
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 21, 1994                    TAG: 9406210399 
SECTION: LOCAL                     PAGE: B3    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: 940621                                 LENGTH: Medium

USING SURGICAL PRECISION, DJ TRIES TO STAY ON RADIO'S CUTTING EDGE

{LEAD} Radio stations regularly compete to see who can go lowest in the race to win high ratings. On Monday, WNOR-FM descended below the belt as Tommy Griffiths, co-host of the station's Tommy and the Bull morning show, had his long-promoted on-air vasectomy.

The operation was the culmination of weeks of sophomoric humor, song parodies in dubious taste and crowd-pleasing nonsense events including a Vasec-Tommy Shower.

{REST} Until 8:30 a.m. Monday, Griffiths and his partner of four years, Henry ``The Bull'' Del Toro, conducted business as usual in WNOR's Chesapeake studio. They answered calls of support from men who had undergone vasectomies and one from a woman claiming her husband had died from vasectomy complications.

Off the air, Griffiths admitted to mounting nerves. At 8:21 a.m. he said, almost to himself, ``What the hell am I doing?'' Asked what they could do for an encore, Griffiths suggested they might get the stocky Del Toro on-air liposuction. The team cracked a few last jokes, then drove to the office of Dr. Joseph J. Konefal of Tidewater Urology.

Once there, Griffiths and Konefal swapped weekend fishing stories. By 9:05, Griffiths was lying on an examination table draped with sheets from waist to feet except for a strategically exposed square of flesh. His wife, Cheryl, present to lend support and to drive the patient home, admitted, ``I didn't think it would be like this.''

Griffiths, Del Toro and Konefal were all equipped with microphones. Konefal provided play-by-play, Del Toro offered color analysis, and Griffiths delivered sound effects. Konefal narrated the procedure, beginning with an injection of anesthetic into Griffiths' scrotum. The disc jockey's feet writhed under the sheets.

At 9:15 a.m., an incision was made and the moment of truth arrived. But Konefal was suddenly, visibly concerned. He quieted the jokes - he was having trouble capturing the first of two vas deferens, the sperm-carrying tubes whose cutting is the point of a vasectomy. Konefal later admitted that he feared the show might have to be continued later.

At 9:17, however, he had the unruly parts under control. As Del Toro told listeners, it looked remarkably like a length of spaghetti. Moving swiftly now, Konefal cut a section less than an inch long out of the vas and tied the ends. By 9:22, he'd moved to the other side and by 9:29 the incision was closed.

By 9:41, Griffiths was up and walking - albeit delicately. Total elapsed time of the procedure: Less than 30 minutes. At 9:58, after a final flurry of tasteless humor, Griffiths and Del Toro were off the air. Griffiths carried himself carefully, walking with a shuffling gait as he headed for his Corvette to be driven home to bed. ``You know what,'' he said, ``it was almost painless.''

Almost.

by CNB