Making the drive between Oakland and Santa Cruz, with frequent stops in San Jose, has provided me with ample opportunity to call people when I'm in traffic and listen to a lot of radio. For whatever reason (laziness) I keep neglecting to charge my ipod and/or restock the car with new CDs, and so I end up listening to the radio a lot, but the thing is I actually really enjoy the experience of continually scanning the dial to find something decent to listen to. When I'm southbound, I listen to KALX until it fades, which is usually around Hayward. Then I inevitably do a lot of NPR, but I'm often driving during Forum, and I don't like Forum. (Thing #4 That I Actually Miss About Living in Providence: WBUR's On Point, with Tom Ashbrook, which kicks Forum's ass in many ways.)
There's something to be said for trying to find something good on the radio, slogging through the Pussycat Dolls and commercials and morning show assholes, because when you're alone in the car and you have a good radio moment, it's pretty amazing. Tonight I had two.
1) I love Delilah. Delilah deserves her own post. Do you know Delilah? You do. You have to. She's the syndicated love song radio show host, the one with the buttery voice and unlimited capacity for schmaltz.
She's like Extreme Home Makeover x 100. She's wise and dorky and, as one comes to realize when one is weirdly obsessed with listening to her, a very damaged woman who often makes her wound-licking and -healing quite public. She's a foster mom who loves to garden and restore her old farmhouse. People call into her show and tell her their heart-wrenching problems, and she makes wisecracks and wise comments and then says "Let me play a song for you" and then plays like "Stand By Me" or "What the World Needs Now is Love." Her motto is "love someone." I first discovered her while driving cross country, since she's syndicated everywhere. Jason and I listened to her constantly when we lived in Providence. We would actually spend a Friday night sitting on our shaggy white rug drinking wine and listening to her talk and play shitty music and respond to all these people who called in about lost love or estranged parents or sick children or husbands in Iraq. One night we tried to go out and have an adventure in Cranston and ended up driving around listening to her show. One of her favorite songs to play is that horrible hideous "How Far is Heaven" song by Los Lonely Boys, which is so so bad, but that night Jason and I listened to it all the way through, without changing the station.
All of this is to say that there is a stretch of Highway 17 that seems to get nothing but Spanish language stations and Delilah. Banda y rock en espanol y some lite rock station that always always has her on. So tonight I was doing that dark drive home to my parents' house in San Jose, and I was scanning the stations, and there she was. Like an old friend. Right there, hanging out behind a redwood tree, waiting to play me bad songs. I got this giant smile on my face when I found her, and then she played a song. And it was Los Lonely Boys, and I laughed out loud, alone in my car, on foggy 17, and totally listened to that entire fucking song. And I thought about driving around Cranston, going to Job Lot and Hon's and places with names like Meatball Mike's to do karaoke with weird New Englanders. And I felt fond of those times but so so happy to have Delilah here, in California, where we all belong.
2) Delilah cut out around Los Gatos, if not a bit before. I lost her right after this woman with a wicked Texas drawl called in to talk about the blessings of being a foster-turned-adoptive mother. D played something to celebrate her, and I got static. Then I called Jason, and we talked about Nancy Drew books until I was almost home. When I got midway down Pine Ave., nearing the park and my general childhood stomping grounds, I turned the radio back up right in time for the beginning of "Baba O'Reilly" and I was very excited. Suddenly there was no one on the streets, it was just me, and everything was a little bit misty and the streetlights had this particular glow, a familiar warming of the night, and the park was on my left right when Roger Daltry is all "Out here in the fields! I fought for my meals!" Clearly I did not exactly fight for any meals, nor is River Street Park a 'field' per se, but I couldn't resist the Moment, and I rolled the windows down and drove all slow around the neighborhood. It smelled like San Jose, like Willow Glen, like wet onions and houses. There's the barrier by the creek that didn't used to be there and people kept driving off the road into the water. The creek where we found the porn in the tree after an almost-flood. There's the Cat House that we used to walk by, the one with a million cats that would come out to rub on you and say hello. There's the scary house with the covered windows, and there's where I used to babysit and watch Spice once the kid went to sleep. Total Teenage Wasteland.
Thank you, radio.
There's something to be said for trying to find something good on the radio, slogging through the Pussycat Dolls and commercials and morning show assholes, because when you're alone in the car and you have a good radio moment, it's pretty amazing. Tonight I had two.
1) I love Delilah. Delilah deserves her own post. Do you know Delilah? You do. You have to. She's the syndicated love song radio show host, the one with the buttery voice and unlimited capacity for schmaltz.
She's like Extreme Home Makeover x 100. She's wise and dorky and, as one comes to realize when one is weirdly obsessed with listening to her, a very damaged woman who often makes her wound-licking and -healing quite public. She's a foster mom who loves to garden and restore her old farmhouse. People call into her show and tell her their heart-wrenching problems, and she makes wisecracks and wise comments and then says "Let me play a song for you" and then plays like "Stand By Me" or "What the World Needs Now is Love." Her motto is "love someone." I first discovered her while driving cross country, since she's syndicated everywhere. Jason and I listened to her constantly when we lived in Providence. We would actually spend a Friday night sitting on our shaggy white rug drinking wine and listening to her talk and play shitty music and respond to all these people who called in about lost love or estranged parents or sick children or husbands in Iraq. One night we tried to go out and have an adventure in Cranston and ended up driving around listening to her show. One of her favorite songs to play is that horrible hideous "How Far is Heaven" song by Los Lonely Boys, which is so so bad, but that night Jason and I listened to it all the way through, without changing the station.
All of this is to say that there is a stretch of Highway 17 that seems to get nothing but Spanish language stations and Delilah. Banda y rock en espanol y some lite rock station that always always has her on. So tonight I was doing that dark drive home to my parents' house in San Jose, and I was scanning the stations, and there she was. Like an old friend. Right there, hanging out behind a redwood tree, waiting to play me bad songs. I got this giant smile on my face when I found her, and then she played a song. And it was Los Lonely Boys, and I laughed out loud, alone in my car, on foggy 17, and totally listened to that entire fucking song. And I thought about driving around Cranston, going to Job Lot and Hon's and places with names like Meatball Mike's to do karaoke with weird New Englanders. And I felt fond of those times but so so happy to have Delilah here, in California, where we all belong.
2) Delilah cut out around Los Gatos, if not a bit before. I lost her right after this woman with a wicked Texas drawl called in to talk about the blessings of being a foster-turned-adoptive mother. D played something to celebrate her, and I got static. Then I called Jason, and we talked about Nancy Drew books until I was almost home. When I got midway down Pine Ave., nearing the park and my general childhood stomping grounds, I turned the radio back up right in time for the beginning of "Baba O'Reilly" and I was very excited. Suddenly there was no one on the streets, it was just me, and everything was a little bit misty and the streetlights had this particular glow, a familiar warming of the night, and the park was on my left right when Roger Daltry is all "Out here in the fields! I fought for my meals!" Clearly I did not exactly fight for any meals, nor is River Street Park a 'field' per se, but I couldn't resist the Moment, and I rolled the windows down and drove all slow around the neighborhood. It smelled like San Jose, like Willow Glen, like wet onions and houses. There's the barrier by the creek that didn't used to be there and people kept driving off the road into the water. The creek where we found the porn in the tree after an almost-flood. There's the Cat House that we used to walk by, the one with a million cats that would come out to rub on you and say hello. There's the scary house with the covered windows, and there's where I used to babysit and watch Spice once the kid went to sleep. Total Teenage Wasteland.
Thank you, radio.
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