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Thanks to the graciousness of host Tom Scharpling, I was able to visit the WFMU studios in beautiful downtown Jersey City during the second Best Show marathon program this Tuesday. To say this was a thrill would be a vast understatement. To say that it made me one with the cosmos and eternity itself...that's probably an overstatement. So let's say the experience was somewhere in the middle.

It was amazing to see the sheer amount of work that goes into the marathon, from all of the Phone Slaves taking pledges to wrangling all the premiums to feeding the assembled host (which was amazingly done by WFMU's own Terre T, one of the coolest people in existence). It felt a lot like being backstage at a Broadway production or a live TV show circa 1957, with folks coming and going at breakneck speed in confined quarters to make sure everything ran as smoothly as possible. Except that not a single person involved received a dime for their work. It was all, literally, a labor of love.

And as if witnessing The Best Show raise an unbelievable $80K+ for WFMU wasn't enough, I got to see funnymen Patton Oswalt and John Hodgman lend their talents to the cause. I also captured some of these moments on video, thanks to my lil' iPod. The picture quality is not stellar, but the audio is pretty good, and their historic import compels me to share them with you. (You can hear the actual show here.)

Let this post serve as another friendly reminder that the WFMU Marathon is spinning along, and the station still needs your help!

The goal for this year's marathon is $1.2 million. As of this writing, they stand at about $500K. So there's still a tough road to hoe. Anything you can contribute will be greatly appreciated.

How much do I believe in this cause? I've actually altered my site to include an Insta-Pledge widget over there to your right. Now, you don't even have to leave this fabulous webbed site to show your support! (If you want to alter your own site in such fashion, go here.)

The mere fact that you can aid such a fabulous cause should be reason enough to do so. But a pledge of $75 or more entitles you to at least one DJ premium, which are all amazing, full of stuff you can't get anywhere else, and will bring you hours of amusement.

Case in point: I just rediscovered an unbelievable CD that Terre T gave out as her DJ premium way back in 2003. It features live performances from a plethora of bands who played on her show: The Dirtbombs, Corba Verde, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Electric Eel Shock...there is nothing not awesome on this collection, and none of it can be found anywhere else.

Where can you find this CD now? YOU CAN'T. Unless you have a time machine and can travel back in time and pledge to her show, which would be an excellent use of a time machine (right after you killed Hitler, of course).

What I'm saying is, do you want to look back on your life without regret? Pledge now, get these premiums, and lord it over your less savvy friends in the years to come.

I heartily recommend you tune in to tonight's installment of The Best Show, because--well, I'd recommend doing that every Tuesday night. But on this Tuesday, if you pledge, you won't just receive this year's Chump Steamroller Fun Pack, which includes a bumper sticker, Best Show trading cards, and a DVD whose participants and contents are far too awesome to recount here.

No, as if all of that weren't enough, a pledge tonight puts you in the running for a number of fabulous additional prizes. Like what? Oh, how about the entire Monty Python Complete Series DVD set AUTOGRAPHED BY TERRY GILLIAM?! Seriously, how about that, nerds? I can actually hear 12-year-old me getting a boner over the very thought of such a thing.

And if Monty Python ain't your bag, there's also a fabulous set of rare, rare, super rare stuff from Boston Spaceships (Robert Pollard of Guided by Voice's current deal), which includes (among many other things) a 7" test pressing. How rare are those? That rare. (I'm holding my arms out very far.) You can't get a test pressing of anything unless you're in the band, produce the band, or sleep with the band. Pledging is a much easier means of acquiring this thing.

Oh, and there will be fabulous celebrity guests in studio, of course: Patton Oswalt and John Hodgman, who will contribute live hilarity to the festivities (Patton's peformance as The Famous Flamer during the 2008 is one of the funniest pledge drive come-ons you will ever hear).

If you don't tune in, you will miss awesome stuff such as what happened last week, when Ted Leo played a few songs from his brand new album The Brutalist Bricks (out today!). He also sang a duet with frequent Best Show caller/Newbridge's biggest cannabis enthusiast, Bryce, on "We Built this City on Rock and Roll".



Your country needs you. Your airwaves need you. So don't think about it, DO IT!!!!!!

The annual WFMU Marathon is upon us! Huzzah!

Every year, The Freeform Station of the Nation asks you, the listener, to kindly lend some change to keep their doors open for another year. To which I say, in word of Henry Rollins (via The Pink Fairies), DON'T THINK ABOUT IT, DO IT!!!!!!!!!!! !

Look, I know things are tough all over. I know that we've had a few horrible things happen in the world recently that definitely deserve our time and attention and cash. But if you have any dough to spare for the only radio station worth listening to in the tri-state area, please consider doing so. Got five bucks? Send 'em five bucks. Every little bit helps.

But if you can send more than five bucks, you will get quite a bang for those bucks. For instance, if you were to pledge to, say, The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling, which airs tonight from 8 to 11pm EST. Tune in and hear Ted Leo play songs by request. and Tom's partner in crime Jon Wurster do his magic live in studio. And if you pledge $75 or more, you will receive The Chump Steamroller Fun Pack. That includes a set of Best Show trading cards, a bumper sticker, and the first ever Best Show DVD, which I'm told will contain all sorts of celebrity contributions, bits by frequent callers, and much much much much more.

If you can spare even more change, you can pick multiple DJ premiums, and there is no shortage of awesome DJ premiums. Terre T, Evan "Funk" Davies, Rex, Dave the Spazz, Night People--a cornucopia of a smorgasbord of an orgy of awesome. Pick any one of them and you can't go wrong.

Click here to pledge or call 1-800-989-9368 during the show of your choice. Do your part! YOUR AIRWAVES NEED YOU!

I usually don't announce impending events on this site, but I had to share this with the Interweb public. Tonight's Best Show on WFMU will feature as its guest none other than Martin Short, SCTV/SNL alum and all-around funnyman extraordinaire. So tune in at 8 pm this evening. UNLESS YOU HATE HILARITY.

I imagine host Tom Scharpling will ask him many questions about Clifford, the aggressively weird/dark 1994 film starring Short as a crazed man-child and Charles Grodin at his grumpy best. This all-but-forgetten cinematic tour de force has been a running theme on The Best Show for several months now. All of Tom's recent "guests" somehow manage to mention the same exact scene from it, regardless of whether it has anything to do with what they're talking about or not.

The Academy must forever live with the shame that Mr. Short was not Oscar-nominated for this role.



However, I hope Tom also makes time to ask non-Clifford-related questions. I for one would love to hear exactly how The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley got made--and when we can finally see this masterpiece on DVD, dammit. Now that The State has been preserved in digital form, Ed Grimley is the only outstanding piece of True Comedy still confined to the vaults.

This is as good a time as any to point back to a post I did a few years back about that brilliant cartoon, which starred the voice talents of other comedic giants like Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin, and Jonathan Winters. Thanks to Roger Clemens, the YouTube clips no longer work. But if you never saw the show when it was on (and it would've been very easy for you to miss), I hope my humble post gives you a glimpse of its majesty.