The magic of sports radio

For nearly two months in the summer of 2010 I commuted 65 miles from my home to LA daily for internship and research. I got into a set rhythm: I woke up at 5:15, was in the car and on the road by 5:45 armed with a tall mug of coffee. I would be in LA by 7:30 or 7:45 at the latest. I tried playing some of my music during this mind-numbing drive to entertain myself but soon ran out of good songs to play. That is when I walked down the dark murky path to sports talk radio.

710 ESPN is LA's self-professed sports leader and the official home of the much revered Lakers. In a couple days I knew the entire lineup: Mike and Mike in the morning followed by the irascible Colin Cowherd. Andrew Siciliano and former Laker Mychal (yes that is not a typo) Thompson took over till the afternoon. Steve Mason and John Ireland came on air from 3-6 and A Martinez (I never found out his true first name) and Brian Long wrapped up the evening.

I had a fun time listening to these guys banter and make awkward jokes. Andrew and Mychal were the funniest of them all, in my opinion. (sadly I found out about ten months ago that this show was replaced by the Max and Marcellus show) They squabbled like old married couple. Colin Cowherd was downright crazy and was never afraid to hide it.

Sports radio has a stigma attached to it. Print sports journalists malign it for sensationalizing sports and making a big deal out of non events. Radio hosts are blamed for playing the same audio clips over and over and for fawning over the people they interview or the teams their stations represent.

Now all of this definitely true. But that is the very nature of the beast. These guys have to be on air for hours. Unlike TV people, they don't have the added advantage of using visuals to capture the viewers' attentions. There are no fancy graphics or interactive animations. So what do they do? They talk in a highly animated voice. They produce exaggerated laughs. They make dramatic pauses. They take a non-incident and stretch it across shows - horse beaten to death by M&M at 6 am would be resurrected by Mason and Ireland at 5:30 pm without any shame. A big part of these shows was taking calls from listeners. You'd have Randy from Burbank calling in to wax poetic about his brand of run-defense for the new-look Washington Redskins. Or Robert from Chatsworth expressing his fears over "Paulina" Gasol and "Andrea" Bynum (this was a real call, BTW - not making it up). If a guy blabbered too much, the hosts would swiftly cut his call. You can't cede control to armchair offensive coordinators, after all.

And that was the fun of it. A nice little ecosystem built entirely around sports its primary food source. They made my otherwise excruciating commute bearable. I was still pretty freaking exhausted every time I came home in the evening, but at least I didn't want to bash my head in.

A month's worth of newness

Well it’s been more than month since I have posted anything here and it’s damn well about time I changed that. I have been incredibly busy and have been totally absorbed by medical school and all the burdens that go with moving to a totally new place and getting adjusted to living there. But now I have begun to settle down into a fairly convenient routine and can give a good retrospect of the month that just passed.

On August 8, I boarded a painfully early morning flight from Los Angeles to St. Louis to start medical school at Washington University. The founders of my school must have been fond of misunderstandings, since its name provokes a lot of confusion.

“Is it in Washington?”

“Is it in Washington, D.C.?”

These are the two most common follow-up questions I get whenever I talk to someone not in the medical community. No wonder that in 1976, the Regents of the university finally sneaked in the qualifier “in St. Louis” to the school’s name to make it “Washington University in St. Louis.”

Usually its shortened to either WashU or WUStL. 

BTW if you haven’t got it by now, the school was named after our first president.

Orientation was from August 9-12. I was at a slight advantage at meeting a lot of my new classmates because more than half of the class had arrived in St. Louis early to do a week-long community health program. First day went by fairly briskly, and I spent an awful lot of time shaking hands and smiling and introducing myself. The two most common questions following introductions – “Where are you from?” and “Where did you do your undergrad?”

If time permitted, these were usually followed by “Where are you living right now?”

That evening, the school rented out the entire City Museum from 6-9 and threw a lavish reception party, replete with an open bar and a generous dinner. This was the type of affair with waiters circulating in and out of crowds, carrying trays laden with delicious appetizers and some kind of wine. The entire top brass showed up, and the Dean of admissions was seated at my table. I was awestruck. This man was literally directly responsible for my admission to the school. He was my interviewer way back in November of last year, and he was the one I wrote to express my interest after being waitlist. And he was the one who called me the next day to announce the happy news.

There were four other students at the table, and the talk turned to California. My class has a lot of Californians. The Dean made a joke about it: “When the creator made the world, he/she took the whole North American landmass and shook it thoroughly, and all the nuts fell down to California.” 

Hey-O!

The rest of the orientation days were, sadly, neither as eventful nor as exciting. We were bombarded with lectures and protocols and forms. Orientation culminated in what has now become a standard practice among medical schools, the white coat ceremony. It is a fairly recent tradition (Wikipedia tells me it was first introduced in late 1980’s) that marks the initiation of new medical students into the medical community. Each student is given a white coat and the class as a whole recites an oath to uphold the principles of medicine.

WashU makes us construct our own oath, partly because the Hippocratic oath is terribly outdated (it includes clauses like "to live in common with him[i.e. teacher] and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art." ) and partly because the school acknowledges that while the main tenets of medicine may not change, each new generation of physicians-to-be brings its own set of ideals. 

For that purpose, we were split into small groups. Each group, under the guidance of a faculty mentor, spent two hours brainstorming various ideas worthy of including in the oath. Two representatives were appointed from each group, and all the representatives met again to write the final product. If anyone is interested, here is the oath in full: Oath.

Now normally, I am faintly leery of such displays of solemnity because I think people take them for granted, thus diluting the significance of these events. However, I was very impressed with the gravitas and authenticity of the whole ceremony. Granted, we are all at a very young stage in our careers, but the boisterious idealism on display at the white coat ceremony is necessary to sustain the tough years ahead. Plus, everyone’s parents had a nice reason to feel happy and overwhelmed, which is always good. This post has grown too long already, and I will talk about classes, daily life etc. in my next post.

Life in the fast lane

I have wild dreams of becoming a famous writer. Occasionally, I muster up enough determination to crawl out of my laziness to jot short vignettes that I imagine could become smashing short stories. Hah delusions.

Anyway, I noticed I haven't written anything worthwhile in ages and although Lafayette manned the fort ably, I need to pitch in too.

So enjoy this vignette that will, in due time, become the next best Los Angeles novel:

My normal honk-to-mile frequency is around 2. 2.53, to be technical. But today I was easily approaching the freakishly astronomical realm of 10 honks per mile. I felt a sweet, deep jolt of savage satisfaction as my sweaty fist hit the vinyl expanse on the middle of the steering wheel. The oblong Toyota logo shuddered, almost in resonance with the loud honk that reverberated across the freeway, bouncing off fenders, plexiglass and tricked up wheels. It was loud and emphatic, proudly showcasing my frustration, vehemence and desperation.

Up in the air, down on the ground - a veteran sure and proud

A while ago, I saw the 2009 film Up in the Air, starring suavemeister George Clooney. It was your typical Clooney film, meaning it was slightly quirky, used a lot of close shots of his improbably perfect stubble, and exploited his prodigious talents in making mundane dialogue somehow seem interesting.

The movie has an interesting plot. Basically, Clooney plays this high-flying executive whose only job is to "consolidate" badly performing firms. If you haven't figures it out yet, it's just a nicer way of saying his job is to fire people. See, the company he works for specializes in this sort of thing (a repo agency for firms, if you will) so anytime a firm is not doing so hot, it will hire Clooney and Co. to come clean up. Clooney is your seasoned veteran: he has a gazillion frequent flyer miles (towards the end of the movie, he gets a special gold-plated card by American Airlines for becoming one of the very few people to accumulate ten million miles), and an equal number of club cards, credit cards, hotel discount cards and so on. Long story short, he has a change of heart, one predictably disastrous love affair, and decides to change his life for good.

The reason I brought up this movie is that lately I have been feeling like a veteran too. I may not have the same number of frequent flier miles that Clooney does, but I have certainly done more than a fair share of flying. Medical school interview sure have familiarized me with a LOT of airports that I would otherwise never have gone to. Since all of my interviews usually end around 4 pm in the afternoon, I end up taking the late evening flight back to LAX. That means I get to my apartment by 11 (on a good day) or midnight (on a mas o menos day).

And let me tell you something: no matter how much I hate the ridiculously long lines, no matter how irritated I get at the byzantine security procedures (I am severely glaring at you American for moronically counting my garment bag as a "third carry-on" bag), I definitely breath a nice, long sigh of joy and relief when I get down the escalator and see the giant pic of our esteemed mayor giving a wholesome grin. Damn it feels good to be back each and every time.

To round this off, here are some interesting tidbits from today:

• God I had this kid patient once and he had severe foot odor. He had sweaty feet! - overheard at Northwestern med school. 
•  My faculty interviewer was roommates with noted neurosurgeon Keith Black at the University of Michigan med school. He also partied hard with Magic Johnson when Magic was at Michigan State. Best quote from him: "We needled Keith a lot when he appeared on cover of Time." Medical celebrities!

The grand to-do list

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately (you should try it too - it's good for your health). I dusted off the cobwebs, oiled the creaky rusty brain and put it to work. And I realized that despite being in LA for the last three years, there are quite a few things I haven't had a chance to do. I have one more year before I graduate and leave the bubble, so here is a list of things I would like to do/accomplish before the year is over.

If I was Jay Leno (or David Letterman, pick your poison), now would be the time for the terrible in-house band to play some dramatic music and do a drum roll.


1. Get into a medical school. If that doesn't work out, the next best thing is getting a PhD in Computer Science.

2. Visit the USC campus. Everyone makes such a big deal out of the crosstown rivalry and I have never once visited the Trojan campus. Would be nice to do that.

3. Visit the Hollywood sign. You know the sign that every movie and TV show set in LA tries to get panoramic shots of? Yeah apparently you can hike up to that.

4. Attend a concert at Hollywood bowl. I have been to the LA Opera (cheap student tickets and an alert friend), but haven't been to the Bowl yet. It's quite expensive from what I've heard, but so is regret.

5. Spot a celebrity. Almost four years and one-and-a-half sightings (James Franco in Starbucks, Magic Johnson from across the street. Couple friends tried getting his attention, but he ignored them and drove away). Not enough, obviously. People reported seeing entities like Adam Sandler, Rajon Rondo, and a string of E and F-listers. I will make this happen this year, even if it means staking someone out and making them get a restraining order (I am looking at you Kim Kardashian. Nah just joking)

6. Publish a short story. Yeah it sucks that no one reads the pages and pages of stuff I write. But this year I am seriously going to try and get something published in the Westwind (the college literary magazine). Maybe I too will get discovered a la Justin "Look at my bangs" Bieber. 

Short list, but I am not too demanding.