11/6/2006

Yesterday we mentioned some of the various e-mail we’ve gotten- and I don’t mean to ignore all the “snail mail” we get every week. There’s always a bunch of letters, drawings, and photos sent by you guys. This brought to mind our various “sidekicks” for the mail segments- some beloved, some not. When we first started here, Doug Graves, our musical director, often did the mail segment with us…but, as his schedule became more hectic, he relinquished it to- Ed the Bat!!! Some of you might remember Ed, for his erratic flights above the mailbag, but mainly for his squeaky voice-which led to his early demise…one of our top men in charge here at WCIU, Neal Sabin, absolutely HATED the shrill, annoying voice of Ed- and asked me to get rid of him. I told him we would- IF he would appear in a segment that told the story of Ed’s being fired! He graciously did- and away went Ed. We sometimes had his British bat cousin Nigel fill in, but he also got his walking (or flitting) papers. The next mail assistant was the Postasaurus- a gruff dinosaur character who would add commentary during the mail. He was replaced by a long-time favorite- the “Wacky Dactyl” from the “WOOO in Berwyn” Morning Zoo radio show!(No, I have no idea why you could never get that station on your radio…) He had a long run, and, I think, went to satellite radio, so we now have –QWERTY !!! Our “webmaster” is a spider- who, along with his eight legs, has eight personalities- of which we have a few to discover! Some longtime fans might remember that there was a previous different character named Qwerty on the “Koz Zone” many years ago…and, yes, the name came from the first six letters on the keyboard! Let us know if one of Qwerty’s eight personalities is your favorite- maybe with some counseling, he might just lock into ONE personality! Another question we’ve gotten regards why we don’t do really long mail segments like we used to- well, some of our movies were long enough that, with our commercial load, we had to use the mail segment as out “safety valve” to keep the show on time. Plus, with so e-mails, it’s easier to respond quicker by just typing out an answer! We do have some shorter Universal films coming up- maybe we’ll do a couple marathon mail segments, like in the old days… And this marathon blog session is now over…more tomorrow!