Self Help Radio 032219: Thumbs

(Original image here.)

Ah, thumbs!  Where would our hands be without you?  & yet, I don't think anyone's ever devoted a radio show to you!  What a sadness!  Well!  That ends today!  For on this day, Self Help Radio spends its time celebrating all manner of thumbs: green thumbs, golden thumbs, sore thumbs, sucked & unsucked thumbs!  In this space there is no judgment of thumbs; let them go up or down without jeers or cheers!  If one wishes to twiddle their thumbs or even sit on their thumbs & rotate, this is the time & place to do it.  Four cheers for thumbs!  Not as forceful as the pointer, nor as cute as the pinky, not your first choice for rings & totally incorrect for offensive gestures, it's the friendly thumb that gets you rides from strangers!  Thank you, thumb.  Have a ridiculous radio show for all your troubles!

The show is of course at Self Help Radio dot net, where it belongs.  As a rule of thumb, you will need a username (SHR) & a password.  All the contents of the show are listed below.

Happy day of thumbs!  Being "all thumbs" today is not pejorative!

Self Help Radio Thumbs Show

"Thumb" The Creatures _Wild Things_
"Thumb" The Chesterfields _Kettle_
"Thumb" Dinosaur Jr. _Green Mind_

introduction & interruption

"You've Got Me Under Your Thumb" Fats Waller & His Rhythm _One Never Knows, Do One: The Best Of Fats Waller_
"Under Your Thumb" Godley & Creme _The Very Best Of 10cc_
"Under My Thumb" Hounds _Puttin' On The Dog_
"Under The Thumb" The Len Price 3 _Pictures_
"Under Your Thumb" The Vaccines _What Did You Expect From The Vaccines_

interview with biologist Dr. Madeleine Unicorn

"Thumbs Down" The Chiffons _Sweet Talkin' Girls: The Best Of The Chiffons_
"Thumbsucker" Shel Silverstein _Freakin' At The Freakers Ball_
"Twiddle Your Thumbs Mum" Shrubbies _Memphis In Texas_
"Dancing On God's Thumb" Robyn Hitchcock _Black Snake Diamond Röle_
"The Man With The Golden Thumb" Jerry Reed _The Man With The Golden Thumb_

interview with filmmaker Paul Ees Douman (part one)

"Hitchin' A Ride" Vanity Faire _Super Hits Of The '70s: Have A Nice Day, Vol. 2_
"Thumbin' A Ride" The Coasters _There's A Riot Going On_
"Thumb Thumb" Frankie Lymon _The Complete Recordings_
"Thumbin' Johnny Brown" Burl Ives _It's Just My Funny Way Of Laughin'_
"Ridin' Thumb" King Curtis _Funk Drops: Breaks, Nuggets, & Rarities_

interview with filmmaker Paul Ees Douman (part two)

"Tom Thumb's Tune" Patience & Prudence _The Best Of Patience & Prudence_
"Tom Thumb's Drum" The Pasadena Roof Orchestra _Breakaway_
"The Story Of Tom Thumb" Joan Gerber _The Story Lady_
"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" Nina Simone _The Very Best Of Nina Simone_
"Thumbelina" Jimmy Boyd _I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus_

conclusion & goodbyes

"Neville Thumbcatch" The Attack _Magic In The Air_
"Thumbtack" Bob Mould _Bob Mould_
"Thumbtacks + Glue" Woodpigeon _Thumbtacks + Glue_
"Thumbtack" The Rad Trads _On Tap_
"Thumb A Ride" Melbourne Cans _Moonlight Malaise_

Whither Thumbs?

(Here's a bunch of thumbs from this place.)

Thumbs are fascinating.  Too big to stick in the ear, but perfect for the mouth.  Wait, am I writing weirdo erotica all of a sudden?  That's no good.  It won't surprise you that there are people with thumb fetishes but I don't think I will talk about this on the show.  But if you want to be more educated than anyone without the fetish needs, you can visit the Thumb Sucking Adults web site.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, I think thumbs are cool.  I have been toying with the idea of a show about fingers for some time, but thought I'd narrow it down to the handiest of fingers which is of course the middle finger.  But there aren't many songs about flipping people off but plenty of songs about thumbs.

It's happening tomorrow at noon at Self Help Radio dot net.  Two thumbs down?  Really?  Already?

Tough crowd.

Best Coercive Spam Ever!

Oh wow I just got the best threatening spam ever!  It came from someone calling themselves this:

"Janiece August"

(It's nice to know that the CIA has offices in Gabon.)

It's entitled:

Central Intelligence Agency - Case #14857293

Here's a big jpg of the message, but I'll print it out below:

Here's what it says:

"Case #14857293
Distribution and storage of pornographic electronic materials involving underage children.

My name is Janiece August and I am a technical collection officer working for Central Intelligence Agency.
 
It has come to my attention that your personal details including your email address (gary@selfhelpradio.net) are listed in case #14857293.
 
The following details are listed in the document's attachment:
 
Your personal details,
Home address,
Work address,
List of relatives and their contact information.

Case #14857293 is part of a large international operation set to arrest more than 2000 individuals suspected of paedophilia in 27 countries.
 
The data which could be used to acquire your personal information:
 
Your ISP web browsing history,
DNS queries history and connection logs,
Deep web .onion browsing and/or connection sharing,
Online chat-room logs,
Social media activity log.
 
The first arrests are scheduled for April 8, 2019.
 
Why am I contacting you ?
 
I read the documentation and I know you are a wealthy person who may be concerned about reputation.
 
I am one of several people who have access to those documents and I have enough security clearance to amend and remove your details from this case. Here is my proposition.
 
Transfer exactly $10,000 USD (ten thousand dollars - about 2.5 BTC) through Bitcoin network to this special bitcoin address:
 
39bwp3VtpMNLPQHwk89FgkNbWo7eEGnR7b
 
You can transfer funds with online bitcoin exchanges such as Coinbase, Bitstamp or Coinmama. The deadline is March 27, 2019 (I need few days to access and edit the files).
 
Upon confirming your transfer I will take care of all the files linked to you and you can rest assured no one will bother you.
 
Please do not contact me. I will contact you and confirm only when I see the valid transfer.
 
Regards,
Janiece August
 
Technical Collection Officer
Directorate of Science and Technology
Central Intelligence Agency"

When I read the email to my wife, she laughed out loud at the line, "I read the documentation and I know you are a wealthy person who may be concerned about reputation."

They should've listened to Self Help Radio, & they'd have known at the very least that I am not at all concerned about reputation!

It's so beautiful.  The only thing that would make this better is if it were a song.

This Is A True Story With A Silly Punchline

Shared on Facebook today:

I went to an Indian store a few weeks back meaning to buy some yellow lentils & instead bought chana dal (which is chickpeas) & finally decided to make them last week & the recipe I found was super spicy & delicious but the thing is, the entire time I'm making them I'm singing a song to the tune of that Iggy Pop ditty:
"I could escape this feeling with my chana dal
Wake up in the morning where's my little chana dal"

My wife talks a lot more about divorce these days it seems.

The Future Of Self Help Radio

(Original picture here.)

Ooo, that's a dramatic title, isn't it?  The future of Self Help Radio!  How can a show that barely exists in the present have any kind of future?

This is really more about my future anyway.  If you listened to last week's show, this isn't a surprise to you, but you probably didn't so I thought I'd mention it on the blog.  Here's the news:

My lovely wife got a job at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland & we're moving there in May.  This is a big change, & it'll be intense - we'll be taking six animals & all our stuff two thousand miles away from here.  But it impacts this radio show I do in a couple of obvious ways.

One, I'm not going to be able to do the show for about a month, since, you know, moving & putting stuff in boxes, etc.  So the last Self Help Radio for a while will be April 12.  I don't know when I'll be able to start it up again but I'm thinking May 24th.  That's what it'll say on the web page, at any rate.

A subsidiary of this is, of course, I won't be doing the Tuesday Morning Blend on KNON anymore.  That would be one hell of a commute.  I believe my last show will be April 2.

The second thing is, maybe Self Help Radio will find a home in the airwaves of Portland?  I am excited about this.  The show was not welcomed on the few spots it could have aired in D/FW, but I am hopeful there'll be opportunities for it in Stumptown.

That's the future!  So far away & so soon!

Self Help Radio 031519: It Depends

(Original image here.)

You know, I forgot the most famous "depends"-related poem in the English language.  Well, I forgot it while I was doing the show, but I remember it now:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

When we read that poem in my eleventh grade English class, half of my peers reacted with confusion & disgust.  How is that a poem?  One guy even counted - that's like sixteen words!  He would later be traumatized by haiku.

Now that that's out of the way, & despite the shit we're hearing from New Zealand, here's this week's show, about depending & dependence & stuff like that.  I had hoped to cover more about independence but time ran out.  It's ridiculous how little time two hours is!

The show is now at Self Help Radio dot net.  You'll need a password (selfhelp) & username (SHR) but those are pretty self-evident.  I just told them to you!  The songs I played & the stuff happening on the show are listed below.

Will you dig it?  It depends!

Self Help Radio It Depends Show

"You Can Depend On Me" Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra _1931-1932_
"I'm Depending On You" Otis Redding _The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968_
"Dependence" P1/E _Second Offender (1980-1981)_

introduction & definition

"It All Depends On You" Frank Sinatra _The Columbia Years (1943-1952)_
"Depending On You" King Arthur Epps _Soul On Fire (The Detroit Soul Story 1957-1977)_
"Oh Baby, You Can Depend On Me" Luther Ingram _I've Been Here All The Time_
"Chemical Dependency" Bodhitrees _Katie_
"Dependence Leads Your Fortune" Roxy Epoxy & The Rebound _Bandaids On Bullet Holes_

Ned Dry interrupts to talk about his dependents

"Life Depends On Love" Bert Jansch _Nicola_
"My Dreams Depend On You" New Colony Six _Colonization_
"A Love You Can Depend On" Brenda & The Tabulations _A Van McCoy Songbook_
"Depend On Yourself" Joe & Eddie _Walkin' Down The Line_
"Depend On Yourself" B.T. Express _Give Up The Funk: The BT Express Anthology (1974-1982)_

interview with Depends sponsor/advertiser Berry Addington

"(You Can) Depend On Me" The Miracles _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 1: 1959-1961_
"Don't Depend On Me" The Fantastic Johnny C _The Phil-La Of Soul Singles Collection 1967-1973_
"I Was Depending On You To Be My Jesus" 1000 Violins _Like One Thousand Violins_
"I Don't Depend On You" The Human League A.K.A. The Men _Travelogue_
"Can't Depend" Sebadoh _Defend Yourself_

Marge Most reports

"Why Did I Always Depend On You?" Billie Holiday _Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday On Columbia (1933-1944)_
"Depend On Me" Joann Garrett _Just A Taste_
"A Girl You Can Depend On" Palace Guard _I'm Losing Tonight! Vol. 7: 30 Moody, Garage-Folkpunk Gems From The Midsixties_
"No One To Depend On" Coke Escovedo _Coke_
"Everything Depends On You" Dub Dickerson _Boppin' In The Dark_

announcement, conclusion, & goodbye

"Declaration Of Independence" Stan Freberg _The United States Of America_
"Declaration Of Independence" Count Five _Psychotic Revelation: The Ultimate Count Five_
"Declaration Of Independence" We The People _Too Much Noise_
"Declaration Of Independence" The Insect Trust _The Insect Trust_
"Independence Blues" The Crowd _Independence Blues_

Whither It Depends?

(Image from here.)

Oh hey.  Hey!  Over here.  Yeah, it's me.  Self Help Radio is new this week, after a week off.  I bet you kinda hoped it was gone for good, but no such luck!  Not only are we back, we're back with a really dumb theme: it depends.

What the hell does that mean?  Well, it means songs that talk about depending on people or things, & also songs about not depending on anyone, which, you know, is independence.  See?  Told ya!  A dumb theme.

The reason I'm doing this show is sort of stupid, too, & coincidental.  I was in a neighborhood supermarket some time around the beginning of the year & a customer was trying to get an opinion out of an employee, who didn't seem to feel confident enough about the subject matter, which was yogurt.  I myself was standing somewhat near to them, as in this supermarket, the place where the tofu & the tempeh is is next to the yogurt & the butter.  I was buying tofu.  I pretended to browse so I could eavesdrop.

The customer was my age or a little older & he seemed to need to know something about the yogurt in relation to what I believe was a recent development of lactose intolerance.  This he did not come out & say, so perhaps that explained the employee's hesitation to express a solid opinion one way or another, but this manifested in many rounds of a conversation like this:

Customer (holding up a small container of yogurt): "Is this a brand you think is good?"
Employee: "It depends."
Customer: "On what?"
Employee: "On your own preference."

The customer would then pick another brand & ask a similar question, often after poring over the little container.  The employee would wait patiently, & then be noncommittal all over again.

At some point the employee wandered away & (a person who I assumed was) the customer's spouse showed up & asked the customer, "Which one did he think was good?"  The customer said, "I think he liked this one best."

I was amazed.  I was convinced he'd be enraged!  But nope.  I thought, "I need to answer more questions with 'it depends'!"  People mainly want you to validate their own decisions, it seems.

& then of course I thought it might be a good show.  So I came home & started collecting songs.

Will it be a good show?  Let's not press our luck.  Let's just listen tomorrow at noon at Self Help Radio dot net.  I hope you'll listen.  I'm depending on it.

Preface To It Depends: Fucking Facebook

Facebook was down most of the day.  I was able to post my dumb pictures like I do to the Tumblr page (I also post them to my personal Facebook page) but after that, it wouldn't let me post nothing.

Yeah, I saw the double negative.  I did it on purpose!

This was bad for one reason that may not seem obvious, but a thing I do during the week (Sunday through Wednesday) is that I post a Youtube vid of a song on the show's Facebook page that I may or may not play on the show this week.  I don't know if anyone listens or cares but I like to be consistent.  & I couldn't post one today because, right now, I can't post anything to Facebook.  Not just nothing, I can't post anything.

Fucking Facebook!

Hard Times A-Comin'

"Hard Times A-Comin'."  Where did that come from?

Discogs tells me it's the b-side of a single by Earl Richards as demonstrated with photographic proof on the linked page.  (It for some reason won't let me upload the picture & it's just as well I suppose.)

But I haven't heard that single nor that b-side.  Speaking of, the Wikipedia entry about a- & b-sides doesn't let us know just why we refer to them as "a-sides" & "b-sides" although I suppose it makes sense.  Nowadays of course there are digital singles & they don't have sides.  They exist in the dimension of sound.

But back to the title of this post: why would I call it "Hard Times A-Comin'"?  Am I implying something?  Are you inferring something?  Are you one of those people who have a problem distinguishing between the words "imply" & "infer"?  In general, I never did but I did have someone once ask me, "What are you inferring?"  To which I replied, "I don't know, what are you implying?"  He didn't get the joke.

Frankly I'm lucky I didn't get beat up.

But I want to stress that I'm not talking about the country or the world or the economy or the climate or my old age or anything like that, although almost certainly hard times a-comin' for all those things.

Hey, maybe it's a message from my brain!  Do brains do that, send signals that hint at meaning?  Why would brains do that?  Wouldn't they want to be direct?  Brains don't have to be like religious texts or other mythic riddles, they can simply tell you what they want, right?  Or else - is that how we're wired?  To forever deal with ambiguous nonsense because we desperately need to trust our own interpretations?

Wow, that's depressing.  Is it true?  I don't know.  But if so, wow, how (let me reiterate) depressing!

Dogsitting

We're watching our neighbor's dog Brinkley for a week.  She went back home, which in her case is New York.  He's a sweet one, not terrible emotionally expressive, but needy.  When the wife left today, he waited by the door for her, not noticing that I was in my room.

But that's not what I was thinking when I thought of "dogsitting."  Like a child, in love with an old joke, I thought about actually sitting on a dog while watching it for its owners.  & because my brain is slightly diseased, it went back to something that disturbed me when I discovered its existence & that my brain wouldn't let me forget about, which is this: facesitting.

Now, I have of course heard the Monty Python ditty & I suppose I thought that song had something to do with the common Happy Days insult but the truth is I hadn't thought about it really at all.  Sit on it?  What?  Why?  Why a face?  That doesn't make any sense!

The Urban Dictionary has a very handy definition of facesitting though, some of which I will share here:

Face sitting is when one person sits on another person's face. Any gender can be the face sitter, & any gender can be the face sit recipient, or face "sittee." The face sitter can wear pants, dress, undergarments, be butt naked, etc.

Continue reading if you want more information, & be aware it's naughty, because facesitting is or ca be a sexual thing.  I did learn something new from this entry, though, which is: Face sitting is used in five main areas: Foreplay, domination, fantasy role play, mischief, or accident.

You may be asking yourself, how did Gary find out about facesitting?  Was it mischief or accident?  It was more than twenty years ago now, I was working part-time at an Austin video store mainly to get free movies, & the place had a porn room.  One small section of the porn room - I guess it was still too prohibitively difficult to watch videos online at that point - was dedicated to fetishes like facesitting.

Anyway, at some point it came to the attention of the owners or the manager that no one ever rented the facesitting videos.  So we wrapped them in plastic & put them up for sale.  & no one bought them.

One late night, a friend came by to take me out after I closed the place up.  He brought another friend, someone I only knew as an acquaintance, & that acquaintance found his way to the porn room.  I was counting money when I heard him exclaim, "Facesitting!  Holy shit!"

He was so excited by the videos - which, I seem to remember, did feature large women sitting on the faces of smaller men - that I told him he could have them.  I was frankly sick of them.  He carried out like the seven or eight facesitting videos like a happy schoolchild carrying the books of his beloved.

What the manager or the owners thought when they found the shelf empty of facesitting videos I don't know.  They didn't say anything to me, & I didn't rearranged the shelf to make it look like videos weren't missing.  Most probably, they forgot they were there at all.

Why does dogsitting make me think of facesitting?  I'm still a little jet-lagged, maybe, or my brain is just not right.  Probably the latter.

Self Help Radio 030819: You Gaze Out Into Space

It's very proper that the very male-centric Self Help Radio not have a show on International Women's Day, especially when I hadn't prepared for such a thing should I have done a show today.  Instead, as you know, I am in Portland enjoying myself.  In honor of the day, I'm going to see Captain Marvel at a beautiful old local place called the Bagdad Theater.

As for the fake theme up here: I play a dumb online game that I can't say I enjoy but I've been doing it for years & can't really stop & there's something that happens when you're playing & there's a time-based adventure & it's over but you'd have to log out for the links to disappear.  If you click the links, it'll say "You gaze out into space" with a black screen in front of you.  Today felt like that, had one gone to the website.

By the way, "gazing out into space" might be a terrible theme for a show. But in a sense, it's today's theme.

Nobody of course is missing Self Help Radio today but if you are might I recommend visiting the archive page & listening to an old episode?  That sounds like torture to me but maybe you'd enjoy it.

Meanwhile: a new show next week!  Hooray!

Enjoying Portland

Sorry if there's not been much action on the blog this week.  Portland has been delightful.  When we drove in, it snowed.  Today, just walking, it hailed, but in the afternoon the sun came out.  We're doing too much & eating too much & I'm not bothered that it's cold - the sun came out, after all.

This place is not at all like Fort Worth.  People walk, people bike, people seem to be out past eight pm.  We're going to a theater tomorrow.  I miss my animals but I'm glad to have uninterrupted sleep.

& yeah, I got to see the Monochrome Set last night.  I was dead tired from a day of traveling but it was super fun.

Here's the song "Portland" by Andrea Van Kampen I played on the Blend Tuesday.  She'd be happy to know it's been stuck in my head most of the day.

Portland

It's snowing. I never thought I'd drive through snow again. This is a lovely little town.

All right.  No time to dally.  Going to get pizza now at Virtuous Pie!

Being Coy? Moi?

It occurred to me that my last post, which mentioned there won't be a new Self Help Radio this week, didn't say what might be the reason for that.  Am I just taking a week off to be lazy?  Is there some sort of obligation?  Or might I be going somewhere?

Certainly I did not mean to be coy.  As I said on the radio this morning, I am visiting Portland.  The reason is sort of complicated.  It goes like this:

First, I haven't had a vacation for a while.  I honestly can't remember - maybe when we went to Pittsburgh this past summer was the last time I was separated from my animals.  But my wife is always traveling.  Granted, she did spend a lot of time with family in the past few months, & many people would refuse to call that vacation, but the point is, she was away from home.  I wanted to be away from home!

Second, thanks to Twitter, I noticed a few weeks ago that the legendary Monochrome Set were touring but, of course, not coming anywhere near here.  They were, however, going to be in the northwest in early March, specifically Portland, a town that I visited in November of 2017 & which I wanted to visit again.

It took a bit of cajoling (the wife is famously cheap) but she relented when she was able to get time off work, & we're leaving tomorrow for the Rose City & we'll get to see a band that I never imagined I'd ever see.  Plus, we'll eat like vegan kings - the town is the most vegan place I've ever been.

Naturally, my instincts failed me - it'll snow while we're there.  I've been told that Portland has some unbearably lovely days, but they don't happen in March.  It hasn't been too great in Dallas - it's been frightfully cold - but the sun visits more often than not.  I will probably not see much sunlight for the next four or five days.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention where I'm going.  Now I need to snuggle with my animals for a while.  I spend most of every day with them, & I feel separation anxiety when we're not together.  You'd think I'd feel relief, but nope.  Anxiety.

Know what?  I'll manage.  I need a week off!

A Week Off

Sort of.  I mean, I still have to do the Tuesday Morning Blend tomorrow, & I am always listening to stuff for Self Help Radio.  But yeah, I'm going out of town this week so there'll be limited action here & on the Facebook page.  Do you follow the show on its Facebook page?  You really should.

Not that anything exciting happens there, but then, nothing exciting happens here, & you're reading this.  Or are you?  I'm sorry, you were looking for what?  Some conspiracy page that claims that Luke Perry & the Prodigy guy were the same person?  What the hell?

Who would start a rumor like that?  & why?  To get people to their stupid blog?  It's disrespectful & it's dumb.  Don't blame me!  I though I had made it up & it wasn't even conceivable because it's so stupid!  Now I find out it's a thing!  Because everything is a thing! 

That's just great.  Damn, I need a week off.

Wait.

Self Help Radio 030119: So Much

(Original image here.)

On this week's show, which is so much show, we not only hear lots of songs about things & stuff that are so much, but we have special guests related to the So Muchies, the awards given for folks who have, do, or are just so much!  This is pretty amazing.  If you, like me, loved watching the So Muchies earlier in the week, you'll be thrilled to know we have its host & two of the winners!

My mind is still reeling with this.  Go listen to it already!  It's at the Self Help Radio website & you'll need, you know, the username (SHR) & the password (selfhelp) to listen.  The show's two hours long & what happens during the show is listed below.

Thanks so much for listening!

Self Help Radio So Much Show
"So Much" Jackie Wilson _So Much_
"So Much" Count Five _Psychotic Reaction_
"So Much" The Windbreakers _A Different Sort_

introduction & explanation

"So Much Song" Tanya Donelly _Beauty Sleep_
"It Hurts So Much" The Superbs _Anthology_
"So Much More" Tim & Adam _Tim & Adam_
"You Could Have It So Much Better" Franz Ferdinand _You Could Have It So Much Better_
"So Much About You" Lunchbox _The Magic Of Sound_

interview with So Muchies host & coordinator Kippa Love

"So Little Time (So Much To Do)" Louis Armstrong _The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-46)_
"I Love You So Much It Hurts" Floyd Tillman _The History Of Country & Western Music, Vol. 13 (1947)_
"The Book Was So Much Better Than The Picture" Jerry Lewis _Jerry Lewis: Capitol Collector's Series_
"Burning Airlines Give You So Much More" Brian Eno _Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy_
"Only So Much You Can Do" Archie Powell & The Exports _Great Ideas In Action_

interview with So Muchie winner for So Much Anxiety, Todd Grub

"So Much Hate" East River Pipe _Oh, Merge: A Merge Records 10 Year Anniversary Compilation_
"So Much Fault" Dislocation Dance _Music Music Music/Slip That Disc!_
"So Much To Learn" Nikki Sudden _Fred Beethoven_
"Love You So What" Lloyd Cole _Bad Vibes_
"I Got So Much Trouble On My Mind" Joe Quarterman & Free Soul _Sir Joe Quarterman & Free Soul_

interview with So Muchie winner for Rocking So Much Harder Than Anyone, Lars Mars

"I Hate Myself For Loving You So Much" Betty Cody _The Successful Hillbilly Era Of Betty Cody (1952-54)_
"Not So Much To Be Loved As To Love" Jonathan Richman _Not So Much To Be Loved As To Love_
"So Much More" B'ehl _Bright Eyes_
"So Much To Do" California Oranges _California Oranges_
"Why Do You Have So Much Fun Without Me?" Barcelona _Simon Basic_

conclusion & goodbye

"So Much For Love" John Cale _Walking On Locusts_
"It's So Much Easier" Kleenex Girl Wonder _Ponyoak_
"So Much To Lose" My Dad Is Dead _The Taller You Are, The Shorter You Get_
"Miss It So Much" Röyksopp _Junior_

Whither So Much?

(Image from here.)

What can I say about a show that's about so much?  I should be able to say so much about such a show.  Instead, I find myself not really saying too much.  Which is not like me.  Is it?

In case I haven't told this story before: when I was in high school, to irritate my mother, who is German, I refused to take German as my foreign language requirement.  I took Latin instead.  Get it? It's a dead language!  Anyway, my high school only let you take two years of Latin, so I had to take another language for my senior year, & this time I chose French.  Fuck you, Mom!  (Don't worry, I decided to be a good son & took German in college.)

In French class, as opposed to Latin class, they had a penpal service you could use to write to people in the countries whose languages you were studying.  (I guess they wisely chose not to let teenagers write to priests who spoke Latin.)  I had like three penpals but they were too teenager-y & wrote only in French.  My French was not good.  But a girl from Belgium wrote me - her native language was Dutch - so she was mainly interested in writing in English.  That was easy for me!

Years later, I visited Germany & sneaked over to Belgium to meet her, & we were sitting in her dorm room - she lived at a Catholic co-op that very kindly also furnished me with a room for the night - & even though we had written many letters & even sent tapes back & forth to one another, she paused after I said something & said, "I didn't know you would talk so much!"

We're still friends.  I still talk so much.  But there's so much more to this week's show than my talking, thankfully.  Find out tomorrow at noon at Self Help Radio dot net.  You might find it so much fun to listen to!

Preface To So Much Show: MIA Today

Certainly I would like to tell you that I spent the day working on the show ("I worked on it so much today") but I didn't, really.  I mean, I usually put a slew of possible songs on my phone & listen when I can - making dinner, driving somewhere, on dogwalks if the wife is talking to her mom - that's usually several hours worth of songs.

Quick aside: the most covered song of the week, wanna guess what it was?  I'll tell ya later.

No, today I spent a great deal of time obsessing about the Michael Cohen testimony.  I read about it on Twitter, I watched clips online, when we went for a dogwalk, I read Cohen's prepared remarks to the wife.  It felt historical.  It felt like the beginning of the end.  But what the hell do I know?

Of course I have no insights about any of this.  I don't know if I've shared many political opinions on this or any other radio show I've done.  I can't imagine what I would say if I had to stand up & express my views with a bunch of people.  I am apparently bad at that.  For example:

There were people I used to know, I met them on a Usenet group in the 90s, it turned out they were very conservative although for some reason politics never came up, at least in email exchanges or whatever.  I used to joke that I was "somewhat to the left of Leon Trotsky," a line I stole from somewhere, or maybe I was repurposing a comparison I had heard about Reagan or someone that said he was "somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan."  Trotsky was pulled out of my ass, for no real reason.  I never really had any sympathy for communism in practice.  Anyway.

Years later, in a dumb discussion on Facebook, one of these people got angry at me & said I had "terrible, revolutionary ideas."  The person said, "I know how you really feel."  I didn't remember saying anything really political to this person, except maybe the Trotsky line.  So, you know.  It somehow triggered this person to believe I deserved an icepick to the brain.

& yeah, I am not revealing the gender of the person because I still know them a little & don't want to out them if they still pay attention to me.  I don't think they do, but I don't want to argue about something as dumb as my unexplained politics versus their hyper-partisan politics.

See?  This is what watching C-Span does to you!

& the song - it's Floyd Tillman's "I Love You So Much It Hurts."  I had a few covers of that.  I think I'll play the original, though.

Here's some dumb trivia: when I worked at the University of Texas, & managed students that helped faculty in the College of Liberal Arts with instructional technology, one of those students had the last name Tillman.  I jokingly asked if he were related to Floyd, & he said, "I am.  Probably distantly, but the family talks about him."

That was cool.

I Am Tired, I Am Weary

Do you know the song I am quoting?

I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years

It is of course the song "Venus In Furs" by the Velvet Underground, which I did not play on the radio this morning, choosing instead the less long & disturbing "Femme Fatale."

On the air I mentioned I have a huge crush on the long-dead Nico, who sang the song, which prompted a caller to ask me if I had to choose to between Nico & Ultra Violet, whom would I choose?  I said Nico, duh.  He seemed okay with that, so I suggested we double-date.

Here's a picture of Nico's "Screen Test" for Andy Warhol which I took in the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh last summer:

That she was beautiful is beyond reproach.  Something about her singing seems to have puzzled as well as mesmerized many listeners.

There's a chance I may be dreaming this, but I recall reading an interview with Leonard Cohen - who had a dalliance with her, the lucky fool - in which he describes in some detail his encounter, & how puzzling it was, until he realized that she basically deaf.  I have scoured the internet for confirmation of this but have found none.  It's not like the kind Mr. Cohen to be pejorative.  But it seems he was incorrect.

In any event: I wake at 4am to go to KNON to do a show at 7am.  The drive is around fifty minutes from there to here (& back again) give or take the regularly scheduled stupid traffic accident.  Today that happened literally right before the exit to KNON.  How thoughtful!  A freak-out about being late for the show right as I neared the station!

& yeah, look, I know "Venus In Furs" isn't about being tired because you've been up way too long.  I get it.  But why should things we quote necessarily have anything to do with context?  Pretty much anyone who quotes a religious text is foregoing context.  For me, Lou Reed is as close to a religious text as I'll ever get - so I'm sure he'd understand.

Or maybe he wouldn't, but who cares?  As anyone who's studied literature will tell you, at some point it has nothing to do with what the author intended.  So many dissertations have flowed from this.  & it's fucking beautiful.

Tumblr Blog I Like # 5

Again, this is not a Tumblr blog, though I discovered this on Tumblr.  It's a site called They Can Talk.  I find it goofy & charming.  For example:

If we were friends on Facebook, you would have hidden me from your feed by now because I'm always posting comics like this.