RIP Cheezeface

Blog, Entertainment, Random — August 25, 2009 at 11:58

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was a radio station, let’s call it WJFK, and on that radio station was quite possibly the greatest line-up a radio station has ever known. Howard Stern mornings, a bunch of random crap middays (okay, so it wasn’t perfect), Don and Mike afternoons, Ron and Fez nights, and The Hideout even later nights. Now since this was a long long time ago, it predated all concepts of podcasts, live streams, or HD2 subchannels, so for people who didn’t live in the galaxy where this radio station broadcast, they were shit out of luck as far as listening.

But for those souls who dared venture into the rebel world of the “underground” there was a new hope against this empire, and empire which had no interest in letting people choose what station and where they wanted to listen to it. For those people there was a jedi, er, a man, a man named Cheezeface, a man who went by other names, but for the purposes of this lame Star Wars themed obiturary, we’ll just call him that. Cheeze was a helper, he provided people everywhere a chance to listen to this fantastic radio station from wherever they wanted, and even possibly even more useful, he recorded and cataloged each and every show and posted it Usenet, the rebel alliance of the internet past.

But this never quite seemed enough for Cheeze. He did all this because he loved the station and wanted share it with everyone else. But he possibly loved the station too much. Some might call him a fan, others might call him an uber-fan, others might call him and out and out stalker. That’s what the police called him after he spent too much time contacting and even at one point hanging out near the house of one the station’s host. Clearly, he had some boundary issues, but it was never all the clear to Cheeze. He in his mind was the brave soul standing up to the suits and making this station available to the world and for that, however possibly psychotic, thought he was due something, anything. But he wasn’t even ever allowed to call in to his favorite show, so over time you could speculate this ate at him, and his ’stalker’ status only became more and more a reality.

So what does this have to do with this website and the DC AM? Well we’re a show of characters and one of those characters is Original Wall, and Original Wall was a beneficiary of Cheezeface’s good deeds. While living outside the area for a time he was able to listen to all the shows at his complete leisure because Cheeze had the good sense to see podcasts for what they were before any executive ever could, just another way to get the word out for a show. But after some time of grinding away and posting all these episodes Cheeze grew tired and his recordings became more and more unreliable, so Original Wall, now back in the area, took over the job. Through doing so Original Wall would occasionally swap e-mails with Cheeze, pinging him to see if he had any of the missing older episodes, or on whatever techniques he was using to turn FM airwaves into a listenable MP3. His advice sometimes made no sense, and other times was spot on, and then other times he asked for an address to send a crate of audio CD’s over so someone else could have his archives. Unfortunately Original Wall knew of Cheeze’s propensity to want to drive by people’s houses, so he never got those CD’s, but still, you could certainly tell Cheeze was enthusiastic about the station and it’s content.

So it’s now a sad duty to report that Cheeze has passed. He was internet “underground” hero to some, a super-fan caller to others, and the stereotyped creepy message-board (or is it mailbag?) weirdo to others. RIP Cheezeface

To those that never heard him, here’s a clip:

The news story from DCRTV.com:

Carl Grossman Dies – 8/24 – DCRTV gets confirmation that Carl Grossman, 60, the Leesburg man who pleaded guilty in Fairfax County Court in May 2007 to a misdemeanor charge of stalking in connection with a January 2007 incident in which former WJFK afternoon host Don Geronimo (aka Michael Sorce) received a letter that allegedly contained threats to himself and his family, has died. Grossman, who had been a frequent caller on the Don and Mike O’Meara show, was given a one-year jail sentence with 10 months suspended, followed by a year of probation and a period of supervised mental health care. Grossman’s sister, Sara, tells DCRTV that her brother’s death “was very sudden and unexpected. Of course, my family blames Don Geronimo for his death in a weird way.” She adds: “Our view is that if Don had accepted Carl’s written apology, or allowed Carl to pay a fine and be on probation instead of insisting that no plea could be reached unless a jail sentence was attached, then Carl would not have been fired from his job, would not have been denied unemployment benefits, would not have lost health insurance, could have gone to see doctors and afford medications for his asthma, and would not have died uninsured and with respiratory failure that he could not afford to have treated properly.” She says that Carl went to an emergency room last Wednesday. He was released from the hospital on Friday and was found dead of an apparent asthma attack on Saturday morning after placing a 911 call at 5 AM…..

Tags: bad star wars analogies, cheeseface, Featured, hero, internet, radio, rip, stalker, underground, wjfk