WFMU's a freeform radio station in Jersey City, and I'm a fan of an experimental talk show they have called 'Seven Second Delay', whose hosts are Ken Freedman and Andy Breckman. They're funny guys; Andy used to write for Saturday Night Live -- he wrote the 'White Like Me' Eddie Murphy sketch -- and he also had an incarnation as a humorous folk singer. (His song 'Railroad Bill' is part of my repertoire.) The show isn't for everyone, but I find its flawed implementations of half-baked ideas to be frequently hilarious.
So last Friday I went down to WFMU in Jersey City for 'Seven Second Delay's Almost Amateur Hour', where I and a dozen and a half other Seven Second Delay listeners were given two minutes and thirty-five seconds each to perform. There was also a similar number of judges, mostly WFMU DJs.
When I got there, frazzled and burnt out from the long drive, and 20 minutes after I was supposed to check in, I found Ken to tell him I had finally arrived. He told me:
"OK. You're on after the juggler. After everyone's done performing, the results will be tabulated. The performers will all then vote on who their favorite judge was. Once the winners have been announced, we'll call all the performers to the stage, we'll start up the smoke machine, and everyone will sing 'I Shall Be Released'. You'll then find yourself descending into a state of true peace and contentment for the first time in your life."
I thought to myself: Clearly, some of that is a joke, but which parts? To find out the answer to that question, and to see which performer and which judge were picked as the best, tune in tonight on wfmu.org from 6-7:40 pm!
You never know what you're going to get with a random assemblage of seventeen or eighteen performers, but I was really impressed -- pretty much everyone on the bill ranged from good to excellent. And there was a large, enthusiastic crowd. It was a really fun night, and almost worth the hour I spent crawling down the West Side Highway to the Holland Tunnel to get there.
I was on thirteenth (after the juggler).