[Kzyxtalk] Oh, Magoo, you've done it again!

[Marco McClean]

Oh, Magoo, you've done it again!


"When a grid's misaligned with another behind, that's a moire/ When the 
spacing is tight and the difference is slight, that's a moire." -Randall 
Patrick Munroe


The recording of last night's (2017-04-07) KNYO and KMEC Memo of the 
Air: Good Night Radio show is available to download and enjoy via 
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com


Just as I was starting the show John Redding came in and played a few 
songs on his guitar. He had an appealingly Mister-Rogers-like manner and 
tone. I hope he visits again. Keeter Stewart (sp?) showed up and played 
a few songs of his and others', sounding, I thought, very like Greg 
Brown in both guitar style and voice, and that was it for walk-ins. 
After that you can expect the usual odd items and louder, less 
restrained flow of when I’m doing the show from next to the bar and not 
from Juanita’s apartment where I have to not wake up the neighbors. When 
I read parts 3-6 of Ezekiel Krahlin’s story about a time-traveler in a 
Motel 6 going back to relatively ancient Jerusalem to investigate the 
myth of Jesus I blew the crucial last line, and here’s how that happened:


Ezekiel sent email to the MCN announce and discussion listservs, and at 
deadline time I was speed-checking (blinking at) all my all-week email 
one last time as I snatched up the last of the text for the file to 
print to take to the show, and there was email with /something vaguely 
like what I remembered from Ezekiel’s story/, which was already printed 
because I had it left over from last week, already in the milk crate in 
the car, and for some reason I mistook this email for a correction 
request. It wasn’t even addressed to me, but to someone else on the 
listserv, but I saw it, misread it and misinterpreted it and at like 
2:30am when I got to that part I was a little proud of remembering and 
just changed the line on the fly. Changed the word /lilies/ to /dildos/. 
The last word of the story. When I got home at 5 or 6 I checked my email 
before I went to bed and there was Zeke’s surprisingly gentle WTF? 
letter. Jesus, sorry, Zeke. Wow. Oh, well.


That will go down in my personal things-to-ever-after-wince-at ledger 
right next to the time, last year, I had just been reading a funny story 
about how you should never ask a woman if she's pregnant because 1. it’s 
none of your business and 2. she might be just fat, which is equally 
none of your business, not to mention: if you (the world) think she’s 
fat enough to be pregnant, why say it and make it worse?, and I was 
talking with a woman who was not fat -statuesque, rather, much bigger 
than Juanita, my gold standard for women, but well-enough-proportioned- 
but something in conversation reminded me of the article and that kind 
of funny foot-in-mouth moment and I said, “…Like, what are you, 
pregnant?” (referring to the article that, who knows why, my brain just 
assumed everyone else had read) and everybody at the table /froze/, and 
she glared at me, and inside I was like, /Marco! What, why, no, arghh! 
Go back!/ But you can’t go back, can you.


Then there was the time in the mid-1990s I was delivering the pulp 
version of Memo in Ukiah and went to put a couple of copies in the 
library and went in the back to talk to Pat Hunt, who ran Redwood Free 
Net and so I knew he worked there, and his office was plastered with 
pictures of singer Holly Near in all stages of her career and age and 
size and dress and so on, and I was amusedly creeped out by the 
stalker-ness of it all, and I said, "You must be a big fan of Holly 
Near." He said, "I love her." I said, "Uh-huh. Does Holly Near know of 
your feelings on the subject?" "Yes. She’s my /wife/." It interested me 
to be in the same room, you know, in an office setting, with someone so 
fucked up, and so this weird conversation went on for a very long time 
before I finally grasped that /he was really married to Holly Near/. I 
have a vast internal gallery of moments like that, to re-live every time 
something reminds me of something else. I'll take you on a tour 
sometime. Wait, no, one day I'll die of old age or get hit by a car and 
stop taking you on that tour. Or you can change the channel any time. Or 
explore our gift shop. It won't hurt my feelings. Money is money.


Oh! And at the end of the show, instead of an old-time radio drama, I 
played the recording I made Wednesday in Helen Schoeni Theater of Susan 
Maeder's one-woman show, The Goosefoot Tango: A Love Story, about a 14th 
century French holy woman who had a goosefoot for a foot, and who 
invented cigarets, and who had a relationship with Jesus who would, when 
not away on business, teach her different dances and stay for breakfast, 
as they say. It was so late, though; I'll make arrangements with Bob and 
play it much earlier in the evening one night this coming week on KNYO, 
and I'll let you know before that, so you can listen. I've known Susan 
Maeder for thirty –almost forty years, and I had no idea what a great 
writer she is. It’s a wonderful story. It's almost an hour long. Some of 
the story is visual, but hearing it is enough.


Anyway, also at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find directions 
to many non-radio-useful though worthwhile goods that I found while 
putting radio shows together. Items such as:


Man designs, builds and learns to fly a real-life Iron Man flying suit. 
It has little jet engines on the arms, on his back, and on his boots, 
each one with about 45 pounds of thrust. The fuel tank is a bag on his 
back, just above the jets.
http://technabob.com/blog/2017/04/03/daedalus-iron-man-flying-suit/


"I think there’s something cathartic about being quite thoroughly 
freaked out. To have the adrenaline rush with the knowledge that these 
things are safely confined to the book. You put it away. Not real."
http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2017/04/mastermind.html


"Nobody ever handed /me/ anything on a plate."
http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate


And Service.
https://vimeo.com/211513023



--
Marco McClean
memo at mcn.org
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com