Germany Travel Tips WHAT THE HECK?!?

I have been waiting for a very, very long time to go back to Germany. You see, I have relatives there on my mom's side and I have been wanting to go back with my wife of almost 5 years and my mom of, well, my entire life. Yes, she will sort of be the interpreter but she is also someone whom I think Germany is not the same without. I went back 22 years ago with a friend of mine and he and I had fun, but mom adds a different dimension. She's a tour guide and a, well, mom all in one!

Booking the flight was easy! Air fare there (now that's a rhymey sentence) is shockingly low right now. You see the adds pop up everywhere from Facebook to your gmail. Getting a passport can be a little tricky, but my wife and I took care of that a few years ago (around the time Mexico said they were needing to see passports...not that I was on a Tiajuana run).

Now today's WHAT THE HECK??? If you want to rent a car in Germany YOU CAN'T GET AN AUTOMATIC! That is, unless you double the amount you're paying for the rental. That means roughly everybody from 28 years of age to 0 can't drive over there (unless they don't want any brautwurst spending money). I have also noticed crazy rates on car rental insurance which just about everyone needs since it most often is not covered in your normal insurance plan. Oh, and air conditioning? EXTRA! This almost feels like Hawaii: everything comes with a price tag.

I'm also told ketchup in a FAST FOOD RESTAURANT will cost you extra. That's great for my diet since now I won't step foot in any of them over there, but do you see a pattern here?

Why the animosity towards us? Is this all W's fault? And by the way, what's with everyone poking fun at Geitner's delivery and blaming the market's fall on such? Do you remember the last president? At least the current administration is making corrections. Everyone's gotta complain about something. Which is what I'm doing till right NOW since my minutes over...bye!

The Dues and Don't's

So back when I got it in my head when I was 17 that I wanted to be in radio, I realized it might take a while to ever make it to where the DJ's that I heard were. I was prepared. The first words I heard out of the night DJ who couldn't wait to exploit me but at the same time give me my big break was, "You gotta pay your dues."

Today's WHAT THE HECK?...people who exploit other people in the name of "Paying Their Dues."

In today's world, the whole concept of paying dues should be thrown out the window. We don't have time for that anymore. No one should be allowed to do anything for free. We live in a world where Keynesian economics are at work, and that requires money getting in to your hands so you can pay me for a service that in turn I will pay someone else for their service and so on and so on thus spreading money through out our society.

Not only that, but telling someone to "go make my coffee" or nowadays "go buy me a Starbucks" is just ridiculous superiority "holier than thou" attitude. WHAT THE HECK!?! Radio (and other areas of the entertainment industry) overuses interns more than any other industry. Radio is filled with egomaniacs who love people being subservient to them and doing their work for them. If an investigation was ever made about this, the results would be pretty staggering. In my early days I remember going out on a chore that included stopping at a supermarket to buy a magazine that the DJ said a listener said she was on the cover of. (I guess that wasn't so bad because he gave me money for the magazine and I was trustworthy enough to give him back the correct change.)

Yes, success takes hard work and dedication. But what lacks in this world (and particularly in my last place of employment) is recognition for hard work and dedication. My last year in radio had me working for free and for long hours EXACTLY THE SAME as when I started radio 22 years ago. Two things change in 22 years, your waste size and your patience...and hopefully your income.

Bottom line (and I hate blogs that end with "bottom line" some where in the final paragraph) is where ever you work, do NOT give in to that "paying your dues" crap. Work hard the hours you do work (no Twitter, no Facebook), but Saturdays and holidays (unless you get another day in the week off for compensation) are YOUR DAYS and YOUR REWARDS for giving it your all during normal business hours. Yes, go above and beyond, but remember that you will NOT be rewarded and NO ONE WILL RECOGNIZE IT. That's just the cold, hard facts of today's world and that's my minute.

Life Here in the South

Growing up in California, you get used to constants like beaches, traffic, and smog. Here in the South, the constants shift to churches, waves from cars, and occasionally a colossal WHAT THE HECK?

I'm not sure if I specified in my last blog that I moved here to Alabama to start and run a country station. Yes, a guy from California running a country station...wouldn't you want a guy from Nashville or at least from some part of Texas? A very cool guy in the company, however, believed in me so my wife and I set out for Huntsville. We were excited about the change and the opportunities.

When we got here we quickly acclimated to the little differences. Where we lived in California was sometimes known as "Bakersfield by the Sea', so we weren't total city slickers. The complete absence of Trader Joe's did upset us, but then at the end of last year Nashville got one which is only an hour and a half hour drive.

The area of California we were from had it's trees, but nothing like the scale and magnitude here. Plus the cool rivers and lakes. It was upon trying to take a picture like the one above that I came upon my latest WHAT THE HECK?

Someone broke into my car. On my Facebook page a friend wrote, well, this wouldn't happen in Amish country! They said, infact, you wouldn't even have a car! Though I know I'm not in Amish country, I did think with the abundance of religious fervor and good Christian attitude every where that we wouldn't have some one break into a car in a busy parking lot. But that's not the case in Huntsville, it's a city like any where else...though with no graphitti (as compared to where we were in CA where it was every where!)

So keep an eye on your stuff, now more than ever. These are desperate times. The desperate station I worked for let me go as it desperately tried to hold on to the bottom line. The guy breaking into my car was desperate though all he got was an mp3 player that only worked out of the left ear. Keep waving from your car, but don't forget there are also people that don't wave that have no faith in anything we call humanity. Despite some little bumps, I still got faith.

That was a little more than a minute.

My First Entry for Mike's One Minute What the Heck

Hello, and welcome to my first blog. I have wanted to do this for soooo long, especially after the events of December 15th.

That was a Monday if you recall. Not the best day of my life. I was driving into work, driving a large over sized truck that's only purpose was to promote a radio station. Driving the roads around the Tennessee Valley is not the easiest task in such a beast, but I learned to manage it over the year that I worked for the company that in mere minutes would let me go. I should have known something was up the way two coworkers who were privy to the upcoming event scurried like cockroaches when the kitchen door opens.

I don't want to dwell on this turn of events, suffice to say that this replayed over and over again. Yes, across the US where the unemployment rate rose from 6 to 8 to 10 percent, but also at this company where soon many more employees were asked to leave. This is the state of radio. You may not listen every day to your "favorite station". You may now find yourself relying more on your ipod since it gives you much more variety than anything over the airwaves. You may have discovered podcasts, much like I did, where normal people talk about normal things--infinitely more interesting than anything heard on the dial!

My first WHAT THE HECK? WHAT THE HECK radio? You were a fantastic artistic medium for so many years. I guess I was in denial about how you really were. Not long ago you began the change of life and became the utterly desperate creature we see today. Desperate because you are clinging to life. No one cares about you. The digital age has passed your staticky carcass by! There is no need for your boring, trite, and uninteresting promotions any more. Good bye!

Thanks for reading my first blog. Other observations are on the way as well as a cartoon character I recently resurrected named "Gnat-Man"; you'll see him in future "effizodes".

Enjoy the weekend!