Work

It’s much nicer being on set than in the usual flash studio. In the flash studio I’m sitting alone, struggling to hear through an earpiece as I talk to a camera lens. On set there’s no earpiece and I’m talking to a human. That’s much nicer and more like real life, unless you’re completely mental.
It’s a shame the segment was only three minutes long because I could have told some great immigration & naturalization stories. In fact, I could fill a whole hour show with nothing but insight and complaining. Alas, time was short and before I knew it the floor manager was signaling that I had only a minute left. I was determined to get the “5 Years To Many” photo on there because I was appalled that such a grammatical error not only made it to the embroidery stage, but actually got walked down the streets of San Francisco. Thanks to zombietime.com for the photo and Val in MD for telling me it existed.
Read on if you want some back-story on the immigration and naturalization process.

Continue reading…

Tonight is the debut of Not Just Another Cable News Show on CNN Headline. I’m one of several people who slide in and out of the screen, making hopefully witty comments on a variety of news items. I was hoping to be credited as “Author, In the Event of My Untimely Demise but the producers of a show called Not Just Another Cable News Show shot me an email telling me that my title was too long.
Other commenters include Huffington Post writer Rachel Sklar, former Daily Show writer Chris Regan, and comedian Hugh Fink.
7p and 9p Saturday & Sunday on CNN Headline.

Under heavy sniper fire, CNN Headline host Glenn Beck asks me questions about IN THE EVENT OF MY UNTIMELY DEMISE while I attempt to stay on message like a savvy politician.
It should be mentioned that the book has a delicious website and savory Facebook page.

In early September I was asked if I’d consider hosting a morning show in Atlanta. I said no. Morning radio was something I’d wanted to try my hand at in the ’90s when I actually lived there and worked for radio station 99X. It seemed like an unnecessary diversion at this juncture. Plus I’d have to leave New York and move to a city that has no water.
But we talked some more, and when I realized they’d previously been paying an enormous chunk of cash to a guy who I’d never heard a good word said about, I reconsidered. Not just for the cash, mind you, but it did seem like it could have potential for a lot of fun. I got excited about the idea of competing for listeners and spending my afternoons mulling over Arbitron ratings books. And best of all there was the chance I could hire my friend Mark and steal him away from his career as an airline baggage handler. That’s a dream shared by anyone and everyone who knows Mark.
In order to ascertain if the station management was on the same wavelength I drafted a six-page document called A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT STATE OF MORNING RADIO AND WHY IT OFTEN BLOWS and sent it to them.
It contained thoughts on morning radio including:
The morning radio time slot has traditionally been staffed by radio professionals who, rather than being comedy-proficient or entertaining individuals, are often merely in the right place at the right time. Such as in the station break room when the General Manager strolls in and says, “Can you fill the morning slot, Karl?” The end result is that morning radio, which frequently aspires to be funny and entertaining, is often helmed by individuals who are neither funny nor entertaining.
This greatly diminishes the morning show’s power as a comedic juggernaut.
In it I discussed what makes morning radio blow. In my opinion, and the opinion of anyone with a functioning brain, that included such things as:
Zany sound effects.
Wacky prank calls.
One, two or three people heartily laughing into the microphone when nothing that was said in the last 70 minutes was remotely worthy of such laughter.
Attempting to emulate Howard Stern again.
I even did research, perusing Atlanta message boards for opinions on local morning radio shows. I found lots of opinions, and they weighed heavily on the side of Atlanta morning radio blowing. The one that sums it up the best – with a hint of misogyny – was this one:
“ALL Atlanta morning shows suck. Just play the friggin music, people; if I wanted to wake up to the sound of someone babbling incessantly I’d get a wife.”
I concluded my analysis with some opinions on what I believed would make a morning show enjoyable.
They read it, liked it, and it was determined that we were on the same page. So, I went down there and auditioned over the course of three nights. Two nights with friends from my improvisation days, and one night with Jimmy Baron, who put the 99X morning show on the map back in the day. That day ended, incidentally, when broadcast-megacorporation Cumulus bought the station and stabbed Jimmy in the face.
We had a blast doing the auditions. Not only that, but the programming director taught me stuff. I had made some assumptions based on what I thought I knew about commercial radio – assumptions he was quick to correct: Satellite radio was not a threat, as I had believed, as its market penetration and audience is tiny in comparison. The biggest threat to commercial radio, he told me, was mobile phones. If you don’t capture someone’s interest quickly, they call ma.
He also educated me on the science of morning radio – how the waking brain processes information, and what it needs at 6am as opposed to 9am. It was really, really interesting learning experience, and I love any learning experience that doesn’t have geometry in it.
Alas, Friday I received from him a very friendly voicemail informing me that they’d be going in a different direction with their morning show. I can’t say I’m surprised, as with me they’d genuinely be taking a risk – morning radio is one of the myriad arenas I’m untested in.
Though my wife was relieved to no end, I was disappointed as one is when one doesn’t get the part. That’s something I’ve gotten quite used to after years of auditioning for various things, but no matter how thick the skin there’s always a tinge of disappointment. However, I’m really disappointed for Mark because this means I will be unable to hire him away from his airline baggage career anytime soon.
I wish them luck and hope Atlanta gets an enjoyable morning show. And really, this is a win-win for me. If the show blows, I can simply gloat. And if it’s good, I can pretend they were influenced by call to ending dick jokes and celebrity impersonations. Only time will tell. And even then, someone will have to tell me how it’s going because I live well out of their signal range…up where the water is at.

I will be on CNN Headline’s Showbiz Tonight offering insight on a topic I know next to nothing about: celebrities.
Update:
I was on CNN Headline’s Showbiz Tonight offering insight on a topic I know next to nothing about: celebrities.

I’m very grateful that we no longer have to deal with cassette tapes because pulling these clips from nine hours’ worth of my DAVE-FM morning show audition would have been time-consuming and impractical. Plus it’d sound all hissy.
These are some favorites:
The Pope Is a Jew
This came from the audition I did with long-time Atlanta morning show host Jimmy Baron who I used to work with back in the day at 99X. He recorded this at the North Georgia State Fair. It scared me.


The Fund For Ribbons
An audio version of something I’d written for Banterist a while back. Mike Schatz on guitar.

Your Bag Is On Fire
A true story about someone’s flaming luggage actually making it to the baggage carousel, followed by a psychological probe of an airline baggage handler. With Mark Harris and Mike Schatz, my old improv colleagues.

The make-up lady informed me that by next month or so CNN Headline is making the switch to high definition. And for some reason that means less make-up. Go figure. But it also means every blemish and botched shaving job will be ultra-visible. Hooray!
Glenn went off on his bat snot tangent right as I was trying to pull off my earpiece schtick, meaning I had to sit there with my finger in my ear for much longer than I had hoped. Sometimes I wish we were in the same room.
I wore the Poland lapel pin this time to celebrate the fact that Polish voters finally booted the ludicrously cranky government under Kaczynski in favor of the smarter, savvier Donald Tusk – who looks like Tony Randall.
Sadly, I still have not been able to end the segment with “Don’t snitch.”

Harper sent me the galleys for the book. For those not familiar with the nomenclature of the publishing industry, galleys are basically what the book is going to look like – subject to further proofreading and minor tweakage. And the actual book will be hardcover. Galleys get sent to reviewers and book buyers and folks they’d like to get endorsement blurbs from. They’re much more official looking than a photocopied manuscript and eminently more portable.
I wasn’t sure why they called them galleys in the first place so I looked it up and found the word is derived from the French gallée which is a long tray for holding the set-up type. Discovering that fact wasn’t as interesting as I’d imagined.
I’m very happy with the design. They incorporated the sign idea that I’d woken up with one morning. That came to me because someone at Harper had voiced the concern that the title might be “too dark.” I was panicked that they might try and change the title, so I was desperate to come up with a visual that would put those fears to rest.
I really like the way the color red screams Achtung! at you. That’s what you want in a cover – something that’s roughly the equivalent of setting a small signal fire over in the corner of the book store. I have no doubts that this design will at the very least cause someone to go, “What the hell is that over there?” And really – getting a potential reader to say, “What the hell is that over there?” is the name of the game as far as I think I understand it.

The TimeWarner security guy actually knew my name this time. It’s almost like I’m a somebody! Regardless, I still have to put my stuff through the X-Ray scanner as if I’m going to try and smuggle a firearm into the newsroom.
I keep seeing Lou Dobbs and Jack Cafferty wandering about. They seem like guys I’d actually love to go out drinking with though I’ve never spoken a word to them. I have fantasies about the three of us sitting in a pub, red-eyed and slurring, agreeing and disagreeing on various topics as we swill beer. That’d be a great night.
I seem to have fallen into a pattern of wearing the same shirts and ties all the time. At one point I accidentally wore the same outfit two segments in a row. Sadly, I’m a bit player so there’s no wardrobe budget for me. It’d be nice to have Armani people begging you to wear their stuff or some lady traipsing around Manhattan, buying clothes for you with Ted Turner’s credit card. The best thing that ever happened to my wardrobe was a salesman named Ben who was my own personal Queer Eye episode. I walked out with the four shirts and four ties that have become my default outfits for the show. Meanwhile, one night at Gramercy Tavern at dinner with John Mayer, a woman leaned over and handed him her Tommy Hilfiger business card. “Anything you want from our collection,” she said, “Just call.” Solely because he’s famous. It seemed unfair, though understandable. But if it had been a Hugo Boss, Ted Baker or Paul Smith rep I’d have cried right then and there.
Segment-wise, we seem to have discovered the secret to not running out of time: Don’t put a lot of stuff in it. No matter what, Glenn’s going to go off on some tangent which will send us down a different path. When he’s done I then have to scramble back up the path to get back on topic. But this time we fit it all in and I was even able to give a “Semper Fi” shout-out to my father and his Marine Corps pals who were watching at Parris Island.
It’s true about the Ron Paul campaign: I’ve tried on three occasions to get them to send me some campaign materials. Placard. Hat. Shirt. Anything I could use in the segment to advertise their candidate. I’ve even identified myself to them as an ally. Nothing. No response. They complain a lot about being left out of mainstream media coverage – and to a large extent I agree with them. But they’re not helping their cause any. I know they don’t like Glenn but methinks they’re acting a bit like babies. At least the Advocates for Self Government were nice enough to send me some books and a huge stack of their World’s Smallest Political Quiz leaflets.

The morning show tryouts were loads of fun. The station has a very advanced coffee-making machine that helped ease the pain of being up from 1-4am.
Monday and Tuesday morning I did the show with Mike Schatz and Mark Harris, friends and colleagues from my improv days. I chose them because after years of us working together I know what their strengths are and I thought we’d compliment each other nicely. Mike has had some radio experience. Mark is an airline baggage handler. Anyone who knows him has been trying to change that.

We had a good time during the Monday show making Mark nervous about losing his baggage job. Mike admitted having had a problem with Ambien and Mark accused Mike of getting a red nose when he drinks. Mark really took a liking to talking about Atlanta’s water shortage and kept wanting to return to the subject. “We’re drinking the very same water that the dinosaurs drank,” he told everyone twenty-five minutes after we stopped talking about water.
Tuesday was more of the same, though instead of just talking I tried a few different things such as reading some pieces of mine. We took a caller, too. We were worried that soliciting calls at 2:45a would net us nothing but drunks but we wound up getting a Bail Bondsman who told a great story about drawing a gun on a fugitive who had two children clinging to his legs as he brandished a deer rifle. The caller’s main concern though was finding out when we’d be going back to playing music. Speaking of: Mike brought a guitar along and had a song prepared but I nixed it once he explained what a “rusty trombone” was.
Wednesday I was paired with Jimmy Baron who helmed the popular Morning X show on 99X for many years. I worked for 99X back in the day so we’d crossed paths a lot, though I never got to spend much time with him. You can tell he’s a veteran because when he walked in the studio he turned on all the lights to raise the energy level. That had never occurred to me, so I’d done the first two shows in near-dark. He’s older and wiser so he had a couple of prepared bits including a great interview with a Deliverance type who thought the Pope was Jewish (because he wears a beanie). We also learned that Poland and Yugoslavia have identical national anthems. I admired Jimmy’s ability to seamlessly segue into the next topic. I think we went lull-less for the full three hours.

Emboldened by the 15 second profanity delay, we decided we’d take callers even though it was around 3:45am. I expected little, if any, humanity was out there but when we gave out the number the board lit up. One caller was delivering newspapers. Another was a car detailer. Another called to say she missed Jimmy. Not a single one tried swearing, which I found surprising. The board operator Chris must have found it surprising as well, as I watched him poised to dive over the console and hit the dump button in case anyone got naughty.
I learned our endeavor made the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

I flew down to Atlanta on Delta, comforted by the New York Times headline “Fatal Crashes of Airplanes Decline 65% Over 10 Years” though somewhat discomforted by my middle row seat.
For the next three days I’m here in a market that is, according to those in the know, terribly under-served in the radio morning show department. In an effort to correct that problem I’ve been tasked with seeing how I might put on a morning show.
We’re just dipping our toes in the water at the moment. They’re trying to see if I have a future in morning radio, whereas I’m trying to see if I want to have a future in morning radio, as that would involve pulling the family up and relocating in these here parts.
Could be a blast. Could be a train wreck. No way of knowing really until you do it live, on air, with real listeners and crazy people calling in telling you the radio beams are going into their brains.
And so here we are. This demo morning show is being conducted stealthily, so as not to upset too many people right away. We’re on between the ungodly hours of 1am until 4am EST. This is certain to wreak havoc on my sleep cycle from now through Thursday, as well as that of my cohorts. Monday and Tuesday I’ve dragged Mike Schatz and Mark Steven David Harris into this. Wednesday is someone different. I’ll tell later.
If you’re up (and why would you be up?) the live stream is here. Unless you live in Atlanta in which case you can tune to 92.9 and listen without being tied to a computer.

In the TImeWarner elevator: Gloria Estefan. Apparently. I was watching the Elevator TV channel so I didn’t notice, but she was pointed out to me after the fact by Eric, my producer. By some strange coincidence Eric and I were dressed exactly alike, then I changed into my outfit and put on a purple shirt like Glenn’s. Apparently I am unable to put a tie on straight.
The fact that the word mélange brought everything to a screeching halt gave me an idea. From now on I’m going to throw in more French-origin words and see how far off-topic we can get. Next segment: bricolage.
Amazingly, we got through everything we intended to get through, though sadly I got clipped at the end when telling Glenn “Don’t snitch.”

This past week the HarperCollins folks had meetings and made decisions, and on Friday I received the copyedited manuscript for IN THE EVENT OF MY UNTIMELY DEMISE, my book. This is a milestone of some sort: the writing part is essentially over. I merely need to look at the copyeditor’s grammatical tweaks such as whom not who and suggestions like maybe lose the third paragraph. If I disagree with anything I can write “stet” in red pencil. That’s power.
I thought I was pretty good at grammar and spelling, but Christy the copyediting lady is magical. She sees everything.
The process of actually writing a book has been really interesting. I’ve learned things I never knew or thought much about. In fact, I think my next book should be titled BOOK: The Making of a Book. The book would be about the book itself. Pure genius.
First of all, I had no idea it took so long between signing the publishing contract and the book actually appearing on a store shelf. On average you’re talking 12-18 months, unless you’re pooping out something timely like a character assault on a politician or brainless fluff like WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN NICOLE RICHIE’S EXPECTING.
The length of time makes sense now though. Even when the book is written there are still weeks of editing to be done. Marketing has to be planned. Covers have to be designed. The book has to be promoted to the retailers. And once they have an idea how many they’ll be printing, the Harper Lumberjacks have to be dispatched to Canada to fell trees.
Another thing I learned during this whole endeavor was that the publisher has final say on the title, subtitle and cover art. This is a fairly standard item in the contract unless you’re a big-time author and can call the shots. For all other authors it means holding your breath and hoping for the best. It’s a frightening prospect, especially when I think back to all the advertising campaigns I worked on that were destroyed by well-meaning committees of people in suits. I’d have cried and cried and cried if they changed the title to something like WACKY DADDY TALEZ! but in the end they left it alone. I am very happy about that. Now all that’s left is the cover art. I wait patiently for JPEGs to arrive while I torture myself with worst-case scenarios: We thought it would be funny to have an angry mime holding a tangerine.
At any rate, with the creative stage nearing completion the next step is working on endorsements. This is the fun part – seeking out appropriate authors and celebrities to offer blurbs for the back cover. Things like:
“Sack’s instructional memoir to his son is a heartfelt comedic juggernaut that assaults the senses with the same ferocity as the Rangers at Pont du Hoc. I laughed, I cried, and my thumb was numbed with joy.”
More on blurb-seeking later.

The Public Viewer segment is unscripted. Instead, my producer Eric and I map out what we’re going to talk about, and try to imagine the route we’ll take to get to our planned bits by guessing what Glenn will say in the segment.
Of course, what we think Glenn will say in the segment and what Glenn actually winds up saying often are often not the same thing, which sends us down another path. Before I know it, we’ve spent 30 seconds of a 4 minute segment talking about something else, and in the back of my head I’m scrambling to find a way to return to the comedy bits Eric and I had planned. In this case, we didn’t even get close to the bit we’d prepared for the end of the segment, which I was really excited to do. I think I did a great job of not hiding my disappointment.

Do you mind waiting for Billy Ray Cyrus? is a question I never thought I’d be asked. Nevertheless, he seems to have de-mulleted from his Achy Breaky days and I had no problem sitting back while he finished up in the studio.
Hopefully my Lithuanian fanbase will notice I wore their flag on my lapel.
I had hoped to show off a t-shirt I picked up in Poland. It says “Atak Klonów” (Attack of the Clones) and rips on the hilariously unpopular Kaczynski twins who are currently running Poland’s government into the ground. But, as usual, we ran out of time.

My first face-to-face interview with Glenn regarding his book An Inconvenient Book. Usually I’m sitting alone in a room on another floor while an automatic camera creepily adjusts itself and people talk to me in my ear. For the record I prefer his set and his comfier chairs.

I wore a Poland lapel pin in the hopes of luring Glenn into a discussion about the ridiculous Kaczynski twins who are currently running/embarrassing that country, but to no avail. He didn’t notice. Instead we stuck to the material and as usual ran out of time.
After I finished my segment, a very attractive woman in a sexy dress said hello and took my seat. It is customary for me to get incredibly shy in the presence of very attractive women in sexy dresses, so I mumbled “hweh” and fled the room. I later learned this was a woman called “Obama Girl” who nearly everyone but me had heard of.
Hopefully they cleaned off the earpiece, or Obama Girl has Brian Wax in her aural canal.

I have a new producer, Eric, who is very helpful. I can say, “What if we do something like this?” and then a little while later he’ll email me a graphic. And if I say “Glenn said something ludicrous on Wednesday” he finds it. I like that. It makes me feel powerful like Donald Trump – but with much less money and a wife who’s not an opportunist.
Lately I’ve begun re-visiting my phobia about the IFP – the little earpiece that I have to shove down my aural canal in order to hear Glenn and the control room. They tell me that the earpiece is “cleaned” frequently, but I’ve yet to see anyone actually caught in the act of hosing it down. Every time I shove it in my ear I wonder who was sitting there before me, and if his or her ear wax is now mingling with mine. Today Renée Zellweger was wandering the building, so I tried to convince myself I might now share DNA with her, as opposed to some portly biofuel lobbyist Wolf Blitzer was interviewing.

The bit about the sailors at the end was tough. I wanted to make a joke about “seamen” but I also wanted to it to be directed at Glenn, and not seem to be poking fun at the military. But it also had to be tactful – I don’t find blue humor that funny unless it’s used in a clever manner. In the end I gave up because we’d already been talking about transsexuals, and I figured I should just forget launching into a seamen/semen joke with a guy who doesn’t go to R-rated movies.

By virtue of having just turned over my manuscript to the publisher, I am technically a humorist and as such my opinion is now tremendously valuable. I opined on a few subjects for CNN Money, and here is one of them.
Apparently they had a box of sound effects lying around.
Follow this link to the CNN Video player, which seems to have issues with the most popular browsers.

I was hoping my France lapel pin would attract Glenn’s attention and enter us into a discussion about the elections in France. Alas, he didn’t notice – probably because the studio monitors are too small.
I still have no idea what Glenn meant by “I’ve got your gift too… it’s paper for year one.”
Glenn Beck on CNN Headline
7p & 9p EST