Monday, January 20, 2020

Robin's Wrong - Early 2020 Update

Back in the day, someone undertook the task of keeping up with Robin Quivers’ many blunders during the Stern show and memorialized them on the www.robinswrong.com website.  The site isn’t active today, but cached versions are still around online.

While the following list is far from complete, here are some more subsequent screw ups by Robin, who modestly described herself as “arguably one of America’s most popular female radio personalities” in her bio at a 2019 Landmark Forum event.

January 14, 2020.  When discussing Ronan Farrow’s book “Catch and Kill”, Robin referred to the title as “Cut and Kill”. 

January 8, 2020.  Robin read a story about the death of author Elizabeth Wurtzel - the hefty newswoman didn’t realize her book “Prozac Nation” was a memoir and described it as a novel. 

August 6, 2019.  Avid TV watcher Robin referred to Jerry Seinfeld’s Netflix show “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” as ”Comedians in Cars Doing Some Coffee Thing.”

August 5, 2019.  Robin, who ate lots of fast food during her infamous military career, got confused by a story involving Burger King’s introduction of a meatless burger.  She thought that the Impossible Whopper had an ingredient called “impossible food” and didn't realize that Impossible Foods is the name of a company.

June 4, 2019.  Robin read a story about Damon Wayans going on social media to defend his 15-year-old daughter after she came out as gay.   However, she quickly had to correct the story to mention that (1) it was Marlon Wayans rather than Damon, and (2) the daughter in question was 19 rather than 15.

February 4, 2019
.  Robin brought up a story about Virginia governor Ralph Northam appearing in blackface (something that an unevolved Howard Stern also used to do).  Robin said that the picture was in his high school yearbook, although the picture was from his medical school yearbook. 

January 9, 2019.  Robin referred to a story about Mark Harmon making $19 million a year on NCIS but referred to him as Mark Hamill. 

November 5, 2018.  Robin told Howard that Steven Tyler officiates weddings and will marry people for a fee of $1,000.  Howard and the guys thought this was ridiculously low but Robin continued to insist that she was right.  However, someone found that the correct fee was $200,000. 

July 24, 2018.  Robin botched a story about former porn star Stormy Daniels getting divorced.  Robin initially said that Stormy filed for divorce from her husband but later realized that the husband was the one who requested the divorce.

February 26, 2018.  The show played Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” when coming back from one of the numerous breaks.  Music expert Robin chimed in to show that she knew about the song but thought that it was by Rage Against the Machine. 

April 17, 2017.  Robin read a story about a couple who went to a fertility clinic and found out that they were fraternal twins.  Even Howard, who is rumored to have an IQ of 99, thought this story sounded fishy.  After being pressed, Robin cited her source as the “India Express” - needless to say, this ended up being fake news and not a real story.

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

It Takes a Village

The Howard Stern show has been on a break during the last week, as Howard has just finished his grueling tour to promote his new book “Howard Stern Comes Again”.  Congratulations to Howard, as it managed to become a New York Times bestseller even though one individual estimated that the text consists of 84% transcripts of old interviews and only 16% original content.

During the downtime, the staffers are hopefully getting a chance to recharge.  Gary Dell’Abate mentioned earlier this year that they have 65-70 people working to deliver radio gold to subscribers three days a week.  While some of the people are well-known, others work clandestinely behind the scenes (who knows what type of hijinks they may be up to while the show is on break).

Here's a list of the show employees and contributors that I found, which should help the millions of Stern show fans get a better chance to learn about some of these folks.  Howard is probably wondering if one of them may be the mole who has been leaking information to Stuttering John Melendez.

1. Howard Stern
2. Robin Quivers
3. Fred Norris
4. Gary Dell’Abate.  Gary was at the Bottlerock festival in California again this week.  He posed for a picture with his wife - maybe he was also able to meet up with some of his other West Coast friends while he was out there. 


5. Benjy Bronk
6. Jon Hein
7. Rahsaan Rogers - now working out in Los Angeles
8. Marci Turk - COO (and Getting Things Done!)
9. Jeremy Coleman - SVP Programming
10. Will Murray
11. Jason Kaplan
12. Sal Governale
13. Richard Christy (no relation to Howard's son-in-law Colin Christy)
14. Shuli Egar
15. Brent Hatley
16. JD Harmeyer
17. Memet Walker
18. Steve Nowicki - who continues to hit it out of the park (?) with his fake Alex Jones bit
19. Chris Wilding - #BuildThatWall

Some of the other show contributors:

20. Ben Barto - current husband of Marci Turk?
21. Joseph Berson - Associate Production Manager 
22. Jonathan Blitt
23. Steve Brandano - Director of Talent Relations
24. Michael Flandina - Technical Producer
25. Michael Fox - Producer
26. Chris Gibbons - Director, Studio Operations 
27. Greg Giordano - Associate Producer 
28. Paul Grassini - Supervising Producer 
29. Steve Griffiths - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevengriffiths/ 
30. Daniel Grote - Assistant
31. Sean Hanahue - Technical Producer 
32. Matt Hansen - Director of Information Technology at One Twelve, Inc.
33. Derek Jones - Writer Producer
34. Ashley Khan - Production Assistant
35. Jessica Kirson - https://jessicakirson.com/bio/
36. David LeClaire - Supervising Producer 
37. Jeremy Lipkin - Director of Tapes & Post Production
38. Ryan McKenna - Publisher, Video/Talk Programming (former Stern show research producer until this month - still at Sirius in Los Angeles, but unclear if he's still with the Stern show) 
39. Michelle Miloscia - Transcriber / Production Assistant 
40. Laura Muraczewski https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-muraczewski-72999282/ - former agents assistant at Don Buchwald & Associates and has been with the Stern show since 2014.
41. Angela Muto - comedienne contributor (example - Ronnie Mund's mom
42. Ryan O’Connell - Managing Editor of Howardstern.com at Whalerock
43. Mike Pearlman Producer
44. Ryan Pienciak - Senior Director, Programming
45. Ryan Rasmason - Producer https://twitter.com/user/status/1059645257216860160
46. Nik Ruckert - https://twitter.com/NikRuckert
47. Michael Shepard - Digital Media Researcher  
48. Matt Soares - Production Assistant  
49. Tim Stimpson - Associate Producer
50. Kyle Simon Researcher Producer also is a t-shirt designer
51. Mike Trainor - "Comedy" Writer
52. Prateek Vij -  Production Assistant 
53. Chris Weiler - Producer  

Monday, April 2, 2018

Beth Stern Foster Failures

These days Beth Stern is mainly known for fostering cats and hosting kitten shows on the Hallmark Channel which don't exactly set the world on fire with amazing ratings.  Beth recently was in the news because she flew across the country to rescue a cat in Fontana, California that had been horribly abused.

The timing was also perfect for Beth, as she was able to attend a birthday party for Molly McNearney (wife of one Jimmy Kimmel) while she was in Los Angeles - maybe she was also able to visit with her cousin Noel while she was in town.

Beth's stay in New York with this new foster cat was short-lived, as she was down in the Sterns' mansion in Palm Beach, Florida a week later.  Beth was also recently interviewed by some South Florida publication called Modern Luxury -

In response to a question about how they find homes for the foster cats, Beth replied:

"I have a lot of cat followers (laughs) and a 100 percent success rate. I read each and every email that is sent to my foster address, and the ones I think are worthwhile to interview, I explore. Those names are then given to people who work for the NSALA, who decide who among that group should be called. They are given an extensive telephone interview, and then we talk to the vets and get the three references they submit to us who know them as families. By the time we are ready to deliver the cat or kitten, we are sure about their new forever homes, and I personally deliver each animal myself."

I'm not sure what Beth considers a "success", but over the years there appear to have been more than just a few foster placements that didn't work out so well - here are some examples:

1.  September 2014 - one of the bad stories about Beth's foster kittens.  Howard discussed this on the air, and told his listeners that the kittens were declawed and the returned to the Sterns due to a family problem: 

"Howard said he has a cat story real quick. He said he and his wife are involved in fostering cats. He said they had a couple of kittens they raised last summer named Ellie and Shirley. He said they were returned to them because of a family problem. Howard said that they had them declawed which bummed them out."



2.  February 2018 - foster named Sugar Plum Fairy (?) was returned to Beth.  Beth claimed that the woman who adopted the cat was "returning her after realizing she wasn’t the right fit. The adopter feels she would benefit by having a friend."  Beth also deleted a prior post which indicated that the reason for returning the cat was that the owner found out the cat wasn't a "lap kitten".
 
3.  December 2017 -  "Ten year old foster Felix is back".  "Felix is back with us and to no fault of his own or the family who adopted him. We’ve learned that he’s scared of children."  Perhaps they could check on this before placing other cats in the future.

4.  September 2017 - Maggie and Lyla back after refusing to eat in forever home and are now staying with Beth's "friend".

5.  March 2017 - foster cats Tatertot and Woodstock returned because of a family member's allergies.

6.  March 2017 - foster Sammy Crinkles only lasted one day in his 'forever' home due to the adopter having some (apparently newly-discovered) personal issues:


7.  December 2016 - adult fosters Sienna and Sugarplum up for adoption again as Virginia forever family can't keep them because "the family's 2 other resident kitties were never able to welcome them with open arms".

8.  May 2016- foster Strawberry back to the Sterns' Hamptons mansion  -  she "was placed with a family who only wanted a single pet. The family called me after having her for a few months and said Strawberry seemed unhappy and cried all night."

9.  November 2015 - Florida foster cats Banjo and Mathilda have returned "due to unforeseen circumstances".

10.  July 2015 -  foster cat returned after other cat in house doesn't get along with it.

11.  April 2015 - another case of an allergic forever family, as fosters Lollipop and Pumpernickel returned due to their forever mom being allergic to them.


While Beth may not have the 100% success rate described in that Florida magazine article, hopefully she and the North Shore Animal League will continue to improve the screening process so that less cats end up getting returned to Beth's Hamptons mansion.

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Bianca's Furry Friends Foundation - 2015 Annual Report

In addition to asking fans to contribute to the North Shore Animal League to fund the Bianca's Furry Friends project, NSAL spokesperson Beth Stern has her own separate charity called the Bianca's Furry Friends Foundation (the "BFF Foundation").  This somewhat mysterious charity has been mentioned in this blog, but there is not a whole lot of information available about the BFF Foundation - it does not seem to have a public website and I don't recall either of the Sterns mentioning this great cause to their millions of fans and social media followers.  However, the BFF Foundation's 2015 annual report is now available on the New York state charity website and although there wasn't any earth shattering information, here are a few nuggets from the filing.

Over $576,000 of Contributions in 2015

For a foundation that has no website and no readily apparent way for the public to make donations, the BFF Foundation was able to raise over $576,000 of contributions in 2015.  One can only wonder if Howard and/or Beth Stern contributed money to the foundation or if the money came from other donors.  Regardless, the donor(s) were likely to have been able to reap a tax deduction for a contribution to this charitable organization.



Minimal Expenses in 2015

With such large amounts of contributions, one may have expected the BFF Foundation to put the money to good use in order to save lives (of animals, not people).  However, it surprisingly reported only $2,648 of expenses in 2015, including $989 of legal fees and a generous grant of $1,659 to a Harlem animal hospital. I wonder how the cost of the shoes that Beth posted in a recent picture compares to the amount of the grant to the animal hospital.




The BFF Foundation does not seem to have any employees and each of the named officers and directors puts in an average of 0.0 hours per week.



Investments in Publicly-Traded Securities

The BFF Foundation's annual report reveals what the foundation did with the hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions - rather than funding animal-related charities, the money is mainly in cash accounts and invested in publicly-traded securities.



Certainly an interesting use of funds, although maybe the BFF Foundation will use some of that cash to pay for the NSAL kitten wing once construction finally starts.

Bianca's Furry Friends - Update

Nearly 4 years after the project was first announced, a Newsday story indicated that the North Shore Animal League finally received  preliminary approval to build Bianca's Furry Friends. 

The Newsday article mentioned that "the league did not receive full approval because the staff has to submit paperwork proving that they would abide by six special construction requests from the town."  It's unclear whether the NSAL submitted said paperwork, when the project will actually get started or when it is expected to be completed.

In the meantime, there are still fund raisers for Bianca's Furry Friends, and Beth proudly announced that a middle school kid donated his allowance and it will be used to build this gaudy addition - the lucky youngster received a wonderful prize in his school's contest, as he got to name one of Beth's foster cats. 



As usual, commenters in Beth's Instagram post praise the young kid instead of asking why Beth and Howard don't just pay for the kitty wing themselves rather than spending a fortune on their lavish homes. Too bad they couldn't have also thrown in some additional prizes, such as one of Howard's great drawings or a gift bag similar to the generous swag that the Stern show gives to guests.

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Festival of Cock

By the title of the post, one may be expecting to see a recap of some recent Howard Stern shows, as its aging host continues to be very interested in male genitals.

This hard-working man once spent hours of his ample time off searching the interwebs to find uncensored pictures of a naked Orlando Bloom and staffers continue to come up with ways to show him their junk in order to get air time, including:

Richard Christy measures Benjy Bronk's junk

Another 'original' bit in which comic genius Sal drops his pants

Brent Hatley, the show's resident expert on politics and all things radio, delivers a forgettable segment in which he got waxed on air:


Japanese Festival

Actually, today marks the day on which one city in Japan has an annual penis festival.  Although Howard has said on many occasions that he doesn't like parades, maybe he could make an exception for this type of festival.

Feel free to watch this video to get some background on the festival:



PSA - Check out the Solo Travel Blog You Tube Channel

Unlike listening to the Stern channels, which are filled with stale, censored replays, hacks doing bad impressions of President Trump, and tortured interviews of celebrities, check out the SoloTravelBlog You Tube channel and your life may be changed in an inexplicable way.

My man Dustin is an American dude who films his buckwild adventures while cruising and perusing in Japan (now India) and has a nice freaking channel filled with all kinds of entertaining videos (all different kinds). 

Video quality has improved since the penis festival video from a few years ago, and even ones about mundane topics are worth viewing:

For example, a video about Japanese convenience store grub is more entertaining than hearing Grandma Stern complain about vocal fry:



There's also a Jon Hein inspired "diabetes quest" series of videos - the Destination America channel probably would have gotten better results if it had Dustin host the Fast Food Mania show instead of the lifeless Mr. Hein - then again, they may have been counting on the Stern show's "millions" of listeners to tune in (side note:  Jon may be hitting a milestone with his awesome fast food book, as one site reports that its sales are approaching nearly 500 copies sold on Amazon as of today).

Dude is more witty than the untalented millenial "producers" of the Stern show, and an unboxing of plastic dogs (I mean "dawgs" as they say on the STB channel) beats a call from "Lee King Snatch"



There are also some animal videos on the channel, which may be to the liking of Stern show fans who enjoy seeing Howard's wife post a slew of kitten pictures to her Instagram account each day:




Saturday, September 10, 2016

Dog Days of Summer - Still No Bianca's Furry Friends

As the summer winds down, it's time to recap the highlights of an eventful summer for satellite radio host Howard Stern and his wife Beth Stern.

The Howard Stern Show 

During the last few years, the Stern show has had a very light schedule in August, but this year, it broke from that recent practice and treated fans to nine live shows during August.

The content wasn't exactly hitting it out of the park though, as guests included several people who had done the show multiple times in the past, such as: 
  • Seth Rogen (I think Seth may have tried marijuana once or twice in his life - did expert interviewer Howard get to this?)
  • Jonah Hill
  • Tracy Morgan, and 
  • Amy Schumer (the hard-hitting interview unfortunately didn't have any questions about her alleged theft of material from other comics).

Sirius/XM subscribers may have thought they tuned into the old OutQ channel, as there also seemed to be plenty of discussion of male genitalia - Howard spent lots of time discussing his search for uncensored pictures of a naked Orlando Bloom, as well as disturbing bits called "Boner Bongo" (which involved male staffers dropping their pants to play the bongos with their dicks), "Prostate Karaoke" (staffers drop their pants and sing karaoke during a prostate exam - "that's gold Jerry, gold"), as well as Richard Christy embarrassing himself by dropping his pants to try on electric cock ring.  While the Stern show is now evolved and does not have segments involving naked women (which segments seemed to taper off once Howard TV "went dark"), Howard seems to feature more than a fair share of talk and segments involving naked dudes.

America's Got Talent 

For the first time in 4 years, Howard is not serving as a judge on NBC's America's Got Talent.  As we have seen before, the "Stern effect" on AGT ratings wasn't exactly stellar while he served as the self-glossed America's judge, although some Stern fans thought that his mere presence would cause ratings to skyrocket.

Simon Cowell replaced Howard as a judge this year and ratings are up - earlier this week ratings in the key 18-49 demo for the semi-final performance show were also nearly 20% higher than comparable ratings during 2015, with a 2.5 rating compared to last year's dismal 2.1 rating.

I do not believe that Howard has had much discussion about the AGT ratings increase this year on the Howard Stern radio show as the show is too jam packed with great bits - see the item above for some of the killer content that has filled the show's airtime during the summer.

Annual Magazine Cover and Lots of Kittens
 
Beth Stern has also had a busy summer - in case fans didn't know, Beth was again featured on the cover of a magazine called "Social Life".


This magazine isn't well-known outside of the Hamptons, but the Sterns managed to get an article written about the photo shoot and cover in the Daily Mail.

The 44 year old animal activist also posted many of the Social Life pictures to Instagram, and floods her account with many pictures of cats (and herself) each day -
 
A photo posted by Beth Stern (@bethostern) on
 
In honor of the Olympics, the Hallmark Channel rolled out its kitten sports special over the summer and they were lucky to find that Beth was available to host the event, which was called the Kitten Summer Games. 
 
Unfortunately, the ratings for said Kitten Summer Games did not draw the 'millions' of people who listen to the Stern show, as it finished with a 0.07 rating and was the #115 show on cable for the night). 

Beth will be back on the Hallmark Channel with another animal-related show this fall, as she is hosting the Hero Dog Awards again.

Bianca's Furry Friends - September 2016 Update 

Fans again may have been excited for a possible summer ground breaking of the Bianca's Furry Friends addition at the North Shore Animal League.  While promoting a North Shore Animal League event in June, Beth gave fans some hope that Bianca's Furry Friends may get started this summer, as she said:
 
  "...the opening of Bianca's Furry Friends is probably still a few years away, they will hopefully be breaking ground at the end of the summer."
 
Now that September has started, it doesn't look too promising for a summer ground breaking for Bianca's Furry Friends - as we have seen before, this is not a new pattern with respect to the promised start date of Bianca's Furry Friends, but this is the first time I recall seeing that the opening of the kitty wing will be "a few years" after it gets started.  Looks like it will be 2018 at the earliest for the NSAL addition to finally open up after first being announced in 2013.
 
Needless to say, the NSAL is still trying to raise money for Bianca's Furry Friends - proceeds from two more events later this year will be donated to BFF: (1) the Gold Coast Affair on September 14 (unfortunately, tickets appear to be sold out) and (2) the 2016 annual gala on November 18.

Even if the summer ends without Bianca's Furry Friends breaking ground, maybe the additional cash from these events will be enough to allow for a 2017 ground breaking.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Instagram Recycling and Video of a PETA Visit to the NSAL

Howard Stern's large backroom staff must have a hard time coming up with new material for the 12 hours of radio they do each week.  Although the creative meetings have led to comedy gold such as "Flat Ronnie" and "Ronnie the Robot", the show is still filled with stale, recycled bits, including impersonators of Presidential candidates, dreadful phony calls, parody songs about a 'hot' 60 year old overweight newswoman and Howard's fake Viet Nam war stories.

Howard's wife Beth has also done her share of recycling - on Instagram, where she has posted thousands of pictures over the years.

As we have seen before, some recurring themes of Beth Stern's Instagram account involved posting pictures of herself in revealing attire in order to please some "kittenposthaters" and also showing the foster kittens when they just happen to be near her fancy shoes and purses.

Here are a few more ideas which have been recycled over the years in the many thousands of her Instagram pictures:

Beth Has to Pee (aka Too Much Information)

For some reason, fostering kittens interferes with Beth's ability to use one of the many bathrooms in the Sterns' mansion in Southampton, although it's a good thing that Beth has her phone close by to capture the amazing moment for her followers.

Beth's followers lap this up as if it's original almost every time, even though she's posted a number of these pictures, complete with unusual hashtags, over the years:

January 2016 - #ihavetopee

October 2015 - #havetopee

September 2015

A photo posted by Beth Stern (@bethostern) on

August 2015 - Foster cat Peter Parker causing trouble


June 2015 - Has to pee

March 2015 - Yoda won't let Beth pee in peace

March 2015 - Picture with the late Apple the cat


January 2015 - Bella jumps on Beth's lap #yesmyphonewaswithme

October 2014 - I have to pee

Meditating Beth 

Howard Stern has been a big fan (big fan) of Transcendental Meditation for years, and Beth has taken up this practice as well.  Unfortunately, some of her meditation sessions are interrupted by the darn cats and kittens, but luckily she is able to get a picture for her followers.  Beth is also providing some handy tips on TM with these informative posts, as it's not common knowledge that one is supposed to keep a phone handy while lying down to meditate and an untrained observer may have mistaken her meditation for a nap.

May 2016 - Meditating with "bellaboo"

April 2016 - Wakes up from TM with a 'cat bum' in her face

April 2016 - A 'kitty toot' wakes Beth from her meditation

A photo posted by Beth Stern (@bethostern) on

November 2015 - Trying to meditate. #nothappening #TM  https://www.instagram.com/p/-Chb93IfIx/

October 2015 - Yoda interrupts a meditation session

NSAL Mentioned in a PETA Video

Beth is the spokesperson for the North Shore Animal League and it is the source of many of the foster kittens that have been featured in her social media pictures.

The NSAL is not shy about describing its 'no kill' status but as shown in  this PETA video below, the no kill shelter concept may not be as great as the name sounds and PETA is in favor of open admission shelters.

A PETA article from a few years ago (which contains a long list of disturbing stories about mistreatment of animals) explains the issue that PETA has with no kill shelters, and the basic concept seems to be:

 (1) there are only so many animals that are going to get adopted from shelters,

 (2) the no kill shelters fill up and they essentially leave others with the dirty work of having to put down animals that don't get adopted, and

 (3) because people are turned away from these no kill shelters, they often are left with no choice but to abandon their pets or end up giving them to places which mistreat them.

In the video below, the caption is "(s)lamming the door in the faces of needy homeless animals makes intake and euthanasia statistics sound favorable but lets animals down." 

The video features people being turned away at various shelters, and the crew visits the NSAL headquarters in Port Washington, NY at the 8:18 mark.  The NSAL person says that they only will accept animals that were originally adopted from the NSAL (?) and that 'a lot' of the animals that the NSAL places get returned to the shelter - the video closes with the line "no kill can mean no help for the neediest of animals."

  

There doesn't appear to be any easy way to fix to this, but in the meantime, another problem is still in search of a solution - after three years, the Stern show is still asking fans for money to help build Bianca's Furry Friends in this tweet from last week, this time in the form of an auction to sit in on the Stern show and the latest bid as of this date is $25,000.