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

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 #65: She Knew It And She Met Him
April 28^th, 2014

I’m on record as saying that “Open Face Sandwich” is by far the dumbest thing we ever did on the show, and I absolutely love it. Helen Noble and I were on the swim team, and while eating lunch at Conference she made herself something she called an open-face sandwich, which I’d never heard and was adamantly convinced wasn’t a thing. For some reason I made up this reggae song while she was eating, and then wouldn’t stop singing it for the rest of the trip. Eventually I wanted to perform it on the show. The idea to have Will say these buzz words in the background is what really pushed the song into infamy. The phrase: “Costco samples, I taste you” came from this Facebook status a Jamaican guy made freshman year that Morgan Ann Gray loved to quote. It makes no sense, but I put it in there anyway. I have since accepted that open-face sandwiches are, in fact, a thing.

Featuring: Peter Raffel, Helen Noble, and Will Fraser

From On Patrol #20: The Attitude Bus Or Train
March 13^th, 2012

I’d found this abandoned copy of Mickey Rooney’s autobiography in the town mall, and figured we could incorporate it into the show somehow – which led to Morgan Ann Gray reading it in a New York accent on air. To this day I honestly know nothing about Mickey Rooney or what he sounds like, which is part of what makes this so funny. This was really the first time Morgan and I did a bit together on the show, and her commitment to the character is already evident – like the way she says, “The snake spirit inside my body squeezes its way out my nose and climbs that golden staircase up to heaven.” We both pretty much lose it while she’s reading from the actual book, which is so over-the-top that it might as well be part of the written sketch. The Mickey Rooney jokes were some of my favorite to write because it basically just involved thinking of the most insane scenario imaginable and then tacking on some obscure showbiz name.

Featuring: Peter Raffel and Morgan Ann Gray

From On Patrol #35: Hot Helena Bonham Carter
November 12^th, 2012

At this point we’d lost both Joe Fey and David Lewis, who were our two main characters – but when you’re working on a project for two years, you have to expect changes like this to occur. In that way, Major Grottowas very much shaped by its surroundings, which is the way the show always was. So I went with it: I brought on Mackenzie Rech to voice Major Grotto (claiming that the Major had gone through vocal changes due to stress after Jabadiah’s death), and Andrew Kraemer as Jobobiah, who was Jabadiah’s exiled brother. Major Grottowas verging on being so unwieldy as I added stuff: deep Pink Floyd/Indie Rock knowledge, pretty elusive inside jokes, tons of pop culture references, and then this political structure of Atlantis – with the addition of Ryan Kottman and Abby Schubach. I think the original cast members – Morgan Ann and Nico – were probably worried about the saga’s changing shape, but as soon as we heard Kottman and Kraemer go at it we knew we had something magical. Honestly, though, my favorite part is when someone makes a noise at my cue: “Suddenly there is a loud crash,” which sounds like paper crumpling – and my response is a totally adlibbed throwaway: “…Alright.” I think it was at that moment that I knew the thing had gotten away from me, and that it was its own beast.

Featuring: Peter Raffel, Mackenzie Rech, Nico Glennon, Morgan Ann Gray, Andrew Kraemer, Ryan Kottman, and Abby Schubach

From On Patrol #89: Computers of the Past
March 9^th, 2015

At this point the show was well known enough that I was able to bring in more people, including faculty members, to partake in the written material. I served on a financial committee with our Dean of Students, Nancy Truesdell, and she was absolutely hilarious – so I knew she’d be down to come on-air. The idea was basically that the university wanted to “connect” with students, and thus hired a Dean of Party; looking back, it’s truly insane that we got someone so high up to do something this dumb, but Dean Truesdell sells it so well. I also think it’s one of Morgan Ann’s best performances: she’s naturally a very polite person, so one second she’s making small talk with Dean Truesdell in the other room and the next she’s screaming “Fancy Nancy” in her face. I also really like how Dean Partysburg keeps “blurring the line between reality and fiction” – it sort of goes under the radar, but this is clearly a very unstable character who knows a bizarre number of actors in Willow. And I will say, there is something oddly satisfying about having the Dean of Students say that she’s tried numerous times to expel you (and then call you Pastry).

Featuring: Peter Raffel, Nancy Truesdell, and Morgan Ann Gray

From On Patrol #12: Puro Caff
January 16^th, 2012

Greta Schmitt was the first person to come in-studio and just hang out, and even though there’s some initial hesitation it’s clear how hilarious and natural this element of the show was going to be. I’d heard her talk about Hocus before, and thought it was such an absurd story that it had to be told on air. I love how genuine these moments are: someone telling something mildly embarrassing from their life that simply couldn’t be made up, like a clown who comes to your house once a year and performs the same tricks over and over. The point where Greta’s sister is actually asking for Hocus not to come is beyond funny to me, and him selling phones at Sam’s Club. It’s sort of heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.

Featuring: Peter Raffel and Greta Schmitt

From Radio for Rwanda 2014
Sunday, May 25^th, 2014

Radio for Rwanda was notorious for these bizarre concepts I’d come up with on-air. There was this terrific campus bluegrass group called the Involuntary String Band, and violinist Martha McDonnell happened to bring her sister Kit down for the segment – so when Kit came in I had the idea to do this scene of us as two old southerners on a plantation while the band played in the background. This was probably offensive to people from the south, and maybe even the band, but everyone played along – and it turned out to be a really stupid, sweet improvised moment. I have no idea why I thought to say I was pregnant, other than that we’d been live for five hours and I was exhausted. Kit has this incredible laugh that you could hear wafting across campus; I think it’s safe to admit now that I was only somewhat-acting with regards to all that swooning.

Featuring: Peter Raffel, Kit McDonnell, and the Involuntary String Band

From On Patrol #77: Haircut Makes The Man
November, 11^th, 2014

This is a bit with a lot of moving parts to it, so much so that certain jokes get overshadowed. I don’t even remember writing that Drac ‘n Cheese line – that might’ve been something Ridley threw in there. I knew I wanted to expand this Zulu religion thing from the earlier bit, so we added Kip Hathaway as a High Zulu Priest or something. Kip is a super talented actor with this stellar voice that I wanted to do something with on air. I’d seen him and Ridley together (the lanky Hawaiian shirt bit is true – you could really spot Kip anywhere), so I think I just emailed them with the idea and got to work. This one has a lot of favorite moments: Kip’s lengthy story about his fear of internships, Ridley’s Tanksy persona, the Infinite Reverb Pedal – but the real gold is the little stuff, like Ridley quietly repeating everything Kip says, and them constantly blurting out: “Praise Zulu.” They both have such unique comedic voices that I was able to write for them again and again – their parts in Bar Mitzvah Crawl were written with them in mind, as were the additional Zulu bits. This is also the first appearance of Will’s unscripted pronunciation of Caprese Panini, which I added because I’d seen him eating one in the university’s café. From that point on I pretty much tacked it on to the end of every bit just to make him say it.

Featuring: Peter Raffel, Ridley Tankersley, Kip Hathaway, and Will Fraser

From On Patrol #85: Punt Them Into The Flames
February 9^th, 2015

I was notorious for making fun of the other shows on WLFM, particularly whoever came after me – I’d get their names wrong, talk about how the program was trash, etc. For those last two years, the show after us was called The Cult; one of the hosts was Margaret Koss, who we had hired at the station and I’d become friends with. So I wrote this bit in which she roasted me at the end of an episode – sort of getting back at me for the years of picking on them. I really liked the idea of always teasing everyone, but not being able to take it when someone teased me. Pretty much everything she says is true: my hair was kind of bleached from being on the swim team, I wore this Patagonia pullover most of the time, and I had these woven shoes I’d gotten in India that everyone was always commenting on – so it was quite easy to write material like that. I remember Margaret really loved the Cocaine Phoenix line, but I think the best is when she says she has more grandparents alive than I have listeners – and that all her grandparents are dead. That’s the ultimate burn.

Featuring: Pete Raffel and Margaret Koss

On the Air (2014)