this is it. THIS IS IT!



this is the last day of WFMUs two week marathon. as of right now-ish they're a little over 100,000 under their goal. i cannot stress how incredibly awesome and utterly slept on this radio station is and how amazing and unique their model of communicating craziness is. if you're the sort of person who likes ME, or ZITA, or this blog or anything related to it, i can honestly guarantee that there's something over at WFMU that you'll become so completely enamored with that you'll poop.

head over there and PLEDGE, people! if you do and later regret it, i just might give you your money back outta my own pocket.


$15 gets you a sticker (and extra good vibes)


$50 gets you a t-shirt (i suggest the "consistently inconsistent" design by espo)

$75 gets you a shirt, the sticker and one of the lovingly hand crafted dj premiums, of which i am sure there is at least one that will have you pitching a tent in your pants over.

i personally recommend The Best Show On WFMU with Tom Scharpling Presents The 2010 Chump Steamroller Fun Pack which is the first-ever Best Show DVD, loaded with tons of surprises and star-studded greatness (PATTON OSWALT! TED LEO! PAUL F. TOMPKINS! ZACH GALIFIANAKIS! TIM AND ERIC! JOHN HODGMAN! YO LA TENGO! TODD BARRY! MUCH MORE!) and a set of Best Show TRADING CARDS!

$180 ($15/mo! cheep!) equals three dj premiums and the shirt and the sticker.

if you need any help deciding on which two premiums to add, i suggest Trent's Instant iTunes Party Pak (Four gigabytes of the best music in the world on a DVD + limited edition OFFICIAL Sound and Safe blue glowstick. Makes panties drop from Venice Beach to Venus!) and Mr. Fine Wine's Cats Got These Cats' Tongues - 25 Mostly Wordless Obscurities from Mr. Fine Wine's Vaults (You know those mind-blowing R&B, soul, and funk instrumentals Mr. Fine Wine is always talking over? Here they are without the talking-over).


$365 (payable $30/mo) gets you any 7 DJ premiums, both shirts, an item from the prize warehouse, and the vice-pack seen above that includes a shot glass designed by half-japanese's jad fair, some temporary tattoos (by dimitri simakis), and a set of loaded dice, cause WFMU always comes up on top (SNAKE EYES!).


there's a thousand dollar pledge level (puts you in the running for a trip with the station to go to the primavera sound festival in SPAIN) and a three thousand dollar level, but i'm not expecting anyone in eye-shot of this blog to be flush enough to handle cash like that.




and with that, i'm out. this has been a crazy two-week marathon and i'm glad we can hopefully go back to regularly scheduled programming for a full year after tonight.

if the blog was what opened the door, then seven second delay was what invited me to have a seat and make myself comfortable. i immediately fell in love with the curmudgeonly antics of andy breckman and his straight man station manager ken freedman, who has an amazing show of his own (wednesday mornings from 9-12 eastern time) that's worth it alone for the images and gifs he tosses into the insta-playlist.

i'm pretty sure it was the sophie's choice episode where andy admits to annually telling his children which one of them is his favorite, followed directly by the e-less olympics episode where they had a contest to see which caller could have the longest conversation using only words that didn't have the letter e in them, that officially won me over, and i've never looked back.

since then i've listened as they tasered, tattoed, and water boarded their way through the various marathons, to say nothing of the most recent debacle that involved station manager ken getting blackout drunk and interviewing people as famous as tony shaloub.





tonight they'll be participating in the old "peanut butter underwear" routine that i'm sure is going to be the height of hilarity, as well as any number of other surprises.

got an iphone? get the WFMU app. it's FREE and it's AWESOME!



the new version dropped a week or so before the marathon started, and it's a drastic improvement over the old version, featuring a live stream as well as a backlog of podcasts, archives, links to the stations twitter and blog, and most importantly, it can play in the background and allow you to access your other apps.

cop that shit RIGHT OVER HERE.

maybe a little explanation is in order? at WFMU each DJ lovingly crafts something to be given away for various pledge levels, usually a mix cd, but sometimes a DVD or even a commemorative plate like seven second delay did last year. during the marathon the blog posts up a track from each premium for that day and then a couple days later takes em down, cause they're sneaky like that. the ones they have up right now are pretty great and i advocate snagging em before they get gotten down. who knows, maybe you'll end up donating to the station and getting one or three in the mail.

day 6

day 7

day 8

what is it about painting on velvet that makes the subject so much more amazing? i have no idea! did you know that WFMU (or, more specifically, station manager ken) has a HUGE collection of velvet paintings? if you donate enough to the station, i'm sure they'll let you "adopt" the phil spector gets arraigned piece (along with a t-shirt, sticker, and three excellent dj premiums), which will no doubt make you much more attractive to members of the opposite sex.

and, just to up our google searchability, here's anthony bourdain's no reservations segment with chuck palahniuk where they head over to the portland, oregon's velveteria.



finally, here's some more music, this time from not bad meaning good, but bad meaning bad, a disc full of the most horrible raps from people who have no business rapping. this 2007 compilation was assembled for the show coffee break for heroes and villains, a now defunct show that was dedicated to playing hip-hop from only unsigned artists and currently lives on in a more bite size amount via one of the numerous podcasts offered by WFMU.

strawberry shortcake: strawberry rap


mister t: no dope no drugs


rodney dangerfield: rappin' rodney


dee dee ramone: funky man

i'm a librarian by degree, so whenever i see people navigating hyper organized collections of absurd amounts of crap like the above video, my eyes roll back in my head and my leg starts shaking wildly as if i were a dog getting its belly scratched.

onward to the music! the tracks i've got below are two of my favorites i'm gonna kick out during the whole of the marathon. these are both from trent's sound and safe pop off pop premium last year, which i slept on originally, but snapped up last winter during a mini 24 hr marathon.

beyonce: single ladies (maximum fx silk blindz party room)


kanye west: love lockdown (maximum fx 8bit lotus siikness)


this year trent is dishing out a dvd with 730 awesome songs on it, as well as the glowstick seen below.

if it's good enough for k.c. it's good enough for...

whatever. here's some more music, ripped straight from the cds they send me when i give them money.

these are all bands that ron asheton (July 17, 1948 – January 6, 2009) played guitar post iggy and the stooges, and come from terre t's cherry blossom clinic premium that was given out last year.

destroy all monsters: you're gonna die (1978)


new race: nov. 22, 1963 (1981)


dark carnival: bang (1996)

i'm a sucker for covers, and this one from tony coulter's hit replay premium from last years marathon is pretty excellent.

russ allen, who really needs to try and step up his internet presence if he's gonna have such a generic name, covered this doobie brothers song and put it on his album titled nothin' special (but its me). and with that, you know as much as i do.

russ allen: long train running

every year, round this time, i throw this pledge thing up and go on and on about how awesome wfmu is. so far, i have no idea how many of you humble readers have leap-frogged from my hyperbolically enthusiastical rantings, but i trundle onwards in the hopes that some of you might join me in bowing at the freeform radio altar coming at you from the great state of new jersey.

every day of the marathon i'll be throwing out some mp3s from the dj specific premium cds i've amassed in the past four or whatever years.

the html code for their instapledge doo-dad is kinda shitty and i can't get it to look like it does on their site, but it should be pretty trustworthy to the maybe one cheap bastard i wrangle into donating 5 bucks to the station.

edit: nevermind, they totally came through on fixing the insta-pledge embed code.

there are some things that exist in the world that just knowing they exist makes the world a better place. wfmu, "Where Downtown Art Skronk and Appalachian Meat Murder Ballads Acquire Brill Building Panache," is one such thing.

other than (maybe) three other people in my circle of friends, i have yet to meet anyone else who's totally down with this radio station as much as i am, so i'm not gonna put a hard sell on anyone other than to say that for the next 24 hours (starting tonight at 7pm) they're looking for donations to help fund some crazy big expansion stuff they've had in the works for a while.

please please please swing over to their site and roll through the archives etc for the avant-nerdy goodness. i got hooked through the incredible blog they run and the stunt-radio of seven second delay, and just kept going from there. toes will be curled and hair will be blown back by the sheer tonnage of awesome they're able to churn out.

***also, nobody beats these guys by way of insanely cool marathon premiums. hit up tom scharplings the best show for a shirt drawn special by the one and only michael kupperman of snake n bacon and tales to thrizzle fame.

downtown soulville with mr. fine wine, marty mcsorley, sound and safe with trent, nickle and dime radio with $mall ¢hange... check it out and get back to me.



how can you see a radio station with a show titled "inflatable squirrel carcass" and not think to yourself "i need to support this."

i'm only gonna say this once because badgering everyone about how they should do such and such is rarely a good idea.

having said that, wfmu is one of the most amazing musical institutions in america. they're a freeform, which means that there's no set top 40 shit going on, and the music is completely up to the dj. the only rules are those of the fcc (boo! hiss!).

they don't do ads, cause no one likes ads. all the money that runs tha station comes from their two week long pledge drive, and in the next year there are a bunch of looming problems (they have to move the station across the street to the tune of $40,000 and a %500 monthly rent increase, and they need a new transmitter which will cost $80,000). also: someone on the bus today was telling me about this whole recession thing that's happening right about now.

toss them a sawbuck if you can. going all sorts of ron paul over this thing is sounding like the way to do a thing.

public radio gives away coffee cups and national geographic dvds of hump-back whales lactating on celtic dancers and whatever. WFMU gives out compilations made by the station djs, who all have better taste in music than you thought was humanly capable, as well as a zillion other things. last year i got a floaty pen that makes lynard skynards airplane crash into a swamp when you tip it sideways. when you tip it the other way the plane coems back out of the swamp and no one died. it's so cool.

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things to do that will win you over to the WoofMoo:

check their blog.

subscribe to their podcasts (i highly recommend downtown soulville with mr. fine wine).

listen to them while you're doing stuff around the house.