Radio Ga-Ga

"I'd sit alone and watch your light,

My only friend through teenage nights.

And everything I had to know,

I heard it on my radio"

--“Radio Ga-Ga” By Queen

It’s three-thirty in the morning, and you have two choices. You can either do what your body wants you to do—and shut your eyes and sleep, or you can keep your job. See, sometimes doing “what’s natural” can get you fired, and quick. You’re sitting all alone at a bank of black and white close-circuit television monitors, but you’re not alone.

Not really.

Because this is 2003, and there are cameras everywhere—including one aimed at you. Four blocks away in a concrete, windowless bunker a homophobic, maladjusted, would-be-policeman is keeping tabs on you. Making sure you don’t get too comfortable. Every hour, on the hour, you check-in via a cheap walkie-talkie. Every two hours you get a telephone call from “downtown,” wherever the hell that this—and a tobacco stained voice gives you a random letter, which you must write down on your nightly shift report.

Sometimes the letters spell things, sometimes they don’t.

Tonight, you think the word is “BEDSHEET” but you aren’t sure. You could go ahead and shut your eyes, and hope the phone or walkie-talkie wakes you up…but if you get caught sleeping you get shit-canned. Your job is to stay awake and alert.

Watch the screens. Watch the screens.

Maybe bad guys are going to break-in tonight and steal corporate secrets. Maybe the Spanish-speaking janitors are going to rape the woman who works late up on the fourth floor. If you fall asleep, who’s going to stop them?

Even though it’s against the rules, you pull out a book. You’re trying to get through an arduous book by Victor Hugo. You also hope that the people who you’re keeping an eye one won’t think you’re such a useless piece of shit. Because that’s what you are—a jack-fuck who can only get a job staying up late and staring blankly at CCTV monitors.

The book is bullshit. You’re an idiot—reading at this time of night only makes you fall asleep that much faster. You shove the book back into your gym bag and pull out your old friend.

You pull out your AM/FM radio.

For three dollars at Wal-Mart you bought a fantastic little pocket radio. Made in China, by people you’ve never met. People who wear surgical masks in the subway and eat cow eyes. These people make a damn fine radio. Someday you want to meet the men and women who made your pocket radio (all fifteen of them, they're great until they fall apart...which is usually every two months).

There are really only two choices when it comes to the radio these days: crappy music or crappy talk. AM or FM.

If you listen to the music, if you go that route—by the time your eight hour shift is over, you will have heard the same 20 songs three times. You will get off work and find yourself brushing your teeth to the rhythm of “Lucky” by Brittany Spears or “Kryptonite” by Three Doors Down. Eventually, you will grow to hate yourself even more that you already do. The loathing will smother you, like a blanket. Modern pop-music is mindless and asinine. Vapid and idiotic.

And so is talk radio, but talk radio is better. Talk radio is like being trapped in an elevator with the world’s biggest blabbermouth. Try as you might, it’s impossible to fall asleep with Rush Limbaugh ranting and raving about liberals. You can’t do it. You can, however, fall asleep to Nickelback.

You’re lonely, bored, and tired. That’s the talk-radio trifecta.

Rush Limbaugh’s program, along with most of the other major talk radio programs, are repeated exactly 12 hours after they’re originally played. What normal people hear at 3:00pm, you hear at 3:00am. Rush is a blowhard, listening to him though, is better than falling asleep. Of course, at that magic hour of 3:00am, your brain is mushy and soon you start agreeing with Limbaugh. This is almost as scary as falling asleep and getting fired. So you switch the station.

The other program you can listen to is COAST TO COAST AM with George Noory. You turn the volume even lower for this program, lest someone overhear what you’re listening to. People hear you listening to Rush, and they think you’re a conservative, perhaps even borderline racist. People overhear you listening to COAST TO COAST AM and they think you’re a lunatic. Not just playfully insane either--real, honest-to-God straightjacketed insanity.

Astral Projection. UFO’s. Area-51. Telekinesis. Men in Black. Chemtrails. The Lock Ness Monster. These are the topics of the evening (or morning, depending on how you look at it). This show is like an open cesspool, all the worlds runoff finds it's way here. The dumbest people call-in and talk about being probed by ET or run over by Big Foot. The biggest liars, and the most stupidly transparent con-men you’ve ever heard are frequent guests. These people claim that there is a world beyond our world. A world of darkness lurking just below the surface of everything.

On Halloween they broadcast a tape “recorded” in Hell. Your eyes bulge as tormented screams spill out of the little silver speaker and onto your security console. When you go to make rounds that night, you run through the shadows, convinced that Satan is nipping at your heels. On the roof-top, you forgo the usual cigarette break to say what you hope is a prayer good enough to get you into heaven.

Not that you believe that shit, but it’s late and at that special witching hour your brain is incapable of telling “truth” from “fiction.” Which is why you almost vote for George H. Bush the second time around (thank you Rush) and why you start suspecting that the guy that relives you from you post in the morning might be from another planet.

Then there are the local, college radio programs. Guys who smoke a joint just before hopping on the mike talk in soft, subtle voices about art galleries that will never open or civic meetings no one will ever attend. Sunday morning it's a barrage of Bible discussion groups and prayer meetings, where sinners are for the most part, always saved.

There is nothing more dismal than local radio. Avoid it all cost. The big boys in the National Radio are a much better show. They have whiskey-smooth voices that paint a picture of slicked-back hair and Old Spice aftershave. What they say always seems intelligent and spot on. When people call in to a Nationally syndicated show, it’s like hearing the voice of America. And let me tell you, America is fucking stupid. Dogs barking in the background; babies crying in the distance. And smoke alarms.

Wait for the smoke alarms.

If you ever decide to embarrass yourself, and actually call-in to one of these shows—you swear you're finding a quiet room. There is nothing worse than having your articulate, well thought-out view point overshadowed by a couple arguing in the hall.

Three in the morning is pretty damn bleak, even with your little pocket radio. But there’s always something on, something always buzzing over those crackling airwaves. You’re never alone and you’re never bored.