The next Mosen Explosion on Friday at 9 AM and again at 9 PM US Eastern time is a special one.
We'll open with a quick romp through other things that happened on this day in history, then we hand almost the whole two hours over to a genuine original: Stan Freberg, born 100 years ago on August 7, 1926.
If the name doesn't ring a bell, the work absolutely will. Freberg was a comedian, satirist, voice actor, and advertising genius who basically taught America how to laugh at itself. He lent his voice to Warner Bros. cartoons alongside Mel Blanc, then stormed the record charts with comedy classics like "St. George and the Dragonet," which knocked everything else off the top spot in 1953. He skewered pop music with his send-up of "The Banana Boat Song," "Heartbreak Hotel", "The Great Pretender" and more, took aim at holiday commercialism in "Green Christmas, and gave us the wonderfully cheeky "Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America." Then he reinvented the advertising business by proving a commercial could actually be funny, hauling in a mountain of awards along the way. Generations of satirists, "Weird Al" Yankovic among them, owe him a debt.
So bring your sense of humor and join me for two hours of music and mirth from a comedy legend. Freberg at 100, only on the Mosen Explosion.