the rix mix

WFMU DJ Charlie usually asks me to do his 9 a.m. Monday program when he takes off a week. I always turn it down, even though Charlie is a great guy who does the kind of wide-ranging free form show I enjoy "filling-in." The last time I did a weekly show at that hour was in 1996 at the old East Orange NJ studio when I was desperate to get back on the schedule & I had a reliable car & prepared most of the program a week in advance, but it was still nerve-wracking worrying I'd oversleep or the car wouldn't start or I'd get stuck in a traffic jam on the Garden State Parkway. Now I'd have to get up at 6:30 a.m. latest, catch the 7:26 train to Newark, change to the Jersey City Exchange Place PATH train (all crowded rush hour hauling an extra amount of recordings), maybe get coffee & a banana walnut muffin at the Au Bon Pain, arrive at the studio with luck about 8:20 & have a half hour to pull the rest of the music & no time to audition new stuff, all for a one-show gig. I may be a masochist, but neither my ego nor my sense of reponsibility toward WFMU demand that sort of sacrificial suffering anymore. Instead, I put in five hours at the station on Wednesday stuffing envelopes for a pre-Marathon mailing, which is less creative but just as important & certainly more zen. & I didn't have to arrive until after noon. I will be filling in for Bethany on Sunday 2/20 from 9 p.m. to midnight.