It's free

VJ Damasius of Vyto’s Pharmacy needed a virile male of a certain age to do a spot about a Viagra-like drug, so he naturally turned to me. You can listen to the spot daily on my WJOB morning show.
 
This happenstance did not escape the attention of MX, the steelworker turned cartoonist. Somehow the accompanying meme works. I don’t know why but it does.

It’s 4:05pm and I’m sitting in my underwear listening to the Sox beat up on the Tigers, 11-1. Geovany Soto just hit his second home run.

This brings up the debate of whether it is better to listen to baseball on the radio or watch it on TV? The same debate can be held about hockey, which we will be airing on WJOB 1230 AM and 104.7 FM in about an hour. Somehow Ryan signed us up to broadcast the “Frozen Four,” which is college hockey’s equivalent of the NCAA final four.
 
“I wonder if anyone will listen to that,” station manager Debbie asked me.
 
“I will. I love listening to hockey on the radio. Same thing with baseball. I’d much rather listen than watch,” I said.
 
“Not me. I love watching hockey, and NO ONE is gonna be listening tonight.”
 
Maybe she’s right. I will be listening, and now that the three or four of you are aware of the Frozen Four, maybe one of you will listen right along with me.
 
Like always, it’s been a whirlwind 28 hours or so.
 
11:30am yesterday – East Chicago mayor Anthony Copeland delivers his State of the City address at the Ameristar Casino along Lake Michigan. I attend by myself and sit by Hammond councilman Bob Markovich and longtime banker/attorney Cal Bellamy. Cal tries to get me to come to his ethics summit this week.
 
“How much is it?” councilman Markovich asks.
 
“It’s free. Free. Isn’t that what you like, Bob, free?” Bellamy says.
 
“That’s terrible, Cal. Terrible.”
 
1:30pm – For whatever reason, I find myself meeting with Tia Cauley, the director of the East Chicago Housing Authority. We’re at the West Calumet Housing project, which is being demolished because there’s a bunch of lead and arsenic there. I haven’t met with Tia before, but I am immediately drawn to her abruptness.
 
Evidently, there’s a few dozen people still living in the housing project even though they have been directed by the EPA to find housing elsewhere.
 
“How much is the rent while they wait for a new place?” someone in the meeting asks.
 
“Free. It’s free.”
 
5:20pm – It’s not free to attend a showing of “The Zookeepers Wife” at the AMC theaters in Schererville. It’s a story about a couple that runs a zoo during WWII and they harbor Jews until the war’s over. Great movie, but unlike Cal’s ethics seminar and the current rent at the West Calumet Housing project, it’s not free. It costs $21.98 for Alexis and I to watch "The Zookeeper's Wife."
 
5:30am – It’s raining sideways and cold and damp, so I do the first half hour of my show on a wireless mic from the parking lot. Last time I did that I caught a cold. Some people never learn. I’m one of some people.
 
7:00am – I interview Indiana governor Eric Holcomb, who says
 

• he’s supported the train since the beginning
• he is dedicated to making northwest Indiana thrive
• I’m the best interviewer in America.

Okay, he only said two of these things. You four figure it out.
 
7:24am – A caller named Jamie takes me to task.
 
“Hey JED, can I talk about your blog?”
 
“By all means.”
 
“Concerning programming, I really like when you have local programs on past when you are on the radio. I listen to you, of course, but what about the rest of the day?”
 
Great question, Jamie. That’s what the Facebook Live videos and the podcasts are all about. I explain to Jamie and to the seven or eight other listeners that any time of the day or night they can go to wjob1230.com and listen to our many podcasts or watch and listen to our many Facebook Live videos. It’s called the internet.
 
“Nah, I just like it when it’s on the radio after you get off the show.”
 
Some people never learn.
 
10am – I do a Facebook Live/podcast with Kevin Roach and Scott Sparks of the Laborers union. This does not go on the radio live. It airs on Facebook Live and the audio of it will air on the radio later and, ultimately, I’ll put it into a podcast called, “JED in the Money.”
 
Roach tells a story in which he was hanging in a cage 200 feet in the air slapping against a tank. That’s dangerous. I tell a Laborers story in which I’m 20 feet in the ground and a water main breaks and I nearly drown. Sparks listens to both of us as if we’re oldtimers telling stories, which we are.
 
11:15am – I interview lawyer Scott Yahne for another “JED in the Money” on Facebook Live. You can go right now and listen to it. Yahne says some pretty insightful stuff about getting a business deal done – “You want to cross the i’s and dot the t’s, as you say, but you don’t want to kill a deal with too much detail.” Yahne gets it. I’ve seen more than a couple deals die when a lawyer gets involved and sharpens his pencil at $250 an hour.
 
Noon – I interview Matt Govert of Govert Auto Body for “JED in the Money” on Facebook Live. There’s a cadre of Goverts that run the shops in Griffith and Merrillville. Matt had some pretty good insight on leaving work at work, especially at family gatherings. Also, when I asked Matt if he could give any other advice about running a mom-and-pop:
 
“Come to work. And do what you do. I work 7am to 5:30, Monday thru Friday, and 8:30 to noon on Saturdays. We do body work and general auto maintenance. That’s what we do. I’ve seen so many people try to add other things to what they do and it doesn’t work out.”
 
I really like that advice, but as the three or four of you know, I very much fall into the category of someone who keeps trying other things that don’t necessarily work out. The difference between me and all of the experimenters that Matt Govert knows is that one day I’m gonna hit the bigtime with my inventions. You watch, the three or four of you, the next roll of the dice, that’s the one that’s gonna take me to the big time. Or maybe the next one after that. Okay, the next one after the next one after that. Or maybe.... some people just never learn.

We’ve reached Another Thousand Words. This session of My Radio Life is over.