Weird Medicine Healthcare for the Rest of Us

Well, we finally emerged into the 21st century;  although we cannot play content that we made for SiriusXM, there’s nothing in our contract (at least the way I read it) that says we can’t do a separate podcast if we want to!  So I’m hoping to do a regularly scheduled podcast called “The Weird Medicine Addendum” (we’ve done this before, for long-term listeners, just never on iTunes).  These will be brand “spanking” (yuck yuck) new shows, made specifically for the podcast audience.  Maybe we’ll even get a sponsor or two, who knows?  

You can still use the same number: 347 POO HEAD which will be a pool from which we draw for both shows.  Hell, if your call is good enough, it may make it on both.

Let us know what you think!

your pal,

Dr Steve

Big A is one of our best friends on the show;  he does a lot of stuff for us behind the scenes and is a beloved regular of the Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez shows.  As you know, Big A hasn’t exactly placed his health in a position of high priority in recent years.  He has severe sleep apnea and would just “forget” to wear his mask, and his diet was so bad he eventually got up to somewhere in the neigborhood of 430 pounds.

Recently he got a health scare and spent some time in the hospital.  The fear, coupled with overwhelming well-wishes from 202/197 listeners and staff produced a life-changing event in Big A’s life.  He is now a total health nut and has lost nearly 100 pounds on his way to his goal weight of 235 lbs.

All this would be wonderful, except recently Big A was found to be anemic.   This could be caused by a number of things, but it can’t be ignored.   The workup will include upper endoscopy, lower endoscopy, and a ton of blood work.   Unfortunately for Big A, his insurance only covers stuff that happens in the hospital, and covers nothing that is done as an outpatient.

Big A has a full-time job, and he works hard driving a Taxi, but he does not have the kind of money that is required to complete a multi-thousand-dollar workup.   To make matters worse, he is helping to take care of a sick family member pretty much full-time and really can’t get a second job.   A classic case of a guy who works hard, does all the right things, and still can’t afford the healthcare he needs.

We previously raised some money for Big A and it went to good use;  bloodwork, a stroboscopic laryngoscopy, and some doctor visits.  We also arranged to get him a sleep study and a cpap mask (which he is now using!)   I think it’s a good time to raise some money again to help defray the cost of Big A’s medical bills.

If you’d like to donate $1 or $1000, click the button below.   Every penny will go to Big A’s medical expenses.

Thanks again, 202/197 listeners are the best.

your pal,

Steve

The February 12th Weird Medicine will be a special show for Valentine’s Day.  Replacing PA John, Chest Pain Rob, Jefferson the Lawyer and Double Vasectomy Todd will be a panel of beauties including “Triple H (She’s High, Hot, and a Hellovalot!),  PA Jill (from WM Live III and the WM Addendums (Addendae? ugh)), hot Doctor Ashley, and perhaps a surprise guest.   The hook is that they will be answering questions for guys about women in general that guys want to ask women but never get to because of the crappy communication we have between the sexes.   Questions like “how come you guys won’t let us play with your boobs whenever we want?” and “why don’t you like <insert disgusting act here>?”   Although the boys will be in the studio audience grilling the ladies, we need your input, too!   So pick up the phone and call 347 POO HEAD (347 766 4323) or 423 DIE TUTI (423 343 8884) and ask a question!  If we like it, we’ll use it on the air.  Just preface your question thusly: “This question is for the panel of <insert awful euphemism for women here>…”    BE FUNNY!  Or at least be interesting.   Just being grotesque or evil will work maybe for the first question or two, but it’ll get old fast.

I’m still working on my debriefing of the Oct 16th show.  It’s taking longer than I thought;  it was an emotionally difficult show, and writing it up is proving to be similarly difficult.

Don’t forget to check out the Weird Medicine store at CafePress.   New for this season is this Bristol Stool Scale Mug:

Check out your stool with your morning cup of coffee! The Weird Medicine Bristol Stool Scale mug makes a great holiday gift!

Your pal,

Dr Steve

Most regular listeners of Weird Medicine know that PA John and the rest of the WM team are not able to make it to NYC this year for the live show.  It’s rough…everyone has obligations and it’s very expensive to make this trip.  Sirius has consistently declined to help out with expenses and I can’t ask 4 other guys to spend their hard-earned $$$ on a Quixotic adventure that is basically my dream, not theirs.    So Tacie and I are going up by ourselves.

This leaves a huge void for me.   John obviously can field medical questions while I’m looking stuff up and looking for the next call to take.   Todd and Rob play the part of the audience, asking questions that they think someone listening might ask.  Jefferson gives great legal advice and is a truly funny person.   I couldn’t conceive of doing this alone, so I asked the only person I could think of that could take the place of 4 men…the great and inimitable Ron Bennington.

Ron has had a long history with Weird Medicine behind the scenes.  When we were first practicing for the Oct 2007 live show, he listened to demos that we made and critiqued them for us.  The positive feedback we got was the only thing that gave us the confidence to go to NYC and “put on a show” in the O&A XM studios.    We’re huge fans of Mr Bennington, and I’ve wanted to try to do a project with him for years. I was very happy and honored that he accepted my invitation to co-host Weird Medicine this year.

I wasn’t nervous about this show until the great Bobby Kelly admitted he was intimidated by Ronnie’s presence. I talked to him the other night on Brian Smith’s “Radio Freaks” show and he said “If I was hosting a show and Ron Bennington was my co-host, I JUST WOULDN’T SHOW UP.”   Thanks, Bob, now I’m crapping my pants.

Anyway, tune in;  if I s#!& the bed, it should be epic.  If I don’t, it should be a great show.  Either way it will be entertaining.   Erock is working on getting us a “very special” guest for the second hour, too, so “stay tuned” (yeccch).

We’ll be back to regular Weird Medicine shows in November (we’ll run a “Most Mediocre of…” the week after the live show so I can recuperate).   Our contract is up for negotiations, so I’m hoping we can work in some Nashville live shows, too.

your pal,

Steve

I’ve been hinting around that there is “Big” news involving the midnight eastern time slot and we can finally announce it. Big Kev’s Geek Stuff is not only returning to Sirius/XM radio, but will be sharing the midnight eastern timeslot with Weird Medicine.

The story behind this goes back to October 2007.  Big Kev and Weird Medicine were the first “pest radio” shows on the Saturday Night Virus.  If you recall, Gregg “Opie” Hughes made an announcement that any “pests” who had a good idea for a show should let him know…they were willing to put unique shows on the air.   I immediately called and pitched “Weird Medicine”, and somewhere in there Big Kev did the same for his “Geek Stuff”, which was already popular on the internet.  October 13, 2007 made history as Kev did 90 minutes and we followed him with another 90 minutes of our show.  Both shows exceeded expectations and eventually we settled into doing regular shows for XM, for awhile at 7pm, then at 5pm, but we were always paired with BKGS.   Once Sirius got into the picture and basically killed the  SNV (remember, The Lazlow Show, Black Phillip, Uninformed with Bill Burr, and Bob Kelly’s “Eat My Ass”?  All gone, sadly) Big Kev’s show was one of the fallen.  

After 3 years of doing shows for Sirius/XM, a lot of changes have occurred…PA John and his wife PA Jill had a baby,  Double Vasectomy Todd had a family tragedy that has rearranged his live forever, Jefferson’s law practice has heated up, Chest Pain Rob started having chest pains (hence the name), and I was working three jobs (two of them for free) and trying to hold down two radio shows (both of them for free).   Something had to give, and our recording schedule for Weird Medicine was one of those things.   We tried dropping down to recording two shows once a month, but that meant running replays twice a month and people were getting peeved at all the repeated content.  So we went to a “two-shows-every-three-weeks” format so we’re doing two-on and one-off right now;  even though 67% of the time we’re running new shows, that one replay hurts us.

I started thinking of things we could do and since we’d been paired with Big Kev since the inception of our show, BKGS made the most sense.  Now, in the background, Kevin had been agitating to get back on Sirius XM for some time, so I can’t take full or even partial credit for this, but I did call him and ask if he’d be interested in sharing the time slot with us so we could both keep our feet in the door in case an opportunity presented itself (like, say, getting paid even a LITTLE bit for doing our shows) in the future.   His reaction was positive, so we started lobbying Sirius XM from our side to add Big Kev and his group to the lineup.   What was done from his side, I can’t speak to.

By the way, this was last DECEMBER when all this started.   If you ever wondered if we’re lying about how slow things happen at Sirius XM, here’s a great example.  

Anyway, it’s a reality now, and I see great things in this for everyone:

1) NO MORE REPLAYS at Midnight
       Should be all-new content except on major holidays or if we have a kick-ass best-of to run for a specific reason.

2) MORE NEW BITS
      Since we’ll have more time to prepare, there should be more interesting content on Weird Medicine.  We already have approval for a couple of interesting bits with more to come.

3) BIG KEV WILL KICK THE GEEK SHOW ON 101’s ASS
     Of course 101×2=202 so Big Kev’s geek show should be twice as good as the one on 101.   Big Kev is twice their size, too.   I bet his sleep apnea is twice as bad as theirs, as well.   For 202/197 loyalists, this should be a victory.  If you don’t care about stuff like that (and good for you) then you should enjoy hearing about new movies and television shows that you’d never hear about from the mainstream media.

I can think of other reasons, but I’ve squandered enough bandwidth on this.   We are very happy to share the Midnight Eastern timeslot with Big Kev’s Geek Stuff and hope you all will enjoy it as much as we will.   Will it cause confusion and consternation, both to Big Kev fans and Weird Medicine listeners?  Maybe.  I’m hoping people tuning in to hear Big Kev will give Weird Medicine a listen and vice versa.   We are very, very different shows as far as content is concerned, but very similar in sensibility and “fit” with the channel.

Questions, comments?  Call our voicemail at 423 343 8884, or leave a comment on our log. 

your pal,

Dr Steve

We have two new shows “in the can” and they’ll play May 8th and May 15th. We’re going to do two more shows in two weeks to carry us through vacation season so we won’t have 2-3 weeks of reruns as we did recently. We cover Dave McDonald’s costochondritis, a guy who can’t smell farts, herpes, herpes, herpes, and a guy who got gutshot with a .22 cal pistol and not only lived to tell the tale, but is driving around, calling us wondering what he should do about it!

I had to kill the Weird Medicine Addendum…if we did it before we recorded “Weird Medicine”, it ruined the spontaneity if we used a call twice. If we tried to do it after the show recording, we were too Weird Medicined out to make it good. Perhaps John or Todd and I will just sit down one day and pound out a decent podcast for our RSS feed.

The May 15th show features the world premiere of a song Fred Vultee and I wrote many years ago. It is my tribute to our trucker fans and I’ll post it here for download (assuming anyone wants it) once it has aired. Until then, here’s a Ron Bennington Ringtone for your cell phone: ringtone – ronnie b intro

Have a great week and thanks for listening! Check your stupid lumps for nuts, quit smoking, get off your asses and get some exercise!

your pal,

dr steve

Do I need to post pics of the kid with 20 toes?  I’ve thought about making this site a bit more interesting by posting actual “Weird” medicine stories.  Then I think about how much work that would take and I get lazy.  Let me know what you think.   Silicone penis guy would definitely make the cut, as would maggots-between-scalp-and-skull guy.   Do we really need another Ripley’s Believe it or Puke?   I’ll do it if you think it’s necessary.

Here’s the newest Weird Medicine Addendum;  we kind of got carried away.   A 10 minute podcast that’s 21 minutes long?  Insane!  We finally figured out that featuring materal on the addendum that’s going to be on the regular show is a mistake.  everyone gets confused and looks around the room going “didn’t we cover this already?”  YES!  FIVE MINUTES AGO WHEN WE RECORDED THE PODCAST, YOU DOLTS!  But anyway, that’s just how it is.  The reactions to things are much more spontaneous on the addendum than the second time I bring it up on the “real” show.

So from now on, the addendum will be TOTALLY new material, not heard or rehashed on the air.   Stay tuned.

We may be doing a live show April 24th from Nashville.  More on this as it develops.

As always, don’t forget the Weird Medicine merchandise store, or the Weird Medicine Drug Store (link at https://www.doctorsteve.com).

Check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off your asses and get some exercise and we’ll see you soon for the next edition of ‘Weird Medicine”!

your pal,

Dr Steve

PS: the “Weird Medicine Addendum” is always posted in CD Quality sound, rather than that crappy 64kbps MP3 audio some people use. 🙂