Saying Goodbye to The Best Show, For Now

Long before I was a Phan or a Juggalo, I was am FOT, or Friend of Tom. That’s what die-hard fans of The Best Show, the comedy institution Tom Scharpling has hosted for the last two decades, first at independent station WFMU and later as an independent podcast, call themselves. 

I’ll never forget the exhilarating sense of excitement and discovery I experienced listening to Scharpling and his comedy partner Jon Wurster for the first time on their legendary Rock, Rot & Rule CD, an achingly essential rock and roll milestone derived from a prank call Wurster made to WFMU pretending to be Ronald Thomas Clontle, the inexplicably arrogant, exquisitely misguided author of a book called Rock, Rot & Rule. 

The preternaturally unflappable Clontle hard-sells his book as “the ultimate argument settler” as to whether or not every big act in pop music history rocks, rots or rules, wonderfully meaningless categories he defends to the ever-mounting rage of apoplectic callers unwittingly pressed into the role of straight men/comic foil alongside Scharpling. 

It was like picking up The Onion for the first time, or listening to Paul’s Boutique. I loved it immediately and knew I would until the day that I died. Wurster’s subsequent calls to Scharpling were nearly as brilliant. The chemistry between the two men was so extraordinary that it was like they were two comic voices with one mind and one sensibility but there was more to The Best Show than just the comedy team of Scharpling & Wurster. It was a three hour show that felt like a home for listeners. Listening to The Best Show, I found my tribe, or at least one of them.

It felt like Rock, Rot & Rule was made specifically for me. I was an instant fan. It was one of the highlights of my life and career when I had the unbelievable honor of calling into The Best Show to promote my very own dodgy book about music, 2013’s You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me, a heartfelt argument as to why, actually, Insane Clown Posse and Phish are both good and important. When The Best Show ended its run on WFMU at the end of 2013, I mourned it the way you would mourn a friend or a family member who died. When it was reborn as an independent podcast about a year later, I was overjoyed. 

I can’t tell you how many times through the years I’ve thought, “The world is a better, kinder, funnier and more bearable place with Tom Scharpling doing The Best Show.”

I had that thought a lot during the early days of the pandemic. The continuing existence of The Best Show during a particularly terrifying and uncertain time made the world seem less scary and more humane. It provided distraction at a time when we needed distraction most, as well as a sense of continuity and ritual in a cultural moment where everything seemed turbulent and mercurial. 

So you can imagine how I felt when Scharpling tweeted on June 8th, “The Best Show is on hiatus until further notice. Thanks for the support for the last few years. I will be back soon in some form or another. Not tweeting this to be dramatic, it’s just that we should all have bigger and better things to focus on right now. I know I do.” 

To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement. In my mind, The Best Show is a matter of supreme importance, particularly now.

But I also understood. Tom is a sensitive and thoughtful human being during a particularly trying and important period in our nation’s history. He is an artist. He is a creator. He's someone with a social conscience. He is not a dancing clown who exists to amuse his fans. 

Here’s the thing about the podcasters and musicians and authors and other artists whose work fills our lives with joy and meaning and purposes and provide a distraction from the looming specter of the grave and a world gone mad: they don’t owe us anything. We’re fortunate that great artists like Scharpling share their gifts with us. The artists we love do not belong to us and if their conscience tells them that it’s time to stop for an indefinite amount of time, until the world makes more sense, then we have no choice but to accept that. 

I pledge money to the Best Show Patreon account because I love the show and feel honored to pay some small part in its continuing existence. The Best Show doesn’t belong to me because I send a modest sum of money its way each month. I don’t have a proprietary stake in the show and its future because I pledge to its Patreon account and have used my soapbox as a pop culture writer to evangelize on its behalf. 

So goodbye for now, The Best Show. I hope you return sooner rather than later but I also know that you have to do your own thing, in your own time. I not only accept that, I embrace it. 

Help ensure a future for The Happy Place by pledging at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace

And, of course, you CAN and SHOULD pick up the Happy Place’s very first book, The Weird Accordion to Al, a lovingly illustrated deep dive into the complete discography of “Weird Al” Yankovic, with an introduction from Al himself here or here