Posted Friday, April 21, 2006 by Gene

Random inexplicable complaint of the day
I spend most of my work drive-- from home in the morning and to home in the evening-- listening to sports talk radio. This is now easier to do than it used to be because there are two stations in town (actually three, but I only listen to two) instead of just one, so commercial breaks can be easily avoided by flipping the channel. Option number two on my dial is ESPN radio, which in the afternoon is hosted by the often-annoying Michael Felger and Kevin Winter. Felger is annoying because he seems to live in a world where the only people who get their sports information from the internet are geeks who live in their parents' basement. Winter is an entirely different breed of annoying, and the most annoying part is I may be the only person who hears it.

Do this: say out loud the letter "N". Good. Now unless you are Kevin Winter, you said it the way everyone says it: "ennn". Winter, if he did the same thing, just said "ennaa". This comes up whenever a word ends with an "N" sound, which is frustratingly often. Worse, he does the sports flash, so every twenty minutes we get to hear the local sports news announced like this: "the Bostonna Red Sox wonna a close onea last night against the Orioles, Onea nothing, onna a home runna off the bat of Kevinna Youklis."

And I swear, I am the only one who hears this.