They Call Me Baba Booey (9 page)

“Love Train,”
O’Jays

“Strawberry Letter #23,”
Brothers Johnson

“Band on the Run,”
Paul McCartney & Wings

“Smoke on the Water,”
Deep Purple

“A Horse with No Name,”
America

1990

Boy Gary.

That was my nickname for the first six years on the show. It wasn’t even original. The guy I replaced had been “Boy Lee.” Before that, Howard had called his college roommate “Boy.” I was just another in a long line of boys. In 1989, the Rolling Stones held a press conference at Grand Central Terminal to announce their Steel Wheels tour. This was the early days of cable. Every network—from MTV to CNN—covered it live. With cameras rolling, I asked the first question. “Mick,” I said, “Boy Gary from
The Howard Stern Show.”

I was getting too old to be called boy: I was pushing thirty. I was more than a decade older than our interns. I looked forward to shedding the tag. But I had no idea what would replace it. Until July 26, 1990.

The day began like any other—with me saying something that became fodder for the show. In the late ’80s and early
’90s collecting animation art became popular. These were iconic cartoon cels—Bugs Bunny eating a carrot or Yosemite Sam sitting on a keg of dynamite—drawn by the original cartoonist, signed and then framed. They weren’t mass-produced. Each picture was numbered, making them limited-edition, high-end pieces of art. Galleries began selling them for a few hundred bucks. A Mickey Mouse at the time sold for more than four hundred thousand dollars. I thought they would be a good investment. “They will never go down in value,” I would say to Howard.

And he would make fun of me. I babbled about getting a Friz Freleng or a Chuck Jones, two of the big Warner Bros. artists back in the day. The truth was, I talked about the cels more than I collected them. After months of research and browsing, I owned exactly one, a picture of Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam.

But I had made a decision: I was going to buy a new one. And that morning, July 26, 1990, I mentioned my intention to Jackie before the show. It was a big deal for me—I was leaving the Warner Bros. family to purchase something from the Hanna-Barbera collection. I told Jackie the characters I wanted to buy and he shrugged, like he wasn’t that interested. I was wrong. He was very interested.

A couple of minutes later, after we were on the air, Howard called me in. “Gary’s into this weird thing, he collects cartoon art.”

“Animated cels. Get it right,” I said.

“My next purchase will be a Da Vinci or a Marmaduke,” Howard said, imitating me in a dopey voice.

“I am strictly a Warner Bros. collector,” I said. “But I am thinking about dabbling in the Hanna-Barbera stuff. I am thinking about getting a Quick Draw McGraw or a Baba Booey.”

“Good, good,” Howard said. “How do you make the final determination? How much does a Baba Looey go for?”

“Quick Draw and Baba Booey are about three hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

“What do you call him?” Howard asked.

“Baba Booey,” I answered, emphasizing the word
Booey
by raising my voice an octave.

“It’s Baba Looey! You’re going to hang a picture of a guy and you don’t know his name. Baba Booey? Baba Booey!”

A resigned, disgusted silence descended, then Howard continued.

“Baba Booey … I didn’t know what he was saying. A Baba Booey.”

I was bored with the conversation. I figured they were done with me and they’d move on in a few minutes. This is what happened every day. I stood up and left the studio.

“He just walked out,” Howard said. “He thinks we’ve exhausted this, but we haven’t exhausted this.” A pause. Then he yelled, “It’s just the tip of the iceberg! Baba Booey!”

Then we went to a commercial and I said, “Okay, guys, joke’s over.”

I sat down at my desk and thought,
All right, it’s 8:30. They’ll be on to something else in an hour
.

But an hour passed, and they were still laughing at me. I’d hear
Baba Booey, Baba Booey
, followed by cackles. They sounded like monkeys who had been smoking dope all morning. The next morning it lingered and I realized it had a little bit of a shelf life. Maybe it would last a week or two. It just wasn’t a nickname that was going to stick—it was like an Abba song that reached No. 1. It had two weeks, three tops. It’s not that I hated the name. It was funny to say, but I just thought it was so silly. I didn’t believe it would stand the test of time.

One day I came into work with a tape of Quick Draw McGraw saying the phrase “Baba Boy.” If you listened closely it sounded like he was saying “Baba Booey.” I even tried to
bring it up, but Howard shot me down. “It’s perfect,” he said. “Why do you want to ruin it.”

Every day, Baba Booey grew, leaving Boy Gary behind. Captain Janks, a fan from Philly who used to call talk shows like
Donahue
and scream, “Howard Stern rules!” started using Baba Booey instead. He realized that if he said it on the air, hosts weren’t as quick to cut him off. They had no idea what he was saying. Larry King was his favorite target. Poor Larry. The worst thing he ever did was get an 800 number, because it meant Janks could call him nonstop without getting charged. Once, Janks got through the screeners and yelled, “Baba Booey, Baba Booey!” But Larry didn’t hang up on him. He just stared into the screen, his eyes wide and confused behind those glasses, and said, “I don’t understand.”

Then, in February 1991, Howard released a CD called
Crucified by the FCC
, which was a compilation of all the moments that had gotten him in trouble over the years. It came with a booklet, and on the back cover was a list of the top phrases in the history of
The Howard Stern Show
. “That’s not flab, honey, that’s bulk” was No. 10; “It’s too late, Soupy, I’ve already cut a string on the piano” was No. 5. And No. 1 was Baba Booey.

I thought,
Really?
It wasn’t even the dumbest thing I had ever said on the show. Or the most embarrassing. I had once given such graphic details about my sex life that even my mom called to tell me I had taken it too far. And she beat people with shrubs!

But Baba Booey wasn’t just about me acting stupid. It was something more visceral. The alliteration made it fun to say. It was a call to action. I used to spend a lot of weekends on the road making personal appearances. I’d hit strip clubs in Buffalo, mattress store openings in Cleveland, happy hours in Detroit—these were my specialties. A lot of times I’d bring one of my guys from Long Island with me. My first couple of times through each town I drew a lot of people. It’s not as
though I had a show. I’d just sign my autograph on my glossy head shots. By the third, fourth, or fifth time that I hit the same spot, the crowds grew smaller. The novelty wore off. It was just me, the guy from Howard Stern, signing my name on my face. That changed when I became Baba Booey.

Soon after the name entered the ether, the lines became longer wherever I went. It was as if Baba Booey gave people a reason to see me. “Hey,” they could tell friends, “let’s go see Baba Booey.” Then they’d laugh—like they were stoned monkeys. I still signed autographs. But if I wrote, “To Jimmy, All my best, Gary,” Jimmy would shove the picture back in my face and say, “No, just sign it Baba Booey.” Pretty soon, that’s all I signed.

It wasn’t about me at all anymore. It had morphed into being a code for the show, like a battle cry.

Fans picked up on that idea, and followed in the steps of Captain Janks.

In 1997, a
Sports Illustrated
column mentioned Boston University and that it was Howard’s alma mater. The piece ended, “Baba Booey!” It had nothing to do with me. There were the people who understood what it meant—the loyal listeners to the show; the members of the club—and the rest of the world who didn’t.

The night of the O. J. Simpson slow-speed chase, in June 1994, we all learned that ABC News anchor Peter Jennings was a member of the latter group.

It was a Friday night and Mary and I were in Boston for a wedding that weekend. The Knicks were playing in Game Six of the NBA Finals. I really wanted to see this game. We were at Legal Sea Foods in Copley Square and I snuck away to the bar to get the score. I saw the white Bronco and said to the bartender, “Can you put on the game?” Earlier in the day there had been reports that O.J. had killed himself. I didn’t know what was going on. Then some drunk leaned over and
slurred, “O.J.’s in the car with a gun. Half of Los Angeles is chasing him.”

I wasn’t that interested. I wanted to find the game. So I dragged Mary, who was five months pregnant, all around Boston looking for a decent bar that showed sports. There wasn’t a single one. All of them were tuned to O.J. I couldn’t believe the people in Boston hated New York so much they would rather watch a freak show than the finals of an NBA game. I didn’t sense the magnitude of the moment. Big deal. It’s not like I didn’t have a part in the night’s drama. Kind of.

This was before the Internet was big, remember. I didn’t care about the chase so Mary and I just went back to our hotel and went to bed. In the morning we drove twenty-five miles to the wedding in Salem. As soon as I walked through the door, I was barraged. “You were on TV last night!” “I can’t believe you were in the middle of the O.J. chase!”

Well, I wasn’t. I was asleep, next to my pregnant wife, completely ignoring the chase because I was pissed no one would show the Knicks game. But when a loyal and genius fan decided to call Peter Jennings, I instantly became a part of the biggest story of the decade. Here’s how it went down:

“We have with us now Mr. Robert Higgins, who can see inside O.J.’s car. Mr. Higgins, Can you see him doing anything specific?” Jennings asked.

“He is just sitting there looking nervous.”

“Can you hear anything?”

“There is too much commotion. But I can still see O.J. and he looks scared.”

“Thank you, Mr. Higgins.”

“And Baba Booey to y’all.”

Jennings pulled a Larry King: confused silence. He had no idea what had just been said. If not for an explanation from Al Michaels, a fan of the show who happened to call in to Jennings
after hearing the magic words, the anchor would have remained in the dark.

“Peter,” Michaels began, “just for the record that was a totally farcical call. He said something in code at the end that is indicative of the name of a certain radio talk show host. So he was not there.”

“Okay, Al,” Jennings said. “Thank you very much. Not the first time or the last time we’ll have been had.”

We live by a rule on the show: Don’t dissect the comedy. Do that and it’s no longer funny. So we have never tried to break down why Baba Booey sticks with people. But we did analyze that prank call as much as possible. We wanted to make a Broadway musical about it. We even re-created the entire scene and had Al Michaels on to reenact his role. You could tell he had a hard time explaining to Jennings what had happened. He didn’t really want to admit he had a foot in our world; it’s like being at a party and admitting you know the slob who just walked through the door.

After that, it became so much more than just a catchphrase for fans. Mary and I have had this conversation a lot. It doesn’t really mean what it meant anymore. It has morphed into something entirely different. Howard will sometimes say to me, “Can you believe it’s lasted this long?” But it’s not about me. It’s just something said to make other people laugh, whether in sitcoms, songs, or in someone’s living room.

Or airports. When Jackson was three years old we visited my brother Anthony, who had moved to Austin, Texas. The two of us were sitting at our gate waiting to go home when a man walked by and said, “Hey, Baby Booey.” Jackson couldn’t stop laughing. I asked him, “What’s so funny?”

He looked at me with a big smile and said, “He thinks you are a Baba Booey.”

Truth is, I am.

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