Yesterday I learned that the average German resident listens to the radio four hours a day (which means there is perhaps one poor sod out there having to listen to eight hours a day to make up for me).  I think I picked up this fact when I walked into the room where spouse was doing his daily radio listening duty (NB- the person making up for me, just might be spouse) and the moderator was reporting about how the pandemic has been affecting German radio listenership. (The gist of it, if I understood correctly, unlike the cratering of NPR’s listener numbers with the cratering of the number of people commuting to work, German radio is seeing a surge that is, alas, not turning into rising income from advertising, because the demand for ads is plummeting because nobody’s everybody’s at home trying not to catch the coronavirus.)  My immediate response to this factoid was to wonder then why all the radio stations here suck.  If there is so much enthusiasm for radio, surely at least one station could manage to play something besides drivel meant to clutter up the quiet that would encourage you to pay attention to your own life?  OK, German radio stations at least seem to have finally outgrown having Phil Collins on heavy rotation (as in, since about a year not, like, you know, 30), but they still need to work on moving beyond Queen, the Scorpions’ Wind of Change, AC/DC, and the two worst Billy Idol songs ever (Flesh for Fantasy and Sweet Sixteen).

When spouse and I were discussing this later  in the car on the grocery store because we argue a lot about how shitty German radio is, mainly because he has to have the radio and/or tv on constantly but then mentally totally tunes it out, leaving me to writhe in what is for me the inescapable agony of mediocre music and/or distracting noise, the universe reacted.  On came Ich und mein Pony by The Toten Crackhuren im Kofferraum (which translates to Me and My Pony by The Dead Crackwhores in the Trunk and don’t ask me why they use the English the instead of a German die).  The song is so horrible it’s fabulous, sort of like the Barbie Song but less annoying.  It’s about a girl riding her pony named Johnny into the sunset while her extensions waft in the wind. The song somehow manages to rhyme pony with Johnny instead of going for something more workable, like Tony.  Johnny, by the way, like it when she whips him on the butt.