Mike Webster

History

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1 year 18 weeks

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Personal Information

State

NY

Bio

I was born in East Orange, NJ, in 1963 and spent my entire childhood in North Jersey. I aborted a first attempt at college in 1981. I eventually earned a B.A. in Radio-TV/Film from Messiah College, Grantham, PA in 1986. I met Pamela Douglas at Messiah in 1983 and married her in 1989; we passed our eighteenth anniversary this year. She's not done with me yet. I went on to earn another degree, a B.Arch. from Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, in 1997. I am now a registered architect working in a firm in Ithaca, NY.

I am fond of attention, perhaps excessively so. My fifth grade teacher told my parents that I am a ham. All evidence supports the allegation. I did some theater in high school and college; I plague my co-workers with spontaneous bits of fluff designed to support a fantasy stand-up comedy career; and I keep a very short "private" journal of occasional light musings to be left in a conspicuous place just before I die to ensure my post-humous publication and instant fame.

At 43 years old, I'm almost done flattering myself that I will hit .400 for the New York Yankees someday. I have begun to flatter myself that I might write for This American Life someday.

Jesus Christ is my Savior; I struggle daily to make him my Lord.

What's your favorite public radio show?

This American Life. It taught me that stories don't have to be pretty to be humorous or redemptive, and that radio personalities don't need "radio voices" to tell them effectively.

What's your secret talent?

I can, when necessary, hold two jobs at once.

For instance, to support myself in college, I took night and weekend field assignments in Russia as Agent 008 for the British Secret Service. (I would have preferred more Mediterranean locations, but that other guy played better baccarat.) The work was tough and time-consuming--I had to kill many men with my bare hands on these trips--but I never handed in a school paper late.

By the way, not even my wife knows that my part-time job led directly to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. (Don't tell her.)

What song is stuck in your head right now, you know, a music wedgie?

At this moment, I am, mercifully, not at the mercy of any particular interior tape loop. But, now that you mention it, there are a few songs that can lodge inside me for hours like the skin of a corn kernel stuck between your teeth. Like, for instance, "Girlfriend is Better" by the Talking Heads. Ohhhhh, GREAT. Thanks a lot.

What sound is most characteristic of where you live?

During the spring meltoff, white water plunges over the Ithaca Falls into the surrounding gorge, pushing white noise out into the entire Fall Creek neighborhood.

What's your favorite sound memory?

The cafeteria wing of my town's high school was perched on a gentle hill across the street from the house of my preadolescent years. On certain spring nights, live local rock bands would play at the annual dances the grown-up high-school students would hold there. My favorite sound memory is of those bands' electric bass notes escaping the cafeteria's glassy enclosure and floating down to us across that grassy hill.

Which station do you listen to most?

WEOS, Geneva, NY

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