Off Duty: The Best of On Patrol With Peter Raffel (Week II)

On Patrol With Peter Raffel is celebrating its seventh anniversary with the release of Off Duty: The Best of On Patrol With Peter Raffel, a compilation of the show’s greatest moments from its four-year run. Each Wednesday for the next seven weeks featured clips will be shared that best emphasize the show’s unusual hilarity.

For the uninitiated: On Patrol With Peter Raffel was a two-hour college radio show that aired from 2011 to 2015, featuring music, comedy, and guests – some real, some fictitious – all streaming live from WLFM Studios at Lawrence University. For over one-hundred episodes, Raffel and his band of misfits unleashed chaos on the Appleton airwaves – at times against their will. The show featured Will Fraser as its intern (often referred to as Intern Will), and Morgan Ann Gray as a variety of outlandish characters. The show also hosted annual fundraisers, in partnership with GlobeMed and Health Development Initiative, called Radio for Rwanda: a twelve-hour marathon that raised over $8000 in its three years.

Included with each clip is a bit of commentary from Raffel’s perspective, featuring never-before-shared insight and backstory. Enjoy this bizarre, poignant, and sometimes embarrassing collection!

From On Patrol #32: Davis and Love
October 22^nd, 2012

Morgan Ann Gray did this impression of Keira Knightley – apparently Keira Knightley has this ridiculous laugh – and so I wrote a bit for the character revolving around a movie called Fart Library. Basically one day I walked into the library and it smelled like farts, and I thought of Fart Library. But the really great thing about this is when Morgan, within the Keira impression, does an impression of Johnny Depp – and then one of George Lucas that sounds exactly the same. When her voice completely changes for a moment – that really got me. Also the idea that Keira Knightley refuses to star in anything that Jane Austen didn’t write, and describes the fart aspect of Fart Libraryas “gothic.” I think I was reading Jane Eyreat the time for a class, and we kept talking about how “gothic” it was – that’s where it came from.

Featuring: Peter Raffel and Morgan Ann Gray

From On Patrol #66: Guac-On-Guac Crime
May 5^th, 2014

In the history of On Patrol, never has a moment been recalled and scrutinized more than Intern Will’s infamous “Do You Need Help With Your Keyboard?” tale. This is a story that sent shockwaves through everything; when I look back on the show’s entire run, it’s really pre- and post-Keyboard. Will and I had been talking about pretty much nothing for twenty minutes, with me trying to pull something of interest out of him, when in the final moments he dropped this bombshell. The Seinfeld-esque concept of a girl hitting on Will by asking him this is just so bizarre, and Will has this earnestness when trying to unpack what it means – he’s able to talk about it in such a humorous and sincere way. This story made the rounds after we talked about it on air, so much so that a year later the girl who’d propositioned him contacted me saying that she really had been offering Will help with his keyboard. She wasn’t fooling anybody.

Featuring: Peter Raffel and Will Fraser

From On Patrol #10: Rumor Alert
November 21^st, 2011

For the last episode of that first term I wrote this song for two international friends of mine – Nico Glennon and Diana Szteinberg – to perform; it was basically just another self-deprecating bit, but what makes it great is how slyly it turns into that over time. I’m being a bigger jerk than normal in this one, and the thing just gets turned on my head. We practiced a couple times in my room before eventually deciding that if they messed up it would probably be funnier. I always loved doing stuff like this, where there was a climax we were working towards: a song, or a poem, or something so silly that one of us thought up. My favorite moment is when Diana reveals that she’s Jewish, and Nico goes, “Jesus…” under his breath. I still am truly surprised at how many words rhyme with the word “rhyme.”

Featuring: Peter Raffel, Nico Glennon, and Diana Szteinberg

From On Patrol #59: Peeasta
February 17^th, 2014

The idea for this came from an email my mom sent me about our movie collection while cleaning our house. For some reason I thought it’d be funny to have a film studies professor review them and give tons of incorrect information – and to only approve of the movie Hancock. I’d written some notes on each movie for Morgan Ann (like Richard Gere not having enough suits in Chicago), but this was one of the first long-form improvised bits we did, and one to involve Will so prominently. My voice was completely gone through all of this – which almost adds to the humor, because I’m trying to keep everything from going off the rails when clearly I have no control. The truly great part, though, is Will’s admittance that he hasn’t seen the movies: “To get to the point, I haven’t seen it.” And then once he started calling them “flicks” I really couldn’t keep it together. You can tell we’re all on the verge bursting for this whole segment, but are trying so desperately to keep from laughing. This character would eventually transition into Ayyo Scott, the film critic who uses a DJ while reviewing movies. I thought punning on A.O. Scott – noted New York Timeswriter – was a true piece of brilliance.

Featuring: Peter Raffel, Will Fraser, and Morgan Ann Gray

From On Patrol #72: Pretty Drunk at Cub Foods
October 6^th, 2014

Reid Trier was one of the first people I met at Lawrence (Fun Fact: Morgan Ann Gray was the very first – we were both getting our laptops set up with internet at the library), and one of the sweetest guys in the world. One night at dinner he started telling these stories from his childhood that were so out of character – he was a really bad kid. For example, at his grandmother’s funeral he went and knocked on the casket and said: “Grandma, you in there?” After he started telling these stories I had to have him on the show. He was quite nervous, and came in with this sticky note of anecdotes he was going to tell – it was so adorable. This one I didn’t know beforehand, which is evident from the fact that I blow out the microphone from laughing, and nearly curse. The funniest thing to me is Reid running home after being called out – no words, just him running across a field after pooping on the court.

Featuring: Peter Raffel and Reid Trier

From On Patrol #15: Trust
February 6^th, 2012

For the second installment of Major Grotto we added more characters and delved deeper into absurdity – these obscure indie rock references slid into what is essentially a campy mystery has me laughing to this day. So much of Major Grotto is rooted in clichés: J.T. (aka Ernesto) repeatedly telling Brock that he doesn’t like him; this two-dimensional love story between Brock and Cleopatra; and then, of course, the Oracle. Kanami Fukada was a student from Japan who hung out with us a lot freshman year, and was so sweet and willing to read these ridiculous lines I’d written. You can totally hear everyone losing it in the background while she’s speaking – especially when she repeats her line at the end: “You must look inside yourself to understand what it truly means to be a hero.” We were saying that to each other all year.

Featuring: Peter Raffel, Joe Fey, Morgan Ann Gray, Nico Glennon, David Lewis, Kanami Fukuda, Mari Ayala, and Greta Schmitt

From On Patrol #69: Grapefruit or Farts
June 2^nd, 2014

Boyfriend Matt came from two different ideas. The first was that I kept meeting people who would mention having a boyfriend back home, and it seemed like every one of them was named Matt. So I decided that every character Morgan Ann played that term would mention Boyfriend Matt, and astute listeners would realize what was going on – and then he’d finally come on-air himself. The second was this joke Morgan and I had about a Pokémon named AYNRAND – I can’t remember which of us did it first, but we couldn’t stop saying it in this gravelly voice. So I sandwiched the two concepts together, and then added in these stupid puns about The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. You can hear Morgan break when she mentions AYNRAND snipping its scissors – she just couldn’t get past that. And then the thing really turns inside out when Morgan ends up talking about herself while playing Boyfriend Matt, and then has a conversation with him at the end. This was the sort of weird convoluted stuff I loved doing. I don’t know why AYNRAND is completely capitalized, but it always felt right.

Featuring: Peter Raffel and Morgan Ann Gray

From Radio for Rwanda 2013
Sunday, May 19^th, 2013

For that first Radio for Rwanda I pulled out all the stops: tons of guests, bands, surprises. But I knew I needed a gimmick – something to center the marathon around. I had this idea that I wanted to shave Alex York’s head, who was a really well-known friend of ours with truly luscious hair. He wasn’t willing to do that, but he agreed to let us shave his chest. And then, since he’s a professionally trained singer, I wanted him to sing “I Dreamed A Dream” while we did it. It was the craziest, stupidest, most bizarre concept I’d attempted – I’m a sucker for wild ideas coming to fruition. I’m pretty sure people thought I was actually insane: a twelve-hour marathon where the centerpiece was shaving this guy’s chest. But it was a huge success: people loved it, and we raised a ton of money. To make matters even better (or worse), I got Kevin Killian to drink the shaving water if we cobbled together enough money – and that was when everything really spiraled out of control. Those twelve hours were a total frenzy, but something happened down there that I couldn’t have planned for: a feeling, a community, an energy. It isn’t until you’re in a basement shaving a grown man’s chest for charity that you really feel how united this world can be. We got the school newspaper the following week and there was York on the cover, mid-shave, belting out Les Mis.

Featuring: Peter Raffel, Anastasia Skilarova, Alex York, Mitchell Greenberg, Kevin Killian, and Andrew Kraemer

The Cast of Major Grotto: Episode II – (from left) Kanami Fukuda, Joe Fey, Mari Ayala, David Lewis, Morgan Ann Gray (2012)