JOSH INNES ON FIRE AND UNLEASHED By LM

03-29-2011

There are times in history when a person knows he's on top of the world: W landing on the aircraft carrier, General McArthur returning home from War, Jay Z performing Encore "ONE DEEP" and Josh Innes' last 45 minutes with Boatie N Pearland.

If you don't know Boatie N Pearland, is quickly rising up the leader board in Sports Talk. 

Currently, his resume includes an interview with Travis Rodgers and Lesbian Craig, in addition to being a Jim Rome favorite. Now we can include another notch on his belt, Josh Innes.   Initially, the interview started choppy with minor technical difficulties but when it got rolling, it got rolling.  

Josh Innes is a young Caucasian male working in Sports Talk. Until this point in Houston, I think it's fair to say Josh has went through some ups and downs, clearly he is on the upswing of his career.  

To use a comparison, Josh arriving in Houston was more like Chris Farley, John Belushi with the "in your face" comedy, but now he has settled to George Carlin.  I am talking about the over use of the metro-sexual thingy, but now he has obviously realized it's not received well in Houston and therefore you are hearing Josh in a more masculine role with his girlfriend, etc.  Josh Innes is also one of the personalities in the market that would appear to be comfortable around African-Americans.  He goes out of his way to point out social injustices and the "fact of the matter" when it comes to black people.  

In addition to Josh Innes mildly changing up his game, he has made Drive Time on 610 AM tolerable again.  Sure, I still feel 610 AM as a whole can do a better job with audience interaction "in show" as well as ease off the "visual radio".  "Visual radio" meaning everything Gavin Spittle can use as a low budget movie for the radio (I will hit on this later).  I hear plenty of people say the show is trash or lack sports relevance, but they quickly forget how boring the show was six months ago.

THE INTERVIEW

In layman's terms, Josh Innes crushed it.  It started off as a normal interview with the typical questions, but when Josh begin to use profane language Boatie begin giggling like a school girl just as shocked as I were to hear a 610 AM employee CUT loose.

During the interview, Josh was asked about his guest appearances on the Jim Rome Show.  Josh keeping it 100, talked about being pleased to do the show and he realized what type of audience he was dealing with.  He also elaborated on the fact he knows he's not the Sklar Brothers (which he's a fan of) nor Jay Mohr.  

Stucknut is a Jim Rome fan page therefore they hit Josh with a vast amount of Jim Rome questions of how did it come about and what's going on during the show.  The most interesting part of that segment was Josh explaining how Rome's guys would tell him to pull back off of certain topics the one in particular being "Bret Favre's Pole".

After the Rome talk subsided, they began talking about "telling it like it is" and relating to people.  Josh opened by saying he realized that people want to hear sports, but they also want to hear the humanistic side.  He talked about how people text'n or sending emails about Josh doing stuff for effect as he explained it's what he believes and it's SHOCK because you are basically close minded.  In other words, if Josh's thinking don't align itself with yours, you want to call it SHOCK.  I can take that one,but I know for fact some things Josh has said is meant for Shock.  You can quickly tell when it's about to occur see ND Kalu, Bernard Pollard and Greg Koch.  It appears to me when a person of some sort of celebrity is in studio with J&R, Josh tends to get a tad bit more FLAMBOYANT.

THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW

The rest of the interview, Josh Innes went into WOLF MAN mode as he completely ripped the interview to shreds with his version of coming real.  Josh went sub-nuclear on the real chart and honestly, I believe he had to be juicing.  Earlier, I wrote that Josh plays on self-deprecation humor but he took that to a new level while calling his dad an "Ass kisser" to talking about creating fake names on message boards.  I mean it was like the guy was human and the people loved it. I thought Boatie was having a premature accident because he was so giddy.  Josh even talked about the rules given to him by the boss "Don't make it personal" as his cell phone continued to ring in the background.  The interview was a breath of fresh air to hear the guys let loose instead of this FCC regulated media talk gibberish.  


HMW'S ANGLE

Near the end of the interview, Boatie asked Josh "What did he think about Lesbian Craig?".  Josh was generous in response saying HMW were his boys and we talked about him in the past, but he appreciates what we are doing and he wishes the Houston Chronicle would do the same.  He also said he liked the fact that we "listen".  This was probably the only part of the interview I took exception with because in a round about away it feels as if he's dissing HMW by mentioning a major publication in lieu with HMW. I know, I know, that's petty but what brought about Lesbian Craig and HMW anyway?


JOSH FIRED THE FIRST SHOT

It's strange how things happen because Josh is one of the few personalities that has consistently praised the efforts of the blog. However, last summer when he was in the 10 O'Clock slot, he made fun of Mike in DA's delivery.  To make matters worse he began talking about these "group of guys calling themselves THE FRAT and I guess they are bloggers".  To make a long story short, Lesbian Craig went to one of Josh's remotes and days later, HMW "went in" on him.  This all happened around the time he first guest hosted Jim Rome in which we chronicled the feedback.  According to Steve with Stucknut, the response was positive but the national feedback we received was pretty brutal. Josh isolated himself from HMW,  but months later we slowly began talking again.  

Approximately three weeks ago, Lesbian Craig did an interview with Boatie and he was asked about Josh.  Lesbian Craig praised Josh's talents, but didn't feel Josh would make it in Houston if he continued the "fat goofy kid can't get a date" bit, therefore it was only fitting Boatie would ask Josh to respond.


Currently HMW and Josh are cool and when you see us call him "Big Baby" that should let you know.  That's similar to us calling John Lopez "Giggles" or "Sports Jesus".


COMEDY

If you can't tell, I like the art of comedy.  I am guessing that's why I think guys like Adam Clanton and Lance Zierlein are talented personalities with their multiple voice impersonations.  Josh's comedic value and personality reminds me of a very "under the radar" comedian.  When I hear Josh Innes, visions of Andy Kaufman comes to mind.  The late Kauffman was a comedian that wanted to approach comedy in a different way and was commonly ridiculed for his bits.  What he felt was funny, everyone else thought was weird and insensitive.  I personally like a person willing to go against the status quo because it shows me they are not a robot.  I just wonder if Josh is like Andy in that Andy hated doing "Taxi", but money and celebrity forced him.  


SPORTS REAL TALK


Personalities like Dylan Gwinn and Josh Innes is a scorned fan's best friend because they are saying what we actually feel about the local team.  These are two personalities in Houston willing to call crap CRAP however this article is about Josh.  I am not sure if this is theatre or another bit by Gavin Spittle but Josh lets the audience know he gets in trouble for the things he say about the local teams.  As LM the fan, I love to hear a personality on radio to share in my pain and frustrations.  Outside of Bernard Pollard, Josh is known to speak the truth about the local teams but the "truth" is not to be confused with only negative because he give them "PROPS" when they do something good.  Lets not get it twisted, Josh is no Adam Wexler, Lance, Sean Pendergast or John Lopez when it comes down to game analysis of sport but he knows how to deliver his reaction.  To be honest, I can't even take Josh's sports takes seriously.  I am not going to Josh asking him "why did the Left Guard pull on a 33 Trap" but I will listen to his reaction of a team in general.

Too many of our local personalities have gotten caught up with  thinking "if they kiss up", these professionals will love them unless we are talking about Universal Unpopular players like Tracy McGrady but I challenge all of them to go observe who Andre Johnson is following.  Oh yea, this in an article coming.  Andre Johnson is beloved by the City of Houston. No one in Houston has a negative word to say about Andre but do you know who Andre follows in Houston?  Name me three local sports personalities in Houston Andre is following.  Andre Johnson follows ESG and Slim Thug   (Houston Rappers) and hardly any of the Local Sports Personalities.  As far as personalities, Andre follow more Miami Radio Shows and Sports Personalities than anything in HTOWN.  What I am trying to say is, it doesn't pay to kiss ass because these  athletes don't care about what you think.  What does that say about our personalities in Houston when a guy is following his Hometown Sports Shows but I am sure the few will say "well DUH, that's his hometown, this only makes sense and he won a National Championship there".  With that being said, I challenge anyone to go look at who Vince Young is following, I mean with that logic VY should be following every sports station and personality in Houston.  Good job Josh in calling crap CRAP with the exception of Bernard Pollard.


WRAP IT UP

The interview was off the leash and I liked Josh's patience with the technical difficulties at the beginning of the interview.  That was the part of the interview I was most shocked by because I perceived Josh as an arrogant person and I still do to a degree. However, his willingness to stick in the interview was solid. 

He's smart though, because once he realized the vibe was going in his favor with the profane language, he fed into it.  Yes, I know it's sad that this is where we have come as a society that we hear someone use profanity and we love it.  I am guilty of it.  All in all, it just feels good to hear a person speak openly, UNLEASHED.

A potential issue seems to be brewing.  Earlier, before Josh took the stage with Boatie, he was speaking about media critiques on his show.  The "Hair Balls" from the Houston Press mildly questioned the way J&R conducted their Babe Bracket. By the way, HMW feels that this is a KILT project, therefore they can dictate the rules, we have no issue with it.  With that being said, Josh invited the Houston Press and Chronicle. 

He will answer any questions asked, but during this segment he applauded the work of HMW and other media critics. However we did not receive an invite.  With that being said, we are not tripping because we are sure it was only a minor "hiccup".  We have interviewed Josh before and if we want to interview him in the future, we will. If not, then that's cool, too.


Boatie and Pooldoc, good job on the interview.  If you would like to listen to the interview in it's entirety, please visit Stucknut and choose it from the available audio takes.


Boatie, Pooldoc, Steve and the whole Stucknut FAMILY,  MADD PROPS.


Below is some of the interview 





OUT

LM