Day of Ragnarok
Some know that I used to do internet radio but this is a story that I’ve kept under my hat for awhile now. I wanted to tell you this story, not for any reason in particular but just because it’s something that happened and I wanted to illustrate how the internet used to be.
See, when people lie, I don’t really care. Tell me all the grandiose stories you want I’ve heard all of them. As long as they don’t involve me, it’s fine. Once it involves me, well, you’ll see how this goes…
First internet radio station I ever hopped on didn’t have a server that we could cut to where music or clips played at all hours of the day and night. We had to have a DJ on at all times.
After awhile, the running joke became when I wasn’t working in corrections, I was doing the same shift on Internet Radio.
I had a girlfriend at the time, things were long-distance but she wanted to spend time with me so I looked at the schedule and two months in advance, found a weekend I was off and told the head of the station that I would be taking that weekend off and he needed to find coverage. Keep in mind, none of us were ever paid for this. That’s what we were hoping for.
Some things you need to know about out Station Head whom I’ll just call SH from here on out…
SH claimed to have European Investors that didn’t speak any English. He spoke for them (RED FLAG)
SH was couch-surfing. A lot. Having him crash on your couch was pretty much the kiss of death for your slot.
SH had four DJs in the same area. We all knew each other. We’ve all been friends practically forever. You can already see where this is going.
SH made phone calls. He didn’t talk over anything like MSN or Yahoo messenger (the popular apps at the time) and loved to butter you up while talking trash about everyone else.
…and this is just for starters.
The guy kept making cuts to my show and it was getting on my nerves something fierce. We were the rebels. We would do stuff that terrestrial radio wouldn’t. There was no subscription fee but we had a major problem…mobility. See smartphones were a thing, yes, but they weren’t what you’re used to today. If you go back and look at an old Palm Pilot or and older Blackberry with the clickwheel on the side, you’ll understand. You basically had to be at your computer to listen to this stuff and some did. You could directly interact with us so we came with our own built-in fan-bases.
Internet radio about twenty to twenty-one years ago was wild.
So back to the story.
Some of you are still probably asking yourself “Why would you wreck a dude like that?” The answer is simple.
Two months of notice. Constant reminders. He assured me he had coverage and it was all locked down.
Cut to the weekend. My plans were pay bills, get groceries and settle in for a relaxing weekend. I’m out for a walk, on the phone with my girl and everything is going great.
Keep in mind, the constant reminders were from me to SH. We’d been through this before. I’m on the other side of town when he calls through. I didn’t answer it. Tough rocks, dude.
He would not stop calling. I mean absolutely would not stop until I finally answered. Here we go again, same old song and dance we’ve done about a million times. Every time I scheduled time off…something went wrong and I was “the only one capable” of covering and getting the audience engaged…his words over the phone.
I kept telling him at best it would be a couple of hours before I got home (it was less than that but I’m not being paid and if I had to do anything, I was already going to make it painful.)
Also by this point in the scheme of things, I was fed up with his constant crap. Remember when I said he had four DJs in the same area? Well here’s where the kiss of death for my channel came…
He wanted to make our local area the HQ for his channel. He talked about moving down. Okay. I told him I could get with my landlord whom I’ve known for years and get him set up. He went oddly silent after that.
Listen, I knew the score by then. Every red flag was just waving by then. It was held up by the breaths of dead DJs’ respective shows and slots. He was running out of allies super-fast and it was showing.
So I’m on the phone and I’m like “We set this up two months ago…” and he cut me off.
People, I was raised Southern. Back where I’m from it’s considered rude to cut someone off and I had to listen to him droning on and on and on and I finally said “Well, from the other 12-hour job that I do, there’s an important lesson here. Piss Poor Prior Planning On Your Part Will Not Constitute An Emergency On Mine. You knew this was coming. You failed to plan. I’m off this weekend. That’s the end of it. Have fun on the stream.” and hung up. Start to continue my conversation with my girl and boom…he’s calling again.
This is where my multitude of lines had been crossed and she finally got fed up and said “Look, just go do it.”
Fuck! Now I’ve got her pissed and it looks like I’mma have to march my happy ass back home with no music (I only took off with my phone and bluetooth headset and we didn’t have that capability back then) and then I decided…he’d been warned. I took my absolute time getting home.
When I did get back, no lie, he calls me up after the intro into the playlist that I had to scramble to create and his opener “It’s about fucking time…”
If there was one thing SH didn’t want, it was dead air. If any of us logged off the server before the other one did without a countdown, there was dead air and the longer it went, the more listeners we’d lose. It’s about time? Oh no…Strike Two. Strike One was killing a sort of cellphone date night for me.
I flipped that fire-engine red MotoRAZR closed so hard you could hear the pop through the house. I was texting my girl back and forth and I shot her one text. “One more wrong move and I’m going to level this dude…”
I told him under no uncertain terms, having shut my cellphone off completely that the next two days, he’s on his own. Tonight is a courtesy and that is all.
He tried calling me…phone’s off I know this because of the litany of voicemails he left that I found later. His only options were chat through MSN or call the landline phone…either way, he’s mine if he does it.
He called us so much because he weaved a very intricate web of lies and if he thought that this was going to involve me anymore, he was in for disappointment in the worst kind of way.
Did the show, signed off. Pretty much didn’t bother turning the phone back on.
For me, it was over.
Saturday came and went and everything seemed to be on the level. Sunday, he’s ringing me off the hook again. This time I’d had it. Strike Three. You’re out. Now, there would need to be a message getting across. No one expected me on so early but the listener numbers were climbing. I opened after shutting the phone completely off. Two of the other DJs were on and heard me screaming into the stream as I was apt to do in my 20s but I played it off like a normal show. Here I was going HAM…and SH is trying to call again. He’s pissed that the phone is off.
I don’t care. Welcome To Thunderdome…Two Men Enter…One Man Leaves.
We went back and forth over MSN and every time he called me selfish, I’d pulled up a list of dates and times. Dates I had scheduled off, how far in advance, the time and what his excuse was.
If my actual paying job in corrections taught me anything, it was document everything. If you didn’t document it, it never happened and that’s what he was counting on. What he wasn’t counting on was…
SH: You’re always only thinking about yourself, it’s never the good of the station
Me: (Date) (Time) Who covered that one without hesitation? Who got that call?
Over and over and over again, this took place. I caught him talking trash about a few other DJs trying to be vague but we all knew who he was talking about. This wasn’t exactly a colossus in terms of “staffing” here.
At some point. I just killed the stream having ended on The Genitorturers - Sin City as a finale. I had my mind made up. SH would have absolute zero control anymore. I was taking that from him.
SH: If you don’t like it then do us all a favor and quit.
Oh…ultimatums. Yeah that’s always worked to change my mind. He’d been going like this for 30 minutes. I’m sitting there letting him past a certain point.
Strike three meant that he’d made an enemy of me and I was about to prove why that was the absolute biggest mistake anyone could make. I let him drone on, typing and posting for half an hour before he threw that ultimatum. Crank up The Enola Gay, because we’re over target.
That’s when I hit him with Fat Man.
Me: Already did. I’ve been off stream for the last thirty minutes. Might wanna hop on there because you’ve already had half an hour of dead air.
Never interrupt your enemy when they’re making mistakes…
He flew into a panic and I quickly hit Select All in the conversation. Then copy. Then I pasted it into a notecard. Documentation.
Here comes Little Boy.
I went over to my MySpace and then pasted it into the blog section. I took down all links to his station, I posted the notification to my following.
SH was as good as exposed but why? Because he ruined a date night?
No, not just that. Remember he had four of us in the same town. Like I said, we’d been friends forever. I got heads up via text message that I needed to head over to my friends’ place as soon as possible.
There was a DJ meeting. They had my post already up. This was an emergency meeting and I got to read the entire thing. DJs were ordered not even to associate with me and association with me meant their streams would be killed as well. Meanwhile, we’re all reading tab-by-tab on the browsers. He was running damage control as everything fell apart around him.
Why not name the station? Oh that’s pretty easy, it was called Hear The Pulse and it no longer exists. For a little while, it looked like HTP had changed hands and it probably had but it was over for me and the other three DJs that SH had, they bounced too.
Whatever happened to SH? Don’t know, don’t care.
There’s really no point to this story other than it’s just what happened. I’ve done my share of dumb shit on the internet that I haven’t been allowed to forget and for those enjoying seeing the backlash happen, well, stay tuned because there’s so much more to come but making an enemy out of me because of sheer laziness isn’t exactly wise in my opinion.