And Just As I Had Made Up My Mind to Adopt Them Both

The Orphanage closed its doors today.

Danny.

I didn't get to hear much of the Orphanage or any of the handoffs today, just a few minutes'-worth, unfortunately.  A very few quick hits:

(1) Danny said in a kind of roundabout way at the beginning of the show that at this stage of his life he wants his Saturdays back, and that if they were going to have been fired it would have been done a long time ago.  I see no reason not to believe that the departure of The Orphanage was entirely voluntary, claimed overheard bar talk to the contrary notwithstanding.

(2) Jeff Catlin (stay tuned for more Jeff) has let it be known at The Ticket that he's will entertain proposals from younger Ticket guys to fill the 10-noon Saturday slot.

(3) Mike Sirois said that Cirque was offered that time slot and turned it down.  He said he had no idea what would replace the Orphanage.

(4) He also said that awhile back Cirque had been offered Sunday mornings, now occupied by The Shake Joint.  Cat, he recalled, had tried to sell it as the most desirable of the weekend slots.

(5) He called the Sunday morning show "the little analytics guys" and did not mention the show or its hosts by name.

(6) He also suggested that the ability to attract remotes was important to the profitability of the weekend shows.

*     *     *

I understand why some people didn't care for the Orphanage, but I really liked it.  Are Danny and Davey sort of clinging to an adolescent-to-mid-twenties lifestyle that sometimes fit oddly on men approaching the half-century mark?  Sure -- but geez, I'd like to go back to those times and live like that again myself if I could.  I don't begrudge either of them the time or lifestyle choices to allow them to keep up with current music, hit the clubs, play in bands, open bars (and close them), thumb their noses at critics, and make jokes on the radio. 

And they handled it with enough self-deprecation to suggest that they knew they were in on the joke, in fact, kind of were the joke, and were OK with it.

Davey.

So I found those two very agreeable company on Saturday mornings.  They're guys I'd hang out with if I were cool enough or famous enough and I'm neither, so what?  I want to be entertained while I'm doing my Saturday errands or working out in the field, and they never failed to do that. 

So I very much regret that when the announcement came, I was not holding my butt.  Orphanage, RIP.

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Whither the Orphanage?

The demise of The Orphanage is regularly predicted by Confessors. I was never sure why, except that the show seemed to get under the skin of some listeners who show up here. It's been away the last two weeks. If there has been an explanation for its absence, I haven't heard it.

I only heard a bit of its replacement on Saturday. I believe it was Bruce LeVine and maybe Josh Bogorad? I didn't hear a name, but Bruce made reference to his partner, so I'm surmising. Nothing wrong with the show. Nothing distinctive, but an OK listen.

But it wasn't the Orphanage.

Some have tired of what they believe to be Danny's "act," the aging hipster music snob. Some feel that the ages have passed Dave Lane by. Some don't like the attitude, the nose-thumbing at show prep, the sometimes hung-over flavor to the whole thing.

I like all of these things, and I like The Orphanage. I would not like to see it leave the air.

But to everything there is a season, no? I am doubtful that either D or D is handsomely compensated for spending his Saturday morning on the air. Danny has gone into business which must require some of his professional attention, has musical irons in the fire, and he's still full-time on The Hardline (with, it seems, more absences than in the past).

No one has dropped me a line with any inside dope on the disposition of The Orphanage. Perhaps someone will. If it is the case that we have seen the last of it -- and, as Norm might say, with the greatest respect to Bruce LeVine and the other guy -- I hope the CTO will continue their policy of looking for some fresh voices among the JV. I'm not sure who it would be. For my money The Ticket has hit a home run with Cirque and The Shake Joint, and I also very much like any combination of Ty Walker, David Newbury, David Moore, Stewart Cedar, guys like that.

In the meantime, I'll remain hopeful that the Teebox will continue to hand off to Davey and Danny.

And the Winner, Based on a Small Sample Size and Highly Subjective Taste, Is . . .

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This site has remarked a couple of times on the frenetic George/Gordon Raising Cain's ads.  I think I heard them say that their promotional visit to the opening of the latest Raising Cain's resulted in the biggest one-day sales at an RC store, something like that.

In the comments to my post on Raising Cain's and chicken generally, Confessors weighed in on their local favorites.  My dark-horse favorite was regional chain Golden Chick.

But the biggest Ticket-fried-chicken-related shot was the multi-segment celebration by Danny and Dave on the Orphanage last Saturday on the greatness of regional chain Chicken Express.  I wasn't the only one who wondered whether this was going to cause a problem with the Raising Cain's folks, who must have poured a fortune into the George/Gordon spots and promotional appearances.  Danny acknowledged he'd received cautionary communications from P1's but brushed them off, advising that RC was a "Muser" sponsor.

I have now recently visited both a Golden Chick and a Chicken Express in the Cool Metro.

Chicken Express wins on:

     --  Overall store appearance, inside and out.
     --  Menu variety and layout.
     --  Cleanliness.
     --  Staff friendliness and efficiency.
     --  Store accessibility (more and better DFW-area locations)

Golden Chick wins on:

     --  Chicken.

Sorry, Danny and Dave.  The Chicken Express chicken was good, but the chicken pieces were not of the best quality (size and tenderness).  That would have been okay if the coating had distinguished itself, but it was thin and somewhat limp.  It tasted all right, but it did not have the heartiness and crispiness of Golden Chick, and the thighs (my preferred cut) were on the undernourished side. 

(I acknowledge that crispiness is not the be-all/end-all of great fried chicken.  KFC Original Recipe yields a positively soggy coating but its deliciousness makes up for it.)

I have learned that CE is opening a store on a thoroughfare I get to with some regularity, so I'm sure I'll be visiting again.  If the foregoing is unfair (again, no respectable critic would base a comparo on a single visit), I'll check back.

All topics open, as usual.

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Follow Your Plainsman on Twitter:  @Plainsman1310

Email Your Plainsman:  ThePlainsman1310@gmail.com

May 29, 2012

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7:40 a.m. -- Playing around with something different.  With my time availability dwindling and likely to dwindle further, I'm going to try to get quick hits up from time to time for whatever interest they may have, but mainly to provide a continuing and occasionally refreshed forum for those who care enough to leave a comment.

The usual articles and thought pieces will continue to appear as I'm able to get to them.  I invite anyone with a hankerin' to write a piece to drop me an email, and, of course, I will be pirating emails to generate content for this space either anonymously or credited (with permission only). 

In any given day, there may be added material that will be headed by the time it was posted, thrown up as things occur to me.

*     *     *

I was out of town over the weekend.  Did The Orphanage comment on last week's technical disasters (I understand they had some technical challenges of their own)?

Did George DeJohn and the TeeBox have a real handoff on Saturday?  (The prior weekend the handoff was torpedoed by the worse TeeBox transmission quality ever, and the week before that, I 1think, was the George D-Craig R tiff.)

Does anyone have any information on Greg Williams's medical condition?

*     *     *

1:35 p.m. -- We hear from folks who think I'm (and some commenters are) overblowing the whole Ticket technical crisis.  Entirely possible they're right.  The show does manage to go on, mostly.  

But the commenters here and to the site that T4 directs us to (see comments to this post), including a well-known local broadcaster, makes the same point I made a week or so ago -- when things go bad and good people start to leave, everything suffers.  Not just the ability to stick plug A into port A, but morale, initiative, the desire to do well, the desire to come to work every day.  It shows in the product, and, eventually, it will show in the cast of characters who emerge on the air.

OPEN THREAD: World Series Wrap-Up

I tried to listen to as much Ticket as I could Friday and this weekend, didn't catch as much as I would have liked.  A little Diamond Talk, a little Orphanage, a little Soul Patch.  I'm liking the Soul Patch, Matt McClearin is growing more comfortable by the week.  I'm also finding that I like listening to Danny Balis talk sports on those too-rare occasions when he turns his attention that way.  I didn't listen to much Diamond Talk this year -- bedtime -- but I may have to make that effort next season.  Good stuff, and I didn't notice some of the Newberry mannerisms that have gotten some adverse commentary here. 

In general, I thought the coverage was about where I hoped it would come out -- informed, calm, non-accusatory, balanced, big-picture.  Put responsibility about where it probably belonged (mostly pitching) without going ballistic. 

I especially liked the commentary from the likes of Mike R that we had focused on the Rangers' "story" to the near-total exclusion of the Cardinals' "story," and that had been our mistake.

So I gots nothing too profound here.  Feel free to offer sportsy baseball commentary as well as Ticket commentary, and if you have a thought on the TV coverage, that would also be welcome.  Here's a very mild one:  I've never thought much of Tim McCarver, going back a long time.  His observations have always seemed generic and obvious to me, but I guess we could have worse color guys.  Contrary to some of the Ticket hosts, I thought A.J. Pierzynski gave the Fox presentation a needed jolt.  Yeah, he looks kind of spiky, and I hear he has been voted putz-of-the-year or something by MLB players, but I thought his observations were fresh.

We haven't heard any of The Ticket's regular programming apres-Series as of this posting, so please return and post your thoughts on what our weekday warriors have had to say as the broadcast week gets underway. 

Me, I'm getting ready for The Ticket's "unofficial" Cowboys pre-game show.  (They've started to call it that on promos -- I wonder if The Fan complained to someone about that.)

*     *     *

[PS:  There seems to be some controversy over whether Danny B has received some kind of formal appointment as "weekend program director."  Anon D says no, it's a bit; a couple of other commenters seem fairly certain that it has happened.  Can anyone shed any light on this?]

Hits way way up the last few weeks.  My gratitude to the Nation.  The party's only getting started.

As always, don't worry about jacking the thread.  If you've got something else on your mind, let us hear from you.  You can also email me at ThePlainsman1310@gmail.com.  I am not case-sensitive.

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Follow Your Plainsman on Twitter:  @Plainsman1310

Is Dallas a Drag?

Ooo, I may get in trouble with the Nation for this one.

*     *     *

I was very struck by segments on three different showgrams -- The Musers, The Hardline, and The Orphanage -- that the nation is not going to have a positive reaction to the City of Dallas when it visits for the Super Bowl.

There were various reasons given.  One common theme was that downtown Dallas is nothing.  It was pointed out that pockets of enjoyable nightlife and retail are few and isolated.  In general, I got the impression from almost every host that they didn't think Dallas was much of a city, for all of its apparent belief that it's world class. 

I agree.

Even ESPN is making its home in Fort Worth.

I arrived in Dallas in 2004.  I moved here because I love Mrs. Plainsman and Mrs. Plainsman's family is here and it's a great family and it was inevitable.  So at an appropriate juncture, we found jobs in the area and made the move.  We were living in a certifiably great city at the time, but I wasn't feeling too bad to leave it.  I'd lived there a long time and had experienced what it had to offer and could always go back to visit.  I had a vision of Dallas as vibrant, young, on the move, putting its money -- it has lots of money, doesn't it?  I mean Dallas and oil and money, right? -- to good use with exciting urban projects.

When I got here, I was stunned.  Compared to the other American cities I'd lived in  (East Coast, West Coast, Midwest), Dallas wasn't even close to being in their league.  And yes, a lot of it had to do with the wretched downtown, the decaying West End and Deep Ellum, the stark southern border and western borders that fall off instantly into poverty and junk, the incomparably ugly public buildings.  As noted, more strip clubs per capita than most anyplace else.  The view along many of our expressways is simply appalling.  I came to understand that local government dominated by the city council was a joke --  no city so constituted ever gets much done, and it does, it's so corrupted and compromised that it's a disaster in the making.  Dallas was a poster child for weak-mayor civic government.

And you know, even in its best parts -- it is really not an extremely attractive city.

Now, if I were a single guy with tons of free time on my hands to zoom from one island of reasonably cool stuff to another, I might feel differently.  It's not that there isn't good stuff in Dallas, it's that its almost randomly scattered about the place.  A couple of good museums.    Dallas is a restaurant capital as well, among the most if not the most restaurants per capita of any city in the US.  (In my judgment, many of the finest by reputation are overrated.)  But what's good about the city is almost random -- you can find good museums, restaurants, night life, architecture anywhere you go, but Dallas doesn't convey an identifiable singular urban experience.  It's entirely generic.  What cities do convey that experience?  Well, Fort Worth; San Antonio; Austin; and, I would argue, even Houston has a better brand than Dallas.

The city has many, many good people, and some gorgeous women.

But, and you must trust me on this, absolutely no more than elsewhere, and, like everything else about the place, and despite the evidence of that photograph, they're so scattered that even the pulchritude in this city is seriously diluted.

Ah  .  .  .  but Dallas has The Ticket.  It is no surprise that in resident surveys on what is best about DFW, a little light-bulb of a guy-based radio station consistently ranks at or near the top of the charts.  This is testimony to The Ticket's greatness, but it must also be counted as a serious rebuke to the city, that so many of its residents can't think of ten things better than a sports-talk station.   I am not entirely sure what I would do without The Little One to elevate my Dallas experience.

In discussing Dallas with others, I am always fearful that I would come off like a snob, so I don't talk much about my disappointment with the joint.  Which is why I was so startled to hear so many Ticket hosts believing that visitors were going to come away with a bad impression.  Yeah, they will, but it amazed me that these long-time Dallas guys believed that.

What do you think, Confessors?  Does Dallas have an inferiority complex?  Does it deserve to be mentioned alongside the great cities of our country?  Tell me what I need to do -- other than listen to The Ticket even more than I do now -- to get into the good things that Dallas has to offer, to learn to appreciate the place. 

I can be educated.

Is This a Permanent Change? If So, Great

Delighted to hear that The Orphanage is going to 1 PM today.  Another positive development for original Ticket weekend programming, which has made great strides the last year.  Hope this is a permanent change. 

If so, Ticket/Cumulus management deserves thanks.

If not, then thanks for today.

MARCHING ORDERS (2): Tune in to The Orphanage (Danny Balis and Dave Lane) Saturday at 10 AM on SportsRadio 1310 AM, 104.1 FM, The Ticket

I can assure all Confessors that I receive no promotional consideration for plugging The Orphanage and The Teebox.  I do not know and  have never met Rick, Craig, Danny, or Dave, any Ticket technical staff or management, or any members of their immediate families, respectively. 

I just enjoy the showgrams and wanted to spread the word, nothing more devious than that.

Confessor Nation: I Respectfully Request That You Tune in to "The Orphanage" on The Ticket, 10 AM to Noon, Saturdays

I know I don't have an Oprah-like influence on your life, but I do recommend that you tune in to the Danny Balis/Dave Lane Saturday morning show.   All orphans deserve our support -- well, they're not really orphans, they were just given up for adoption and have since tracked down their very-much-living mothers -- and lately the boys have taken to discussing the lack of promotional support for their showgram and their correspondingly dismal ratings.

So I thought I'd chip in for The Orphanage.  Thanks to P1 Steven, I've had a couple of spikes in readership here (he linked to Part 1 of my massive BaD Radio Trilogy from a couple of weeks back durng the live online chat with Dan McDowell a couple of days ago -- I'm sure Dan appreciated the broader dissemination of Your Plainsman's uncertainty over Dan's broadcast value).  So as long as I have a few more of you clicking over, I thought I'd exercise my vast invluence to engage in some special pleading for one of this site's favorites.

Yes, the show is suffused with a certain degree of cynicism and übercoolness as would any showgram anchored by Danny.  But it's a lot of fun, very smart, and when they do talk sports, it's about as astute as what you hear on The Hardline and most of The Musers (except when Craig is delivering himself of one of his close readings of the record, which is just about the smartest sports talk I've ever heard).  Also some of the best listener calls you will hear on The Ticket.

So give it a spin:

WHAT:  The Orphanage
WHERE:  1310 AM or 104.1 FM, and I guess some HD channel I don't remember
WHEN:   Saturdays, 10 AM to Noon
WHAT ELSE:   Become a fan on their Facebook page
ANYTHING ELSE:  Become a fan of Dave's new Facebook page (OldWaver) and check out his music blog (http://www.oldwaver.com/)

Thanks.

Danny Draws Back the Curtain

A post or two ago I tossed a bouquet to Jeff Catlin , Program Director at The Little One (he may have a different Cumulus title, not sure).  He drops a line now and then, always polite, usually pointing out areas of disagreement, but always in pretty neutral tones.  I appreciate his communications and said so in the post.

An "Anonymous" poster, however, observed:  "Cat is a douche and doesn't respect all of his employees and most of the P1's."

I can't speak to Mr. Catlin's attitude towards his employees.  Although one does get the impression of a certain uneasy distance between JC and his charges, especially when he's referenced by Mike R on The Hardline.   As to the P1's, Your Plainsman mostly hears good things about his responsiveness, although I recall one commenter who didn't get a response to an email.  I imagine Mr. Catlin gets hundreds a day and probably doesn't (can't) respond to all of the genius suggestions he receives from The P1 Nation.  But perhaps Anonymous has information I lack.

Which is why I found this morning's Orphanage of interest.  (I'd been able to catch a fair amount of Cirque du Sirois (damned clever name) substituting for the Teebox.  Based on early returns, CdS is a pretty good show that suffers only from the Ben-and-Skin disease of the hosts sounding too much alike -- in this case for pretty good DNA-based reasons.  I'll have more to say about it in the future.)

Anyway, a caller on the "Ask the Orphanage" segment asked why The Ticket didn't run The Orphanage as a substitute programming for the regular weekday shows when those hosts were on vacation, since (in that caller's and his pals' opinion) the Orphanage was the best show on The Ticket.

Danny's initial response was "Because Cat hates us."  Upon brief reconsideration, he said that there were two reasons. 

First -- if I understood him correctly -- Danny explained that The Orphanage, as a successor to The Rant, got "grandfathered in" as a show that was not required to conform strictly to the X-percentage-of-sports-talk format.  Other shows, he said -- and I tend to credit this account -- are constantly importuned to maintain a substantial amount of actual sports talk.  The number Danny threw out was 60%, but I'm not sure if that was intended to be an accurate report or just an illustration of Cat's instruction to emphasize sports talk.  But The Orphanage is apparently exempt from that requirement, and Danny thought that Cat would not "trust" them to do a conventional sports-talk showgram substituting for a regular weekday show.  (Ironically, today's show was heavily sports-oriented, and probably had the most intensive World Cup coverage I've heard to date on The Ticket -- and since I usually tune such talk completely out, it was a tribute to the show that I didn't.)  

Second, he said, "Cat hates us."

I can understand why Mr. Catlin might have a problem with Mr. Balis.  I don't have a firm grip on Dave Lane's persona -- I gather he may have had a more prominent role on The Ticket in the past, perhaps before I got to Dallas in the mid-Oughts.  (I could never figure out who "Gen-X Davey" was.)   And I assume Dave has an actual paying job elsewhere.  Danny, however, gives every indication of being an actual honest-to-Jah free spirit who enjoys his freedom more than his radio gig and probably would not be the favorite of any supervisor who wanted employees to, you know, comply with his employer's instructions and policies, as employees are universally required to do.   

Cat's problem (if Danny's suggestion that there is a problem is to be credited), of course, is that -- putting aside attitude for the time being -- Danny is a truly gifted human.  Let's see:  He's a composer; producer; musical performer; witty; funny (not the same thing); a talented broadcaster as a secondary sidekick; a talented broadcaster as a show host; and a notable content provider ("What's On Mike's Mind" intros and other similar contributions).  Also a man-about-Dallas through his performing and his friendships with the Wilonskyesque Observer-orbit hipster element.  And a thoughtful mentor to that nice young Michael Gruber.     

And, I suspect, a Galaxy-Class pain in the ass to the KTCK/Cumulus overlords.

And it's true that the Dark Cloud emerges from time to time to annoy the hoi polloi P1 Nation with his overcool musical tastes and his cynicism about matters that may call for it in the abstract (for example, most of pop culture), but which he tends to oversmack on The Hardline.  But man, if he weren't there M-F 3:30-7, you'd miss him terribly. 

 (By the way -- does anyone know why George refers to him as "Big Dumb Danny"?  When I hear that [although I haven't heard him say it in awhile], I get this image of George walking around in a big glass house, with me standing outside with a chunk of feldspar -- or perhaps gneiss -- in my hand, ready to chuck.)

But returning to the original point -- doesn't it say something positive about Mr. Catlin that despite what he may see as unacceptable disrespect for Cumulus programming goals by the obstreperous Danny B, he recognizes what he's got and not only declines to terminate the the SOB, but actually gives him his own showgram?   

Before I sign off:    Will one of my faithful Confessors please remind me to post sometime on the extremely intriguing Danny B/Gordon K dynamic? 

Ah, dammit.  It's Great to Listen to The Ticket. Hurrah for the freakin' Fourth of July, everyone.