Usually, Verlie Suggs hosts Tuesdays with me. She couldn’t make it so Dave Kusiak sat with me. Yesterday, Billy Baker Troublemaker joined me. My stated purpose is to screw around on the morning show. Verlie, Kooz and Baker come in and always want to get serious.
​
I just wanna
have a little fun
before I die. There’s so
much hate and loss, it makes
you wanna cry.

… Michael Griffin, the Highland clerk-treasurer for the last 28 years, just came on with me. We talked about the coming storm for local municipalities. All will be faced with less money due to a bunch of boring stuff.

“I’m thinking about how I can better serve… I am talking with my family… I am considering it.”

That’s my paraphrase what Griffin had to say about the run for Congress for the 1st district in Indiana. A ton of people are “considering” it and a few have announced they’re running.

The three or four of you remember a few days ago or so when Pete Visclosky, who’s held the seat since 1985, announced he wasn’t gonna run.

“I really loved that day,” newly-elected Highland councilman Roger Sheeman told me yesterday. “First you had (Hammond mayor Tom) McDermott on video in the morning. An hour later, Visclosky said he wasn’t gonna run again and you did the video. Then McDermott announced his candidacy. Another video. And, finally, (North Township Trustee Frank) Mrvan came on video with you and announced his candidacy. That was as exciting as it gets.”

The video numbers for that morning indicate that there is great interest in who is running for this seat.

Mrvan
McDermott
Mara Candelaria Reardon (possibly)
Michael Griffin (possibly)
Harper from Porter County

The list is growing. A year ago, I railed against Lake County Democratic party chair Jim Wieser for a lack of involvement of young people in his party. I did the same to Lake County Republican chair Dan Dernulc. I criticized all of us for not challenging our longtime incumbents.

And then, in a New York minute in the election two weeks ago, Highland goes Republican, with local legend Connie Kuiper losing his seat. In Hammond, 32-year councilman Bob Markovich lost his spot to Katrina Alexander. There is movement. There is challenge to the old guard. This is good, no matter who wins.

But is it about to get ugly in the race for Congress? This is Lake County, Indiana. Former governor Mitch Daniels once said (paraphrase) –

“You guys are entitled to all the corrupt and inefficient government you want… “ Robert Kennedy called a portion of us the most corrupt place in America. We have earned our reputation for playing dirty.

“What’s different now is that back in the day we used to kill each other,” caller Walt said about the rough and tumble nature of our politics. There were murders. I hope like hell there’s not violence in our future…. But the three or four of you know that what is about to unfold will be nothing if not interesting as hell.

And there’s a damn good possibility that much of it will unfold on live, streaming video and good old fashioned radio. Welcome to a the new and the old. Gotta go work out. Bye.

​It’s Saturday morning at 6am. I announced the Warsaw at Merrillville Regional championship game last night from Demaree Stadium in Merrillville. You can see the stadium from I-65. It’s a huge, concrete structure sticking up from what was once a cornfield. Impressive.

​​Friday morning, 5am. I’m having a little trouble pushing off the pillow to get ready to do a two-hour radio show. I have no idea if there’s any guests or not. It’s better that way. 
 
Yesterday, I drove to downtown Chicago and had lunch with Lin Brehmer, the venerable Chicago rock jock for the last 30 years. Lin gave us a tour of all of the stations owned by Entercom. It’s in the old Prudential building, which is right next to the old Standard Oil building where I worked when I was 24 years old. I read patents to make sure the grammar was right. Even then I liked making sure that no one used an exclamation point.

​It’s 9am on a Tuesday. I just finished doing the morning show in the studios here at Purdue. As usual, I  hide in my office afterwards.

It was 12 years ago today – September 24, 2007 – that I told everyone to get out of the studio.