I hate the radio. Generally speaking I don't like to waste emotion on inanimate objects, but I really hate the radio. I never listened to the radio much until I came to college because I'm from a relatively small town and the choices were country, oldies, or a fuzzy version of "lite rock," whatever that may be.
Then I came to the booming metropolis of Buffalo, where I was introduced to stations that actually played music I'd heard of. Still though, it annoyed me to listen to 15 minutes of yapping, be it commercials or some yahoo "personality," for every five minutes of music.
I'd much rather listen to my own selection of music, uninterrupted by people who talk just because they like the sound of their voice when they make words like "wild" and "hot" into miniature Broadway numbers as teenyboppers scream in the background.
Every now and then I get sick of hooking up my ghetto CD Walkman to my ghetto Buick sound system - if you can call it that - and I flip on the radio. I usually flip from classic rock to 103.3 "The Edge," and then "Kiss" 98.5 if I get really desperate. Sometimes, just for sheer amusement, I turn my dial to "Wild" 101.1.
"The Edge" I can understand, they play cutting-edge music. Allegedly. I don't know if the new Nirvana tune I keep hearing every five minutes qualifies as "cutting edge," since the lead singer has been deceased for quite some time. "Wild" I can also see, because playing the same ten songs over and over again, day in and day out is pretty wild, I guess.
I think the Canadian Hip Hop Committee only allows the DJs at "Wild" 101 to play songs that have the "dwoot dwoot" of a car alarm sampled at least once. As if we weren't all irritated enough by the people who put alarms on their 1985 Volkswagen Rabbits and insist on hitting the alarm button 20 times so that we all have to look at the chrome rims and spoiler they duct taped on to make it look sporty.
I cannot, for the life of me understand "Kiss" 98.5. The Delta Sonic "Kiss" car wash makes more sense, and even that's a stretch. I'll offer you kids a deal right now. Send us a better name for a radio station and I'll buy whoever comes up with the best one the wholesome meal of his or her choice at the campus Burger King. Send your submissions to the email address listed below.
Other than catching the occasional tolerable song and listening for the always-entertaining Mighty Taco ads, I can't imagine why you'd listen to the radio. I don't know how talk radio shows stay in business, with the exception of Loveline.
There's nothing quite like listening to peoples' bizarre sexual problems being met with ruthless sarcasm. Dr. Drew provides real advice for all you folks out there who aren't willing to admit that you can identify with the guy calling from North Dakota who has this weird thing about printer cables and tootsie pops. Now there's a show worth listening to.
Other talk shows usually try to tell me what my opinion on various social and political issues should be. I don't appreciate people I meet in person telling me who I should vote for, and I certainly don't care for some disembodied voice inviting itself into my car and telling me how evil our government is for wanting to go to war, either. You'll notice, too, that if you ever actually see the people on the radio they're usually nowhere near as attractive as their voices would seem to suggest. I believe this phenomenon is known in the industry as having a "Radio Face."
What else is out there for the average radio listener? News, traffic reports, and more talk shows smothered by commercials. I prefer my bad news with lots of gory pictures, delivered by anchors cowering for refuge in a bunker somewhere, thank you, and for that I turn to CNN or Fox News. Granted, CNN only gives me postage stamp-sized gory pictures between their endless stream of tickers, and Fox news anchors might break a nail if they reported from the field. We all have to compromise.
Traffic reports are something of a joke in Buffalo. I've been keeping a running tally of the days I've heard "slight congestion around the 33-198 split" and I haven't missed a day since freshman year. Besides, by the time I'm in my car and hear the traffic report, I've already been sitting for twenty minutes in the five-mile long pile up caused by a mosquito crossing the highway.
I guess someday the folks at Napster and Kazaa will make this a moot point, anyway. Music will be contained in a communal database that we all pay a monthly fee to access, or something "Wuh-hyle-duh" like that. As long as there are no commercials, I won't mind.
