The Ninth House

On November 4th, when Americans like me are heading to the polls, a far fewer but no less ardent number of folks will be in Ottawa, Ontario at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters convention.  Some of those folks will attend the induction ceremonies for the CAB Hall of Fame, where one of the broadcasters inducted will be John Majhor.

If you lived in Toronto in the 70s, 80s and 90s and owned a radio or TV, you know who John Majhor is.  If you lived within broadcast signal range, you know.  I won’t attempt to describe here who John is and why his career makes him Hall of Fame-worthy.  If you Google his name, you’ll figure it out pretty quickly.  You can even see some terrific video of him back in the day here.

The only downside to John’s induction is that its posthumous.  He died on January 23rd, 2007 at age 53 of an extremely butt-kicking kind of cancer.  John was very frank about writing about it on his MySpace page, which is still up and running even though he isn’t, something I’m confident he would have found very funny.  This is, after all, the guy who posted his bone scan on the same MySpace page and titled one of his blogs “Dead Man Talking To Himself.”

I got to know John in Charleston, SC in late 2004, when he hired me to work part-time for a classic hits rock station he was programming then.  I won’t attempt to describe here our friendship, other than to say we got busy fast.  And it was more than two middle-aged old-school rock radio disc jockeys plowing common ground and calling one another on their bullshit, though that was certainly a big part of it.  I don’t feel like talking too much about it here, other than to say he was my good friend, and I miss him.

And now, thanks to the efforts of many and one woman in particular (yay, Andy), John Majhor’s in the Hall of Fame.  I think he would have liked that.  What broadcaster wouldn’t?  Its the kind of honor that both serves as the perfect coda to a remarkable life and career, and pisses off all the right people — namely, those who didn’t like you all that much when you were still alive.  And there are a good number of those, too.  That, I think, John would have found hilarious.

On Sunday, May 27th, 2007, John’s family and many of his friends and radio buddies gathered at Second City in Toronto to remember him.  I delivered his eulogy.  2,771 words.  I was going to post it here, but as I’ve been writing this, I’ve changed my mind.  Not because I don’t want you to read it, but because it was written for that occasion only, and it just doesn’t feel right to haul it out of the attic trunk and tack it to the wall.

The morning after John died, I wrote a comments post for his MySpace page.  Its in many ways a shorter version of his eulogy.  Its still there, if you care to read it.  If you do, keep in mind I have not yet been haunted by him, at least not as far as I know.  But if, as is sometimes said, the dead return to us in dreams, then John has paid me a visit at least once since his passing.  A wonderful dream, in which we were both at opposite ends of a broadcast console, on the air together — which we never were in life — laughing until our sides ached as we riffed on how frustrating it was, for one very specific reason, for a dog not to have an opposable thumb.

Don’t ask me why.  But if that’s not good enough to get you into the Hall of Fame, tell me what is?

Congratulations, John.  We still miss you.  Bastard.

TNH

UPDATE: 11/8/2008

Now that’s John’s safely ensconced in the HOF, we can post the tribute video that was created for the induction.  Enjoy:

John Majhor Hall of Fame Tribute