SIZZLIN' STEVE RETURNS

Oh, what a tangled web.

So there's this really really famous blog written by an ex-girlfriend of mine, and this woman in Salt Lake City is an avid reader. Eventually, the woman in SLC begins reading another blog written by the famous blogger's husband. I have been known to leave a comment or two on that site, so the woman in SLC begins visiting my site on a regular basis. She leaves some comments here, and eventually I check out her site.

After a while, I realize that she knows a reporter from Portland who I had bumped into while covering various regional stories. So we trade a few emails back and forth to see if we have any other common friends or acquaintances. Turns out we had about a dozen or so.

But then came the real shocker. This woman didn't know me so much as Matthew Workman, but as my evil radio Alter Ego Sizzlin' Steve Sargent. I invented Sizzlin' Steve with the help of this guy. Sizzlin' Steve was the sum total of all that was awful about Top 40 radio in the 1990s. Our specific target was a station called Hot 94.9, which was pretty awful. Looks like they're still pretty awful now.

Steve was invented to liven the tempo of a radio talk show that Sean was hosting. Sometimes the pace would get a little slow, or nobody would call, and things would drag... that's where Sizzlin' Steve would come in.

Steve would call in from teen hot spots in and around Provo, Utah. Just like the lame Top 40 DJs of the day, Steve would speak in a loud annoying voice, end his sentences with stupid rhymes, and get very excited about the possibility of someone winning Boyz II Men concert tickets.

Of course, it was all fake. I was calling from the next room, and a few friends would yell and scream to imitate crowds. It was pretty fun, and effectively served the purpose of filling up some dead time.

As the talk show grew in popularity, there were more callers and fewer dull moments, but Sizzlin' Steve survived. We started a feature called "Pantry Raid." At the start of the show, a listener would win a prize. Sizzlin' Steve (and his trusty pal Dan Dorfler... Sizzlin' Steve didn't have a car in college) would then be dispatched to the winner's home to deliver the prize, do a live remote, and steal something from the winner's pantry. By the end of the show, Steve, Dan, the the show's host would be dining in the studio on the stolen food. It was all good fun.

Then one day, we got the call we were all hoping for. Someone living in Helaman Halls won a prize. Not just someone... a woman. Helaman Halls was (and still is, as far as I know) a dorm complex on the campus of a school I never quite graduated from. As you might expect from a Mormon school, there were pretty strict rules about men being in the women's dorms, especially late at night. But our naughty little listeners smuggled us into their dorm room, and at 11:34 PM, we did a historic live remote from inside the women's dorms at BYU.

And during the course of my email exchanges with that woman in SLC last month, I discovered that it was HER dorm room I snuck into some 14 years ago. She even took a picture of the blessed event. It's obviously a photo of a photo, so the image quality isn't the best, but you can clearly see a clock radio, $5 prize coupons for Tommy's Burgers, a ska concert poster, and my bangs (which could probably make the list for Most Awful Things of the 1990s).

Moments after this photo was taken, there was a knock on the door, and I had to scurry under the bed for fear of being caught. Good times.

Before this photo arrived in my inbox, I probably hadn't thought of Sizzlin' Steve in 8 years. But now that he's back, the old instincts have returned. I'm overwhelmed by the urge to speak loudly in public and compose sentences that include phrases like, "The home of hot rockin' hits, on your 24 hour tower of power!" But most importantly, I feel the need to accost random teens and give them free Color me Badd t-shirts.

That's natural, right?

2/14/07 SIZZLIN' UPDATE: A friend sent me some audio files of Sizzlin' Steve on the radio. 14 years later, I'm really struck by how annoying that character was. I know he's supposed to be annoying, but still...