Morning Radio
Monday, July 31, 2006 at 3:10AM I had a small flood of emails on MySpace last week saying that Opie & Anthony had made some mention or "given a shout-out" to me on the air.
That's very cool.
I don't have the XM Radio and I'm never up that early anyway so I figure I'll give a shout back right here from my sweaty office in Bisbee, AZ. If you're listeners, feel free to email them and tell them that I mentioned them on my website.
I think I would be terrified to be a popular morning radio guy. They get the creepiest fans of any media personalities. I don't know why this is but anytime you do a show hosted by any major morning show, the audience acts like howler monkeys in an impotent gang rape. They love to send angry emails and the call-ins are usually assholes.
It's understandable that they put assholes on the air, as retarded bombast is far more entertaining than ass-kissing. It's the amount of assholes they have to choose from that baffles and scares me.
I have some scary fans, no doubt. Enough to keep me entertained but not so many that I feel I need tighter security or a phony moutache to go out in public.
Most anybody in the public eye will grab the attention of nitwits here and there, but the serious shooters and horse-whisperers seem to draw a bead on morning radio.
My theory is the hour. Anybody who is awake and in their car for long periods of time between 6-10 a.m. - Monday thru Friday - is a miserable motherfucker. They breed hate like a puppy mill and store it in the small, unwashed cages of their cracking minds.
Morning radio knows full well of their listener's misery and gives them targets to despise or provide guests that hate each other so that commuters can choose sides and find a false outlet for the rage from his own shitty lot in life.
Rogan vs Mencia. David Cross vs The Cable Guy. The Right vs The Left. Yankees vs Red Sox. You decide who you want to loathe and call in to tell us about it. The guy you should really hate is the guy that put you in a car at 6:30 in the morning. The guidance counsellor who told you to ditch your dreams and get into retail. The guy with the name tag talking to you like a child for showing up 11 minutes late. Those are the real assholes. But each of us has our own individual assholes so morning radio finds more universal scapegoat pallbearers for your napsack of shit.
Makes perfect sense and a good business plan.
Vicarious hate. That's the product. But the by-product is that will attract some very disturbed individuals into your world. And that can be entertaining or scary, depending on your mood.
Here is the email from a O & A fan that began this whole minor tirade. It's from an O & A fan named "Bob" with the bonus photo that makes Myspace so worth the time. The grammar and spelling as well as the content are unedited.
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Let's ignore that Bob is a moron for a moment and just listen to what he is saying.
Bob likes Opie & Antony and possibly me, according to his email. But Bob's main concern is whether or not I hate Howard Stern.
This is the big problem.
More people want to tell you who they think sucks than tell you who they think you might like.
They want to take up other people's fights without taking any risk of their own.
Personally, I like both shows but rarely hear them as I sleep during those hours.
The only time I seem to be up during those shows is when I'm on the road doing blow, tearing out a fruitless coke-yank to internet porn after endless unanswered calls to hookers on Eros Guide. Hookers are sleeping during those hours as well, it would seem...
I have done the Stern show several times and they were always really cool to me.
I called into O&A once while tripping my balls off on mushrooms. They were really cool to me. Occassionaly I will put on my list of things to do that I need to "call O&A on 'shrooms". No shit. You should see a list of things I think I have to do. Laundry is rarely in the top 20.
Stern and O&A evidently have some kinda beef. Why should I give a shit? I have my own problems and I sleep during those hours. I did talk to Jim Norton once about doing O&A but it was at the same time I was talking to Sirius about doing my own show there. I told Norton that I didn't want to make waves until I knew. I never got a show on Sirius and I'm back to not giving a shit and doing mushrooms down here on the border.
It would be nice if there were no conflict between the two as they are both good radio. But maybe the rivalry is good in the long run because conflict is what assholes like Bob live for. Vicarious hate means more Bob's buying Sirius or XM and more people will hear good uncensored radio.
For this update, I will decide to hate Bob.
Not that Bob is a bad person. I bet if I sent Bob a Dane Cook-styled "I'm humbled to have you as a fan" email, I would have Bob as a life-long fan.
Then Bob would probably travel a long way to see my show and stare at the door, waiting for my arrival. He'd spot me going into the mens room to take a pre-show, post-hangover splattering shit and talk to me through the stall door. He'd try to talk to me throughout my show (probably about O&A) and then he'd loom over me while I sold merchandise, recounting what he believes were his funniest barbs and how they enhanced my performance.
Bob's not gone yet, no-siree-Bob. Bob will be at the bar next door when I show up to meet the waitress that power-sprayed Norton in the green room two weeks ago. You know she's easy pickins for my comparatively mild forms of dysfunctions. But just as I slide up to her at the bar, an unwashed and boisterous Bob will jam in between us, wrap his stinking arm around my neck and demand that we do a shot. Then he will demend I leave a message on the voicemail of a friend who is going to prison.
Then Bob will repeat his favorite bit of mine back to me without it being funny and without it being mine. When I tell him that bit is Greg Giraldo's and he screwed up the punchline, he will argue with me that it is in fact my own bit and he heard me do it on Letterman. I will decide not to bother telling him that I've never done Letterman.
The middle act will wind up fucking the waitress and I will end up waiting until after last call for Bob to find coke and call my cell. When I go back to the hotel, Bob is pacing in the lobby with a few packets of StayAlert ephedrine pills from the adjecent Flying J truck stop and asks to crash on my floor.
Hey Bob -
No matter how it may play on paper, no matter how 'down-to-Earth" the personalities come across over the airwaves, not Opie OR Antony, Howard Stern, Norton nor myself will be spending Thanksgiving at your house. We entertain. Stop blowing yourself by thinking that choosing your morning entertainment is a decision that defines you as a man.
If you are taking your diversions that seriously, you may want to consider getting off your illiterate, mealy hindquarters and taking your own risks in life.
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The summer monsoon rains took three consecutive days to wash Tom Rhodes' vomit from our glitter-red driveway. He'd thrown up stars and the universe, according to his own word and I have no reason to doubt him. I was down their on the ground with him for so long that flat cement with the occasional pieces of gravel felt almost form-fitting. |
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I've never tripped to the point of virtual blindness - where everything was so blown out and over-exposed that you couldn't differentiate a chair from the picnic table - but I've tripped enough that I certainly didn't panic.
Three or four caps and stems each, the usual amount to get you there and back safely. But then Tom suggested we do more. Brendon Walsh had been out tripping with me a few weeks earlier when we made the same choice - to do more - and somehow it counteracted the trip we already had going and killed it. Odd.
Still, Tom and I did more. The same dosage - ground to a powder and drank in a Mike's Hard Lemonade. I don't remember the time just before being on the ground, only that we were there and we could not see. Blind to the point that the was no difference with or without my eyeglasses and I have a strong perscription.
The few times I got off of my belly were to urinate, which I did at first all over myself and then later without even bothering to take my dick out of my pants.
The best estimation of time - from Bingo who thankfully decided not to trip and was available to tend to our desperate needs like changing my underpants after I'd pissed myself - was that we were on the ground for about 45 minutes, most of the times snot 'n tears laughing while constantly reminding each other that we were nearly 40 years old and crawling in blind filth.
It wasn't until Tom vomited that we began to come around to just plain tripping. It was a vicious, moaning series of explosions that vicariously made me feel better too, as though he'd puked for both of us.
That's when I noticed I could see again and there was a long several beats of silence before Tom looked up from a twisted three-point stance, slobber and upheave dripping from his mouth and said "Good thing we did more."
There rest of the nights events went on as scheduled.
The presidential campaign announcement brought more emails than I could possibly get to this week. I am in the process of securing a campaign manager and will be getting back to all of you as soon as I
return from Scotland.
Keep your eye on www.HammerOfTruth.com for a detailed Q&A regarding my campaign and feel free to engage yourselves in the commentary.
While I will never be able to keep on top of all the Libertarian blogs, you are all free to join my message board to discuss issues, be an asshole or post horrible pictures of that boil under your eye.
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I'll be in Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival from August 3rd until August 29th along with Al Gore and Charlize Theron. |
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