Confessors, I apologize for my distance the last few weeks. Been hard to get by the Osborne to slap up some fresh material. I am grateful for you guys and gals making up your own topics in the meantime, and this one seems to have some legs. I'm late to the party so maybe it's played out, but maybe we can find a new angle on this.
Many commenters to the last post have listed the items that cause them to punch out. Here is a partial list, some of which seem rather extreme and some of which may be tongue-in-cheek (I'll get back to this):
-- Ranch Reports or midweek Ranch Reports
-- The Tom Grieve Show
-- The Jason Witten Show
-- Gay/Not Gay
-- Red Dirt talk from George
-- Norm's show
-- Musers and Hardline "Around the NFL"
-- Hardline College Football talk (assume this is the Tuesday roundup)
-- Hockey talk
-- Soccer talk
-- Homer Call
-- Monkey News (not sure what this is)
-- Aggressiveness audio (guess this is a BaD thing; commenter says it isn't done much anymore)
-- Gribble talking
-- Norm interviewing a new guest
-- Corby travel, political, music, or name-drop talk
-- Any interview
-- Any Cowboys talk
-- Any NFL talk
-- Any music talk
-- Any Norm
-- P1 Football picks against the Musers
-- Evan Grant
-- Musers' charity functions
-- BaD game show segments
-- BaD segments that take forever to set up
-- Race Week
-- Teebox
-- Any wireless segment
-- SMU football
-- Stars hockey
-- Checkout Mike
-- Fart game
-- All athlete interviews, including Troy Aikman
-- Why Today Doesn't Suck
-- Hardline thinking certain music or trends are douche-like
-- What's On Mike's Mind
-- Muse in the News
-- Fantastic Friday Fan Feedback (not familiar with this, sorry)
-- Junior's Top/Bottom Five List
-- Cirque du Sirois
-- Intentional Grounding
-- Ferrall
-- NBA talk
-- Orphanage
-- Soccer, golf, and tennis talk
The first thing to notice about this list is that some of it consists of entire shows. Fair enough, but it's not really a punch-out candidate. You don't like a show, you don't punch in.
And I would never doubt the sincerity of a Confessor, but I suspect that a lot
of these items are not true punch-outs, but just items that the P1 in question
doesn't care for. I just don't see a large number of people who care enough about The Ticket -- who like it -- to turn away from the station when some of these things come on.
On that list I only see a couple of things that sometimes move me to change channels on the Philco. I dislike phone pranks, so I'm out on the Fart Game. If wireless wandering gets too blue or supercilious, I sometimes see what Little Steven's Underground Garage has cooking. Looks like BaD may be overrepresented in that list, but I have been known to wander up and down the dial when some set-up drones on, or when Dan says "Right?" more than seven times in a ninety-second period. But by and large, my only regular punch outs are ads:
-- The Central Market "Are you really into . . . ."
-- The "Most Interesting Man in the World" Dos Equis ads (he used to be interesting, but he seems to have turned into an űbermensch)
-- Ads for SMU featuring the extremely smug pitchman, who seems to be finding work with other sponsors, which I also punch out on.
And frequently, I don't really punch out, I just turn the sound down until the annoyance passes.
(I must mention one ad that I find absolutely fascinating, and that is the one for renting tires. I think it's "Rent A Wheel." Sounds like the entire ad was phoned in. Now, you may be wondering about the wisdom of renting a tire, a process which conjures up the temporary use of a tire, for which privilege one pays, and then one returns the tire when the rental period expires. And that tire is then rented out to another motorist, and so on. Ah, but that would appear to be wrong thinking. If you go to the website, it seems instead to be the financing of an actual tire purchase.)
I don't really have a point here. But I do wonder where you guys go when you really do punch out. Do you sample ESPN or The Fan? Do you turn the thing off?
Hey, as long as I'm rambling: What's the deal with KT? I didn't hear what The Musers said, and I can't tell from Kevin's or others' comments on the last thread if his status has changed somehow on the Ben/Skin showgram. In any event, Kevin, continued good wishes.
Finally: I'll continue to be scarce for the next little while. Thanks for continuing to check in, and keep on giving us your thoughtful and civil comments.
