Mornings with Bobby and the Fat Man! was doomed to failure.
The first and most insurmountable of the problems was the six AM start time. Garcia was actually an early riser, so he would stop by Bobby’s A-Frame and roust him, except it took Bobby fucking forever to start his day. Not only was his toilet extensive and leisurely, but Bobby also insisted on–roundabout halfway through his first cup of coffee–singing The Poopin’ Song. (They sound-checked The Poopin’ Song in ’76. Honest.)
Then Bobby would start Saluting the Sun and absent-mindedly leafing through the San Francisco Chronicle while Garcia, left to his own devices, has fallen asleep while watching cartoons and playing scales on one of Bobby’s guitars and by now it is well into Drive Time and the door bell rings: it is the intern the station manager has dispatched to “go and fetch the Grateful Dead.”
Bobby gets in the driver’s seat of Garcia’s massive Bavarian rhino of a car. They cannot take Bobby’s bitchin’ Corvette because they also need to bring the intern they just dosed back; also, Bobby’s date from last night needs to be dropped off in time for homeroom.
The show would not improve: Bear insisted on engineering, which meant that if you were listening in your car, your radio had roughly a one-in-five chance of suddenly exploding. And they let Billy do the sports and it got racist: immediately and every single time.
Billy once launched into a ten-minute explanation on which race was best-suited–by genetics, culture, and an intangible factor that Billy referred to as “squirreliness”–to which position. “You need a Chinese to pitch for you: they can’t see anything BUT the strike zone. Except if he’s one of those giant Chinese sumo guys, then you put that fat bastard in your back pocket for hockey season. Uncle Billy’s got the angles figured out. Also: what about an all-Sherpa team? Those little snow monkeys, you bring ’em down to civilization and they’re like gods: it’s like Superman and the Sun.”
Things got worse from there: Bobby read the traffic, but he’s, you know: massively dyslexic, so he would just make up stuff. Bobby learned an important lesson, though: no matter how silly you think you’re being, if you tell enough people, a few idiots will believe you. So when Bobby declared the Golden Gate Bridge had been destroyed by Godzilla, long story short, Bobby’s legally enjoined from speaking about the incident, for which he claims no responsibility and admits no wrongdoing.
Mornings with Bobby and the Fat Man! was cancelled during its second commercial break. The station underwent rebranding and, upon relaunch as a Spanish-language sports talker, tripled its ratings overnight.
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