Luke, Luke, Don't Tell Me...

There's meta-rada this week around town about NPR national reporter, and ex-Seattleite Luke Burbank. He's guest-hosting for Peter Sagal on NPR's witty weekly game show, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me (KUOW Saturdays, 10-11a) for 3 summer weeks- he started Saturday last.

The show's panel stars Paula Poundstone, P.J. O'Rourke, Mo Rocca, Roy Blount and other national class wits.

Burbank's day job for NPR is living in his shoes; chasing the national news and thrusting a microphone in its face. You'll hear him on pet stories and disasters; he interviews Newt Gingrich, Nancy Pelosi and Tom Tancreado.

He told the Seattle Times Mark Rahner: "I'm like the kid from Life cereal. "Give it to Luke. He'll cover anything." They put me on the Michael Jackson trial, which I think they thought was a scut assignment but I thought was awesome. I hung out there for a month and just observed. I was in the courtroom. I got to see Michael Jackson up close and personal, which, by the way, is somehow more disturbing than seeing him on TV."

Luke, 30, who once did comedy in downtown clubs, revealed in the hilarious Rahner piece, he'd once worked on the Times doing local sports scut work. "The computer system they used to use there was the kind of computer you felt like you should open the back up and there would be a parrot inside, like from The Flintstones, and he would look up and go, 'It's a living.'"

He has lots of friends in the radio business around here. And why not? Luke's a boyish, energetic, smart and funny guy who's paid his dues and is on his way up... to somewhere.

In a more biddified treatment, the Seattle P-I's Susan Paynter in her weekly column did a good job letting Luke describe his hard scrabble up in the Seattle market. He worked at KJR sports radio, he was fired from a country music station. He worked Metro Traffic. He had "every possible lowly gig in Seattle radio." 

He once even had his own Saturday show on KVI, which he says was" ridiculously bad," and short-lived.

But neither Paynter nor Rahner mentioned Burbank's Seattle right-wing talk radio experience, even though he says, he told them about it. 

(One of our favorite rants is about how Seattle media has always studiously refused to even acknowledge conservative talk radio- much less report on it. Some of it is infra-medium faux-haughty, [TV speaks only to newspapers and newspapers speak only to God. Radio, of course, is goose poop on their shoes] but mostly it's the macular degeneration caused by living in a liberal bubble. When talk radio comes up and bites them in the ass, they act so surprised...).

Luke went to work on KVI producing for the quirky/bombastic, libertarian Peter Weissbach (he's Canadian so his name rhymes with "fries crack") who was the freek of the moment on the afternoon drive. "I did that for about a year," he says, and when Kirby's producer left, I took over on the AM shift- mostly because Weissbach scared the shit out of me."

He says he was really young and not really interested in politics when he got that gig. "It was a big improvement for Peter when Dave [Boze] come on to produce him."

He really liked Kirby (who doesn't?) and Carleen Johnson (who wouldn't). "But the 3am wake up calls were brutal."

So when a job opened up over at KUOW, he jumped at the chance. "

That made things a little awkward at KVI, he says, "...since I had kind of become part of the family, and was kind of an adopted son to lots of the listeners... and here I was leaving for the enemy... but eh, what are you gonna do?"

Over the years, no matter where he was working, it seemed you could always hear Luke doing Metro Traffic. He started working there when he was a sophomore at the UW.

"I learned a TON about radio from them. You are on like 10 different stations every day, hearing different formats and trying to adjust your style accordingly. None of the stations (except the NPR stations, which are on a very regimented clock) stay in their windows, so you are always trying to jump around and do these little updates without missing someone else. It's super stressful, and super good for any person wanting to learn radio.

These days, if I'm on the Brooklyn Bridge during a transit strike, or outside a courthouse somewhere doing a series of updates for NPR... I am steadied by the fact that it will be 10 times easier than trying to work an average shift at Metro Traffic. My hat is off to those brave folks."

Burbank says it's been interesting to be on both ends of the ideological spectrum.

"Because (as clichéd as it sounds) the two sides have way more in common than they realize. Each genuinely think they have the country's best interest at heart. And each think the other side is literally trying to make things worse for people. Of course neither one has it all right, and neither one is actively trying to screw things up.

But I guess polemical rants sell more Car Toys spots... so they're probably here to stay." 

Comments

[Fremont]

Great piece, Bla'M! WWDTM is one of my faves....I covet a Carl Kasell recording on my answering machine. Another Seattle boy makes the news...

[joanie]

Agree, Fremont. Another good commentary and KUOW is definitely a good place to go for some R&R.

Luke's comment about cons and libs having more in common than not is provocative to me. . . "neither one has it all right." I wonder what his politics are?

If we are all the same, what are we arguing about?

[Fremont]

Joans, have you seen or read Thank You for Smoking? Argument and spin is an end in itself. Moral imperatives?

[joanie]

No, I haven't seen it but have seen previews. . . and thanks for the trailer! I want to see it. We are living in a time when down is up, inside is outside, and global warming isn't . . . HELP!

[Lucille Anderson]

Hi,

Any idea where Peter Weissbach is broadcasting these days?