Back On The Radio


Yesterday, I wrote about my bad decision… sleeping late on Sunday. That came back to bite me on the ass today!

My alarm was set for 4:00 AM. I went upstairs around 8:30, fell asleep by 9:00 and was awake again before midnight.

I assumed that position you assume when you’re awake, but don’t want to give in and get up. I wanted… no, I needed more sleep. Not to be.

I went downstairs and watched the clock.

I was in the car by 5:00 AM, heading to Hartford for my radio appearance on WCCC. My only detour was for coffee at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Cromwell.

WCCC is old school. It’s not owned by a conglomerate. Its promos have the old, fun feel of a station close to its listeners. It’s live 24-7 with no voice tracking.

Even cooler, WCCC is in an old house, near St. Francis Hospital, in Hartford. This is not some chi-chi refurb. If you moved out the radio gear, you could move a family right in!

WCCC’s air product is a little hard edged for me. After all, 20hours a day, this station is really rocking. I’m not sure I am equal to that task.

I made myself comfy in the studio while the show’s producer, Jen, handed me a packet of ‘nearly’ news to read. I could sense things were going to be really casual… and they were.

Sebastian runs the show. He is the ‘name’ talent around which the show revolves. He’s been in the market forever, in good times and bad.

It’s a very good time right now.

In the studio with Sebastian are Pete Lamoureux, who does sports, and Don Steele, the all around announcer guy and the person who runs the ‘board’, the audio console which controls everything you hear. As was the case with Sebastian, they could not have been nicer.

Sebastian walked in the studio at 6:00 AM and we were off and running. Over the years morning shows have started moving to earlier start times. Lots of shows begin at 5:00 or 5:30. Like I said, this is old school.

I wonder if they know how good they have it? They got reasonably good hours and carte blanche to say nearly anything&#185

My job was to be second (or possibly third or fourth) banana. There was a time I would have objected. Not now. I embraced this opportunity for what it was – a chance to have a good time in a medium I’m still madly in love with.

When Sebastian said anything funny (or was intended to be funny), I laughed. That’s part of the job. Ask Ed McMahon.

I was fresh meat so there was lots of conversation that centered around me. How Helaine and I met. What it was like after 23 years at the TV station. Who was fun and not fun to work with. Stuff like that.

There are some stories I’ve told a million times. I had no trouble telling them again.

Sebastian can be tough, but he was easy on me. I was glad for that. OK – he did ask if I color my hair (NO!). The four hours went quickly.

I spent some time with Michael Picozzi, the program director, before heading south down I-91 toward home.

I was back to the bed around 11:30. There was no trouble falling asleep this time. I was ready.

&#185 – I shied away from a funny use of the acronym MILF. Later, when I told Sebastian I’d censored myself, he laughed and asked why?

Imus – Totally Off Topic

I watched the replay of Keith Olbermann’s show tonight when I got home from work. Not a particularly exciting news day. I had already seen or read nearly everything he reported.

While he was doing the Imus story, Keith made reference to “1,200 Hamburgers To Go,” Imus’ iconic comedy bit/album. And then Olbermann told the fiction normally associated with it – that it was a real call made on-the-air.

When this bit first aired, Imus worked at WGAR in Cleveland. After he left, I also worked there. All we shared in common was program director John Lund, who hired us both.

That McDonalds guy… it’s Lund! That’s what John told me nearly 35 years ago. I was asking about the bit, thinking at the time it had been a real call, when John told me the backstory.

I didn’t think about it until years later when I was watching Woody Allen’s Bananas. Siding with the rebels in a broken down Central American setting, Allen is sent to get lunch for the troops.

Do you have

any grilled cheese sandwiches?

– Yes, sir.

– Well, let me have a thousand.

And… tuna fish… and

bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches.

As far as I can tell, Imus’ album came out in 1972, a year after Allen’s movie. The scene’s are virtually the same.

The bit was funny. It just wasn’t original nor legitimate.

Keith Olbermann and I have corresponded in the past via email, but MSNBC has seen fit to ‘obscure’ his address. Since I can’t tell him, I’ll tell you.

Blogger’s adendum:

After I wrote this, John Lund wrote me. He was there, so his timeline is much better than mine. And, if writing now, I would no longer imply the connection between 1200 Hamburgers and Woody Allen’s Bananas.

Regarding 1200 Hamburgers to Go… We did all phony phone calls as setups because it was illegal to put people on the air without getting their permission first…and back then we had that telephone beep every 10 seconds when we recorded. While the LP was released when Don got to NY in 1972, we conceived and recorded it early in his tenure at 1220/WGAR, certainly by spring of 1971 if not the previous fall. As with many of the cuts on the album, I wrote the bits and was the voice on a few. I wrote comedy for Don for several years, including bits for his TV show on a UHF station in Cleveland (sponsored by Ed Stinn Chevy)…and bits like this. Typically he conceived the premise, I wrote the script or outline, we rehearsed, then he would call me in my office from the studio to record the routine. To sound like a McDonald’s employee for that call, I spoke with a pencil in my mouth.

The Man Who Met Norman Chad

Have I mentioned I enjoy playing poker? I continue playing online almost every night and my deposit of three years ago is still there.

For poker players, our ‘world series’ is the World Series of Poker. Conveniently named, isn’t it?

The WSOP is the biggest tournament in the world. Actually, it’s a series of tournaments, culminating in the ‘Main Event.’

Anyone can enter. All you need is a $10,000 ticket. This year, a $10,000 ticket turned into $12,000,000 for Jamie Gold of California.

I’ve never been to the World Series. C’mon – $10,000 is a lot of money and you’re playing against all the best (and some of the luckiest) players around.

My friend Rick played this year. He won his $10,000 entry playing in a satellite tournament. It cost him $1!

Though Rick had a great time, he came home with little more than memories and some tchotchkes for me. One of them is pictured on the left. It’s an autograph from Norman Chad.

OK – it’s on a piece of paper ripped out of a spiral notepad. Can’t it still be a cherished memento?

Chad is a newspaper columnist. He’s also written books and for TV, including a pretty funny episode of Arli$$. Mostly, I know him as the color commentator on the World Series broadcasts.

Rick has had the autograph for months. Tonight was finally time to pick it up.

I don’t have many friends I can visit at midnight besides Rick. He is a professional announcer and sets his own schedule. His business is primarily carried on from a studio in his basement.

If you’re in Connecticut, you’ve heard Rick say “99-1, WPLR” or voice commercials for Bob’s Stores (the clothing, not the furniture stores). If you’re elsewhere, you’ve heard him too, on commercials and promos too numerous count.

He has one of those voices that is just too darned deep. It is accented by gravely side tones which make it mellifluous and friendly.

My voice is so lacking in bass, a program director I worked for in Philadelphia considered using a ‘Harmonizer’ to electronically lower the pitch! I will be eternally envious of Rick’s pipes.

There was actually more waiting for me than the autograph (though that will be my most cherished piece of swag). Rick also gave me a deck of WSOP playing cards, a WSOP chip, PokerStars.net t-shirt, and the ‘souvenir’ room key from his Vegas hotel.

We were down in his studio talking when I noticed the full wall of record albums. These were real 33 1/3 rpm vinyl disks. They’re the kind that scratched, popped and hissed when you played them. Looking at the collection was like going back in time.

I started pulling albums off the wall and, on two vintage Technics turntables, Rick began playing cuts. There was early Hendrix and Janis Joplin. I read the technical notes on the cover of the Beach Boys seminal Holland LP. There were more obscure groups like The Buoys&#185 and The Easybeats.

Some cuts, like Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream, I hadn’t heard in 40 years or so! I remembered conversations with friends in the 60s, trying to figure out why Dylan starting the song acoustically, stopped to laugh, and then began again, this time with electric guitar and electrified accompaniment.

Our musical tastes are very different. Rick has a more eclectic, more discerning ear for artistry. I gravitate to pop and ‘the hits.’ Still, there was a lot to share and, as former disk jockeys, stories to tell.

I got home around 3:00 AM, carrying my loot with me.

Forget my WSOP take. I can’t begin to tell you how much fun I had just schmoozing and listening to those old songs.

&#185 – The Buoys hit “Timothy” is probably the best top-40 song about cannibalism ever!

How I Met My Wife

Helaine and I have known each other for twenty five years. I wish I remembered the exact date. I don’t. I know it was around this time of year, sometime in mid-July.

I was working at WIFI – a horrendous top-40 station in Philadelphia. Though owned by the movie chain, “General Cinema,” it seemed more like a mom and pop operation. The equipment was tired and in a semi-constant state of disrepair.

On the air, we used every gimmick possible to try and magnify what meager ratings we had. We even ‘kited’ time checks to try and inflate the amount of time people said they were listening!

Though a true blue radio fanatic, I was getting burned out by my time at WIFI. The final straw was getting calls from nine and ten year olds asking me to play, “We don’t need no education.”

I felt, single handedly, I was leading American society into some sort of social abyss. I made the decision to leave radio and get into television.

Though thirty, I was very young looking. I had only begun to shave on a regular basis. Here’s my 1980 driver’s license. You make the call.

I took everything I’d ever done in front of a camera (and this included telethon appearances, an Evening Magazine audition in Philadelphia, even “Popeye’s 50th Birthday Party”) and started searching for a TV job. On this particular July day the call came in&#185.

I was incredibly excited. Not only would I be leaving WIFI, I’d also be starting a new life a television… albeit in Buffalo.

My air shift ended at 10:00 AM. I ran out of the studio, toward the parking lot&#178 where I’d meet some friends and tell them the good news.

To exit the WIFI studio, you opened the door, turned right, walked down a hallway and then around the edge of another studio, making a full 180&#176 turn! As I rounded that corner I ran into a woman who had just started working in the promotion department.

When I say “ran into,” I am being literal. I ran into her and knocked her to the ground! That was my first contact with Helaine!

We saw each other a few times, but I was exiting Philadelphia in a few weeks. I was a guy who tried to avoid commitment during normal times… much less now, as I packed my stuff.

OK – I’m a jerk. I’m a fool. For all intents and purposes, I should have lost her to someone smarter and more mature. But, I didn’t.

I left Philly and didn’t see Helaine for another year and a half. I’ll tell how we got together some other time. It’s an interesting story with me, again, playing the part of the jerk!

The story you’ve read has been told a zillion times. It needs no embellishment, because it’s totally true.

As it turns out, it might be the best day of my life. The day my career changed and, more importantly, the day I met the woman I’d love for the rest of my life.

Maybe this is why I love the summer and why July is my favorite month. I bet Helaine knows the exact date.

&#185 – The call came from WGR-TV’s program director, Farrell Meisel. I can never thank Farrell enough for that first opportunity. He took a great chance, considering I had no experience in TV at all. Farrell and I are still really good friends, though I can no longer work for his TV station as I don’t speak Arabic!

&#178 – WIFI’s studio were in a mid-rise office complex in Bala Cynwyd, PA (yes, that’s how it’s spelled). In that pre consolidation era, we were in the same building as four other radio stations.

Back on the Radio

When I was a teenager in high school I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up – I wanted to be a disk jockey. And sure enough, when I got myself tossed from college (or the ‘accelerated dismissal program’ as I like to call it), radio is where I went.

It was a reasonably good career working at some of the classic stations of the AM radio era, being program director of what was known as an ‘underground station,’ and doing mornings in Philadelphia. I miss it all the time. Any time I run into a radio person here in Connecticut I offer to do some fill-in work.

They smile, but seldom call. I’ve done a few talk shows on WTIC and it was like a fix to an addict.

Today I had the opportunity to be on the radio and in a situation I had never experienced before. I was one of three guests on a Sunday morning public affairs show which was taped for Star 99.9 and WPLR.

This all has to do with my involvement in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. I have been their celebrity spokesperson for 11 years – though I’m not sure what that job actually entails. JDRF is a wonderful organization. I feel touched every time I do something on their behalf. And, their Walk to Cure is coming up in early October.

The program was taped at the Cox Broadcasting studios in Milford. It was the most corporate radio facility I had ever been in. Everything was neat and clean. The equipment looked like it was all working. There were no slovenly disk jockeys yelling at the top of their voices!

It seemed too sterile to really be radio.

The station’s lunch room seemed sanitary, as if you could eat there. How is this possibly radio? Certainly it is not radio as I knew it, where your clothing choices were always promotional t-shirts and jeans.

Every time I write about it, I wonder why I miss radio so much… and when I’ll be back on?

David Letterman

I’m going to say bad things, so let me start by saying nice things. It’s part of my inherited guilt.

I think David Letterman is the king of talk show hosts. I have been watching him for at least 25 years – maybe more. He has always been on edge, always been witty, always been funny.

Back in Buffalo I kvetched and complained until our program director, Vicki Gregorian, began running his NBC late night show. Did I have anything to do with our finally clearing it? Probably not, but it still felt good and was the right thing to do.

Before I left Buffalo, I threw a party and sent an invitation to Dave. He never answered. I never thought he would, but it was an expression of the depth of my admiration for him.

There have actually been times when I’ve purposely not watched Dave because I felt I was ripping him off. I didn’t do it on purpose, his influence was that strong.

At home, I have the DVR set to record his show every night. I only watch once or twice a week and then I skim. The truth is, Late Night with David Letterman has gotten stale. It hurts me to say that because of all the respect I still have for Dave.

Tonight was a perfect example of what’s gone wrong. Much of the first half of the show was taken up by tired, reused bits like “Will It Float” and “Know Your Current Events.” This is the antithesis of what made Dave what he is – unpredictable, off-the-wall material. This is the guy who jumped into the water wearing a suit of Alka Seltzer, crushed items with a steamroller, and dropped watermelons off a building.

The show can be saved, but someone’s going to have to shock him into it. I don’t know Dave personally, but everything I’ve read says that won’t be easy. It’s time to scrap the repetition and move on.

Who has the guts to tell him?

As it is, a much less astute, less intellectual, but harder working Jay Leno cleans up in the ratings. It just shouldn’t be. Dave has to take a fair share of the blame. Now it’s time to move on and regain what once was.

Atlantic City and the Weather’s Awful

I’m writing this midday Sunday. There hasn’t been any sun or even the glimpse of the nighttime sky since we’ve been here. Sort of depressing.

As opposed to Las Vegas, this isn’t a good place for Steffie. The hotel, beautiful as it is, is very kid unfriendly. We are removed from the Boardwalk and midtown Atlantic City, though that would make little difference.

Helaine took Steffie to the Boardwalk yesterday, but they stayed only a short time. She was disappointed by the whole honky tonk, sleazy, scene. Of course that’s what Helaine and I like about it. More than anything, we enjoy the people watching, because there are characters of every sort.

We had dinner at the buffet at The Borgata with my friend Peter. I first met him in the early 70’s when I was working in Cleveland. He was the first person I ever met who owned a calculator! He still has it. Later, Peter became my boss – the program director at WPEN radio in Philadelphia. We have been very good friends for 30 years.

The buffet is definitely a Las Vegas contender. There were carving stations and lots of interesting, well prepared, dishes.

A chef was making some spaghetti sauce, I believe using vodka. I tried to take a photo, but was too late. So she put some vodka in a pan so I could have a photo op. Very appreciated.

Unfortunately, she was on the high end of service employees who don’t reach the same level as in Vegas. I’m sorry to do all these comparisons, but it’s only natural. And, time-wise, from where I live in Connecticut, Las Vegas isn’t that much farther away.

We had tickets to the comedy show at the hotel for 9:00 PM. I figured, since it was crowded, that I’d go down and register for poker before we went. That way I wouldn’t have to wait as long. As it turned out, my name wasn’t called until 11:30!

The comedy show, in the same room that Helaine and Steffie saw Rick Springfield the night before, was pretty good. There were three comics, “The Coach,” Jack Fontana, and Pete Correalle.

We all agreed Pete Correalle was the best. In some ways he was reminiscent of Seinfeld. He was in control and laid back.

I thought Jack Fontana, an ‘old school’ joke teller ,was better than “The Coach,” but I was alone in that impression. Either way, both were worse than great, better than bad. Entertaining, but not special.

Last night, the casino was as crowded as any casino I had ever seen. And the crowd was younger than any casino crowd I’d ever seen. Many of the women were dressed in that tawdry, slutty way that’s OK for women, as long as they’re not in your family.

I headed down to the poker room to wait out my table. When I say down, I really mean it, since the room is in the basement.

Like the main casino floor, the poker room was astoundingly crowded. I did get a chance to see what the floor people were carrying. They each have some sort of HP PDA with 802.11b access to the poker room system. So they can work the lists and do nearly everything that can be done from the podium.

I sat at a $6/$12 Hold’em table and slowly began to lose money. It wasn’t long before I was down $100. But I was playing decently (though not as tight as I’d like)&#185, so I figured I’d be OK.

My losses stabilized for a while and then I went down again. I had lost $130 or so when things began to turn. I won a few small pots. At least two times everyone laid down their cards to my bet on the river. I think I won because of my earlier semi-tight play. Then I won a few bigs hands.

By the time I went to cash in my chips, I had won $176. So, three sessions for $96, $5, $176. I’m happy.

As I walked through the casino, after 2:00 AM, things were still jumping. In the elevator, yesterday’s Rear Window had given way to Lost in Translation.

&#185 – It’s reasonable to ask, if you know you’re not playing right, why not just do it? The brief answer is, while you’re at a table, you’re always looking at the hands and evaluating them. But you’re also there to play, which is what you don’t do when you lay your cards down. This is less a problem on-line. Even though I can intellectualize the problem, I don’t always act with my intellect.

Radio Is In My Blood

I am not really in television – it’s more radio with pictures. Radio was always my first love. As a kid, I knew I’d go into radio (and I did). TV was an afterthought. Other than the actual skill of forecasting the weather, there’s nothing I do on TV that I didn’t do on radio first.

This is going to make me sound old.

I went to high school in the same building that housed the New York City Board of Education’s radio station. We were FM back when no one listened to FM. That was mainly because no one owned an FM radio!

WNYE-FM had an eclectic mix of educational programs. It’s tough to visualize today, but teachers in NYC would bring clunky Granco FM radios into their classrooms so the students could listen to, “Let’s Look at the News” or “Young Heroes.” There’s little in the way of TV today that’s equivalent.

Looking for a way to get out of conventional English classes, I became a radio actor for English class credit. I was cast in dozens and dozens of morality plays and historical recreations. I was young Orville Wright, Thomas Jefferson, Jackie Robinson (in that less politically correct time) and lots of kids named Billy.

In the morality plays, I often had lines like, “If I ride my bike over the hill, mom will never know.” By the second act, my arm was in a cast and I was sorry. In these shows, no transgression went unpunished.

All through high school, I listened to radio – listening to the disk jockeys more than the music. The disk jockeys were cool and hip and in control. They talked back to the boss with impunity, or so it seemed to me. They were quick and witty and sarcastic. I wanted to be a disk jockey.

Though I grew up in New York City, my favorite radio station was WKBW in Buffalo. You could only hear “KB” from dusk ’til dawn, but it boomed in like a local at our apartment in Queens.

The nighttime jocks on “KB” were unbelievable. Over time, there were Joey Reynolds, Bud Ballou, Jack Armstrong and others. KB Pulse Beat news with Irv Weinstein, who I’d later know personally, was a tabloid newscast, back when rock stations had to have newscasts.

This is not to say I didn’t listen to WABC in NYC, because I did. There’s little doubt that Dan Ingram is the best disk jockey to ever point a finger at a board operator. He was all the things that the “KB” guys were, but he operated within the more heavily produced WABC universe. At WABC there was a jingle for everything except going to the bathroom… and maybe there was a jingle for that too.

Back on track… must get back on track… where is this going?

In college, I knew I wanted to be like them. I wasn’t as cool as they were. I certainly didn’t have ‘pipes’ (the euphemism for a deep, throaty voice). Still, I wanted to be on the air.

At home, or in the car, I’d practice ‘talking up records.’ That means talking over the instrumental bridge that opens songs before the singing begins, and stopping on a dime, effortlessly, as the singing began. That’s called “hitting vocal,” and I was very good at that.

I started in radio at WSAR in Fall River, MA. I was part time, making $2.50 an hour. Before long, the company I was working for, Knight Quality Stations (some of which weren’t on at night, and none of which had quality), sent me to Florida to be program director at WMUM, aka – “Mother.” I was still making $2.50 an hour or $130 for a 6 day, 48 hour week.

WMUM was an “underground station.” Again, it’s a concept tough to understand today. We played everything without resorting to a playlist. It was some sort of misguided Utopian programming concept that never really took hold anywhere for long. But in 1969, at age 19, “Mother” was an unreal place to be.

We were hip and cool and broadcast from a building located adjacent to the parking lot for Lake Worth, Florida’s beach. From our studio, through the soundproof glass, you could watch the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean. The beach was always filled with girls in bathing suits.

“Mother” didn’t hold its allure for long. Within 18 months, I had moved on to our sister AM station and then two other stations in the West Palm Beach market.

At age 21, I went to Charlotte, NC. There I did nights on a station that truly was heard from Canada to Florida. During my tenure, we even got mail from Cuba and Scandinavia. WBT was a classic radio station with good facilities, excellent promotion and nurturing management. I didn’t know how good I had it until I left.

I became a radio gypsy, moving to Cleveland and Phoenix and finally Philadelphia. I moved enough to qualify for the U-Haul Gold Card. I worked nights at WPEN in Philadelphia for a few years before moving to mornings.

We were a good AM station, playing oldies, at about the time music on AM was dying… rapidly.

I think I was pretty good at WPEN. If you’ll remember that this aircheck is over 25 years old, and I was more than 25 years younger than I am now, you can listen to it by clicking here. I really enjoyed what I was doing.

After a while we could see things weren’t going well in the ratings. A new program director was brought in to change things. Brandon Brooks, my friend and newsman on the show, came to me. Things were going to change but, “Don’t worry Geoff. They can’t fire you.”

I was gone within two hours.

My radio career never got back to that place. I continued to work, but it wasn’t the same. I finally ended up at WIFI, a top-40 FM station where I constantly worried that I, personally, was leading to the degradation of youth and society.

The scene played over and over again as I answered the hitline. I’d say, “Hello, WIFI.” On the other end, a young voice would respond, “Play, ‘We Don’t Need No Education.'” To me, it was like screeching chalk on a blackboard.

WIFI was my last stop before getting into TV. Still I miss radio nearly each and every day.

This is not to say I want to leave TV. I don’t. But, I do have this fantasy where I do radio in the morning and TV in the evening. That’s why, whenever someone from radio calls and asks me to fill-in or come on the air, I jump at the chance. It’s really an involuntary response.

It’s still in my blood.

The reason I’m writing all of this is because of someone I saw today at a charity event. I was helping present a check and toys to support shelters for abused women at the Verizon Wireless store in North Haven. A man walked up to me and said hello. It was Pete Salant.

I know Pete, though not that well. My sense is, Pete could go one-on-one with me with any bit of radio minutiae. It runs through his blood as well. In fact, with him broadcasting is an inbred thing, as his dad&#185 was a giant when CBS was the “Tiffany Network.”

Pete was known mostly as a radio programmer – and a damned good one. It’s probable, though I really don’t remember anymore, that within Pete’s career, he turned me down for a job… maybe more than once. I know he ran places where I wanted to work. Today, he creates commercials for radio station that run on TV.

It was good to see him. It’s always good to think about radio.

&#185 Pete tells me it was actually his cousin… and not a very close one… who was with CBS: “Dick Salant was my cousin twice-removed (grandfather’s first cousin), not my dad.” I’m going to leave the original posting as is, because I want to try and keep this blog as a contemporaneous record, but add the correction here.

Anything’s possible

Late last week, my friend Harold told me he was taking this week off and that if I took a day off, we’d go to “The City” (Since I was a little child “The City” meant Manhattan which was treated differently than other parts of New York City).

Fine. I asked for, and received, Tuesday off.

But, what to do in The City? We talked about The Lower East Side (I am a knockoff watch whore and am looking for a new faux Breitling), getting tickets at TKTS and seeing a Broadway show, the Ansel Adams exhibit at MOMA and going to see David Letterman.

I have been a Letterman fan since the first time I saw him on The Tonight Show. When his late show began on NBC, I got on my knees and begged our program director at WGRZ in Buffalo to run it (which she eventually did).

Click to see the inscription from Dave

Around 20 years ago, Helaine and I went and saw a taping at 30 Rock. A friend who worked at NBC at the time got us into the studio early, where we shmoozed with Biff Henderson.

Letterman came out before the show and walked into the audience, looking for questions. Being right in front, we were tough to avoid. He called on Helaine and then answered her question, “What kind of makeup do you wear? My fiancee is on TV and his doesn’t look as good.”

When the show started, he made reference to the question and asked me what station I was on. Andrea Martin was on the show, but I don’t remember much more.

Of course, Letterman tickets are tough to come by, especially in the summer when his target audience is … at will, so to speak. So, I emailed my friend Mel at CBS. “They hate us,” he replied, making no bones about the Letterman staff’s relationship with the rest of CBS.

Next, an email to Aaron Barnhart at the Kansas City Star and www.tvbarn.com. Aaron has been a Letterman fan forever, and I figured he was connected. Anyway, I had just done a favor for him, so he was into me.

No pull.

But, Aaron suggested I go to the CBS website and put myself on the standby list. What the hell? It was late, the dog was chowing down, I had nothing better to do.

This afternoon the message appeared on my cellphone. Mitch at Late Night was calling, telling me they had a cancellation and I was invited. Assured seats, no standby. How cool is this?

All I had to do was answer a trivia question to establish my Letterman bonafides. First, how often did I watch? I told him 2-3 times a week (any more and too much Dave starts sneaking into my performance). My question, “Who is Alan Kalter?”

Damn! Alex, I’ll take staff announcers for $500.

So, Harold arrives at 10:00am. We”ll drive to Stamford and catch Metro North to Grand Central. And, we’re going to see Letterman.