With Apologies to Terry Malloy, Can We Start Calling Him "Mike in Palookaville"?

CONFIDENTIAL TO MIKE IN DUNCANVILLE: KRLD ("The Fan"): 877-881-1053; KESN ("ESPN Dallas): 855-787-1033

Man, have we had our fill of this guy?

Win or lose, can we count on this marking the end of his presence on Ticket bandwidth?

His recent rants are sounding more and more like extreme self-parodying bits ("I win the e-brake"; "I move the needle"), which pretty much kills any interest in seeing what we thought was a true narcissist get his comeuppance (or knockdownance).  I'm a little surprised The Ticket is playing along, although they are getting some Fight Night pub, which has been lacking in the last couple of years. 

Absent a knockout, my money is on the crowd voting with Jake, if I had any money.

"Got nexts, Jake."

Not a Lot to See Here, Just Keeping the Thread Moving Along

I'm as big a fan of Monty + The Machine (aka "Not a Podcast") on Saturday morning as most of you seem to be.  A raucous, slacker-anarchic show even with only two voices.  Fun, different, some good Emerging Demo Sports Takes.

It's still kind of finding its way, though; still poking a sharp stick into the side of The Ticket.  Is it a good strategy?  I dunno.  I shake my head sometimes, but I don't punch out.

Yesterday, for example.

The Machine was on fire, returning to his roots as a guy who talks a lot.  The guy has a very unique radio timbre, and it's an interesting sound to have coming through the buds, but the guy gives some signs of being positively Sturmian as the syllables pour out of him, irrespective of what else is happening on the show at the time.   I thought that he and Justin had really worked out a nice balance in the last couple of months, but Justin's 1-1:30 news was a jumble of both of them talking at once.  (Hey, Machine, don't get upset -- love the show, love what you got.  OK?  This is just what one guy is hearing.  Maybe I'll hear from Confessors who ain't hearing the same thing.  And I'm estimating a P1 readership for this site on the order of 0.05% and a Cumulus readership south of that.)

And then there was the Eli Jordan Ticker.  It was cruising along at its usual dramatic pace, when all of a sudden there was a bunch of talking going on over his report.  I thought it was Machine, but I could be mistaken about that.  Could have been both him and Justin.  I tried to tell if whoever was talking over the Ticker was doing it accidentally because of a mis-hit board button, or just crashing the Ticker for the hell of it, but since the whole thing was incomprehensible, it was hard to tell.  I will say this, Eli didn't miss a beat, so it wasn't clear to me that he could hear the host-noise going on over his report.

But I think he did, and I think he did not believe it was a technical meltdown, because:

After it was all over, Machine and Justin tried to get Eli to get on-mic to  .  .  .  well, it wasn't clear what they wanted to talk to him about, although they said once or twice they wanted to "ask him a question."  But Mr. Jordan was having none of it, a 100% layout, Eli has left the building, leaving M+M to vamp embarrassingly for a bit before moving on. 

And M+M didn't blame the technology.

I dunno, guys, dunno what you get out of jabbing the Musers, don't know what you get out of jabbing Eli, don't even know what you get out of pretty harshly jabbing the Siroises as you also did yesterday (and do a lot).  I know, I know, it's a M+M bit to be the snotty newcomers.  Maybe that's what Cat is looking for, maybe you've got a deal with Mike and Cash.

But it's starting to take on just a bit of a hostile cast, pretty aggressive for a show that may feel established to its hosts but does not to most everyone else (all right, maybe just to me).  I really want to be hearing M+M on the air for the foreseeable future, so I'm hopeful that they will give some thought to the whereabouts of that fine line between bit and bloviation.

ThePlainsman1310@gmail.com

@Plainsman1310

FROM THE ARCHIVES -- Let's Take a Break for a Little Green Tail Shiner

CONFESSORS:  I'm still tied up with some personal and professional changes.  got some stuff in the hopper but we're in desperate need of a thread-freshener.  dipping into the archives this morning for a spot of fun.  the ticket should bring this back as a station meme, but it seems to have faded in the collective memory.  thanks for keeping the site going while i'm tied up.  let me hear from you if you have something you'd like to propose as a featured post.  thanks, confessors.  -- plainsman

All right, things are getting a little too testy around here for my liking.

We all need to calm down a little for some Ticket fun from the archives. 

I've written about this a couple of times in past posts.  For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, and for those who do, the good men at The UnTicket have the goods as they usually do.  I re-listened to this a few minutes ago and I laughed out loud again, and not just one or two giggles.

9/11 was unquestionably a worthy Number One moment at The Ticket, but here is my personal favorite moment on The Ticket of the last ten years:

Green Tail Shiner Non-Explanation with Embedded Replay of Original Reference with Bonus Classic Michael Gruber Background Chortling

The link is actually Mike's Mind on the day following the original reference, but I believe most if not all of the original Green Tail Shiner reference is replayed here.

So if, on my deathbed, my final words are "Green Tail Shiner," as they may well be, you won't need a whole damned movie to figure out what I was talking about.

With All the Annoying Political Talk, we Turn to the Ads.

Confessor Jack McCall submitted this little essay prompted by his perplexity over the "Good Contractors List" commercials running with increasing frequency on The Ticket.  I liked the writing and the recollection and the point.  With Cowboys training camp and surging Rangers and Fight Night and all the rest there's Ticket fodder out there, but I thought this elegaic little piece was worth your time.  Thanks to Jack McCall -- his nom de MTC is actually quite clever -- and, as always, I would appreciate hearing from others who would like to be a guest contributor.  I hope Jack will weigh in on a Ticket topic soon.

*     *     *

As a P1 you have a love-hate relationship with commercials. And by "love" I mean "not hate as much." Commercials are part of the P1 deal, though, so your best option is to at least let the advertising genius in you dissect some of these odorous specimens.

If you don't have that level of expertise don't worry--neither do I. But I do know something about the generally terrible idea of coming up with a message that is so contrarian that it must be good. Hint: it isn't.

Sophomore year of high school my buddies and I managed to talk our parents into letting us spend New Year's at a friend's "river house," which was actually a single-wide situated some 300 yards of thick, steep hiking away from a desolate stretch of the Brazos.

Obtaining their permission was tough, as our folks no doubt imagined a combination of booze, fireworks and just an utter disregard for the dangers of the river. We prevailed but were still rattled enough on the drive down that we came up with an idea, one that would layer in some additional lies to lessen the ongoing skepticism. If nothing else we might be subject to less grilling upon return.

This idea, which was really bad and poorly strategized from the beginning, went something like this: Upon calling our parents to confirm arrival in Unincorporated, Texas, we'd all mention how some state trooper had stopped us as we pulled into our destination. This idea, which, again, was really bad, was that we'd breathlessly tell our parents how this cop had pulled us over for no good reason, searched us and our car for no good reason, and then obviously had to let us go because of course his search was fruitless.

What our parents would take from these calls, however, was that a mere 90 minutes into our trip we had already found ourselves in trouble with the police.

It's easy to become so enamored of a contrarian idea, so convinced of its reverse-psychology genius, that you don't quite think it all the way through. For example, if you're a company called The Good Contractors List, maybe don't do a whole commercial talking about a really BAD contractor on YOUR list. As Seinfeld once said, "Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?"

Your company positions itself, down to its very name, as a cut above the rest. But you spend lots of money to run lots of spots talking about a bad contractor on your good list. I guess the resulting cognitive dissonance is supposed to be so jarring that I'm now listening even more attentively as you explain why your company is still good anyway. But really, I'm just thinking about how maybe your company can't quite live up to, well, you know, the name you gave it.

"Anyone know where I can find a Hammer?"