Fez Marie Whatley - A Sweet Gentle Man*


No movie review today - no, today I'm going to wax nostalgic, maybe even dive deeper into who I am than you care to read about. Why you ask?

Fez Marie Whatley passed away this past Saturday night, at 2:30 in the morning. He couldn't outrun the heart and it's constant attacks, and so today we say goodbye after an emotional 2 hour and 49 minute funeral on The Bennington Show.

No showing is needed for the fans - we've spent hours and hours of listening, so it's only right to celebrate the life of Fez this way. 

But, as they say, we have to start at the beginning before we can get to the end. For me the beginning began on XM radio before Howard Stern and Sirius took over the satellite game.

I was a big Opie & Anthony fan at the time and they brought their pals over with a magical "Golden Ticket," which I'm sure was just a contract someone pissed on.

At first, I didn't understand what the Ron & Fez show was. It was far different from the "shock jocks," of the early 80's to early 90's and so on and so forth.

During that time I had relocated to Decatur, Illinois and was working in an old medical records office digitizing old files into a computer system so Doctors wouldn't have to touch the files anymore. Real fun fucking stuff, right?

It was through the fucking boring toil and toll of that office that I slowly started to understand what R&F was all about. At the same time, I was away from my friends an extremely lonely at that time. So they became my friends, honestly. The drunk Davey Mac, the high strung Fez Whatley and the smartest man on the earth, Ron Bennington. Mix in weird characters here and there and this show was something you really have to listen to, to understand.

I fall into stretch's of depression, but I knew for three hours a day R&F would take my mind off that loneliness and despair - even if the show wasn't about "happy time, all the time," you know?

The show was relatable somehow. The anger was real (if not magnified by mics). The humor was NSFW yet I couldn't turn it off, even when Davey Mac was getting hotsauced in his ass or Fezzy was having another melt down because he was hiding the worst kept secret on radio. 

They were always so open to their fans - with PalTalk being a precursor to Twitch, with a video interaction during shows that was ahead of its time ... I think. 

I just remember Fez with his blow ups; or worse, his shut downs. And how Ronnie B would play off them and how the show found a way to turn the awkward into art. 

Fezzy was always the palate, holding the colors of the show and Ronnie B was the painter holding the brush - and while not every show was a masterpiece, every show had it's own beauty.

Thank God we can go back and listen to these old shows, because there will never be another like it. 

My condolences to Ron, Gail, and the R&F family. 

* You'll have to watch the show to understand the title of this column.


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