The Chairman
02-23-2003, 08:34 PM
Ron Quixote
Any discussion of the history of comic radio past, present or future must include Ron and Fez of The Ron and Fez Show. It is more than a radio talk show, just like Don Quixote is more than a novel.
To myriad listeners, Ron and Fez are their "Lord Ron Bennington" and "Lord Fez Watley" and their show is the comic Bible as spoken word. Their only rivals in the imaginative radio of the past ten years is the duo of Opie and Anthony.
Ron "Quixote" is the peer of Hamlet. Fez, his "Sancho," is a match for Sir John Falstaff. Higher praise I do not know how to render.
The Ron and Fez Show is a complex phenomenon, yet it can be distilled into just one central relationship, that between Ron Quixote - Sancho Fezzie and their listeners. Like The Don and Sancho, Ron and Fez never fail their listeners or each other in love, loyalty, or each other's wisdom (or their various "interns" un-wisdom...)
There was nothing like it in the O&A Show. Anthony's Horatio, the straight man for Opie's Hamlet, and the hubris of their producers allowed their show to be destroyed by Infinity Broadcasting's King Henry V. It was obvious from listening to both shows that RnF and O&A are preternaturally gifted listeners, but what distinguishes Ron and Fez is that they listen to their listeners. Opie (like King Lear) scarcely listened to anyone. Anthony (like Antony and Cleopatra) sometimes hilariously couldn't listen to Opie.
I think I can establish the principle that change, the deepening and internalization of the self, is absolutely antithetical when we bring Ron and Fez and Opie and Anthony together. Put another way, Fez and Ron develop newer and richer egos by hearing one another, whereas O&A developed the same process only by hearing themselves.
While very nearly everything that can happen does happen on the Ron and Fez Show, what matters most are the ongoing conversations between Fez and Ron. Turn on the radio at random, and you are likely to find yourself in the midst of one of their exchanges, angry or whimsical, but ultimately always loving, and founded on mutual respect, especially for their listeners. Ron and Fez never have fallings out on their air, one of the few areas where the quixotic figures of Cervantes differ from our buddays.
Even when they argue most fiercely, (which is rare) Ron and Fez's courtesy for each other (and their loyal fan base) is unfailing, and they never stop learning from listening to the other. And just like Don Quixote's protagonists, by hearing, they change.
We owe much to Ron and Fez as we do the greatest characters created in literature. Yet Melville's Ahab has no Fez; he is as isolated as Hamlet or Macbeth. Otherwise Ron-esque, poor Emma Bovary also possesses no Fez and dies ultimately from self-overhearing. Huckleberry Finn finds his Fez in Jim (Black Earl?) and is so saved from withering gloriously in the air of solitude. Raskolnikov, in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, confronts what might be seen as an his "anti-Fez" in the nihilistic Svidrigailov.
Whenever there is an affectionate (and frequently testy) debate involving Ron and Fez, they gradually take on each other's attributes. Ron's visionary brilliance and impeccable timing begins to acquire a cannier dimension, and Fez's commonsensical shrewdness starts to mutate into the play world of quest (just like in Don Quixote). Their natures never fuse, but they reflexively depend upon one another (and their listeners)....and always to a comic point.
Like Hamlet, Ron is but mad north-northwest; he is anything but a fool, nor is Fez. Like Prince Hal and Falstaff, they play a very complex game, happily without ambivalence. So complex indeed is their play that the audience is fated to listen to their own Ron and Fez Show, because Ron and Fez, like Shakespeare or Cervantes, are as impartial as they are complex.
There is clear nonproblematical gaiety in the show. In fact, The Ron and Fez Show rather embodies the tragic sense in life, Ron's "madness" may be seen as a protest against the nece
Any discussion of the history of comic radio past, present or future must include Ron and Fez of The Ron and Fez Show. It is more than a radio talk show, just like Don Quixote is more than a novel.
To myriad listeners, Ron and Fez are their "Lord Ron Bennington" and "Lord Fez Watley" and their show is the comic Bible as spoken word. Their only rivals in the imaginative radio of the past ten years is the duo of Opie and Anthony.
Ron "Quixote" is the peer of Hamlet. Fez, his "Sancho," is a match for Sir John Falstaff. Higher praise I do not know how to render.
The Ron and Fez Show is a complex phenomenon, yet it can be distilled into just one central relationship, that between Ron Quixote - Sancho Fezzie and their listeners. Like The Don and Sancho, Ron and Fez never fail their listeners or each other in love, loyalty, or each other's wisdom (or their various "interns" un-wisdom...)
There was nothing like it in the O&A Show. Anthony's Horatio, the straight man for Opie's Hamlet, and the hubris of their producers allowed their show to be destroyed by Infinity Broadcasting's King Henry V. It was obvious from listening to both shows that RnF and O&A are preternaturally gifted listeners, but what distinguishes Ron and Fez is that they listen to their listeners. Opie (like King Lear) scarcely listened to anyone. Anthony (like Antony and Cleopatra) sometimes hilariously couldn't listen to Opie.
I think I can establish the principle that change, the deepening and internalization of the self, is absolutely antithetical when we bring Ron and Fez and Opie and Anthony together. Put another way, Fez and Ron develop newer and richer egos by hearing one another, whereas O&A developed the same process only by hearing themselves.
While very nearly everything that can happen does happen on the Ron and Fez Show, what matters most are the ongoing conversations between Fez and Ron. Turn on the radio at random, and you are likely to find yourself in the midst of one of their exchanges, angry or whimsical, but ultimately always loving, and founded on mutual respect, especially for their listeners. Ron and Fez never have fallings out on their air, one of the few areas where the quixotic figures of Cervantes differ from our buddays.
Even when they argue most fiercely, (which is rare) Ron and Fez's courtesy for each other (and their loyal fan base) is unfailing, and they never stop learning from listening to the other. And just like Don Quixote's protagonists, by hearing, they change.
We owe much to Ron and Fez as we do the greatest characters created in literature. Yet Melville's Ahab has no Fez; he is as isolated as Hamlet or Macbeth. Otherwise Ron-esque, poor Emma Bovary also possesses no Fez and dies ultimately from self-overhearing. Huckleberry Finn finds his Fez in Jim (Black Earl?) and is so saved from withering gloriously in the air of solitude. Raskolnikov, in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, confronts what might be seen as an his "anti-Fez" in the nihilistic Svidrigailov.
Whenever there is an affectionate (and frequently testy) debate involving Ron and Fez, they gradually take on each other's attributes. Ron's visionary brilliance and impeccable timing begins to acquire a cannier dimension, and Fez's commonsensical shrewdness starts to mutate into the play world of quest (just like in Don Quixote). Their natures never fuse, but they reflexively depend upon one another (and their listeners)....and always to a comic point.
Like Hamlet, Ron is but mad north-northwest; he is anything but a fool, nor is Fez. Like Prince Hal and Falstaff, they play a very complex game, happily without ambivalence. So complex indeed is their play that the audience is fated to listen to their own Ron and Fez Show, because Ron and Fez, like Shakespeare or Cervantes, are as impartial as they are complex.
There is clear nonproblematical gaiety in the show. In fact, The Ron and Fez Show rather embodies the tragic sense in life, Ron's "madness" may be seen as a protest against the nece