I was back from a trip to Tahiti with some of my friends and family, and just in time. If the trip had been 3 or 4 days longer, we would have been circling the U.S. for who knows how long.

In any case, things changed pretty drastically at KFI after this. My next scheduled show would have been September 14, 2001, and as you know, there was no comedy anywhere after 9/11; especially not in talk radio. KFI devoted themselves entirely to an orgiastic glut of non-news and panic mongering, and I was relieved of my duties for all of October.

Actually, that’s not completely accurate. I was given the choice of doing the same shit everyone else was doing, or staying home. I stayed home.

I came back in November, and stayed for another year. But I sort of think as this show as the end of my run at KFI. After this show, they started listening, starting trying to influence the content, even changing the way I said the station ID.

KFI: Are you mumbling the station ID?
ME: Well, yes. But I say it correctly at least once in every segment.
KFI: Why would you do that?
ME: Because I think it’s important not to take ourselves too seriously.
KFI: But it’s our station ID.
ME: Yes, but we say it 12 times an hour. People know what it is.
KFI: Well you should stop doing it.
ME: But people really like it. It’s caught on. It’s popular.
KFI: Don’t do it anymore.

And that’s kind of how it went after that. KFI stopped being a place of many voices and became a place where many people spoke with one. They went from really being irreverent to simply putting up snarky billboards. They went from being leaders to followers. In short, they just became talk radio.

Click here for the September 8, 2001 show

Well, maybe podcast is too strong a word. It’s more like a 35 minute spew, followed by a song so lovely, it might have to be your new ringtone.

Just so you know, there’s a lot of cursing.

In any case, this show is unbelievably important. Seriously. I know I say that every time, but this time it’s true. I can’t stress it enough. And not just because it starts with a story about an aborted lesbian tryst in the parking lot of Gelsons.

No, this show matters because this is the night I introduced the world to mung mung mung. It happens in the middle of the second hour.

This is one of my fondest memories of all the shows I did on KFI, and one of my fondest memories of Mick. It’s short, but I absolutely love it.

Anyway, that’s what’s on the menu today. If you like what I’ve dished out, tip your server.

Click here for the May 12, 2001 show

Visit the Premium page for 5 new Highlight reels from the early, glorious KABC days with Marc Germain!

Yes, now you can relive the joys of the Halloween remote at the 99¢ store, my feud with Strouds, Manrammer Magazine, and long, pointless conversations about Oprah, pork rinds, Quincy and bidets. This was the golden age of blathering, when Marc had a job and I still had the energy to go somewhere on a Friday night.

Each show is only a buck, and I get 75¢ of that payday, so load up!

Click over to the Premium page, or visit my Tradebit store.

10:00 – 11:00 PM

• Mr. KABC Bingo
• Cheap ass plastic surgery
• The family that overdoses together
• My brush with Rush
• Wing sings: Coal Miner’s Daughter
• The Studio 60 drinking game
• Emo Girl 21
• Wing Sings: Breathe
• Winchies
• Wing Sings: Somewhere Over The Lainbow

11:00 – Midnight

• Bank of America: Banking for Bums
• The Madrid models
• Swedish Joan Jett Covers
• Chihuahua ailments
• Mr. K’s favorite new show that’s been on for 6 years

Midnight – 1:00 AM

• “Without breasts, there is no paradise”
• What up, The View?
• A terrifying Rosie O’Donnell story
• A story of abject humiliation
• It started with Nemo
• I can’t talk right now, I have company
• Tiaras and matching jumpsuits
• Many, many muuuns
• One like that, only different
• Mr. K tortures an Ebay deadbeat

Midnight – 1:00 AM

And speaking of Father’s Day, Marc Germain and I have managed to choke out yet another podcast!

Of course, this podcast has absolutely nothing to do with Father’s Day. I mean, Marc is a father, and I used to have one, but that’s about it.

Fortunately, we do talk about Ed McMahon, people who want to cut their hands off and the grade Z celebrity I saw in the food court at the mall. So don’t think of this as 44 minutes wasted.

I mean, it is, clearly. But don’t think of it that way.

Right out of the gate, you get the Vicodin-fueled retelling of Mr. K’s recent motorcycle accident on the 405. And there’s an uncomfortable discussion about sex with famous people.

Carnage, drugs and sex, all in less than an hour. You don’t get that on Ira Fistell.

But there’s more! You’ll also get racially insensitive comments about Native Americans, stories about meat-eating and gambling, details on my upcoming movie with Gary Busey and lots and lots of old-fashioned cursing. Golly, this is the best Memorial Day ever!

So go ahead. Click on the player below to listen now, or download it to slog through at your leisure.

Sure it’s a chore. But that’s what weekends are for.

Me neither.

Nothing even resembling a podcast has happened in quite some time. Not only have Marc and I been busy trying to get our mystery project up and running, I’ve actually been . . . oh what do they call that again?

Oh yes.

Working.

In the last few weeks, I’ve done a commercial for Kmart, voiced roles in the new Rob Zombie movie, worked on Phineas and Ferb, and on Thursday, I’ll be doing Penguins, which is a Disney series from the people behind Madagascar. Can you believe that? If I wasn’t so drunk, I’d think I was hallucinating.

I’m not completely sure when we’re going to get another podcast up, but from reading your comments, I can tell you have to get something to listen to pretty quickly. You’ve stopped short of actual threats, but it’s an uneasy peace.

So today I’m uploading three new highlight reels, which you can get here (or at the bottom of this post). What I think makes these worthwhile is that they’re from my first years at KFI, and they’re completely ridiculous.

I fondly recall this period as sort of the tail end of a great period in local radio. Clear Channel hadn’t yet hadn’t yet gotten to the stage where they demanded right-wing conservative blathering from every gasbag they hired, and little fish like me were largely alone to create their own formats. And since I had no sponsors and only did weekends, KFI management didn’t really give a shit what I was doing.

Obviously, not everything I tried was successful, but the failures were entertaining in their own right. It was all part of trying to create a new kind of radio that was more about amusing people than irritating them.

It was great for a while, but the burnout was inevitable. No matter how hard I worked or what I accomplished, I was just a placeholder for another clone. Talk radio would continue to be distilled down to a few personalities, and even fewer points of view.

And I think that’s really the best indicator of how very out of step Clear Channel is. Terrestrial radio is in financial freefall, and the first thing they cut from ther budgets are local hosts. As podcasting explodes, corporate radio responds by giving us fewer voices.

Yeah.

I hope you enjoy these highlight reels. I like to think we’re heading back to this kind of freedom.

I like to think we’re going to demand it.

KFI Highlight Reel: July – September 2002

KFI Highlight Reel: March – November 2002

KFI Highlight Reel: November 2001 – June 2002

(Many thanks to SoCalFKK for sitting through endless hours of marginal entertainment to put these Highlight Reels together.)

I couldn’t, of course, because nothing ever works the way it’s supposed to and something always goes wrong and everyone is an asshole. And I don’t think I’m overstating my case.

It turns out the reason I had no internet access last week is because my account was “suspended” by AT&T.

Why, you ask?

Because I moved.

That’s right. I moved. I had the audacity to pack my things and move to a different home, and AT&T had some real issues with that.

Apparently you have to register with AT & T when you move. And apparently that’s a whole different thing than calling them up and saying, hey can you transfer my service to this new address? And them saying, sure, and then they send a bill to the new place.

This isn’t that.

This is something else. Although no one can tell you what it is. But you have a 30 day grace period to get it done, so you better not fuck around.

Anyway, here’s the podcast. I don’t know how good it is, but at least I don’t have a cold yet, and I’m still somewhat pleasant. Considering how things have been going lately, this one could be something of a novelty.

It might have had something to do with the fact that we’re both out of work, or that talk radio is imploding, or that Robin Williams is divorcing the nanny. Hard to say.

The point is, there is a kind of bittersweet quality to this podcast, which gets a bit more introspective in some spots than you may be comfortable with.

To that I say, grow a dick.

And the next fucker who posts some comment about Macs vs. PCs gets shitcanned.