Men from Maine is a one to two-minute comedy segment, opening with soap opera organ music and Loren stating something varying along the lines of, "And now for another thrilling episode of the exciting adventures of Men from Maine. As today's action packed drama begins-". Airing typically at 6:17 AM and 7:17 AM, episodes typically revolve around the two main characters Lem (played by Tom) and Ephus (played by Wally), and other residents of Bangor, Maine, such as Ephus' wife Effie and son Ephus Junior, Doc Cider (after Dock Sider shoes) and Pastor Fazool (after pasta e fagioli). The same characters have been used in songs about Maine on the segment "Tom's Townie Tunes" (see below). The humor of the segment is at its root generic "redneck humor", but set in very rural, backwoods Maine as opposed to the American South. Episode themes can run all the way from industrial accidents handled in incompetent ways (many residents, including Lem and Ephus work in the local sawmill), to bestiality. In all cases, the humor comes from the stupidity of the characters, and their obliviousness to it.
At least one listener has found the show offensive, as heard on the first Men from Maine CD (sold during the holiday season to raise money for charity). Offended by the humor poking fun at her home state, a woman called the station, threatening to continue protesting the show until it is taken off the air. But as of September 2011, the segment is still played on the Loren and Wally show and some can be found as a "Loren & Wally Podcast of the Day" on iTunes, and 2 episodes are posted on YouTube.
Read more about this topic: WROR-FM, Loren and Wally
Famous quotes containing the words men and/or maine:
“If men will believe it, sua si bona norint, there are no more quiet Tempes, nor more poetic and Arcadian lives, than may be lived in these New England dwellings. We thought that the employment of their inhabitants by day would be to tend the flowers and herds, and at night, like the shepherds of old, to cluster and give names to the stars from the river banks.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have been oranging and fat,
carrot colored, gaped at,
allowing my cracked o’s to drop on the sea
near Venice and Mombasa.
Over Maine I have rested.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)