The Imus Dinosaur

Like a lot of people I was surprised to hear what radio personality Don Imus said that got him into so much trouble. I was not surprised to hear what he had said really, the surprise was more like "Don Imus still has a radio show?" Given the fact that I had last seen the man when his show was being broadcast live on some damn cable network he looked like was slowly dying right there in his chair I just assumed he had shuffled off this mortal coil a long time ago.

Don Imus has always seemed a bit like a strange fellow to me. I am a big fan of radio. I used to be in radio, but I never made it past doing part-time and fill-in work in small cities and towns located a stone's throw from much larger and more significant cities and towns. I was always a guy who had to talk for about ten to fifteen seconds between songs and somehow sound interesting. I was never particularly good at it, but I was fairly reliable and able to handle the equipment for the most part so the program directors I worked for tended to like me. If they needed a guy to come in on Christmas I was more than willing because to me it was still a lot of fun to play with all of that cool equipment.

Imus was, apparently, one of the first "shock jock" types. At least, he tries to protray himself that way. He certainly looks old enough that he was probably there standing behind Marconi when the man was building his very first radio. I heard him when, for a while, this very tiny AM radio station broadcast his syndicated morning show to the St. Louis area during a part of the mid-90s. I listened because I had heard he was controversial but funny. I listened for a few weeks and never quite got hooked on it.

It sounded to me like he had this huge case of characters. Every time the time was mentioned a duck would quack. I never understood why a duck quacked when the time was mentioned, but there it was. He also seemed to be backing away from any kind of controversy at the time. Whenever a story would come up and one of his on-air lackies said something salacious or a little outrageous he would immediately back off and tell them that wasn't the right thing to say.

I know most of what I know about him through my years of listening to Howard Stern. Yes, I was a fan of Howard's until he went to a place where I had to buy expensive equipment and have professionals install things into my car to do his show. I am not willing to make that kind of investment in radio at this point in my life, thank you. I can still get shows I enjoy for free and I don't have to worry about retrieving my radio when I eventually sell my current vehicle to get a new one.

Howard said he met Imus back when he first got to New York. He also has repeatedly stated that, off air, Imus would unload a barrage of racial slurs all the time. How much of that is true, of course, is up to debate. Howard is certainly no stranger to controversy but he is so outrageous that he can say racial things and nothing much seems to happen to him. Imus, on the other hand, not being on satellite, cannot. If Howard is to be believed them the Imus that made that racial statement may be the real guy and not the guy you normally hear on the air.

Imus is often seen wearing a cowboy hat. I never quite understood that either. Once again, most of what I know I know from other people making fun of him. Apparently he had some kind of ranch where he would take kids with cancer and put them to work doing chores or something. I'm not really sure how that helps a kid with cancer but apparently it made Imus seem more like a human being. He also often talked about his brother and his wife.

Most of the time when I would listen to Imus I could barely understand what he was saying. I would think that having some kind of clear and understandable delivery would be key to successful radio, what with it being an audio medium and all. To me he was always slurring and sounded like his dentures were slipping. Whenever you would see him on television he was always looking down when he spoke and his lips barely moved. It was like watching a ventriloquist without the dummy. Perhaps Imus was the dummy and he was animatronic.

Imus is not on the air here in Chicago. Chicago stations are willing to put just about anyone on the air but I have never heard Don Imus here ever. We had Don and Mike for a while. We had Howard. Dear God, help us, we even had Mancow. the city was never subjected to the duck-quacking, slurring, denture-slipping mumblings of the man with the cowboy hat slowly torturing cancer children (or whatever he did there). As such, I was always left with the second-hand information about the man.

Considering he always seemed like he was falling asleep on his own show I have a hard time holding him completely responsible for whatever he said. Surely you have talked in your sleep before. Perhaps you have even awakened yourself while talking in your sleep. Half the time you have no idea what you've said or why you said it. If you do remember what you've said you probably scratched your head and wondered why the heck you said what you said.

Being in radio just doesn't seem like much fun anymore. Maybe at one of the satellite companies it's fun because you can get away with everything including swearing. With the FCC turning evermore tyrannical you pretty much have to second-guess every word out of your mouth. It can be done and it still can be done in an entertaining way but now you really need to work at it more. You can't just open your mouth and let whatever pour out of it.

I am glad I am out of the radio business. I was never headed for the success of a Howard Stern or even a Don Imus. The music DJ days seem to be drawing to a close. I could never sustain four or five hours of talking, either. I like writing. Imus wrote a book too. I heard it sucked. Considering he could be out of a job soon, he had better find something else to be decent at very quickly.

Bryan W. Alaspa's novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.