From the Green Room: Get Out, Charles

After 48 years behind a microphone, the man who is arguably the greatest radio newsman since Walter Winchell, Charles McCord, is finally hanging up his headphones.

For over thirty years he has toiled beside radio’s original “shock jock,” but now, no longer will his millions of fans be treated to his four-eyed, quirky, Ozark idiosyncrasies, the product of a “Type A” personality that, by comparison, makes the most rampant anal retentive behavior seem like just a mild case of constipation. No more slicing news stories from the tabloids, paper-clipping them to blank sheets of typing paper, stapling them to their corresponding wire reports, footnoting them in Sharpie pen, and filing them, alphabetically, and by topic, in three columns of five rows each, in a latticework pattern reminiscent of the lace doilies on his great grandmother’s dining room table.

Charles was on the air to report some of the most important news stories in history, including the War in Iraq, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and the Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.  A conservative Christian man, his idea of a wild night involved the imbibing of caffeinated soda and wearing only pajama bottoms to bed. Now, he will finally be free to really cut loose, and tend to his many hobbies: dressing up his four Boston Terriers as famous biblical figures and photographing them for his annual Christmas card; collecting Nazi Memorabilia; and storing the severed heads of homeless drifters in pickle jars in a small Amana refrigerator located underneath his porch.

McCord leaves behind his longtime companion, Don Imus, a cancer sufferer, presumably so the old cowboy can die alone.  No matter that his best friend for nearly 4 decades is waging a valiant battle for his life, Charles is abandoning him to go drown worms off the bow of a bass fishing boat with other mouth-breathing goobers. No longer will the airwaves be graced by the velvet toned, baritone voice that brought the lone modicum of sanity to the Imus in the Morning Program.

Charlie we hardly knew ye.  Get out. 


From the Green Room: Run, Imus, Run!

Today the I-Man reaches a milestone: three consecutive years of daily runs on the treadmill. Three years, without missing a single day. That’s 1,095 days, 1,096 if you count “leap day,” and you should, because he ran on that day too.  Why?  Because he is nothing if not committed.  Some people might say that he should be committed, but they don’t understand.  This is the very reason why he’s so successful.  He gets an idea in his head, and he doesn’t just obsess over it, he becomes a full-on, Unabomber-like enthusiast.

For those of us who have been fans of his since he first came to New York, we already know Imus never does ANYTHING in a small way.  When he wanted to get into photography in the 70’s, he didn’t just buy a little Instamatic camera and take snapshots: he spent $385,000 on equipment; turned an entire wing of his penthouse into a state-of-the-art darkroom;  got a couple of eight balls; and spent the weekend teaching himself how to be a photographer.

How can anyone ever forget the Whittaker Chamber years, when Imus’s fixation on the minutiae of the Alger Hiss trial had him poring over transcripts with a zeal that would’ve put Joe McCarthy to shame? He almost used the same exact antique Woodstock typewriter as had been used in the famous case (an anniversary gift from Deirdre) to write his own conspiracy manifesto about it.

And now, it’s running that has tickled his fancy, and turned him into a Southwestern Jim Fixx. Imus has run, every day, without fail, for three years.  Averaging around 6 miles a day, that's damn near 6000 miles.  He essentially ran to Seattle and back, with a 1,000 mile cool down. He ran the length of the Great Wall of China, and then part of the way back. If he’d only gone west, and kept going, he’d…well, he’d be in the middle of the Pacific ocean, which probably would prevent him from continuing to run the following day. But he’s not. He’s here, in the Fox Studios, still doing his radio show, with a vow that he is going to continue running in the same spirit he maintains his sobriety: one day at  a time.

Which, hopefully, would prevent him from the same fate as Jim Fixx, who, ironically, died on a run.  

But if he did, at least we know Deirdre would be able to take a photograph of it.  And then use the Woodstock typewriter to compose a letter to the probate lawyer.



From the Green Room: Sign This

Just when you thought your moon was in Jupiter, or you were a Sagittarius with a Pisces rising, comes the astrological revelation that there is now a 13th sign.  Due to the changes in the equatorial alignment of the Earth in relation to the sun over the past 300 centuries, there are now 13 different periods of the year. The effect of which, now adds a sign called Ophiuchus, which sounds less like a part of the Astrological chart than it does a hideous growth or some  kind of skin condition. “My dermatologist had to give me an ointment to clear up this Ophiuchus I have on the back of my neck.”

Parke Kunkle, a Minneapolis astronomer, discovered that the Earth’s “wobble” has caused an “Equinox Precession,” moving it some 23 degrees since Babylonian times, and, along with it, the constellations. Which means that there is also a shift in the chart; so if you were once a dichotomous Gemini, you are now a bull-headed Taurus. Not something which requires you to change your passport or driver’s license, just your entire personality profile and future. I hate to break it to you, former Scorpio, but where you were once determined and forceful, intuitive, exciting and magnetic, you are now an indecisive, gullible and self-indulgent Libra, which is probably why, when your previous sign’s horoscope told you it was a “good day to take a chance and do something risky,” you lost your shirt after buying all that Enron stock. You should have been looking at the recommendation for Libras: “Stay in bed until the darkness passes,”  Oops.  Hear that?  It’s the Universe saying, “Sorry, my bad.”

It’s the most significant thing to happen to newspapers since the brief period of time when the sign for Cancer was changed to “Moon Children,” so as not to force the other, more negative definition of the word on the poor people who were born between the 22nd of June and the 22nd of July. It may not seem like news, unless you consider that 26 percent of all Americans believe in astrology. It certainly calls into question all the advice Nancy Reagan got from her astrologer, especially on the day poor ol’ Ronnie got shot.  Had she been given the right information, the President might have stayed home that day and watched a Jodie Foster movie instead of being in the line of fire of her “biggest fan.” It also might have affected the singles scene back in the 70’s: “I’m a Leo with a penis rising.” Oh, really?

The next thing you know, they’re going to disprove the efficacy of fortune cookies.  Although, the only one that’s ever applied to me is the rib-tickler I get every other time I go to Big Wong’s: “You like Chinese food.” Now that I think of it, I wonder whether this astrological shift affects the Chinese Zodiac as well.  

Forget about the indignity of going from a set of twins to a bull. It would be a damn shame for anybody born in the Year of the Dragon to suddenly wake up and find themselves a Pig.  

From the Green Room: You'll Poke Your Eye Out

A Florida judge has just ruled that a Disneyworld groping case can move ahead in court.  The Sunshine State is rapidly becoming the best example of the glaring need for tort reform in this country, as the Donald Duck Feel Up lawsuit comes on the heels of a $650,000 settlement for an injury a man incurred while receiving a lap dance at a Florida strip club. With apologies to Johnnie Cochran, “If he paid to see  t***,  you must acquit.”
 
There are many hazards in store for horny males who fill these nefarious nightspots of nookie with fistfuls of singles, hoping for the fleeting attentions of silicone-enhanced single moms with Daddy issues. Getting kicked in the face by a stripper’s heel would not be one that immediately leaps to mind.  But in 2008, while Michael Ireland was enjoying the titillating Terpsichorean talents of a Grind Hostess at the Cheetah Club in West Palm Beach, he wound up not only getting his eye socket punctured, but some broken bones around his nose as well. Although eye damage is not something out of the realm of possibility at an adult social club, it is much easier to conjure the stripper as the one getting her eye “poked” by the tumid member of a particularly gifted and aroused lap-dance recipient.  Not the other way around.  Unless, of course, the dancer is a tranny.
 
But exactly how a stiletto heel wound up anywhere near the man’s face is somewhat confounding, unless the stripper in question was also a contortionist.  You don’t have to have ever been a patron of a Strip Club to know that if the dancer’s feet are anywhere near your face during her performance, she’s either doing it wrong, or she’s showing off a Martha Graham-style modern dance routine that displays a creative legitimacy, the kind of which the genre is currently bereft.
 
The suit was settled out of court, thankfully, because if this case actually been handed to a jury, one could only imagine the kind of deliberations involved, with the myriad charts, photographic evidence and recreations of the “accident” necessary to assign damages.  Not to mention that the cross examination of the dancer would’ve been more entertaining than the O.J. case:
 
“Tell me, Ms. Suki, when my client was in the midst of receiving his lap dance from you, was he himself in an aroused state?”
 
“No, he was in Florida.”

From the Green Room: The Return of the McRib

The McRibnote: This essay is just barely okay. Over-written and not really all that amusing...but we needed something in this space. -Imus

November 2^nd 2010.  A date that will live…in infamy.  For it is the day when the McRib will return after a 16-year hiatus. 

And some people think there is no God.

It is McDonald’s most mystifyingly elusive sandwich.  Unlike the Big Mac, the Quarter Pounder, and the ubiquitous Angus Deluxe’(with or without bacon), the McRib is not readily available. Although there are a few outlets throughout the nation where stalwart fast food enthusiasts may score its onion and pickle laden, barbecue sauce slathered goodness on a regular basis, it has been absent from the Golden Arch’s national menu since its farewell tour in 2005.  The return of the McRib is cause for celebration among grease aficionados everywhere, as this is the item that single-handedly put the “unk” in junk food.

"nuggets"There is no more unctuous comestible than the McRib, nor one more curious in its construction.  Chicken fingers were always a misnomer, for if pullets had the benefit of opposable thumbs, you can be damn sure they wouldn’t be as easy an entrée as they currently are.  However, just as it is incredulous that Cheap Trick has not been inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, you have to wonder how the folks who hand out the Nobel Prize didn’t bestow one upon Mickey D’s for the invention of the McNugget. Bite-size convenience notwithstanding, at least they sound as if they actually are a part of the chicken: you know they don’t have fingers, but they MUST have nuggets. Otherwise, how do we wind up with baby chicks?

Kudos must also be handed out to McD’s for their Hot Apple Pie, certainly one of the more creative desserts a chain restaurant has ever offered. After slamming a quarter-pound of congealed kangaroo meat into my gullet, I usually have a hankering for a fried egg roll stuffed with an apple cinnamon filling and served at a temperature akin to that of molten magma. For me, no visit to McDonald’s is complete without burning the first three layers of flesh off the roof of my mouth, so that they hang at the back of my throat like curtains.

But dreaming up the McRib takes a certain kind of genius.  They could have merely taken a patty of ground pork and served it as the McPork sandwich.  But careful thought and creative design abounded, and the “meat” was formed into the shape of an actual rack of ribs, sans, of course, the bone.

Which, of course, would negate its classification as an actual ‘rib’ in the first place. An ice cream cone cannot be such, without, well, the ice cream or the cone.  You kind of can’t call something a rib if there isn’t a rib in it.  Similarly, you can’t eat a rib as a sandwich, due to the aforementioned bone problem. 

The infamous Double DownThus, McDonald’s created one of the greatest concoctions to grace the existence of modern history since the Salk Vaccine. KFC may have raised the bar by bringing the world the Double Down, a bacon and chicken breast patty sandwich that threw caution to the wind by removing the need for bread by using the chicken itself as the delivery system. But the McRib—completely manufactured, ultra-processed, an ersatz offering of faux food—is the sun-source of all that we hold sacred, of all that is holy.

It is, in short, America. On a bun.