Howard Stern regular dies and nobody hears

If a
Howard Stern
sidekick
drops dead
and nobody
hears about it,
is he really dead?

Well, it's happened, but who would know? Or care? Gosh, has it really been that long since Howard was relevant-- or even real? For you younger readers growing up in an aural wasteland dominated by the likes of the surprisingly pliable and recently feminized monotonal bore Adam Carolla (he now plays the “modern woman” to his pre-liberation sidekick Teresa Strasser and Eighties pop culture gal “Bald Brian”) there was a time when the radio personality was a vital force in pop culture, with his radio show debated on television and in print and the comings and goings of his subsidiary characters like Jackie The Jokeman and Stuttering John treated like characters on a radio reality show.

But since Howard sold out his fans and moved to private pay radio, he works in a vacuum. Forgotten by the mainstream and occasionally popping up in the media few days after the fact, thanks to a vigorous PR efforts and public displays of inebriation by his pathetic sidekick Artie Lange (whose phony on-air explosion and possible "firing" was an obvious publicity stunt before a vacation a couple of weeks back), whose sad claim to fame is being at the top of most Celebrity Death Pools.

But another Stern player has beaten Artie to the punch. Kenneth Keith Kallenbach, the hippie burnout who parlayed his Stern exposure into other appearances, died in jail last week (he'd been arrested for pulling an underage girl into his car-- looks like Howard didn't bail him out). The death was announced Thursday on Howard’s private show, but news from Stern's hideout travels as quickly as it did in the days of Pony Express.

Who would know if we didn’t mention it here?