I want my Rubber back!

First the bad news: Leon Frazier, aka DJ Rubberband, has left our community radio station KZFR (90.1 on your dial). This is a sad day for Chico and the greater Northern California listening audience. For 10 years Leon has volunteered his time to bring Chico into the 20th century. Rap music and hip-hop were introduced into this area via Leon’s expertise in the field. He dared to play what other radio stations considered a “fad.” While The New York Times hails rapper Eminem as the new “Elvis,” Chico still doesn’t seem ready for admission into the 21st century. The hardest thing to do these days is to keep abreast of the world’s situation while the “'Times They are a Changin''’ Leon was our window into the world, and now the window has shut due to irreconcilable differences.

I’m not going to place blame for this incredibly unfortunate event, as I am aware of the entire circumstance. On Rubber’s side are the pitfalls of doing such a raw edgy radio program, which is to say FCC violations for lurid content and profanity. Obviously we have not evolved past Lenny Bruce; our supposedly “free country” is actually quite backwards culturally. On KZFR’s side, you have the downer of what every nonprofit has to deal with—a board of directors. When you consider that all nonprofits must ultimately answer to a BOD, it’s amazing that any survive! Being on a BOD is like being in a large band where nobody plays any instruments. It’s so much noise with little progress; the fanfare of the bourgeoisie. And the obvious losers are you and I.

The good news is that Margot Melcon has created an amazingly strange play at the Blue Room called On the Verge. Three women travel through time. Very kooky! The design of the show is brilliant, and Blue Room Company member Alice Wiley Pickett is hysterical. Director Melcon is one of those community players who should be commended on her commitment to increasing the excellence of our little rice town.

And I don’t know what to tell you people who missed Tim B.'s party at Moxie’s, but it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Politicians trying to be comedians—I’ve always done it the other way around; no wonder I always lost.