Photographs Of Places I've Lived # 19: Southbend Dr

(image from Google Maps.)

At some point in the fall of 2010, my wife began looking for houses to buy.  She did it without telling me that's what she was doing, because we had agreed to stay in the rental for a couple of years before looking.  What if we didn't like Lexington?  What if she was offered or found a job somewhere else?  She didn't tell me because she didn't want to argue with me & also because it was her money anyway.

She took me to this house & I was unimpressed.  She didn't care.  To this day she will ask me as a courtesy about what I think about things but I know it doesn't matter.  The house seemed cluttered inside, but she had a vision.  She knocked the walls out of the dining room so you walked into a spacious living space.  It had a small sun room in the back that the animals loved.  It was a bit too big - four bedrooms & two + 1/2 baths.  The half bath is where we kept the litter box.  The rooms were basically for storage, except the guest room which was sometime used.  But we had very few guests in Kentucky.  It's not a destination many people come to, & we discovered that the folks we thought were our friends didn't really like us enough to come visit us.

It was a gorgeous place, & I loved living there.  The house, I mean.  I met some wonderful folks in Lexington & I came to think the radio station, WRFL, was a sacred space.  I worked very hard to make RFL more accessible to students & also to community members.  I was able to help change the music department there & also helped with some policies.  & I loved doing Self Help Radio at that station.

But I kept saying to myself, "I don't want to die in Kentucky."  My wife & I often think if we'd ended up in Louisville or in Cincinnati, we might have stayed in that part of the world.  But Lexington was a bit too circumscribed for us.  It wasn't a dying small town like Huntington was, & it was a college town, which is always a good thing.  But as I looked for pictures of the house on my computer - it seems I never took a picture of the front of the place I lived, as I couldn't find one - I was reminded of how tiny my life was.  We still had to drive to Louisville or Cincinnati or Columbus to see most touring bands - they simply didn't find their way to Lexington.  There wasn't a vegetarian restaurant when we lived there, & no Ethiopian cuisine either.  We made do, though.  I was already learning to cook.  & our semi-regular trips to the Costco in Louisville (forty-five minutes to the west) ended when Costco opened in town.

My dog George died in that house.  (You can read my tribute to him here on this blog.)  We adopted Pauline the day after George died, & she grew up in this house.  (Here's a post where you can see a video of her playing in our backyard with Winston - when she was smaller than him.)  We adopted our sweet cat Boone when we lived here - in the neighborhood.  (That story is on the blog too.)  My sister Pat died while we lived in Lexington, & we brought home her dog Yoko to join our pack.  (I wrote about my sister & adopting Yoko also on this blog.)  There was a point where it was me, my wife, four dogs, & four cats.  & the house was big enough.  We joked about adopting more, but we both knew we weren't going to be in Kentucky forever.

Man, I miss that house.  It would turn out to be only my third favorite house - so far - & it suffered from being a bit too big - & also from being in Kentucky.  That house here in Portland would still be kind of big - but also just fine.

Not the yard though.  Holy shit not that yard.  It took me two days to mow that fucker.  God I hated that yard.  I loved it because the dogs loved it but I hated it when I mowed it.  How fortunate the Google mappers took their picture when it was freshly mowed!

The day we left, in August 2016, I remember having a look around from the front door, then closing & locking that door for the last time.  I didn't feel too terribly sad.  I believe we lived there for a little over five years, which is either tied for the longest I've ever lived in a place, or is actually the longest.  It was a good house.  We had great neighbors.  I loved living there, I really did.  But I'm very glad I'm not still living there.

Such feelings, so complicated & contradictory.

The Films Of 1985 (Chuck Style)

Hey!  In case you were listening to this past week's Self Help Radio (it was the favorites of 1985 show), but didn't really understand why in the middle of each set there was a sample from a movie & a fellow talking about that movie, it's because that was the show's resident cinephile Chuck talking about his favorite films of 1985.  Ya silly.

But you say it went by too fast!  & you wanted to learn more about those movies!  Like - what were the movies?

They were: Brazil, Day Of The Dead, Re-Animator, The Return Of The Living Dead, Static, Better Off Dead, The Goonies, & Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

How can I find out more about the movies + others from 1985?  There are several ways to do so:

Check out Chuck's Twitter feed!
Watch full movies from 1985 on YouTube!
You can also watch trailers for 1985 movies on YouTube!
There are movies from 1985 on IMDb TV!
& finally here are Chuck's movies on Letterboxd tagged for the show!

Okay then.  We'll be returning to 1985 in the summer, so maybe you can take the time to get up to speed.  Ya silly.

Self Help Radio 011921: 1985

(All images from Discogs.)

Here it is.  The seventeenth (!) installment of the show I do on my birthday week.  Lots of music from 1985 that I love dearly.  Whenever I do one of these shows, I think to myself, "I bet I could do a radio show for an entire year just focused on one particular year, & it wouldn't exhaust the great stuff released then."  This becomes more apparent as I get to the years when I was actively looking for & acquiring new music - something I've been doing since 1985, basically.  Which is why I am going to continue with 1985 in six months.  There is so much more to share!

Much thanks to our resident cinephile Chuck who took the time to share with us his favorite eight films from 1985.  His commentary is spread throughout the show.  The rest is me talking & lots of music.

Listen now at the Self Help Radio website.  Remember you'll need a username & a password, which are SHR & selfhelpradio.  What I played is below.  Feel free to share your favorites of the year!

Self Help Radio 1985 Show

"When The Going Is Smooth & Good" William Onyeabor _Anything You Sow_

"The World Turned Upside Down" Billy Bragg _Between The Wars_

"The People's Limousine" The Coward Brothers _The People's Limousine_

"I Want The One I Can't Have" The Smiths _Meat Is Murder_

"Go Out & Get 'Em, Boy!" The Wedding Present _Go Out & Get 'Em Boy!_

"Well Well Well" The Woodentops _Well Well Well_

"Hounds Of Love" Kate Bush _Hounds Of Love_

"Primitive Painters" Felt _Ignite The Seven Cannons & Set Sail For The Sun_

"Spoilt Victorian Child" The Fall _This Nation's Saving Grace_

"Edie" The Adult Net _Edie_

"Throne Of Agony" Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel _Nail_

"My Wife & My Dead Wife (Live)" Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians _Gotta Let This Hen Out!_

"The UFO Man" Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers _Rockin' & Romance_

"In Between Days" The Cure _The Head On The Door_

"Bring On The Dancing Horses" Echo & The Bunnymen _Songs To Learn & Sing_

"Never Surrender" Chin-Chin _Sound Of The Westway_

"Dirty Old Town" The Pogues _Rum Sodomy & The Lash_

"Downtown Train" Tom Waits _Rain Dogs_

"Malaria" Shriekback _Oil & Gold_

"Singing Rule Britannia (While The Walls Close In)" The Chameleons _What Does Anything Mean? Basically_

"Melonella" Cocteau Twins _Echoes In A Shallow Bay_

"Death Valley '69" Sonic Youth _Bad Moon Rising_

"Books About UFOs" Hüsker Dü _New Day Rising_

"Fish (Doghouse Version)" Throwing Muses _In A Doghouse_

"Why I Love Country Music" Lloyd Cole & The Commotions _Easy Pieces_

"All Fall Down" Primal Scream _All Fall Down_

"I'm Alright With You" The Pastels _I'm Alright With You_

"Haunted When The Minutes Drag" Love & Rockets _Seventh Dream Of Teenage Heaven_

"The Hardest Walk" The Jesus & Mary Chain _Psychocandy_

"Hollow Eyes" Red Lorry Yellow Lorry _Talk About The Weather_

"Avatar" Dead Can Dance _Spleen & Ideal_

"Life In A Northern Town" The Dream Academy _The Dream Academy_

"Stay Up Late" Talking Heads _Little Creatures_

"The Bottom Line" Big Audio Dynamite _This Is Big Audio Dynamite_

"The Whole Of The Moon" The Waterboys _This Is The Sea_

Whither 1985?

(image from here)

This is something I do every year: during my birthday week, I play songs from a year in the past.  & not just any year!  I started in 2003 (the first time my birthday rolled around during the show) with 1968, the year of my birth, & have gone up a year every year since then.  I have made it to 1985.  Which was (in my opinion) an amazing year for music.

Using the Rate Your Music website, I have gone through thousands of albums, singles, & EPs released that year.  I made long lists & spent the last week re-listening to many of those records to re-familiarize myself with them, to see if I still loved them as much as I once did (almost always the answer was hell yes), to decide what I might play on the show.  & a couple of things became obvious: one, there are too many songs to fit even a three-hour show; & two, I listened to a lot of musicians who were white & male.  Of course I did!  I was a lonely young white kid in a miserable suburb of Dallas in 1985.  I was naturally going to be drawn to songs designed for lonely white kids.

My half-assed solution is that I plan to revisit 1985 in six months.  The next show might not be my absolute top favorites, but certainly I think I can include great music I've discovered since my youth that is not quite as white & male as the stuff you'll hear tonight.

Tonight!  At midnight!  On 90.7 KBOO!  Online at kboo.fm!  Listen to the soundtrack of Gary's seventeenth year on the planet.  Sort of.  A lot of the music I would discover later.  But some of it I was actually listening to in 1985.  & like I said: I think it was a great year for music.

Preface To 1985: How Was My 17th Year?

So in 1985, I finished my eleventh grade year & I began my twelfth grade year.  I worked in the summer, I had a friend with whom I mostly hung out, I listened to a lot of music, & I read lots of books, comics, & whatever I could get my hands on.  I had virtually no idea about the future.  I hadn't thought about college - I had a sense I would be going, but hadn't made any plans.  No one at school talked to me or asked me about it - I don't think I ever spoke to a guidance counselor after ninth grade.  My family couldn't talk to me about it because none of them had any experience with college.  I feel like I lived in the moment almost by default, but I certainly wasn't seizing the day.  I was just kind of existing.  School, part-time job, fast food, sleep.  Every day.

The songs that I loved were all about love but I was very awkward around girls.  There was one person, a young lady named Cynthia, to whom I wrote notes constantly, & she wrote back, but mainly because she was friendly.  I don't think I found her attractive, & I don't think I really wanted to kiss her or anything, I simply wanted practice.  It was obvious she didn't want anything like that from me.  She laughed at most everything I said, mainly because she was very religious & very conservative, & I could say basic mainstream things & be outrageous.  I remember one time she asked me if I had a bible, & I said, "Sure.  It's in the fiction section of my library."  She found that funny & horrifying at the same time.

A class that became important to me was AP History.  The teacher tended to cultivate personal relationships with his students - not in a weird way - he thought of himself as a mentor - & he was also the faculty sponsor for the Whiz Quiz high school team I was on.  He would encourage us to keep our things in his room, so most of twelfth grade I didn't really use my locker.  I guess I thought it was some kind of status, & I took to coming to school before 7:30am to avoid the teachers who wouldn't let students wander the halls before class - they would make the students gather outside closed doors before 8am, & let them in like for a concert, a concert no one wanted to go to.  I could sit in the hall before the teacher arrived.  & then sit in his classroom before first period.  A couple of other students did it too, & we became friends of a sort.  I suppose I thought we'd be friends longer, but we mostly lost touch after high school.

It was in AP History that I first fell in love for reals.  Her name was Laura - it probably still is, but I of course haven't seen her in decades.  I actually asked her out once, I took her to see a play, but she thought of it as a "just friends" thing.  My heart was quite broken after I dropped her off.  I went to where my friend worked at the Mobil gas station & just slept in my car, more depressed & forlorn than I had ever felt.  I simply had no idea what the right thing to do was, how to go about it, or even how to read basic signs.  I suppose she thought I was nice.  From my current vantage point at the precipice of 53 years, I don't know where I got the courage or bravery to even try.

Most of my high school stories are not fun stories.  I might have been a bit arrogant - I was the asshole in the class who got the perfect score on the test & ruined the curve.  I certainly felt superior to everyone despite being secretly envious.  Why them & not me?  I read books about looking inward but never quite examined myself.  My mother had this way of making you do things with her moods & with strange, awkward compliments which I think she learned from her mother.  I too would toss in words of self-pity, unthinkingly, as a learned behavior, which for the first time people called me out for doing.  One high school friend didn't talk to me for months because she felt I was somehow manipulating her.  My lack of self-awareness made me think she was in the wrong, not me.

But I don't necessarily think of my seventeenth year as a dark time.  I was surrounding myself with things I loved, I was seeing more movies, I was reading lots, I was finding new music.  I was finding out what I liked, something that really takes a while, & needs cultivating.  The person with whom I spent the most time, my "best friend," would have gladly been anywhere else if someone else had only asked, but we did drive around Dallas listening to music, going to record stores & book stores, sometimes well into the night.  I came to know the city better.

The truth is, it was neither as hard as I thought it was, nor as easy.  I was woefully ill-equipped for looming adulthood, & I had no one to help me, & would have rejected anyone's help if it had been offered.  My lessons were in the works of creation I loved.  & I tried to join in: I actually wrote a book in that year.  (It wasn't that long, maybe 200 handwritten pages.)  I remember almost nothing about it, & it's in a box somewhere, but I wrote it in pencil, so it's almost certainly faded.  I do recall I was very proud of myself, & the friend I mentioned above, the one who called me manipulative, she asked to read it.  My "best friend" never offered to.

& she read it!  When she handed it back to me, I remember this as if I were there at this moment, & I asked, "What did you think?"  She looked kind of puzzled & said, "It's terrible, isn't it?"  As if that were something I already knew.

My reaction was swift.  I took it back from her, I stormed away, & I honestly never looked at it again.  It seems I was not going to be good at taking any kind of criticism for my writing in my life.

Though that really happened, it also feels like a metaphor for the person I was at seventeen.  Confident enough to take the time to write a novel, but unable to have a friend dislike it, & willing to just reject it outright once the slightest negativity came my way.  How many other things did I abandon & give up when there were signs it wouldn't be celebrated & embraced immediately?

The Jobs Of 1985

It's a sadness that memory is murky.  I'm trying to remember what I was doing as my part-time jobs in 1985 & it has befuddled me.  You might as well be asking me what classes I was taking in 11th grade from first to sixth period.  I might guess one or two, but not all.

My mother worked at a convenience store, the Time Saver, owned by the man whom she was dating, if you can call two people who were both in their fifties "dating."  Ed was an unpleasant fellow who really didn't like me.  I returned the feeling, but it was more complicated than that.  He bought me a car in 1984 & I agreed to work afternoons after school to pay it off.  Fifty dollars a week, I would get I think five dollars an hour, I would keep what was left for myself.  My mother, who had no real sense of self-preservation, stole constantly from Ed.  In later years, she would chuckle & say, "I ripped him off blind!"  But of course he only had the store; he had no other source of income, he wasn't independently wealthy; this was what he was doing to make a life, & he was giving money to her to pay her rent, feed & clothe her kids, etc.  When I look back at how mercenary my mother was, I wonder what had happened to her to make her so.  I wonder if she treated my father that way, & if they contributed to his own fall into alcoholism.  I couldn't really ask her when she was alive, & now that she's gone, it's all speculation.

In any event, Ed was somewhat loathsome.  I will perhaps write me about him at some time, although I am sure I've written about him before.  It's kind of impossible to search for "Ed" in my many posts.  I came to find the time we spent together at the store trying.  He had discovered things I liked & he would remark on them in a condescending way that I knew had some kind of malice behind it.  He was my mom's boyfriend, he was my boss, I couldn't just explode at him.  So I longed for a way out.  Despite it being a pretty good gig, & despite the fact that I, too, was stealing from him.

It pains me to admit this.  But it was so easy.  I wasn't making much money, I had a gas guzzler, I needed comic books, & I often ate fast food because my mother didn't really cook.  If a certain number of people came in, I would often leave the cash register open, calculate what they bought in my head, & then make change as if I had rung up their purchases.  In this way, I would pocket five dollars a night.  I never did more - I had enough of a sense of right & wrong, or at least I didn't want to get caught.  & I covered my tracks, which my mother never did - it was common at the end of the night to be something like fifty dollars off, which I took to mean my mother had stolen fifty dollars that day.

One major factor was that I was a bit envious of people at school who had good stories from their dumb jobs.  They were working at fast food joints, interacting with all sorts of weirdos, & I was just in the same store that I'd worked in & been in & my mom worked in forever it seemed.  A guy I knew named Karel - who was a grade above me - happened to mention that he delivered pizza.  I had a car, he said it was good money, & so I applied & got a job at Crusty's Pizza in the Eastgate Shopping Center.

This has to be late 1984 or early 1985.  It seems like I worked there forever - but it was probably only a few months.  I might have mentioned that I worked at the Mobil gas station during the summer of 1985, & for some reason I thought it was before my pizza delivery experience.  But now I am pretty certain it was after.  For one thing, when I delivered pizza, I was able to listen to a lot of music.  Sure, I was running my poor old car down, but when you drive for several hours a night, you can listen to a lot of albums.  By the summer of 1985, I had consumed a good deal of music, mostly Bowie's, Lennon's, & Costello's catalogs.  But there's also this piece of evidence:

One of the fellow who worked with me was a very tall, very homely, very thin, very quiet dude named David.  David was a classic rock fan, & also something of an illustrator.  I don't think David stayed at Crusty's as long as I did - he wasn't there when I left. I once hung out with him to see if he wanted to collaborate on a comic book with me (he wasn't that kind of an artist), but what I can remember is, if a band came to town, he would take the time to paint on his hatchback the band's logo.  He seemed to do this for radio promotions - he had won free tickets for that before.  One time, he did it for U2, he recreated the cover of the Under A Blood Red Sky album on the back of his car.  The only time U2 came to Dallas in the period was in February, 1985.  The last time was in 1983 when I didn't have a car.  So I had to be working at Crusty's at that time.

It seems like everyone left (David & Karel too) as spring approached, & the new delivery guys were jerks, & they stole money from where I kept change inside my car.  (I was dumb, I didn't lock it, because I was in & out so much.)  & then Crusty's closed, they had a store in Arlington they wanted me to transfer to, & they said I could be a cook but I was terrible at making pizza.  So I ended my pizza delivery days then.

My brother Ralph was working at a Mobil at the border of Garland & Richardson, & I believe I worked there for a while.  I seem to remember working there in the summer.  I may not have been there long when the manager transferred to a different Mobil, which is where I was working on the Saturday when Live Aid happened (July 1985).  So maybe I didn't work at the first Mobil for long.  That manager left & I stayed when the new manager came along, but he didn't like me much.  I always felt uncomfortable around him.  He always seemed to be testing me.  After I apparently failed at training a new employee, he called me & fired me.  But I believe that was in early 1986.

The funny thing is, I remember that my boss at Mobil was called Rob.  I have no memory of anyone else who worked there, except one woman who was very attractive but kind of intimidating.  Sometimes I think about my life & all the conversations I've had with people I've known & of course I can't remember any of them.  What does it say about memory that we can work with people for months & have no memory of them at all?  Why would I ever dare to think I was memorable?

This evening, on a dog walk, I worked out my 1985 work history & am still not very satisfied.  I wish I had saved pay stubs, I wish I had kept something like a journal.  I didn't.  Imagine carrying all that from high school to college!  But there's something interesting to end this probably dull entry with:

My brother Ralph got me the job at Mobil, but he was fired quickly after I was hired.  Why?  He was caught stealing.  Our mother's example was always with us.

My Seventeenth Year

The upcoming episode of Self Help Radio has the theme "1985."  When I first began the show, I had the notion that on my birthday week, I would revisit the year of my birth, 1968, & each birthday thereafter, I would go forward a year.  I would play my favorite music from that year.  Naturally, I wasn't listening to much music of my own choosing in 1968, so it was music that I love now, & that has been the case for most of these shows.  But for the 1985 show, I will play music I listened to & bought in 1985.  Much of it I would discover in the next couple of years, but I hope you'll agree with me that 1985 was a good year for music.

On January 20, 1985, I turned seventeen.  I'm not sure if it was a big deal or not.  I was a junior at South Garland High School in Garland, Texas, when the year began.  I'd become a senior in the fall.  I had maybe three or four people I knew in school that I considered "school friends," but I didn't really see them outside of school.  I had a friend named Gary Anderson that I knew outside of school because he frequented the same book store where I bought comics.  Gary was an odd kid - I talked about him here, & also here, & also here.  That last link has a story I will tell below.  The main person I hung out with, the person I called my best friend, actually didn't like me all that much.  I suspect he only hung out with me because I had a car.  I introduced him to Bowie & other musicians, & music became important to him.  But he loved to insult me, to demean me, he took a kind of sadistic glee in it.  I loved & admired him, & didn't know that your friends shouldn't do that to you.  All I had, really, was my experience with my family, & every member of my family acted as though they were in competition with one another.  If you were, let's say, somewhat intelligent & doing very well at school, you were told in no uncertain terms that that would get you nowhere & that "common sense" was more important than "book smarts."  In that way, my family denigrated whatever small achievements I had while amplifying my failures.  "He can't even change the oil in his car!"

My "best friend" would often get angry at me if I disliked or otherwise spoke out against things he had decided were good or important.  I learned to simply not tell him if I disagreed with him.  Later on in life, when our situations were such that I felt I could disagree with him, he would act horrified, even frightened, & to this day he doesn't talk to me about things he knows I have different opinions than he does.  Anyway, in about six years, he would betray me so utterly that it almost killed me, & it took me much longer to realize it was easy for him because of how contemptuous he was of me.

At seventeen, I had never been kissed, & of course I had never had a relationship with a girl.  I wouldn't have known how to start one.  This is a true story: there was a girl in our neighborhood whom I fancied.  I had "met" her at the convenience store where I worked, & found out she lived nearby.  I asked her over to my little apartment (this is where we lived) & told her how I felt.  She was of course dumbstruck, & said, "Okay," & left, & never spoke to me again.  The idea that I might ask her out hadn't occurred to me.  I guess I hadn't seen enough movies or something.  I simply didn't know what I was expecting.

Which brings me to the story of Gary Anderson.  Gary was gay, although I wouldn't have entirely known what that meant at the time, & wouldn't find out for a few years.  But, you know, it was kind of obvious.  At some point, either in 1985 or earlier, he was looking at my high school yearbook.  He had big round eyes & a long mane of curly blond hair, too poofy to be a mullet, but mullet-esque, & he turned to me with horror.  "Gary!" he said.  "You let boys sign your yearbook?"  I said of course I did.  The only people I talked to in school were boys.  He said, "Won't people think you're gay?"

Mostly people didn't think about me at all.  My family had almost written me off, my little brother didn't even say hello to me if he saw me in the halls at high school, & despite I suppose having a good academic record, I didn't really distinguish myself in anything notable in school.  Well, I was on the Whiz Quiz team.  That was a kind of local "College Bowl" competition, & our team was beaten by the team that went on to take it all.  My brain is telling me it was Arts Magnet, but I don't know if I remember it.  I missed a simple Mark Twain question that would've tied the game if I had answered it correctly.  For some reason, I agreed to be team captain in my senior year but luckily Whiz Quiz was either discontinued or put on hiatus.  There's a videotape of the event - it was broadcast on local television - that my friend Russell taped & gave me a copy of, but I was never able to watch it all the way through.  It's not fun watching yourself lose.

Even acquaintances thought very little of me.  My favorite place to get comics was a bookstore - I won't remember what it was called, but I remember the odd man, Don, who owned it.  I should write more about Don.  Anyway, I came in at some point in 1985 to get comics, & he wasn't there.  He had sold the place.  The woman who bought it told me she intended to continue with the same arrangement he had with me - putting aside comics for me each week - but it really hurt that he never told me.  I visited that store every week for two years & talked with him.  He never said goodbye.  It probably didn't even cross his mind.

As for work - this is getting long & there's lots to say about this year - I worked at the convenience store owned by my mother's boyfriend but wasn't fond of it.  I worked over the summer I believe at Mobil gas station, & remember quite liking it, moving with the manager to a different store when he transferred.  His name was Rob, he was the first Sikh I ever met, although entirely American.  & also my first horndog.  The guy made Jack Tripper on Three's Company seem like a seminarian.  At some point I also delivered pizza, & I think I did that after the gas stations?  No, I think it was before.  It's too bad, too.  It ruined my poor old car.

Enough for today.  These little yearly entries are the closest I'll ever get to writing an autobiography, so I feel the need to cram so much in.  But I feel like I liked 1985 pretty much.  I was mostly unself-aware but thought I knew it all.  Is that how most seventeen-year-olds feel?

PS When Self Help Radio explored the number "seventeen" as theme, I wrote a little about my seventeenth year.  You can read that, if you want, here.

Jeans On Film

(image sources below)

If you listened to this week's Self Help Radio, the show about Jean, you doubtless caught another installment of Chuck's Happily Unsophisticated Cinema Korner in which the show's resident cinephile talked about four famous Jeans - Arthur, Seberg, Simmons, & Marsh - & some of their work.  But Chuck didn't stop there!  If you want to follow up on his Jean research:

Here is his Jean's list on IMDb featuring the works of all the Jeans.  Plus he's created Youtube playlists where you can sample many of their works: Jean Arthur, Jean Seberg, Jean Simmons, Jean Marsh.  There are many treasures to be unearthed on these playlists!

Here are the films tagged for the show by Chuck on Letterboxd.

& as always, you can keep track of the movies & other stuff Chuck watched for Self Help Radio by following his Twitter account.

So much to explore!  It's so nice to be a Jean!

Photo credits: Jean Arthur, Jean Seberg, Jean Simmons, Jean Marsh.

Self Help Radio 011221: Jean's Show

(Again, not that kind of jean.  Image from here.)

Finally.  After all the disappointment, the anger, the confusion, the tears, the frustration, the harsh words, the arrests, the trials, the convictions, the sudden overturning of the convictions, the mobs, the property damage, the terrifying nights of fear & hiding, the helplessness, the hopelessness - finally, here's Jean's show.  & we freely admit, Jean deserved this show.  It was all worth it for her.

You might be saying, "Wasn't this show delayed for a week?"  It's true, but as we have seen, in 2021, a week feels more like a month.  Possibly two.  It's early yet.

You & your friend Jean (also Jeanette, Jeannie, & Janine) call listen to the show at the Self Help Radio website.  Please let her know she'll need a username & a password, which is SHR & selfhelp.  She'll get to hear lots of songs about her as well as interviews with namesakes.  That information is below.

Hooray for Jean!

Self Help Radio Jean's Show

"Have You Seen Jean" Al Vance _The Complete Goldwax Singles. Vol. 1: 1962-1966_

"I Love My Jean" Camera Obscura _I Love My Jean_

"Creeping Jean" The Kinks _The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society_

introduction & definitions

"Jeanne" Air & Francoise Hardy _Pop Romantique_

"Blue Jean" Papercranes _We Were So Turned On: A Tribute To David Bowie_

"Jellypop Perky Jean" Julian Cope _Droolian_

"Jeane" The Smiths _This Charming Man_

"Miss Jean" Richard Barone _Clouds Over Eden_

interview with Jean-Marie

"Recessive Jean" Shriekback _Without Real String Or Fish_

"Jean's Not Happening" The Pale Fountains _...From Across The Kitchen Table_

"String Bean Jean" Belle & Sebastian _Dog On Wheels_

"Jean's Waving" Amor De Días _The House At Sea_

"Jean & Dinah" The Mighty Sparrow _Soca Anthology: Dr. Bird_

interview with Jeannette

"Jeannette" Gus Viseur _Cafe De Paris 1930-41: 24 Accordion Classics From The Boulevards Of Paris_

"Jeanette" Wade Flemons _Casino Classics: The Forgotten Floorshakers_

"Jeanette" The English Beat _Special Beat Service_

"Electro-Jeanette" Nosoträsh _Popemas_

"Blues For Jeanette" Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials _Chicken, Gravy, & Biscuits_

interview with Bonnie Jeanne

"Jean" Aaron Freeman _Marvelous Clouds_

"Bettye Jean's Blues" Bettye Jean Washington _I'm A Bad, Bad Girl: Seven Dozen Dusky Divas 1939-1953_

"Betty Jean" The Soul Of John Black _Black John_

"My Sister Mary Jean" Lily Tomlin _And That's The Truth_

"Amber Jean" Neil Young & The International Harvesters _A Treasure_

Chuck's Happily Unsophisticated Cinema Korner looks at actors named Jean

"I Dream Of Jeannie" Big Kahuna & The Copa Cat Pack _Shake Those Hula Hips_

"I Dream Of Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair" Sam Cooke _Sam Cooke_

"Jeannie With The Dark Blue Eyes" Doug Powell _Virginia Rocks! The History Of Rockabilly In The Commonwealth_

"Jeannie Nitro" The Fratellis _We Need Medicine_

"Jeannie Steps Out" Eileen Rose _At Our Tables_

a Self Help Radio list: famous Jeans

"Janine" David Bowie _Space Oddity_

"Jean & Paul" The Cherry Orchard _The Start Of Our Affair_

"Jeanie" The Reivers _Saturday_

"Jeanie" Widowspeak _Plum_

"Jeannine I Dream Of Lilac Time" Gene Austin _Gene Austin_

"Devon Jean" Rudolph Johnson _Killer Jazz Funk From Black Jazz Vault_

conclusion & goodbye

"Jeane, If You're Ever In Portland (Live)" Casiotone For The Painfully Alone _Bobby Malone Moves Home E.P._

"Jeannie's Last Kiss" Bobby Bare _500 Miles Away From Home_

"Jeanie" The Sweet _The Sweet's Biggest Hits_

"Jeanie Loves Pop" Warm Soda _Someone For You_

"Skinny Jeanne" The Pernice Brothers _Spread The Feeling_

"Jeanie Jeanie Jeanie" Eddie Cochran _Somethin' Else: The Fine Lookin' Hits Of Eddie Cochran_

Whither Jean's Show (We'll Try It Again)?

(Image from here.)

Oh, I know what you're thinking, you're thinking, last week at this time Gary wrote:

Tonight's show is all about people (mainly women) named Jean.  I thought about perhaps including the male Jean, since it's the same word, but mostly I found songs about women named Jean.  & Jeannie.  & Jeanette.  & I think a Janine or two.  If there's a Jean song about a dude, it's probably by accident, or because I didn't notice.

Plus I'll talk to some Jeans!  I was able to find three Jeans of assorted types - a Jean-Marie, a Jeannette, & a Bonnie Jeanne - & I'll ask them about their names, where they got them, what they think of them.  & since there are lots of film stars named Jean, our resident cinephile Chuck will talk about four of them.  That's in addition to all the songs!  & who knows what other Jean might show up?

Why do a show about the name Jean?  Wouldya believe I once wanted to be named Jean?  Because of Jean Grey of the X-Men?  You wouldn't believe that?  Well, good.  It's not true.  I had a hard enough time with the word "dick" in my last name; an ambiguously-gendered name would have been rougher still.  No, the reason I'm doing it is because I noticed lots of songs with the name Jean.  It's really as simple as that.  I thought, "I should do a show."  & now I will.

But then you tuned in & although you heard three Jean songs there weren't any after that!  What the fuck?  Why would I try again?

Hope springs eternal I guess.  Like I said last week, 

Jean's show is on tonight (or Tuesday morning if you prefer) on 90.7 fm KBOO, online at kboo.fm, from midnight to 3am.  You may think, does Jean really deserve three hours?  She does!  She really does.

Preface To Jean's Show, Again: Déjà Vu

According to Wikipedia, "Déjà vu is the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before. This is a French phrase that translates literally as 'already seen.' Although some interpret déjà vu in a paranormal context, mainstream scientific approaches reject the explanation of déjà vu as 'precognition' or 'prophecy.'"

Do you remember this scene in the Matrix?

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XfEuxRDYiyc" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

(You can just watch the first minute.)

That's not how déjà vu works.  You don't see something & then think you've seen it again suddenly.  You get the feeling, which is almost certainly generated randomly by your brain, that you've experienced what you just experienced before.  It actually happened to me tonight, at the end of a movie I was watching.  I not only felt that I had seen the end credits before, it almost convinced me I had scene the entire movie before.  Which I couldn't have - it was just released this year.

It sometimes baffles people that your brain can replicate the feeling of having experienced something before.  But it happens in situations outside déjà vu.  Have you ever had a dream you were in a place that is utterly familiar to you but when you wake you realize you've never been there before?  It's not because there's some mystical connection - "I was there in a past life" - it's because your brain, in the dream, gives you the memory of feeling like you've been in the place before.  This happens to me all the time.  & it helps me experience other things in the dream - I don't spend time in the dream wondering where the hell I am because the dream makes me think I am in a place I've been before.  That's a feeling, like déjà vu.

But today was the opposite of déjà vu.  I spent the day in something like a mild panic because I would normally be working on my show today.  But the Dickenbock Report is done, & so is Self Help Radio.  I did spend some time today working on upcoming shows, but mostly I just felt a little lost.  I became a little addlepated at the evening's end, which made me think it might not be Sunday.  Is it Sunday?  It feels like Saturday.

One thing I hope is I don't experience déjà vu Tuesday morning, with my show turning off fifteen minutes in.  It will perhaps make me think that in fact I'm cursed.  That 2021 cursed me!

Wait. It's January?

Might I make an observation about January that might seem trite to most people.  Yes?

Okay.  Here it is.  January might not feel the same to everyone.

& yes, you might point out the lack of authority in that statement.  More confident folk (who I find are mostly wrong) would have avoided the "might."  They would assert & would do so shamelessly.  They are generally insecure people who feel the need to speak in absolutes.  Perhaps they find succor in dogma.  In any event, it's uncomfortable for them to qualify a statement without making it somehow universal.  I can't speak for anyone but me, but I find that a bit sad.  Though surely they have a quote from someone of their ilk to punctuate their feelings.

When I lived in Lexington, January meant at least one snowfall & perhaps some very cold days.  One winter it got down to single digits.  That was quite unpleasant.

In Fort Worth, there were days of some cold, possibly even days where the temperature reached freezing.  But except for the scare of ice - ice on the road terrified even the most road-weary Texas driver - it never seemed like winter would inconvenience the average denizen of the Metroplex.

Yet I weigh roughly six years in snowland vs three years in Texas plains & I say: what happened to January?

It has been cold here.  Not too cold - maybe the mid-40s.  & it has rained here.  It's Portland man.  But snow?  Bitter cold?  That hasn't happened.  It's weird, right?

Or is it?  No one I've spoken to thinks so.  They think it might snow in March.  March!

This fucking West Coast.

By the way, I'm told it's less cold on the coast.  Just get to the Pacific, it's warmer & there's less rain.  What the actual fuck?

Photographs Of Places I've Lived # 18: Tulsa Rd

(image from google maps)

This unassuming red brick house was where we lived the first year my wife, my animals, & I lived in Lexington, Kentucky.  It was owned by an elderly couple: the husband of the pair showed the house, but it was pretty obvious the wife was in charge.  We were a hard sell - we had three dogs (we lied about the cats) but my wife's nerdy charms won the day.  The old man was smitten with her.  He would chuckle appreciatively about her when she would leave the room, as if I weren't there.  We figured he would have a hands-off approach to the rental property, & we were right.  He never came by.  We never had to hide the cats.

It had two bedrooms upstairs we never used.  Well, except for storage, & one time when someone I knew was passing through & needed a place to crash.  We used the downstairs.  It was a mostly pleasant place but in the spring we noticed something... odd.  We called it "the zombie smell."  It was an odor that seemed to emanate from the area around the bathroom that was redolent, well, of dead things.  It went away in the summer but we suspected if we stayed there another year, we'd be visited by it again.

The yards - both front & back - were huge.  The fence was useless, so we created a smaller area for the dogs near the back door.  They didn't seem to resent that.  Perhaps it was that we walked them regularly, no matter the weather.  Or perhaps they observed how unhappy I was mowing that gigantic fucking yard.  Which took two days.  Every time.  & when autumn came, & the leaves fell, well.  There went my week.  There was a nice woman across the street who asked if she could have my leaves for mulch, so I raked them & carried them over to her.  I don't think she said a single thing to me ever again.

While I was living there, I began deejaying at WRFL, & it was a happy time.  The wife was still working at Marshall & would occasionally drive to work there, staying at the house we owned there, which was for sale, but which took about a year to find buyers.  She got a job at UK in the spring of 2011, so she left Marshall & West Virginia behind.  I would've liked to go back & look around, but I never did.

All of my babies were well there, the last time that would be the case.  I have pictures of my cat Beatrice & she seemed very fat & happy.  Bronte, adopted in West Virginia, grew chubby there, too.  One story of that time bears repeating.  It's about how our dog Ringo almost killed everyone in the house.

Ringo, since his adoption in 2004, had always been a menace.  Food-focused, he would break into locked pantries, he would knock over deep-fryers to lick the grease, he would find things on shelves or countertops like bags of tortilla chips, open them & eat them all.  He was about eight when we moved into the rental on Tulsa Road.  We thought he might have mellowed somewhat, since he was officially "elderly."  One night the wife had prepared a bunch of sweet potatoes to be used in burritos.  I suspect it was a Sunday, because she left to come pick me up, & it was probably from an RFL meeting.

We came home to find a sweet potato nightmare.  The pot was off the stove, the floor & walls had remnants of orange on them, & Ringo was suspiciously fat.  But worse than that, the gas stove was on.  There was no flame, just gas.  We believe Ringo figured out - probably through trial & error - how to open the door to the oven, use it as a springboard, & get onto the top of the stove, where the delicious yam concoction was waiting for him.  But he must have accidentally jostled a knob, because he had turned on the gas.  We were gone for mere minutes; had we been gone for longer - we often did drive to Louisville, or Cincinnati - the house would have been flooded with dangerous vapors.

The wife thinks it might have made them sick, but not killed them.  But it was enough to make me decide to do something I cannot believe I hadn't thought of before: we started locking the dogs in the bedroom when we left.  I would give them treats so they would go willingly, even eagerly, but once in there, the baying would begin.  This would last until 2018, when Ringo died.  The remaining three - two of which never lived with us on Tulsa Road - were never as food-focused & nefarious as Ringo.  It felt weird letting them stick around when we left.  Ringo, even when he was old & gray, was still quite the threat.

The wife felt burned by the buying & selling of the house in West Virginia, & swore to me that she'd wait a couple of years before looking for a home to buy - after all, we didn't know if we wanted to stay in Lexington!  But in the fall of 2011, she found a house in the neighborhood she wanted to buy.  That, by the way, would become our modus operandi - rent in an area, decide we liked it, buy in the same or nearby neighborhood.  I was a bit irritated by this - we had just moved twice in the past two years - but she both found a place she loved & she found a place she wanted to renovate.  I was mainly focused on my radio life, & taking care of both my kids & my wife.

It wasn't quite as often as it would become, but I cooked a lot more at Tulsa.  I was starting to enjoy the process of following a recipe.  Which was good - having become vegan in Huntington, we found that there weren't many more vegan options in Lexington.  Luckily there were in Louisville & Cincinnati, which were closer, & which we did visit often.  As I mentioned.

In all, I enjoyed that house on Tulsa Road.  I just looked through old pictures (old! it was a decade ago!) but couldn't find one of the front of the house.  The place never felt like ours, & I hate corner houses.  But I had that sense of freedom one has when one escapes a terrible situation, like we did, when we left Huntington.

Why Not Dickenbock Report?

You weren't paying attention but I had a lousy Monday night/Tuesday morning.

It started off all right.  I spent the day putting together that evening's Self Help Radio, I had a delicious dinner with the wife, I fed the cats, I took the time to do a little Twitter research, & when midnight rolled around, I tuned in to KBOO on my radio to listen to when I would be on the air.

You see, I have been doing Self Help Radio - & basically all the shows I've done on KBOO - live from my little room since last summer.  There have been occasional glitches, & I'm aware they can happen.  But there hadn't been one in several months.  I suppose you could say I was complacent.

The system in place at KBOO works quite well.  I basically stream my show from my home to KBOO, & if the stream is interrupt, it plays a song or a station spot & gives me the chance to reconnect.  This is partially because something as dumb as accidentally downloading a file can disrupt the stream.  We can't watch Netflix or anything like that, & we sure as hell shouldn't be trying to upload or download anything, while we're doing the live show.  Which is fine - it's midnight for fuck's sake, the wife's asleep, it's just me & some caffeine & my dumb radio thing.

But something awful happened Tuesday morning.  The show started after the KBOO spots played.  I was able to get SHR going & was even in the middle of my first airbreak when my internet just stopped. This was around 12:15am.  It wasn't a glitch, it wasn't something I did, it wasn't a power surge or anything like that.  It stopped & it didn't come back on.  For thirty minutes.

The worst thing was, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.  I just listened to the radio as the automation system compensated by playing a song & a spot, tried to connect, played another song & another spot, tried to connect a second time, played a further song & spot, tried to connect a third time, played a desperate last song & spot, & then played an old episode of Self Help Radio from November of last year.  I texted a couple of people from KBOO to see if they were up & could help, but they weren't up - & by the time my internet came back on I was so demoralized I didn't think I could do the show.  I had a beer, I read a book, I felt like shit.

You probably can't tell, but I put a lot of work into these dumb radio shows I do.  Their shabbiness is my amateurishness, & if it were just me, I wouldn't feel so bad.  But I ask people to help out.  & when I can't do the show, it makes me feel I've let them down.

This turned into some massive self-pity for me but I actually wanted to say two things.  One, going forward, I don't think I'm going to do Self Help Radio - or any radio show - live from home.  I've never seen myself as oversensitive but I don't want to live through something like this again.  Anyway, the Dickenbock Report is recorded & it doesn't seem to suffer for it.

Which brings me to number two: if you want a dose of Gary radio this week, you can go to the Self Help Radio website & listen to this week's the Dickenbock Report.  I archive all those shows, actually, I just don't make a big deal about this.  This week I focused on Utah.  Why?  Go listen!  It's at the top of the page.

& next week's Self Help Radio will be what this week's Self Help Radio was supposed to be, only my airbreaks will be recorded tomorrow or Saturday.  I am still really bummed about it.  The chance of it happening again is pretty great, so I'm going to just nip it in the bud & not give that chance a chance.

Sigh.

Whither Jean's Show?

(Not that kind of jean!  Image from here.)

Tonight's show is all about people (mainly women) named Jean.  I thought about perhaps including the male Jean, since it's the same word, but mostly I found songs about women named Jean.  & Jeannie.  & Jeanette.  & I think a Janine or two.  If there's a Jean song about a dude, it's probably by accident, or because I didn't notice.

Plus I'll talk to some Jeans!  I was able to find three Jeans of assorted types - a Jean-Marie, a Jeannette, & a Bonnie Jeanne - & I'll ask them about their names, where they got them, what they think of them.  & since there are lots of film stars named Jean, our resident cinephile Chuck will talk about four of them.  That's in addition to all the songs!  & who knows what other Jean might show up?

Why do a show about the name Jean?  Wouldya believe I once wanted to be named Jean?  Because of Jean Grey of the X-Men?  You wouldn't believe that?  Well, good.  It's not true.  I had a hard enough time with the word "dick" in my last name; an ambiguously-gendered name would have been rougher still.  No, the reason I'm doing it is because I noticed lots of songs with the name Jean.  It's really as simple as that.  I thought, "I should do a show."  & now I will.

Tonight (or Tuesday morning if you prefer) on 90.7 fm KBOO, online at kboo.fm, from midnight to 3am.  You may think, does Jean really deserve three hours?  She does!  She really does.

Preface To Jean's Show: Don't Know Nobody Named Jean

It's true.  I don't know anyone named Jean.  Certainly the only "Jean" that shows up in my Facebook friend search - & can we just acknowledge how weird it is that you can "search" your "friends"? - is someone I haven't spoken to in well over a decade & I'm certain she no longer looks at Facebook.  She might even have forgotten her password.  Anyway, I'm not sure it's her real name - she's using Jean as her last name but perhaps it's actually her real middle name.  The point is, I'm not sure if I reached out to her I'd actually get a response.

There was a time when there were two sort-of Jeans in my life.  My sister Pat's husband - he's a widower now - his mother was named Jeanette, but she's not been with us for a while.  & he now longer speaks to me.  So I couldn't ask him to talk about his mother, who seemed to be a very nice person.  I can see her face even now.  She had a lovely smile.

& the ex-wife of one of my brothers has a sister named Jeannie.  I thought about asking her - we're friends on Facebook - to inquire if her sister might like to talk on the show, but I somehow thought she'd either say no, or her sister would say no, or it would just be too weird for either of them.  I haven't spoken to that Jeannie since - this is absolutely true - the fall of 1988, when she gave me a ride to Dallas from Austin for I think Thanksgiving.  She was living on the Gulf Coast at the time & was swinging through Austin for some reason.  It seemed like a nice drive.  But we didn't speak again.  & I guess my brother & her sister were divorced soon after, so there weren't any family gatherings at which to see her.

& that's it!  So why do a radio show about anyone named Jean?  I suppose I can answer that tomorrow, even though you know what the answer is & shouldn't even ask that question anymore.

Post Script: I will talk to three people with some form of the name Jean on the show, though.

The Grouble With Gribbles

Imagine my surprise to learn that a gribble is an actual thing!  I thought it was just the odd noise a hamburger corporation mascot makes in 1980s television commercials.  But no, a gribble is in general a white, quite pale, crustacean.  Here's a delightful sentence from the Brittanica online: They feed on algae, driftwood, & the submerged wood of docks & wharves & sometimes attack the nonwoody insulation of submarine cables.

Perhaps the author of that article got a tad too judgmental in the last sentence.  "Attack"?  Perhaps I should investigate further - the image of a gribble "attacking" something it wants to eat is perhaps akin to one "attacking" a meal when one is hungry.

Instead, I decide to look at pictures of gribbles.  Here's one:

One image, two gribbles.  It's from an article entitled "The Gribble Worm Could Hold Secrets for Cheaper Renewable Energy."  It's a bit weird that they outright call the gribble a worm in the headline but say in the first sentence: Perhaps you can tell by their name, but gribble worms are not the most beloved of crustaceans.

What the hell?  Does the word "gribble" automatically sound pejorative to you?  How can I tell by its name that it's not the most beloved of crustaceans?  & by the way, how can you be trusted if you call something both a worm & a crustacean?  Worms aren't crustaceans.  That seems pretty easy to research.

But I wondered if I wasn't cool enough to know what "gribble" might mean, especially to the hip Popular Mechanics crowd (that's where the article is).  So I went to the trusty Urban Dictionary, which tells me that gribble is the slang term in Hawaii for falling or "eating it."  As usual, there's a helpful sample sentence: Sam gribbled on the turf.

Let me just state that I don't see or hear any relationship in the word gribble with eating wood, being loved, or falling down.  In fact, the word is quite young, having entered the English language barely two hundred years ago - centuries in fact after sailors probably noticed them eating their piers.  Etymologists don't know exactly where the word comes from, but most seem to think it's a slight variation on "grub."  & sure, "grubby" is an insulting term, but I don't hear "grubby" in "gribble."  Seriously, all I can hear is some variation of what the Hamburglar said in old commercials (although I think it was "robble robble" & not "gribble gribble").

Can I tell you two more things about gribbles?  They're from the Wikipedia article.

One: Gribbles play an ecologically important role, by helping to degrade & recycle driftwood. Most seaweed boring gribbles attack holdfasts & their activities can cause the seaweed to come adrift especially during storms.

& two: For defense, gribbles can jam themselves within their burrows using their uropods & block the tunnel with their rear disc-shaped segment, the pleotelson.

Now, I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it doesn't suggest to me an animal people naturally hate.  But if you're going to be mean to an animal that helps degrade & recycle driftwood, I hope it jams its uropods & sticks its pleotelson in your stupid face.

Photographs Of Places I've Lived # 17: Neel St

In 2008, the woman I lived with, who became my wife later that year, got her PhD.  She began looking for jobs at universities, & even though the economy went kablooey that year, managed to find a tenure-track position at Marshall University in the spring of 2009.  That's in Huntington, West Virginia, a state I never thought I'd ever visit because it was a state I never thought of.  Knowing how my roots were in Texas, & Austin in particular (I'd lived there basically since 1986), my wife thought I might stay there while she lived in West Virginia & return on the weekends.  That was absolutely untenable, not the least because we had three dogs & two cats to take care of, & I would be at work most of the day.  No, I felt the time had come to leave Austin, & although neither of us were very happy in Huntington, I'm glad we left.

The city was very small, very provincial, very conservative & poor.  In our neighborhood - we lived quite close to a park - there were houses that were built seventy or eighty years prior (our house, pictured above, was built in 1934) that just sat empty.  One of our neighbors worked for the Census that year & frantically attempted to count people because the city was depopulating, & would lose some status if it dropped under 50,000 residents.  They wanted to count the students before they disappeared for the summer.

Huntington has the reputation of the most unhealthy city in the country.  While we were there, British cooking person Jamie Oliver was filming his attempt to remake school lunches or something.  There's some controversy over whether he helped or hurt.  I recall our neighbors being a bit resentful of his presence.

We had to buy a place - this became a common refrain - because you couldn't really rent with five pets.  The house was nice, three stories, so too big for us, & not good for our dog George, who was elderly at this point, & not so great on the stairs.  We liked the house, somewhat, but the town was dark, it got cold, & my wife was miserable.  Not only did she hate her job, she hated the city, & we took to going places on the weekend - we visited Athens, & Columbus, & Cincinnati, Ohio, we tried to find things to do in Charleston, but most often we found ourselves in Lexington, Kentucky, about two hours to the west.  I've never been the sharpest tool in the shed, but I should have known that our constant attempts to escape the city boded ill for our time there.

There was a student station, WMUL, that let non-students volunteer & do shows, & perhaps I've written about the issues I had while deejaying there.  It was fundamentally organized around commenting on & calling sports games.  Its music shows were afterthoughts, & in fact most of the time its automation system played the same songs.  My last show there I believe was late Monday, maybe from 10 to midnight, maybe later.  I can't recall.  I would go to the campus police, get a key, let myself into the building, turn off the automation, do Self Help Radio, turn the automation back on, & then return the key.  It was lonesome & not much fun.  One night in December however I went in to do my show & returned to find the world covered in snow.  That was amazing.

(I did a late night show because any other time my show might be preempted for sports.  One time I couldn't do a show because they decided to air a little league game to give the sports guys some practice.  That's a true story.)

We had decided to relocate to Lexington by the summer of 2010.  My wife went to Madagascar for research in June but we found a place to rent which you'll see next week.  I left WMUL in June before we knew we were going to move to Lexington.  I am hesitant to talk smack about radio stations but I was incredibly dissatisfied at WMUL & I found many of its practices distasteful.  I knew I didn't have much of a future there, & was thinking about trying to deejay at a station in Lexington, driving the two hours there every week to do the show.  It turns out I didn't need to drive that far once I got to the station.

One very nice thing about Huntington was we adopted our cat Bronte there.  I talked about her here & here.  She's doing quite well at 13 which is a surprise as we didn't think she'd make it this long.  After Beatrice died in 2018, she became much sweeter, & often visits us to purr loudly in our face.  To find the picture of the house above, I went through many photos of her tiny self when she first arrived.  She's a sweetheart.

Not That I'm Counting (But I'm Counting)

Happy New Year's Eve!  I am preparing for the fireworks because I have a nervous dog.  That's going to be fun.

Last year around this time, I was very excited because I had gotten a show on KBOO, which, along with my shows on Freeform Portland & XRAY, meant I was doing three shows in Portland.  I contrasted that with how long it took me to get a show in Dallas, which wasn't even a show that I really wanted to do.  It seemed too good to be true.

The Dickenbock Report was to be bi-weekly, so I wrote in this post a breakdown of how many radio shows I thought I would be doing in Portland in 2020:

Assuming I do all of my radio shows next year - not a safe bet, but, you know, I just might - that will mean:
52 Self Help Radios
52 Sugar Substitutes
26 Dickenbock Reports
That's 130 radio shows.

It certainly wasn't a safe bet.  Even with the week off for the Dickenbock Report, it was pretty difficult to do three shows every other week.  & then I was surprisingly offered a midnight to three slot on KBOO - on the same night I did Sugar Substitute.  It wasn't an easy decision, but I chose to end the XRAY show (this was a week before the studios closed for the pandemic) for one main reason: it was kinda lonesome.  The shows before & after mine were recorded.  I never met the programmers (the show after mine was produced in France!) & that simply wasn't the case - or wouldn't be the case, anyway - with KBOO.

It turned out of course that I started the midnight to three show after the stations closed, so I've still not met the people who do the shows before & after me.  But once the stations closed, I concentrated on both making the shows I was supposed to make for both KBOO & Freeform, & I kept doing volunteer work (but not shows) for XRAY.

Freeform took a while to get a structured automation, so there was a gap between Self Help Radio episodes.  Some of them I made & they were tossed into the general automation & I have no idea if they ever aired.  In July they were scheduled for the 8-10am timeslot, & they stayed there until I moved the show to KBOO in late October.  So while I probably should have had 52 episodes of Self Help Radio this year, the count was actually 48.  I did my regular Christmas show, my wife's birthday show, three indiepop a to z episodes, my favorite releases show, my anniversary show (where I revisited an old theme), & 41 other shows with unique themes, including Halloween & Valentine's shows which were nevertheless a different theme than previous ones.

But wait.  When I discovered that there was no show on the Tuesdays when the Dickenbock Report aired on KBOO, I asked the Program Manager if she needed a sub.  She said yes.  So starting in June I alternated the show (which I began doing live from my home) with re-made episodes of Self Help Radio (I added to existing playlists after first re-airing shows that may or may not have aired on Freeform).  I revisited 12 themes over the course of eight episodes.  Technically then, I did 56 episodes of Self Help Radio this year.  But I don't necessarily count these as Self Help Radio episodes.

If things had continued as expected, there would be 26 episodes of the Dickenbock Report.  The show aired every other week until late October when it switched places with Self Help Radio & began airing weekly on Freeform Portland.  Instead of 26 there were 34 episodes of The Dickenbock Report in 2020.

Sugar Substitute ended on XRAY in early March but not before I did eight episodes of that show.

Once the pandemic started, I began to make shows both for Freeform's automation & I also regularly covered the Thursday 3 to 5:30am slot the Dickenbock Report left empty when it moved to Tuesday, first every other week, & then weekly from August to November.  Though I did that show live, it very nearly killed me.  I was doing basically seven & a half hours of radio a week & it was exhausting.  It meant I couldn't really help out in many other ways & that broke my heart.  I made eight freeform sub shows (including one pre-pandemic) & I made 28 KBOO sub shows (including a reggae show that must've be replayed at least five times).  That's 36 extra shows I made during the pandemic.  I might have made more if I hadn't committed myself to the regular Thursday morning show.  I was able to make a Freeform fundraising evergreen & participate in our of their challenges because I didn't have to worry about that show.

Let's do the math, shall we?  48 Self Help Radios + 8 Extra Self Help Radios on KBOO + 34 Dickenbock Reports + 8 Sugar Substitutes + 36 other shows equals 134 radio shows for Gary in 2020.

It looks like I made more than I thought I would.  Even though I didn't make as many of the shows I thought I would make.

Certainly I hope to return to the studios in 2021.  I hope to continue the current shows on KBOO & Freeform & hope to sub occasionally on all three stations when needed.  But if this time next year I just had oh let's say 50 Self Help Radios & 50 Dickenbock Reports I could not be happy.

It's sad to say but there really can be too much of a good thing.  & by the way I mean a good thing for me, not for people who listen to radio in Portland.  For most of them I'm sure hearing too much Gary - or any Gary at all - is a bad thing.

Happy New Year!

Self Help Radio 122920: Indiepop A To Z # 64

(Most if not all of these images found on Discogs.)

As I type this, it's very late on December 30th - later still to the east of me, where it's already New Year's Eve in most of the country.  I spent some part of today conducting interviews for the first Self Help Radio of the year.  I spent some time visiting with old friends from KVRX on something that wasn't Zoom but was Zoom-like.  I walked the dogs twice, both times happily in-between bouts of rain.  I also fed my animals twice.  Oh yeah, I went shopping & it won't surprise you to learn I forgot to get chickpeas.  However, if I had, my bill at Natural Grocers wouldn't have been $20.20 & even the jaded cashier, who always looks like heroin might be a little too stimulating for her, responded with a "Hey! Wouldya look at that!"  But I spent most of the day, it feels like, making that fucking collage up there of images of releases I played on Self Help Radio this week.

Holy shit that was time-consuming.  I spent the evening with my wife & came back to it when she went to bed so I could finish.  I knew I played forty-three songs & I created the grid to have forty-four spaces so I could stick the Self Help Radio logo in there, but when I got to the end of the song list, I had two little squares instead of one.  So I had to go back, one by one, to see which one I absent-mindedly left out.  It turns out it was an album I was working on when my wife came home from work.  She came to say hello & I just moved on to the next one as if I had done the previous one.  I hadn't.  I had to work backward to discover which one that is.

Which is appropriate for the last show of the year.  Holy fuck this year.  What a fucking mess.

Anyway, the show's on the Self Help Radio website if you wanna listen.  It's packed with good tunes.  It's also on the KBOO website's Self Help Radio page if you'd like to listen to it with KBOO spots at the very beginning.  I appreciate the extra hour but maybe three hours is too much.  Holy moly.

Remember username/password SHR/selfhelp.  Look below for what I played.  Happy new year!

Self Help Radio Indiepop A To Z # 64

"The Girl With Sunny Smile" Pale Sunday _A Weekend With Jane_

"Happy & Oblivious" The Palindromes _Muy Muy Pop Yum Yum_

"Knight In Gale" The Palisades _A Month Too Soon: 1985-1989_

"Brenda Walsh" The Palm Songwriters _You Make Me Smile (A Shelflife Records Collection)_

"How To Beat Dementia" Palomar _All Things, Forests_

"The Garden" Panax _2000 Teenbeat Sampler_

"Patronage" The Pancakes _Pancakes Can Panick_

"Pillar Box" Panda Pops _Bristol Fashion_

"Ghosting" Panda Riot _Infinity Maps_

"Beatrice Was Her Name" Panel Of Judges _Captain Circus! Chocolat Art Returns Compilation Vol. 1_

"Barely There" The Pansies _Feel Easy_

"Alison Statton" Pants Yell! _Alison Statton_

"On My Way" Papa Go Riot _...What's This?_

"Lo Que Me Gusta Del Verano Es Poder Tomar Helado" Papá Topo _Oso Panda_

"Way You Walk" Papas Fritas _Buildings & Grounds_

"Shine" Papas New Faith _Papas New Faith_

"The Lovers" The Paper Merchants _A Friend Of Mine_

"Falling" Paper Moon _Intercontinental Pop Exchange No. 2_

"A Northern Allowance" The Paperbacks _Intercontinental Pop Exchange No. 1_

"This Is How I Feel" The Paperboys _This Is How I Feel_

"Chills" Papercuts _Fading Parade_

"The Fastest Planes" Paperfangs _ePop006_

"Sometimes In Vain" The Parachute Men _Sometimes In Vain_

"Tree Roots Turn To Forts" Parachutes _Tree Roots_

"Metaluna Moroder" Parade _Metaluna_

"Without You" The Parallelograms _1 2 3 Go!_

"Burnt Toast" Parasites _Shreds Volume 3: American Underground '95_

"If I Ever Get The Chance Again" The Parcels _One_

"Me & You" Parekh & Singh _Ocean_

"Going Down Niagara Falls" The Pariahs _Tightrope Walk_

"All On You (Perfume)" Paris Angels _All On You (Perfume)_

"Painted World" The Paris Work-In _Hi-Five! Eardrums Pop's 5 Year Anniversary Compilation_

"Adding Up" Parsnip _Adding Up_

"Sapphire" The Part Time Losers _Sometimes The Nice Boy Wins_

"The Trumpet Song" The Particles _Tales From The Australian Underground, Vol. 2: 1977-1990_

"Pacific Love State" Partnerships _Double Love Suicide_

"I Wanna Take You Out In Your Holiday Sweater" Pas/Cal _The Handbag Memoirs_

"Into Hole" Passing Clouds _Creation's Happy Reel EP_

"Sometimes" Passengers _The Sound Of Leamington Spa Volume 3_

"I'm In Love With A German Film Star" The Passions _Thirty Thousand Feet Over China_

"Every Child In Heaven" The Passmore Sisters _The Original Rock & Roll Chair_

"Wherever You Go, Take Me With You" Pastel Collision _Wherever You Go, Take Me With You_

"Baby Honey" The Pastels _Truckload Of Trouble: 1986-1993_