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Saturday, July 15, 2006

Sammy the Stem Cell, Lawton Smalls, and the Milfingtons are really gone this time
Posted by Jill | 7:23 PM
Mr. Brilliant was out of work when Air America Radio went live on March 31, 2004, so he was tuned in and ready to go when Al Franken came on for the first time. The next day, April 1, fittingly saw the birth of Morning Sedition.

From that moment until the cancellation of Morning Sedition, the radios in the Brilliant household were tuned to AAR/WLIB whenever we were in the house and awake.
I had never even HEARD of Marc Maron before Morning Sedition, but from the first day of the show, we were hooked. I was familiar with Mike Malloy (who joined up later) and Randi Rhodes from internet streams, but MS was something new, different, and hysterically funny right from the get-go.

Maybe it’s because I’m a neurotic Jew from New Jersey myself, but after years of trying to watch lame stand-up on Comedy Central, it was so great to hear someone who was actually FUNNY.

By 2005, listening to Morning Sedition made me understand what Deadheads were all about after a really tight show. Maron and Riley worked together seamlessly, and even the board guys became part of the fun.

You all know the story: AAR brought in Danny Goldberg, a record executive, as CEO. Goldberg proceeded to systematically destroy everything that was good about Air America Radio. He replaced Unfiltered with Jerry Springer. He cancelled Morning Sedition because he hated Marc Maron, and poor Mark Riley has been foundering ever since. He added a bunch of "progressive utopian with no sense of humor" programming on the weekends that is hardly even listenable.

When Morning Sedition was cancelled, it was as if someone in my family had died. Being a neurotic myself , I had often looked ahead and wondered what I’d do when MS ended, as I figured it would at some point. I just never dreamed it would be so soon. I felt actually bereft, until word of Maron's new show from L.A. came about.

Now, I can’t say I loved The Marc Maron Show the way I loved Morning Sedition. It was fun when it was live, and Marc would take calls from Gypsy and Kristapea and “Seanie from the Truck.” But once it was taped, I think the show lost something. I brought down most of the podcasts and will keep them, but after the trauma of losing MS, I think Maron had lost some of that unpredictable energy too. The tradeoff was that he became a more professional radio personality, so hopefully this means he’ll latch on someplace else.

Marc and Jim Earl and the other guys who have been associated with these shows -- from Jon Larsen, Brendan McDonald and Dan Pashman on the production side to Jim Earl and Kent Jones on the comedy side, have made themselves accessible to the listeners in a way that’s rare in show business. They built a tight-knit community in which they only rarely participated, and which to this day I don't think they understand.

I usually bring up this line at funerals, but it also sort of fits now. There’s a line from an Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem that reads, “I am a part of all that I have met.” Marc, Jim, Brendan, Dan, Jon Larsen, Little Goliath, Tom Johnson, and all the characters — Sammy the Stem Cell, Lawton Smalls, Butch the dead cat, Pendejo the Revolutionary, Marc the Shark, the Stalker, all of the Milfingtons — and the Dream Diary, the Presidential Palm Pilot, Morning Sedition Radio Theatre, and all the other bits I can’t think of now, are all part of those who listened to the funny these 2-1/2 years.

All good things must come to an end, but nothing ends without a new beginning. So let’s look ahead to whatever kind of lunacy the future has in store for us Maronites and Seditionistas. Maybe it'll be podcasting. Maybe it'll be satellite radio. Maybe it'll be just an appearance on Conan O'Brien here and an HBO special there.

Whatever form Marc and Jim's broadcasting future takes, I hope it'll happen soon, and I hope it'll be widely and easily available.

But for now, we geniuses, we philosopher kings and queens, working class heroes, progressive utopians with no sense of humor, lurking conservatives, pain sponges and need machines, and angry puppets, find ourselves wandering lost in the wilderness. Because James Wolcott was right back last November: a world without Sammy the Stem Cell is a world that might as well stop revolving.

Thanks for 2-1/2 years of bringing the funny five days a week, guys. We'll miss you....until we hear you again.






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