GenePool Humor

Beating Up the Radio, Part Three

Monday, June 14

Being the suave, sophisticated, clever, writerly man of letters type of guy that I am, I barely get any sleep at all the night before my first interview because I'm scared silly about the whole thing. This is actually not much of a bad thing since by the morning I'm too tired to be nervous. I am also too tired to speak cogently, so I immediately down two cups of coffee and smoke three cigarettes. Now I'm awake, but my voice has half-dissipated with the smoke.

The worst part about this whole thing isn't even the interview schedule, although that's pretty tough too. The worst part is that since Deb's work schedule usually doesn't place her anywhere near our home any time before 8:30, I have to get myself ready for work and also shepherd two sleepy kids through their own morning perambulations. My children do not move independently in the morning unless it's the weekend. Instead, a steady stream of instructions needs to be dictated, often two or three times, in order to activate them. Often, I need to barter with them in order to get them to do what I wish of them. Tim is a cinnamon sugar junkie, and we have not yet allowed him to use the toaster oven on his own, as we're afraid he might set himself on fire. So in order to get him to, say, get dressed, I will promise him cinnamon toast in return for his guarantee that he will go upstairs and select a wardrobe that is roughly appropriate for the current climate. (Untutored, he will opt for a long sleeve turtleneck on a 95 degree day. I'm serious.) Becky is somewhat easier to activate, but has already started to develop a skill that will be far more important to her in the future, namely, she takes forever in the bathroom. Often, she will be found semi-dressed and unfed in front of the mirror, trying to get her hair "just so," an activity she has been at for fifteen minutes uninterrupted. Also, she is the only child with shoelaces. Tim's shoes have velcro (how did any parent survive before velcro?) so his shoe adorning procedure is fairly painless provided he remembers where he originally removed said shoes. Becky must be allotted extra time to locate and then tie her shoes, a procedure that takes much longer than it takes me to shower and shave.

In fact the only thing I really have going for me is that I managed to convince Mamom to take the children into school every day of this week. So all I have to do is make sure the kids are ready to walk out the door by 8:00, which, coincidentally, is the time of my first radio interview of the week.

My interview is with a station in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. I have some trepidation about this one, based entirely on the woman who I set this up with. These interviews were set up one of three ways. Either the station emailed me asking me to call, or they emailed my publisher who then emailed me telling me to call somone, or they called me at my work number and left a voice mail. This interview was set up after I picked up a message from a woman whose name sounded utterly alien to me. I listened to it three times and had no luck whatsoever understanding what it was. Finally, I gave up and called the station and repeated back the name in the most perfect imitation of the sounds I'd heard on my voice mail. I was icily corrected by the person on the other end, who informed me the name I was butchering was "Amber," and that I was speaking to her.

The good news was that this was to be a brief interview, and "Amber" was not the on-air talent. They were supposed to call me at 8:00. At least, I was pretty sure they were. That's another thing I learned about halfway through the week; make a note of who is supposed to call who.

At 8:02, nobody had called me, so I call the only number I have, which is Amber's. This ultimately gets me through to the on-air guy, who says he was about to call me, and reads back my work number, which would have done him no good since I'm still at home.

But we get in the interview. It is, as advertised, a very short interview. It doesn't go very well in part because I can barely hear him. At one point I realize we're both talking at the same time, which can't have sounded good. One of the things I notice right away is that he seems to be under the impression that I've written a self-help book. I try very hard to dissuade him of this notion, but I run out of time fairly quickly and don't even get a chance to correct him on the assumption that anyone can just walk into a bookstore and pick up a copy off of the shelf.

It's not the best start. I'm hoping things go uphill from here.

Tuesday, June 15

Here's where my life starts to get ugly. My first and only interview of the day is at 7:10 A.M. This means getting up VERY EARLY to shower and drink copious amounts of coffee in order to sound like an interesting person by 7:10. In theory this would involve having gone to bed at a reasonable hour the previous evening, and I would have certainly done this had it not been for my inability to have a good game of Tetris before 11:15 P.M. and, as I'm sure you understand, one simply cannot sleep well without first having a good game of Tetris behind you. (My parents bought me Tetris for my birthday this year, so this is entirely their fault. I would delete it from my computer, but I have no will-power.)

I do manage to get up early enough to shower and drink a lot of coffee in time for the interview. I leave the children to mill about randomly in the living room while I sequester myself in the kitchen to talk to Knoxville, Tennessee.

I'm expecting this interview to go much better. I'd set it up by speaking to the on-air talent himself, a man named Tony who doesn't sound anything like a man named Tony. I'm basing this entirely on ethnic stereotypes and for that I apologize, but nobody named Tony should have a southern twang. Actually, when I spoke to him I developed one myself. This is an old problem, and one I can never entirely escape. I steal accents. I speak with, as near as I can tell, no accent whatsoever, which makes me a tabula rasa for other accents to draw on. When I spoke to him previously, I apologized halfway through and made it clear I was not intentionally mocking him or anything. His answer was "oh, do ah have an accent?"

He also asked me at that time what I "do" on the air. Do I have a bit, a routine? Of course, I don't. So I told him I just talk about my book. This seemed to satisfy him, and he said I have a good voice for the radio (there it is again) so I'll do fine.

So by 7:10 A.M. I'm looking forward to talking to Tony. I pick up the phone and call one of the numbers he'd given me (I knew I was supposed to call for this one) and immediately get connected to a fax machine. This is lesson number two: always get more than one number. I have the hotline number for the station, fortunately, which I call. I get Tony, who tells me to hang up and call collect. I don't know why he insists on this, but I'm in no shape to argue.

When I get through again he points out that he can no longer find me listed at guestfinder.com, so he doesn't have any of the sample questions I worked so hard to put together so long ago, so he asks if I can give him a few. Naturally, I can't remember a single one. So after much hemming and hawing, I tell him to ask me about my vacation and I'll see if I can go on from there.

Ultimately, this interview goes much better, even though Tony also doesn't really have any idea what the book is actually about. I've realized by now that there's simply not enough time to ramble in response to any question, which is a shame, because my overall philosophy in writing humor is to avoid punchlines, and here I am in a medium that demands punchlines.

After we finish I end up hanging up and then realizing I completely forgot to mention how to get my book. So I call Tony back on the hotline and beg him to mention it. He promises to, and I'm pretty sure he does, because, well, I kinda like Tony.

Wednesday, June 16

I'd like to say I'm getting used to going to bed early and getting up early, but I'm not. I'm just not built properly to appreciate this sort of schedule, and this is entirely the fault of the children. I'm trained not to relax until both of them are sleeping, which means there are only two times when I'm completely relaxed: my lunch break, and some time around 9:00 P.M. every night. I'm suffering a loss of both because I'm cutting back on my lunch hour due to the fact that I'm arriving late for work every day of this week, and I have to go to bed at around 10:00 or 10:30 each evening. If I don't get these little spots of quiet freedom to relax without having to worry about the possibility that someone in the other room needs me to perform some random task, I get irritable. And if I'm irritable I'm not a good radio guest, which means this entire thing is an exercise in futility.

This is my last day with only one interview, and it's at 7:45 A.M. This one is with Gardner, Maine, and two guys named Mike and Eric. I have never spoken with either Mike or Eric, having arranged this via email, so I have no idea at all how this is going to work out. However, they seem enthusiastic, and since at least one of them (I think Mike) is a father, there's a good chance they can relate.

Well, it goes very well. My publisher had been faxing samples of the book to the stations that wanted to do interviews, and these guys had actually read the samples. They'd also found the holy Sample Questions, and they even ask me one or two of them. Fairly early on, Mike mentions that while it seems like a lot of terrible things happen to me in the book, all I'm really doing is describing stuff every father goes through. I'm ecstatic. Finally, someone understands what the book is all about. They also ask me- since part of the title of my book is "A Year In the Life of an Amateur Father"- what constitutes a professional father. Wilt Chamberlain is the only example I can come up with.

After working a full day I end up at my parents' house for a few hours to celebrate Becky's official birthday, which was actually yesterday. This happens every year. Somehow their birthdays never seem to fall on a weekend, when we can plan a party and expect people to actually come, so we celebrate them twice. This year Becky's actual party is taking place on Sunday, which is also Father's Day. We hope to get a decent turnout, but since the invitations were my responsibility we have to rely on the ability of strangers to decipher my handwriting, which has a rune-like quality to it. "Party" in my script looks an awful lot like the ancient Celtic word for "Bug."

Thusday, June 17

A dreaded twofer interview morning, and it's only going to get worse from here on out. The first one is at 8:00 A.M., with Manchester, NH. I still haven't gotten the hang of waiting for someone to call, so I again break down and call them, which for some reason tends to surprise radio personalities who, I'm beginning to gather, dislike surprises. This interview is the only one I have this week with a station that's close enough for me to theoretically drive to within an hour or two, and this is bad, because it instantly reduces the amount of available banter I have at my disposal; specifically, I can't talk about the weather, because they're experiencing the exact same thing.

I also can't get away with complaining about being tired, at least not with anyone in New Hampshire. They seem sympathetic, at first, until they remember I'm in the same time zone. The good news, I'm starting to remember the stories that go with my Sample Questions, and since every station I encounter now has them at their disposal, I no longer sound surprised to hear them.

I am starting to realize that not everyone might share my sense of humor. One sample question is "what's the most horrifying sentence you ever heard from one of your children?" The answer is, from my son, "Daddy, I pooped in my bed!" This joke went pretty far with my Maine interview, but New Hampshire doesn't appreciate it one bit, so I have to come back quickly with the second most horrifying, which, from Becky, was "Daddy, Timmy fell out the window!" I rescue the show from dead air with the punch line (the window went to the front porch) and go on from there. On the whole, my New Hampshire interview goes pretty well, at least in comparison to the next one.

My 8:45 interview with Panama City, Florida is a good example of why one never knows what to expect with this sort of thing until it's far too late. After finishing my New Hampshire interview, I sit around the house watching the clock, smoking cigarettes, playing Tetris, and preparing to leap into the car at lightning speed to rocket to work as soon as the interview is done, so that I'm not too late. (My boss, who is absolutely the greatest boss in the entire world and quite possibly the entire solar system, allowed me to come in late most of the days of this week, and didn't once, ever, a single time, request that I mention specifically in any of my columns that she is the greatest boss in the entire world and quite possibly the entire solar system. I swear.) And I'm resolved by now to wait until THEY call ME. At 8:50, I still haven't heard from them, so I cave in yet again and call. This is when I find out I've been bumped for a half an hour. (They tried to call to tell me this, but they called my work number.) Of course, this is not feasible, because I really do have to get to work, so I tell them I'll have to call them back in forty-five minutes instead. This is acceptable.

So, breaking a few traffic laws and also the sound barrier, I race to work, run upstairs, grunt a hello or two, and then find a quiet, unoccupied office from which to telephone. The first thing I'm informed of when I get them on the line again is that they're running on a theme. The theme, in honor of Father's Day, is "things you used to hear from your father that you never thought you'd hear yourself say, but you now say all the time." I'm informed of this forty-five seconds before we go live, and of course I can't think of anything true to life at all. (I can barely remember my Sample Answers as it is.) The first thing that comes to mind is "don't put your arm in that part of the doggy." There are two problems with this. First, my father never said that, because we didn't have a dog. Second, it's not my line; it's Dave Barry's, and he LIVES in Florida, so I really really can't use it. So, my mind searching desperately for something, ANYthing, I make up one, which is "son, put down that gun."

"PLEASE don't say that on the air," they implore.

I don't remember what I actually end up saying. I do, however, remember that we hardly discuss my book at all, and I never get a chance to even mention where to buy it.

The afternoon brings an odd telephone call from my wife. Her request is that as soon as I come home I transport Salamore, the Slowly Fading gerbil, to the vet to get a shot. This is the precursor to possibly bringing the gerbil back in on Friday to the animal hospital to be euthanized should the shot be ineffective. I ask her to run through the costs associated with both appointments and then offer to euthanize the gerbil myself by tossing him into traffic. Debbie is somewhat less amused by this than Panama City was with my gun comment. She ends up bringing the gerbil in herself, and the gerbil ends up spending the night at the veterinarian so he can be put on a monitor, or something. (I picture a little tiny EKG monitor when I think of this.)

To be continued

© 2000, Gene Doucette