The Onion’s Roots and Klingon Lullabies(Hour 1)

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

Your inside source on everything entertainment from Wisconsin to Hollywood.

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

Pete Schwabba.

M2?

Oh, 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.

He probably

warned you in a promo.

Yes.

I think everybody's been warned.

Yeah.

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 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 boss 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 as 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.

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

They didn't have any.

And then I was checking the Barnes & Noble on the other side of town and they also didn't have any.

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 could 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 access 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 movie or a TV show, TV or movies?

Who's your favorite dad actor?

You can call us or text us.

Again, the numbers eight five five seven five two four eight four two or text us your favorite actor who played a dad,

right?

So that's TV or movie.

Yes, that's the question.

All right.

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 know.

Let's break the mold here.

All right.

Well, let's go.

Let's rebel.

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

Um,

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 this question is because he's played one of my favorite dads and 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.

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 want to have a conversation with them.

You want to talk to them,

right?

Yeah.

And, uh, 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.

And 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 fifties, it was like these TV shows got onto this thing where they had to have a moral to the story.

They did.

So leave it to Beaver.

Beaver always got in trouble somehow.

And usually it sort of really wasn't his fault, but

right.

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.

It was a little different.

I liked Tom Bosley from Happy Days.

Oh, yeah.

He was just a bubbly,

bubbly

guy, great actor.

Yeah.

And very recognizable boy.

She was on everything,

every ad

on TV.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So, 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

that kind of memory.

I think so.

Oh yeah.

What we'd like to find out.

I mean, if you'd like to give us a call, please feel free to do that.

8557524842.

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've 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.

Yeah.

You know,

yeah,

I can't remember Robert

Young, Robert Young.

Yes.

Yes.

That was a dumb show.

Father's knows best.

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, exactly.

Because that never works out if you think you know more than the

wife.

Yeah, mom is kind of left out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

what's the other one?

What are you thinking of?

I'm thinking of Paul Peterson was on.

Oh, oh, uh, Donna Reed show, Donna Reed show.

Um, oh God, who was that guy?

He played a doctor.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Carl Betts.

Carl Betts.

Betts.

Betts.

Okay.

Carl Betts.

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 richo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What are you singing?

My dad?

Yes.

Yeah.

Paul

Peterson.

Oh, my

God.

They plant.

It was a high school talent show.

Yeah.

And he he sang my dad on it, but he met but Paul Betts his dad missed the show and they went backstage and

Paul Peterson said

Paul Peterson's dad.

Yeah.

Carl Carl Betts, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Anyway, they're

You know, 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, Ozzy and Harriet Joe.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy,

here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy,

here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy,

here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy,

here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Ozzy, here.

Oz

Right?

Yeah.

You know what, one of the things that what 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.

Oh, in an eye.

Yeah.

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 a kid

Klingon.

Yes, he's trying to teach him Klingon.

Where

did this come from?

What?

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 it just was really a kind of a dumb storyline and they kind of filled a lot of time with it So, uh, yeah, well, we're gonna play that we're

gonna.

Yeah, we're gonna The actual cut we'll play it for right 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.

You're listening to Civic Media.

Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.

Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.

It's Night Light with Pete Schwabba.

Pete is off tonight.

John Peterson and Gordy 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.

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?

Somebody to watch the kids.

I don't know.

And Tom said I hope that that some walk of 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?

Kwai Chang Kane in Kung Fu, the legend continues.

I miss 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, version of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Backstage, before the performance, I chatted to a Level 4 Klingon speaker.

Dharmand 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... Where's my chief?

And I would say... 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.

Lots of domestic things.

Exactly.

I had words for shuttlecraft, and phaser, and transport, ionization unit.

I

didn't have a bottle, right?

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

Give jet.

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 giv 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, 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, that's the weirdest thing.

I can't imagine doing that.

To your

child.

You don't even have a

word for

bottle 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.

I watched that and the movies, all the movies.

Yeah, sadly.

It was 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 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 to speak.

Yeah.

Well, you know, Captain Kirk's

to pay started looking really bad by the third movie.

It really just looked like a hair hat.

Yeah, worse from there.

Okay.

Are

you are you laying into William Shatner?

You know what your big hero mind?

Is he?

Yeah, seriously.

No, I like the guy.

Oh, I think he's great.

He has one of the great

acting careers of all time.

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.

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.

Out

of sight

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 Dundren'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, 7 p.m.

And we have 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 Lauren

Holly.

Tom Lennon.

Tom Lennon.

Yeah.

Lance Barber.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's great.

Great film.

Do we have Scott Dickers on the line?

Yes, we do.

All right.

Hi, Scott.

Good evening, Scott.

Well,

good evening, gentlemen.

So nice to

see you here.

I

didn't

expect you.

I

don't know how long I've been in your virtual waiting room here, but 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.

And we need to keep talking about William Shatner.

Do you have some William Shatner experience to tell us

about?

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' space rocket.

Yeah, 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 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.

Yeah,

no, he

is, he is.

Yeah, all the other actors on Star Trek hated him, you know, all this other stuff.

Right,

right.

And he's seen us 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 it'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

it

was really inspiring it really was

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, you know, much into character.

I don't know what it was.

I think he, 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, 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 there.

It's backwards, guys.

Well, maybe we're seeing it okay.

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, like 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 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 just 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 I we I couldn't upload it for some reason it wasn't going

up.

We have the audible

But I thank you for that that that's wonderful.

Yeah,

we put

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 John worked there.

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.

They were

great stories.

They were really funny, great

stories.

They were fun.

They were so much fun.

And yeah, so there's this whole like 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 at a morning shift, I would get there at 5 a.m.

and I would play like Dick Cavett's comedy hour and a bunch of other shows 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 in the world.

And 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 he could 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 one of the main ones, you know,

yeah.

Hmm.

Okay.

Well, yeah, that sounds like fun.

I mean, I think

we

had 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.

And it's

just like this weird pipeline.

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 gonna, I had heard that he was gonna 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, 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 came and went a few

times.

Yeah, 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.

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 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 them we're not ready we need a little more time and then as soon as I left the writers that were there just jumped at a tv show and

Yeah, you know Yeah, that's how

Scott hold that thought we got to 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 civic media radio network

You're

listening to civic media find the latest news information and archives of all your favorite shows on the civic media website civic media dot us

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 at the end of that chapter, the audio, the audible version of it is fun to listen to.

It

is.

Of course,

you narrated 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 yeah, I learned I learned a lot But

yeah, I

appreciate the words you guys it's an editor's pick on Amazon never had a book be an editor's pick before so that's yeah

Yeah,

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 a marketing speak the marketing people told you to say that but in this case I think it's actually

actually true

yeah.

We've got a clip from our cable access show

we see we really love the onion and we really back you guys.

You have the receipts.

I do.

I do have

the

receipts and we have a clip that we can play.

This is cut 86.

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

clip.

It's about four minutes and that would take up all the time.

But this is, it's Rich Dom and Graham Zalinsky and Graham Zalinsky.

He used to be part of the Democratic party, Wisconsin.

Yeah,

he

was, he was kicked out.

He had that kind of sense of humor.

It's also fired from the onion.

Oh, is that

so?

Back in the day, yeah.

He's a friend of the onion, but, you know, sometimes you have to fight with your friends.

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.

Let's try that.

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 catch

times.

We're always the first to

break the news

as you know.

Well, do you know do you recall anything from this story that?

Did you stop the execution of these fresh?

Well, you know once the university process gets going pretty hard to stop those apparently there was a clerical error and many students names were misspelled and so they were 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, USA Today can net 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.

Okay.

Let's just 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.

Oh, no kidding.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's great success.

They did have a