He was one of a kind.
At least that’s what the aliens told him.
Howard Stern “Wack Packer” Riley Martin was unique. The occasionally combative galactic traveler, who claimed to have been abducted by a race of aliens called “Biaviians,” died Dec. 22 at 69 in Bethlehem, Pa.
With his rich baritone voice and seemingly endless knowledge of all things quasi-dimensional, Martin could wax poetic about secret colonies hidden on Jupiter’s moons. He chatted about ravenous reptilian monsters from another world, creatures that lustfully eyeballed Earth and its inhabitants like a delicious big blue marble in space.
He also allegedly had a bit of a drinking problem. Both as a frequent caller to “The Howard Stern Show” and later on his own program, Martin could be heard slurring his words as he doled out advice. He covered everything from making sweet love to alien women to more practical endeavors like, er, traveling through wormholes.
HOWARD STERN ‘WACK PACK’ MEMBER RILEY MARTIN DIES
Even when he fell asleep on the air — and was called on it by listeners — he would belligerently claim it was due to food poisoning.
I had a special affinity for Martin. Especially after running into him one night in a Manhattan parking lot near Stern’s studio.
The well-spoken radio host was just stepping out of the passenger side of a beat-up Toyota. I wandered over to tell him I was a fan. That’s when I noticed the big Poland Spring jug he was urinating into as he stood behind the open car door, grinning.
About a dozen people looked on horrified as I approached Martin and suggested that he might be more comfortable using the garage’s bathroom, which was only a few steps away. Or maybe he would be interested in the much cleaner restroom waiting for him upstairs at SiriusXM.
“I like this jug!” he snapped midstream. “It’s my jug and I’m not done filling it up.”
And then he suggested I go on his website and buy his book.
Years ago Martin wrote a book about his alleged 1953 abduction, called “The Coming of Tan.” He listed the leader of the Biaviians, O-Qua Tangin Wann, as co-author and sold copies of it online and later through his talk show. Stern gave Martin the program on SiriusXM, and he hosted it from 2006 until his death last month.
Martin also used his website to sell his hand drawn “symbols.” He claimed those were “downloaded” to his brain during a second abduction in 1975.
On the night I met him in the parking lot, several people were looking at him open-mouthed as he continued to empty his bladder. Oblivious to their stares, and now swaying so that he sporadically splashed the outside of the container and the ground with his stream, Martin suggested that I go online and buy one of his symbols too.
By then, a parking lot staffer had appeared nearby with a mop.
A few months later, a producer from the Stern show called to say that Riley was on the air at that moment trying to explain to Stern why a staffer on “The Riley Martin Show” had quit. Apparently Martin had a penchant for peeing in a big water jug he kept in the studio, rather than getting up and going to the restroom.
Happy to offer my own experience relevant to the conversation, I was soon on the air with Martin and Howard, relating my own golden-infused encounter in the parking lot.
Martin suddenly exploded. His calm demeanor was gone and soon he was calling me names and threatening: “I WILL LAY YOU OUT, YOU LITTLE CREEP, I WILL LAY YOU OUT.”
I asked him if he would be swinging his filled piss-jug at my head to achieve this.
I will miss him. I’ll miss his show, his appearances on Stern and mostly his depthless knowledge about the mysteries of the universe.
Pee well, space traveler. Fare thee well.
