The third installment of Dead Air:
BECAUSE I am an avid eavesdropper, I have often wondered why microphones are not made to resemble ears. After all, the point of a microphone is not that someone is speaking, but that someone else is, or will be, listening. That is also the danger of microphones.
What we say never gets us into trouble unless it’s heard. Shout it at home in your cork-lined room, and you’re safe. Tell someone, and you are asking for trouble. Speak it into an open mike, and you’re courting disaster. Yet who among us, upon discovering that an idea has popped into our minds, can resist whispering it into an attractive ear or a microphone?
Consider the case of Bob Balducci, who rose to fame as a ventriloquist and ended up as assistant to a dummy. For quite a few years when I was a boy, “Bob Balducci’s Breakfast Bunch” was a program everyone knew. It was broadcast from a restaurant where an audience of little old ladies sat at tables eating breakfast. The clatter of cutlery was always in the background. Bob ended his program with the same routine every time, saying, “Well, that brings another gathering of the Breakfast Bunch to a close, but it has been so wonderful being here with all of you lovely ladies this morning that I think we ought to do it again tomorrow . . . don’t you?”
The audience would call out, “Yes, Bob,” and begin cheering and applauding, and then the studio orchestra would strike up the lively Breakfast Bunch theme, and the program would be over.
On the morning that wrote finis to his career as host of the Breakfast Bunch, Bob ended the program with his usual routine, and when he said “I think we ought to do it again tomorrow . . . don’t you?” the audience chorused, “Yes, Bob,” and the lively Breakfast Bunch theme came up over their applause, but then, thinking that he was off the air, Bob turned to his second banana and alter ego, Baldy the Dummy, and asked, “What were the last words of our dear departed Uncle Don?”
“Gee, Bob,” said Baldy. “I haven’t thought of Uncle Don in years. I used to listen to him all the time when I was a little splinter. Poor guy.”
“I asked you what he said.”
“Well, you know, I’ve heard two versions of the story, Bob. In one, Uncle Don said, ‘That ought to satisfy the little bastards,’ and in the other he said, ‘That ought to keep the little bastards happy till next week,’ but in both versions the mike was on. Too bad. That was his best show.”
“And his last.”
“Yeah.”
“But in our case,” said Bob with an audible sigh, “there’s gonna be a whole new batch of desiccated old bats tomorrow.”
The microphone was open.
Like Uncle Don before him, Bob went down. The program went on, though. It was still called “Bob Balducci’s Breakfast Bunch,” but every show began with the claim that Bob was on vacation. Someone was always filling in for him.
I knew that Bob wasn’t on vacation. All I had to do to find him was tune in late at night, and there he was, still on the air — in a way. His new program was called “Baldy’s Nightcap.” Its star was Baldy the Dummy. Bob had only one line on Baldy’s show: “Yeah.” Sometimes it was, “Yeah?”
About once a month, at some unpredictable point in the program, Baldy would ask,
“Bob?”
“Yeah?”
“Aren’t you the guy who insulted those desiccated old bats?”
“Yeah.”
“Baldy’s Nightcap” had a simple format. Baldy talked. That’s all he did. He didn’t play music or interview guests. He just talked. As he talked, he seemed to be doing nothing more than letting his thoughts run on, talking to a friend — me. Often he would begin by asking, “Have you ever wondered . . .” and go on to explore some question that he had been wondering about. Sometimes he would employ a prop. I remember his saying one night, “You’re probably wondering why I’ve got this log beside me. Well, you know what? I think it might be one of my relatives,” and he went on to reminisce — complain, actually — about growing up as a dummy in Falling Rock Zone, Minnesota. He never offered much detail about his private, off-the-air life. He was wary, I suppose, of suffering Bob’s fate. He claimed to live in a cave, but he never said a word about how he spent his days. It was as if he were someone else during the day, or asleep, or in a box. I would lie there, listening, and sometimes I would fall asleep, and wake, and sleep and wake again. It wasn’t that Baldy was boring, but he spoke with an infectious weariness that seemed to have begun long before the show came on and seemed as if it would continue long after the show was over.
He always ended the show in the same way, with a look at the miserable side of the news, an item or two from the day’s events that seemed to him most vividly to epitomize the pain and vulgarity of everyday life, followed by the words “Good night, boys and girls. Remember what Baldy says: stay in the cave. It’s a nasty world out there.” Sometimes, he would add, as if to himself, almost inaudibly, “That ought to satisfy the little — ” and then the microphone would be switched off abruptly, leaving a wooden silence: dead air.
[to be continued]
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