remembering the brendan leonard show

strange as it may sound, i credit some of my favorite musical discoveries to a bad wendy’s cheeseburger and a gang of dorky midwestern teenagers.

i don’t remember the exact date, nor what else i did that day (aside from having wendy's for lunch). i do remember, however, that it was the summer of 2003, that the weather was miserably hot and sticky, and that i'd somehow weaseled out of getting a "real" job by picking up a ton of babysitting gigs with children who pinched, tormented, and lied to me. retail probably would have been a field day. 

as babysitters went, i wasn't the greatest. sure, the kids loved me because i rapped them eminem instead of singing them lullabies and turned a blind eye and deaf ear when they traipsed around upstairs long after their bedtimes. but i also temporarily lost a pet rabbit, backed my car into a tree, and set off the smoke detector while trying to microwave popcorn. but, it got me by and allowed me to live a life of leisure for a few months.

anyway, there i was, feeling queasy on the couch at my parents' house after eating a tainted JBC. i started flipping through channels and stopped on ABC family (now called freeform or some bull). a group of awkward teenage boys who looked neither like TV stars—nor like they were acting—goofed around, ribbing each other and making bad jokes. it was weirdly, refreshingly unpolished, and if i didn’t know any better, i would have thought i was watching a cable access show. which, i found out later, was how the show began.

(this intro will forever give me ALL OF THE WARM FUZZIES and make me crack the biggest smile)

as it went to commercial break, i learned that i was watching the brendan leonard show. brendan, the son of journalist mike leonard, had parlayed his chicago cable access show into a summer slot on every teen’s favorite cable channel. like a more wholesome jackass with a quirky twist, the understated, down-to-earth nature of BLS quickly won me (and a small but dedicated legion of my peers) over. there were no special effects, the production was bare-bones, and the show relied completely on the cast members and skit concepts to make it all work. some ideas fared better than others, but it was always real, and almost always amusing; the “spatulas” bit remains one of my favorites:

the show aired every weekday for that whole summer, and many episodes had a “band of the day” whose songs provided the soundtrack for each skit. these included superchunk, jets to brazil, ted leo & the pharmacists, the promise ring, built to spill, and guided by voices. like, were these the coolest fucking high school kids ever or what? while i was familiar with a few of them prior to watching the show, every day presented the opportunity for a new, awesome band to enter my life—many of whom I still listen to frequently (arlo, the plus ones, and the long winters, to name a few). 

while many shows with great music have come and gone over the past 16 years, none aligned quite so perfectly with both my sense of humor and taste in music. it was sadly canceled after that summer (though the boys went on to do some hilarious shorts a few years later—including my favorite, "the gods of pogs," below), but the summer of the brendan leonard show will forever hold a very special place in my heart. thanks, wendy's!