Thursday, July 7, 2011

Satellite Radio Withdrawl in the Old West

I used to get in the car around 5 am, if I was lucky, I'd skip around the AM stations listening for traffic and weather. If it was winter I might have a looming fear that a snow storm would break out the further north I got. That had happened on more than one occasion, the worst of which the Parkway traffic slowed down to a one lane, 25mph crawl, where I spun out for a moment before getting control of the car. I stopped at the next rest stop, called out from work and drove back to the shore white knuckled.
But on a good day, by the time I got to the Parkway and the sun would start showing itself, I'd plug the satellite radio into the cigarette lighter and usually hear this come up.
It's from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly soundtrack by Enrico Morricone. Metallica used to come out to it in the early 90's, then recorded a version of it in the 00's. Opie and Anthony probably got it from them.

Anyway it was the first thing I'd pay attention to in the morning. I'd pretend I wasn't driving to work but was instead on some Eastwoodian quest for revenge, or justice or something of the like. It made it easier to wake up pretending I was headed towards some cinematic showdown rather than an office where I'd be fielding phone calls and discreetly abusing the Internet for 8 or 9 hours every day. Opie and Anthony, and usually Jim Norton but sometimes, (hopefully) Patrice O'Neal would start up shortly after that. The first segment of the show could run up to an hour long if they were on a roll and often they would. Sometimes I'd sit in the parking lot and listen to the end of the bit. This happened in college several time for things like this and missed a class for this (which is only part of a bit that went on for well over an hour).

There was also Ron and Fez. Both shows were on WNEW in the late 90's and early 00's. Opie and Anthony got fired over the Sex for Sam thing and shortly thereafter WNEW switched formats and Ron and Fez were fired. They came back a few years later on XM Satellite Radio and my boss at the time, VP Rolo Beesler, bought his own setup specifically to listen to them while he worked. After the first few "fucks" and "shits' echoed through the entire office he kept the volume low and usually shut the door to his office.
A few months later Ron and Fez got a show on the same channel. I started commuting from Brick to Ramsey. In honor of this, VP Rolo, who was upgrading his XM, gave me his old receiver; a stereo and a car mount. I'd catch the first hour of Opie and Anthony on the way in and rest of the show on a replay going home. Ron and Fez (doing bits like How Many 9 Year Olds Can You Beat Up) were on mid-days and I could keep them on while everyone was at lunch.

Sir Bert of Rohan soon joined us XM owners and it wasn't long before we just kept the radio on all day in the office and had our own little inside jokes that annoyed and alienated everyone else we worked with. The swan song for this came when Rolo and I were relocated to the warehouse (I suppose demoted) Rolo wired speakers running from his office to the rafters of the warehouse.

Anyway, I'm thinking about all this stuff because I'm looking for a job. Not a job, I guess. I'm looking for some work. I sort of have a job that I work at from home, however I'm constantly finding myself broke, so I'm looking for some supplementary income. So I'm going to go out and have to meet new people, get acclimated to a new environment, curb whatever tics or shitty things I say or do on a normal basis.

After I quit the XM place I got a quick job at a warehouse, closer to home. No radio, no friends, no fun. Just an old gray job. I loathed every second of it.

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