By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag.com
After years of delays, false promises and more stalling than Jesse Pinkman’s RV and the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive put together, I want to officially welcome you to the Nxt LvL of the DetroitSportsRag.com.
Yep, since the time we first discussed moving to the NxT Lvl, the US Military killed Osama bin Laden, the kidnapped Jaycee Dugard was returned to her family, Chinese Democracy was finally released and the alleged murderer of Etan Patz was arrested.
We did beat Peace in the Middle East, but who the fuck hasn’t?
So what does NxT LvL even mean? Well, if you figure it out, please email me at DetroitSportsRag.com and let me know because up until about 15 minutes ago, I thought it was just an elongated bit around these parts.
Actually, here are some of the differences you will notice with DSR 4.0:
1) The return of the “DSR on Tee-Vee” after a six-year hiatus sans Randy W. Hall and our old producer who made Ellen Degeneres look fem. In what promises to be the most triumphant “television” return since Fox brought back “Family Guy,” our dysfunctional group of miscreants will be joined by co-host, Sean Baligian, to moderate the upcoming three-ring circus.
The show will debut tonight and will stream live on the DSR’s main page from the UDetroit Café. We will have a live studio audience and everyone is invited. The address is 1417 Randolph and the bar is located in Harmonie Park right next to the Detroit Seafood Market.
(Don’t worry. If you would rather watch Justin Verlander pitch at Fenway, all episodes of the DirtTV will be archived for your viewing pleasure.)
Also, joining the panel discussion will be longtime DSR contributor, Michael Bochenek. The man who goes by more nicknames than Apollo Creed is even promising a Mike Valenti revelation during our premiere episode.
(Here are just a few of the guy’s aliases: Master Shake, That Choco Shake Kid, Blizzard with Heath Bar and Boston Cooler Man. You’d think with those sorts of monikers the kid would be the size of Scott “The Gator” Anderson, but actually he will be the only person on the panel who probably isn’t in need of a good angioplasty procedure.)
So why has Baligian agreed to join our group of degenerates and derelicts? Well, we will find out this evening, but I am guessing he doesn’t really give two shits about ever doing a radio show from Detroit again if he is signing up for this career suicide.
In case you haven’t kept up with Baligian’s career, he spent many years at WDFN hosting a variety of shows. After being laid-off as part of the President Obama inauguration purge by Clear Channel, the station rehired him later that year.
After the death of his broadcast partner (and our mutual friend) Tom “Killer” Kowalski last summer, things between Sean and DFN went downhill for the host of “It is What it Is” which culminated with Baligian telling Clear Channel executive, Mike McCoy, to take his job and shove it up his ass.
Soooo, Sean has been working at ESPN 96.1 in Grand Rapids since last fall where he is able to broadcast from his Northville home.
And according to the administrator (MWMetalhead) of the Michigan Radio and TV Buzzboard, Baligian’s show has been “top three in Men 25-54 at times despite airing on a station with an impaired signal and much smaller budget than its direct competitor.”
And even though Baligian and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye on things and I have probably said some shitty things about him based on information I gathered from certain reptilian sources, there is a simple reason we are joining forces to air this show.
We don’t give a fuck about the proposed light rail down Woodward or care to discuss the streetlight issue in Detroit nor do we want to gab about the best burger in the area.
We just want to talk about sports. That is it. Detroit sports. Not Terry Foster’s daughter’s soccer team or ice fishing. DETROIT SPORTS.
Look, if we are going talking about a MANAGER, it will be Jim Leyland and not someone that Rick Snyder has named to run Detroit in an emergency situation.
We will be yenta’ing it up about ….. Detroit. Sports.
Which we will start doing tonight at 8pm on a weekly basis until Baligian beats the living crap out of me for calling him a “retard” when we disagree on an issue.
2) One of the old features of the DSR was the Moronic Media Quote of the Day, which was we disbanded when I stopped listening to sports talk radio on January 9, 2006.
It was becoming a giant pain in the ass™ (Fusilli Jerry) to keep up with a new quote every day so I 86’ed it back in 2007.
But with the advent of Twitter and every single douche bag in the local sports media having an unfiltered account, the only problem with reinstating this feature is that there probably could be a Moronic Media Quote of the HOUR.
So. Many. Dummies.
Anyway, the MMQOTD is coming back and as always, your help in tipping us off to the stupidity of the Motown scribes and show hosts will be greatly appreciated.
3) Because our old message board was attacked by Dutch Dragons (true story), I made the executive decision a few years back to abandon our old forums for a Facebook group.
But, NxT LvL will include an integrated bulletin board for discussion purposes and in yet another tremendous blow to Mark Zuckerberg’s empire, we will be leaving Facebook. Which probably can explain the stock being down 20 percent since trading opened.
Which surely will make all of the regular posters around here happy since they won’t ever have to get a message again from their mother like the following:
“Why are you part of a Facebook group where people call each other cunts?”
Finally, we have always preferred quality over quantity on our message board. If you stink, you will be blocked from posting. If you aren’t bright, you will be blocked from posting.
Don’t take it personally if you do get “Gonged.” You will be more than welcome to continue reading our brilliance, but this site isn’t for everyone and freedom of speech isn’t a right provided to you under the Constitution here at the ole DirtSpurtRig.
4) If you are new to the site and not familiar with the regular posters on the DSR, we will be starting a weekly featured entitled, “Familiarize Yourself with a Psycho.”
This way you can catch up on what you have been missing since 2003. We have a bunch of these in the can already because we were recently trying to put up a Wikipedia page, but those bastards kept taking it down.
Not sure Y Jimmy Wales is so M to Joffrey Muss.
5) This isn’t much of an achievement for most websites in the year 2012, but I will be able to post directly to the Dort as opposed to sending them off to my Webmaster for publication.
I will even be able to update the site on my iPhone and iPad with breaking news.
6) Because I will have more freedom to post crap directly to the site, the main page is going to have more updates than just my normal 3,000 word articles. There will be more links and videos posted with my marvelous commentary added.
Also, if something breaks like the Prince Fielder signing, I can blog about it in real time.
The bottom line is there will be more content than ever before and a reason to check the site daily as opposed to weekly.
7) As you probably already noticed, we have a new logo that exploits the Olde English D and includes an antique radio with multiple reticles to signify the Detroit sports media caught in the DSR’s crosshairs.
Some contributors on the site wanted me to include Lynn Henning or Terry Foster’s mug inside the scopes, but that didn’t workout real well for Sarah Palin when Gabrielle Gifford’s got “Regarding Henry’d” by some lunatic with an assault weapon in Arizona.
Yes, even I have a modicum of taste. Barely.
So that is about it. The NxT LvL of the DSR. And incredibly enough, after all of the false starts and unfulfilled promises, the new site is going to debut on the same day as the revitalized DSR on Tee-Vee. This is total happenstance and wasn’t planned at all.
When they make the movie about the DortSpert and the triumphant ending features the TV show and NxT LvL arriving on the SAME DAY, nobody is going to believe it.
Like, in “Private Parts,” Allison Stern didn’t REALLY go into labor with Howard’s first child on the SAME DAY that the King of All Media finally became #1 in New York while AC/DC simultaneously rocked out to “You Shook Me All Night Long.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj8MEjP4SpE
Sometimes life is stranger than fiction though.
Welcome to the NxT LvL. [Verlander] help us all.