The Sunday Memory Drawer - Diploma City, The Final Season

The photo above was taken sometime during Diploma City's third and final season. Our little show had actually been spotlighted in a feature story that ran in the Westchester Gannett newspapers.

Ironically, it's also the only known photograph of Diploma City in action.
In this day of digital cameras and digital everything else, it's hard to fathom that very little of our radio show remains today. I had a lot of the reel-to-reel tapes of some episodes, but those magnetic strips were never built to last. I have somewhere a few cassette airchecks, but I would have to remember what closet and box they're in.

Almost inexplicably, the person who seemingly had the most complete Diploma City archives was the dad of Djinn from the Bronx, our beloved and now missed "Mr. G." A few years back, he was doing some apartment cleaning and sent me over a couple of episodes that had been taped for the third season. Having not listened to anything Diploma City in almost three decades, I put the cassettes aside. Did I really want to revisit? After all, I still write and I would probably cringe at my earliest efforts. I literally had to ingest some liquor before I could pop these ancient artifacts into my 21st century stereo equipment.
I was surprised.

The stuff held up. By Year 3, we had gotten damn good at doing a radio situation comedy.

Oh, sure, the acting could always be a little better. And there were a few too many cheap jokes and a reliance on some punching bag humor. But, overall, we were doing a pretty nifty show every week. And, oddly enough, there was actually story and character development. We had all jelled into a pretty cohesive and well-oiled machine.

While I had already graduated from college, I had not skyrocketed into so much employment fame that I didn't have the time to still write and produce Diploma City in its third year. Besides, most of the cast was still at Fordham in their own senior years. Amid the inane and insane trappings of my advertising assistant job at the Carvel Ice Cream Corporation, I still had my connection and lifeline to Fordham through this creative outlet which would be like no other that I would have the rest of my life.

We still taped on Tuesday nights. Frequently, we did two episodes in one evening. Our precision in that season allowed us to produce 34 first-run installments, which would bring us to a total of 90 episodes for the entire three season run. We had it all down to a science.

In the first season of Diploma City, there were weeks where the script would come up short of 30 minutes. It was almost a strain to fill the time. But, by Year 3, our stories were so compelling that we couldn't stop telling them. As a result, our scripts tended to run a little long and past the half-hour mark.

At the time, I didn't think this was a problem. Heck, this is non-commercial, free-form college radio. No boundaries, right?

Wrong.

In our third year, we aired on Saturday nights just before one of those cliched FM radio rock DJs. As a matter of fact, the show that followed us by hosted by my old high school buddy who, recalling my previous entry on Freshman Orientation, had been my personal self esteem destroyer. 

Ahem. 

Well, said Radio Jock did not take kindly to our show spilling over into his Gordon Lightfoot and Yes-laden world. If we ran more than five minutes over, he would start cutting into the soundtrack. Talking about how unprofessional we were. Even providing a snarly Greek chorus to the dialogue and the storyline. On the tapes I revisited, one of these diatribes was included. I was angry all over again. 

And that made me remember one more time just how special that show was to me, with or without the histrionics provided by some Scott Muni wannabe. At least, we were doing something different on the radio. Most of the others on WFUV weren't. When I listened to a few of those episodes provided by Mr. G, I found myself smiling at some jokes. I remembered exact lines and words that had been flubbed over and over. I thought how much better the show might have sounded with real, honest-to-goodness actors. Should I have gone that route? Maybe. 

 But, then, it wouldn't have been Diploma City. Those very special times in that studio with some even more special friends, many of them in my life to this day.  
In the final tip of the hat to my inspiration, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Diploma City did its own finale episode. But, instead of characters going off to parts unknown, our Bronx college student married his girlfriend. And the Taft College juniors left for the summer to come back again in the fall. 

Except they never did. But, in retrospect, none of them really left me. Oh, there are some that I don't see much at all. We all re-connected in a fashion at a WFUV reunion five years ago with wider waists, longer wrinkles, and more narrow strips of hair. Yet, there are others that I talk to and see either monthly, weekly, or daily. Several read this blog regularly and I'm hoping these memories are tapping their eye duct kegs as much as mine.   I've gotten to work with a lot of actors since then, but this cast will always be my favorite.

 So, here's to all of them, both near and far. Glenn, Ron, Djinna, John ("Neh Heh"), the Bibster, Mary, Ralph, two Bobs, Larry, Ginny, Jim, Lorraine, Joanne, Mike F.,Annie Baby, Jan, and anybody I might have forgotten. Because, truth be told, I haven't forgotten at all. 

Dinner last night: Kobe beef burger at Cafe Montana.