Whither Razors?

Look. Sometimes you're all like, "Could I really do a radio show about ______?"

& it's not just, "Can I play a bunch of songs about ______?" but "Can I play a bunch of actually good songs about _____?"  Because there are always enough songs about a theme.  Always.  I remember when I did my Halloween show about werewolves, I discovered there were an almost literal shit ton of songs about werewolves in the metal genre.  As someone who never developed a taste for any metal really, that was a problem - because I only play songs that I actually enjoy.

Imagine, then, me, a few months ago, asking, "Could I really do a radio show about razors?"  I was asking "Could I really do a radio show with good songs about razors?"

It took me a while, but I did in fact find a decent number of good songs about razors.  This does mean that the show kinda originated in a dare to myself.

Where did the idea of songs about razors come from?  Easy.  I was listened to Blind Willie McTell & was intrigued about his song, "The Razor Ball."  I don't know what a razor ball is (the "ball" in the title is in the sense of "dance party") but I loved the song, & it made me think, "Hm, songs about razors."

That's where the dare came in.  I dare myself a lot when I've been drinking.  Did I mention I was drinking while listening to Blind Willie McTell?  Oh well.  I said, "I bet you can't…"  & then I started to think about razor songs.

Which brings us to tomorrow morning.  The low temperature is supposed to be -12 degrees.  I don't even know if I've ever experienced negative temperatures.  I'll be getting into a car & driving to the radio station in negative temperatures.  But!  I'll do it.  Because it's what I do!

An entire show about razors.  From 7-9am.  On 88.1 fm Lexington in quite literally frozen Lexington.  Online in happier climes at wrfl dot fm.

Also I should add: brrrrrrrrr.

Beagle Fan

Congrats to Miss P for winning the Westminster Dog Show yesterday.  As the owner of three beagles, I am happy & proud.  Plus, she's a beauty.  Mine are lovely - there's no such thing as an ugly beagle - but they're probably not pure bred.  The P in Miss P might stand for perfect.

It's going to be very cold tonight (a low of -9 F), & it's been cold & snowy for days now, & I promise I'm not going to complain about shoveling snow today (although I did it again for the third damn day in a row), but one thing I miss thanks to the weather is that we don't walk the dogs when the Fahrenheit is in the 20s or lower.  Our littlest, Winston, just couldn't handle it - he comes inside from a brief urination break all a-shiver because it's so cold.  I am glad, though, we're not out walking, because I just know that there are folks in the neighborhood who never let their dogs (or cats) inside.  & when the temperature dips into the negatives - & it will tonight, & on the morning before this week's show - these heartless fucktards will still leave their animals outside.  As I have heard from family members - in Texas, of course, it's leaving pooches out in 110 degree weather that's the problem - "they're just dogs."

People who say "they're just dogs" are barely even human.

So damn it! bring your dogs in when the weather sucks.  If they're smelly, give them a bath.  Don't you know their species co-evolved with ours for millennia?  Our ancestors slept with their ancestors around fires & in caves - we used to have to be out in the bad weather together, so why not let them in with you with the fancy protection you now have?

They'd do it for you.

Snow Daze

It snowed a lot in Lexington yesterday.  The local newspaper talks about how the city dealt with it, & warn that it's going to snow tonight & so there'll be more snow tomorrow.

I shoveled snow for a couple of hours yesterday & today.  Cleared a path for the mail carrier, & for the car, although our street has not been plowed & probably won't be - according to the county's Snow & Ice Control Plan, I don't live on a street that gets any attention.  The plans just go up to "Priority Four"; I'm guessing we're somewhere near "Priority Fuck You."

So I'm not going to drive anywhere, though I could get the car out into the street.  The street!  I've had to help push a couple of cars that got stuck out there.  A few neighbors came out to help as well.  The next-door neighbor, who has a better snow shovel than I do, lent me his, & helped me & the wife finish our driveway.

Snow shoveling is no fun.  Why in the world would Charlie Brown do it for money?  How much money does he really need?

But if he must, where the hell was he today?  I would've given someone money, a few of my books, & a home-cooked meal to shovel my damn walk.  I don't want to have to do that again.

Funny I should think of Charlie Brown.  Shoveling snow is one of those Charlie Brown things.  You hate doing it, you do it, then it snows again, so you have to do it again. Which you hate doing.  Good grief!

Snowed In

Hopefully I'll be thawed out by Friday.

Self Help Radio 021315: Valentine's Day 2015 - Famous Lovers

(Original image here.)

Ah, love!  What a mess it is!  & what messy lives the lovers of history & myth had!  From Adam & Eve to John & Yoko, things don't usually turn out so well.  Why do we love these stories, then?  Why do we fall in love?

None of those questions are answered on today's show (heck, none of them were even asked!) which features nothing but songs about famous lovers, as well as an interview with historian David Fruchter about his new book about love, a report by Marge Most, & an update by SHR's man in Hollywood, Mark Miller.  It will not be a good substitute for flowers & candy if your better half expects that, but it'll kill time on the drive to the fancy schmany restaurant to be sure.

The show is over at the Self Help Radio website, right at the top of the playlists.  When you click one of them, it'll ask you for a username & a password.  They're available on the page, not hard to find, but they're also SHR & selfhelp if you are impatient.  They're not a secret.  The songs I played in each half of the show are listed below.

Happy Valentine's Day!

(part one)

"Adam & Eve" Paul Anka from Paul Anka Sings His Big 15_
"Adam & Evil" Elvis Presley from Spinout_
"Adam & Eve" Bob Marley from The Great Legend Of Reggae_

"Helen & Paris" Dancing Mice from Quiz Culture_
"Pyramus & Thisbe" Lida Husik from The Return Of Red Emma_
"King Solomon's Song & Mine" Momus from Circus Maximus_
"Orpheus & Eurydice" Helen Slater from The Myths Of Ancient Greece_

"(If) Cleopatra Took A Chance" Eddie Holland from The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 2: 1962_
"Abdul & Cleopatra" Jonathan Richman from The Best Of Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers (The Beserkley Years)_
"The Continuing Story Of Mary & Joseph" George Carlin from When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?_
"Mary & Joseph" Richard Thompson from Henry The Human Fly_

"Héloïse & Abélard" Anna Erikssön & Mason Bendewald from Meet Me At Père Lachaise_
"Letter From Heloise To Abelard" Laura Paton from A Lover's Gift/From Her To Him_
"Abelard & Heloise" Spokane from Leisure & Other Songs_

(part two)

"Lancelot's Tune (Guinevere)" Tom Rush from Tom Rush Celebrates 50 Years Of Music_
"Beauty & The Beast" Joan Gerber from The Story Lady_
"Beauty & The Beast" David Bowie from Heroes_

"Romeo & Juliet" William Shatner from The Transformed Man_
"Romeo & Juliet" Michael & The Messengers from Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968_
"Romeo & Juliet" Dire Straits from Making Movies_

"The Legend Of Bonnie & Clyde" Merle Haggard from The Great Merle Haggard Sings_
"The Ballad Of Bonnie & Clyde" Georgie Fame from The British Invasion: The History Of British Rock, Vol. 5_
"A Day In The Life Of Bonnie & Clyde" Mel Torme from A Day In The Life Of Bonnie & Clyde_
"Bonnie & Clyde" Mick Harvey & Anita Lane from Intoxicated Man_

"Everyone Has Something To Hide Except Me & My Monkey" Kristin Hersh from Echo_
"The Ballad Of John & Yoko" Teenage Fanclub from Deep Fried Fanclub_

Whither Valentine's Day 2015: Famous Lovers?

I like doing Valentine's Day shows, &, I suppose, the topics are almost limitless.  But at a certain point, panic sets in.  I've done (according to the Self Help Radio website's list of themes I've covered) eleven Valentine's Day shows (I have no idea why I didn't do one in 2006) with themes like love, hate, crushes, jealousy, boyfriends, girlfriends, love songs, lovesickness, finishing the line "love is…", & last year, valentines, but after I started gathering music for this year's show I realized I totally could've done an entire show on Romeo & Juliet without too much trouble.  & now I'm just planning on playing a few songs about them in the middle of a larger show.  Panic.  Sets.  In.

You could help, you know.  You could suggest future Valentine's Day themes.  Email ideas to me.  Respond to this blog entry.  Come to my house, slap me around a bit, & taunt me with better ideas.  Anything.  Because.  Panic.  Sets.  In.

Not right away, though, since I have a year after tomorrow to think of something else.  Tomorrow there'll be songs about all kinds of historical, mythical, & fictional lovers.  I'm a little surprised that there aren't more pop songs about Pyramus & Thisbe, but I understand I'm not in charge of the world.  Alas.

Self Help Radio's 2015 Valentine's Day show is on from 7 to 9am on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington, & online at wrfl dot fm.  I'll have it up on the Self Help Radio web place long before Valentine's Day.  I am told the show is a powerful aphrodisiac.  Or was that a prank call?

Jon

(I found this picture here.)

There's nothing I can really say about Jon Stewart's decision to leave the Daily Show.  Actually, there's a lot of things I can say & why not say them here?

Though I think it's right & proper to continue the show, we have to admit it's going to be weird without him behind that desk.  I've watched it faithfully for a very long time now.  I started watching it way before the 2000 election - but I just read that he started in 1999.  I wasn't a regular viewer of the Craig Kilbourn version, so I must have heard some buzz about it early on.

This is how long ago it was: I was often not home at 10pm (when it aired in Texas) so I would have my VCR programmed to tape it.  I would have videotapes of the show to watch when I had time.  Videotapes!  Sometimes I'd accidentally tape over something I hadn't watched.  Those pre-DVR days were so barbaric!

I watched him during the 2000 election.  I watched him on his first show after 9/11.  I've watched him I guess fifteen years now.  It's a long relationship.  It's crazy that it will end this year.

Not that I haven't had my problems with him.  I thought the "Rally To Restore Sanity" was really dumb & ineffectual.  & most damning of all: not funny.  Politically, it might have really made a difference.  I remember the wife & I almost drove up to DC to take part in it, but when I was watching it, that Saturday morning, from home, I was so glad we didn't.  Bands I didn't like (mostly boring commercial radio fare) played for a long time before half-assed attempts to humor intending to promote reasonable discussions in the country were performed, & so fucking lame they were.  Oh my god.  A month or so later, in an off-year election that Stewart might have actually influenced, the Republican Party began its resurgence.  If Stewart didn't have his "I'm just a comedian defense" (another thing about him that I find disingenuous), he might feel a bit ashamed for wasting his considerable clout on a mostly unfunny performance at gathering of his fans.

Even though what I just wrote nearly attained the level of rant, I truly respect & admire the man.  I wish the people who should watch his show - mainly people who trust Fox News - actually did watch it, but there were times when, by sheer virtue of how he presented a story, he did enlighten me, inform me, even sometimes changed my mind.  & of course he was so very funny.  I don't think I watched one show that I thought, eh.  I always found something to laugh at.

I think my heartbreak over the end of the Colbert Report was ameliorated by the fact that he'll be back on the air soon.  I don't know what Jon Stewart intends to do - he surely isn't going to do a talk show that will compete with his friend.  I haven't seen Rosewater, but will when it comes to DVD - yet I certainly hope he won't spend the rest of his days behind a camera instead of in front of it.  As much as I love John Oliver's show on HBO, I didn't really think he was all that great when he subbed for Stewart.  I missed Jon Stewart so much that summer.

& I'll miss him more knowing he won't be on weeknights mocking the self-important & telling jokes to power after this year.

Lover lover lover

I wanted to do this year's Valentine's Day show about famous lovers, & so I shall, but it hasn't been easy.  Why didn't you tell me there weren't a shit-ton of songs about Pyramus & Thisbe?  I would've believed otherwise.  In a perfect world, there'd be one by Momus & another by Belle & Sebastian.

In fact, I now wish I had promised a show just prominently featuring the word "lover."  I would most definitely have played the Leonard Cohen classic:

& maybe even mixed it up with songs like this one:

Though that may be too ridiculously suggestive for Friday morning.

I am grateful, however, that though there are famous lovers throughout history, & though there are only a few of those that have been celebrated in song, the ones that are celebrated in song have a lot of songs about them.

& because of that: I am also regretting not just doing a show about Romeo & Juliet.

Another Year, Another Groan

Last year, I wrote on the this blog why I don't watch the Grammys.  But I pay attention to the Facebook, Twitter, & Tumblr, & people are talking about Grammys (which aired last night) today.

Most of the people who are talking about the Grammys are people who don't know or don't care that there's an amazing world of music out there that isn't played on top 40 radio, or on any commercial radio at all.  Those same people listen mostly (I would assume) to either whatever's on the radio now or music that meant a lot to them (which was probably also on the radio then) when they were of the age (teens to early twenties) when music seemed to mean a lot.  & when I say, "whatever's on the radio," I tend to mean, whatever's on whatever popular service people listen to, because I simply don't know.

In short, they don't listen to the sort of radio I make, or to the music one hears on the sorts of radio stations I've been on (college/community).  I have in fact been told by people (my family, acquaintances who listen to my show when they've found out I do one) that my music is "weird."  Whatever is accepted as mainstream is "not weird" to them.

I have no problem with that.  I make the assumption that, in general, that they are more passive listeners of music than I am.  They are happy to accept whatever music is placed in front of them by corporations.  They're concerned with many other things than just the music they hear (mostly csex appeal & things the artists wear & say).  They aren't aware that so much of that music is, in effect, written by committee, & designed to be catchy so it sticks in your head.  (I liken it to music for commercials, which in a way it really is.)  (Perhaps you should listen to what Bo Burnham thinks of popular music.)

I started thinking that it's interesting that a "popular" form of art is composed of a such a narrow band of people.  The sort of musical act that makes its way to the Grammys, compared to the number of musicians out there, may make the Grammy crowd the musical 1%.

My point is that I get it.  I understand that people who have a limited knowledge of, or desire to discover, the vast amount of amazing music out there, some of which will stand the test of time in ways virtually all of this year's Grammy winners & nominees won't, I understand that they listen to & like the most convenient music that exists for them.

What I don't understand is the people I know from my radio stations who obsess & reblog & defend Grammy nominees + winners.  They know much more about the 99% of the music out there that the Grammys will never acknowledge, let alone celebrate.  & I have to ask, truly: don't they listen to their own radio stations?

Self Help Radio 020615: Tigers

Ah, tigers.  I stared at pictures of them all week.  I read article after increasingly depressing article.  I listened to a ton of songs about them.  I watched videos of their cubs.  (I stayed away from videos that show them hunting & eating large animals.)  I even cursed the world for leading them to the brink of extinction.  All of this for a radio show!  Seriously, if just you listened to the show, you got off way easier than I did!

It was I think a good show.  I interviewed an actual Bengal tiger (who came down from the Cincinnati Zoo), & also conservationist David Fruchter.  I also performed a Dramatic Readings Of A Classic Rock Song, as I am wont to be.  All this & so many songs about tigers that you'll feel like a cub again!

The show is listen-to-able at the Self Help Radio website.  Do pay attention to login/password information if you want to listen to any shows.  & the songs I played - the fearsome, nocturnal, fierce-toothed, gorgeously striped songs - they're listed below.

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Tiger Rag" The Mills Brothers _Blue Skies: 45 Hits From The 30s & 40s_
"Tiger Man (King Of The Jungle)" Rufus Thomas, Jr. _The Sun Records Collection_
"Tiger" Sparkle Moore _Killer 7"_
"Teach Me Tiger" April Stevens _Ultra Lounge, Vol. 8: Cocktail Capers_

"The Tiger's Wide Awake" The Romeos _The Tiger's Wide Awake_
"Paper Tiger" Sue Thompson _Suzie (The Hickory Anthology 1961-1965)_
"Tiger" Brian Auger _The Mod Years_
"I've Got A Tiger By The Tail" Buck Owens _Classic Country: The Golden 60s_
"Tiger Girl" The Tigermen _Scum Of The Earth_

"I'm A Tiger" Lulu _The Best Of The Sixties_
"Tame Me Tiger" Bonnie St. Claire _The Singles_
"Hunting Tigers Out In 'Indiah'" The Bonzo Dog Band _Tadpoles_
"Tame My Tiger" T.Rex _Dandy In The Underworld_

"Paper Tigers" The Chameleons _Script Of The Bridge_
"Plain Tiger" Cocteau Twins _Tiny Dynamite_

(part two)

"Laughing Tigers" BFG _Fathoms_
"Tyger Tyger (Dub Version)" Jah Wobble _Glitters Is Gold_

"The Black Tiger" Phillip Boa & The Voodooclub _Boa Best Singles_
"Lions & Tigers" The Soft Boys _Nextdoorland_
"The Tigers Have Spoken" Neko Case _The Tigers Have Spoken_
"My Tiger My Heart" The Boy Least Likely To _The Best Party Ever_

"Like A Tiger" Fourth Of July _Fourth Of July On The Plains_
"Tiger In The Sea" Daysleepers _Drowned In A Sea Of Sound_
"Tiger In A Cage" Suave As Hell _Ashell III_

"Tyger Tyger" Tania Rivas _Tyger Tyger_
"Albino Tiger Rescue Squad" Bearsuit _The Phantom Forest_
"Tiger Eyes" Half Japanese _Overjoyed_

Whither Tigers?

Man, whatever you do, don't read web pages about tigers.  You can look at photos of them - they're truly stunning beasts - & definitely watch videos of them, especially their cubs, on Youtube or other video web pages - but if you read about them, you'll get angry & sad because there will come a time when they won't exist on Earth anymore.  Maybe in zoos, maybe in sanctuaries.  But of the nine subspecies that have existed, three are extinct, & one is extinct in the wild.  The rest are all endangered.

If I were some kind of crazy magician, I'd multiply the tiger species by a factor of a million or so & give them a fighting chance to take back their habitat from humans.  Also, I'd take away from humans the ability to defend themselves unfairly with weapons like guns & bombs.  Tiger claw & teeth vs human claw & teeth.  There'd be a whole swath of Asia, basically, which just be the nation of Tiger.  Imagine how glorious a place that would be!

Tomorrow's show will therefore have a tinge of melancholy to it, but I hope it's great nonetheless.  It airs Friday morning from 7-9am on 88.1 fm WRFL Lexington, & online at wrfl dot fm.  I'll put it up on the Self Help Radio website later in the day.

& if you're up early, I'll be doing the two hours before Self Help Radio as well, because, why not?  It'll be freezing cold outside & I'm a weirdo!

Preface To Tigers: Save The Tigers!

Holy crap tigers are majestic creatures. It's terrifying to think we may one day live in a world where there aren't any. The World Wildlife Federation lays out the challenges of tiger conservation (salvation?) here.

This is information I may share on Friday, too, so don't be surprised if some of the things I say on the radio feel familiar to you.

Even Killing Machines Were Babies Once

The second love of my life used to do this cute thing when she was in a playful mood.  She'd light up like a spring morning & smile wide & say to me, "You were a baby once!"  Her reverie, which was adorable as all hell, would end with "Everything was a baby once!"

In that spirit, here's a compilation of baby tigers being super fucking cute:

Coming Up: A Radio Show

It's true!  This week, the show is about tigers.  Tigers as in ferocious beasts much, much bigger than my housecats, although my housecats think they're tigers & act as though every moment they refrain from leaping upon me & ripping out my throat is a gift they beneficently bestow upon me.  Indeed, in this picture:

They pretty much think they're the big tiger &, unless I'm feeding them, I'm the annoying little tiger.  See how amazingly patient they are with me?  Why, they could eat me alive!  They're so good to me.

I took that picture from this place: The Mighty Tiger: 15 Facts & 25 Stunning Photos.  You may want to bone up on that before this week's show.  Although I might have chosen 15 Photos & 25 Stunning Facts.  Because that is how I am.

Self Help Radio 013015: Jerks

(Original image here.)

God, some people are such jerks.  Did you know, some jerks get an entire radio show about them?  Can you even imagine it?  What sort of jerk makes a radio show about jerks?  A big ol' jerk, I bet!  But does it make you a jerk to listen to a radio show about jerks?

That's for you to find out!  You can listen to Self Help Radio's show about jerks any time you'd like because it's now over at the Self Help Radio website.  The site is kinda password protected, so please make sure you see the login (SHR) & the password (selfhelp) while you're there.  Yeah, I just gave them to you - I'm not some kind of a jerk!

The jerky songs I played are below.  About half of them appear to be about a dance craze in the mid-60s that for some reason never attached itself to the pejorative "jerk."  I guess that's how dance crazes are.

Thanks for listening!  (You're not a jerk.)

(part one)

"Bongo Jerk" Laurel Aitken _Laurel Aitken: Ska Legend_
"Buzz The Jerk" The Pretty Things _Get The Picture?_
"Can You Jerk Like Me?" The Contours _The Very Best Of The Contours_
"Cool Jerk" The Go-Go's _Return To The Valley Of The Go-Go's_

"Don't Be A Jerk, Jonny" The Drums _Summertime!_
"Everybody Jerk" Jackie Lee _The Duck_
"How Not To Get Jerked" Boogie Down Productions _Sex & Violence_
"I Can Be A Jerk" Eddy Current Suppression Ring _Rush To Relax_

"I Do The Jerk" Bill Pinkney _Jerk! Shake! & Vibrate!_
"Jerk" Buzzcocks _Buzzcocks_
"The Jerk" The Clarendonians _Trojan Mod Reggae Box Set_
"Jerk" The Haywains _Desperately Seeking Something_

"The Jerk" The Larks _The Jerk_
"The Jerk" Martha & The Vandellas _Dance Party_
"Jerk It With Soul" Willie Walker _Northern Soul Fever, Vol. 3_

(part two)

"Jerk" Noise Addict _Meet The Real You_
"Jerk" Senseless Things _Christine Keeler_
"Jerkin' Back & Forth" Devo _New Traditionalists_
"Jerks On Ice" Elk City _House Of Tongues_

"Jesus What A Jerk" The Verlaines _Some Disenchanted Evening_
"Knee Jerk Reaction" The Green Circles _Antipodean Screams, Vol. 1_
"Long Time Jerk" The Clash _Super Black Market Clash_
"Planet Jerk" Barcelona _Transhuman Revolution_

"Serenade To A Jerk" Spike Jones & His City Slickers _Strictly For Music Lovers_
"She Loves The Jerk" Elvis Costello _Goodbye Cruel World_
"Tear Jerker" Personal & The Pizzas _Raw Pie_
"We're All Jerks" Impanada _Business Deal Band Lotto 2_

"When In Rome (Do The Jerk)" Rocket From The Crypt _All Systems Go III_
"You're A Bigger Jerk Than Me" The Karl Hendricks Rock Band _Oh, Merge_

Whither Jerks?

[This is this blog's 2000th post!  Hooray!]

Frankly I'm surprised there aren't more songs that call jerks what they are.

[2000 of these!  It's kinda crazy, right?]

I found so many damn songs about the 60s dance craze called the Jerk, & frankly, it's kind of a dumb dance.

[I've never done 2000 of any thing!]

So the show tomorrow will be jerk-heavy, but not entirely the kind of jerk you're thinking about.

[Probably not even 2000 radio shows!]

I resisted finding general songs about assholes.  I thought all kinds of the jerk ought to be represented.

[I'm so much more excited about this than anyone else!]

Just giving you a taste of what to expect tomorrow morning.

[Well.  Maybe not that excited.]

As usual, it's on from 7 to 9am on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington.

[My cats are looking at me with more withering stares than usual.]

Also simulcast (I don't think I've ever used that word before) at wrfl dot fm.

[They're jerks.]

& of course later at the Self Help Radio homepage.

[Nothing excites them.]

Hope you listen.  Also, congrats to me for 2000 blog posts!

[You noticed!  Hooray!]

1999 Poem

This is not a poem about 1999, a year I don't really remember (that's not true).  It's a poem I've created by laboriously (some may say foolishly) going through & picking the first word of every blog post (including this one, which will be the last word of the poem) I've written for this blog.  It will therefore have 1,999 words.

It goes a little something like this (hit it!):

Hi this when here's but quick this I in I we why Halloween amazingly as before hey
I I do oh you what normally I I I it's recently Halloween as I hey this ah today my I I
It's today's it this I it's I whatever man I'll seriously I'm well people yeah here wow boy
I it's my I that's it's damn greetings alas the another I this a the it's I someone har boy
My I I just nothing like they happy do it's what what this buy hey it's dude I is nothing
I I welcome it's did oh well I've I LB friends thank James I I this need I I I if so dearest I
Hello why because as this as the I'd from I two lookit no I Madchester this my I 1) I I
Yea a hey OH MY GOD THIS IS INSANE!

I barely got through the first five months of 2007!  (I started this blog in late 2006.)  There's no way I'd have the time (not to mention the energy) of going through one thousand nine hundred & ninety nine posts.  What am I, nuts?

Can I at least say I tried?  & maybe not feel like such a loser?

Countdown To 2000

Suddenly it's two days before the end of the world!  Not really.  The 2000 I am referring to is the 2000th post on this dumb blog ostensibly created to supplement my radio show.  Alas!  It does not.

This is post # 1998 (I think) (let me check) (yeah, okay, it is) & I haven't any idea how to of if to make # 2000 a big deal.  There are many things working against making a small milestone (oh god) such as this something to celebrate:

1) No one reads this blog, so the only one who might celebrate is me.
2) I've tried to make little every-hundredth-post milestones (that word) something to celebrate but nobody (since no one reads this blog) made reference or contacted me or whatever so things I had planned to giveaway were never given away.
3) I had thought of a third but forgot because I was distracted by my wife wanting me to hold my diabetic cat so we could check her blood sugar, a two-person job to be sure.

Is it really a big deal?  I dunno.  But I don't want to keep talking about it.  Instead, I should mention that so far this year my favorite record is Malcolm Middleton & David Shrigley's Music & Words.  I think it's quite clever & really funny.  I find it very odd that I never knew who David Shrigley was before.  Now I see him everywhere.  I've just followed him on Twitter!

The record is pretty profane, full of lots of bad words, so most of it I can't really play on the radio.  Like the first track, which I share below.  It's great!



But seriously, if you have any ideas about how to celebrate two thousand Self Help Radio blog posts, let me know.

Also PS: New Louis CK special.  That's fucking awesome!

I'll Never Fly Again

The TSA - the Transportation Security Administration of the United States - has a blog which I've never read before.  Someone commenting on Tumblr led to last Friday's chilling post, TSA 2014 Year In Review.  If that doesn't sound scary - & it really doesn't, I'm not saying it is, or else I'd be frightened by the very thought of year-end lists - please take a second to read the article.  If you do, you'll see pictures like these:

These are grenades (mostly inert) & guns (mostly loaded) taken by the TSA in the past year.

& there's more.  My favorite by far is this one:

The caption reads, "An 8.5" knife was discovered in an enchilada at the Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport (STS)."

In an ENCHILADA?  At the CHARLES M. SCHULZ airport?  Good grief!

I think it's great that the people we entrust to keep our air travel safe appear to be doing their job, but wow, can you imagine what actually gets through?  Or is that a weird thing to focus on?  Am I really that cynical?

A KNIFE in an ENCHILADA for fuck's sake.  I can't stand it!

Self Help Radio 012315: Shoulders

(Original image here.)

Well, after the show today & all week on this blog, what can I say about shoulders that I haven't already said?  Lots!  I haven't said anything about shoulders!  I didn't talk about shoulder anatomy or shoulder health or even stuff like "what your shoulders say about you"!  I barely scratched the surface of shoulders.  Okay, that sounds weird.  It sounds like I'd get skin under my nails & there'd be some blood.  Anyway.  Shoulders, am I right?  Am I right?

The shoulders Self Help Radio show is where it was always meant to be at Self Help Radio Shoulders Central.  While there, pay attention to login + password information.  All the songs I played, but not my terrible rendition of Denver John's "Sunshine On My Shoulders," are listed below.

Take care of your shoulders!  & thanks for listening.

(part one)

"There's A Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder" McKinney's Cotton Pickers _Bix Restored, Vol. 5_
"Don't Come Cryin' On My Shoulder" Louis Jordan _Louis Jordan& His Tympany Five, Vol. 1: 1938-1940_
"There's A New Moon Over My Shoulder" Tex Ritter _Collectors Series_

"(Danger) Soft Shoulders" Sonny Til _Solo_
"Cold Shoulder" Johnny Cash _The Man In Black 1954-1958_
"Angel On My Shoulder" Shelby Flint _Shelby Flint_
"Look Over Your Shoulder" Helen Shapiro _At Abbey Road 1961-1967_
"You Can Cry On My Shoulder" Brenda Holloway _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 5: 1965_

"Don't Cry On My Shoulder" Sam Cooke _The Man Who Invented Soul_
"Head & Shoulders" Pattie Young _Detroit's Golden Soul: The Ron Murphy Masters_
"Go Cry On Somebody's Else's Shoulder" The Mothers Of Invention _Freak Out!_
"Soft Shoulders & Dangerous Curves" The Willis Brothers _Thunder On The Road_
"Shoulder To Shoulder" George Jones _Where Grass Won't Grow_

"Ride On My Shoulder" Paul Revere & The Raiders _Hard 'N' Heavy (With Marshmallow)_

(part two)

"Chips On My Shoulder" Soft Cell _Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret_
"Shoulder Pads # 1 & 2" The Fall _Bend Sinister_
"Looking Over Your Shoulder" Even As We Speak _A Three Minute Song Is One Minute Too Long_
"Across My Shoulder" The Primitives _Lazy 86 - 88 (Singles Collection)_

"Over Your Shoulder" Echo & The Bunnymen _Echo & The Bunnymen_
"No Hard Shoulder To Cry On" Julian Cope _Jehovahkill_
"Over My Shoulder" I Am Kloot _Gods & Monsters_

"Young Shoulders" Magic Bullets _Magic Bullets_
"Shoulder" The School _Loveless Unbeliever_
"Let Me Lend My Shoulder" Big Harp _White Hat_
"Cold Shoulders" Gold Motel _Gold Motel_

"Some Dandruff On Your Shoulder" Jens Lekman _I Know What Love Isn't_
"Over My Shoulder" Paul Banks _Banks_

Whither Shoulders?

If you are a weirdo & read this blog with any regularity, I want to apologize for writing so late on Thursdays.  I try to write earlier, but I spend Thursdays putting the show together, & I'm totally a last minute sort of guy.  Most of the papers I wrote in college were written the night before.  So if the show seems shabby - well, that's why.

Self Help Radio is a family show, so I would never talk about ridiculous sexual stuff on the air, but I do want to point out that shoulders are things that both men & women find attractive (this articles says women choose mates by shoulder size first), & like most everything in my life, I found that out in a weird way, with my best friend in high school exclaiming that a woman in another car (we were driving) that she had "amazing shoulders."

Listen, puberty was confusing for me, & what I mostly fixated on was the girls I thought were pretty, & I remember being in Home Economics class in eighth grade listening to guys comment about a particular girl's ass.  An ass?  You can be attracted to the thing people poop out of?  All very confusing.  Mostly, I remember, a girl's face & something about a her shape - the curve of her body - was what made my blood boil.

I wish I could've been more open about my perplexity, but I just filed it away: "my friend likes women's shoulders."  & I paid more attention to shoulders after that.

What happened later on in life, of course, is that if I fell in love, I tended to appreciate pretty much all of the object of my affection.  Including their shoulders.

None of this will be discussed tomorrow on Self Help Radio, but there'll be many other shoulder-related things discussed as well as lots of shoulder songs.  That's from 7 to 9am on 88.1 fm in Lexington, & online everywhere at wrfl dot fm.  & of course it'll end up on the the Self Help Radio website.

See you then!

Preface To Shoulders: Shoulders The Band

Some time in the early 1990s, someone gave me a cassette tape of a local Austin band called Shoulders.    They don't play out as much as they used to, but at that time they seemed to be on the verge of some kind of fame (or infamy) that never quite materialized.  (This happened to so many bands & musicians I saw in Austin during the twenty years I lived there, but there's no reason to believe that doesn't happen in pretty much any city with a thriving music scene.)  You can see their website (not updated since last September) here, & there's a Wikipedia page here with more information than I'll give on this blog.

Though the Wiki page calls their work "drunken carnival music," it's not a stretch to simply say they sounded, from the music to lead singer Michael Slattery's voice, like Tom Waits.  Pretty much every band these days that's trying to make "drunken carnival music" (there's a band in town called the Ford Theatre Reunion that does pretty much the same thing) is chasing the dragon that is Tom Waits' two seminal 1980s records, Swordfishtrombones & Rain Dogs.  I don't believe this is an insult - there's a whole genre of music, power pop, which is a subset of bands trying desperately to make perfect pop a la the Beatles.  & truly, there were some Shoulders songs that were much, much better than what Waits was doing at the same time.

I listened to that cassette a lot, & was a little let-down when they released a record which contained re-recordings of many of the songs on the record.  Too slick, I thought.  In particular, they had somehow managed to overproduce a lot of the delightful rough edges of my favorite Shoulders song, "Uncle Achin."  I had seen them play at least half a dozen times, but (if the Wikipedia page is to be believed), they achieved some notoriety in Europe, & toured there.  At some point, I didn't go see them anymore; in fact, I feel like they weren't even gigging in Austin anymore.  Or I just wasn't paying attention.

I bring the band up because (although this hasn't happened) it's usual for me, when I do a show, to get a request not for a song that fits a theme, but for a band whose name that fits the theme.  Maybe in the next couple of days someone will ask me to play a Shoulders song.  But as I've talked about before, it's one of my dumb rules that it's the subject of the song, not the band's name, not the name of the album, that qualifies a song for my show's theme.  If Shoulders did a song about shoulders, yes!  I'd play them.  But as far as I know - & I confess I never heard their second record - they don't.  So I won't.

It doesn't stop me from sharing one of their songs here, though.  Here they are, three years ago, performing my favorite song of theirs, at one of my favorite pubs in Austin, which sadly no longer exists:

Today Is My Birthday

Yes, I was born on this day forty-seven years ago.  I know this because it says so on all my official documents.  I don't have any memories of the day itself.  So of course everything I say about that day should be taken with a grain of salt, which is an odd idiom meaning "with healthy skepticism."

So these are the facts (or "facts"):

I was my mother's sixth child.  She was thirty-nine years old when I was born, & it had been around seventeen or eighteen years since her first child was born.  What a weirdo.

According to my oldest sister, my mother kept her pregnancy a secret, beginning what would be a lifelong embarrassment of me.  How does one keep a pregnancy in its seventh month a secret?  Baggy clothes I guess.  Ancient German deception.  When my mother went to a nearby clinic for a check-up or because she wasn't feeling right, my sister told all my other siblings that she was going to give have a baby.  She probably should have wagered on it; no one believed her.

I was born in a little clinic on the corner of Shiloh Road & Miller Road in Garland, Texas, at 9:30am.  January 20, 1968, was a Saturday.  The little clinic actually stood there, a glaring reminder of those responsible for my existence, until only a few years ago, when it was torn down & replaced by a more appropriate landmark: a giant gas station/convenience store.  I confess I have stopped there since & bought a soda.

(There's a picture of the clinic that I took in the nineties, but it's in a box somewhere & I'll never be able to find it right now.)

I was two months premature, but I've never heard anyone talk about my early moments on this earth being touch & go.  I had assumed I spent some time in an incubator or other contraption that preemies are kept in safety, but my mother tells me she took me home as soon as she could.  Again, I have no memories of that time.

Forty-seven years later, it just feels like another day.  Not nearly as dramatic as a secret pregnancy, a premature birth, a brand new gas station/convenience store!

But I'll try to enjoy it nonetheless.

I Have A Martin Luther King Jr. Story

Not that I met him or anything - he was assassinated when I was barely three months old.

This is not a good Martin Luther King, Jr., story.  It's a story about the American South, white people, & racism, & of course it involves my family.

I'm not going to mention which family member is involved.  No need to embarrass anyone who may have evolved since the incident.  A couple members of my family seem to have reformed & speak more respectfully about African-Americans now than they did in my childhood.  They voted for Obama, & not just because they are Democrats.  More members of my family, however, are unrepentant racists, & it's one of the reasons I don't enjoy visiting them.  After the 2008 election, one member of my family on Facebook just inserted Obama's name into what were already moldy racist jokes.  It's the kind of family I come from.

I hate to pussyfoot around this, but the story uses the n-word, but I'll just write "n-word."  You know what that means.

A family member was in Austin (though not to visit me).  I had already lived there for a while.  That family member met me on campus (where I worked) & we went to get something to eat.  At that time, you could drive through campus from 26th Street (now called Dean Keaton) to MLK (which was previously called 19th Street).  We were going to eat somewhere that we could get to more quickly by taking I-35, so I told my family member to go south through campus & take a left on MLK, toward the highway.  My family member noticed that the street was called Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard, & off-handedly made the observation, "They've got a street named for that [n-word] everywhere."

I sputtered & told this family member that I completely disagreed with the comment in no uncertain terms.  I was, frankly, shocked & appalled that anyone would make that observation, even one of my unrepentantly racist family members, about Martin Luther King.  Who in the world outside of Klan members didn't show him a modicum of respect?  The fact that my family member would even say the n-word in reference to him outraged me into a kind of angry incoherence.

But despite that, my reaction didn't lead to any confrontation or animosity, as this family member probably expected that from me, & besides was pretty secure in their racism.  We went to get food.  I doubtless continued to shake my head in bafflement for a while.

I have kept this memory while my family member has probably forgotten it.  One of the reasons this memory has stayed with me (in addition to its blatant awfulness) was that I was angry with myself for not standing up to this person or at the very least having something devastating to say in response.  So when I have told the story in the past, I have made myself more of a hero, adding a (what I think is) clever retort that I thought of later.  I guess I'm lying, but really it's only a lie in the sense that I made my comeback more of what I was thinking (but couldn't at that time put into words) than just me saying in horror "Oh fuck did you really say that?"

Here is how it should've gone, or did go, if my family member could have read my thoughts:

Family Member: They've got a street named for that [n-word] everywhere.
Me: Ha! You have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.  Compared to Martin Luther King, we're the [n-word]s!

But really, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference to my family member's racist world view.

Self Help Radio 011615: 1979

(Original image here)

Well, after all this reminiscing about 1979, it's about time there was some music!  Here's around two hours of music from that year, hopefully presented in a pleasing manner, along with facts about the year that I gathered from summary sites & spat back to you.  Who needs Google on the radio?

The show is available all 1979 2015 long at the Self Help Radio website.  Please pay attention to login/password information.  The songs I played are below.

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Fantastic Voyage" David Bowie _Lodger_
"Teenage Kicks" The Undertones _Teenage Kicks_
"Boys Don't Cry" The Cure _Boys Don't Cry_
"Dreaming" Blondie _Eat To The Beat_

"My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)" Neil Young & Crazy Horse _Rust Never Sleeps_
"Big Kick, Plain Scrap" Nick Lowe _Labour Of Lust_
"Discovering Japan" Graham Parker _Squeezing Out Sparks_
"Party Girl" Elvis Costello _Armed Forces_

"Industrial Estate" The Fall _Live At The Witch Trials_
"Flat Of Angles" The Fall _Dragnet_
"You Say You Don't Love Me" Buzzcocks _A Different Kind Of Tension_
"Insight" Joy Division _Unknown Pleasures_

"Down By The Side Of The Road" John Prine _Pink Cadillac_
"Came So Far For Beauty" Leonard Cohen _Recent Songs_

(part two)

"Affection" Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers _Back In Your Life_
"Making Plans For Nigel" XTC _Drums & Wires_
"Like Flies On Sherbert" Alex Chilton _Like Flies On Sherbert_

"40 Versions" Wire _154_
"No Looking" The Raincoats _The Raincoats_
"Adventures Close To Home" The Slits _Cut_
"I Found That Essence Rare" Gang Of Four _Entertainment!_

"Air" Talking Heads _Fear Of Music_
"Yellow Pills" 20/20 _20/20_
"Goodbye Girl" Squeeze _Cool For Cats_
"Rudie Can't Fail" The Clash _London Calling_

"Joe's Garage" Frank Zappa _Joe's Garage Act I_

Whither 1979?

Normally in this space, I remind you that tomorrow I have another Self Help Radio show, on from 7 to 9am, on 88.1 fm in Lexington & online at wrfl dot fm.  I might also mention why I'm doing a particular theme, if I know.  I do know!  This is my birthday week, & way back when I started Self Help Radio, I explored my favorite music from 1968 on my birthday, & it became an annual thing.  I am up to 1979.

But I've been reminiscing about 1979 on this blog, & I want to tell the story of my adventure in 1979, when I was eleven years old, as I spent the longest I would spend away from home until I left for college: a summer passed in Albany, Georgia.

I mentioned previously that I didn't remember my mother telling me & my little brother that we'd be going, but that doesn't mean she didn't.  She must have.  What I do remember is being completely unaware that we'd be away from home for virtually the entire summer.

I talked to both of my sisters yesterday about this.  They cleared up a number of things I didn't know & perhaps had guessed at.  My younger sister, Karin, didn't quite run away from home.  She was miserable in high school & told our mother she wanted to get away, & our mother agreed on the condition that Karin attend school in Georgia.  She didn't - she would return with us when my mother came to pick us up at the end of the summer, & never go back to school - but that was sort of the plan.

As I discovered when I moved from growing, vibrant Austin, Texas, to shrinking, moribund Huntington, West Virginia, a few years ago, there's a tremendous shock to the system when one place is so very much unlike the other.  Garland, Texas, may have been - & may continue to be - the armpit of the Metroplex, but it is next to Dallas, which is a bona fide city; Albany, Georgia, sits lonesome in central south Georgia, two hours away from Tallahassee, Columbus, Macon - not cities in the same class as Dallas.

So my sister wasn't really going to find anything in Georgia but a temporary respite from her teenage misery.  I still applaud her for doing it, & of course I am glad our big sister was there for her.

(In 1980, according to the census, Garland had 139,000 people; Albany had 74,000.  So it wasn't quite as weird as going from Austin to Huntington, but still quite a shock I'd say.)

Now, I might not have thought I'd be spending the summer in Georgia, but it turns out I wasn't alone: my sister & brother-in-law, living on a very modest military salary, didn't think we'd be there all summer, either.  It was probably a bit of a strain for Karin to show up; imagine how tight the budget became when my little brother & I showed up!

Why did my mother not tell my older sister how long she'd be in Germany?  I don't want to be too unkind, but it's weird to look back into my childhood to observe how many things my mother did that were just outright selfish.  I don't have a whole lot of evidence to say she was like that her entire life - but I do have enough to suggest that.  She stayed in Germany for as long as she could because she knew there'd be no repercussions for doing that.  She knew her daughter wouldn't send us away or mistreat us or do anything awful to us.  As she's gotten older, as she's relied upon her daughters more & more, my mother treats them in much the same way.  She asks for virtually nothing from her sons.  But her daughters, it appears, have always been required to do what she says & take care of what she needs.

I was awakened painfully early (school was out!) on an early summer morning (there's a picture of me somewhere in my tee shirt & underwear, sitting on the edge of my bed, looking as though I'd been tortured & sleep-deprived for weeks) & put into a car.  My brother-in-law, the Marine, had probably driven from Georgia the day before.  My little brother, me, my sister, her husband, & their dog Sam went straight back onto the road.  I can't say I wasn't a little excited once I woke up - it would be the longest I'd been in a car in my life.  We drove on small highways - I'm guessing we were on I-20 for a while, but it might not have been as developed as it is now.  My memories are of small road.  & I have two memories of the trip:

1) Stopping at a Stuckey's.  We had a burger there.  It was my first truckstop.  It seemed to me a magical place, full of things unavailable in department stores, but with the feel of a weird overstuffed convenience store with a diner in it.  I remember us eating outside, because Sam was with us, & it was probably too hot to leave him in a car.

2) Driving through the Alabama woods as the day was ending.  I had never seen so many trees, so densely packed.  I felt like I watched whole worlds go by.

My sister & brother-in-law lived in military housing, a small place with a carport, immaculately kept by my sister.  I think my little brother & I were given the extra room, & my sister Karin exiled to the living room.  It was probably a good idea - keeping two spazzy kids in a room you could lock was a good idea.

Now, when I talked to my sister yesterday - my older sister, Pat, who has read my previous entries - I told her I didn't want to say anything mean about her or her husband.  But the realization came pretty quickly to me & my little brother that we were having our summer stolen from us.  The first night after we arrived, we were made to go to bed at 9pm.  9pm!  It was still light out at 9pm.  This was the summer!  I'd be up to all hours watching old movies & Mary Hartmann & whatever else I could find on the television.  What the hell was going on?

I'm sure that my older sister & her husband watched the way my little brother & I were raised - or not raised, as the case may be - & told themselves, "We can do better."  They made us wake at a certain time in the morning, we ate at specific times, we had snacks at specific times.  There were times when we were shown the door & told "go play."

Imagine my shock!  As a willful child, certainly one who wasn't above crying & pitching a fit to get what I wanted, I doubtless tried that.  But my brother-in-law was a Marine.  My sister had already lived through three other kids.  I wasn't going to win.

It didn't help that Albany was basically a swamp.  It rained every day, usually around three in the afternoon, not for a long time, but long enough, which meant it was hot, muggy, & humid all the time.  I have memories of just standing under that carport waiting for the rain to stop.  A summer just standing there.  Wondering what I had done to deserve this.

& there weren't a lot of children in the area, either.  We might have met & played with a couple, but it was mainly my little brother & me, trying to find ways to pass the time.  & me wishing the entire time I was back home.

Oh, to have been more self-aware then!  I'd love to have eavesdropped on telephone calls my sister had with my mother, asking when she'd be coming to get us, perhaps asking for a little money (which my mother didn't have & wouldn't be able to get to her anyway) to help out.  Or the discussions Pat & Dan had about their limited resources.  Both of them are good people, but in retrospect it seems a disrespectful thing was done to them, a thing they've probably never been recompensed for, or even apologized to for.

Look, I know I wasn't tortured or in any way mistreated, spending the summer there, but I did resent it a great deal & for a good period of time afterward.  I think my brother-in-law came to really dislike me at that time, & that dislike was not eased by my teenage years, after he & Pat moved back to Texas.  It took years for him to be agreeable to me - more than fifteen years, I'd reckon.

I felt like I was in Albany for three months, all summer long.  My sister Karin says we were there for two months.

My mother finally showed up, on a Trailways bus, in the middle of August.  She had landed in Dallas, hopped on a bus, & came to get us.  My sister Karin opted to come back with us to Garland, so, after a night's sleep, we four took a Trailways bus back to Texas.  Trailways still exists out there, but in the 1970s, it was the cheaper alternative to Greyhound, & by cheaper, I meant cheapest.  We switched buses a lot on the trip back, & I remember at least one bus had no air conditioning, just open windows.  In the heat of the summer of the Southern United States.  We returned to Garland smelling the opposite of roses.

& our apartment was a mess.  I told my sister last night that it smelled like a Cheech & Chong film.  My brother had not kept it up, & what's worse, he had barely taken care of our rabbit.  She was very thin, & something had happened to one of her eyes - a green film covered it.  We never took her to the vet, & to my complete shame, I was repulsed by her, & didn't spend a lot of time with her after that.  She became this lonesome creature that lived in our little patio that my mother, I suppose, remembered to feed & water, & she actually lived a couple more years.  As someone who now has seven animals that I live for, it angers & saddens me that my self of thirty-five years ago was such a piece of shit to the poor bunny.  It makes sense that as a child I couldn't be trusted with a dog.

& selfish me, I was desperate to reclaim as much summer as I could.  It was two weeks until school started.  I wanted to go swimming in our apartment complex's pool!  The bad news was, as I've mentioned before, the place was a shithole, & it was apparently between effective management, so the pool hadn't been cleaned all summer long.  In fact, it was a deep green color due to algae growth.  Honestly, I would've swam in it anyway.  My mother, alas, would not let me.

& that's how I lost the summer of 1979.  I would make up for it by being a complete sloth the next summer - but there would be a heat wave!  I'll talk about that, I suppose, next year.  I'll try not to kill too many brain cells between now & then.

Preface To 1979: All Calculations Are Off

Getting old is a strange phenomenon.  One's memory, which of course was never as infallible as it one believed it was, is gradually revealed as completely untrustworthy.  The past, which one once remembered with incredible detail, is made general by perspective.  & the stories one tells oneself about one's life stop making sense when everything is put into context.  How our minds do protect us!

In 1979, I was 11 years old.  I was in fourth grade until the summer, & started fifth grade in September (or late August) of the year.  My family had moved, the previous year, to an apartment complex called Villa Cordoba, which is now called Garland Oaks Apartments, located 2900 S. 5th Street, in Garland, Texas. It's a shithole now, & there's no reason to believe it wasn't a shithole then.

We lived in those apartments for maybe five years.  It would be the longest I lived anywhere in my childhood, although we lived in three different apartments in the complex (if I remember correctly, apartments 30, 18, & 47, in that order) during that time.  In 1979, we lived in apartment 18, which was in the back of the apartments, on the northeastern corner.

Thanks to the magic of Google Maps, & the fact that the apartment complex backed into a Lutheran church, I actually was able to find a (not great) picture of the apartment in which my family lived in 1979:

(The picture is taken from the street view of First Street.  An alley connecting the streets, running past the church on the left & a school on the right, also served as part of the apartment complex's driveway area, & parking spaces sat in front of the apartments, whose doors looked out, & still look out, on all four sides.)

Apartment 18 is the one on the corner.  The window on the second floor was the window in my & my little brother's bedroom.  We would sleep with the curtains open so the rising sun would wake us.  I remember people I knew in middle school (which I would start the next year & which was actually right next to the apartments) telling me they could see me sleeping when they went to the church.  They were probably being mean; I was just embarrassed.

I seem to remember it being puke-pink.  It had a little fenced-in "patio" in the back.  The patio is important because all through my childhood I - like every other kid in the world - wanted a dog.  My mother simply told us we couldn't have one; she never gave us excuses about apartment rules or pet deposits, maybe because she didn't want us to know how poor we really were.  But she did get us a rabbit, which I named Sunny, although later someone told us he was a she, so she became Sunshine.  Sunshine lived a terrible life, even for a domestic rabbit.  We had no idea how to care for her, & when we discovered she wasn't the most playful thing that ever lived, she became just something that lived in a shabbily-constructed little home in our patio, which had no cover, so she was constantly exposed to the Texas heat.  The patio, with its stucco or adobe walls that only went into the ground so far, had little dirt areas (nothing would grow, of course) that Sunny was constantly digging through - she must've escaped half a dozen times.  I wish she would have, because dying of a car accident or something else sudden would have been better than her sad, sad fate.

It should be noted at the outset that, as children of a single mom who worked a lot, & overseen by a sister in the prime of her teen years, my little brother & I were mostly left alone & not really watched or disciplined.  In fact, we might have turned out much, much worse if we hadn't been raised by my particular mother.  My mother is terrified of the world, & every other thing she said out loud to us was some superstition or other awful thing that happened to people who weren't paying suitably afraid & wary.  With a different parent, my little brother or I might have left the confines of the apartments & gotten into real trouble; with my mother's constant tales of the world's terrors, we rarely ventured far from home.

Despite that, we were doubtless brats.  Certainly we were enough bother that my sister Karin resents me (at least) to this day for being someone she was forced to constantly watch.  She will tell me, even now, what a "pain in the ass" I was, & I am always a little baffled how I am to respond.  I was a child.  I had a mother to whom I was still pretty attached, whose love I competed for among seven children (& which competition, as I've noted before, my mother actively encouraged).  Winning favor with her was everything.  My little brother would snitch on me, I would snitch on him, & of course we both would tell our mother anything we knew about whatever illicit things (usually involving boys) my sister was doing.  There was certainly no malevolence involved - how could there be?  But boy did my sister & my sister's boyfriends (& boy friends, of which there were many) dislike me.  One of them, who I remember looking like a kind of goatroper Frankenstein, even once came close to actually striking me.

That resentment came to a head in the middle of 1979, when my sister Karin dropped out of school (she would've been, I guess, in eleventh grade), & fled to Albany, Georgia, where my oldest sister & her husband had recently relocated.

There are two things I want to note about this action by my sister:

1) It was a ballsy thing to do.  It was not something any of my mother's sons would have even considered doing.  The Dickerson boys, by virtue of being nurtured by their fearful mother, are at heart cowards.  (& yeah, I include myself.)  My sister did have sense enough to go somewhere safe, which may have been influenced a little by my mother's constant world-dread.

2) The dropping out thing was a 70s phenomenon.  I guess it still happens with sad regularity, but in the 1970s it was a kind of a statement.  Certainly in my family, it was something that probably wouldn't have been done without the lingering effects of the 1960s.  There are seven of us, & only four of us graduated high school.  My sister was the third to drop out, after brothers number 2 & 3, respectively.  It will perhaps warm your heart to know that all three eventually did get GEDs.

I have only vague memories of my mother's reaction to my sister's escape.  The apartment had three upstairs bedrooms, & my sister's, in the middle, was a windowless room whose door was always closed.  I remember the door to the room being strangely open after my sister left.  But I don't really recall a lot of my mother's reactions to things; I assume she was upset about a lot of stuff, because she's still like that, today.  But if she ever really freaked out about things like my sister running away, her children dropping out of high school, or even those rare times my alcoholic father would come by (when she was at work) & take us somewhere, I don't have a clear memory of them.

Unfairly, using evidence gleaned from paying attention to her for the last two decades, I might say she was simply looking out for herself.  My mother's narcissism & selfishness surely couldn't have risen, fully formed, in the last act of her life.  But in the interest of being a little more understanding I might say that she was simply too busy trying to provide for three children to allow herself to worry to a crippling extent.

In early summer 1979 - school had just ended, & I was looking forward to the laziness & freedom of the school break - my oldest sister & her husband came to town very early one morning - there's a photo somewhere of me looking stupid because I had been awakened around 5am - & whisked us away to spend the summer with them in Albany, Georgia.  I have no memory about being told this would happen, & it was certainly a surprise for me.  We were out the door before the sun came up.

I bring up my rabbit & her sad fate because it was difficult to leave her to spend the summer in Georgia.  Because my little brother & I were taken there not as a vacation, but (spoiler alert) as a place to stay while my mother visited her family in Germany.  My younger sister was already there, with my older sister & her husband; my brother Eddie had a wife & lived elsewhere; which left my two older brothers.  My brother Steve (brother number 2, child number 3) may have gotten married by then (my sister seems to think so).  Which left my brother Ralph (brother number 3, child number 4), who had lived with Steve & so now was abandoned by marriage, to be the caretaker of apartment 18 - & poor Sunny.

Boy I had a lot to write about 1979.  I'll write about my trip to Georgia & the return tomorrow.

When I Was Still Eleven...

I meant to tell a story about the year 1979, but the day got away from me.  Can I tell the story tomorrow?  Thanks.

When I Was Eleven...

The show this week is my birthday show.  I was born on January 20, 1968.  When I first started doing Self Help Radio, I thought it would be fun, on the week of my birthday, to do a show featuring my favorite music from the year of my birth.  & then, since it would be weird to devote a show to 1968 every year, I decided to move up a year on subsequent shows, so the next year I'd do 1969, the year after that I'd explore 1970, etc.

Because I was born in January, I would be the age I turned on my birthday for nearly most of the year.  This is handy for remembering a certain year of my life.  It's not so handy when it comes to schooling.  In January 1979, I was in the fourth grade, a miserable experience; fifth grade would be a little better.

I talked some about my life in 1978 previously on this blog.  That link is good at pointing out two important things.  One is that virtually none of the music I'm playing on my show this week is music I listened to at the time, though I had at the very least discovered the Beatles by this point.  I did listen to the radio constantly, & so did my older brothers, who (as I also noted last year) listened to none of the great punk & post-punk that was happening at the time.  This may be because it simply wasn't being played on the radio - but the fact that the Sex Pistols played in Dallas - Dallas! - ten days before my eleventh birthday & none of my family probably noticed says a lot, I think, about the limited amount of musics I had access to.

Strangely, I can't remember the name of my fifth grade teacher.  She was a very nice person & she made us sit in desks that were grouped in fours.  My group - at least for a while - included someone with whom I am still friends, Dale Smith, & also a fellow named Greg Brown, who never liked me.  (Greg went on to become valedictorian of my high school class, & I was frankly surprised he didn't turn out to be gay.)  The other person was a fellow named Phil Claunch, who was kind of my best friend.  I say "kind of" because he teased me mercilessly about things that I had very little control over - mainly things that existed because my family was very poor - like my terrible teeth & my clothes.  Still, I must've been amusing enough to be around, as my little brother & I would ride our bikes to school to Phil's house - which meant riding up a big hill on Parkmont - & get him before we went to the school.  It wasn't a long ride - maybe a half mile - but it was quite a triumph that my mother, a person so full of fear that I think she's lived to a ripe old age mainly because she's terrified of dying, even let us.  She confided in me later that she would call the school every morning to make sure we got there okay.  I don't think she did it all year long, but certainly she probably did it longer than most parents would.

I remember that group of four because I somehow convinced all of them to help me make my first comic book.  I was obsessed with comics & even though I had virtually no sense of humor, I drew strips all the time.  I got Dale, Phil, & Greg to write strips, then to copy them three times (!) so we could have four issues.  (I had no access to the mimeograph machine.)  I remember my most successful strip was me illustrating a joke from a book of "jokes for kids" I got from the library.  I remember Dale did a strip called "Big Red" that involved a cowboy who was so large all you saw was his boot.  & I remember Greg making a "Battle Of The Planets" parody that I liked so much that I made my own - which annoyed him - but mine was more detailed because I loved the show more.  He may have started hating me then, although it did boil over in Music class later in fifth grade because both of us had memorized the required terms, & we answered questions to a standstill.

Or it may have come earlier - I remember a similar competition with him in third grade, involving times tables.  From a young age, I've hated competition.  It made me uncomfortable, & I was by the age of eight or nine exhausted by constantly competing with my little brother.  In school, which didn't seem to operate by the same rules of my house, where my mother openly encourage her children to vie with each other for her affection & approval, in school competition seemed weird to me.  Anyone who did well could get an "A."  There didn't need to be a winner.

In third grade against Greg Brown, I just decided I'd had enough, & was yelled at for it.  In fifth grade - possibly also against Greg Brown - I purposely flubbed a word in a spelling bee competition when I realized that, after it was done in the class, if I won, I'd have to compete against the winner in the other fifth grade class, & then that, after, with the one who won at his or her elementary school - it just seemed endless, endless discomfort, endless pressure, endless attention to something that didn't mean anything to me.

So when I misspelled the crucial word, I said, out loud, "Oh well!  Back to my comic!"  & my teacher, furious with me, took the comics from me & told me I couldn't make them any more.  (It didn't make me any more competitive, however.)

The teacher was otherwise very nice.  I wish I could remember her name!  I liked her definitely more than my fourth grade teacher, & I remember her treating me with respect.  Her anger at me throwing the spelling bee was probably because she expected more from me.  I was, & I say this not as a boast, a pretty smart kid.

I may be getting dates mixed up, but I believe the summer of 1979 was the first summer I ever spent away from home.  In the summer of 1974, I spent a couple of weeks with my mother & little brother in Germany, but in June of 1974, my brother & I were whisked away from our home - & from the summer I loved, the time to sleep late, watch reruns, & go swimming - & taken to Albany, Georgia, for almost three months.  I'll talk about that tomorrow.

Self Help Radio 010915: A Long Time

That's Steve Ditko's "Eternity" that I've marred with my logo!

I keep using the same old joke: Self Help Radio's show with the theme "a long time" is actually only two hours in length; however, it may feel like an eternity while you're listening to it.  Ho ho ho!  Can I call it a joke if I'm the only one who finds it funny?  Wait.  What if I don't really find it funny?

There might be something you'll like in this week's Self Help Radio.  There's lots of great music (the playlist is below) & also I talk to self-help guru Suthabee Queenbii Belladonna, who gives us tips to living a long time, & the famed host of the long-running program Perspectives, Dr. David Fruchter, gives us a sense of what a long time really is.  Plus, I revive my old segment, Dramatic Readings Of Classic Rock Songs.  It made me cry.

The show is where the show always is, you know: where the Self Help Radio website has been for a long time.  Pay attention to password/login information; but it shouldn't take you a long time to figure that out.

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Run On For A Long Time" Bill Landford & The Landfordaires _Roots N' Blues The Retrospective (1925-1950)_
"It Takes A Long Time" Dent May _Warm Blanket_
"It's Been A Long Long Time" Hep Stars _It's Been A Long Long Time_

"Long Long Long" The Beatles _The Beatles_
"Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad" Ian & Sylvia _The Complete Vanguard Studio Recordings_
"Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time)" Me First & The Gimme Gimmes _Have A Ball_
"Some Things Last A Long Time" Beach House _Devotion_

"Long Time Man" Tim Rose _Tim Rose_
"Long Time Boy" Nadia Cattouse _Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil-Up_
"It's Been A Long Time" Loveninjas _The Secret Of The Loveninjas_
"You've Been A Long Time Comin'" Clarence Carter _The Dynamic Clarence Carter_

"Tomorrow Is A Long Time" Bob Dylan _The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 (The Bootleg Series Vol. 9)_
"I'm A Long Time Traveling Away From Home" J. T. Allison's Sacred Harp Singers _Oh My Little Darling_

(part two)

"Such A Long Long Time" Kangaroo _Kangaroo_
"A Long Time Ago" Jamie Coe & The Gigolos _The One Who Really Loves You_
"Long Time To Forget" George Jones _Ragged But Right: The Starday Years Plus_
"I've Been A Long Time Leavin'" Roger Miller _The Genius Of Roger Miller_
"Doing Comedy A Long Time" Todd Barry _Super Crazy_

"Waiting A Long Time" Extra Medium Pony _11868_
"Long Time Waiting" Munks _Nightmares From The Underworld, Vol. 1_
"Been A Long Time" Jerry Butler _Ice On Ice_
"Long Time Gone" Memphis Slim _Legacy Of The Blues, Vol. 7_

"It's Been A Long, Long Time" Keely Smith _Swingin' Pretty_
"A Long Time Comin'" Ellie Greenwich _Composes, Produces, & Sings_
"It's Been A Long Time" Annie Laurie _The OKeh Rhythm & Blues Story 1949-1957_
"Ela (Long Time)" Tarika _Soul Makassar_

"Long Time Ahead Of Us" The Walkmen _You & Me_
"We're Going To Live For A Very Long Time" Heaven 17 _Penthouse & Pavement_

Whither A Long Time?

Look, I know I do a dumb radio show that doesn't get controversial or edgy or even interesting most of the time, but I do appreciate living in a place where something I say on the radio that might offend someone won't get me killed.  As it stands, if I might make fun of something someone else holds precious, there's only a very small probability that masked gunmen would come into the radio station & gun me down.  The fact that it does happen in some places - & that it happened in France this week - pains me, & so of course I say: #jesuischarlie

(The best of the world says so too.)

Tomorrow my show won't insult any religion, it won't insult anyone's way of life, it won't offend anyone in any way other than that person may not like the music I play.  If I want to be critical of someone's faith or way of seeing or anything, however, I am glad there are people who will fight - &, sadly, die - for that right.  I hope I am one of those people.

Friday morning, Self Help Radio, which has been on the radio for a surprisingly long time, explores the theme "a long time."  It won't take a long time - it's on from 7 to 9am - so please come & have a listen, either in Lexington at 88.1 on the fm dial, or online at WRFL's web site. Your time zone may vary; calibrate with Eastern Standard Time.

I'll put the show up at Self Help Radio dot net later.  Not a long time after the show, I promise.

Preface To A Long Time: The Words We Use To Discuss Long Periods Of Time

Far be it for me to be too critical of lexicographers & whatever you call people who assemble thesauruses, but I found this list of "synonyms or related words for long period of time" to be more amusing than helpful.  Look at these definitions!

eternity (n.) an extremely long time
light years (n.) a very long way in time, distance, or quality
ages (n.)  a long time
aeon (n.) an extremely long period of time
hours (n.) a long time
years (n.) a very long time
long (n.) a long period of time
epic (n.) an event or activity that lasts a long time & is sometimes difficult or complicated
hour after/upon hour a very long time
donkey’s years an extremely long time

By these definitions, "donkey's years" are basically the equivalent of "eternity."  Poor donkeys!  They live such a long time!

Contrast this with actual dictionary definitions of the words.  For example, the dictionary here defines "eternity" as "infinite time; duration without beginning or end."  An aeon, at the same place, is defined both as "the largest division of geologic time, comprising two or more eras," &, in astronomy, "one billion years" (!).

Wouldn't that list up there look cooler if it said:

eternity (n.) infinite time; duration without beginning or end
aeon (n.) the largest division of geologic time, comprising two or more eras; (Astronomy) one billion years

?

I think so!

But please don't expect Self Help Radio to be any more rigorous than the first list.  It's cold in Lexington & I am prone to napping.

Miller Time

I haven't watched this yet, & may not.  It was brought to my attention by one of my favorite musicians, Momus, on his Tumblr blog.  It's a documentary about Henry Miller, a writer whose ability I admire, although I'm not sure I'm crazy about his subject matter.  (We get it, Henry, you've had sex.  Sheesh.)  Here it is:



Momus adds something that I've been thinking about a lot.  He says the documentary

contains pretty much everything you need to know about how to live well:
* Give up your job.
* Leave America.
* Pursue a life of untrammeled self-expression.
* Live in a cheap city full of shabby patina and colour.
* Embrace precarity.
* Befriend other artists.
* Explore the “demimonde”.
* Believe — but really believe — in sex.
* Don’t think too far ahead, either in your writing or your life.
* Live for companionship and experience rather than money.
* Swim often.
* Play ping pong while your Japanese girlfriend sings a song about the Tokyo to Osaka steam express.

I did at one time want to be a writer.  I did at one time fancy myself an artist.  I do right now, two weeks before I turn 47 years old, wish I had done even one of those things twenty-five years ago.

I wrote to a friend that my problem was that I had a big ego - I really believed I was great - coupled with big fear - what if I wasn't as great as I believed?  I never took creative writing classes because I knew I couldn't handle being told I was terrible.  & I knew, even then, that the process of getting better would have been such hard work.

It's only been recently that I've felt comfortable enough in my own skin to share my one real creative outlet, my radio show, with other people.  My friends who are my fake interview guests are funny, expressive, brilliant people with whom at another time in my life I would've felt too competitive to ask to be on my show.  What changed is that my ego was deflated by time, by defeats that I had to endure even though I tried to avoid them.  I have, I suppose, chosen to pay attention to the lessons of life's endless humblings rather than defy them.  I can remember a time when it would've been galling to me to not be the funniest person talking.  That changed when I realized I am almost never the funniest person talking.

Maybe there's some wisdom in the Miller doc up there.  Please enjoy.

A New Year, Same Old Website

This isn't at all that important, but this weekend I moved all of my 2014 playlists to a separate page & now have the 2015 shows I've done on the front of my Self Help Radio website.  This isn't a terribly difficult thing to do, & would probably be a couple of buttons pushed, but since I hand-code the site, it took a little while.  (Most of the time actually was spent updating all the other pages of playlists to add a "2014" link to them.)  I wish I could say there were some new bells & whistles added, but I can't.  It's pretty much the same old thing.

If you're wandering around the site (why would you?) & some links aren't working, please let me know, please.  Again, the site is mainly a repository for my playlists, which are of minimal interest to pretty much everyone but me, but I do hope no one gets a "404 not found" while browsing.  I've only been on the internet for two decades, after all.

Thanks!