With all my recent frustrations and rants over the state of the nation and the FCC have led me to write beyond the scope of my beloved blog. I'm still not 100% sure where I'm going with this, but I have a general layout (and purpose) with the root of the following excerpt. I hope to complete it sometime within the next couple of years, and I intend on making it a full novel. Not just a short story or novella this time. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, and if you're good little seamonkeys, I might just put some more snippets up here for you.

Bon apetit...

After getting out of college, I was anxious to try and bring the Morning Wood Experience to another outlet. It was relatively easy to get a radio show back at old Dormsike, you just had to be persistent. Sooner or later they were gonna have to acknowledge you unless you were batting a double digit IQ and/or had rotten musical taste. And even then your odds were decent.

At any rate, I wanted to test the waters, see what I was worth. So when I made the trip from college to grad school, I made a beeline for station tryouts. Due to my class schedule, I could only stay in training classes for half the allotted time, but I did make a connection with the station manager, Gil Loeb. I’ll never be sure how impressed he was, if at all, since his expression never changed. He was an older fella, probably in his mid 50s, with a full head of white and a sizeable paunch. He never removed his sport coat, not once, even during the residual summer humidity of early September. Had he ever peeled that second skin of a jacket from his torso, you would’ve seen a button-down shirt that was unable to hide his belly jutting over his beltline.

Herein laid the key difference between WCCH and New Haven College’s WNHC. My old stomping grounds had been run by the students. This strange new world was also run by the students.

But supervised by the faculty. Even a eunuch would’ve wound up in the fetal position after this boot to the junk.

So here I am, trying to play down my beloved A.M. antics to Gargantuan Gil Loeb. I felt like I was about to spar with a boxing champion. It was a feeling I would become very familiar with after grad school, when going on job interviews.

“So,” he started. “You obviously have a great deal of experience, having done four years at college. To be truthful, we don’t often get grad students trying out for the station… We like to reserve on-air slots for undergraduates.”

“I assumed that was the typical scenario, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a shot.”

“You’re going for your MBA in… what was it now, finance?” Not even close.

“Marketing, actually.”

“Oh, right. Marketing. And you’re a full time student, correct?”

“Yep, three classes a week from 5:30 to 8:30 at night.”

“And you commute from Waterbury? What is that, about a half-hour drive?”

“Forty-five minutes with evening traffic.”

“Hmm.” Gil had this way of analyzing and contemplating every response you offered. “Hmm” would’ve been his response if I answered a question on what color my socks were.

They were white, for the record.

“Quite a hike to do a radio show, isn’t it?” he pried. This made me uncomfortable. The question was borderline accusatory, and I felt like this went from a purportedly casual chat to an interrogation. I realized it sounded a little outlandish, driving nearly an hour to do a simple radio show, but Gil made me feel like I was bound for Bellevue, padded cell and all. I did my best to hide the sinking feeling in my gut and just shrugged with a grin.

“I loved doing radio. It’s something I want to keep up with, if possible.”

“Hmm.” This particular monosyllabic pondering segued into Gil reviewing my show proposal. Every instinct was telling me that this was now officially a lost cause and I should bolt to the door. A word of advice, true believer: in any interview situation, whenever someone pauses from a line of questioning to review anything written on paper, it is not a good sign. Proceed with caution. “Your show was pretty risqué, no?” My mental Magic 8-Ball was reading “Outlook Not Good” by now. I could offer Gil the Holy Grail at this point and it wouldn’t have made a different.

“It was harmless fun. College students like a good laugh or two while getting ready for an 8:00 AM class.” This comment didn’t even warrant the requisite “Hmm.” Gil went right for the jugular.

“You are familiar with station policy in compliance with FCC regulations, correct?” The FCC. This was my first run-in with those three cursed consonants. While WCCH was legally bound to their regulations, it was still easy to get away with murder on the air (especially between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM; safe harbor hours). Every new DJ viewed those letters while skimming the station rules, but no one at the station ever made a fuss over it. Why would a great white like the FCC bother with a guppy like WCCH? Or WNHC for that matter? To Gil’s query, I simply nodded. “Because of the prevalence of so-called ‘shock jocks,’ the FCC has strict laws regarding on-air content, and we make it a point to abide by these laws. I am very concerned about what is broadcast on my station. I don’t even want to hear the word ‘sucks’ on my station.”

I bit my tongue, trying to keep my jaw in place and not hit the floor. How in the hell do you ban such a timid word? I mean, don’t misunderstand me, I know full well the origin of the word. To say “this sucks” is an abbreviation of the derogatory phrase “this sucks dick.” Or “cock,” whichever tickles your fancy. But I mean, despite where the term derives from, we are talking about 2002 here. The twenty-first century, new millennium and all that. By this point in time, hell by the mid 90’s, “sucks’ had become so distilled through extensive use that its suggestive origins had been all but forgotten by the general public. In fact, the phrase had pretty much been fully assimilated by the vernacular lexicon of our culture.

To this day, I wonder if Gil ever felt that Prohibition was still a good idea.

I also wonder if he knew the fact that the word “jerk” was originally used to describe someone who masturbated too much. Or that a “geek” really meant someone who bit the heads off of chickens. That was where the words started, but where they finished was an altogether different story, much like “sucks.” Kurtz and I had had several discussions over the English language, and how sooner or later, there would be no such thing as a truly taboo word. By this time, “damn,” “hell,” “ass,” and “bitch” had already become acceptable on most television and radio broadcasts, which were the two mediums that were and still are largely unregulated in terms of content. After all, a 12-year-old can get turned away at an R-rated movie, but there’s no authority figure with the exception of parents to bar them from turning the channel to a program that’s rated TV-MA. And by the turn of the century, anything rated TV-MA got a little extra dose of freedom in terms of content. Shows like “Playmakers” and “NYPD Blue” were freely exposing bare bottoms and dropping the word “shit” freely. In fact, “South Park” got away with saying “shit” more than 150 times in one episode without a single bleep. Granted, the geniuses that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are, they did so to prove a point. But nonetheless, it was evident that the reigns of censorship were being gradually loosened by this time in history.

“Words are just words,” Kurtz once said to me. “They mean different things to different people and always will. For you, ‘happiness’ might mean a good job, a loving wife, a nice house and two kids. For me, ‘happiness’ might be a good porno movie that inspires a round of wondrous masturbatory antics. It’s all relative. One day swears will be relative, too. They’re halfway there already. ‘Shit’ could mean a pile of feces or a mere synonym for ‘stuff.’ Trust me when I tell you there will come a point in time where they just won’t be regarded as forbidden.”

“Fuckin’ A,” I remember responding. But as much as I agreed with the good Colonel’s reasoning, I very quickly realized that there would be no convincing Gil that “sucks” was perfectly kosher. Because no matter how much the public had accepted the term, it wasn’t the public’s station. It was Gil’s. If he didn’t want to hear it, he didn’t want to hear it, end of story. He was sitting before me, leaning forward as much as his hefty frame would allow him to without his gut being restricted by his desk. I nodded, fingers in a steeple following his restrictive edict. “Well Gil, it’s your station.” What passed for a smile crossed his face. I had acknowledged his illusion of power, and that had made him happy. It was an in. Maybe not a big one, but an in nonetheless. I could use that to my advantage if I wanted to. I could kiss his ass until a tube of Chapstick the size of Ron Jeremy’s legendary penis would be needed to cure my parched lips. I could still get to do a toned down version of my show, despite the traffic and invisible watchdogs keeping an eye on me at all times. I could swing it.

“Well, then,” Gil began. “Would you be interested in recording a demo?” His entire demeanor had changed. He was no longer hunched forward. He had leaned back, seeming very comfortable and proud of himself as his weight caused the seat to creak loudly. My in grew larger; there was an offer on the table.

“Hmm,” I said as I now leaned back. I rested my elbows on the armrests and folded my hands, looking down at the cluttered desk and nodding to myself. After a few seconds I got up from the chair, shook Gil’s hand, and turned promptly around toward the door. Standing in the doorway, I looked over my shoulder and uttered what have got to be the greatest lie and the greatest truth I have ever told consecutively: “You’re a nice guy Gil, but your policy sucks.”