Monday. 4:22am. In bed. Musta been snoring again 'cuz there's no Alexis next to me.
Happy Monday morning. The presidential primary circus is coming to Indiana later this week, and I've been working my ass off to get an interview with one of the five candidates. It's a long shot, for sure, but so is buying the local radio station and running it for the last 12 years. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
How have the three or four of you been doing? Me too. I've been doing a lot of radio lately, with the local, state and national primaries coming up on May 3rd. There's been a decent amount of fireworks on the morning show. This Sheriff Buncich vs. Mayor McDermott thing got a lot bigger than I thought it would and it's made for some decent radio.
How have the three or four of you been doing? Me too. I've been doing a lot of radio lately, with the local, state and national primaries coming up on May 3rd. There's been a decent amount of fireworks on the morning show. This Sheriff Buncich vs. Mayor McDermott thing got a lot bigger than I thought it would and it's made for some decent radio.
At the heart of it is that a sitting circuit court judge, George Paras, is being challenged by Marissa McDermott, the wife of Hammond mayor Tom McDermott. Paras is the childhood buddy and evidently also a confidante of Lake County Sheriff John Buncich. It's judge Paras vs. upstart Marissa, but it's also the Sheriff of Lake County vs. the mayor of our largest city. Buncich is pissed that McDermott's running his wife, saying on the air that when McDermott was chairman of the party he said that Democrats should support incumbents. And here he is running his wife against an incumbent. McDermott points to how Paras got the job in the first place... that little sleight of hand that Paras and former judge Arredondo pulled down in Indianapolis.
There's enough drama going on in this one to fill a whole blog post for the three or four of you. But in the end, since it's only you guys, I gotta tell you that I really can't wait for the political season to be over. Some people like my trio of morning guest hosts - Verlie Suggs, Dave Kusiak and Andy Qunell - can't get enough of the drama and the intrigue. For me, it's not nearly as quaint and welcoming to sit in my chair and start talking for four hours in the middle of a political season that is often filled with hate and spite.
And sometimes people try to use us and/or put the radio station, or me, in the middle of their political squabbles. If any of the three or four of you are owners of a relatively small local radio station, then you know what I'm talking about. Political people, especially here in this most corrupt county in America, can be nasty and hurtful... yet kinda interesting, too.
Back to Trump, Cruz, Kasich, Hillary and Bernie. If any staffers from these campaigns happen to stumble on this blog to nowhere, please note that you can bring your candidate to the new WJOB studios on the campus of the Purdue Commercialization and Manufacturing Excellence Center and get a decent amount of exposure for the effort. I'm a fair interviewer. You can ask Republican attorney general Greg Zoeller and Indiana senator Joe Donnelly or a host of local politicos. My fill-ins are two Democrats - Verlie Suggs and Dave Kusiak - and one Republican - Andy Qunell. As a matter of course, the population of my fill-in roster mirrors the voting population of Lake County in general, which is roughly two Democrats to one Republican.
What else would entice you to put WJOB on your schedule? Does it matter to you that WJOB is one of the few radio stations in America owned by a female Hispanic? I didn't think so. Even if it did matter to you, it's probably best that you don't say so out loud. Does it matter to you that we're on the campus of the Purdue Commercialization center and that we teach broadcasting classes here? Okay. I know how your mind works. You're thinking, "hmm, does that mean we can have our candidate in a picture with a bunch of broadcasting students? hmm, let me think about this. Will they be of various races?"
Our new studios are in a radio globe that looks out on to one of the most truck-travelled local roads around. There's another photo/video opp for you. Here's your candidate getting interviewed by a Berkeley grad just a couple dozen feet from an 18-wheeler barreling down Indianapolis Boulevard hauling steel coils. Nice campaign photo. Nice campaign interviewer.
I know what the three or four of you are thinking - "JED, you've done a lot of crazy shit before, but to think that you could get a possible president to sit across from you is kinda crazy."
Call me "crazy" then, but if I were running for president - and that'll never happen because, you know, skeletons tumbling out of the closet - I'd stop by WJOB in Hammond, Indiana, and get interviewed by myself. Especially since Indiana has become ground zero for this presidential primary campaign ON BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE. I know that I tell the three or four of you and any Purdue student who will listen, and any of our high school interns and even my nieces and nephews in grade school - never use exclamation points or CAPITALS to emphasize your point - but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The presidency could hinge on what happens in Indiana starting on Wednesday after the Pennsylvania and four other state primary.
What is it that the three or four of you blog readers and the seven or eight of my listeners would want to know from the candidates? That's another story for another blog. Right now, it's 4:45 in the morning and I'm running late for the show. I wanna stop by Munster Donut for a vanilla iced cake and two cartons of milk. I'll pick up with you later.
There's enough drama going on in this one to fill a whole blog post for the three or four of you. But in the end, since it's only you guys, I gotta tell you that I really can't wait for the political season to be over. Some people like my trio of morning guest hosts - Verlie Suggs, Dave Kusiak and Andy Qunell - can't get enough of the drama and the intrigue. For me, it's not nearly as quaint and welcoming to sit in my chair and start talking for four hours in the middle of a political season that is often filled with hate and spite.
And sometimes people try to use us and/or put the radio station, or me, in the middle of their political squabbles. If any of the three or four of you are owners of a relatively small local radio station, then you know what I'm talking about. Political people, especially here in this most corrupt county in America, can be nasty and hurtful... yet kinda interesting, too.
Back to Trump, Cruz, Kasich, Hillary and Bernie. If any staffers from these campaigns happen to stumble on this blog to nowhere, please note that you can bring your candidate to the new WJOB studios on the campus of the Purdue Commercialization and Manufacturing Excellence Center and get a decent amount of exposure for the effort. I'm a fair interviewer. You can ask Republican attorney general Greg Zoeller and Indiana senator Joe Donnelly or a host of local politicos. My fill-ins are two Democrats - Verlie Suggs and Dave Kusiak - and one Republican - Andy Qunell. As a matter of course, the population of my fill-in roster mirrors the voting population of Lake County in general, which is roughly two Democrats to one Republican.
What else would entice you to put WJOB on your schedule? Does it matter to you that WJOB is one of the few radio stations in America owned by a female Hispanic? I didn't think so. Even if it did matter to you, it's probably best that you don't say so out loud. Does it matter to you that we're on the campus of the Purdue Commercialization center and that we teach broadcasting classes here? Okay. I know how your mind works. You're thinking, "hmm, does that mean we can have our candidate in a picture with a bunch of broadcasting students? hmm, let me think about this. Will they be of various races?"
Our new studios are in a radio globe that looks out on to one of the most truck-travelled local roads around. There's another photo/video opp for you. Here's your candidate getting interviewed by a Berkeley grad just a couple dozen feet from an 18-wheeler barreling down Indianapolis Boulevard hauling steel coils. Nice campaign photo. Nice campaign interviewer.
I know what the three or four of you are thinking - "JED, you've done a lot of crazy shit before, but to think that you could get a possible president to sit across from you is kinda crazy."
Call me "crazy" then, but if I were running for president - and that'll never happen because, you know, skeletons tumbling out of the closet - I'd stop by WJOB in Hammond, Indiana, and get interviewed by myself. Especially since Indiana has become ground zero for this presidential primary campaign ON BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE. I know that I tell the three or four of you and any Purdue student who will listen, and any of our high school interns and even my nieces and nephews in grade school - never use exclamation points or CAPITALS to emphasize your point - but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The presidency could hinge on what happens in Indiana starting on Wednesday after the Pennsylvania and four other state primary.
What is it that the three or four of you blog readers and the seven or eight of my listeners would want to know from the candidates? That's another story for another blog. Right now, it's 4:45 in the morning and I'm running late for the show. I wanna stop by Munster Donut for a vanilla iced cake and two cartons of milk. I'll pick up with you later.
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