I work at a radio station; it's a very sexy occupation

I should be working on my term paper, but instead, I am eating a muffin, drinking tea, and blogging. These are the perks of getting up at 5:30 in the morning on a Sunday.

The first time Dustin called me, and I could hardly understand him, he requested Mozart. This was my first ever show. I was pretty excited to be fulfilling his request, I mean, the guy is practically famous at KBGA. So I started looking for our classical section, assuming we had a classical section. Which we do, it just happens to be buried in a drawer somewhere not in the studio. I wasn't aware of this.

So I pretty frantically ran around the studio looking for the classical section, panicking only a little bit. And then I sort of looked up in exasperation, and there was a record sleeve sitting on top of the CD shelves, the Best of Mozart record. So I got all excited again and pulled it down.

When I was doing my training, I never really listened to how to use the turntables. Vinyls? Dude, I have an iPod. And a laptop. I don't have vinyls. But I'm hoping that I can figure it out...which I couldn't. I hit TT1 (turntable 1, incase that wasn't obvious) on the soundboard, and I hit "START" on the record player. And nothing happens.

Let me tell you something about silence on the radio. Nothing compares to silence on the radio. You know when you are sitting with a date or a new friend or whatever and things go all awkward and quiet and the silence is a little painful? Yeah, that is nothing compared to this. To knowing that every single person tuned in (which actually is relatively few at 6am on Sunday) is hearing your pitiful mistake, or rather, hearing nothing at all.

I very ungracefully threw on another song, SOMETHING to kill the awful silence.

And then I saw the "ON/OFF" switch on the turntable. Did you know there's an "ON/OFF" switch on the turntable? Did you know it has to be turned ON in order to play? You would have known this if you paid attention in training.

So even more ungracefully than the first time, I switched BACK to the turn tables and Mozart started flooding the studio and my God was it an ordeal.

I tell you this story out of a sort of irony that happened to me today. I have two shifts left, so today was one of my last. You'll never guess who called and you'll never guess what he requested. Well after having some 70 hours plus of on-air time, I'm a frickin' genius at running the turntable (as in, I switch the thing on first).

Only today, even after turning it on, the damn thing wouldn't work. And that horrible silence came over the air once again. It's like, if silence could eat you alive, I was breakfast. Bad analogy. Anyway, it was nostalgic and ironic and catastrophic and I turned on a CD of Brahm instead. Still don't know why the turntables weren't working.

And so Dustin calls back about an hour and a half later and asks me to play Mozart, and I'm like, yeah, about that, the turntables aren't working. I played you something else though, didn't you hear? I played you Brahm.

Dustin didn't hear. He wasn't listening to the radio after he made his request. Facepalm.

It's important to note that in this conversation with Dustin, I pronounced Brahm "Braam." Dustin then went on to correct me for the next five minutes, telling me it is "Brawm," not "Braam." He doesn't know why it is pronounced that way, and he sees how I could think it was the other way, but it is actually "Brawm," not "Braam."

So for the love of God, just call him "Brawm." Live radio is a great place to make a fool of yourself.

Just sayin.