Usually, I listen to NPR on my drives around Salt Lake. If not NPR. the Ipod. But yesterday, I was in a real pickle.
You see, 90.1 (local NPR) is very informative, lots of good news and thoughts and some really terrible jazz music after 7pm. But there is a show that comes on from 12-1 called Talk of the Nation. If I can put my absolutely absurd idiosyncracies aside long enough, I can like Talk of the Nation. People call in, they talk, they tell their stories. It's great. often, their comments are triumphant or thoughtful or well composed. But, listening comes at a risk to me, because you never know when there might be one of those....awkward pauses.
Awkward Radio is a dirty word in my head. It's the WORST CASE SCENARIO of public events to me. I can't explain why. But when host Neal Conan says those fated words "You're on the air" and more than a fraction of a second goes by, that hum of dead radio air sends me into convulsions like microphone feedback at full blast. HE'S TALKING TO YOU. TALK. TALK! THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA ARE LISTENING TO YOU FAIL.
sometimes they finally come around and speak. sometimes they don't. when they do speak, they might say something good, or possibly something terrible. But by then, I've already twitched right into oncoming traffic and ended the silence myself with the sound of jutting metal and tires bouncing independently from their vehicles down 11th East and away from the wreckage. That properly summations my feelings on Awkward Radio.
So as I was saying, yesterday I was confronted by awkward radio, and I chose to live, but to change the channel from NPR. I didn't have my ipod, so I was stuck with whatever Utah had to offer me.
[SCAN ONE]: Owl City.
(oh, if only your music WERE limited to children's birthday parties.)
A horrible commercialized copy cat of Deathcab with lyrics that were SURELY written by a lifelong "professional" rabbit breeder high on cage cleaning products. Not 1/100ths of a pause before hitting the scan button again. When suddenly I am confronted by possibly the only band more putrid to mine ears than Owl City.
[SCAN 2] Plain White T's
Photo Caption: "Why yes, as a matter of fact, we ARE bored of our own music. Thank you for asking!"
oh, the Plain White Ts. WHO ARE YOU, PLAIN WHITE T's??? Your music is saccharine and aimless, but just catchy and clean enough to be Utah's Darling. The musical love child of washed up rastafarianism and Donny Osmond, and therefore the most overplayed evil in the Beehive State. For this, Plain White T's, you are banished from my traveling device.
Surely it can't get worse than this.
[SCAN THREE]
I hate you, Toby Keith.
It was around this point that I decided (and the radio agreed) that silence was best.
You see, 90.1 (local NPR) is very informative, lots of good news and thoughts and some really terrible jazz music after 7pm. But there is a show that comes on from 12-1 called Talk of the Nation. If I can put my absolutely absurd idiosyncracies aside long enough, I can like Talk of the Nation. People call in, they talk, they tell their stories. It's great. often, their comments are triumphant or thoughtful or well composed. But, listening comes at a risk to me, because you never know when there might be one of those....awkward pauses.
Awkward Radio is a dirty word in my head. It's the WORST CASE SCENARIO of public events to me. I can't explain why. But when host Neal Conan says those fated words "You're on the air" and more than a fraction of a second goes by, that hum of dead radio air sends me into convulsions like microphone feedback at full blast. HE'S TALKING TO YOU. TALK. TALK! THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA ARE LISTENING TO YOU FAIL.
sometimes they finally come around and speak. sometimes they don't. when they do speak, they might say something good, or possibly something terrible. But by then, I've already twitched right into oncoming traffic and ended the silence myself with the sound of jutting metal and tires bouncing independently from their vehicles down 11th East and away from the wreckage. That properly summations my feelings on Awkward Radio.
So as I was saying, yesterday I was confronted by awkward radio, and I chose to live, but to change the channel from NPR. I didn't have my ipod, so I was stuck with whatever Utah had to offer me.
[SCAN ONE]: Owl City.
(oh, if only your music WERE limited to children's birthday parties.)
A horrible commercialized copy cat of Deathcab with lyrics that were SURELY written by a lifelong "professional" rabbit breeder high on cage cleaning products. Not 1/100ths of a pause before hitting the scan button again. When suddenly I am confronted by possibly the only band more putrid to mine ears than Owl City.
[SCAN 2] Plain White T's
Photo Caption: "Why yes, as a matter of fact, we ARE bored of our own music. Thank you for asking!"
oh, the Plain White Ts. WHO ARE YOU, PLAIN WHITE T's??? Your music is saccharine and aimless, but just catchy and clean enough to be Utah's Darling. The musical love child of washed up rastafarianism and Donny Osmond, and therefore the most overplayed evil in the Beehive State. For this, Plain White T's, you are banished from my traveling device.
Surely it can't get worse than this.
[SCAN THREE]
I hate you, Toby Keith.
It was around this point that I decided (and the radio agreed) that silence was best.
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