09 December 2009

Midweek - Radio Show - Olympiakos Away (CL)

Same day post, now what do we owe this pleasure?

Well, to be honest, it's a post the day after the remote broadcast from the pub. Which I must say was an interesting little happening. I'll take a moment to mention the Champions League in brief because really not much happened from the Arsenal point of view.

The Arsenal fielded a young side and took a reasonable loss. The scoreline justly reflects that. Of course, I am only going off of highlight reels and not the whole match. However, what is slightly more interesting is the Scousers fell once again. It is really not their year. I would say my heart goes out to that lot but I wouldn't really be sincere with it at this time.

Radio...... life transmission.....

As many of you may or may not know, one of the local sports shows decided to do a remote broadcast from the pub. The focus was on the World Cup draw and impressions from some of the pundits and players, more like two or three. Little to my knowledge, the extremely talkative Manc chap who was at Grant Wahl's reading was the radio host.

Early Monday evening, SlainteLOSC was sending me messages about this thing. Apparently there was an FB invite to it but I don't recall ever receiving it. I agreed to show up, just to represent and see what was really happening.

After work on Tuesday, I head over to the pub. The downstairs was bare, maybe 2 or 3 random people but nothing exciting. I take a few moments to harass Little sister and say hey to Bridge then head up.

Little sister was warning me that they all looked like skinheads. I laughed and said they were probably all balding and shaved the rest off to look cool. She wasn't convinced, so I started singing some lines from some random old school dirty reggae song as I headed upstairs.

Exactly as expected, just a couple of random guys. I immediately recognized the talkative Manc and put it all together about him hosting the radio show. Part of me knew how this was going to play out but I would endure it either way.

Manager in Black came over and was talking me up to the TalkativeManc. We nodded and he asked if I had any questions for Alexi Lalas. I bit my tongue and just said no but I was thinking "What the fuck would I ask that dude a question for?"

Yes I am being nice today, can you tell?

It was more interesting that Grant Wahl was going to be there. I'll say it again, very cool guy. Now if I had a question to ask, that is the man to ask the questions.

Grant came in and talked to me for a bit about the Arsenal. TalkativeManc came over and started yapping his ear off. I will say Grant is a patient man. They went over to the broadcast set up to begin the show and go over some of the talking points.

I took a seat at the bar, SlainteLOSC joined me and we perused some scores from Europa and he gave me a little jibe about Lyon losing to Lille. The Manager in Black sat on the other side of me just as the show began.

The first bit was a little interesting, however the three stooges began our own conversation. All I can remember is there was a discussion about the Revolutionary War, Lafayette, and something about how come the French got their asses kicked by the English.

My response -> We did not cheat. followed by a Gallic shrug.

Somehow, I hope none of that got picked up on the mics. The show continued, one of the DC United players was on for a bit, talking about things and then some more commercial breaks. Grant and TalkativeManc, with his sidekick, got into a decent discussion about the African teams.

HOWEVER, after the 10th commercial break, they had to start talking about American Football, to keep their numbers up, or so they say. I really think there needs to be a proper football show, if you are going to call yourself a sports radio station.

One show where it is on target, that would help raise the level of interest. People just aren't exposed to the beautiful game like they should be and when they are, it's by some semi-supporter of (insert the club everyone supports). It gives a very skewed vision of the dynamics that reside in the game and within the greater culture surrounding the game.

So, there were like about 20 people scattered around the pub, they all converged for the Ravens segment, like flies to shit. It was really odd. SlainteLOSC and myself moved to the corner by the bar supplies and talked about the crowd. We also decided to stack a bunch of the kiddie cups and thought of other ways to entertain ourselves at the expense of others.

Final segment was with the gentleman from the Baltimore Brigade. One of the US supporters club that is based in Baltimore, of course. I bet you had trouble figuring that one out. They are trying to connect with one of the national groups, forget which one but it's not Sam's Army.

So the broadcast ends and that is my cue to head home. Like I said, it was interesting and now I understand why TalkativeManc is the way he is. I don't think he has an off button.

They are planning on doing some more remote broadcasts closer to WC2010, so we will see.

Final Note

I actually failed in my radio bombing. The only thing I really did was yell WOOOO really obnoxiously whenever they mentioned pub on the air. I know, not exciting, should have broken into some vulgar football songs and see how many F-words I could get away with before being carded.

Such is my life!

~LeChat

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