New York Tales>Post Trip Talk-Act 2>Howard, Howard, Howard

on saturday morning, april 16th, approximately, 11am or thereabout, i was picked up by my friend stewart, whom i introduced to my host as a howard stern impersonator. yep, that's right, a howard stern impersonator. yet, to me, he's always been stew (short for stewart).

i met stew nearly 18 years ago, through my own fanzine, cops hate poetry. i reviewed a few of his vinyl albums back then & he sent me a truckload of information, to boot. at that point in my life, i was traveling, while still living at home & publishing a fanzine & that's pretty much all i cared about. my college career was on hold indefinitely, as i had just been booted out of western illinois university in macomb, illinois, for failing to make minimum educational requirements.

as cops hate poetry forged ahead, so did my friendship with stew. we had a few things in common, like both of us being beatles fans & his birthday falls a week before mine, for starters. when cops hate poetry went on hiatus for a few years between 1988-early 1990, i began to freelance & stew sent me records of his to review for the journal i had been writing for at that time.

in early 1991, i want to say, i can't seem to recall at this point & will correct the date if i am wrong, i interviewed stew, along with my host (mykel board) a few months later & both interviews ran in the same issue. i did see stew in 1989, when i visited philadelphia, while meeting a penpal (stayed there too) & met another artist, who i would end up staying friends with for many years to come, named scoats. he drew two comic strip characters named gloveman & pinky (as in baseball glove & pinky finger) & published a fanzine titled caves & cucumbers, which often published my poetry & varying words from one of my characters, swami harold.

the last time i saw stew before this past weekend, was in 1990, when i picked him up at o'hare airport in chicago & walked him over to his next plane, for which he was flying to moline, illinois to shoot a television pilot. what happened in the airport within two to three minutes was phenomenal, but i'll get to that shortly.

but back to present day. after we left my host's apartment building, we exchanged catch-up stories & he asked me what i wanted to do. i happened to mention something about jack kerouac & washington square park, so he suggested we walk through it. there was a fair there, with vendors hawking all the usual sorts of items, including tee shirts & food, most of it, while i wanted to try it, i couldn't as most of it was very spicy & i didn't want to mess up my throat, as i was planning on performing in the afternoon & one of my pieces incorporated some throat-singing, so you get the idea, right? no spicy food for me.

as we walked through the tents, people stopped & stared at him, & whispered to each other until, one space we stopped at, a new york post information table, where the man behind the table asked him if he was howard stern.

that's the same exact thing that happened at o'hare airport in chicago. people stopped & stared & chanted "howard, howard, howard." the same thing was happening here too. we continued walking through the tents & that's all we heard, but he was used to it. so used to it by now.

we continued to wander through the district until we took a subway to 72nd street & central park west, where we got off, took a few photos of each other & walked upstairs, walked past the dakota building, where yoko ono lives, john lennon was murdered & across the street, was strawberry fields, the portion of central park that was dedicated to lennon's memory & also, the imagine circle, where dozens upon dozens of people where taking photographs, like them, that's what we did too.

as we were taking photos, i noticed even more people were staring hard at stew doing double-takes, the old doppelganger effect was in full force here & i didn't think it would disappear anytime soon. i told stew that taking pictures here, reminded me of the time i was at abbey road in london in the pouring rain, yet there were approximately 50-100 people there taking photos.

when we finished, we took a walk around the park & then headed off to a part of central park he had never been to. as we walked, i noticed four teenage boys with their bikes perched upon a rocky mount, and heard one of them in his thickest brooklyn accent exclaim to the others, "no, that can't be, it's howard stern!" then they started to chant that old familar mantra, "howard, howard, howard." then i heard another one say, "naw, dat's not him, it's just someone who looks a lot like him." they didn't seem to be too sure of themselves, as stew & i smiled at each other & walked onward.

when i realized the time, i told him we had to get back & grab a subway to the club. as we walked toward the station, i noticed he carried with him an a brown manila envelope. i asked him what he had in it & to my amusement, he said, color pictures of himself, in case anyone wanted an autograph. he said it happens a lot & he always signs them with his own insignia, in the event someone were to sell it on ebay & someone else would realize that it's not the real howard stern.
quite a clever guy, stew is, as i asked him to sign a photo for me. he did & signed it, "to charlie, from not howard." it hangs proudly on my refrigerator now.

so go on, take a look for yourself at stew on his official website, www.howardsternguy.com he really does look like howard stern. even the real howard stern complimented stew on his looks, well, sort of. he told stew on his radio & television show that, "you look like a douche bag." but as one learns in the entertainment business, one compliment, whether good or bad, brings nothing but good publicity all around. having had the experience of being complimented negatively by the late gg allin & allen ginsberg, i can tell you it pays off. for bragging rights, that is.