Once Upon a Time: Howard Stern

It was the summer of 1991, I was riding shotgun in my dad's faded red Datsun pickup, headed west, down Foothill Boulevard as he channel-surfed local radio.

“They say this guy is crazy,” he said as he tuned it to KLSX 97.1.

I have no recollection of the broadcast, and I don’t remember thinking it was “crazy,” and after a few minutes, my dad changed the channel, probably back to K-Earth 101 or KNX 1070 News Ray-Dee-Oww, his favorites. It might have been the last time he listened to Howard Stern; he preferred comedy where people mused about what type of behavior is considered “redneck”.

But that idea, that this crazy radio show was out there, helmed by a man named Howard Stern, stuck with me, and when I was older, I would listen to him before school. There were aspects of the show I preferred to others. I never found the lesbian porn star interviews that stimulating. I liked it when he busted on Gary Dell‘Abate, aka Baba Booey. The Wack Pack was funny, although it felt exploitive to me even at the time. The celebrity interviews were good when people understood the combative nature of Stern, better when they didn’t.

The best part of the show was Howard Stern’s relentless, bottomless well of resentment and anger for anyone who wronged him. I remember an exchange with another “shock jock” from Chicago, Stern held a special contempt for competitors. I'm paraphrasing, but Stern said something to the effect of he was going to dig up his dead father's body and skull fuck him. Howard Stern was in a perpetual state of war, and to his devotees, he wasn’t just winning, he was going scorched earth on these motherfuckers. It spoke to disenfranchised young men, like myself, and I could not get enough.

After high school, I attended a for-profit college in Koreatown, best described as a poor man's DeVry University. It required me to take a long train ride to Los Angeles Union Station, and transfer to the subway for the final leg, five days a week. Ironically, the college shared a building with the 97.1 radio station, which by then had rebranded as “FM Talk”.  Stern was simulcast from New York, but the rest of the station's programming was direct from the 20-story building in K-Town. It wasn’t unusual, during a smoke break between classes, to see a black car pull up to 3550 Wilshire Blvd and a celebrity exit the back seat. I specifically remember a group of us milling around after class when Jeff Bridges emerged from a smoke-filled limousine, and someone yelled out, “THE DUDE!” Bridges coolly flashed us a peace sign as he passed.

I was perpetually broke in those days, but what I lacked in prosperity, I made up for in freedom. I was not the dedicated student I would become later in life, and I would often meander my way to school, exiting the train at different stops, walking large portions of the city, and sometimes not make it to school at all. Howard Stern was a constant companion, keeping me company through my headphones as I traversed Olvera Street, Pershing Square, MacArthur Park, and everywhere in between. His show became my best friend; in turn, I became a dutiful, dedicated soldier. Some days, I would go to the Los Angeles library (an incredible place every Angeleno should check out) and read Howard Stern’s books. Eventually, despite my many absences and half-assed assignments, I graduated and was thrust into the meat grinder that is corporate America. But my love affair with the Stern show deepened during my long commutes, and I even found co-workers who shared my affinity for Stern.

There is a debate among Stern fans about when the show peaked. For my money, the Artie Lange years were the best, and specifically the first couple of years on satellite radio. I was one of the 2.5 million people (give or take) who made the jump with Stern to satellite. It was inarguably the beginning of the end for Howard Stern as a culturally relevant figure. In his last few years on terrestrial radio, he had a listenership of ten million people a day and was at war with the Federal government. The Federal Communications Commission, under George W. Bush, targeted Stern with millions of dollars in fines, of which the companies paying for Stern’s services were not obliged to pay. Stern wasn’t just a radio show; he was a political movement fighting the government and corporations. What kind of America do you want to live in? ¡Viva La Revolución!

While the first few years on satellite radio were the beginning of the end of cultural relevance for Stern, they were, in my opinion, his creative apex. Two of my favorite segments of all time are when they had the wrestler Goldust on, who apparently had Tourette's as part of his WWE storyline. Every time he talked, Artie would insert a Tourette’s style grunt, something I still do whenever I hear someone clear their throat. I can’t explain why it’s funny, it just is. And when Erik the Midget, excuse me, Eric the Actor, came on promoting some appearance, I believe at a WNBA game in Sacramento. Artie and Fred Norris kept repeating the zero-point-zero scene from Animal House, in reference to how many tickets Eric had sold. Eric lost his shit. Again, I can’t explain it, it was just funny as fuck.

As an aside, Eric is my favorite Wack Packer of all time, in a group of people with severe delusions, he might have been the most delusional and the most lovable. The Wack Pack is an interesting evolution for the people who point to Stern’s downturn, though. Eric the Midget became Eric the Actor, Gary the Retard became Gary the Conqueror and Wendy the Retard became Wendy the Slow Adult. This was the canary in the coal mine for many Stern fans. A signal that Stern was the Hollywood big shot he had always railed against. Stern was rich, he was mature, he had vanquished his enemies, but worst of all, he had been invited to the club. And what happens to so many people who satirize popular culture is that they become popular culture.

But I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. The criticism that Stern went “woke”, requires one to find the word woke as a pejorative, and I don’t. For those of us paying attention, Howard Stern was always woke. He was a traditional libertarian and a free speech warrior. Not in the bullshit sense you hear nowadays but in a true sense, and he supported LGBTQ+ rights. His comedy was harsh and I’m not here to defend everything he did. They smeared mayonnaise on a girls naked ass and tossed pieces of bologna on it. That wasn’t my cup of tea then and it isn’t my cup of tea now. But I listened and I laughed, and I would have defended it. But we’re getting away from the point. What is done is done. None of that is why I stopped listening.

Towards the end of Artie Lange’s run on the show, he did an appearance on Joe Buck’s HBO talk show. It really is a piece of TV history; a somewhat inebriated Artie Lange annihilates Buck and, in the process, destroys a young Jason Sudeikis and a young Paul Rudd. He big times these guys who, even then, had comparable careers and who would go on to lap Artie Lange many, many times over. But in that moment, a belligerent Artie Lange took no prisoners; it’s a piece of TV that should be studied. I didn’t watch it live; I couldn’t afford HBO but I listened to the clips the Monday morning after it aired on the Stern show. When the segment started, I thought, Joe Buck, is going to wish he had never been born. Howard is going to emasculate this guy so bad that his grandsons, grandsons will have to sit when they pee. But Howard didn’t do that. If anything, he seemed embarrassed by Artie’s behavior. Like he didn’t want to be associated with it. In hindsight, it makes sense. Artie was a spiraling addict. But in the moment, it was like, huh? Who is this guy, and what has he done with Howard Stern? But none of that really mattered; relationships run their course, and three things happened that pushed Howard out of my life for good.

1) I moved. I had a shorter commute. 2) The show changed to three days a week, and the geniuses they put in charge of running the shows made sure that those of us who worked a standard eight-hour day heard the same segment driving to work that we heard driving home. Lazy asses. 3) I was no longer an angry young man looking to parasocial surrogate father figures for guidance. I had sprouted wings, and the impenetrable Howard Stern, the guy who taught me to use baby wipes and be comfortable with the size of my penis, was no longer needed.

I still love Howard Stern, but I don’t listen regularly; I haven’t for many years. I don’t have a negative feeling towards him or the show, though. It’s like that old girlfriend who moved to Oregon with her broad-shouldered husband and had three blonde-haired children with perfect teeth. The one who got away, but who, honestly, you’re glad you don’t have to get up with at 6 am on Saturdays for Little League games. You don’t even think about them anymore, except for when you write a 1500-word essay, but whatever, let's not get bogged down in details. I don’t cry because it’s over, I smile because it happened.