Tim Blair

AIR AUSTRALIA

James Lileks and Glenn Reynolds both appeared live via phone on yesterday’s Hugh Hewitt radio show. “Live” plus “phone” plus “radio” can result in unexpected outside contributions. Lileks reports:

What no one heard was the domestic management I did behind the scenes to ensure I could speak without interruption from Gnat. My wife is out tonight with a friend, so I had no one to amuse her. That’s where our dear friend Television came in: I had the foresight tonight to pick up a video to keep her occupied ... She was quiet, but then we went into the next hour just as the Spongebob tape ended. DAAAADDDDEEE!

And Reynolds had psychokitty issues:

Started off a bit distracted, as my tomcat was for some reason hurling himself against the closed door to my study, but it picked up after that. Hope the thuds didn't make it over the air.

Even if they did, it probably sounded better than anything from Air America. I was once live on radio from home, reporting Something Very Serious to a stern and attentive host, when a massive bird landed on a ledge outside an open window. The cruel beast stared directly at me for several seconds, apparently waiting for the ideal moment to strike; then, at the exact point listeners expected my Deeply Considered Reply to the host’s Big Main Important Question, they instead heard this:

RAAAAWK! RAAAAWK! ARK! ARK! RAAAAAAAAWK!

Which was more or less what I was planning to say anyway, but at a slightly less violent level. This bird was loud. And just out of reach. As an acknowledged master of the audio medium, I handled this distraction with my usual professional calm:

HOST: What the hell was that?

ME: That? Oh, that was ... that was just one of my birds. Yes. I live in a big aviary, you see, and ... and ... sometimes ...

HOST: (long pause) You live in a what?

Seriously. I really did claim to live in a large bird-keeping facility. That’s how good I am under pressure. Still, it wasn’t as bad as the time I was on radio from my old newspaper office in Melbourne, trying to revive interest in the dying thing I was editing, when an enraged reporter burst in and screamed: “This story idea of yours is shit! You think it’s so good, you do it yourself!”

I tried to blame that on my “aviary”, too. Didn’t work.

Posted by Tim Blair at April 3, 2004 04:01 AM