The Greenwich/Staples Massacree

Staples Stadium at 7:15 in the morning

Things went according to plan today.

The snooze button won the battle this morning and I got up a hair later than expected but was out the door just after 6:00 a.m. The ride went smoothly with light traffic as the sun came up.

I went for a true Thanksgiving tradition on the ride: the 1967 classic song "Alice's Restaurant Massacree."

Clocking in at a little over 18 minutes, the Arlo Guthrie song serves as a war protest against the draft tinged with comedy and bizarre stories.

For the record, it took three playings of the song to get me from Mahopac to Westport.

Staples have a postage-stamp-size pressbox and, more often than not, there isn't room for me in there. Today was no exception. I tried to see this as a blessing instead of being angry.

Making the best of my frustration, I saddled up to be outside in the 35 MPH gusts that attacked Staples Stadium.

A maintenance worker from Westport Public Schools helped clean the leftover rain off the table that Chris Erway and I used and I got to work on setting up.

By 8 a.m., Chris and I hiked to the nearby middle school where Greenwich had a great tailgate set up. An egg/cheese/spicy sausage/home fries/bacon/chili sandwich later (and, perhaps, a bloody Mary), we returned to the booth.

In the meantime, it appeared that Local Live was doing a video webstream and we were being asked to add our call to it. I was happy to help set that up and grateful for Ben Talbott and Chris O'Shea to be on-site.

It all came together. I had internet from the WGCH hotspot and Staples guest wifi. What could go wrong?

That cell service and internet could suck, that's what.

It's purely unacceptable and embarrassing.

OK -- I can save this. I talked with Sean Kilkelly right before air time and told him we could just take the audio from Local Live and run it on WGCH! He and I would communicate cues via phone but we'd make it work!

Er...nope. The equipment was sufficient.

So after rebooting and reconnecting and watching my hair fall out, we caved in I called the station via cell phone. That's how we called the second half for the radio.

The Local Live broadcast is behind a password so I can't show you that (as of tonight).

I'll post the audio of the game, but I'm not sure you'll fully understand just how bad it was. Maybe you can hear my angst but I hope not. What I think is more obvious is that I tried to call the details but I was distracted by the myriad nonsense of trying to keep the internet signal to feed to the radio station.

It was infuriating.

I've fought so many different things over the years, and have even learned to calm down but this was just not up to anything I believe in.

I thought I'd need to call Office Obie and have 27 8x10 color glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one. But instead, I wound up on the Group W bench.

If you don't know "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" then that won't make sense.

I was pretty horrified and furious, though I'm pleased that the Local Live broadcast was OK.

I even had to edit three different files from Robcasting Radio to have a complete broadcast.

It was just that kind of day.

But, if I may, once again we find a way to take those lemons and crank out some lemonade. I've learned that not everyone has that skill set.

The broadcast happened and we survived. That doesn't mean I'm happy.

Anyway, Thanksgiving football allowed for some insanity. While Greenwich won easily, Cheshire and Southington played into overtime before Southington won. New Canaan shut Darien down and, after all of the mathematics, it appears that I'll be calling Greenwich/Darien on Tuesday night.

That's the thing about these broadcasts. You have to dust yourself and survive, or simply quit.

I'm not ready to do that.