Off Duty: The Best of On Patrol With Peter Raffel (Week I)
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 #70: It’s Not About The Umbrella
June 9th, 2014
One of my favorite things to do on the show was to have people play these twisted versions of themselves – sort of an extrapolation of my own exaggerated on-air persona. This really worked well with something as long-form as On Patrol: since people were coming on regularly it led to these characters, and eventually bits like this. I was always teasing Intern Will about his love of reverb – later to be spoofed on with the Infinite Reverb Pedal – and Morgan Ann Gray was really into period pieces; Mitch Greenberg and I were constantly talking about Star Wars, both on-air and off, and then I decided to have Anastasia Skliarova be obsessed with meat for some reason. We had all these personalities for people to shift in and out of – it was quite organic, which was always something I loved about the show. This bit was for the year’s finale and I’d been making a lot of SNL jokes throughout the term, so it made sense to do a cold open like this. The best part is when Mitch calls me a terrible writer, reading from a script that I wrote. This was just as we were going into the last year of the program, when the characters and situations became even more outlandish and interconnected – it was really a launching pad for the craziness of senior year.
Featuring: Morgan Ann Gray, Will Fraser, Mitchell Greenberg, and Anastasia Skilarova
From On Patrol #37: Moon Bees
January 7th, 2013
After Will’s first term as the show’s intern, I asked him to spend winter break creating a theme song that could be played before each episode. What he came back with was unsurprisingly brilliant, and also a quite catchy tune. The lyrics are pretty simple, which I can only imagine was because Will didn’t really understand what we were doing in that basement. He was right not to.
Written and Performed by Will Fraser
From On Patrol #2: Alcohol
September 26th, 2011
Listening back to the early episodes is difficult, because it’s pretty clear I had no idea what I was doing and had very little planned. Originally I intended to have listener calls be a way bigger part of the show, but the station didn’t have the phone hooked up – so I was using my cell to take calls holding it up to the microphone. This call always stood out to me as one of the first truly great moments, when Joe Fey called in unannounced and we just began to improvise. I had no idea where he was going so I was simultaneously trying to figure out what was happening and how to add on constructively. I love the part where I tell him I’m right-handed and he says, “I know, I know.” I think that was when I realized that Joe and I could really play off each other, and that some of these unexpected moments would end up being the funniest stuff.
Featuring: Peter Raffel and Joe Fey
From On Patrol #92: Done With The Seeds
April 6th, 2015
Towards the end of our run, the show fell into a standard format: songs at the beginning, followed by a monologue and some banter with Intern Will; then we’d perform the bit, and end with a guest – I certainly tried other methods, but after four years I’d figured out how best to structure the program. But that made for about twenty minutes off the top where I just talked – for better or worse – and after improvising alone for so long I’d really found my niche. I’m sure it was the audience’s least favorite part of the show, but for me it was important to cement the program’s narrative voice and ramp up to the absurdity later on. There was discussion about making the show only an hour, but I knew the thing had to be long-form and able to breathe around the edges: that monologue was so important to the overall arrangement. I could really go on for as long as necessary – and you can really hear my comfort, making myself laugh more than anything else. Most of these monologues were unscripted: occasionally I’d have an outline or a couple of points I wanted to hit, but primarily I was just free-associating and letting it go. I find this one particularly funny, even if no one else does: even before Bill Cosby’s was accused of sexual assault, I remember thinking it was super off-putting how he wore a sweat suit on stage.
Featuring: Peter Raffel
From On Patrol #87: The Connector
February 23rd, 2015
Harland Allison Williams will always have a special place in my heart, and is a character I wish we’d done more with. I really dislike these folk-hipster bands that seem so ubiquitous – the original idea came about when Morgan Ann and I were discussing how all their songs have that “Hey!” chant. That summer I’d seen a band called Fleeting Sons, who said their name was a combination of Fleet Foxes and Mumford and Sons – and that’s when I realized the movement had definitely gone too far. I was also going through a phase where I loved having Morgan Ann list a bunch of absurd things – writing all those band names was the best part. There’s also the obligatory nod to The Simpsons with the Mandolin District (a reference to the Hammock District in “You Only Die Twice”); and the dental advice is actual stuff I’d gotten from my hygienist and promptly never did. The top moments are when I call Harland out for potentially being drunk, and then Mumford and Sons member Eco Kyle.
Featuring: Peter Raffel and Morgan Ann Gray
From On Patrol #44: Exploring
March 4th, 2013
I made a lot of decisions involving the show – some good, some bad – but by far the best one was “hiring” Will Fraser. After that first year I wanted someone else involved: someone down there to make fun of, basically. All I knew was that the thing had to grow, and my gut feeling was to place someone in the role of “intern.”
Will lived on the same floor as me, and one day I passed by his room while he was playing Arcade Fire’s Funeral on vinyl, which was the first album that really turned me on to the contemporary music scene. So I knocked on his door, and we talked about it a bit, and the next time I saw him I offered him the intern position. I said if he didn’t like it he didn’t have to come back. He ended up staying three years.
Will would never admit this, but I’m almost positive he hated me for the first few months. I was absolutely ruthless to him, which is certainly a regret I have – it was all in the interest of a comedic style I was still honing in on. It became clear, though, that he was the perfect foil for me and that I’d hit some sort of jackpot by stumbling across him. Will is, far and away, the greatest musician and songwriter I’ve ever known personally – and in those early performances on the show you can literally hear my respect and awe for his craft growing. This was all before he’d started up Wild Firth, played any shows, recorded any tapes other than a project he’d done the previous summer. It was like watching an artist come into his own in real time. This song, entitled “Dance Nance,” had a guitar riff that I simply couldn’t get out of my head – I edited out the track from the show and put it on my iPod I loved it so much. It probably sounds like I’m fawning over him, but listening back to these early clips just shows his apparent genius from the beginning, both as a musician and as a sidekick. I’m probably more indebted to him than anyone else when it comes to On Patrol – if I hadn’t knocked on that door, the show would’ve ended long before it became what it eventually would.
Written by Will Fraser
Performed by Will Fraser and Nate Rosenfield
From On Patrol #5: All Along The Watchtower
October 17th, 2011
Things like this were always some of the best parts of the show for me: an idea would come up that was really absurd and we just ran with it, to the point where we were making radio plays based on one dumb joke. We put so much time into this thing: Joe Fey edited it like crazy, we did a rehearsal – the works. Everyone involved brought such an enthusiasm and sincerity to it – this was really the first time something bigger was done on air, and just had everyone laughing so hard afterwards. People like David Lewis and Morgan Ann were such big voices immediately, and were so comfortable even in their first appearance. Listening to it now I’m surprised at how well it holds up for something that might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever written.
Featuring: Peter Raffel, Joe Fey, David Lewis, Nico Glennon, and Morgan Ann Gray
Will Fraser and Nate Rosenfield performing “Dance Nance” (2012)
From On Patrol #32: Davis and Love
October 22nd, 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 5th, 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 21st, 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 17th, 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 6th, 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 6th, 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 2nd, 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 19th, 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)
From On Patrol #71: White Women
September 29th, 2014
At the end of our third year, Will told me that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep doing the show. I spent the summer having a panic attack at the thought of him quitting – I knew I couldn’t do it without him. At the time he said it was because he was busy, but I always got the sense that he felt underutilized – which he was, considering at this point he was everyone’s favorite part. Regardless, I hardly slept during our hiatus, fearful that I’d have to go on without him. In a really genius move on my part, I thought up the idea to have him “go on strike,” which would free him up to come and go as he pleased, and involve him more in the written material. It ended up being the best idea I ever had.
One of the biggest comments I got about the show was that I was mean to Will, despite the fact that the role had been created as a ne’er-do-well punching bag for my cynical character. But this bit gave me an opportunity to bring those thoughts to the forefront in a surprisingly therapeutic way. Everything we say here is either based on a comment I received or our past interactions: I really did bother Will with 6:50 PM texts every week, for example. I think being able to do this was a way of laughing at ourselves and whatever had built up over our two years together, even if it was all in good fun. I’d kept this bit a secret, too, so when we started doing it people actually thought it was real – I guess we really sold it by screaming at each other. I also grew a Strike Beard for that term’s arc to really give it authenticity.
I love that this is followed by another really great bit, and that they flow seamlessly into each other. I visited Morgan Ann with Anastasia Skliarova that summer and we watched this movie Cirque du Freakon TV, then kept shouting the name at each other in a southern accent. I had an idea for a guy who was obsessed with Cirque du Freak– I think it was Anastasia who first thought up: “Monday, Cirque du Freak!” etc. The Ruth Bader-Ginsburg thing was a reoccurring gag since freshman year, where I was continually trying to get an interview with her and never could; and the Love Boatreference was because I spent that summer watching it with my dad every Sunday – for some reason I’d written a note in my iPhone that said: “And Sunday, well, that’s Love Boatday.” So I threw it in the bit.
But furthermore, I think one of the reasons these bits work so well, and why the final thirty episodes resonate so much, is because I began writing for a place of honesty, even if it was still comedy. Up until this point, every character and joke had one purpose: to be funny. But from that moment forward, I realized that the most humorous stuff I had to offer was the stuff I was really feeling – thoughts of not wanting to do the show, of not being funny, of no one listening, of being overweight, of the future, etc. Once I began writing from there, and trying to express those feelings through the comedy, I think the show really took off. It’d always been hiding in the material, but it wasn’t until the last year that it really took center stage – and I think it helped me focus in on what I was trying to do, which was to create an honest and open community, even if it came in the form of really dumb jokes.
Featuring: Peter Raffel, Will Fraser, and Morgan Ann Gray
From On Patrol #30: 1994
October 1st, 2012
The Tom Scharpling interview is one of my proudest moments in the history of the show, and maybe the most nervous I’ve ever been. My girlfriend said it was the only time she heard a quiver in my voice on air, right at the beginning of the call before I launch into it. But the interview was really beyond my wildest dreams – to have someone who is such a hero of mine, and probably the single biggest inspiration I have, call in and talk for such a long time was truly amazing; and then to talk Pink Floyd with him was unbelievable. Honestly, the whole interview is really interesting and funny, and Tom’s readiness to talk and riff was so meaningful to me. Fun Fact: Our discussion of Suicide’s debut album led me to call his show and discuss listening to “Frankie Teardrop” during a power outage, which eventually became one of the Best Show’s signature topics, The Frankie Teardrop Challenge.
Featuring: Peter Raffel and Tom Scharpling
From On Patrol #13: The Introduction of the Heart Condition
January 23rd, 2012
I remember staying up all night in some conference room writing this bit with Joe Fey and David Lewis – we’d done calls for both of these characters the week before, and from that idea arose the in-studio debate. We must’ve spent hours just making each other laugh, and thinking up more absurd ideas for this thing; at some point past 2 AM we decided to have David yell “Whoop!” at various moments, and that’s really when we lost our minds. I think originally PlumKilogram was supposed to be the more humorous of the two, but listening back now there’s something so disgustingly funny about OrangePound, especially when he says that he made his wife “wail.” The really long soliloquy about him taking the family to Disney World has to be Joe’s writing – that’s totally his humor. Both David and Joe left college after freshman year, and I’ll always remember this bit as the pinnacle of our collaborative writing – three guys who could truly crack each other up.
Featuring: Peter Raffel, Joe Fey and David Lewis
From On Patrol #57: Keys
February 3rd, 2014
This clip gets included because it’s by far the hardest I ever laughed on the show: Morgan Ann Gray’s Cowabunga Tut joke has resonated through the years. We’d down there for a half-hour riling each other up – myself, Morgan Ann, Isabelle Skoog, and Liz Vidulich – hence the giddiness that’s apparent. They’d been talking about this Dracula television show with Jonathan Rhys Myers that really got me going, and everything after that was nonsense. But when Morgan dropped Cowabunga Tut, I lost control more than I ever had on-air. Still gets me.
Featuring: Peter Raffel, Morgan Ann Gray, Isabelle Skoog, and Elizabeth Vidulich
From On Patrol #25: Time Goes Fast In Busy Day Life
May 21st, 2012
At this point we knew that Joe Fey, who played Jabadiah, was going to be leaving at the end of the year, and the future of Major Grotto was very much up in the air. Joe was serving as the play’s editor, as well as writing a lot of the jokes with me, and this was one of the last things we worked on together. I think it’s also the only time that Joe ever broke character and couldn’t keep from laughing. We’d talked a lot about the ridiculous scene in The Matrix Reloadedwhere Lawrence Fishburne addresses this massive crowd in a cave – something that has stuck with me from childhood – and the decision to have Joe read that script verbatim worked out perfectly. Honestly I’m a little mad at myself for how much I lost it, but Joe holding this annotated paragraph in his hand, having watched the clip a million times, was just too much. Also, Morgan Ann Gray had done that Claudette voice a lot – the old-timey “I’m a woman, I have rights” thing – and so incorporating it into the show was a must. Her and David talking about the Dusty Clam is so hilarious.
Featuring: Peter Raffel, Joe Fey, David Lewis, Nico Glennon, Morgan Ann Gray, Mari Ayala, Greta Schmitt, Kanami Fukuda, and Maggie Ward
From On Patrol #74: The 80s or Whenever
October 20th, 2014
Ridley Tankersley was a recent hire at the station and the new bassist for Will’s band Wild Firth. I had this idea that he’d interview for Will’s intern position as part of the Strike Arc – this was really the beginning of bringing in more people, and expanding the show’s written material and universe. Ridley is a really talented comedian who became a huge part of the show; the section where he and Will go at each other with these non-stop jokes really cemented his role. Maybe the funniest is Will’s final line about Ridley’s godfather’s construction business: “He co-owns it with his wife – don’t lie,” which is just this earnest little throwaway at the end of all the nonsense. This was also the introduction to the bizarre religion I’d conceived of called the Zuluists – it was an extrapolation of this bit from MTV’s The Statewith Thomas Lennon called “Old Fashioned Man” that I thought was one of the funniest things ever. I really liked the idea of having the bit go in a completely different direction in the final moments, and Ridley’s character being way crazier than anyone would originally think. Ridley also really took to the idea of being described as a “computer nerd with a Hot Topic gift-card” – I think after I wrote that he was on board for whatever I wanted to do. I loved that I could insult people so acutely on the show and not get in trouble for it.
Featuring: Peter Raffel, Will Fraser, and Ridley Tankersley
From On Patrol #81: Moving Pictures at the Movies
January 12th, 2015
Mitchell Greenberg and I are massive Star Wars fans, and when it was announced that they were making a seventh movie I thought it’d be fun to recast the original – which I can only assume is coming down the pipeline. We’d get so worked up talking about Star Wars that we’d forget we were on air. Mitch and I always had such a natural way of talking and making each other laugh that he could come down with no preparation and I knew it’d be great. Picking an actor to play Obi-Wan led us to a discussion of Richard Dreyfuss, and this argument about how the kid in Mr. Holland’s Opus lost his hearing – I see this as the most notorious On Patrol moment, besides Will’s Keyboard. I still think the fire truck was responsible, although I’ve gone out of my way to not rewatch the movie and find out. We actually ended up making a short film based on this conversation, where Mitch and I had to reenact the argument like five times. I think that forever ruined Richard Dreyfuss and Mr. Holland’s Opusfor us. The moment where we simultaneously question whether or not Richard Dreyfuss is alive was pure genius.
Featuring: Peter Raffel and Mitchell Greenberg
From On Patrol #6: Christmas Is Here
October 24th, 2011
About halfway through that first term, my dad came up to visit and watch me do the show. This bit was an extension of a call he did in the very first episode, the plot of which involved him renting out my room to this macho-type guy named Chad. There’s something about this bit that just makes me smile: maybe it’s the way my dad plays it, or just the absolute absurdity of the premise. I’d actually been tossing around this idea of Senior Citizen Fake I.D.’s for around ten years, ever since I saw an advertisement for the discount outside a Sara Lee store. It still makes me laugh when he talks about Chad’s friends (“You just got Stooged!”) and when he says, “You can spend three hours putting a guy in a funny hat.”
Featuring: Peter Raffel and Larry Raffel
From Left: Morgan Ann Gray, Liz Vidulich, and Isabelle Skoog (2014)
From On Patrol #65: She Knew It And She Met Him
April 28th, 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 13th, 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 12th, 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 9th, 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 16th, 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 25th, 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, 11th, 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 9th, 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)
Peter M. Raffel 