I'm gonna try & swear on KDKA tonight

(485 words)

I’m going to make this brief: I’ll be on 1020 KDKA-AM radio tonight with John McIntire and I’m going to try and swear.

I want to do something shocking, something that’ll earn a jolt of attention, something that generates news.

And because it is radio, merely dropping my pants won’t matter.

I plan on doing that, too, but strictly for comfort.

I should write at least one book a year just to get on the radio with John. He’s that much fun.

He used to do a cable TV show and, man, that was always a party. It was very seat of the pants and that helped make for electrifying viewing.

I remember one Fat Tuesday when me and some buddies had been celebrating in downtown Pittsburgh hours before I was scheduled to appear with John.

I’m not going to say I was “too drunk” to be on television -- is there such a thing? -- but I was plenty drunk enough to make for entertaining viewing, or so I was told.

What I remember most about that one was going into the dressing room — I was festooned in Mardi Gras beads — and looking in the mirror and detecting a slight forehead shine.

What was I going to do about that?

Well, lo and behold, right there was a makeup kit for some of the on-air talent. I took out the little pad from what I guess you’d call foundation and gave my face a little tap.

It worked! The shine had vanished beneath an orangish dab about the size of a quarter.

Of course, that added a bit too much contrast to my Caucasian mug. So for balance I dabbed the other side.

Better!

But now the lower face seemed off-kilter color-wise.

I don’t remember just how long I was in there splashing and dabbing my face, but when I finally gazed back in the mirror I momentarily thought I’d been replaced by a shape-shifter Oompa-Loompa.

My face looked like a sun setting into a bead-graced turtleneck horizon.

That’s when the producer walked in and said, “You’re on in 30 seconds!”

I don’t remember much about the next hour except for me giggling for long stretches and John staring at me with his head cocked looking like a chicken in the rain.

No chance of that happening tonight.

I do plan on asking about swearing. I’d like to say bitch and ass and maybe a few of the PG-13 barnyard profanities.

But I hope you’ll listen. I’ll be talking about my new book, my motivational speaking — “75 percent humor/23 percent humanity/2 percent motivation" — and what it’s like to work on the top floor of the Tin Lizzy, a building that features three wonderful drinking joints. 

And, as always, I’ll try and be a good, coherent guest for John and his avid listeners.

I feel obliged to make up for the night I startled him by appearing tipsy and in too much makeup.

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12 reasons you should listen to me & McIntire on KDKA Saturday nite

(872 words)

John McIntire invited me to appear on his KDKA-AM 1020 radio program Saturday at 9 p.m., as if “appearing” on radio is a metaphysical possibility. Here are some reasons why you might want to tune in to the streamer link.

• We won’t discuss anything depressing. John’s not going to ask me my opinions on the bloody conflict in Gaza, the downed Malaysian jetliner or how the drought in California is going to affect the price of lettuce in Pittsburgh.

• I might sing. I always include a little tune in all my live appearances and it’s always a soul-tickling experience. For me, at least. I say that while acknowledging not one single person’s ever come up after one of my speeches and said, gee, they wished I’d sung longer and louder.

• For the first time ever, I have reason to be an on-air optimist. I’ve been intermittently appearing on Pittsburgh radio and TV since 1994. I’ll bet during those 20 years I’ve never once been heard broadcasting the words, “My career’s going great! And I’m confident tomorrow’s only going to be better!” But if we do talk about my career, I’ll be sure to talk about how successful my speaking engagements have been. People are really responding to my talks and there’s reason to believe that cheerful reaction is about to grow exponentially.

• John is the most compelling voice on Pittsburgh radio. Doug Hoerth, Jack Bogut, Lynn Cullen, Scott Paulsen — giants once roamed the radio here. No more. Across the dial, Pittsburgh radio is a uniformly lame landscape of harpies and posers. John is the only guy you listen to who at least once every show says something outrageous enough to convince you he doesn’t care if he gets fired or not. He’s always been the kind of liberal who’s enjoyed by conservatives who genuinely enjoy being on his show.

• You can feel like The Waltons used to. Gather the family around the radio and shut off all the other devices. For authenticity’s sake, stare straight at the radio the way the old timers used to like they could visualize what was happening in the studio.

• John might be cranky. If you’ve never heard him, you might think of John like David Letterman. He’s always very funny, but he’s riveting when something he won’t talk about is really pissing him off.

• I might for the sake of publicity stage a freak out. This seemed to work for Joaquin Phoenix. I think it’d do wonders for my publicity if there were news stories about the guy who wrote the book about being nice and happy trashed the KDKA studios when host John McIntire refused to fetch him a plum.

• In this day of archived appearances, this might be your only chance to hear me with John on KDKA. I was last on in May ’13 and we had a lively hour that earned a fantastic reaction. But KDKA, then at least, had some prohibition about posting a link to any of John’s shows and the engineer blew me off when I pestered about a tape. So it’s like it never happened. I might just tape the thing on my iPhone right there in the studio. It’d let you hear all the off-mic banter during the commercials when I ask John if my voice sounds okay, if my jokes are funny and if my pants make my butt look too big.

• The Bucs will still have at least 78 other games. They play the Colorado Rockies Saturday with a 7 p.m. first pitch. So the most interesting part of the game will probably coincide with when I’m on with John. I give you selfish permission to skip the Bucs and listen to us.

• There’s always a chance I’ll get drunk before the show. Those chances are slim, but there is precedent. I remember in about 2000 when John was still doing his much-missed PCNC cable show and he asked me to appear — truly appear — on Fat Tuesday. I said yes, but that didn’t mean I was going to skip a downtown splurge to which I’d been invited. What I remember most was prior to the show walking into the station men’s room and finding WPXI anchor David Johnson’s make-up kit by the glamor mirror. I looked in the mirror and noticed a shiny spot on my forehead. I reached for the powder pad and gave the shiny spot a gentle dab. Then I noticed another. And another. And another! I did so much foundational dabbing that I came out looking like an Oompa Loompa. I also remember blurting out nonsensical things and laughing hysterically at myself and looking over and seeing John looking at me with an expression best described as quizzical. Oh, how I wish I could find a tape of that show.

• I might mention your name! I’m going to ask John if he’ll let me read all the names of people who’ve told me they read and enjoy my blog. And to shake things up, I’m starting with the Zs and going backwards. Know what that means? For once, you’re first, Theodore Zyzak!

And lastly . . .

• An hour of commercial radio: No erectile dysfunction ads!

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The Unprofessional: I'm on KDKA Saturday nite

(894 words)

Something happened this week that should have happened a year ago.

I began to appear professional.

In fact, it would have been a mite helpful if that would have happened in 1992. But for the sake of brevity let’s just stick with the 21st century.

Last year I looked like a guy who’d written a book. This week I began to look like a guy intent on selling one.

There’s a big difference.

I’ve had some people suggest my next book should be the story of “Use All The Crayons!” and the journey it’s taking me on. They say a lot of aspiring writers would enjoy it. And I might do that, but only if the book becomes a success.

There’s no point in writing a book about a book that didn’t sell. It’d be redundant. The only way I could draw any interest is if the failure turned me into a serial killer  and I don’t have the stomach to make such a vile transformation.

Maybe I could become a serial hugger.

So what’s the big deal about this week?

The book’s website became fully functional; I got some snazzy “Use All The Crayons!” letterhead; and I got invited to promote the book Saturday night with John McIntire on KDKA. He’s the city’s best radio host and is back on  Pittsburgh’s heirloom radio station.

A professional would have had all that lined up before he or she even got a peek at the finished book.

Not me. I did it all practically backwards.

Let’s start with the website. When you self-publish, you don’t think about promotion. At least I didn’t.

No, I thought about how this could be the biggest mistake of my life, one that could sink what has already been an often-leaky rubber raft of a career in the first place.

You wonder if you’ll recoup the $8,000 you charged on your credit card for self-publishing services and 2,000 copies. You wonder if you’re getting ripped off. You wonder what you see in yourself that’s been invisible to every other agent and publisher on the face of the earth. 

It’s a preposterous undertaking.

I lost faith. I didn’t think anyone would want to buy my book.

So what did I do? I began giving it away.

I spent four or five months last summer getting copies into the hands of all my friends and loved ones. Each book was inscribed with a note saying I could never have written a book about colorful living without them in my life.

Then they all started buying copies for friends: 10 at a time, 20. One guy bought 30.

I knew then I was onto something.

It takes me a long time to get a website to my liking. I’m finicky. Plus, I listen to suggestions. Apollo Design here in Latrobe does all my work. They have many high-paying and demanding customers.

I’m not one of them.

I understand they’re busy with deep-pocket accounts so I’m sheepish about pestering. Then when they do everything to my wishes, someone suggests, hey, your site really needs a media kit page with FAQs.

So I go back to Mike and tell him what I want next and that, pinky swear, this will be it. And all that time I hold off on a big media push until the site is just so.

As of Wednesday the site became just so.

It was two days after my new letterhead came in. The letterhead is cheerful. It is colorful.

It is beautiful.

As I said before, I’ve been reluctant to change letterhead because I’m already awash in the stuff.

I’d send out promotional letters in “Palm Features” envelopes paper clipped with “Eight Days To Amish” business cards, promoting a book called “Use All The Crayons!” signed in crayon by a guy named Chris Rodell.

It was confusing.

Finally, I ran out of Palm Features envelopes.

That was the final instigation to get “Use All The Crayons!” envelopes, letterhead and business cards.

Now I have confidence that I have the total package. 

Call me old school, but the U.S. Postal Service will be my point of contact.

I believe a one-page eye-catching letter with a couple of gushy clips about the book will at this stage do more for me than a 1,000 charmless e-mails. My envelopes will stand out like jewels in the mail of editors I’ll now target for feature stories. Who doesn’t enjoy getting a nice letter?

The letters, I hope, will entice them to the website where Monday I’ll post a link to the KDKA interview with the great John McIntire, my favorite big city radio talk host. He’s funny, sarcastic, avowedly liberal and eminently listenable to people of all political persuasions.

He used to have me on for his much-missed PCNC cable show “NightTalk.” Nothing I’ve ever done has equaled the interest of those appearance. People just loved that show.

I read last week that KDKA is bringing him back. I sent him a note of congratulations, told him about my book and -- boom -- he asked me to be on Saturday at 9 p.m. I hope you’ll tune in.

I can’t wait. I can guarantee it’ll be so loose and fun that parts of it will seem downright  unprofessional.

I’ll feel right at home.

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