Robert F**king Wagner

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      20 Sep 2010

      The truth about some peoples blog traffic...

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      Hey, don't make fun! My bank account is just fine.

      ;)

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      19 Sep 2010

      @unibashradio : You're fired. Now go, do your own show.

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      My first meeting with Jay Mackin was not in the flesh but rather in the PDX.FM/meebo chatbox during an episode of Portland Sucks, a few months before there even was a PDX.FM (if my memory is correct, this was sometime in late July of 2009 when we were still under the "Small Plate Radio" umbrella). I met him again the next day, then the next, then the next. He seemed a curious individual, content to spew some of the most tasteless one-liners while we were broadcasting, usually using a different username each day, sometimes 4 or 5 during the course of a given show. I assumed for a time that he was a lonely teenager on Summer vacation from middle school, until he won a contest on The Meat Show and Emily Gibson reported back that he was in fact an adult after meeting him to give him some movie passes to Zombieland.

       

      I finally met Jay in person a few months later when he showed up to volunteer for Baconfest '09. On that morning he almost single-handedly set-up the entire event, or at least the PDX.FM part of it anyway, and I was left to scratch my head and wonder "who the hell is this guy?" and "what the hell does he want?"

       

      A week or so later I received an envelope with some show demos in the mail. I rarely checked our mail at the time so apparently Jay was a bit anxious with anticipation because I took so long to get back to him. Jay told me that he had been a part of a nationally syndicated radio show that had broadcast out of Portland a few years ago (like I'd know? I don't listen to the radio) and, like all radio personalities, he eventually got the axe. I listened to his demo material, laughed, and the rest is history.

       

      Last Tuesday I had to fire Jay from Morning Submission. I tried to accomplish this in true corporate radio form so that it wouldn't be a shock to him, which really just means that I didn't give him a chance to explain himself or beg or plead for whatever mercy I wasn't going to grant him. I put up a quick page on morningsubmission.com that announced that the show itself had been cancelled and that was that. Jay called at about 1:15 that afternoon wondering what the fuck was going on. 

       

      And then we talked. I asked Jay what he thought about doing his own show, his own way, for a full 30 minutes every day. He said "you know, I've always had this idea…"

       

      Take a listen to the all-new and improved Unibash Radio. Weekday mornings from 9:30 to 10:00AM Pacific on PDX.FM. Think of it as the cheese in your daily trailer-park sandwich, tucked snug between the cheap white bread of Suck It™ at 8:30AM and Cort and Fatboy at 10:00AM.

      Itunesicon

       

       

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    • 17
      18 Sep 2010

      Everything goes back to normal, live at 8:30am Monday morning.

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      This post is intended as something of an explanation to those that have emailed me about the demise of Morning Submission over the past several days. I would like to start by saying that I've literally spent nearly three full days reading your emails and I sincerely appreciate each and every one of them. It's incredibly gratifying to know that so many of you listened to us and if I could personally take the time to thank all of you in person I would.

      On Tuesday, the 14th of September at 9:45AM, I had something of an epiphany. I wasn't having fun doing the Morning Submission show anymore. It wasn't the fault of anyone in particular, no one that is except me. After all, how many people do you know that get to work with three of their best friends every day? And furthermore, how many people do you know that get to claim that cracking jokes into a microphone for an hour is actually work? Probably not too many in either case.

      But there I was, hitting rock bottom with the idea that I wanted to get up every single day and be...whimsical.

      Morning Submission was intended to be an extension of what Sabrina and I put together with the Portland Sucks show. Portland Sucks represented the ultimate in freedom for me – I could bitch about something one minute and make fun of something else the next. You could take it seriously, you could take it with a grain of salt, you could take it and dump it in your computers recycle bin – it didn't really matter, the point was that it felt like it occasionally had something to say. Listeners and fans called them "rants", I call it being stuck in my body, in my head, in my city. 

      I'm blessed with having the luxury of being able to do what I want, what feels right to me, rather than having to do what I'm told. Sometime last May I lost sight of all of that. After a series of difficult issues in my personal life I started feeling a certain amount of defeat – I quit blogging entirely, I stopped getting involved in the things I believe in, and I ceased to voice my opinion about much of anything at all. I got soft. As a result, Morning Submission never represented the Robert Wagner that I enjoy being, instead it represented the one that can "phone it in" in a semi-competent manner.

      I realized after a false start a few weeks ago that I can't go back to Portland Sucks and I can't, or rather don't, feel good about Morning Submission. But what I can do, now that my life is back on track 110% (and it very much fucking is) is start over, so that's what I intend to do.

      I invite you, in the most humble way possible, to join us – myself and Sabrina Miller – live at 8:30AM Pacific on PDX.FM.

       

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    • 0
      15 Sep 2010

      It would seem that The Shadow has been breaking into houses in my neighborhood...

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      Neighborhoodwatch

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    • 1
      14 Sep 2010

      I can't possibly be expected to know how to use a calendar, I'm just not that smart.

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      This past Saturday I made the mistake of taking a couple of early morning photos, both of which I thought were mildly humorous - with an emphasis on the word "mildly", quite a lot of emphasis actually. The first was of a coffee mug I've been using for a couple of months that I never really paid any attention to, the second was of a tupperware container filled with bacon. Shame on me. Yesterday morning I received an email complaining about the content of those two posts, not so much because of what they were but presumably more because of what they weren't. Aww hell, this is too hard to explain so I'll just share an excerpt from the email in question...

      "...any reflection on what happened to our brothers and sisters in the towers is nowhere to be found. 9-11 is not a day for you or anyone else to try out your lame comedic efforts. Show some respect or I will assume you have none."

      Yes, Saturday was the 9th anniversary of a terrible event.

      No, I'm not going to stop living my life because of that.

      Yes, you are mentally fucking ill if you think that makes you better than me.

      The full email a pretty entertaining but ultimately very repetitive read. To know that there's actually someone out there in the land of the Interwebs that believes we should all wake up in the morning on a weekend, gaze at a calendar to figure out what we should feel bad about, and then proceed to only focus/dwell on that one thing for the rest of the day (and for the rest of our lives), well, that just makes me want to beat a bunny rabbit.

      Knowing that the person in question reads this drivel (i.e. my blog, the one you're reading right now) warms my heart though because that also means that I can say

      fuck you

      and the proper party will receive my response loud and clear.


       

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    • 2
      13 Sep 2010

      Moving forward...

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      “Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.”
      - George E. Woodberry

      I had a long conversation with my dear friend Betsy Richter tonight regarding the future of OurPDX, the blog that she founded and that I subsequently took over editorial duties for earlier this year. Alright, I'm lying. The conversation was anything but lengthy, in fact I estimate that it probably took less time to discuss than 95% of the paragraphs that have graced OurPDX in its lifetime so far took to compose. It was all decided in mere minutes. Hibernation is what Betsy decided to call it.

      There's this catchphrase that was going around awhile back, doing it wrong, that instantly came to mind. I've always hated catchphrases and that one was certainly no exception. How simplistic and dull is it to make such an explicitly harsh statement as doing it wrong, especially when no one out there is doing it right?  Oh sure, there's no shortage of people that claim that they're doing it right while everyone else is doing it wrong but, if you look closer they're mostly full of shit.

      Bloggers are a dime a dozen, they're largely disorganized, and nearly none of them are making money - particularly if you eliminate technology blogs from the equation.

      My father doesn't read blogs. You could say that he's too old to "get it" and maybe you'd be right but then explain my sister, who is seven years younger than I am and doesn't read blogs either. So then maybe my family isn't the typical target audience for a blog, having little to no interest in the tech industry beyond owning an iPhone. If so, explain my friend Dave in Seattle who works for one of the largest technology companies in the world, Microsoft, and claims he never, ever reads blogs. Who does that leave?

      The simple truth is, most people do in fact read blogs on occasion, they just don't realize that what they're reading is a blog.

      The problem is this - we're all doing it wrong. I've been doing it completely wrong and to speak honestly, I've probably been doing it a hell of a lot more right than you have. Sure, there are exceptions, but for all of the hype surrounding the blog that we've had to endure over the past several years, I'm just not seeing the mainstream acceptance of it all. Not yet. Not in a way that speaks to people like my father, my sister, or my friend Dave in Seattle. 

      We're not doing it right and I'm no exception.

      But neither are you. Not yet.

       

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    • 1
      7 Sep 2010

      Even Goody Two-Shoes Can Get a Hangover

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      goody two-shoes definition

      1. n.
        someone who tries to behave better than anyone else. (Also a term of address.) : I'm no goody two-shoes. I just like to keep my nose clean.
      2. n.
        sabrina miller

       

       

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      4 Sep 2010

      Bumbershoot 2010 in Tweets - Day 1 (of 2 because Day 3 looks lame)

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      • Next stop... Seattle. Well, not the NEXT stop but the only one I'm going to care about. Until then, Zzzzzzz
      • Trains aren't conducive to my antisocial behavior http://post.ly/vdEb
      • Dear Bumbershoot security, relax, no one came here to blown up Bob Dylan, his lookalikes, or the endless sea of hippies.
      • About to watch the Stop Podcasting Yourself Live Podcast. In fact, my Bumbershoot Saturday is all comedy until 5ish.
      • They'll never find it! #wellhidden RT @DrunkenGeeBee: @pdxsucks they're looking for your hidden booze.
      • Ok, well that wasn't exactly worth sitting through...#bumbershoot
      • @QMpolly close, I use a different hole though. And its tequila.
      • #groan just get to Chris Hardwick already #bumbershoot
      • Wow. #bumbershoot #podcaster #fail #ofthehighestorder can I just go home now? #butbobdylanisonlater
      • It has come to my attention that the OH possibilities in Seattle just aren't as interesting as in #pdx #bumbershoot
      • So let it be written... going to Dick's on Broadway sometime before the night is over. #ritualofgrease
      • Fuck. Its. Cold. #andimnotdressedfortheelementsdamnit
        #catchmydeathofcold #imhashtaggingoutofsheerboredomnow 
        #ignoreme #bumbershoot
      • Help. I'm trapped in a smelly sea of twittering hippies & we all smell like rotten carrots #andallclosertoAARPmembershipthanwedliketoadmit
      • Oooh I think they're about ready to wheel bob dylan out onto the stage
      • Ok, no more #bobdylan ... sorry, this just ain't my thing. #atall #killme ... karaoke downtown instead? Hmmm.

      Bottom line? Day one pretty much sucked. I was looking forward to seeing some of the iTunes Podcaster Superstars™ live on stage and instead what I got was a few disappointing sets from a smattering of extremely similar comedians, none of whom I was able to identify with at all. Is there a law out there now that states that all modern comedians have to ramble endlessly about pop culture? I get it, pop culture is a "thing" right now but still – whatever happened to poking fun at life, love, and the pursuit of happiness? You can only hear so many fucking jokes with movie tie-ins and references to LiLo, Paris, et al, before you tune out, or at least I do anyway.

      As for the music? Bob Dylan has all the personality of a half-empty box of plastic toothpicks and the rest was even more forgettable. 

      BFD.

      Tomorrow.... Weezer! Hole! and.... some other stuff.

       

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    • 0
      4 Sep 2010

      @QMpolly is right. my feet are hideous.

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      via Pixelpipe
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      4 Sep 2010

      Trains aren't conducive to my antisocial behavior

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      "Wow! Is that an iPad?"

      Yeah.

      "Can I try it?"

      No.

      And why would you even ask? So, random stranger, you and I are both on a train bound for Seattle but only one of us is prepared to pass the time. I cant help it if you aren't bright enough to think ahead and bring something, anything, with you to occupy that feeble little brain of yours. First you have the audacity to harass me while I'm listening to my iPod. "Now, is that an iPhone?" you asked. No. It's my anti-dipshit-on-a-train device. Here's the rules: earbuds in? Yes? Leave me alone. Next, you noticed that I was watching a movie on my "iPhone" (it's NOT a fucking iPhone!) and decided to interrupt me again, actually touching me no less, and asking "which Bourne Identity movie is that?" ... I took my earbuds out and replied "The Bourne Indifferrence", even though I'm watching Green Zone. The joke is lost on you though because you reply "oh, that's a new one". Then, you notice that I'm writing something on my iPad and figure this is your ticket to try it for yourself, but it's not just any iPad dude, it's MY iPad and I didn't bring it along so that you could be entertained. I don't care that you've "been thinking about buying one", and I'm laughing my ass off on the inside because while you're sitting there next to me, asking me stupid questions and basically just being an annoying dickhole, I'm actually writing about you. The fact that I still have to endure your presence for another two hours though? That's not sitting so well with me.

      So, if anyone out there is reading this and there's a news story tonight about a man found dead on a train from Portland to Seattle with an iPad crammed up his ass, you'll know who did it. It was me.

      And it was MY iPad.

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  • Robert F**king Wagner

    Who I am and where I'm from is completely unimportant, much like the content and babble you're likely to read about herein.

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