Friday, June 30, 2006

My first podcast = "Screamin' Sean's" last broadcast

When I was in college, I first majored in computer science. I found out soon that my college's computer science department was for crap, so rather than do the smart thing and switch to a better college, I switched to an easier major: journalism, with a concentration on radio broadcasting. Why? Well...because I love music, and I've always been told I have a good voice for radio. God knows I have the perfect face for radio.

I took all the radio courses and was on the air at the college's radio station. In fact, during my last semester I hosted a specialty show dedicated to the most obscure Beach Boys music ever released, and that show won the "Specialty Show of the Year" award -- and I was against nineteen other shows.

Now, I knew going into it that a radio career -- or any journalism career, for that matter -- is extremely low paying unless you make it big in a major market. The year I graduated, I got a part-time gig at WYKT, a modern rock station located in the middle of nowhere in southwestern Will County...and I literally mean nowhere. There was a quadrangle of Wilmington, Coal City, Diamond, and Braidwood, and we were smack dab in the middle of the unincorporated area amongst all those dinky toilet towns. The mailing address that was on our stationary was Diamond. When we read our address over the air, it was Coal City. The phone number had a Braidwood exchange. And our legal ID said -- and even now as the station changed formats and even moved twice to two different towns, still DOES say -- Wilmington.

In fact....we kind of stretched it. When I started there, the legal ID sweeper actually said "WYKT, Wilmington, Joliet" -- the biggest city nearby is Joliet (one of the top ten largest in Illinois and still growing). After I was there a while they rerecorded the legal ID sweeper so that it says "Wilmington, Joliet, Chicago"! We thought the addition of Chicago was a stretch, but Tim Lamping, a jock (who's still there!) who lives in Chicago, told me he could pick up the broadcast ever-so-faintly by Midway Airport, so it was indeed true!

I was officially hired on October 4, 1996, literally the day after my 22nd birthday. At that time, it was called "The Kat 105.5," and the format was basically hard rock. Basically, if it rocked, we played it; if it was mellow, we didn't. I could go on for several volumes about my experiences there and the crazy management stories, but I'll save that for a book or something. I left there almost exactly two years later when I moved to New Jersey. When I got to Jersey, I didn't bother seeking to continue my radio career, as I now had a life (and soon a wife) and didn't really feel like being away from home making literally minimum wage and with zero job security.

As for my on-air name...well, when I first started, I just used my real name, which had absolutely no oomph to it over the air. Well...some time into my tenure, we hired a guy named Lenny Svoboda, who was already a known local jock at one of the Joliet stations. His shift was before mine every Saturday morning, and at the end of his first show there while I was waiting to take over, just off the top of his head, Lenny said, "...and coming up next is SCREAMIN' Sean" -- to which I responded with a major blood-curdling scream! I kinda liked that, so I let it stick -- especially because I don't scream at all! Our program director liked the irony, too.

Going back to that job security thing...I must have survived everything possible. I was suspended for breaking an unwritten rule that our program director at the time never told anybody; interestingly, he was run out of town on a rail after he did that. I dealt with drunk listeners. And I even survived a station takeover -- usually when the station is taken over, all the staff can kiss their jobs goodbye, but part of the deal when the station was sold was that everybody got to keep their jobs. The station lost a lot of its hard rock edge and transitioned into kind of a combination adult contemporary/modern rock. We lost some listeners, but we gained a ton more than we had before.

Shortly after I left for Jersey, the station moved to downtown Joliet -- within walking distance of where I lived before! The station was located in the same building as the historic Rialto Square Theater, and it was one of those you-can-watch-the-jock-through-the-windows deals. They still actually broadcasted via the broadcast antenna in Wilmington via a T1 line. After a year or two, however, in one of the dumbest moves ever, they left Joliet and moved to Kankakee, one of the worst places you could ever be, changed the format to oldies, and rechristened themselves "The Pickle." And I'm not kidding. Nobody -- even staff -- knows why the hell they changed the name to "The Pickle." And they still use the antenna in Wilmington via a T1 line.

Having moved back to the Chicago area, I drove down to the old stompin' grounds. Here's a picture I took during the trip:



Believe it or not, the building is much more dilapidated than it looks in the photo. Even more shocking is that the place didn't look much different when I worked there ten years ago! Seriously, it was rarely kept up. Yes, that's part of a broadcast tower -- that was our old tower from when I first started working there; probably a year after I started we built a taller one, and of course that's still standing but didn't get into the picture. It's 500 feet tall -- the maximum allowed by FCC law if the tower is located within two miles of a major highway. (Interstate 55 is right down the road.) Near the door we had a decomissioned toilet where we kept the keys to the building -- if someone had to come to work but nobody was there (i.e., if we were running automation), they simply removed the key from the dried-out tank. (You just can't make this stuff up!)

It was a crazy two years, but a great one nonetheless. I really had fun. Now, I give you my first podcast! This is my aircheck from what is so far the last time I ever was on the radio -- Saturday, September 26, 1998. Just to explain a couple of things...I left in a promo for "Basement of Blues," a really cool Sunday night blues show that was hosted by Mike Saracini, a.k.a. "Chicago Slim." He did a fantastic job, although he would never accept any compliments from anybody; he thought he was awful! I loved his show, as did many people, so I left the promo in as a memento. Also, before everybody starts replying and correcting me, I know that "Leaving Here" is not originally by The Who, but I didn't know it at the time!

Click on the date in the previous paragraph to hear the podcast. Enjoy!

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Travel Tips from Dauber, part 2: Miscellaneous travel

Another travel holiday is coming up, so I figured it'd be nice to put up some more travel tips. No particular order here, but it may be very Chicago-centric.

  • If you're flying out of Chicago Midway International Airport, be prepared for the most useless wait you'll ever experience. Seriously, there's next to nothing to do there. Food options are extremely limited -- you're pretty much limited to sandwiches, non-deep-dish pizza (yet you can get Pizzeria Uno pizza...at frickin' NEWARK International!!), and ice cream. That's pretty much it.

  • If you take the Metra into Chicago via La Salle Street and need to catch the Brown Line (or, as my friend Jim calls it, the "Skidmark"), the best way to do it is to go out through the east exit, and when you get down to the corner of the street, turn left. There's a hidden Skidmark entrance right around the corner. This way you can avoid the maze of pathways leading to the different CTA lines.

  • If you take the Orange Line to Midway, be prepared to walk...and walk...and walk....and walk...and walk...and finally see a sign that you're inside the terminal: a Dunkin' Donuts! Ahh...but wait...you still have more parking deck to walk...and walk....and walk...and walk...and walk...through.

  • If you fly into Newark International Airport, be sure you plan for an additional two hours, as that might be how long you'll wait at baggage claim, no matter what airline you take at what time of the day or night. Midway isn't as bad -- you'll wait maybe 30 minutes.

  • Most people in Monmouth County, New Jersey know about the speed trap on 33 westbound that's literally on the border of Freehold and Manalapan. Usually during rush hour there's a cop hiding right there by the Manalapan border sign. Be careful, though -- sometimes the cop will be a little ways up, not quite within sight of the sign. Keep in mind that "Manalapan" is an old Lenape word that means "radar trap," so be sure you're not going a hair over 55 when you cross into town.

  • One of the biggest lies I was ever told was told to me by my father. (In fact, two of the biggest lies I was ever told were told to me by my father.) Having worked on an aircraft carrier while he was in the Navy, he told me, before my wife and I took my honeymoon cruise, that the ships are so big that "you can't even feel the waves." BIG LIE. Thankfully I don't get seasick, but just to be safe, bring the proper meds with you if you've never cruised before. What's really cool is that if you cruise through some rough surf at night, the rocking of the ship will put you to sleep pretty quickly.

  • If for whatever reason you're forced to go to New York City, don't ever, ever drive into Manhattan unless you leave six hours early, have enough money to give to the toll taker at the bridge or tunnel (last I checked it was seven dollars), and have an absolutely guaranteed parking spot somewhere.

  • Boston is a fantastic place to visit, but for the love of God, don't even attempt to drive within miles of that place. Take Amtrak or some other form of transportation that doesn't require that you drive.

  • At some airports, they now have these devices that you walk under, and they shoot quick blasts of air at you, from your feet to your head. It's a mechanical way of patting you down. In case the blasts hit your ears, be prepared to lose a significant amount of your hearing for a couple of hours, as I learned the hard way. I complained to the TSA staff at the airport about that, and I was told that I can request a manual pat-down to avoid it. Next time I flew, I saw that I was being led to one of those things, and I asked for a manual pat-down instead. The TSA person said no way. I told him that last time I flew one of the puffs went right into my ears and killed my hearing for three hours and that I was told I could get a manual pat-down in lieu of the machine. Thankfully, another TSA staffer overheard me and told the one I was dealing with that yes, that's correct, and led me down another path. All was good.

  • If you're visiting Chicago and flying into O'Hare and have an EZ-Pass transponder, bring it with you -- on January 1, 2005, the state of Illinois doubled all of its tolls...and they were atrociously expensive to begin with. There are no tolls in the city of Chicago, but there are in the northwest suburbs, including Rosemont, which is the actual location of O'Hare. The tolls did not double for IPass users -- and IPass is now compatible with EZ-Pass.

  • If you're visiting the state of Illinois, a little tip for you: it is perfectly legal to make a left-turn onto a one-way street (that goes left, of course!) if you're at a red light.

  • Visiting Chicago and looking for a beach along the lake, and you just can't get to Oak Street Beach or North Avenue Beach because they're too crowded and the parking lots are full? There's a beach right off Navy Pier that not many people know about, and ergo doesn't get crowded. I believe it's called Olive Beach. It actually faces north, which is unusual for a beach on Lake Michigan.


That's all for now. I hope you've found these tips helpful. And if you drive with Florida or New York plates, I hope you get your bloody license revoked.

Friday, June 16, 2006

Atari 2600 Pac-Man Really Gets a Bad Rap

Atari 2600 buffs will loudly declare Pac-Man to be one of the worst games ever released for the Video Computer System, up there with E.T. This usually includes discussion of the supposed landfill that's loaded with unsold copies of these games.

Is the game itself bad? No, not at all. I think the problem is that it was so different from the arcade game. The colors are different. The sound effects don't come close to the arcade's. No fruit. Everything Pac-Man eats is some form of rectangle. The tunnels were rotated 90 degrees. The maze drastically changed. There were no intermissions. Instead of one bonus life, the Atari VCS version offered one bonus life every time you cleared the board -- way too easy compared to the arcade version. It was allegedly a rush job for which Tod Frye supposedly collected a huge paycheck. There are even theories that Atari intentionally made the 2600 version bad so that they could boost sales of the 5200, whose Pac-Man conversion was very faithful to the arcade version; however, given the time lapse between the release of the 2600 version of Pac-Man and the release of the 5200 system, it's highly unlikely. Many people blame the VCS Pac-Man for the beginning of the great video game crash.

Having said all that, does the Atari VCS Pac-Man deserve its bad reputation? I for one think not. Dig my situation when it came out. I was eight or nine years old. If I wanted to play an arcade game, I had to go with my parents to the local Kroger, where they usually had two games up by the registers. And it was a huge deal when they brought in a pirated Pac-Man machine; of course, back then I didn't realize it was pirated -- I just thought the reason the sign was hand-drawn and that the cabinet and joystick were different from what I'd seen in pictures was that it was a refurbed model! Of course, I had to pray that I had a quarter or that one of my parents would be generous enough to give me a quarter to play, which didn't happen all that often.

Eventually a couple of arcades opened up within a few miles of where we lived. One of them I never set foot in, and the other one I only set foot in once, and that was because my brother really wanted to go there the day we threw a going-away party for him before he left to join the Army. So a bunch of us youngsters in the family joined him. My parents never took me to an arcade...

...except for our monthly trips to the Lincoln Mall in Matteson, Illinois...the nearest shopping mall at the time. On the first floor near Montgomery Ward was Bally's Aladdin's Castle, which to this day is the best game room I ever set foot in. It was huge in its prime, and they had pretty much everything you could want to play. My allowance on our monthly trips: one dollar, which gave you four video game tokens. My dad didn't have a heck of a lot of patience, so if somebody was hogging a machine I really wanted to play, I had to play something else. But that one dollar was all I ever got, plus any tokens I found on the floor -- if I found a token on the floor, my dad allowed me to use it; he wasn't that impatient.

Other than that, what did I have to play? Our trusty Atari 2600 at home, which my brother and I got as a Christmas present in 1983. If I wanted to play Pac-Man, it was the 2600 version except for the monthly mall trip. The 2600 version of Pac-Man was all I, and many of my friends and my cousins, had. And we really loved it, too. Even my brother, who was old enough to drive and could go to the arcades pretty much whenever he wanted to (and he did go a lot -- Zaxxon and Battlezone were his games, if I recall correctly), would get into the 2600 version of Pac-Man, and he played one night until he scored well over 100,000 -- considering the highest score you can get in one move is 160 points, that's not an easy thing to do. I still remember the highest score I recorded: 90,723.

The game play was still there. And the differences from the arcade version presented new challenges...all the monsters (called "ghosts" in the 2600 version) moved at the same speed, the maze was larger, and the collision detection was very sensitive -- so sensitive that, unlike with the arcade version, in which the monster practically had to travel through you to kill you, you died if the slightest hair of a ghost touched you.

The Atari 2600 Pac-Man will always have a special place in my heart. To this day, when I pull out my old 2600 (which I do as much as I can), it's one of the first carts I reach for. Was it the best arcade conversion? Not by a long shot (I think Jr. Pac-Man was the best), but boy, did I -- and do I -- love it.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Words That Don't Exist

George Carlin once discussed how there are some concepts that exist, but not corresponding words. For example, the concept of being "near-fetched" exists, but the word doesn't. Of course, I've thought of many others, all of which I hope enter everyday conversation globally.

combobulated:
"I had a bad day yesterday, but I'm pretty combobulated today."

degalvanize:
"Oops...bad alloy. Let's degalvanize that sword."

enfrog:
"Sally was enfrogged by the number of baseball diamonds she saw from the airplane."

ept:
"What? Sheldon doesn't know how to partition his hard drive? Geez...if he were any less ept, I wouldn't even trust him with a shoelace."

gruntled:
"I have a nice commute, short hours, good pay...I'm fairly gruntled with my job."

miss (that is, antonym of "dismiss"):
"We need to have a meeting. Please miss everybody to the conference room."

underdub:
"I don't like that vocal. Please underdub it from track 3."