Another Free One

You get your money's worth

Chronologically, this will fall right after I got the news from my urologist. To get the details on that, you can be a paid subscriber. No worries if not, but you’re missing out on all the fun. By “fun,” I mean “awful medical details about the shit through which I’m going.”

My follow-up with my urologist happened this past Friday. You may or may not know that was the day of our “Down to March” event at Pin Chasers, at which we sold t-shirts to be printed onsite by Wove Print Co (great guys and company) to benefit the Down Syndrome Association of Tampa Bay. The timing was suspect, as there was a significant chance that mere hours before the broadcast, I’d be receiving devastating news about my personal health.

I’ve gone on the air under some rough circumstances. I’ve found out mere minutes before the show began that $9000 “mysteriously” disappeared from my credit union account. During the show, I’ve dealt with discovering that my son was home alone when someone was supposed to be there, that his ride to a band performance didn’t show, etc. I’ve had messages from a not-mentally-well ex-girlfriend that she was going to kill herself, that she was pregnant with my kid (although I knew it was a lie, that’s still not an easy thing to digest while you’re trying to host a talk show), along with nonstop messages about how I was responsible for her misery and would have to suffer the consequences. I tried my hardest to keep this stuff off the air, focusing instead on the listener and how they deserved my best on-air effort. It wasn’t always easy.

How do you greet listeners at a fun charity broadcast when you’re dying inside? How do you manage a “thanks for coming out, nice to have met you” when just hours ago, you sat with a urologist who told you that you’re dying? Fortunately, that’s not the news I received. That’s a blessing. I still don’t know how I would have mustered the strength to fake it through those four hours, and I consider myself so lucky that I didn’t have to.

Instead, while I did indeed receive some unsavory news, at least it wasn’t catastrophic. My dear friends, Todd Wright, Mika Rotunda, Rodney Bailey, JoJo, and Monika showed up and helped me keep my mind off my impending surgery. Even that oh-so-overbearing Marine Rob, along with his mom, managed to put a smile on my face. Hopefully, I achieved my goal of executing a fun broadcast (thanks to John Senning adjusting his package in front of Monika earlier that week), and you didn’t even suspect that you were listening to a man whose life was about to change.

That’s my objective with every broadcast. There’s still shit in my life. There are people who have perceived that I somehow “wronged” them who go out of their way to be dicks. In the grand scheme of things, in the words of Bill Murray from Meatballs, “it just doesn’t matter.” I’ve managed to somehow avoid romantic pitfalls, as I’ve been with a simply wonderful young lady for the past 21 months. My son’s mom has gotten her life back on track in a HUGE way, and she moved back in with us a few months ago so she can restore her relationship with our son as well as help me out. So, there’s way more good shit than bullshit. As I said, my goal every day is to put my head down and focus on giving you something entertaining and compelling to listen to every weekday afternoon. No matter what I’m going through, profound or trivial, you deserve to be able to listen to our show and forget about your own problems for a while. That’s how I got through last Friday afternoon, and that’s how you get Capone.