“Unggh.”
“Aargggh.”
“Blurrgle.”
“Chhrr chhr chrr!”
“What time is it?”
“Four twenty-seven.”
“In the morning‽”
“Yeah. I can’t believe it, either.”
“The actual freaking morning‽”
“We’ve already established that, Dick. Time to move on.”
“Don’t – doesn’t the station have overnight DJs?”
“It’s Canada Day, Dick. They’re not answering their phones.”
“Damn national celebrations!”
Pause.
“Accch. Flubble. Rhubarb. Rhubarb. Rhubarb. Okay, you’re listening to 95 point two two, C-DIK, Big Dick Radio. I’m Jean-Claude ‘von Dick’ De-La-Skibol…”
“Mrumph.”
“Come on, Dick. You can say it.
“Don’t wanna.”
“And, he’s Reginald ‘Dick’ Kefauver.”
“Aww, did you hafta?”
“And it is, in fact, Canada Day. So, I’m not going to lie to you. The reason the station has been putting out dead air for the last twelve hours -“
“Fourteen, Dick. Almost fourteen and a half.”
“Pedantic as always, Dick.”
“Thank you. I try.”
Brief pause. “The reason for all that dead air for all that time is because…crocodiles invaded the studio and ate the transmitter. I’m not going to lie to you – genetic mutation may have been involved.”
“Crocodiles? In southern Ontario?”
“Brampton.”
“Oh. Yeah. That tracks.”
“Management would like -“
“But if that’s the case, why bring us in at this hour?”
“- us to – what?”
“We’re morning DJs, not overnights. Our shift doesn’t begin for another two and a half hours. Why are we here?”
*SIGH* “Okay. Somebody insists on telling he truth. So…to celebrate Canada Day, C-DIK was planning on playing 159 Canadian songs, one for each year of the country’s existence. Because radio is basically a dying industry -“
“Dying? Really?”
“Why do you think the station has been sold twelve times in the last three years?”
“We were sold twelve times in the last three years?”
“Why did you think the station went through a klezmer phase?”
“Ohhhhhh. So that’s what that was about! I thought we just had a lot of listeners from North York.”
“Yeah, so, the station manager -“
“All hail the mighty station manager.”
“All hail the mighty station manager. So, Gordy figured he could save a few bucks by programming the 159 songs and interviews with Canadian musicians and stuff in advance and letting everybody go home to celebrate.”
“The mighty station manager can be patriotic that way.”
“Yeeee-ah. That’s it. Patriotic. Anyway, there was a glitch in the computer, and it played all 159 songs at the same time instead of one after the other.”
“Ooooh! I’ll bet Phil Specter would have been jealous of that wall of sound! I mean, if he was still alive and stuff.”
“Yeah. No. People within a mile of radios tuned to the station suffered from ear bleeds. Fortunately, most of the people who listen to us are so old, they’re used to bleeding from various places in their bodies and aren’t likely to sue. Still, somebody needed to fill the time until our shift started, and since we were going to have to come in a couple of hours anyway…”
“Lucky us.”
“For some measure of ‘lucky,’ I suppose.”
“What are we going to play?”
“Pinochle.”
“Ha ha. I meant music. What music shall we play?”
“I meant pinochle. Gordy won’t let us play any music – he doesn’t want another bleeding ear situation to happen. So, C-DIK won’t be playing any music until the sound engineer has a chance -“
“All hail the mighty station sound engineer.”
“Yeah. No. Not gonna say that. There won’t be any music on C-DIK until Gordy, Jr. has a chance to find out what went wrong with the computer. He should be in at nine…maybe ten if he’s sleeping something off.”
“It can be hard to be the son of the mighty station manager.”
Long pause. Not fourteen and a half hours long, long, but noticeable nonetheless.
“So, uhh Dick, what are we gonna do?”
“Remember when we were briefly an all talk radio station?”
“Phewf! Do I! Those were the toughest three hours and seventeen minutes of my life!”
“Yeah, well, we’re gonna have to do that.”
“Okay.” (pause) “Wanna see a card trick?”
“Oh! Sorry! I’d love to, but I left my pack of cards in another pair of pants…on the other side of the country…that aren’t even mine.”
“Oh. Okay. Maybe next time. Do you wanna hear a joke?”
“Does it involve pimentos?”
“Maaaaybeeeeee…”
“Then, no. Thank you. We’re still getting angry emails from the last time you told a pimento joke.”
“What should we talk about, then?”
“I’m calling up a dictionary on my phone. If we go through it alphabetically…”