Radio Star D.O.A., by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #140

August 9, 2011 Arthur Tebbel 2 Comments

Dear Art,

I understand that you’ll be appearing on one of our stations this week.  While we believe in providing uncensored content to our listeners you have a bit of a reputation for swearing.  Can you please keep it in check this weekend?

-Mel Karmazin, CEO, Sirius XM Radio

Mel,

To give a little context for this I will be performing at the Del Close Marathon in New York City this weekend with my improv team, Twik.  The show, along with the rest of the marathon will be simulcast on Sirius XM satellite radio.  Friday night, 11:45pm Eastern time, listen in people.  Now onto the business of this column which, this week, is disappointing Mel.

Live comedy is a dangerous thing.  Ask Michael Richards.  He probably didn’t get up on stage that night thinking Google would autofill his name to “Michael Richards racist” for the rest of his life.  I think he would need to murder a President to change that.  And not a black President, that’d probably just double it down.  He went up there with an idea of what he would do and that happened.  We’re going to be improvising.  That said, it’s pretty unlikely any of us will end up being racist, we just aren’t like that.

I don’t work particularly blue.  Well blue by modern standards.  I’ll drop a lot of Carlin’s seven words.  Especially fuck, whoa boy do I like that word.  Describing sexual acts in an improv scene is usually a sign it’s gone completely off the rails.  Pantomiming is a different matter entirely but that wouldn’t come up on the radio now would it?  My group doesn’t really do that either.  Improv in LA has a kind of jocks vs. nerds mentality (even though we’re really all nerds hence performing improv comedy) and my group is pretty solidly in the nerd camp.  Nerds don’t reenact sex acts on stage.

I’m glad we had a chance to talk though because we do have one big problem.  Why aren’t you promoting the shit out of this?  I listen to your service basically exclusively while I’m driving and not once have I heard someone talking about how I was going to be on the radio this Friday night at 11:45pm eastern time.  Are you trying to keep it a secret?  I mean the rest of the festival is probably going to be cool to what with it featuring some of the best long form teams in the entire country but damn it if you had the time to write me this letter you had time to cut a promo about me.  You let me down Mel.