Lush Rimbaugh
|
MSNNNBC: Stern's Sirius question answeredGo to the site to vote in their poll....
| Quote: | Howard Stern's Sirius question is answered
One year on satellite radio and the King of All Media is better than ever
By Helen A.S. Popkin
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 11:30 a.m. ET Jan 8, 2007
Whether radio is worth around 43 cents a day was resolutely answered on Sept. 21, 2006, 256 days after "The Howard Stern Show" made its move to subscription-based Sirius Satellite Radio. That's the day the show's comedy writer/sidekick Artie Lange copped to snorting smack.
Lange's spontaneous heroin admission wasn't the most shocking or outrageous event on "The Howard Stern Show" since its Jan. 9, 2006, Sirius premiere. Out of range from the Federal Communication Commission's jurisdiction, the "Stern Show" is now free from the astronomical indecency fines that haunted its last years on terrestrial radio. Puerile and sexually charged bits now rock the content with impunity.
During the first Sirius year, comedy writer Richard Christy had his genitals waxed on air, his howls and shrieks delighting the Stern cast and audience. Porn star Jenna Jameson inaugurated the in-studio Sybian, a saddle-like sex toy since utilized by many female guests - including Blue Iris, a geriatric sex star in her own right. And "Stern Show" wack packers 'Crazy' Alice and 'Elegant' Elliot Offen phoned in their weekly football picks, spewing expletives and insults with every call.
Compared to such antics, Lange's confession is tame. His substance abuse problems were never a secret. Hilarious anecdotes such as scoring cocaine in full pig makeup while on the cast of Fox's "MadTV," or his accidental hookup with a prostitute, are "Stern Show" staples, repeatedly referenced since Lange replaced Jackie Martling on Stern's cast in 2001. But Lange's confession to recent heroin use while in Stern's employ, seemingly a surprise to even Stern, was different.
Very little is sacred on "The Howard Stern Show." Every in-house conflict or personal issue warrants full audience disclosure. No doubt many that followed Stern to Sirius are there for Jameson and her peers or the in-depth discussions on bodily functions. But to echo pretty much every highfalutin Stern proponent ever - it's this intangible community that makes the "Stern Show" great. It's what copycat shock jocks can't duplicate. Allowed to bloom beyond terrestrial confines, "The Howard Stern Show" is arguably the best radio on the airwaves and possibly the best it's ever been.
Radio revelation
Lange's slip comes during a segment in which three homeless men compete for the saddest life story. The winner gets a lap dance from a couple of strippers. It's a fairly standard bit. Stern and cast question the contestants. Lange is particularly empathetic to a 21-year-old heroin addict. The kid's got a $120-a-day habit. On occasion, the kid has turned to prostitution. His parents have given up on him and he's very worried about his future.
Lange asks if the kid has tried Subutext, a prescription drug that stops heroin cravings. Yeah, the kid says, until he lost his insurance. And then Lange comes out with it: "If you guys agree not to grill me on it, I actually have those pills ... ."
Lange reveals the pill bottle. Co-host Robin Quivers sums up the studio's surprise: "Wait a minute!" and "What the hell are you doing?"
Lange: "It's a long story, let's not get into it."
Stern: "Maybe you need the lap dance."
There's laughter. The subject is momentarily dropped. The pills are not shared. The game continues. The winner (not the heroin addict) receives his lap dance. Hilarity ensues. Break.
Stern: "I'm still trying to figure out how Artie has those heroin pills."
Quivers: "And we're going to get to the bottom of that."
And they do. "I remember you said this to me one time," Lange says to Stern. "You know how something pops in your head and you want to be honest because you know it's so entertaining and interesting and then you just blurt something out ?" Lange spills it all. How he fell back into the habit while doing a stand-up tour; the shows he missed in 2005; the withdrawal sickness; and the toll it took on his family and girlfriend.
There are moments Lange chokes, falls silent, or mumbles it's something he shouldn't have said. Quivers asks how they can help. Stern says he'll share a worse revelation: Now that he's 52, his pants are constantly urine-stained from dribbles. Sound guy Fred Norris plays Steppenwolf's "The Pusher." Stern groans, saying it's like the time he overdosed on acid and his friend kept playing the Grateful Dead. They try to make Lange laugh. They tell him it only matters that he's OK now. And they never stop asking questions.
RELATED CONTENT
Vote: Is the "Stern Show" worth the cost of satellite radio?
Humanity among the fart jokes
Lange's story wasn't crass or pornographic. It also wasn't anything you're likely to hear on radio or most other entertainment forums. Between contrived reality TV and soulless celebrities unable to admit their flaws even as they issue fake apologies, popular culture is starved for humanity. Seriously, kids. Lange's confession, even the running joke it's become on the 'Stern Show,' is real. It's human.
It's true, Stern's audience is about a third of what he commanded on terrestrial radio. Whether the majority can ever wrap their heads around paying for something they're used to getting for free remains to be seen. It's still early in the day for satellite radio. But any questions or criticisms surrounding Stern's decision to move are now moot. No matter the loss, no matter the cost, the creative freedom is worth it.
Again, to echo the highfalutin, it's not about the cuss words or the poopy talk. It's the freedom to swear, or rather not prescreen every syllable before it's said, that's blown Stern's show wide open. Between the vomit fetishists and unbleeped fart jokes, real life has room to spread out and tell its story. And that's interesting and entertaining.
Helen Popkin listens to Howard on her Sirius boombox from her Bronx home.
© 2006 MSNBC Interactive |
|
TerryGale
|
Other Stern items:
The Happy Feminist: On Howard Stern
NY Daily News
Last, but not least..
| Quote: | NYT - Stern Likes His New Censor: Himself
By JACQUES STEINBERG
Published: January 9, 2007
Howard Stern, who today marks his first anniversary on satellite radio, wasted little time over that period before setting off on an expedition deep into the wild, forested territories of a medium patrolled by neither the Federal Communications Commission nor, apparently, his own employer.
Listeners who have paid $12.95 a month to hear him on Sirius Satellite Radio have been treated to uncensored aural experiences like a standing bit in which he persuades a porn star or centerfold model (typically naked, sometimes in tandem) to climb onto a vibrating, mechanical contraption known as the Sybian. He (and they) then provide play-by-play commentary on their apparently escalating enjoyment — all over the roar of a motor as loud as a leaf blower’s.
Fans who, upon hearing these and other scenes described to them, have been seized by a desire to see what’s going on can do so too, for an additional $9.99 to $13.99 a month via Mr. Stern’s on-demand television channel, which is available on many cable and satellite television systems.
But one does not need to see Mr. Stern, or his supporting cast of producers and technicians and various hangers-on (long known to listeners of his former radio show as the “Whack Pack”), to hear them talk freely about topics like their apparent fondness for less conventional sexual practices — the very topics that once drew Mr. Stern steep F.C.C. fines — punctuated with locker-room language so colorful that it might make George Carlin blush.
“It’s free-form, free-flowing, one big party,” Mr. Stern said in an interview on Friday, in a tiny corner office adjacent to his studio in Midtown Manhattan that was virtually bare except for photos of his steady girlfriend, Beth Ostrosky, and two large bottles of Purel, the hand cleanser. “We’re talking about the stuff you can’t talk about. The show on terrestrial radio in the last 10 years had been so watered down,” he said. “Now it’s only great because of the freedom.”
Still, however obvious Mr. Stern’s enthusiasm, his argument prompts an immediate question: Having mined so much of his humor in the past from his frustration at butting up against seemingly insurmountable boundaries (variously thrown up by the F.C.C., and, before that, his wife, Alison, from whom he is now divorced), can he be as entertaining when no one is telling him that anything is off limits?
Mr. Stern says that he can, and that he has already been.
“I don’t know what it is in particular with my career,” Mr. Stern said, sprawling in an easy chair, his 6-foot-5 frame clad in leather jacket, stone-washed jeans and black work boots. “They wouldn’t say that about Chris Rock, that Chris Rock shouldn’t be in clubs, he should be on TV, because he would have restraint. For some reason people or critics latch onto this idea that I needed the F.C.C. in order to be funny. Which is ludicrous. I’m not funny because of the F.C.C.”
And yet Mr. Stern acknowledged that with no one else seeking to put the brakes on his show, it has occasionally fallen to him, in a vacuum, to do so. “There are times now when I’m the guy saying, ‘That went too far,’ which is a new role,” he said.
Pressed for an example, he recalled a regular staff meeting on a recent Thursday in which one cast member had made the following request: that Mr. Stern, as both the microphones and cameras rolled, knock him out with chloroform, strip him naked and replace his clothes.
“I said, ‘I’m not sure chloroform is legal,’ ” Mr. Stern recalled saying. “ ‘I don’t know if it kills you.’ I said, ‘Wait a second, I’m not going there.’ ”
The material that has passed Mr. Stern’s own personal litmus test — including the broadcast of a version of the children’s game ring toss, only this one involving meat balls and women’s bare bottoms — is being heard by a much smaller audience than Mr. Stern had before departing free radio in the fall of 2005.
Where once Mr. Stern could boast of reaching 12 million listeners a day, Sirius’s overall subscriber base, while growing dramatically, is half that. At the same time Mr. Stern has relinquished his role on the front lines of the battle against government encroachment on free speech because the F.C.C. has no jurisdiction over satellite radio.
Asked if he missed being heard by so many or being talked about quite so much, Mr. Stern said that he was delighting in being part of “a start-up business.” Still, he sounded almost hopeful that his critics had not gone away.
“We’re still up against the wall,” he said. “There isn’t a day we don’t have a television report where someone says I’m a piece of garbage. There are so many angry mobs out there to have my head.”
A moment later, though, he said he would not miss the fights of the past, over issues like whether there was a place for indecency and foul language on the public airwaves... |
Go to the sites to see items in full...
|
|
|
|