Hey! I thought I'd open my Button Box (R) blog with a lively post about good ol' radio, novelty keychains, and proof to the world that I was there. Wayyyyyy back when, I had washed out of LIVE college radio and currently was living the life of a retail underpaid shrub. My desire to create funny stuff for radio was strong and I sunk $5000 in a radio school. They could teach me to do radio right? RIGHT? They also GAR-UN-TEED I'd have a paid job when I graduated. Wow. Someone would pay me to broadcast? I was all in.

The school was half assed. We went from 40+ to a class of 15 by the time the eight month, three nights a week ended. I had some pretty good training from respected disc jockeys around Cleveland. "More Music" Ken Morgan was my primary instructor and he taught me one thing and one thing only that helped me further my career. How to splice tape.

Yes, it was an art. Simple, neat, and efficient. It's how countless hours of every kind of recorded media was edited. You took a coffee pot grease pencil, put marks on the tape where you would like to cut out the "F" word. Then using a razor blade and a special angled splice block , you cut the tape. Then you used a sticky tape to "spice" the two sections of tape together. If you were good at it, you had a perfect edit. Prior to this instruction, I couldn't do it correctly. Funny thing about this process, as digital editors were making tape obsolete and schools started training on computers, mooks like us that new how to cut tape could get minimum wage board op gigs at the 500 watt light bulb AM. Computer editing wouldn't be cheap for another 10 years and most radio stations when you were starting had equipment from the 50's.

I do credit the school for getting me in the door at WNCX, Cleveland. It's "Cleveland's Classic Rock" and it was pretty much the dregs of Cleveland radio in the mornings until they brought in a deejay from New York named Howard Stern. My "mistake" was asking for an "internship" where I could run downtown Cleveland three days a week to pile up commercial tapes for the music director that ran the show. Plus, I could go get breakfast for him. I could walk into the pee smelling lobby of McDonalds and bring back eats and set up the commercials for the next hour.

I wanted more than anything to be a morning show deejay and the internship lording over the commercials was my foot in the door to the wonders of syndication. My "mistake" soon became, and I mean SOON, the best gig I've ever worked for no money. Before WNCX, I was a college deejay still doing radio the old way. Howard changed everything. Howard did something that taught me that to be funny on the radio. Be yourself and be honest.

When Howard became #1 in Cleveland, I was working my first job down the hall as a PAID radio board op and I was still interning mornings because I'd be damned if I'd give up such a fun morning. I was rewarded with being a flunkie at the "funeral" that Howard held in Cleveland. I picked up such luminaries from the airport as "Gange" and "two guys from the band America" and "a hatin hat" parody guy. (You figure it out.) I had to clean the cheeseburger wrappers and Taco Bell bags from my Saturn SL. Imagine me picking up rock stars in my un-air conditioned stick Saturn SL. I did it, and I was thrilled to do it. Nobody ever said there was a budget for radio. It went into the show.

For what it's worth, I saved the signs. I went to the event, had a fairly good time despite the wires getting cut and crossed signals  leaving me off the Howard Stern bus. Oh well. The pre show took place inside the above place. A strip club. Yep. It was Howard Stern. I was inches away from a ton of mammories and that was just Robin Quivers. There were plenty of other mammories to see not feel. I met Baba Booey and Joey Buttafuco and got the notes and pens for Jackie the joke man. I got some passes. I got a keychain. Above shows the key chain. Simple logo on the front, blank on the back. And a suprise inside!

A festive balloon! That's right! It's a keychain with a festive balloon! How thoughtful was the management to provide thousands of the keychains so the people that came for Howard Stern's victory party could blow them up and bounce them around. Wheeeeeeeee! Party time fun. 

Hmmm. I've never  seen a balloon with such a large nozzle to fill with air. Hmmm what a really odd thing. It's looks like it's packed in it's own baloon jelly. What's more, why would they have an expiration date on a balloon? Is that so once it's filled up, you'll know how long until it breaks? Oh, maybe it's a "freshness" date. Like beer. A "born on" date. What a festive yellow color....

Hey... wait a minute...

That's a "balloon" all right...but it's not intended for festive Howard Stern parties nor to be filled with air...it's what John Lennon wanted to put Yoko Ono inside when jamming on stage in New York with Frank Zappa...

A  SCUMBAG!!!!!!!

..fin.

-Ricochet