Posting will be light-ish today.

Enjoy the breeze!

I get a lot of questions here at Shot In The Dark.  Periodically, I like to answer them.

Let’s start at the top!

“Hey, Merg!  You worked on a special election campaign.  And it lost!  Hahahahahahahahaha!” Yeah, who’da thunk it, a Republican losing in Saint Paul.  That’s not even “dog bites man”.  That’s “Dog sniffs Dog”.    We gave it our best shot, and we came up waaaaay short.  More later.

“Hey, Merg!  You promoted Bradlee Dean!  I got the screen shot!” Well, yeah, genius – it was on my blog every weekend for two years.  And in the last segment of my show, every Saturday; “Sons of Liberty up next, for those of you who want your Constitution straight up with no chaser!”, or some such.

That’s what you do when you work for a radio station, or any broadcaster, or narrowcaster for that matter, if they depend on ratings; you cross-plug the other shows.  If, I dunno, Eric Pusey and Diane “Minnesota Observer” Gerth were to buy air time after the Northern Alliance on Saturdays, I’d give them a jaunty cross-promotion, too – because that’s what you do in radio.  It’s called being a professional.You promote the station’s other shows – because if they’re doing well, the whole station does well.  And if the station does well, Ed and I stay on the air.

Does it mean I endorse everything Bradlee Dean said on his show?  Of course not.  I’m not going to comment on the Sons of Liberty’s departure from AM1280 – but the General Manager who lets us use his air time, Ron Stone, did, right here, and I really don’t need to add much to that.  Of course I will add that much of the Twin Cities leftymedia’s “coverage” of Dean was really, really bad; he never advocated killing gays, for starters, and his “association with the GOP” is even thinner gruel.  But hey, they need to break eggs to make omelettes, right?

“But Merg!  You lost!  Hahahahahahaha!” Well, as Abraham Lincoln said, “The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.” And bringing a multi-party democracy to the “progressive” cesspool that is Saint Paul is nothing if not just; Saint Paul Republicans follow in the footsteps of Lech Walesa, trying to crack the rotting facade of a single-party autocracy.  It’s a tough job…

“Hey, Mitch – how’s biking going?”:  It’s not, yet.  My commute jumped from six to 20 miles.  Which is not to say I’m not going to start riding to work, at least part-way, pretty quick here – probably by throwing my bike on my bike rack, driving part way, leaving my car at a park and ride, and biking in the rest of the way.   Soon, here.

“But Merg!  Your candidate got beat!  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Teh DFL owns this town!”. In 1982, the Chicago Bears went 3-6, in a strike-shortened season.  It was a terrible year, and a terrible team.   But it had some elements – Walter Payton and some other great players in waiting – that would, when combined with a new coach, Mike Ditka, lead that same team, three years later, to become the greatest team in the history of pro football.

The Saint Paul GOP, and the Fourth District GOP for that matter, are going to need more than three years to recover from decades of the beaten-down indolence that is the result of decades of defeat and oppression.  I say ten years.  Others think it can be done faster; I hope they’re right, but I figure ten years.

What, we’re supposed to just give up?

You don’t know me very well, do you?

“Say, Mitch – why do you still call the show the Northern Alliance Radio Network?  It’s just one show, on one station!” Oh, stay tuned.

My youngest, Zam, voted for the first time yesterday.  The three of us, Bun and Zam and I went to the polls last night.  As of 6:30, Zam was the only new registrant the district had had all day.

And between us, we accounted for 10% of Greg Copeland’s votes in my precinct…

Posting will be very light today.

Very, very busy.

To: Mother Nature

From: Mitch Berg, Biker

Re: Springing for Spring

Ma:

By this time last year, I’d been commuting via bike for a week already.

Two years ago?  I’d been on the road for four days.

In 2008, of course, we had an ice storm in early April, pushing biking season back to the middle of the month, so I shouldn’t complain too hard.

Still, Ma – I love winter (or what Twin Citians call “winter”) as much as the next guy, but could we get off the can and on the stick here?

Melt, baby, melt.

That is all.

(And no, I do realize that a fast melt will cause all sorts of flooding problems, and I do not want that.  I’m just itching to get on the road).

It was a Sunday afternoon, at my weekend gig at KDWB.  It was 5PM, and I was back at the pop machine.  Joe Hansen was grabbing a coke.

“So, ah, the boss fired one of our board ops”, he said, in his typical indoor voice, which was loud enough to shush R. Lee Ermey.

It clicked.  “S0 – they’re hiring someone to replace him?”, I asked.

They were.  Joe told me to contact Leighton Peck, the boss at K63 – KDWB-AM, once a storied Top40 AM station from the glory days of rock and roll radio – and let him know I was interested.

Tomorrow.  For sure.

It was a big day yesterday.

I kicked off by testifying at the Senate Rules Committee over proposed rules changes for credentialing reporters.  I wrote about this yesterday.  David Brauer and I each spoke briefly to the committee – led by Majority Leader Amy Koch and President Fischbach, with Tom Bakk leading the minority side.

We each answered a few questions, and then the committee went on to discuss all of the amendments proposed to the Senate rules – everything from dress codes to rules for disciplinary hearings.

One funny (in a very wonky sense) moment; there was one passage in the proposed media credentialing rules that both Brauer and I had questioned, which would have required people applying for “session passes” – credentials good for the entire session – to apply 30 days before the session started, in order to get published in the Senate’s media directory.   Brauer and I both pried into it – but the provision stayed.  I had mentioned that perhaps a web-based directory might make more sense than the traditional paper one – but that one fell under the “if it ain’t broke…” clause, so I didn’t make a big deal.

Conservative Senator Warren Limmer, however, moved to strike the deadline from the rules; after some discussion with the Sergeant at Arms, the deadline was removed by a nearly-unanimous vote.  Brauer whispered “that may be the only time in history you’ll see Limmer carrying the water for David Brauer!”

After that, it was over to the House, for an appearance on Marty Owings’ “Capitol Conversations” with Marty Owings.  I was on a panel with Sarah Janecek, as well as former DFL State reps Karla Bigham and Paul Gardner.  That was a fun time.

Then it was off to the House District 66B convention, where I was elected deputy district chair.

It was a long day, but a fun one…

Today is Shot In The Dark’s ninth birthday.

I was working at a dying little dotcom nine years ago.  I was reading a Time article on the “new breed of young conservative intellectuals”.  They profiled Andrew Sullivan and his “blog”.  I checked it out.  I saw the link to Blogger.com.

And when I got home, after dinner, I set the thing up, and it was off to the races.

And the race has not stopped for more than a weekend since then (barring a one-week break when my ISP died back in 2004).

Anyway – thanks!

More next year, God willing!

You can tell a lot about a kid’s personality bright and early in life.

Bun, my oldest, was rash and obstreporous even in the womb, tumbling and kicking and trying to have things her way from the very beginning [1].  She was born about the same way; starting right around her due date, flailing away through a couple of days of labor and a very difficult delivery, before coming out, taking a deep breath, and taking a nap.

And she’s approached most of the things in her life that way.  When she was a baby, she started trying to get up on her feet early; she stumbled and flopped and banged into things and, finally, lurched into standing more or less by accident.  And when she saw people around her talking, she didn’t bother with being perfect at it; she started babbling away almost immediately, and left the “figuring out what Bun is saying” thing to us for the first few months.  Potty training?  Same deal; months and months and months of almost, until the pieces fell together.

My youngest, Zam was just the opposite.  He watched his sister walk for month, before slowly hauling himself to his feet and…well, walking, with pretty decent coordination, without a whole lot of drama.

Zam, was just the opposite.  Potty training?  It felt like he waited until second grade (he was really only three, but when you’re waiting to change that last diaper, time loses some meaning) – and then, pow.  Done.  From poooey diapers to hitting the seat pretty much overnight, when he was ready.

Talking?  Zam watched, and listened, and clearly was churning the whole concept of “speech” over in his head for months and months.  Until finally, one day, when his mother said “would Zammy like a ba-ba?” Zam looked at her and replied “Yes, Mother, I’d very much like one; go a little easy on the heat, though, I don’t have an azz-BEST-toast lip”.

And before he was born?  Same thing.  Zam was very quiet – disconcertingly so, after Bun.  It made me nervous.  And he was two solid weeks late when he was born, when the plopped out after eight relatively placid hours of labor, as if he didn’t want to come out until he was really, really ready.

Just like with the bathroom, fifteen years later.

But for all of  his calm, patient, studious deliberation, which which he’s approached so many things, from learning to talk to learning the guitar, Zam certainly has not gone slow with one thing.  The eighteen years between 12:15AM on Feburary 4, 1993 and today shot past like they were hardly there.

Anyway – Happy Birthday, Zam!

[1] I bet Janet Napolitano calls me a “potential pro-life terrorist” for saying conception was “the very beginning”.  I’ll keep you posted.

It was February 3, 1991.  I’d been working my side gig at KDWB for a few weeks.

It was a pretty menial gig by radio standards; come in on Sunday afternoons to work with Spyder Harrison and Kris Adams.  I did get the occasional call to come in on weeknights to produce Spyder’s weekday evening show – which was four solid hours of pure adrenaline.

But this was not one of those days.  The weekend gig was fun.  Low-key, but fun.

But it wasn’t the kind of radio I really dug.

During my last radio gig – my stint at KSTP-AM which, it pained me to remember, had ended almost four years ago, I’d tacked an extra layer onto my radio addiction.  In addition to the addiction of the ozone and the pace and the buzz, there was the intellectual addiction you got in talk radio – the buzz you get mixing it up with an unpredictable, sometimes hostile, sometimes drunk, sometimes dissociative audience.

After that?  Spinning records (more like “firing off tape carts”) didn’t have the same buzz it did when I was 16.

Still, it was a gig.  It kept me in the business, more or less, for 4-10 hours a week.  And as long as I had to have a menial, crummy job, it might as well be one in the same industry as the one I wanted to be in.

But how to make that work?  I pondered that constantly.

I may have been pondering it when a big, swarthy guy with black hair, piercing eyes and a bushy porn-star mustache walked into the KDWB studio.

“Hey, Spyder”, he said in a booming voice that set the stack of carts on the console rattling.

“Hey, man”, Spyder responded in his off-air voice, which was basically the same as his air voice, an octave above “whales only” range.

The swarthy guy looked at me.  “Hey, you the Mitch Berg that used to work for Don Vogel?”

I brightened up.  “Yeah”.  I was amazed anyone remembered that.  And maybe validated, just a little.

“Cool, man.  I’m Joe Hansen.  We gotta talk sometime!”.

I made a mental note.

There’s something about every addiction.  Something that reminds the addict of the rush, the cool part, of their addiction.

To me, it’s the faint smell of ozone  you get around electrical equipment that was part of the atmosphere, literally and metaphorically, in every radio station.

I’ve noticed you get a lot less of it at AM1280 than in the stations I grew up with; radio’s become a solid-state, computerized industry, and computers just don’t give off ozone like the stacks and racks and rooms full of 1930’s-1950’s vintage relays and tube  preamps and wired electrical gear in the KEYJ studio I grew up in, or the 60’s-era remotes and ’70’s satellite demods and 1950’s diesel generators at KSTP-AM; you can get the faintest whiff of it in the engineering bay, upstairs from our studio bunker.

Just enough for the smell to trigger the memories.

———-

It’d been a week since I had talked with “Mister Ed” at the Mermaid.  After almost four years of head-banging futility, it was dizzying how fast the process of getting onboard at KDWB had been.

What was not dizzying was my actual job.  I’d be a phone screener/producer/gofer for the station’s Sunday disc jockeys – which, in radio terms, meant the weekday people doing their obligatory weekend shift.  I’d be making something like $6/hour, for six or eight hours of work on Sunday afternoons.

It was a toehold in radio, after all those years.  The pinkie toe on my left foot, but a toe, nonetheless.

And today, January 13, was my first day.

I drove from the house in Saint Paul to Thresher Square, on Third Street by Chicago Avenue, more or less kittycorner (at least conceptually) from the Metrodome, parked in the side lot, and opened the front door with my brand-new key.  I took the elevator up to the third floor…

…and stepped back into the world of the addict.  The hustle and bustle – even on the weekend, in its own way.  The burble of speakers.  The throb of different audio signals – KDWB’s “Contemporary Hit Radio” (what used to be called “Top Forty”) groove mixing with the oldies at “K63”, KDWB-AM, as they wafted out the door of the engineering room.

And the ozone.  I could smell just a hint of it; from the amps in engineering, from K63’s twenty-year-old control board, from wherever.

I was back in the ozone.

I wandered past the unoccupied receptionist desk, down past a row of offices across from a glass wall looking out over the building’s atrium, past K-63’s small studio (manned by a wan, swarthy-looking fellow who pointed me two doors down to the FM studio).  The “on-air” light was on.  I stood in the hall as a wiry guy with an impossibly deep voice talked through a break.  He “hit his post” (radio jargon for “talked over the song’s instrumental intro, bitting off “One Oh One Point Three, Kay Dee Dubbleyou Bee” a fraction of a beat before the song’s vocal kicked in), and flicked the mike off.   I knocked twice and opened the door.

“Hey, I’m Mitch”, I said.

“Heeeey.  Spyder Harrison”, in a booming voice two octaves below mine. After the introductions, he sent me to the other end of the hall, to the break room, to get him four – count ’em, four – cups of coffee, each with three sugars.   He set them on the console table, on the far corner from the control board and the “log” paperwork – and seemed to forget about them.

I spent the day learning the Top Forty Gofer trade; I pulled each hour’s music and commercials, in order, and had them stacked on the console table ready for each hour, half an hour before the top of the hour.  When Spyder ran a contest, I answer the phone (Hint:  When he said “We’ll take caller 101”, it was really more like caller four); while Spyder recorded his conversation with the caller, I ran the board, playing songs and spots (and never, ever talking on the air; an absolute, inviolable rule), watching as he slashed the tape of the “interview” with the winner into a neatly-packaged twenty-second audio gem, with a razor blade, on reel-to-reel tape, with seconds to spare before his break.  He took the board, quickly fine-tuned the tape’s cueing, opened the mic as I got back in the producer seat, and started his patter…

“101.3 KDWB, we have a winn-ah!  Who’s this?”, he said, rolling the tape to the sound of Ashley or Brandi or Cari from Brooklyn Center or Maple Grove or Richfield’s disembodied voice replied off the tape, timed perfectly, sounding like it was a live phone call.

And we did it again next hour.

After a couple of hours, Kris Adams – a short, ebullient twentysomething woman with dark brunette hair in a Dorothy Hamill hairdo – came into the studio to take over.  The station’s former graveyard shift jock, she’d gone part-time (I learned that afternoon) to pursue voice-over work (quite successfully) and have a real life – including getting married (the month before).  We had a great chat as the shift wore on through the afternoon; contests, phone calls, stacking hours…

…and then my first day in radio – sort of – in three and a half years was over.

I walked out, and drove home, the smell of ozone still knocking around my brain.

It was Saturday, January 5, 1991.

I was working at the Mermaid, the supper club, sports bar, bowling alley and nighclub in Moundview where I’d been spinning records, three nights a week, for a little over two years now.

One of our regular features was the Saturday night live appearances from “Mister Ed”, a disk jockey at KDWB.  He’d come out to the bar, talk on the mobile mike, hand out prizes, and generally work the room (for a nice little fee).

We had a pretty good working relationship; I ran a great floor when I was working, and I set up his appearances pretty well.  We got along – which was better than most of the club jocks managed.

It’d been over three years since I’d been out of radio.

And then, it occurred to me; for the first time in three, almost four years, there was a radio guy with some clout who actually had a good opinion of me.

So…

As the evening ground to a close, and Ed was sipping on his drink, I made my move.

“So – if I was trying to get back into radio, would there be anything I could do at KDWB?”

“Sure”, Ed said without skipping a beat.  “Absolutely!  We could use a weekend screener!”

And as fast as I could memorize the details, he said I could start next Saturday, working with Kris Adams and Spyder Harrison.

And that was that.  I was back in radio.

A little, anyway.

The day before the 12/11 blizzard, I finally shrugged off my traditional asceticism (and the attendant need to constantly replace work shoes) and bought my first-ever pair of sorel boots, with the removable wool liners.

My feet have been toasty warm ever since.

For all those  years, I had no idea what a nifty thing that was.

I practically sleep in them today.

Apropos not much.

Who, me?  I have a liter of Tequila, a box of .38 hollowpoints, and a full tank of gas.  Why do you ask?

(more…)

…it was a fantastic Christmas.  One of the best in years!

Although the temptation is always there to switch the family to the Russian Orthodox church.  With its January 6 Christmas.

Think of the savings on gifts!

(Note to any Russian Orthodox readers;  No, I’m not going to switch churches purely for the savings.  Just pointing out one utterly non-faith-related upside to your church’s particular calendar).

(Waiting to see what the Anti-Faith-Police have to say about this…)

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

This past year, I’ve been vastly more blessed than I could ever deserve; wonderful friends, my kids whom I love so much, great opportunities – and even a few gnarly challenges requiring some creative solutions that, in the end, have turned out to be blessings, so far.

And like all of us, I’m blessed to live in a country where I can write this.  If you are, or have ever been, in the military, thank you for the Christmases you’ve spent away from home, standing on that wall brushing snow off your rifle or tank or F16 or destroyer while the rest of us drank eggnog somewhere behind you.

What can I say but “Merry Christmas”, and God bless you all!

So on behalf of Johnny Roosh, First Ringer and Bogus D, thanks for another great year, and whatever the holiday means to you, I hope you find it in spades!

UPDATE: The Northern Alliance will be a “best of” today.  John, Brian and Ed cancelled due to the weather.  And I’ll be taking a bike ride, then going to a pool party afterward.  Stay safe, everyone.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.  Maybe.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I follow from 1-3PM Central.  If we both make it to the station.
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on hiatus, still.  Stay tuned!
• And for those of you who like your constitutionalism straight up with no chaser, don’t forget the Sons of Liberty, from 3-5!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream).
• Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• And make sure you fan us on Facebook!

Join us!

Didja ever have the nightmare after high school or college – dreaming that you’d gotten a call a week before graduation, saying that you were going to have your diploma held up beccause you hadn’t taken Woodshop in seventh grade, or had squeaked through four years without taking Art Appreciation (yep, I had ’em both)?

I’ve got my own flavor of that nightmare, and it pops up every couple years, including a few nights ago.

I’m walking into a radio station in some out-of-the-way place.  A faceless program director directs me into a control room, to sit at a control panel I’ve never seen before.  Without any direction, he says “go to it”, and shuts the door and goes out for a drink.

A song is playing – usually on some device I’ve never seen before.  I have to figure out how to get the next song cued up, get on the air, and hit my break. 

The last time I had the dream, it was a little marginal AM station above (I kid you not) Peter’s Grill in Minneapolis.  It was just a little placeholder to keep the frequency alive until a new buyer could happen (yes, the backstory was in the dream), so the owner – he looked like “Newman” the mailman from Seinfeld – had cobbled together a bunch of equipment from the 1920’s; a big old ship’s chronometer, an eighty-year old control board with Bakelite control knobs and ceramic VU meters.  The song (on a turntable) ran out, and I couldn’t find either how to put the other turntable into “cue” to cue up the next record, or how to turn the monitor up so I could hear what was on the air…

…so I spent the entire air shirt winging it until the boss came back and chewed me out before firing me.

The other night?  The opposite extreme.  I was at KDWB (in its old offices, in Thresher Square, down by the Metrodome) – but its studios were so high tech, I might as well have been on the bridge of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise.  The song was playing, and the only way to run the controls was via a table full of touch-screen interfaces whose function I kept messing up.

Not sure what it means.  Other than “liberalism sucks”.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I follow from 1-3PM Central
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on from 9-11 on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  We’re broadening the franchise; two stations, now!
• And for those of you who like your constitutionalism straight up with no chaser, don’t forget the Sons of Liberty, from 3-5!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream).
• Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• And make sure you fan us on Facebook!

Join us!

I feel a little like the former bomber pilot in the movie The Best Years Of Our Lives.  After a stretch of riding on the edge, of pouring all your energy into something, it’s a little jarring to switch back to the humdrum of daily life.

And my daily life isn’t even all that humdrum these days.  New job (yay!), all sorts of family shenanigans – the usual stuff.

The run-up to the election was incredibly exciting; there is no feeling quite like the one you get when you know you’re fighting the good fight at long odds for a just cause. 

Election night was, of course, an epic rush – six and a half hours of pure talk radio adrenaline.  And the news – seeing that our efforts were being rewarded, mostly, and our just cause was on the roll nationwide – was enough to keep the adrenaline going.  And the event – election night at the Sheraton – was one of those things I’ve loved more than just about anything, since I got into radio; talking with the movers and shakers, being where the news is happening – booyah!

And today’s the morning after.   It’s a good morning after; the day after the ’06 and ’08 elections were a lot more disappointing.  But still – as the need for energy has waned, so has the energy.  Or maybe it’s just the “morning after the morning after” kicking my butt; I got three hours of sleep after the election, and suffice to say that today, the adrenaline has worn off.

There is much to do, of course.

• Get our new GOP majority to go on the attack. 
• Investigate the Minnesota and HHH polls.  This is going to be a very serious project.
• Keep asking the questions of Mark Dayton that the media just…couldn’t…bother with before the election.
• Oh, yeah – the recount.

But for today?  Family.  New job.  Clothes shopping.

Sleep.

Readjust.

28 years ago, when I was working at my first country-western radio job, about the time the early eighties recession was at its deepest, I first heard this Merle Haggard song. It was in the “recurrent” bin – music the station had played for a good six months before I started – but never quite left the rotation.

And it captured the spirit of 1980 and 1981 was well as any song of the era…:

…and really, life in Minnesota, today, as well.

And if the Republicans sweep the nation?  Especially if Emmer wins?

I haven’t felt like that since 1991 – when the Berlin Wall fell.

And nothing captured that era better than this ditty:

Watching the nation wake up from that Obama buzz won’t be quite as fun as watching the USSR gurgle down the drain…

…but this is the battle we’ve been dealt.

I’m game!

Thursdays are the Tuesdays of the blogging week.

Mondays are easy; I usually have three or four posts written over the weekend spotted in advance; I barely need to write at all, although I always do.

Tuesdays are usually good news days, plus there’s all sorts of early-week energy.

Wednesdays usually have a story or two of overflow, plus news.

Friday?  Always good for end-of-the-week stuff, plus the late-day news-dumps.

But Thursdays reek.  No emergy.  No desire to write.

Which is why I make a point of writing something.

Even if it’s just this…

…or bolded paragraphs much.  I usually stick with good ol’ black on white for pure readability’s sake.

If I were to give you an entire paragraph, in bold type and a different, attention-getting color, that’d be because it was very, very big news indeed.

I think I’ve done it once in the history of this blog; back in 2003, when the Minnesota Personal Protection Act passed the first time.

But there’s a pretty good chance I’ll do it again today.

Stay tuned after noon on Shot In The Dark.