J-Dubb's Theatre

The End of a Chapter

It's been a while since I last posted here. The post beneath this one is a video I did over a year ago featuring a short-haired me. I'm not even entirely sure how to post anymore, as the Blogger layout has completely changed. The last post I went to write was the 2011 anniversary post, following the tradition of October 11 every preceding year since the original post. I wrote the title and uploaded the fireworks images just like I did in the original blog post and every anniversary post since. But I didn't have anything to write about. This blog, once the center hub of J-Dubb's Theatre, had become nothing more than a place to embed my YouTube videos, which people were already watching on my channel and on Facebook. This blog had diminished, and YouTube had become J-Dubb's Theatre central. So, the completion of that anniversary post became a back-burner "to do list" item for awhile, until I finally gave up the ghost.

So, I found it fitting to revive this blog once more to chronicle the end of CortandFatboy, as I find this event, in a way, to be karmically intertwined with the fate of this blog.

In October of 2005, I was a young security officer working for a call center. I would pass the time by listening to 101 KUFO at my security desk. I would catch the end of the Cort and Boomer show, and then listen to the Tim Savage show. The writing in my original blog posts was inspired by the speaking style of Tim Savage. Eventually, Boomer left the Cort and Boomer show to be replaced by some guy named Fatboy. The time slots were then changed around to make room for the Marconi show, Kufo's new main event, so I didn't hear much of the Cort and Fatboy show at that time. I read a couple of Fatboy's blog posts though, and decided the guy was funny.

At the end of the year, I quit my security job to focus on school full time. In the mornings I would listen to the Adam Carolla show on Kufo, until, for whatever reason, I started listening to cds instead. At some point, I stopped listening to the Marconi show. As a grown adult wanting to be successful, I felt I had outgrown a fourty-something who still acted like a college fratboy. As I changed the J-Dubb's Theatre image from collegian to adult, I removed the Kufo link from this blog.

Some years later, I'm unsure why, I decided to tune in to Kufo. I must have been in a reminiscing mood. The Cort and Fatboy show happened to be on at the time. This was my first time really listening to their show since its inception, and I decided I was a fan. They were not douchey shock-jock fratboy wannabes like Marconi. They were funny and intelligent adults. I was delighted to learn that their show had taken over the Marconi time-slot, and Marconi was a thing of the past.

It turned out that I wasn't the only one who felt this way. They had a large fanbase of people who despised Marconi and felt refreshed by CortandFatboy's intelligent humor and discussion. Many people referred to them as the "saviors of radio" in that radio had become a poor medium for music in light of iPods and CDs, and this show was the only reason these people tuned in to the radio.

Around that same time, still in the reminiscing mood I guess, I decided to listen to the Adam Carolla show one morning. After driving for a little bit, I realized that it wasn't Adam Carolla I was listening to. This was something different called the Rick Emerson show. This was a sophisticated, adult-oriented show. Rick Emerson was perfectly complimentary to his foil, Sarah X. Dylan. And newscaster, Tim Riley, added the perfect touch. It seemed Kufo had grown up with me.

I began following Cort and Fatboy and the Rick Emerson crew on Twitter. I learned of the many local events these guys held, including midnight movies and the "survive it and drive it" event. I began following other "Portland" related people through their retweets. It turned out these guys were a major part of the Portland community. During that time, I became less interested in YouTube and more interested in Portland media. I've lived the majority of my life in the Portland area, but never felt more connected to the Portland community than this time.

I added the Kufo link back to this blog.

Then, October 2009, as I was about to tune into the show, I saw a rumor buzzing around Twitter that Cort and Fatboy had been fired. I turned on the radio, and sure enough, they were gone. The next morning, it was confirmed that the Rick Emerson crew had also been canned. Everybody involved with Kufo up to that time had been fired and replaced by Alpha Broadcasting, the new owners of Kufo and several other Portland stations. For the next several days, the only thing the station broadcast, was a countdown in a robotic voice with intermittent "mother ship refueling." As a further slap in the face, the newly revamped station brought back the despised Marconi. I covered this incident in my post, The Day the Radio Died.

A local podcast called PDX Sucks, hosted by Portlander, Robert Wagner, left a voicemail number for people to call and leave angry voicemails about the canning of Cort and Fatboy, and played the voicemails in a podcast. I was one of those people. I also wrote a couple of definitions for Kufo on Urban Dictionary, which people seemed to enjoy.

After a few weeks of angry tweeting and blogging, the Cort and Fatboy show made a comeback in podcast form. They resumed their midnight movie showings at the Baghdad, beginning with Raising Arizona. Also, Sarah X. Dylan along with Greg Nibler, former producer of the Rick Emerson Show, began a new podcast, Funemployment Radio. Cort and Fatboy eventually moved their podcast to PDX.fm, a podcast network run by Robert Wagner of PDX Sucks. After a while, Rick Emerson started a show on PDX.fm as well.

I listened to PDX Sucks, Cort and Fatboy, and Funemployment Radio for a while, and the list began to grow. At one point, PDX.fm hosted a large Portland telethon. This happened uncannily simultaneous with me posting a video about a mock fund raiser. I became irrationally concerned that people involved in the real fund raiser may have thought I was making fun of them. This is now one of many embarrassing life memories.

After a while, all the podcasts came to be too much. In the past, I could have the radio on in the background while working, and the Cort and Fatboy show would come on, and I could stop and listen. But I couldn't work while listening to a podcast. My podcast listening dwindled down to just Cort and Fatboy, and eventually, I stopped listening to that on a regular basis, as well. In 2010, my Portland media interest diminished, and I made a comeback on YouTube.

In April of 2011, I don't remember how, but I found out that Kufo had gone off the air. After the Alpha Broadcasting revamp, ratings plummeted until the station just didn't hold up any longer. What was 101 KUFO since 1989 was replaced by talk radio. I have memories of listening to the radio in my room as a kid in the 90s and hearing the KUFO call letters. As of April 2011, that station is no more.

Around the same time, I'm unsure of the proximity or sequence, Robert Wagner sold Cascadia.fm, formerly known as PDX.fm. He went back to being an independent blogger/ podcaster.

And now, in conclusion to the saga, the Cort and Fatboy show has ended. The final show was held live at the Baghdad Theatre. Regrettably, I wasn't able to attend because I had accepted a late shift before I knew about the show. But it's over.

And now, I have decided to follow suit and end this blog. This was chapter one of J-Dubb's Theatre. Chapter two, my YouTube channel, is going strong. But this blog has been defunct for a little over a year now. So I've decided, rather than letting it dwindle into the ether of abandoned blogs, I will give it a ceremonious ending.

And so, just as the Mayans predicted, December 21 2012 will be the end. Stay tuned...

edit: At the time this post was written, I had not published anything to this blog since October 2011. It was very much a defunct blog. As of June 2020, all videos that were uploaded to the J-Dubb's Theatre YouTube channel, between October 2011 and the date of this post, have been published to this blog, dated according to their original upload dates.