free variable

I was listening to the radio while working out this afternoon. I can’t usually tune my preferred station — the music network of Wisconsin Public Radio — from inside the gym, because I think that they transmit from a toilet-paper tube with copper wire wrapped around it. The gym often plays “105.5 Triple-M”, which is — as far as I can tell — a station for “progressive” soccer moms and corporate drones who think that they’re aesthetes. It is generally intolerable, as it oscillates between some token blues or roots reggae and something selected from the top-40 music of the early 90s (e.g. REM, the Dave Matthews Band, or Hootie and the Blowfish (!)). Furthermore, the DJs are a bunch of self-congratulatory hacks who really like to get letters from listeners about how nice it is to have a station on which someone can hear the latest from U2. In general, I find commercial radio unpalatable to begin with, so these deficiencies really raise my ire.

Often, when I’m working out and can’t tune WPR, I will listen to the local “classic rock that ROCKS” station, which is at least refreshing for its lack of irony — that is, the DJ is apparently really excited that Def Leppard will be in the next non-stop 40-minute music set. (This is in sharp contrast to stations that target “alternative” 18-25s, on which the DJ will rarely, if ever, actually admit that she likes a song.) Also, the format allows me to relive the fun parts of junior high, without the intellectual ennui, daily beatings, and crippling clinical depression. However, today, I couldn’t even tune that, so I had to listen to the non-NPR “listener supported” station, which is generally a sounding board for the twaddle of anti-globalization, communist wackos. Fortunately, they were playing music.

The only tune I recognized was a cover of “She Said, She Said”. I think that might be my favorite Beatles song, but that’s probably not a great distinction, since — while I like the Beatles — I don’t pray to them at night or anything. That’s all, really.

Actually, it’s not quite all. The DJ also mentioned “The Hentchmen” (spelling mistake not mine), as “a great Detroit band”. I realized that I had owned a Hentchmen 7″ in high school, when I listened to a lot of indie rock, etc. I suddenly felt somewhat old and pathetic, until I realized that the Hentchmen themselves are probably at least 5 years older (and moderately more pathetic) than I am, to say nothing of the DJ.