They Call Me Baba Booey (13 page)

But a couple of nights later my dad handed me a twenty-dollar bill and said I could go. I was ecstatic and didn’t think about the money until a week later, when I was looking for some change in my parents’ water cooler full of coins. It was missing all the silver. Pennies were all that remained.

All those years that my dad hustled flea markets he kept getting calls from other ice cream companies. He hated the industry, felt burned by it, and had so much pride he didn’t want anything to do with it. But he was a great ice cream salesman. And nothing else was working. So he finally answered one of those calls and said yes. After that we didn’t really worry about money again.

Here’s why I loved my wrestling coach: After kicking me off the team in eighth grade, he welcomed me back in ninth. He acted like nothing had ever happened. In fact, he made me a team captain. And I went undefeated! And I played on the football team! And I was voted Most Popular! Seriously! Three years earlier I had been in grammar school and kids made fun of me for having yellow teeth. Now I was one of the school’s more accomplished athletes and most popular kids. I know it’s
hard to believe this when Tracey the office manager is going after me or Howard is ripping me for playing solitaire on the wrap-up show. But it was true.

In fact, it taught me a great lesson about being a minor celebrity. I didn’t campaign to be most popular; it was a random vote. I was chatty and played sports, so people knew me. Afterward my closest friends were like,
How cool, congratulations
. Other people who had never spoken to me suddenly wanted to be friends with me. And then there were the kids who were nasty. They said, “Oooh, there goes Mr. Popular,” whenever I walked by and mocked me for everything. The reaction was completely surprising to me. Being picked on—at home, at school, in the park—I understood. Being picked on because too many people liked me? That was new to me.

When I started on the Stern show it was the same thing. The first time it happened was when we were working at NBC and I went to a party at an apartment in the city. Now, I knew guys who truly showed off what they did. There was a producer for Don Imus who wore a black and silver NBC jacket with the peacock on the back that he bought at the gift shop. He had it embroidered with “Producer, Imus in the Morning” in big letters. That has never been my style.

At this party I was talking to a girl who was really excited that I worked for the show. She grabbed her friend, who was really cute, and said, “Do you know who this is?” The friend wheeled around, gave me the once-over, and sneered, “You think you’re a big shot?” It was like she was looking for a fight. I don’t think I am anybody. I’m not looking to be the big wheel. Occasionally I’d walk into a bar in New York City and people would automatically say, “Oh, Mr. Big Shot.” That anyone could think I’d get a big head after a day getting destroyed on the show is remarkable.

Here’s the thing about that year in junior high: I still never felt like I belonged. Maybe it’s because I was afraid we were
going to lose our house. But I was always sure someone was going to say to me, “Okay, we caught you. You are a fake and phony. Get out.” I hung with the jocks but I didn’t really think I deserved to. I felt like a poser and assumed that eventually someone else would see that, too.

I’VE GOT SO MANY
great pictures in my office.

There’s a framed ten-by-twelve shot Howard gave me as a birthday present, showing all of us from the show dressed up in drag at a photo shoot for his second book,
Miss America
. There’s my younger son, Lucas, doing the Tricky Dick Nixon pose on his campaign poster when he ran for fifth grade class president. I’ve got a framed, limited-edition etching of Jay Leno sent to me by Helen Kushnick, his old agent, who was played by Kathy Bates in the movie
The Late Shift
. She mailed it to me one September as an early Christmas present because she knew she was about to get fired. Hanging above it is a letter from her, dated two days before she got canned.

Across from that is a framed cover of the free local Connecticut magazine,
County Kids
, of me, Mary, and Jackson when he was just a toddler. It was taken right before
Private
Parts
came out and we were doing any kind of promotion that came along. On my filing cabinet is a picture from a
Saturday Night Live
newscast with Tina Fey. She’s pointing to a picture of me as the punchline for a joke about the new president of Iraq. She said the guys who ran were Mahmoud Aliabi, Muhammed Abibbi, and Baba Booey. One day she was on our show and signed it, “Gary, Congrats on becoming President of Iraq. Tina Fey.”

In a red frame on my wraparound desk is a picture of Frances Bean Cobain when she was around four. Courtney Love gave it to me and I call it the Four-Hundred-Dollar Picture. One morning we called Courtney for an interview when she happened to be in New York. Howard asked her to come in and she said, “No, I’m in pajamas. I’m a mess.” He told her we’d send a car for her and, next thing you know, she was in the studio in her nightgown, doing a segment. When it was over I was trying to get her back in the car, which wasn’t easy, and she finally stopped me and said, “Gary, I am sending you a picture of Frances Bean. I want you to put it on Howard’s console in the studio so he knows, whenever he talks badly about me or Kurt, he is hurting her.” I said okay and sent her home.

A couple of hours later someone dropped off a package at my desk. It was a picture of Frances Bean. Later that week we got a bill for four hundred dollars from the car service. Turns out Courtney had asked the driver to wait when he dropped her off, then she went up to her apartment, found a picture, and sent him back with it. Now I look at it every day.

Frances Bean’s photo is right in front of a picture of me and Mary walking the red carpet for
Private Parts
. Next to that is a picture of the sign outside a Burger King in southern New Jersey. To get there you had to exit the New Jersey Turnpike at exit 7, drive thirty minutes, and then scan the horizon. It was easy to spot—there was nothing else around for miles. Here’s the picture:

But my favorite is a candid shot of Fred, Artie, Howard, Robin, and me on set while doing the show in Las Vegas. It’s rare that we have photographers shooting the show and even rarer for us to be in a picture that isn’t posed. It’s just us, working, doing what we love, what we’re pretty good at, with people we like hanging out with. I hung it right above my computer, in my line of sight whenever I am staring at my screen. These are my guys, my family.

They’re the reasons I’ve spent more than twenty-five years doing the show. We were all just a bunch of radio nerds who found a gig that felt like we were hanging with our friends every day.

I knew how special it was early on, after Howard left NBC for K-Rock and I was just a year into working for him. When K-Rock hired him, Howard wasn’t able to take me along. There wasn’t a spot in the budget for more than one producer and that job title was technically Fred’s. I was still working at NBC—all the people that worked for Howard were—and we were trying to figure out what to do with our lives as the execs who fired Howard put us on random shows. It kind of sucked. The day Howard had his press conference for K-Rock I went to it, just to say hello and wish him luck. But when it was over he pulled me aside and said, “I’m really sorry we can’t bring you along. The folks at K-Rock don’t really get how the show works. But I am working on them and I feel good that I can get you back with us in six months. I know it’s a long time and you might have to find a new gig before then. I get it, I understand. But I’m trying and if within the next six months it works out and you’re around, it’d be great if you could be with us.”

Man, I was surprised. I was dying to be back with those guys and was crushed when I had to stay behind at NBC. The fact that Howard was working to get me back made me feel pretty good.

The day of his first show—this was back when he was on in the afternoons—it felt like my floor of NBC shut down. We weren’t supposed to be listening to him, but as soon as he came on the air every office door closed. I had my radio on and it hurt not being there. A lot. Then, at the first break, my phone rang.

“Hello, is Gary there?” It was a nasal, high-pitched voice. I didn’t recognize it at all.

“This is Gary,” I answered.

“Gary, it’s me, Howard.”

I was shocked. He was in the middle of his first break on his first show and was calling me. Using a really bad voice in case I didn’t answer my phone.

“Listen,” he continued. “I got a spot for you. It won’t take six months. I can get you in here tomorrow. Can you do it?”

I was there early. I knew I’d found a home.

Every kid needs his guys, the group he bonds with. These are the guys who do as much to keep him out of jail and teach him how to behave as his parents. These are the ones who, thirty years later, he can sit in a room with and rip about personality tics only they understand.

For me, my guys were Vinny, Frank, Steve, and Paul, who I finally found toward the end of ninth grade. Now stick with me, because this may get confusing.

Vinny was a co-captain of the wrestling team with me. He and I became buddies toward the end of that ninth-grade season. Paul was on the wrestling team, too, and hung with us every once in a while. Steve was the one guy I stayed tight with from playing football, who also happened to wrestle. And Frank, well, Frank was with Vinny. Frank looked like a man when he was fifteen, bigger than everybody in ninth grade and a year older. He was the only kid I knew who wore nice slacks and dress shoes to school every day. But that’s because he had gone to Catholic school and never dropped the dress code. Even after he was kicked out for fist fighting with a nun.

In fact, that may have been the reason I liked him at first. I had had bad experiences with nuns. When I was preparing for First Communion the class was held in the basement of the church—girls on one side, boys on the other. The nuns told us to come up one at a time through the aisle, pick out a carnation and a pin, and fasten it to the lapels of our blue suits. I did as I was told and, when I got back to my seat and was about to sit down, John Hackett, who was sitting behind me and was a real troublemaker, stuck his pin under my ass. I jumped up and yelled, “Whoa!” Without asking what happened a nun named
Sister Barbara (we called her Sister Boogie because her finger was always knuckle deep in her nose) pointed at me and told me to come to the front of the room. When I did, she grabbed me close by the lapels and then hit me on the side of the head with her open palms ten times over both ears. My ears were literally ringing. Then we had to go to the Communion service.

I was crying so hard my mom thought it was an emotional experience for me, as though I had found God and my calling. Not so. I was just sad. And angry.

So I could appreciate Frank’s disdain for organized religion.

Vinny and Frank hung out a lot. Then Vinny brought in me and Paul. Then I brought in Steve. Except for Steve, we were all Italian. And, unlike the guys at Uniondale Park, they wanted to do things and go places. I felt a real bond with them.

People were actually afraid of Frank when he first came to school. It might have been because he knocked the wind out of a nun. Or because he was so big he just commanded respect. But as people got to know him they realized that he wasn’t aggressive at all. He had his own car, a beige Pontiac Bonneville that looked like a tank and had a backseat the size of a queen-size bed. At parties people asked him for the keys to his car so they could hook up in the backseat.

Vinny was like me: He was short and built and really Italian looking. He had an older brother and was really into music. Since Frank didn’t care about music at all, Vinny and I used to trade off sitting in the front seat of the Bonneville screwing with the radio and popping eight-tracks in the deck. Vinny would borrow some freaky jazz fusion from his brother that we liked to listen to.

Steve was like our Tom Hagan, from
The Godfather
. He was blond and Irish and had come from Catholic school, too. Only he left the right way, not like Frank. He was quiet and, really, he was the good-looking one in the bunch. His house was completely different than mine in that no one talked back to adults
and no one yelled at another in front of guests. Years later, Steve was always my plus-1 whenever I went to Cleveland or Buffalo for an appearance at a mattress store opening or a strip club.