Talk radio is my favorite form of entertainment.  It hasn’t always been my favorite because at one point I had a strong interest in movies where Adam Sandler returned to elementary school and for about 10 years thereafter, spent approximately all of my time listening to my dad’s Flip Wilson records which contain the first recorded contention that Queen Isabella sent Christopher Columbus to America to find Ray Charles.

I lived in a small town and walked to school so my access to talk radio was non-existent.  To make matters worse, my parents only listened to NPR, which meant that until I was 18 I thought everyone in the radio business had a name like Thomas Lawrence and spent all of their time talking about wetlands and the human genome project.  NPR, for those who are from The South, is well-produced radio that delivers loads of useful information and thoughtful reporting about important world events from a stable of on-air personalities who all sound vaguely the same regardless of sex.

I discovered talk radio in college while trying to avoid talking to my roommate and for the last ten years, have been a fan of various local and national shows.  For most of that time my allegiance has remained with a show called “The Jim & Margery Show” on Boston’s WTKK.  The show, not surprisingly, consists of people named Jim and Margery hosting a morning talk fest that is about 4,000 times better than its name.  Previously, this show was called “Eagan & Braude” which was a better name because it contained the names of both hosts and didn’t sound like a public access TV show about cats[1].  

Jim and Margery are great because like most successful radio personalities, they are able to talk about nothing for approximately three hours a day and to make a listener feel as though they are sitting in their living room, with their friends, and hundreds of thousands of other friends, instead of sitting in their living room with no friends, which is probably what they are doing.  What makes them unique, however, in the world of morning talk radio, is that instead of talking about Hollywood gossip and playing bad “Top 40” songs, or screaming about one issue and having predictably conservative positions about immigration or taxes, they sometimes talk about two issues.  But mostly they repeat old jokes about one another and tell stories from when they were in middle school and Jewish sleep-away camp, and sometimes adopt predictably liberal positions on a range of issues.

Given my affection for the show I was thrilled to appear as a guest last week as part of its “Week in Review News Quiz”.  The quiz participants are generally would-be politicians, members of the media, or very minor celebrities such as Pauly Shore, who reached his zenith as a secondary character in a movie about a caveman trying to fit in at a suburban high school.  Last week, however, in addition to me, the guests were a woman who appeared to have about 15 different media jobs, and an editor from the Boston Globe who rode his bicycle to the show, shook my hand while there was still a drinkable quantity of sweat on his hands, hung around the entire time in a fluorescent spandex biking outfit, and was apparently, totally serious.

Even though I answered zero questions correctly, being a guest on the show was all I hoped it would be as I had a chance to participate in the repetitive joke making and found a way to mention Phil Collins and Jim’s career as a leather merchant in a three-minute span. 

One of the main topics of the day was the band ABBA, and its recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  I was supportive of the decision, but all of the older people in the room maintained that ABBA was trash and should not grace The Hall.  The woman with 15 jobs made some gestures about how bad she thought they were, and the bike guy called them a “guilty pleasure” but ultimately voted them down.  Even the hosts took shots at ABBA, calling them terrible and valueless.  I probably could have guessed they weren’t huge ABBA fans but it seemed like tough talk from people who’ve invited Pauly Shore and me on their radio show.

  http://www.969bostontalks.com/podcast/Episodes.aspx?PID=1466 (hear my appearance- under "Jim and Margery News Quiz 3/19/2010)