WHOT FM

The past two weeks were the greatest two weeks. Great. Great. Great. And, I'll tell you what, I have had a great year. I have worked for tremendous directors and producers and I've been working hard with Fred Willard's sketch group -- the MOHO's. I've been writing for comedians and actors alike. I wrote and directed a 33 minute (not-so) short film that turned out much better than I could have dreamed, thanks to like 40 talented people in front and behind the camera. I got married! In Ireland! In a freakin' castle!

Good damn year. But, the last two weeks took me by surprise. I had the opportunity to work as a comedy writer for a major market radio show. I know what you're thinking. But, these guys aren't a zoo and they aren't shock jocks. They come from a Chicago Improv background and they're freakin' great. The past two weeks I worked all day at 20th Century Fox and then wrote sketches and bits until 3am and then got to the station by 8(ish) for TWO WEEKS! It was grueling and by the last day I was speaking in tongues -- but I loved it! When I called my bro he said he wasn't surprised. And that I always come back to radio and Bren, my wife said the same thing.

I was a radio major in college and I have worked at a few stations as a writer and comedian, but I never really thought of myself as someone who wanted to get into radio. I always thought standup and tv writing first. But then I remembered WHOT. I grew up in Gary, Indiana. Home of Michael Jackson and that song from the Music Man. I was a complete dork. I wore big, thick plastic glasses and I was afraid of my own shadow.

One day as we were waiting in line at the cafeteria (fifth grade) I saw a kid in front of me holding a Smiley face pillow. I asked him what that was all about and he told me that he fell out of a tree and has to get stiches on his ass. He told me they accidentallyt sewed up his crack and poo came out of his ears. And we were friends ever since. The kid I'm talking about is the legendary Sheed. He's interspersed throught my sites. Can't tell a story about grades five through eleven without Sheed. Sheed's half brother was a dj and that was all that Sheed ever talked about. We of course, shared a love for music and would race to his basement every day to see if Sheed got a press copy of any album sent to him by his bro.

Soon, we set up a dj station in his laundry room and started spinning records every day. Then, his bro set up a couple of mikes to the speakers and we were golden. Every day, it was WHOT with Sheed and Tully. I still have tapes of us two boneheads doing no less than two hours straight of pure morning radio banter. It was hilarious. We would do retarded Star Wars sketches, lame near-perjurized Mad magazine rehashes... whatever.

Song parodies were huge. I still remember almost all the words to Toilet Surfing USA. A song about the Tidy Bowl man's best friend; a toilet bowl surfer. "I've got a toilet paper surfboard. Watch out for that poo." What can I say? Poo was huge in the fifth grade. Before too long, the kids in our neighborhood would come over after school to dance to the records. Gary was a predominantly black neighborhood, and I learned only later when I had to move to a white neighborhood that brothers & sisters weren't near the tight asses white folks are when it comes to dancing. So, sometimes we'd have like twenty kids downstairs just breakin' their asses off.

We even named the basement the "Diamond Club" and had dance off's where we'd tap out dancers until it went down to the winners. We were dorks. But it was pretty freakin' fun. Many days were spent in that basement spinning plastic. It may have been a way for us to stay off the incredibly tough streets of Gary; but we never saw it that way. We were just having a good time.

So, I guess I have always loved radio. Weird how long it takes to learn stuff about yourself you already knew. JT