Tales of Romance, TV Dads, and a Twist on Frankenstein (Hour 2)

Broadcasting live from the Civic Media Studios in Green Bay, this is Night Light with Pete Chwaba.

Your inside source on everything entertainment from Wisconsin to Hollywood.

And now, a guy who never leaves the house without wearing a cup, Pete

Chwaba.

Really?

Not lie, I do too.

I didn't know that, you know, he did.

You do?

Uh, this is, uh, John Peterson and Gordy Young.

We, uh, do John and Gordy in the morning, normally in WMDX, and we're filling in for Pete.

Can I?

Yeah, we fill in every once in a while.

Has he probably warned you in a promo?

Yes.

I think everybody's been warned.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Pete's taken a couple of nights off because he has all this vacation time that he didn't know he had.

And now he's like got to burn it off.

Use it or lose it.

Well, yeah, sometimes you find out you have vacation time and you realize that you need to take it.

And, you know, a lot of times in radio, you don't really get vacation time.

So that's why we never really look for

it.

Right.

Yeah.

Don't expect it.

Here we are.

And Conrad is with us this evening.

Good evening, Conrad.

Hey, guys.

Yeah, thanks for filling in.

It's awesome.

We love

it.

We'll always like to be in here.

We always have a good time here.

And coming up a little bit later on, we've got my wife.

She's she's here and Voss Peterson author and our guest tonight.

And we'll get into a whole bunch of different things her career book she's written.

And we'll talk about movies.

Well because she always seems to know more than me about movies and you know a lot and I know a

lot You know she knows more than you that's a

lot.

Well, I let her think so

Yeah, and we have another guest lined up later in the show.

Yes, we do Scott dickers

Scott dickers who?

Was in on the onion at the very beginning and he'll tell us his story because he has a book out

He has a brand new book out called the onion story

Um, I went to Barnes and Noble today to try to buy the book and they were sold out.

Yeah,

they didn't have any Yeah, and then I was checking the Barnes and Noble on the other side of town and they also didn't have it So, you know, we're flying blind as far as the book goes, but that's why we'll have Scott.

He'll explain to us what's in there But I was listening to an audio, you know, the audible book

or

whatever.

What

is it

called Kindle?

I don't know.

Anyway,

the Kindle version.

Yeah

And your name is mentioned in this because we knew Scott Dickers.

You knew him.

I didn't really know him, but way back.

Yes, we

had him on a radio station up in Sun Prairie.

Yeah.

And we had Onion News.

Yes.

And he actually was talking about that in the part that I listened to.

Isn't that crazy?

So you are in the book.

I was hoping to be a part of that

history.

Well, now you are.

It seemed like everybody had forgotten.

And we had a few guests.

By the way, we had onion reporters on our cable access show as well.

And I've got a clip from that coming up in just a little while.

Our cable access show here in Madison was in the late eighties.

Yeah.

Remember when, you know, cable companies were required to have access channels.

Yeah.

For the general public.

Right.

People

create their own shows and do their own.

Boy, a lot of people had some really fun shows here.

Vernon Evelyn was one of the great programs here in the Madison area.

They were two mice.

What?

And there were voiceovers for the mice and they would introduce different segments of the show.

And real human beings, human beings would be in these segments.

They also had another cable axel show that I loved, which was called What's Your Problem?

Yes.

Two guys

with a

phone in between them.

Yep.

Just sitting on the set

there.

That was great

stuff.

No set really, just two chairs, you know, and they would take phone calls and people would call and complain about whatever they wanted to complain about.

It was a

great concept.

Yeah, it was great.

You can call us this evening as we continue to fill in on Nightlight on the Civic Media Radio Network.

The number is 855-752-4842.

All right.

Well,

I think it's about that time for the Nightlight question of the night.

What do you think?

I think we need to hear that music, Conrad.

Let's talk about the question.

Question.

Question.

Question.

Question.

Okay, I have a question.

Questions.

This question.

Question.

Questions.

Questions.

We do have

a

question.

Okay, so apparently it's Steve Zahn's birthday, you know, famous actor.

He's played a lot of different parts, but a lot of times he plays a dad

in

the movies that he's in, right?

So what actor is that you like out there that plays a dad

in a TV or

TV show TV or movies?

Yeah.

All right.

Who's your favorite dad actor?

You can call us or text us.

Again, the numbers 855-752-4842 or text us your favorite actor who played a dad.

Right.

So that's TV or movie.

Yes.

That's the question.

All right.

Okay.

So should we reveal our choices tonight?

Is that what Pete usually

does Conrad?

Yeah, I think you guys should go right ahead.

Well, let's just let's break the mold here.

All

right.

Well, let's go.

Let's let's rebel.

If he didn't do it, we would do it anyway.

Well, we asked Conrad first.

Conrad,

I

mean, you're younger.

Well,

Steve's on is, I mean, it's the reason I came up with those questions because he's played one of my favorite dads in diver won't be kid.

He plays Frank Heffley and he's just hilarious in it.

Sure.

Okay.

Um, John, do you have a favorite TV dad?

I do.

I do.

It's, uh, it's Ward Cleaver.

Oh, now I go way back, right?

Hugh Beaumont.

Yeah.

You can, you can pick up any of these shows on like,

Fubo and freebie and all these other free commercial champs.

Yeah, and if you watch the early versions of Leave It To Beaver, Hugh Beaumont is on there playing Ward Cleaver.

And I actually modeled my fatherhood on Ward Cleaver.

Oh, really?

Yes.

I really did.

I wanted to be what he was in the show.

And the thing is, you know, when the kid gets into trouble,

You wanna have a conversation with them.

You wanna talk to them,

right?

Yeah.

And the one way he did this, he had Beaver sit down on the edge of the bed.

Right.

And he sat down on the edge of the bed, and they had a really great conversation.

Yeah, I did.

Exactly that.

Yeah.

How'd that work out for you and your boys?

It worked out wonderfully.

It did.

Yeah.

You still

do that?

They didn't know why I was doing it.

Why are you sitting here, Dad?

Well, you know, back in the early days of television, though, in the 50s, it was like these TV shows got onto this thing where they had to have a moral to the story.

They did, every time.

So

leave it to Beaver.

Beaver always got in trouble somehow.

And usually, it sort of really wasn't his fault, but he got talked into it.

Well, Eddie Haskell was a problem.

Eddie Haskell was

a problem, yeah.

And my favorite TV dad, you know, I was trying to think of somebody that was a little different.

I liked

Um, Tom Bosley from

happy days.

Oh, yeah.

He was just a

bubbly, bubbly guy,

great actor.

Uh, and very recognizable boy.

She was on everything, every ad on TV.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So, um, so if you have a favorite TV dad, you can call us or text us and let us know.

I think we kind of stumped everybody because no one has nobody knows kind of memory.

I think

so.

Oh, yeah, we're like to find out.

I mean, if you'd like to give us a call, please feel free to do that eight five five seven five two forty eight forty two.

That's it.

Yep.

We'd like to hear from you and talk about your favorite memories of these TV and movie dads.

Right.

There's

so many to

choose from.

Is there really?

There have been a lot of shows.

Yeah.

A

lot of movies.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm getting always, I was trying to think of.

What other TV dad could I possibly remember

father knows best?

I mean, that was another one where there was a had to always be a moral at the end of the story.

You know,

yeah, I can't remember Robert Young Robert Young.

Yes.

Yes.

That was a dumb show.

Father's knows best.

You know,

straighten out some controversy between the daughters and the son.

You'd think with a title like that, you know,

He and the wife would not get along at all Yeah, because that never works out if you think you know more Yeah,

mom it's kind of left out.

Yeah.

Yeah,

so well,

what's the other one?

I'm thinking of Paul Peterson was on.

Oh,

oh Donna Reed show Donna Reed show

Oh, God, who was that guy?

He played a doctor.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Carl Bets.

Carl Bets.

Bets.

Bets.

Okay.

Carl Bets.

Okay.

And one of the great TV shows of all time, really, and I can't remember what season is.

Maybe it's four or five.

Oh, Donna, Donna Riccio.

Yeah, yeah.

Who are you singing my dad?

Yes.

Paul Peterson.

Paul Peterson.

Oh, my God.

They plant, they plant, it was a high school talent show.

Yeah.

And he

He sang My Dad on it, but Paul Betts' dad missed the show and they went backstage and

Paul Peterson's

dad.

Yeah.

Carl Betts, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Anyway, this is way too convoluted.

Okay.

We got the

weeds on this.

Anyway, it's a big dramatic scene.

It's a really dramatic scene and everybody was in tears at the end of it because it was something else.

And Paul Peterson did a fantastic job of acting that out.

I mean, his bottom lip quivered and your tears streaming down his eyes.

I don't know how they did

that.

Well, and it turned into a big top 40 hit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was thinking also Ricky Nelson, Ozzie and

Harry.

Ozzie.

Ozzie

Nelson.

Ozzie Nelson.

What a character that was, boy.

Yeah.

Well, boy, he knew what to do, didn't he?

I mean, he started all the, uh, the video craze, uh, having, uh, his kid become a pop star.

Yeah.

Ricky Nelson.

Yeah.

On the

show and all those hits he'd sing.

He did always at the end of the show, sing a, sing a new song.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, one of the, one of the things that when I used to watch, I mean, you could catch these videos anywhere.

Rick Nelson singing from those shows.

They have those video clips, but when you watch it.

It seems like he really is kind of detached from the audience because they always played in front of their friends at a small party and everybody was there in an eye, right?

Yeah.

But he acted like he was, well, I'm just singing this song, you know, I'm a pop star now.

Don't worry about it.

But they have that lighting, perfect

and

soft focus, you know,

and traveling man.

Remember, they had all the videos of the different locations around the world.

We're going way back in time.

We'll see.

We really disconnected.

All right.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

I've got a, I've got a really big, big story about something that has to do with a dad, actually.

Yeah.

A dad was trying to relate to his son.

And he tried to teach him the language, the Klingon language from Star Trek.

Really?

Yes.

The dad's trying to teach his

kid

Klingon.

Yes, he's trying to teach him Klingon.

Where did this

come from?

Who is this?

Tell me more.

Well, it's a British actor and comedian Stephen Fry.

He decided to perform in the Klingon Shakespearean play Hamlet.

And then he interviewed a linguistic specializing coach on Klingon.

And the coach apparently told the story about him trying to teach his kid the language of Klingon.

And I have to tell you that I hated the Klingons.

I

hated

their history because they were evil.

Well, right.

Yeah.

But well, I guess so.

I mean, some of them.

But, you know, they had all this history and they created these stupid practices.

And, you know, it just was really a kind of a dumb storyline.

And they kind of filled a lot of time with it.

So.

Yeah, we're going to play that.

We're going to play that.

We've got

the actual cut.

We'll play it for it.

Stand by for that.

Yeah, we got that coming up.

Also, we'll be talking to Scott Dickers about the new onion book, the onion story, and novelist, author, and wife of John Peterson,

and

Voss Peterson will join us a little bit later.

Being wife is the real job.

Oh, boy.

Okay.

It's

gonna get

interesting.

I know.

Okay.

It's Night Light.

It's John and Gordy filling in for Peach Shwaba on the Civic Media Radio Network.

We're coming back

after this.

It's Night Light with Pete Schwabba.

Pete is off tonight.

John Peterson and Gordie Young filling in this evening.

We're getting a bunch of responses to our question of the night to your favorite TV or movie dad.

A big hello to Tom New Berlin.

Yeah.

Also Eric Chubby Chase love all the vacation movies.

Oh yeah.

Yeah those are great.

Good dad.

They were good.

Kurt says Brian Keith Family Affair.

Okay.

You know I didn't like the kids though.

I don't think

he

liked the kids either.

The

little kids.

Yeah.

Yeah, they were kind of a pain.

Something about red hair

and Sebastian Cabot is the as the butler.

I know.

Like they needed a butler.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why would they need a butler?

You know, somebody to watch the kids.

I don't know.

And Tom said, I hope that that some Walker Sean Milwaukee boomers hear your silly and truthful thought.

Okay, I know

it is silly.

I know we went a little long on that stuff.

And who is this?

Qui Chang Kane in Kung Fu, the legend continues.

Okay,

I missed that.

I don't

know

that miss that that season.

But thank

you, Leon from Oshkosh.

So should we get to listening to you know what it's like to be somebody who's trying to teach

kid cling on

for some stupid ass

reasons.

This is amazing to me.

Why?

Well, it's cut 93.

Okay.

And let's let's see if if I'm accurate in selecting this cut, I believe

you think you're just picking a number.

I'm just

picking a number and I'm hoping that it's the right one.

Conrad, do you have that ready to roll?

You look mystified.

Yep.

Here we go.

All right, a

version of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Back backstage, before the performance, I chatted to a level four Klingon speaker.

Darman Spears is a computational linguist who took the rather unusual step of teaching his son Klingon as his first language.

We had a lot of fun.

We would play language games.

So I would say things to him, like, Nukdak och Kebobuja, and he would point to my cheek.

Where's my cheek?

And I would say, Nukdak och Richleja, and he would point to his nose.

And then one day we're playing on the...

carpet in the living room, and I had his bottle that he would drink from.

And we didn't have a word for bottle, we didn't have a word for diaper, we didn't have a word for, you know, a high chair, most of these things.

I

had words for shuttlecraft and phaser and transporter ionization unit.

I didn't have a bottle, right?

So we were using a word for bottle that is like a drinking vessel.

And I said to him one day, you know, we'd had this game, you know, no duck, oh, this or that.

And so I said to him, nook tak och chiv jet le jet.

So I used the word for bottle.

I used it with a suffix.

I used it in a sentence.

I didn't point at it.

I didn't look at it.

I didn't do anything like that.

And this two-year-old kid, you know, baby, into a toddler, started crawling over towards the bottle and grabbed the bottle.

One of the other things we did was we had a lullaby that we would sing every night.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

The Klingon Imperial Anthem.

Takjajwo.

May the empire endure.

And we sang it as a lullaby.

I'm

so picturing this little baby in a sort of two bear onesie, singing the Klingon empire

song.

Absolutely

right.

As he went from about two and a half to three years old, he stopped.

He stopped being interested.

He stopped enjoying doing it with me as much.

So I would say something to him in Klingon, and he would say it back in English, and I would try to encourage him.

And he started to resist it.

And it was fun, and it was interesting, and when it stopped being fun and interesting, I stopped doing

it.

Klingon was little used to Darman's son in communicating with the outside world.

And that is the key factor in whether a language survives and flourishes or dies.

Well, it's the weirdest thing.

I can't imagine doing that to your

child.

You don't even have a word for bottled yet or diaper.

You know, do you need a new diaper?

You know, something like that.

And instead, it's all Klingon.

Conrad, are you a big Star Trek fan?

Would you?

I

am not.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I watched the original TV show and then the next generation.

Yeah.

And the next generation to watch that and the movies, all the movies,

sadly, all the movies.

There were some not so good.

First couple were pretty good.

Yeah.

Then it kind of started going downhill.

When the new Star Trek movies came out.

Yeah.

With Christopher Pine.

Those were really the, well, okay, not all of them were really good.

The first two were extraordinary.

Yeah.

After that, they just fell off the face of the earth.

So yeah,

well, uh, you know, captain Kirk's, uh, to pay started looking really bad by the third movie.

It really just looked like a hair hat.

Yeah.

Got worse from there.

Okay.

Uh,

are you, are you laying into a William Shatner?

You know what your big hero mind?

Is he?

Yeah.

Seriously.

No, I, I like the guy.

Oh, I think he's great.

He has one of the great.

Acting careers of all time.

Oh, yeah.

He was in so many different shows, so many different movies.

But here, the one that I remember most is Thriller with Boris Karloff.

Oh, you really should check those episodes out online Thriller.

There's one where he play.

Oh, it's the Grim Reaper.

And there was a Grim Reaper picture and this picture comes to life magically and kills people.

Okay, and he doesn't believe it.

He thinks it's just a myth You know something create a created to make the picture more interesting.

Yeah, and he finds out the hard way it It isn't like that.

I kind of gave it away, but definitely check out.

It's very scary

And then there's the William Shatner Twilight Zone with the guy out on the wing.

Oh my god, that was a classic Twilight Zone episode.

It really was good stuff.

All right, let's see.

Oh

You know, when we come back, we're going to tell you more about the big showing that we're having in Madison of the godfather of Green Bay, the Pete Schwabba movie.

Yeah, we got a couple clips.

Yeah, we've got some of that coming up.

And Scott Dickers.

Scott Dickers will be with us in just a few minutes.

He's written a book about the onion.

He was one of the beginners of the onion.

He was

right there with the other two creators or three creators.

Yeah, that book is called The Onion Story and we'll be talking with Scott shortly on the Civic Media Radio Network.

It's John and Gordy in for Pete Schwabba on Night Lights.

Stay with

us.

Nightlight

with Pete Schwabba, John and Gordy filling in tonight.

And in just a moment, we'll talk to Scott Dickers.

He's got a new book out called The Onion Story, and we're going to find out more about that.

We want to remind you that we are going to be showing The Godfather of Green Bay here in Madison at the Atwood Music Hall.

This is going to happen on Thursday, December 4th.

It's a great little movie.

Pete Schwabba is in it.

This is the 20th anniversary this year of Godfather of Green Bay.

and WMDX here in Madison, the Civic Media Station.

We're hosting that along with our friends at Doundren's Distilling, and it's all to benefit the Dane County Humane Society.

But that film screening, again, is going to be Thursday, December 4th, 7pm.

And we have more information at our website, WMDXRadio.com.

That's right.

It's going to be fun.

Pete put together a great little movie.

And who else is in this?

Tony Goldman?

Yes.

and uh loren

holly tom lennon

tom lennon yeah

lance barber in fact we

yeah yeah it's great uh great film do we have scott dickers on the line yes

we

do all right hi scott good evening scott

well good evening gentlemen

oh you

do so nice to see you here i didn't expect you i don't know how i don't know how long i've been in your virtual waiting room here but

uh

I can't put up with this crap anymore.

I'm an important author and Mr. Dickers has been waiting five or ten minutes to talk to you guys.

So I'm glad to finally be with you.

Well, we're happy to have you.

And we need to keep talking about William Shatner.

Do you have some William Shatner experience?

to tell

us

about

you know people uh people often ask me where did the name the onion come from did it come from the fact that it's so funny that it makes you cry and i'm thinking oh my god imagine if we had that much hubris that we named it that because we knew how funny it was going to be to people but william shatner wrote something that made me cry and it was just a beautiful piece of writing so he went up in jeff bezos's space rocket

Yeah, yeah 90 and he came back and he wrote this little brief couple of paragraphs I just was weeping because they always said like and there's a line in the movie contact where they say Where Jodie Foster goes into space and they always send the scientists and stuff and she says You know, they should have sent a poet and obviously she's speaking through the voice of Carl Sagan That's what he always thought you need to send a poet to outer space to

adequately communicate the off awesomeness of that experience.

And here's William Shatner, you know, he's kind of a no offense, John, but he's, you know, he's kind of a joke in the world.

No,

he

is.

He is.

People, every, all the other actors on Star Trek hated him and all this other stuff.

Right.

Right.

And he's seen as kind of a lightweight, you know, he's in the airplane sequel for God's sake.

So, but he comes back and he writes this, this beautiful piece of writing that just likes that's just like a shot across the bow.

that really sums up what it must be like to be in outer space.

And I highly encourage you to look that up and read it.

Amazing piece of writing.

I did actually read it back then.

You

did read it.

You know what I'm talking about?

I did.

It was really inspiring.

It really was.

Amazing.

Just amazing.

I think it shows his character and I don't know why a lot of people didn't like him on the set.

Maybe it was a little rude to them or maybe it was just very much into character.

I don't know what it was.

I think he and Leonard Nimoy got along.

I think that's...

Yeah, I think he mostly... George Takei, I think, was the main person who didn't like him.

Didn't like him.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think everybody else was jealous.

He's the leading man.

He's good looking.

Gets all the girls.

You know, why would you like a guy like that?

You

know?

I know.

I know.

Yeah.

He always, you know, played the captain part, you know?

Yeah, I'm the captain, you know?

But he's so... Yeah.

...affable.

He seems so nice and friendly and...

it does make you wonder like, was that a him problem that people didn't like him?

I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know.

Let's talk about your book though.

I mean, this is a really a fantastic book.

We were checking it out before

we go.

It's backwards, guys.

Well, maybe we're seeing it okay.

You see it good.

That's just me.

That's wonderful.

Yeah, that's the book.

It's almost as big as my head.

You can always tell us the book is good.

Well, I went to Barnes

& Noble

this

afternoon to try to get it.

It wasn't at Barnes & Noble on the east side.

They didn't have it on the west side.

I don't know.

It's sold out already.

They're first few copies.

So tell us about the book and why you came to write this, Scott.

I wrote this because I wrote a similar subject matter book a long time ago, just about how the onion grows.

It's almost like a business marketing type of book.

how the onion got to be a name brand.

And I got a couple of inquiries from a couple of different companies saying, hey, would you be interested in selling the movie rights to this book?

And I was like, the movie rights to a book about marketing, what are you talking about?

And one of my agents was like, no, you should write another book that tells like the emotional story, the personal story of what it was like to be starting up the onion in the original group of people and then seeing it through for

30 35 years or whatever all the ups and downs all the crazy characters and I thought yeah that'd be fun you know because I have every issue of the onion I have all these journals from the time and I talked to a lot of people who who did that journey with me or part of it I don't know if there's anybody who was there the same like amount of time I was almost everybody else kind of was in and out

Yeah,

but yeah, so it was really fun like most of the books I write are comedy books and then recently I've been writing books about how to write comedy I've never done anything like a memoir or a serious like nonfiction book about my own life and

you're in it john you're in the book have you found yourself yet

i actually did i had the cut all ready to go but

yeah

we i couldn't upload it for some reason it wasn't going

up we have the audible uh oh yeah we have

that but i i thank you for that that uh that's wonderful yeah

we put you on there you were an important part of the onion's history you were

part of the first iteration of the onion radio news.

Yes.

Well, it was

great

because you also mentioned Baba Bella, who had a great audio studio here in Madison, and we all, you know, crossed paths back then.

And

Catherine Lake was in on a couple of those sessions that we had as well, and she's the program director here.

Jay Rath and Pirate Radio, all

that

kind of straying from those days.

Yeah, that's kind of a hidden story of the onion that people don't realize is the whole radio story of the onion.

Yeah.

It was a very parallel track that the Onion radio show was on.

And for a time, the Onion's radio show had a far bigger audience, if you're to believe the Arbitron ratings at the time, than the print publication ever had.

So yeah, it was on radio stations all over the country.

It was

great stories.

They were really funny great

stories fun.

They were so much fun and Yeah, so there's this whole like under were underbelly of the onion in The world of radio that was fun to write about you know and I and a lot of other Staffers at the onion worked at Wisconsin Public Radio I worked at a bunch of radio stations in Madison I was just thinking during the break when you had the news on the news guy came on I was thinking of this radio station.

I worked at in Madison

Back around the time the onion was getting started And it was a I had a morning shift I would get there at 5 a.m.

And I would play like dick cabbage comedy hour and a bunch of other like Shows on on a record album we'd play for an hour and a guy would come in and do the news at the top of the hour for five minutes And he was just like the laziest news guy He came in

aren't they all

yeah, he would come in and

one day he was drunk he literally was hungover from the night before and he came in and he recorded the news once on a cart and he says play this every hour you didn't care you know if you know LA dropped into the sea between 10 a.m.

and noon as long as you can go back home and go to sleep

So it's just like a lot of fun times, you know, what

station was that this guy

that I remember the call letters.

No, it was one of the AM commercial states like an AM talk station.

I don't remember the call letters.

Yeah, one of the main ones, you know.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Okay.

Well, yeah, that sounds like fun.

I mean, I think

we

have that newsman for a little

while.

We

probably

ran it didn't

work out though.

We thought we'd give him a second

chance.

But Scott, you know, I mean, the whole thing started, I mean, with your your cartooning, Jim's Journal, you know, it became very successful.

You and the other people, I just read part of the introduction in the book.

But, you know, all these other cartoonists were together and you were making money from a little bit of money, right?

You were selling t-shirts and paraphernalia.

And you syndicated that cartoon, Jim's Journal, that was in other papers, right?

Yes, Jim's journal was a really big success on campus before the onion came around and Oddly later on when the onion was kind of really cooking a few years in We realized that like the majority of the writing staff had all been cartoonists at the Daily Cardinal at one point.

Yeah,

really like this weird pipeline Yeah, but no, I mean it wasn't really a result the onion wasn't a result of Jim's journal so much as I was kind of in that orbit

and James Sturm who had this really popular comic strip called Down and Out Dog at the time.

James got into business with this guy Tim Keck to do a one sheet calendar that he distributed to students and they made a few hundred bucks having James draw some drawings and Tim sold some advertising on it and it was kind of like a proto onion and Tim was going to, I had heard that he was going to approach me about doing a Jim's Journal version of that calendar.

And then it turned out he wasn't because he had he had moved on to bigger things, which is, hey, I'm going to do a whole weekly newspaper every week.

And he brought in this other business guy, Chris Johnson, and they wanted me to run Jim Cernl and the Onion.

I didn't.

I came up with a bunch of other comic strips to make for them and help them write jokes and edit and stuff.

And, you know, we were off and running.

And after a year of that, they

got tired of it and they sold it to me and to other people who were, you know, seemed, we seemed to have a lot more ambition for it.

And Tim and Chris just ran themselves ragged that first year and they wanted out.

But yeah, so it was just a crazy series of events and the right people in the right place, the right time.

How long did you stay with the onion?

I mean, I left many times.

Yeah, you kind of came and went a few

times.

Yes, and sometimes I would just leave.

I remember telling Tim and Chris after six months, I told Tim and Chris, I've done enough.

I kept doing my cartoons, but I didn't show up at the office and help anymore for like six months.

And it was after that period, they came to me and said, we'd like to sell it to you.

So I leave and then they pull me back in.

But then it happened again, where I left in the mid 90s to make a movie.

And then I left in the late 90s, I thought for good.

I'm like, okay, I've done what I can with the onion.

I'm leaving.

And then I sold my shares in it.

And then the new owners like invited me back to run it for a few years.

And yeah, there were things like that where it was kind of come and go, very strange.

Were you involved with the television show that eventually spun off with that?

I was the executive producer of the web series that led to the show that got us the deal for the show.

yeah

yeah and the the show was was it was unfortunate because i i watch it now and there's definitely some funny parts in it but it we i don't think we're ready to do a tv show i think you're trying to get our legs with the web series and we're doing really well and we had agents just like begging us to do a tv show and i kept telling him nah we're not ready we need a little more time and then as soon as i left the the writers that were there just jumped at a tv show and

Yeah, you know,

yeah

Scott

hold that thought we gotta take a break here.

We're gonna take a brief time out here We'll continue our conversation here with Scott dickers author of the onion story on nightlight.

Yes.

I'm a civic media radio

network

This is Nightlight with Pete Trauma, John and Gordy filling in tonight on Civic Media, the radio network.

We have as our guest today, Scott Dickers, who has the Onion Story, a new book, and it is taking off.

And I've got to say that into that chapter, the audio, the audible version of it is fun to listen to.

It

is.

Of course,

you'd narrate it, of course, Scott, but it sounds great.

Oh, thank you.

I appreciate it.

We did that through Brilliant's Audio, the Amazon.

audio book production people so I learned a lot.

But yeah,

I

appreciate the words you guys.

It's an editor's pick on Amazon.

I never had a book be an editor's pick before, so that's exciting.

Yeah,

it's terrific.

A lot of visibility and it was a number one new release in a couple of categories.

So normally I would poo poo.

Somebody says, really take it off as marketing speak.

The marketing people told you to say that.

But in this case, I think it's

actually true.

Yeah.

We've got a clip from our old cable access show.

We see we really love the onion and we really backed you guys up a

lot.

And you have the you have the receipts.

I do have the receipts and we have a clip that we can play.

This is cut 86.

Conrad

Conrad, we only want to play about a minute and a half or two minutes because it's a lot.

It's a light spot four minutes and that would take up all the time, but this is it's rich Dom and Graham Zalinsky and Graham Zalinsky used to be part of the Democratic Party, Wisconsin Yeah,

he

was he was kicked out He had that kind of sense of

humor fired from the onion.

Oh That's so yeah, he's a friend of the onion, but you know

Yeah.

Sometimes you have to fight with your friends.

Yeah.

So they're talking about some of the early stories.

Some of the

early headlines that we presented to them in order to, you know, find out what they thought about those important stories that The Onion covered.

Let's listen to it.

All right.

A story I bet stunned many, many people.

This is a warning to the new students.

The university administrators plot the execution style murders of thousands of freshmen.

Now this is a story I didn't happen to read in the Wisconsin State Journal or

the Cap

Times.

We're always the first to break the news, as you know.

Well, do you recall anything from this story that did

you stop the execution of these freshmen?

Well, once the university process gets going, it's pretty hard to stop those things.

Apparently, there was a clerical error, and many students' names were misspelled, and so they were ritually executed for their rather

than fix the error.

I want to set the record straight.

I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable at all, but I really don't think it's fair to compare us to, like, Madison newspapers, or even, even, like, USA2Net newspapers, because, I mean, I don't want to question their journalistic integrity.

But

you've worked too hard.

We've worked too hard to be scooped by those jokers, and we're, I mean, we're a cut above, clearly.

I mean, any person with any news sense would see that that's a story.

They pass it up.

They had a little brief on it, I mean, but they just mentioned it offhandedly.

And this is

probably one of them.

Graham Graham was on voice there.

Yeah.

OK.

But you guys know what became of Rich John.

No.

No.

No.

He went off to Hollywood to pursue a career as a writer and he ended up being the executive producer and showrunner of the Colbert Report.

No kidding.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's great success.

They did have a

lot of

references to Madison in that show, too.

I'm sure Rich had no small part in that.

I thought you guys were going to drag out the clip where you had me on your show, which I have on a VHS tape somewhere.

I sent you a couple of clips.

But that's great.

Yeah, those guys are great.

We used to do that a lot.

I talked about this in the book where I would put different people out in the media to represent the onion.

so that the world wouldn't identify one guy like me as the lone genius behind the onion, like the leader.

I always wanted people to be confused as to who was running it, who was in charge.

And it worked because the point was to have the brand, the onion be the star, not any individual writer or person behind it.

And that really did help the onion survive.

a few times when we had to make a move and we lost a lot of employees, any other comedy publication would have suffered because readers would say, oh, so-and-so left, it's not funny anymore.

But it was always just the onion.

And it looked like the onion sounded like the onion.

They didn't know who was coming or going.

And that was very much by design.

We just have a couple of minutes left, but I want to ask you about the onion today.

You know, it's gone through several different owners and what do you think of the publication coming back as a print edition once a month?

I love it.

I think it's great when they stopped doing it in 2012.

I was there and I was very unhappy about it and the new owners are great.

Yeah, they had a bunch of really sketchy owners.

It didn't know what the hell they were doing.

The

new

owners, they're really supporting the writers and the writing staff has always been pretty much in a cocoon.

but it was tough for a few years there where the the bean counters and you know would come in and try to affect the content but now they're alone to flourish there if they have an idea it gets a budget so i'm really happy for them and i'm delighted by the new owners global tetrahedron is the name of the company that

sounds like a spy organization

well it's a it's a company name that we invented for our book Ardham Century we mentioned it

in the very last page of the book, there's a, you know, the book is a bunch of front pages from the onion from the year 1900 to the year 2000.

And it came out in April of 99, but we printed the front page from like January 1, 2000, just because the onion can predict the future.

So why not just publish a book with a future newspaper front page?

And one of the stories was richest 1% escapes earth in, you know,

And the company that all other companies have merged into is called Global Tetrahedron.

So

you hear a company that's put together by a journalist and a billionaire or whatever, and they're called that.

I'm like, OK, these are fans.

They get it.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Scott, we got to leave it there.

But thanks for joining us.

If people want to find out more about your book, the Onion Story, or find out more about what you're up to, how do they do that?

I mean, if there was some kind of tool in the modern world where you could enter the name, where you could put the name of a book or a person, you know, just tell it the name and get information back, I would say go there, but we don't have anything to

say.

Somebody's working on that already, so we'll

have to

wait.

The older tetrahedron will invent something like

that.

All right.

John and Gordy in for Pete.

That's right.

He's off.

Yeah, we just talked to Scott Dickers, who has the onion stories just written that book.