Entries this day: Ultimate curtis_KTRU

Ultimate

12:07pm CDT Saturday 8 September 2001

Our team had great representation, and at halftime, we were soundly whomping the other team who started with 5 guys and 1 girl, but then soon had 2 other guys show up. So they only had 2 subs and the girl had to play savage.

At halftime the score was 6 to 1, and they asked if we'd be willing to share a player. I volunteered to go to their team. "I'm just here to have fun, plus with all due respect, we're whomping them."

While on the other team, I had one stunning beautiful throw that was a huge arcing lob, thrown so the plane of the disc was at a 45 degree angle. When I threw the disc, I was nearly facing away from my intended receiver; I had a blind spot of 170 degrees for almost a second as I launched the disc. As planned, it was way high and well out of the way of anyone on the field and came down over the head of the defender, who still tipped the disc and got the D.

So even though she tipped it away, I'm still calling my throw great.

I had another couple of good forearm zingers down the field, and I almost caught a low flying disc as I slid about 12 feet through the wet grass. It was so close!

Wende and I just cleaned the bathroom and are about to see a movie.

curtis KTRU

September 2001

Curtis is one of my favorite DJs at KTRU. I enjoy listening to him ramble about random thoughts that are in his mind. I am compelled to listen when I hear him on the air. And if I have a phone nearby, I always call him after he is done speaking, thanking him for being a DJ, that I really like his work.

According to the email below, not everyone shared my viewpoint. I called Curtis just now; said stuff that can be abbreviated as "wow" and "how bizarre" and "I trust it will all be good."

On the KTRU email list, few people have responded to his message, offering varying levels of support or not. Tomorrow is the semester's mandatory KTRU meeting. Curtis will likely be there; he has been suspended from DJing, not from any other KTRU activities. I am certain there won't be a big stink made; I think Curtis would find this offensive.

   Date:        Sat, 8 Sep 2001 10:31:31 -0600
   From:        Curtis
Subject:        suspension

Never would I have believed that I would write a
message such as this.

Three days ago I was suspended from ktru. Ben, the
station manager, and
Amie and Jesse, the dj directors, invited me to a
meeting at which they
informed me that they had made a decision that the
content of my on air
comments is inconsistent with the mission of ktru. I
was placed on
immediate suspension, barred even from my final summer
shift, and told 
that
I could reapply in Winter, when they will reconsider
my circumstances 
if I
have come to better understand my role as a dj.

I was shocked. I still am.

To defend myself on this is humiliating. And the idea
of being a source 
of
divisiveness within ktru is nauseating. Yet, I cannot
sit in silence, 
for
it is my belief that this action is seriously wrong.

You might disagree with me, you might find that Ben,
Amie and Jesse 
have
acted entirely appropriately.  But whatever you
believe, all djs have a
right to know about the decisions made on their behalf
by their elected
representatives. I'm not asking anyone to read what
follows - it's here
only if you're interested.

*************

I'm a philosophy grad student and I became a dj 3 1/2
years ago. Since
early on I have sprinkled my shifts with comments and
stories that tend 
to
be enigmatic, perverse or merely stupid. Many of them
are pointed at 
issues
of religion, truth and meaning.

On two previous occasions, both over a year ago,
someone in station
management has objected to my djing. On each occasion
I responded in
writing to specific concerns, and in both cases the
end result was that 
I
was offered a grudging tolerance. These folks may not
have approved of 
my
comments, but they granted me autonomy.

In this current instance I have been caught completely
by surprise. I 
have
worked closely with Ben on several occasions over the
last year and I 
had
developed tremendous respect and admiration for him. 
I know that he 
was
aware of my shifts, and yet never once did he express
any concern about
what I was doing. Neither did Amie, Jesse nor anyone
else in the 
current
ktru administration. In fact, I thought these people
understood me and 
that
the nature of my shifts had become a non-issue.  Then
last Monday I got 
an
email from Ben that asked me to come to a meeting to
talk about the 
content
of my previous shift and a listener complaint it had
generated. I 
replied
cherfully and I showed up to a meeting last Wednesday.
 I had imagined 
that
this would be a friendly meeting, but within several
minutes it was 
clear
to me that a decision had already been made to suspend
me. I was blown 
away.

So I must have done something pretty horrible, right?
Well, I am NOT
accused of violating any FCC rules, or of any
illegalities of any kind. 
Nor
am I accused on grounds of any specific comment or
event. In fact, the
claim from Ben, Amie and Jesse, is that there is no
particular thing 
for
which I am being suspended, but rather that the
general content and 
tone of
my comments are not consistent with ktru's mission.

To be sure, my shift last Friday and the complaint it
generated were
apparently a catalyst for this action. So let me bore
you with the 
details.
During that shift I talked about an imaginary art
project that involved
suspending a kitten in a fish bowl of lemon jello.
This speech was
certainly edgy and it was roughly twice as long as
virtually anything 
I've
ever talked about - nearly 15 minutes (too long, I
grant). Immediately
after this piece I got a couple phone calls, one which
was highly
appreciative and another which started out
complimentary but then 
turned
weird. The caller accused me of plagiarizing the
speech from a website,
bonsaikitty.com. When I told him that I had never
heard of that site he
called me a liar and got angry. (In retrospect I think
that I probably 
had
heard of it before, but I had never visited it, and I
didn't remember
having heard of it when he called. Moreover, now that
I have visited a
bonsai kitty site the assertion of plagiarism seems
even more 
ridiculous.
My idea was to capture the moment of kitty death
inside the jello - did 
you
know that the soul can't pass through jello? - but
bonsai kitties are
supposed to be kept alive in small containers - that's
sick!) Anyway, 
this
caller then went on to criticize me because I had
entered two songs on 
the
set list in the wrong order, and so I hung up on him.
Apparently, he 
next
sent an email to station management complaining about
my shift. 
Interesting
trivia: it turns out that he is someone who has
applied to be a dj, and 
got
turned down.

The truth of it is, Ben, Amie and Jesse initially
cited this complaint 
as a
reason for suspension, but then afterwards they
admitted that the 
letter
wasn't very relevant. I am being as forthright as I
possibly can when I 
say
that their claim is exactly this: the general tone and
content of my on 
air
comments are inconsistent with the mission of ktru.

By the way, I am slightly disappointed to report that
this is the only
written complaint ktru has ever received about my
shift. I do get 
caller
complaints periodically, usually about religious
content. I try to 
handle
these very politely. (My favorite complaint was once
when someone 
thought I
was trying to proselytize. I had to play some evil
anti-Christian thing 
to
make the guy happy.)

Of course, I acknowledge that when we are hired as djs
it is made clear
that ktru is about the music; we're not supposed to
call attention to
ourselves or to talk excessively. This is a long
standing ktru policy 
and I
am in violation of it. Thus, it's an easy call; I
violate the rules, I
should be punished.

I won't exhaust you with a treatise on the nature of
rules, but if you
believe that all rules are meant to be taken quite
strictly then we 
have
very different ways of conceiving the world. Truth is,
I agree that we
should indoctrinate all new djs with the mantra that
this is about 
music,
not about amusing ourselves on the microphone. But
ktru is also about
creativity and individuality and as djs put in time
they naturally 
develop
personal styles. This is to be encouraged, not
repudiated. This is a
complex issue, and I'm not going to say any more about
it. Maybe you
believe it's reprehensible that I don't just shut up
and play music, 
and
I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong. I
disagree, and I believe 
that
I should have the right to disagree and to act on my
disagreement.

However, perhaps an even more relevant issue is that
Ben, Amie and 
Jesse
have not acted merely because I break the rules. It's
not that I talk 
too
much about extraneous things, it's that they find the
content and tone 
of
the extraneous things I choose to talk about
inconsistent with ktru's
mission.

So the big obvious question: what is it to be
consistent with ktru's
mission? I have not received anything like a
satisfactory answer on 
this
from Ben, Amie or Jesse. Obviously our mission
includes playing
underexposed music and educating, but is that the
whole story?

Ktru has a long history of peculiar and controversial
djs. Is their
contribution no part of ktru's mission?

I think Ben, Amie and Jesse see themselves as
protectors of a certain 
moral
image. I think they sincerely believe that they are
acting righteously,
acting in the best interests of the station, the
community and the
university. Rather offensively, they even suggested
that I will see 
that
this is in my own best interest, once I come to
understand it.

It is extremely important to me that I point out that
I am under no
delusions about myself as a dj. In a huge lot of ways,
I suck. I listen 
to
many of the specialty show djs and I am so often
impressed by their
knowledge and decorum; they're wonderful. Or consider
my personal 
candidate
for model dj: Nancy Novotny; she has a perfect voice,
exuding ease and
competence, she has a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge
of music, her
selections are wonderful and even her segues work.
I'll never be able 
to do
what she does.

But what's worse, I even have severe doubts about the
comments I make.
There's nothing more horrible than someone who tries
to be meaningful 
or
ironic or perverse, and fails. And I worry that I fail
every shift. 
It's
rare that I have the sense that something I say really
works. My 
greatest
fear is that the real reason that I'm being suspended
is that 
everything I
say is just embarrassingly stupid. To me, that would
be a good reason. 
But
I'm pretty sure this isn't their reason. If it is I
wish they'd say it,
instead they say things like this: we like much of
what you do, but 
we're
concerned about those who might not understand.

I suppose that this is the natural place to answer the
hardest two
questions of all. What is it that I do? And why the
hell do I do it?

I suspect that most of you probably haven't heard much
or any of my 
Friday
afternoon shifts, and there's no reason that you
should have. However, 
it
makes this discussion fairly abstract. I would think
that the most
controversial things I've ever said are vicious
statements about God - 
for
instance railing on once about how much I hate him for
not existing.  
But I
have said many things about God and religion in
different tones and
contexts.  (No, I don't believe in Christian
mythology, but I do 
believe in
the beauty of the world's mystery and perversion, and
for me that's God
better than God.)  The other worst sort of thing I
have said are 
comments
about violence against children - I did a short piece
once about how
opposed I am to killing children with hammers. (Don't
misunderstand, I
appreciate the objections against moral absolutism,
but I believe from 
the
bottom of my heart that it's wrong to kill children
with hammers. That
includes both ball peen and claw hammers. I know what
your thinking, 
what
if it's an ugly child? Aren't there some cases when
it's OK to kill 
ugly
children with hammers? But I'm sorry, in my mind the
answer is still 
no.)

Think your worst about such examples. They are mixed
with comments 
about my
ambivalent feelings upon branding my first cow, my
surprise at 
discovering
a bit of meaning in a jar of peanut butter, the
quantity of love that 
fits
in a golf-ball sized space, the prejudice against
falsehoods, and above 
all
other things, the beauty of jello.

And why do I do this?  If you really want to know, buy
me a beer and 
we'll
talk.  I doubt I can satisfy you even then, but I'll
try.  Here, I want 
to
say only this: some people may suppose that djing is
merely a joke with 
me,
or worse that I lash out capriciously taking pleasure
from belittling 
the
listeners. This isn't true.

Finally, there are a few points to fill in.  I left
the meeting in 
which I
was suspended in a state of bewilderment.  I went
home, and I sat down 
and
I wrote an email to Ben, Amie and Jesse.  I tried to
reason with them.  
I
also did something which in retrospect I'm a little
embarrassed to 
admit.
I suggested a compromise.  I offered to accept a
graveyard shift, 
1-4am. I
have previously thought about returning to graveyard
anyway in part 
because
of my schedule, and also because I like songs that say
"fuck," and I
figured if I went graveyard, I'd feel freed to explore
my inclinations 
any
way I wanted.

But incredibly, they've told me that that's not an
option.  I am on
suspension.  They did offer me this: I am welcome to
talk to the host 
of
the spoken word show and see about being a guest. 
Thanks guys.

Finally, yesterday evening I sent them a draft of this
email and I 
asked
for comments.  In reply they discouraged me from
posting to the list, 
but
they had nothing new to say.

**********

Ben, Amie and Jesse, I resent that you've put me in a
situation where I
feel it necessary to write this. I resent that you've
made me defend 
myself.

What do I want as a resolution? I'd like to be
reinstated obviously. 
Ktru
is an incredibly important part of my life, and now
it's been stolen 
away
without even a pretense of due process.

Nonetheless, I intend this letter as the end of my
efforts. I ask you, 
Ben,
Amie and Jesse, to look within. If you are truly
comfortable with your
decision, it amazes and saddens me, but I will not
fight you further.

To all my fellow djs, I am so sorry for this.

god, love, jello,
Curtis