First Time, Short Time

This is how the intros go:

“Frijoles went 0-3 last night, and also got arrested for beating up his wife. I gotta tell ya: I’m more upset about the oh-fer. Lotta reasons! First of all, I had to watch him bat, whereas I did not witness the alleged beating. Gotta say ‘alleged’ cuz otherwise you’re a racist or whatever. Second, I don’t know what was said in that house. There are certain things you can’t say, certain words you shouldn’t use, and sometimes women use them, knowing they won’t catch a pop in the mouth. Guy says that stuff? Pop in the mouth. Women feel like they’re above that. I don’t know what happened in that house.

“Personally, I don’t think Frijoles hit her: he couldn’t make contact with anything last night.

“You’re listening to Mel & the Vampire Squid on WRBI. We’ll take your calls after these messages from Sleepy’s.”

And then there’s three more hours of that.

Younger Enthusiasts, there was once a medium known as radio; it was brutally murdered by video; a guy named Trevor Horn wrote a delightful and short audio essay on the incident. Folks used to listen to their radios in the living room. They would smoke pipes and cross their legs and stare off into the distance as Bob Hope and Jerry Colonna cracked wise on the Turbot Laxative Fun-Time Hour. Folks were simpler back then. Don’t believe me? One of the most famous stars of radio’s Golden Age was a ventriloquist. All of your ancestors were idiots.

Enter the teevee. Now the radio is removed from its place of domestic worship and jammed into Pontiacs. What was once a god is now a mascot. Gone are the big stars and the high-faluting dramas and the serialized soaps, as the advertising money has dried up along with the ratings. There’s just barely enough cash to play records, and so that’s what radio did.

But now a new dilemma. Previously, radio stations had broadcast along the AM waves, which were thin and not well suited for dynamic music, but now the high-fidelity FM had come along and no one wanted to listen to crackly, compressed-to-shit versions of their favorite groovy tunes. (AM stands for Amplitude Modulation, and FM stands for Frequency Modulation. IM stands for Instant Message, if you’re a 90’s kid.) What could poor AM radio do?

They could learn to bray.

“Darryl Strawberry with an extra arm would be the premier outfielder in the game.”

“Dog–”

“Out of his chest, back, wherever. Wherever the third arm originates from, I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.”

“Dog–”

“Darryl would make it work. I don’t know how it would change his batting stance. Obviously, it would, but like I said: not a doctor.”

“Dog, you’re two blocks down the street when you should still be at the bus stop. You gotta tell me: does Straw have this arm from birth? Or is it a thing where he wakes up at however old he is now and he’s got a third arm all of a sudden?”

“Birth arm. Birth arm.”

“Because that affects the conversation. That affects the conversation heavy, Dog.”

That poor bastard in his work van on the Tappan Zee: he was trapped, you see, and he secretly wanted to be brayed at. He wanted a side to be picked, stuck to, used as a cudgel. And don’t talk about anything faggy, either. Sports and chicks and Ronald Reagan. Male voices, especially with local accents. Guys who tell it like it is.

Other stations switched to religious broadcasting, or went Spanish-language.

This brings us to Nick Paumgarten, whose priorities must sadly be questioned. He has written a wonderful article on Craig Carton, former co-host of WFAN’s morning drive time slot and current inmate at whatever prison the Full House lady will be going to. Carton (he is known by his last name; real men call each other by their last names) enjoyed playing blackjack like Kerry Packer; however, Kerry Packer was hilariously wealthy, and Carton was just rich. This led, naturally, to a Ponzi scheme so sad and half-assed that old Charles would want his name taken off it.

What issue can there be with the Paumeranian?

Don’t call him that.

This is, bushy-tailed Enthusiasts will note, the second spectacular article that he has written about NY-based sports talk personalities–go read this one, too, about Mike & the Mad Dog back in their salad days–and yet he has produced only ONE piece about the Grateful Dead. One fucking article. White people climbing up shit? There’s enough reportage to fill a book. But the Dead: one article. I know the New Yorker has room, Nick. If there’s space for 50,000 words on FDR’s granddaughter learning to cum, then there’s space for the Grateful goddamned Dead.

I look forward to the rectification of the oversight.

CELL PHONE NOISE

…

What the fuck?

CELL PHONE NOISE

Hello?

“Hi, this is Doris from Rego Park. I wanna talk about the Jets’ front line.”

I don’t take sports calls. How is this even possible?

“When you hear the name ‘Geno Smith,’ you don’t think it’s gonna be a black guy. But he is.”

I’m hanging up, Doris.