F-The FCC

I just finished my first shift on the air in about 15 years. (Damn, I'm old) Overall, it went pretty well. I received some calls during the show telling me I was playing good stuff. The person who runs the station called me with a few minutes left and told me that people called her to tell her I was doing well. That's cool. A couple of small problems that need to be taken care of, though...

Uh...first would be the 2 F-bombs I let loose on the air...in the same song. I was actually connected to 3 of them, really. I intended to play a song from this compilation CD from Amnesty International to help the refugees in Darfur - famous bands doing the songs of John Lennon. Sound's noble so far, right? Well, I thought I'd try to show my hipness by playing the Black Eyed Peas...which I know isn't really hip, but there was the possibility of some of my students listening (more on that later). Either I wasn't paying attention or the CD player was being goofy, but I got the wrong song. It was Green Day instead. OK, fine. I'll let that finish, then I'll play BEP because I already announced it. It didn't click in my head what the song was - Working Man Hero. BAM! F-bomb. Great. While it happened, the DJ before me was in the booth. He started laughing, because he had accidentally let one on the air earlier when he played a cut from the Jill Souble concert I told him about last week - it's downloadable for free on her website. So he played a song from it without really previewing it and she dropped one in the intro. Meanwhile someone calls up whining, "This isn't the Black Eyed Peas." I know, I screwed up, I'll play it next. Just then, the other DJ says, "Hey, isn't there another one in this..." BAM! The second f-bomb.

OK, I've been on the air less than an hour and I've let the word "fuck" go over the airwaves twice. This is not going to look good on my resume'.

Then I get a call for a request...but it starts off, "Is this Dave Atias?" Says my name right and everything.

"Uh...yeah."

"Hi, it's blah, blah, blah. Sally's father." (not her real name) Sally is a kid in my class. I've let two f-bombs go and one of my kids was listening. This is going to suck on Tuesday. Anyway, he says everything's sounding great and he made a few requests and I'll deal with the rest on Tuesday.

But then came the PSA's. Oh Lordy. I'm surprised there wasn't a group of Hawaiians waiting for me after the show to escort me back to the mainland. The problem? I can't speak Hawaiian. Every street and landmark has a freakin Hawaiian name and I had to to 2 PSA's an hour. So after I butcher the first one, Mr. Helper calls me and his first words to me were, "You haven't been here long, have you." I figured I was already responsible for enough "fuck"'s tonight so I just told him he was right. Well, Richard Helper then proceeded to give me a lesson in Hawaiian on the phone. He basically told me (as others already have) to pronounce all the vowels in Hawaiian words as you do in Spanish. Of course he was assuming I spoke Spanish. I guess he was inviting me to butcher two languages at the same time. Can you say "douchebag" on the air?

But overall it went well. It was good being back on the air. If I can get some regular time I'll be my old smooth self again in no time.