Radio Radio

So this morning when I am rolling to work in my American Car with FM radio I punch the buttons on the old man side of the dial just in time-I am assured-to ride shotgun with Bad Company or rape and pillage with the mighty Zep.

And predictably for me and classic rock I'm half right.


What I do hear when I tune in is the ending of Led Zeppelins Dancing Days when the lady DJ (always with the lady DJ's these guys) comes on and says that's right That is Dancing Days by Led Zeppelin and it is our Tenth song in a row.


I scream aloud as I wait for my parking gate to open. I scream again "Of Course it's Dancing Days! If you haven't learned that in the last twenty five years then you should be condemned to another twenty five years of listening to this shit" Then My gate opened and they went to commercial and I sat in traffic and punched the buttons some more.

Naturally all of this got me thinking about comfort and predictability.

I commute through the puzzle zones before lunch .Disc Jockey's, in exchange for the promise of a free lunch, posit conundrums for the audience to decipher. The audience is listless and easily distracted.


The familiar noise from the air waves fills thier quiet spots. lists and themes are rigoursly wrought from a small canon of music that stretches from Bono to Zozo. Classic Rock.

The Lunch contests on these radio station are usually in a form not unlike the wheel of fortune where the DJ knows a word or phrase and the listener is supposed to divine this word or phrase from some amalgamation of song titles and band names.

Most times these questions are simple enough for most machine shops, kitchen workers, roofers, carpenters to figure out. The logic is working class as far as I can tell but i have the luxury of having to listen to only the last ten minutes.


Unlike the oldies station that does its best to throw its lunchtime weight around with the office world of women and their many marketability in the obvious parallel of the construction sight- the dentist office gals , the ladies in the printing shops front office, the harpies in accounts receivable at Lockheed Martin.

In a post snack time world where puzzles are hard and just being able to list ten songs passes as achievement, at work when one should be, I dunno working, they waste no time getting their call in in less than ten minutes. And it seems that it is always Alba Garcia who wins.

So I've been re watching a lot of Peter Greenaway flicks lately and last nights addition was the aptly title The Cook the Thief His Wife and her Lover.

I recall seeing this feature a few times before, but it only looked familiar. So the story seemed new to me.

But I am not here to talk about the film, I just need to note an observation I had while watching this film.


The Bad Guy in the story,Albert Spica- played by Michael Gambone, is a hideous self absorbed thug without a clue as to his vulgarness. Every thing about this character seems to be the prototype of another clueless self absorbed bully Ricky Gervais's David Brent.

Although Greenaway's brute is a disagreeable wife beating murderer with a penchant for scatological violence-he really makes you like him when he shivs a eunuch child-
one must remember he is after all English.

Even though David Brent is a short sighted selfish sycophantic tyrant unable to mask his extraordinary ability to suck-up one wonders how he may behave if he knew his wife was making hot love in the dank blue light of a spider infested mop closet behind the coke machine on the second floor?