What A Week It Was The Other Day

Surely I'm not the only one feeling like time has somehow changed its behavior, like certain rules no longer apply or have been slightly changed.  This afternoon I took a one-hour nap & woke & was almost certain it was morning.  That sort of confusion is becoming more & more pronounced the farther away I get from an actual schedule.  I hope that that will be remedied once I begin doing Self Help Radio weekly.

Right now I'm concentrating on prerecorded programming for two stations, KBOO & Freeform, & technically there's no deadline.  I will have a deadline for the Dickenbock Report next week, which is Sunday, & I've begun working on that.  But it's really making sure there's something that needs to be done regularly that I believe will disabuse me of this almost hallucinatory sense of time, & I think it starts with resuming SHR.

Though tonight, watching CNN, I understood why I needed to stop for a bit.  It's completely fucked-up out there & it looks to get way worse before it gets better.  The wife & I have been luckier than most - we managed to stock up on essentials, & she can work from home.  Except for dog walks - even, as today, in steady rain - we stay put, & so far we haven't gotten on each other's nerves too much.

By far the saddest thing is favorite restaurants closing.  Some subsist on take-out & delivery, but some can't keep their doors open for that - which makes me profoundly sad.  But we can only eat so much.  & I've already gained too much weight in this town.  It will be exceedingly depressing if once this is over we will have lost the great places to eat that adds to the flavor - no pun intended - of this town.

& we do that a lot, too.  We say, "Once this is over."  We talk about an end we don't have in sight.

Okay, enough of that.  Let's start talking about the dumb radio show again, damn it!

Two (Prerecorded) Shows, One Day

One of the things I like about KBOO is that they archive all their shows.  One of the things that's uncomfortable about that is, in this time of prerecorded programming, sometimes they are presenting shows in timeslots that aren't adhering to the regular shows' formats.  For example, I had two shows on KBOO today, & the timeslots which they filled - I need to stress I did not choose the times they would air - were during programs called "The Persian Show" & a time split between shows called "Armando Puentes" & "La Voz Del Sabor."  Needless to say, I did not play Persian or Spanish language music.  Instead, I prerecorded the sort of silliness that would make any other broadcaster deeply embarrassed.

My very silly show about breakfast can be listened to here.  The other program I'll need to upload to my website as it was split between programs.

In all my reading about the trials & tribulations of our plague time, I haven't really seen anything about radio stations.  & frankly that's because most commercial stations are already mostly automation.  Their programming is prepared somewhere & distributed to stations across the country.  This is emphatically not true about noncommercial radio.

Except for some nice Twitter feedback from folks not in the area, I have no idea what reaction there was to me appearing on KBOO on a Sunday during programs that I was not subbing.  I wish I could do a Persian show or Spanish-language programming.  I cannot.  I am flattered my homemade shows aired.  I wish everyone had the time & capabilities to do that for their own shows.

But I don't want the whole concept of "going to a radio station & doing your own show" to end!  Commercial radio has killed that & no one seems to care.  But those of us who value our tiny space at the left of the dial - we cherish it.  What I'm doing I hope will keep some of that space available for whatever the fuck comes after.

These are fucked-up times we're living in.  I only wish I could do more.

That Was Fast!

Last night I completed a couple of shows for KBOO - the studio has been closed for some time to staff because of the pandemic, & don't get me wrong, I think that's a very good idea.  The station has more volunteers than any place I've ever been involved at, & that decision was for the safety of everyone.  But some folks don't have the ability to prerecord their shows from home, & so the dedicated & frankly unstoppable staff have been filling in when needed.  It was the absolute least I could do to help out with some content.

So, yeah, I finished two shows - & they're going to be on the air tomorrow!  That's very gratifying & I hope you can listen.  The first - which is a show about breakfast - & which leans heavily on an episode of Self Help Radio I did over ten years ago will air at 11am, & the second - a show about ambition - which borrows liberally from an episode of Self Help Radio from five years ago will air at 3pm.

Is it weird that I will be on KBOO during the day?  Yes!  Is it sad that it's prerecorded?  Heck no!  I honestly wish I could do more, but in addition to keeping myself sane in these dark days, I have a wife & many animals I need to care about as well.  I am quite busy.

If you can listen at 90.7fm or at kboo.fm tomorrow, that will be swell.  I'll announce it over on the show's Facebook page as well as on the Self Help Radio twitter, & I'll probably live tweet the shows.

See you tomorrow!

Spending This Rainy Day

Making imaginary radio shows.

They're not really imaginary - they will possibly (probably?) air on the station for which I am making them.  They take me a bit of time despite the fact that I am purposely repurposing old Self Help Radio shows.  What's taking me some time is that I am adding new songs, I am relistening to the songs in case there are FCC violations, & I am of course recording new airbreaks which is what takes the most time even though I am keeping them short.  Well, short for me.

The truth is, I am amazed - really, kinda flabbergasted - by deejays who just come on, back announce, & sign off.  I wish (sort of) I could do that.  In the case of this situation - creating content to keep stations on the air while the stations are closed to regular programmers - I don't feel comfortable being as chatty as I am when it's my show & a listener can be expected to deal with my loud mouth.

Tonight's goal - & the goal for the next few days - is a couple of hours a day.  Although - I have created six hours for Freeform & the joke now is that that's what you hear when you turn the station on.  I know I can destroy a lot of goodwill with overexposure.  Maybe they'll take my recordings out of circulation once there's more new material.

In any event - these shows I'm doing I may well share with you, at some point.  & I'll have a new Self Help Radio & Dickenbock Report in April.  That's a kind of exciting, isn't it?  It's keeping my anxiety at bay for the moment, anyway.

Three New Shows (Or Are They "New" Shows)

Over at the Self Help Radio website, I've added three playlists.  Two are for episodes of the Dickenbock Report, this morning's & the one that aired two weeks ago.  This morning's was prerecorded; the previous one was live.  Both are over at the KBOO website, where they archive all their shows.  Mine are under the name "Alright Radio" because for some reason I can't access the Dickenbock Report page from Spinitron.  Yes, I have submitted a ticket to tech support.  I suspect there are more important things going on that require their attention at this time.

The third is a Freeform sub show which I made the Monday before last when the station needed content.  Interestingly, this show was on the air this afternoon when I was running errands.  It's a mix of all kinds of songs, & I interrupt from time-to-time to back-announce.  I try to keep it brief.  I hope the music is fun to listen to.

My plans for the weekend include working on the next Self Help Radio & making a couple more mixes for these stations.  As you may have heard, the United States now has the most Coronavirus cases in the world.  So I suspect I may be doing this sort of thing for a few more weeks.

Maybe these shows will be diverting.  In any event, there they are.  I mean, really - over there.  At the Self Help Radio website.

Things That Will Happen This Week (& Later I Guess)

Besides Texas grandparents sacrificing themselves for the economy, I mean.

Can I number them?  I'm going to number them.

1) There'll be a new episode of the The Dickenbock Report on Thursday morning.  It won't be anything special (when is anything I do ever special?) but it'll be something new from me, & it'll be on the air, though prerecorded.  Special bonus: it'll feature a report by none other than the Rev. Dr. Howard Gently!

2) Yes, I believe I'll share with you one or more of my recent prerecorded shows for Freeform.  I was asked on Twitter about sharing old, not-currently-available episodes of Self Help Radio, & I may do that too.

3) This week I'll also prepare a couple more mixes for Freeform.  They're fun to do, & until the station management decides how to restore some semblance of the schedule - to put shows on during their regular timeslot - I like to give them some content to play whenever, & keep it fairly fresh.

& finally 4) Since I don't know just when I'll be able to get back into the studios at KBOO & Freeform, I'll resume doing Self Help Radio as a podcast in April.  Things might be more dire in the world, but hopefully I'll have gotten enough of my shit together to do that.  Whether it airs on Freeform is a different thing entirely.  But I'll release the show on Mondays starting April 6.

& with that, I take a couple days break from this blog.  How fucking strange is this world right now?  I can't even.  I really can't even.

Days Like No Other

On Sundays I usually spend a great deal of time working on Self Help Radio.  I usually have hours of music to listen to (but I've hopefully done that before Sunday) which means I have many songs to sift through.  I have my silly interviews & "comedy" to edit.  I have the entire thing to put together & then to write stuff about.  Because of the fake interviews, I don't write as much as I used to - that work is being done for the Dickenbock Report now - but there's still information to look for & organize.

Maybe I've not mentioned this, but when we moved to Oregon - gosh, it's almost been a year - we worried a bit about our dogs.  In Texas they had a magnificent backyard, but the rental we got had a treeless, almost grassless square in the back that would have perhaps made a great "beginner's yard," but was nothing to write home about.  So, to engage the pups - already traumatized by the four-day journey across half the country - we started walking them twice a day.  The walks - in the morning & evening, when possible - take about an hour each time, often more.  That means some time between an eighth & a sixth of my waking hours is spent walking dogs.

Not that I don't enjoy it, & not that I'm unaware of the health benefits to me.  But it can be quite a hole blown into one's daily routine when one has a lot of work to do.  & Sundays - since September - have been quite busy days for me.

Until last week.  That's when I decided, upon hearing that Freeform was closing its doors to help deal with the pandemic, that I'd not do Self Help Radio for a while, with the excuse that I preferred to do it live.  & that Sunday was just fucking weird.

This Sunday has been worse.  I have this sense - I'm sure I'll feel it tomorrow morning too - that I'm not doing what I should be doing.  I am unable to enjoy this as if it were a vacation.  Although to be fair enjoying anything at all in these times seems awkward & even impolite.

Though, please, enjoy life.  We'll need something like joy to help us through this.  It's obvious very few who are "in charge" - I speak of those at the national level - have any real sense of the urgency of this & will many blame others when the dust settles & we see what's left.

Which is ultimately why it's weird to talk about my life or my dumb radio show.  Dylan once sang,

I wish I'd been a doctor
Maybe I'd have saved some lives that'd been lost
Maybe I could've done some good in the world
Instead of burning every bridge I crossed

It's astonishing to hear Bob Dylan be so self-piteous - his music has helped me beyond calculation - but I sympathize with the sentiment.  The best I've done this past week is cooked for the wife & made prerecorded radio shows for Freeform.  Yes, I've avoided hoarding toilet paper & willfully defying social distancing requirements, but even I can't imagine being such an asshole.

How weird to yearn for the Sundays I was scrambling to put a radio show together!  They seem so far away - two weeks ago! - & in a world that simply no longer exists.

Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting

Someone told me today was the first day of Spring but Googly says it was Thursday.  Here's a question: does time even matter anymore?  Here's a follow-up: what the actual fuck?

Yesterday I said I'd try to get stuff done but I finished the night staying up really late & binging coronavirus websites & then watching two Cinemasins episodes about two movies I'll never watch.

That's no excuse but a good night's sleep would be nice.  I wonder what that would feel like in this day & age.

One thing I keep finding myself doing is hearing old classic rock songs from my youth in my head & revisiting them on Youtube.  Mostly it's a disappointment - I will for example like a section of the song but find most of it quite silly - especially noodly guitar solos - but mostly I'm surprised how many of them have lyrics I simply never quite knew.  Like the Elton John song after which this post is named.  Here's a little background:

The first album I ever owned, the first record that was exclusively mine, was Elton John's Greatest Hits.  I loved it mainly for the song "Rocket Man" (though I had yet to see William Shatner's definitive version) & possibly "Daniel," a song that always freaked me out for some reason.  Anyway, the song "Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting" - & yeah, I know it's "Alright," I just can't bring myself to use the incorrect grammatical word, I'm sorry - that song never really grabbed me, & part of the reason why that I heard the lyrics wrong.

"Saturday's night all right for fighting, get a little action in," is how it goes.  For some reason - might it be because I got the record in 1976? - I thought the song said, "even in an election year."  There was a part of my eight-year-old mind that somehow accepted the premise that you shouldn't fight in election years, but Elton John was arguing that that indeed was fine.  Wanna scuffle on a Saturday in 1968?  Totally cool.  Bash some brains between Friday & Sunday in 1972?  Go for it.  Beat up some drunkards on a weekend in 1980?  You can do it dude!  Eight year old me appreciated the specificity but found it a tad unrelatable.

How many lyrics have I heard wrong my entire life?  You could narrow it down to Elvis Costello lyrics & it would be a troubling number.

Not as troubling as the world is right now, & who knows, maybe my mind is attempting to comfort me with soothing sounds from my childhood.  They might have been soothing then, but of course old Gary does find a lot of them, as I said, a little silly.  Still, keep 'em coming.  It's a welcome respite from the news which has no hope for any of us in sight.

Wait, I shouldn't speak for everyone.  The very rich will come through this all right.  They always do.

Panic & Depression

People text me - some email me - it's really been just a couple of people - a couple of people have either texted or emailed me - they ask me how I'm doing.  I say I spend a lot of time feeling panicked & a lot of time feeling depressed.  My wife isn't a terribly empathetic person & she doesn't really know how to deal with me in times like this.  Of course, I've known her for almost twenty years, I don't expect her to.

There's Twitter, there's the news, there's online reading, there's Next Door dot com.  There's walking the dogs in glorious spring weather - it's supposed to rain in a few days, maybe that fix something with my mood - there's so many people at home, outside, they're walking their dogs, they're taking their kids to the park.  Some are truly foolish - my wife noticed people playing volleyball - at least ten people touching the same ball & batting it to one another - & she said, "The winner of that game is COVID-19."  We've stopped letting people pet our dogs - & the smarter people don't try.

Tonight I went to get some food at a vegan Chinese place & they basically made us pay over the phone & put the food out on a table in the foyer.  They texted us when it was ready.  That seems completely crazy.  But welcome to this world.

& everyone's saying it'll get worse before it gets better.  My god, look at Italy.

But as far as I know I'm healthy (probably not, but for now...) & I have stuff to do.  I finished my third Freeform prerecord, that was fun, maybe I'll share them on the website.  I will spend the weekend working on the Dickenbock Report.  Last week at this time - last week! - I had decided to stop doing Sugar Substitute because I was too exhausted.  Now I could have three episodes of that in the can.  But it's best to do it for Freeform - right now people are making cool mixes for rotation.  It's adventurous to listen now.

Okay, I'm going to try to forge ahead.  Try to get shit done.  Try not to be overwhelmed by this strange world we're going to have to live in for some time.  It's been a week!  Five days ago I waited in line at Costco for toilet paper.  I don't even want to repeat what I've read online today.  Although this article was a true fucking delight: Texas Antivaxxers Fear Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccines More Than The Virus Itself.  Really?  Holy shit.

Can I Tell You Something?

This might be weird.  I did it for so long.  But I don't really like prerecording my shows.

This is something I admit as I am actively prerecording shows for Freeform Portland, & as I plan to prerecord one or more Dickenbock Reports for KBOO.

Here's the thing: I don't want to do it for Self Help Radio.  I feel the need to apologize.  But I spent so long doing the show prerecorded, I simply prefer to do it live.

But I know I won't be able to do it live for a while.  So maybe - not do it?

Things are changing fast, my mind might change in a week.  But there won't be a new Self Help Radio - even as a podcast - next week.

That's what I wanted to tell you.  I hope that's okay.

It Felt Weird

Not doing a show today.  I'll podcast next week.  I'm making some freeform shows for random play on Freeform, maybe I'll share them on my web site.

Fuck, it's just generally weird out here.  I waited in line at Costco for toilet paper today.  & I suspect it will just get stranger.

Whither Virus Cancels Self Help Radio?

(Original image here.)

In case you haven't heard - or you haven't read this blog - both KBOO & Freeform Portland have closed their studios for the time being in response to the coronavirus.  This means I won't be able to do Self Help Radio this week or perhaps for several weeks.  (But you know me - I'll probably make a podcast next week.  The reason I didn't do it this week is because I was waiting to hear what the plan was for prerecords or other broadcast options, & I just got the news this morning.  Not enough time, alas, to make a podcast.)  Okay, most of this post is parenthetical.  That's bad writing, right there.

Yes, this is disappointing but I am 100% behind the decision at Freeform.  The news we get from the rest of the world is a horror story, & everyone is advising us to act as if we're already infected & that means not infecting anyone else.  That's a good idea & I am proud of the decisive action taken at both stations.  (I will have a prerecord of the Dickenbock Report for the week after next, although I'm not sure if it will air at its regular time at this point.)

This is a bummer but eventually this virus will be contained & we can go back to whatever semblance of normal is left.  I myself have been a bit depressed about it all but will do what I can to help.  I'll keep you apprised of any radio appearances I may have & most probably (like I said) will make a Self Help Radio podcast in a week.

Please take care of yourselves.

Preface To Surprise: Would It Surprise You If There Were No Self Help Radio This Week?

It wouldn't surprise me.

Yesterday I wrote:

I expect - despite how fucked up the world is right now - I expect I will be in the Freeform studios for Self Help Radio come Monday.

But don't quote me on that.  Everything is in flux, everything is completely crazy. 

The folks at Freeform closed the studios this afternoon.  I mentioned they were exploring remote broadcasting options, but one station Board member said "we aren't going to remote broadcast in the short term."  I have been waiting for a confirmation email, & I have been working on Self Help Radio, but I suspect that there won't be one this week.

There hasn't been any information from KBOO about submitting shows, either.  I spent most of today wondering what the next couple of months will mean for me, radio wise.  I suspect at some point in there I may be battling a virus - as will many others.

Surprise!  A radio show about surprise is (not surprisingly?) probably not going to happen!

Shutdown

Today I almost subbed a show on KBOO.  It was a folky show, they found a folky sub in time.  I was almost out the door when I heard someone more - is qualified the word? sure - more qualified than I was was available.  I confess I wasn't excited about subbing the show, but now I wish I had, because at the end of the day, KBOO closed the station to everyone but staff.

Now, I don't have a show scheduled on KBOO till a week from Thursday, & I will prerecord that.  I don't like to prerecord but I understand.  The same marching orders came down from XRAY - but as you know, I am no longer doing a show there.

& my beloved Freeform?  They are exploring options for remote broadcasting.  I hope that works out, although I am not sure how that will work.  But I expect - despite how fucked up the world is right now - I expect I will be in the Freeform studios for Self Help Radio come Monday.

But don't quote me on that.  Everything is in flux, everything is completely crazy.  I think it's amazing we're protecting ourselves but I fear the uncertainty will perhaps drive us even more insane.

But what the hell do I know?  I didn't expect this yesterday, what can I say about tomorrow?

Suspending My Sugar Substitute Campaign

This is so completely unimportant but so is this blog & all the radio shows I do.  Like you, I am worried about pandemic & I can't be sure what the future holds but let me, for a moment, pretend everything is normal, & talk about the dumb radio shows I do.

Radio shows.  Do you know, a year ago, the idea of having more than one show on more than one station was unthinkable?  I did a program called the Tuesday Morning Blend on KNON, & the station manager would have "fired" me - they used that term, although of course I didn't get paid for deejaying - if I had done another show at a different noncommercial station.  "They are our competition," he would say, even if it were a low-power station in Denton whose signal never reached Dallas County limits.

Which isn't to say that I had a chance to do a show on such a station.  While I was in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, there were three low-power fm stations at which I might have done a show.  One of them only played "local" music, which was a restriction that would've made it impossible for me to do Self Help Radio, & the other two never wrote me back.  The latter two seemed to be content to have a few live deejays & the rest of the time play random music from iTunes or whatever.

Ack!  I didn't mean this to be a complaint or a whine.  I just wanted to point out that the idea of me doing three radio shows on three different stations - with no complaints by the stations! - the Program Manager at KBOO said, "Hey, we're all in this together" - that is still a bit mind-blowing for me.

Even moreso is the fact that I am doing a show on KBOO.  Of the three stations at which I'm involved, KBOO is the most storied, & probably the most respected.  Certainly it's the most recognized, which might not mean anything, but when I say I do a show on KBOO, people know what I'm talking about.

In any event, even before the pandemic ratcheted up this week, I was feeling very exhausted doing Sugar Substitute on XRAY so soon after Self Help Radio on Freeform.  When I did the show from 6-8am, there were eighteen hours between the end of one show & the beginning of another.  That changed when the show was moved to 8-10am.  I was getting very little sleep & then rushing off to do another show.  & I felt the last few Sugar Substitutes were suffering from my inability to prepare well for them.

Something has happened, though, & it's not just the coronavirus.  In April, I am going to be doing the Dickenbock Report - which now airs Thursday mornings from 3-5:30am - on Tuesday mornings from midnight to 3am.  In addition to getting an extra half-hour - gulp! - I will be much earlier, when many more people might be listening.  (To be fair, I have listeners now - this morning I got three calls, more in one setting than I've ever gotten on my XRAY show.)

But Gary!  In April, you will have only fourteen hours between Self Help Radio & the Dickenbock Report!  Won't you be tired then too?

Yes.  But the Dickenbock Report will happen every other week.  & giving up my XRAY slot frees me to work more on the other two shows.  I honestly can't believe I'm saying this.  But I think it might be better to do just two shows instead of three.

Holy shit, the me in Dallas is like, What the fuck?  Do you know what you're giving up?

Yeah, I do.  I wrote the Program Manager at XRAY today, after I got an email from the Operations Manager saying that if deejays can prerecord their shows, they should do so.  I don't want to prerecord Sugar Substitute.  I hope I can resurrect it at a different time in the future.  It was the one place I could play new music, which I love to do.  (Maybe I can do it on Freeform during sub shifts now?)

Wow this is a lot of writing.  It's my way of saying goodbye to Sugar Substitute for now.  & to prepare for the Dickenbock Report on Monday nights/Tuesday mornings in April.

Now if you don't mind I need to drink a little to insure I have a decent amount of nightmares about COVID-19 tonight.

Self Help Radio 030920: Every Day

(Okay, what's with me & the movie posters?  Original image here.)

Wow!  For the fifth time in this show's - what is it now? - nearly eighteen year history, I managed to program an entire show with only songs that have as their title the show's theme.  Never mind that there are both "Everyday" & "Every Day" songs.  They are synonymous, & anyway, are you that much of a stickler?  Really?  The truth is, I didn't start out wanting to do the show that way - it just so happened I noticed an overabundance of songs called "Every Day" (or "Everyday" - actually there are more songs with that title although they do in fact mean "Every Day").  One thing led to another.  & I do like a challenge.

In addition to that, & interviews with silly people, I went out into the field - well, it was a dog park - off leash! - & asked folks about things they loved & hated every day.  That was fun, & I hope to do more of that sort of thing, but I'm convinced people think I'm a weirdo, so I try to make sure I have my dogs nearby to prove I have a reason to be there.  One woman thought I was from a right-wing radio show!

Anywhatever, the show can be listened to every day (not recommended) or any time you want (that's probably a better plan) at Self Help Radio dot net.  There's a username (SHR) & a password (selfhelp) but also that information is on the page so what's the big deal?  What happened on the show, as well as the songs that were played, is listed below.

Seriously, though, I couldn't do this show every day.  I am aware of that.

Self Help Radio Every Day Show
"Everyday" Buddy Holly _Not Fade Away: The Complete Studio Recordings & More_
"Everyday" Mack Self _The Sun Country Box_
"Everyday" Johnny Rivers _Johnny Rivers_

introduction & definitions

"Everyday" The Challengers _Witchcraft In The AirL Detroit Soul 1957-1962_
"Everyday" The Moody Blues _The Singles+_
"Every Day" Sandie Shaw _Nothing Comes Easy_
"Every Day" The Outcasts _Acid Visions: The Complete Collection, Vol. 2_
"Every Day" The Golden Dawn _Power Plant_

one of Gary's favorite words!

"Every Day" Sleepy Labeef _Larger Than Life_
"Everyday" The Climax Chicago Blues Band _A Lot Of Bottle_
"Everyday" Gil Scott-Heron _Small Talk At 125th & Lenox_
"Everyday" Dead Fingers Talk _Storm The Reality Studios...  Plus_
"Everyday" Rikk Agnew _All By Myself_

interview with expert millennials Alyssa & Jason

"Everyday" The Delmontes _Carousel_
"Every Day" Go Sailor _Go Sailor_
"Everyday" Ivy _Realistic_
"Everyday" Collette Carter _The New Stroboscopic_
"Everyday" Thee Headcoats _Beached Earls_

interview with sociologist Dr. Stang Foley

"Everyday" A Drag City Super Session _Tramps, Traitors, & Little Devils_
"Every Day" Sing Sing _Madame Sing-Sing_
"Every Day" The School _Wasting Away & Wondering_
"Every Day" The Sunbathers _A Weekend Away With..._

Marge Most interviews Parson Abernathy no she doesn't

"Everyday" Indian Jewelry _Free Gold!_
"Everyday" Keeps _Brief Spirit_
"Everyday" Sacred Paws _Strike A Match_
"Everyday" Weyes Blood _Titanic Rising_

conclusion & goodbye

"Everyday" Yo La Tengo _And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out_
"Everyday" Saturday Looks Good To Me _Saturday Looks Good To Me_

Whither Every Day?

(Original image here.)

First, to assuage your fears: this show is not an announcement that Self Help Radio will be on every day.  Yes!  I can hear your sigh of relief.  I'm on the radio enough as it is - imagine if you had to suffer through daily episodes of Self Help Radio!  Don't you have enough to worry about as it is?

Second, I know a while back I did a show with the theme "the days of the week".  You might be asking yourself, "Isn't that the same as 'every day'?"  No, & you're overthinking it.  That show featured songs which happened to mention every day of the week.  This show simply features songs where people talk about things that happen every day.  Non-specifically.  It's different.  I swear.

Third - & I can't promise this will happen - but I might be able to do on this show what I have only done four times before - & that was when I did shows with the themes heaven, tell me, everybody knows, & hold on - I might be able to play nothing but songs with the theme as the title for the entire show.

There will be one catch - there are songs called "every day" & songs called "everyday."  I plan to play nothing but songs with those titles.  But are they the same title?  It's for you to decided.  I got nothing to prove.

Tomorrow!  Monday!  From 8-10am!  On Freeform Portland!  90.3 & 98.3 fm!  freeformportland.org!  It's not every day you hear a show like this!

Preface To Every Day: What Do You Do Every Day

That's an interesting question - what do I do every day?  I asked the internet that question & instead of some social or psychological answer, it proceeded to tell me what I should do every day.  For example, this web page from lifehack.org had thirty suggestions "that improve the quality of your life."  Let me go through the first few, may I?

1. Drink a cup of coffee or tea. The caffeine will help to give you a much-needed boost – and it is pretty delicious too!

Wow, is this web page sponsored by the coffee or tea industry?  I don't like hot liquids, & I try to stay away from caffeine if I could.  I do drink caffeinated sodas when I am up late/early to do radio, but luckily I haven't felt addicted so far.

2. Wake up earlier.

Spoken like someone who doesn't have to be awake at 3am to do a radio show.  & if you wake up earlier every day, won't you be waking up around your bedtime?

3. Clean out your email.

As someone who does this, I don't think it improves the quality of my life.  I'm just a tad OCD, & when I spend a few minutes to go through email, I often think to myself, "God, I'd be so much happier if have an inbox with a thousand emails in it didn't make me uncomfortable."

4. Make a friend smile.

All I can say is that my cats are humorless fucks.

5. Read the newspaper.

It's interesting it doesn't specify which newspaper.  I have a few I check out online, but most recently I've become aware of a local paper that seems to collect the most horrible stories you've read on Next Door.  If I read that every day, I'd be afraid to go outside.

6. Hug someone you are close to.

Again, I could use some new cats.

7. Have a quick tidy up if you have a few spare minutes.

Is this even English?

8. Write a diary entry or a blog post.

Sigh.

It is true that I don't write in this blog every day - I usually do it five days a week.  Isn't that enough?  Seriously.  Isn't it?

Or is it already too much?

SXSW & The Single Coronavirus

It really shocked me today when I found out they cancelled South By Southwest in Austin this year.  Until I discovered that the people behind South By Southwest didn't cancel the festival - the city of Austin did.  Read more here.

Which makes sense - South By Southwest (SXSW) makes millions of dollars for Austin, why in the world would any capitalist enterprise cancel any event for health reasons?  This is not to say it won't be without consequences - local businesses, especially local venues, will suffer the most.  They usually operated with such a slim profit margin, a music festival might float them for the rest of the year.  I have read reports about venues which have ordered lots of beer for the festival - which was to begin next week - who cannot return the order if there are not thousands descending on Austin for the week.

At the moment, I don't think I'm nervous about going to see shows - there are a few in March here in Portland I might want to see - but if this keeps happening, what will our future concert calendars look like?  Will the folks who bought wristbands & badges for SXSW be reimbursed for their purchase?  Will the folks who booked flights to Austin (& reserved hotel rooms) back out, or come anyway?  I had read that some bands cancelled their SXSW showcases - what about the bands that didn't?

Now, I know I don't live in Austin anymore, & none of this matters to me in the abstract (I most probably won't visit Austin ever again).  But I feel a strange kinship to the folks who live at the edges of the monstrosity that the South By Southwest music festival has become.

Mostly I want everyone to be safe.  Is this something that will become more awful with time?  If so, good!  Cancel the music festivals!  If not - well, let's be glad we were safe.  All the people I know in Austin will be safe.  That's good enough for me.

Corona

As is my wont, I discussed the coronavirus on Sugar Substitute this week, & it's something I read about occasionally (all right, constantly) when I am surfing the net.  Outside the world seems pretty much the same - spring is coming tentatively to Portland, people are still waiting for buses & walking their dogs & driving way too slow - but at Costco they were out of toilet paper (!) & as I was leaving I heard to employees say, "Well, that was the last of the Clorox wipes!"

Now it says twelve confirmed dead in the United States.  There are many cases just north & south of us here.  It's a bit frightening.  But, again, I am not seeing folks in masks, I don't know a person who's been unwell, & though I am taking precautions - wiping down consoles at the radio stations before I use them, for example - I feel a little silly doing so.

But, yes, I'm anxious about it.  I watched Bill Maher last Friday & he seemed a bit freaked out.  I watched John Oliver on Sunday & he was a bit more helpful.  In fact, I'm going to watch that segment again.  Want to watch with me?  Cool.

Self Help Radio 030220: Quite A Show

Yes, the first Self Help Radio on from 8-10am on Freeform was indeed "quite a show."  Do not make a drinking game out of the foul-ups, bleeps, & blunders, or you'll have alcohol poisoning before the second hour begins.  "Quite" as an adverb here can mean so many things, it's sweet if you assume it means something intensifying, as in "quite good," but more often than not, for this show anyway, it goes the other way: "that's not quite right."

Still, it was quite the time this morning, what with English computers interrupting, & old dissolute mentors calling in.  There was music, poetry, secret call-ins, & I almost - almost! - revealed Masonic secrets that probably would've gotten me killed, if not audited.

You can listen now at Self Help Radio dot net.  As always, it's quite inconvenient that you'll need to know a username & a password, but as usual it's SHR & selfhelp respectively.  What happens on the show - which too two hours, quite a lot of time! - is listed below.

All right.  That's quite enough for now.

Self Help Radio - Quite A Show
"Quite Early Morning" Pete Seeger _The Essential Pete Seeger_
"Quite Ugly One Morning" Warren Zevon _Mr. Bad Example_
"Quite All Right" The Reputations _Electric Power_

introduction & definitions

"Allright/Not Quite" The Apples In Stereo _The Discovery Of A World Inside The Moone_
"Not Quite Burning Bridges" Bunnygrunt _Wish I'd Kept A Scrapbook: A Tribute To Tullycraft_
"Quite Quieter Than Spiders" Joy Electric _The Ministry Of Archers_
"Quite Disappointing" 999 _The 999 Singles Album_
"Mary, Mary Quite Contrary" Ruff Diamond _Mary, Mary Quite Contrary_

an English computer interrupts!

"Quite Unrehearsed" Colin Newman _It Seems_
"Quite Ahead Of My Time" David Bowwow _439 Golden Greats: Never Mind The Originals Here's The HeeBeeGeeBees_
"Standing Quite A Long Way Away" Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie _Saturday Live, Vol. 1_
"Almost But Not Quite There" Traffic Jam (Status Quo) _Quotations, Vol. 1: The Beginning_
"The Hour Of Not Quite Rain" Buffalo Springfield _Last Time Around_

idioms - with a Ned Dry interruption!

"Quite Content" The Soup Dragons _Scared To Get Happy (A Story Of Indie-Pop 1980-1989)_
"She Seems Quite Free" The June Brides _She Seems Quite Free_
"Not Quite Right" The Cannanes & Steward _Communicating At An Unknown Rate_
"Why I Am Quite Handy With The Ladies" Emo Philips _Live From The Hasty Pudding Theatre_
"Not Quite A Lady" Miss World _Keeping Up With Miss World_

Gary's old mentor, Pat "Stinky Pete" Millburn, calls in!

"I'll Never Quite Get Over You" The Hep Stars _We & Our Cadillac_
"Not Quite A Yes" Arab Strap _Philophobia_
"Quite Like You" Andy Shauf _The Party_
"Not Quite The Same" Temples _Hot Motion_
"Quite Unusual" Front 242 _Official Version_

conclusion & goodbye

"Quite Naturally" The Jellydots _Hey You Kids!_
"Quite Good Time" 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong _Baby Trash_
"Quite A Reputation" The Chymes _Girls In The Garage, Vol. 2_
"Quite Fast" David Moses & Group _Swinging London: The Accidental Genius Of Saga Records 1968-1970_
"Must Be Quite A Show" Marvin Gaye _Motown Unreleased 1964_
"The Picture Became Quite Clear" The Manhattans _With These Hands_

Whither Quite A Show?

(Informative information to inform you here.)

That's correct: this week's Self Help Radio theme is "quite a show."  Which means of course a bunch of songs that prominently feature the word "quite."  If you don't know how to use the word "quite," you will get many examples on this week's show, & you can also watch the video I linked to above.  It's actually quite entertaining & informative.

There's something else going on, of course - Self Help Radio is changing timeslots for the new Freeform Schedule (which began this morning at midnight!).  We're moving up from 6-8am to 8-10am.  & I felt it would be a good introduction to the show to any new listener to let them know that Self Help Radio is "quite a show" - but also that the show does dumb things like spend an entire show playing songs & talking about an adverb.  It does that from time-to-time.  That's how Self Help Radio rolls.  It's quite ridiculous.

The show is on tomorrow, Monday morning, new timeslot! from 8-10am on 90.3+98.3fm Freeform Portland freeform portland dot org.  Will it be quite entertaining?  With "quite" as the theme, it better be!

Preface To Quite A Show: No More Non Sequiturs For Me, Thanks

Back when I used to smoke - I used to smoke - I quit smoking a while ago, I think it must be over ten years now, although my smoking heyday was from 1995-2005 or so - about ten years as a moderately heavy smoker - a pack a day - more if I were out drinking - I remember one night hanging with my friend Molly I ran out of matches & so I kept lighting a new cigarette with the one I had been smoking & she said, "Gary! You're chain smoking!" - until then I don't think I knew what chain smoking meant - anyway, I quit around 2005 or so - it was Halloween, I remember - maybe 2006 - it was uncomfortable but after a couple of days I was fine - but I still kinda longed for a cigarette - & I took it up again in the summer of 2008 - at that point I was a "secret smoker" - I found quiet places to smoke & only told a few people I smoked - of course I smoked at home - I guess I was a smoker when I moved from Austin to West Virginia in 2009 but I don't remember smoking on the drive - I had to quit smoking for good in the fall of 2009 because of my health - so I suppose I smoked for eleven years? - I had a couple cigarettes since then - probably the last in 2012 or so - usually when I was drinking - if I smoked a cigarette sober I'd do two things immediately: I'd get incredibly nauseous & I'd really, really need to take a shit - I remember I had a cigarette in Atlanta in 2013 - I bummed it off a cute girl at a bar - it was something awful, like a Marlboro Light - I was drinking but the cigarette really fucked me up - my hands got numb - anyway - back when I used to smoke - as I was saying - what was I saying? - I was going to say something about what my life was like when I smoked - but the memories came flooding back & I can't remember now (ironically) what I was getting at when I wrote "back when I used to smoke" - there was a time when everyone smoked - I grew up in a haze of tobacco smoke - my mother smoked - nearly every one of my siblings smoked - it was stupid of me to take up smoking when I did but in a way - I suppose I might not be saying this if I had a condition like lung cancer or COPD caused by smoking - in a way I'm glad I was a smoker -  something about the experience is nice to have under one's belt - but I am far more glad that I no longer smoke - it's not worth the cost, financially & to your health - & I never feel like a non-smoker - I feel like an ex-smoker - it's funny, or maybe it's sad, it's funny & sad, near KBOO is what I think is a halfway house for women & children - there's no sign that says that, but that's because - especially if they come from violent homes - they usually don't advertise such places - anyway, they obviously don't allow smoking on the premises - so the women will find a place just outside the boundaries of the complex & they'll smoke there - sometimes it's like an open air cocktail party (without the cocktails) there are so many women just standing there smoking - & I try to not bother them - I will cross the street instead of having to walk through them - but there's a woman I've seen twice - none of these women seem older than thirty - there's a woman who I've seen standing there, smoking, looking at her phone, & she looks seven or eight months pregnant - & it bothers me but I have a confession to make - I was outside my work sometime earlier this century smoking & a woman stopped me & asked for a cigarette - I was never greedy, I always shared, what a merchant of death I was - & when I was lighting her cigarette, she told me she was three months pregnant - I know I should've knocked the cigarette out of her mouth & told her to go elsewhere - but instead I just said, "I guess I'm going to hell" - she tried to make me feel better but I felt awful - & I remember my mother telling me she never smoked when she was pregnant - & I don't know if I believe her - one of my brothers is so addicted that even after he had a stroke he continues to smoke - but what the fuck do I know about pregnancy, maybe it makes you have strength to do such things - in any event - I thought I'd remember what I was going to say but it doesn't look like I will - but I used to smoke - if there's anything to take away from this, it's that I used to smoke - & another thing - I don't miss it at all.  Not anymore.

Just Watched Tonight's Real Time With Bill Maher

& now I know I'm going to have nightmares about the coronavirus.

Yep, I'm going to spend the rest of night sipping whiskey & reading too much about this disease.  I'll try to stay away from alarmist websites.  But I make no promises.

Another thing: I need to clean the boards & the mics & the stuff I use at radio stations starting now.  That's what I will do.  Good lord.

Three Possible Flavors (Mostly Unpalatable)

Early Tuesday morning, when I was doing the show I do on XRAY, I came to a weird realization.  It may not seem like it, because all the shows I do have me in them, but I think there's three different (not wildly different, but perhaps demonstrably different) kinds of me who host the shows.

Take Sugar Substitute, the XRAY show.  I mainly just play music, but I jot down notes about the bands & will mention them (that band is from Philadelphia!) when I back-announce.  But more often than not, I'm not making much sense in a stream-of-consciousness style, somewhat like I used to do at KNON.  Basically, I won't stop talking.

This stands in direct contrast to The Dickenbock Report, which, since it's supposed to be a kind of newscast, is pretty scripted.  I ad-lib a little, but mainly I'm reading during airbreaks.

Self Help Radio is a mix of both - there's not always a lot of time to completely off the rails like I do on Sugar Substitute, but I'll sometimes find myself doing that.  But since there's usually some information I'd like to convey, I do have notes I have taken, which I attempt to read.  But a lot of it is me clumsily riffing.

That was a weird thing to come to terms with - the fact that I have different approaches for different shows.  My brain just said to me, "If I ever get a fourth show..."  & then there was just screaming, screaming from everywhere, inside & out.

Self Help Radio 022420: Bees Revisited

(Look at that beauty.  Original image here.)

This was a bittersweet show to do.  It was by request from Freeform deejay Jaxxmaster Kevrock - the fellow whose show has followed Self Help Radio for the past six months - & it turns out it's his last show for a while.  He's taking six months off (that's the length of the Freeform schedule).  He will be missed!

So I'm glad I did the show when I did!  I wish I had recorded his first airbreak - Kev is actually a beekeeper & he said some powerful things about bees.  Instead, all you get is my silliness & lots of songs about bees.  By the way, for the record, the show is about 33% new.  I suspect if I hadn't relied so much on the original show, I might have found many more new bee songs.  As it happened, there are ten songs I didn't play on the original, & I think that's grand.

Listen to the show now at Self Help Radio dot net - pay attention to the username & password info (it's SHR & selfhelp).  See what you'll hear on the show below.

& for fuck's sake save the bees!

Self Help Radio Bees Show Revisited
"Why Does A Bee Buzz?" Marais & Miranda _More Nature Songs_
"Busy Bee Boogie" Hal Serra & Carol Mark _Animal Hootenanny_
"Buzz Buzz Buzz" Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers _Back In Your Life_
"Honey Bee" Mountain Man _Made The Harbor_

introduction & definitions

"Flight Of The Bumble Bee" Harry James & His Orchestra _Swingin' The Classics_
"Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee" Julie London _Swing Me An Old Song_
"Honey Bee (Keep On Stinging Me)" Diana Ross & The Supremes _Love Child_
"Bee Sting Stings" Tullycraft _City Of Subarus_
"Honeybee" Girlfrendo _One_

interview & performance by beetronica musician Oscar Maize

"Me & The Bees" The Softies _Holiday In Rhode Island_
"Like A Honey Bee (Honey Bee)" The Carousel _abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz_
"Bees" The Hepburns _In The Mean Time_
"One Bee At A Time" Negativland _True False_
"A Sleepin' Bee" Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderly _Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderly_

interview with millennial experts Alyssa & Jason

"Beehive" Boss Hog _Boss Hog_
"Taster Of The Honey (Not The Keeper Of The Bee)" The Jones Girls _The Music Merchant Story_
"Bee Kind To The Bugs" Culture Abuse _Bay Dream_
"The Bees (The Bees)" His Name Is Alive _Stars On ESP_
"Honey Bee" Johnny Johnson & The Bandwagon _The Golden Torch Story (A Collection Of 18 Classic Northern Soul Shakers)_

interview with Rev Dr Howard Gently (replay)

"Honey Bee" Jon & Robin _Elastic Event_
"The L.S. Bumble Bee" Peter Cook & Dudley Moore _We Can Fly, Vol. 1_
"Beeswing" Richard Thompson _Mirror Blue_

interview with master beekeeper Lana "Swarmy" Swarms

"Beestung" Kristin Hersh _Hips & Makers_
"Tumble Bee" Karl Blau _Shell Collection_
"Humble Bee" John Wesley Harding _The Confessions Of St. Ace_
"I'll Be The Bee" Ruth & Al _Crescent City Soul: The Sound Of New Orleans 1947-1974_

conclusion & goodbyes

"Sweet Honey Sucking Bees" W. H. Auden _An Evening Of Elizabethan Verse & Its Music_
"Queen Bee" John Lee Hooker _The Classic Early Years 1948-1951_
"New Bumble Bee" Memphis Minnie _Queen Of The Country Blues: All The Published Sides 1929-1937_
"Beehive (feat. Tony Allen, Akenya Seymour, & Isaiah Oby)" Chicago Afrobeat Project _What Goes Up_

Whither Bees (Again)?

(Image from here.)

The reason why Self Help Radio's show this week is about bees is very simple: someone asked me.  Yes, someone said, "I hear you on the radio all the time saying if I'd like you to explore a theme, just ask, & so, I'd like you to do a show about bees."

But there was a twist!  I had already done a show about bees, back in 2016, on a station in Kentucky!

But there was another twist!  That show was done nearly four years ago & over two thousand miles away.  The chances of anyone in Portland ever having heard that show were infinitesimal.  (The chances of anyone having heard it at the time were also vanishingly small.)  So why revisit the theme?  Update it, if you will, with some new songs & new interviews!

& that's what will happen.  Tomorrow morning, Monday, February 24, from 6-8 am, on Freeform Portland, 90.3 + 98.3 fm, freeformportland.org - a show about bees.

You know, I could've done a show about honey or something - made it somewhat new.  But nope!  I wanted to revisit the theme!

Preface To Bees Revisited: Why Revisit Bees? Or Any Theme At All?

In the ridiculous set of rules I laid out for myself for Self Help Radio, one of them was, "Don't repeat themes."  I'm sure this was initially a challenge, to myself certainly, but also to other deejays who repeated theme-based shows - especially on holidays.  One deejay in Austin would play the almost exact same show every Thanksgiving.  I said to myself, even if I did do a show for holidays - like Valentine's Day - I would pick a different theme based on the holiday each year but never repeat that theme ever again.

Except - yeah, there are always exceptions - I decided in 2008 I would, around the time of the show's anniversary, revisit an old theme then & there.  & I have - sometimes I almost forget, but I've managed to do that.  (I also have used episodes of Self Help Radio in other radio shows I've done - like with the Dickenbock Report, where for example the last show I did, I played songs from the Self Help Radio episode about kissing, which for some reason I didn't do on Valentine's Day.  Although I mostly used songs from the KNON Tuesday Morning Blend show I did in 2018 around Valentine's Day which used the old Self Help Radio show about kissing as its base.  The point is, I'm not averse to revisiting themes in other contexts - especially when I am doing three different radio shows on three different stations.)  I simply didn't want to re-do shows on Self Help Radio, it was a rule, except during anniversary shows.

Except - & this wasn't an exception I thought about until it happened - what if someone requests a show you've already done but couldn't have heard it?  For example, someone in Portland who likes bees who asked you to explore bees but you already did a show about bees?  It seems like that would be a good reason to do another version of the theme.  & why not?  The people who did the same shows over & over did them in Austin, & whatever reason I decided not to do that - envy, perhaps, or spite - shouldn't apply in another place in the future.  I don't archive all my shows.  They're not always accessible.  (That's mainly because who would want to listen to them?  The last year of shows I've done is always available on my website & nobody ever listens to them.)  & sometimes someone wants to hear a show I've already done.

Except - this is perhaps a rule about re-doing shows that I've never articulated - I'm doing new interviews & I'm going to play songs I didn't play on the previous show.  Because there have been new bee songs in the past four years, either recorded since or discovered by me since.

That's what's happening this week, & why.  I guess I should've saved this for tomorrow.  Oops.

Something I Wrote About Bees

This week's show - next week's show - whatever - is kind of a rerun.  I'll do it live, but I once did a show about bees, four years or so ago.  More on why I am re-doing a show tomorrow.  But I never really re-run things I've written on this blog because, well, one, they're not that memorable, these things I write, & two, there's hardly ever a reason to repost them.  But here's something I wrote about bees in May of 2016

_________________________

In a couple of the fake interviews for this week's shows - these are parts I might have edited out, because I tend to edit out my own contributions, whittling them down to more or less pertinent questions for my funny friends/guests* - I mentioned that I was allergic to bees.  But I have a confession to make: I don't know if I am.  I have never been stung by a bee.

Why would I say, & actually believe, that I am allergic to bees?  Because once my mother told me I was.  That was it!  I'm sure she was telling me that I had a dangerous allergy because she wanted me to be safe, & not to fuck around with bees, creatures that might sting me if I stupidly put my hand into their hive or something.  My mother is pretty much afraid of everything, & that fear was quite easily passed down into all her children.

& you know what, it worked!  It worked so well that I have never been stung by a bee.  I remember watching in awe as a middle-school friend not only got stung by a bee (I was so freaked out I almost cried) but calmly took the stinger out of his skin.  He looked briefly at it as if it were as threatening as a splinter & tossed it away.

As threatening as a splinter!  My mother once told me I absolutely had to get splinters out of my skin as soon as possible because otherwise they'd continue traveling downward, get into the blood vessels, & make their way to your heart, where one tiny splinter could stab & stab & stab you until you fucking died.

If she felt that way about a splinter, imagine what horrors a bee sting could inflict!  Honestly, I don't even know if my mother knew about allergic reactions or going into anaphylactic shock or any of that shit.  She just erred on the side of being terrified of the entire world & made sure to burden us with her suspect wisdom at every opportunity.

The weird thing is how long it took me - well into adulthood - to figure out how bogus it was.  Take, for example, fire ants.  Fire ants would bite you until you died, said my mother, & that's why you should be careful walking around them.  Only, my little brother once stood in a fire ant hill, got bitten all over his legs, was in a lot of pain, was covered in calamine lotion for a night, & didn't die.

It's a testimony to how much a child relies upon the parent that I didn't call my mother out after my brother lived.  Because when I saw those ants crawling all over him, I thought he was going to die.

Anyway, bees.  I'm still afraid of bees, & actually most insects that are larger than a dime.  & who knows?  Maybe I should carry an EpiPen with me.  For all the hell I know, out of the thousands, if not millions of things my mother told me that turned out to be hysterically wrong, she might be right about this.**

* I am only replaying one of the old interviews from the original show, so this might not come up at all.
** I've still never been stung by a bee.

These Times Without Radio

There was only, for me, one radio show this week - Self Help Radio.  On the way to the show on Monday morning, I got an ominous warning in my Prius & it turned out our battery had died.  This is apparently exceedingly common in Priuses, although no one ever told me, & I took it to a nearby dealership after the show to deal with it.

It would take a couple of days to diagnose the problem which meant I couldn't get to XRAY to do Sugar Substitute the next night/morning, so I didn't get to do that show.  A different XRAY show ran in repeat instead of mine.  Sad face emoji.

This left me resigned to only doing one radio show this week until!  Look!  There's a 4 to 6 am slot on Freeform open!  I think I'll do that!

Tomorrow morning, 4-6am, me just playing music & talking about nothing on Freeform.  I'm saved from just one show a week!

Good lord, how did I do this a year ago?

Self Help Radio 021720: Intent

(Of course, this is based on the title card of this television show.)

Boy, this show felt like a mess.  Was this show a mess?  I'm very sleepy.  I feel like I'm about to go to sleep after unleashing a mess upon Portland.  This was not my intention.

Something I learned from this show: it's better when I have guests.  Terrible guests are better than just lots of Gary.

Something else I learned from this show: intent & intention kinda mean the same thing.  They are both used in each other's definitions.  That seems lazy of dictionaries, doesn't it?

One other thing I learned right before this show: you can be driving along in your Prius listening to Kinky Friedman & an alert will flash & tell you CHECK HYBRID SYSTEM STOP THE VEHICLE IN A SAFE PLACE IMMEDIATELY.  & you might say, fuck it, I need to get to a radio station to do a show & if the car explodes or catches fire you'll want to be close so you can abandon it as close to the radio station as possible.

Maybe that makes a radio show a mess?  I felt like I compartmentalized it pretty well.

Anyway, for all intents & purposes, the show as it happened is as it happened.  It's over at the Self Help Radio webpage as we speak.  You can see what you might hear below.  Remember: username SHR, password selfhelp.  It wasn't my intention to make such a mess.  But I have no intention of cleaning it up!

Self Help Radio Intent Show
"Intent" The Creeping Nobodies _Stop Movement Stop Loss_
"Intent" Lunch Duchess _Nervous Breakthroughs_
"Pure Intent" Empath _Active Listening: Night On Earth_

introduction & definitions

"Intentions" Ed's Redeeming Qualities _Big Grapefruit Cleanup Job_
"Intentions" Bill Ding _And The Sound Of Adventure_
"Intentions" Film School _Brilliant Career_
"Right Intention" William Hope _Buddhism Plain & Simple by Steve Hagen_
"Signal Your Intention" Hodges, James, & Smith _Incredible_

let's watch a YouTube video on the radio!

"Letter Of Intent" Ducktails _The Flower Lane_
"Statement Of Intent" Bis _Intendo_
"Statement Of Intent" Chris Knox _Seizure_
"Almost Unintentional" Alistair Hulett _In The Back Streets Of Paradise_

idiom time

"Good Intentions" Kitty Kallen _Warm & Sincere_
"New Emotion, Good Intentions" Mondial _The Sound Of Young Sweden Vol. 2_
"Good Intentions" The Dudes _Brain Heart Guitar_
"Good Intentions" Marika Hackman _I'm Not Your Man_
"Good Intentions?" Rocketship _Here Comes... Rocketship_

Ned Dry interrupts!

"Get Up Off Your Good Intentions" Charley Pride _She's Just An Old Love Turned Memory_
"Good Intentions" Ex Norwegian _No Sleep_
"Best Of Intentions" The Spook School _Could It Be Different?_
"Introducing John Stanley Hart/He Entered The Bar With The Best Of Intentions" William S. Burroughs _You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With_
"Good Intentions Heal The Soul" Mansun _Kleptomania_

producer Bob interrupts!

"You've Got Bad Intensions" Bobby "Blue" Bland _I Pity The Fool: The Duke Recordings, Vol. 1_
"Bye Bye Badman" The Stone Roses _The Stone Roses_
"Cool Intentions" Islands _Taste_
"Cruel Intentions" Shlomo Franklin _Apt. 16_

conclusion & goodbye

"(Do You Intend To Put An End To) A Sweet Beginning Like This" Fats Waller _1935, Vol. 2_
"I Don't Intend To Die In Egyptland" Joshua White _Goodbye Babylon_
"Gran Intento" Monica Giraldo _Putumayo Presents Cafe Del Mundo_

Whither Intent?

(Image from here.)

It wasn't ever my intent to make a radio program about intent.  It was never intended, I should say.  I didn't have the intention.  & yet, here we are, less than a day from a Self Help Radio about intent.  How in the world did that happen?

It had been so long since I had been in a tent.  It must've been years, actually.  A tent, you know, a camping tent.  Not a giant tent-like structure that might house a farmer's market or a religious revival.  & yet there I was, in someone's tent.  & by the way, it was in a camping situation, not in a houseless person situation.  Here in Portland you see a lot of tents, often on sidewalks, or along the highway.  It's a big problem here, how to deal with them.  This was not that.  I was in someone's tent, somewhere where they were camping.

Oh shit, I forgot to mention, this was in a dream.  Yeah, I wasn't just wandering around some natural area, saw a tent, & went in.  No, this was a tent in a dream.  That was important, I'm sorry.  Yeah, I was dreaming I was in someone's tent.  But whoever's tent it was, that person wasn't someone I knew.  Just someone who had, previously in the dream I guess, invited me into their tent.  & like you do in dreams, they were talking to me about my radio show.

"Have you ever done a show about tents?" this person in my dream asked me.

The truth is, I couldn't remember, so I tried to look up my website on my phone, to see what themes I'd explored before.  But my phone couldn't find the website.  This happens to me a lot in my dreams, I try to find out information that I honestly don't know so I try to use a computer & because my brain doesn't know the information, it makes my computers not work.  In the dream I was embarrassed I didn't know if I had done a show about tents, & also that my web page didn't seem to exist, so I said, "I might have."

The person in the tent - & I couldn't describe them, I don't even know if I saw them, their tent was tidy but there was only one light, a Coleman lantern, just hanging in the center, illuminating camping gear & an unrolled sleeping bag - the person said, "In tents!  Intense!  In tent!  Intent!"

Perhaps sensing I might be harmed, I started to leave the tent.  The person said, "Do a radio show that's in tent in tents!  Intent intense!"

& I can't tell you how I knew the person wasn't just say "intense" or "in tents" over & over - somehow I figured out they were playing with the words.

When I woke, I tried to explain the dream to my wife, who was immediately bored by it, because it was, frankly, a boring dream.  (At some point in the dream I got to feed a deer, but that's not important to this story, but gosh! what a thrill!)  But there was a part of me that thought my mind was daring me to do a radio show that would be weird to do, so I decided - without looking around for songs - to do a show with the theme "intent," as a way to answer the challenge.  You'll have to wait till tomorrow to see how that worked out for me.

Yes, tomorrow - Monday morning - 6 to 8am on Freeform Portland, 90.3 & 98.3 fm, freeformportland.org.

Listen, as I may never let my dreams dictate a show theme ever again.

Preface To Intent: Be Careful What You Wish For

Sometime last week, I complained that that week's theme had too many songs for me to get through.  I wrote, "Please don't ever let me explore a theme that has the possibility of having more than ten hours worth of songs."  I am having the opposite problem this week.  I am having a hard time finding enough songs.

Well, yeah, I found enough songs.  But it wasn't the easiest journey.  Let's break this down:

The theme is "intent."  But why?  I guess I can answer that tomorrow.

Don't you have to read into songs to determine if they're about "intent"?  Why not simply look for songs about "intentions"?  The dictionary definition of "intent' is literally "intention or purpose."

& look, when you see the definition of "intention," you get, "a thing intended."  Suddenly your theme is opened up to intending as well as intentions!

That's how I filled the show up, anyway.  But maybe I can find a happy medium between too many songs & almost not enough songs.  For Pete's sake!

Valentine's Reminder

Happy Valentine's Day!  I remind you that you can listen to this week's Self Help Radio - which was all about the heart (💘) over at the Self Help Radio web page.  But wait!  There's more!

You can also listen to last year's Valentine's Day show, which was about flirting.  Not only were there very flirtatious songs, but if I recall correctly, we talked with flirting expert Dr. Jack Dick Curvybody & I played clips of my favorite flirt.  You can listen to it over here.

Have a happy day, lovers!

The Dickenbock Report Has Its Own Page

The Dickenbock Report has arrived on KBOO's web page!  & it only took five episodes & ten weeks!

There is now a Dickenbock Report page on the KBOO website.  KBOO archives all their shows, but if previous episodes of the Report are still there (since I assigned them to different shows), you'll have to follow the links on the Self Help Radio website to hear earlier programs.  You're not missing anything, in any case.

The Dickenbock Report is still in its infancy, & this week's show was cobbled together in haste from old episodes of Self Help Radio, Cradle To Grave, & some subbing I did on Freeform last summer.  Hopefully it won't continue to be a Frankenshow.  But since Portland hasn't heard much of anything I've ever done, & because much of what I've done hasn't been heard by anyone, I'm not going to feel too guilty plundering my archives.

Anyway, once that Dick Dickenbock guy shows up, I'm sure he'll make it all better.

Self Help Radio 021020: Valentine's Day 2020 - The Heart

(Original images from the Wikipedia, found here & here.)

Two millennials talking about dating apps.  A motivational speaker discussing a five-step plan to heart health.  A stranger who claims he has no heart.  An actual human heart that does impressions.  Lots & lots of songs about the heart.  What do all these things have in common?

If you know, send a postcard to Self Help Radio c/o Dickenbock Enterprises, Bangor, Maine.  We'd love to know.

No wait!  You don't have to do that!  I'll tell you: they are all part of this week's episode of Self Help Radio, which is a Valentine's Day episode, which is all about the heart.  Yes, many songs were played.  Yes, many guests were interviewed.  & yes, there were these odd pieces where a know-it-all anatomist talked about the actual human heart.  In a word: romantic.  What they had in common is the romance of the heart.

Listen to the show now & especially on Valentine's Day at Self Help Radio dot net.  There are a few hurdles to jump over to get to the show - you'll need to enter a username ("SHR") & a password ("selfhelp") (don't use the quotation marks).  But once you're there, you'll have two hours of hearty music.  What happens on the show is below.

Happy Valentine's Day!  Take care of your heart!

Self Help Radio Valentine's Heart Show
"What Will I Tell My Heart?" Arthur Prysock _The Legendary Big Band Singers_
"Hear My Heart" Ella Fitzgerald _Jukebox Ella: The Complete Verve Singles, Vol. 1_
"I Sold My Heart To The Junkman" The Starlets _Beg, Scream & Shout: The Big Ol' Box Of '60s Soul_

introduction & definitions

"Slow Down Heart" The Temptations _Emperors Of Soul_
"Locking Up My Heart" The Marvelettes _The Complete Motown Singles Vol. 3: 1963_
"Home In Your Heart" Otis Redding _The Otis Redding Story_
"My Runaway Heart" Carol Fran _Bluesoul Belles -The Complete Calla, Port & Roulette Recordings_
"I Ain't Got No Heart" The Mothers Of Invention _Freak Out!_

interview with Hearty the human heart

"Dark In My Heart" Lee Hazlewood _Lee Hazlewoodism - Its Cause & Cure_
"Mein Herz Sagt Oui" Jaqueline Boyer _Schlager-Erinnerungen_
"Temptation Inside Your Heart" The Velvet Underground _Peel Slowly & See_
"Ask My Heart" Eddie Billups _Atlanta Soul (The Peachtree Records Story)_
"A Heart Needs A Home" Richard & Linda Thompson _Hokey Pokey_

interview with Douglas Nome, a man without a heart

"Heart Of Mine" Bob Dylan _Biograph_
"Heart With No Companion" Leonard Cohen _Various Positions_
"Heart" Rocky Sharpe & The Replays _The Chiswick Story: Adventures Of An Independent Record Label 1975-1982_
"Another Nail In My Heart" Squeeze _Argybargy_
"Tapin' Up My Heart" The Mr. T Experience _...And The Women Who Love Them_

interview with motivational speaker Dirk Robbins

"Dear Heart" Cocteau Twins _BBC Sessions_
"Sloppy Heart" Frazier Chorus _Sloppy Heart EP_
"The Last Beat Of My Heart" Siouxsie & The Banshees _Peepshow_
"Destroy The Heart" House Of Love _The House Of Love 1986-88: The Creation Recordings_

interview with expert millennials Alyssa & Jason

"You Must Ask The Heart" Jonathan Richman _You Must Ask The Heart_
"One Big Heart" BMX Bandits _Theme Park_
"Safety Pin Stuck In My Heart" The Bartlebees _Urban Folk Legends_
"Epitaph For My Heart" The Magnetic Fields _69 Love Songs_

conclusion & goodbye

"Heart Of Glass" Nouvelle Vague _Bande À Part_
"I Saw My Heart Passing By" Stars In Coma _You're Still Frozen In Time_
"Dinosaur Heart" Bearsuit _Oh:io_

Whither The Heart?

(Yer heart's too big, fella.  Image from here.)

Hey, Valentine's Day is coming up so it's time for another Self Help Radio Valentine's Day show!  In the past, we've explored love & hate, crushes & jealousy, boyfriends & girlfriends.  We've featured love songs & tried to figure out what love is.  We got ourselves lovesick & experienced heartbreak, though we kept flirting with all kinds of sweethearts (including famous lovers), some of whom got roses but all of whom got valentines.  This year it seemed appropriate to look at the figurative center of love, the heart.

Which is what we'll do! That's tomorrow, Monday morning, from 6 to 8am, on Freeform Portland, which you can hear at 90.3 & 98.3 fm + online at freeform portland dot org.  I'm sure we'll hear a little about the anatomy of the heart but I suspect we'll spend much more time in metaphor.  Love lives in metaphor.  Doesn't it?

This will be the sixteenth Valentine's Day show Self Help Radio has done in the seventeen & a half years of its existence.  Why not a show in 2006?  I think it might have been one of those times the station airing Self Help Radio was off the air.  Or I forgot.  We've all forgotten Valentine's Day once, haven't we?  & those who live to tell of it never forget again.

Preface To Hearts: Card Games

A long time ago, I discovered some folks at my work had a regular card game.  Poker, it was, not Hearts, which is the card game referenced in the title, & which I once knew how to play but don't now, & which will not at all be the subject of any of the songs on this week's show, which is a Valentine's Day show, so the songs will be about the sort of hearts which one thinks of when one thinks of love & Valentine's Day, & probably there'll be some discussion about anatomical hearts, but we all know don't we that the heart is no more the seat of emotions than the liver is the seat of the soul, which as far as I know no one ever believed but which seemed like the right thing to say at the time, where was I? oh yeah, they played Poker not Hearts.

These weren't my friends but I was friendly with them & I wondered why I wasn't invited to their weekly poker game.  Indeed, even if it were small stakes, it seems like it would be fun to hang out with people - some of whom, come to think of it, I used to bowl with - & play cards & have male friends in my 40s.  When I asked, I didn't get a satisfying answer.  In fact, I don't remember the answer I got, but the answer basically said, "You can't play poker with us."

The person who rejected me - a co-worker - he didn't consult any of his poker buddies, but perhaps it was his game at his house.  He lived nearby at the time - walking distance, even on miserably hot Texas days.  Or nights.  But he unilaterally decided that I was not to be one of the poker people.

Interestingly, this guy had the habit of telling me, not all the time, but enough of a time that I noticed, stories from his poker games when we ran into each other at work.  "You'll never guess what happened last night at poker," he'd say.  Or: "Let me tell you this funny thing one of the guys told me on Poker Night."  He didn't seem to remember that I had hinted at one time that I might enjoy playing poker with the guys & he said no.  Or maybe he did remember, & he was just being a dick.

It didn't mean that much to me, not getting invited to play.  I had been excluded from things by people my entire life.  One gets used to such things.  He told me that it was a rule that one person picked all the music for one night, & one of the guys always played stuff everyone hated.  That would have been too much pressure for me.  The deejay in me would hope everyone was digging what I played.

Anyway, I thought about Poker when I thought about Hearts & I had hoped as I wrote this to come up with a clever ending which said something about "breaking Hearts" or "lonely Hearts" - oh I know!  I could have said, "I never did get to play Poker with those guys, so I spent many hours in my darkened room playing lonely Hearts."

Not bad.  I wish I had thought of it before I got to the end, though.  It remains just an idea that never saw proper exploration.

If I Might Complain A Little

Gripe, grumble, lament, moan.

Please don't ever let me explore a theme that has the possibility of having more than ten hours worth of songs.  I swear to Ra & Set & of course Isis that I have listened to a day's worth of songs about hearts & I am nowhere near finished.  At some point I am going to just stop & that'll be the show.

People often ask me if I've done a show about "cars" or some other very general theme.  There's simply no way to find the best two hours of music for something that could be an entire radio show.  Seriously, you could do a radio show called "Car Songs" & go years without repeating yourself.

The same is true about hearts.  I've eliminated heartbeats, heartbreak, & heartaches & still I have three days' worth of songs to go.  Please don't let me do this again.  Make me stick to more specific themes where I struggle to find two hours' worth of music.  Otherwise you'll get more of this:

Gripe, grumble, lament, moan.

Random Elevator Story

How long has it been since I've been on an elevator?  Is it weird to think there are elevators I've been on that don't exist any more?  But there are!  Here's a random story about one of them.

From sometime in 1988 until the building was renovated in the early 21st century, I worked in a building on the University Of Texas campus called Batts Hall.  It was built in the early 50s, & I assume the elevator dated from around that time - it certainly seemed to need to be serviced a lot, & sometimes I felt a little unsafe in it.

But almost every weekday morning for almost a decade I got in that elevator around 7:45am, rode up to the second floor, opened the lab I ran (it began as a language lab then ended a computer lab).  Some mornings - lots of mornings - I would have to go back downstairs for a meeting.  (Sometimes I did take the stairs, especially if I were late.)

Some mornings - not every morning - not even once a week - someone would have written, in precise penmanship, using a sharpie perhaps, the phrase "Jesus was gay" on the inside door of the elevator car.  "Jesus" was often not capitalized - "jesus was gay."  The first time I saw it - at 7:45 in the morning! - I chuckled & wondered who the fuck was up so early to write in the elevator?  Then I worried someone would think it was me when I got off the elevator!

Classes began at 8, & students are naturally late for 8am classes, so I was usually on the elevator alone, but I'm sure there were people up & down to all three floors of Batts after I was in my lab.  My meetings were often around 8:30, so I'd go back down - I'd try to use the elevator if I had seen the scribbled phrase - & inevitably, "jesus was gay" was violently scratched out, sometimes in marker, sometimes in pen, sometimes with so much pressure it fucked up the paint on the door.

Personally I don't believe in anything supernatural & I don't worship the people I admire, so anyone is allowed to think whatever they want about them.  It doesn't matter to me if you think Leonard Cohen is an asshole, & if you want to write it on the walls of a tiny elevator car, be my guest.  I'll think it's weird, but I suspect anyone who knows Leonard Cohen will know it's false, & anyone who doesn't know who Leonard Cohen is will likely think it's about some undergrad who's pissed off a girlfriend or something.

& yeah, I know, Jesus is a religious figure, who some think is the son of a god or a god himself or one-third of a god-thing, or all of the above, so it seems disrespectful.  So what?  If even some of the stories about him in the gospels are true, he endured way more opprobrium than an early morning graffito in an unsafe elevator in a college building.  What would he think of the anger & hate demonstrated by the person doing more damage to the paint than the simple sharpie?  It's hard not to marvel at the intense insecurity of the person who came to his god's "defense."

By lunchtime, someone had been dispatched to repaint, or clean off the sharpie, & I'm sure it was all forgotten - until a few days or weeks later when it happened again.

When did it start?  I began running the lab in 1994, & I saw it for the first time in the Fall of that year.  When did it end?  The whole building was gutted & remodeled - although I think they saved the elevator shaft though not the elevator - sometime in 2003 or 2004.  I had stopped running the lab in 1999, so the last I would have seen it was spring of that year.  (I worked on the ground floor then.  Not much need to go upstairs.)  I can't recall if I did - but I remember seeing it a lot.

Oh my gosh I want so badly to end this with the confession "It was me all along!"  But it wasn't.  I suspect it was someone who worked somewhere else in the building - the Spanish & Portuguese Department was on the second floor, where my lab was, so perhaps it was a disgruntled employee.  Maybe a grad student?  I never knew.  There were simply too many people in & out of the elevator for me to keep an eye on any "regular."

But perhaps that prankster made it a point to check up on his or her handiwork.  Maybe they even took pictures.  I have no idea why they would want to do such a thing, but I saw the whole chain of events happen more than a dozen times.  & there were days I never had to go back downstairs, or arrived late, or took the stairs.  I suspect if it were a scientific experiment, the results were the same every time.

How weird would it be if the person who did it found this blog post & wrote to me?  A twenty-year-old secret revealed at last?  Too bad I & this blog are hopelessly obscure.