Ten years, …still seems like yesterday for me.
Even though I was living in South Carolina at the time, it was like it didn’t matter where you lived… everyone became a part of that moment in history forever.
I remember waking to the phone ringing, and getting angry because I was working late the night before. On the phone was my friend Mary Anne, who told me to turn on the TV. The first thing I thought of, which was probably what most people were thinking… was where everyone in my family was… and who I knew that could have been there… I had a friend who worked in The Pentagon, that I found out later had classes for his Masters that morning… but I must have left like 10 messages on his phone saying to call me or zap me an email…
I think after the initial shock of everything, in that one morning and afternoon I probably went through every single stage of grief. Upon getting to acceptance, I realized that even though I was where I was… I could still do some good… somehow….
I remembering asking myself, what do I even have to offer? What good could I actually do to assist from where I was? With the limited technology and skills I had at the time, how could I make a difference? The answer for me was with The Misplaced Comedy Group.
We only had a few recordings, but most of them were from when I worked at Adventure Radio.
We barely had any newly finished material, and the stuff we had really wasn’t refined in anyway… We did have a few things we were writing about the Women of Afghanistan, from a petition email I received from a friend in Australia a few months prior… But no one knew for about 2-3 days who was responsible for the catastrophe… I remember switching back and forth from CNN to Fox news and reporters just rattling off names from Arafat to Gaddafi… One of the Anchors said, “Bin Laden… It MUST be Bin Laden”… and that was that.
Within days, and without any real knowledge of the Taliban, or Al Qaeda… who they were or what they even represented, we just came up with the goofiest, most cliche’, scenarios… and made the character Bin Laden as much of a buffoon as we could get. We already had “Leave it to Bin”, and “The Afghanistan Dating Game” under wraps, when Jeff (Prekop) came up with “The Bin Laden (Banana Boat) Song”. The CD just fell into place from there.
At the time, there were no smart phones, only 1/3 of Americans had computers in their homes… and most of those ran on Windows ‘95! There was no such thing as iTunes, Facebook or even MySpace to post these things… But after many hours and days, I found a site called mp3.com.
MP3?… what’s that? I only knew about wave files, and I worked at one of the most technologically advanced radio stations in the Country! I quickly educated myself on how to take my wave making machine and converting them to mp3’s, and we were on our way.
We called our plight to help “Comic Relief in America’s Grief”, and petitioned all over the Internet and posted our material on mp3.com, to showcase our generic way to help lighten the moods of anyone who would listen. We had no idea that people would listen, but they did. The CD became one of the top downloaded CDs of the year on mp3.com, and “The Bin Laden (Banana Boat) Song would remain at the #1 spot in comedy for 5 straight months. The funds generated from the song (which really wasn’t that much) were donated to the local chapter of The American Red Cross, who claimed they were sending supplies to those families who suffered from that horrific day.
Jeff and I were interviewed by newspapers, magazines, Internet article writers, radio and television stations…. The emails became so tremendous, that we started to perform live Improv shows just to keep the message of our Comic Relief in America’s Grief alive. I received death threats, hate mail along with emails from fans and supporters alike. From those emails, I knew that we needed to keep going and create more to make sure that our messages stay active. If we were going to be The “Misplaced” Comedy Group, we were going for the gusto… all genres and styles of comedy, while educating ourselves with various styles of news and the new broadcast mediums that were developing. I felt it was necessary. It became a drive for me and probably will remain with me forever.
By recording “The Afghan Files”, as well as other recordings that never made the CD, we tried to bring some sort of sense to those events within ourselves, while helping everyone involved cope with their losses and bring some sort of closure to the events in some way. We all became a part of something we felt needed to be done in order to help bring smiles to those who really needed it.
In listening to the CD now, I probably wouldn’t have released some of the material or maybe would have re-written some of it… because, at the time Americans didn’t know about Afghanistan, or the people of that culture. No one knew of their customs or religion. …All we knew was they were Muslim, or considered themselves Muslim. There were no radical faction or specific cell or group…. The scripts and sketches on the CD literally show that. I am just glad that I personally learned from that experience to make sure I understand why before I make those kinds of leaps. But I keep that CD and those recordings out on the Internet. To make sure we keep that part of history in our minds and to show that we as Americans all came together with that mentality and insight. To show that we made that leap together… all of us, as Americans.
