Raised in Los Angeles, he's as much a part of the town as the sign in the hills and the smog above them. In other words, Shearer is what Al Franken wishes he were in his wildest dreams. Then, of course, there is Spinal Tap, the band that will never break up no matter how many drummers overdose on cold medication or spontaneously combust. He's the performer who's able to keep reinventing himself while, along the way, satisfying his urges to create or merely play. Shearer is, in fact, one of the luckier among us.
Luck is the right word.
It is luck. To the right of you and to the left of you, you see signs of the people who aren't as lucky all the time. And it's pretty remarkable in that in a supposedly mass medium, my connection with the audience is absolutely direct, assuming a radio station gets off its ass and plugs into the network. That's extremely different from a movie, which is intensely collaborative. And writing is solitary and depressing, as writing always is.