2:30 PM - 3:30 PM, Monday, January 20th, 1997: Darryl calls me and asks why I haven’t talked to Mary Jo. I was going to today, but he beat me to it. I got the note this weekend to call her, hell I had literally JUST woken up. He was kinda pissed. So I asked for her number and that pissed him off too. It wasn’t that I didn’t have it, I just figured he’d yell her extension really quick and boom. Anyway, I call her up (which is supposed to be daily now) and got some topics and some stuff to go over with Steve. Mary Jo will be kind of the go-to guy for producers dealing with crazy talk show hosts. Heh. Then I get another call from Darryl and he asks if "I’m on the Bus"...I laughed....sure. What does that mean? He wanted to know if I was serious about this. Doesn’t he know that I work overnights...how much earlier was I supposed to call? Fuckin’ A. I said yes, and he still seemed pissy. Then I call back 5 minutes later and just ask: "What’s wrong". He truly was mad that I hadn’t called her. Something’s up his ass.   9:30 PM - 5:30 AM, Monday - Tuesday, January 20th - 21st, 1997: Well, the first night. The first thing Carmen says to me is: "Well, I’ve been demoted..." Great. More for her to be pissed at me for. She's now the same thing she's always been, a call-screener, but because she didn't get PROmoted she's DEmoted. In my mailbox were some topics from Mary Jo, and a benefits package. Cool. Health Insurance. I talked to Cannon about the topics and a bit about what was going on. He was pretty cool. Carmen however WAS NOT. Shitty to me the whole time. Cannon was getting zero calls and then the lines would light up with people on hold and Carmen talking to them, but no names came up on our screen or anything. I finally got frustrated enough to type: 2?...or 1? and I get back DONT WORRY. Then she comes in and yells at me. "I have to deal with these complaint calls, and I don’t want to deal with you typing things to me." Fuck You. As a host it sucks not knowing what’s going on so I'm happy to defend Cannon here. Her attitude is amazing. I’ll tell ya what, we’ll get into a fight quicker than me and Steve will. Steve’s show: The way it always is, boring. He is great at talking the issues, but that alone is boring to me. I feel so frustrated. It's now MY RESPONSIBILITY to make his show not suck ass. How ironic is THIS? How can I possibly change this? And what do they want from him? He certainly never talked to me, and basically made shitty comments throughout the night on-air about the new schedule, and no trivia. Running Rush after him was pretty boring as well. Oh and get this, Darryl calls up at...2:38 actually, and asks how it went. I said fine, except for Carmen. It seemed to upset him. And then I asked him what was his ideal Cannon show, what they wanted. "Targeted at a 40 year old male. That’s what I’ve been saying." Really irritated. Once again, FUCK YOU. How ‘bout being a little more vague genius. How frustrating is this. Christ. Talked to Joe in the morning, and he was cool once again. Sally Wagner got bumped from Morning anchor to....City Hall Reporter. Sheesh. That hurts. Oh well. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.   3:15 PM, Tuesday, January 21st, 1997: Call #2. I talk to Mary Jo about last night. She’s pretty understanding. I told her my frustration, but now that I think about it, there were no real solutions she gave. I also told her that Carmen was VERY PISSED, but now I think I shouldn’t have. I don’t like spreading shit around, even if I should. I have a bad feeling about tonight. Hmmm....   10:00 PM - 5:15 AM, Tuesday - Wednesday, January 21st - 22nd, 1997: Not bad. Cannon actually did alright...for straight talk. I was still bored out of my mind though. Seat-belt laws was the big topic, and went for too long. I was gonna say something, but I’m going at this slow though, I don’t want to start a fight. Carmen was fine, but I wish she would just leave. She doesn’t want to be there, and it shows. As for Cannon, we will probably get along pretty well. This isn’t turning out as bad as I thought.   (Tonight I had a very vivid dream that Darryl got fired and killed himself. And to show their support for him almost everyone at the station followed him by jumping off this balcony right after him. What the hell does that mean?)   3:15 PM, Wednesday, January 22nd, 1997: Call #3. Short and quick. As opposed to tall and slow? Said a couple of topics and I said things went well.   10:15 PM - 5:15 AM, Wednesday - Thursday, January 22nd - 23rd, 1997: So Cannon starts out the show doing a mailbag of all of his future guest possibilities and announces it's going to be: "you-be-the-producer listeners, as I go through the guests who want to be on my show." A slap in the face? Kind of. Basically because I wasn’t involved. John and Jane did that bit with Ethan and they went through their mail and talked as a group...since he’s their producer. It worked really well. But Cannon kept saying it’s "me and you, me and you" working on this. NO, it should be Cannon and I and the callers. At a break I said something to him about bringing everyone into it, and he said it was a good idea. Before the show I got a hold of Jim Williams in Denver to talk about Jon Benet Ramsey, since the list of suspects has narrowed. Well, according to Jim apparently there is no list of suspects. That’s just the media. Wow. So before Cannon went on I told him that specifically. What did he ask in the interview? "So, now that the list of suspects...." And made a fool of himself, Jim said I don’t know where you’re getting your information, and Cannon said "my source must be misinformed." HELLO, SLAM on me. Afterwards I said to him like a child: "Don’t you remember me telling you there was no list of suspects?" "I must’ve read it somewhere..." Fuckin’ idiot. And at the beginning of that hour, Cannon came in at about 12:02 and said: "Aren’t you going to call this guy?" I went and got the number for him and had Carmen call him up. He was ready at 12:06, the interview was scheduled at 12:10. Cannon being a needle dick types to Carmen that we’re going to have to take a caller until Adam gets his act together. I watched him type the whole fucking sentence while Jim was on hold. I was too fast for the old fuck. I let him know Jim was waiting, and he still took the caller beforehand to prove his point. What a moron. At least learn how to type fast. Then at about 12:40 he brings up the drug testing issue that I gave him, and Mary Jo gave me...IT ROCKS, he gets a bunch of calls and takes him to 2:00. He had a total of 4 calls before that. Then he says: "I wish they would’ve called like this at 11:30..." "You didn’t read the STORY before that." "Oh." You stupid fuck.   AND FINALLY this guy called up talking about the UDF Boycott, and at the end of the conversation he asked him if he was overweight,?!?! He responded yes, and he said "I thought so" and hung up! WHAT? A lady called up and said that sucked and that he was an intelligent man... Cannon says "he’s a dope and so are you" and hung up on her. What the hell’s the use in embarassing the guy about his weight? Steve said it was because he panted and sounded out of breath. It seemed cruel to me, ‘cause although the guy was a redneck, he made some good points. OK, that’s it. Goodbye.   10:15 PM - 10:45 AM, Thursday - Friday, January 23rd - 24th, 1997: I'M TYPING 100 MPH RIGHT NOW. Get there, and suggest to Cannon to bring up the 21st century stories from Newseek that Mary Jo gave me. "Did you think 2000 would be like this?" kind of stuff. Great gimmick to get people to call in. "Well I thought Ebonics in front of the Congress was good." And that's the end of that. I'm not sure what the point of working with Mary Jo is at this point. Then at the top of the hour I go in to help clean up and Hansel says: "Hello Star..." I put my hands up like: "WHAT DID I DO NOW?" "You didn’t see the piece you got in The Other Paper?...they’re gonna be asking for naked pictures next...."   HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT   As I trotted down the hall it all started to swarm around my head until I was running faster than I ever have. REALLY REALLY Fast. I see the people outside the building with the Pizza (It’s Cannon’s birthday) and realize they probably think I was running that fast for them. I grab the paper and let them in. It was KILLING me but I was polite and walked them up the steps and to the producer’s room, clear them a space to put the pizza’s down, and then...Jesus, I can’t remember what happened after that. I actually have forgotten my reaction the first time I read this. It’s all a blur. Here’s the article:         Can you believe it? I had to read it about three times. And then sit and listen to Cannon for threeeeeeee hours. Holy shit was this hard. My mind was absolutely racing. I wanted to tell EVERYONE. But I had to wait. Cannon’s show? Sucked. Drove me nuts. He doesn’t listen to anything I ever suggest. We do not work well together, and he’s the most arrogant man I’ve met at that station. I mean REALLY arrogant. To the point that it keeps me sane. It makes me laugh, how great he thinks he is. Him and his "inane chit-chat". Ha ha ha. He just bores me. 3 calls in one half-hour was his best. He like when I usually get that in half the time. But he likes to run his show....REEEEEEAL SLOW, REAL SLOW, REAL SLOW, woah woah woha oooooooh. ANYWAY. It hit 2:00 and BAM I was online telling my fellow online supporters. My dad called up about 2:05 and I got to tell him. I was so pumped. He was really happy. Rush once again went really quick. I actually enjoy the time alone to tell you the truth. At 5:15 I ran home to get my stuff because I was going to do production until 10:00 AM, because we had a meeting right after. I made a new opening song, sung to the tune "Zanzibar" It’s really nifty. And did 2 Attitude Opens. That took me 4 hours. Can you believe it? Just editing down those tapes took forever. Then the meeting: Perry Frey, the General Manager is retiring on March 31st. Shit. Another guy who was just awesome to me and 100% in my corner. I’ve talked about him a few times in this journal, and they’ve all been great. Every time I talk to him he tells me about another listener who has talked about me. It’s wonderful. He did the same thing after the meeting: "I met someone who..." It was nice. A lot of people were crying. He’s a great guy. The new GM was this nerdy looking guy. And there’s a new district manager...Didn’t know him. Boring meeting, but Darryl saw me there. Cannon was there too, but he of course got 6 hours of sleep. So, I’m walking out of the meeting and Munch comes up to me and says: "Nice stuff in the Other Paper, It’s all true brother, all true..." That was very cool. Then, damn this is a long entry, I went into Mary Jo’s office to tell her about last night, since I wouldn’t be able to call her. I reiterated the statements I said above. I’m a board op to him, he doesn’t listen to my ideas, and he’s SOOOOOO arrogant. Then he walked past the room, and then came in. "You know we’re talking about you Steve." Mary Jo blurts out. And he got that funny paranoid look in his eye again. "Really, what about..." He squirmed for a bit. It was great, then Mary Jo said: "Everything’s good, and Adam was telling me you’re working very well together..." (Great, she was playing along.) And then Cannon took over... his demeanor completely changed and now being "suave":   "Yes, we really are..." He went on to say that, this was great, it was nice to know that everything Adam and Carmen came up with he had already thought of. That was his idea of thinking along the same lines. He acted more arrogant than he had with me! I had the biggest smile. Cannon went on to say how he was still working on my role as his producer. Holy shit it was so great. Then after his soliloquy, he just stood there. I wanted to finish talking to Mary Jo. So she says: "Well, this guy’s (points to me) got a lot of great ideas so listen to him." Cannon was dumbfounded. I think he said something like "what?" And then he left. It was great. I finished talking with Mary Jo and then finally headed .off to sleep. What. A. Day   5:30 PM - 2:30 AM, Saturday - Sunday, January 25th - 26th, 1997: SHOW 226 Made a great opener to Billy Joel's Zanzibar and it just oozes the confidence the Other Paper article gave me...and the that dried up real quick once the show started. Wow, this sucked. Ha, man were the first 3 hours difficult. I mean REALLY difficult. Probably the worst I’ve ever had...caller-wise. We’re talking 7 in three hours. Then from about 11:45 until 12:30 I had 11. It’s going to take awhile to milk this new crowd. The show was probably pretty good if you’d never heard it before. I played a few Boyles and lots of skits, but I mean no one called. Now, there were no great topics, and I didn’t really push the talk. I brought up pthe Buckeyes and the year 2000. 2 calls each (in 5 hours). It was very tough. A good learning experience though. I’m going to hit a talk subject hard next week, and I’ve gotta tell you. Sundays will be hell (and are postponed another week GRRRR). Hopefully some regulars will be there. Christ. Press on young man, press on.   4:00 PM - 4:30 PM, Sunday, January 26th, 1997: Came in on Superbowl Sunday to dub 3 commercials. What a team player.