Crank and Phoebus are gay

A few days ago, we reviewed The Worst Show Ever hosted by Crank and Phoebus. Sarah had the day off. 

 On that show, Crank had to have reassurance from Phoebus that straight pe...ople don't publically flaunt their sexuality before launching into a story about his experience at a mall. Phoebus agreed that straight people don't publically flaunt their sexuality and we were regaled with a tale of a mall full of gay people all talking about having sex with each other. The short quip bordered on disgust on Crank's part.

If straight people don't publically flaunt their sexuality, then why did Phoebus offer to help Crank have sex with his wife this morning? Yup, that's right. We were "entertained" with Crank's desire to have more rhythm to make a baby and Phoebus offered to grab his ass and push to get the rhythm going.

If we are to believe Crank and Phoebus from the other day that only gay people flaunt their sexuality in public, then I guess we can conclude Crank and Phoebus are gay.

A pretend dysfunctional family needs drastic intervention

We're all partying for the Fourth of July because, well, it's an excuse to party. It's not like our freedom really means much anymore, but it's still a good excuse to get drunk.

Listening to The Worst Show Ever this week, we have, after a few, ok, quite a few beers tonight, arrived at a conclusion of what really lacks in the morning show. One word: family.

"What?" you ask.  

 The answer is simple. Successful morning show hosts come across as better than best friends. They come across as being a family. Crank, Phoebus, and Sarah come across as being complete strangers pretending to be a dysfunctional family.

 Crank is the controlling, alpha-male. He didn't get the alpha-male position by virtue of earning it. He got it by being there much longer than either Sarah or Phoebus. When Phoebus and Sarah came on the scene, they deferred to Crank's seniority.

As listeners to the show, we'll set a few facts straight.

Crank is a no-talent. He is not humorous nor does he give insightful views to today's issues. His only talent is to take extreme stories and try to paint them as average stories. He is incapable of taking the extreme story and making fun of it. He is only capable of taking an extreme story and asking why our society has devolved so much as if the extreme is the norm.

Phoebus is immature. His talent is growing and The Worst Show Ever is a good venue for the development of his talent. Unfortunately, he forgets he is performing for everyone and not just the listeners who think like he does. After about another ten years of experience, real life experience (and not radio experience), he might actually be funny. Sadly, he is stuck with the radio experience and what he learns from Google and will never be able to relate his humor to real people. He needs to take a sabbatical to gain some real life experience.

Sarah is stuck as the coffee girl. She makes some really funny comments that go unnoticed by the male dominated show and, obviously, from the male dominated WZBH station.

The Worst Show Ever is controlled by Crank. He speaks 90% of the time. Phoebus speaks 9.9% of the time. Sarah speaks one or two sentences here and there.

Here's where the dysfunctional "family" comes in. Crank yaps around like a little Chihuahua and there's nothing funny about a Chihuahua other than how annoying they are. Phoebus and Sarah defer to the chihuahua's seniority at the station and play along. They let the little guy with a big bark rule how the show will proceed.

Our conclusion: Crank needs to be fired. Phoebus needs to quit and gain real life experience outside of the microphone. Sarah needs to take over The Worst Show Ever.

Why do straight people have to flaunt their sexuality?

Yesterday morning, Crank asked the question, "Do heterosexual people flaunt their sexuality?"  Phoebus answered no.  Sarah was silent because she wasn't there.

Once Crank had agreement that straight people don't flaunt their sexuality in public, he launched into a tale of his experience at the mall.   Gay people were everywhere and they all were openly talking about having sex with each other.  The experience wasn't one gay couple in one store.  "Every" store had gay people shopping and talking about sex.

We don't know which mall Crank went to that was crawling with gay people, but we can say that not one of the five of us even remotely experienced what Crank claimed he experienced.  We're not just talking about the Salisbury mall, either.  Between all of us and all the places we've been, we're talking about the Salisbury Mall, at least three different malls in Baltimore, the mall in Dover, a mall in Chester, PA, a couple of malls in Denver, CO and several malls in Phoenix, AZ.  We're also talking experience from two of us who are old enough to be Crank's Dad and experience of three of us who are old enough to be Crank's Mom or Dad if they started a family at a young age.  Still, not one of us can relate any experience even remotely similar to the mall experience Crank described - ever in our entire lives. 

Heck, remember when we all went to a few gay bars in Baltimore to see who had the most gay sex appeal - Crank, JJ, or Sarah?  (Crank unofficially won in the gay leather bar, by the way.)  Even there we did not hear or experience the kind of scene Crank described at his mall. 

On the other hand, we can relate a few stories where we witnessed a couple, usually a young man and young woman, who, by their actions, made us wonder if all the local motels were booked and they had nowhere else to go but the mall.

We wrote Crank's tale off as a fisherman's tale with a homophobic twist and we wouldn't have expected anything less from him when talking about gay people.  Like the fisherman who is prone to extreme exaggeration to make him look like a real fisherman, Crank is prone to extreme exaggeration, almost to the point of lying, not that there's really a difference between extreme exaggeration and lying, to make it appear gay people are oversexed perverts with no public couth.  Our guess is, through his eyes that view the world around him in stereotypes, he saw two people who "looked" gay to him, thought he heard something said that had sexual undertones, and we got the story that the mall was filled with gay people who could only talk about sex.

Thank God straight people don't flaunt their sexuality publically the way all those gay people at the mall flaunted theirs, huh?  That's what Crank and Phoebus told us yesterday morning.  Then why, this morning, were we entertained with Crank's method for getting his wife in the mood while Sarah and Phoebus jumped in with their sexual innuendos to bolster the story along.  Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-s?

After three years, we have never heard Crank, nor any DJ, talk respectfully about gay people, whether JJ has to remind us his comment isn't "homo or anything" (yes, JJ, we caught a bit of your show where you made the comment, again, but chose not to review it) or Crank regales us with his mall tale or talks about "furrier people".  (If you recall, even though Crank's "furrier" story was about people who think they are an animal, he chose a gay couple to illustrate how weird "furrier people" are.  Do the math.  If gay people make up 3% of the population and "furrier" people make up less than 1% of the population, then Crank should've picked a heterosexual couple to accurately portray the average "furrier" person and not the only gay "furrier" person in the country to illustrate the point.)  Crank has taken a more subtle, albeit less frequent, route to denigrate gay people, but the fact remains - gay people are fair targets for stereotyped bashing. 

Neither WZBH nor Crank ever apologized for that particularly offensive gay-, race-, and women-bashing show back on August 19, 2010 that motivated us to launch this blog.  While the homophobia, racism, and sexism is greatly toned down and less frequent from the days of Matt and Crank three years ago, it is all still there.  Women take a backseat to the men and that's how Sarah became the coffee girl on the show and gay people are oversexed, weird perverts and that's why not one DJ ever talks favorably or at least respectably about gay people.  The only positive observation is that racism appears to have disappeared from the regular lineup.

Let's bully 'em

The Worst Show Ever put on an interesting show that fired all five of us up.  Crank, apparently, has too much time on his hands.  He started the show out with his review of a reality show on TV called "Living Below Zero", a documentary, of sorts, about new age hippies living in the rough above the Arctic Circle. 

Before we go any further, let's make our stance clear.  There is no such thing as "reality TV".  It is all staged.  Does any sane mind truly believe that people who want to escape the drama of modern life would invite a TV crew to their community to document their daily lives?  Of course not.  The story is made for TV, and idiots buy into it as if it were the real thing. 

The conversation slowly morphed from the new age hippies to "furries", people who dress up, and act like, animals.  Crank even played a quip of a guy who acted like a dog. 

With the two stories involved, all three hosts agreed that weird people would be better served with a "punch in the face" because the weirdoes need to be kept in check.  We shouldn't have to play nice with them and they need to be bullied into behaving in the proper manner because insane is insane.

We couldn't agree more.  Weirdoes need to be bullied into their place. 

But let's put a dose of reality into the conversation, first.  The new age hippies, they are made for TV and are getting paid big bucks for their antics.  Losers, like Crank, are watching the show, which drives advertising dollars, and those new age hippies aren't stupid.  They are getting a healthy slice of those advertising dollars.

The "furriers"?  Heck, none of us ever heard of these people.  Our guess is that some desperate, or maybe mentally unstable people, have gone an extreme route to gain fifteen minutes of fame, and maybe some advertising dollars.  Not one of us five can say that we know, worked with, met, or passed in the Walmart, one of these "furrier" people.  We can say, unequivocally, that any person who claims to "lead a life of an animal" is plain psycho and we don't feel like we're being politically incorrect for stating the fact, despite what the morning crew would like us to believe.  Our conclusion is that losers, like Crank with too much time on his hands, actually discovered this "furrier community" and believed it to be real.

But we do like the idea the morning crew put out that bullying the weirdoes to keep them in check is a good thing.  That is why all five of us agree that every listener should call in to the morning show and ask the coffee girl to deliver a coffee, black, with plenty of sugar and cream on the side.  Lord knows she wouldn't be able to get the cream and sugar just right, so let's be politically correct and ask for the cream and sugar on the side.   

All five of us watched that documentary about the ginger kids.  Cartman had it right.  Ginger kids aren't right in the head.  But let's be politically correct and call in to the morning show and ask if the ginger kid wants some ginger snaps to go with his coffee that the coffee girl brings him every half hour.

For the hairless dwarf, or more aptly termed, hairless troll, let's be as politically correct as we can and ask him if he thinks he ever can achieve a better status of the penises he looks up to every day when he is asked to "look me eye to eye."  

Sorry, five thumbs down (we don't count the extra thumb on one of our reviewers) for this morning's show.  Start out your show with something people can relate to.  There's lots of things listeners can relate to other than the old guy holding up the convenience store line, or a TV show that was nauseating, or a news event that shows how far we have devolved as a country.  Maybe some mornings have a line in the convenience store running faster than one can put his purchase on the counter, a TV show that was particularly entertaining, or a news event that shows how far we have evolved as a society. 

Oh, yeah, we forgot.  Usually only the extreme and the extreme negative generates advertising dollars.  At least, that's what the experts in the industry tell us.

Sarah going solo

Saturday morning, all five of us made it a point to listen to Sarah's solo performance. Us three guys listened because we knew she was more than the coffee girl. The two women in our group listened to Sarah, well, to be bitchy. (Fortunately, only one of us five actually writes these reviews, so I'll let the two women stew some more when they read that comment.)

We all agree that when the sun came up and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, Sarah gave a weather forecast of "mostly cloudy". The two women in our group texted, unequivocally, "What? The bitch couldn't look out the window and see that forecast would be wrong?"

Us three men responded, "She's not getting paid to be a weatherman. She's getting paid to read whatever comes across her desk and play good music." And play good music she did.

As far as 3/5ths of the reviewers of this site is concerned, Sarah's perky, happy voice made our Saturday morning sunny side up. Majority rules so who gives a damn about the other two reviewers?

Quick, what color is the guy?

We've been listening to WZBH and The Worse Show Ever off and on for the last few weeks.  Captain Blue and Doug McKenzie are still spot on as entertaining DJs, projecting an image, through sound, of professionalism.  As we already mentioned in our previous review (Lights Out With JJ is not entirely his fault ), we could do with a lot less of the dumbass-style quips as they are overdone throughout the day and night from everyone starting with the morning crew, through Captain Blue, Doug McKenzie, and ending with JJ.  (We've never listened to WZBH during the time slot after JJ and before The Worse Show Ever so we don't know if the dumbass-style quips are continued through the night and early morning hours.)  Perhaps it's just us, but when we tune into any radio station, we expect to hear lots of music and little talking.  When the DJ does talk, we like to hear about the music, the song, or the artist and little else. 

For a morning show, we expect to hear entertaining talk by characters who have built an image of themselves, through words, that we can identify with.  Maybe one character makes us laugh.  Another makes us see something we hadn't thought about.  Maybe one makes us rethink what we thought about something.  No matter what, we want morning show hosts who compel us to tune in every morning just to hear what they are going to say next.  They make us wish we were friends so we could enjoy a round of beer with them because they are that entertaining.  Crank, Phoebus, and Sarah fail miserably. 

We have pinpointed exactly why we really don't care if we tune in or not - lack of creativity and repetitiveness.  Yesterday morning (Wednesday), for example, Phoebus regaled us with a story of his experience at a convenience store.  The story was very much like the story of Crank and Phoebus on a quest to find a Mexican store or Crank's experience with an old man holding up the line at a convenience store. 

Need more examples of repetitiveness and lack of creativity?  These are stories we've heard more than once over the last few weeks. 

• Crank's complaining that he isn't as strong or physically fit as he used to be.  Yes, we know.  You've hit middle age and every seven years from here on out, you'll notice radical changes in your body.  Quit whining about getting old and try telling us what most of us don't already know.
• Descriptions of bathroom habits or lack of toilet paper.  We're sure a sizeable segment of listeners are driving to work and eating breakfast at the same time.  On more than one occasion, we have switched stations so we could eat our breakfast without being grossed out and never bothered to switch back.  Makes us wonder how many other listeners have done the same.
• Vehicles each host drives.  Really, who cares?  Try telling a funny story about driving the vehicle instead of trying to convince us what is "manly" and not.  Vehicles are vehicles and hold no entertainment value.  What happens because of the vehicle or happens in the vehicle is the funny, creative story.
• Obama and his demon wife.  Yes, we get it.  Phoebus and Crank don't like Obama and his wife.  Now try telling us why you don't like them.  Name calling is why the "sticks and stones" comeback was written for first graders.  By the time one makes it to a radio career, we sort of expect more than the elementary school style of making a point.

For readers who may be new, of the five of us behind the reviews, only one does the writing.  As we discussed the contents of this review, the other four issued me a challenge: write a creative paragraph retelling Phoebus' experience at the convenience store to hammer home the point of the hosts' lack of creativity.  No, I am not a professional writer and I don't fancy myself to be a good, much less creative, writer, but I don't back down from a challenge, either.  So here goes.

This morning, on my way in, I stopped at the convenience store to get my breakfast of tostados.  Not one of those fancy, big name convenience stores, mind you.  An old Mom and Pop style convenience store that's probably fueled up '57 Chevys and hasn't changed since.  Don't ask me what kind tostados I got, either.  They all are stuffed with the same ingredients, but are just given different names. 

There's no one in the store when I walked in, but I heard a lot of commotion in the back.  I grabbed my breakfast and waited at the register to check out.  I guess at four in the morning I'm like most people and really don't pay attention because I thought I was alone in the store.  As I'm standing at the register, I hear breathing behind me.  Startled, I turned to glance at who stood behind me.  A huge, hulking man with breakfast in hand stood patiently in line.  This guy was big enough to be a Raven's linebacker.  I don't know how I missed him when I came in, but there he was.  I stole my glance and faced the register.  I could still hear the hulking man's breathing.  I could picture his nostrils flaring in and out with each breath like a bull's.  I could feel his expressionless, dark eyes watching the hairs on my neck rising. 

A loud shriek emanated from the back room.  Chickens squawked in a frenzy as a small dude emerged.  As he walked behind the counter, I asked him what all the commotion was about.  He answered, in a heavy accent, "Making chicken wings."  As the sweat dripped off this scrawny guy's face, all I could think was the chickens must have won the fight.  Heck, judging by the guy's stature, a canary could have won the fight.  He must've been outmatched by the chickens.

Now, keep in mind, I am not a professional writer and my version of Phoebus' story is a first draft written in twenty minutes because I'm a slow typist.  Now, quick, what color was the hulking man standing behind me?  If I was somewhat successful at my descriptions, you not only pictured what the hulking man looked like, but you also pictured what the store and the scrawny man looked like.

Now here's Phoebus' story, paraphrased since I don't have a recording of the show.

This morning, on my way in, I stopped at this hole-in-the-wall gas station to get my breakfast of tostados.  Yeah, all tostados are the same.  They just have different names. 

There's no one in the store, but I hear a lot of commotion in the back. I go up to the counter and there's this big, hulking Black guy behind me. So it's just me and this big, Black dude waiting for the guy in the back.  

There's a lot of loud, squawking sounds, like chickens, and this little dude, no bigger than three-foot something, comes out of the back, dripping sweat. I asked him what he was doing. He said, "Making chicken wings." I think he was an Indian dude or one of those foreigners. (In Phoebus' defense, he only added the ethnicity of the store clerk because Crank asked. Crank has a hang up about knowing that all the races and ethnic groups of people are behaving in the manner stereotypes dictate they should behave.)

Ok, we give it to you that being creative while writing off the cuff and being creative while talking off the cuff with other people involved in the talking are two different things and about as comparable as a clam to an oyster.  But, like we have reviewed many times during Matt Walsh's days, why did Phoebus feel it was necessary to state the hulking guy behind him was Black?  His race had nothing to do with the point of the story, as bland as the story was.  In fact, the hulking guy had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story. 

We know why he pointed out the ethnicity of the store clerk.  Crank needed to know and Phoebus did such a bad job of story telling, Crank had no idea of how to picture the store clerk. 

We can't say Phoebus is guilty of bigotry or even stereotyping.  The guy behind him probably was a Black guy, even though this big, hulking Black guy had no further bearing on the rest of the story so why even mention him, much less state his race? 

Of course, one has to scratch his head when the whole story is taken into consideration.  After Crank asked what the ethnicity of the store clerk was, the stereotyping began.  People who work the overnight shift at a convenience store are shady characters.  They aren't too bright and certainly shouldn't be seen in the light of day. 

This is where Sarah blew her chance to shine as the intelligent star of the show.  After Crank had stated his description of overnight workers at a convenience store, Sarah asked, "But Crank, didn't you work at one on the overnight shift?"

Crank blew her point off.  "Yeah, and I probably shouldn't have been seen in the light of day back then." 

Come on, Sarah.  You had a chance to shine as a star.  Instead, you backed down and let Crank and Phoebus do the talking.  What?  Did you have to get up and get more coffee and donuts for the guys?

Yes, there was a reason Phoebus felt a need to state the hulking guy's race and Crank's need to know the ethnicity of the store clerk.  Only they know the reason.  We can only guess that non-creative minds need to have every detail spelled out for them and non-creative minds feel a need to spell out every detail for everyone else.  We have to wonder, though, if they didn't really want to go off on a different stereotyping bash fest at the beginning of the story in the same manner they stereotypically bashed overnight store clerks.

Phoebus and Crank carried on the story of bashing overnight convenience store clerks to an anti-climatic end.  Like we all do when they talk about bathroom habits, the two of us who were listening switched stations and called it a day for listening to WZBH.

Lights Out With JJ is not entirely his fault

We did, finally, over the last couple of weeks tune in on "Lights Out with JJ". Definitely his comfort zone and uncreatively predictable. He plays lots of music, which is good, and we know better than to criticize his playlist. He plays what the recording industry wants him to play and he has little room to be creative with the playlist. We like his "Acoustics at Eight", even though the song plays as late as 8:32, and he keeps his commentary to a minimum, another good quality a DJ can have when most people want to hear music, and not the DJ.

What we don't like is his "Nightly Dumbass" reports. If JJ were the only one reporting the dumbass stories throughout the day, the short segment would be an endearing aspect of his show. Unfortunately, every DJ from the morning show through Captain Blue and Doug McKenzie has their own dumbass quips, so, enough already. Play the music or shut up.

Dumbass stories are entertaining once or twice throughout the day. Whatever happened to the days when DJs talked about the music, the groups, and the "behind the scenes" tidbits of information about making the music, the group, or the history of the song, itself?

It's not JJ's fault. The era of great DJs ended over forty years ago. Back then, DJs got listeners pumped up about the music, music the DJs chose, loved, and believed in. "Barefoot in Baltimore" by the Strawberry Alarm Clock in the late sixties, for example, made a regional hit, but not a national hit. The song made a regional hit because the local DJs loved the song and played it as if it were a hit and didn't relegate it to a special time slot like "Local Produce" of today.

Unfortunately, the record industry put a stop to DJs playing what they loved and started dictating what should be played to make money. Songs like "Barefoot in Baltimore" could be played in a special time slot when most people aren't listening to the radio, but couldn't be played when the record industry decided the songs they wanted to make money should be played. That left the DJs with nothing more than to promote commercial music and talk about dumbass stories.

Creativity, from JJ, Captain Blue, Doug McKenzie, or the morning crew would be a refreshing change, but, unfortunately, the pimp (the recording industry) has dictated to the prostitute (the radio station), what the Johns (the DJs) are expected to do to get paid.

By the way, what happened to the groundbreaking female DJ? The lineup is looking more and more like young, White male. Crank is about to be retired to the nursing home, JJ shortly behind him. The fact that both made it to or past thirty and are still employed baffles us.