Private Parts (28 page)

Sly stopped the conversation and grabbed the phone: "She learned everything she knows from her first boyfriend."

Great guests. I'm still waiting for them to call back.

"I love him, I really
love him." -- Sylvester Stallone

THE WACKY STALLONE FAMILY

I could write a whole chapter about my exploits with the wacky Stallone family. You never know what's going to happen. Especially when Jackie, Stallone's mother, shows up. If she isn't making some cuckoo astrological predictions or claiming that Jesse Jackson offered her the vice presidential spot in 1988, she's having huge

fights with her ex-husband. They were reunited for the first time in six years when Frank Sr. called in when Jackie was in the studio. They seemed to be having a pleasant enough conversation but then Jackie got real and revealed that Frank was the one who got tired of sleeping with her.

"Let me tell you, when she was pregnant with Sylvester, she put on sixty-five pounds," Frank Sr. said.

"I did not!" Jackie maintained.

Soon after, he hung up and Jackie started whispering, not realizing she was still on the air.

"Thank God I said the right things about him, or he woulda shot me. He was the worst lay in the world." We all cracked up. But we weren't laughing the next time these two tangled horns.

"He couldn't get it up when he was twenty-five," Jackie complained about her seventy-two-year-old ex-husband, who was now dating a twenty-five-year-old he'd met when she was seventeen. "What's he doing with her?" she railed. It didn't take long for Gary to come in and tell us that Frank Sr. was on the phone.

"I'm ready to jump through this phone. I just can't believe this wrinkly, messy, vulgar woman saying things about her own family that just won't quit!" he bellowed. "She is probably the lowest vermin that I've ever known in my life and it was a sorry day when I met her."

"Listen, you pig," Jackie countered, "let me tell you, you old son of a bitch. You beat me up and put me in the hospital so many times, and choked me to death so many times, and you like to go on the air and say you're basically a nice guy. You prick -- you never supported your kids. You never gave a goddamn for -- "

"You are the biggest goddamn liar!" he screamed.

"Fuck you!" Jackie said and we screamed. Thank God for seven-second delay.

"Get this slob off the phone!" Jackie ordered.

"You were nothing when I met you," Frank said.

"What the hell are you doing with an eighteen-year-old girl?" Jackie wondered.

"She's giving me more than you ever could, that's what."

"What the hell did you ever give me, you old bastard? I supported you for years. You goddamn half-ass hairdresser. I opened the business, I put you to work, and then you stole all the money. And I

bought the house and goddamnit, you put a gun to my head and made me sign it over to you for another old broad married to a cabdriver with five kids who dumped you six months later," Jackie railed.

"You are absolutely insane!" Frank said.

"You can go to hell! And don't you ever talk to me again, you fucking creep! You gave me no pleasure. Goddamnit, you couldn't even fuck!"

"Whoaaa, wait a second," I jumped in. "You're gonna lose our license. I can't bleep you that fast." Jackie was still yelling off-mike while I waited for the delay to build up. I begged her not to use the f-word.

"I won't use the f-word, but as far as sex -- twice a year, he'd say, 'Okay, if you're ready, lay down.' And then if I pretended I was excited, he said, 'Look, if you're gonna act like you're excited, forget it!' You're from hunger!" she screamed. "He'd bring home bushels of tomatoes and peppers and tell me to can them. I'm not an Italian housewife. What do I know about canning? He punched me in the jaw."

"Why don't you keep quiet and listen to the truth?" he said.

"That is the truth!"

"You're insane!"

"Well, I had to be to have you," she said.

"You are insane, woman."

"But you two produced a movie star"
I offered helpfully.

"No help from him. Any guy coulda done the job in three seconds. He didn't even want Sylvester -- he tried to get me to have an abortion! Yes, you did! And I pretended I got one. You were very surprised to find out I had a kid."

"Is that true, Mr. Stallone?" I asked.

"It certainly is!" Jackie butted in.

"She's really off her rocker," he said.

"You didn't want this kid and you know it!" Jackie screamed.

"You remind me of an old crinkled-up Genoa salami. That's all you will be all your life. Good-bye!" he yelled and hung up.

"You know, you have to say to yourself, Why? Why? Why?" I questioned. "Why does this have to happen at ten-thirty? Why can't it happen during drive time at seven o'clock? I'll have to replay this tomorrow at seven."

FRANK STALLONE, JR.

I even got Frank Jr. in on the act. I skillfully interrogated Frank on his relationship to his superfamous sibling, utilizing my best Perry Mason.

"You and Sylvester never tickled each other?"

"No."

"You never saw Sylvester naked?"

"Of course, he's my brother."

"Did you admire his large penis?"

"No."

"You didn't even look at it? Did you look at his genitals? Have you seen your brother's genitals?"

"Of course!"

"And you looked at them, is that correct?"

"Of course."

"So you do admit to looking at your brother's genitals?"

"Looking at -- no. It was like a glance."

"Did you look at Sylvester Stallone's genitals? Answer the question."

"It wasn't like sitting there beaming in."

"No, but did you see them? Yes?"

"Of course I've seen them because we're brothers."

"Did you compare who was bigger?"

"Uh, yes."

"You did. So you admit now, not only looking at your brother's genitals but doing..."

"No, I was doing this in my own mind."

"Oh, in your mind you were thinking about Sylvester's penis. Admit it!"

"No, no, no, no."

"All right, so there you go. You're as homo as I am," I said triumphantly. "I shoulda been a lawyer."

"His show is great! He possesses brilliance."
-- Billy Dee Williams

"Stern's conversation is... the national id run wild.... His over-the-top humor draws a road map of American society's taboos of public and private behavior and brings them audaciously, often hilariously, into the open."

-- Richard Zoglin,
Time
magazine

CHIP Z'NUFF

ROCK STAR FROM THE BAND ENUFF Z'NUFF

It started out innocently enough when I was asking Chip and Donnie, the two rock stars from the band Enuff Z'Nuff, if they got any famous women. Enuff Z'Nuff is one of my favorites, and I cannot believe that, after three albums, they are not superstars.

"Chip got Madonna," Donnie squealed. "He got her back when she was a drummer in L.A."

"Is that true, Chip?" I was out of my mind. "You nailed Madonna? Let me smell your hand!" "I ain't telling," Chip said.

"Did you smack her around? I can't believe you got Madonna and you never told me in private!"

The next time they came on, Chip was foolish enough to tell me the details of what happened before we went on the air. He said he had sex with Madonna and peed inside her. We argued, because I said that it was impossible to pee inside of a woman. It was impossible to carry on with this graphic discussion on the radio, so I cleaned up the story a little. But I couldn't wait to talk about it.

"These guys told me what went on with Madonna!"
I teased. "Robin, if I told you, you couldn't do the news. It would
be
the news!" At a break we told Robin. Then she started in. "Was it out of disgust? Was it an accident or did you really want to?" she wondered.

It was time to go for it. "Chip, no kidding, Madonna goes for that? Did she get mad? These guys use women as a toilet and
I'm
sexist?" I blurted out.

"Hey, maybe Chip just had to go. He gets wild with women and he can't make the trek to the bathroom. When you see one of her videos, Chip, do you say, I've got to go to the bathroom'?" I asked. After they left, we told a less graphic version of the story. "How cool is that that Chip peed on Madonna?" I said, even though he

insisted that he had peed
in
her. "That story should carry him for twenty years! And he's so casual about it. I would do bits on that endlessly for the rest of my life. Talking about it, analyzing it. And he's going, 'Why are you guys making such a big deal about the fact that I peed on Madonna?' Chip, don't you get it?
You peed on
MADONNA!"

Naturally, the next time they came on, I brought it up again. "Where's Madonna? I have to urinate," I said. "Poor Chip. Hey, you should be proud of that. That's a rock 'n' roll legend. It says something about you. It means you got street years on you. All these other guys are waiting to get Madonna and you just abuse her that way, just to teach her a lesson.
'Okay, shut up! I have to go to the bathroom now.'
That's so cool.
'Hey, there's no bathroom available and I'm a man. This is what I'm doing.'
That's so cool. But I don't understand it. Couldn't you go to the bathroom? You did this as a thing to turn her on, right?"

"It was a long time ago," Chip protested. "It wasn't like that at all."

"You see that guy Fred over there?" I pointed. "He farted in front of Gloria Estefan. It was really cool, she was all fouled out. But you take the cake. You're our hero!"

I began to fantasize them winning a Grammy: "We'd like to thank the Academy. We'd like to thank God. And we'd like to thank Madonna. When we didn't have a toilet, we used her."

Chip was uncomfortable. I tried to press him, but he would only say it was a one-night fling. Off the air, he couldn't stop bragging.

"Let me ask you something," I said. "If you had stayed with Madonna for a couple of weeks, do you think you would have built up to something? Like doing number
two
or something?"

Chip wouldn't answer.

"The [Howard Stern radio show] has made its own fairly major contribution to the rancid nature of public talk on the East Coast." -- Alexander Cockburn, The Nation

"Howard is an improv actor. I don't think he believes half the things he says. He's picked his role well and he's given people the vortex to let the asshole in themselves come out."
-- Sally Kirkland

Another celebrity you have to love, Joe Franklin. I attempted male' to-male sodomy on the set, but he wouldn't hear of it.

Sally Kirkland (right) on set with Tawny Kitaen and me
as
Larry King).

"Howard Stern without a radio microphone would be a goofy, lost child from the Aerosmith generation. Radio without Howard Stern would be a bore."
-- Geraldo Rivera

"Howard knows I love him."
-- Steven Tyler, Aerosmith

Yakking it up with
actor/motorcycle-accident victim Gary Busey during the Head Injury Club for Men sketch on my TV show.

M
ore Hate Mail

I received your reply to my letter and decided to try what you suggested about listening to Howard's morning radio show with an open mind. Attached is a typed copy of a daily diary of sorts with my notes on what I heard each morning for one week that offended me, insulted my intelligence and made me want to change channels.

7/25/91

In discussing Linda Lavin's divorce, Howard says it is

OK for a man to commit adultery if his wife is ugly.

7/26/91

Howard says "all women should be skinny" with enormous breasts."

7/30/91

Pee Wee Herman is a pretty easy target this week but Michael Landon??? Howard bashes Landon as not being a real family man because he was married three times. Howard believes himself to be a real family man - he has only one wife and family. However, if his wife gets fat, he will be forced to bang the millions of women who hit on him because he is so famous.

Dear Mr. Stern:

So you're no. 1 in the ratings. That only proves that America is a land of perverts.

Howard:

Your show sucks. That person that says it's the Howard Stern Show now here's Howard Stern. He sounds like a Jewish guy eating corned beef in a deli.

Your jealous of Mark and Brian because they have national tv show. The reason there ratings on tv is not higher because there competing with the most popular tv show Sixty Minutes. Why can't you get a national tv show.

Why don't you do plastic surgery on your ugly face.

I
f You're Not Like Me I Hate You
Chapter 8

Every once in a while I have this fantasy that I should be lying in the sun somewhere on vacation. But where? To tell the truth, I hate every fucking place in the world. I hate Europe. I hate the Bahamas and all those islands filled with hostile natives. I'm uncomfortable asking black guys to serve me. What about Mexico? They have a corrupt government, endless begging in the streets, and you get diarrhea from eating a piece of fruit. I also hate the hassle of going on a plane and feel no excitement for seeing strange and unusual places. I have no desire to expose my children to other cultures and give them incredible learning experiences. Hell, I hate leaving the house. I like the food here, and I got a pool for swimming.

A rare out-of-country experience, my honeymoon in Mexico. The Mexicans do everything to humiliate you. No Mexican would wear that stupid hat.