October 19, 2009 | 2:20 pm

Loyalty

Posted by Rob Eshman

If there was ever a time to “Save Artie Lange“, that time would be now. We have now entered Week 2 of Artie’s absence.
Howard Stern sidekick Artie Lange is out for the second week in a row, a source of speculation, drama and comedy on the Stern Show. According to the web site savebabygorilla.com—a somewhat loving tribute site dedicated to Lange:

A text was sent to Gary explaining on what was going. “Artie’s got a lot of drama going on and we’re right in there with him”, said Howard. According to the note, it is not drugs. Neither Howard nor Gary knew if the text was for public display. Howard handed the note over to Robin to review for her opinion on whether or not to read it on air.

Robin reacted with an “Oh wow” upon reading it. The Queen of Mean actually silenced? Must be sensitive material. Howard said that he actually thought that [content of the note] was going on. Robin added, “but that’s what everything is about anyway.” She added, “I thought there was something being given to prevent that.” Then she asked Howard, “Have you ever just wanted to stay home?”

So what does this all mean? Depression? Father Issues? Still Drugs? Rehab? Girlfriend stuff? A-Rod producing in the post-season?

Howard’s reaction to Lange resonates with me.  He tends, at least on radio, to excuse, overlook, avoid and dismiss the most egregious lapses by his co-workers. I can relate.  The same muscles that enable his creativity atrophy when it comes to being a disciplinarian.  He can’t and won’t be both. 

I wrote before how Howard has taught me not to avoid confrontation, but that doesn’t seem to apply to the people closest to him on the show. Either that or he realizes that their disciplinary lapses are actually good for the show.  Speculating about Artie or upbraiding Sal is good radio, and perhaps Howard would rather have ongoing drama than the finality of discipline and—inevitably—dismissal.  Because, face it, in any other workplace Artie and Sal and likely Richard would have been let go by now.

Maybe Howard recognizes that their talent is not simple to replace.  Maybe he knows that it’s all good radio.  Maybe has has a weakness for those who work most closely with him.  For someone who can be so unrelentingly hard on himself, he sure can be soft on others.

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September 27, 2009 | 1:16 pm

Stern AWOL on Ablow

Posted by Rob Eshman

I picked up a copy of Dr. Keith Ablow’s, “Living the Truth” on the Barnes and Noble remainder table last night.  $5.98 marked down from $25.98.  I’ve heard the doctor on the Stern show and have been impressed with his direct, almost jargon-free approach to people’s emotional problems.

What struck me was that the publisher, Little,Brown, didn’t list appearances on the Sten Show among Ablow’s credits.  Good Housekeeping, Tyra Banks, the O’Reilly Factor, Good Morning America—but not a single mention of the fact that millions hear the doctor at his best on Stern. His on-air treatment of Riley Mrtin is some of the best radio—and therapy—you will ever hear. (I only wish he’d do the same for Ronnie the Frustrated Jewish Limo Driver).

Why no Stern mention?  My guess is that Ablow and his publisher believe it is mainstream poison—another example of how Stern can be at the cutting edge, and constantly get cut out.

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September 25, 2009 | 5:17 pm

“Users!”

Posted by Rob Eshman

Yesterday Robin noted that when McKenzie Phillips was hocking her ailing career, Howard was always happy to have her on the show.  But now that she has a major scoop about her alleged affair with her dad, she goes straight to Oprah.  Robin noted that the show can get the big names on their way up or down, but not at the peak.

“Users!” Howard interjected. “That’s why I hate everybody.”

I can relate.  In Jewish journalism, long the journalistic equivalent of FM radio, we can get the big celebs only after they’ve entered adult diapers or when they’re just out of baby diapers… but we do get ‘em….

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September 23, 2009 | 12:04 am

Sit n Sleep

Posted by Rob Eshman

Imagine my thrill to hear that jewishjournal.com’s newest advertiser is Sit n’ Sleep.  There it is on our very own site, the face of Larry “Or your mattress is free, FREE!” Miller, who I’ve heard for years plugging away on The Howard Stern Show. Me and Howard sharing Larry Miller— I can’t help but think of the poet Alan Ginsburg’s pride when he slept with Dean Moriarity the found out Morairity slept with Gavin Arthur ho slept with Edward Carpenter who slept with Walt Whitman. “I slept with Walt Whitman,” Ginsburg used to boast.

Well, I shared an advertiser with Howard Stern.

What I remember about Sit n Sleep on Stern bac when he was on terrestrial radio was how carefully and precisely Stern would do the lead ins for Miller’s commercials.  I began to see that Stern was an excellent pitchman for his products, he took the plugs and placements as seriously as the fart jokes and stripper sketches.  Sometimes the copy was awful, but Stern would make it his own, put it in his voice, but infuse it with his on air passion.  Didn’t matter whether it was mattresses or Binaca or backhair removers or some spray he was hawking that removed butt odor. Here’s what Stern, one of the wealthiest and most powerful people in media knows: which side his bread is buttered on. He never got cocky or glib with the people paying the bills, the companies whose money keeps the staff employed and the lights on.

A lot of creative types just starting out tend to look down on the business part of show business—they resent the intrusion of commerce in art.  And as they get more and more successful, they try to distance themselves from the fact that they are, in a way, selling soap. But Howard pay his dues, dutifully.  He taught me to pay attention to advertisers—not to bend standards because of them, but to respect their support, and do what they pay us to do with excellence and attentiveness. 

It’s like the Dylan song says, no matter how big you are, how rich you are, you gotta serve someone…

You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk,
You may be the head of some big TV network,
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame,
You may be living in another country under another name

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

One day I look forward to calling Larry Miller and talking about his Stern years.  In the meantime, click on one of his ads and buy a mattress.

 

 

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September 21, 2009 | 6:32 pm

Fatel Gets It

Posted by Rob Eshman

The blog has made me listen to Howard more intently, which may be a good thing.

Or may not.

I am actually in danger of using the Howard Stern Show as a self-help guide, which when I think about is, is frightening.  Who’s your life coach?  Deepak?  Oprah? Your shrink?  Your dad?

No, it’s Howard Stern.

C’mon, I’m fairly convinced even Howard wouldn’t think that’s a good idea.

But I’m going through… stuff… and as I do, I find that the insights I glean from the Show, on the way to work and on the way from work, are very helpful. (My dad’s helpful too, by the way).  And yes, I understand it’s a show, and I understand Howard is an on-air persona, not the real Howard.  I know enough famous people to know 99 percent of them aren’t looking to be anyone’s personal guru, and 99.9 percent of them have feet, hearts and minds made of clay.  Famous people are human, and humans are flawed.

But Howard keeps spinning off insights, which in these times of my…stuff… turn out to be relevant and useful.  I call them my “Stern Rules.” Some are simple, but as my wife the rabbi reminds me, most big truths are.

So, yes, Howard Stern is making me a better person.  A better manager of my own life.  A better husband.  A better dad.

How weird is that?

Today’s Stern Rule is, “Be Yourself.”

The comedian Mitch Fatel actually thanked Howard on air for teaching him this. From Marksfriggin.com:

Mitch said that he had to thank Howard for the internship there. He said that when he was a little kid he would listen to Howard and he got from him that he could be cool by not being cool. He said he just wanted to be himself and that’s what he’s done. He said he didn’t have to create a persona for himself. He said that’s the reason he’s successful today. Howard thanked him for that, gave him some more plugs and said he’s very proud of him for that.

“You don’t need to invent a persona,” said Howard. 

If you listen to “The History of Howard Stern” show, you hear how Howard himself learned this—it comes out in his voice.  In his early shows it is thinner, hurried and forced.  As his career progresses his voice deepens, slows and approaches his natural speaking voice.  As his persona became more authentic, and less “cool,” his true voice comes out.  Voice coaches speak of a person’s “body voice,” which seems to resonate from deep within their chest, not leap out from their throat.  Stern developed that as he dropped the persona of the cool DJ. And he passed it on to Mitch Fatel and other listeners, and that can only help them—and me—- with… stuff.

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September 18, 2009 | 11:06 am

Story Time With Howard

Posted by Rob Eshman

When you strip the Stern Show down to its essentials, it is this: storytelling.

Howard and his colleagues tell what happened to them. They talk about their pasts. They report on the present. Howard interviews guests, better than any living interviewer, and extracts thir best stories.  Sandra Bernhard was in his studio last Thursday—admittedly she’s not the type from whom you have to pull information, with her and a guest like Kathy Griffin it’s more a question of artfully directing their yentas-on-meth shtick to keep it interesting to people other than Sandra Bernhard and Kathy Griffin.

But Howard hit a jackpot—the fact that last July the bisexual Sandra had engaged in a threesome with her partner and show regular Ralph. Once Howard got the headline, he didn’t just wow and guffaw and whoop it up. He carefully led Sandra and the audience through the telling of the story, eliciting the sequence and the details as carefully as any journalist.  Because storytelling matters.

The older I get, the more I see how true this is. My friends who work in Hollywood and succeed are without exception good, even great, storytellers.  I once knew an agent whose highest praise for a client was, “He can tell a good story.”  He didn’t mean on paper, he meant in a meeting. It’s hard to get a writer or director in front of someone who can greenlight a movie.  That’s half the battle.  But once your guy is in the room, he has to keep their interest, entertain, fascinate—and nothing does that better than a story.

It is the oldest human art. You need a brain and a mouth—something humans have always had, when they had nothing else, not even fire.  Darkness would fall, you’d sit in a circle, and even before there was fire there was the warmth of another person’s words, their story.

The Stern Show at its most elemental is that circle. Howard, Robin,  Artie, Fred and us, this big, satellite assisted circle. Listen to Howard tell a story.  It seems artless and effortless, but it sounds like it would read.  The people on his show are all expert at it: they keep your interest from word one. They construct these mini dramas and mini comedies and draw us in, and the stories—the time Gary pleaded on video with his old girlfriend to take him back, the time Robin had passionate sex over a bathroom sink, the time Howard showered with his wife, John Stamos and Rebecca Romjin-Stamos Conelly Eshman (hmm, might have accidentally one too many names there). The gang repeats and refines these stories time and again— and they become as familiar and polished as Biblical passages.

My wife is beautiful and funny and smart, but right up there with the reasons I married her is the fact that she’s an exceptional story teller. She can hold an audience or a dinner table rapt, and she has a million of them.  Marriage is long and sometimes hard: having a good strory teller at your side makes it entertaining. And what do we do for fun?  Sit arond and listen to The Moth, a story-telling series on public radio.  Some of the speakers are Stern Show worthy—and that’s pretty good.

So, now, I’m about to head into a big meeting, and I think it will work out fine, but man would it be easier if I were the type who, at the right moment, could tell the right story.  Where’s my inner Howard when I need him?

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September 17, 2009 | 7:28 pm

Best Jimmy Carter Crack Ever

Posted by Rob Eshman

Best Jimmy Carter crack ever. 

The comedian Greg Fitzsimmons sat in with Howard today to do the news with Robin Quivers.  Robin reported how Jimmy Carter said racism was behind the opposition to Obama, and Fitzsimmons cracked:

Jimmy Carter, fresh off his his book, “Fucking Jews,” is deciding who’s racist.

Howard loved it, of course.

My New Years resolution is to keep this blog and Foodaism up daily.  If Howard can host a radio show, make a movie, produce a TV show and write two best-selling books—I can handle everything going on at work and write a fachacta blog.

Shana Tova, Mr. Fitzsimmons.

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August 18, 2009 | 5:05 pm

Stern Rule #1

Posted by Rob Eshman

My son doesn’t like it when I listen to Howard.  All summer I’ve been driving him to his internship in Beverly Hills.  I wait in the car for him to get out of the house, figuring the extra time he takes are a few extra minutes of Howard.  He gets in the passenger seat and reaches to turn off the radio.

“Can’t we just talk?”

“No.”  I bat at his hand. “Let me listen. If you don’t laugh, you never have to listen again.”

He accepts.  He’s always loved to laugh.  I think he would sell me out for a Henny Youngman joke. (Last night he told one of his latest favorites:  A girl goes up to her boyfriend and says, “I think we need to stop seeing each other.  Everyone says you’re a pedophile.”  The boyfriend says, “That’s a pretty big word for a 10 year old.”)

So we listen, and sure enough, by about Venice and Sepulveda, Adi cracks a smile.  By the time I drop him off on Canon, he’s laughed at least once.  Yesterday he held out until we got to Mar Vista.  Then Howard made his crack about Don Imus knowing how to treat kids with cancer when he can’t even put together a decent radio show. Adi laughed. Today he held out all the way to Beverlywood, until Artie did his Christian Bale impression.  That set him off.

I like to listen for the guaranteed laugh on the way to work, but I realize there’s a much bigger reason I’m compelled to tune in: Howard is my teacher.

Scary, huh?

The revelation came to me when Howard was talking to Robin about, hmm, how do I say this—bathroom hygiene.  He was nailing down the particulars—wiping with toilet paper versus moist towelettes versus showering.  I found it all compelling, even if it was frustrating that in 20 years of talking about it, no one has mentioned the obvious: buy a bidet attachment for your toilet, $200 bucks, install it with a crescent wrench, and you’re done, end of story, case closed, and cleaned.

It’s true that one of Howard’s main influence on the larger culture is his willingness to talk about the things we all do, but which, for good reasons or bad, we’re loathe to discuss.  Important—but that’s not what makes him so powerful to me.  In fact, what he says, as groundbreaking as it is, is in the end less important than what he does. Howard affects the culture, and his listeners lives—including mine—by what he does.  By example.

Ultimately I think that’s why we keep listening.  Put all the bits and gags and interviews and doodie jokes aside—Howard is a radio therapist, an inspirational broadcaster, a self-help guru—disguised as a shock jock.

I can think of ten ways Howard has inspired and led by example.  Here’s the first and most obvious one. Let’s call it, Stern Rule #1.

Run TOWARD conflict, not away from it.

Think about it.  His battles with management.  With and among his staff. With the Congress.  With the culture.  Howard will say he didn’t necessarily seek out these battles, and in his personal life I have no idea how he handles conflict (I don’t know the guy, and I’m writing here about his on-air persona, which of course can’t be one and the same with his radio persona.  Otherwise he’d have killed himself a long time ago).

But on air, he relishes a battle.  He thrusts himself into it, well-prepared, fully-loaded, his facts and allies in place.  Most of us (by that I mean me) shy away from head-butting.

I can say Howard has led me to at least learn to go for it, if not relish it.

That’s a great gift—above and beyond the dick jokes.

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August 9, 2009 | 1:06 pm

Why Howard Stern Isn’t YET The King of All Media

Posted by Rob Eshman

All weekend the Stern Show has been replaying tape of a visit the Howard Stern Show took to the Playboy Mansion in 2001. Howard’s interview with Hugh Hefner got me thinking about something I’d given a lot of thought to in the past: Why isn’t there a Howard Magazine?

Howard has had success in radio, television, movies and books—almost all media.  He demonstrated his ability to create and serve a huge audience across many different platforms.  But he neglected to conquer the one media that would ensure his vision and values endure even as he leaves radio and, like Hef, grows old.

I’m sure Howard has thought about doing a magazine.  After all, one of his major influences was Mad magazine.  And think how much of his show revolves around what appears in Playboy, Penthouse and the pages of national magazines.

These days of course the media environment makes the chances of launching a successful print periodical about nil: anything he does now would have to be web-based with a specialty print component (monthly limited circ collector’s editions, perhaps).  But, still, there are two compelling reasons he should try:

1. To ensure his values will continue to influence the culture.  As I’ve tried to prove in this blog, Howard Stern stands for something beyond boobs and fart jokes (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  The values that animate his show—humor, tolerance, honesty, fairness, fun—need to be part of the American conversation. 

2. To rebrand the Howard Stern Show.  He can’t keep doing the radio show forever.  Even if he re-ups another couple of years, at some point the air goes out of the balloon. What he needs to do is what Hef brillianty did—create a vehicl that can stay young and fresh even as he ages.  Howard then becomes the impresario and Creator-Genius, with as much or as little hands-on involvement as he wants, but he doesn’t have to wake up at 5 am every morning to do it.

3. To serve his fan base.  When Howard does leave radio, he will leave a lot of hungry fans, and that’s money left on the table.  He would never stoop to gimmickry to mine their last dollars, but a web/print publication could maintain his standards, attract advertisers and serve his fans long after the show—and God forbid even Howard—are gone.

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August 4, 2009 | 3:57 pm

Ruthless Cosmopolitan Howard

Posted by Rob Eshman

On vacation up in Lake Arrowhead, I turned on Howard in the car.  I’d been with my family the whole time, which means no Howard.  I love the guy, but anyone who allows his 13 year-old daughter listen to Howard Stern deserves a visit from Child Services.

I was running up to the local market, and had some alone time.  Howard in the mountains is discordant. Arrowhead isn’t exactly Deliverance; it’s 2 hours from LA, surrounded by giant homes and laced with the wakes of 1000 speedboats, about as rural as Lincoln Center.  But it’s still San Bernardino County, not the big city, and I realized as Howard’s voice merged with the scenery of pine trees and lakefront, how intensely urban an experience he is.

And that’s why so many Americans hate him.

Howard Stern stands for the city.  He is, in a phrase I’ll borrow from the writer Ruth Ellen Gruber, a ruthless cosmopolitan—celebrating New York, urban culture, reveling in its language and people and its pace. What about the country?  Howard puts country music up there with herpes sores and open sewage.  His endless crank phone calls nine times out of 10 go to people with thick Southern accents.  To Howard, the city is life, the country a swamp.

Many Americans despise him for this, and whenever the cultural wars flare, he is an easy and ready target. 

But their tactic is a bit more insidious than that.

Because his attackers know they can also count on the fact that in the popular imagination, Cosmopolitan=Jewish. There is no People more closely associated with the city than the Jews. And Howard is so obviously, clearly physically Jewish, I can’t help assuming the Focus on the Family sorts, in targeting Howard, are counting on a dose of latent anti-semitism to further inflame their culture warriors.

After all, Howard is an abortion-supporting, porn-loving, four-letter-word spouting, New York Jew.  What better symbol to the culture warriors of all that is decadent and liberal in America.

The problem, of course, is that the stereotype doesn’t exactly fit.  Howard is also a Libertarian, a gun-owner, a supporter of Giuliani and D’Amato, and as conservative a businessman, family man and father as anybody walking into church in San Bernardino.  He also likes fishing, vacationing in the country (at least), and girly music, like Katy Perry.  That makes him not a stereotypical Jew, but a complicated Jew.  Which is to say, a real Jew.

But his voice still doesn’t jive with lakes and pine trees.

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July 14, 2009 | 6:31 pm

When Howard Met Sacha

Posted by Rob Eshman

Sacha Baron Cohen was on the show yesterday. It was theatre.  Cohen as Bruno, Stern and Robin as his straight man and woman.  If you didn’t hear it, imagine a Sid Caesar sketch from “Your Show of Shows”—funny accents, stream of consciousness humor, one-liners—but imagine Caesar dressed as a flaming queen, reveling in incest and body functions. 

Oh to have a Time Travel machine and have Howard and Bruno on stage in front of Caesar’s audience.  At first they’d laugh hysterically—it’s the same beats, the same funny accents—then slowly it would dawn on them what’s being said, and their faces would fall, dead silence, then homicidal rage….

Cohen/Bruno gets the credit for provoking those responses, but Stern paved the way.  As I blogged earlier, Cohen is the heir to a brand of humor that Stern (and before him Caesar and the Marx Brothers) pioneered.  Consider this:

THINGS BRUNO DOES THAT HOWARD DID YEARS AGO

Ambush unsuspecting celebrities in fake interviews

Display his butt for comic effect

Talk openly and matter-of-factly about gay sex, anal bleaching, every possible bodily function

Spoof celebrities who adopt African babies

Create skits about off the wall gay characters

This isn’t meant to detract from Cohen.  His talent is for acting, for taking concepts and ideas Howard used and literally taking them to the street, fully developing them as movie concepts.

Clearly, Stern appreciates that—he said he loved the movie, and he seemed genuinely enthralled by Cohen’s in-studio performance.  Sure: he’s a proud dad.

Click here for Bruno’s 5 Top Jewish Moments.

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