A Nice Quiet Ticket Friday Night at Home with Mrs. Plainsman

It was a very interesting Ticket day, I thought. 

Mrs. P is recovering from some surgery (she’s fine, thanks for asking) and we’re watching some March Mildness (although this Kansas-Michigan game is concluding in an interesting way).  I’m in the old rocker and thought I’d give you  a number of items to chew on.

 

A SOURCE!

A commenter to the last post chided me for not having “sources” that would have instantly alerted me to Alexis’s departure.  I was going to respond that when one has no sources at all, my ignorance might be excused.

And later that day, I heard from someone.

I never know how to evaluate the stuff that (quite rarely and unexpectedly) comes my way.  I kinda consider the content, figure out it makes sense in the context of other stuff we know or think we know.  I decided this communicant probably had good information.  He (?) was someone who has been listening to The Ticket for a long time, and also exhibited some inside knowledge.  And in this case, his stuff was not incendiary, no apparent axes to grind. 

Paring it down s/he said:  The Campout was a Muser-only thing for several years before the whole station went.   The Musers decided to invite the whole station and make it a Ticket event.  It was never popular with some of the hosts, but they soldiered through.   After last year’s campout, only three of the nine on-air hosts were interested in doing it this year.  Thus, no more Campout, at least not this year and maybe never.

S/he also reported that the end of the Compound had nothing to do with Greggo’s departure.  S/he did not identify any specific reason the Compound was shelved, but did suggest that the talent sometimes feels that some items get stale and resist improvement.

Thanks to the Source – tried to think of a funny name for this correspondent, but nothing comes to mind.

I will say, however, that in general this tends to support my fairly unremarkable thought that there is some extremely interesting stuff that goes on behind the scenes.  Not all the hosts are on board with all of the stuff all the time.  This isn’t a shocking conclusion, but it’s the kind of stuff that the P1 would love to know about.  But, just as people beyond your employer don’t know the politics at your workplace, I don’t reckon we’ll ever get the story behind, for example, the demise of The Great Game.  There were some ill feelings after the last one, as I recall, centering on Mike Bacsik’s team-switching.  (Am I remembering correctly that that was the last one?)  You know, it’s probably just as well we don’t know.

 

 Trademarking Fun Ticket Phrases and Names

Confessors!  How unseemly!  You should receive your gratification entirely from the adoption of your descriptors by Confessors and others.  (I ran into a guy the other day who told me that he was the author of the “Yuck Monkey” designation on The Ticket.  I actually believed him.)

 How Mike is Sounding

Faithful Confessor ausgang left a comment to the last post reporting that he thought he detected sadness in Mike’s voice, that he seemed a little depressed.  Seemed to start 3-4- months ago.  (ausgang stated that he had no knowledge of any issues in Mike’s life.)

Well.   ausgang, I was startled by your comment because I noticed something in his voice at about the same time.  I thought about writing about it, but decided I may have been hearing things, and, truth to tell, I only hear it once in awhile.  (And not at all today, see below.)

But I had a different thought.  I didn’t feel that what I heard reflected any attitudinal issues.

What I thought was that for the first time, I thought I heard age creeping into those incredible pipes.    As I say, I don’t hear it often, but just once in awhile, I’ll hear a little crack, or a little breathiness, that I don’t recall hearing before.  The man is what, 62?  I mean, jeez, he comes by it honestly, and he’s not a young 62.   And he’s a regular vocal performer with his bands, singing out of his range (my opinion).  Not easy, and maybe what I’m hearing is just a little vocal weariness from a recent performance. 

 

 

But yeah, ausgang, I noticed something, too.

Mike and Mark

I only heard bits and pieces of The Hardline today, but what I heard sounded pretty good.  Mike was fully engaged, sounded great, and there was some sports talk on both their parts that indicated either preparation, or just plain sportsy knowledge.  I think most of us would like to hear more of this Mike with Corby and Danny, not just when sports is on the table, but in segments across the board. 

I wish I had heard more of their talk about the genesis of The Ticket, specifically Mark’s hiring by Mike.

 

Intra-Show Sniping

(1)  Corby won the E-Brake this morning for his show stop-down with a bad pun (that is, a pretty good pun).   George took the opportunity to take on The Hardline, who had been sniping at The Musers for not selecting enough of THL gaffes for the Friday contest.   George made some rather cutting comments about The Hardline, and concluded by recalling Corby’s suggestion that THL should do an internal blooper competition of its own.  George rather pointedly invited THL to do exactly that.   (I think that THL has won the last three E-Brakes.)

Of course, there is frequently some jabbing between the shows and it’s usually pretty-obviously good-natured.   George’s remarks did not have that flavor.  Anyone else thing George was just the tiniest bit hot under the collar?

 

 

(2)  I believe this one took place when Jake was doing E-News.  He made reference to a former Ticket guy, I believe it was Psycho Dave, who had stated somewhere along the line that he quit The Ticket because of Bob Sturm, although it could have BaD generally.  Mark said that he had left The Ticket way back when because of some friction with the cadre of BaD interns.  And there was talk directed generally against BaD interns (this may have been a reference to times past, hard to tell).   I forget who said that Bob was also amazed when learning that his management style did not get good reviews from his minions, but Mike jumped in at the end to support this piling on Bob.

(Attention UnTicket – that would be a nice clip to hear again.)

*     *     *

As I said – an interesting Ticket day.

And now, I'm going to sit back and watch Perry Mason on Channel 24. 

Twitter: @Plainsman1310

Email:  ThePlainsman1310@gmail.com

 

Wanna go Camping?

That's a punchline to a pretty good, but pretty dirty joke.  If you don't know it, let me know.

So what did we all think about the camping experience?

A couple of random observations.

First, it reminds us that listening to a drunken conversation is a lot funnier, and a lot more fun, when you are a drunken participant in it.   I'm sure we have all had the experience of being the only sober person when everyone around us is drunk.  (Haven't we?)  It can be fun, but it can also be vaguely discomfiting, as we are embarrassed over the behavior of people we know to be, in the usual case, honorable and civilized.  Interesting how being drunk makes one thinks certain utterances are howlingly funny, but when those utterances are received by unebriated ears, the only reaction is bafflement and embarassment. 

Second -- there seems to be a schizophrenic reaction at the station.  I had thought that the hosts who commented on it -- even Mike R -- were fairly positive about it.  But I was listening to the Orphanage/Rant Saturday morning -- or was it the Newbery/McClaren show, I forget -- where there was a report that the participants were lukewarm on the thing.

In general, I liked it.  I thought it was worthwhile, and pretty funny, and different, and it's interesting to hear the mix-and-match hosts coming in and out of the various programs.  Kind of an informal Wife Swap.  Even the drunken broadcasting was, a a minimum, something one doesn't hear often from any kind of public media.  Mavericks Radi 1310 was a mild disappointment to me, because I was not watching the game at the time and the commentary itself did not state what was going on.  So when the boys would start howling it was not possible for me to hook it up with what was happening on the court.  In general, I thought it was a success.

I do have one question:  Was it really the "Musers'" Woodfood Reserve Campout?  Or is that just what the Musers called it?  Woodford Reserve is associated with Corby.  No big deal, just interesting the little ways the Musers and Hardline guys try to one-up each other.  (BaD Radio never tries to one-up anyone.)
I can understand why they're doing the camping instead of the Compound where they trash some poor developer's house that he can't sell.  It's hard for a radio station to destroy an entire forest over two days.