Author: John Bollwitt

I think I’m still full from the feast I had with my family over Easter. The day started out with a brunch and ended with more food than the meal we began with. For a moment, you felt like you made it out of the holiday without the ability to fill up on more food than your eyes can handle. Little do you know what lurks around the corner. With luck, I was able to avoid total food coma until I got home, but I still had some goodies to wade through for the next few days.

Summer is looming on the horizon and I cannot even begin to explain how happy this makes me. Today was the first day of the year that the flip flops came out for the entirety of the day. It takes some getting used to again, but I have missed the warmth so much. Just getting into the car today, it was hot to the point where you had to roll down the window to just breathe.

Tomorrow they’re calling for thunderstorms. Yes!

It’s not done yet, but the new furniture is rolling in. They should be done by the end of the week. My office was done yesterday. It’s really strange to me. Before, it was just a room with a chair and a desk where I did the things that I do. Now, it’s an actual work space. I would go as far to say that it’s a real live office. I actually feel like I’m working and that the corporate world has embraced me with open, cold, metallic arms.

DJ Shadow did a brilliant remix of “We Might As Well Be Strangers” by Keane. It’s quite lovely.

This week has really pushed on me. In fact, I had to head into the station today for an ISDN with Wisconsin Public Radio for a decent portion of my afternoon. It wasn’t that bad. ISDN’s are easy unless the interview with the station on the other end is not that exciting in terms of content. Such as the other day where the interview involved something about economics that went completely over my head and out of the realm of my interest. However, it was a long week and I was super tired, so that had a lot to do with it as well.

Long story short, we’re getting new office furniture at the station starting Monday. This means we had to clear everything we could from the old furniture and have it hauled away by the end of last week so the new stuff can roll in first thing at the beginning of next. Lots of heavy lifting, bumps, bruises, and scrapes. At certain points, I had flashbacks to the days of moving KRUI. Luckily, everything moved stayed within the building and very little of it involved expensive audio equipment.

At one point, Jim asked me, “Could you imagine what it would be like to move this entire radio station?” I told him very nicely and politely that I did not want to think about it and hope that I’m not around if and when that happens.

I love how advertisers are targeting “real men” these days. The simple fact is that there are men out there that cannot cook. For them, I feel very sorry. It’s not that hard. Really. Instead, fast food places cater to these individuals saying, “Hey, don’t worry! We’re here. We’ll take care of you.”

They stop short of actually pulling your own mother on the screen to say that you should clog your circulatory system full of this crap because you need to “eat something, you’re too skinny.” Let’s not fail to mention that the people on these commercials seem to be not of you most obese types, to say the least.

And Hootie’s doing commercials for Burger King now? Guh? Where’s the rest of the guys? That annoying, long haired, blond drummer dude? With the big nose? Come on… You know who I’m talking about. I know you do.

I was never a gamer. I always liked playing video games growing up, but that’s just it. I liked to play them. I was never dead set on winning. If I could conquer a level, that was good. I’d get frustrated, but I’d always come back to the game. Retry that level, get where I could, and start the process over again.

I remember nights where I would be all geek like and play network games with other friends. Remember, these were the days before internet gaming. If some one got upset with what one person did in a game, it was very usual for that person to tromp down the hallway and punch other said person for doing whatever they did. It was a good time, but I don’t think I can recall “winning” at whatever it was that we played.

In the long run, gaming just never stuck with me. I like playing games, they’re fun, and I’ve done my fair share of wasting time with them. If I practiced, I’m sure I could get better at such things, but I really have no drive to.

However, if it wasn’t for NHL ’93, I probably wouldn’t have come to love hockey as much as I do.

As if shopping for cars wasn’t nerve racking enough, I’m trying to figure out what I want to do about my cell phone provider. Right now, I know what I want from my next phone. That’s easy being the geek that I am. I don’t want cool; I want functionality. Beyond that, it’s all about what kind of plan I can get. Zach hooked me up with a sweet plan as good friends who work for cell phone companies should be really cool about doing. I don’t know how much better I can get than what I have right now.

Had a really good time celebrating my brother’s and nephew’s birthday this past weekend. Spread the wealth of Napolean Dynamite and had some good laughs. Parties like this consist of lots of good food and funny things coming out of the mouths of the kids. More so, the streaking that Anthony thought would be fun to do in the middle of the night with his birthday sleep over buddies. Little white blurs running around the house in the middle of the dark, cold night. He’s pretty amazing at math as well.

And here is what Rebecca thinks I look like in South Park.

I bought toothpaste that is cinnamon flavored compared to the typical mint stuff that I’ve been buying most of my life. I saw it and thought it was worth a try. I like cinnamon. It’s probably one of my favorite tastes of what tastes that can be classified as such things. However, I’ve been deceived.

This toothpaste tastes so good that I want to eat it. Last I heard, that’s a bad thing. It’s like drinking mouthwash because it tastes like peppermint schnapps. Even worse, it’s red. So suddenly, you look into the sink and start to wonder if all of your teeth are about to fall out because of this sea of red foam being rinsed down the drain. I just went to the dentist and got the sister-in-law seal of approval on my teeth, minus the four tiny cavities that were found. That happens when you haven’t seen the dentist in nearly two years.

When you take down the AP news server at a news and talk radio station, there is no stopping once you start a project like that. Something like that is pretty important. What gets even harder to handle is the process of making ten year old technology to work with what is current. Suddenly things don’t go the way you had planned, and you’re left to make guesses and assumptions about where to go next. Once that fails, you fall back to your back up plan. What if you don’t have a back up plan? You make it up as you go. As long as it works, you get the job done and walk away. Just never forget to come back and make sure you get everything the way it should be at a later point in time.

This past weekend, I have been listening to a lot of Ray LaMontagne. I picked up on the guy from my good friend Adam. He bought the CD after I made a dash into a record store down in Lawrence, Kansas over the new year holiday only to have the whole group follow me in. I listened to it and instantly liked it. I kind of forgot that I had it in my library until last Friday. Now I’m in love with it. For a guy who woke up one morning with the craving of just being able to sing and quitting his job on the same day, I respect this guy so much for his talent. Let’s not forget to mention that his voice has captured me like no other in a long time.

Here’s the basic formula. Take your standard bar type game. Figure out which one isn’t very popular with the general public. Find celebrities to go on TV while playing said game. Make them play for money, just like you would in any bar, but donate it to charity. Put it in a cool location, nicely lit set, and promote the hell out of it.

With luck, in a few weeks to months, this game that you have “rediscovered” will become popular again. The fifteen to twenty-six demographic will latch on to it and drag their friends onto this new, cool thing that everyone is doing. Morning TV programs will do stories about it. Cable news will pick it up as a fluff story. Bars will have whole nights of a single event where you pay to play, slowly letting the event drift from weekly, to monthly, to no longer even being payed attention to so they did away with it completely.

That is, of course, until some one comes up with the next best thing.

Celebrity Lawn Darts.

Sales people in general scare me. Someone who holds the duty of doing everything within his or her power to sell you a product just seems slightly on the evil side. What is it that they are not telling you that makes the sale sound so good? That sugar taste in your mouth… is this junk they are telling me really that incredible that I have to buy this thing right here and now?

Don’t wait, act now. Only so many left. You’ll be sorry to let this opportunity pass you by. They’ll even knock off some of the price? How can you not beat that?

Sometimes, it’s difficult to live without them. However, can we lump these people in with the lawyers when we finally decide to begin the crusade? That would be absolutely lovely.