We did a lot of touristy NewYork-y stuff over the next 24 hours; took the Staten Island Ferry with Big A, did the Empire State Building, ate at the Carnegie Deli, and hit the Comedy Cellar for the early show.
Weirdly, two most attractive women who we met at the Ron and Fez show also “coincidentally” showed up at the Cellar while we were eating. In a city of millions of people, it was either the most amazing synchronicity, or it was fate (or they were stalking Double Vasectomy Todd, the only single guy in the group).
Saturday night was show night and we arrived at 1221 6th Ave in plenty of time to get ready. Security in the building is very efficient and very effective. Of course none of us were on the list. All of our guests were magically on the list, but apparently no one thought to add the host and his minions to the “ok to come up” ledger. I started to panic while the minutes ticked away and no one came to rescue us. Erock told me to chill out, that he’d be there in a minute and fix things. I figured at worst if we shit the bed on the show I could blame it on whoever it was that forgot that we were doing a show that night. I also realized that if we weren’t ready to do the show by 8pm, getting in at 7pm wouldn’t really help much. Eventually we got upstairs.
The next thing security did was kick out all our interns. We need 3-4 people to run this dumb show behind the scenes: a producer to work the board in the studio, one to work the master control board, one to call screen, and hopefully another to do anything else that needs doing. For whatever reason, the security guy on the 36th floor decided Angry Matt and his fellow interns didn’t need to be up there that night and kicked them out. Erock was going to have to do the job of 3 people if we were going to have a show that night. My record of zero technical difficulties on-air was in serious jeopardy. Something I can say about Erock right here and now: he was unflappable. As much crap as he gets on O&A on a daily basis, he was totally professional and if this whole situation bothered him he never let it show. Instead he went into problem solving mode and decided to remote everything from the master control room. Intern Paul got to stay and he’d phone screen and we’d wing the rest. In the end, Erik somehow got the interns back (they just magically reappeared 5 minutes before showtime) and all was well.
9-10pm: A tribute to Barry the Blade, our late “Trucker Hygiene Correspondent” and a section on trucker doody and trucker health. We took a bunch of phone calls but as usual the phones were SLAMMED and there were way more great calls on the board than we could ever hope to get on the air. I was very impressed at how Rob, Jefferson, and Double Vasectomy Todd fell right into the rhythm of things without showing any nerves at all. Is it just me that gets adrenaline pumping and says dumb things and acts nervous when put in a strange situation? I was also very happy that PA John has fully taken on the mantle of cohost…he did an amazing job of keeping things moving.
10-10:30 My first true “celebrity interview”, though we’d done Victoria Zdrok on the last live show, I thought this one would be the real deal. I’d confirmed 3 times with Vos, and he’d even given me his hotel room number in Vegas. The day before the show I confirmed with him again and got back “i’ll be there, looking forward to it”. 10pm rolls around, and I get this from the control room through my headset: “VOS ISN’T ANSWERING ANY OF THESE NUMBERS YOU GAVE US!” It was a perfect Vos moment for me, so we went to the next guy on the list who was a Suboxone user and had successfully beaten narcotic addiction with it. The whole point of the thing was that I was going to have someone (Vos) on first who kicked drugs the “old school” way through cold-turkey and rehab, and someone else following him who had done it the “new school” way with Suboxone. The concept I was trying to get across is that there are lots of ways to skin a cat and if these guys could do it, perhaps it would encourage someone else to kick the habit as well. We then had a guy (MilkmanDan) who told me he blamed doctors for the glut of prescription drugs being abused out there but we got off on another subject. The whole half-hour didn’t go as I expected, but we got some experience in improvisation and I think it turned out pretty interesting and entertaining anyway. This whole thing led up to my favorite momement of the whole show:
10:30-11
My first celebrity “hang up”! We were in commercial when Erik notified me that Vos was now on the phone. We all debated what to do with him, tell him to go F himself or just have him on and do the interview…I decided to do a little of both. While I wanted to be all miffed at Vos for blowing us off, the truth of the matter is that we’re a dinky show and he has a real career and I was glad he remembered us at all. In addition, he does have a story to tell about getting off drugs and I’m very proud of him for being drug-free for over 20 years. So we went to him right after the break, got him to talk a little bit about his story, patted him on the back for doing such a great job kicking dope, and then hung up on him in the middle of him giving out his plugs. I learned this trick from Opie: if you just hang up on someone, you get silence. But if you hang up on them and then click on the open hotline number, you get a dial tone. The sound of the person being cut off and followed by a dial tone is hilarious. Opie is a genius and a great teacher.
11-11:30
Somewhere in there we discussed the Penis Lengthening Challenge; MJ Carlesi helped Double Vasectomy Todd to lose 80 lbs and gain 2 3/4 inches of penis length. He didn’t really “gain” it as much as “reclaim” it, but it was pretty astounding.
Next we had Big A in the studio to talk about his health issues; Andrew has a job and has health insurance and still can’t afford health care. Thanks to Jon Gray at caseofthemondays.net Big A now has a BiPAP machine for his awful sleep apnea syndrome. He has a long way to go but is at least back in the health care system thanks to the listeners of Weird Medicine who have donated to his and Pat from Moonachie’s health care fund.
Big A next got diagnosed by a PhD Speech Pathologist; Kris G believes he has “spasmodic dysphonia”, a theory we will try to prove or disprove over the next few months if we can find a neurologist who is interested in speech problems who will treat him for free.
Next we had the lovely and funny Heather Height whose show “HateSpeechRadio” airs on BPSRadio.com. She’s a comic-in-training, too, and also works at an adult gift shop. She brought in some Cawk Pillz (which Double Vas Todd immediately downed) and a really unusual sexual device. Behind the scenes we got to meet her betrothed, David Harris, and the owner of BPS Radio, Brian Smith. Always cool to make new friends. It’s also funny that they had no problem getting into the studio but the interns who work there got kicked out.
11:30-12
The wheels almost fell of the cart when Foundry Music Jeff came in to talk about health care reform. He’s been our correspondent on health care issues since Episode 3 and we were supposed to talk about “Death Panels” and what (if anything) can be done to cover everyone in this country. Instead, Jeff decided to piss off half of the country by advocating that insurers save money for “essential” services by eliminating coverage for things with “unproven” efficacy, like rape counseling. Tacie was out in the hallway pushing Heather back into the studio to respond to this, and no one heard another word Jeff said. He may have had the most reasoned argument in the world and the cure for cancer, but after the inflammatory comments (including “Americans love to be sick”) everyone seemed to get bogged down in a couple of points and we never got any further. One caller said Jeff should be shot with a “shit shotgun” (which was a pretty good line as long as we’re only talking metaphorically) and before we knew it the show was over.
Weird Medicine Episode IV: A New Hope was history.
Thanks go out to everyone who helped us with this show, especially my lovely wife Tacie who researches topics on the fly for me so I can sound like a genius on the air. We absolutely loved NYC and can’t wait to come back again next year. Until then, there may be some opportunities for live Weird Medicine shows, either from the SiriusXM studios in Nashville, or by installing an ISDN line in the local studio we broadcast from now. More on that later.
Your pal,
Steve
PS: Don’t forget your “Weird Medicine” merchandise! All of our crap is designed to elicit a “WTF is this?” response at your next “White Elephant” gift exchange. Check it out at http://www.cafepress.com/weirdmedicine
PPS: We’ll be on with brand new shows for the next three weeks at 11:59pm Saturday and Sunday nights. Don’t miss the holiday spectacular on Dec 19th where PA John chases us all out of the studio with his awful gassers. We specialize in grown-up comedy, don’t we?
