o my friend John Erler -- the same John who traveled with me to Alaska -- has a weekly radio show in Austin called "The Elk Mating Ritual Hour." I forget the origin of that name, but it's a pretty popular two-hour show on the college station KVRX (the station's motto: "None of the hits, all of the time") during which John chats with callers and plays music and talks about philosophy. The usual morning DJ stuff. One week, to protest the overuse of adjectives, he donated money to the sister station for every adjective he used (I think there were seven). The next week he went without verbs for a now-classic No Verbs show. I tell this to you because:
One afternoon last spring John and I were talking about my roadtrip. I was bummed because I'd pitched an on-the-road column to the Weekly Cynical, and they'd turned it down.
"You should do something else," John said. "Maybe radio."
"Maybe I'll just call your show every week." It was a joke.
"Maybe you could."
"Are you being serious?"
"Maybe I am."
And so that's how it happened. Every Thursday morning at 8:45am central standard time, I call John's show. I tell stories about my travels or things that have happened to me. Sometimes it's great. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes I completely forget we're on the air and we have conversations like this:
"Did I just interrupt you?"
"No."
"No I did. You say what you were going to say."
"No I want you first."
"No I want you first."
"I forgot what I was going to say."
"Oh."
We plan nothing. Before he puts me on the air, John often doesn't know where I am and I often don't know what he's been talking about on the show. One time, he surprises me by asking me to sing my high-school song, which is no problem. One time he surprises me by talking about some French philosopher I mistakenly refer to as Jacques Pepin, the celebrity chef. But it's fun. I've called from a phone booth surrounded by deer in Glacier National Park. I've called from the town square in Quebec City, from a Best Western in Hancock, Michigan, from a farm in Winfield, Iowa. Tomorrow morning I'll call from Brooklyn, and who knows what I'll talk about. Here's where you come in.
See, it's possible to listen to this show online. To prove this I just went to the website to make sure one could actually listen to the show online. Of course, I can't, because I'm a moron. But anyone with a modicum of tech-savvy can listen to the show tomorrow if they're curious. And you should. Because John's funny and brainy and peculiar and you might get a kick out of listening to me fumble my way through 10 minutes of radio time. If you're in Austin, the show runs 7-9am on KVRX, 91.7FM. For the rest of us, it can be accessed at kvrx.org and then just click on LISTEN. And let me know if it works. (And how.)