Beating Up the Radio Part Four

GenePool Humor

Beating Up the Radio, Part Four

Friday, June 18

This is the day I've been most worried about. About mid-week I knew I was looking at a four interview day, because this is the last good radio day before Father's Day (weekend radio is usually somewhat lethargic.) Some time over the course of Thursday afternoon I ended up agreeing to two additional interviews, possibly due to a caffeine deficiency, so I face this morning knowing this is going to in all likelihood be an exceptionally long day. Worse, my final interview is supposed to be an hour long.

My first one is with Jacksonville, Florida, at 7:10 A.M. Being as exceptionally detail-oriented as you must realize I am, I'd love to provide details on this interview, but they're all starting to blur together in my mind. I'm pretty sure this went well, since I don't remember anything about it at all.

Also, the second interview is memorable enough all by itself. I'd been having trouble sleeping just thinking about it.

Here's the scenario. Some time around the middle of the week I received a phone call from an exceptionally cheerful, detail-oriented person named Mike. Mike was a very charming person who immediately put me at ease and told me exactly how much he wanted me to be on this radio show, and he did such a convincing job of it he could have probably sold me life insurance and a used car without missing a beat. Mike HAd to be good at this because the show he was trying to talk me into making a vocal appearance on was Daybreak America on the Catholic Family Radio Network.

"It's NOT what you think," Mike insisted. "We're VERY laid back. Can I show you some mutual funds projections?"

This really was something I couldn't say no to. Daybreak America is simulcast daily in L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Denver, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and the internet. I can't pass up this kind of exposure, even if it results in my being excommunicated for making a bad Christ joke.

In an effort to put me more at ease Mike suggested I go to their web site and examine the Catholic Family Radio Network for myself. This only made things worse. See, in addition to writing these sparkling little humor columns, I also write a column about skepticism, and, well, just a quick perusal of the CFRN's web site was enough to give me material for three new columns. Here I was, one week into my first professional book tour, and I'd already sold out.

I called my publisher about them and said something like "PLEASE tell me they don't know I'm a skeptic."

"Well, there's a link to your website at guestfinder.com, and that's where they found you so..."

"So I better be ready to argue the Scopes trial, right?"

My publisher insisted that they would not have given my number out if Mike had not assured them that I was not there to discuss religion, and also that Mike gave them a great deal on a set of American Revolution commemorative plates.

So I'd sat around every night this week thinking of decent responses to questions like "what do you think about your children learning evolution in school?" and "we hear you're Satan; care to comment?"

By the time 8:00 A.M. rolls around I'm, well, I'm too tired to be in a panic, but I am worried.

I call the station and get put on hold, which is okay because I get to hear what they talk about while I'm on hold. It's the news. I still half-expect to hear "this just in; in an exclusive interview, Jesus announced he's on his way, so clean up that kitchen." But it's a very benign newscast.

Then they start the music. I'm not sure how I feel about their choice for introductory music. I recognize the song, which is more than I think a lot of people can say, but then a lot of people didn't grow up memorizing every line from every album Pink Floyd ever produced.

Yes, that's right. The Catholic Family Radio Network uses Pink Floyd in their morning show. Specifically, they use a song called "Run Like Hell." Fortunately, they don't ever get to any of the lyrics, which is good, because they include lines like "'...cuz if they catch you in the back seat trying to pick her locks/ they're gonna send you back to mother in a cardboard box." I can take this one of two ways. Either they are VERY laid back and they never bothered to listen to the words of this song, or they have listened to the words and I'm in VERY big trouble.

It turns out they really are very laid back. In fact, this is by far the best interview I end up giving this week. I even get away with a resurrection joke.

My next interview is with West Virginia, at 9:30 A.M. This is a mercifully brief interview that goes fairly well except that, again, I spend a lot of time trying to explain exactly what the book is about. I'm starting to think it might be a good idea to insist on speaking only to fellow parents when I do these interviews.

The 10:30 A.M. interview is a last-minute affair. Some time on Thursday afternoon I got a phone call from a woman named Eddy who works as a DJ for a radio station in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We booked the interview, I jotted down the info, and that was that. A couple of hours later I got another call from Grand Rapids, and since I didn't bother to write down the call letters of Eddy's station, I proceeded to tell the fellow who called that I already arranged everything with Eddy. He said that, yes, while he does know Eddy quite well, she currently works for a different radio station in Grand Rapids, and he was thinking of doing a 3:30 P.M. interview, if that's all right.

Anyhow, the interview with Eddy doesn't go that well, and it's not even her fault. I call the station and listen in as she finishes up with the previous caller, who is a medical expert of some sort and who is very concerned with the amount of sun block we human beings apply to ourselves in the summer. It is a very serious phone call, very informative, and was an immediate death-knell for any chance I might have had to sound interesting and funny. As it is, being on my fourth interview in five hours, I'm pretty spent. I try pretty much every punchline I have in response to Eddy's questions and don't get even a giggle from her.

I redeem myself with the Michigan audience with the 3.30 P.M. interview. In the somewhat large time span between the two calls I had eaten food and imbibed a tremendous amount of coffee, so I am able to submit a very decent performance that is also aided by the fact that this time the woman interviewing me has children of her own. And she laughs at everything I say, which is what I look for in most women.

At 4:00 P.M. I get a phone call from Gainesville, Florida. This is the station that wants to talk with me for an entire hour. I discover I've been done in by God and the U.S. Senate. Apparently, the bill to post the Ten Commandments in public schools as a deterrent to school shootings (it's well documented that kids who shoot other kids do so only because they are unaware God says not to) is important enough to command my time slot. I might have been upset had this been my only interview, but as it is, I think this is great news. My one hour interview was going to probably end up being one hour of me saying "uhhhhhh....."

Saturday, June 19

Finally, having made it through one of the most mentally draining weeks of my entire life, I reach Saturday having faced up to every last interview except one. It is a day for relaxation, for catching up on some well-deserved sleep, for getting to know my family again, for drinking extensively, and for doing as little as is absolutely possible.

I don't get to do any of this.

I rarely get to mention this, but my wife has siblings. In particular, she has an older sister named Dawn. Dawn lives on the West coast with her husband, Michael, her sons, Danny and Christopher, and her daughter, Marissa. Danny and Christopher are teenagers, but Marissa is a year younger than Becky. They don't get many opportunities to make it to the East coast, so Becky, Tim and Marissa have never really had a chance to spend any time together. Complicating matters is Deb's mom, who visits us routinely and who lives near Marissa. She is the information conduit in this chain, and she provides Becky with ample information about Marissa and vice versa. By now both children think the other child is the Greatest Kid on the Planet.

When we received word that Dawn and company would be able to come up to Boston for a one day visit, Deb took one look at our apartment and calculated the likelihood we would be able to have guests in it. The conclusion was that the only guests we should have are government officials determining whether we qualify for disaster relief. Instead, Deb invited them to meet us at my parents' home on Cape Cod.

This sounded like an awfully sane solution. We go to the Cape all the time, there are beds there, toys, beaches with sand, miniature golf courses, a pool table, etc. But Becky's birthday party is scheduled to begin at 1:30 P.M. on Sunday at a movie theater that is nowhere near Cape Cod so, to pull this off, we need to drive down there early on Saturday morning-- hopefully arriving before Dawn and Mike-- spend the day showing them around and feeding them and all that, waiting until 8:35 P.M. so that I can speak to a radio station in San Antonio, then drive back to Cambridge again.

But I'm not worried about all of this as much as I am worried about the possibility that Marissa or Becky will discover that the other child is NOT the Greatest Kid on the Planet. Becky has literally not opened her mouth for a week without mentioning Marissa. Mid-week, she purchased (well, with our money,) a birthday present for Marissa because she found out she'd missed Marissa's birthday. Becky and Tim actually drove down to the Cape with my parents on Friday night so as to simplify our trip down on Saturday morning, and neither child went to sleep until after 11:00 P.M. because they were just too excited. (The waves of excitement emanating from Becky actually affected her brother.) When both of them are operating on very little sleep, frankly, I'M a little afraid of them. As I understand it, Marissa is comparatively petite (Becky and Tim aren't overweight; they're perfectly proportioned for children two years older than they actually are,) so if she plays as hard with them as they play with one another, they might just do her actual harm. "Please don't break cousin Marissa," I implored them.

Me and Deb arrive at the Cape house at around 10:15 A.M., about twenty minutes before Dawn, Michael, Christopher, and Marissa. (Mike had directions from me to work off of, so naturally, he gets completely lost.) Marissa, Becky, and Tim immediately begin playing in such a way as to suggest they've known one another personally for years. I do my part as host, dragging Mike and Chris into the basement to play pool with me (nobody in my family wants to any more) for the better part of the morning. Later, after lunch, we discover that a trip to the beach is necessary, which is a bit of a problem as I don't know how to get to a beach. Granted, my parents have owned this house for a couple of years, but I'm just not a beach person, so I don't go there. Nonetheless, with my father's help, we do locate the ocean, and the kids frolic madly in the waves.

Frolic madly is actually a very apt description for how their entire day goes. Marissa seems to be gifted with the same unimaginably deep energy source that our kids have. After the beach we show them miniature golf, which Tim loves because it gives him an excuse to hit strangers with hard round objects and not get into too much trouble for it.

In short, it's an exhausting day that comes off pretty much without a hitch, right up until it's time for my interview.

I'd known for a few days that I would have to conduct the San Antonio interview from the Cape rather than from home, and I'd called the person who arranged the interview to give her the number there. I'd also gotten the on-air number in case there were any other last-minute changes. I leave it up to her to convey this information to the appropriate parties, which she evidently does not do.

At 8:38 P.M., having waited patiently for the phone to ring for a full three minutes (it seems longer) I finally call them. The fellow I speak to asks me where I've been; he's apparently called my home and work number twice to let me know they want to do the interview a half-hour earlier. Of course, I wasn't there to hear either message. I am now no longer interested in being even a tiny bit polite, so I ask him how long it will take him to get me on the air, because dammit, it's not MY fault they don't know enough to call the right number. He says he'll call me back in ten minutes.

Miraculously, he does. I have a short little chat on-air about the book which goes pretty well seeing as how by now, I no longer really care any more; I just want to drive home and go to bed.

Following the interview I do exactly half of that. We drive home, encountering hardly any traffic (if you have ever driven from Cape Cod to Boston, you understand this is a miracle,) arriving at around 10:00 P.M.

Once home I check the answering machine message and find, reassuringly, two messages from the San Antonio guy who wanted to reschedule. I also find another message from a man in Alabama. He'd contacted me by email mid-week, asking if I could do an interview Saturday night. Since I was pretty sure I'd be on the road when he wanted to talk, I told him I'd get back to him. I never DID get back to him, so he had called. I phoned the number he left and got HIS answering machine. Not wanting to burn any bridges-- even ones that lead to Alabama-- I leave an apologetic message saying I'd be glad to do the interview another time.

At 11:30 P.M., when I should, by all rights, be in bed, the phone rings. It's Alabama. He still wants the interview; would 12:15 be all right for me? (They're on Central time, so this doesn't sound quite as insane on his end of the phone.) I figure, what the hell. In one week I've gone from being genuinely terrified of speaking on the radio to being so nonchalant that I'm willing to talk whenever without fear of screwing up. Better, I don't even care any more if I do screw up. To emphasize this point (and to get me in the right mood) I hang up and have a swig of Southern Comfort to prepare for what I sincerely hope is my last interview of the week.

The phone rings punctually at 12:15 A.M., and I'm put straight through to the DJs, who are busy talking with someone else on the air. As I think I've mentioned before, when you wait to talk on the radio you get to hear what's being broadcast before you're introduced. At this moment the hosts are talking to a man who they've evidently spoken to many times before. He brings up what is evidently a hot subject in Alabama, namely the frequency in which black people (PLEASE don't make me say "persons of color") get traffic tickets in contrast to white people. Their caller commits two cardinal sins at the same time: he makes a joke. The joke is, first, an exceptionally racist one, and second and possibly worse, it's not even funny. (I don't care for racist jokes one way or another, but my God, at least make sure they're funny.) My first thought is, what have I gotten into? I drink more Southern Comfort.

Thankfully, as soon as the hosts (who did give him a polite laugh for his joke) hang up with him they apologize to their listening audience, saying "We did not say that, our producer did not say that, and our guest did not say that." They suggest hate mail should really be directed to the person who did say that.

These guys turn out to be a lot of fun. I ultimately benefit from coming on right after an off-color not-even-funny joke, since now every thing I say is a show-saver for them. Also, one of them has kids, which is the first ingredient to a successful interview.

One question they ask, which is not on my list of things to ask me (and thank goodness for that) is, if I had a choice between working full time and writing at night, or writing full time, which would I choose?

My answer surprises them, and we end up spending the bulk of the interview discussing it, because I tell them I'd rather work full time. Even after facing a week which would have gone much more efficiently, I think, if I hadn't had to go to work, I'd rather do things this way. I told them I greatly prefer being able to go out every day and interact with the world. How else can I write about it if I don't experience it?

Plus, if my life got easier, I'd have nothing to say in these columns. And wouldn't that be a shame?

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