2004-05-25
22:30
A FEW PEOPLE ALWAYS MESS IT UP FOR THE REST OF US
Last Saturday I did a personal appearance at Tower Records here in Portland Oregon to promote my DVD. The idea was, at 1:00 o’clock in the afternoon I do a 20-minute set, then sign merchandise for all my adoring fans. To promote this, I was going to go on a local morning radio show on Friday and spend 3 hours being funny and telling my adoring fans to show up at Tower Records. The morning show was hosted by a DJ named Marconi and his sidekick Tiny (an ironic pseudonym). I have heard their show before and always found them to be juvenile, unfunny morons, or in other words, perfect morning DJs. My in to the show was my friend and fellow funny comic, Lonnie Bruhn, who sits in regularly on Fridays on the morning Fart and Jack-off joke fest. The show would have been great because it is my perfect demographic and I have always worked well with Lonnie. The problem came on Wednesday when the moron twins (they aren’t really twins) decided it would be funny to run the audio of Nick Berg being decapitated and give a humorous play-by-play. Strangely enough, the listening audience took umbrage to this. Maybe it was making fun of a man’s murder or maybe these tight–asses don’t like to here the last death wail of a 28-year old before they get their coffee. Either way, Marconi and Tiny lost their gig, and I lost my chance to pimp my DVD and personal appearance. The results are two fold: first of all, only 5 people came to Tower Records, 4 of whom I knew (by the way, thank you 1 guy who I didn’t know who bought the DVD and was a wonderful crowd). But, more importantly, the FCC got more ammunition in their war of attrition to sensor free speech. Look, I don’t like to judge art I haven’t experienced. But in the cases of Dirty Dancing, that Whoopee Goldberg sitcom and doing play-by-play to a man’s death, I don’t need to. They are all evil, senseless wastes of the First Amendment.
The point is, that morning, the radio station was flooded with calls from listeners that were offended by what they heard, and the perpetrators were punished by being fired. That’s right FCC, we didn’t need you telling us what we should and shouldn’t hear. We decided for ourselves.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
