TalkJunkie

I guess I abandoned the inane Alec Baldwin’s in studio appearance on Brian Whitman’s Sunday night show a bit too soon. During the show, Hannity called in to confront Baldwin on a number of his statements and his refusal to appear on Sean’s own program. They were quickly joined by Mark Levin and the show rapidly degenerated, or perhaps invigorated, to a tag-team of insults.

Whitman, who has a flair for theatre and gags, had to have known what would ensue if the call was taken. I wonder who alerted Sean and Mark to the appearance. I wish they’d have alerted me too.

But to the rescue comes Mark Levin Fan with the audio for all to enjoy.

Well I think I’ve sucessfully completed a WordPress upgrade this evening.  I hope it didn’t inconvenience anyone, and I know it didn’t cause anyone a fraction of the anxiety it caused me.

If you spot anything screwy, you can let me know with the contact link at the foot of the page.  Thanks.

Tammy has announced on her site that “for the time being”, free streaming is available of her program from the Talk Radio Network Site. The Tammy Radio stream is active during her live show hours of noon til 3pm est. Monday thru Friday.

She advises, “Go to the Talk Radio Network site, click on my picture and a page will appear automatically with player and stream options. I’m told that the Windows player seems to be the most reliable.” I won’t get to try this out for myself til Tuesday but I’ve added the link on the schedule grid already. I’m glad to have a source again for weekday streaming of this show. Hopefully, “for the time being”, will last awhile.

from Sunday

I been busy. I can report that sampling the following beers in one afternoon in no way diminishes one’s interest in talk radio. I started the afternoon at The Celebration of The Suds in Atlantic City with Magic Hat HIPA because I’ve already enjoyed their #9 and the goal was trying new beers.

What follows may or may not be the precise order or precise list or precise anything. Barley Creek Angler Black and I think, Antler Brown Ale. Young’s – Old Nick, Young’s Special London and Winter Warmer. Blue Ridge Rainbow Trout ESB. Chimay’s Grand Reserve and Cinq Cents. Rogue Arrogant Bastard Ale. Abita Old Scratch. Allagash Dubbel. Brookly Brewery’s Smoked Porter, Brooklyn Pale Ale and Fortitude Lager.

Off in the corner was a booth from some upstart company, Anheuser something. I wandered over. It didn’t smell like beer, so I tried one that might have the best chance of tastink like beer – the BareKnuckle Stout. Somewhat beerlike, but I don’t think this outfit has much of a future. Working my way back up to speed, I moved to Sam Adams Brown Ale, and requested a ticket for a later tasting of Sam Adams Utopia.

I grabbed a salted pretzel and since they didn’t have any Mountain Dew I thought I’d test whether pretzels and beer can compliment each other. That works fime. Lancaster Brewing provided me some Hop Hog and Lancaster Milk Stout – mmsmooth – Got Stout? I think I also had their Strawberry Wheat or ah somebody’s strawberry something. I had Tun Tavern’s somewhat unusual BarleyWine. Back to Adamsams for the special pour of their Utopia. Strong alcohol smell, I mean “aroma” – yeah aroma. The tast made me think sherry while others say brandy. Someone mor beerliterate than I had this information- packed post on a beerboard – “this is an ass-kicker of a “beer.” Do I even know what beer is anymore? Do I care? How does one rate this beer fairly? I sure don’t know.” There – exactly. It’s supposadyly 27 thousand percnet alcholol, requires special financing and according to Adam website, “Utopias can not be sold in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia.”

Back to beer. Heavyweight coeerced me into their Perkuno’s Hammer, a porter from the Baltic region of New Jersey. Also their B’iere d’Art Ale. And of course some Lunacy Belgian-Style Ale. I don’t know what the hell else I had at what was basiclly a six hour open bar forall of 25 bucks. Wonderful event. Of course sampling these in a different order or making subsitutions might bring different results – this requires much testing. I can also recommend finishing with dinner at Cuba Libre – good plantain soup and of course, drinks. I not drivin – I probbably shoudlnt’ be drivin for a few days.

Now it isn’t. I thought I had this Saturday morning autotainment show on the schedule but apparently I screwed up. I’ve corrected that. Its not as if this show isn’t available on more than a few stations.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi’s Car Talk has been informing and entertaining on NPR since 1987 but began ten years before that at Boston University’s WBUR. Now on over 588 stations, the brothers have also put out a Car Talk book and newspaper column which appears in over 200 newspapers. The column, Click and Clack Talk Cars is named after their radio alter-egos, Click and Clack, The Tappet Bros. The show has also been inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.

Between them, according to Wikipedia, the brothers have degrees in general science, chemical engineering, and an MBA and Ph.D in management, and were commencement speakers at MIT. The program was honored with a Peabody award in 1992, sharing award time that year with Daniel Schorr, Jerry Seinfield and Bill Cosby. They’ve appeared on The Tonight Show, Letterman, CBS Evening News, The Today Show and 60 Minutes. They say they’re still waiting for the big time, with an invite from Regis and Kelly. So apparently the two have some sort of credentials, Tom and Ray I’m talking about, not Regis and Kelly.

So if your vehicle has some kind of weird smell or mysterious whirring sound coming from the cragameter or whatever when you make right turns, who you gonna call? No, not Regis. Click and Clack, Tom and Ray are the ones to call when they’re on the air and not in the Harvard Square office of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe. Because evidently these guys also know something about cars and such and freely “espouse all kinds of solutions – a small fraction of which may actually be correct.” In truth, they pretty quickly divine likely solutions, (as if I would know), attributed by one of them on this weeks show to his disengagement from the thought process.

The show is now on my weekend grid for the Saturday broadcast at 10am est. The current show is also archived by segment and available for listening all week from the website at cartalk.com. And if your car question can’t wait til next Saturday, then try their active bulletin board discussions.

Because what better lead-in could there possibly be for Dr. Laura, than – – Penn Gillette on FreeFM? As Glenn Beck might suggest, get out the duct tape. Lets see whose listeners heads would explode first.

Expounding the “freedom to be a whackjob” Penn delivers politically incorrect humor at its finest. This is frequently not safe for work kind of listening. The sound of occasional guest Gilbert Gottfiried’s voice coming from your cubicle at work might not amuse management types.

Few people would be able to navigate a funny, respectful and anti-pc discussion about cancer one day after the Dana Reeve announcement. But Penn did just that while making it clear that the Reeves were people for whom he had the utmost respect. What other topics blended perfectly with that? Well of course, furry lobster discoveries and grammatical errors in the song “Shaft”.

While cancer can be explained by God working in mysterious ways, Gillette says he wants to keep score in golf in mysterious ways. I just hope he keeps planning his show in mysterious ways. There is some archived listening available at penn.freefm.com. Some recent discussions include playing the Hitler card, abortions and the eulogy of Libertarian, Harry Browne. And yes, I do have Penn on the schedule grid between Dr. Joy Browne and Dr. Laura Schlessinger, perfect.

I don’t know why I’m looking forward to part 2 of Howard Stern on Hannity and Colmes tomorrow night but I am. Tonight, Howard mostly dealt with all the stuff that’s already been heard about CBS’s rediculous lawsuit. Tomorrow is supposed to be more personal.

Of course as Sean said tonight, part of Howard’s appeal and success is that he just says whatever is on his mind. And after so many years of his broadcasts, movie and books, what else is there to know? And why do I care? In the last ten or fifteen years I’ve probably listened to less than an hour of the regular Stern show. Before that, well, there were lots of hours.

Recently I’ve listened to his press conference regarding the CBS lawsuit. I enjoyed a wonderful appearance by Howard on one of Bob Grant’s last broadcasts. In fact, Howard’s call was I think, the best call of that final week. And now I watched the first half of Sean’s interview. I think Stern is at his absolute best when he is being himself and serious. Who the hell wants to listen to twenty years of lesbian dial-a-date?

When Stern called Bob Grant a few months ago, it was like Howard was trying to decide for himself when it would be time for him to move on or retire. It was an introspective call as much as a testimonial to Bob. It was then that I realized I’d like to hear Howard doing serious talk radio.

Stern is a brilliant guy and a compelling personality. And when you take away all the schtick, the Fartman routines, appearances in drag and assorted obscenities, you’re left with a brilliant compelling guy who can command any topic. Of course if he ever left all that behind, he’d probably be taking a hundred million dollar a year pay cut. In the meantime, there is tomorrow night and a possible appearance by Stern on Hannity’s radio show next week.

And maybe after he finishes his five year deal with Sirius, perhaps he’ll have enough in the bank and really decide to just be himself, seriously.

Feeling “bent” or just want another way to get tanked, then ScubaRadio may be just the answer. Want tips on proper use of the diver peeing flag or have a hankering for some safety sausage, then you should buddy up with your radio or computer and listen to ScubaRadio.

Now on the Saturday schedule live at 3pm est., this nearly ten-year-old show is heard by about half a million people a week. Join Greg the divemaster as he reports from dive events throughout the country. Last week’s show included an interview about wreck diving in Michigan – winter wreck diving in Michigan – chopping first through 15 inches of ice kind of winter diving. And you might have thought chainsaws were not essential dive equipment.

After following that story with an ad for diving in the Bahamas (more my kind of weather) it was back north to a report from Alaska about whales stalking fishing boats to rob their long lines. It seems fishing boat engines are now a whale siren for free eats, maybe a sort of revenge for hunts of the past.

The show’s website scubaradio.com includes a listening archive of past shows so you really can listen anytime. Whether you dive or never get your feet wet, the show offers some cool listening, sometimes icy cool.

India got a shiny new nuclear deal and Pakistan got just a visit from W. Of course India is a functioning democracy which shares some common values with the west and Pakistan isn’t. India has been responsible with its nuclear technology and Pakistan hasn’t.

Over the weekend Monica Crowley and Frank Gaffney discussed the tenuous relationship with Pakistan. The bottom line is that this nation is potentially a heartbeat away from being a nuclear armed, islamofascist state working entirely against the US and the west.

Here is the audio link. If you’re not listening to Monica each Saturday from 10am est, you’re missing some of the best talk on radio.

On little green footballs we have a story centered around the Council on American Islamic Relations, their defense of the port deal, and the “title holder” to their Washington headquarters. It seems that the individual who put up just under a million dollars for CAIR’s building is UAE defense minister Gen. Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum. The point made in the excerpted article from FrontPage Magazine is that Cair has quite a conflict of interest in their port deal defense. Of course, this also highlights deeper problems with CAIR and who they are truly representing.

What I find interesting is that our good friends in the UAE have another very direct link to al-Qaida.

So we have the UAE Royals as good hunting buddies with Binney, kinda like Cheney and his political soul-mate hunting buddies. Maybe Cheney can give Sheik Maktoum some hunting tips for the general’s next outing with his good-ol pal Bin Laden. You can read the full article at FrontPageMagazine.com.

I’m fed up with the disparate cast of characters portraying anyone opposing the port deal as Islamo-phobic or racist. We’re at war. Why isn’t the standard – what will this deal do to improve security?