On the Seventh Day of Lino: Spring Break Broke

April 2-3, 2008: So Lino travels down to Gus Lloyd's house, gets kicked out, and is then reinvited back, all in the space of three days. Finally, everything is normal and Lino can enjoy his time in Florida.

Or so we thought.

About midway through Lino's Wednesday broadcast, Program Director Rob Astorino called in and, with an explanation about as weak as the coffee in the Lino Watch World Headquarters breakroom, ordered Lino to return to New York the next day for some nebulous meeting. An incredulous Lino thought that the whole thing was a joke, but Maureen received an e-mail from Rob a few minutes later saying that it wasn't. After taking numerous calls on the subject, Lino was still unsure about whether to go back to New York or defy Rob and remain in Tampa.

The next morning during the first hour of Seize The Day, Lino came into Gus' studio and announced that, after thinking about it overnight, that he would catch an early morning flight back to NYC that morning. After well-wishes from Gus, Lino departed and arrived back at the Sirius studios in time to broadcast his show on Thursday afternoon. Then things got really ugly.

During the first hour, Rob called into the show and announced that his request to bring Lino back to New York was all just a big joke that he never imagined Lino would actually fall for. He was actually surprised to see Lino in the building that day. Not only that, it came to light a few minutes later that Maureen was in on the joke the whole time. The next day Rob came into the studio to face the music from Lino and the listeners, and the listeners let him have it.

We know that we have a tendency to mock Lino whenever there's an opportunity to do so, but in this case Lino got a raw deal, and we felt really bad for him. Here's hoping that Spring Break 2009 (assuming there'll be one) is much more enjoyable for Lino.

On the Sixth Day of Lino: Bearing gifts of DVDs, an Orange, and Olde English 800

March 30-April 2, 2008: This is going to be the easiest post of the twelve, as our beloved host Lino already did most of the work for me. So instead of retelling the story myself, just click on the photo below to go to Lino's web site, where you'll enjoy a nice narrative (complete with pictures!) of Lino's first three days of Spring Break at Gus Lloyd's house:


But be sure to come back tomorrow, because the saga of Lino's Spring Break doesn't end there.

On the Fifth Day of Lino: "This is a scam"

March 2008: In anticipation of Lino's spring break trip to Gus Lloyd's house in Tampa, Gus placed a poll on his web site and asked listeners to choose what Lino should do while he was there. The five choices were:

• Option 1 nobody can remember
  
• Option 2 nobody can remember
  
• Option 3 nobody can remember
  
• Clean toilets
• Nothing -- Gus should serve Lino

What started out as an innocent poll turned into much, much more. "Clean toilets" took a strong lead for the first few days of the poll, and then Lino promoted it on his show and "Nothing" bounced back to take the lead. Both choices traded the lead for days, and then Gus decided to have a little fun with the poll by having an on-air trivia contest, with correct answers meriting multiple votes for whatever choice the caller desired. (You can guess where most of those votes went.) This prompted Lino to call into Gus' show and declare the whole thing a big scam, among other epithets. If only you could hear the actual clip... and you'd be able to if only my computer's hard drive hadn't destroyed itself back in mid-May. Gus ended up relenting and canceled out all of the multiple votes, and afterwards was mercilessly mocked for a short speech where he declared to everyone that it was "my poll" to do with as he saw fit.

Eventually the poll devolved into a huge tug-of-war between fans on both sides, some of whom figured out how to manipulate the poll to cast huge numbers of votes at once. In the end, "Clean Toilets" ended up winning the poll by about 300 votes (out of over 8,000 cast), but in a show of Christian humility Gus declared that he wouldn't force Lino to clean toilets after all, and that he would in fact serve Lino while he was there.

On the Fourth Day of Lino: "I am your bro-ther! Your best friend forev-er!"

1/17/2008: The night before on American Idol, a white-caped Renaldo Lapuz shocked the ears of millions with his heartfelt yet nails-on-the-chalkboard-esque rendition of his original composition, "I Am Your Brother, Your Best Friend Forever". Lino, appreciating the meaning behind Renaldo's song yet unbothered by its potential effects on people's eardrums, extolled the virtues of his song on the air the next day... while having the song play in continuous loop in the background:



To this day, Lino uses the opening strains from this song as a sound effect on the show, and he eventually had Renaldo on the show a few weeks later. But you thought the whole Celine Dion debacle was bad? At least her song didn't go on for 45 minutes.