Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Surreal Radio

Culture Shock: Turning on the radio expecting to hear Laura Ingraham and instead hearing the coarsened pipes of Jackie Mason, who was apparently filling in for her. I say apparently because during the first segment of the show that I caught, I never heard Mason mention who he was or whose show he was doing. It was straight from the intro bumper music into Mason launching into a rambling, breathless, twelve-minute eulogy of Gerald Ford and right into the out music.

During the next segment, Mason did introduce himself and explain that he was indeed filling in for Ingraham. It was obvious that Mason doesn't have a lot of radio experience and a couple of times I even caught a producer whispering advice to him in the background. But as a amateur/hobby/part-time/hack weekend radio host, I appreciate how difficult it can be to carry on a monologue for any length of time and Mason's conversational style, while far from polished, was interesting. You literally never knew what you were going to hear next and in radio that counts for a lot. There's nothing worse than boring, predictable talk radio. In the hour that I listened to today, Jackie Mason was anything but that.

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