The name should change.
From Alltell to All Hell.Tonight was a perfect example of why I'm a fan of Sprint when it comes to cell phone coverage. Sometimes I see the commercials that advertise all the minutes/text messages you want for 29.95 or something and I begin to wonder if that would be better.
Then a night like tonight comes along.
I traversed the countryside to Nickerson, a quite little borough approx. 40 miles away from my hometown, to broadcast a football game between Nickerson and my hometown Swathers. Nickerson does not have the luxury of a land phone line, so I had to carry with me a celluar telephone setup. The setup consists of a power supply, a cell phone, a mixer box, a microphone and a headset. It's slightly cumbersome as it seems I have more cords coming and going than a whole LAN network for computer games. The concept is relatively easy; call the station and talk to the board engineer who cues me when it's time to talk in my announcer voice. Sounds simple?
Not tonight. Apparently, All Hell's network doesn't like Nickerson. Period. I called the station at 6:35 to get set up to go and All Hell dropped the call. Honestly, being somewhat technologically ignorant, I thought I had bumped something that disconnected me. I called right back and hooked up with Heath (my board op) I didn't think any thing of it.
Until it happened again. Nickerson's second play, it disconnected again. I tried dialing back only to get a "redial" on the cell phone screen. Five times I kept trying, only to never work. I had Heath on my actuall cell as I was trying to get things figured out. Finally I connected. I managed to cover a couple of plays, before All Hell struck again. Both times the setup cut out, I heard a guy's voice that I didn't recognize, then silence. White Noise anyone? Fortunately I didn't hear "DIE" or that would have been bad.
Things finally got straightened out, because I'm guessing the EMP stuff bored whatever spirits were interferring with things. Then he struck.
Even though I was wearing headphones, I couldn't help but hear the PA announcer who thought he was oh, so clever. It was atrocious. They've always said the mark of a good PA guy is that you don't notice him. Tubby was trying to be noticed. He actually was announcing things that were going on DURING the play over the loudspeaker. It was all I could do not to say "DUDE, that's my job. Shut the F up."
I didn't think the 9000 people in that tiny little press box would have appreciated it.
But we did win 17-0.
posted by Rusty @ 10:51 PM
Comments: 0
