How To Earn A Lifetime Ban From Your Elementary School Chess Club
This email has so much stuff for you guys. There are videos to watch. An artificial intelligence recapping the first issue of The Savage She-Hulk, and more!
In A Hurry?
I hope you check out all this cool stuff I made for you, but we all got shit to do. Click here to listen to the latest episode of WAYWO.TV.
The FCC & You & Me
This week, the college radio station I received a lifetime ban from, died.
Its FCC license was not renewed by the State University of New York.
I wish I could say I had something to do with the death of WETD, but I did not.
It was COVID that killed it.
That’s also what happened at my other college radio station, WAIH. The license was not renewed, and so, the station is dead.
I loved my time at WAIH, but I hated WETD.
WETD had a level of viciousness and pettiness that you can only encounter within the tiny towns of a few hundred people or less that pocket upstate New York.
So. I’m tickled that my lifetime ban is over without me having to die to end it.
(The story of the ban is something I’m saving for a TV Pilot. So you’ll have to wait a little while longer to hear it. I promise I didn’t do anything weird. I was just an asshole.
A funny one, but an asshole just the same.
-BJ
And a WAYWO We Go Go …
It’s hard to pick one interview to feature here each week.
But as a fan of The Venture Bros., and feeling nostalgic for the early 2000s when I was a DJ at WETD, I knew who was going to get the spot this week.
It’s Hal Lublin.
You may know Hal from The Thrilling Adventure Hour and Welcome to Nightvale, but I know him most as being a good dude, fellow professional wrestling and NBA fan, AND the voice of “Wide Whale” on season six of The Venture Bros.
Come listen above to hear how Hal helped to craft and voice that character.
And of course, there are so many wonderful interviews that you can listen to hear.
Looking For Your Next Read?
Thich Nhat Hanh passed away in January.
So I’ve gone back and revisited both books of his. (“Peace Is Every Step” is the other one, which I featured in an earlier edition of this newsletter.)
There’s some overlap of content between “The Art of Living” and his previous books, but they’re still great reads (and listens).
Especially now when everything kind of sucks.
If you need some mental relief, and a good reminder not to take life too seriously, trust me, you can’t go wrong with Thich Nhat Hanh.
You can buy the book, and support this newsletter, here through Bookshop.org
#ICYMI
Each week, until I run out of episodes to highlight, I’ll be pointing you to episodes of my old podcast, “Rosie & BJ Save The World”.
It was a fun show that got lost in the pandemic shuffle like so many other things.
This week, Rosie and I talk about Universal Healthcare in the United States.
A topic that only got MORE important because of COVID-19.
Here are the episode and the show notes.
Of course, if you live overseas, this episode might not be that appealing, but I hope you’ll give it a listen just the same.
There’s always a good laugh to be found in every episode.
How to Reach Out and Touch Me (Appropriately)
Well, that’s it for another week here in happy Harriman, New York.
Here are other places you can get me:
-BJ@BJMendelson.com ← This is always the best way to reach me.
-646–331–8341 (Yup. That’s my number. But don’t call it! I’ll only answer if you are Melissa O’Neil from ABC’s “The Rookie”, and that’s only if you’re calling to ask me out on a date.)
P.S.
I just really liked this week’s subject line. There isn’t a story about it beyond the fact that I was, in elementary school, a member of the Chess Club.
This is hilarious because I was terrible at chess.
Still am!
Also? I did a thing. If you like comic books, come give this a listen. It’s a funny recap of the first issue of Marvel’s “The Savage She-Hulk”, first published in 1980.
