My Last Post

I've been at this a while...
Now that I've moved I will lose close access to the Internet, and I've found most people who are on are on Facebook or elsewhere.
So I am going to call this my last post here, and then I'll be deleting this blog. (probably Sunday night)
WHY?
Nobody reads it.

Thanks for the fun while it lasted.
Juan Bodley out.

Reflection...

Yesterday (July 25) the class of 1989 from Columbia City Joint High School had their reunion. In Columbia City, actually at a nearby bar/pizza place, where many members of the class still reside. Myself I just moved back the weekend before, and it's a move I really didn't want to make, simply because I always thought since the end of high school that I would not come back.

From about 2 AM on this morning, about 45 minutes before I left the soiree, which was damn fun actually, I began (as a lot of people do at these life moments) taking stock of what I did wrong to end up here.

20 years ago I was focused on the idea of an electronics education that would make me a fine broadcast engineer. That hit the floor. The idea of a wife was in my head somewhere, but that has not been fulfilled either. Now I have a house, but not where I thought it would be located. Basically everything I had banked on bounced.

Now what do I do. That's the great question that I can't answer.

Some 20 years.

...And The Walls Come Down...

It happens this weekend...July 18th and 19th, 2009.

Juan Bodley returns to his hometown and wrecks the joint.

No more truck stop, no more raiding the radio station on a whim, just lots and lots of well work and a house to wreck and sleeping in what the heck??

Who's my landlord, who's my landlord...

My dad's my landlord. The end.

This may be the last post for a while. Enjoy yourselves this summer.

Pick a designated drunk and watch him/her/it and laugh yourself pissless.

Juan Bodley. Proprietor since 1987.

Remodeling The Juan Bodley Way...

Whoever let me have the saw was nuts. Thanks Dad!!

We cut more lumber out of that place than Weyerhouser, Georgia Pacific and Holmes Lumber Co. had all together.

And let me praise the Stihl Company for their fine instruments of timber destruction. Go get one today and show your loved ones your inner lumberjack.

By the way I cut down A LARCH...

The Time Is Closing In FAST...

When you know you're going to do something BIG you usually really WANT to do it or you dread the thought...

For me it's moving BACK TO WHERE I DON'T WANT TO GO...

And remodeling a house. It's a pain. It's a piece of shit house, built by someone who had NO BUSINESS building it but (of course) he did anyway. (It's Backhoe Bill's old house if you really care.)

So the time is coming faster. More space, farther away from Fort Wayne, no Internet, no cable, no women (not yet,) so I'm not looking forward to it.

Updates to come.

Adieu Bob Chase

This morning there was a grand gathering of legends, friends, admirers and co-workers of Bob Chase at 2915 Maples Road, home of the studios of WOWO radio.  This morning, after 50 plus years in the studio, in different locations, Bob put the cans to rest, pushed the microphone away at 9 AM, and I hate to say it, the old era of radio has been ushered to the ether of past memories.

Bob was a member of a fraternity that has its hallmarks in the beginning of broadcasting, when WOWO and WGL were just starting.  He came to Fort Wayne in the 50s and stayed, and will still be here when tomorrow comes, just not on the air.  (Yes he'll still do Komet games.  I want to do Komet games, but I don't think they want me.)  Now it's more "how many gigabytes can we get of music storage in the main song computer?" than "hey turntable number 2 has a broken stylus."  Transmitters run themselves for days, sometimes months before they see an engineer; when Bob started out there were not only full time engineers, some never LEFT THE TRANSMITTER.  Now you'd be lucky to find some engineers who ACUTALLY KNOW WHERE THEIR TOWER IS LOCATED.  Radio and television are different horses now.  TV at one time had more local programming than network and radio was more dependent on their networks for music than they played locally; in a lot of cases they didn't have the equipment to play music from their studio.  Now some stations are a "jukebox;" that is, there's a computer for song, commercial, and promo playback, MAYBE a console SOMEWHERE in a studio big enough to be a closet in another setting, and a few sales staff or a receptionist floating around.  (The station I used to work at here in Fort Wayne is a studio somewhat similar to the one I just mentioned; it happens to be down the hall from the studios of 1190 AM, WOWO, at the same 2915 Maples Rd. - now automated with ESPN.)

Bob, enjoy retirement.

If I could share a Pepsi with you sometime and hear the tales of radio past, it would be an honor, sir.  Can't wait for the puck to drop next season.   "And on WOWO, KOMET HOCKEY!!" 

Going Because She Showed Up...

After the first neighbor lady and I had a "falling out" over something I won't discuss here, I became very distrustful of the neighborhood I live in and the people living there.  Too many punk youth and (could be) gangbangers, the hip-hop youth, and just too much bullshit for me to deal with.

So here's a question...

What do you do when your new next-door neighbor is a 20-something lush??  And 3 years before your neighbor (in the same apartment) was a 40-something lush who almost ruined your life??  How do you learn to trust ANYONE again?  How do you learn to interact with her 5 beers an hour BFFs and attached boy-toy manfriends AND STILL GET SOME SLEEP AT NIGHT???

(Friday afternoon I came homw to a new neighbor and within the first 5 minutes she confesses she just got an OWI and her brother kicked her out the same week...and then THAT NIGHT she has a physical "play-fight" with one of her guy friends that was knocking shit off MY apartment walls...)

ALL I CAN SAY IS "WHAT THE FUCK, MAN?????!!!!!!???????"