January 24, 2011 | 12:55 pm

Piers Morgan and Howard Stern: A Rematch?

Posted by Rob Eshman

Steve Langford of the Howard 100 News Team interviewed me by phone this morning about my last blog post.  I love being interviewed by Steve: it is exactly as if you’re talking to a New York Times reporter, or a field producer for 60 Minutes.  The questions are well-informed, always with follow-up, and often tough—and then I realize— this is the Howard 100 News. 

Anyway, in my usual fashion, just after Steve hung up, I realized what I should have said.  I don’t blame Piers for not conducting a great interview with Howard—it was Piers first week, Howard is even so out of his league as a broadcaster, you don’t step on to to the field and throw a 90 yard pass on your second play. If anything, Piers has a producer who should have either warned him off, or should have given him a better approach.  Here’s the approach I would have advised Piers to take:  get Howard’s advice.  Piers is starting out as an American broadcaster, Howard is in the twilight of his radio career.  Piers wants to reign supreme one day, Howard has and, in my opinion, does.  So the question is, how does Howard do it?  What for him makes a great interview?  How does he get major subjects to open up?  How does he follow up a brilliant interview with a stripper who never graduated high school with a brilliant interview with a governor or senator?  How did he develop his talents?  How does he account for his success? 

Piers should have played the student to Howard’s mentor.  Howard has lessons, rules to his success.  (I was going to call this blog Stern Rules, but it felt too fanzine-esquie). It would have truly enlightened the audience, allowed them a glimpse into how Howard constructed one of the most successful careers in American media—it would have been fascinating and useful. 

Oh well, next time.

Meanwhile, here’s a previous post on the genius of the idea of Howard 100 News.

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January 20, 2011 | 11:53 pm

5 Lessons Piers Morgan Can Learn from Howard Stern [VIDEO]

Posted by Rob Eshman

I tuned in to watch CN’s Larry King-replacement Piers Morgan interview Howard Stern earlier this week. By the end of it it was clear to me why Howard is at the top of his game and Piers is.. really popular in England.  I’m going to boil down my observations this way: when Morgan replays the interview, here are the five things Howard-the-interviewer does that Piers should have. I’ll make it quick:

1. Listen. Howard runs a great interview because he listens carefully to what people say, and to what they mean.  Even if, like Morgan, he may sometimes be thinking of the next question, or worrying about how the interview is going, he doesn’t show it. Morgan did. The reward for careful listening is Howard can tell when a guest has strayed into uncomfortable territory.  That’s when he pounces.

2. Don’t strive for shock or outrageousness. Strive for honesty.  Howard’s reputation as a “shock jock,” distracts people from his real goal: to get people, including himself,  to be as honest as possible.  Shock is a byproduct of honesty.  Morgan kept tossing in questions about sex and penis size, thinking he would reveal the “shocking” Howard.  Howard tried to make something out of the dead end observations. (By the way, Piers, if you’re going to offer up teasers, they should tease.  “When we come back, we’ll talk to Howard about money,” is not what I call a cliffhanger.

3. Once you open a wound, dig in. There was one coup for Morgan in the interview, when Howard revealed the time his dad called him a genius.  Morgan should have pressed deeper on that, pressed and pressed.  Howard would have sensed the honesty, the rawness, and dug in with more questions, and circled back to it. That’s how Howard pulled out the nugget about Kelsey Grammer’s alleged dress-up fetish from his ex-wife. Piers just let Howard’s reveal slide, or so it appeared in the edit.

4. Go where no hack interviewer has gone before..  If Howard asks ten questions, you can be sure his subject has never been asked eight f them before, at least not in public. Some of Howard’s questions are meant to throw a person off guard, others are the result of someone—maybe Howard, or Gary, or Will—going down a list and circling what’s new and different.

5. Your audience will always care more about you than whoever your talking to. Balls, Piers.  You’re on TV. This is your show. What do you think?  What’s going through your head?  Every interview Howard does reveals a lot… about Howard.  Piers still thinks of himself as a journalist.  And if this were a print or NPR interview, that’s fine.  But CNN needs personality and a strong point of view, not a suspender-less Larry King.

For his part, Howard was as good as I’ve ever seen him on TV, but I got the sense he expected the interview to be tougher, fresher, more original than it was.  The Jackie puppet would have been a tougher interlocutor.  Howard was never once not in total control.  At one point Piers had to point out that it was not Howard’s turn to interview him. Too bad.  Piers could have learned something.

Video from CNN.com.

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December 15, 2010 | 6:31 pm

Erin Stern, The Next Miss Howard TV?

Posted by Rob Eshman

Howard has given me a gift by renewing for five years.  So I’m going to return the favor.  In today’s Jewish Journal we have an exclusive interview with Erin Stern, Ms. Olympia. Maybe she’s a long lost relative.  Or maybe not.  She is certainly Howard-esque: bright, disciplined, ambitious.  Here’s how she went from dejected highjumper to the top of her sport:

A Junior All-American at the University of Florida, Stern had been competing in events like the pentathlon and heptathlon since high school. Her high-jump numbers were good enough that she set her sights on the Beijing Olympics. All that stood between her and the team trials were a few short centimeters. She kicked her training into overdrive, and her numbers improved, but she was falling just shy of what she needed.

“I’m a little short for a high-jumper,” says the statuesque 5-foot-8 Stern, chuckling. “I gave it my all, but I couldn’t make the last three centimeters.”

Dejected, Stern was forced to give up on Olympic high jumping.

“I was extremely bummed,” she said.

By rights, Stern’s athletic journey should have ended there, three centimeters short of glory.  She had a promising career in real estate to fall back on, and her college years were over. It was time for a transition. But she’d been a track star for so long that it felt weird to have no focus, no goal to reach for. That’s when a friend suggested she try competing in Figure competitions.

Stern grew up in a family of athletes. “My father played football at C.W. Post and Adelphi University, and my mother would run three miles a day,” she says.

She started riding horses in competitions at a young age and later developed a passion for running, just like her mother, which led her to her track career.

Stern was raised in a Jewish household. She attended religious school and had her bat mitzvah during Passover.

“I’ll never forget having to read the long haftarah,” she said. “ I had to do the service all in Hebrew. My sister was lucky — by the time her bat mitzvah rolled around, we’d joined the Reform temple, and she got to do a lot of the prayers in English.”

Erin Stern’s Fitness Tips

Starting your own journey toward becoming a fitter Jew isn’t as hard as training for a contest like the Olympia. 2010 Figure Olympia champ Erin Stern offers a few simple changes you can make to get yourself on the road to a healthier life today.

“The No. 1 rule is don’t make excuses. People always make excuses for why it’s too hard to work out or take time to be healthier.  I suggest making appointments for fitness, just like you would for a business meeting or a lunch with a friend. Make an appointment to walk or lift some weights. That way, there’s no excuse not to have the time.”

“Another thing I like to follow is the 90/10 rule — eat well 90 percent of the time so you can enjoy yourself the other 10 percent.  Don’t deny yourself that nice cheat meal on Saturday night; eat right the rest of the week and you can have it with no guilt.”

“Eat five meals a day. You should have breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus two snacks in between. Snacking is really important in terms of controlling your insulin spikes. If you have two healthy snacks in between meals — almonds, an apple, string cheese, Greek yogurt or veggies — you won’t get to the point where you’re so hungry you overeat.”

“Work out with a friend; it makes you accountable. You’re less likely to skip that after-work trip to the gym if you know your friend is there waiting for you and counting on you.”

“Pick a class that fits you — there are so many on the market these days, from yoga to spinning to pole dancing to Krav Maga. There’s a class out there for every fitness level and every taste, so find one that speaks to you.”

“If you’re training for a contest, or just want to keep track of your weight loss, take progress pictures. You see your body every day, so it’s hard to notice changes. If you take a picture in the same outfit, in the same spot, once every week, you’ll be able to notice the changes you’re making much easier.”

Stern’s last piece of advice for people looking to live healthier: “Start now.  Don’t wait for the new year. Set your goals, print them out, hang them on your wall, and make a plan to get fitter and healthier today.”

Her parents stressed both Judaism and athletics as important pursuits.

“Everything is connected,” Stern said. “It’s important for us to take care of ourselves physically, spiritually and mentally.”

Anyone who gets past the fart jokes and Sybian rides understands that physical, mental and spiritual discipline is the secret to Howard’s (and Robin’s)  success.  It’s not brain surgery… it’s harder.

In any case, Howard (and Robin and Fred), thanks, and enjoy:

 

 

Find more photos like this on EveryJew.com

Here’s the whole story.

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December 9, 2010 | 11:09 am

Howard Stern Re-signs

Posted by Rob Eshman

Howard Stern announced today that he has re-signed with Sirius for five years.  That ends a down-to-the-wire contract negotiation which concluded with just days to go before Howard’s last contract was over.  I was one of the voices speculating that Sirius would be making a huge mistake letting Howard go. In this media environment, where consumers have multiple choices for getting news and entertainment, exclusive content is more important than ever.  And there is no one like Howard. His departure, as I wrote here, would not only have been bad for Sirius, but bad for society.

This is good.  At 57 years old, Howard is still putting out some of the most innovative, boundary-breaking entertainment on air.  But he is also making the transition from outlaw to icon,  someone venerated and respected in his field.  He will be able to attract great guests—he remains one of the best interviewers in all media—, push new boundaries, influence a new generation of creative minds, and keep me from going batshit in LA traffic.

Thanks Mel, thanks Howard….

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September 16, 2010 | 1:31 pm

Time to out Howard Stern

Posted by Rob Eshman

No, he’s not gay.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The true outing of Howard Stern takes place in dribs and drabs, in offhand comments from various guests and staffers, so rarely and so quickly that only die-hard listeners would begin to understand the truth: Howard Stern is a mensch.

Yes, it’s true.  I said it.  A mensch: Yiddish meaning a good soul, a nice guy. And 30 years ago, when he was starting out, that sentence would have done more damage to his burgeoning career as an in-your-face, no-holds-barred radio DJ than a nude spread on the cover of OUT magazine.  But now I don’t think his demographic is going to stick their fingers down their throats discovering that their radio god has feet of… well, the feet of a really good guy.

What is equally true though, is that outside his fans, the general public perceptions is still that Howard Stern is a cruel, creepy, sexist, racist boor. Just last week on the show Howard played a clip of his former girlfriend Angie Everhart mentioning his name on the Wendy Williams Show.  The audience boo’ed, or oo’d, or made some collective animal-like noise that a herd of buffalo likely makes when they sense a coyote is getting too close.  Howard said people still think he’s worse than Mel Gibson.  To prove it he sent his writer Sal out on the street to ask people who’s worse, Mel Gibson or Howard Stern?  Here’s how the site Mark’s Friggin reported it:

Gary told Howard he had Sal’s interviews about who’s worse, Howard or Mel Gibson. Howard said he didn’t expect that until tomorrow. Gary said Sal interviewed a wide variety of people out there. Howard played the clips and most of the people were saying ‘‘Howard Stern.’’ There were many who said they love Mel Gibson. There were people saying Howard is an idiot and they hate him more than Mel. There were some who said they don’t like Mel Gibson.

Sal edited together all of the people just saying ‘‘Howard Stern’’ over and over again. Howard laughed when he heard so many people saying his name. The people were saying that Howard Stern has a potty mouth.

Howard said he counted 21 Howard Stern’s and 11 Mel Gibson’s. He said that’s unbelievable. Howard said that they’re in a small world with their fans there and they don’t know what it’s really like out there. Howard said New York is really the best place to ask the question because he’s kind of beloved there.

Sal told Howard that they should have video taped this because the reactions he got were amazing. He said their eyes would pop out of their heads when he’d bring up Howard’s name. Howard said he respects the results he got. Sal said he would pick Howard too.

Bottom line: Howard Stern still creeps MIddle America out.

But fans get a glimpse into a different side: Celebrity guests will often say Howard is so different in real life.  His parents say so. And his wife Beth says so—and she doesn’t seem to be the type that’s attracted to people who are worse than Mel Gibson.

Another clue came in my e-mail this week, and I’m going to share it (with the e-mailer’s permission).  I’m gonna out Howard Stern.

Last week on the show Howard took a few moments to mock a CBS producer named Steve North, who had sent Howard an e-greeting card for the Jewish New Years.  He said it was annoying the guy sent it to him, he didn’t want to open it, and who the hell is Steve North, and why does he have Howard’s e-mail, and why would a guy named Steve North act so Jewish when he clearly changed his name.  From MarksFriggin.com:

Howard said he hates these E-cards that people send out. He said he got one from this guy, Steve North, and he keeps getting reminders in his email if he doesn’t open it. Howard said he gets one every year from Steve and it’s always the same thing. He said it’s not that much fun. Howard wondered if Steve gets notes telling him that he hasn’t opened the card. He said he opened it and watched it for like one second before turning it off. Howard said it’s a whole long Opus and he doesn’t care about it.

Howard said that someone had to have given Steve his email address but he’s not sure how that happened. Howard wondered why Steve North is sending him a Jewish holiday card. Gary said he’s not sure that he even did it. Howard also wondered why Steve has a last name of ‘‘North’’ if he’s Jewish. Howard said he must have changed his name.

That led to Fred playing some Gilbert Gottfried doing his Rabbi Gottfried impression and singing songs. Howard said he wants to make an E-card out of that. Howard said he hates when Jews change their names to things like ‘‘North.’’ Robin said maybe his parents changed it. Howard said maybe they did.

All it all, Howard took the thoughtful act of an old acquaintance reaching out to say Happy Jew Year, and turned it into a long and very fun attack on Steve North’s character.

So I happen to know Steve North.  He has written columns for The Jewish Journal, and on Rosh Hashanah, during a family visit to LA, he actually attended my wife’s congregation for services.

Steve knows Howard because Steve was the first guy to offer Gary Dell’abate a job in radio.  But the two have crossed paths many times, and though I have no idea if Howard admires Steve, Steve was an early promoter of Howard’s genius.  In a long, March 18, 1992 interview with Howard in The Two River Times, Steve writes, “The bottom line is that this 6’5” shaggy-haired, happily married father of two young daughters has perfected the art of satire.”  C’mon, very few people beyond maybe Howard’s agent, Robin and Fred realized back then the extent of Stern’s gifts. Steve had it right early on.  (In an interview later he wrote, “You never know when [Howard]‘s going to berate you on the air for something.”  Right about that too.)

But back to Howard the Mensch.  Here’s what Steve e-mailed me following Howard’s rant about him:

So now I hear Howard was talking about the Rosh Hashana e-card I sent to him (and you and hundreds of others).  And wondering when I changed my last name!  (Blame that one on my dad).

A friend of mine sent me more details about it just now… too funny.  And I laughed over the fact that he apparently was wondering how I have his e-mail address, as he well knows he gave it to me a few years ago when our mutual friend Mark Drucker was terminally ill, and we corresponded regularly… and, periodically since then (including a few months ago when he wrote to me before an appearance on the Early Show). 

The truth is, personally, the guy’s a major mensch.  I mentioned our mutual friend Mark (known as “Mark the Shark” when he was DeBella’s newsman in Philly);  Howard was great during Mark’s illness, writing him a 3-page handwritten letter about their friendship, which hung on the wall in Mark’s hospital room, and asking me after Mark’s death to get him in touch with Mark’s mom and sister.  I doubt he’d want any of this mentioned in detail… and I have other stories about what a good guy he is… but, you get the idea.

Case closed.  I’ve made the case elsewhere that what people mistake for Howard’s misogyny or homophobia is satire aimed at the big, bloody red heart of American hypocrisy.  Sometimes he gets close to the line, sometimes he crosses it (Honestly?  Today his impromptu skit about Warren Beatty and Annette Benning daughter’s sex change to my taste crossed the line.  I met the daughter many years ago when she was a girl performing in a play with my son, in a context where they were just another set of proud parents, and when I heard the story I just couldn’t laugh along—it has to be a really tough time for any parent and child going through that, even if you’re sick famous.)  Anyway, Stern Rule # 27: You don’t get great by playing it safe….

I’m not saying Howard is all sweetness.  I’m sure those who are closest to him, or who have been in the past, can cite their own examples of that.  But there are enough examples of the type Steve e-mailed me to definitively prove that Howard Stern the man is far from the nasty, negative brand image of Howard Stern he and popular culture have created.

What I wonder is this: Can Howard Stern the Image exist without Howard the Mensch?  Does it take a fundamentally kind person to create the atmosphere where people can feel free enough and creative enough to work at their peak?  Wouldn’t a true a-hole have flamed out years earlier?  Doesn’t it take a person who genuinely cares about people, is curious about their lives, and who at some level can empathize with their plight to be as great an interviewer as Howard is? Does nastiness work for Howard as an image because it’s a shell of armor he can put on top go into the world, and take off in private?  In other words, could only a true mensch pretend to be such a true prick?

Shana Tova.

*Oh, by the way, Steve North sent me the same e-card he sent Howard.  And I didn’t open mine either.

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September 7, 2010 | 7:45 pm

Will Howard Stern Leave Sirius? Or Vice Versa?

Posted by Rob Eshman

Howard has been hinting that things aren’t working out between him and Sirius.  In four months, his contract is up, and there’s a good chance, judging by his comments, he won’t renew.  But he doesn’t seem particularly upset: He seems to have an option under wraps that will allow him to do his uncensored show through a different delivery system. 

People keep talking about about why or whether Howard would leave Sirius, but what’s happening of course is that Sirius is leaving Howard.  As ar as his fans are concerned, Sirius is guilty until proven innocent. One day it might come out that as part of his new contract, Howard stipulated that he would work only from home, nude, in pantomime, but Howard doesn’t strike me as a prima donna or a kook.  He knows what he’s worth, and he knows what he has to do to be worth it. 

I’m trying to figure out, if Howard wants to stay at Sirius, why in the world Sirius would let him walk. Sirius is in the radio business, and he’s still the most innovative and original voice in radio.  I’m trying to look at this from management’s perspective, because, as a fan, I can’t quite believe it.

Let me be clear, the day Howard Stern leaves Sirius, I leave Sirius.  If I want to hear standup, I can TiVO Comedy Central.  If I want to hear uninterrupted music,  they’ve invented something called an MP3 player that you only pay for once, not every month.  If I want to hear Nancy Sinatra talking about her dad, I can go down to the Museum of Television and Radio and watch some old Mike Douglas segments. I don’t know why the company would let Howard go, but I’ve narrowed it down to five reasons:

1. He’ll cost more than he’ll bring in.

2. They think they can retain the subscribers he brought in without him.  Put Howard in the window, attract a lot of PR and subscribers, then move him out and move in some cheaper model. This is my Howard as a Loss Leader Theory. 

3. Howard’s contract demands are unreasonable, would set a bad precedent, would give him too much control over the company, would hurt the bottom line or investor confidence.

4. Somebody important at Sirius just doesn’t like him.

5. The company has figured out a new revenue model that doesn’t depend on brilliant, original content.  Maybe there’s more money in the actual hardware business.  Maybe they want to just be a conduit, renting out satellite and radio technology,  not a content provider. 

Those are the rational reasons.  But we live in a world where serious companies make the dumbest , most self-destructive decisions imaginable, dragging down whole business sectors, whole countries, in a wake of short-sightedeness and arrogance.  GM, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Merrill, Bear Stearns, Nationwide. So maybe that’s what’s going on.

Whatever it is, I’ll just click off my subscription and follow Howard.  Because he isn’t a Loss Leader, he’s a leader. Plain and simple.  Radio will follow where he goes.

Yes, he’s 50 something.  But no one younger is doing anything more cutting edge or interesting.  Maybe he’s a little cranky sometimes, and maybe close to burnout—but he’s not there yet.  He has a good 5 years in him, especially energized by his almost frightening need to prove himself, to win.  Sirius, watch out, you’ve awoken a sleeping, giant, needy, brilliant, Jewish overachiever.

How many others beside me will leave?  That would be a great book to make in Vegas.  Howard claims he signed a million listeners.  Let’s say he’s wrong by half.  And let’s say of the 500,000 he signed, only half cancel their subscriptions.  That’s 250,000 subscribers at 13 bucks a month times 12 months. $39,000,000 sucked out of a company that’s still hooked up to a respirator, and whose share price could be posted over a lemonade stand.

But I’m no financial analyst.  Others, much smarter than me, have written that Sirius, with its billion-plus revenue, will experience Howard’s departure as a blip, maybe a bad year, but it is sufficiently diverse that it will recover.  Writing on his blog Seeking Alpha, Relmor Demetrius says that Sirus has already proven it can get millions of subscribers for reasons other than Howard:

The facts are quite clear on this. Sirius XM added more than 1 million customers this year alone. That would offset losing Howard Stern right there. Their growth would probably cover any cancellations and they wouldn’t miss a beat. The company that hired Stern 5 years ago is vastly different in 2010.

Maybe, but Demetrius neglects one huge factor: competition. What if Howard or someone else develops a radio delivery system that’s better and cheaper?  What if Sirius is susceptible to bad press, or the defection of another top talent?  I think even Mel Karmazin would admit that Howard was the cornerstone of Sirius’ success.  When you pull out the cornerstone, a lot of unpredictable things start to happen.  Radio, like newspapers and TV and film, always come back to content, and content always comes back to talent.  Neglect talent, and you pay a price. Ask Clear Channel.

Granted, Sirius is not going to disappear all at once,  and maybe it’s only $30 million, or $20 million or, as Demetrius says, even $100 million that Howard’s departure will cost the company (after accounting for savings).  But you’re talking about a company that makes its dough 13 bucks at a time. In any subscription business (here;’s something I know a little about) the key thing is retention—retaining subscribers.  That’s steady income, money you can build next year’s budget around.  Without it, you better be able to tell the friggin future.

Anyway, once Howard leaves, I don’t give a crap about Sirius.  I hope it thrives—I was one of the shmucks who bought the stock.  But in my radio life, I can go back to listening to NPR and all my iBooks and finally stop bringing cocktail party conversations to a dead halt by interjecting, “You’ll never believe what Howard Stern did today…”

More likely, I’ll pay whatever Howard asks in order to hear him through his next medium.  The most plausible is a podcast, like the one Adam Carolla does. I listen to that when Teresa Strasser hosts it, because Teresa is just so damn good and quick, and funny and bright.  I don’t know if a pay model can work for podcasts, but if Howard can get a million people to pay 120 bucks a year,  and he spends half on overhead, he can still do pretty well—and own the company he creates.  That, and a Howard Stern web site and event division that is as much lifestyle as Stern Show, and he will go into his dotage creating a brand that can live on long after The Howard Stern Show, and Sirius Satellite Radio, are gone. . 

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September 6, 2010 | 8:30 am

Robert Schimmel z"l

Posted by Rob Eshman

The comedian, writer, thinker and mensch Larry Miller has a beautiful tribute to Robert Schimmel on his blog today. Schimmel was a regular Howard Stern guest.  As funny as his stand up was, there was something in the interactions between him and Howard that unleashed an even funnier, even darker side. In some deep ways, those two understod one another.

Miller understood Schimmel too.  Here’s an an excerpt from the blog:

....Here’s something you won’t read in any of the papers, and it’s really the whole point of this clog.
Robert’s parent were both Holocaust survivors. His father was marched out of their concentration camp with thousands of others as the Americans were advancing in the winter of ‘45, in order to… Oh, who knows what those horrible folks were even thinking at that point. They marched the prisoners, in no coats, until they died or dropped. And when they dropped, trying to catch a breath, they walked over and shot them — as calm as a glass of tea. Robert’s father dropped, along with his best friend, and a guard walked over and killed him. Otto, the father, was next to him, and he was the one shot, weakly holding up a hand and whispering, “No. Please.”
Then the guard turned to Otto and… Shot him? No. He screamed, “If you want to live, get up and keep going.” And somehow Otto did.
And a few years later, Robert was making people laugh in Las Vegas.
Here’s the thing, though. One night, Otto told Robery after a show, “You were good. You know, I always wanted to be a comic, but, well…” Can you imagine? Is life weird enough?
And here’s the deepest part: Otto never forgot that moment in the snow on that march. And one day Robert said to him something I still find extraordinary. Did you catch it? It was what the guard said.
If you put it in different hands, at a different moment, with a different feeling, Robert said, it’s actually the greatest, deepest, simplest advice in history:
“If you want to live, get up and keep going.”
Robert Schimmel certainly learned that lesson. Get up and keep going. He never gave up. He was a terrific comic, but maybe that was his greatest gift: Get up and keep going.
Not a bad lesson for all of us to learn. With all the things in his life, I told him once, even Job turned to God and said, “Gee, now I don’t feel so bad anymore.”
Have a great Labor Day weekend. And then, get up and keep going.
(P.S. If you feel like it, that new show of mine is available for free by subscribing to iTunes: “This Week With Larry Miller.)
REMEMBER: IF YOU WALKED OUT OF BED TODAY, AND NO ONE YOU LOVE GOT SICK AND DIED, AND NO ONE SHOT YOU WHEN YOU GOT TIRED… FOLKS, TURN ON A GAME AND CRACK A BEER, BECAUSE YOU ARE WALKING IN TALL COTTON.

Rest in peace, Bob Schimmel.

By the way, our writer Naomi Pfefferman did a nice interview with Schimmel a few years back.  Here that is:

In June 2000, Robert Schimmel—whose ribald routines earned him a spot on Comedy Central’s list of 100 greatest comics—was pondering his mortality after undergoing a cancer biopsy: “Is there a God? What about Jesus . . . I didn’t believe in him on earth so is he gonna be pissed at me now?” the 58-year-old recounts in “Cancer on $5 a Day: How Humor Got Me Through the Toughest Journey of My Life.”

In the memoir—which he’ll discuss at the West Hollywood Book Fair on Sept. 28—Schimmel mixes harrowing stories about his chemotherapy with hilarious anecdotes about his illness and treatment. He riffs about the salesman who tried to sell him a pubic hair toupee (it’s called a “merkin”); lusting after various nurses; having to ask his mother, the Holocaust survivor, to buy rolling papers for his medical marijuana; and imagining his funeral (“I probably should’ve gotten close with some rabbi so I don’t get the generic eulogy,” he said. “I hate those. You know he never knew the dead guy.”)

Even before his diagnosis of Stage III non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Schimmel’s experiences had the makings of an inspirational book. He suffered a heart attack in his 40s and the death of one of his six children (also to cancer) in 1992, but he returned to the stage and, by 2000, had produced an HBO special, best-selling CDs, and a sitcom, “Schimmel,” slated to debut on the Fox network.
While in rehearsals for the pilot, however, the comedian experienced severe chills and night sweats; a biopsy revealed he had an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. His response to the doctor was immediate: “Just my luck. I get the one not named after the guy.”

“My instinct was to go for the laugh,” Schimmel said recently, looking fit eight years into his remission. He realized that even though he had just been told he had cancer, he hadn’t been told he was going to die. To prove it, he was going to do the one thing that showed he was very much alive, which was to make people laugh.

His audience consisted of fellow patients in the chemotherapy room at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix—“the toughest room I ever worked,” he said. “But remembering what Norman Cousins said about the healing power of humor ... [made] me want to be part of their recovery. I want to help them to feel good, even for a short time…. For in the moment that they laughed, in that one moment, they weren’t sick, and they weren’t afraid.”

Schimmel traces his own survivor’s spirit to his parents, Betty and Otto Schimmel, who survived Mauthausen and Auschwitz, respectively. During the most grueling part of chemo—when he briefly considered suicide—the comic was fortified by Otto Schimmel’s words about how he had traversed a Nazi death march. The prisoner had remembered a Nazi’s admonition: “If you want to live, keep moving.”

Doctors first warned Schimmel that he might be prone to cancer when he was 13, and they performed surgery on an undescended testicle. Nevertheless, Robert proved to be a class clown with a predilection for trouble. When he failed his German final exam in high school, he declared that the teacher was anti-Semitic: “My father went apes—- and threatened to sue the district,” the comic said. “He even got a Jewish German teacher to re-administer my final exam, but I got a worse grade from her than I did the original teacher.”

Schimmel went on to work as a stereo salesman in Phoenix, never envisioning a career as a comic, nor even attending a comedy club until he visited his sister in Los Angeles and she signed him up for an open mic night at The Improv—without telling him—20 years ago, when he was in his early 30s. The club’s owner chanced to pull Schimmel’s name out of a hat and heckled him until he ventured onstage. Schimmel riffed; the audience laughed; and the owner offered him future gigs.

“So I quit my job, put the Phoenix house up for sale and my [then-wife] and I loaded our belongings on a U-Haul to drive to Los Angeles,” he said. “I got off the Hollywood Freeway to show her where I was going to be working—and it turned out the club had burned down the night before.”

Schimmel stayed in Los Angeles, supporting himself as a salesman and working open mic shows until he could support his family as a comedian.

When his 3-year-old son, Derek, was diagnosed with cancer in the 1980s, Schimmel found solace in the Book of Job: “The story talks about whether one can have faith when s—- happens, and I always had faith,” he said. “I think the real you comes out when you hit bottom. That’s when you find out who you really are.”

Later, between Schimmel’s own chemotherapy treatments, he incorporated his illness into his nightclub act, complete with a slide show of his deterioration. (“That’s me when they told me what the co-pay was,” he quips about one skeletal-looking picture.) Club owners warned him that audiences wouldn’t appreciate the dark subject matter, but viewers roared with laughter, rewarding him with standing ovations and rushing to hug him after each show.

Later, the slide show incorporated photos of the now-healthy comic; his wife, Melissa; and his children (there is one of the late Derek as well). Schimmel just taped a Showtime special, and he performs numerous standup shows a year but still spends a good deal of time speaking to (and joking with) cancer patients.
“How can I say ‘no’ when people reach out to me? If there is a reason I survived, that’s it.”

 

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August 26, 2010 | 3:04 pm

10 Ways Howard Stern’s Retirement Will Hurt the World

Posted by Rob Eshman

This blog is devoted to examining the effects of Howard Stern on the culture at large.  These days a lot of his on air discussion revolves around whether or not he’ll renew his contract with Sirius and stay on the radio as a morning broadcaster. 

I can’t imagine what it’s like going through such a major life decision so publicly.  Quite an industry has grown up around one man—doing anything other than simply renewing will upset the status quo for a lot of people.

But I don’t care about them.  At least, not for the purposes of this blog entry.  What I’ve been wondering is what happens to the culture, to society, without Howard?  I’ve come up with 10 effects.  They’re all bad.

1. There will be less innovation in broadcasting.

Howard has always been at the cutting edge of the industry.  He took radio to the edge of social acceptability, until society had to catch up to him.  He perfected some aspects that already existed, and invented others.  I give him credit with pushing the reality show format, with introducing real life—sex, pornography, frank talk—into a very plastic medium, with finding incredible talent, with pioneering forms of satire and social commentary (see the celebrity sabotage, the societal outcasts he turns into ongoing characters, The Howard 100 News). His move to Sirius didn’t create satellite radio, but enabled it to survive.  The fact that Howard has survived major show shake ups, even thrived after each one was predicted to ensure his doom, shows that he is still capable of growing and changing. There’s no one else who looks ready to push as many boundaries or develop as many new, untested ideas.

2. There will be one less powerful voice to combat the phonies, hypocrites and demagogues on our airwaves.

Nobody as big as Howard speaks as frankly and as honestly about the Limbaughs, Schlesingers and Becks.  Howard is not afraid to take them on, and he is more than their equal on the air.  Though he is not overtly political, he can rise up and bash them down in a way that no one else—other than Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert—really can.

3. One of the great radio teams in history will come to an end

Howard, Robin and Fred are as classic a comedy team as American entertyainment has ever produced.  Their timing, their individual strengths, their teamwork— all of it honed over decades of working together—that will not be repeated any time soon.

4.   There is no one to replace Howard as a truly great, on-air interviewer.

Jon Stewart, Steve Colbert and Rachel Maddow are all excellent, but their format is so limiting.  The rich, famous and powerful who had the balls to sit with Howard face an interviewer in a forum that is as close to no-holds-barred as exists in broadcasting.  No language, topic or time limits—and an interviewer as smart and articulate as any guest.  Jon Stewart won’t go there.  Howard will.

5. There is no bullshit meter in mainstream media as accurate and as outspoken as Howard Stern.

Howard understood that outing hypocrisy is entertaining.  Whether its politicians, news stories or celebrities, Howard has a canny sense of when the public is being fed a line of crap, and he can relentlessly attack the crap-feeders.

6. There is no one who is both as childish and as mature.

Howard innovates, but he is also rooted in the Boomer generation.  He is not divorced from history, and it’s refreshing to hear someone who can talk about contemporary culture, but with a sense of what came before.  If his references to Ed Sullivan and the Beatles and the Ramones date him, they also deepen him.
 
7. The Jewish people will have lost a valuable voice.

Howard is sooooo Jewish.  He makes Larry David, with his golf clubs and Brentwood manor house, look Unitarian.  Whether he likes it or not, Stern is a very visible, voluble, valuable representative of his People.  The values he promulgates—tolerance, questioning, innovation, humor, irreverence—are the best of Jewish values.  Yeah, again, there’s Jon Stewart, but Stewart speaks mostly to the converted,  Howard preaches to a much more diverse audience. 

8. There are few better defenders of decent rights and values on the airwaves.

People get caught up in the lesbian strippers and fart contests.  Sure, there’s that.  But the whole circus Howard brings to town embodies certain bedrock values.  I’m going to reel off values I’ve heard Howard espouse, or demonstrate, time and again over the years.  He seems to have lived up to them in his personal life, or at least the part that’s been made public.  That’s quite an achievement for someone who has been in the public eye as long as he has. Social acceptance (Eric the Midget), gay rights (George Takei), hard work, civic involvement (Pataki, Whitman).  When The Simpsons came out people attacked it for undermining values.  Now churches use it to teach values.  Years from now they’ll use Stern the same way.

9. There will be no one else to save satellite radio.

Unless they find the Moshiach and give him a channel, shalom Sirius.  And I say that as someone who like a friggin’ genius bought stock at—I don’t want to say what I bought it at.  I hope Mel Karmazin will figure out a way to transform the company, but under the current model, it really needs a big personality.  No one has an audience as loyal as Howard’s. Done. Period.

10. There will be no more surprises.

A classic line in Private Parts has one NBC executive explaining why even people who hate Howard still tune in—to see what he’ll say next.  There are very few shows that have the ability to surprise us.  Some can shock us.  Reality shows are full of scripted shocks and edited emotions.  Howard Stern manages to supply daily, raw, entertaining surprises.  They can come in the complex interactions of the people on the show, or in the bits or guests, but they inevitably come. It is very rare to find mainstream entertainment that dependably surprises and sometimes even shocks you—and in so doing challenges and provokes and makes you laugh and think.  The Howard Stern Show is a circus, full of comedy and stunts and weirdos and logic-defying moments.  But it is an important, undervalued circus, whose tent is as big as all society. When it leaves town, we’ll all miss it.

 

 

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August 3, 2010 | 3:14 pm

Anthony Bourdain: The “Howard Stern” of Chefs

Posted by Rob Eshman

Last night the only good food show on TV, “No Reservations,” featured a documentary on the host, Anthony Bourdain.  In the midst of it, Chef Beth Aretsky referred to Bourdain as, “The Howard Stern of chefs.”

It was an off-handed comment, just slipped into an hour-long documentary, but of course it leapt out for me—and not just because in that instant two of my passions—Howard Stern and great food—joined as one.  What Aretsky meant was that that Bourdain’s career as a chef and writer embodied the same qualities as Stern’s career in radio: a fearless, iconoclastic, anti-establishment, outrageous, original.

What stood out for me is that Aretsky, who has actually served as Bourdain’s executive assistant—she was the “Grill Bitch” in his book “Kitchen Confidential”—was using Stern’s name as a kind of adjective, but not, as is so often the case, pejoratively. (She might also have been struck by the personal similarities: both are tall, skinny, driven men whose wild public personas conceal a highly disciplined work ethic).

I know she’s on to something.  One day, hopefully while Stern is still alive, it will be a badge of honor for anyone to be referred to as “the Howard Stern” of his or her profession.  It means you blazed a trail, outraged, upset and ultimately entertained a wide audience, took huge risks in telling the truth, pursued your craft with excellence and originality, and in so doing shook up the larger culture.

All of this begs the question:  Who else is the Howard Stern of his or her world?  Who’s the Howard Stern of TV, of journalism, of fiction, of movies, of business?

And most importantly, how Howard Stern is each of us capable of being in our own work?

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July 9, 2010 | 2:28 pm

Is Howard Stern the Son Joan Rivers Never Had? [VIDEO]

Posted by Rob Eshman

The new film on Joan Rivers, “A Piece of Work,” is, as Howard said on his radio show, not just a fine documentary on Rivers, but one of the the finest documentaries on any topic you’ll see this year.  It drives along at a rock ‘n roll pace, delivering laughs, pathos, and shock.  I don’t know who writer/director Ricki Stern is—no relation, I’m sure—but I know I’d now watch a documentary on pencil holders if her name was on it.

One thing that shocked me was the doc’s initial depiction of Rivers as a washed up has-been to whom nobody pays attention.  If you live in the Howard Stern universe, you’d never know that.  She is a frequent, even revered guest, someone who comes in regularly and always kills.  One of my favorite exchanges on the Stern show is when Howard spoke to Joan about a date she had where the man had a heart attack at the dinner table.  The two of them get more laughs out of what had to have been some horror show tragedy—I love Joan’s crack about how terrified she was because the guy dropped dead before the check came.

The world may have passed Joan Rovers by—at least that’s the conceit of the first part of the doc—but Howard never has.  He must see in her what he has strived to be himself: a hard-working, tireless, driven and original entertainer, whose humor is based on telling the truth, on being more honest with the audience than anyone else could or even should be.  They have the children of immigrant upbringing, the compulsive work ethic, the self-loathing AND self-aggrandizing posture, and utter fearlessness. In that the two are very much alike, so its no wonder that in Stern’s world, Joan River never gets old.

Here’s a bit of them together:

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May 18, 2010 | 3:01 pm

Rima Fakih Miss USA 2010…and Howard

Posted by Rob Eshman

Howard Stern brought stripping out of the shadows and into the main stream, featuring strippers of all types, shapes and sizes on his radio show from the earliest days.  In the beginning mainstream media dismissed this as crass and inappropriate.  Now there are stripper aerobics in your neighborhood mall, and my daughter listens to Top Ten songs on AM radio about strippers.  Next I predict the Coca Cola Stripping Finals in Daytona Beach.  Howard’s great good sense was to pull our American appetites out of the shadows and shine the light of humor and satire on them. 

Howard was also poking fun at these beauty pageants and the essential hypocrisy of them long before they started self-destructing.  On his show he had lesbian beauty contests, retarded beauty contests, tranny beauty contests (that one was just last week—so weird I couldn’t even listen).  For years Miss Howard Stern has been a pill-addled booze-addicted unemployed blond who couldn’t string four words together.  And don’t forget the title of Howard’ second book, on whose cover he posed as a beauty queen: “MIss America.”  Howard long sensed that the beauty contests embodies so much that is hypocritical and ripe for satire in our culture: the myth of purity and chastity, the pressure of ideal beauty, the implicit cruelty of somebody sitting in judgment on someone else. 

Finally, Howard long understood the insatiable, secretive, repressed level of horniness lurking like a locked-up dog in the American closet.  He was getting “average” girls naked on his show long before reality TV made fortunes doing the same.  He knew that the hunger was so great, that a woman could get headlines just for peeling off her shirt. 

Now all these two trends collide: with pictures of Rima Fakih on the pole,  the stripper beauty pageant is now entirely mainstream—the world has caught up to Howard Stern.

And if Howard would draw a lesson from the Rima Fakih scandal, it’s likely this: it’s a better world for us all when half-naked Arab-Americans are on stripper poles in Michigan rather than in jail cells in Guantanamo. 

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