Posted by Andy Massaua

Well golly !

Losing to the Colts last night… well… sucked.   Especially with the game well within reach… a couple of mistakes here and there cost the Patriots a very winnable game.

But rather than focus on the negative, I choose to remember all those great Colts losses… with The Manning Face.  A great site that every Patriots fan should bookmark and check in on from time to time.

I just wish we could have seen it last night.

Posted by Andy Massaua

I don’t really remember how it came up… when Buck starts telling stories I tend to glaze over and ignore him, but at some point during Wednesdays’ Big Show Steve Buckley made a reference to a great video he recently saw on Youtube starring former major leaguer Rod Allen. 

Again, I don’t know how it came up, but here’s the video Buck was referencing… and he was right, it is hilarious to watch Rod chase that poor pitcher around the field.

Posted by Andy Massaua

Chest Hair Monthly... I mean Playgirl, circa 1983

The strangest and perhaps funniest call of the day on Thursday came around 5:30 when I was tucked away in our dub booth producing the whiner line.  I didn’t get to hear about it until after the fact.  My first reaction: why couldn’t this have happened before 5PM, my de facto cut-off time for accepting calls for that days’ whiner line.   I didn’t get to hear the call itself until after the show last night… while uploading it for your listening pleasure.  Set a few minutes aside today to listen to the call we received from Fred Smerlas’ secret admirer, Rich from Hartford, in a segment we lovingly refer to as Gay for Fred.

Fred, you beast.  Who’da thunk it?  All these years with Fred on the show and we’re just finding out now that Fred is desirable to a certain segment of the gay population, as Rich put it, at least ten people.   Not that there’s anything wrong with that.   In all honesty, we probably should have known this before now.  The man did appear in Playgirl in 1983, in an issue focusing on the sexiest pro athletes.  I guess we never should have underestimated Freddy’s sex appeal… with women and men.

The good news for the Big Show is, this puppy has legs… what was slam-dunk whiner line fodder for Thursday is strong enough to carry into Friday.  Especially if we do what we normally do and collaborate on a bit which utilizes the audio.  I’m pretty sure I can also depend on Glenn to harp on it all day, and I’m 100% positive Zolak is going to be downright giddy about this development.

“I would let Fred hurt me.” - Rich in Hartford, October 9th 2008.   A day which will live in infamy.

Posted by Andy Massaua

Trouble brewing in beautiful Everett, MA

If you missed it on the Big Show earlier this afternoon, we had one of the more funny caller call-ins ever on the program.   One of our regular callers, Angelo from Everett, called in to express some reservations about Tim Wakefield starting game four of the ALCS.  Problem was, Angelo was calling from work… and despite the fact that Angelo’s boss had gone home for the day, Angelo must have forgotten that his boss had a radio in his car.

So as Angelo ranted about Wake, his boss called us on another line and demanded that he be able to talk to Angelo and bust him for calling sports radio during his shift.   Being that Brett and I are both notorious ball-busters (it’s in our job description), we of course conferenced in Angelo’s boss.

Sorry Angelo, but you shouldn’t be calling us while on the job… you’ve got enough trouble holding the phone and talking at the same time.

And that wasn’t even the funniest call of the day… more on that in my next blog entry, hopefully tomorrow.  And speaking of blog entries… sorry I haven’t posted since last Friday.   The fact of the matter is, since this isn’t part of my normal job description or salary structure, it’s something I do in my free time.   And this week I haven’t had a lot of free time.   It’s going to happen from time to time unless this gets rolled into part of my normal duties… right now it’s secondary in my job and my life so it’s got to be treated that way… for now at least.

Posted by Andy Massaua

An update from my Friday (turned Monday) blog on Troy Brown.  My favorite media picture :

Yes, that is Steve Burton from Channel 4 in his Toyota pose.  Click for a bigger image and better, more clear look at it.   That image is one of the many reasons I like Steve Burton… his passion for the sports, events and teams he covers.   We miss ‘Big Time’ on the Big Show… but his new schedule as lead sports anchor over at Channel 4 makes scheduling him for the Big Show a big problem.  Down the line when we’re not locked into our Friday co-hosts (Deossie/Zolak for Patriots Friday), we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to get Steve back in the mix.

Sorry for the quality of the image, or lack there of… this is a scan of the actual PFW cover from 2003 that’s been stuck to the corkboard over my desk for five years now.   The pinholes and faded colors tell that story.   I should reach out to Paul Perillo and see if he has access to a better quality image.

Posted by Andy Massaua

Last night I told Mikey that the picture controversy concerning Pats QB Kevin O’Connell…

…reminded me a lot of what happened to Billy Ripken on his baseball card in the late 80’s.

Poor Billy… besides being Cal’s younger bro, this is probably his most famous moment in the bigs.

Posted by Andy Massaua

So apparently the movers and shakers in management are already on top of the problem. Tonight the cleaning staff was already in talking to us all about how things can change, and according to Mikey’s producer J-Pod they were already well on top of the first step to cleaning up our work space… dust removal.  Once again the problem has absolutely nothing to do with how well the cleaning staff do their jobs.   I think most of the Entercom employees would agree with me that the cleaning people are all very pleasant to deal with and all do their jobs very well.   The problem of the great unwashed studios stemmed from the fact that they are in use almost 24 hours a day… a cleaning staff can’t come in and scrub and vacuum when we’re on the air trying to play radio, especially since they’re only in the building from 5-9PM, a time period when we’re always on the air.   But that can’t be the end of it… we can’t just throw our hands up in the air and say ‘oh well, it can’t be cleaned because the studios are always occupied.’  Some sort of contingency plan had to be put in place, whether it be cleaning during commercials or cleaning during off-air hours.    Something had to be said so something would finally be done.

Here’s where I offer up another disclaimer for everybody on the management side of the building that may or may not be aggravated by my exposé piece in yesterday’s blog.  I can say with confidence that the entire production and on-air staff for both WRKO and WEEI agree 100% with everything I wrote.  What I wrote is no different than what the entire on-air staff has been bitching about (on the air and off) for a couple of years now.  It’s not like we haven’t gone public with our gripes before… on-air and online I am far from the first person to register these complaints.  So please don’t shoot the (latest) messenger just because I used actual evidence… we all have to work in those conditions, and I’m not ashamed that I brought it to everyone’s attention… something had to be done.

Now, back to the Sox game.

Posted by Andy Massaua

A few weeks ago in Michael Felger’s mailbag, Felger left us with the following note:

Is it possible to have a studio smell like dried ass... and then not smell like dried ass?

While we’re on the topic of workplace conditions, I thought I’d take the time to let you know that the radio studios at WEEI are unbelievable. Unbelievably disgusting, I mean. Food morsels everywhere. Gunk on the walls and shelves. Stains that haven’t moved since I was here three years ago. A smell that closely resembles dried ass. The paint is a nice gesture and all, but how about some disinfectant?

The Control Room intake vent... almost completely obstructed by dust.

Graig Murphy, our in-studio guest from yesterday, at one point off the air commented to me: “Geez, I thought you guys were always kidding about the studios.”  No Graig, we weren’t kidding, and neither was Felger.   Except Felger appears to have pissed off station management with his little blog rant.   For some reason the painting stopped with the outer hallways… inside our studios and offices there is no new paint to be found… just more stains and dried ass smell.  Sorry Shaq, but anyone who has ever gotten a whiff of one of our ripped up, stained chairs in the studios can probably tell you exactly how several people’s ass tastes.  Those chairs all contain what I like to call ‘The Ghost of a Thousand Asses’, they’ve been perpetually sat in for about a decade now and they look and smell it.  So what’s the best way for Felger, myself and the entire staff to get this corrected?  Probably not to blog about it and post actual pictures of our mess, it certainly didn’t work when Felgie tried it.  But what the hell, I’m feeling more dangerous than Pete Carroll was… that one time he felt dangerous.

Attention station management: I’m not here to appeal to your sense of cleanliness, I think we all could live with some dirt and gunk here and there, Lord knows we all do it at home, it’s certainly to be expected in any shared work space.   We both know if you really want to clean things up you could always just ban all food from the studios except bottled water.  But that’s really not the major issue I’m bitching about.   Removing food would only solve about a third of our problem.

A Decade of Dust... the shot behind the control board.

I’m here to appeal to your sense of human decency and compassion for another human being’s health.  The dust and dirt that has built up around the WEEI studios isn’t only unsightly, it’s just plain unhealthy.   For some reason the HVAC system on our floor doesn’t have a filtration system.   Homeowners and people who own dehumidifiers or HEPA filters know what I’m talking about here.   Every 90 days you replace an air filter in your furnace or device to keep dust and dirt down to a minimum in your home.  Here at the WEEI studios there’s no such thing.  That probably wouldn’t be so bad if the final resting place for all dust and dirt wasn’t the WEEI studios.  It’s like the ventilation system sucks all the dust out of the entire floor and pumps it directly into our studios.  There is a build up of dust and fuzzy dirt that literally coats every square inch of the ceilings and walls.  It’s bad in the on-air studios where the talent works out of, but it’s ten times worse in my home away from home for four hours a day, the control booth.   Our 10′ x 10′ control booth is so dust coated its beyond disgusting, it’s just plain unhealthy. So on behalf of the entire production and on-air staff, some of which have lung ailments like asthma and chronic bronchitis, I ask this to upper management… can we get a little help here?

That's not a funky paint pattern on the grey wall... that's dust stuck to carpeted soundproofing.

The obvious response from management will be the following: “Well the rest of the staff (sales and marketing) seems to be able to keep their side of the building clean… why can’t programming?”   Programming can’t keep its area clean because our studios do not operate like an office with a typical eight hour shift.   We don’t open them at 8AM and close at 5PM.  The on-air studios are occupied by several different groups of people for 18 hours of the day.   The control booth and production studios are occupied 24 hours a day… different people in and out of them constantly.  The booth also contains tens of thousands of dollars of electronic equipment that is constantly running, never shut off… if you won’t protect us, won’t you at least protect the poor equipment?

Cliff Claven once told a true factoid on Cheers… most common dust is made up primarily of microscopic flakes of dead skin.   That actually makes sense to me now considering how much dust has accumulated in the control booth and how many people are in and our of it on a constant basis.  I looked it up further and found that dust can also contain the following:

The On-Air Studio vent... all we are is dust in the wind.

Human skin and hair, waxes, mucus and fecal matter.  Pollen, mold, fungi, lichen, tiny particles of wood, paint, fibers from fabrics such as wool, nylon, rayon & acrylic, foam rubber, sheet rock, plant and vegetable matter, insect parts, and every form of pollution such as auto and industrial emissions, heavy hydrocarbon waste from an oil or gas heater, tiny bits of metal debris from door hinges or any place where metal and friction meet (like the equipment found in a radio studio), lots of food waste, and paper particles.

Oh what a joy it is to breathe all of that in for four hours plus a day.

Get Along ! Little dust bunnies, get along !

So beyond a major professional cleaning of the studio and adding in a filter during an over-haul of the HVAC system, we, the production and on-air staff still need more of a commitment from management moving forward.  While a nightly cleaning crew that takes out the trash and vacuums up a little may be fine for the average office that runs on an 8 or 10 hour schedule, a set of studios that is open and operates for 24 hours a day requires a little bit more.   What we need is a crew of cleaners to come in once a month to clean the hell out of our studios… top to bottom, walls, crevices, ledges, desks, counters, glass.  I mean vacuuming, sweeping, windexing, disinfecting, the whole shebang.  Yes, we need a whole crew of girls like Lucy (the cute Brazilian cleaning lady that Pete once terrorized) to put a little extra time in at our studios once a month.   If you won’t do it for your employees health and well being, at least do it for our station’s image, which suffers a hit every time we welcome in a client or guest and they witness our mess for themselves.   And those chairs… please do something about the smell of those chairs… preferably gasoline and a match.

And now, before I get called into management’s office for handling it via blog and not behind closed doors, here are the rest of the wonderful pictures I took for evidence.   And just remember, the views expressed by Andy about the condition of our studios IS the opinion of the WEEI on-air staff in general.   Don’t blame Andy for calling attention to the problem… instead call Merry Maids and tell them to bring their elbow grease and some extra dustbusters.

Mmmmmmmm… wall stain.

A message from either Holley or Callahan to anyone else who sits in the corner, co-host chair (Fred, I’m looking at you pal).   I’m guessing that’s Holley’s message… I can’t see Gerry using “Grow Up”.

The carpet underneath the master control board has been so worn down after almost a decade of someone standing or sitting there, this is all that’s left.   Don’t ask me how someone managed to chip the concrete floor.