Other Magazines That Piss Me Off

Thanks to Ol' No. 7 for the breakdown of our beloved Ted. I have not managed--how best to say this--to avoid shitting my pants in Ted-to-Ted competition thus far. In 2005, my team was so absurdly awful (despite what I felt to be a pretty good pitching lineup at the start of the year, including a newly Yankee-fied Randy "The Ape Drape" Johnson, who everyone expected to win 40 games and grudge-fuck Anna Benson on the mound after each one, merely as a way to re-assert the American League's primacy) that I lost like the 1977 Cubs at an Atlantic City craps table. Last year was slightly better, but that's like saying losing three fingers in a Cuisinart is slightly better than having a pack of rabid Dachshunds gnaw off both feet.

Anyway. I fully expect to beat all of these losers in every single matchup. (I notice 7 didn't bring up our ancillary football/baseball league, The Nat, in which I have experienced considerably more success, including a just-barely-unsuccessful run at the baseball championship. I blame southern Colorado educational system and that wicked Durango beer.)

I have a beef to beef. So let's to it:

LOCAL SPORTS TALK RADIO

In Denver--where I live with my ferocious Lhasa Apso Colonel Steve, and my equally ferocious wife, Brandy--our options are, or should I say were, Sporting News Radio on AM 560, starring the vaguely racist, saturnine dwarf Tim Neverett, or AM 950, starring a conglomeration of insufferable douchebags who have all bounced around the local media scene for years. There's Joe Williams, an ancient crank whose claims to fame are 1. he used to constantly agitate for John Elway to be traded and once suggested the Broncos replace him with Kansas State's Chad May, and 2. he got his start, ala JT The Brick, as a caller. There's Sandy Clough, whose voice is the aural equivalent of a ratchet screwdriver in the eye, Mark Moser, whose NASCAR-dude persona endears him to men who have sex with their daughters, and Irv Brown, who...well, he's actually not that bad. He is over 100, though.

A pretty motley crew--and it's gotten worse. Neverett, at least, once shared his show with Jim Armstrong, an unapologetic cheesehead but an actual reporter, and thus 560 would, on occasion, offer sports-related programming that rose above the usual shouts. Then the folks in charge broke them up, Armstrong went on to join Williams and Brown in a clumsy on-air threeway (I totally mini-puked in my throat upon writing that) and Neverett was left to carry the show by himself.

Neverett is a hockey fan. And not just a hockey fan--one of those hockey fans. The ones who get all pissed off and defensive when people say things like, "I don't really like hockey" or "hockey? Is that even still around?" The ones who call your sports intelligence into question for not knowing of--or let's be honest, caring about--the intricacies of the Left Wing lock. The ones who puff up about fighting (it's part of the game!) but think everyone in the NBA is out to steal their wallet.

So, with Armstrong's moderating influence gone, 560 in the morning became all pucks, all the time. They even started a segment with one of our two local dailies' hockey writers and introduced it with The Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)."

I doubt they appreciated the unintentional comedy inherent in two flabby white dudes rapping about a third-tier Canadian pastime, preceded by a bad, 10-year-old song by one of America's all-time lamest bands, but whatev. Hockey and subtlety go together like toothpaste and beer.

Even so, it was my regular morning show. And two days ago, from nowhere, it disappeared, replaced by some national product out of Atlanta featuring a couple of mumbly dudes who laugh at themselves a lot. So I had to make the switch to 950. And Clough's yells have left my eardrums feeling like Trent Green's asshole after a night out with "the boys."

Please. For God's sake, Clear Channel, or Phil Anschutz, or whoever: bring back Armstrong and Neverett. They were the best of a very, very bad bunch.