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The early afternoon shift at what was then 1500ESPN was broadcasting from a golf course in Lakeville on June 1, 2012. It was a Friday and Dark Star was scheduled for his weekly hour-long appearance with Dan Cole on KFAN-FM.
There was a call on my cell phone while doing our show from the golf course. It was from KFAN, asking if I had talked on this day with Dark Star. He had no-showed for Cole's show and had not called the station to offer an excuse.
I had not talked with Dark Star since Sunday, when we taped the cult hit, "The Sports Show.''
The alarming part of this call was that the Darkman had not offered an excuse. He was never absent an excuse, no matter how preposterous it might have seemed to a nation of less-creative thinkers.
I mean, late in his long career at the Big Neighbor (WCCO-AM), Dark Star missed almost an entire summer of his late-evening shows because of a determined effort to fix bad teeth. And by chance, the recuperation plan he was given by a reputable dentist consisted of much fishing and golf while staying at Grand View Lodge on Gull Lake.
Back to 6-1-2012: The Darkman had not been feeling chipper, so at the next break, I called his backup cell phone — not a burner, just the one if you really needed an answer you might get one.
No answer. Now, there was a sense of doom.
"I had that immediately that day,'' Cole said Tuesday. "He never missed the show. He would say, 'My radio career is now an hour with Coley on Fridays, and a sit-in with 'Meat Sauce' on Saturdays, and that's all I want.'
"When I found out we hadn't heard from him, I said, 'Then he has died,' and I wasn't joking.''
Chad Abbott, KFAN's station manager, and Bob Hagan, the Vikings' P.R. director and a close friend, went to the apartment building near Ridgedale.
"Abbott and I were walking down that long hallway,'' Hagan said Tuesday. "We were over halfway and saw the newspaper in front of his door. It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon. We looked at each other and said, 'This isn't good.' "
And it wasn't. Dark Star, known to some by the given name George Chapple, was deceased in his apartment, the one where he paid to have a sauna installed even though he didn't own the unit.
He was 66, and it was a heart attack, 10 years ago on Wednesday, a decade that has given untold numbers of people a thousand fewer laughs and a hundred fewer stories to tell.
Maybe more. We might need the Dark Star method for adjusted accuracy.
"Dark's the only person I've ever known to do this,'' Hagan said. "He would tell you his first version, and then immediately reveal the lie.
"I was on him hard to quit smoking, and he swore that he had. He had come out to Winter Park to pick up some tickets. I brought them to his car. I was handing the tickets through the window and saw a pack of cigarettes on the passenger's seat.
"I jumped him about it. First, he claimed they weren't his and then said, 'OK, I'm smoking six a day … which means 12.' "
Which means I must confess to a lie earlier in this offering: There's one known occasion when Dark didn't offer an excuse.
Ryan Lefebvre, long-serving Kansas City Royals broadcaster and one of Dark's younger pals when Ryan lived in Minnesota, had lobbied for a couple of years to sit alongside in Dark Star's two courtside tickets at Timberwolves games.
"The night was set for weeks; it was happening,'' Lefebvre said this week. "Ten minutes before he was going to pick me up, Dark calls and says, 'You're out!' I say, 'What do you mean?' He says, 'You're out!' I say, 'How can I be out?' Dark says, 'I'll tell you later.'
"I watched the game and there was Dark in the front row, with a very attractive young lady in my seat.''
Kevin Gorg became a Canterbury Park buddy. That friendship was intensified when track announcer Paul Allen and Gorg were working in the press box on a Pick Five ticket at Saratoga to bet at Canterbury.
"Dark called and said, 'Whatever you come up with, I'm in.' It wasn't a big ticket — 48 bucks, I think; meaning, $16 for Dark,' " Gorg said. ''We hit it for $14,000. By the time it came in, Dark was with us, we had all the horses in front coming down the stretch in the fifth race, and we wound up in a big pile of craziness on the floor.'
"He told that story a hundred times … when I was there.''
Dan Cook had a run as Dark's producer at WCCO. "I was a young guy but with no hair,'' Cook said. "I walked into my first staff meeting at the station. Dark says, 'Who's that guy?' and he's told, 'Dan, a new producer.'
"Dark says, 'Hey, great to meet you, Dan, but next time, wear a hat, please. The light coming off you is blinding me.' "
Dark had good hair. And not much of a governor on his quips. My all-time favorite was when he opened a video with Trent Tucker as his guest by asking, "White people; your thoughts?''
There's no one in Twin Cities radio that serves as the link to Dark Star more strongly than "Meat Sauce,'' also known to some by his given name, Paul Lambert.
Steve Thomson, a longtime WCCO-er often caught filling in the gaps when Dark left the studio to "go out for a smoke'' and came back 45 minutes later, said: "I refer to Meat Sauce as Dark Star's protégé.''
This week, Lambert said: "I don't know exactly why, but Dark loved me. For sure, he was the first person to believe in me. I had lots of people say, 'What you do isn't going to work. It's not funny.' Dark would say, 'Paulie … you're going to be a star.' "
Dark Star was a character created from whole cloth. Lambert actually went to Brown Institute and started as a board operator. Mike Morris gave him the Meat Sauce nickname. That turned into "Saturdays with Sauce,'' an afternoon show that Lambert dubbed as a Dark Star production.
"One day, he called me to his place, and for two hours, he laid out this whole plan for me — 'you'll be Grand Marshal of a parade,' 'you'll do this, do that,' so mention all these ideas when getting your new contract.
"I said, 'Dark, I'm an hourly employee.' He looked at me, looked down at his outline, and said, 'OK, forget it. Let's go have lunch.' "
Seems like quite a bit of the Dark plan came to be, though, Sauce?
"It has,'' Lambert said. "Amazing.''
So was your mentor, Sauce:
Hilariously, extravagantly, outrageously. And while he died a bit young, he was close to even with the world, once his creditors sold off the Maserati, and the 80-inch TV, and the memorabilia, and his accountant, George, did the old soft shoe, and he even left behind a sauna for the next renters.
