Monday, March 21, 2011

The Prodigal Son Returns!

Hello, Earth!  Sound the trumpets, because I'm coming at you with some tremendous news!  After nine months wandering in the wilderness, far from the light of the FM dial, this intergalactic DJ has finally found a new home for Lost Moon Radio!

I'm pleased to report that my show will be returning to Los Angeles's airwaves for good.  My new permanent home: KRST FM: The Lamb of God and Greater Los Angeles.


Now those of you are familiar with the station may be thinking, "Jack, isn't KRST a Christian music station?  Since when do you do religious radio?"

Well, you're right.  I'm more or less a dyed-in-the-wool agnostic, and KRST will definitely be a format shift.  The truth is I've been mailing resumes and proposals down to all the Earthside stations I could think of, and KRST's the first one to get back to me and actually offer me a spot (for reasons that I won't go into at the moment).

So I'm going to try to make it work.  I guess my feeling is that religion's really about the search for truth and meaning in this crazy galaxy of ours, and isn't that what Lost Moon Radio's always been about, too?

Now I'm off to sort through my records!  I want to make sure I've got the perfect setlist for this new debut.  So check the KRST listings and tune in this weekend!  They haven't told me my exact timeslot yet, but I'm probably going to filling one of the late-night hours previously occupied by a computer reading selections from First Corinthians.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Jupiter Jack and the Seven Dwarves

Well friends, it probably comes as no surprise that my current transitional employment status has led this extraplanetary disc jockey to reflect on the highs and lows of the ol' curriculum vitae. Though I've spent the better part of my adult life in the Steel Tower of Radio, I've also held my share of odd jobs here and there. Some of you may recall my mentioning, in a Tweet of Solidarity with the costumed characters rousted from Hollywood Boulevard last summer, that I once spent two months portraying Happy the Dwarf at Disneyland. I figure I owe you the story.

Like many boys and girls of the 1950s, I spent a large portion of my childhood engaged in a fervent love affair with all things Disney.  I was a committed Mouseketeer, an avid collector of Uncle Scrooge comics, and a dedicated viewer of the Disneyland TV series.  (I was a little young for the height of the Crockett craze, but I was a great fan of some of their subsequent frontier serials, particularly the ones about Elfego Baca, a Mexican-American lawman portrayed surprisingly convincingly by Robert Loggia.)  My preteen imaginative romantic energies were entirely focused, in succession, on Annette Funicello, Haley Mills, and Julie Andrews.  And I was fascinated by the feature films about boy genius college student Merlin Jones, whose experiments inspired many failed invention attempts on my part: hovercraft, robot servants, hypnorays.  (I also liked that Annette Funicello played his girlfriend.)

By the late sixties, however, my Disney loyalties had been supplanted by a new fixation on rock n' roll and the thriving counterculture.  From my parents' Southern California living room, I jealously watched the Summer of Love play out on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.  I vowed that the following June I'd be making my own way to San Francisco, as many flowers as possible in my hair.  It was only when the next school year ended, and I discovered how much a bus ticket alone would cost, that I realized I was going to need to save up some money.  I volunteered to mow our neighbor Mr. Sanderson's lawn, and he paid me a generous fifty cents.  When I showed up the next afternoon offering to mow his lawn again, I think he realized I was looking for a more long-term sort of employment.  Turned out his brother was mid-level management at Disneyland, and he put in a good word for me.  And that's how I, somewhat reluctantly, took a summer job at the Happiest Place on Earth.