Marconi plays the mamba

Whenever I sleep alone, my laptop sleeps with me. When I’m finally ready to slumber, I usually lay it next to Blansky, a bow-tied stuffed dog from my childhood. I think I need a shelf for the laptop. It can’t be good when my 220-lb. body rolls on top of it. I’m sorry, lappy.

This morning sleeping with the laptop reminded me of when I used to sleep with my Panasonic radio/cassette player when I was a teen. I had the same little battery operated machine from age 14 until I went to college. I couldn’t sleep with a radio in front of my metal head roommate, and placed my bigger boom box on my faux-wood dresser. It was a hard habit to break.

That piece of scuffed gray durability was like a friend to me. In the morning, I would turn on Z-100 and often won call-in contests like the Mystery Oldie. Scott Shannon would play a split second of a song and I would instantly know it was “One on One” by Hall and Oates or “It’s Raining Again” by Supertramp. Once I won a $100 gift certificate to J&R Music World and my Dad drove me to Manhattan where I bought a Casio keyboard with detachable speakers!

At night I would listen to Dr. Ruth. It’s a shame that she’s a punchline now because I think she probably saved a lot of gay kids’ lives. She was pretty much the only person I ever heard speak positively and consistently about gay people until I went to college. I consider myself a sexually healthy person (no comments from the peanut gallery) and she gets partial credit for that.

The best part about the radio is that with a click of a button, I could interrupt the recording of a song and record my voice instead. I would do this in a rapid fire fashion. For example, you know the part of Laura Branigan’s “Self Control” when she sings “Wo oh oh. Wo oh oh.” like a Tarzan imitation? I could record the whole song and sing just that part myself. It sent my friend Nick into laughing convusions. I was the background singer all the time, never the lead. When I sang like the commanding black women at the end of “Rock and a Hard Place” by the Stones, I thought I was as fierce as Chaka Khan.

Now I never listen to the radio and it makes me sad. As recent as a few years ago, I listened to KISS-FM while cooking dinner and danced to “Running Away” by Roy Ayers and “Everybody Dance” by Chic. It was such a good tension release after work. Now author-turned-talk show host Michael Baisden takes calls about baby daddy’s during that hour. Sigh. Broadcast radio has really gone down the tubes.

I think my nostalgia for radio is why I prefer my Ipod Shuffle to my Mini – it replicated the surprise factor of radio. I don’t even have a radio in my apartment. Maybe I’ll buy one on the way home. I know I’ll end up listening to LITE-FM.