from the desk of Wade T Oberlin
it's RUTABAGA! the latest and least concentrated of all my efforts. Where once I was a rock n roll zinester who didn't know the rules, now I am humbled that it was partially digested at all. These days you are better off sending beer money to Iowa for DUMB AND READY PIGMEAT if you want a true rock zine that knows how to focus and not go off wandering into "friend" obits, over-analysis over shit non-rocker-approved movies, anime(!), and past life grievances- my actual rock writing and hype in Faux Wood Paneling was fine when I did or did not ape my hero R. Meltzer, or dug up old quips from Electronic Gaming Monthly/Top Deck that I totally ripped off carte blanche etc etc.
...it's also GHOST which is a whole new platform that I have yet to explore, maybe because it isn't the sensorium, sloppy headache of Substack. I haven't seen a feed of any kind. I'm in the wilderness here. All I know is some respectable people on Fbook are going for it so why the hack not.
Today I figured I'd just blare whatever is going on in my head, mainly this: I'd never work for a company that has anything to do with planes or helicopters. I WOULD work for a company that wants to bring blimps back. I think they are due and if we are serious about a truly progressive future it is our responsibility to retard flight schedules of planes and reconsider the blimp as a viable, practical and leisurely form of travel not unlike a train. Will there be accidents? Undoubtedly. Can mistakes be rectified now with all the modern tech and new materials on hand? Yes. It's time to bring back THE BLIMP! THE BLIMP!
https://www.aerosociety.com/news/floating-into-the-future/
Oftentimes I think to myself what would I do for work if not college radio? Yes, I feel challenged by the prospect of leaving academia when I feel I'm given just enough to live- do I earn it? I may justify the means to myself- after all, there ain't no way people will hire me to write a word and no way I can be edited by one not familiar with post-rock blog style gush. An editor ought not edit much of anything, only getting away with the tiniest of restructures. Be it for clarity or appearance, the author should feel their text hasn't even been brushed.
But anyways, work in radio is all about keeping things in motion, keeping the lights on, the temp in the transmitter room consistent... it's like managing a building that happens to be a big stereo. Unless you throw in on volunteering fir a program it's all background, and the promise of time to write and later print my own stuff with what all office supplies around was important to me, has been for 6-7 years. Autonomous charge within the automation. And yet, I do feel the pull and want to be part of something else. Even at this "late stage" I'd like to be more affected by the spirit of capitalism. Of course I justify my station in life as more of a derelict monkish kind of training ground.
I've been fantasizing about owning a small camper. To my knowledge, there is still a 1971 Rover, "completely" restored says the owner, with all-original windows/stove/furnace for a mere 4K in Jamestown right up the street from my parents. Part of the fantasy involves making small burgers, sliders for whomever would walk by.
My recent trek to Tiffin University to witness my very first radio intern graduate with a Masters degree in film studies allowed me to visit Kewpee Burger's first location in Lima and then an hour or so later, Crabill's in Urbana. As legend has it, Dave Thomas of Wendy's borrowed the idea of Kewpee's signature square patty and never gave it back.
Crabill's is, give-or-take some time to move locations/suffer a family hiatus, a 99 year-old biz. They sell very little beyond their sliders, some locally made potato chips and root beer. They even sell their own brown mustard in label-less bottles, which at first I didn't favor, but only because I paired it with Muenster cheese, my mistake... is delectable! Cash AND Drive-Thru only.
I may have the softest hands in the school of life, but I dream of some gnarled fingers someday. They can stand some grease burns. But I still don't want to throw in at McDs or BK or or or... I'd like to be involved with something akin to Miamisburg's Hamburger Wagon!
How about Koji Burger? Hrrrm, too hip to have me, and while I do like that they use Kewpie Mayo (a separate Kew-P company of the Japanese persuasion unrelated to the previously mentioned KewpeeBurg) and Koji's sesame seeded burgs are very good in a just-so acceptably sub-greasy and photogenic kinda way, they are just too high, steep in price.
Apropos of nothing, all this reminds me of when I was fascinated by the idea of Depression-era Midwesterners eating the fabled BRAIN BURGERS. Fried brain (cow, pig) sandwiches. Can this indelicacy reemerge, spill out past places such as Evansville Indiana's Hilltop Inn, where calves brain WAS served but where swine if fine today? or Defiance, Ohio's purveyor of pork brain sammies on rye, Kissner's? [photos redacted]...
Dunno. But road trip time is imminent, and I'm opting for Michigan's Kewpee location where they serve the less audacious and more compelling Olive Burger. Lima locations don't got. Then the remainder, Kewpee Lunch in Racine, to the North...
On the phone with another fan club devotee, when not talking about the wonders of scribe Richard Meltzer whose 81st birthday was immanent, I was asked questions about my parents that I didn't know the full answers to. I only had a vague understanding of why my own mother worked as a correctional officer and in a minimum security prison when I was a child– my assumption was that male family members had set that standard with their own stints in the military or with local police.
I had interviewed my father Dave strictly to get his rock and roll stories for an early Faux Wood Paneling bit, which were few but easily collected. He was the same while drudging up the past with a mic in front of him. But a week or so ago I interviewed my ma and watched her noticeably change- she normally has a sort of rambling way of talking that easily finds ways off topic that can usher sighs from my sister and I when we want the elusive point- but when I put a voice recorder in front of her, her way of addressing topics stayed on and I got all the answers I needed in about a half-hours time.
Turns out my assumptions were correct- beyond the example set by older family members, the only other motivation was decent pay. However, while working with prisoners (who, in the minimum security setting, were called "residents") she believes she made impacts that changed the course of their lives for the better, through mere conversations held in the sallyport. Her later work in drug rehab I'm sure provided similar accounts.
The choice of her vocations dovetails with that midlife passion that she never gave up: martial arts. I see my mother (aw, might as well celebrate!) as a disciplined person with a heart for the downtrodden, and I should know!
Guessing I'll use Descript to transcribe the interview and rearrange it, intersperse it with something else in the foreseeable future.
So to wrap up and echo my dying Substank...
...the most essential rock & record collecting zine worth keeping your PO Box open for is DUMB AND READY PIGMEAT!
Send beer money (enough for a few) (seriously, 5 or ten dollars) to:
Brad Kohler
802 Crystal
Ames, Iowa, 50010
…and tell ‘em Wade T sent ya!
and speaking of me, while I got no-mo zines for sale, I do still have plenty of Mordecai flexi discs. Would be down to trade and barter, or go consignment if need be. Only about 60-70 left.
I figure if you ping my PO Box you'll at least get one! C'mon, what's the harm?
Wade T Oberlin
PO Box 211
Wilberforce, OH, 45384
More to come here from Rutabaga HQ soon.