Shout Out

            My favorite radio show right now, perhaps of all time, is 'The Tony Kornheiser Show.'  Tony K. was a columnist for a long time for the Washington Post and I got into his written stuff back in the early 90s when I was living in D.C.  His sense of humor is simply fantastic. 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Kornheiser

 

            Later on in his career, he got a radio show, first locally in D.C. and then picked up nationally by ESPN Radio.  His show was the morning show on ESPN Radio, right before the Dan Patrick Show.  I tried to be in my car as often as I could in them mornings, just to listen to Mister Tony on my satellite radio.  A few years ago, he was hired to be one of the three guys in the Monday Night Football booth, until he was replaced this season.  He stopped doing radio while he was doing Monday Night, but now he's back on the radio locally in the D.C. area.

 

            Importantly for me, his show is also available for free as a pod cast on iTunes.  As a result, I can download it when I'm on the road and listen to it whenever I want, which has been a nice boon in the last few months.

 

            Mister Tony never interviews players or coaches on the rationale that they all say the same thing all the time: "We are going to take the game one play at a time." "An all out effort is going to be needed this week."  "Our coaches/players did a great job, we just came up a little short this week."  I couldn't agree more – I can't stand 98% of the interviews I've heard with players and coaches.  Instead he interviews a lot of newspaper reporters, columnists and others that will actually give true opinions of what is going on in their various topics of interest.

 

            What is also great about his show is that it is only about half sports.  He (and the people he has in the booth with him, three or so everyday from a rotating cast of about seven or eight) ends up more of the time just talking about things in the news, entertainment, movies, music, and such.  His show hits about everything under the sun – and his show's self-deprecating tag line is "this show stinks!"

 

            Part of his various idiosyncrasies is explained by his unofficial website FAQ: http://www.thiswebsitestinks.com/faq.asp

 

            If you are a sports fan at all, it is a must listen.  If you aren't, I still think there is a good chance you'd still love it.  Another thing I love is that he totally refuses to ever take phone calls from listeners on his show (how worthless are those 99.9% of the time?), but he has a dedicated set of followers that email him about every day.  The emails he reads on the air are usually quite funny and riff off the topics that have been on the air that day.  One of his daily emailers, Chad, sends a few haikus everyday – one of Mister Tony's rules is that Chad is the only one allowed now to do haikus, since they are so good.

 

            Now that I think about tit, I think one of the main reasons that I am such a fan of his is that he has about as many strange rules and quirks as I do.  Though I'd be lucky at this point to aspire to one-tenth of his success.

 

            Whether you want to listen to all of his stuff or not.  Go to the Apple Store and download the October 13 pod cast.  There are two that day one for each hour of his show.  Download the one labeled "Tim Kurkjan," which is the first hour.

 

Then go to about 34:30 or so and listen for about a minute.