Category: Uncategorized

93.3 the bone

When I moved to Dallas in 2000, I was mightily disappointed with what the radio dial offered up. Crap, crap, crap, leavened only occasionally with lesser crap. The only station that seemed bearable was Merge Radio 93.3, which played the usual radio-ready adult-alternative dreck (yeah, Creed, I’m looking at you), but mixed in some older stuff (early R.E.M., Replacements) often enough to make it work on those occasions that public radio becomes too dull for words.
So yesterday, during a Krys Villasenor snorefest asking listeners to call in with their favorite local community theater troupes (zzzzz), I flipped over to 93.3. And I heard Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” perhaps the most mawkishly mockable power ballad of the 1980s. I thought: “Heh — I guess some DJ has a sense of humor.” But then came an AC/DC song. Then “Purple Haze.” I started to get the idea something serious was going wrong here.
Then came the station promo: I realized I was no longer listening to “Merge Radio.” I was listening to “The New 93.3, The Bone.” The Bone. I doubt they’re trying to target the paleontologist niche market; I’m sure the bone in question is more pants-based. Every third word out of the DJ’s mouth was “bone” — “Coming soon, the Bone-a-thon! We’ll rock you to the bone! No bones about it! Tell your friends, so you don’t bone alone!” The web site prominently features the “Bone Babes.” (Their official tagline, seemingly designed for the slow learners in the audience, is “rock that rocks.”)
I haven’t checked lately, but was there a shortage of Aerosmith on the radio dial? Were there people sitting in traffic, fondling their gun racks, saying, “Man, I sure could use a little Whitesnake right about now, but damn it, there are no radio stations that will cater to my interests! If only there were a 17th classic rock station in the market!” Don’t get me wrong: I hold no grudge against Robert Plant. But come on, help me out here: any of you DFW types know of a good station I’m missing?

txcn appearance

If any of you faithful readers tune in to TXCN (cable channel 38 in Dallas, I think) tonight, you might catch a glimpse of me talking about education reform. I should be on at either :20 or :50 after the hour, starting at 7:20 or 7:50 and continuing through the night. (I look hungover, as usual, even though I’m not.) You can also check tomorrow’s paper for my story (front page, I think).

big brothers

Update: Some time ago, I wrote about how I was trying to become a Big Brother for a ninth-grader here in Dallas, and how I was worried because my interviewer asked me all sorts of kiddie porn/drug use/Satan worship questions that a friend of mine going through the same process didn’t get. Well, today, weeks later, I finally got the okay: evidently my past is uncheckered enough for them to let me in the door. I meet my “little” (as they’re known in the Big Bro biz) Thursday. Woo hoo: one more young life to scar!

husker du and mazie project update

For some reason, I popped in Husker Du’s Flip Your Wig last night for the first time in a year or more. Then came the lyrics of the opening track:
Sunday section gave us a mention
Grandma’s freaking out over the attention
…which I figured was strangely appropriate considering the attention the Mazie Project has gotten. (Except substitute Metafilter for the Sunday section. And she’s not freaking out — she’s just confused.)
As I mentioned on the project’s page, Mazie’s gotten three cards so far, and she’s very grateful. She sounded like she had a huge smile on her face when we talked about it earlier today.
Another thought I had when listening to Husker Du: for 1985, they had some prescient predictions about the future. “We’ll invent some new computers / Link up the global village / And get AP, UPI, and Reuters / To tell everybody the news.” Maybe Bob Mould got in on the ground floor of AOL. Maybe Bob Mould was alongside Vint Cerf in the Arpanet days. Maybe Bob Mould invented the Internet, not Al Gore. (And you have to admire anyone who rhymes “computers” with “Reuters.”)
A final thought I had while listening to Husker Du: I’m surprised Bob Mould has any vocal cords left at all. Mine wouldn’t survive a karaoke trip through Side 1. (Then again, neither would the eardrums of whoever was listening to me. Do they have Husker Du karaoke? They should.)

scale at the back dock

The most obvious long-term impact 9/11 had on my place of work is that employees now have to enter through a different door than we always had. The new entry has security cameras, a keycard ID system, and a narrow, fast-closing door so a rogue Al-Qaeda member would have a tougher time skating in behind someone legitimate.
The only problem is that this new employees-only door was once a loading area on the back dock, so there’s a big industrial-size scale embedded in the floor. It’s covered with a scrap of carpet and usually put in some sort of locked position so it doesn’t register weight. But every once in a while, someone unlocks it, and every employee walking into work gets weighed. It’s like we’re walking into a heavyweight fight or something.
Even worse, the scale is way off, so people appear to be 30 to 50 pounds heavier than they really are. (At least I hope so — if not, that bagel I eat on the drive over has many more calories than I thought it did.) It’s great fun to watch people walk in, catch the soaring needle out of the corner of an eye, then depressingly watch it settle at some Shallow-Hal-in-reverse version of reality. Really gets people in the right frame of mind for a productive workday.