Monday, July 20, 2009

A Bad Diet and No Exercise Killed the Radio Star

Billy Joel was playing when I snapped on the car radio for the drive home which was fine except that I keep it tuned to the local college, alternative rock, shit nobody else listens to NPR station.

So naturally I thought one of two things, perhaps both simultaneously since it had been a long, synapse-disconnecting day:

1-Billy Joel is dead.

2-The radio has re-programmed itself to a station that plays songs it actually knows and can hum along with.

Not that there's anything wrong with the local alternative rock, shit nobody else listens to NPR station but there's a reason they play the music you won't here everywhere else.

Everywhere else has no interest in the latest release of Finger Sniffing Bolsheviks, or the Pretenders cover that Piss Nanny just came out with or the interpretation Glorious Band of the 17th of September has of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik done with bent saws and garbage can lids.

Every once in a while I'll flip back to commercial top forty radio that plays things that human beings on this planet listen to and have heard before. Then of course the ersatz shock jocks cut the song short to talk about their underwear or lure a caller into confessing an affair and I've snapped it back to NPR and Carl Kastle's lisp. Sometimes I have no choice and I'm riding in with Bonaduce cursing Shirley for not taking the little bastard over her knee more often. The local alternatives share a bandspace right next to an all-news service and the NPR talk station is wedged up against a classical outlet the way you were next to fat Aunt Tessie at Easter services. So unless you'd like your ears to go schizophrenic between the Decembrist's and hog futures or Cokie Roberts musing why the fuck there are different viewpoints in America interspersed with Chopin you should know the title to but were getting under Charlotte's sweater that particular day in Music Appreciation, you're back to Bonaduce's underwear and wondering if Shirley had had a man like you around, would he be president now?

Thankfully I've also got a CD player in the car and a copy of Teach Yourself Spanish which I'm employing for my linguistic betterment.

I'm all the way up to "Dos cervezas frigas por favore" and feel myself accomplished enough to head back to Madrid.

Bunny on, mi amigos!

1 Comments:

Blogger Ericka said...

billy joel is dead?

10:25 PM  

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