Thursday, December 15, 2005

The King is Dead! Long Live the King!

Tomorrow, Friday 12/16, is Howard's final show on terrestrial radio! Oh YEAH! On to Sirius!

I started listening to Howard back in '82 (maybe '83) on WNBC when he was doing the Gay Lone Ranger bits. (Haw haw!) He was funny then and he's funny now. Undoubtedly, much of my humor was shaped by 23 years of Stern, and my daily talk is peppered with quotes from the show (everybody loves when Psaur and I do our Jackie impressions!)

These last few weeks of shows have been tremendous, especially this morning's when Jackie Martling came in. As great as Artie is, the Jackie presence is the funniest of all. Not that Jackie himself was the best part of the show, but the Jackie laugh, and the Jackie puppet, and all the Jackie impressions (especially that kid who says, "I'm Jackie the drunk man...") are perpetually hilarious!

All Hail the King of All Media. In the immortal words of Grampa Al, "Fuck the FCC...fuck 'em!"

Oh, and f-jackie! See you on the other side!

2 comments:

Brian Kunath said...

Listened to part of the final broadcast today. I was kinda hoping they'd end it in the studio.

The first time I saw Stern was on Letterman in like '83. I was so used to seeing Dave manhandle guests that I was shocked when this tall skinny dude seemed to turn the tables.

We didn't get his show in Syracuse, so I had to wait for college, when people like Paul and Tom brought up audio tapes of his show. There was also the short-lived Channel 9 show.

I finally got to hear him live in NC. He was hilarious. So funny that people still say that his humour is either "crude and rude," "shocking" or based on the tension between his content and what the FCC deems as legal or acceptable. To me, he's just very smart, very honest and very funny. The proof is that a million rip-offs have come around trying to outdo his raunch and attitude, and all have failed because they lacked the wit behind it all.

But I agree with you: There should be more stop signs on Millford Avenue.

psaur said...

Howard never got around to playing Billy West's recorded message, but it may be posted at www.billywest.com (or at least BW said he would). That's a cool site--he posts there a lot, and seems to respond to almost every post topic...

I wish they had given Jokie more time on Thursday. My favorite Jackie story didn't come from the show, but was one he told when they were all discussing Jackie's casual attitude toward toileting privacy.

Jackie was at a bar on Long Island which had its men's room toilet out in the open, without a stall. Whereas most guys would never dream of using it for anything other than a piss, Jackie, of course, had no problem with dropping a deuce in it amidst a parade of bag-draining drunks.

So this one time, a guy at the urinal, hammered out of his skull, takes a long look at Jokeman pooping away without a care. Finally, the guy says, "Man... in all the years I been coming to this bar, I seen two people take a dump on that toilet--and both of them was you."