All posts by Matthew Callan

The Funny, Tuneage

My Annual Plea

I've used this pic four years running, and if it was good enough for 2008, dagnabbit, it's good enough for 2012

Every year around this time, I entreat you, the Scratchbomb reader, to consider donating some funds to WFMU, the Fun 91, the Freeform Station of the Nation. That time is upon us again.

WFMU does not get any money from the government (federal, state, local, what have you), nor does it get any money from corporations. It also refrains from constantly begging for money throughout the year a la PBS. WFMU has but one two-week pledge marathon that raises the bulk of their operating costs for the year. That is why it is crucial to add your support at this time.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but radio in the New York area is bad. Like, really bad. Atrocious, one might say. For a city that likes to think it’s the Center of Everything, particularly when it comes to the arts, New York’s radio stations are unlistenable, robotically programmed swill. WFMU is an island of goodness amid this raging sea of garbage.

Because they are not owned by some huge Conglomco, and because they are not beholden to any taskmasters governmental or corporate, WFMU gets to do whatever the hell it wants (within FCC confines, of course). I don’t love everything I’ve ever heard on WFMU, but I do love the fact that all of it is made by real humans who love music and radio, which definitively cannot be said for everything else on the airwaves.

I first started listening to WFMU well over a decade ago. A roommate turned me on to Terre T’s Cherry Blossom Clinic, which was exactly the kind of punk/garage/glam show I’d been searching for my entire life to that point. I made my first WFMU donation to her show when I was still powerfully, crushingly unemployed, because I believed in it that much, and if I couldn’t share what little money I had with something that made me that happy, well, what was the point of money anyway?

I still love Cherry Blossom Clinic and listen every Saturday I can; in my push to complete my novel over the last few months, I probably wrote 75 percent of it listening to Terre T. And so I feel somewhat indebted to WFMU for providing me with a soundtrack to my industry.

WFMU is also home to The Best Show, which is not only one of the funniest things humans have ever done, but which would be impossible on any other station. To do the kind of humor that Tom Scharpling does on that show–be it sparring with callers, chatting with guests, or performing comedy with Jon Wurster–requires large swaths of time that other spots on the dial would never allow in a million years. Even if you don’t listen to The Best Show, chances are you enjoy some form of comedy that has taken inspiration in some way from The Best Show. (SNL, for instance, counts many Friends Of Tom among its writers and performers; peep Bill Hader’s t-shirt in this video for visual evidence thereof.) That alone makes it, and WFMU, worthy of your attention.

I’ve volunteered for WFMU events for last few years and it is always a joyous experience. I am not blessed with a huge amount of free time, but I make time for WFMU, because being a tiny piece of what makes it happen is so rewarding. For instance, two years ago, I got witness this bit of amazingness–a Nerd-Off between John Hodgman and Patton Oswalt–live and in person.

My wife and I will be assisting in The Best Show’s first marathon program this evening. We will also be donating funds in addition to our time, and if you have any change to spare, I urge you to do the same. If you can part with 5 bucks, I assure you it is appreciated. I’ve manned the phones at the marathon and received pledges at that level, and I can promise you that every little bit helps.

However, if you care to listen during tonight’s show (which will feature special guests Ted Leo and Julie Klausner) and care to donate $75 or more, you are entitled to the Hammer of the Gods Best Show Demon Summoning Pack, which includes:

  • A Best Show magazine with contributions from such luminaries as John Hodgman, David Rees, Robert Popper, Michael Kupperman, and more, plus an interview with Michael Nesmith and many other awesome tidbits and treats.
  • A flexidisc with an exclusive song from Kurt Vile
  • A CD of brand new comedy from Scharpling and Wurster.
  • A free download of the audio from last year’s Radiovision Conference panel, featuring Tom, Marc Maron, and Ira Glass.
  • A new Best Show sticker! A Vance the Puppet stressball! Some other stuff, I bet!

If all of that ain’t worth $75, I don’t know what is.

High rollers can donate more and get premiums from other DJs, which are always fantastic; the premium CDs from Terre T, Rex, and Evan “Funk” Davies always contain some amazing vinyl finds you simply can not get anywhere else. Think you can just get anything from anywhere in our digital age? You are completely wrong, and WFMU’s DJ premiums prove it every year.

I believe I’ve made made my case. This concludes my annual plea on behalf of WFMU, one of my favorite things in the world, until next week when I bug you again during Marathon Week Two.

Endeavors Elsewhere, Shameless Self Promotion

What’s Been Doin’

Hey! I haven’t written here in a while. Nor have I been writing all that much at Scratchbomb in calendar year 2012. One large reason is that, for the last bit and a half, I’ve been concentrating alternately on finishing my novel and working on a large-ish non-fiction thing.

As far as the novel goes, it is 98 percent done. I’ve completed a second draft, and will soon begin a third so I can dot the i’s, cross the t’s, remove superfluous adverbs, and so on. However, all the really hard work (the actual writing of stuff) is done, and very soon I will send it out to the world and onto a slush pile near you. I am close enough to completion that I feel confident enough to tell the world the following facts about this novel:

  1. The title is Love and a Short Leash.
  2. It is a spy novel that involves baseball.

Speaking of baseball, the large-ish non-fiction thing I mentioned above involves The Great American Pastime and it too has been consuming me of late. I’ve been kinda squirrely about exactly what this thing is on Twitter and elsewhere. I realize that vagueness such as this is maddening and I apologize for that. Here is what I can say about it:

  1. It is called Yells For Ourselves.
  2. It is a multi-volume ebook about the 1999/2000 Mets, or rather, about the narratives and media perceptions thereof.
  3. It will be available in a no-frills version and a souped-up version for the iPad that will include lots of extra goodies, the technical aspects of which I’ve (mostly) figured out.
  4. More details will become available upon the official launch of YellsForOurselves.com. (Nothing there right now, really, except a “watch this space” notice and one of my favorite Mets-related pics ever.)

I am pursuing traditional channels to get my novel published. (Speaking of which, if you’re involved with traditional channels, hey, hit me up, wouldja?) The non-fiction book will be self-published, more or less to prove that the souped-up version is something can be done, from a technical standpoint.

The other big reason I’ve been delinquent in my posts here is because I’ve been writing for other sites. (Scratchbomb and I have an open relationship.) I realize this has endangered my goal for Scratchbomb to be the M*A*S*H of the Internet (“where hilarity meets brooding introspection!”). However, I’m pretty proud of the stuff I’ve done elsewhere of late. Apart from my regular stuff at Amazin’ Avenue (which should ramp up now that spring training is upon us). here’s where you could have seen me so far in 2012.

  • Last Friday I eulogized Gary Carter at The Classical. The Kid was the first athlete I loved, and his death, while sadly unexpected, hit me hard. I hope did his memory justice here. On a less serious tip, I also took a look at how Ray Manzarek’s brought an otherwise fine HBO doc about John Wooden and the UCLA basketball dynasty to a screeching halt.
  • For Vice, I penned a brief assessment of the Marlins’ home run monstrosity as a sign of the impending apocalypse. If you think that take is a bit hyperbolic, I assume you have not seen this thing.
  • For Splitsider, I looked back at the Looney Tunes 50th Anniversary Special, possibly the greatest thing Bill Murray has ever done, if not humanity itself.
  • Last but certainly not least, I’ve scribbled a few things for Low Times: a review of Mitch Miller’s prog record, and an in-depth study of which exact city was built on rock and roll. And if you’re not listening to the Low Times podcast, get on the stick, fella. I have to say the Worst Lyrics discussion with Ted Leo and DC Pierson is one of the funniest things I’ve heard in many a moon.

Will I be posting here with more regularity in the near future? Possibly. What I can promise is that if I don’t, I will definitely put up another post apologizing for not posting.

Tuneage

How Chuck Klosterman Made the List

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Note: I wrote this last week when the events described first blew up the internet. Another site took a pass on it, so I reread and wondered if I was still just as mad as I was when I first scribbled it down. The verdict: Yes! Here’s to Irish Alzheimers!

I have a small, select group of people who crossed a certain line with me and will never be allowed back into my good graces, barring a miracle. Chuck Klosterman is high on that list.

I was reminded of this when he threw up a piece at Grantland that pooped all over tUnE-yArDs for the crime of winning the Village Voice’s Pazz and Jop Poll’s record of the year. It wasn’t so much his choice of target that bugged me as the methods used, and reasons behind aiming in that direction. Per Klosterman habit, the piece made feint, passive-aggressive stabs at its subject, qualifying all of his contempt behind insincere well-wishing for the creator of art he doesn’t like while implying the poor, misguided souls who profess to enjoy it are simply saying they do to bolster their elitist cred. Like much of Klosterman’s writing on music, it  was obsessed with the idea that critics might like things the average slob doesn’t.

Multiple Fire-Joe-Morgan-style takedowns of this post have already been penned, so I won’t attempt that. (I’m partial to this one by Scott Creney.) However, the tone and direction of his tUnE-yArDs hit piece reminded me of another, even more infuriating thing he wrote years ago, one that I believe he still deserves an enormous amount of grief for penning.

Back in 2002, Dee Dee Ramone and Robbin Crosby (late of the hair metal band Ratt) died within 24 hours of each other. The New York Times asked Klosterman to write a look back at both men for the “Lives They Lived” issue of their Sunday magazine (aka Guys Who Died This Year). Klosterman proceeded to pen one of the most rage-inducing, wall-punchingest things I’ve ever read in my entire life.

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