Sunday Night Bedtime Story: Miami’s Own, Scotty Mac

Scott Macollough aka Scotty Mac was the sports producer for WIOD. He was responsible for carting up audio clips, occasionally booking guests, answering phones and running the board during SportTalk610, weeknight 6-8pm before Goldberg At Night, then Randi Rhodes, then Chris Baker, then Passion Phones. So he was in the building most days 3p - 9p. Which meant Neil rarely saw him, but everyone else did, sandwiched between Rick and Suds and whatever show was on at night.

For most of his tenure SportsTalk610 had a round table of hosts.. Defo, MadDog, Bokamper, Zagack-ack-acki. Even Sonny Hirsh when Hurricane Hotline would take over the show on Thursday nights during the UM season.

Scotty, or Mac, or Smack or whatever anyone called him, was the biggest happy-go-lucky elf you ever saw. Ears like radar dishes on a pin sized head tacked atop his 5’8 135lb frame, was THE biggest sports nerd I’ve ever met. He wasn’t just a kid who watched a lot of sports; he was the kind that would read the MLB rule book each year. He was pretty straight laced; his father was the head-honcho over at public TV’s WLRN, so he didn’t really fit in the the rest of the slacker clowns like me, Jorge, Marvin, or Manny or Alex Rodriguez or David Waggener, or “Fajita” Ray Trujillo, or “The Piercer” Steven Spierer or anyone else in the producer roll. But he was such a good natured odd-ball that we’d include him whenever we thought his weirdness was a plus to whatever we were doing.. which was often.

Let me back up a second and remind folks that in those days, in radio in general, it wasn’t as corporate as it is now. The sales suits and programming suits RAN the place, but the 20-somethings like me had the RUN OF the place. It didn’t matter that I was running the board from 11pm to 6am and was only being paid for that… I was AT THE BUILDING at 1pm to help out or take part in whatever was going on. Neil needs someone to go run and get Florias? I’m on it. Marvin needs someone to run the board when he goes on payphone challenge? Ok. Mitch Lewis needs someone to make the sound effect of someone vomiting into a garbage can? I volunteer. That’s how things like the “Johnny Dark’s an Asshole” cart came about… 3 or 4 of us were hanging out in a production room around 10pm, screwing around with the voice changer, and I sang that out. People laughed, we carted it up, and left it for Neil. That’s just how it worked. But I digress…

Scotty was a s-t-r-a-n-g-e bird, I tellya. He had these incredibly thin hands with long fingers, and punctuated his sentences and gave words emphasis with them the way Brad Pitt does playing a nutjob in the movie “12 Monkeys” with a huge smile on his face. he had a really high pitched and raspy voice to go along with those hands, and those ears, and that frame and that personality. I’ve never met a more caricaturistic live person ever.

So you’d say “I’m going on a date tonight”, and Scotty would point at you, and in that raspy high pitched voice with a Cheshire cat grin say “ahh haa HAAH!“. And so, one night, we got Scotty to record that drop.

When something super cool would happen he was fond of exclaiming “TREMENDOUS!“. Cart it up!

One night, we’re eating chinese food, and Scotty sees us, and goes to do his normal “ahh haa HAAH!” and gives it Chinese language flavoring, and out bursts “HEE HAWW HEEE”…

STOP. EVERYTHING. GET IN THE PRODUCTION ROOM NOW. And we had him record like 5 different versions of that. Rick and Suds start playing the clips, and before you know it, the audience is calling in to do their own versions of it. Burping. On helium. As the Pope. Farting. Drowning.

I’m not exactly sure where “I did that one time, when I was about 15 years old” but I can be absolutely sure that it happened much the same way.

And everyone got their own Scotty Mac style nickname: I was “Lanky Kirschbaum”.

One Christmas, Scotty sent out invitations to us because his family was having a holiday party at their house, and he invited us to it. Some of us brought dates, others just came intending to drink their asses off. After searching for his house in this super nice neighborhood, i finally found it; Scotty is standing at the end of the driveway looking like one of those lantern jockey thingies with a lantern in his hand. Only he’s wearing a black jacket.. with a white turtleneck under it. It’s like 85 degrees out, and he’s dressed like a Crispin Glover character, and i roll down the window and in his best preppy palm-beach, clenched teeth Biff impressions says “Wel-come to myyyyy PARRRRtyyyy”. I park, go in, and even though he’d invited us at like 9pm, apparently we were invited as the after party his family had thrown for their own friends. All the trays of food had crumbs on them. We didn’t care; the family was SUPER nice, and the house was totally f-ing “Mack”ed out.. ridiculous house. And we ate leftovers and drank before splitting.

After seeing his house, and hearing about how they summered in Vero Beach, we pressed Smack for a year to get a weekend for us all up there. Eventually he capitulated and one weekend, before his family was to stake their summer claim there, he invited us up there and me and my girlfriend, and Marvin and his girlfriend, and Jorge and like 6 other people all drive up there. It was like that scene in Caddyshack when they let all the Caddy’s use the pool.. all these young drunken, stoned riff-raff clamoring up to “MAC’s Landing”. That wasn’t my name for it. It actually said that in a carved driftwood sign at the entrance. It was ON. THE. BEACH. And the place is, again, ridiculously nice.

And people are smoking, and drinking and generally going berserk. Marvin is partying his ass off with his girlfriend listening to the Spin Doctors at like 11 in a bedroom, I’m being a clown and trying to make a bong out of anything I can find, and Jorge Rodriguez is hurling Goldschlager off the balcony. It was awesome. I dont think anyone could remember what Scotty did. he wasn’t much of a partier, so my only memory is of him is being a good host, nursing a can of beer all night and going from guest to guest to schmooze.

I saw Scotty like 2 years ago. In a parking lot. Driving an old car, stuffed with crap and folders and newspapers and magazines and stuff. He said he was coaching a kid’s little league or was an assistant coach at a high school or something. He was still doing some freelance stuff for Defo too. I told him it was great to see him after all this time, and I wished him well. And as he left, he rolled down his window as he went by and yelled “HEE HAWW HEEE!” as he drove away.