I hate getting sad news but it seems there is just no way to avoid life’s sudden down turns. Waking up today to here that George Carlin had passed away was not really a surprise, since he had been suffering with a variety of issues concerning his heart of the past several years, but it was none the less a sad piece of news.     I noticed that George Carlin was a bit angrier than what I would have liked from one of my favorite Humorists/comedians/social observers, over the past couple of years. His views on politics, social issues as well as basic human behavior he wrote about in books of used in his stand up routines seemed at little harder for me to agree with over the past few years. It reminds me of what Mark Twain once said about growing up and how the older he got the smart his parents seemed to have become. But with George it seemed to be going the other direction. For me it was realizing that not everything Mr. Carlin would rant, rage, ridicule, rip, roast, or otherwise just flat out trash through his books and stage shows was my gospel anymore. I would actually get a little pissed off listening or reading some of his thoughts on a wide range of subjects like parenting, politics, social issues and the like.       But just as I was once a huge and loyal follower of the Late Hunter S. Thompson, it was hearing the news of each one’s death when I realized just how important they were to my life and to the world we live in. You see you don’t have to agree with everything a person you admire says to be a supporter or a fan of them. You just have to have an open mind and the ability to be accepting of   one’s own personal strangeness and be able to laugh at yourself and then the world around you.      If it wasn’t for my George Carlin records, The National Lampoon Album “That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick” or for that matter my Cheech and Chong records I don’t know that I would have ever been able to realize my ability to write and develop a sense of humor that has allowed me to have the confidence to get into radio and have the career I have had. Remember when being politically incorrect wouldn’t get you thrown in jail (oh wait, Carlin did get tossed in Jail in Milwaukee when he did his 7 words routine)        So I think I can speak for many of the old gang I grew up with when I say, what would our lives been like if we hadn’t had a George Carlin making comedy records, Hunters books, Monty Python, National Lampoon magazine and radio hour, SCTV and of course Saturday Night live. I just wonder what kind of crazed smart asses we might have become! We might have dared to question authority, the government, big business, education, pop culture, social behavior, the media. Or question  those who think Global warming is only because of America, or have developed a serious loathing for  people who  cheer for a college football team who’s mascot is a hairless NUT! Wait a minute! I did become like that! And I’m damn glad I did! And guess what, I also care deeply about my fellow man my planet and the future for our children! So thanks George! You were one of the greats!

I just wanted to send out a message to a very important person in my life. He’s the Block I was chipped from, he’s the tree this nut  didn’t fall to far from, he’s the man who made me such a crazy Michigan fan that Istill can’t sleep the night nbefore the annual Michigan Ohio State game. He taught me how to catch a football and after figuring out I was a lefty and just maybe the next Ted Williams, he taught me how to play baseball. He’s the guy who took our family on so many wondeful trips and adventures not to mention the fact that I got to practically grow up in the Big House,Michigan Stadium thanks to him!

He taught me what it takes to battle through some of lifes biggest challenges,he battled cancer and HE BEAT IT! Most of all though he taught me how to be a man and that was probably his toughest challenge. Knowing what I was like growing up has just made me love and respect him  more each year. I know i couldn’t have put up with me if I was you, let alone turn me into well…ME!

Dad I know I haven’t always acted like I was listening and I know I made you flat out crazy somedays,but I want you to know I couldn’t do what I do and I couldn’t have become the dad I am for my daughter without you and everything you’ve taught me. So Happy Fathers day from one dad to another .And thanks for never giving up on me,it’s what mattered the most. I love you! You old son of a bitch! and I mean that  as a compliment!

I’m just sitting here trying to keep my head from banging on my desk top and no it’s not what you probably think. It’s not because the Detroit Red Wings lost in triple overtime in game 5 of the Stanley cup playoffs last night, it’s because I stayed up as late as the game went only to see that and not getting any sleep after being up all night drinking berry Flavored Maalox and asking myself the question, “what in the hell is wrong with me?” Why do I let a sport like hockey on TV just take over my life and set the tone for my next day at work and for that matter effect every other part of my day as well? I know I have blogged on this subject before but after the past few games in the Stanley Cup playoffs I had to really take a look at the price a person pays for being so wrapped up in his or hers sports team. The stomach problems, granted I could probably eat a lot better and not suffer the sour acid burning gut I seem to get every playoff season (the redwings have made the playoffs 17 straight years now so that’ made for a lot of stomach damage) which in turn effects my wallet, having to purchase various med’s and for occasional visits to the Dr.’s. My work can suffer when I’m so preoccupied with the outcome of the previous night’s game or worrying about the game coming up next that I just don’t focus on the tasks at hand that day. Relationships, well let’s just say that you can really screw things up for yourself if you let the heat of the moment (I mean the excitement in the game you’re watching) get between you and the “little lady”. And to think you can watch hours of meaningless drama on TV with them only to be looked upon like a freak when you ask them to let you just “watch” the game. But I realized last night that I just don’t watch the game, I live it, and I let every twist and turn in the contest effect the way I feel, act, speak, sleep, eat, and treat other people around me. So I just wanted to take a few moments to tell those of you who must live, work or have contact with me during these difficult times in my life to BUG THE HELL OFF till at least next week you  damn…..

     Ride with me if you will, through the gauntlet that you, YES YOU the other upstate drivers laid out in front of me this morning for my drive to work!      While backing out of my driveway a person was stopped right in front of it, looking at something on the other side of the street. Guess they couldn’t see me or for that matter hear my horn since I had to get out of my car and ask them to move. At the end of my neighborhood there is an unusual 5 way stop. And as I watched the 4 other cars do this kind of nervous twitch go-stop-go-stop move, I looked down at my watch and realized it had just took me 5 minute to get out of the neighborhood. After two more herky jerky 4 way stops I come to a railroad crossing that today is under repair….right where I need to cross. I don’t know what’s wrong for like 20 minutes because the line to the intersection is so long. After getting turned around I try to find another way across the tracks and decide to use the little tunnel that goes under the track about a block or two down the track…OOPS, seems everyone else new about that way too. I was stuck trying to get through the single lane tunnel for another 15 minutes..OOPS.     Crap now I’m low on gas and I have to stop for gas, I’m zooming down the local highway towards a gas station with decent prices before I run out, a Jack ass in a little red pickup pulls out in front of me! I slam on the brakes thinking it was about ditch time cause I couldn’t swerve to my left since the Semi Truck I had been following a few miles back that was in the left lane going only 40 was now coming up on my side. After pulling up to the next light and letting the A**Hole know how much I appreciated his stupidity, after waiting in line at the gas station for the guy ahead of me in line to look at all the scratch off games before deciding not even buy one and after having yet another big truck pull out in front of me and once again block the left lane so no one can get past him, I realized I better try the southern connector to work to make up some time. Yes it was going to cost me a few bucks but damn I need to make that time up, plus I had the correct change to use the fast lane at the booths… OOPS! As I entered to freeway behind a dump truck going less than 30 miles an hour and racing up to the first toll booth, SURPRISE! There in the exact change lane was another 18 wheeler, trying to back up, cause I guess he just knew I was coming, and in a hurry! Ok fine, I’m now only one toll booth and about 8 miles to work. Last stop, the toll booth. I’ve got that correct change again and I’ll just get in that lane and… OOPS! What’s this? Cones? Men working on the coin catcher? ARE YOU ****ING KIDDING ME???       So here I am, at work, almost an hour late but glad to report that No humans or animals were injured or killed in the making of this blog….YET!

Wanted to give some recognition to a couple of local music legends for recent events they held that benefited local charities and helped support the under-appreciated musical talent here in the upstate.First a big thanks to Blues Legend and sweetest dudes I’ve ever met, Mac Arnold, his band Plate full of blues and all the great people involved with Mac and his Corn Bread and Collard greens festival. For the second year in a row Mac and crew gave us 4 days of amazing music that featured some great legends of music along with some of the area’s top young musicians and the proceeds from this great annual event this year went to the Greenville memorial children’s hospital. Please go to www.macarnold.com and find out more about Mac, his band and all that he gives back to the community and to the kid’s especially!          Another true local legend and one of the coolest people I’ve ever got to know in music is long time Marshall Tucker Band drummer Paul T. Riddle. Paul and his long time friend who is also another jewel of the upstate music scene Steve Watson put together a new organization to help musically talented upstate kids get some exposure and to help raise money for scholarships for those kids as well as donate money to area charities buy holding show case concerts featuring some of these kids playing with some our area’s top professional musicians. The first of those show case event took place last Saturday night. It was held at the Greenville Little theater which donated the building for the event and we thank Alex and Suzanne at the little theater for doing that. It was a rousing success as the house was full, funds were raised for a local soup kitchen and everyone got to see and an exceptional young man named Chase Carpenter play guitar with Paul, Steve, Mike Rogers and many other local musicians. It’s called: UPSTATE MUSIC CARES and please keep listening to my Sunday show Fresh Tracks for more information on this great new organization.

 1^st I want to thank all my listeners here in the Greenville/Spartanburg area for all the wonderful and overwhelming support you’ve given my show. You made it #1 in the afternoons and I can’t thank you enough for that. I’m as jacked up as one can get when it comes to my Detroit Red Wings. 7 more victories away from yet another Stanley cup for Hockey Town.      Can anybody please explain to me why Hillary Clinton will not just except reality move on with her life and get out of the race for the nomination. She’s like pretending she can’t hear the fat lady sing when she’s sitting right next to her.        Oh mom, how much do I love thee…? Mom you are so special to me. You have  always been there for me, you’ve always listened you’ve always cared, and most of all you’ve always given me so much love and support and have never failed to get me pointed back in the right direction. From those days long ago when you had to deal with my whining, my bitching, my stomping of the feet, just to get what I wanted. To all the times you would talk me through hard times in my life and support me no matter what I decided to do cause you helped me think things through so I could do those things These are all part of what makes you the most important influence on my life. I don’t have the words or really enough time left in my own life to give you back as much as you’ve given me in the way of support and love. But I hope you don’t mind if I keep trying to catch up with you show you my love for you each and every day.       And to another mom in my life. This might shock you these days but, thank you for being such a great mother to our daughter. Despite our differences and our problems I know our daughter is safe and happy and you are the reason for her being such a wonderful little girl.       And to one other mom I’ve gotten to know recently. Happy Mother’s Day.  You are an amazing mom and wonderful woman and my best friend! I wish you nothing but all the love and the best for you this Mothers day

OOP’S OUCH DAMNIT!I wonder why it is that some people are and some people aren’t.  How can one person do something and come away better for doing it, while another person can do that same thing but pay a much higher price for identical results?      I’m referring to those of us who are known as “accident prone”! Or like I like to call us, members of the Shleprock club! Remember old Shleprock? He was Pebbles and Bamm Bamm, friend whose mire presence could cause disaster at any moment. Things would fall and crash to the ground, blow up, fall apart, or for the individual cursed with being near the Shlepster there was some form of bodily harm just moments away.  Other than Comedian Tim Allen in his role as the bungling handy man Tim Taylor on the show Home Improvement I believe I might be a close second on the list of longtime members to the Shleprock club!This blog space is just too small to list all the stupid Freak accidents that have resulted in a wide variety of injuries for me. From being electrocuted more than a dozen times, burned,  cut, scrapped, bruised, and broken (as in bones) to numerous concussions, gouges, and sprains of all kinds, I have reached gold member status among my fellow Schlep a ters!       Within my family I have become a source of entertainment with my  vast collection of stories recounting the long history of oop’s in my life. There’s the rolling on the log that ended in a broken wrist and hand that happened just days after having a cast removed from my leg after breaking that weeks earlier at a Michigan/Ohio State game. Or the back injury suffered while mocking the dance moves of the male dancers in that famous scene with Dom De Louis in the movie “Blazing Saddles” resulting in long term back problems! It’s these stories that have brought friends and family especially my beautiful mother to tears of laughter after hearing me recount these tales.      So it is after doing some handy man work around my girl friend’s home this past weekend that left me with a large blood blister on my index finger after pinching the end of it with a pair of pliers, that I have decide to ask the membership committee of Club Shleprock to please remove my name from the roster of Members. Wait; hold on just a second here. I’ve just been informed that if I maintain my membership for the next several months, that I could very likely receive a nomination into the “Accident Prone “Hall of Fame! Ok so look how many times do any of us do something enough to get a nomination to some kind of “hall of fame”? I mean, I can take a few more whacks, bruises and even a cut here and there in order to reach such a great honor as that. I just draw the line at electric shocks. I’ve just had enough of those to last 2 life times, but…

Through out the course of human history we’ve all watched as the power of Karma repeatdly makes you believe in it’s power.We all have examples in our lives of how karma has cut not only our way but right back in our own faces as well. Karma can ruin a persons day,or make it wonderful, it can turn a sports teams fortunes around in a single moment, heck it can even destroy whole cultures.

     I have observed a couple of examples of how Karma appears out of nowhere to change the tone and a scope of an individuals life recently and it’s just amazing how it can change so much for that person who’s been effected by it’s mysterious power. This sweet and wonderful person deserved the positive dose of the “big K” she just recieved. Then take the case of one Cody McCleod the left winger for the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche. He dared to roll the dice on the old karma magic. See Cody thought he’d just mess around with a old Detroit hockey tradition. For years now during the Stanley cup playoffs, it’s not unusual to see a Octopus appear on the ice at “the Joe”. It has a story behind it but i won’t bore you folks into spring football and racing with the details of the tradition of the Pie on ice! So lets get back to Cody. See he decided to not allow the detroit tradition of someone from the biulding crew come out and pick the fleshy mass off the ice and wave it to the fans like it always has been for years. No he skated over and scooped up the glob with his stick and the whipped it into the stands almost hitting a security guy in the head with it. And as old Cody was skating around taunting more Red wings fans and laughing,well you just new something was coming. Yes things didn’t go to well for Cody and his Av’s team mates. The Detroit Red Wings went on to pound them into the ice with a 5-1 victory on Saturday.  So if you are one to believe in this thing called Karma, I just wanted to give you something to always keep in mind Don’t ever go skating over to a dead goowee Cephalopod, pick it up with your stick and fling it toward someone without expecting  that someday…SOMEWAY you will end up with said Cephalopod, coming back at you and hitting you right in the face!

Well my daily attitude these recent weeks has been greatly affected in a positive way by a certain wonderful individual and by the weather finally warming up too. But I’m about to blow my peaceful happy domineer because of certain pro Hockey team from a certain town will just call Hockey town to protect the innocent. This is that certain team (the red wings ooop’s, I just reveled them to you, oh well I’ll just go on from here.)  That I annually obsess over come play off time is coming off yet another banner regular season leading the league with the best record and the #1 seed in the Stanley cup playoffs. They have had alot of injuries this season but as healthy as they could be as the go into the playoff. They are matched up with the # 8 Nashville, (yeah I said Nashville, it makes me laugh to think of a hockey team in Nashville) and despite the name and city of the team doesn’t exactly scream Hockey, they are a very good team. Saying that the red wings quickly took a 2-0 lead in the series and then headed to NNNNNashville to play games 3 and 4. Well now after loosing 2 games to the Preds (short for Predators, why they shorten it to the preds is beyond me but I’ll go with it) the wings find themselves tied at 2 games a piece and if not for the fact they are going back to Detroit for game five and have been given a chance to get back on track at home, I believe I would have ground all my teeth to the gums these past few days. Yes we Wings fans are a tad spoiled and some would say a little on the pompice side but is it asking to much as a fan to expect your team when they are the best in the league to at least make it through the first round of the playoffs so we can enjoy the season for at least a few more weeks. Yes I do enjoy hockey and you’d think that even if for some bizarre reason my beloved Wings are knocked out of the playoffs I could at leaset watch the other teams in those playoffs just because it is the run for the cup. But let me ask you this, could you just cheer for another team in a bowl game that knocked your team out of that same bowl game? Could you just start cheering for another driver in a NASCAR races when your favorite just got grinded right off the track for the rest of the race? Could you just drive up and pay 3.25 a gallon for gas in the afternoon, when it was just 3.17 when you went by the station that morning but you didn’t stop cause you were running late for work and then after getting off work realizing you just cost yourself money by not stopping in the morning and now you feel like you should be able to charge your employers? Wait maybe its not really the wings that are getting me all worked up here. Yeah I love the game and the team, but is just sports and not real life. So it must be these gas prices that have got so damned upset. Look we can all argue till the cows come home as to who to blame for all this but let’s get real here. The next president needs to be the one who can go to OPEC and say knock the F off with this limiting production crap. Then we, as the American public, need to not just start driving cars that get better gas mileage, we need to nut up and understand that we can make a difference by not buying gas at these prices, by understanding that we can’t lower our dependence on oil from the middle east and south America unless we drill more places in our own country, build more refineries and develop better sources of fuel. And when it comes to that, let’s make this point clear. Ethanol is made from corn, it’s not cost effective and those who are producing it are getting government money to survive. So you and I are paying for that twice. So I can live with a wings collapse in the Stanley cup playoff, but I’ve just about had enough of the lack of effort by we the public, the government, and activists who are so blinded by they’re personal agenda’s that they are actually support positions that are making things even worse for the economy. I wish we could do it another way. But in time, if we as America start to really take all this seriously, we will probably will find a better way to feed our need to drive. But until that something we can see, feel, and touch (which means not B.S. but for real) we need to make some tough choices… And to quote Bluto in Animal house… WHO’S WITH ME? LET’S GO AAAAAAAAAAAGH!

It’s the only time of year where I start to wish i was back in the Great lake state.Back in Hockeytown back where the Biscuit has nothing to do with gravy or breakfast. It’s playoff time for both college and professional hockey. I know it just doesn’t register with most of you but when you’re favorite college team and your favorite Pro team in any sport are the top teams and favorites to win it all. Well you kind of grasp why i’d almost like to sit in the snow during April again!

Tar heel fans, why the ugliness towards Basketball coach Roy Williams? Ok so he didn’t have the team ready 4 the final 4 ,they got blown out by the team he coached for 15 years before coming to Carolina, and on monday night he was sitting in the stands with a Kansas Jayhawk button on cheering for the eventual national champs. You know he did coach that team for 15 years and his daughter attends the school right now too. Can you give the guy a break and see what he was doing wasn’t a big insult to you? IT WAS A BIG INSULT TO HIS PLAYERS. So let the players get mad and you, well just be glad you have one of the countries best coaches, who occasionally has bad judgement when it comes to using time out and who’s team button he wears at games!

When is it going to finally get hot around these parts? Not complaining about the rain, but when can we expect to enjoy a 78-80 average temp? I think this weather is effecting bird migration.We’ve had to Canadian Geese walking around the WROQ compound eating atll the fresh growing grass and while many employee’s thought this was so cute and a chnace to see these long necks up close. I wonder how many still appreciate thes geese now that the whole grass area here at the station is covered in well lets just say it’s like a mine field now. A mine field with an aroma.

Anybody else just about had it with the gas prices. If we could all just get together on this thing and stop being the slaves we are to the fuel  of gold,we just might be able to get this turned around. I just can’t see putting another dime in the pockets of the poeple responsible for this profitering. What do you think?

Enough for now got someone to go see about a scooter that runs on goose crap!!!