"Fire up the colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."

Tom Snyder
1936 - 2007

I remember Tom Snyder mostly on radio. I was too young to see him on the Tomorrow Show but he told some of the best Tomorrow stories on the radio.

Tom was something of a goof. He wasn't the hippest cat at the shin-dig but he was a likable goof. His performances on TV were called "ego-driven" by critics but on the radio he was much more self-deprecating. I like self-deprecating humor. It shows that there's a certain absence of malice. Plus radio is a more intimate medium.

Fire up the ol' colortini, Tom, and watch the angels, now, as they fly through the air.

Radio Contest Gone Awry

Here's a happy little news excerpt:

Woman in Water Drinking Contest Dies

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - A woman who competed in a radio station's contest to see how much water she could drink without going to the bathroom died of water intoxication, the coroner's office said Saturday.

Jennifer Strange, 28, was found dead Friday in her suburban Rancho Cordova home hours after taking part in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest in which KDND 107.9 promised a Nintendo Wii video game system for the winner.

"She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad," said Laura Rios, one of Strange's co-workers at Radiological Associates of Sacramento. "She was crying and that was the last that anyone had heard from her."

It was not immediately know how much water Strange consumed…

Full Story Here

I'm hoping for the sake of the jocks involved that Ms. Strange died in a bizarre coincidence unrelated to the radio contest but if I were a betting man I'd bet it was directly related to drinking water for a video game system.

People are easily led. People will do a lot of stupid things for fame and fortune. Sorry, that's just the way it is: people… they are not always level headed.

That being said: KDND killed that woman. No silly disclaimer of "don't do this if you can't handle it" is sufficient. KDND is the responsible party. KDND is the business entity which encouraged folks to perform a dangerous activity. KDND jocks probably yucked it up as several folks just couldn’t drink any more. They likely cheered Jennifer Strange on as she kept a-drinkin'.

KDND has a lot of explaining to do but they are not the only ones. We have plenty of, dare I say, absolutely irresponsible morning DJ morons in our little town of Los Anchorage who would have done the very same thing if they'd have thought of it first.

What happened to those halcyon days when being caller number 12 was thrill enough?

We recently had a DJ get a juvenile male to come down to a radio station with some sort of pellet gun and volunteer to get shot in the ass for some hockey tickets. Hockey games are fun, sure, but offering anyone, let alone a minor, compensation for intentionally injuring themselves in public… well, it's wrong.

Maybe I'm a party pooper because I'm not a fan of Jackass-type humor or Fear Factor type challenges.

Maybe I'm a party pooper because I work for the po-po and have to field calls from angry, frightened, or confused citizens who don't listen to the particular radio station and so don't understand that the naked man running across the shopping mall parking lot is not a crazed criminal but really someone who NEEDS to win some concert tickets.

Or maybe I am a party pooper because a 28 year old woman died for a stupid reason and someone in uniform had to go tell her parents that they no longer had a daughter.

Hope the KDND jocks got a good laugh over that too.