1200 Miles Roundtrip

Spending 10 hours in a car on a Sunday can be grueling if you only have terrestrial radio because religious music, bad local talk and paid programming about vitamins and chelation therapy dominate the airwaves. Catching the Puzzle Master on NPR will kill a good 15 minutes but the rest of the time is spent scanning, moaning and scanning some more.

Occasionally, we'll stop off at a Goodwill to buy a $3 used CD. This time we picked up "Wakafrika" by Manu Dibango. Unfortunately, reading the liner notes was making me car sick so hubby was frustrated by not having information as he was listening. "Where is he from in Africa? What year was this recorded? Is that King Sunny Ade?"

"I don't know, I can't read without my glasses and I'm going to hurl." I think we only heard 30 seconds of each song before he hit eject.

Luckily, our most recent rental car came equipped with XM/Sirius. We love C-Span's rebroadcast of Meet The Depressed and This Is Weak Even Without George Stephanopoulos because we yell at the radio, turning our vehicle into a moving Mystery Political Science Theater 3000.

But, our absolute favorite "stuck in the car all day" program is an old-time rerun of Casey Kasem's America's Top 40. Although, since my husband's impression of Casey Kasem sounds more like Clark Gable, we call it Clark Gable's America's Top 40.

The Week of March 11,1972 show was surreal, featuring such varied artists as Donny Osmond, Gary Glitter and Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose. Sometimes it was Sonny & Cher, other times it was just Cher... never was it just Sonny. (Hubby knows better than to ever let me listen to a broadcast from 1976 because there is an extremely high probability that we'll hear my least favorite song, "Hotel California." He says the Eagles' classic makes me react the same way Curly Joe does when he hears "Pop Goes The Weasel.")

I was seven in 1972 so, naturally, Chuck Berry's "My Ding-A-Ling" was one of my favorite songs. Even then, I liked a good dick joke.