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Time to Remember
Mental Floss magazine has one of the more entertaining feeds on Twitter. Today they posted a link with “10 Things to Remember About Memorial Day” that I immediately “re-tweeted.” As a former northerner, I didn’t know that the southern states didn’t adopt the holiday until after World War I and that nine states also have a Confederate Memorial Day. Tennessee’s is on June 3.
When I was a kid, I would go to the Memorial Day parade that marched past the Crestwood Library and ended at a war memorial. Usually the local politicians would make a few statements. Even though we were in New York State, it had a Mayberry feel to it.
My daughter is visiting Knoxville this weekend. On Memorial Day a few years ago, she stopped off at Culpeper National Cemetery (where my father is buried) and took some photos that I now like to look at every year on Memorial Day. What Memorial Day traditions do you have?
Hey, Good Morning
Certain guests in my radio career made me want to do something out of the ordinary to prepare for their arrival. When Julia Child was coming to KLOS, I wanted to feed her. When Captain Kangaroo was coming, I wanted to re-create part of his show.
In yesterday’s post about the death of Gary Coleman, I alluded to Bob Keeshan’s appearance on the Mark & Brian show. In one of our planning meetings, somebody suggested dropping ping pong balls on the TV icon. My wife and I went about obtaining a large quantity of ping pong balls from Sport Chalet and devised a way to drop them. We filled a mesh laundry bag with the small white orbs. My wife re-worked the drawstring so that tugging on it would open the bag.
When I got to work the next day, I secured the laundry bag to the ceiling of the radio studio, over the large counter top that the hosts and guests sat around. I had an engineer point an extra microphone at the counter to capture the sound of the ping pong balls hitting the surface. I also had Mark & Brian lower their studio chairs. I wanted to keep Mr. Keeshan’s focus as low as possible. I even asked Mark & Brian to pull their hands down to waist-level when shaking hands with the Captain.
While Mr. Keeshan waited in the green room, the listening audience was told what to expect. Shortly before a commercial break, Mark & Brian would lead Bob into a knock-knock joke. That would be my cue to pull the string and release the ping pong balls. All went according to plan and the Captain’s reaction was perfect.
The commercials started and I began retrieving the ping pong balls. I was on all fours under the counter when I unexpectedly bumped into someone. It was Captain Kangaroo, also on all fours, helping to clean up the mess. I was stunned and delighted at the same time. Before he left, I made sure he autographed one of the ping pong balls for me.
Set Free
Gary Coleman scared the bejesus out of Brian Phelps one morning. The diminutive former child-star had gone along with my plan to hide inside a box at KLOS. As you can imagine, the stunt took a bit of planning. My wife had recently helped me rig a laundry bag full of ping-pong balls to drop on Captain Kangaroo during his visit to KLOS. I turned to her again to help me figure how to put Gary Coleman in a box.
The previous day, my wife and I had rummaged through our garage to find a moving box big enough to contain Gary. She then gift-wrapped it, leaving the flaps on one end unsealed. She put wrapping paper on the open flaps too. A bow went on the end opposite the opening. On the big day, I got a cart from the mail room and waited for Gary to arrive. He climbed onto the cart and I placed the box on its side next to him. As I flipped the box over him, Gary made sure the open flaps were tucked under him. From the outside, it looked like the entire box was sealed with wrapping paper.
On the occasion of Mark & Brian’s tenth anniversary at KLOS, I had booked Rockapella to sing live and “Good Day LA” to do a TV simulcast. While the cameras were on, I would wheel in the big surprise. Mark & Brian thought I was delivering their gift from station management. They started tearing open the paper on the top of the box and out popped Gary. For a moment, I really thought Brian was going to have a heart attack.
A couple of weeks later, Gary was one of the celebrities who showed up when Mark & Brian got their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I remember hanging out with him after the after-party as he waited for his ride.
The news of Gary’s death at age 42 saddened me and made me think of something my friend Bean said. He interviewed Gary many times over the years on KROQ. This past January, he wrote a troubling blog post predicting that Gary would not live to see 2011. Terry Morrow points out that one of Gary’s last public appearances was a year ago in Knoxville. I hope that in the next life, Gary finds the happiness that seemed to elude him in this world.
Darn Tootin’
There was a stretch in my career when I had to give depositions in one lawsuit after another. The lawyers preparing me for the questioning told me to only answer exactly what was asked. If the opposition asked a yes or no question, I was to only give a yes or no answer. Interviewing kids is the same. By nature, they usually only answer what is asked of them.
The late Art Linkletter realized the truth about kids and knew to avoid yes or no questions. His beautifully simple interviews with children allowed the kids to shine. There’s a reason the segment was called “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” not “Art Says the Darndest Things.” Like Johnny Carson, Art knew to let the kids’ funny lines breathe and not try to one-up them. Art’s genius was in his questions.
I was inspired to write about Linkletter when I saw a tribute to him on my friend Sandy Weaver’s Facebook wall. I dashed off a quick comment and then condensed it into a Twitter post and Facebook status:
Every broadcaster could learn from the late, great Art Linkletter. Listen to him talk to kids. Almost no yes/no questions and he doesn’t interrupt them. Plus he lets them have the last word and doesn’t try to “top” them. What a great, GREAT interviewer!
Jack Diamond commented on your status: “So, true, Frank. He made the transition from Radio to TV because he was so good at listening, and then responding.”
Linkletter also resisted the urge to interrupt his interview subjects. He created a comfortable environment for the kids to speak honestly. In the obituary that ran on CBS, he said he was on the same mental level as they were.
Translators and Repeaters
If all goes according to plan, this summer I should get three states closer to achieving my goal of visiting all 50. On Wednesday afternoon, I grabbed my newly obtained AAA TourBook for Idaho, Montana & Wyoming and started reading in bed. It occurred to me that I could use my WiFi clock radio to hear more about my intended destinations. I flipped through the TourBook in vain, trying to find the call letters of stations along my route. Wouldn’t a local radio guide be useful to AAA members who are taking driving vacations?
The TourBook did have phone numbers for the chambers of commerce in Jackson, Missoula and Coeur d’Alene. I got through to live humans at two of the three places. As a radio guy, I was discouraged that the chamber employees couldn’t rattle off the call letters of their local stations. Because my radio sorts Internet stations by name or call letters, the dial positions wouldn’t help me. One of the receptionists was kind enough to look up her market on Google for me. The other was only able to recall the name of the NPR-affiliated college station. I had slightly better luck using the directory at Reciva.com. I added Yellowstone Public Radio, Montana Public Radio and Spokane Public Radio to the “My Stations” folder.
It was a lot easier to find the official Twitter feeds for Yellowstone, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington tourism. I was surprised when Wyoming followed me back. Given my renewed dependence on caffeine, isn’t it appropriate that my vacation should wrap up in Seattle?
Crema-tour
The Body Farm novels have made Helen Taylor a bit of a local celebrity. Recently, a widow arriving at the East Tennessee Cremation Company for her husband’s cremation asked Helen to autograph a Jefferson Bass book before the cremation began. Helen much prefers the recognition she gets nowadays as opposed to when she was quoted in a 1997 Time Magazine article about a corpse injured beyond recognition in a suspicious accident.
At the Bone Zones pizza party last Sunday, Susan Seals and Mary Jo Tarvin asked if I wanted to accompany them on a tour of the crematory run by Helen Taylor. Of course I accepted. An invitation like that doesn’t come along every day. Although I have seen Dr. Bill Bass’s slide show on cremations, I thought that seeing the equipment in person would give me a better understanding of the process.
Our tour began in the room where family members can gather during their loved one’s cremation. The room has a window, through which they can view the container being put into the retort. The room also has a button for those whose tradition dictates that a family member ignite the flames.
Helen recently bought a new cremator designed for large human remains. It has been delivered but is not yet fully installed. People who weigh more than 300 pounds present a challenge. In standard-sized cremators, it is recommended that they be cremated at the beginning of the day. The chamber should be cold so its walls can absorb the extra heat generated by the bigger bodies. All the cremations that were underway during our visit were of larger people. Helen told us she has cremated several people who died shortly after gastric bypass surgery. I felt a great sadness for those who died from obesity-related causes, especially those who were younger than me.
The body is reduced to a brittle skeleton during the cremation process. The bones are raked into a collection tray and pulverized into a powder. Before pulverization can occur, a magnet is used to separate any metal from the remains, including staples from the cardboard casket and any implanted medical hardware. Sometimes the family members ask to keep artificial joints, sometimes they don’t. Pacemakers should be removed before cremation because they explode. Helen told us about a close call she had with a pacemaker that exploded just as she was opening the cremator door.
Because I had once admired the artificial knee that Susan and Mary Jo use as a business card holder, they made sure that Helen gave me one to take home. They even had her autograph it.
Pilot Episode
A desire for free coffee and a Facebook coupon for free oatmeal was the motivation for my idea to combine the two. Customers at Pilot Travel Centers use the same Styrofoam cups to serve themselves both items. The idea was already in my head when a Twitter post from Pilot prompted me to respond. One thing led to another and before long I had offered to host a “Coffee/Oatmeal TweetUp” at a Pilot on Lovell Road.
In my discussion with Pilot’s Lynsay Caylor, we thought about waiting a week or two to hold the event, which would realistically draw about 20 people. Instead, we chose to strike while the iron was warm and have the TweetUp a mere 72 hours later, knowing that only about 10 would show up on short notice. Besides, this was all for fun. Pilot provided the coffee and oatmeal for free.
Some of the people at the gathering put too much coffee in their oatmeal. One woman used flavored cappuccino and liked it. The key to success was adding the coffee slowly, stirring until it reached the desired consistency. I mixed dark roast coffee into maple & brown sugar oatmeal and was delighted with the results. I don’t have oatmeal that often but I will probably never make it with plain hot water again.
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