It's 9:40pm so I'm getting ready to go to bed and texts and calls are coming in about a large boom sound at BP in Whiting and then sirens and alarm sounds. A resident says Indianapolis Boulevard is closed between 129th and Schrage Avenue. Because I'm local radio guy and get a lotta info quickly, I post UNCONFIRMED reports on Facebook and Twitter. I'm the first or damn near to post it.
     This is so strange in that today is the 59th anniversary of the big explosion at Standard Oil (now BP)  in 1955. We talked about it a bunch on the show today. NWI Times sportswriter Al Hamnik was in studio and said he was thrown from his bed to the wooden floor when he was only six-years-old. For Al, the day turned especially scary since his dad was at work at the Sinclair refinery and for a long time no one really knew which refinery had blown up. 
     My mom, who passed a long time ago, told me about the explosion and the chaos that followed when she showed up at Hammond High for school... 

here's my five pages of notes from today's show.

The story of local radio has to include the adage - It's not if things go wrong, it's when. And when things go wrong, it's how you deal with them that matters.

Today the attorney general for the state of Indiana, Greg Zoeller, came into the new studios and we talked about things like scams of old people and how to get young people to not start smoking. It was a particularly timely interview in that tomorrow the nation will be watching a tiny courtroom in Chicago and the attorney general has a big hand in what's going on there.

It's all about gay and lesbian marriage... (click below to read more)

Sunday afternoon and like 75 million other people I'm watching the Jackie Robinson West Little League team take a beatdown from South Korea. ABC TV. They make lots of money. 

Alexis and I saw a movie about swallowing a packet of drugs and getting special brain powers. Scarlett Johanssen has a sexy voice, something a local radio guy would notice.

And I was the local radio guy yesterday at Pints in the Park at Wicker Park in Highland. Our good friends who do the catering at Wicker Park threw a craft beer fest for 34 brewers, more than 100 beers (including a ton of pumpkin pie in a bottle), 600 people or so... and a massive Region thunderstorm. The skies opened up at 3pm, right when it was scheduled to start. So the walk-up business surely wasn't what it could be. All in all, for a first festival it was a success.

A ton of WJOB listeners there. We gave away a bunch of tickets on the air so no surprise there. It really is cool when a local radio guy has dozens of people, mostly couples, stop you to tell you that they wake up with you. Sometimes it's the wife who needs the radio AM fix and sometimes it's the husband who takes the radio in the shower. I prefer the visual of the wife. Most of my guy listeners are like me. A little overweight, hairy, too much sun over the years and their clothes often don't fit right. Like I said, I much prefer the visual of the wives in the shower.