place" Poprace _Hanggliding At Sea_
"Long Distance" Go Sailor _Go Sailor_
"The Loneliness Of A Middle-Distance Runner" Belle & Sebastian _Jonathan David_
"Longitude & Latitude" Tom Glazer & Dottie Evans _Space Songs_

"Almost In Walking Distance" Shoc Corridor _Holding Treasure_
"Those Distant Lights" The One AM Radio _A Name Writ In Water_
"The Distance Between Us" Arrogants _Nobody's Cool_
"Shimmering Distant Love" Robyn Hitchcock _Eye_

"Long Distance Dedication # 1 (live)" Negativland _These Guys Are From England & Who Gives A Shit

Whither A Distant Show?

Yes, yes, finally!  Tomorrow there'll be a new Self Help Radio!  & since I've traveled some distance to get from there (which was in Kentucky) to here (which is in Texas), I thought a show about distance - whether it be miles or personal space - would be appropriate.

We're always some distance away from each other, you & I, when I do these shows, & maybe now we're even further away.  I am in fact only relatively close to my cats at the moment.  They're awful close to me.  I think perhaps I should ask them to keep their distance.  They're annoying!

Anyhow, it behooves me to get to work!  A show must be prepared before noon tomorrow.  That's another distance: time.  Sometimes I wish I could slow down the rate at which I travel that distance.  Especially if it means more sleep.  I could always use more sleep.

Yes, yes, all right.  Tomorrow.  A new Self Help Radio podcast.  This time for real.

Don't Say I Didn't Tell You So

Sigh.  I don't have my shit properly together.  (In fact, most of my CDs are still in boxes.) So I won't have a new Self Help Radio for you by noon tomorrow.  I'm sorry.  I'll definitely have it ready by noon Saturday.  I hope it remains relevant.

But!  I hope to always have new podcasts by Friday noon!  That's my weird promise to me, & by extension, you!  Tonight, though: I unload boxes & boxes of CDs.

Preface To A Distant Show: What's Going On With Your Radio Search, Gary?

(Image from Google Maps.)

First of all, I want to say that I am extremely unprepared for this week's Self Help Radio.  I haven't spent nearly enough time on it & my wife has scheduled me to take the car in for a check-up on Friday at 1pm so if I have the first new podcast up by noon that day (which is my plan) it will be because I scrambled at the last minute to get it done.  Therefore you have been notified of its almost inevitable shabbiness.

Second of all: I've met with nice people at KTCU & KFTW this week.  Here are my brief reports:

KTCU is the most immaculate college radio station I've ever been to.  (Remember, at WRFL, even guests feel obliged to leave their mark on the walls.)  The Station Manager is not a student, but a faculty member, & while I feel like we had a nice meeting, after chatting with me for an hour or so, he asked me if I had any references.  Well, I did!  I sent them to him the next day.  I liked the place & hope there might be a home there for Self Help Radio but if not I hope I can help out some.  College radio is in my blood.

The charming couple who run KFTW met me today at a local coffee jernt where I had a delicious soy latte & thrilled to hear the voice of a deejay from my youth.  The founder of the station is a giant in Metroplex radio, & it was a joy to listen to him talk.  I hope both of them liked me, but, as I suspected, since they feature one-hundred percent local music, it would be difficult to do SHR there - although the suggestion was made to "re-tool" it for the station, so not impossible - but I think I have a lot to offer anyway.  They had lots of cool ideas which we'll be exploring I hope in the weeks to come.

Interestingly, we had already sort of "met" the night before, when we passed in the neighborhood while they were walking their dog & the wife & I were walking our four.  The two girls - Pauline the beagle & Yoko the chihuahua - barked at them, for different reasons: Pauline wants to be friends, Yoko wants to be mean.  That's one of the reasons I feel Fort Worth is a small town masquerading as a big city.

As for KNON - no response yet.  But I've decided to go visit them sometime next week, like I did with KTCU, just drop in, see if there's any volunteering I can do, put an ugly face to my application.  & then, on the way home, get take-out Ethiopian from my favorite Ethiopian restaurant in the Dallas area.

There!  That's what's going on.  Are you glad I'm keeping you in the loop?

These Are Weird Things About House Hunting/House Owning

Here is a weird thing about owning a house: owning trees.  If the lot on which the house you own has trees, you are the de facto owner of the trees.  I have owned three houses now (not simultaneously) & all three have had trees.  I was the owner of trees.  Still am, I guess, since I still own a house in Lexington which is currently on the market.

Not only was am I an owner of trees, I watched a tree die.  In Austin, one of our trees died.  It died.  Trees have lifespans.  A tree I owned died.  In Lexington, a tree we owned was too close to the house, its roots possibly damaging the house's foundation, so we killed it.  Well, we didn't kill it.  We hired someone to do it.  Someone killed our tree for us.

Isn't that strange?  A human being can own a tree.  A human being can watch a tree he or she owns die helplessly.  A human being can murder a tree he or she owns.  Isn't that sad & weird & strange?

We're looking for a house to buy in Fort Worth now, & here's a weird thing about looking for a house: you get to go into houses where people still live & look around.

For example, a house we looked at yesterday had literature by the bedside from Al-Anon.  Here's what that organization does.  That seemed an awfully personal thing to discover about a stranger.  Not only that, but my wife, myself, & our realtor stayed in the house, where they had something cooking in a crock pot, for almost an hour talking about the house, sometimes saying unflattering things.  Imagine!  People coming into your home, noticing extremely intimate things from which they might draw any number of conclusions, & then being critical about it while still in your home.

That seems like a very strange way to do things.

Today we went to a house (which my wife liked very much) & asked the realtor about the previous owners, who we knew had recently died.  She quickly said to us, "They didn't die in the house!"

Neither my wife nor I are superstitious, & of course everyone has to die at some point, but it seemed something of an indignity that a deceased person must suffer (even though, of course, they can't be offended, since they're dead) if they had the bad fortune to not only die, but to die in their own home.

& if they did, the realtor's probably going to lie about anyway.

Not only that, but if the person died & there's stuff in the house, whoever's responsible for the estate - their children, or grandchildren, or bankers, or whoever - they've got to either sell or throw away that stuff.  So you're looking at all the stuff from a person's life that they quite literally couldn't take with them.

Oh, listen, I understand, there's often circumstances that make it impossible to empty a house before it's put on the market - & it's equally weird to go into those houses that are "staged" with cheap furniture & the inevitable tables with glass fruit on them - but even if the owners are still alive, I feel like I'm going into a house after a murder.  I should be carrying scientific equipment with me.

These are weird things about looking to buy a house.  I always feel so ill-prepared for this adulthood I entered decades ago; but even if they had taught this in school, I would've thought they were blowing it out of proportion.  Like gerunds.  A whole section on gerunds?  Really?

Oops I'm Doing It Again

(I took that image from here.)

FIRST.  I need to apologize.  This doesn't matter to you, but it does to me, so let me apologize & you can roll your eyes all you want when my back is turned, but the last post I published, last week, wasn't the - what was it? - 2400th post.  Y'see, if you start a post on Blogger, then you get distracted by, say, a page about a monkey on a horse, then forget you started a post, then start another one, the "draft" (as it is called) counts as a post.  So I just noticed that I had two "drafts" in my collection of posts, which means this is the 2399th post, & so the previous post was 2398.  No big deal for anyone but me, as I've said, but full disclosure is the name of the game.

Or is it?

SECOND.  I am still shopping around for a radio station here, but because I can't help myself, I am going to start doing Self Help Radio as a podcast, & there'll be a new episode this Friday.

That's right!  A new Self Help Radio this Friday!  Hooray!  Huzzah!  At noon Texas time!  Huzzay!  Hoorah!

Now.  I suppose I should start working on it.

Two Four Zero Zero

Holy stockyards, this is the two thousand four hundredth post on this site.  Who knew I had so many uninteresting words in me?  I should be giving advice on Pinterest!

As a public service, here are samples of things you'd find if you were desperate enough for reading material that you looked into past entries on this blog (chosen at random thanks to Random Dot Org).

-----

March 2, 2010:

I'll be here if you need zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

June 17, 2015:

This is something else I am sort of annoyed by: the stock question that cashiers ask when you get to check-out: "Did you find everything okay?"  I want to say, "Whether I did or not, this is exactly the wrong place to ask me.  If I didn't, we would hold up the line for everyone else because I wasn't smart enough to find any number of the clearly-marked employees around the store to ask for help.  In fact, you should probably say, 'If you haven't found everything you came for at this point, you're a moron & you don't deserve my help.'"

March 9, 2007:

Today's show will be some sounds from bands that are coming to Austin next week for a little-known musical festival called "Over By Over-Rated." If you happen to be coming to town, please come visit KOOP. If you happen to be coming to town & you're going to visit KOOP, & it's a Friday afternoon, come visit me. I'll put you on the air & we'll cry about our lost youth.

January 2, 2008:

I am reminded of the great parable of
the footstools in one forgotten religion
(or another) which you may remember
from your religious youth

December 22, 2011:

I promise I won't scream into the microphone like I've been doing lately.

September 10, 2012:

Anyway, I didn't find any songs about expectorating, so it's fine.

May 12, 2010:

So how do you successfully rescue a cat in this day & age? Pay attention to the flyers! Pay attention to strays! Be more like my wife, not like me - don't just say hello to neighborhood cats, but look them in the eye & say, "Didn't I see your picture on a telephone pole?"

-----

So much godawful prose!  & it's all here, for the intrepid explorer!  Did I say intrepid?  I meant...  Oh, never mind.

Here's to 2400 more oh please god no!

Whither No Show At All This Week?

Aaggh!  I would just be driving home from Self Help Radio right now if I were doing the show in Lexington!  But I'm not - I'm somewhere that's 20 degrees warmer than it is there.

What's worse, I'm impatient.  I know I could be doing fun things with another radio station - I don't even need to be on the air, just involved - but they are slow to getting back at me.  I will need to schedule a visit with them to follow-up on my emails & phone calls.  Maybe that will seem pushy or presumptuous - but I feel the need to show them my enthusiasm.

What I'll end up doing is making another episode of Self Help Radio, starting next week, & just sharing them on the website until there's a radio home for them.  I half-expected to do this anyway - look at the dates for upcoming shows on the website.  But there is part of me that thought I could actually be on the radio sooner than later.

So!  The show will return next Friday, the 19th.  I will start working on it now.  It may never make it to the airwaves, but it will exist, a sign of my weird need to make radio shows even when they're not on the radio.  Something's wrong with me, I know.

Preface To Not Having A Show This Week: What The Hell Will I Do With Myself

Actually, all of my music is still in boxes, so it's a good thing there won't be a Self Help Radio this week.

& frankly, I'm going to get impatient with the hoops I'll doubtless have to jump through before I can get back on the air.

(Honestly, I'm not complaining: it's good to learn the rules of a new organization, & bad to suppose they'll be like previous ones.  Each station interprets FCC regulations to fit its own understanding & has its own policies & procedures to be familiar with.)

Having said all that, I miss doing the show, so, barring any magical change of fortune, I intend to start doing Self Help Radio next week.  I'll put shows out at noon on Fridays like I did the last time I podcasted.

If that's okay with you.  Well, even if it's not okay with you.  My radio itch needs to be scratched, even if there's no radio in sight.

Prospects, Part II

(Three logos, taken from their respective websites.)

If Self Help Radio is going to return to the air in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, it has its best chance(s) to do so on one of these three stations.  They are all non-commercial, as I can't really imagine my show anywhere else.

Here's what I think:

KFTW: The Southside Pirate, on the air at 97.5 fm in Fort Worth, is a newish Low Power FM station which, according to its Facebook page, is "dedicated to local musicians in general, in Fort Worth, Texas in particular, & the great Southside community," featuring "100% LOCAL Music & Programming, playing music from DFW in Fort Worth Texas."

What are the chances the show finds a home here?  I can't say.  The only way to communicate with the station - they don't appear to have a storefront - is by messaging them on Facebook, which I did as soon as I got internet in our house yesterday.  Facebook says the message was seen soon after I sent it, but there's been no response as of this writing.

Qualms: I know very little about Fort Worth music, so I doubt a show like Self Help Radio could thrive on KFTW.  However, it depends on what one means by "local programming."  I am a local, I would be programming a show locally.

The chances of Self Help Radio finding a home at KFTW are the unlucky toss of a coin.

KTCU is the student radio station at TCU.  They're on 88.7 fm in Fort Worth, & I've been listening to them for the most part while I've been driving around town the past couple of days.  College radio is when I began, & WRFL is obviously a college radio station, so I am very comfortable in that milieu.  In addition to what I call "freeform" programming, KTCU has a slew of "specialty" or "block" shows, especially on the weekends.  I've been entertained.

What are the chances the show finds a home here?  I am more hopeful about this station.  I called them a month ago to ask if they allowed non-students to deejay, & was told with enthusiasm that they did & that I should come by.  I told the caller than I wasn't moving to Fort Worth until August, & he helpfully gave me names to contact once I was here.  I will call those people tomorrow.

Qualms: Oh, I am so full of self-doubt that I am worried that Self Help Radio won't "fit" on their station.  One thing I notice is that the programmers don't do a lot of airbreaks.  I do.  I'm a chatty dude.  & I worry someone will have a problem with the show's fake interviews.  I worry, is what I am trying to say.  I worry without any reason to worry at this early moment.  There'll be more to report later.  & doubtless more to worry about.

Still, I think the chances of Self Help Radio find a home at KTCU are pretty good.

KNON is Dallas' community radio station, a station I listened to back in high school, a station I think is as good as KOOP down in Austin.  They're on at 89.3 fm in Dallas, & their diversity is incredible.  I can't tune them in from here, but I listen to them when I'm in Dallas, & I can here them all over the suburbs.

What are the chances the show finds a home here?  The station's website asks that you send in a volunteer application/show proposal, which I did yesterday.  They obviously don't program new shows unless an old show ends or is otherwise removed from the schedule.  One clear issue is that they're in Dallas & I'm in Fort Worth.  Even without a lot of traffic, it'd take me almost an hour to get there for each show, not to mention volunteering, which I will want to do.

So, the chances of Self Help Radio finding a home at KNON are probably very small.

& yet - who knows what the future will bring?

Prospects

(Downtown Fort Worth, Texas, found here.)

Hooray!  The family made it safely to Fort Worth!  Very little is unpacked, but we got internet today, so, yay!  No more reading Twitter on my phone!

Since this blog is about a radio show, it behooves me to write (very briefly, to expand upon tomorrow) my radio prospects.  They are (in no particular order):

88.7 fm KTCU Fort Worth
89.3 fm KNON Dallas
95.7 fm KFTW Fort Worth

An application has been sent to KNON.  An email has been sent to KFTW.  A meeting is planned at KTCU.  These sentences are all in the passive voice.  Who has sent an application & an email?  Who has planned a meeting?  Who fucking talks like that?

Tomorrow I'll take some time to talk about the stations & why I think Self Help Radio would be a good fit.  Or maybe not that last part.  Self Help Radio has never really fit anywhere.

Self Help Radio 080216: The Two-Hour-Long Goodbye

(Original image here.)

It is all over now, baby blue.  I did my first sub show (or "fill" as the kids at the station call it) on August 19, 2010.  Nearly six years ago.  I had been living in Huntington, West Virginia, & had been doing a show on WMUL.  But that was a town of barely 50,000 people.  Lexington was maybe six or seven times larger - & WRFL was a station with programmers on the air every hour of every day.  While WMUL valued its sports shows, most of its programming was done with automation software.  Soon enough I discovered that WRFL had a long history & fierce listenership.  It was a fun place to discover & become involved in.

Maybe one day I'll write about all the changes I helped make behind the scenes - about the wonderful, sometimes intense, arguments we had about the direction of the station, & the hard work some of us did to make the place more accessible to UK students & the Lexington community.  What always ends up being important, however, is the programming - RFL's on-air signal is, of course, the face it shows the world.  I did my best, with my obvious limitations, to make sure when I was on the air, it was at least listenable.  If I succeeded sometimes, it probably has more to do with luck than skill.  I mean, I was on the air a lot.  Please don't hold that against anyone at WRFL!

& here is the last show I'll do on this dear, dear radio station.  As I write this, I'm sitting in a house I love so much which, after tomorrow, I won't ever be in again.  My heart, so used to being broken, is still surprised after all this time that it bothers to become attached to people, places, & things.  But it also thrills to new adventures ahead - to new radio stations, a new city to explore & learn about, new friends & old in a sort-of familiar setting.  That's why I'm not too sad - I honestly never expected to be in Kentucky, to have had such an amazing experience with this radio station & its people, with this lovely city, with this part of the world.  I will miss being here, certainly, but mostly I am glad I was here at all.

Self Help Radio will go on, & I hope you find it wherever it ends up.  But if you want to hear it say goodbye, you can do so now on the show's website.  The two parts have lots of goodbye songs, which are listed below.

When next we talk, I'll be back in the state where I was born!

(part one)

"Hello & Goodbye" George Carlin _Playing With Your Head_
"Bye Bye" The Clean _Vehicle_
"Bye Bye Baby" Fats Waller _1936_

"Gotta Say Goodbye" The Fun & Games _Elephant Candy_
"Bye Bye" Pipas _Chunnel Autumnal_
"The Long Goodbye" A Girl Called Eddy _A Girl Called Eddy_
"Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" Helen Grayco _After Midnight_

"Adios" Esquivel _Other Worlds Other Sounds_
"Auf Wiederseh'n" Gus Backus _Die Singles 1959-1961_
"Adieu Adieu" Stereo Total _Musique Automatique_
"Goodbye" Psychedelic Furs _Forever Now_

"Rhymes Of Goodbye" Scott Walker _Scott 4_
"Seasons In The Sun" Black Box Recorder _England Made Me_

(part two)

"Goodbye" Elephant Parade _Bedroom Recordings_
"Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" Leonard Cohen _Songs Of Leonard Cohen_
"Hometown Farewell Kiss" The Triffids _Calenture_

"How To Say Goodbye" The Magnetic Fields _69 Love Songs_
"There's No Beautiful Way To Say Goodbye" Television Personalities _My Dark Places_
"One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell" Morrissey _Years Of Refusal_

"Bye Bye Baby" Hattie Burleson _I Can't Be Satisfied: Early American Women Blues Singers - Town & Country, Vol. 2 "Town"_
"Good-Bye" The Four Freshmen _Four Freshmen & Five Trumpets_
"Bye Bye Baby" The Popguns _Alvin Lives (In Leeds): Anti Poll Tax Trax_
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" Bob Dylan _Bringing It All Back Home_

"Goodbye, Goodbye" Billy Bragg _Tooth & Nail_
"What's The Theme, Gary?" Luxuriator _What's The Theme, Gary?_

Whither Goodbye?

(All of my Peanuts books are in boxes, so I had to find this on Pinterest.)

Hopefully it's not coming as a shock to you that today's show is the last Self Help Radio in Lexington.  I know I didn't mention it until a few days ago, but I didn't want a repeat of last year, when I jumped the gun before plans were finalized.  I expect everyone to be skeptical, but it sunk in this weekend, as I packed many of my beloved records & CDs into boxes, that it's real.  Around this time in two days, my family of two humans, four dogs, & four cats will leave this place.  To say I'm not freaking out a little about it is a tiny lie.  I am freaking out a lot.

Today's show, then, is really goodbye.  I chose this theme, which I always imagined I would use on the very last Self Help Radio ever, mainly because I didn't want to do a radio show about Texas, Dallas, or Fort Worth.  (Although my friend Jenny did find an awesome Fort Worth song.)  Goodbye seemed simplest, sweetest, & more appropriate.  & of course my collaborators will be along to make it much more fun than if I were doing it on my own.

As always, you can follow the show on Twitter or like the show on Facebook to keep up with where the show ends up, if the show finds a radio station, if there's a podcast coming out, etc.  Or you can just read this blog.  I blather here five days a week.

In any event - the last Self Help Radio on WRFL airs today from 4-6pm on 88.1 fm in town & online at wrfl dot fm everywhere.  I hope you'll listen, & if you think of it, call in & say goodbye, or write goodbye.  I'll miss you!

Preface To Goodbye: U-Haul In The Driveway

Even though I am not very good at it, I love taking pictures.  (You can see the pictures I take on the show's Tumblr page.)  It's not something I've always done, like some people.  It's something I decided I wanted to do maybe just two or three years ago.

But there was a time - in seventh & eighth grade - when I was able to develop my own film & print my own photos.  I took photography class & was on my middle school's yearbook staff.  My pictures were mostly pedestrian, mainly because I didn't really know what I liked enough to take pictures of it.  My teacher - whose name, alas, I don't remember - even once told me I was trying too hard, like someone who had some vague notion of what "art" is but doesn't really know.  I think I once caught her laughing at some dumb picture I took, though she did try to hide it.  I was more embarrassed than offended.

The reason I am mentioning this is not to plug that page, but rather to relate that one regret (of many, I'm sure) is that I never took the time to just park my car in some parts of the city & walk around taking some pictures.  I was reminded of that today at the U-Haul place, which is near some interesting places, with delightful urban decay, anachronistic signage, & other things which I find fascinating, & should have taken the time to take some pictures of.  It was not meant to be.

Of course there will be many more places to go & many more pictures to take, but I do wish I had a lot more memories on digital film of this town.  Everything I do now I am conscious that I am doing for the last time - the last time I went to this town's Costco, the last time I went to my favorite cheap Chinese joint, etc.  It seems very unhealthy to do that, but I just can't stop.

& tomorrow - one last Self Help Radio in Lexington.  Oh jeez.

July 31st

On today's dog walk, I watched children - supervised by their parents - play with sparklers.  Sparklers are a mainstay of the Fourth Of July, of course, & it's - quite literally - twenty-seven days after that.  But if there's one thing I will remember about Kentucky, it's that the residents of this state will take any opportunity to use fireworks.  New Year's Eve?  Boom boom boom!  New Year's Day?  Why the hell not?  President's Day?  First Day Of Spring? Arbor Day? Light up the goddamned sky.

Fireworks are illegal in Texas for many reasons, some of which are obvious: it's drier there than here, so, fire.  Fire!  Fire that burns for days!  That doesn't stop folks from setting fireworks off, although in the two or three neighborhoods I lived in, in Austin, police were called & fines were levied.  This was in addition to the danger of bringing fireworks into  the city - sometimes there were checkpoints.  A decidedly perilous process for potential pyromaniacs.

But not so Kentucky!  My animals have had to react to many nights of pop pop bang.  I think I will miss that.  & not just because I think fireworks are cool.  Dude, I bought fireworks this year at Costco.  They were not the military-grade explode-in-the-lower-atmosphere types you have to spend top dollar for, but hey - they made some of my friends' kids happy, & isn't that the point?

Will they be fireworks in Texas?  & if so, when?  I hope to report on this in the future.  In the meantime - holy shit! I have a lot of packing still to do!

Putting Everything Into Boxes

Why does a house look empty even when it's filled with boxes?

The strangest thing I do - I'm sure some others do, but how the hell would I know? - is take things, like, say, a pile of papers related to a particular time period, & stick them in a drawer.  So when one is, for example, packing things up in anticipation of a move, one finds a few months' worth of strange memorabilia.  A drawer or shelf thus filled, a new pile emerges someplace else.

So I've relived today parts of the six years I've lived in Kentucky in bits & pieces as I pack stuff away.  Here are cards sent to me on every possible occasion by the dear sister that died last years, one of which says something like, I hope you know how much I enjoy our conversations.  They always put a smile on my face.  Over here are forms & stickers relating to some period at WRFL or another.  Still here are items that go back even further, to my time in West Virginia, when I tried to work for a literacy program.  Our minds often don't need to form memories, they know they're stored in the bits & pieces of life we save on scraps of paper, opened letters, saved notes or flyers.

Some friends from Lexington are coming over tonight.  I hope it goes well.  I have much such nice people here, & I know at the end of the night I'll wish I were less introverted & spent more time with them.  Once a loner, I wrote somewhere, probably imitating or ripping off someone, always alone.

Damn, I have a lot of CDs.  I hope I have enough boxes!

Self Help Radio 072616: Fashion

(Original image here.)

The next-to-the-last episode!  What excitement!  Like a fashion show!  Wait a second.  Nothing like a fashion show!  More like a garage sale!  Or standing outside waiting for movers to come!

Still, I'm sure my hard-hitting investigative radio show about fashions shook Los Angeles, New York City, London, Paris, & Tokyo to the core.  That Tim Gunn fellow probably woke up in a cold sweat last night.  Skinny runway models everywhere suddenly got hungry & ate two slices of pizza before their handlers forced them to regurgitate it.  Normal, everyday Americans suddenly felt good about shopping for food in their sweatpants/pajama-top combos.  A victory was struck, even if it were temporary, & I woke up with a simulacrum of the head of Cindy Crawford carved in vegetable fat at the bottom of my bed this morning.  I got the message.  & I will stop - but only because, you know, I have to do a different show with a different theme next week.

But the world got a taste of the power of Self Help Radio, & wisely found it lacking.

What else?  Nothing, really.  I hope the show was a lot of fun.  It's now at the Self Help Radio web site.  You know about the passwords & stuff by now.  The show's in two parts, an hour each, & the songs in the parts are listed below.

(part one)

"Fashion" David Bowie _Scary Monsters (& Super Creeps)_
"Dedicated Follower Of Fashion" The Kinks _The Kink Kontroversy_

"Fashion Is Danger" Flight Of The Conchords _I Told You I Was Freaky_
"Fashion Hurts" Xex _Group : Xex_
"Fashion Rules!" Chicks On Speed _99 Cents_
"Old Fashion" Baxendale _The Revenge Has Just Begun: The Story So Far_

"Fashion Concious" The Fresh Windows _Chocolate Soup For Diabetics, Vol. 1_
"Fashion" Otway & Barrett _The Wimp & The Wild_
"Fashion Street" The Get Quick _See You In The Crossfire_
"What Are You Wearing?" Kahimi Karie _K.K.K.K.K._

"Fashion Chant" Noh Mercy _Noh Mercy_
"Crimes Of Fashion" The Frenchmen _Sorry We Ruined Your Party_

(part two)

"The Fashion Plague" The Exits _This Is Mod, Vol. 2: More Rarities 1979-1981_
"It's Fashion" Girls At Our Best! _Pleasure_
"Fashion Show" The Shrubs _Take Me Aside For A Midnight Harangue_

"Fashion Forward" The Telephone Company _Panda Brain_
"Off With His Cardigan!" The Lucksmiths _What Bird Is That?_
"High Street Fashion" The Hepburns _The Last Thing I Saw Before I Said Goodbye_
"Fab Fad Fashions" Proctor & Bergman _Give Us A Break_
"Fashion Parade (ft Noddy Holder)" Misty's Big Adventure _Fashion Parade 7"_

"Fast-Fashion" Supermoon _Playland_
"Fashion Crisis Hits New York" The Frank & Walters _The Best Of The Frank & Walters_
"Fashion Zombies!" The Aquabats _Charge!!_
"Vagaries Of Fashion" Fujiya & Miyagi _Artificial Sweeteners_

"Boys Of Fashion Magazines" Kuruki _TV Scape_
"I Fell In Love With A Fashion Victim" The Rosehips _The Rosehips_

Whither Fashion?

(I found this picture here.)

Look, no one is less equipped than I to do an authoritative show about fashion.  I have never been & surely will never be fashionable.  It was just never meant to be.  Because I wish I could say, "It's not for lack of trying," but - I never tried.

But from the outside looking in, I suppose, I can make some observations, which I will do today.  Not just me!  I'll be talking about L.A. fashion with our man in Hollywood, Mark Miller, & I'll be talking with a real fashion designer, the great CJ Buchanan.  In the interests of fairness, I will talk to one David Fruchter, who crusades against fashion, & in the interests of spirituality, I'll ask my spiritual advisor to weigh in on the spiritual side of fashion.

Come to think of it, with all the music & guests, there'll probably be very little time for me to display my ignorance of fashion.  That's for the best, I'm sure.  Folks will tell you the most excellent Self Help Radio episodes are usually light on the "Gary" content.

Plus, it's the next-to-the-last Self Help Radio on WRFL!  It's on from 4-6 pm on 88.1 fm in Lexington & wrfl dot fm in the fashion world.  I certainly hope you're well-dressed enough to listen!

Preface To Fashion: Embarrassment Averted!

(This image from a website called superfashionable dot com.)

Getting older, one supposes, might bring wisdom & shit, but our own experience with old people suggest otherwise: things get messy.

This is especially true with my own brain, which discards information without bothering to ask me whether or not I want to keep it, like my mother throwing away all my papers & drawings one day when I was at school true story!  Oh god I think my brain might be my mother.

Sometimes, though rarely, I plan for just such an occasion.  For example, I made a page on my website listing all the themes I've done.  I'm pretty OCD but I don't actually double-check, when I think of a theme, if I've already covered it before.  I rely upon my memory ha ha ha urgh.

Anyhoo, a few weeks ago, I was all like, "Hey! Let's do a show about suits!" & I went about thinking of songs about suits, collecting them, saying "la la la" as the days passed & my life slowly got shorter.  Then, just last week, actually - after I announced that "suits" would be the theme next week on the show - I was looking for songs, & discovered one that was tagged "Self Help Radio."  Oh no, I thought.  & then I looked.  Oh yes.  I had actually done a show about suits almost exactly three years ago.

One big problem is that I had already recorded a bit with one of my collaborators.  Luckily we didn't talk about suits the entire time (when do they ever talk about the show's theme exclusively?), so I quickly checked to see if I had done a show about fashion - I had not! - & I changed the listing on the web site & thanked my lucky stars I have a kind of system of checks that prevents me from stupidly accidentally revisiting old themes.

But boy, would it have been embarrassing if my penultimate show were a kind of repeat!

The Most Important Question

(This is not me, these are not my CDs; it's a picture from here.)

There is a question folks like me - musicophiles, you could say, sub-category: deejays - must answer quickly once a move is planned: When do I pack up my music?

"My music" is of course primarily understood for folks in my advanced middle age as "vinyl & CDs," although I must include my computer, since I digitize & rip music onto that for each show.  The computer is probably the thing I will pack last, since I do so many things on it - although we'll not have internet access on our last day, having taken the equipment back to the cable company.

Let's see: I have a show on August 2, two days before I leave.  Do I really want to come home from my last show on WRFL to pack up hundreds of CDs?  No.  I need to plan better.

Because I am less than two weeks out, & I have made no plans at all.