Rico Brogna Doesn't Answer Phone; Next Choice, Brian Daubach, Joins Big Show

Just kidding. I like the Daubber. Plus, judging from the quotes below, he's done his WEEI homework!

"Well, the Big Show first contacted me a couple months ago about becoming an afternoon co-host," the former Red Sox, White Sox, Met and Marlin said. "Mostly, I've been working on my fake laugh. I'd say it's about 90% right now. I'm just looking for a chance to get in there and see how it feels live."

Something tells me he's gonna do juuuust fine. Especially:

"Steve Buckley's old-time, gay-ass, baseball something or other is coming up, right? Do I have to actually play in that?"

The guy's a natural!

Pots, Kettles, and Blacks

Don Imus came under fire again this week for racially charged comments relating to Pacman Jones. Among the I-Man's critics was Callahan, who derided Imus as a "racist, old crank."

Now, some might view this as laughably hypocritical of our boy, Gerry. After all, does he not own a coffee mug inscribed with, "World's Greatest Racist Crank" ? Indeed, he does. (He keeps it on his Herald desk, right next to his copy of Cheapshots: An Illustrated Handbook for the Pickup Basketball Player.)

[Figure 2.7]

The only way to reconcile this, then, is to focus on the second word of Gerry's epithet. Old. Because that's really the only difference between the two. Hmmm....OK, here goes: I'm guessing there exists within the racist crank community an age-based pecking order, in which the older racist cranks are discounted as doddering coots, and the younger racist cranks are dismissed as snot-nosed punks......That makes sense, right? Right?

Gerry may be an ageist. But a hypocrite? To quote Butch Stearns, "I'm not so sure about that."

(The best part of the story is Imus's claim that he was being intentionally sarcastic, rather than unguardedly racist. It actually would've been more believable if he used the I was rehearsing for a play defense. )

["Zero point zero....Good Glavin!"]

Thangst for nothing, Butch

Filling in for Gerry on Monday was Butch Stearns, who must go to bed each night and rise each morning shaking his head in wonderment that he actually has a job.

Butch and Dino were theorizing as to why Fenway crowds have been relatively quiet as of late, even in close games. Stearns himself said he doesn't get too worked up for games now. But that doesn't mean he's passionless. Rather, he's just waiting for the right time:

"I'll angst later. I'll angst in September. I'll angst in October."

You do that, Butchie. In the meantime, let's hope someone is kind enough to pull you aside and inform you that "angst" isn't a verb.

Now, granted, anyone who talks into a microphone for 4 straight hours is going to suffer some lingual lapses. Plus, Stearns is hardly the only WEEI co-host to misspeak. In fact, butchering the English language is something of a club sport over at 850 (Sheppard's got a "C" on his grease-stained jersey for this).

Still, there was something funny about the way Butch made up a word and used it three times in a row for emphasis.

But you know what? Perhaps I'm not giving him enough credit. After all, Butch was filling in for Gerry. And thanks to his malapropism, it was almost like Callahan was there.

Almost. Some things you just can't replace. Like barely-concealed contempt for minorities. Nobody does that like Gerry.

Pete Sheppard Ends Cookie Diet. Keebler Elves Announce Massive Layoffs.

Did you know that some Smurfs are prejudiced towards Keebler elves? It's true. Sometimes if a Smurf is walking at night and a Keebler elf approaches from the other direction, the Smurf will cross the street.

In general, Smurfs have become more progressive in their thinking. But among older Smurfs, you still hear the racial slur "Keeb" tossed around.

MG Remembers...

I experienced my first crisis of conscience while listening to John Dennis talk about a Patriots game. Specifically, D&C were analyzing a play late in the 4th quarter, in which a scrambling Tom Brady sought to conserve precious seconds of game-time.

Anyway, Dino wondered aloud why Brady ran out of bounds 2 yards shy of the first down. When all he had to do was stay inbounds, pick up the first down, and the clock would stop for the chains to be moved.

Um............what?

How could Dennis think that the NFL stops the clock on first downs? Everyone knows this is a college rule. I mean, even people who don't really follow football know it's college-only. Hell, the Guatemalan girl who used to clean my cage at the zoo--she's never watched a down of American football in her life--and she knows the NFL doesn't stop the clock on first downs.

So how the hell could the co-host of a major sports radio show not know that?

I remember being shaken and confused. But more than that, I was embarrassed for John. Especially when a caller pointed out the gaffe. John quickly changed the subject, yelled at the caller, and hung up on him (standard operating procedure), but his voice was unusually shrill. You could hear his humiliation.

Sigh. It's never fun when your heroes stumble.

Dale Arnold Talks Black. Region Suffers…..Metco Gorilla Suffers More Than Most

Of all the cringe-inducing things you’ll hear on WEEI, Dale Arnold's occasional hip-hop speak is the worst. MG would blush with embarrassment if he could. But he can’t. (As you probably know, humans are the only primates who can blush. Well, actually, I've known some Japanese Snow Monkeys who can blush. Plus, of course, the Yeti.)

[This yeti's got a little ZZ Top thing going on.]

What Dale says: Don't be bringin' that weak-ass stuff into my lane!

What Dale thinks: Heh heh. I'm a dorky white guy, but I use urban phrases now and then. Because everyone knows how funny it is when a straitlaced white guy talks like a black dude, right? Right?

I'm literally losing my hair over this...and I'm not misusing "literally" like everyone on 850 does. I mean, each time Dale talks like this, I go Samsonite-commercial crazy and pull out a tuft of my own fucking hair!

Sweet St. Bonobo, please make that midday geek stop. I can't take any more.

Steve Buckley, Iron Man

The Streak Continues!

3,148 Days Without Saying Anything Remotely Funny

Anybody can be unfunny for a day or two. Some people can even go a full week without a single clever utterance.

But only one man has the unique talent and dogged persistence to give us nearly nine years' worth of bad puns and pointless stories.

Say what you want about Buckley:

He's arrogant. He's self-righteous. He's the prototypical sports-radio Jekyll-and-Hyde (self-styled tough guy / whiney little pussy).

All true. But above all, he's stultifyingly boring. And that's what makes him special.

[Actual listeners]

Origins of Metco Gorilla

I do not know what my real name is. Or was. Or whether I was even given a name at birth.

These questions are immaterial to my endeavor.

In the predawn hours on a cool October morning in 2003, I escaped from the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston. Escaped. Not wandered off, as some news stories described it at the time. I mean, really. Old men with dementia and shabby bathrobes wander off. My break-out was five months in the planning. And had it not been for the incompetence of a city bus driver, my plan would have succeeded in toto.

["I threw my back out humpin' your mom."]

I never knew my mother. The official records claim she was a circus performer who died in a freak tricycle accident. But I have long suspected this to be a cover story. Perhaps she abandoned me and I was to be spared the shame. Perhaps she died in 'rilla-birth and I was to be spared the guilt.

Either way, I feel neither resentment nor longing for my mother. In fact, I feel nothing for her. Because I never knew her. And all of this, too, is immaterial; because the point I'm trying to make is that I spent the formative years of my life alone. Just me and my thoughts.

And a radio.

The radio belonged to a zoo attendant who worked the day shift in my pen. (In retrospect, it's odd that I don't remember his name, considering he was something of a prophet, albeit an unwitting one.) It was always tuned to AM-850; as a youth, I woke to the sounds of WEEI's "Dennis & Callahan Show." And for hours each morning, theirs were the only voices I heard. (The attendant wasn't much of a conversationalist.)

Back then, the morning show was nothing but unintelligible background noise to me. A cacaphonous rattle of self-righteousness and mispronunciations.

But one day, I understood. It was miraculous. They were speaking and I could comprehend them. Finally, I could hear them. Word for sanctimonious word.

Oh, happy, inexplicable day! I cannot convey the trembling and delirium that accompanied this new dawn, this wondrous realization. As God spoke to Moses, so were Dennis & Callahan speaking to me, through the burning bush of my attendant's radio.

[A brief literary aside: I should point out that gorillas generally don't use burning bush metaphors; it's a red-flag phrase. The reason being that a voice emanating from a bush has traditionally meant bad news for gorillas. Granted, these days a bush is more likely concealing a Discovery Channel documentarian than it is a poacher. Indeed, we've made progress. But it wasn't too long ago that the bushes were crawling with would-be Hemingways who'd shoot you, cut your head off, and mount it on the wall of their bumper pool room faster than you could say The Snows of Kilimanjaro.]

[Let's see how tough you are without that giant shotgun, you monocled jerkoff.]

Back to my epiphany. Just as Moses was spurred to lead his people out of Egypt, I was divinely inspired to make an exodus of my own: I would flee the zoo and make a pilgrimage to WEEI, where (John-and-Gerry-willing) I would meet John and Gerry.

Months later, I escaped and got as far as that bus stop, where I was apprehended. My detainment made the news, and that's when D&C first learned of me. Up until then, they had been my world. And now I had finally, and fatefully, become a part of theirs.

That was the day they named me. That was they day their ill-advised attempt at humor got them in all sorts of funny trouble. But most important, that was the day I became Metco Gorilla.

[Editor's note: *Here's what actually happened. ]

Well, that's pretty much it for the dramatic backstory. After briefly returning to the zoo, I decided to move to Lexington. I mean, if it was good enough for their joke, it was good enough for me, right? I've been living there ever since (Go Minutemen!), happily listening to D&C and the rest of the gang at WEEI each day.

Recently I decided to start this blog as a gesture of gratitude to D&C. After all, they made me; I figure it's the least I can do. My hope is that when people think of Dennis & Callahan, they'll remember Metco Gorilla.

Plus, to be honest, there isn't much else to do in Lexington.