At Venture Capital showcase, Valpo U | Good morning. It's 454 am and I know that I haven't written to you lately. But you haven't written to me, either, so we're even. In the past nine days since I last told you something, I've - announced a Regional football game - did a live broadcast to open a big restaurant - attended a venture capital showcase - started the design of a new studio - done a zillion live radio shows - recorded a zillion commercials - edited a zillion flashbacks - and more It's local radio. And to own the station (with your wife) and host the morning show and to somehow find enough clients and supporters and to keep the logs straight and do some reading for prep material and move money around in accounts to keep checks from bouncing and to clean out your old studio and to keep up this website and you get the picture. Part of the reason I even keep this blog is to somehow chronicl what it's like to be local radio guy. One day there won't be any local radio guys like me and it would be nice to at least see how one lived. Like Neanderthal man. Don't you wish at least one Neanderthal man had kept a journal, blog, a few notes? He's not around anymore and I just wonder if when he woke in the morning if he hunted first or decorated his cave, how high he could jump, did he pair off with one Neanderthal woman or did they just rotate like at a party at a Berkeley co-op? |
Women, women everywhere... and not a drop to drink.
Or is it more like? - I used to chase women. Now they find me... on the radio. And like the red wheelbarrow, that has made all the difference. I really don't wanna be known as the Midwest's Alan Alda. I mean, I like women and all. But I'm a man and in the end I wear socks two days in a row and can't see my junk without bending over. And all my friends are guys, really. The seven women in a morning started with my wife, which is of course appropriate. I woke in the dark and walked down the backstairs - in the dark - and opened the kitchen door (in the dark) and then in the dark nearly had a heart attack at the refrigerator door. "Oh hi, I was trying not to scare you," she said. "Didn't work." And since she hasn't been up with me at four in the morning in a couple of years - and since I don't know how to cook - Alexis made me two eggs and a piece of sourdough toast. Woman #1 in my life also contributed several suggestions about what I should talk about on the air today. Around 5:49am, while I was babbling on the air about sumpin or another, I watched a white sedan pull into the parking lot of the Purdue Commercialization Center, and out popped Verlie Suggs. Woman #2. Verlie Suggs used to talk for eight years on WLTH but they have new owners now. She joins me every other Tuesday as co-host. "I've been dealing with weak men all my life," she told a male caller today. "Deal with it." Woman #3 would be author Denise Brown to talk about National Caregivers Month. Denise hosts a popular website - Caregiving.com - for people who care for parents, kids, friends, church members, or anyone who needs it. You'd be surprised how many people (men and women) called to tell their story about caring for a loved one. One guy said his 27-year-old son got in a car wreck in February and that now he and his wife are nearly 24-hour caregivers. They need a place to go sometimes. Let's hope Caregiving.com can help. Woman #4 would be Jean Keslin, who's worked with me for ten years. Jean takes care of our web stuff and in her spare time for the past ten years Jean's been caring for her parents or her partner Phil's parents. Jean knows a lot about what she says is the "guilt, resentment, anger" of being the primary caregiver, and of course the isolation. Jean brought Denise in to the studio. After the caregiving segment, Michelle Quinn, writer for the Post-Tribune, joined Verlie and me and we talked about a bunch of things, including why Republicans swept the nation in last week's elections. Verlie and Michelle (who is of course woman #5) were also out at the big forum on minority hiring in the Hammond police department. That subject of course ignited phone calls, including one from crotchety MadMac that descended into a shouting match. Maybe MadMac could use some sensitivity training when it comes to women. Do you think I could teach that course? Woman #6 is Angela Moore, the head of marketing for St. Catherine Hospital. Besides being the pride of Hammond Morton High School, Angela has been one of the biggest supporters of WJOB throughout the years. Every couple of weeks St. Catherine's does a paid show at 8:30, and every time Angela looks like a deer in the headlights when I start talking. She carries a healthy dose of fear that I will cross the line with my rather edgy humor. Rightfully so, I suppose. Today, though, I held back. Maybe it's because there were so many women around. Angela brought with her woman #7, nurse Virginia Aita Shia and we talked about obesity, diabetes, and that most dreaded of all terms - "lifestyle change." The latter is a way to delay diabetes and most likely live longer. But if I had a nickel for every time I've sat buttoning my shirt in a doctor's office (men and women doctors) listening to a lecture about how I need a "lifestyle change...." Of course I nod earnestly as if I know what "lifestyle change" means and that I will be diligent in pursuing one. But on the way home I often stop at Munster Donut for a Vanilla-iced long john and two whole milks. Seven women, one day. Deal with it. One of the cool things about local radio is the unexpected.
A zillion times you’ll go to a caller and after a few moments you can be brought to an instant guffaw or awkward silence or even tears behind your eyes. With local radio, though, the unexpected seems to follow even when you’re not on the air. On Tuesday, I showed up in north Hammond to hear the president of Arcelor Mittal, Mike Rippey, give a speech on the steel industry, which is a big deal around here. I took my seat at the head table (I’m a local celebrity, remember) and after a few bites of chicken noticed that where sat the nameplate for Mike Rippey sat no Mike Rippey. No big deal, I thought. He’s Mike Rippey. He runs a steel mill. He’ll be here. Wrong thought. While Lakeshore Chamber director Dave Ryan gave his introductory thank yous and acknowledgements, he looked down at his cellphone and read a text. I knew at that moment that I should stop chewing chicken. Praise God for small favors. That's a Calumet Region way of saying, "thank God elections are over."
For months we've been watching Chicago TV about the governor's race. Incumbent Democrat Pat Quinnn calling Bruce Rauner a rich a#%hole. And Republican Rauner calling Quinn an incompetent overspending Democrat. Like you, I've spent hours of my life during football games and The Good Wife watching attack commercials about a race that I only mildly care or know about. And now it's over, at least by 10 pm or so. On WJOB, it's been the tradition that Dave Kusiak and Matt Reardon host the election results show on WJOB. That way it's people who know what they're talking about. If I did the election show, then it would a person who really didn't know what he was talking about. I come from the sports and business world. That's not really changed in the ten years we've owned the local talk radio station. I bumble my way through thoughts on government, party affiliation, elections, but really I'm a visitor to a game in which I have no business portraying myself as an expert in. In the end, a lot of candidates used WJOB to get their word out (cha-ching), so we weren't all that different than WGN, channel 7 and the rest. I really am grateful to all of you candidates for spending some Johnny with us to tell your story. But, with all due respect, I'm also glad that it's over. Hope you understand. Wish all of you well. ... So there. What I really wanted to talk about is earaches. No kidding. If you're in local radio and you wear headphones on average six hours a day, then maybe you get them too. Add it up. I wear headphones for the morning show on average about four hours a day. Then afterwards I put on a different set of headphones to edit the show for podcast and stuff... and sometimes I put on headphones to listen to music or Adam Carolla and sometimes I announce a football or basketball game or a soccer match or a parade or a panel or you get the picture. I figure that I wear headphones about 30 hours a week. That has to be why I get this recurring earache. It won't go away. Lately it's started on Thursday evening. That's after four days of sweating billions of bacteria into a padded ear covering. By Friday morning my left jaw's swollen. I look like I'm chewing a golf ball. But through August and September I didn't do much radio over the weekend. Brian Jennings and Kirk "the Minnow" Smith announced the main football game, and Ryan Walsh and Rick Massoels did the bounce game. I sat at home on Friday and Saturday nights and drank beer, without headphones. By Monday morning the earache would be gone. But in the past few weeks I've been announcing football on Friday night, cutting it up on Saturday and building a studio in my house. It adds up to another ten or more hours of headphone time over the weekend... and a badass earache that won't go away. The solution? I'm hoping that it's a one-ear headset. No kidding. Your mic hangs off of the headphone on one side and then on the other side there's nothing. Your bad ear is open. No sweaty bacteria buildup. So I just called Paul at BSW, where I buy all my radio stuff. He said they get so few requests for single-sided headsets that it might take a while. "Why, may I ask, do you want a single-sided headset?" Paul asked. For some reason, I was too embarrassed to tell him that, like a little baby, I don't sleep well because of an earache and that in the middle of the night my wife has to wake up and put drops in my ear. So don't tell anybody. |
I run radio stations and a streaming video network in Hammond, Ind., and write this blog.
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