On the way back from Chicago, I struck upon a good idea. Leave me alone for 7 hours in the boring wastelands of the Badger State and I will produce exactly one idea worth expanding upon. The idea was this: list off my favorite things, one entry at a time.
The list excludes the Big Ones. You, The Good Lord, the 1st Amendment, Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich -- these are everyone's favorites, they go without saying. Plus, there's already a whole slew of internet chatter on the Spicy Chicken Sandwich. I'm not gonna say anything that hasn't already been covered. So here goes...
Volume One: Tommy Mischke
I got a Sony Walkman for Christmas in 1993. I was eleven yeas old. It was late at night, and I was laying in bed, wearing my Batman underwear, trying slow my brain down long enough to fall asleep. This was my least favorite part of the day. I put my headphones on, flipped the switch to my shiny black Walkman, and thumbed the dial across the FM landscape. I only listened to Oldies, which meant that a) I wasn't interested in 95% of the available channels, and b) I was guaranteed to not hear anything new.I flipped to AM. I didn't listen to AM radio, and wasn't really sure why it was even there. It was like FM, but without all of the things that made people want to listen to FM. A guy talking, some music in Spanish, someone reading the news. And then there was someone else. This guy didn't sound like a talk radio host; he sounded like someone who had about 30 seconds before the real host came back from the bathroom and called security. He was talking about the solar system, about how a group of European scientists wanted to drop Pluto as an official planet. This grabbed my attention. I'd just finished my science project on Pluto. If they yanked it's Official Planet status, I'd have to start over. I sat up. The man continued. Pluto was the only planet discovered by an American, the Europeans can't take Pluto from us. "If you absolutely must yank one of them," he begged, "please, yank Uranus."
11-year-old-Me exploded into laughter. I covered my face with my pillow and laughed harder as the man went on and on. My parents knocked on the door and told me I was supposed to be sleeping, that I'd better be in bed mister. I listened till midnight, and the show was over, but I was hooked.
Tommy Mischke could turn a newspaper article about some drunken nun in Germany who crashed her riding lawn mower into a telephone pole into 30 minutes of quality material. This was better than anything on TV. Mischke took calls cold, meaning people calling the station expected to get a call screener, but got Mischke instead. By the time they realized who they were talking to, they'd already been on live radio for 12 minutes. Mischke once took a call from a guy named Al, who called in to ask about a weather update. Tommy told the guy he was the station meteorologist, Blow Zephyr, and kept the guy on the phone for over 4 hours. When the guy turned on his radio and heard his own voice, Mischke convinced him it was atmospheric interference. I know about this stuff, after all, I'm the station weatherman, Blow Zephyr. They talked another 90 minutes.
This one time, he called the operator with a caller on the line, and...well, here: you listen. You'll see.
See! It's chaotic and weirdly troubling, and it's broadcast on 50,000 watts to...er, dozens of people. Most importantly, in a sea populated by ten thousand cookie-cutter sports/politics junkies, Mischke stands alone. He's the only radio host to go for an entire 2 hour show without uttering a word. 2 hours of dead air. Complete radio silence, interrupted every so often by commercials. Anyone else behind that mic would've been out of a job; Tommy was awarded Best Twin Cities Radio Personality that year.
So there it is, my favorite person to listen to. I don't know what it says about me, but If I ever go crazy, start hearing voices, I hope they're old Mischke reruns. Here's one more for the road.
I Heart You.
