Self Help Radio 102015: Belonging

(Original image here.)

Do we belong?  This is probably not a question that philosophers & deep thinkers have been asking & answering for many, many years.  It hadn't occurred to me, actually, until I started thinking about doing the show.  But once I did think about it, it became one of the many questions I ask out loud in public places that earn me dirty looks & threats from neighborhood toughs.

Self Help Radio this week attempted to resolve whatever issues about belonging there might be, but not with tired tactics like conversation or reasoning.  Instead, lots of songs said things like "you belong to me" or "you don't belong to me" or "I belong to you" or "I belong to nobody."  You get the drift.  Maybe some questions were answered, however, questions like, "Do heiresses belong on a university campus with their talking dogs?"  & "Is there a sense of belonging in Hollywood"?  & of course "Is the sort of guy who writes a book called You Don't Belong going to be a total jerk?"

You may find out what & who belongs yourself - it might be you, after all - by listening to this week's Self Help Radio episode.  You can find it on the Self Help Radio website.  Please pay attention to the password info there.  The show is in two roughly hour-long parts.  What is played in each hour is listed below.

Once you've downloaded it, the show belongs to you.  No take-backs!

(part one)

"Make Me Belong To You" Barbara Lewis _Hello Stranger: The Best Of Barbara Lewis_
"You Belong To My Heart" Julie London _Sings Latin In A Satin Mood_
"You Belong To Me" Cherry Vanilla _Venus D'Vinyl_

"Tonight You Belong To Me" Cubsimo Grafico _Tout!_
"This Is Where I Belong" The Kinks _Face To Face_
"Your Love Belongs Under A Rock" The Dirtbombs _Ultraglide In Black_
"A Sense Of Belonging" Television Personalities _The Painted Word_

"She Belongs To Me" Bob Dylan _Bringing It All Back Home_
"You Belong To Me" Elvis Costello _This Year's Model_
"Do I Belong?" The Hidden Cameras _Origin: Orphan_
"Right Here Is Where You Belong" Jerry Washington _Cheatin' Soul & The Southern Dream Of Freedom_

"Your Heart Belongs To Me" The Velvelettes _Does Anybody Know I'm Here?: Vietnam Through The Eyes Of Black America 1962-1972_
"She Belonged To Another" The Statesiders _Mindrocker: Anthology Of 60s US-Punk Garage Psych, Vol. 12_
"You Belong To Me" The Chesterfield Kings _Stop!_

(part two)

"We Belong" The June Brides _For Better Or Worse_
"It's The Love" The Breeders _Mountain Battles_
"You Belong With Us" My Favorite _Love At Absolute Zero_

"My Heart Belongs To Daddy" Mary Martin _American Musical Theater: Shows, Songs, & Stars, Vol. 2_
"Where Does Your Heart Belong?" The School _Reading Too Much Into Things Like Everything_
"I Belong To Nobody" Flaming Hands _Tales From The Australian Underground: Singles 1976-1989_
"Belong" The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart _Belong_

"She Doesn't Belong To Me" Pete & The Pirates _Little Death_
"You Belong With Me" X-Teens _Love & Politics_
"Bengali In Platforms" Morrissey _Viva Hate_
"Your Mind & We Belong Together" Love _Forever Changes_

"Need To Belong To Someone" Isaac Hayes _Black Moses_

Whither Belonging?

(I found this image here.)

Ah, a radio program about belonging!  This could indeed be ironic, because certainly for most radio deejays, doing a radio show is a solitary experience.  (I can't speak to commercial radio deejays, however - but they usually don't program their own shows themselves, so it's not something I can relate to.)  But those of us who love radio were drawn to it because of its ability to create a temporary community through love of music.  Sharing what one loves is surely a way to facilitate a sense of belonging.

It turns out, though, I'm kind of a loner.  I have many theories why that is, & it must have something to do with how I was raised, because most if not all of my siblings are (or appear to be) friendless.  Certainly my mother seems content to be by herself most of the time, or to have maybe one or two people whom she sees socially every once in a while.  I'm at my most gregarious when I am part of something I feel strongly about - especially non-commercial radio.  Outside of that, I'm usually reading, or listening to music, or watching a movie, or looking around the internet - stuff that doesn't require a community at all.  Perhaps I don't belong anywhere?

Today of course there are lots of songs about belonging (& not belonging) on Self Help Radio, so I hope you find your way over to 88.1 fm in Lexington (or wrfl dot fm everywhere else) around 4pm till around 6pm for this week's show.  If not, of course, I'll archive it on the SHR website, but you'll feel more like you belong if you listen live.

Just sayin'.

Preface To Belonging: That Groucho Marx Joke

It is going to take all my power to refrain, on tomorrow's show about "belonging," from mentioning one of my favorite quips of all time, by one of my favorite people of all time, Groucho Marx.  He wrote, in his book Groucho & Me: 

I sent the club [the Friar's Club of Beverly Hills] a wire, stating: "PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION.  I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER."

To this day I find that so damn funny.  But I won't mention it tomorrow.  I promise.

But it does bring to mind something very real that I often found happening back in the days when I was youngish, carefree, & dating.  I would find myself with a lovely young lady with whom I might or might not have much in common.  There was an initial attraction, so we were going out, but something was off.  I guessed I didn't like her as much as I thought, or perhaps the fact that we had very little in common was more glaringly obvious by the day, but I knew the relationship was doomed.  In most cases, the relationship would end, of course, before that time - a bright young woman would naturally see me for the mediocre human being I am.  But if it were to go on - almost as if by intertia - I'd withdraw, possibly become more passive-aggressive, in order to sabotage the thing.

It doesn't matter what or how, but the relationship, whether two dates or two months long, would end.  & then suddenly - it never failed - suddenly, magically, I would fall heels over head in love with the woman.  I would be obsessive.  I would be heartbroken.  & I thought it might be sour grapes, at first, but I think the opposite would be more true: people usually nurse hate with a broken heart.

No, for me, it was the very Marxist revelation: I admired them for having the good sense, the exquisite taste, to reject me.  Dating me was a mark against them.  Dumping me was such a tremendously wise decision that it caused me to swoon.

In other words: I found it very hard to date a girl who would have someone like me as her boyfriend.

This of course happened in the absence of real love.  When real love happened, I was never bored, or focused on how little in common we had, or anything like that.  & there was no sudden insight of love when the relationship ended - I stayed in love because I was always in love.

Anyway - I won't talk about that, or the Groucho Marx quote tomorrow.  I swear.

Photo Of What I Am Convinced Is The Average Self Help Radio Listener

The Gary Files # 5: Gary Larson

(I found this picture here.)

An explanation: Since the name Gary is going extinct, I thought it incumbent upon me to celebrate more notable Garys than myself.  This is the fifth of a series!

Gary Larson is, according to the Wikipedia, "an American cartoonist, the creator of The Far Side, a single-panel cartoon series that was syndicated internationally to over 1,900 newspapers for fifteen years, until 1995."

When did you first become aware of him?  A few years after the cartoon's debut in 1980.  I think one of the two Dallas papers (that existed at the time) carried it.  If it were the Dallas Times Herald, which was the more liberal of the two (& which went out of business in 1991), that would make sense - that was the paper that was most often in the house.

Did you like it?  I loved it.  Oh my god, it was so funny.

Do you have a story about reading The Far Side at school & getting into trouble?  I do!  In my senior year, I had a physics class which was taught by a coach who was waaaaay over his head.  A lot of the time, we just sort of sat there while he encouraged us to read.  None of the experiments we were supposed to do worked as they should have - not even the teacher's.  The class was my last period of the day, & one Friday, the teacher was clearly not wanting to teach, & my friend Mike Jones brought a Far Side book, & we read it together at our desks (which were, as in science classes, giant tables) & we laughed & laughed.  Every cartoon seemed funnier than the last.  I was laughing so much I was crying.  The teacher got more & more angry until he threatened to send both Mike & me to the office if we didn't shut the hell up.

Did your appreciation of the comic change over time?  I haven't read it in years, but I remember a girlfriend of mine had a collection that I read in the crapper at some point, & I was surprised how quaint it seemed.  Though I did think it had funny moments.

Why do you think you felt that way?  Maybe so much of what was innovative about the comic had become so much a part of the culture that it now seemed old hat.  Or maybe my sense of humor had changed since high school.

It was probably the first one.  I still laugh at the same dumb things.

Is his name really Gary?  Wikipedia says so.

Do you know why he was named Gary?  He was born in 1950.  It's all Gary Cooper's fault.

Did you know there's a beetle named after him?  Lucky bastard.

Self Help Radio 101315: Rollercoasters Revisited - A 13th Anniversary Show!

(Original image here.)

It was a fun show yesterday, with nice calls & lots of well-wishing, & hardly anyone telling me they're surprised the show has lasted this long.  Almost no calls were about how awesome roller coasters are, which made me sad.  I wanted us to bond over that subject!

There's really nothing I can add to this, except I need to find out when amusement parks are mostly empty, because I'd love to ride every roller coaster there in one day.  Am I getting too old for that?  When I told people this summer I loved roller coasters, they thought I was joking.  We'll see who has the last laugh!

The show this week is chock full of guests, so if you're into that, you're in luck!  It's now available for your listening pleasure at the website my shows live on.  Did I mention username/password?  Did I say SHR/selfhelp?  I can't recall.  The show is in two parts, what songs I played in each part are listed below.

Hey!  No line jumping!

(part one)

"Roller Coaster" Chuck Higgins _So Long_
"Roller Coaster" Little Walter _The Complete Chess Recordings_
"Love Roller Coaster" Big Joe Turner _Big, Bad & Blue: The Big Joe Turner Anthology_

"Rollercoaster" Dear Nora _We'll Have A Time_
"Roller Coaster By The Sea" Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers _Rock 'n' Roll With The Modern Lovers_
"Rollercoaster" Everything But The Girl _Amplified Heart_
"Rollercoaster" Michael Shelley _Half Empty_

"Roller Coaster Blues" Diana Dors _Sex Kittens In Hi-Fi: The Blondes_
"Roller Coaster" The Partridge Family _Bulletin Board_
"Rollercoaster" Sportique _The Matinée Summer Splash_
"Emotional Rollercoaster" Romanovsky & Phillips _Emotional Roller Coaster_

"The Rollercoaster Ride" Belle & Sebastian _The Boy With The Arab Strap_

(part two)

"Rock & Roller Coaster" Tony Crombie & His Rockets _Great British Rock & Roll, Vol. 2_
"Roller Coaster" Bobby Caver & Group _Never Leave Me_
"Roller Coaster Ride" American Death Ray _Smash Radio Hits_

"Roller Coaster" The Ides Of March _Ideology 1965-1968_
"Rollercoaster" M Ward _Post-War_
"Fear Of Rollercoasters" The Lucksmiths _Why That Doesn't Surprise Me_
"The Rollercoaster Song" The Lilac Time _Paradise Circus_

"Rollercoaster" Spirea X _Fireblade Skies_
"Rollercoaster" Northern Uproar _Northern Uproar_
"Rollercoaster Ride" The Whitest Boy Alive _Rules_
"Rollercoasting" Helen Love _Radio Hits 2_

"Rollercoaster" Sleater-Kinney _The Woods_
"My Rollercoaster" Kimya Dawson _Juno OST_

Whither Roller Coasters Revisited?

(I found this image here.)

It was probably late summer/early autumn 2000 - around fifteen years ago - that I put in an application for a show at KOOP radio in Austin, Texas.  I had no idea what I was getting into.  The station had been rocked by in-fighting for a couple of years - you can see on this webpage what the losing side in the battle thought - but I was blissfully unaware of what I was getting into.

Without going into specifics - there were some crazy things that happened at that station during my eight years there - I began to volunteer but found out they had no real path for newcomers to get a show.  Programmers basically got to keep their shows as long as they wanted them, unless they did something really stupid, like steal or, worse, cross the people in charge.  I knew a lot of people there - many of them former KVRXers like myself - so I helped train, I got involved, & I waited.  I waited & waited & waited.

Something happened - a few hours opened up - I don't recall how or why - in September 2002 - & I campaigned for a show.  The name "Self Help Radio" is something I came up with at the very last minute - I remember then-Station Manager Angela Keaton laughing happily when I told what I was going to call my show.  I had toyed with many others - my friend Joe suggested I called the show "Be My Radio Friend," & I even worked out a Mr. Rogers-type theme song for it.  But "Self Help Radio" - a reference, ultimately, to my own desperate need for all kinds of self-help - took, & despite some people thinking it's an actual self-help radio show - like dozens of my "followers" on Twitter - I am happy I called it that.

The themes were there from the beginning as well, but if I had a copy of that first show for you to listen to, you'd be surprised how unfocused it was.  I didn't actually come up with the idea of talking about the themes, along with playing songs about them, until perhaps the end of the year.  It was so obvious that of course I missed it.  The show has always been, & will continue to be, a shambling work-in-progress.

The first show aired on October 9, 2002.  Now it's thirteen years later.  I don't even want to count the number of shows I've done, or the number of themes I've covered.  Doubtless it's over six hundred shows, maybe the same number of themes (though I revisit them from time-to-time - like today!).  & yet I feel like I have a few more shows in me.  Silly old me.

You can listen today from 4-6 pm on 88.1 fm in Lexington - that's WRFL, you know - & you can listen online at wrfl dot fm if you're out of town &/or don't own a radio.  I'll be speaking with lots of guests, including the show's head writer & a fellow who sued me over the idea of the show, & of course there'll be lots of songs about roller coasters - & hopefully not some of the same as I played the first time around.

Oh yeah - you can win a tee shirt too!  If you listen!

Preface To The 13th Anniversary Show: Reflections On Thirteen Years

Oh no, I'm not going to spend time writing about the last thirteen years of this show right now!  I'm self-involved, but I'm not that self-involved.

Instead, let me show you this:

It's the 13th anniversary design by Suloni Robertson, who also designed the original logo.  I'm going to have some shirts made in honor of the anniversary, & you will have a chance to win one on tomorrow's show!

It's lovely, isn't it?  She's my favorite artist.

So: no reflections on thirteen years.  I was actually going to see if I could dig up the old cassette of my original roller coaster show from 2004 & try to digitize it - but I wasn't feeling masochistic enough.

Secure Your Things, People

This is a picture I took at King's Island this summer.  (I talked about that trip here.)  As someone who likes to take dumb pictures (& whose pictures have taken over the show's Tumblr blog), I really really wanted to take out my crappy little digital camera & attempt to take photos on the ride.  But that collection made me hope everything I had would stay in my pockets!

Turns out I didn't have a lot to worry about - I fit snugly into the seats & my things were in my pockets.  Not that I didn't check after every damn ride.

Why am I thinking about this?  Because I am listening to songs about roller coasters for this week's show, of course.  I went to Columbus a week or two ago, & I drove home on a chilly Thursday morning in the rain, & passed King's Island, which (I believe) is closed for the season.  It looked quite desolate & alone.

Thinking about it, though: I wonder what that grand amusement park looks like covered in snow?

The Gary Files # 4: Gary Peacock

(I found this picture here.)

An explanation: Since the name Gary is going extinct, I thought it incumbent upon me to celebrate more notable Garys than myself.  This is the fourth of a series!

Gary Peacock is, according to the Wikipedia, "an American jazz double-bassist."  He started performing in the 1960s, notably playing with Bill Evans, Albert Ayler, & even Miles Davis.  He is still with us, at the age of eighty, & I hope still performing.  (Update: he is!)

When did you first become aware of him?  Probably on the mid-1960s Albert Ayler records, especially Ghosts.

Are you a fan of jazz bassists?  Honestly, I know very little about the bass guitar, in jazz or otherwise.  I try very hard when I listen to Peacock's sessions to pay attention to his artistry, but he strikes me as in the same vein as the late, great Charlie Haden.  I like how versatile he is.

Did you know he studied Zen Buddhism in the late 60s?  I didn't, but I have read about it.  I imagine it helps musicians a lot to practice mindfulness, which is something you can learn in meditation, which you can learn as you study Buddhism.

Ever seen him live?  I haven't.  I would have liked seeing him playing with Ayler, as well as the stuff he did with Keith Jarrett in the early 80s.  I really need to spend more time with Peacock's work as a leader.

Is his name really Gary?  As far as I can tell, it is, & he apparently has no middle name.

Do you know why he was named Gary?  It's gotta be Gary Cooper, again.  Peacock was born in 1935!

Anything else you want to say?  No, but if you'd like to see him play, here's a snippet:

Self Help Radio 100615: Everybody Knows

(Original image here.)

Well, lookee here.  I done did an entire radio show with every song titled "Everybody Knows."  Oh, there were a couple of songs with parentheticals next to them - a "(Part One)," a "(The River Song)," & an "(Except You)."  But I've always been told that you're not supposed to say that part.  Therefore, boom!  An entire two-hour show with every song with the same title.  It may not be impressive, but it is something that I like to do, therefore my self has been helped by this radio show.

But wait!  There's more!  I myself visit a town in Ohio where everybody knows everything!  I talk to a scientist who's written a book called Everybody Nose in which he postulates that everything we know comes from our sense of smell!  & I interview a cagey CIA analyst who's written a book called Stuff Everybody Knows!

All this & - if I haven't mentioned this before - every song I play is called "Everybody Knows"!  Seriously, I can't understand why my cats don't find this as amazing as I do.

The show is available now at the Self Help Radio website.  You say username/password?  I say SHR/selfhelp .  On the website you will see the show is in two parts - I will list the songs I played in each below but I don't really have to because... oh you know.

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Everybody Knows" Louis Prima with Sam Butera & The Witnesses _The Wildest Comes Home_
"Everybody Knows (Part 1)" Little Johnny Taylor _Everybody Knows_
"Everybody Knows" Sean Buckley & The Beatcrumbs _Beat It! Killer Tracks From The Roarin' 60's_

"Everybody Knows" The Dave Clark Five _Everybody Knows_
"Everybody Knows" Lost _The Arf! Arf! El Cheapo 2-CD Sampler_
"Everybody Knows" Brenda Holloway _The Motown Anthology_
"Everybody Knows (The River Song)" O.V. Wright _Down & Out: The Sad Soul Of The Black South_

"Everybody Knows" Incredible Kidda Band _Too Much, Too Little, Too Late_
"Everybody Knows" Half Japanese _Fire In The Sky_
"Everybody Knows" The Decemberists _Otis' Opuses_
"Everybody Knows" Three Finger Cowboy _Kissed_
"Everybody Knows" The Corner Laughers _Tomb Of Leopards_

"Everybody Knows" Leonard Cohen _I'm Your Man_
"Everybody Knows (Except You)" The Divine Comedy _A Short Album About Love_

(part two)

"Everybody Knows" James _Laid_
"Everybody Knows" Ride _Firing Blanks (Unreleased Ride Recordings 1988-1995)_
"Everybody Knows" The Cherry Orchard _The World Is Such A Groovy Place_

"Everybody Knows" Lunchbox _Lunchbox Loves You_
"Everybody Knows" Sex Ghost _Sex Ghost EP_
"Everybody Knows" The Free Association _David Holmes Presents The Free Association_

"Everybody Knows" East Village _Drop Out_
"Everybody Knows" Slow Loris _Routine Glow_
"Everybody Knows" Ballard _Bucky_
"Everybody Knows" Candybomber _Everybody Knows_

"Everybody Knows" Men Without Hats _Love In The Age Of War_
"Everybody Knows" Sheer Agony _The Unruly Sisters_

Whither Everybody Knows?

(I found this image here.)

A few years ago, I sent my show's playlists to a mailing list based on a band I liked, because the members wanted to know what I played. (It occurs to me I don't belong to lists like those anymore.  I wonder why.)  I'm not going to remember the theme of the show when I sent one particular list out, but the response I got was something like, "Gary's kinda going off the deep end."

(It might have been the show with the theme Here I/You/He/She/It/We/They Come.  But I can't recall.)

The point of mentioning this is that, at some point, I kinda got tired of themes that were mostly nouns.  Themes that were things.  My dumb process of making this show involves me suddenly noticing something about the music I'm listening to, & thinking, "That would be a good theme!"  Sometimes they're verbs.  Sometimes they're phrases.  Phrases recur in songs, you know.

In the case of this show, I was listening to Leonard Cohen (like I said yesterday) & wondered whether there were enough songs that were called or said "everybody knows."  That was the genesis of this show.

But it gets better!  I am kind of obsessed about doing a show in which all the songs have the same title.  I've only managed to do this twice.  (Here & here.)  Guess what?  It's happening again today!  That's right - every song today has the title "Everybody Knows"!

Don't believe me?  Listen!  The show is on today from 4 to 6pm on 88.1 fm WRFL Lexington, & online at the same time online.  Yes yes, I'll archive it tomorrow at SHR web central.  Of course I will.  Everybody knows that!

Preface To Everybody Knows: The Great Man

This week's show has the theme "Everybody Knows." & I think everybody knows the song that was the inspiration & impetus for it. Here's that extraordinary old man performing his wonderful song live.

Live Blogging On The DVD

Have I mentioned recently how awful I am on the Twitter?  Maybe it's because I don't have a Twitter account for me, but rather for my radio show.  & I sometimes worry that I'm being inappropriate, but trying to be funny or insightful on the Twitter about things in my life (my latest tweet is something my wife said to me) instead of things that pertain to my radio show.

Which is also something I worry about with another of my stunted social media experiments, my Facebook page.  When talking about it on the air, I often say, "You can follow me on Twitter or like me on Facebook."  But that's misleading - I want people to follow my show on Twitter, & like my show on Facebook.  I understand how incredibly unlikeable I am.  It's a hefty cleaning job every week to make the show as little about me as possible!

Currently I have over three hundred "followers" on Twitter (I loathe that term, I have no desire to be the sort of person that has "followers"), & a little over two hundred fifty "likes" on Facebook.  Those numbers baffle the fuck out of me.  I know that many of my Facebook friends, who are sweet & want to support me, & also probably pity me appropriately, "like" the show page when they don't listen to me on the radio at all.  But the Twitter thing - that's weird.  It's weird & I know there are several people on the Twitter who think they're "following" the idea of self-help radio.

You're thinking I obsess about this too much & you're right.  To change the subject entirely, I filled out an application tonight to do a show on WLXL, Lexington's new low-powered fm station.  I figured I should.  No word whether I'll actually get a show &, of course, to make matters worse, no word on whether I'd be able to handle two radio shows a week!

You know I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything.

The Gary Files # 3: Gary Collins

(I found this photo here.)

An explanation: Since the name Gary is going extinct, I thought it incumbent upon me to celebrate more notable Garys than myself.  This is the third of a series!

Gary Collins was, according to the Wikipedia, a "an American film & television actor & award-winning talk show host."  After a long career in television, continues the Wikipedia, Collins "hosted the Group W television talk show Hour Magazine from 1980 to 1988, & co-hosted the ABC television series The Home Show from 1989 to 1994. He was the host of the Miss America Pageant from 1982 to 1990."

When did you first become aware of him?  Saw him on television doing talk show stuff when I was a kid.  I don't remember The Home Show, since those were my college days & I didn't watch a lot of television then, but I must have sat through Hour Magazine more than once when I was flipping channels & nothing else was on.  I vaguely remember the commercials.

Did you like the show?  I have no memory of the show itself, I can't bring to mind a set or any format at all.  Looking at the show's IMDb page, I can see it was a celebrity ass-kiss of the highest order, so perhaps I tuned in when someone I gave a shit about was the guest.

What about his acting career?  Do you remember seeing him on television in dramas in the 1970s?  Not at all.  He has a generic middle-aged man look that would've made it hard for me to tell him apart from half of the other actors in television at the time.  If I watched three different shows that he guest-starred on back-to-back I might not be able to tell he was on all of them, or maybe even what characters he played.

Maybe that's why he became a talk show host?  I guess so.  Sometimes they aren't required to have much of a personality.

Do you remember seeing him in infomercials in the past few years?  Oh yeah, & I remember when the people behind the informercials got in trouble with the FCC.  I always notice when someone named Gary gets in trouble.

Did you know he was an alcoholic?  Aren't all actors alcoholic?

Is his name really Gary?  Yes, Gary Ennis Collins.

Do you know why he was named Gary?  I'll bet it's because of Gary Cooper.  He's responsible for all the Gary names during the time he was a star.  But I can't say for sure.

He's dead now, you know.  Poor bastard.

Self Help Radio 092915: The Holy Show

(I found the clip art halo here.)

Holy smokes, I finished another Self Help Radio.  Hopefully without offending anyone.  (Some people act pretty "holier-than-thou," if you know what I mean.)

What happened on the show, you may ask, before you download it & utterly waste your time?  I'll tell you!  I talked to a college professor who's written about cool Eastern religions.  I chatted about minced oaths.  I spoke with internet sensation Holy Joe!  (He always writes his name with an exclamation mark, & yes, he's always yelling.)  I played a lot of songs about holy things - & yes, in alphabetical order.  Except the last song.  The next deejay ran a little late.

This is important: you don't have to be holy to enjoy this show.  Though it might help to be sanctimonious.  You can listen to the show now & even at church over at self help radio dot net.  Being ultra holy won't help you listen unless you know the password/username combination.  It's available on the page.  All the holiest of songs I played are listed below.

I'll see you in hell!

(part one)

"Holy Holy" David Bowie _The Man Who Sold The World_
"Holy Are You" Electric Prunes _Release Of An Oath_
"Holy Calamity (Bear Witness II)" Handsome Boy Modeling School _So... How's Your Girl?_

"Holy Cow" Lee Dorsey _Working In The Coal Mine_
"Holy Cow" The Aurbisons _The Sound Of Leamington Spa, Vol. 1_
"Holy Dances" Beach House _Devotion_
"Holy Dotage" Magazine _No Thyself_

"Holy Fire" Robert Pollard _Lord Of The Birdcage_
"Holy Fool" Love & Rockets _Lift_
"Holy Forest" Pinkshinyultrablast _Everything Else Matters_
"Holy Ghost" Happy Mondays _Hallelujah_

"Holy Head" The Wake _Make It Loud_
"Holy Honey" The Wreckery _Past Imperfect_

(part two)

"The Holy Hour" The Cure _Faith_
"Holy Joe" Haysi Fantayzee _Battle Hymns for Children Singing_
"Holy Love" Julian Cope _Fried_

"Holy Mackerel" Prentice Moreland _Holy Mackerel! Pretenders To Little Richard's Throne_
"Holy Moly" The Pastels _Sittin' Pretty_
"Holy Mountain" Best Friends _Hot. Reckless. Totally Insane._
"Holy Night Fever" Deerhoof _Reveille_

"Holy Picture" Sebadoh _III_
"Holy River" House Of Love _She Paints Words In Red_
"Holy Roll" Rufus & Ben Quillian (Blue Harmony Boys) _Hokum, Blues & Rags_
"Holy Smoke" Tony Allen _Rhythm & Blues Goes Rock & Roll, Vol. 2_

"Holy Water" The Triffids _Calenture_
"Hole In The Holy" Echo & The Bunnymen _Echo & The Bunnymen_

Whither The Holy Show?

(I found this cartoon here.)

Can I tell you, I kind of agonized over this show?  I had a recent experience where something I was involved in, which had no hint of offense, had to be changed because it might have been offensive.  I don't know if I've ever worried about that before.

For example, a while ago I did a show about glue.  During one airbreak, I pretended to sniff glue on the air.  Later on, of course, I admitted I hadn't sniffed glue, but the only comment I got (& yeah, I am assuming more than one person was listening, which is perhaps a bad assumption) was someone saying, "This is why I love your show!"

But the climate is weird.  Someone like Kim Davis - who lives & works within about an hour & a half's drive from here - should I put works in quotes? - who lives & "works" close to me - she can refuse to do her job because of her beliefs.  My sensitive brain was saying to me, "What if someone thinks by doing a 'holy show,' I'm somehow making fun of people's beliefs?"

Once upon a time I worked in a building on the campus of the University of Texas.  I ran a computer lab.  I had to be in the lab at 8am every morning, so I'd drag myself into old Batts Hall, take the ancient elevator up to the second floor, & open my lab.  During one semester in the mid-90s, some joker with a sharpie would write, probably twice a week, the phrase "Jesus was gay" on the inside of the elevator door.  I would note it with amusement but would otherwise be unaffected by it.

Around 9:30 or so, I'd have to go downstairs to do something in my department's office.  I'd stumble into the antique elevator, & what would be on the wall?  Desperate scratching, violent crossings-out, crazy wild strokes of pen, pencil, or marker, all over the phrase "Jesus was gay."  I mean, the door probably needed repainting, but this was a strange way to suggest it!

What struck me about this odd little back-&-forth is how insecure the reaction was to a meaningless little phrase.  How in the world does it affect your faith if someone believes or says something about it that you disagree with?  I suspect most people would have shrugged the graffiti off, if they even noticed it - I imagine some eyes don't focus until they've had coffee.  But there are the others - the ones who just cannot allow what they consider insult or even blasphemy to exist.  So they deface public property in such a way that draws more attention to the provocative scribble.

Which is my way of saying, who the hell knows.  I may offend someone today, someone who thinks the word "holy" is, well, "holy."  It's not my intention.  But boy the possibility that it might has affected some of the things I might say on the air.  Expect me to be more self-censoring than is my normal practice.

Hey!  Find out how inoffensive I can be today from 4-6 pm on 88.1 fm in Lexington, & also simultaneously online at wrfl dot fm if you like to listen to the radio & the computer at
the same time.  I'll archive the show tomorrow on the show's website, of course, but it'll be in real time that I might ruffle some feathers.

It does seem to me that the thin-skinned are, in fact, covered in feathers.

Preface To The Holy Show: New Rules

The show this week is called "the holy show."  Will it be a collection of my favorite gospel tunes, especially those of old-time country & blues songs?  Or will it an ironic collection of skeptical/critical songs in the popular music idiom taking aim at religiosity?  Or will it be both?

It will be neither.  Because I am a boring dude, it'll be songs in which people use the word "holy," either in the sense of an oath ("Holy Moly!") or to describe something ("Holy Thursday").  Seriously, I am so boring.  Rereading my first paragraph, I'm like, why couldn't I have played an entire two hours of cool old gospel music?  (It might be because I've kinda already done it, for an hour at least.)  But no, it's a Self Help Radio thing.

& there are a lot of songs in which things are described as holy.  Quite a few.  So I then thought to myself: maybe I should just play songs in which the title is "Holy Blank" (where the word blank indicates another noun or whatever).  Further, what if I try to do it in alphabetical order?!?

Holy spit, I think I lost you there.  Hey, I haven't even finished listening to music for the show, I don't know how the hell it's going to come out.

As a bonus, here's a song I'll probably talk over - but it's an awesome piece of music by David Axelrod, called "Holy Thursday."  (It's based on the William Blake poem.)  Enjoy it!

Sometimes It Needs Reminding

This is Yoko.

Self Help Radio has a Tumblr page.  I don't reblog (re-tumbl?) things there, I don't do anything really that's related to the show there.  I just put my dumb photographs, like the one above of my home's newest addition, the yaptastic Yoko, on there, in batches of ten, in no coherent order, with no discernible theme, except "pictures I have taken in the last couple of months that I have gotten around to looking at on my digital camera & that I like enough to share."

Please note: I don't think of myself as a photographer, I don't think of myself as an artist, I'm just taking pictures of things I think are lovely, weird, funny, etc.  Maybe you'll enjoy looking at them too.    Maybe you'd like me to be friends/follow/whatever it is your Tumblr blog.  Follow me, I'll follow you.  Most of the time.  I don't always pay attention.

The Gary Files # 2: Gary Hart

(I found this image on the dude's Wikipedia page.)

An explanation: Since the name Gary is going extinct, I thought it incumbent upon me to celebrate more notable Garys than myself.  This is the second of a series!

Gary Hart is, according to the Wikipedia, a "diplomat, politician, lawyer, author, professor, & commentator."  He was a senator from Colorado when I was in high school, & ran for President of the United States twice, most notably in 1987 & 1988 when I was in college.  He flamed out because he got caught cheating on his wife, which was headline news for much of that year.

When did you first become aware of him?  When he was running for president the second time, in 1987, especially because people talked about him being "Kennedy-esque."  I was born after the Kennedy administration, but his presence loomed large in politics then.  I must've known he was running for president in 1984, but I don't have any memory of that.

Did you support him?  I was going to support anyone who wasn't involved in the Reagan administration.  My god, when I hear how that awful man has been deified, I have to wonder if his admirers lived in a different 1980s than I did.

Did you ever see him speak while he was running for president?  I did, actually, after his campaign was basically over.  After the scandal broke, he had suspended his campaign for most of 1987, but returned at the end of the year.  I saw him sometime early in 1988, in a room in Burdine Hall, if I recall.

Were you on the news that night?  I was!  I didn't know about it till the next day, but apparently the local news videotaped me watching him speak.

How did you find out about it?  One of my professors told me about it the next day.  He said I looked "skeptical."

Did you ever see him/think about him/etc. after he lost the nomination?  He kinda disrespected the name Gary so I didn't really know or care about him.  He was stupid - stupid like John Edwards would later be - with his indiscretions, so, you know, he kinda go what he deserved in that regard.

Is his name really Gary?  Yes, Gary Warren Hartpence.

Do you know why he was named Gary?  I can't say for sure, but he was born in 1936, the year Gary Cooper starred in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, so that doubtless played a big part.  Many Garys were named after Gary Cooper.

Do you know what he's doing now?  It says on the Wikipedia page that he's U.S. Special Envoy for Northern Ireland.

What's that?  Like an ambassador, but lesser?

Did you know he's written five novels?  Oh good lord.

Self Help Radio 092215: Shapes

(I probably could have made this myself, but instead I modified the image I found here.)

Shapes!  They come in all sizes &, er, shapes.  Shapes are shapely, there's no doubt about that.  Some shapes are in two dimensions.  Others in three.  The fourth dimension, I think, is time.  The fifth dimension did that song about letting the sun shine in.  Is the sixth dimension where warp drive is?  I have no idea where I'm going with this.  I was talking about shapes, right?  Shapes!  How they shape our lives!  (No pun intended.)  (What do you mean, of course pun was intended!)  (Sorry.)

The truth is, I wanted you to actually care about shapes for once in your life.  Not be worried about home invasion, or whether hair can grow on your tongue, but just care about something.  & shapes are very easy to care for because everything has a shape.  Except for those things which are shapeless, which you are allowed to not care about because why would you?  Oh god, can hair really grow on your tongue?  Why would you put that image in my head?

In any event.  In any case.  At any rate.  Anyway.  Terrible segue.  Awkward transition.  The show about shapes can be listened to anytime you're a-round (good grief) over at the Self Help Radio website.  Don't be a square (please stop)!  Make sure you notice there's a username & password requirement!  They're available on the page.  The songs I played I list below in case you don't want to be surprised.  Also, polygon.

Hooray, shapes!

"The Ballad Of The Shape Of Things To Come" Blossom Dearie _Needlepoint Magic_
"The Different Shapes They Are" Lou Carter _Louie's Love Songs_
"Shape" Breakfast In Fur _Flyaway Garden_

"Shape Of Things To Come" Max Frost & The Troopers _Shape Of Things To Come_
"Shapes Of Things" David Bowie _Pin Ups_
"Give Me Shapes" Grass Widow _Past Time_
"Odyshape" The Raincoats _Odyshape_

"Everything Around Us Has A Shape" Brian Dullaghan _Have Fun Learning_
"Colors & Shapes" Nobody's Children _Mayhem & Psychosis, Vol. 1_
"Colours & Shapes" Pale Saints _Mrs. Dolphin_
"Cut-Out Shapes" Magazine _Secondhand Daylight_

"Mis-Shapes" Pulp _Different Class_
"Last Shapes Of Never" Múm _Sing Along To Songs You Don't Know_

(part two)

"Four Sides In Three Shapes" Great Plains _Length Of Growth 1981-89_
"Heart-Shaped Box" The Vichy Government _Filthy Little Angels Singles Club_
"Pull Shapes" The Pipettes _We Are The Pipettes_

"Changing Shape" Milky Wimpshake _My Funny Social Crime_
"Shapeshifter" Elephant _Sky Swimming_
"Shape We Made" Peggy Sue _Fossils & Other Phantoms_
"Shapes Of Venus" Clone Defects _Shapes Of Venus_

"All Shapes" JDSY _Ghostly Swim_
"Forms & Shapes" Sascha Funke _Camping Complilation_
"Shapes To Escape" He Said _Hail_
"Chatter Shapes" The Moodists _Two-Fisted Art_

"Shapes For Sale" Eugene Mirman _The Absurd Nightclub Comedy Of Eugene Mirman_
"The Shapes Between Us Turn Into Animals" Robyn Hitchcock _Globe Of Frogs_
"The Shape Of Dolls" Able Tasmans _Songs From The Departure Lounge_

Whither Shapes?

(I found this image, where the circle isn't looking very circular, here.)

Can I tell you what not to expect from this week's show, which is about shapes?*  Don't expect individual songs about specific shapes, like squares, circles, nonagons, etc.** (I did a show about circles ten years ago, anyway.)  No, in typical infuriating OCD Gary fashion, this is a show about shapes in general.  Songs about shapes may reference specific shapes, but they should be talking about different kinds of shapes.  You'll see!

Also:*** I'm avoiding songs today about "shape" as used in the sense of "being in shape."  I might not play a lot of songs about "shaping" things, focusing instead on the noun form.  I most probably will not play songs with colloquial or idiomatic uses of the word, like "shape up!"  Instead, it'll be all about the shapely shapes like the ones above.****

Might you want to listen?  If so, it'll be on from 4 to 6 pm today on 88.1 fm in Lexington & all over the world in all shapes & sizes at wrfl dot fm the website.  I'll archive it later over at the show's website, but who knows what shape it'll be in at that point?  Better to listen to it when its edges are sharp & its color bright!*****

Hope you listen!

* I mean, besides not expecting it to be very good.
** So many damn songs about nonagons.
*** There's more?
**** Though I'll say it again, that's not a circle up there.
***** Kill me now.

Preface To Shapes: Different Shapes & Sizes Of Radios

This super-duper website (from where I nicked the pictures above) has cool photos of radios in all shapes & sizes.  Why do I bring it up?  Because this week's show is about shapes!  Certainly you can see that the shapes that Self Help Radio can mold itself into are endless!

More details about the show tomorrow - before it airs, of course.

A Trip To Fort Wayne

(Picture from the city's Wikipedia page.)

The wife & I drove to Fort Wayne, Indiana, yesterday, because that was the closest (so far) that Bill Maher has come to Kentucky recently.  Fort Wayne is about 250 miles from Lexington, but because there's not a major highway connecting the two cities, you have to spend some portion of the drive on highways which pass through small towns, which means stop lights, varying speed limits, & the occasionally horse & buggy.  We opted, on the way, there, to follow I-75 through Ohio most of the way, & arrived in about four & a half hours.

A friend at WRFL, who is from Indiana, told me the place was a "shithole."  My wife, who has not-very-fond memories of living in West Virginia, decided the place reminded her of Huntington.  (Huntington, however, is about an eighth smaller than Fort Wayne, & doesn't have anything resembling a skyline.)  I kept an open mind.  We were going to be there for less than a day; why have preconceived notions that color your short stay?

Complicating matters somewhat was that our youngest beagle, Pauline, who wants to be friends with everything, which means wanting to play with everything, which has resulted in the deaths of things too small to play with (birds, chipmunks) & sometimes mean reactions from things of the same size & even species who didn't want to playing with her (cats, unfriendly dogs), tried to make friends with a skunk on Friday night, which ended as you might expect, & though the wife did her best to de-stink her, we drove the long drive with a lingering skunky smell in the car.  A skunky smell will, in small doses, cause a skunky smell headache, which got to me a little as I drove the last leg there.

But!  Fort Wayne has an awesome vegan restaurant called Loving Cafe which was packed when we visited, & we know why: the food was great.  It broke my heart to think I might never visit there again - when will I find another reason to visit Fort Wayne?  It took nearly forty-eight years & the eccentricities of Bill Maher's schedule to bring me there in the first place!

The weather was chilly but good & though parking was a bitch, we got to the Embassy to see the man himself, & were sandwiched in-between two older couples who, I confess, I would've taken for more conservative on first glance.  (The city has a Democratic mayor, but its City Council & state representatives are overwhelmingly Republican.)  Maher himself joked that perhaps all the liberals in the city were there that night.  He was great, he talked/told jokes/was himself for ninety minutes, & we went back to the hotel, where our pups were waiting, & we were lucky the place let us open the window to the room, because it was a little skunky in there.  (Our apologies to the nice people who had to clean the place.)

After we woke this morning, we walked the dogs through Headwaters Park in the downtown area.  We went to a nice bakery for lunch & I begged the wife to let me drive the longer drive (by around an hour) through rural Indiana, basically running parallel to I-75 on the Indiana side, & driving through such notable small towns as Decatur, Berne, Portland, & Richmond, before stepping over into Ohio through Oxford, & finally down to Cincinnati to pick up good vegan pizza at a place called Mac's, & heading home.

When I lived in Austin, & had to visit the family in Dallas, I would often drive the longer drive through Texas east or west of I-35 just to see more (& also not to drive on dangerous I-35), but eventually I knew it would be faster to just risk my life on that eighteen-wheeler-clogged artery because I knew I'd get there in roughly three hours.  But you see so much of the world by taking a little bit of time - we did in fact see a horse & buggy on the road, as well as driving slowly through Levi Coffin Days in Richmond, & seeing a surprising number of Confederate flags flying from Indiana porches.  (They do know, don't they, which side Indiana fought on during that war?  Here's a hint: the winning side.)

Such a nice little trip we took.  I liked Fort Wayne.  I wish Lexington had a vegan or vegetarian restaurant.  Don't the city's daring restauranteurs know that anyone can eat vegan food?  My wife mentioned while we were at the Loving Cafe that we might be the only actual vegans eating there at that moment!  Let's hope Fort Wayne gives me another excuse one day to visit the town that - contrary to what my friend at RFL said - was a nice little urban area.

The Gary Files # 1: Gary Oldman

(I found this picture here.)

An explanation: Since the name Gary is going extinct, I thought it incumbent upon me to celebrate more notable Garys than myself.  This is the first of a series!

Gary Oldman is an English actor who's just ten years older than I am, & you read all about him here.  I'll ask myself questions & answer them about him.

When did you first see him?  When he starred in Sid & Nancy, which, even though I know the film is pretty fact-free, I still enjoy thanks to his performance.

Do you have a favorite performance of his?  I liked a lot of his early film performances, especially as Sid Vicious & Joe Orton.  I think he made a great Commissioner Gordon.

But you don't like all the villains he's played?  It's fun to watch him do over-the-top stuff, like in The Professional & Air Force One, but I always imagined he'd be less a box office star & more of a cinema artiste in the vein of Montgomery Clift.

Why do you think that eluded him?  It's arguable that it did, but if it did, maybe it's because he's not traditionally handsome.

He's not?  He's decent I suppose, but also kind of funny-looking.  That may be an asset, since he changes himself to get into roles - he kinda really looked like Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK.

Did you ever see Nil By Mouth, the only film (so far) he's written & directed?  No, it seemed pretty bleak.

Is his name really Gary?  Yes, Gary Leonard Oldman.

Do you know why he was named Gary?  I don't.  I think the name used to be more popular in the UK.  I once met a Scottish drummer whose name was Gary, although he said it in such a way that I didn't understand we had the same name for the first few seconds we talked.

Does it bother you that he might be a little right-wing leaning?  It doesn't, but it might not be true.  As this weird web page suggests, he's not really made his political views known.

Do you have anything else to say about Gary Oldman?  Not really, although one day (& soon), I think I'll be an Old Man Gary myself.

Self Help Radio 091515: Deserve

(Original image here.)

Do people get what they deserve?  Do you deserve happiness?  What did you do to deserve your fate?  Make no mistake, these questions, & related others, are not answered on this week's Self Help Radio. But we're hoping you give us credit for at least asking them.

So many things happened on this show!  I interviewed a fellow who is starting a new awards show, the Deservies!  I also interviewed a self-help (how appropriate) guru who has a personal enrichment program called "You Deserve It!"  Plus, my spiritual mentor, the Rev. Dr. Howard Gently called!  All this & the deserve-oriented songs you see listed below.  Maybe you do get what you deserve!  If, you know, my dumb radio show is what you deserve.

The show is now where you can listen to it any time at all at the Self Help Radio web site.  You know there's a username (SHR) & password (selfhelp) required to listen, right?  All right then!  Please enjoy.

Especially since you know I don't deserve you!

(part one)

"One Good Turn Deserves Another" Don Grady _One Good Turn Deserves Another_
"You Deserve What You Got" Eddie Holland _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 2: 1962_
"Deserve" The Wolfgang Press _The Legendary Wolfgang Press & Other Tall Stories_

"I Deserve It" Samantha Jones _Girls On 45: A Collection Of Girl Groups, Girlie Pop, & Soulful Ladies 1963-1968_
"You Deserve More Than A Maybe" St. Christopher _Air Balloon Road_
"Get What They Deserve" Close Lobsters _Forever Until Victory: The Singles Collection_
"You Don't Deserve Yourself" Andrew Jackson Jihad _Can't Maintain_

"So Little Deserve" Heavenly _So Little Deserve_
"She Don't Deserve You" The Honeybees _Growin' Up Too Fast: The Girl Group Anthology_
"Do I Deserve It Baby" Barbara Lewis _The Many Grooves Of Barbara Lewis_
"You Get What You Deserve" The Siddeleys _Slum Clearance_

"You Deserve" Peggy Lee _All Aglow Again!_
"What Have I Done To Deserve This" Pet Shop Boys feat. Dusty Springfield _Simply... Dusty_

(part two)

"I Don't Deserve It" Proto Idiot _Andrew Anderson_
"We Have Only What We Deserve" Billy Childish _Hunger At The Moon_
"Deserve" Trembling Blue Stars _Lips That Taste Of Tears_

"You Deserve Each Other" Robert Mitchum _That Man, Robert Mitchum, Sings_
"What Did I Ever Do To Deserve Such A Fate" The Music Explosion _Little Bit O' Soul: The Best Of The Music Explosion_
"What Did I Do To Deserve You?" Joey Ramone _...Ya Know?_
"I Don't Deserve A Boy Like You" The Chiffons _Sweet Talkin' Girls: The Best Of The Chiffons_

"You Get What You Deserve" Big Star _Radio City_
"People Don't Get What They Deserve" Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings _Give The People What They Want_
"Nothing Less Than You Deserve" Fat Tulips _Starfish_
"I Don't Deserve You" The Gitanes _Strange Girl_

"He Didn't Deserve You" They Go Boom!! _Atlantic_
"Undeserved Disgrace" Mondial _Labrador 100: A Complete History Of Popular Music_

Whither Deserve?

(Apparently this was a game show.  I found the image here.)

Oh no, it's another one of those shows the theme of which is a verb!  Why does Gary do that?  Does he think we deserve that sort of thing?  & why is he talking about himself in the third person?  Does that make it easier to distance himself from an uncomfortably weird theme?

Seriously, why can't I do a show about nouns like crickets, crucibles, or crockery?  It's because sometimes I get caught up in things I'm listening to.  Like, a while back, I was listening to Big Star's Radio City.  There's a song on there called "You Get What You Deserve."  Do I believe that?  I don't know - I'm almost certain that many people who live in fear, poverty, deprivation, & want don't deserve it, just as I'm completely certain that most people born into privilege do not deserve all they have.  I then happened (in a manner of minutes) to listen to the Sharon Jones' song "People Don't Get What They Deserve," & that's when I thought, "I smell a theme!"

We can argue about who deserves what if you want but let's instead focus on the fact that there's a lot of songs about deserving or not deserving on this week's Self Help Radio, which airs from 4 to 6 pm on WRFL in Lexington (that's at 88.1 fm) & also simultaneously online at wrfl dot fm.  You'll hear both the songs I mentioned about plus many more as well as an interview with self-help guru David Fruchter (the "you deserve it" guy) & an interview with a man named CJ Buchanan, who has just created a new awards show, the Deservies.

If you think you don't deserve to miss this, don't worry!  I'll archive it tomorrow on self help radio dot net.

Look, I know I don't deserve your listening, but I hope you'll do so all the same.

Preface To Deserve: Look At These!

It's the day before I do Self Help Radio & I am hard at work half-heartedly working on my show, so do you mind if share a neat web site I stumbled on while avoiding editing stuff?  This is a collection of "acquaintance cards" from the 19th century.  Like this one:

You can find lots of them - & find out what exactly an "acquaintance card"is - here.

Let's bring these back!  & not ironically!  If it at possible.

Write-Up

The semesterly magazine of WRFL, called "Rifle," has its fall issue out, which you can find all over Lexington & online here.  In addition to a section featuring drawings of two characters from the show - Werful, the monster who lived under the station, & the Princess he/she secretly was - both beautifully rendered by my friend Suloni Robertson - Self Help Radio makes an appearance in an article about the new schedule, which I present here:

In case you don't feel like clicking to read, it says this: "Gary continues to be hilarious & largely indescribable on Self Help Radio."

Really?  Largely indescribable?  Every week I explore a different theme with music & talk.  Also, hilarious?  Maybe not me, but certainly my guests!

Still - it's nice to be thought of!

Spending The Day In The Past

(I found this image here.)

It's not near the time of my birthday, so there's no real excuse for me to be stumbling into my past, but I was talking to a friend about our old haunts in Garland, Texas, & I asked him about this place from my past.  It was a knick-knack/tchotchke store in the portion of the Ridgewood Shopping Center very close to the apartments my family lived in from around 1977 to 1982.

During the time we lived there, we knew some kids - a couple of them were teenagers, who were more friends of my sister Karin - who, like us, were quite poor, so my little brother & I emulated them in their shoplifting ways.  I can't say I stole a whole lot of things, but I got pretty good at it.  There was a "dime store" called TG&Y & across the drive from that place, was the weird knick-knack store.  You can read more about TG&Y here; its demise is a little sad.  I think the store I visited had closed before the chain itself disappeared, but I can't be sure, because it had been four years since I lived near the Ridgewood Shopping Center.

The tchotchke place seemed very fancy to me.  It smelled of odd fragrances inside, & every shelf seemed to have a soft lining, & the little things - carved ceramics, figurines, etc. - had their prices hand-written on little tags usually on their bottoms.  Thinking about it now, I realize that it's the same smell you associate with hobby places like Michaels or Jo-Ann's or that hateful & intolerant place - what's it called, Lobby Lobby? - that smell from ceramics & metals.  Except at this place, it was crammed into a small, not terribly lit place.  Oh, & the people there watched me like a hawk, with good reason - I probably wanted to steal something.  Just to have it, you know?

There was a grocery store called Minyards on the same side as the knick-knack shop, & it existed until the end of the late 1990s, because I remember going there during my third year of college & seeing someone I hadn't seen since middle school.  That, by the way, never happens anymore - I haven't run into anyone I knew from high school in two decades or more.  Not in my home town, not really anywhere.

In any event - I know this information is only of interest to me, & I apologize for that - the most interesting thing about TG&Y is something I've just discovered, which is this: the former employees have a web site & a Facebook page where they reconnect with each other, & share information about possible retirement benefits.

Where I am going with this - what I asked my friend - is what the hell was the name of the shop that existed across from the TG&Y?  Here's a picture from Google maps of what the old place looks like now-ish:

TG&Y would be the building on the right, the knick-knack place would be the first shop on the left.  The place looks so nondescript now, but the pillars that line the left side used to have this pebble-y covering that was attractive & also painful if you ran into it.  It was probably too hard to maintain - I guess pulled off the pebbly thing & painted the pillars.

In my lame "research" - you know, just trying to find stuff with Google - I found a forum where I asked if anyone remembered the place's name.  & then - just a few minutes ago - in the shower - my brain told me this name: "The Gift Shoppe."

There's no real way to know if that's what it was actually called, but in my mind I can see the sign hanging by the door, I can almost make out the font.  It feels right.  It feels like there's a place called "The Gift Shoppe," where I never could ever afford to buy a gift.  & wouldn't even know anyone who would want a gift from there.

Was that really its name?  I don't know.  I think so.  I did spend the whole day trying to find out!

Self Help Radio 090815: Ambition

(Original image here.)

It certainly didn't feel ambitious to do a radio show about ambition.  Although I am proud that the first fifteen songs I played were all called "Ambition."  & one of those was a request!

The show went tolerably well despite how terrible I do in it.  Much of that is because of the great interviews I had: CJ Buchanan, talking about his new book, "The Death Of Ambition"; Mark Miller, talking about ambition in Hollywood; & the Reverend Dr. Howard Gently, giving us spiritual wisdom about ambition.  As I said on the air, it's good to have them around, because it means less of me on the show.

& the show is now available for your listening - pleasure? could it be? - at the Self Help Radio website.  As always, please pay attention to password/username information at the top of the page.  What I played is below.

So much for ambition!

(part one)

"Ambition" The Subway Sect _Twenty Odd Years: The Story Of Vic Godard & The Subway Sect_
"Ambition" Iggy Pop _Soldier_
"Ambition" TV21 _Ambition_

"Ambition" UK Subs _Endangered Species_
"Ambition" The Lonely Hearts _Ambition 7"_
"Ambition" Dalek I Love You _Dalek I Love You_
"Ambition" Robert Marlow _The Peter Pan Effect_

"Ambition" New Model Army _No Rest For The Wicked_
"Ambition" The Knack _Zoom_
"Ambition" John Vanderslice _Mass Suicide Occult Figurines_

"Ambition" Graduate _Acting My Age_
"Ambition" Velvet Elvis _Velvet Elvis_

(part two)

"Ambition" Smog _Supper_
"Ambition" Blue Skies For Black Hearts _Serenades & Hand Grenades_
"Ambition" We Are Scientists _Barbara_

"Man With Ambition" Denzil Dennis _Early Dayz_
"Good Ambition" The Ethiopians _Everything Crash_
"Aim & Ambition" Jimmy Cliff _Hard Road To Travel_
"My Ambition" Marcia Griffiths _Truly_

"Ambitious" Wire _The Ideal Copy_
"Ambitions" Liechtenstein _Fast Forward_
"My Life's Ambition" Groovey Joe Poovey _Greatest Grooves_
"Slave Of My Ambition" Malaria _Emotion_

"Great Expectations" The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger _Midnight Sun_

Whither Ambition?

(Original image found here.)

This is true: I am probably the least ambitious person you'll ever meet.  Sure, I put a lot of work into my radio show, not that you could tell, but I don't know that if I knew how to make it really great, if I could actually do it.  Because I have spent my life doing the bare minimum required of me to make or do something passable.  A striver for excellence I ain't.

For example: I usually wrote my college papers the night before they were due.  In fact, in the days before most people had computers, I would often ask my professors if it were all right if I turned papers in hand-written.  I remember one class - it must have been an existentialist lit class - where I wrote a paper on my bedroom floor on my stomach in pen about two hours before class.  It was for a book a really love, Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, & I had a lot to say about it, but still.

You might say, well, you know you could get away with it.  But that's completely wrong - I've never had the confidence that I could in fact get things done in time.  I even told one professor I should take an incomplete instead of writing a paper, but she talked me off the ledge & let me turn that final report in a bit later.

Anyway, I could've gone to grad school, I suppose.  But I stuck with the easiest job I could find after college.  & at one period of time, I thought I might write, but it turned out I liked being ridiculous on the radio even better.  It was certainly less work - it was in fact easy, sharing music with people.  If in fact my radio shows sound as shabby as I believe they do, it's because the whole process feels easy to me.  Perhaps I should try harder.  I wonder what that would feel like.

In any event - today I unambitiously present a show about ambition.  It's on from four to six pm (4-6pm) on eighty-eight point one fm (88.1 fm) WRFL in Lexington proper.  All over the world improper it's online at wrfl.fm.  I have lots of guests today - I guess that's ambitious - & the first hour or so will be entirely filled with songs called "Ambition."

Don't worry, I didn't work that hard on it.  If you can't listen, I'll archive it tomorrow on the show's web site.

By the way, it's annoying to me that we still say "man" or "mankind" to mean the entire human race.  When I see a quote like the one above, my first thought is, "& what did Marcus Aurelius think a woman's worth was?"  (Well, chances are he didn't think of women at all.)  Would it be so bad to retroactively change quotes like that to "A person's worth..." or "A human's worth..."?  It's translated from the Latin anyway.

Here's an ambitious thought: just as I think I'll be old & die in a world in which same-sex marriage is no big deal to the vast majority of us, I hope I'll be old & die in a world where people stop saying "man" & "mankind" & instead say "human" & "humankind" or "humanity."  That way, even though every day will be over 120 degrees, & most of the great coastal cities will be underwater, I'll at least be glad that as the human race is dying out, we aren't as homophobic & sexist as we were when I was a kid.

Preface To Ambition: Ambitious Inspiration

There are two songs that I was listening to recently that made me think, Hey, I should do a radio show about ambition.  (I've already shared this on my Facebook page today.  Sorry for the repeat.)  (I'm going to post this to my Twitter page too.  It's the lame way I try to be relevant on social media.)

Here's the first one, a legendary single by Subway Sect:



& the other, from the mid-80s version of Wire:



This is normally what I talk about on the day of my show, but I thought I'd share today.  Great songs - maybe a great show?

Belabor Day

Do you remember where you were at when you learned what certain words meant?  Is that a weird questions to ask?  I used to be one of those kids who had a dictionary by the side of the bed - because I read in bed - & I would look words up I didn't understand.  Not that I always remember the meanings.  I always have to look up "feckless" (I note this ironically) & also "jejune," for example (another word that may painfully describe me), since for some reason I can't keep them in my head.  Two words that I used to have a problem with - "atavistic" & "quotidian" - I am now comfortable with.  So there's hope for me yet!

Nowadays of course I just look them up on my computer or phone (which is a computer, isn't it).  But that wasn't the question I asked.  Do you remember the moment when you learned what a particular word meant?  There are some words that I remember exactly when I learned what they meant.

To qualify my previous statement: I don't know an exact date or time, but I do know an exact scenario, usually involving a book, or comic book, or newspaper, or magazine.

One of those words is "belabor."  It's most often used in the phrase "to belabor the point."  I might be accuse of belaboring many points in this blog.  Belabor means to argue or go on about something in too much detail.  Belaboring a point is basically talking something to death.

It must have been in the late seventies because I was skimming a magazine (Time? Newsweek? People? Hustler?) at my mom's convenience store, & they were complaining about the President - who was Carter - belaboring a point about his foreign policy, most probably with Iran.  My initial thought was that he was working hard to make the point - he was "laboring" to make the point, although I didn't know what the "be-" prefix might point to.  Some hours after that, on the news, they used the same phrase: "belaboring the point."  It didn't seem like a positive statement in context.  It started to drive me crazy.

So I looked it up.  & I learned what it meant.  That very day.

& you - do you have memories of discovering word meanings in a specific matter?  Maybe you should think about them on this Belabor Day.