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Sun. Dec 31, 2006

I Insist You Have A Happy 2007

It recently came to my attention that December 29th was National Drunk Blogging Day. Or, was it National Blog Drunk Day. Hell, let me go check the link. OK, it was the former, not the latter. At any rate, no one bothered to send me the memo, so I was distressingly sober that day. So I’m making up for it. Right now.

The link. Oh, yeah. It’s from Doug Monroe, a former longtime AJC reporter who has a fine blog called “Peachtree Screed” over at Atlanta Magazine, which has really poor formatting in their RSS feed (hey, drinking does lower your inhibitions!)

Anyway, reading about the festivities as told by Rusty and Shelby, it sounded like fun. And tonight, the champagne put Susan to bed early … and put me to blogging.

Run while you still can.

Oh, it’s not that bad, I’m only on my third glass of champagne. It’s just I’m pretty much a lightweight when it comes to drinking. It wasn’t always that way. During my DJ days, my blood was about 2% peppermint schnapps at times. I’ve closed more than my share of bars. But that was a whole lot of years and brain cells ago. When I was 23, I travelled from Warner Robins to Atlanta with my then wife, Susan Stott, and a couple of friends for New Year’s Eve, where we rented a couple of rooms at the Peachtree Plaza, and saw Mother’s Finest put on a wild show at the Fox Theater to ring in 1981.

25 years later, a night at home with the current wife, Susan Stott v2.0, and some champagne is plenty. When I was 23, if v1.0 has gone to sleep at 10 on New Year’s Eve, I would have been youthfully enraged beyond all reason. How could she do this?!? We had plans!!!

Tonight, I know that 10 is already past her normal bedtime, never mind the champagne. What’s to be mad about? Funny how time changes. I believe they call that “maturity” or something. Yes, I’m 25 years more mature.

Glass four.

Yes, the glasses. I have predator like tendencies when it comes to champagne flutes. Not on purpose. But you put a pair of them in my range, soon enough, I’ll have killed one of them. Suddenly, out of nowhere, my left leg will kick one across the room. I don’t know what it is. But Susan has witnessed it more than once.

Tonight she was getting out our wedding set to rinse them off, and when I walked into the kitchen, she just looked at me and put them up. Yes, it’s that bad. After she went to bed, I finished the glass I had, carefully rinsed it out with an eyedropper … and went to the cabinet to get a plastic cup.

I’m really trying not to kill again. Lawd, if I broke one of these, I’d better get a running head start before morning. And I’ve had too much champagne to run far enough to be effective.

Maybe it has to do with my introduction to champagne. It was in Dixie cups. In the green room after the first performance of a show at the Wake Forest University Theatre. I had won the second male lead, was (barely) 17, and champagne made me feel much different than the only other alcohol to which I’d been exposed, beer. At that young age, I still wasn’t convinced the taste of beer was worth the buzz.

But this champagne stuff, it was pretty kewl! Not served at your average college frat party, though, so I never became much of a drinker in college. Or really at any time in my life. I certainly drank more when I was working as a DJ at a nightclub in Macon (anyone recall Flaming Sally’s?), but that was a relatively brief time.

OK, this “blogging while drunk” thing has a limited appeal. Podcasting, that’s what I should be doing

[Reid tips his chair over due to hysterical ironic laughter]

Am I drunk enough to talk about what a joke I think podcasting is? Sure, why not. Frankly, I’m hard pressed to come up with a less efficient way for me to get information than to first have to make a 20, 30, 40 MB download and then spend 15, 30, or 60 minutes of my life listening to people pretend they’re on the radio, playing bumper music and jingles and otherwise trying to cram one dead medium into one new one.

OK, OK, if you have a long commute each day, I can see how podcasts could be great. I can see in some niche topic areas, a podcast would be the best way to convey information (a blog filled with music reviews, for example). But we’re talking niches within niches.

I didn’t need the Internet to come along and show me that everybody wants to be a DJ. I learned that 25 years ago when I was a program director. I also learned that most people who think they should be on the radio … are wrong.

Don’t give me one, two, three people sitting around talking. If you want to do that, make it a video. Put it on YouTube or something. Let me hear and see. If you are going to do audio only, give me some Theater of the Mind. Use the medium for something more than talk radio.

There. That should have ticked off a goodly number of people. Let there be no doubt, I’m a crusty radio veteran and curmudgeon who is not likely to be inclined to think podcasting is All That like so many do. But I implore you. Be different. Be inventive. Or be video.

Glass five. (I hit c instead of v three times in a row trying to type five … typing is decaying. Deploy spel chek!). Oh my. The bottle is empty. Good thing we forgot to get orange juice for Mimosas tomorrow. Reid would be in trouble then!

Sorry, “I’m the One” by the Average White Band just came over the headphones, and the bass line prevented me from typing. Segue: if I were to make a New Year’s Resolution, which I don’t do, it would be to go get that cheap ass guitar and add it to my collection of Garageband noises. Hell, I already know three chords. And Lawd knows I need another time-sucking vortex.

I’ll also pause to say how pleased I am at the number of working links I’ve placed in this article while drunk.

Segues. That used to be the most fun part of doing an airshift. Creating a three song set with two segues that were as seamless as possible. Before DJ’s dealt in computerized BPM’s, it was just the turntable felt, your fingers, the cue speaker, and your imagination. Like photography, the tools of the industry have changed so much. Unlike photography, the whole radio business has gone to hell in a handbasket. I have to say, I got out at just the right time. If I’d stayed in the radio business, by the early 90’s you would have read about me in the paper … one of those “DJ Barricades Himself in Studio” stories.

Glass empty.

Drunk blogging over. My guess is I’d blow about a 0.12 right now. So I’m going to stop operating heavy machinery, and wish you and yours a Happy New Year.

May 2007 make 2006 look like 2001. I think you’ll need a few glasses of champagne to properly appreciate that statement.