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“Of course darling!” Pat said in what had to be an imitation of Bette Davis. People were still doing Bette Davis in the 80s.
“And you’re going to find us a sponsor for the coins?”
Pat bowed deeply from the waist. “Your wish is my command.” I didn’t know exactly who she was doing this time, but she definitely made her point.
“And what about the hot air balloon? Kurt?”
Kurt jumped to attention at the mention of his name. “No problem! I have it covered. I have a buddy who works at a company that rents those things, and I got us a great deal.” Everyone nodded in approval.
“And you’ll get someone to operate the thing?”
“Yeah, sure. Of course.”
When Pat told me Kurt's back story a few days later I understood why he struck me as particularly eager to please; and why he felt he had to tell me as soon as he met me he’d been the morning man at a big radio station in Boston.
Kurt's brief stint as a morning man at the Boston station had ended on less than a stellar note. In fact, he was let go because his ratings were so bad even his father pulled the advertising for his Mercedes dealership. Kurt took this especially hard because as a Yale Drama School graduate, he knew his family already thought sitting behind a microphone was a waste of his expensive education. His eagerness to please seemed almost like an apology for doing radio instead of doing Shakespeare in the Park.
“Great. Good to hear Kurt. Okay, everyone, I’m counting on you all to work together and make this a super event. We’re heading into a rating period, and I’m blowing the budget on this thing, so let’s make a difference!”
I was assigned to train with Pat, who besides being a part-time comedian at Laugh Till It Hurts, was the senior sales rep on staff.
“It’s easy to pitch WEWO,” Pat told me. “Number one-every other stations’ listeners are old and don’t spend money. Number two-AM stations still bothering to play music are ridiculous. They should stick to doing what they do best-running a full hour of commercials. Number three-don’t worry, you’ll sell something. We’re cheap! Now let’s find a gold and silver buyer to sponsor this thing.”
We grabbed a Pittsburgh Press someone had left in the break room, and looked for big splashy ads with lots of dollar signs. There were a few gold buyers in town that week, but Norman’s Gold and Silver at the Ramada Inn in McKeesport had the biggest advertisement.
On the way there we stopped at Pat’s apartment off Forbes Avenue near the University of Pittsburgh to check her answering machine for any news about her latest comedy gig. Pat's place was small and cluttered. I waited for the usual excuses about the mess, but none were forthcoming. Obviously Pat was a busy person, and her priorities didn’t include putting clothes back in the closet, or refolding newspapers once they were read.
There were a number of messages on her answering machine, besides the one from Laugh Till It Hurts. There was one about parking tickets and one about late rent, but Pat only had ears for the message from the comedy club.
On our way back to the car, we ran into some of her neighbors on the sidewalk. Pat made sure she spoke to everyone and reminded all of them about her upcoming show on Thursday night. She gave at least three especially enthusiastic Tarzan yells and didn’t wait for a reaction after any of them. She just kept walking and looking for an opportunity to give another.
When we got to McKeesport and met Norman the gold and silver buyer in his hotel room he was upbeat and full of conversation. Then we told him we were from a radio station.
To soften him up and get him talking again, Pat did a few of her impersonations and I talked about WEWO’s young male listeners who probably had old class rings laying around to sell to him. Then we poked around for his hot button and found out he wanted to add a sense of legitimacy, stability, and trust to his gold buying business. From there we proceeded to convince him that being part of a radio station promotion featuring a hot air balloon and a celebrity would do just that, and we had our sponsor. It was obvious Pat and I were going to be a great team.
When the event was two weeks away the station started hyping it on air. The promos generated a lot of buzz. Listeners called the station with questions: how many coins would be dropped, what was the route, and would Jennifer Beal be available for autographs.
But no one had any answers because no one person or department was in charge of answers. The truth be told, this is the way a lot of radio stations put together promotions in the 80s. Someone would have half an idea for a promotion. Someone else would have another half an idea. Sometimes they even talked to each other about their ideas, but more often they didn’t, or only very briefly. Yet somehow out of these two halves a promotion would be born and put on the station’s calendar. But Pat and I didn’t worry about these sorts of things. We were too busy talking up the event and working each up other up into a frenzied state over what a great promotion it was going to be.
The morning of the promo Pat and I were so psyched we got to the station at 6 a.m. We were the unofficial cheerleaders for the event. When we got there, there wasn’t much to do but wait for the balloon and Jennifer Beal to arrive, so we just wandered department to department drinking coffee, giggling, and kibitzing.
When Kurt got to the station around 8 a.m., he noticed right away that Jennifer Beal wasn’t there, and he started to worry. Pat assured him she’d be there. By 8:30 a.m., when she still wasn’t there, I started to worry. Finally, at 9:00 a.m., Pat started to worry and began calling everyone she could think of who might know where Jennifer Beal was, including her mother, who didn’t know anything but was glad to hear from Pat anyway. Still no Jennifer Beal.
Meanwhile, Kurt was making calls of his own-to his buddy’s rental company. The balloon his buddy’s company had sent was not at all what Kurt or the rest of the station expected. When Pat and I first saw it we both screamed, and ran around looking for him. The balloon was in the shape of a giant green dinosaur. It had large black eyes without pupils and a huge gaping mouth with a long red floppy tongue that whipped back and forth in the breeze. By the time we found Kurt, we’d also found out no one was coming to fly the scary looking thing.
Continued in Chapter 3 "And Away We Go"
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