Tom Magliozzi (1937-2014)

Update: Allegedly "not available" MIT video replaced

Must-watch video
(With credit to MIT: The technical quality is excellent)

In June 1999, a pair of characters named "Raymond" and "Thomas" were the improbable speakers at the commencement of their alma mater, MIT. (In the official video, they're introduced at 11:05.)

Said "Thomas": "When this was announced in the newspaper, my daughter, my lovely daughter Lydia, who's sitting over there, called me and said, 'Is this true?' And I said, 'Yeah.' And she said, 'When is commencement?' I said, 'June the 4th.' She said, ''Promise me just one thing.' I said, 'What?' She said, 'Promise me that you'll think about it before June 3rd.' Which reminded me of that great old country-music song, 'How Come You Know Me So Good When I'm a Stranger to Myself?' " 

Said "Raymond": "We were flattered to find out, I think just this morning, that only once before in the long history of MIT has the demand for commencement tickets been greater, and coincidentally it was when Abraham Lincoln spoke to my brother's graduating class."

"His laugh is the working definition of infectious laughter."

-- Car Talk producer Doug Berman, about Tommy (of course)

by Ken

I was going to, er, celebrate Election Day with something suitably snarky, with a wonderful David Sipress New Yorker "Daily Cartoon" to illustrate it, but then came news of the death of Car Talk's Tom Magliozzi, and, well, the goddamn election can wait.

Tommy gone.

In the fine obit below, NPR's Lynn Neary calls him "one of public radio's most popular personalities." This is surely an understatement. In the whole history of mankind, there can't have been many people who brought more unalloyed pleasure to more people than Tommy alongside baby brother Ray, aka Click and Clack, on Car Talk, a show that was nominally about car repair and all other things car-related but wasn't really. I'm about as far as you can get from a car person, but for a lot of years the show anchored my weekends -- provided a reason to feel good about waking up on Saturday.

People's cars provide a window onto every aspect of their lives, and that was what the show was about, viewed from one of the odder, and almost surely the goofiest, vantage points available in our media wonderland. There's hardly a situation in world or personal affairs that doesn't stir up for me some recollection of a Car Talk moment.

I don't think Tommy had to try to be funny; it just came rolling out of him. And it was a vantage point singularly lacking in malice, except for certain selected targets. He wasn't, for example, exactly crazy about cops, and was wont to speak unkindly about them, often in doughnut-eating terms. Who can forget the time Tommy did one of his cops'-doughnut-eating riffs only to return the next week with a real-news story provided by a listener about a failed Dunkin' Donuts heist that went south when most of the patrons in the joint turned out to be cops? Did that ever bring forth peals of the signature laugh that's so neatly described above by the boys' long-suffering producer, Dougie Berman! "The working definition of infectious laughter." Absolutely.

Could anyone but Tommy have managed to maintain so infectiously as well as resolutely his epic streak of never being able, when asked by Ray, to remember last week's Puzzler?

All Things Considered
Tom Magliozzi, Popular Co-Host Of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies At 77

Tom and Ray on the air

Monday, November 03, 2014
By Lynn Neary

Tom Magliozzi, one of public radio's most popular personalities, died on Monday of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 77 years old.

Tom and his brother, Ray, became famous as "Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers" on the weekly NPR show Car Talk. They bantered, told jokes, laughed and sometimes even gave pretty good advice to listeners who called in with their car troubles.

If there was one thing that defined Tom Magliozzi, it was his laugh. It was loud, it was constant, it was infectious.

"His laugh is the working definition of infectious laughter," says Doug Berman, the longtime producer of Car Talk. He remembers the first time he ever encountered Magliozzi.

"Before I ever met him, I heard him, and it wasn't on the air," he recalls.

Berman was the news director of WBUR at the time.

"I'd just hear this laughter," he says. "And then there'd be more of it, and people would sort of gather around him. He was just kind of a magnet."

The Magliozzi brothers grew up in a tough neighborhood of East Cambridge, Mass., in a close-knit Italian family. Tom was 12 years older, the beloved older brother to Ray. They liked to act like they were just a couple of regular guys who happened to be mechanics, but both of them graduated from MIT.

After getting out of college, Tom Magliozzi went to work as an engineer. One day he had a kind of epiphany, he told graduates when he and Ray gave the 1999 commencement address at their alma mater.

He was on his way to work when he had a near-fatal accident with a tractor-trailer. He pulled off the road and decided to do something different with his life.

"I quit my job," he said. "I became a bum. I spent two years sitting in Harvard Square drinking coffee. I invented the concept of the do-it-yourself auto repair shop, and I met my lovely wife."

Well, he wasn't exactly a bum; he worked as a consultant and college professor, eventually getting a doctoral degree in marketing. And Tom and Ray Magliozzi did open that do-it-yourself repair shop in the early '70s. They called it Hackers Haven. Later they opened a more traditional car repair shop called the Good News Garage.

They got into radio by accident when someone from the local public radio station, WBUR, was putting together a panel of car mechanics for a talk show.

"They called Ray, and Ray thought it was a dumb idea, so he said, 'I'll send my brother' and Tom thought, 'Great, I'll get out of breaking my knuckles for a couple of hours.' And he went over and he was the only one who showed up," Berman says.

Berman says the station liked what Tom did and asked him to come back the next week. This time he brought Ray. The rest, as they say, is history.

In 1987 Car Talk went national on NPR. The Magliozzi brothers were a huge success. Listeners loved their blend of humor, passion, expertise and just plain silliness.

When it came to cars, Berman says the brothers really did know what they were talking about. But, he says, that's not why people listen to the show.

"I think it has very little to do with cars," he says. "It's the guys' personalities. And Tom especially — really a genius. With a great, facile mind. And he's mischievous. He likes to prod people into honesty."

It is almost impossible to talk about Tom Magliozzi without talking about Ray. Berman says the affection you heard on the radio dated back to their childhood — and it was real.

"For Ray, he idolized Tom. This is the guy who introduced him to everything in life, and Tom liked having his little brother around," Berman says. "He liked the guy. So when they grew up they were really, really great friends."

Tom and Ray haven't done the show live for two years; Car Talk has been airing archives of old shows. Berman says Ray would like to continue doing that, as a tribute to his brother.

Seeing that Tommy died of "complications from Alzheimer's disease," and noting that last paragraph of Lynn Neary's remembrance ("Tom and Ray haven't done the show live for two years; Car Talk has been airing archives of old shows. Berman says Ray would like to continue doing that, as a tribute to his brother"), I'm embarrassed to say -- as a supposed Car Talk devotee -- that I didn't know.

For several years now, I've hardly ever been home on Saturday mornings, when we got the show on WNYC. My first thought was how horrible this must have been for Ray and the assorted other members of the Magliozzi family. I hope it's some consolation to them to know how deeply the loss is felt in what might be called the extended Magliozzi family.

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