On the upcoming “Saturday Six Pack with Mark Maynard”…. episode four preview

I won’t bore you with the background. Now that we’re about a month in, I suppose most of you know that I’ve got a Saturday evening radio program on Ypsilanti’s AM 1700, during which I invite people into the studio to share a six pack with me, and take calls from strangers, right? Well, if not… if this is something that’s completely new to you… head over to iTunes and invest a few hours in listening through The Saturday Six Pack with Mark Maynard archive and getting caught up. Otherwise, just keep reading for a preview of the upcoming show, which promises to be pretty terrific.

We’ll be starting the evening by talking with my friend Jason Wright. Jason, in the early ’80s, when he was just a kid, was in a band called Shortwave Mystery… a band that I’ve heard about for years but never actually heard. Well, come Saturday night at 6:00, we’ll be playing a few tracks from their highly sought after EP “Pilots,” and hearing about the formation of the band, which has been credited as being one of the first American responses to the likes of Joy Division and Cabaret Voltaire. (Copies of their record are known to sell for over $1,000 a piece when they go up for sale.) So, if you’d like to hear a little music history from a local Ypsilantian who was actually there, or if you’re just curious as to what the synth-driven electronic music of rural teenagers in Central California sounded like in ’83, I’d encourage you to tune in… Here’s what they looked like at the time, by the way.

Then we’ll call our old friend Pete Larson in Kenya, where he claims to have taken the following photo this morning. As of right now, I only have a cryptic note from Pete explaining the existence of the poster, but I’m sure we can get to the bottom of it… “It’s not you,” he says. “There’s another Mark Maynard here, a spiritual leader, who has a radio show on African AM.”

By then it should be about 7:00, and we’ll be joined by Brigid Mooney, who will be bringing in yet another one of her “shy comedian” friends to talk with us about the burden of being funny.

This will be followed by a continuation of last week’s discussion on the purchasing and consumption of leftovers.

If you listened to last week’s episode of The Saturday Six Pack with Mark Maynard, you heard Ypsilanti artist Cre Fuller solicit people to come into the studio with their leftovers and allow him to bid on them. Well, the pilot episode of the segment, which Cre calls The Hungry Collector, actually worked. Miraculously, two people in the listening audience just happened to be in their homes with recent leftovers handy, and they made their way down to the AM 1700 studio. And Cre, by the end of the segment, was able to purchase about 16 ounces of potato leek soup with homemade Tasso ham for $5. It was a lovely thing to experience, and, if everything goes well, we’d like to try it again this week, in the 7:00 hour of the Six Pack, this Saturday. But, this time, as I understand it, there will be a twist. Cre will no longer be the only bidder. That’s right, there will be two collectors looking to ingest your leftovers, so you’ll have twice the opportunity to make money. All you have to do is drop by the AM 1700 studios at around 7:00 PM this Saturday with your dogie bag from Red Rock, Bona Sera, Beezy’s, Haab’s, The Wurst Bar, or wherever, and we’ll get you on the air to make your pitch, whether it be for a pile of cold, half-eaten french fries or the last few succulent bits of pork still clinging to a bone. “Can you start a bidding war with a potato skin?” You never know. This could be your big chance to strike it rich.

And, then, once it’s good and dark, Patrick Elkins will be presenting a shadow puppet show on human sexuality to the people outside the AM 1700 studio, which I will be helping him to narrate over the air. (To our knowledge, this will be the first AM broadcast of shadow puppetry ever!) So, if you’ve been putting off the talk with your kids about where babies come from, now’s your chance. Bring you kids to the intersection of North Washington and Pearl at about 7:30 PM on Saturday night, and watch as Patrick opens their minds to beauty of conception and majesty of childbirth.

And then, of course, we’ll just talk about random nonsense until the six pack is gone, as is our tradion.

Oh, and we’ll be taking calls throughout the evening. So, if you have something that you’d like to say, just call 734.217.8624 and we’ll try to get you on the air.

And, if you don’t live 17 feet or less from the studio, as we’ve discussed before, you’ll want to stream the show online, which you can do either on the AM1700 website or by way of TuneIn.com.

Click here for this week’s Facebook event page, where you can see who else in the community will be listening, invite your friends, etc. (As of right now, we have 30 confirmed listeners, so we still have a few milliwatts to spare. Reserve yours now.)

And remember to call me between 6:00 and 8:00 on Saturday evening at 734.217.8624… Don’t make me call you.