- I get up around 8-ish, with Jen having let the dogs out already, apparently. I take a whiz then head to my office to check email and the board and start pulling stuff together for the radio show. Jen wakes up and says g’morning, but I’m knee-deep in pulling music for the show. Mewes calls to ask if Jen wants any coffee-bean. He’s babysitting his friend’s Bulldog, Charles, and wants to know if he can bring the mutt by. Gail intercoms up to let us know she and Byron are heading up to Big Bear to check on their place.
- I finally emerge from my office and head upstairs, where Harley and Reyna are watching Mulder adjusting to Charles out on the deck. We throw the pink bone for Mulder, and Charles chases it too. When we throw it in the pool, Mulder dives in after it, leaving the heavy-breathing Charles flummoxed. For the next half hour, we conspire different ways to get Charles to jump into the pool as well, including Mewes going in in his underwear, trying to lure Charles into following. Nothing works. Jen joins us, and we move some patio furniture around before I go downstairs to throw on my workout gear and hit the treadmill.
- I do an hour on the treadmill, watching “Deadwood”. When I’m done, I take a shower and go upstairs to fix some chicken salad. I bring my grub downstairs and suck it down while laying on the bed, playing UB, and watching some TiVo with the couch-riding Jen.
- While my IM’s open, I see Lynch pop up and ask him if he wants to do the radio show tonight. He’s into it, so I tell him to be at the house around 9:30. Edgar Wright calls soon after to let me know he’s in town. I ask him if he wants to come by the radio show, and he’s into it, too. Alice Morning Show producer Matty Staudt calls to tell me he’s on the 405 and heading to the room we booked for him at the Renaissance. I tell him I’ll pick him up there in a few.
- I swing over to the Renaissance to pick up Matt. After I grab some gas, we go to my place. I give him the tour, then we hit the living room and start mapping out the show a bit, pulling news stories and listing the order of the music I’ve put together.
- Around 7-ish a dressed-up Jen and Harley show up, signaling our departure. I leave Matty upstairs and head over to an engagement party for Harley Quinn creator Paul Dini and his fiance’ Misty Lee, held at “Batman: The Animated Series” producer Allan Burnett’s house. We chill for an hour, before heading back home, where we find Brian Lynch waiting outside.
- Brian and Matt chat about the show, and I burn some cd’s with all the intro music I wanna use for coming back from commercials. Jen puts Harley to sleep on our couch and I kiss her g’night before going upstairs to collect the guys. After Jen wishes me good luck, I kiss her and head over to the Wilshire Blvd. KLSX studios. En route, we hit In&Out and Carl’s Jr. for some pre-show grub.
- We get to the studio and Mike meets us in the lobby. Mike’s gonna be working the phones for us. He shows us into the studio, when Matty suddenly realizes he didn’t bring any headphones. Oddly enough, headphones turn out to be a precious commodity at a radio station: there are none to be found. Mike and our board operator for the night, Dick, scrounge up enough cans for me, Bri, Mewes and Matt, as well as a pair for our eventual guest, Edgar. I’m going over all the stories we’ve pulled when Mewes shows up. Matt’s giving Mewes the overview of the show when Dick tells us the cd’s I burned won’t play. I tell him they’re MP3′s, which is problematic, as the studio doesn’t have a computer to play them on. Inexplicably, I’m thrown by this, because I’m not into any of the intro music Matty’s pulled. But there’s no time to fix the problem, as Dick is giving us the wave, indicating it’s time to go on the air.
- We have a haphazard start to the show, but by the second hour, we’re in a good place with the whole affair.
I discover that I don’t like being the front-man of a radio show. I liked my three days on Alice because it was Sarah’s show, and she got to steer it, while I simply followed her lead and got to chime in with the funny. But I find myself in the Sarah role with Brian taking the role I was more comfortable inhabiting: that of sidekick. Riding shotgun, I discover, is way easier – because all you have to do is tag-up on the leader. If you go back and listen to the Alice stuff, that’s all I did for three days. And that’s a lot more fun for me.
Mind you, I don’t want to take anything away from Brian or Mewes, who were great and did what they were supposed to do. But I learn that I’d rather be a guest or second banana.
(It’s really not that different than the Q&A’s: in that situation, the audience is in charge, and I’m just tagging up on what they say, in the form of story-telling.)
If I were to do the radio thing again in the future, I’d wanna be paired up with someone like Sarah – who’d be in charge of running the show. In radio, I think I’d rather just be a sidekick.
- Post-show, Mewes, Brian, Matt, Edgar and I do a post-mortem. Mewes heads off and I bring Edgar, Matt and Bry with me. We drop Edgar off at his hotel, then Matt off at his, then swing back up to my house where Bri’s car is waiting. Lynch heads off and I go inside, chuck on the woobs, check the board reaction to the show and go to sleep.