Today marks Mike Glesinger’s 35th anniversary with KCOW and Eagle Radio. This is a major milestone and an incredible accomplishment in a business where job security is so lousy it’s memorialized in a TV theme song (“Town to town, up and down the dial…”)
Gles, you see, has no truck for self-aggrandizement. (I, on the other hand, don’t have the same problem. My website isn’t called “Area Radio Announcer World.com” after all.) Gles finds elaborate celebrations of an anniversary like this mawkish and distasteful. So I’m not going to do a heartwarming look back at the 23 years I’ve enjoyed working with him. Instead I’ll share ten quick things you may not have known about Mike Glesinger.
The reason you may not know them is because half of them are false. I’ll let you figure out which ones are false. (I will be inserting some old photos in-between these facts, because I am shamelessly nostalgic.)
-“Open Mike” is not named for Gles. In fact it’s not named “Open Mike” at all. It’s “Open Mic”, short for microphone. For you conspiracy theorists though: The last regular full-time host of “Open Mic” was also a guy named Mike: Mike Gastineau. And former KCOW weekend warrior Mike Stewart has also hosted the show a couple of times. And our former General Manager was Mike Garwood. And another former GM was Mike Fell. This is Leonard Nimoy, inviting you to join me….IN SEARCH OF the KCOW/Guys Named Mike Connection.
–Gles once bought me a “Porky Pig” comic book at a garage sale that had an original Pablo Picasso etching tucked inside it. He and Mrs. G are always bringing me treasures from their weekend garage sale outings. Well, this one time I was chuckling at the adventures of Porky Pig when I saw a small scrap of paper with the unmistakable cubist stylings of the great master Picasso. Gles and I decided to sell the Picasso and used the proceeds to install solid gold headphones in all the studios.
-Gles Is A Simpsons Freak. He and I have spent the last 23 years trying to work in at least one “Simpsons” quote every workday. It seems to most frequently happen during “Coffee Talk.” It is incredibly difficult to pick a single Simpsons quote that is our favorite…but this one has gotta be right up there:
-In 1991, when Alliance High School mounted an official Jenga team, Gles did the play-by-play. The 6-week NSAA-sanctioned Jenga season, which ran during a lull in activities in winter, found Gles working to create exciting radio from the always-tense block-stacking game. It is said that Gles’ beloved play-by-play catchphrase “Oh my!” was first uttered when a player from the Berea Jenga Janglers sneezed and tipped over a state-record 8-foot-high tower.
-Gles let me call color commentary once. After years with the great Val Jansante by his side, Gles was starting a football season minus a color man. So for one mind-boggling evening, he let me do it. It was great fun to be up in the booth with Gles (who, in celebrating 35 years at KCOW also celebrates 35 years as the Voice Of The Bulldogs). Fortunately our good pal Coach Steve “Nelly” Nelson joined Gles as full time color commentator…I’m not sure who Gles would have gone with after giving me a shot…the guy who fixes the copier? Caller #14?
“Coffee Talk” Is Carefully Scripted And Rehearsed. Yes, I know it sounds like Gles and I pull our daily “Coffee Talk” conversations out of…uh..thin air. But it’s just that air of spontaneity that we strive for! Each afternoon Gles and I receive the next day’s Coffee Talk script, written by Bob S. Bestos and a former writer for “Two and a Half Men.” We spend 90 minutes rehearsing and re-rehearsing the script to give it that “off the cuff” feeling.
Gles Has Some Weird Nicknames. In college he was nicknamed Box, because he lived in a tiny studio apartment. Also in his younger days, some of his friends (frenemies?) called him “Glesinjerk”. Which brings to mind “Cantstandja” for “Costanza.”
One Day, On “Open Mic”, Gles Was A Little Loopy From Having Just Been To The Dentist And Thought Every Caller Was His Cousin Ed.
Gles and I Both Enjoy Pointing Out To Olivia Newton-Boss That She Is Young And We Are Not. I don’t know why, but it’s just incredibly fun to reference, say for example, the Robot from “Lost In Space”, or who Peter Marshall is, and not have her understand or recognize the reference at all. I should point out that she never pulls this on us in reverse, asking us what song Cardi B sings or who Billie Ilish is. This is the sign of a benevolent manager.
Gles and I Have War Stories. Well, okay, they’re radio stories but we tell them like old soldiers flashing back to the field of battle. Like the time Gles was doing a remote from a Christmas tree sale and someone spilled a full cup of coffee on top of the remote broadcasting unit. I was back at the station and it went down very similar to this:
That’s just one. There are others.
Well, how did you do? Can you identify which facts are true and which facts are The Bunk®? Well, the facts are this: 35 years is a fantastic milestone. Happy Anniversary Gles!