HOWARD STERN has done the impossible. He’s turned me into a nice person.
Well, nicer.
Please. Make him stop.
At an hour in which this city is normally safe only for taxi drivers and crack whores, a new, mellow and potentially medicated Howard Stern yesterday introduced the world to his gig on pay radio.
Before dawn, we jammed, armpit-to-boob-job-to-hair-weave, inside Howard’s new, sweltering studio high above Sixth Avenue – dozens of hot, young TV babes with cup sizes exceeding the number of digits in their IQs. Penny Crone, too.
There was Keith Olbermann. Before things got rolling, he could be heard loudly ridiculing his new MSNBC colleague Connie Chung for re-emerging, cockroach-like, in his airspace – and groused jealously about Bill O’Reilly’s superior ratings. Now, I’m not accustomed to being welcomed into most rooms without prior threat of physical violence. But Howard’s longtime producer, Gary Dell’Abate, greeted me warmly and invited me to sit in the studio opposite Howard. On an actual couch.
Seconds later, Howard was on the air. And he paid the highest honor to this column: “We take her ideas and pass them off as our own.”
Now, pay cash.
During the press conference that ensued, Howard waxed eloquently and virtually expletive-free – though the FCC is no longer on his case – about the size of his personal organs (small) and whether he will continue to tell fart jokes (of course). He said he’d married girlfriend Beth Ostrosky – then insisted he was joking, they’d never wed. He was asked whether he’s had a nose job. (Are you kidding?)
And my favorite – a reporter stumbled into the room, late, evidently confusing the Howard Stern Lovefest with a foreign-affairs briefing. He asked Howard for his take on whether peace was possible in the Middle East.
No, said Howard. Jews are too annoying. “You’re annoying me!” he told the reporter from Jewish World.
It was the closest thing to an insult, harangue or off-color joke I’d heard at that hour of the morning.
Howard even refused to bash three-named rocker David Lee Roth, who took his place on network radio – offering constructive criticism for Roth’s train wreck of a show. It was remarkably – dare I say it? – mature of him.
He was, in a word – nice. Which brings out the absolute worst in me. And, it leads me to wonder if Howard had upped his dosage to a warm and fuzzy level. The kiss of death. Just last week, Alexis Stewart, daughter of Martha, didn’t get off so easily. During a rehearsal, Howard described running into the fair Ms. Stewart in the hallway of Sirius Satellite, where Alexis and her mom also have a show.
The bit was aired today – and Howard referred to the snooty Alexis by a term generally used to describe the female genitalia.
“I was a [that word] long before my mother made all that money,” Alexis responded when told of the slur.
Glad to see you’ve still got it, Howard.
Keep using it. Please.