City of Fools wrote:
I do hereby request more details on "Oy Vey"...
After writing a bunch of crap about it, I googled it just for kicks and ohhhh shit, it's
back. Sundays now, 2 to 4. I was under the impression, having called the station the time it was replaced with Dick Kay, that they were no longer doing the show ("they're no longer here..."click). This is great news. Here's what I wrote a couple minutes ago when I thought it was dead, hence some past tense:
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Anyway. There's a place on the north side called Joey's Brickhouse. Just kind of a family restaurant but with big brunch specials (it's all-you-can-eat but at the end they tell you to tip based on how much food they brought you, and they actually
tell you this to your face, as in they show you the bill and explain 1) how much you owe and 2) how much you would
hypothetically owe were it
not all-you-can-eat and to please add your 15-20% of the hypothetical bill, rather than the actual one. Is this SOP? This seems like what some would call a "straight-up bitch move" but whatever, we can debate the merits of this later if you please) and wacky decor. Maybe you've been there. I haven't, friends have.
Anyway, this particular establishment bought two hours a week on Saturday afternoons to do a show not about food, but about politics. The show was hosted by the two brothers who run the place, with the business guy driving the show and the chef chiming in when he could actually get a word in. Rounding out the show was their dad, who would also compete for airtime and then do an editorial (sort of a Roar of the Day with more stammering), and their mom, who would call in and add thoughts, though what they were I never ascertained. They're all Jewish, as you probably guessed by the name, and unfortunately they chose to manifest this in the form of a weird mean resentment for having grown up on the North Shore and hair-trigger accusations of antisemitism. Though that specific form of hate is still disgustingly widespread (hell, look around this board and the shows it covers), I felt there was some unfounded instigation on the host's part. Guilty parties should absolutely be called out, and they were, but this often made for uncomfortable radio when it unnecessarily arose.
Given that it was brokered time, they had no obligation to run any ads other than advertisements for themselves (like Norman Mailer!), but they hardly even did that. Mentions of the restaurant were sporadic, and so you'd get very close to two full hours of uninterrupted ranting about evil Republicans, the "more irrelevant white people" who ran against Obama, and various inconsequential bugbears of theirs, like various friends that "screwed" them, or Harvey Wells asking them what exactly was the purpose of their show if it had nothing to do with the restaurant and why weren't they paying their bills.
I get the impression that they're all good guys, but the show was just awful in so many ways. Poorly produced, meandering topics, and this weird self-indulgent feeling that has to come with buying two hours of time on the radio that are all yours to do whatever. I kept tuning in every week figuring that I caught them on a bad day and that they'd eventually make for some pleasant Saturday listening, but the show just got worse and worse until it disappeared in December. I wish I had taped it.
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.