The Howard Stern Thread

"Again..."

microphone confusion with the back office on the show with JD in the background cackling was A+

Could any kind soul summarise what is going on with Hein? I've been clicked out of the show for about a year now but I'm intrigued.

Upset in a passive aggressive way towards Jason for popularizing "Hit em with the Hein"

Hein seems to be a particularly joyless and unfunny dude, totally unfit for radio

I've said it before but Jan Hein's anger emerging bc of this is amazing. The fucking guy stands in place at the front of the counter when he buys fast food after he's paid "to make sure they get my order right." Doesn't masturbate, doesn't use condiments. Allegedly hates the show and was totally emasculated by the change of format of TWUS two years ago.

anyone else bummed out about Howard getting dragged in the election coverage especially since Friday?

the politico piece about howard luring trump into painting himself as a buffoon is an interesting reading of the interviews because i never thought of howard as particularly savvy??? like, yeah, maybe he did lure trump into debasing himself-- i found myself, like, proud of howard in that interpretation but like i never saw it that way.

Me neither, but I'm glad CNN and Politico have given H some respect here. He's gotta be really bummed though, especially in light of his out of character groveling for HRC to come on the show in the WaPo in August. No presidential candidate will ever go on his show now.

i googled to check what mark harris thinks about trump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p5OquHPpNk

he posted this on youtube.

You knew!!

you wanted us all to be abuzz!

the past 48 hours has compressed a somewhat queasy sensation I've had for the past year whenever shit that DJT said to HS has been excavated, where this radio show I have listened to for 25 years discretely, as a pressure valve for certain aspects I am not keen to emphasize in public, is now a key part of this national crisis. I'm quite happy that DJT is self-immolating, but his participation on the HS show doesn't put HS in the best light. Like you said above, the politico article tries to represent HS as manipulating DJT as if he were no different that HPE, whereas HS clearly views DJT as a peer and is egging him on in those interviews not just because "it's good for the show," but because HS admires DJT's shameless assholism.

It's bad timing for H in the middle of his "evolution." To most of the public, he disappeared after he went to Sirius, and they still have a cruder/more obnoxious picture of him in mind. All these tapes confirm that just by association.

FB: did you say that you have been listening since 2011? curious as to what attracts newcomers to the show at a late, post-artie date. I wonder how newcomers pick up old show lore, like the gary "hello hello" tape or Jackie's various antics, or if some shit is inaccessible or best left behind.

i'd been peripherally aware of H and the show my whole life obviously, and I remember when he announced he was moving to Sirius the news was inescapable. i went thru this weird phase my last year of high school getting stoned and watching cable news... H was on Piers Morgan's new show, and before that I had the caricature of him in mind, and the interview flipped my wig... from then on I just listened to interviews on youtube, I didn't really get into show lore for a while. but i could listen to H read the phonebook for four hours. didn't have a Sirius subscription until last year. as far as getting caught up, that's the fun for me... just a lot of time looking up compilations and sagas on youtube and listening to Sternthology... when i like something i get pretty obsessive, but with a band or an author or a filmmaker, there's only so much material you can go through and recycle... with the Stern Show, there's thousands and thousands of hours of tape, it's a bottomless well... it's like serialized theater of the mind, and I love listening in real time and seeing how things develop... like a recent, sorta lame example of this is when they played Nick Cannon's slam poetry/spoken word recordings, and now they have the Spoken Word Robin bit...

the first non-interview thing I got caught up in was the Hurricane Sandy week. i love these sagas because they crystallize the show's themes: Sandy is work ethic, Gary's Dinner Party showed the basic character of the main players (H leaves early, Artie shows up late, Robin doesn't even come), the inscrutable nature of Gary as seen in the first pitch saga and the apology tape...you know, here's a guy that's in many ways very good at his job (calming rowdy guests, a good diplomat), and you see him make these huge miscalculations and lapses in judgment all the time... Artie's downfall as documented on the show is practically Shakespearean, there's so much in play there (addiction, dependency, enabling, parental issues)... Benjy I find the most fascinating, I genuinely can't figure him out & find him hilarious (when H asked him if he could depend on him to be at work during Sandy, he asked "what if my internet goes out?")...

i could go on and on, i haven't even mentioned KC... enough for now... i will say the 9/11 show has always stuck with me, because I lived in new york at the time, and when I first heard that show ten years later, it blew me away because it captured the confusion & anger of the city that day that no news organization could...

i still haven't heard the 9/11 show. didn't start listening until 2002 and often find hearing clips from earlier eras a bit off putting. prefer the more relaxed pace of the show now, though i wish howard would fly into rages more often. the "I PRANK!" rant is one of my favorite moment. about two years ago he went on some truly dark and amazing soliloquy about the meaningless of life and i just can't imagine any other radio show pulling that off in way that was both cathartic and funny.

I PRANK! NO ON ELSE!!

yeah, i love how often the show lapses into existentialism... i think i know what bit you're talking about, did it start because of the chemical smell on his dump button? "i wanna take that dump button, and smash it with a fucking hammer." then he went into this whole thing about "i've been doing this for 40 years almost, i don't have it right, i've gotta get it right...i'm doomed. i've got thousands of people working for me, and i can't get it right."

First time i've seen video of this. One of my favorite interviews ever on the show. This caught me early on as a listener.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHI14mbTAdg

"Somehow at the end of every question, beet ends up in some kind of angry sexual scenario"

Lefsetz is such a blowhard

Artie is strung out again and bitching on OPIE'S SHOW, this is so pathetic.

has he been on Opie a lot? that must be weird for his coworkers to see him hanging around the O studio…

several years ago, I listened to that show, and it was so bizarre to think that this program, which when I heard it sounded like all the shitty Ira and the Douche carrying-on that HS towers above, has a cohort that considers it the insurgent alternative to HS. Perhaps if I listened more I could pick up some interesting qualities, but it just fuckin' sucked. Like its hard for me to understand that some major comedians and other show biz big shots have a relationship with that show. I would be interested if anyone has some insight…

at one time, I couldn't imagine the show without Artie: He owned the HS show in the 2000s and I truly thought he was a great guy, thoughtful and often empathetic. The day he stood up to HS was without question the most riveting show I ever heard . Yet I haven't followed him…apparently he had some sports show with this dick racist comedian whose name I can't recall.

can you tell me what he talked about on the O show, FB?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3853478/Howard-Stern-s-former-right-hand-man-Artie-Lange-SLAMS-radio-legend-s-celeb-friendly-image.html

yeah, he sounds very unwell here and he's at his bitter, self-pitying, self-aggrandizing worst. He repeatedly says he doesn't care about HS, and then spends 10 minutes showing that he does.

He just repeated everything in that article. Nothing new on Opie. First and last time I'll ever listen to that channel. O&A have always sucked. Anyway, Artie sounded bad. Said he relapsed in February. Says he's clean now...(right...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2c6K6G3dZc

Artie mentions a documentary about himself and HBO. The whole thing stinks of promotion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjoTnhN0dy4

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvNnRUqWAAAET0N.jpg

Jeff Tweedy looking like Artie these days

several years ago, I listened to that show, and it was so bizarre to think that this program, which when I heard it sounded like all the shitty Ira and the Douche carrying-on that HS towers above, has a cohort that considers it the insurgent alternative to HS. Perhaps if I listened more I could pick up some interesting qualities, but it just fuckin' sucked. Like its hard for me to understand that some major comedians and other show biz big shots have a relationship with that show. I would be interested if anyone has some insight…

i think howard's audience / the o&a audience is really different, especially post-like, the satellite jumps (2004 for o&a and 2006 for howard) but even before that. i don't know if it's because of what markets they were syndicated in before the satellite move? but definitely the people i know that listen to howard are just in my experience as someone that's listened seriously since, like, the 2000s only, the people you meet that are into howard, they're pretty similar to ilxor howard stern crew (decadent urban liberals that frequent bars with children). if you followed o&a to xm, you're probably on some other shit. o&a are darker, more cruel... and definitely dumber, and that extends to the people that hold them down to this day, dirtbags like rich vos, and after the two of them split, they went deeper into their own shit, opie as a butthurt lame and ant as a racist moron. but yeah, i've got friends too that were into o&a and i heard clips through the years and they have their moments, and you have patrice, louis ck, norton, etc. it's definitely a different vibe from hss.

artie's starting to look like the uncle from jackass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADfZ4o4QHe0

Benjy late again, the three of them spent an hour yelling at each other, Benjy called Robin overweight, back from commercial and he's finally been demoted to working outside the studio.

It's a bit

But it sounds like good radio and next week sb interesting

I know, if you listen to the 2009/2010 versions of this, it's nearly word for word. Benjy calling Robin overweight was pretty shocking though.

and right after she was talking about how much pain she was in yesterday. it was rough

haha benjy being late is not a bit, you weirdo.

I think it might've been a sly way to address all the Artie stuff: Howard mentioned Marci for the first time in years, went on this whole bit about "people who used to work here-" *jackie laugh* "-are goddamn near a nervous breakdown." I love Benjy, & him being late as bit to fill air and also address delicate issues is the kind of Kaufmanesque stunt I could see him coming up with.

Goofing on Gary's facebook feed on 10/25 was great. "My love of Cheerios is well known..."

Benjy working outside of the studio today, "may be" back in tomorrow. can't remember the last time halloween landed on a show day, i love Fred's spooky bed tracks running throughout the show. Room of Self Righteous Robins was amazing.

https://i.redd.it/2lbfn74i7wux.jpg

Yoga boasting fight between Bikram Stern vs call-in Hatha so good

I skip so much of the show these days, especially Tommy From Malden, I can't wait to FF.

FF?

Jarring to hear Howard go from talking about how offensive the Cleveland Indians' logo is then directly into the Bikram Yoga bit.

Daniel Mendelson hitting it out of the park with the JD marriage songs

King of All Blacks on fire today

I've cancelled and re upped so many times, at the moment stealing this shit

Lenny Dykstra for most pleasant surprise of the year

Not a Stern fan but tuned in a bit just for a change of pace. He had an interesting perspective on Trump. First he cited an interview he (Stern) did with Billy Joel, where Joel asked "how many good summers do I have left?" And then he wondered, rhetorically, why would Trump, who is 70 and has statistically maybe a decade left, want to waste (from a selfish perspective) the rest of his life being stuck as president, hands tied, unable to do the stuff he likes to do with total impunity, with everyone hating him? And then even if he lives beyond his term(s), things will never be the same for him again. Stern just could not figure out why a selfish, self-centered billionaire would basically want to tether himself to an anchor for the rest of his life. His confusion was intriguing.

Howard's been saying that all year, and he's otm. He was spot on when he said that no one is more shocked that Trump won than Trump himself. Howard is in a really tough spot now... He vigorously opposed Bush 43 after Iraq, and after the Tea Party went all in on homophobia, he lost his mind. But he's holding back on Trump, not necessarily because he wants Trump to come back on the show, but he's worried that if he does excoriate Trump, there'll be hell to pay: lawsuits, threats, possible dirt. It'll be an interesting 4 years on the show.