19 Shows To Go!

Let's fuck shit up.

Remember, today's Self Help Radio is a Christmas spectacular which includes the hour previous, which is my way of saying I am subbing "The House Call," which means this Self Help Radio Christmas has become a Very Self Help Radio Christmas. There'll be lots of Christmas music which isn't entirely right in the head, as well as giveaways, amusing anecdotes about Santa's perversions, & at the very end of the show, I'll hang a giant mistletoe over Austin & everyone'll have to make out. What fun!

I'll get the show archived in time for Christmas, I promise. Meanwhile, if you want/need/expect a Christmas mix fix, visit the Self Help Radio Extra page for last year's Christmas show as a single mix without any radio accoutrements.

See you at 3:30pm Texas time, on the radio or on the web at koop dot org!

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Obligation!

I don't mean the the KOOP Anniversary Party, which got an XL recommendation, whatever that is. (I bet it's not as cool as a doctor's note. I wish I could get a doctor's note for most of my obligations. Oh! & a hall pass! Those are cool.)

That made me think about "Get Out Of Jail" free cards in Monopoly. I guess that, since most of the players end up in jail during the course of the game, it assumes that people who go crazy for real estate are all basically criminals who'll do whatever it takes. I think the game is being honest here. I am surprised.

Anyway, remember, I'm not deejaying tonight, despite what you may have heard. I started that rumor myself & it spread like wild butter. No, it's Irma from Hablando De Salud who'll be spinning the tunes in the spot where my name might once have been tossed about in a potential manner. Go see her! She's wonderful.

I must go prepare for a Christmas show... It's really the only thing I do to celebrate the birth of the little baby girl Jesus. She's pretty!

Whither A Very Self Help Radio Christmas 2007?

There's such good tidings of joy & radio this week, friends & ex-lovers!

First, Self Help Radio will be extended by an hour (as opposed to being removed by court order, as you've been expecting) so you'll get sixty more minutes of Self Help Radio, which promises you, as always, lots of Gary talking mixed with fabulous music. I can't describe it better than that. I just had dental work & my mouth hurts. Also, my co-workers are unkind to me. I think I'll go home early to cry. 'Tis the season.

Second, this month's Self Help Radio Extra is actually all the songs from last year's Self Help Radio Christmas show, only this one has all the talking & announcements taken out. So if you're in the mood for a seventy-two minute mix of Christmas songs you really won't ever hear anywhere else (or at least certainly not in the order in which I have placed them), just hop over to the Self Help Radio Extrapage for downloading & play it at the next Christmas party you attend. You won't be invited back to that house ever again, but you'll enjoy irritating everyone there.

Third, you've doubtless heard about KOOP's 13th Anniversary Party, yes? You should! Austin's best radio station & a brave experiment in community radio is becoming a teenager - & you can come to the party! All the information you need is here. Come celebrate with us!

That's all. You may return to your online shopping/online porn.

Preface To A Very Self Help Radio Christmas: Donning Gay Apparel

I don't know why I like Christmas music so much. I'm not a Christian, I don't really buy anyone gifts, & I don't really enjoy being around my family at this time of year (& the feeling, more & more, appears to be mutual). But I like Christmas music. I just do. I don't know why.

Do I want to know why? I do! But how?

Most people are entirely unaware why they like what they like, says Professor Smartie of Austin's Brainiac Institute. Indeed, he says, most people have either given their taste up to an authority, like television or magazines, or they've chosen to be contrary to the "taste" of the majority of the people in the world. "The truth is," says the doc, "no one really likes anything."

"So when people tell me they like my show?" I asked.

"Oh I've heard it," he said. "It's awful."

"Don't I know!" I said.

"They're obviously trying to make someone angry," he said, "if they say they like your show."

But what about me & Christmas? If I were just being contrary, wouldn't I hate Christmas? Also, wouldn't I shave my head & paint my scrotum blue? Also, wouldn't I visit old people late at night & make hissing noises under their door so they think their radiator's on fire?

"Probably," the doctor said. "But in your case, you're accepted one authority, & only one: Bing Crosby."

"Of course!" I said. "How could I be so stupid?"

"That's a completely different question," he said. "Put another nickel in my bowl, & I'll answer it."

I have since reconsidered the good doctor's diagnosis, but that doesn't mean he's wrong, just that I'm pretty sure he's full of shit. Meanwhile, as I was listening today to the fifteenth version of "Jingle Bells" I've collected for possible play this week, I could only smille to myself & think, "I also really love cheese. I wish someone would give me some cheese for Christmas. I do love it so!"

Full Of Myrrh & Sense

I'm so excited that I get to do a two & one-half hour A Very Self Help Radio Christmas this year. I hope Richard Dawson shows up! He's always there in my dreams!

I must say, I am delighted that weirdos like you enjoy my show, & even though my favorite music of 2007 hardly ever makes anyone's top ten lists besides me own (I only have one artist listed here, although Lucky Soul would have made it if my show were longer, & I played tracks from Japancakes's cover of the entire album Loveless under my airbreaks, even though that record is silly), I am rubber & year-end-top-ten-lists are glue, so their opinions bounce off of me & stick onto people who apparently only listen to music that they're told to. Nyah.

The show itself is current available for your listening or re-listening pleasure over at selfhelpradio.net. The show includes frank & revealing discussions of rich people moving to Mexico, whether or not we believe Ike Turner, & what all those difficult Nobel Prizes really mean. Missing it will be the mistake you always thought you'd make.

Now, back to the annoying Christmas music. It really is like sifting through manure to find pearls. Is that how the cliche goes? Did noblewomen once hide their jewelry in shit? The world is strange.

20 Shows To Go!

I'm down to 20 shows. Holy cow!

Today's show is my favorite indie music from 2007. Is it weird that I feel completely relieved that, of the twenty or so bands I'll get to play today, only one of them made the Onion's top 25 records list?

Justin, who does the House Call before me, is also playing his favorite stuff. So how indie are we? Tune it to find out. Starting at 3:30 pm today, live on the 91.7 frequency in Austin, or at koop.org.

We're so cool. & enjoy me while I last. I'm almost gone! 20 shows! That's like one third of a year!

Friend Of A Friend Of A Frond

Great, now I have a ridiculous title & nothing to write about. Here's what I know about fronds, though:

A frond is a large leaf with many divisions to it, and the term is typically used for the leaves of palms, ferns or cycads.

I don't know anything about friends. Well, I know a little something about Friends, the hit television series which ran on American television from 1975 until the day before the United States went to war in Iraq. If you'll recall, it single-handedly created the paparazzi industry & it also served as replacement therapy for people who've lost the will to click.

Is it wrong that I don't think of the people who may be listening to my show as friends? Well, what if I think of you as acquaintances? Former co-workers? People with whom I served in the armed forces just right before the United States went to war in Iraq?

But if you are friend of a frond, & we're friends, your other friends might think I was a frond, to avoid them being considered the frond with whom you are friends. How do I argue that? I won't. I'll just take my leaf.

Get it? "Take my leaf"? Like take my leave? Oh I kill me.

Whither Gary's Favorite Indie Music 2007?

As has previously been noted, The Self Help Radio has long been a supporter of many generous & onerous causes, including but not limited to musical endeavors. As part of this longstanding belief system, & with all respect due to doctors who operate on all manner of folk, The Self Help Radio has preceded to pretend to poll all of its programmer to determine within a 45% plus or minus accuracy whether said programmer has actually listened to let alone rated his or her (well, his) favorite music which was released in the year many have called 2007.

The results may surprise you. Four out of five of doctors who operate on all manner of folk have agreed to disagree about the nature of the results, which shall be made public in some particular order on the The Self Help Radio show this coming Friday. All press complaints & any personal, swell-scented documents may be delivered with great aplomb to this email address(es) provided in the press packet everyone should have received at the complimentary brunch. Extra silverware may be returned to the Lost &/Or Found Department located on the second shelf.

What should next your move be? Good answer! The listening pleasure of The Self Help Radio was or may one day be discussed in mixed company beneath chandeliers & over mugshots. Don't be forgettable - understand that there are moments in history at which you are attending & those which you were not invited to which. This is open to all those who have stomach, gumption, opportunity, opprobrium & wherewithal. Will you fathom the depths of The Self Help Radio? Might you even look at The Self Help Radio, then at yourself in the mirror, just to see if there's a resemblance? I know you do!

The Self Help Radio thanks you for your supplemental nature. Your name has been put in a hat & one day in the future you will be contacted by someone in the employ of a doctor who operates on all manner of folk. What happens next is entirely up to you.

Preface To Gary's Favorite Indie Music Of 2007: Year End Lists & The Women Who Love Them

"The Year In Music"

JANUARY: An overhyped new record by some old dude. Giant world tour follows. Tickets top four hundred dollars each. Sponsored by Viagra. Old Dude makes lots of money.
FEBRUARY: A new hiphop record by the same dude who's made a lot of hiphop records in the past three years is released the same week as the new hiphop record by the other dude (who'll be dead by year's end) who's made even more hiphop records in the past five years, & there's a lot of news blurbs about the competition in sales. No one actually listens to the records, though some do enjoy the women in bikinis in the videos.
MARCH: Another awards show gives top awards to both an old dude (who was criminally not given this award three decades ago) & a young dude who's sold a lot of records (which no one will listen to three decades from now).
APRIL: A scantily clad, terrifyingly thin pop singer with a child creates a scandal when she endangers her child's life in some way, goes to rehab, leaves the child at rehab, shaves her head, shaves the child's head, & then breaks up some other scantily clad, terrifyingly thin pop singer's relationship. A reality show based on the event follows in the fall.
MAY: A new FCC ruling allows Clear Channel to purchase every radio station in the United States except for ten.
JUNE: Forty year anniversary of some overrated record by overrated old dudes dominates the media for a week, much to the gratitude of the current administration. Only a couple of people are strong-willed enough to look up from the nostalgiac haze to point out that the record hasn't aged well.
JULY: This year's group of "indie" musicians, picked apparently at random in a smoke-filled room by record company executives, get their break by being featured in a commercial or on a summer movie soundtrack. Of course, the ones who "make it" are not the group of musicians who truly deserve it, but the deserving musicians disqualified themselves by not signing to a major label.
AUGUST: Another old dude makes news complaining about the Internet, myspace, filesharing &/or mp3 stores online from his Malibu home as the third set of reissues of his CD catalog (feauring remixes by Moby & Radiohead!) hit the stores.
SEPTEMBER: Someone generally unimportant dies/kills self/is killed & becomes more important than they ever would have if they'd lived. This may or may not be the hiphop artist who released a new record earlier in the year.
OCTOBER: Some old dude rips off some groundbreaking hiphop/electronic/indie/world music trend & is hailed as a genius. He doesn't pay the interns who turned him onto the music (he only listens to his old stuff), but he does let them blow him.
NOVEMBER: A major musical innovator dies, but not only do the obituaries focus on the musician's "hits" & the troubles he/she had while alive, but someone unimportant - a politician, usually - dies soon after, taking the attention away from the true legend.
DECEMBER: Year end lists by famous critics will include only those records sent to the famous critics by major record companies, although, if an intern will fuck them, one of the critics may include the intern's favorite independent record as an afterthought or a "band to watch."

Early September Conjugal Visit

Yes, we have surprises in store for you this weekend only at Self Help Radio, America's favorite organic fast-food shopping emporium & home decor workshop. Using only fair-trade radio parts, Self Help Radio changes the world, one kilobyte of downloadable exacerbation at a time. Listen to what you can see if you'd only had a taste of the sweet-smelling Self Help Radio shaking your hand on the radio every week:

- Collapsible Cheese
- Martin Heidegger
- A Brief Cessation Of Hostilities
- Dimly Lit
- Vegetarian Dim Sum
- Jelly Pipeline
- Mind The Gap
- Popular Novelist On Hold

Want more? Want less? Both are available at no other cost to you than your time &/or interest over at selfhelpradio.net!

Update: On Friday, December 7, 2007, Self Help Radio performed a public service & played ninety minutes of 2007's best electronica (& not, as previously reported, best erotica, sorry). If you didn't hear the show, you will be able to enjoy it as it happened in what is apparently called mp3 format over at selfhelpradio.net. But act soon! It may only be there for a year!

21 Shows To Go!

Eep! Time is running short! Someone needs to get me a banjo & a sentient sports car or else we'll all die!!

Yes, today is (counting down, you know) show number 21. There are only 20 shows after this. If I live that long. You never know what my enemies may be putting in my sag paneer when I'm at an Indian food buffet. All I can say is that I can't eat as much as I used to, & that may be my saving grace. Damn my foes! Can't they wait their turn?

Today's show will be my favorite electronica from the past year. As always, I will neglect to make sure that everyone knows I couldn't possibly have listened to every record put out by every electronical artist (or by every human artist making electronical music) this year. Just most of them.

Actually, I do avoid a lot of stuff. I filter. I don't listen to much that's house-y (although if they made music based on television's House, you can bet I'd listen to that) & I don't listen to a lot of techno ravey dance music. Nor ambient, although it's a fine line sometimes. I mean, what's the real difference between glitch & drill n bass? Or did I make those genres up? I can't tell any more.

Oh, you listen & decide what I like. It'll all be live today on KOOP (& online too) from 4:30 to 6pm Texas time. & then later (probably around Sunday) at selfhelpradio.net. & still later, repeated over & over in your head when you get to hell. Three great chances to hear!

& be sad as show 21 passes by... & my departure from the KOOP airwaves gets ever nearer...

Evel

Last week one of my childhood heroes died. I hadn't really paid any attention to him at all in thirty years, but when I heard he was gone, I felt very, very sad.

His name was Evel but the name wasn't meant to evoke diabolical intent, just coolness. For a little fat kid in Garland, Texas, who loved comic books & science fiction, this guy sure seemed like a super hero. I wish I still had the toys I owned - the action figure on the motor cycle, the action van, the ramps - but the reason I don't is not because I outgrew them. I just played the shit out of them.

He of course wasn't a super hero. Listen to this:

Performing stunts hundreds of times, Mr. Knievel repeatedly shattered bones as well as his bikes. When he was forced to retire in 1980, he told reporters that he was “nothing but scar tissue and surgical steel.”

By his own account, he underwent as many as 15 major operations to relieve severe trauma and repair broken bones — skull, pelvis, ribs, collarbone, shoulders and hips...

He had a titanium hip and aluminum plates in his arms and a great many pins holding other bones and joints together. He was in so many accidents that he occasionally broke some of his metal parts, too.

I'm trying to remember specific moments I watched Evel Knievel jump something - like, did I see the Las Vegas jump, or the Snake River Canyon jump, live on TV? - but I don't think I ever saw anything but "best of" shots. For me, he wasn't someone you tuned into television to watch. He was captured on film doing what came natural to him, like you imagine a stray camera catches Superman flying overhead. He was someone my friends & I talked about, lied about, made up new legends about.

He was such an amazing thing to have as a kid. The New York Times obituary says he retired in 1980, which seems awful late, but by that time I was ass-deep in puberty & not really going to pay attention.

Aw, who am I kidding. Even now, if I had heard he was going to jump the Washington Monument on a Vespa, I'd have wanted to at the very least hear about it. Insert some dumb comment about his motorcycle leaping the river Styx here.

Whither Gary's Favorite Electronica 2007?

Whither not?

I was going to have that be my entire entry but thought, nah. I'm not that cliched. I also thought I'd be explaining it & then have the sentence stop in the

But even that's dumb, & it makes it look like I'm writing poetry or something. Hey! I haven't thought about this in a while.

Do you have a friend
?
Who writes
e - m a i l
like they think
they are
eecummings?

That used to annoy me more than it does now. It was far more annoying in the days when people wrote real letters. You'd get a gigantic letter from someone you liked & there'd be like six words per page. If I hadn't been so damned lonely I wouldn't have written back. Where was texting when I really needed it?

An aside: Back in those days, I used to steal a lot of ideas for letters from comic books. None of my friends ever read comic books - to this day, most people still think they're for kids or something - morons - so I could write letters with weird formatting & strange ideas & nobody I knew would ever know. They'd think I was creative!

That's harder with blogs. Someone could be googling a comic book, get my blog, & the next thing you know, Warren Ellis is coming up to KOOP to kick my ass. Not that that wouldn't be cool.

Speaking of cool - when will electronic music ever get really cool? Every time it seems about to break through, some douche like Moby or those French Daft Fucks come along - or even worse, Radiohead listens to an Aphex Twin record & thinks "Duh we could do this!" - & the commercial result is icky, half-assed, lowest common denominator commercial cookie-cutter shit. Ah well. Some great folks continue to make music regardless.

& that's
whither
my favorite electronica 2007.

Preface To Gary's Favorite Electronica 2007: My Circuit Bored

I want to publicly give thanks to electronics for enhancing my previously only chemically-enhanced lifestyle. In particular I'd like to thank electronics for high-definition school lunches. & satellite channel-changers. & my Tony Stark-flavored CPU. & instruments, like keyboards & kazoos, that can be made electric. Thanks electronics! Have some cheese on me.

I am writing this on what the gurus like to call a "computer." The electrons bouncing off its monitor into my eyes mock me, but I am used to the constant humiliation of "online gaming," so nothing burns me any more. Except the virtual fire of my hate. But that's not important right now. What's important is that eventually, when everything we predicted in romantic comedies comes true, it'll be we who are the machines, & not the machines. Nor vice versa.

For example, it was common in the 80s & before & after to forgo the risk & nuisance of having an actual drummer to use a "beat generator" or "drum machine." Famous bands like the Decaffienated Jellies & the Jean Lenin Sisters preferred the tinny, vaguely programmed sound to actual programmed tin drummers. The result? Legend! Why? Electronics! Hunh? I said Electronics! Turn up your hearing aid!

However, in recent years, the analog has made a slight comeback, also known as, it never really left but we've just noticed it again. "Analog is the new non-digital recording" has appeared on at least one bumper sticker, if that. Dance floors everywhere are a-titter, or possible a-quiver, especially when everyone pays a-ttention. When instead they dance, well, that's where electronics, & electronically-apathetic dance music heroes, shine. Literally. They shine. They have crystals & LEDs & even lightbulbs, although hopefully with a small ecological footprint or a small ecological booty so they don't track mud all over the place.

Let's hear it for electronics! Notice I didn' say "Let's see it for electronics!" That's because I do a radio show, which few people see (don't ask me how many people feel my show). I thank electronics for not only my livelihood but also for helping me make a living. Three cheers for electronics! Please push the "cheer" button three times. Then watch the screen.

Buy Lo! Sell Hi!

The robots this morning were unforgiving, or was it the cats? If I had my trusty pocket calculator, I'd be able to enumerate the humiliations & daily offenses I endure to exist to make this blog that I make to help me make my radio show. I don't do it out of "music love" or "computer love," that's for sure! I'd sooner spend time in a shop window with the other showroom dummies. But I'm no model - I don't want to spend all my time in some electric cafe being exposed to unhealthy radioactivity. It's more fun to do radio than to compute!

Anyway, leaving the man/machine behind, I do want to point out that not one but TWO of the most recent Self Help Radios are available for your listening pleasure over there at selfhelpradio.net. The last two shows I did in November are there, in fact. Please go listen to them & compare them to every Kraftwerk song you know.

Or did your antenna fall off when the spacelab fell on the Trans-Europe Express?

You have no excuse!

22 Shows To Go!

Vacation is over (but I'm taking the day off work anyway, because I am still a little jet lagged - all those damn time zones between here & New York!), so I'm sitting here listening to Christmas music in preparation for my World Famous Christmas Show, which I'll be doing in about a month. A month! It didn't even take Jesus a month to die on the cross!

Just got finished feeding my brood & have been going over the piles of nonsense I have for today's show about birthdays. A moderately exciting thing is happening today, besides it being Girlfriend's Birthday Eve & the general happy excitement of doing a radio show for the nice people: today I get a new apprentice!

Remember, KOOP welcomes newcomers into the station to train to be programmers twice a year, & part of the training process is to be paired with "seasoned" (that means recovering from some addiction) programmers to learn the ropes. I don't know anything about ropes, but I can tie my shoes, so I am assigned an apprentice. You may remember my apprentices from the previous season:

Gary: the rugged, no-holds-barred Midwesterner who has given me more stitches than anyone since the schoolyard bully in elementary school; &
Stephanie: the rugged, no-holds-barred chick from Houston whose inability to stop kicking me in the teeth made for hours of hilariously bloody radio.

Gary may still be around. His day job (he's the state executioner for some Middle Eastern potentate) keeps him busy, though. Stephanie, alas, had to go back to Houston because the city missed her too much. It was getting all weepy & talking with its mouth full of chocolate. What could she do?

It's bittersweet - my apprentice this week & the other one (I don't know why I always get two) next week will be the last apprentices I'll have at KOOP. But they're new! So with only 22 shows to go - wow! New voices on Self Help Radio!

Bad To Verse

"This is the first vacation you didn't finish a book," says my girlfriend Magda. It's true. There was too much to do!

I didn't relax enough, but then, what else are subways for? It's my own fault. I was listening to the lovely subway song that begins, "Stand clear of the closing doors please!"

Much as I constantly confuse the names of the colors (but not the colors) orange & green, or the names of the times of day (but not the times of day) midnight & noon, I have always confused "verse" & "prose." "Prose" has never seemed prosaic to me. & "verse" sounds like an insult. So while what I am writing now is more definitely not verse, I don't really think it's prose, either. In my mind, prose rhymes. With "rose." & "nose." & "those hose."

None of which explains why I should have or could have but did not finish a book over the last five days. I also didn't finish a crossword puzzle, but that doesn't bother me, seeing the half-assed attempts to solve crushingly easy sudoko puzzles in the in-flight magazine. What a wiener was sitting in my seat before me!

Oh oh, another weird thing is religious freaks in the subway. Who lets them in there? & above the Mason-Dixon line? They were handing out Chick Tracts!

What else? A radio show tomorrow! Aha!

Whither Birthdays?

No one really cares WHY I do the shows I do, so I've sort of stopped explaining. (But my love for the word "whither" lives on.)

There are some folks at KOOP who don't understand why I pick the themes I pick, but that keeps them from listening to my show, so saying why on my obscure little blog wouldn't help.

If I must explain: Suffice it to say, it's my wonderful girlfriend Magda's birthday this week, & there are tons of songs about birthdays (literally fourteen thousand pounds of them), & I figured I'd make it a regular thing.

Here's the tagline as if I advertised the show on television:

Is it your birthday? Have you recently had a birthday? Will you have a birthday this year or have you had one already this year? Then this show is for you!

I am still in New York, waiting for my previously mentioned wonderful girlfriend to wake up so we can begin our day. While most folks might finish their nights in gotham at a bar or in jail, we found ourselves last night at a vegan cupcake shop called Babycakes. The staff there were awesome & one of them had an iPod mix better than any jukebox I've heard in the city. The only scary thing: a picture of the owner with Martha Stewart. It almost made me regurgitate my spelt.

I've also seen old friends, new friends, near-relatives, men in business suits throwing up in the subway (okay, just one of those), Rockettes, bartenders eating apples & peanut butter, academics eating raw meat, the Park Slope food co-op, and lots, lots more.

Luckily when I see, I am also there to experience.

Preface To The Birthday Show: Another Year, Another Birthday

Does New York City have a birthday? How hard can it be to find out a day when a city was born? Pretty hard, actually - online encyclopedias give years, but not specific days. This must be a sneaky way to make sure a city has a birthday all year around!

I tried to find out when my home town of Garland, Texas, was born (answer: some time in 1891), but couldn't find a specific date. I did, however, find out that Garland has a Star Trek Lane. I knew there was a reason that I came from that city!

I shall visit it when I am there in Christmastime. For I am a major Star Trek nerd.

By the by, reading about artistical forms invented in New York in the wikipedia, I am surprised that the writer does not mention comic books. I am such a comic book geek that I really do expect to see super heroes in the skies above this city. At the very least, I am waiting for someone to tell me where the Baxter Building is.

What was I talking about? Ah yes, something about birthdays. Are days of creation the same as birthdays? Do my radio shows get born every Friday, or was the show born when I did my first show? (I know that to be October 9. My show expects presents.)

I dunno. My feet are sore because my girlfriend makes me walk everywhere. I am assuming they will fall off at some point, I'll miss my plane, & people will throw coins into my foot sockets as I make my living on the subways of New York. But that hasn't happened yet. I'll keep you posted.

NYC 11-07

Yes, yes, I'm in New York. It's chilly but I am getting to see both the trees in Central Park change color as well as steam pour from the manholes so it doesn't bother me. It's my girlfriend's birthday so this trip is for her, & we're going places & doing things she wants.

This affects you vis-a-vis my radio show in two ways. One, I have not updated the web page or my playlists on both the KOOP page & the myspace page, & b, I have not put up an mp3 of last week's show. I know, you'll not be able to sit at work & pretend it's Friday again today, & for that I am sorry. Not terribly sorry, though. I'm in New York!

Since it's officially Magda's Birthday Week, when I get back to do Self Help Radio on Friday, the show will be about birthdays. Not just hers. If you or anyone you know have a birthday, the show will be for you.

I'll try to continue writing from NYC. I'll also try to figure out what's making those manhole covers steam...