For this month’s installment of Answers/Advice, we solicited questions from a few of local radio’s most prolific pontificators.
I love to golf, and even more so, love to golf barefoot. Are there any other summer activities you’d recommend doing barefoot?
—Kevin Calabro, host of The Kevin Calabro Show on 710 ESPN Seattle
Roderick: This is a question that could best be answered by Matthew McConaughey, so I’m going to turn it over to him:
“Hey, bro-dog, big high-five on the barefoot-activities question. Every day that I don’t have to put on flip-flops is a day I know I’m living in grace. But let me turn that question around: Why are barefoot activities only confined to summer?
Our forefathers and mothers were barefoot all the time, which is why their connection to the Earth was so strong! I don’t like to give advice, because advice is just fear, but since you asked: Everything is better barefoot, from eating fish tacos to making love on the beach in Madagascar. Set yourself free, my bro-master, and join me on the beach of life.” —Matthew McConaughey
Do you really while away the days in the bathtub, as your Twitter posts suggest? And if so, what do you do in there all those hours, besides bathe, obviously? [My autocorrect turned “bathtub” into “bathrobe” as I was writing this, so feel free to alternately, or additionally, answer the same question with bathrobe substituted for bathtub.] By the way, have you ever considered wearing Bedouin dress? I think that would be a smart look for you.
—Cheryl Waters, host of The Midday Show on 90.3 KEXP
I do spend hours in the bathtub—eating sandwiches, writing sternly worded letters to the editor, etc.—because even though I live alone, I also need an inner sanctum within my sanctum. I also spend many more hours than that in my bathrobe. In fact, I am writing this to you now from within my bathrobe. I would estimate that between taking baths and lounging around in bath-related terry-cloth garments, I am only actually dressed in human clothes a maximum of four hours a day, and that is generally under duress.
What does it mean if I’m annoyed at the racket the teenagers are making playing basketball outside my window right now at 10 p.m. on a weeknight? Certainly not that I’m a cranky curmudgeon?
—Waters
Not at all, Cheryl! The fact is that teenagers today have no respect! Certainly not the common decency we had as teenagers not to make any noise after 10 or play basketball next to apartments where people might be sleeping. Why, I myself remember needing to chastise a few of my teenage friends to please be considerate of the neighbors when they were playing a rather spirited game of whist outside on a summer’s evening.
The fact is that we, you and I, are members of the last generation of people to have been raised correctly or to have any consideration for others, and it is absolutely our responsibility to explain to the CHILDREN who are RUNNING WILD IN OUR STREETS that some behaviors have consequences. That is basically the most punk-rock thing you can do, because we are the punk-rock generation and will never grow old!
Do you talk out loud to yourself when you’re alone?
—Waters
I am never alone. I always have a little gang of disagreeable people arguing with me that no one else is able to see.
Please rank the following on the evolutionary ladder: radio DJs, magazine/newspaper critics, and bloggers. (Feel free to use other examples—worms, geoducks—to give full perspective.)
—Andy Harms, DJ, 107.7 The End, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., weekdays
All DJs, writers, and bloggers are members of the phylum Chordata, class Mammalia, order Primates, family Hominidae, genus Homo, species Homo sapiens. I can think of no instance of any of these occupations being filled by a member of a different species, let alone a different phylum, so their different ranks on the evolutionary ladder are so minuscule as to be imperceptible. Now, worms are much more interesting! Even the common earthworm—phylum Annelida, class Clitellata, subclass Oligochaeta, order Haplotaxida, sub-order Lumbricina—diverges into so many different family classifications that it would be impossible for me to give due consideration to their diversity even at the level of genus. Geoducks are also invertebrates, as are the vast majority of living things: phylum Mollusca, class Bivalvia, order Myoida, family Hiatellidae. They are presently worth more per pound on the Asian market than either earthworms or music bloggers. All the examples you mention are members of the kingdom Animalia. I hope this helps.
What’s wrong with KeyArena? Nice court, luxury boxes, it doesn’t cost $300 million. Please help me out.
—Marty Riemer, DJ, 103.7 The Mountain, 2–8 p.m. weekdays
The problem with KeyArena is that it doesn’t maximize the number of Wolfgang Pucks per acre. Also, there are no provisions for our Capitalist Überlords to sequester themselves from the mere Capitalist Overlords and Capitalist Underlords who are presently crowding the skybox level with their gauche cordovan tassel-loafers and brothers-in-law who graduated from Wazzu.
What any true sports fan would understand is that the city needs to underwrite the construction of a new arena with at least seven levels of luxury above the level of common ticket buyer, so that the bold, risk-taking, JOB-CREATING, TRICKLE-DOWNING SUPERMEN who are the real American heroes have the opportunity, not just to chat with one another in over-air-conditioned luxury while barely glancing at the game, but to MAKE TONS OF MONEY FOR THEMSELVES in the process. Money which then trickles down to the rest of the city in the form of popcorn sales. That’s how capitalism works.
At a concert I tend to get mesmerized by the drummer, but then I wonder: Is being a drummer boring after a while? Just back there pounding away?
—Riemer
Without getting too pop-Buddhist on you, everything gets boring after a while. Even being a DJ for The Mountain must get boring after a while, even though you get to play Jason Mraz anytime you want!
Of all the things in the world that a person has to do night after night to earn a living, I imagine pounding on the drums would have to be one of the most continually interesting and engaging in the whole human enterprise. The drummer is setting the time, which can only mean they are listening to the music of the universe.
More people are alive right now than have ever been alive in all of human history. Is there a fact more mind-blowing than that?
—Riemer
There are mites living in your eyelashes.
