“Can you imagine the pain? I understand the pain.”

An Interview with Radio DJ and Author Jude Angelini

Jude Angelini is a difficult stranger to sit across a table from. He’s simultaneously jittery and yet he never blinks. He has an assaulting, raspy voice that wavers between almost-shouting, shouting-shouting and smooth jazz. He collects shoes and antiques and records—real vinyl LPs—and all sorts of other little things that make you feel like you are so boring. And yet, you wonder, “Is he okay?,” every few minutes.

Angelini, also known as Rude Jude, gained mild celebrity as the bully on The Jenny Jones Show. His main gig these days is hosting the All Out Show on Sirius/XM. Angelini’s persona on this long-running radio program as a brash, abrasive and filthy dude, is so eerily familiar to me that I find it endearing. He could be the grown version of any asshole I dated in high school, which, as it turns out, is no accident. We grew up just an hour away from each other: him outside Detroit and me outside Flint, Michigan.  

Last year, Jude self published Hyena, a book of personal stories—mostly about sex and drugs and the decadent part of the world we’re from, but has since signed on with Simon & Schuster and his book can now be found in the “Beach Reads” section at Barnes & Noble. This is the first interview he’s granted to a literary outlet because we are the first literary outlet to have asked. I sat down with Jude a few weeks ago at his apartment in Los Angeles to talk about how someone like him (aka: someone like me) could dare write about themselves.

The minute I arrived, he offered me a drink. I asked what he had on hand. “I got everything, ma.” I chose white wine. He poured me a glass, grabbed what I later found out was a tiny bottle of the recreational intoxicant GHB, and led me out to his balcony for our chat.

—Jane Marie

THE BELIEVER: So how did it come about that you decided to write Hyena?

JUDE ANGELINI: My buddy told me to start a blog because I had a platform.

BLVR: You mean the radio show?

JA: Yeah, it was about five years into the show when I started doing the blog [on Tumblr] and it was mostly just lists and shit. I started telling stories about crazy sex exploits and people seemed to respond to that, but then I broke up with my girl and I started writing about that and I got negative feedback. I wrote about doing DMT and all I could think about was my ex....