In fact, we thought Scott was going to be the best tour date researcher Pollstar.com ever had. If he wasn’t slamming in dates and locations for U2 and Vance Gilbert, he was checking the fax machine for incoming dates for Sara Evans, email for The Michael Brecker Quartet and even old-fashioned snail mail for updates on David Usher and Betty Blowtorch. Yeah, that Scott was one heck of a tour date man.

However, there was one, small problem.

“I love this job,” he was heard to say on his second day of work. “You know, I used to own my own business. That’s right. I used to own a gas station, but it was too self-serving.”

We tried to ignore it at first.

“And then there was the time I worked at the jewelry store,” he said on his third day with the company as he looked over the routing for Mannheim Steamroller Christmas. “I rose pretty fast on that job. You might even say I was the ringleader.”

We acted like we didn’t hear him.

“And then I had the job on the fishing boat,” he said while processing dates for Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri during his fourth day on the job. “That’s right, the “whistlin’ fisherman,” is what my shipmates called me. But the captain fired me because I was always out of tuna.”

That’s when we decided that Scott had to go.

But what to do? He was clearly the boss’ favorite. He could spot the changes in the schedules for Michelle Wright and Lila McCann faster than any other Pollstar.com employee. He could whip out the itinerary for Cigar Store Indians or Kings Of Convenience with more accuracy and precision than any staffer who had ever worked here before. He was clearly the best person for the job, but we could no longer take his trite wordplay, his banal wit, his sense of senseless humor. We not only needed a plan, but we needed a drastic plan for a drastic situation.

He’s Pollstar.com’s dark little secret now. We sent him to a Backstreet Boys concert wearing a *NSYNC T-shirt (Only $16 at the Pollstar.com store). Like piranha swarming over a slow-moving horse crossing the Amazon, AJ and his posse descended upon him, and when the smoke cleared and the dust settled, Scott was no more.

However, we’re still having problems sorting out our feelings about poor Scott Navarone. His work was amazing. He had a sixth sense for the schedules for Diamond Rio and Clint Black, and he was the fastest, brightest tour date processor that had ever walked through our front door. But we couldn’t take the remarks about orchestra conductors who threw tempo tantrums or drummers that cymbolized the entire band. We were at our wits end. We had all that we could take and we couldn’t take no more.

And we no longer have to endure the puns of Navarone.