Two Very Different March 26ths

It may seem like a cheat, to use Saturdays on this blog to look back on pictures of this day, specifically ones I've taken, & aimlessly reminisce about them.  It may seem & it may be.  But nonetheless here are two pictures I took on March 26 in the past & they're in two different places, two thousand miles & two years apart.

On this day two year ago (though it feels like it's been a century), a terrible virus was making its presence known & people understandably panicked.  & I for some reason went to Costco, & saw this:

Those were weird times, when shelves were empty like it was North Korea, or a communist country in the 1970s.  I remember when they eventually got toilet paper & they allowed only one per customer, & I waited in line for it.  Just two years ago.  Imagine.

The other picture was taken on this day in 2018 in Fort Worth, Texas, in my backyard.  I would occasionally see a beautiful woodpecker come down & take a bite from my bird feeder.  & on this day I would take perhaps the best picture of him ever:

There is so very much I don't know about birds, but I remember looking this fellow up & confirming with my next-door neighbors.  I seem to remember it being a red-bellied woodpecker.  That links suggests I was right.  I would've loved a yard full of them.

We have yet to set up a bird feeder here in Portland.  I am not sure why that is.

Antipathy For Self Help Radio Day

From Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy no less!

(Sorry - I forgot where I found this - but almost certainly on Tumblr.)

Also can I remind you that Olivia Jaimes' Nancy (which you can read here) is delightful & I think worth your time?  Okay, then I will remind you!  I just did!

Self Help Radio 032222: Too Much

The sign above, in a picture I took many moons ago in Texas, conveys what I think is too much information.  It has the unenviable task of telling you that not only is the "express lane" coming up, but it's coming up pretty soon, & we know that because it's just a half-mile away.  What's more, you have very little time - this is a Texas highway, probably I-30, which has at times five lanes on each side - to get over to the left lane, which is not the standard exit.  But it's all for naught!  Because the time postscript, in warning-sign-orange, tells us it's closed.  Thanks for reading.  You'll find another express lane by & by.

It's almost like a short story except the ending is a disappointment, not an O. Henry-esque twist.  Which may be why I chose the image - except for the whole "too much information" part - because every episode of Self Help Radio is like an overlong short story with a disappointing ending.

Howsoever you choose to perceive the show, it's now at both the KBOO website & at the Self Help Radio website for your listening pleasure.  There were songs & guests galore - perhaps too much of such things - & those are detailed below.

No matter what you think about Self Help Radio, we think you are too much!

Self Help Radio Too Much Show

"Too Much" Jimmy Reed _Just Jimmy Reed_

"Too Much" Rosie Flores _Working Girl's Guitar_

"Too Much" Blondie _Pollinator_

introduction & definitions

"It's All Too Much" The Beatles _Yellow Submarine_

"I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night" The Electric Prunes _Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era_

"Too Much Yang Energy" Charles Schwab _Sonic Damn Nation_

"Too Much Going For You" Holly Golightly _Laugh It All Up!_

"Nothing's Too Much (Nothing's Too Good)" Billy Young _Deep Soul Treasures (Taken From The Vaults...) (Volume 1)_

interview with wrestler Tommy "Too Much" Turner

"Too Much Pressure" The Selecter _Too Much Pressure_

"Too Much Monkey Business" Chuck Berry _The Chess Years_

"She's Too Much For My Mirror" Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band _Trout Mask Replica_

"I Think Too Much" Aziz Ansari _Dangerously Delicious_

"You Talk Too Much" Run-DMC _Greatest Hits_

interview with travel writer Damien Craig

"Too Much To Bear" Doris Duke _I'm A Loser (The Swamp Dogg Sessions... & More)_

"You Had Too Much" Lonnie Johnson & Violet Green _Roots & Blues_

"Too Much Violence" The Clean _Modern Rock_

"Too Much Acid" Pineapples From The Dawn Of Time _Behind The Banana Curtain 1975-2000_

"Too Much Space" Lisa Germano _In The Maybe World_

interview with psychologist Dr. Sunshine Daydream

"Too Much Of Nothing" Bob Dylan & The Band _The Basement Tapes_

"There's Too Much Love" Belle & Sebastian _Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant_

"Too Much" Julie Doiron _Heart & Crime_

"Too Much Time" Nona Hendryx & Gary Lucas _The World Of Captain Beefheart_

"Too Much Of One Thing" The Go-Betweens _Bright Orange Bright Yellow_

interview with life coach Jarvis Condo

"You Drink Too Much" State Street Swingers _The Music Of Prohibition_

"Too Much Weight" Mickey & Sylvia _Love Is Strange_

"You Yakity Yak Too Much" The Flippers _The Best Of Flip Records Volume 3: The Mess Around_

"Too Much 21st Century" Bauhaus _Go Away White_

"Way Too Much" Wavves _V_

"Need Too Much" Lisa Prank _Perfect Love Song_

a rumination of things there are too much of

"Too Much On My Mind" The Kinks _Face To Face_

"Just Too Much To Hope For" Tammi Terrell _The Complete Motown Singles | Vol. 8: 1968_

"Too Much For You" Bobby Angelle _The Soul Of Money Records_

"Too Much" The Feelies _Only Life_

"Too Much" Lucky Soul _Hard Lines_

"Too Much Information" The Police _Ghost In The Machine_

conclusion & goodbye

"Too Much Too Drink" Milky Wimpshake _Lovers Not Fighters_

"Too Much In Love" The King Khan & BBQ Show _What's For Dinner?_

"Too Much Woman" Alison Stevenson _Eat Me_

"Too Much Make Up" A Giant Dog _Pile_

"Too Much Space" Hey Hey My My _Hey Hey My My_

"I Shared Too Much With Her" Gospel Music _How To Get To Heaven From Jacksonville, FL_

"Too Much E" Lloyd Cole & The Negatives _The Negatives_

Whither Too Much?

 

(image from here)

When the world is too much with me, when I feel too little inspiration from things, I often retreat into a phrase or a word as a theme for Self Help Radio.  & that's what's happening on this week's show - everything on the show will somehow feature the small but potent phrase "too much."

Perhaps I also should have featured "too many" but as it stands, there was almost too much music to get through for tonight's show - too many songs if you will.  There will also be interviews, which may be too much even though there's three hours to fill.  If this seems like too much for you, just remember: the show's theme is "too much"!

It's happening tonight on 90.7 fm KBOO, kboo.fm on the computer or phone with computer on it, in the much too much late hours of midnight to 3am.  It just might be too much for you.  & that's the point.

Preface To Too Much: Isn't Three Hours Too Much

(image & article answering that question here)

A long time ago, when I first starting doing Self Help Radio, I was oh so glad & grateful to have an hour-long show on the airwaves at KOOP.  It was very competitive at that time on the station - most shows were thirty minutes or an hour, & the two hour shows had been around for a while.  & frankly, I had come up with the idea of exploring a different theme every week out of a kind of desperation - I needed an angle to get my show approved.  So who knew if I could fill an hour a week with a show about donuts or diapers or whatever?

But when I had the opportunity to do the show for two hours, I took it.  & then when the station decided to change the schedule, I was happy to do ninety minutes.  & I kinda felt at the time that that was the perfect show length for Self Help Radio.  When I started at WRFL in 2010, the timeslot was three hours long - so I divided the time between a freeform show & Self Help Radio, although eventually I did expand it again to two hours, & ended with a two hour show before I left Kentucky.

When I moved SHR to KBOO, I knew I wouldn't be splitting the timeslot - but I did wonder if maybe I should reserve the last hour for something else, like only instrumentals, or perhaps "re-running" a previous show.  Eventually I decided, you know what?  I will do a three-hour show.  They've given me three hours.  Nothing else made any sense.

But to answer my own question: yes, three hours is too much.  When I have five interviews, it is handy, but I wouldn't have so many interviews if the show were only two hours long.  & I hold out hope that either a) the station decides to carve up the late-night hours into smaller timeslots so more shows can happen or b) I get an earlier two-hour timeslot at some point.  Because doing three hour shows - & then doing the Dickenbock Report - yes, that's too much.

Bo Live

This is a terrible picture taken from quite far away at a Bo Burnham concert I attended in Atlanta on this day in 2015.  I had become familiar with him when I was reviewing material for WRFL & we got a digital copy of his album, What., which would've been in December of 2013.

We didn't normally get comedy records, & I was very baffled by the first track, which is nearly ten minutes long, & which is mostly pantomime (not great for an audio medium).  But I was intrigued by it - & was glad to see the actual show on Youtube not long after.  That started me on the Bo Burnham journey - which led to this show, in which I was old enough to be the father of about 95% of the attendees.

Atlanta was a bit of a schlep from Lexington, Kentucky, where we lived, but we would often have to travel outside the city to see shows - usually Cincinnati or Louisville, but we went to Columbus & Nashville & even St. Louis if a band or comedian only came that close to us.

We don't have that problem in Portland!  Lots of shows come here - of course now I just have to feel comfortable to go to see them.  Which I am probably not.

Remind me to tell you how I fucked up seeing him on his next tour, which would be his last for a while - & that story is the subject of a song he did on his extraordinary Netflix show from last year.

Ginger(bread) Books

(images from Good Reads)

If you listened to this past week's Self Help Radio, you heard our librarian friend Carole talk about books involving gingerbread.  Why would she do that?  Well, it was The Ginger Show.  You didn't listen?  Maybe go do that now - at either KBOO dot fm or at the Self Help Radio website - & when you're done, check out the books she talked about, which were:

The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth, illustrated by Barbara McClintock

The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone

The Gingerbread Cowboy by Janet Squires, illustrated by Holly Berry

The Gingerbread Man Loose In The School by Laura Murray, illustrated by Mike Lowery
(This is the first of a series about the Gingerbread Man - the link will mention the rest!)

Hansel & Gretel by Bethan Woollvin

& Gingerbread For Liberty!: How A German Baker Helped Win The American Revolution by Mara Rockliff, illustrated by Vincent X. Kirsch

You might find all or some of these good fits for your library! Or you might just want to read them at the library. Either one will make Carole very happy.

Self Help Radio 031522: The Ginger Show

Did Self Help Radio broadcast from this place this week? Alas, no!

Whilst sipping ginger tea, & delicately nibbling on ginger snaps, hoping to return home for a cold ginger beer post-show, I sat in the lonesome KBOO studios this morning & presented a radio show about ginger. Of all kinds! The name, the root, the red-head. & probably more. It was a very long show.

& surely it can speak for itself, so let's just tell you the what & where, were you foolish enough to miss it.  You can listen whenever you'd like, preferably while eating ginger &/or hanging out with a ginger (but do the latter gingerly), at both the KBOO website & at the Self Help Radio website.  As always, I remind you, should you choose the latter, you'll need a username (SHR) & a password (selfhelp) to listen.

Lots of music & lots of stuff happened on the show.  All is detailed below.  & please don't forget to support KBOO radio right now!

Self Help Radio 220315: The Ginger Show
"Ginger" Wayne Parker _Rare Fifties Boston Rockabilly, Vol. 1_
"Ginger" Lovers _Star Lit Sunken Ship_
"Ginger" Twin Sister _Vampires With Dreaming Kids/Color Your Life_

introduction & definitions

"Prejudice" Tim Minchin & The Heritage Orchestra _Tim Minchin & The Heritage Orchestra_
"Ginger Geezer" Vivian Stanshall _Teddy Boys Don't Knit_
"The Land Of Green Ginger" The Orb _Back To Mine_
"Gingersnap" Jamie _Gingersnap_
"Do The Ginger Snap" Little Bobby Moore _Only Young Once - The King Records Story 1962_

interview with diviner Sammy Jarvis

"Ginger" Ginger Valley _Country Life_
"Ginger" The Lilys _A Brief History Of Amazing Letdowns_
"Mother Ginger (narrated by Jim Weiss)" London Philharmonic Orchestra, Stephen Simon, Conductor _The Nutcracker_
"Ginger Haired Man" Gallery _Nice To Be With You: All Time Greatest Performances_
"Ginger" The Front Bottoms _Back On Top_

interview with our library friend Carole (part one)

"Ginger Bread" Frankie Avalon _The Best Of Frankie Avalon_
"Sweet Gingerbread Man" Bobby Sherman _With Love, Bobby_
"Gingerbread" Jumprope _Shining Sun_
"The Gingerbread House" Plasticland _Wonder Wonderful Wonderland_
"Gingerbread Abode" Helen Austin _Always Be A Unicorn_

interview with our library friend Carole (part one)

"Princess Of The Gingerland" The Glitterhouse _Color Blind_
"Ginger Man" Barry Goldberg Blues Band _Blowing My Mind_
"Ginger Bread Man" The Shades _Green Crystal Ties Volume Ten (60s Garage Band Flashback)_
"Ginger Ale Yawn" Wolfie _You're Lucky I'm Skinny_
"Ginger Ale" The Clean _Modern Rock_

another installment of Marge's Large Kitchen

"Ginger & Spice" Hoagy Carmichael _A Portrait Of Hoagy Carmichael_
"Gingerbread Coffin" Rasputina _Cabin Fever!_
"Ginger Park" 50 Foot Wave _Golden Ocean_
"Ginger's Boogie" Ginger Smock with the Jackson Brothers _Boogie Woogie Gals: Boogie Songstresses & Piano Stylists_
"Ginger Kisses" Modern Girlfriends _Modern Girlfriends_
"Jackass Ginger" Poi Dog Pondering _Volo Volo_

Gary's moderately amusing ginger ale story

"Ginger" Neil Sedaka _The Brooklyn Demos (1958-1961)_
"Ginger Snaps" Britta Phillips & Dean Wareham _L'Avventura_
"Ginger" Hooverphonic _No More Sweet Music_
"Ginger" Speedy Ortiz _Foil Deer_
"Ginger" T.J. Assembly _Let's Go Down & Blow Our Minds: The British Psychedelic Sounds Of 1967_
"Playing Cards With Gingerbread" WinterKids _Memoirs_

conclusion & goodbye

"Ginger (La Rue Remix)" The Sensualists _Adaptations_
"Jack & Ginger" Ill Ease _Live At The Holiday Sin_
"Ginger, Baby" Ex Norwegian _House Music_
"Ginger" Georgia's Horse _Weather Codes_

Whither The Ginger Show?

Majestic root.

Ginger can mean or be many things.  It can be the delicious root pictured above.  It can mean (in UK slang mostly) a red-headed person.  & it can be a name or nickname (often based on the color of one's hair).  & that's not even talking about the adjective!  Tonight all of the word's meanings will be explored on Self Help Radio's show about ginger.

Perhaps it's these myriad reasons that made me start collecting songs about ginger & gingers in the first place.  Certainly there are more songs about the name than the vegetable, although if you add in gingerbread & ginger snaps & even ginger ale, it attempts to even the number somewhat.  I assure you it had nothing to do with this being the week of St. Patrick's day, the traditional holiday celebrating the Irish, whose folk are famously red-headed!  Howsoever the theme did occur to me, we shall have a show about all kinds of ginger tonight.

Listen from midnight to 3am on 90.7fm in town & online everywhere at kboo.fm.  Many songs, a few interviews, lots of embarrassing talking from me.  The usual!

Preface To The Ginger Show: I Cooked With Ginger Tonight!

(No, not that Ginger! Image from here.)

While Tina Louise is definitely the Ginger of my childhood, I wasn't cooking with her tonight, nor was I watching Gilligan's Island while I was cooking.  Come to think of it, I haven't watched an episode of Gilligan's Island in decades.  But they're burned into my brain from childhood, so I don't have to.  No, I was cooking with the root, which I hate having to peel, & also I don't enjoy grating it either.

If you bet me that I hadn't actually eaten ginger in anything other than gingerbread or ginger ale before I was twenty, I would take that bet - if you showed ginger root to me when I was fifteen, I wouldn't know what it was, let alone that it was edible.  To be fair, I was mostly confused & ignorant when I was fifteen, so it's not that I was simply culinarily ignorant.  Although I was.

My mother, in her eighties, once asked my sister Karin, "Did I cook for you when you were a kid?"  She wasn't getting senile - well, she was, but this wasn't an example of that - my mother was kind of realizing she hadn't been a very good cook.  I can remember maybe five meals we regularly had, & they weren't of the "more than one item" variety - we might have bread, but hardly any sides.  I can imagine my mother lacklusterly listening to her mother trying to teach her how to make meals.  Almost certainly my mother had a very small repertoire of spices - salt, pepper, perhaps some paprika - although she told me she found paprika a bit too spicy for her tastes.

This is sad but true: I didn't eat Indian food or Chinese food until I was in at least my third year of college.  I wasn't too adventurous but I also didn't really know about the other cuisines.  & I really didn't start cooking in earnest until maybe a little over ten years ago.  That's when I became familiar with ginger.  Which I cooked with tonight!  I made a recipe called "Thai Golden Curry."  It took an eighth of a cup of ginger.  I was supposed to grate it, but I did not.  I chopped it as small as I could.

It occurs to me that I don't really know the relationship between the ginger I cook with in non-dessert foods & the ginger in gingerbread, how it works, what the story is.  I must do some research.

& for the record, I was way more into Mary-Ann than Ginger.  When I was like eight.

Some Pictures Of My Animals I've Taken On March 12

As the title of this post says, here are some pictures of my animals that were taken on this day in history.  Starting with one who is gone & whose absence I deeply feel.

Beatrice was almost 17 when this picture was taken.  We met when she was still a kitten in the summer of 2000, & she traveled with me to & from Texas, finally leaving me in 2018.  She wasn't the friendliest of cats but I was always happy that she liked me best of all.

This is Pauline in 2017 on this day.  Yawning in bed.

Here she is - later in the day - wanting to yarp with her little brother (who is five years older than her) Winston.

& here's Winston getting up from a little circular bed he's apparently been sharing with Bolan & Bronte.  We lost Bronte last year, & if you happened to be around her in the eleven years she spent with us, she'd very likely be cuddled up to Bolan.

Here are pictures - one with Pauline, the other with Yoko - taken on our backyard deck.  Like today, it appears that March 12, 2020, was unseasonably warm & sunny*.  So they were relaxing outdoors.

& lastly, here's a picture of Winston & Yoko sitting at the front of the house.  Yoko was probably barking out the window while Winston looked on, bemused, but when I approached, she turned to see if I might be giving out treats.  This was taken one year ago today.

Just to make it clear - I take pictures of my animals every day.  Just because they're not featured her doesn't mean that I didn't take pictures of them.  Oh I did.  But they're a bit too amateurish to share.

* Until the middle of the day this year, then it got cold & rainy.  But the first half of today was glorious!

Harbors In The Movies

(image from the IMDb)

Lollygagging in Self Help Radio harbor this week was our resident cinephile Chuck, who talked to us about films he liked which had scenes in harbors.  Did you listen?  If not, perhaps do so at the show's page on KBOO or at the Self Help Radio website.  We can wait!

These links will help you watch the films he talked about & more:

Here is the IMDb keyword search list for films tagged "harbor."

Here is his YouTube playlist of films with harbor scenes.
Here's a list of some films available for free elsewhere.

Chuck collected the films he watched with reviews on Letterboxd.

See what Chuck is watching by following him on Twitter.

What? No movies about Pearl Harbor?!? That's a different keyword list - & maybe a different show?

Self Help Radio 030822: Harbors

(original image here*)

Self Help Radio this week was a nautical excursion - well, just as far as the harbor.  But what things you can see from the harbor!  & you don't have to get scurvy or anything!

In addition to lots of songs about harbors both real & metaphorical, we talked with two Captains, a cartographer, & our resident cinephile.  Honestly, I had almost nothing to do except play the songs.  Harbors are a bit like that - they're doing all the work, you're just hanging out.

You can listen to the show at all tides at both the KBOO web site or at the Self Help Radio web page.  You know if you go to the latter, you'll need a username (SHR) & a password (selfhelp), right?  I hope so.  All the things that happen on the show are below.

As Phil Ochs has sung, "Come & take the pleasures of the harbor... radio show."

Self Help Radio 220308 Harbors

"Harbour Blues" Lillian Miller _Texas Girls: Complete Recorded Works 1926-1929_

"Harbor Lights" Frances Langford with Sam Koki & His Islanders _The White Cliffs Of Dover_

"Remember Pearl Harbor" Eddy Howard & His Orchestra _The War Years_

introduction & definitions

"Harbor Of Love" Hank Thompson _Treasures_

"I Need A Harbor" Sue Thompson _Paper Tiger_

"Love Is A Sheltering Harbor" The Limeliters _Look At Love... In Depth_

"Harbor Melon" The Young Ones _Tobacco A-Go-Go Vol. II - '60s Carolina Psychedelia_

"Pleasures Of The Harbor" Phil Ochs _Pleasures Of The Harbor_

interview with our cartographer friend Rudy Jasper

"Temma Harbour" Mary Hopkin _Those Were The Days_

"Streets Of The Harbour" Jimmie Spheeris _The Original Tap Dancing Kid_

"Harbour" Mason _Harbour_

"Make & Break Harbour" Stan Rogers _Fogarty's Cove_

"At The Harbour" Renaissance _Ashes Are Burning_

interview with harbor patrol Captain Douglas Fair

"Certain Harbours" The Bongos _Drums Along The Hudson_

"Harborcoat" R.E.M. _Reckoning_

"Black Ship In The Harbour" Felt _Ignite The Seven Cannons & Set Sail For The Sun_ 

"Last Harbor" American Music Club _California_

"Martha's Harbour" All About Eve _All About Eve_

interview with tugboat Captain Tim Hicks

"Harbour Force" The Railway Children _Native Place_

"Harbor" For Against _Shelf Life_

"Cold Harbour Nights" They Go Boom!! _Just For A Day_

"Lost In The Harbour" Tom Waits _Alice_

"Safe Harbour Song" Kirsty McGee _Frost_

our resident cinephile Chuck stops by to talk about movies with harbor scenes

"Love In The Harbour" The Bees _Octopus_

"Benton Harbor Blues" The Fiery Furnaces _Bitter Tea_

"Myriad Harbour" The New Pornographers _Challengers_

"Harbour" Perhapst _Perhapst_

"The Harbor Is Yours" Aesop Rock _None Shall Pass_

a brief digression into the etymology of "harbor"

"Hug The Harbour" Emma Pollock _The Law Of Large Numbers_

"Harbour Lights" Pocketbooks _Carousel_

"Blue Harbour" The Wave Pictures _Beer In The Breakers

"Danny Boyd (Low Tide In Harbor Town)" The Secret History _Americans Singing In The Dark_

conclusion & goodbye

"Harborview Hospital" Mark Lanegan Band _Blues Funeral_

"Quiet, The Winter Harbour" Mazzy Star _Still EP_

* "Capri Harbor" by vgm8383 is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.

Whither Harbors?

That picture up there?  I took it at the Sydney Harbor when I visited Australia in late 2010/early 2011.  We were actually taking a boat across the harbor to the Taronga Zoo.  Yes, that's the famous Sydney Harbor Bridge in the background, but I was impressed by the size of the luxury liner there.  Holy shit it was huge.  I don't think I'd ever been so close to something so huge that was literally floating next to me.  I must've taken a dozen pictures of it.  But only this one also included the harbor.

This begs the question why I didn't do a show about harbors in 2011 when I got back.  I don't think I've really been near a harbor any time recently.  So why do a show about harbors now?  I wish I could tell you.  A decision was made some time ago & the reasons are lost in the mists of the recent past.  Which as I get older becomes more misty even as it gets more recent.

Please enjoy however a nautical Self Help Radio tonight (Tuesday morning) on 90.7 fm KBOO Portland & online everywhere at kboo dot fm from midnight to 3am.  Guests & good tunes.  It'll be just like coming into a harbor from a long sea journey.  Or - let's be honest here - probably not.

Preface To Harbors: Wishing One Lived Nearer To Water

(image from here)

Once, in conversation with my brother-in-law, I commented (I was living in Kentucky at the time) on the number of rivers I had to pass/cross/drive over (whatever) to get to places - the biggest one being the Ohio River, should I be going to Ohio or Indiana.  He was (is? we haven't talked in years) a long-haul trucker, & he thought about the rivers he regularly passed/crossed/drove over, & he said, "We really need more rivers in Texas."

*

The closest I've ever lived near water was probably where I lived in my first two years in Austin.  I was within walking distance of what was then called "Town Lake" but which is now called "Ladybird Lake" (so-renamed after the death of the former first lady) & which is really a part of the Colorado River.  Not that I walked down there much.  I was a busy student & the lake was kind of smelly & there were some terrifically large rats (nutria?) that lived there.  They did not strike me as being shy but I did not want to find out if that were true.

*

In my last visit to Austin, we went to find a food cart which just so happened to be in that very area where I lived from 1986 to 1988.  & so, after thirty years, with many of the old apartments that were there demolished & replaced with condos & snazzier apartments, I walked with my wife & my dogs down to that lake.  It felt like there were far more people around though it was a moderately cold December day.  & perhaps it was natural that there were - according to the internets, when I moved to Austin, there were barely half a million people living there (485,000 is the number I got); thirty years later, the city had almost doubled in size (907,000 it said to me).  This is just the city, not the metropolitan area, which I believe now contains over two million souls.  In any event, I didn't remember much about the area, but it was nice to be close to Town Lake again, even if she had changed her name.

*

The picture above is of some place called "The Harbor Rockwall."  I have never been there.  It's a harbor on a lake - called Lake Ray Hubbard - which forms some of the eastern boundary of my home town of Garland, Texas.  (Rockwall is the town it's in, in case you were looking for a wall of rock.)  It's possibly the closest harbor to when I was born, although it wasn't there when I was born; it was built in 2003.  I hadn't lived in that area for sixteen years when it was built.  But I made a half-assed effort to find a harbor near my birthplace & this is all I got.

*

According to this Wikipedia article, Lake Ray Hubbard (some folks these days call it Ray Hubbard Lake) was named after a fellow "who presided over the Dallas Parks & Recreation System board from 1943 to 1972."  It's human-made, says the article, "created by the construction of the Rockwall-Forney Dam, which impounded the East Fork Trinity River."  The article mentions that the lake "contains a large population of hybrid striped bass, white bass, largemouth bass, channel catfish, blue catfish, white crappie, black crappie, & alligator gar."  When I was a kid, we went swimming in the lake, probably not a lot, but a few times, & I remember one particularly lovely afternoon ruined when someone saw a water moccasin.  We were made to get out of the water forthwith.

*

The article also mentions, "Several areas of the lake have been infested with hydrilla."  Because of the use of the passive tense, the sentence suggests someone is responsible, & I guess someone is, whoever brought the non-native plant to the area in the first place, but I don't think it was intentional.  One of the problems with having a lake, I suppose.

*

Just thinking about harbors tonight made me think about every time I'm near water, I kind of want to live near water.  We walked around the Willamette River a couple of weeks ago & there's a dreamy quality to watching a river slowly pass you by.  I wonder if I'll ever get the chance to fall asleep in a home near the sea or a lake - to see if that dreamy quality truly has a soporific effect.

Snowy Night

In 2015, I had been taking random pictures with a little digital camera for only about a year.  So it's safe to say this picture, taken March 5, 2015, or seven years ago today, was one of the first pictures I took as part of a regular routine.  Chances are it was taken in the very early morning (I am regularly up late, & was then too), & I never have really good cameras, so it's a shabby, badly lit picture.  It's taken from my backyard in Lexington, Kentucky, on what was obviously a very cold night with snow covering everything.

Since then, I've lived in four different houses in two different cities, both very far away from Lexington.  I miss the idea of snow - it's snowed here in Portland a couple of times, but only once (or maybe twice?) so far the "shovel your driveway & sidewalk" kind of snow.  But I don't miss shoveling snow or the inconvenience of snow covering everything - it was more exhausting than beautiful in the end.

But gosh it really is beautiful. & on a cold night, so quiet & still.

The Disastrous Non-Introduction Of Scrooby Droop

(artist's rendition; image from here.)

Here's something that may be evident from listening to my shabby show: I work on it until the very last possible minute.  For last week's show, "the tangled show" (which you can listen to here or here), I decided to forego my usual guests so I'd have a little more time to spend on the show (& also with my wife, who considers my radio shows my mistresses).  I couldn't resist playing some characters, though, & I had the idea late Monday afternoon to introduce a new character - a filthy street "musician" who howls songs in a Scooby Doo outfit & who is brought in by Ned Dry to perform a song, since, you know, I didn't have any guests.  I set it up in a previous interviews, but - as is all too typical - in my haste, I forgot to mix the file down & didn't bring it with me.

It's all incredibly stupid but it made me laugh, & I might bring the character back at some point.  If you think you'd like to listen to it, you can click here to listen.  I won't just play it on next week's show because it wouldn't make any sense.  But if you heard "the tangled show," just imagine this happening in the very last airbreak.  That's where & when it was supposed to air.

As always, I deeply apologize for subjecting you to my nonsense.

Self Help Radio 030122: A Tangled Show

(Original image here.*)

This tangled world probably inspired this tangled show.  Though it's a tiresome, even boring process untangling things - wires, hair, whatever - I don't think it's the same listening to songs about tangled things, about being tangled up, about tangles in general.  & that's about a glowing a recommendation I can give for this silly episode.

Just one note: there aren't any guests on the show.  I felt the need to breathe a little, to not spend so much time on editing audio.  It caused me to make a big mistake!  Which I'll tell you about soon.

Meanwhile, enjoy the show if you need some untangling - either at the Self Help Radio KBOO page or at Self Help Radio dot net.  The latter will require a password & a username, selfhelp + SHR are those respectively.  What happened on the show is below.

Did I feel less tangled up after this show?  Just the contrary!

Self Help Radio 220301: A Tangled Show

"Tangleweed 'Round My Heart" Charlie Barnet & His Orchestra _1940 Vol. 2_

"The World's In A Tangle" Jimmy Rogers _The Complete Chess Recordings_

"Tangled Mind" Hank Snow _The Southern Cannonball_

introduction; a question about tangleweed

"Three Hearts In A Tangle" James Brown & The Famous Flames _The Singles, Volume 2: 1960-1963_

"Tanglefoot" Charlie Drake _Stampede - The United Artists Story_

"Wrapped, Tied, & Tangled" LaVern Baker _What More Can A Woman Do? Brunswick & Chi-Sound Sisters Of Soul_

"Tangled Web" The Browns _The Three Bells_

"Terrible Tangled Web" Bobbie Gentry & Glen Campbell _Bobbie Gentry & Glen Campbell_

definitions (featuring the Definition-O-Tron 3000)

"Like A White Star, Tangled & Far, Tulip That's What You Are" Tyrannosaurus Rex _Unicorn_

"Wrapped Up & Tangled Up In Jesus" Reverend Charlie Jackson _God's Got It: The Legendary Booker & Jackson Singles_

"Tangled Vines" Dolly Parton & Porter Wagoner _Just Between You & Me_

"Tangled Man" Anne Briggs _The Time Has Come_

"Tangled (Like A Spider In Her Hair)" Don McLean _Homeless Brother_

etymologies

"Tangled Up In Blue" Bob Dylan _Blood On The Tracks_

"Let Me Tangle In Your Vines" Yank Rachell _Chicago Style_

"Tangled" The Passage _For All & None_

"Tattered, Tangled, & Torn" Bradford _Bradford_

"Honey Tangle" The Adult Net _The Honey Tangle_

mathematical tangles

"Triangle Tangle Tango" Severed Heads _Rotund For Success_

"Bauble, Bangles, Emotional Tangles" The Band Of Holy Joy _Manic, Magic, Majestic_

"Tangled" Jane Wiedlin _Tangled_

"Tingle Tangle" The Lightning Seeds _Sense_

"Tangle" Bleach _Killing Time_

Ned Dry interrupts!

"Tangle Up" Poole _Tangle Up_

"Tangle My Shoes" The Cat's Miaow _A Kiss & A Cuddle_

"Tangles" Eric's Trip _Peter_

"Tangled Weeks" Licorice Roots _Licorice Roots Orchestra_

"Tangled Up In Blue" The Brilliant Corners _Creamy Stuff: The Singles 84-90_

"Tangled Up In Blue" St. Christopher _Lioness_

Sir Walter Scott & his tangled web

"Don't Want To Tangle With Me" Smokey Wilson _The Man From Mars_

"Tangled Up" Cranes _EP Collection Volumes 1 & 2_

"Tangle" Flare _Bottom_

"The Tango Tangle" Dirt Bike Annie _Show Us Your Demons_

"Tangled" The Black Heart Procession _The Spell_

"Tangled Up With You" The Mumlers _Don't Throw Me Away_

conclusion & goodbye

"Tangled Line" Brave Irene _Brave Irene_

"The Tangle Of Us" Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat _The Most Important Place In The World_

"Tangle Of Souls" Scott Cook _Tangle Of Souls_

"Entangled" Mamak Khadem _Remembrance_

* "Tangled technology" by stuant63 is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.

Whither A Tangled Show?

(I once lived in these apartments. Image from Goggle Marps.)

Everything feels so tangled up I thought it might be appropriate to spend a little time playing a bunch of songs about being tangled up, tangled things, being entangled, stuff like that.  Maybe it might help things get untangled.  But probably not.

Not that special this week, sorry.

Listen at 90.7fm in Portland or online everywhere at kboo.fm.  From midnight to 3am.  Tonight - or Tuesday morning, howsoever you roll.

Preface To Tangle: Tangled Up In Blue

(image from Discogs)

"Tangled Up In Blue" is a Bob Dylan song from Blood On The Tracks, his fifteenth studio album, released in 1975.  It's catchy as hell, one of those Dylan songs without a chorus, just the phrase "tangled up in blue" repeated at the end of each verse.

Wikipedia tells us, "With 'Tangled Up in Blue,' Dylan used shifting perspectives of time, influenced by his recent studies under Raeben."  Norman Raeben was an American painter, & what little I know about him, I'm not sure what exactly Raeben taught Dylan but I was initially confused by the shifting pronouns in the song.  The confusion was compounded by different lyrics - & pronouns - on his Bootleg Series version & even more so the Real Live version, which feels about 65% rewritten.

Dylan denies the song is autobiographical but I suspect there's lots of real life in there somewhere.  The song (& the album) has been part of my life's soundtrack for decades now.

Around the same time I got into Blood On The Tracks, I was writing terrible poetry for a Usenet group & just beginning my radio adventure.  I remember trying to flip pronouns around like Dylan but of course I wasn't really trying to make a narrative.  I was just putting words together & hoping they sounded nice.

Once on a camping trip, my girlfriend & I at the time tried to sing the song from memory.  We didn't get it quite right.  But trying to do so took up a considerable amount of time - much longer than the song itself.

When I mentioned this week's theme on the air, someone texted & requested this song.  I was kinda hoping the person wanted the Bootleg Series version, but they specifically asked for the Blood On The Tracks version.  Which doesn't bother me, I love the song.