Rant of Week: Huh? Speak up!

I love Schneider Arena. I know, it's not the most aesthetically pleasing building in Hockey East, it doesn't have tremendous atmosphere, the sight lines leave something to be desired, most of the fan base tends to wander off to Clubbie's, Brad's, the Abbey or Louie at 9:00 PM and the games were a lot more visceral when the glass was shorter. Still, I have a lot of affection for the old barn and I'm not even half kidding when I say I want to be buried under center ice.

I do have to say that the building has one problem right now. One small detail that drives me and everyone else who has ever attended a Friar home game to distraction. It's a tiny, easily correctable fault that would take a short memo or five seconds worth of worth to correct. To whit:

THE VOLUME ON THE SPEAKERS IS TOO BLOODY LOUD!

The speakers are drowning out the band (and with an awful selection of music too. I dig Metallica, but some of the rest of the music is the awful emo "metal" you hear on WAAF). It's drowning out the fans when they try to make noise. It's driving people away who otherwise have no problem spending a night at PC hockey games. So why not fix this extremely easy problem? The other problems this rink might have (the team is mediocre, pools of water sometimes form on the ice at the end of the game, the refs don't like their dressing room (this sentiment and the fact PC so often get jobbed by bad calls can NOT be a coincidence!) are tough to solve. But the volume of the music in the arena?

Unlike a lot of blog entries, this is not just something that bugs me. This is something that bothers everyone I talk to, everyone sitting near me in Section E, every opposing fan, every PC fan online. So why isn't it fixed? As I said earlier, it can not be that difficult to adjust the volume of the speakers.

And if it doesn't get fixed, I'll probably still go to games. It will just be much harder to hear the anthem with the ringing in my ears.

Other Rants:
-Hi Mark!

-This election needs to end soon. My nightmares now begin with "I'm Barack Obama/John McCain and I approve this message". On a related note, I would like to exile John Sununu and Jean Shaheen to a small island in the South Pacific. Preferably one with the castaways from "the Minnow".

-The Rays are so unbelievably likable (except for Garza, who needs to stop spitting every five seconds. If I want to see that, I'll stare at Francona.) that you just know the Phillies are going to win this series. No one talked about them in the NLCS and here they are now.

-The Bruins are the only team that could improve to the point where they are - literally - winning or within a goal in every game and still not pick up more than one point per game because of Gary Bettman and his stupid bloody shoot outs. If the Maple Leafs win a shoot out tonight... sigh.

-Do you think Kevin Garnett has stopped ranting to himself yet? Or will he just continue from where he left off after Game Six? I'd like to see a debate between him and Papelbohn just so we can see who is more insane.