Sorry guys, I've been busy this week at work and with not sleeping then oversleeping, neither of which is my fault. It's like I've been hit with bad news or something idiotic every day this week so there's no DJ story for today. Please forgive me I'll make it up to you later.

DO YOU REMEMBER ROCK N' ROLL RADIO?

PART II: THE CREATIVE PROCESS OF A MORNING DJ

January 17, 2012- Here's part two of Alli's first broadcast sponsored by Drinking! Drinking: It Beats the Alternative! Alternative DJ in this case. Now back to our show...

I said before that I was a radio DJ and that inspired me to write this. The best part of working a radio station actually wasn't playing music, that was fun since unlike the rest of AFN my station is allowed to pick its own music due to our unique audience, no children since DG is a military base in the middle of nowhere, but the best part was coming up with the commercials which are called 'spots'. For resources we had practically every good (and horrible) radio aired song at our disposal for background music and a library of sound effects to play with. What kind of sound effects? The best sound effects 1986 had to offer!

So of course the 'cash register' was an angry, clanging machine and the 'computer' sounded to be a UNIVAC. It was like listening to the future Star Trek (1966) envisioned. This meant I had to often invent my own lame sound effects, like using a rustling sheet of paper for a cape fluttering in the wind for our local super hero- FFV Man! FFV is "Fresh Fruit & Vegetables" which doesn't sound like a great superhero theme until you realize this is an island where everything is slowboated in and typically shows up near expired. Not that we don't eat it anyway, our fine Medical Department would slap it's Seal of Approval on anything still technically edible and the store would discount it. Which is why Diego Garcia's Ship's Store was the proud home of the Nickel Soda. On days FFV was flown in a green flag was raised across the street from the store heralding it's arrival. Then mangos would be enjoyed by all! For a day, then they'd run out. But for that day it was like Christmas. A sweaty, tropical Christmas.

It was like doing the old time radio in that respect, we even had coconuts to bang together for hooves! Someone may have even used that once. This improvisation led to some odd moments when people would walk by the booth and see me jumping up and down, running in place or panting and wheezing dramatically. The things one does for his art.

Here's your radio story of the day: a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, had his crowning moment of glory one hung over Friday morning...

(REDACTED) was lying on our island famous office couch (it's been in more of our TV commercials than anyone at the station) when my boss reminds him politely if he finishes one more spot we'll be done for the week and we can leave early today. His response? "Yeah, I bet we could leave early today."

She repeats herself, now with a little more force so I get up and say,"Okay, let's go to the booth. I'll help you with this." As I try to come up with a spot announcing Taco Night at the Chief's Club to the world and making it last 29 seconds on the fly. My friend pops up and says sternly, "No, I got this."

He shuffles off and comes back fifteen minutes later to get me so I can voice the spot for him. He gets me into the booth and thrusts a flyer for the Taco Night into my hands, hitting the 'record' button as he does so.

His genius spot:"Read this for 30 seconds."

"For 30 seconds?"

"For 30 seconds."

He spends the next minute harnaguing me as I attempt to read the whole flyer. That was it. The spot was him harassing me as I attempted to read a flyer, I mean "script" with the Tijuana Brass thrown on behind it afterwards. We gave the audience a peek into our complex creative process that day. It was too long to put into Audio Vault's automated system to run throughout the day, that 29 seconds I mentioned early, has to be exact down to a tenth of a second, so I played regularly on my morning show since I ran everything on that three hours of awesome manually. Groovy huh?

Oh and if you can't place who the guy in the first panel is, that's Allison's Uncle Guido Casperetti who is also her comic store employer. Looks like she forgot to tell someone she'd be absent this morning. Good ol' Nurse Becky is also in the background in a movie I'd pay to see. Eventually Bek-Bek will show up in normal Numb, I swear. Now to brass tacks. The site is being updated, so it'll start slowly evolving as I change things around and I think you'll enjoy the updated look. I'm using Mattie's Adventures as the reference for the update. If you haven't read about Mattie click on the link below.