For Your Enjoyment: Dodger Baseball is on the air!

Baseball moistens the eyes of middle-aged men. That's the brave way to put it. It reads more stoically than, "it makes you cry." I'm not referring simply to the heaving and sobbing of the men on the field who've blown the pennant (sorry, Mets), or the joyful masses in the stands, exultant in victory (those damned Angels!).

I'm talking about the long term gestation of love for the game, its traditions, its heroes, and what it can do to a middle aged man who views his youth in bits and flashes of memory. Bob Costas, puts this in better context than most contemporary broadcasters and, along with comedian Billy Crystal, waxes on about Mickey Mantle. The Mick, according to Billy and Bob, never grasped his impact on a generation of boys until his final years. Mantle would register surprise that 45 year old men would be reduced to tears upon meeting him.

It is a shared experience that is accepted but never spoken of at great length. I can tell you with absolutely no qualms whatsoever that it's happened to me. My emotional investment in baseball has gone on, as far as I can determine, since a Sunday afternoon in October of 1966, when a fly ball dropped into the glove of a center fielder named Paul Blair, his name emblazoned across the TV screen. Thus ended the Baltimore Orioles four game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and began the joy and pain of being a devoted fan.

Flash forward to about May of the next year. Another swatch of memory before passion truly took hold of my seven-year-old soul. As clear as a bell, I can hear Vin Scully incredulously telling us all, "...19 to 1...and now Banks scores and the Cubs lead 20 to 1!!" The next sound was some disgruntled gibberish from my brother.

It didn't matter to me...yet. By later that month, after a weekend series with the Giants--ON TELEVISION, I was hooked. Like any TV kid in 1967, I tuned to that very same KTTV Channel 11 to see the next series against the Mets, only to find Merv Griffin jawing with guests on his nightly talk show. I didn't know why at the time, but the Dodgers of the 60's only televised games from San Francisco, which meant a skimpy 9 telecasts a year. My brother showed me how to find the standings and broadcast information in the sports section of the Los Angeles Times, and how to adjust the radio dial near the 64 ("Clear Channel Station K-F-I, 6-40). In front of the Grundig Hi-Fi in the living room, the wall-mounted kitchen unit, or my father's seldom used Sony transistor, I'd wait patiently, inside the house or not, for the opening anthem, the Union Oil song:

You always get the finest! The very best, the finest at the sign of the 76!
It's Orange and Blue, so look for that U--nion,
sign of the finest...
The sign of the Seven-ty Siiiiiiiiiiix!

And Jerry Doggett would intone, "For your enjoyment: Dodger Baseball is on the air!"

And so the game would begin. In 1967, this most assuredly meant the Dodgers would lose. They finished in 8th place, as predicted by the sporting media. Sandy Koufax had retired, Maury Wills and Tommy Davis had been traded for the equivalent of a kettle of fish (but for propriety's sake I'll name the guys: Wills to the Pirates for infielders Bob Bailey and Gene Michael; Davis to the Mets for second baseman Ron Hunt and outfielder Jim Hickman).

When you're seven, turning eight, you think about rooting for your team, not the ineptitude that causes the loss. My eyes were open with wonder. I loved baseball so much, and the Dodgers were on TV so little, I watched the NBC game of the week on Saturdays and became acquainted with the Cubs of Ernie Banks and Ron Santo; the Cardinals of Lou Brock and Orlando Cepeda. In the American League, there were the Red Sox of Carl Yastrezmski and Jim Longborg; Eddie Stanky's White Sox, the Minnesota Twins, the Detroit Tigers, and the first fantastic pennant race I'd see. And I can't give short shrift to the California Angels, who televised twice as many games as the Dodgers did, so I saw many more teams.

I proudly wore my first Dodger cap on a train trip to northern California with my mom. The conductor, a portly man, asked me "Why do you wanna root for them, their way down in 8th place! You oughtta be rootin' for the Giants!" I shook my head no. And I rarely took that cap off. I wore it until the bill literally unraveled and fell off, and then I wore it like a yarmulke until my brother grabbed it off my head.

"All you need is a propeller, and people will think you're Beanie (from Beanie and Cecil)! Take that off!"

As an eighth birthday gift, my parents, my sister, and my grandfather took me to see the Dodgers play the Mets at Dodger Stadium. In later years, I've heard others describe the same sensations I felt see in the green grass, the orange brick infield, and the multi-colored seats. I had only seen baseball on a black and white screen, and the pallet of colors was breath-taking. The Hollywood Stars game was in progress, and there, from our seats in the Loge section (or second deck, for those who've never been to Chavez Ravine), were popular stars of the day playing hard-ball with reckless abandon. It was all too much!

My Grandfather stuck the earplug in and followed the game on his transistor, while I ate everything from every vendor that happened down the aisle. To top it off, Al Ferrrara hit a two run home run, and the Dodgers beat the Mets 2-1. Grandpops, as we called him, had been scribbling all night, and when the game was over, he took out his earplug, and handed me the scorecard, where he had meticulously kept score of the game.

It was a terrific way to turn eight. Of course, my first live baseball game was followed by my first ever weekend of violent gastro-intestinal misery (caused by too many ballpark treats). I look back on it as a way of learning that baseball was joy...and pain.

*

Following baseball on the radio was almost all we had 40 years ago, at least in Los Angeles. The difference was Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett. I was eight, what did I know? I thought every city had someone who described baseball in such a special and thorough way. For the length of my life, there are things Scully said on the radio I'm sure I would never have known had I not been a Dodger fan. The word "Facade," for example. "There's a line drive...FOUL...off the facade of the second deck and into the field level seats." Or, "Lined foul! Off the auxiliary scoreboard, just left of the Dodger dugout."

How else would I have known what a "Marching and Chowder Society," was? Or know the ecstasy of a banner day at the plate by a journeyman ballplayer? I'll never forget the enthusiasm of Vin's voice in a bad season, exulting, "Dick Schoefield! Three for Three!!"

I listened to as many games as I could that first summer. There were only two commercial sponsors, and the spots were a minute apiece. I can still sing one:

From Fresno to San Dee--ay--Go,
From the desert to the Sea,
Security bank has of-fices,
where-ever you may be...

For money-matters,
Here's the key:
Let your fi-nan-cial part-ner be
Security First National Bank!

Today's baseball broadcasts have so many multiple sponsors, local and network spots, there are often four or five short commercials before returning to action. The kids that do hear the game on radio would never remember a jingle like that 40 years later. It would whiz by too quickly.

*

There were few great moments in those early years, but I learned the game and it's history and the history of the Dodgers, driven by the fact they were so average in the late 60's-early 70's. I had just missed the Koufax Era, and the thrilling World Series victories in '55, '59, '63, and '65. I could feel the pain of the play-off loss to the hated Giants in 1962 (my brother, upon being reminded, said, "I was crestfallen!"). As much as I hated the Giants...and still do...a big thrill was going to a game with my dad and my mom's uncle in what used to be the Dugout seats at Dodger Stadium, literally between the dugouts. I looked up to see Willie Mays on deck and shouted "Hey Willie!" He actually looked over and said "Hey." You could hate the Giants, but you had to love Mays.

*

By my adolescence, Dodgers got good enough to bring some pain. They lost the Western Division pennant to the aforementioned Giants by one game, on the last day of the '71 season. By then, they were televising up to 20 games a years. That meant a game each Sunday, and, rarity of rarities, a telecast of that final game of the year versus Houston...live from Dodger Stadium. My first Dodger pennant race, and it ended in ignominy.

Two years later, they started easing what Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett called "The Dodger Youngsters" into the line-up over veterans Like Ken McMullen, and others whose names were familiar. It pissed me to the point that by spring training of '73,I swore off the team in disgust, and decided to follow the Angels (there's desperation for you!). 13 year-olds are allowed to be fickle as their world fills with angst and acne, and as soon as they started to storm the National League West, I came back into fold to stay.

Then the Cincinnati Reds, with their team of future Hall of Famers did some storming of their own, and overtook the Dodgers that September. Pain, but no tears.

The next season remains my favorite. When Billy Crystal talks about being 13 and having the time of his life watching the '61 Yankees, he's describing a team that stands out in baseball history as one of the games most powerful. With Maris and Mantle chasing Babe Ruth's record of 60 homers in a season, and with the Yanks holding off a Detroit Tigers team that also won a hundred games, Billy had a lot to cheer for (the Yanks weren't stingy with telecasts--every home game was on TV, I'm told).

I followed the 1974 Dodgers from Junior High School that spring, to High School that fall. With a G-E Color TV ensconced in my bedroom, and a blue, Radio Shack transistor, with a free battery card to continually replenish the power supply, I had a summer following baseball that every kid turning 14 should experience. Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, and Jimmy Wynn hit homers in abundance, Davey Lopes stole bases, Don Sutton and Andy Messersmith headed the pitching staff, and a kinesiology major named Mike Marshall pitched a hundred and six games in relief. It was a new dawn, a new day! The Dodgers were winners, and logged a hundred and two victories. They bested Pittsburgh in the League Championship series, and were set to face reinging champ Oakland in the World Series!

This would be the first Dodger World Series since being swept by Baltimore in 1966, when I witnessed Paul Blair grasp the last out. Funny thing: My brother, the same one who turned off the TV in disgust that day, was getting married at an elaborate Catholic Mass on the day the Series was to start. This same brother who showed me how to find the games on the radio. In those days devoid of Tivo or home VCRs, part of me wanted to reason with him that my presence in the Wedding party, hideous 1970's brown tux and all, was surely not needed. The other part prevailed, however. All these years later, I can tell you what you already may have guessed: the blue, Radio Shack transistor found its way into the pocket of that hideous brown tux...at least until my mom caught me.

Then the pain. Six days later Oakland had won the Series. Nine months later, my brother was separated from his wife, never to return. My great summer of baseball didn't end like Billy Crystal's, with a World Series championship, but you only turn 14 once. You follow the game with your heart, not your head when you're that young. That's why when you look back on it, you're suddenly that man in his forties who sees a clip of Steve Garvey homering, crossing the plate, being congratulated by Willie Crawford...who has since passed away from heart disease...and baseball begins to mist the eyes.

*

Pain. Losing to the Giants, yes, that brings pain, especially since beating the Dodgers means more to Giants man that being capable of rational thought. In later years losing to the Padres would be more a pain in the ass, and the Angels a BITE in the ass. But losing two straight World Series to the Yankees and Reggie Jackson was a stabbing pain! I frankly didn't want the Dodgers to have to duke it out with them again. It was 1981, the Baseball had just lost 50 games to a players strike, and an extra layer of play-offs had been added to determine who would play in the World Series. Garvey, Lopes, Ron Cey, et al, had been together since 1973. 8 seasons in the same infield, a record that, in today's era of peripatetic free agents, will never be equaled. Having been in first place when the strike started, they automatically had a place in the post season, and opened what was to be called the Division Series with two losses to the Houston Astros. Somehow, they came back to win three straight to earn a berth in the League Championship Series against Montreal.

Down 2 games to 1, they rallied, and faced off with the Expos in game 5. It was a chilly, rainy afternoon on that parking-lot textured astroturf in Montreal. It was a warm afternoon in Los Angeles, and I was a Senior in college, living at my folks house, taking early evening courses and working late into the night at KLON in Long Beach, Ca. This meant viewing the games upon waking. With one eye open. Hoping. The remarkable Fernando Valenzuela dueled through the cold of Quebec in October, by the 9th inning, the score was tied at one. Rick Monday stepped up to the plate as NBC's cameras panned to Donald Sutherland, the only recognizable celebrity to attended expos games.

Then he did it. Rick Monday, by then a part time player, stroked one that cleared the fence in right -field. Unbridled joy! I leapt up about the same time Monday did as he rounded first and watched the bail sail over the wall. This mighty blow was made even more intense by the silent silence with which it was greeted at Olympic Stadium! There I was, leaping out of bed, there were the Dodgers, going bananas in a veritable crypt.

They held on in the bottom of the ninth to win the pennant, and I went out side. I didn't want my mom to see that baseball made a 22 year old man's eyes mist...and mist heavily.

The World Series with those nasty Reggie Jackson Yankees started the next day. There I was, in radio, working at a public station on the Long Beach State campus, as an, albeit unskilled, disc jockey, but bringing in a radio (the blue Radio Shack transistor was long gone--this was a mono boom box of the time) to hear the Dodgers lose the first two games in New York. Game three was a nail biter I heard mostly in the car on the way home from class. I caught the conclusion of a gutty Fernando pitching performance once I got in the door. The next day, a Saturday, began so harrowing, I turned off the set and left the house in the first inning, just after ABC showed Dodger pitcher Bob Welch trudging from the mound after being chased by the Yanks.

To my surprise, when I got home, the Dodgers had rallied with a homer by Jay Johnstone, and with the considerable help of an error by Reggie Jackson. 8-7 Dodgers. Series tied 2-2. That meant Game Five on Sunday. The game on ABC-TV, and CBS's radio coverage on KNX 1070. Vin Scully was calling the game for CBS. It was a no-brainer to watch the game with the sound down on the TV, and Vin's voice coming through the clock radio in my room.

A taut struggle ensued. The Yankee lefty, Ron Guidry, Louisiana Lightning, who'd humiliated the Dodgers in '77 and '78, versus the Dodgers southpaw Jerry Reuss, who'd lost game 1. New York went ahead 1-0, and the due continued until the seventh inning. Louisiana Lightning took a bolt, himself--from Steve Yeager, with a game tying shot into the left field Pavilion at Dodger Stadium. They say lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place, but this time it did, thanks to the bat of Pedro Guerrero. His homer to the same spot where Yeager's landed put the Dodgers ahead to stay, and sent the series back to New York with the Dodgers ahead 3 games to 2. A win meant their first World Series Championship since 1965, which I may or may not have been aware of at the time. This would be my first since learning to love baseball.

I went into the garage and pulled out an ancient portable TV to take to work. I didn't think about it, but it had been the same set I'd watched so many games on in '67, only now it was old and afforded only a snowy black and white picture. I didn't care. Even though Vin was calling it on radio, I had to SEE it.

It was a cakewalk. 9-2, Dodgers. World Champs. No moist eyes, just sheer joy!!

*

Because not all teams have the remarkable record of the New York Yankees, you can feel more pain, following baseball than you can joy. You learn that, in the long run, the winning is the goal, but the hope is the rush. And even the Yankees can't win EVERY year. It would be 1988 before unbridled baseball joy would enter the life of Dodger fans again, after some close, frustrating seasons in 1982 (blew it down the stretch, knocked out on the last day by those damned Giants on Joe Morgan's crucifying home run), 1983 (they won the division, then the Phillies shut them down in the League Championship Series), and 1985 (a GREAT season, sullied by those fastballs straight and true, heaved by reliever Tom Neidenfeuer, and hit by Ozzie Smith and Jack Clark of St. Louis in games 5 and 6 respectively, in the LCS. PAIN).



I was a full-fledged, 29 year-old Top 40 Disc Jockey at Q-105 in Oxnard by 1988. I'd moved from Y-95, San Diego in mid summer. I'd seen L.A. (referred to in San Diego as "Smell-A") lose a couple of close ones at Jack Murphy Stadium. It was one thing to lose, and yet another to blow a games wearing road grays in a city hostile to the blue. Through the vagueries of my business (I had to get out of there--oddly enough it was a 5 and a half hour overnight shift I fled), I was now back close to my home city, in Ventura County, place that embraced the Dodgers. The only thing was, I'd hired on for the "teen-appeal" shift, from 7 to midnight. Add in a couple of hours for commercial production and preparation, and listening to or seeing the '88 Dodgers was out of the question. I'd set the VCR for TV games (up to 50 a year by then), but who has three hours to watch a game when you get home and already know the score? It's not the same. So I mainly kept abreast of what was going on through the Associated Press machine at the studio, the morning Times, and weekend broadcasts. Welcome to the grown up world of following baseball.

In 1988, I missed most of the beauty that was Vin Scully's descriptions of the pennant race, and a lot of Don Drysdale's heightened enthusiasm whenever purpose pitches (throwing inside) was needed. Big D had replaced Jerry Doggett, who had retired at the end of the '87 season. Jerry was aging, at least 70 by then, a jaunty wig alternating with the cold weather cap he'd clamp on his pate for TV games. Jerry wasn't Scully, but he was Dodger baseball, and sometimes he could be so real it was hilarious. There'd been a spring game in the early '70's when he marveled over an infield play, turned to someone in the booth and inadvertantly blurted to KTTV viewers, "A great play like that and you tell me you missed it? JEEEESUS!!" As far as I know, the first quasi-religious reference on a Dodger telecast. It was never spoken of again.

The VCR enabled me to enjoy 1988. Orel Hershiser ended a remarkable season by breaking Don Drysdale's record for consecutive scoreless innings, a record set 20 years before. My brother and I had sat in the dark in his room on a Friday night in May of '68, listening to the Giants-Dodgers thriller that brought Drysdale close to the record. For me, it was almost as thrilling as a World Series, because a Dodger was causing all the excitement. Drysdale pushed closer to the record on the first Tuesady of June, versus the Pirates. I listened until ordered to bed, and woke the next morning to the shocking news that Robert F. Kennedy had been shot. Big D broke the record the follwoing Saturday, a day of triumph lost in national mourning, a game played after the world watched another funeral and burial in the volitile year of 1968.

As a Dodger broadcaster, Drysdale was in the dugout when Hershiser broke his record.The game wasn't televised, regardless of the fact L.A. had cliched the Western Division title as well, so only news highlights were available to me after I'd gotten home. It was a touching moment. Even then, even with the leadership of hard charging Kirk Gibson on the field, I was nervous about the superiority of the teams they would have to face for a shot at the World Championship.

The Mets had beaten them senseless all year, and should they get past New York, there were the Bash (later 'Roid?") Brothers in Oakland who'd pounded the American League into submission. For the championship series, I'd been able to watch live TV, because I was filling in for the station's morning show that week. The teams split the first two games in Los Angeles, lost a controversial, rain spattered Saturday game three in New York. Reliever Jay Howell was tossed for having pine tar on his glove, and suspened for two games. It didn't look good.

The next night, a Sunday, I was home, relaxed, ready to watch game four, and found myself changing stations as the Dodgers got behind to Mets star right hander Doc Gooden. I couldn't take it. My lack of desire to watch them loose caused me to switch to a laughless comedy on NBC called "Sister Kate," starring a saucy British actress named Stepahnie Beacham...as a nun. The show was awful, but watching this woman who'd done nude scenes in feature films dressed in a habit made me chuckle at the possibilities for bawdy humor.

By the end of "Sister Kate," I flipped back to ABC coverage of the game, and a miracle had cccured, the first of many in '88. Kirk Gibson and shocked the Mets with a game tying homer in the ninth, and Mike Scioscia, the Dodgers durable catcher, clubbed one in extra innings to take the lead. To top it off, Hershiser himself volunteered to pitch the last half inning on 24 hours rest, put a the tying and winning runs on, and got a sensational diving catch by center fielder John Shelby for the final out. Shocking! The Dodgers tied the series at 2, with game 5 the next afternoon (exactly noon in southern California). I set the VCR, but woke up and watched, anyway. A rookie right hander named Tim Belcher kept the Mets in check as L-A easily prevailed. This was an unbelievable turn of events!

Games six and seven (if needed) were in L-A, with Hershiser available for a do or die final game. The Mets took game 6, so Hershiser had to work his magic and he did, shutting out the Mets in the seventh game and sending the Dodgers to the fall classic. I was on air and got the news via A.P., and shared the joy with my listing audience (mostly teens, probably the ones who weren't glued to their sets or weren't Dodger fans--we had the largest audience in Ventura County, small potatoes, but revelevant never-the-less).

Saturday, October 15, 1988, the World Series versus Oakland would begin at Dodger Stadium, 5pm Pacific Daylight Time, so the east coast would see the action at 8. No one thought the Dodgers could avoid being crushed to infintesimal particles of waste by the (we now assume artificially) muscle-bound, window breaking A's. Vin Scully, for six seasons also serving as NBC's national baseball voice, would be calling the games. Dame fortune had looked fondly upon Chavez Ravine...in ways of which we could only dream.

In my world, I had a Saturday shift playing the hits, taking calls for inane youngsters, and cracking wise, as my Top 40 idols had done between songs. Ordinarily, I'd be home to watch the Series opener, but I'd taken a side gig at the Camarillo Boys and Girls Club. For a hundred much needed bucks, I'd be spending the evening rolling records for high schoolers.

It was a difficult task. The kids bugged the hell out of me all night. The dance kids complained they couldn't dance to what I was playing, the surfer kids didn't want to hear the dance music, and when I finally aquiesed, and played "Beds are Burning," by Midnight Oil, some very apprehensive girls hurried up to me sand said everyone had moved to the lobbhy and weren't dancing. The little cretins who'd asked for Midnight Oil were seated at the top of the bleachers, buzzed on something, enjoying their song, while I was resolving never to do this kind of shit again.

Afterwhile, they guy from the station who'd tossed the gig tgo me arrived to help break down the equipment. "Hey, " he mentioned casually, "The Dodgers won."

"Great!" I said, thinking something had finally gone right, today.

"Yeah," he went on. "Kirk Gibson had a homer." He tossed it off with the nonchalance of someone who knew little about baseball. It wasn't until I got home and watched the game on that btrust VCR that I realized Gibson had hit one of the top three home runs in all baseball history, a cataclysmic blow that fractured the A's and altered the dynamic of the series. This injured entity, an inert force who drove the team all year, limped to the plate, smote a game winning blast, circled the bases to a wild cacaphony, and crossed the plate into baseball lore. By 4 the next morning, I had rewound and watched the homer seven times...and the eyes of a 29 year old man misted...misted plenty.

I would also miss game 2. I had a date. I had tickets to a concert I didn't want to see, by a man whose music I firmly believe induces insulin shock (Kenny G), with a woman for whom I lusted deeply, yet was beginning to sense was not a good human being.

What was wrong with this picture. At 29, lust, unrequited as it turns out, wins big, and the VCR was set once again, as I suffered this wildy attractive, intensely moody woman, and tolerated the dreck played by the syruppy Mr. Gorelick (the soprano saxophonist's real name). The highligh was Smokey Robinson coming out for a surprise song. Walking back to the car afterward, I said to my mikni-skirted date, "How about Smokey showing up."
"I'm not a fan." She said flatly.

"Oh," I said. Unrequited lust, indeed. All that was waiting for me at the end of this night was the VCR. Thank God it was Game Two of the World Series. Thank God Orel Hershiser had shut out the A's. Thank God I'd had the sense to buy a stack of VHS Tapes to preserve each series game.

I was back at work during games three, four, and five, with the VCR set, and the A.P. wire at the ready. Mark McGwire, who, at a future date who reign in both ecstacy and ignominy, won game three for Oakland in the ninth inning. Then a win in game four, and the remarkable Hershiser in game five, another shutout, and a World Series Clincher!

It was amazing. It was unparalelled. I went on the air and exulted between the hits. I recently discovered the tape of that broadcast, and I sound a lot like that 14 year old in 1974, full of glee that my team had prevailed at long last! I remember thinking that even if they didn't win the next year, it wouldn't matter, because this was so fantatstic.

*

The joy I just relived writing that package has had to last for almost 20 years. I still have the tapes from the '88 series filed away. I never watch them because the memory remains so fresh. The 2007 season has just ended with the Dodgers falling to pieces like a decaying milk bone. Clubhouse factions were revealed, tensions between the youngsters who will lead the team and the high priced forty year olds who were supposed to provide leadership. So what else is new?

Vin Scully spent the final game marking great moments of the past. He's soon to be 80, working home games and road games from Denver and all points west. Three innings simulcast on radio and TV, the rest of the game eclusively via video. He remains a true artist. His voice, his demeanor, his content between the pitches represnts the franchise as much as the color blue.

This past summer, I spent Sundays at the beach, probably the only human being there with a radio as opposed to a discman or Ipod (the subject for another commentary: radio is no longer a presence at the beach). Listening to those three innings of Vin Scully calling the game while sitting in the sand was like having memories and emotion wash ashore along with the waves. To be connected to a baseball team for the majority of one's life is, indeed to know joy and pain. The losing is pain, but winning is not the only joy. The team, the game and what it has meant is the joy in it's blue-hued entirety.

And the eyes of middle-aged men will be subject to mist.

*
Next time, I promise, funny stuff. yes, radio stuff. My take on talk...the opnionated, jibber-jabberers you only think are making you feel informed

Sweet Embraceable Lou: A Radio "Write."

An old-timer, amazed and bewildered by the technology at work here, might say "great and manifold are the blessings of this medium...that really affords us the opportunity to talk to you." I feel pretty much the same about keeping this blog. I have already written that I choose not to expound endlessly about my chosen vocation, which, depending on the events that transpire, could alternately bore, incite, or put my professional ass in a sling.

However, since it IS a part of my life, a little radio will find its way to the page, now and again--especially if it's funny. There will be no commentary or criticism of the business as it stands, but there will be remarks about greats and not-so-greats you may have listened to in the past. Greats who have influenced me, and maybe a couple who've offended my sensibilities...and yours. There's one whom I found so outrageous, I intended to to write a short story based on his peculiarities. I never found the time or energy, because, believe it or not, the radio work can burn you out.

I have enough, though, to provide a few laughs for those who don't need a plot or an ending to their stories. The first two full pages, and situational notes are here, plus a recently written preface that I hope will crack you up, without, of course, actually injuring ribs.

*
In this, the seventh year of the new millennium, there are still veterans of the airwaves who will probably toil until their last, tobacco saturated breath. Guys who are so venerated, their gaffs, mistakes and idiosyncrasies are tolerated with no questions asked. Guys so inept, when they actually did things correctly, it was celebrated...even though their record at doing things right was like that of The Ancient Mariner: as was written in the poem, "He taketh one in three."

One of these gentlemen I called "Sweet Embraceable Lou," and these are some of his exploits, based on fact.

SWEET EMBRACEABLE LOU: Lou's Lucky Strike

Lou Fogg. His name suited him perfectly. Mentally, he had been a little foggy since the days of his misspent youth. An expansive ego had his head in the clouds, and the smoke from his omnipresent Lucky Strike cigarette made his skull truly appear enshrouded. Fog was the word that described him literally and figuratively.

His addiction to Lucky Strikes had him sneaking smokes in the damnedest places. One evening, while the hits of a generation played on , he shuffled around the radio station, looking for a place where he could toke-up without being detected. He chose a unisex restroom with one commode, and a fan that worked only if a second switch was flipped simultaneously with the lights.

In his haste to light up a Lucky, Sweet Embraceable Lou hit only the switch for the lights, put down the lid on the bowl, and fumbled through his pockets for a match. It vaguely dawned on him that he might take this time to use the room for its actual purpose. Alma, his 28-year-old girlfriend, has cooked another volatile meal of pinto beans, cheese and burritos, the kind of dinner that left the old man as plugged as a freshly spackled hole in the wall. His only relief would be to somehow force a moment of flatulence...which is exactly what he did, sitting there on a covered bowl, without ventilation, just as he was putting a light to his cigarette.

WHOOSH!!

Methane met match, and Lou's fuzzy, grey eyebrows went up in one quick POOF! The old man was so out of it, he thought someone had taken his picture with an old-fashioned powder-flash.

Moving with more speed than even he thought was possible, Lou swung over to the basin and splashed water on his smoldering brows, stubbed out his Lucky Strike, and tossed the butt into the trash can. He hastily dried himself, turned out the light, and doddered back to the studio.

Welcome to a night on the air with Sweet Embraceable Lou Fogg, a man not competent to tie his own shoes. One of those remarkable human beings who floated through life like an aerialist, falling once or twice, but always landing on his feet like a pixilated feline. He knew not how he survived--he simply had an instinct for it.

Even his choice of cigarette brands was touched by some aesthetic serendipity. How else would you describe the days and nights of a man who should have been, by all rights, sleeping in a cardboard box, or (at best) with reluctant relatives. His very existence was...a Lucky Strike.

Not that Good 'Ol, Sweet Embraceable Lou ever knew that. His sense of entitlement went back to the crib.

"They had cribs back then?" we would ask ourselves when the subject came up. Apparently so. Lou Fogg came into the world in as slippery a fashion as he would lead his life. One night, sometime in the 1920's (we were never sure which year. The older he looked, the younger he would tell us he was), Miss Fiona Fogg, an increasingly hefty former-flapper with a love for bathtub hooch and card players, staggered into her bathroom to do battle with a case of constipation that would bring Paul Bunyan to his knees. What she thought was the massive dump to end all dumps was nothing of the sort...and baby Lou entered the world with an accidental splash.

Literally baptized with the flotsam and jetsam, he would spend his boyhood around the curbs and gutters of pre-war southern California. Fiona doted on her unexpected bundle of joy. Obviously impervious to physical and emotional pain (consider her son's delivery!), she even endured the heckling of Lou's neighborhood pals. The mean little bastards would see the over-stuffed baba, recall the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk and chant, "Fee, Fi, Fo, FOGG!"

LOU-ICIDE: Life on the Streets

He grew up a lean boy, without much of an appetite for food (mother Fiona would routinely finish his plates with great gusto). Lou's earliest interests in life were stealing, and girls. As he entered puberty, it were as if an acetylene torch went off in his trousers. The depression era was known for its devastating poverty and its criminals, not its promiscuity. No one told Lou.

And here are remaining notes I made:

* That his last name was Fogg cannot be too strongly noted. It was more than coincidence. It were as if his surname were chosen to describe the musings that rumbled in his medulla oblongnotta.

* Sweet Embraceable Lou could not have withstood an actual embrace--a heart slap on the back would disassemble him like a house made of tooth pics. His gaunt frame was like an old TV antennae with swatches of hair and vital organs, precariously clinging to it.

* His voice put me in the mind of a the sound a goose would make while strangulating. As he entered his dotage, he would punctuate his speech with a nervous giggle that could be mistaken for the vocal response to a very unnecessary prostate exam--he squeaked like a rusty bird cage door, and mumbled like the rumble of loose gurney wheels. Somehow, the voice that emanated from that larynx had mesmerized an entire culture of the street.

* ...the song was a minute from ending when Lou opened the mike and thankfully groaned, "ahhhhhhh! That was wonderful! Embraceable!" Then he realized that the groan of delight was actually an involuntary response of relief. He'd suffered another moment of on-air incontinence. "Milton," he warbled distantly to his engineer, "...get a sponge."

* One evening, a fun-loving jock plopped a dollop of the prescription laxative Purge into Lou's coffee. The shit literally hit the fan...and the control board.

* A feral animal apparently took the brunt of the fusillade, as the angry listeners emptied two 45s from afar. Sweet Embraceable Lou traipsed blithely through the hail of lead, wondering only who had their TV on so loud...and if a sudden breeze had picked up.

* The on-air coughing spell had lasted nearly two minutes before Lou finally closed the mike and headed to the men's room. After ten minutes, he was at last able to prod a few voluntary drops from his uncooperative bladder. "Goddamn thing!" he mumbled to no one in particular. "it only works when it feels like it." Lou then heel-toed it outdoors to light up another Lucky Strike and puffed away.
"Hey...workin' when they feel like it! I'll say that on the air," Lou exclaimed as loudly as he could, only to himself. Barely ambulatory, he made his way back into the studio and keyed open the mike, forty seconds into a love song.

"This one's for my engineer, Milton, who works only when he feels like it." Still on the air, he began sniffing. "Hey, I smell smoke. Where's it coming from? Must be Milton's shoes: It's dinnertime! Heeeeeeeeeeee!! HEY! Milton! I didn't mean it! Don't beat me up!"

Milton was swatting Lou with his own jacket to douse the flames that had erupted from the pocket of Lou's ratty coat...the pocket where Embraceable Lou had put the still-lighted Lucky Strike when he had his brainstorm for the on-air bit.

* Growing more furious by the day, Milton sometimes wondered what it would be like to rid himself of his elderly meal ticket. However, babysitting the octogenarian was better than pumping gas--though the fumes from Lou's gas were just as noxious as anything billowing from a refinery.

After periodic expulsions, Lou would warble something like, "My girlfriend makes burritos and sends me to work with a box of Baby Wipes!" Milton thought a cork would be more useful and less expensive. the flatulence and his frequent smoking made Sweet Embraceable Lou's potential for spontaneous combustion greater than that of the Hindenburg.

*

That's it, that's all. Maybe it's peaked some curiosity. Maybe one day it'll yield a plot and a short story. For now, a guffaw or two will do.

Next week...my heart, my pain...40 years following the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Things that make you go "Ha!" Part Duh

It's appropriate to end this little chapter on what makes me laugh by turning to the keyboard right after the opening minutes of the MTV Video Music Awards. I'm not sure who was funnier: Britney Spears or Sarah Silverman. Or, if you look at the glass half full, you might wonder who's effort was more tragic? A bloated Britney, no longer a nymphet, now a mother of two, her body better suited for a baggy,"Property of Haagen Dazs" sweat shirt; Sarah, the pretty-potty-mouth, and comic dujour for awards shows, with an acerbic edge that didn't exactly have her all-star audience in stitches. To me, her humor is better suited for small groups who guffaw at the expense of the rich, famous and slutty. Before a large audience, though, it seems to cause squirming of hemorroidal proportions, and nervous giggles from those embarassed to laugh in public at something shocking.

I haven't always been keen on "Comics dujour." As a teen, I considered my sense of humor more sophisticated than that of my peers. I didn't understand the concept of appealing to the lowest common denominator (I still don't get it, and it's had a chilling affect on my radio career).

For example, I could not abide by the 70's era Steve Martin. The bunny ears, the "wild and crazy guys," loved to distraction by so many others my age, was lost on me. I knew him as a comic whose hair used to be black...a fellow who'd play the banjo on The Tonight Show. Compared to the comedians who made me laugh until I cried, this white-haired, white-suited silly man was a waste of time. Only the witless ninnies (neither my friends or me) lined up to buy his albums, see his show at the Universal Amphitheatre, and memorize the gags from his movie, The Jerk.

It was a classic mistake, on my part. Associating the artist with the audience that embraced him. 10 years later, with the movie Roxanne, I came to appreciate a renaissance performer, who was stealthily hilarious. He'd moved on past establishing himself with "the lowest common denominator," at least in my opinion. I rate him as one of the most gifted performers the country's seen in the last 50 years...movies, TV spots, his books. He always knew exactly what he was doing.

The same was true of Robin Williams. At the outset, "Mork" eluded me completely because the folks I knew, the ones who'd go around repeating "Nanu, Nanu," were humorless people. On their own, they couldn't get a laugh if they experienced an especially loud moment of flatulence at a Wedding Mass--leg lifted and all.

It was the mid-80's by the time I recognized the artist minus his early, easily amused audiences. His TV appearnces and guest shots were electric. Not since Rickles had I seen anything like it. And Good Morning, Vietnam became only the second movie I paid to see twice (the other was Animal House". I went to all his movies after that, until The Fisher King, which was so depressing, I recognized he was truly the clown (the clown can make you laugh and cry, they say). His Late Show, guest spots would have to suffice for just the laughs, and suffice they do.

Knowing that I judged rather poorly in the late 1970's maybe I should give current teen favorite, Dane Cook a break. Maybe he touches something in what they call "the 12 to 24 demographic" that I left behind years ago. Or perhaps I would dislike him as I did Steve Martin when I was in that age group? Will I, one day when I'm pulling my pension, hee-haw with raucous abandon at the work of Dane Cook?

Naaaaw. Not unless I'm dead wrong...again.

This leads me to the last comic on my list. A former favorite who just cracked me up, and still can when he's not pontificating. Dennis Miller was on my list of the funniest people in the world. It would figure that I'd get the obscure references, the "40 dollar" words, and the smerkiness. His "Weekend Updates," on Saturday Night Live were the highlight of some of those 1980's episodes. His 1988 album (and HBO special culled from the same gig) is still a riot, to me. He was hipper than anyone else, an acquired taste, and a lock to say something that would leave me wheezing.

As Dennis' career took off, it put him in places that didn't suit his talents. His syndicated late night show was uncomfortable to watch because he tried to do what Steve Martin had done: appeal to that dreaded Lowest Common Denominator. You have to in TV. Ratings dictate it.

His next series, on HBO, fared much better, because there were no advertisers or affiliates to please. And, man was he funny. Who else would call those who run with the bulls at Pamploma, "A bunch of guys dressed like Topo Gigio, willing to get gored in the ass?"

God yes, Dennis Miller was funny. Then something happened. He says it was 9/11 (the sixth anniversary of which, we are observing this week). Suddenly the smartest of the smart comics, who fired his lasers in all directions, became the cranky heir to William F. Buckley's throne of pomposity.

The man who once scored with lines like, "Ronald Reagan. 76, this last election. With his finger on the button. My grandfather's 76, we won't let him touch the remote to the TV," is now an ideologue who saves his bromides and broadsides for only one side of the political spectrum. Somehow, the references and big words don't score as well when they're not aimed at fellow travellers. And it's too bad. Both sides deserve a skewering at the expense of somebody so funny and so smart.

You could say this is true, also, of John Stewart. I get the impression, though, that the right "gets" John Stewart, and that when it comes to disemboweling the left, Dennis is coming from a place of self satisfaction rather than satire.

I vividly remember one of his syndicated shows in 1991, when Dennis covered all fields, and he zeroed in on Shannen Doherty, then at her Beverly Hills, 90210 peak. Shannon has never made a secret of her political bent. Unlike Dennis, hers comes via upbringing, rather than epiphany.

On one of those shows, Shannen pointed to a nervous Dennis and asked, "Why's your eye twitching like that, " a cruel and bitchy thing to do to the host of a new show.

Dennis got his revenge when her 90210 action figure was introduced. Dennis splayed its legs, hurled it across the stage, cleaned a shelf with it, and eventually dismembered the doll with a madman's sense of glee. It was a highlight show piece of work for a program that didn't last long enough to have a show of that sort. Memorable, 16 years later. Especially since he and Shannen could conceivably bump into each other at the RNC, next year.

Politics does make strange bedfellows.


Next week, an unfinished bit of fiction based on fact... one of just a few glimpses I'll offer, backstage on the 'ol radio ranch.

Things that make you go "Ha!"

I have to admit to possesing a prodigious memory. This can be a good or bad thing, depending upon what I remember, but it affords me the ability to recall one of the first things I saw on TV that made me roll on the ground laughing.

It was Bugs Bunny, spinning his leg like a propeller, kicking Elmer Fudd in the ass so hard, he shot to the top of a tree, where his head rang like a bell. I was 5 then, and I'm chuckling now, as I write this. Don't lie--how often have you wanted to do that to some cretin who was annoying you worse than telemarketers who mispronounce your name, then read from their script like a functional illiterate?

I love to laugh and make others laugh. Always. One of the hard things about dealing with limited sleep is that you don't laugh as much as you should. You don't find things as funny when your eyes are crossed.

Ahh, but I remember! Bugs Bunny, and Soupy Sales, whose antics with White Fang and Black Tooth were aimed at kids like me, but winked knowingly at adults.

Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Jack Benny...all the greats had peaked, but were still on top when I was a child. Get Smart, F-Troop, Dick van Dyke and the Beverly Hillbillies! All of those TV shows, and Mad Magazine helped shape my sense of humor.

Mad Magazine? Yes. Some of the best satire of that era was found between the pages of Mad Magazine. Artwork by the likes of Mort Drucker, George Woodbridge, and Angelo Torres perfectly interpreted the writing of Dick de Bartolo, Larry Seigel and others to make movie and TV satires positively side splitting. Anyone who ever picked up an issue of Mad can't forget the parody of The Godfather (called "The Oddfather," naturally), and what this gang did with the scene where the movie producer wakens in horror to the sight of his horse's severed head. In Mad Magazine, he woke up to a horse's ass (and who hasn't, you might ask?).


By adolescence, I could name my Top 5 favorite comedians: Don Rickles, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Johnny Carson, and Robert Klein.

Rickles delivered what I still believe was the wildest, most uproarious week of television in the history of the medium. It was July of 1973, when he took over The Tonight Show for a vacationing Johnny Carson. It was six nights of what we now call "appointment viewing." I couldn't wait until 11:30, because I'd spent a whole summer day still laughing at what he did the night before.

Everybody was a target of his pin-pointed barbs, from Johnny's sidekick ("There's Ed McMahon, sittin' around the house with the robe open and a can of beer...buhlaaaaaaaaahhhP!!") to his own spouse ("That's the wife in the morning over breakfast; 'You wanna pass the coffee de-ah? BLaaaaaahup!'").

He harassed a Latino band member so repeatedly and hilariously, that on Rickles final night, an NBC camera caught the musician as he cleaned his fingernails with a stiletto knife. Rickles response made mockery of his own atonement. It was a scream. It's not possible to believe that Rickles could have sustained this kind of Herculean comedic effort five nights a week, 40 to 45 weeks a year. What he offered when Johnny was gone was unforgettable.

Not that Johnny was a slouch, of course. We all know what he did, and how he did it. That's why I remember lines he delivered that probably no longer exist on video-tape. Like when he was doing his Carnac bit one night in 1971 when I should have been asleep. One of Carnac's questions got a groan from the audience, to which Johnny quipped, "May a weird holy man put Easy-Off in your shorts!" Funny? I've remembered it for 36 years.

By that time, George Carlin and Richard Pryor had to stifle themselves to perform on TV. To enjoy them at their best meant getting a hold of one of the treasured comedy albums. There, Pryor could use raw language, and NO ONE used it to such deadly, laugh-til-you-pee-your-pants effect. Today's comics curse for the sake of cursing. Pryor USED the profanity to embellish the comedy, a crucial difference. The Mudbone routines alone stand out as some of the most consistent laugh inducing work ever performed.

As with Pryor, George Carlin worked a curse word or two...in a more observational way. He spoke the truth and made it funny. My friends and I would listen and listen in the hey-day of the comedy album. We'd listen until the punchlines and inflections became a part of our day-to-day banter. Even the name of a Carlin album would become a private joke. I'd look at a pal and intone "Occupation: Foole," just as Carlin had, and we'd break up.

Robert Klein? He became a favorite by being the first comedian to make mockery of "The Little Rascals," never attemted before 1970, that I know of. Then, during a Democratic National Telethon in 1972, Jackie Cooper was taking a pledge live on air, and needed to distract the audience while he got the caller's personal information. Klein, with long hair, wearing a flowered shirt, bell-bottomed pants and platform shoes, whipped out his harmonica, played a few bars, then sang out, "Oh...ethnic blues!"

He's made me laugh ever since. There was a night on the Letterman show in 1989 when Klein started riffing on finally discovering "Gilligan's Island." He was impressed that the show had a theme song that summed up the plot: "Here's Gilligaaaaan...and six imbeciles on an Island!"

We vault forward, here, at the mention of Letterman. David Letterman is the King of late night TV, and the legitimate heir to Johnny Carson's crown. It should go without dispute. He earned it. He did it the right way--by being himself.

Jay Leno, who wins the ratings race nightly, has always been a top stand-up comic. His humor goes down easy, even when there's an edge to it. Which accounts for the ratings, of course. He aims to please, a plus for guests not in the mood to be challenged. This is all terrific, but when Letterman is on opposite, why have plain yogurt when you can top off the night with something tangy?

David Letterman is a TV original. Debuting at about the time most households got their first VCRs, his show was the first example of "Must-tape-TV." It wasn't so much the monologue. Good writers turn out monologues that a pro can deliver with no trouble. The trade mark stunts, even he will admit, were inspired by his late night ancestors, like Steve Allen.

No, the key to the Letterman experience are the pliable facial expressions and the off-the-cuff ad libs that probe the intellect and rattle the cage. A withering look and a "No Paul, this isn't rehearsal," or "If that weren't enough, and by God don't you think it ought to be," and "This is just more fun than humans are allowed to have," had studio audiences in stitches, and made certain guests insist their agents never book them again.

NBC made the most of this by re-running shows starring devastated guests like Shirley McLaine, Cher, and Nastassia Kinski (Letterman wouldn't leave her foot-high, "Marge Simpson'" hairdo alone, reducing the beauty to tears).

There was a night in the 90's on CBS when Actress-Model Cindy Crawford sat in the guest chair, wearing very heavy eye shadow. She told a story about accidentally hitting herself in the face. Said Letterman, "That would account for the bruising about the eyes!" A year later, he apologized.

Another gem seemed to fly over every one's head but mine. Early into his now 14 year run on CBS, Rosie O'Donnell showed up in an olive drab one-piece uniform. As she sat down, and as the band stopped playing, Dave said to her, "You bring us greetings from Chairman Mao."

In short, the guy still makes me laugh, and during his illnesses, he was missed. Many years of good health to him. Letterman, surprisingly, Craig Ferguson; The Office, Scrubs, Seinfeld reruns and Tina Fey's 30 Rock deliver the laughs to me, here at the tail end of 2007. I could do three more paragraphs on Tina Fey, but I'll save that for a later time.

John Stewart deserves a blog as the sole subject, too. His wit and impact are on a par with Carson and Letterman. I'll touch on that next week, when I put the focus on who ISN'T funny...and who USED to be, but has allowed partisanship to blur his comedic vision. Hint: He's a Saturday Night Live Alum...and he's not named Chevy.