May 7, 2019

It may seem a little cheap to return to something I wrote barely a year ago, but today is a momentous day for me & my family.  A year ago today we left a beautiful home & truly great neighbors to begin what would be an exhausting four-day trek across the United States to come live in Portland.  I'm glad I wrote these travelogues every night in the hotel rooms.  To this day I can't believe we actually did it.  Here's what I wrote a year ago in a hotel room in - well, it's what the post was called:

Santa Rosa, New Mexico

We made it.  516 miles.  Three dogs & me in a tiny Prius.  Three cats & the wife in a rented minivan. (A Chrysler Pacifica if you really want to know.)  The wife was happy because it had Sirius radio, & she loves the First Wave channel.  I am exhausted.

Last night I couldn't get to sleep, which is par for the course.  I get anxious before trips - my first trip by car to this part of the world, I spent the night until I collapsed from exhaustion around 3am thumbing through a Mapsco deciding the best route.  (This was in 1995, in the days before GPS.)  Then, as this morning, I woke at six.  It's 9pm New Mexico time, & I am running on fumes.  Which is great!  I'll sleep like the dead tonight.

We planned to leave at eight but it took a little longer to get the house cleaned & our shit packed - kudos to the wife for putting four & half times as much as realistically possible into the minivan - & so far the only thing we left behind was Magda's lunch.

It was sad to let the house go.  It's a lovely place, & I know even though they really can't miss it, the dogs (especially Pauline) are going to miss the beautiful yard.  I think my anxiousness about last night was equal parts going from the house & going to Portland.  The wife put so much work & so much of herself into the house & it was the most comfortable place I've ever lived.  Even after all our belongings were taken away on Thursday, I would find myself going to this room or that as I had been doing for two or more years, out of habit, surprised that my stuff wasn't there anymore.

But I love moving, I love going to new cities, I am very excited about getting to know Portland.  It's not that I have wanderlust per se, I just wish I could relocate every two or three years & spend time in a new place.

The dogs - who doubtless thought we were just going to the park - were easily cajoled into the car.  The cats, however, were freaked out - we put them in an empty room while we packed up & it unnerved Bolan, who was quite frantic.  Bronte & Boone hid in an empty closet, & they were easily grabbed & put into carriers.  Bronte & Bolan shared a large one, Boone had to be by himself in a regular-sized one.  The wife tells me that Bolan complained occasionally throughout the drive, & when we stopped & I checked on them, Bolan was meowing to get out while Boone & Bronte stayed in the back of the carriers.  I wish I could have trained them to be walked like dogs!

We hit the road after 9, I got to hear a bit of my friends Pippin & Carole begging for money on the show I used to do, the Tuesday Morning Blend.  They were much, much better at it than I was, & I was glad they were doing it & not me.  The route began on I-30 till it became I-20 & wound its way through Weatherford, past Mineral Wells, through Abilene, & made a right onto 84 at Sweetwater.  Thanks to the magic of cell phones, the wife & I talked a great deal of the drive, although I did listen to some new records, & a collection of Momus tunes I made so I could sing along.  I didn't listen to any podcasts or books on tape, though I brought those, too - I just really love to listen to music when I drive.

We made a promise to stop every hour or so, for everyone but the cats to go pee, & we pretty much kept the schedule.  We stopped outside Abilene to eat lunch - we brought a lot of food, since we ate out with friends pretty much the entire last week we were in Fort Worth (though, as I've said, the lunch Magda prepared for herself last night was left, we later realized, by our unused fireplace).  While I was eating my sandwich, I met a fellow at a gas station who had a pro-beagle bumper sticker & I also met his beautiful sixteen-year-old beagle named Buster.  The guy was so obviously pro-beagle that Winston, who is famously stingy with his love, gave him a lick when the fellow put his face close to Winston's.

The route took us around, & not through, Lubbock - which seems to have more wind turbines than oil derricks these days, hooray! but the same amount of stockyards, so boo!  - & we had to improvise to find a gas station, which we did, in a town called Littlefield, at a service station on Waylon Jennings Road.  Would you believe I was listening to Townes Van Zandt when we drove up?  I was, but you don't have to believe it.  It began to rain as we left, & the very gregarious cashier told us bad weather was coming.  How did she know? I asked.  She said, "I don't watch TV!  It's just what people tell me!"

She's very good, it turns out.  We later discovered we just missed a storm which included a tornado watch.  We had escaped over the border to New Mexico by then.

The highway was smaller, & we had to drop from 75 mph to 35 mph in a matter of fractions of a mile from time-to-time.  That happens in Texas, too, of course, & also there are generally cops there to give tickets to the unwary.  About an hour from Santa Rosa - in a town called Fort Sumner - we met a young woman who was moving from Washington State - the wife noticed her license plates - to Austin (we asked).  We talked about the Austin that we knew & she admitted that she was moving reluctantly - her husband recently got a job there.  Magda thought I might sympathize but nope!  There isn't a lot of reluctance with this move.

Highway 84 took us to Santa Rosa & I noticed we were in a new time zone.  It is earlier than it once was.  We sneaked the cats into the hotel room - luckily our room was near the back door - hey, we paid extra for three dogs! - & they were pretty unhappy.  It's been a few hours & they've finally come out to eat. They still don't know what to make about the noise in the hallway, but I think they'll be fine - although I am not entirely sure they won't hide when it's time to go.

The hotel is on what used to be Route 66, so we walked the dogs a mile or so down the road & back & I took a lot of pictures of cool signs & abandoned places, two of my favorite things.  I'll post the ones I like best at some point - to my personal Facebook page & to the show's Tumblr blog - but knowing how long it takes me to get through my pictures, I'll be settling into regular life in Portland by the time they make their appearances.  Hey!  I take a lot of dumb pictures!  I go through them chronologically!  They remind me how much I forget things!

For dinner, we ate leftover enchiladas I made in Lexington*.  There are not a lot of vegan choices in Santa Rosa.  Let me rephrase that.  There are hardly any vegan choices in Santa Rosa.  Might I try again.  I would be surprised if there were vegan choices in Santa Rosa.  The enchiladas were good.  If I don't say so myself.  Though I just did.

It's earlier than I feel, but I am exhausted.  The wife has already fallen asleep.  I had last driven in this part of the world maybe twenty-five years ago, & for some reason back then I usually drove around here at night.  But the desert is lovely in its way & I've missed it.  Like Jonathan Richman says, "When I'm in the desert, I wanna see the desert some more."

Luckily we're driving up into Utah tomorrow!

*  (I wrote this sentence at the end of a very long day; of course I meant Fort Worth)

Self Help Radio 050420: Maps

(Never the treasure on the map.  Original image here.)

If you used a map to find this week's Self Help Radio, good for you!  The show is in fact about maps. I am unaware of any actual maps made for the show - it's where all the shows turn up, at Self Help Radio dot net - but there are so many maps out there, I suspect it would be easy to repurpose, let's say, the #9 downtown to find your way to a radio show.  Hey.  It's not fun to get lost!

& you won't get lost.  There are plenty of maps on today's show.  There's even a GPS!  & handy tips on making your own map!  It's a mapstravaganza!  A mappapalooza!  A maptastic mapselebration!  Sorry.  I always take these things too far.

Visit the Self Help Radio website to listen to the show.  You should know by now there's a username - SHR - & a password - selfhelp - which you need to enter but you won't have to do it more than once a visit.  & of course all the songs & what happens on the show is noted below.

You're safe!  You have a map now!

Self Help Radio Maps Show
"Maps" Yeah Yeah Yeahs _Fever To Tell_
"Maps" The Front Bottoms _The Front Bottoms_
"Map" Call & Response _Call & Response_

introduction & definitions (with the Definition-O-Tron 3000!)

"Map Of The World" Comsat Angels _Waiting For A Miracle_
"Maps For Lost Lovers" The Rosie Taylor Project _This City Draws Maps_
"Case Study: Maggie The GPS" Superego _Superego Season 2, Episode 7_
"The Map To Your Good Graces" Ad Frank _Mr. Fancypants_
"A Map Below" The Blue Aeroplanes _Detective Song_

interview with educational software Mappy The Map Maker

"Guess How Much I Love You" The Lucksmiths _A Good Kind Of Nervous_
"Maps & Legends" R.E.M. _Fables Of The Reconstruction_
"Moon Map" Jonathan Winters _Another Day, Another World_
"Map Ref. 41°N 93°W" Wire _154_
"Map Of The World" The Corn Dollies _The Corn Dollies_

interview with cartographer & psychologist Dr. Mortimer Davis

"Midnight Maps" Shriekback _Jam Science_
"Map Your Eyes" Bernthøler _Merry Lines In The Sky_
"Map Of The World" The Smothers Brothers _The Two Sides Of The Smothers Brothers_
"El Mapa" Family _Un Soplo En El Corazón_
"An Animated Description Of Mr. Maps" The Books _Lost & Safe_

interview with the Rev Dr Howard Gently

"Hey, Map My Way" Cutaways _Earth & Earthly Things_
"I'm Using My Bible For A Road Map" Porter Wagoner & The Blackwood Brothers Quartet _The Grand Old Gospel_
"Lewton Cole, The Doc, The Map, & The Gunfight" Roger Miller _Waterhole # 3_
"Off The Map" Guy Clark _The Dark_
"Dot On The Map" Volcano Suns _All-Night Lotus Party_

conclusion & goodbye

"New Map" M83 _Hurry Up, We're Dreaming_
"Maps For Sleep" Half String _Eclipse * Oval * Hue_
"Map" The Ex _Disturbing Domestic Peace_

Whither Maps?

(Could this be the oldest map in the world? It's a map on a mammoth's tusk.  It's from around 25,000 BCE.  Read more at this link.)

Oh wow, do you see that picture up there?  It's a map from maybe 27,000 years ago.  It's an amount of time that's hard to wrap one's head around (although this quarantine has made it somewhat more understandable).  Smart people who study these things aren't entirely sure what it's a map of - it could be a map of the area where it was found, in the current Czech Republic.  Or it could have been a hunting map.  It's just fascinating to think, human beings were making maps way back when.  & I still can't tell someone exactly where the nearest dispensary is.

You might be wondering about my own fascination with maps.  I will tell you two stories about my youth - one which I am certain I've mentioned here before, another that I haven't.  I had this notion, because as a child I loved to look at maps, that every city was surrounded by railroad tracks.  That's how you knew you were leaving one city & entering another.  I hadn't thought about it before, but I suspect I might have thought that because of the broken line borders that designated boundaries, which perhaps I interpreted as railroads.  Anyway, my family members disabused me of that notion by calling me an idiot when I spoke the idea out loud.

This did not deter me from thinking I might be helpful & come up with a kind of map.  As I sat in the back seat while someone else (probably one of my brothers) was driving, I took to carrying a notepad & pencil & I attempted to scribble down the street names as we passed.  In a sense I meant to make a kind of "word map" that would help someone - if you memorized, for example, "Medina, Prescott, Ridgedale," you'd be able to know where a street was off another street (in this case, Fifth Street) if you needed a sense of where something was located.

Also I really just wanted a list of every street name.  That fascinated me.  I don't always know when my projects as a child began & ended, but I know when this one was quashed: when I saw my first map of Garland.  There, on the right hand side, was a list, in alphabetical order, of all the streets in the town.  I don't know if that's what I wanted all along, but I remember having a feeling that someone has somehow beaten me to the punch.  & I lost interest in that kind of cartography.

Until tomorrow, of course.  An entire show about maps!  But.  I can't say when tomorrow - I am still operating on what I'm calling quarantime - but some time tomorrow I hope there'll be a Self Help Radio episode about maps.  You can find it at the Self Help Radio website, but I'll announce it here & the other usual places.

You won't need to follow a map to find it.  Although if I planned better, that would've been fun.

Preface To Maps: Maps On Tumblr/New Uploads

You don't mind if I use today's blog for two things, do you?

Here's number one:

There's a blog I like a lot on Tumblr, which is called quite handily Maps On The Web.  It's where the above image comes from, & where you can go to find out what exactly that map is supposed to represent.  Or, you know, I could just tell you.  It's "US States whose names' letters perfectly alternate between consonants & vowels."  If that's something you enjoy, I recommend you visit.

Here's number two:

I have uploaded three recent KBOO shows to the Self Help Radio website.  You can simply go to selfhelpadio.net to find them, or you can click the following direct links, remembering that you'll need to enter a username (SHR) & a password (selfhelp) to listen, at least the first time.  The shows are:

A three-hour general format show that aired April 18.

The Dickenbock Report from April 21 (it's Episode Ten).

A two & a half general format show that aired April 23.

The Dickenbock Report episode was assembled in haste & has two glaring errors which I got to experience while live tweeting & couldn't do a thing about it.  One is that I played a song twice.  I don't know how that got by me.  The other is that I didn't play a song, but still back-announced it.  I'm sure it had something to do with both exhaustion as well as handling dozens of sound files.  But even though no one would have noticed if I hadn't said something, I am still mortified by it.

That's all!  Please enjoy!

Quarantimes

Once upon a time I was talking to an old acquaintance, someone with whom I hadn't spoken in decades.  We found each other again on Facebook, like you do.  At some point he marveled about how fast time seemed to have passed since last we talked.  I said something to him that I'd said to him before.  He even said, "You used to always say that."  It was this: I said, "Life is unbearably long."

My mother - with whom I talk weekly - will often tell me, "I don't know how it happened.  I don't know where the time went.  It all went by so fast."

To which I reply, "Really?  Can you not remember those difficult moments in your life when time seemed to come to a standstill?  When you were bored, or worried, or trapped in a shitty job or I don't know a church service?"

Those are things - those times when time seemed to come to a standstill - that dominate my memories.  I remember being so lonesome in my room I thought I might go insane.  I remember being bafflingly awake in tedious college classes that didn't somehow make me sleepy.  I remember waiting in lines, waiting for buses, waiting for food when very hungry, waiting for a band to fucking get onstage because I was tired of standing up.  I remember still-painful moments of loneliness when I had no friend to reach out to, no one to call, nowhere to go, nothing to watch or listen to or see.  The truth is, they seem like the vast majority of time I've lived on this planet.

When I'm dying, I'll not stand bewildered at where the time went.  I'll be able to envision it like a graph in a textbook, a map of geologic time.

It's true, as I've gotten older, it's become harder for me to get stuff done - tonight I timed myself cutting potatoes to make french fries & was astonished it took three times as long as I thought it would.  & never mind how long it's taking me to do my dumb prerecorded radio shows!  I suspect I have more responsibilities than when I was thirty-five years younger - certainly seventeen-year-old Gary might be bored on a Friday night with nothing on television, no friends to hang out with, & nothing new to read.  I'm hardly ever bored at all in my old age.  But I can't say time moves faster.  & I can't say that life feels any less long.

Maybe this perspective has helped me psychologically during this pandemic.  I do miss many things - I often think about the last time I went out to dinner, the last time I saw a show, the last time I saw a movie - but mostly I miss going to my radio stations.  I've had to listen to myself on the radio so often in the past two months I completely understand why very few people listen to my show.  But I don't feel the way many in the pandemic seem to feel.

My wife, who's much more social than I am, has begun to wonder if she should visit friends.  From a safe distance, of course.  She gets much of her social needs from work, from interacting with co-workers & students.  That's all gone for now.  It's taking its toll.  Me?  I am catching up on my comic book reading.

When I should be doing radio shows.  Damn it!

Anyway, yeah, I still feel life is unbearably long.  & who isn't feeling that right now?

April 30, 2007

In April 2007, this blog wasn't even a year old.  I wasn't even forty years old.  Self Help Radio wasn't even five years old.  I feel like I was a bit more creative then.  For example, this is what I wrote in the blog for that day:

It was entitled "When Pirates Dance!"

As April ends, I want to remember the fourth month I experienced in 2007. It seemed gloomy, rainy & sad, but also weirdly sunny, bright & warm. I may have lost fourteen dollars this month. But I also may have gained a new tooth. As April ends, I am forced to wonder: was I involved with April at all? Or did I simply just mow the lawn a couple of times & then sleep fitfully?

In April, I found out the bees are dying. My own experience with bees has been that, while they appear to be listening, they really retain nothing. After I patiently explained the difference between sugar, high fructose corn syrup & aspertame to a very sweet worker one afternoon, she still wanted to make out with my diet soda. Then she stung me & died, which I found a little too much. My mother used to guilt me like that.

If there's one lesson we should take from April, it's that daylight savings time is taxing. Oh shit, that's like a pun. Ha ha! Or, we can say that tax day saves you everything but daylight. No, that's not true. I know. That the only thing safe from tax day is sunlight. Unless you deal in solar futures. Then, never mind.

I promised last April that I would keep a running tally of the number of times I clipped my nails this April, because I had dreamt that Sid Caesar told me that your fingernails grow twice as long but your toenails twice as slow in April. Or maybe I had dreamt that April Stevens had warned me about the Ides Of March last month, because that's when Caesar died. Or maybe I was just daydreaming while watching HBO's Rome. Did that end this April?

April's not over yet! There's still time to win the lottery, grow a goatee, nail 95 theses to your church's wall, become a vegetarian, design a series of stamps that commemorate McLain Stevenson, bag a thrush, help a friend learn her vocal scales, care for a particularly sickly tree, crawl from the wreckage, reject a telemarketer's advances, get lost in someone's eyes, hit it but don't quit it, & possibly squeeze in a good cry with a friend.

But hurry!

Self Help Radio 042720: Indiepop A To Z # 62

(All images from Discogs - what a resource!)

If you'll recall, I said I'd try to have the show done by noon today.  It will be noon in Honolulu soon.  So naturally I meant noon, Hawaii time.  How weird must it be to live so far away?  I feel like the west coast misses out on all the east coast's craziness as it is!

As you can see if you've skipped ahead, I did not finish the letter O today.  I thought I might - but it wasn't to be.  Too much good stuff!  I think I am a music hoarder - I find it hard to leave some things off the list - although I reject plenty.  Which I will explore in the series I will make after I finish Indiepop A To Z, called Indiepop A To Z: The Rejects.  Just kidding.  I will never finish Indiepop A To Z.

The show is now at the Self Help Radio website.  Remember: username is SHR, password is selfhelp.  The playlist, hopefully in perfect alphabetical order, is below.  My thanks to you for listening.

Self Help Radio Indiepop A To Z # 62
"Happy Little Bumblebee" Of Montreal _The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy_
"Rachel Put Your Arms About Me" The Ogdens _Rachel Put Your Arms About Me_
"Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" Ohio Express _Pleasure From The Buddah Group_

"Boy" Oklahoma Scramble _Throw: The Yoyo Studio Compilation_
"Pretty Girlfriend" Old Hickory _Brain Travels Before The Heart Stops_
"Hide Away (World Trade Remix)" Olivia Tremor Control _Kindercore Fifty_
"Mrs Harrington" On The Waterfront _The Sound Of Leamington Spa, Vol. 5_
"Temporary Tattoo" One Happy Island _Secret Party That The Other Party Doesn't Know About_

"Panda Riot" One Hour _Little Darla Has A Treat For You, Vol. 12_
"Until" One Night Suzan _Don't Let Them Kill Our Taste_
"Mayfly" One Star _Moshi Moshi (Pop International Style)_
"Start Digging My Grave Sugar" One Thousand Violins _Hey Man That's Beautiful_
"Transport" Yuji Oniki _Tvi_

"It Comes Around" Onionhead _The Sound Of Leamington Spa Vol. 3_
"It Doesn't Even Matter" Onward Chariots _Take Me To Somewhere_
"We'll Know When We Get There" Ooberman _Running Girl_
"Empty Box Blues" Opal _Early Recordings_
"Pension Day" Open Book _Pension Day_

"Actors Studio" Oporto _French Blue EP_
"Saturday Looks Bad To Me" Oppenheimer _Oppenheimer_
"Walk & Chew Gum" Optiganally Yours _The Powerpuff Girls: Heroes & Villains_
"Revelation At 3:33 am" Orange Cake Mix _Dream Window_
"Rip It Up" Orange Juice _The Very Best Of Orange Juice_

"You're So Clever" The Orange Peels _So Far_
"So In Love" Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark _Crush_
"Something For The Longing" The Orchids _Who Needs Tomorrow_
"Steven Smith" The Organ _Grab That Gun_
"Growing Old" The Origin _Growing Old_

"A Song For Robert G" Original Sin _A Song For Robert G_
"Chocolate Box" The Originals _Chocolate Box_
"Furthest Point Away" Orlando _Passive Soul_

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 62

(Apparently this links to a "quick intro to twee."  I just googled the word "twee."  It took me this place.)

Yes, yes, we're continuing the Indiepop A To Z despite the quarantine, & possibly the lack of interest, & all the other radio stuff I'm doing.  & we're at the letter O, which is neat.  It stands for Oregon, you know.  I don't know if we'll finish the letter O, though.  I am still gathering songs.  We'll probably get to the "orange" bands, though: Orange Juice, Orange Peels, Orange Cake Mix.  So maybe not.  Hey, I'm going to include some decidedly not-indiepop bands this time around.  Like who?  Like OMD, duh.  Like you care.  You stopped reading before you actually made it to this blog.  That takes skill.

Big fat bees are bumping on my window.  Spring in Portland is lovely, & eerie too - we went for a bike ride today & there were very few people driving.  Lots of folks in their gardens, though.  Which may be why the big fat bee wants to come in.  Those people are intense!

The show will happen some time tomorrow - I'm aiming for noon but I also want to sleep in & the wife is going to make me walk the dogs early so I won't be able to sleep in but I will be walking the dogs & not working on the show - at the Self Help Radio website like always.  I might have time to add the others shows I do, too - the most recent Dickenbock Report, for example.  But I shouldn't overwhelm you.

Gotta go - turns out the big fat bee wants me to come outside & play.  I'll get my mask!

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 62: Information Please

After a day spent working on this week's Self Help Radio & also editing some audio files for Freeform (not to mention watching "Extraction" starring Thor who weirdly didn't use his godlike powers at all during the film), I just looked at a news site & it was like drinking a giant cup of sadness right before bedtime.

So I went to re-watch last Sunday's Last Week Tonight, which I embed below:



There's real genius in that show - something you don't get in general, let along with comedic news programs.  I used to think that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was the best thing possible, but damn, has John Oliver lapped that program & then some.

Both John Oliver & Sam Bee has found their voice again without an audience, something that has eluded Bill Maher, who continues to do his monologue to laugh tracks.  Which is fine, I suppose - he can't berate them for not laughing at his jokes because he believes the audience is too sensitive.  I admire his confidence that he won't accept they just might not be funny.

But he still occasionally makes an amazing point, & this week he was as brave & truthful as he imagines himself to be when he's making jokes about sexless marriages or the trouble with vaccines:



He's absolutely right in this piece.  I have nothing to add, only that it was undercut somewhat by an embarrassing interview with Jay Leno right before it, with Leno rattling off unfunny topical "jokes" & Maher laughing appreciatively like Ed McMahon.  Excruciating.

Anyway, good night!  939,000 cases in the United States!  Over 53,000 dead!  Good night!

Long Day's Drive Into Otherwise

Two things:

One, I asked Twitter if I should continue growing my stupid quarantine beard - I haven't trimmed it in about two months - & the poll so far - it's just been five votes, but - suggests I keep growing it.  My wife can only vote once, so I know it's not just her.  (I'm totally going to trim it this weekend.)

Two, I keep working on radio shows but have been repurposing old Self Help Radio episodes - like I did last month at KBOO - into one-hour segments.  Is that something I should share on my web page?  Of course I am looking for & adding new songs to the mix, but my airbreaks are perfunctory & not at all fun or funny.  (As if they ever are.)  (But at least I try to make them so.) (Not in these short remakes.)  I ask again: should I share these on the web page?

That's all.  Working on the next indiepop a to z episode as we speak.  Hope it's fun.  Hope that in the near future Freeform is able to air programs when they are scheduled to be aired - like KBOO does with the Dickenbock Report - & so I have a more regular schedule.

I said, that's all!  Sheesh.  I'm not important!  I don't have to write things that matter on this dumb blog!  Damn you!  Damn you all to hell!

So Tired

Is it weird to be exhausted during a pandemic?  I can't speak to those who have actual jobs; that is one thing I don't have.  My wife, who teaches at a medical school, conducts lectures in one of our rooms & it's charming to listen to her - I've never actually seen her teach.  In fact:

There was a time, when she was teaches a huge class of nurses at the University of Kentucky that I thought about crashing one of her classes - she had like 250 students - & if there were ever a moment where she asked for questions, I'd raise my hands & say, "Professor - do you date your students?"

Today she showed me a slide from her recent (online) lecture which her students shared in some med school forum.  She said, "It's good to become a meme."

Memewhile, I am making radio shows that may or may not be aired.  I am gathering things for upcoming shows.  I am trying to help out at the stations where I volunteer.  & I am so, so tired.

Here's the thing: when I nap, I wake utterly confused.  I don't know where I am, I am not sure what time of day it is, I am even baffled by the same alarm I've been using for years.

It's a metaphor for our times.  But.  I'm still so tired.

Self Help Radio 042020: Thunder

(Isn't this a lovely image of thunder?  No?  That's right!  It's an image of lightning! Because you can't take a picture of thunder! It's a sound! Damn it! Original image here.)

Finally!  The thunder show!  Was it worth the wait?  Absolutely not!

But think of it this way: the farther away the lightning strike, the longer it takes the thunder to reach you.  So imagine this show about thunder originated in a lightning strike two days ago but it was very far away, so the sound of the strike - the thunder - is just arriving now.  Now, knowing the speed of sound - isn't it 770 miles per hour? - & assuming 48 hours (why not?) - that means the lightning struck around 37,000 miles away.  Which is about one & a half times around the world.  That thunder must have stories to tell!

Well - it's got two hours' worth, anyway.  The thunder show is now available at the Self Help Radio website.  Please remember, you'll need a username (SHR) & a password (selfhelp) to listen.  What happened on the show is below.

Trigger warning: astraphobes may not want to download.  Otherwise, go to town.

Self Help Radio Thunder Show
"It's Thunder" Burnt Friedman & The Nu Dub Players _Just Landed_
"God Of Thunder" M83 _America_
"Thunder" Mekons _Me_

introduction & definitions

"Who's Afraid Of Thunder" Dorothy Collins _Experiment Songs (From Ballads For The Age Of Science)_
"Thunderstorm" Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts _Manhattan_
"Blue Thunder" Galaxie 500 _On Fire_
"Voice Like Thunder" The Babies _The Babies_
"Thunder & Lightning" Chi Coltrane _Super Hits Of The '70s: Have A Nice Day, Vol. 9_

interview with clinical psychologist Eustace Teagarden

"Thunder" Wayne County & The Electric Chairs _These People Are Nuts!_
"Thunder" Huon _Knowing We Was Right From Da Start_
"Thunderous Silence" Alan Watts _Out Of Your Mind_
"Hug Of Thunder" Broken Social Scene _Hug Of Thunder_
"Thunderstorm" Pierce Turner _The Compilation_

interview with the Rev Dr Howard Gently

"The Ballad Of Thunder Road" Robert Mitchum _That Man_
"Thunder Road" Bruce Springsteen _Born To Run_
"The Thunder, Perfect Mind" Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer, & Nancy Lesniewksi _The Gnostic Bible_
"The Thunderclown" Momus & John Henriksson _The Thunderclown_
"Thunderstruck" Antarctica Takes It! _Constellations_

Gary shows how to make thunder at home
Ned Dry interrupts!

"Thunder & Rain" Graham Parker & The Rumour _Stick To Me_
"Thunder In The Sky" The Dirtbombs _Dangerous Magical Noise_
"Thundertunes" Pauline Murray & The Invisible Girls _Pauline Murray & The Invisible Girls_
"Thunder Of Hearts" Buzzcocks _Modern_

conclusion & goodbye

"Thunderstorm Blues" Maggie Jones _Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order, Vol. 1 (August 1923 To April 1925)_
"Thunderbird" The Casual-Aires _Las Vegas Grind!_
"The Case Of The Thundering Dunderhead" Thee Headcoats _Beach Bums Must Die_

Whither Thunder?

(There is no thunder without lightning.  Here, lightning photobombs a picture of thunder.  Image from here.)

Hey!  I know I've been terrible at that "getting Self Help Radio done on time" thing.  There are several reasons for it, the most convincing of which is have you seen the world lately?

But that's not really an excuse.  The main excuse I believe is lack of a deadline.  I spent the past couple of days working on Tuesday morning's Dickenbock Report, which has to be turned in twenty-four hours before it airs so it can be properly placed on the automation.  I'm certain if that were the case with Self Help Radio, I'd have it done at that time, too.  It's just not really scheduled - I even have no idea if the last two episodes, placed on the station's automation, have aired at all.

That being said: I think I thought about doing a show about thunder when I was talking to my family in Dallas & there were thunderstorm warnings.  I realized we don't really get a lot of thunder up here in Cascadia.  & sometimes my ruminations lead me in the direction of "are there enough songs about thunder to make a radio show about thunder?"

So!  I will have a new Self Help Radio tomorrow some time, earlier if possible, but definitely sometime on a Monday.  It will of course happen at Self Help Radio dot net & I'll let you know here.  & on Facebook.  & Twitter.  I might text you.  I might also call.  If I show up at your house, I'll just yell from the curb.

Preface To Thunder: I Guess I Don't Miss The Thunder

It's hard to believe it's almost a year since we've moved to Portland.  We lived in Fort Worth, Texas, for nearly three years, & although I'm not a meteorologist & I haven't actually looked this up, I have theories about why the storms in Fort Worth in particular are so awful.

Did I not mention the storms in Fort Worth were awful?  Oh yes!  Lots of wind & thunder & lightning.  Skies darkening menacingly & suddenly.  Flash floods & power outages.  They seemed to always roll in from the west, where the city began & the plains ended.  & that was my theory:

Something about the size of a city, plus the way it absorbs heat, acts as a kind of natural barrier for extreme weather, which seems to need space in order to build its destructive strength.

Is that true?  According to this article in the Dallas Morning News, no.  Instead, the explanation for the intensity & frequency of Texas thunderstorms involves "the jet stream, moist air, & lingering cold fronts."

But, you see, thunderstorms in Fort Worth seem way more intense & ferocious than those on the other side of the metroplex, which is way more populated - & farther away from the storm, which has to travel through a giant collection of cities, suburbs, highways, even an enormous airport.

So in that willful way that is the hallmark of being a human, I will continue to believe there's something to the geography of Fort Worth that invites worse thunderstorms - mainly its position as the first major city the storms will encounter as they come from the west.  It just seems true.  You know?

& anyway, there's only been a couple of thunderstorms since we arrived here, & I haven't missed them at all.  The steady rain of Portland is its own kind of drama, really.

Did You Forget?

Did you forget?  I forgot.

How could you forget?  How could I not?

You wanted to forget?  I wanted it forgotten.

Is it hard to forget?  I used to know - but I forgot.

Don't we struggle to remember?  If we remember to.

So it's best to forget?  Perhaps it's best to be forgotten.

I never want to forget!  I forgot you always say that.

Oh, forget all about it.  Consider it forgotten.

The Dickenbock Report (Episode 9)/A KBOO Sub Show

Hey, I know there are far more interesting ways to pass your time during this quarantine/social distancing reality we have, but in case there isn't any more lint in your belly button to dig out & all the paint has already dried without spectators, I have put two recent radio shows on the Self Help Radio website for your audio "enjoyment."

Yes, those are quotation marks.  I understand how desperate one need to be to choose to listen to anything I do on the radio.

One is last week's Dickenbock Report, which made its (prerecorded) Tuesday morning premiere.  It's a hefty three hours long, & most of the show celebrates National Beer Day with boozy tunes, although the regular birth day/death day segment happens & there are beaver songs for International Beaver Day.

If you don't want to go to the website, click on this discolored set of words to access the show directly.  You will be asked for a username (which is SHR) & a password (which is selfhelp) to listen.  But you'll only be asked once!

The second is two & a half hours of me playing new music on Thursday morning in the space where the Dickenbock Report used to be.  It's mostly stuff released in 2020, & I keep my yapping to a minimum.  If you'd prefer to go directly to the show, click on this sentence to access the mp3 without all that yucky Self Help Radio web page nonsense.  Again, you'll need a username - SHR - & a password - selfhelp.

That is all.  I mean, it's five & a half hours of radio, but that's all from me right now.

Self Help Radio 041320: Surprise!

(Original image here.)

Surprise!  Self Help Radio's show about surprise is a day late!  This may not be much of a surprise, especially considering that it's nearly impossible to determine what day it is most of the time, & time seems itself to be quarantined, trying to get rid of some sickness.  But who cares!  It's a show about surprise!  Surely everyone loves a surprise!

Actually, there are a lot of people who really, really hate surprises.  I have documentation about this assertion.  Still, hating surprises doesn't necessarily mean you'll hate a radio program about surprises.  Because songs about surprises, especially when you're expecting songs about surprises, aren't surprising at all.  So you get the best of both worlds!

The show is, unsurprisingly, at the Self Help Radio website when/if you'd like to listen.  Remember, there is a username (SHR) & a password (selfhelp) needed to listen.  That's no surprise.  & also what songs are played is not a surprise.  They're listed below.

Honestly, for a show about surprise, I'm not really offering many surprises.

Self Help Radio Surprise Show

"Surprise!" +/- _You Are Here_
"Surprise" We Are Scientists _Crap Attack_
"Surprise" Royal Headache _Royal Headache_

introduction & definitions

"Surprise, Surprise" The Rolling Stones _Singles Collection: The London Years_
"Surprise, Surprise (Sweet Bird Of Paradox)" John Lennon _Anthology_
"You'd Be Surprised" Mike Birbiglia _Two Drink Mike_
"Surprise, Surprise" Girlfrendo _Surprise! Surprise! It's Girlfrendo_
"Surprise! Surprise!" Laptop _Don't Try This At Home_

a surprise phone call from Bingham Killkid

"Secret Surprise" Joanna Gruesome _Weird Sister_
"I Am Not Surprised" The Organ _Grab That Gun_
"On Surprises" Fabio _Fabio After Dark_
"Don't Be Surprised" Lynn Williams _Eccentric Soul: The Outskirts Of Deep City_
"Surprise Party For Baby" The Vibrating Vibrations _The Golden Torch Revisited_

an attempt to plan a surprise with Elliot Kliffnerd

"Surprised" The Sugargliders _A Boy, A Girl, & A Rendezvous_
"Surprised" Holiday Flyer _You Make Us Go_
"The Element Of Surprise" The Last Shadow Puppets _Everything You've Come To Expect_
"Little Surprise" The Wave Pictures _Beer In The Breakers_
"A Big Surprise" Sparks _Introducing Sparks_

a surprise phone call from Alyssa & Jason

"I'll Be Your Surprise" Hurrah! _The Sound Of Philadelphia_
"Taken By Surprise" The Family Cat _Tell 'Em We're Surfin'_
"It Was The Surprise More Than Anything" Les Barker _The War On Terrier_
"Surprise, Surprise" X _See How We Are_
"No More Surprises" The Ettes _Shake The Dust_

another surprise phone call from Bingham Killkid

"My Dog Surprise" Guided By Voices _Warp & Woof_
"Surprise Me" Altered Images _Happy Birthday (The Best Of Altered Images)_
"Surprise Symphony" Deerhoof _Reveille_
"Don't Be Surprised" Twerps _Twerps_
"Taken By Surprise" Varsity _The Basement Takes: 2015-2016_

conclusion & goodbye

"Avocado Surprise" Mo Douglas _Healthy Instrumentals_
"Some Kind Of Surprise" Winter _Supreme Blue Dream_
"Surprise Us" Palomar _All Things, Forests_

Whither Surprise?

(I wish I could remember where I found this.)

Surprise!  Tomorrow there'll be another Self Help Radio, & the theme will be "surprise."  This is the theme that would've been explored if circumstances hadn't changed life as we know it so dramatically four weeks ago.

Have I taken the time to work on the show?  Nah.  I am just now gathering music at this late date.  I'll work on the show into the night & tomorrow, & it'll appear during the day sometime on the Self Help Radio website.  I'll announce it here, on Twitter, & on the show's Facebook page.  Basically wherever you saw this, it'll be the same place.  Hopefully it won't be so late in the day, but to be honest, I've been needing afternoon naps a lot recently.

Hey!  Am I deliberating being vague so where I announce that the show about surprise is ready, it'll be something of a surprise?  Of course not.  Unless you think that's cool.  Do you think that's cool?  You choose.

See you tomorrow!

Preface To Surprise: Surprise! I Have Nothing To Say

Tonight I take a break between movies & whiskey to announce that surprise! this blog has nothing of interest to say.

What?!?  You're actually surprised?  Of course not.

We went out today to shop & do other errands & I learned that I am very uncomfortable wearing surgical gloves & I fucking hate wearing a mask.  It may seem a stretch to say I'm very glad I never chose the medical field as a profession because, quite frankly, I never even considered it, but boy am I glad that wasn't a road I travelled down.

Implicit disclaimer: the people who chose that road are fucking heroes & I shouldn't even have to say that but I suppose I should in case someone gets the wrong idea.  Seriously, just because this dumb guy who does radio shows is glad he isn't a physician's assistant, he should worry about offending people who fucking risk their lives every day to keep us safe?  Okay, yeah.  That makes sense.

We went outside with our dogs tonight & it was eerily silent, on a Saturday.  Fuck you, coronacovid-19 virus!  We don't want you, we don't invite you, go fuck some other species up.  We're onto you.

Oh wait.  Stupid people all over are ignoring common-sense warnings.  Yeah, I know.  I know.  I'm just too weary to comment.  Hey.  More radio show nonsense tomorrow.  Yay.

The Socket For The Power Plug Has Become Adrift

People are writing all over the internet about missing socializing, their friends, going out, & etc.  I mostly miss the weird routine I had - I miss waking up in the middle of the night to drive to a radio station to do radio for the few people up at that hour who happen to be listening to the radio.  There are quite a few people up at that hour in Portland who are not listening to the radio, & I should know: I see them on my drive to the radio stations.  Such people aren't exactly the houseless, although there are quite a few of them.  The ones who don't have tents - & I assume at night when I drive by one of the many tents that line the streets of Portland there are people in them - but who appear houseless tend to be sitting alone, or walking from place to place carrying bags full of recycling.  But I see people - this would include people around 1:15 or so, which is when I would leave for XRAY on Tuesday mornings; people around 5:15 or so, which is when I would leave to go to Freeform on Monday mornings; people around 2:30 or so, which is when I would leave to go to KBOO on Thursday mornings; & of course any of the myriad times of night I might be subbing a show at Freeform or KBOO - I see people out walking, exercising, getting home from somewhere, sometimes accompanied by a companion or a dog, often quite determined as it's dark & possibly dangerous.  I've also seen deer, cats, & one time a family or raccoons.  & more than once I've seen coyotes, which initially I mistook for dogs.  I drove past too many stray or lost dogs in Texas, I now try to stop to see if they'll come to me, but coyotes look very, very different from dogs when you're up close.  Anyway, I know the coyotes & the houseless & the people out for whatever reason so very early in the morning are not going to be listening to the radio.  It's funny, I went out the other night & though it was only twilight, it felt like driving around at 3am.  & it made me miss driving around at 3am.  I have a friend who lived in Portland in the mid-90s & he told me he was mugged here.  I am not cavalier about my surroundings but I don't feel unsafe here, although often when I leave one of the radio stations at night, I do sometimes wonder how fast I could get back into the building if I sensed some danger.  & I've never been mugged, not just in Portland.  I miss that most of all, I guess I miss the routine I had that included radio, & I'm not sure how different or otherwise changed it will be when or if things return to normal.  I've taken to staying up late instead of going to sleep early to wake early.  In that sense, this staying up late, reminds me of summer vacation in grade school, although I didn't drink & there were no computers around in my life back then.  I used to miss that time, & then I didn't, & now I'm kind of reliving some aspect of it.  At this point I want to stop writing but I don't feel I've sufficiently wrapped up or concluded my thoughts.  I will say that I just reread what I wrote & mostly I like the phrase "writing all over the internet" because it makes me think of the internet as a giant wall vandals are tagging & scribbling over.  Other than that, this is pretty standard & tedious blog post by me.  My apologies for wasting your time, if you made it this far.  & even if you didn't.

Adding Prerecords To The Website

Hello.

In the next few days, while I'm not overbusy with making radio shows from home - I made three in three days! that was seven & a half hours of radio! - exactly! - I'll be adding the prerecords I made for these station to the Self Help Radio website.

These are not episodes of Self Help Radio.  They're mainly music, with short airbreaks by me to simulate live radio - they actually fooled a friend who texted me when he heard one of the shows & asked "are you broadcasting... live? pulling an airheads?"- anyone listening should know if the show were live I would be talking way too much - & may not be of any interest - but since I put all my playlists up, I figured I'd do that & also link to the shows.

There aren't specific links, but on the front page, they are called March 17 Freeform Portland Sub Show & March 21 Freeform Portland Sub Show.  I'll be adding more over the weekend, including some sub shows I did for KBOO, like the reggae show that's aired more than once over there.

If you're interested.  If not, no worries.

Self Help Radio 040620: Wishes

(Original image here.)

Holy moley, I spent all day on this week's Self Help Radio.  I really have no concept of time.  But it was really fun - & a bit frustrating - putting it together.  There were so many songs about wishes that I just couldn't get to them all.  I bet I could have done four hours - & that was excluding songs about wishing wells, which I covered in a show about wells I did two years ago.

Not only that, the folks who pretend to be experts & get interviewed really brought their A game.  I know that's a sportsball term which means they were at their best, but other than that I don't know exactly what an A game.  Rest assured, what you get from me on the show is my regular C game.  That might be too generous.  C minus game.

If you wish to listen, the show is at the Self Help Radio website now or whenever you have a moment.  Ha ha, all we have are moments these days.  Too many moments.  Remember, the username is SHR & the password is selfhelp.  The show is exactly two hours long.  Amazing!  What happens on the show is listed below.

As you wish.

Self Help Radio Wishes Show

"When You Wish Upon A Star" Petra Haden & Bill Frisell _Petra Haden & Bill Frisell_
"Make A Wish" The Cat's Miaow _Songs For Girls To Sing_
"Wishing The Days Away" Billy Bragg _Talking With The Taxman About Poetry_

introduction & definitions

"I Wish" Eisley _The Valley_
"I Wish I Was Him" Kathleen Hanna _Rock Stars Kill_
"Three Wishes" Twink _The Broken Record_
"Blown A Wish" My Bloody Valentine _Loveless_
"Wish You Would" Ivy _Avenge_

interview with Steig Klettesteig from the Make-A-Wish Take-A-Wish Foundation

"I Wish" Stevie Wonder _Songs In The Key Of Life_
"My Fondest Wish" Sometimes I Wonder _You're Still Young At Heart_
"Down By The Wishing Pool" The Chesterfields _Down By The Wishing Pool_
"Wish We Were" Smoking Popes _This Is Only A Test_

interview with the Rev Dr Howard Gently

"Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)" Nouvelle Vague _Nouvelle Vague_
"I Wished On The Moon" Billie Holiday _The Quintessential Billie Holiday Volume 1, 1933-1935_
"I Wish, I Wish" Cat Stevens _Mona Bone Jakon_
"I Wish I Had Pictures" The Magnetic Fields _50 Song Memoir_

interview with Dolph Winspear of 'Genies R Us'

"I Wish" Skee-Lo _I Wish_ (Volcano, 1995)
"A Specific System Of Selective Short-Term Well-Wishing" George Carlin _When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?_
"I Wish You Would" David Bowie _Pin Ups_
"Wish I Sang A Little Better" Sprites _Starling, Spiders, Tiger, & Sprites_

interview with an actual genie

"Wishin' & Hopin'" The Vandalias _What The World Needs Now (Big Deal Recording Artists Perform The Music Of Burt Bacharach)_
"A Wish Away" The Wonder Stuff _The Eight Legged Groove Machine_
"Wishing It Were Friday" Bubblegum Lemonade _The Great Leap Backward_
"I Wish For You" Lake _The World Is Real_

conclusion & goodbye

"I Wish You Well" Bill Withers _The Best Of Bill Withers: Lean On Me_
"Wishful Thinkin'" Sly & The Family Stone _Small Talk

Whither Wishes?

(Oh boy!  There's a whole list of wish spells at the website where I found this graphic!)

The reason the show today is about wishes & wishing is because it was a request.  Tomorrow is Jenny's birthday & apparently her birthday wish was to have a Self Help Radio show about wishes.  This was a pretty easy wish to make come true.

Although I am nowhere near prepared to have it finished early tomorrow.  It'll appear at some point in the day tomorrow but not first thing, not 10am, probably not even noon.  I spent all day yesterday prerecording The Dickenbock Report, so I'd had no chance to go entirely through the (checks) four thousand songs about wishes I have gathered.  Plus!  I have interviews to edit!  Plus!  I have to prerecord my dumb airbreaks!

But as sure as wishes don't come true, I'll have a new episode of Self Help Radio tomorrow sometime at the show's website.  You don't need to blow out any candles or order a genie to make it so or, yes, invoke some meteor to make me do it.  I'll do it!  I'm doing it now!

Preface To Wishes: Trouble's What You're Wishing For

Honestly I don't know the last time I wished for anything.  I don't even know what I'd make the wish to.  Like, really, to whom do you wish?  Or am I asking the wrong question?  Isn't it more that you wish upon something, like the Jiminy Cricket song?

It's really been a long time since I've spoken to something or someone up there.  Or out there.  Or elsewhere.  Which is a shame, because for the better part of my childhood, I really, really wanted to believe there was that kind of magic in the world.  Imagine finding a bottle, with a genie in it, & getting three wishes!

Instead, it seems life has spent most of its lessons on me disabusing me of the believe in anything supernatural.  I have two stories that demonstrate that point, one of which I'm sure I've told before.  But I can't find it in the blog's archives.

When Star Wars came out, I, like most boys who were ten years old the first time they saw it, was obsessed with it.  Specifically the idea of "the force."  I read lots of comics & science fiction & truly believed there was something out there that held it all together.  All I needed to do was "trust my feelings."  One day, I decided to do just that.  I would close my eyes as I walked along the front area of a shopping center we lived next door to, & I'd let the force guide me safely from one end to the other.  This was on the sidewalk, not the parking area.  I was a dumb kid, but not that dumb.  & of course I almost immediately walked straight into a pillar.  I didn't break my nose, but I did get some cuts on it & bled a little.  Ben Kenobi would tell me I lacked faith, & it was true - my faith in the "force" left me the minute my face got bloodied.

Years later I borrowed a book of magic spells from my friend Gary, about whom I've talked before here & here.  He swore to me that the spells really worked.  One of them I was fascinated by was astral projecting.

Oh, I read & reread the instructions & took it fucking seriously.  I fasted for an entire day - I did it the first time on a Friday.  I waited till sundown & lay on a north-south axis in my bedroom.  I tried to visualize the room I was in & imagined myself touching things in it: my bed, doorknobs, closet doors, my things.  When I felt like I was going to go to sleep, I was supposed to sit up - but my astral self would emerge from my body.

As you might imagine, the first night I just feel asleep.  I was hungry & tired from a day at school.  The next time I tried it, I managed to stay awake, but I just kept jerking up in a dark room.  (I must've been left alone a lot as a kid - I don't recall my mother or little brother bothering me any of these times.)  The third time I made sure to fast at least 24 hours - which was very difficult for me - I was like fifteen! - & of course nothing happened but me sitting up in my room in the dark.

My friend Gary Anderson told me lots of his adventures on the astral plane, but at this point I was convinced it was bullshit.  I had followed all the instructions correctly.  To the letter.  I checked & double-checked.  He was sure I was doing something wrong.

So I asked him, "When you're on the astral plane, so you sometimes fly into my room?"

"Oh I do it all the time!" he said.

Ignoring how creepy that was, I said, "Okay to prove to me you, I'm going to write a note a piece of paper..."

"It's hard to see in the astral realm!" he protested.

"It'll be just one or two words, written very big, just tell me what it is, I'll believe you," I told him.

He never guessed, of course, because he was lying about astrally projecting himself, & soon enough he stopped talking about the whole thing entirely because I would tell him I don't believe you.

& the note I wrote?  On a big legal pad in big black marker, I had written "FUCK YOU."

Looking For "Wish" In A Search Engine

Things I didn't know about, part seven million: wish.com

No, I didn't click on that.  I read just enough in the search engine report to know it's not for me.  To wit: "Wish is an online e-commerce platform that facilitates transactions between sellers & buyers."  That seems so unusual.  I wonder why no one thought of that before?  Or isn't that what basically all "online e-commerce platforms" do?

The tagline for the site - according to the search engine - is "Shopping Made Fun."  I guess I don't find shopping all that fun myself, but the idea of buying stuff online isn't to make it more fun but to make it less tiresome.  For example, as much as I like browsing in a bookstore, I will buy books online not out of some notion of fun, but because I know what I want & I can get it easier than wandering through a store trying to find it.

Like, I just bought some books at Powell's Books online, for example.  I did that because I know what books I wanted, plus they're local & I don't have to support Amazon, which has done grievous harm - often mortal harm - to small businesses everywhere.  Anyway.

The website goes on: "Join over 500 million others that have made their shopping more smart, fun, & rewarding."  "Rewarding"?  Do you get cash back for using the web site?  I suspect that's not true.

Something amusing is that this link comes up quickly when you do a search for "wish."  If you don't want to click it, & you don't, the article is entitled, "WISH.com – SCAM – Why you should NEVER shop on WISH reviews"

What does "shop on WISH reviews" mean?  I dunno, I just read the first paragraph & it didn't make much sense to me.  Still, I appreciate the idea of contrary view.

& let's not even start with the idea of a "wish" & how it relates to shopping.  If you "wish" for something, do you need to pay for it?  Of course not.

Self-Isolation Free Association

Are you kind of afraid to look at the numbers?  The numbers are a little frightening, aren't they?  Friends keep telling me they know people who think it's all a hoax.  I am glad I don't talk to people who think it's all a hoax.  Like parents who don't vaccinate their children, those people are going to get someone killed.  It's a good thing a politician that many people admire didn't say the whole thing was a hoax...  oh wait.

The neighbors holler at each other across the street, & the weary parents sit outside with their kids, who probably aren't aware of what's going on.  The wife & I walk our three dogs, one of whom, our beloved Winston, is nearly thirteen & who has very weak back legs, so at different times we can be a block apart.  This sometimes requires yelling.  So perhaps the self-isolated & even the quarantined wonder about this odd pair & their pups stumbling through the rain possibly arguing, maybe just raising their voices to be heard.

There are only a couple of busy streets we cross, & even those aren't all that busy.  The last time I was in a car was a few days ago, to get some take-out.  We want to support local business, but we also have food that might go bad if we don't eat it.  We haven't been to a store in a week, I guess we're due.  We're both a little nervous about that.  We honestly don't know what to think most of the time.

You can't play on the playgrounds now, signs have been put up, & purple caution tape which says "temporarily closed" has been wrapped around the swings & monkey bars.  Sometimes parents are walking with kids, elementary school kids, most of whom are chatty.  We passed a kid the other day who was telling his mother a story that might have been about ghosts.  He said, quite clearly, "It scared me!  I was white as a sheep!"  I thought, that works too.  & my mind fell into one of holes where nonsense is stored, this one a place where I keep words I didn't understand or phrases that confused me as a kid.

There are radio shows to do, I am working on three at the moment, I finished a reggae mix last night, one half of which aired today, although I didn't listen.  I wonder if this week's Self Help Radio can go into Freeform's general mix.  I dunno.  I suppose I'll ask.

As a result of my constant presence - & I confess I'm up late most nights - my cats imagine that any movement toward where their food is kept is another dinner time.  Sometimes that's true - sometimes they don't finish their meals so I worry they're hungry - but this is like eight, nine times a day.  I suspect they know what they're doing.  So far, though, I can't prove a thing.

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.