The Toadless Boy

This is a little bit Iowa-centric but other regions may answer this.

I may be an outsider and totally wrong on this, but despite the stereotypical use of the word “y’all”, I think it is a perfectly acceptable word/phrase to use.  Isn’t it?

Further background: I use the phrase periodically especially in the formal sense. Not like at the Governor’s Ball but with people I don’t know, much like using “Ihnen” instead of “du” auf Deutsch. It seems, especially now that I live in Iowa, I get weird looks when using it.
For lack of a better example, I shall use the moment yesterday that caused me to ask this question today for context. Yesterday when setting up an appointment, I asked a lady, “Are y’all open today?” I didn’t say it with a drawl and if anything I leaned more heavily on the “you” part of it that probably should be written out above. She looked at me as if I used “Ihnen” or “ihr”  or something. What is a better way to phrase the question? I could have said “you guys” but that is very informal to me. I could have said “you” but I knew she was open because she was sitting there however there were no hairdressers (yeah that’s right I made a hair appointment).

This is not a lone instance. I would feel comfortable using it in a job interview situation or meeting the president (a different president, who doesn’t speak folksy in the first place). I would like to hear thoughts but beyond a “No that’s wrong” I would appreciate a suggestion for how it can be improved.

Striving to meet your linguistic expectations since 1983.

I wish there was some way to do something about it, but today I am listening to the last broadcast of WOXY. Aside from human related things (family, friends, girlfriend, my own health), music is the most important thing to me and I will try not to sound like a crying buffoon, although I am one right now.

For those of you who don’t know, WOXY is a radio station originally based out of Oxford, Ohio. It eventually moved 45 minutes south to Cincinnati a few years ago. It was a real-life FM station that was born 5 days before me on September 4, 1983. It bills itself as the Future of Rock ‘N’ Roll and if you have ever seen the old bumper stickers, they make sure to remind you. It’s going off the air (for good?) today at 4 PM CST due to financial problems. For more history go here.

Lots of radio stations will claim to have their ear to the ground or call themselves the “EDGE” or something lame like that. I’m going to try not to trash “other” radio stations but to me, WOXY is the only radio station. The radio only serves one purpose to this guy normally: entertainment on a long drive when I don’t have a CD in the backup player, my iPod is dead, the 8-track isn’t working and my voice hurts from singing to myself. I could be sitting at a computer with months of music sitting on the harddrive at my feet and WOXY is the only thing that would keep me from listening to it.

As someone who likes to stay on top of things musically, I’m going to have to work harder. I do a lot of my normal site reading and talking with friends with similar interests, but all of those lack a very important feature: instant audio. Even if it is good music and someone tells me it is, there are so many other barriers. What if the name rubbed me the wrong way? I’m looking at you, Wolfmother. I was so sick of “Wolf” bands that I ignored one of the best recent albums. What about a band’s hideous album art or ugly members? I try not to be superficial and avoid these barriers but nobody’s perfect. With WOXY, I know that if I hang in there or check back later, that g–d— Sleater-Kinney song will be over and I’ll get to hear a new gem.

WOXY isn’t some crap college station that claims to play modern rock but mostly has college kids wearing “punk” ties loosely over Old Navy collared shirts sneezing in the microphone. I love the opportunities of college radio but there are limits (or lack there of). Any schmo can get a radio show and claim to be a modern rock hour or two and play “Butterfly” by Crazy Town (did you know it was two words?) repeatedly.

WOXY follows strict but unwritten guidelines. They make sure to change up the rotation constantly and play any respectable new music that one might consider good. I know the DJs are more than willing to play a song that is “good” but they don’t like because they know their listener base. They listen to their listeners. Believe it or not, WOXY is the station that broke “Hey Ya” to this guy. I was sick of it long before it even made normal radio rotation. I remember hearing that song and thinking, “Damn, WOXY you are so amazing. You can pick up a new Outkast record and play something so far from their sound and what is most definitely not their single. Yet somehow, WOXY, you are able to make it sound like everybody should play it.” Well I was wrong. That was eventually their hit single and probably will haunt Big Boi and Andre the rest of their lives. But everybody has to admit that it is a great song, and WOXY is right along with everybody.

If I haven’t already bawled long enough, let me tell you about how WOXY’s touched me (appropriately):

I don’t know my earliest memory or some shit but I do remember wondering how you were to say that weird station on bumper stickers I would see at Tri-County Mall. In southeastern Cincinnati it was pretty hard to pick it up so I do know it took me far too long to discover it.

Along with my own college radio station, WMSR, WOXY was very important to me after I moved to the same small college town as WOXY to begin my schooling. I submit that I learned more from WOXY and WMSR than Miami (of Ohio). Sorry.

Sophomore year at Miami (of Ohio), Adam lived off campus and on late night econ study sessions or McDs runs we were always sure to tune in to WOXY. One set of weeks though, WOXY consumed our lives more than usual. Adam was a huge Coldplay fan from back in the day when he was getting some. Coldplay’s newest album was A Rush of Blood to the Head and somehow WOXY got them to come by and play live on the air. Only they weren’t going to do it at the studios but instead they were going to be putting on a very small gathering in a second floor bar where I shot pool. No tickets were available but they were giving away a few chances to go. The trick was they were playing “Clocks” once during the day and you had better call up and be something like 5th caller for a ticket or two.

Like “Hey Ya,” this was before “Clocks” had annoyed the hell out of every person in the world. But for like two weeks I think the station was on for us constantly. I was always listening for Adam and he was always listening in his car and apartment and he even had some old portable FM stereo. His FM reception in his basement apartment was not very great so he listened to the online feed. It wasn’t until a week and a half after he started his Coldplay mission that he learned the online feed could be delayed up to a minute. Man, was he pissed.

That song had a somewhat distinctive beginning and it became like a trigger, even to me, a guy who didn’t really care either way except for his friend to get to shake hands with the man who shakes it with Gwyneth Paltrow. One of the days after a class, Adam stopped by while I was hiding out in my dorm room. He was there for a little while and we were listening to WOXY, of course, through my PA system. I had all sorts of things hooked to it through a mixer including my computer. So while I was sitting at my computer I queued up some “Clocks” and mean-spiritedly mixed it from WOXY over to my computer audio, smooth as Mike Taylor’s transitions. Oh shit did Adam jump. I wish I could have kept a straight face and listened to Adam explaining to Mike that it is so “Clocks.”

Adam never won those tickets but his persistence paid off because he walked on over to the Balcony and met them outside. He has a cartoon to prove it, I know.

Sophomore year I was also blessed to be a Sony Music rep for the Cincinnati area. I did not last long with that job. We didn’t match at all and I know I was terrible at it but I tried it for a little while. I wasn’t assigned any sort of WOXY duty that I knew of but I thought, “Hey I have promotional material, surely WOXY would like to hear from me.” I just walked in to the studio one day and met Shiv. He was nice as expected and he showed me around and hooked me up with some new tunes. I hooked him up with posters and CDs of some of his and the station’s favorite Sony artists. Not much of a further relationship with the station came from that because I wasn’t with Sony much longer but I still read Shiv’s blog to this day and I still call him my friend like I knew him from something other than his blog, seeing him at shows or around town.

When I moved out to Iowa, I was very lucky that WOXY had a damn good online feed. My first moments in Iowa were lonely in a small town 30 minutes from my college campus that I wasn’t used to. Some nights when I was sick of listening to the Walkmen’s “The Rat” over and over again I would tune in to WOXY. This was when they were still a terrestrial station and so they had live DJing most of the time. I turned it on LATE one night to be surprised by a very familiar voice. Chubby Amy (real name was Anna and was not the least bit chubby) was spinning. She was a WMSR friend who guested on the famed “Bryan, Zach and Adam Show” sometimes. Bry coined the Chubby Amy moniker and we knew her only as that and apparently that name was known around the WOXY studio as well. Anyway, I wrote my first email to the DJ email there and requested some Enon or Raveonettes. (Never really cared for requests because if I wanted to hear a song I’d play it from my own collection and most requests are from really sad people, especially on mainstream radio) Amy sent back some kind words and told me both Enon and Raveonettes were already in the planned playlist. That’s why I love WOXY. They hire women with great radio voices to play great new music.

WOXY was saved last time by “angel investors.” I don’t know what that entails but I have a feeling I couldn’t even touch .1% of what they need. If anything I wish there was someone (even if it was me) that could keep the spirit alive. The radio part of it needs to be there but I wonder what other kind of branding someone could use WOXY for. Music television sucks; music radio sucks; and most music journalism sucks. The only thing that isn’t sucking after 5 PM eastern tonight is the music itself.

Prepare for your mind to be blown.  I present to you the new FedEx: Goodwill Industries

(Note: The smile is a G. Some of you may say, “Are you kidding? That’s so obvious.” Well, FedEx was obvious to me okay. “Relax, it’s just a soda.”)

All the fans.

That is Andy Kaufman-level humor. Thanks J.

The Hawkeyes could build a much bigger dome here in Iowa City with that logic. In watching all of this past weekend’s “OT thriller”, I saw several shots to the crowd. I made rude comments at all the lovely upstate NYers but I also saw tons of Iowa fans. I don’t know the numbers but 1 Iowan travelling to Syracuse is 1 too many, unless they were travelling on through to Utica. You know they were definitely there for their Hawkeyes, not the cultural experience.

(Out of curiosity: was Skorton there? If not, come on dude. It was only an hour away. I say those tons of fans should have gone down to Ithaca and stol’d him back.)

I’m sure some other schools might have a crazier fan or two but I challenge you to find someone in Iowa City who can’t talk about the Hawkeyes. Hell, even I can list most key players. At my old school, I think we had a guy named Roethlisberger. I think he threw to a guy named Sanders?

The ones that crack me up are the ones who are like parents living through their children. Today I saw one of those Iowa “booster” license plates that rocked a phrase alluding to a certain bowl game where a certain catch took place. Just the name of the bowl! And guess who was driving the car!

Neither Tate or Holloway.

Now I know the real reason Skorton left UI. Can you blame him?

A week or so ago the horses we board got out in the evening and were out all night roaming anywhere they wanted to on our property. Why am I writing about this? Because they’ve foiled my plans.

I planned to announce a “Turf and Turf” event in celebration of my birthday. I’ve been dying to play some soccer and thought I can entice soccer players to our place to eat steaks and kick around the ol’ Buckminster Fullerene. Well the horses wandered around my “soccer field” and made it very dangerous for soccer. Thanks to them, any event this Sunday that I have alluded to is not on. We wouldn’t want anybody to injure their leg, then we’d have to put them down.

It was 17 years ago yesterday (September 9) I posed in front of this soccer-themed cake. I remember soccer being new to us and having to use an encyclopedia to figure out the proper dimensions of a soccer field.

It was 23 years ago yesterday evening (7:15 pm eastern), I emerged in a West Virginia University Hospital closet. I remember nothing of that.

Shortly (hopefully later today) there will be information about festivities related to this post to be held next Sunday, September 17th. Stay tuned.

That last one probably either scared or bored most people away from reading further so I’m going to revive my readership with some boring technology self-pleasure.

I am trying out that Pre Release Candidate one of Microsoft Vista. For those that don’t know, Microsoft is working on it’s next version of operating system (a new XP). I heard of the project first sophomore year of college (2002?) when my friend got ahold of some Longhorn (the original project name) tester. I didn’t really see much of it besides screenshots until now.

I have it installed on a computer at work and the boss and I are looking at what’s to come. I’m going to do some further evaluation over this weekend with less productivity stuff and more entertainment stuff. I am hugely interested in the integration of computers in to the home especially for entertainment purposes. So interested, in fact, that I have strongly considered a profession in it. I’m not a Microsoft fanboy or fanman. I’m predominantly a Windows user and I see its faults but I also see that it is the majority and I understand the logic rules established by a Microsoft product. That way I find it very easy to stumble through any Microsoft product or application that I don’t know.

Whether you or I like it or not, Microsoft will have a huge chunk of the market for a long time still so I find it important to be prepared for the new changes. Vista’s appearance so far to me is like someone is running a really well written skin over top of XP. Some ideas have changed and the way it tries to get “points” across to its user has changed.

Here are some of the interesting and/or noticeable differences (some are merely aesthetic):

It is running helltons of more services in the background. One thing I loved about XP was the ability to tweak it. I’m sure that rings true for Vista but it seems like the appeal of Vista so far is its appearance which I’m sure is alot of processing and alot of tweaking for performance will bring it back to looking like a flat 98 edition.

This one came “stock” with Media Center which I have only had one chance to play with the XP version and then I didn’t have any media to put on it. When I get home tonight, I’m throwing some past TV shows on it and my music collection. Without media today, I looked at it and it was interesting looking. Very clean and looks easy to use with a remote. This is the kind of stuff that matters to me when thinking about the future of computers in homes. I understand that Windows is not going to be the ideal software for home theater usage but if you want an all in one integrated machine I figure this is worth looking at.

They revamped the stock games. Some of the classics are there, like Solitaire. I know Chess has been there before but this one looks shinier. They have a new kids game called Purble Place which is like Memory and, man oh man, they gave Minesweeper a facelift and it is a Minef***. It’s all new and shiny but all I care about is protecting my ship from mines, not whether my grid blinks gradient purples. What I find funny about all of this is, in the Prerelease Candidate, they have these included. And they look all completed and ready to roll out. My simple audio driver didn’t come installed but I’ll be damned if I can’t play 9 shiny games. Microsoft must have its priorities straight.

The install was hell of speedy. I have a fast machine (like 3.6 GHz I think) here at work and I wasn’t counting, but I’m pretty sure that thing installed in like a half hour.  Maybe because I started with less compression or something but still damn impressive.  Very good for the people like me who rebuild their machine every 3 months just because “it feels good.”

I’m sure I’ll have more to say. For now, I’m going to see if when you win Solitaire the cards still cascade with black and white trails.