It’s not every day that I write a post like this. Happy that two great friends are just completing a phenomenal 27-year run, yet sad that my weekly role in that is coming to an end… I’ll miss the weekly rides in to the Tribune Tower, traveling after dark makes it feel like the expressways are my own personal possessions. Its gotten to the point now where I schedule client meetings, visits with friends and errands for Wednesday evenings prior to show time, something almost every week, I’ll miss that… Although I remain very much connected to them, I’ll miss the weekly banter with my CyberSquad cohorts Mike DiMichele, Patrick Crispen and Mike Reid… I’ll also miss seeing the friends I’ve made around the show, particularly Dan Sugrue, Paula Cooper, Ted Novak and Alex down in security. I’ll miss running into David Kaplan and Milt Rosenberg in the halls late at night… I’ll miss the stellar coffee available in the guest lounge and sitting in the Showcase Studio during the news looking out onto Michigan Avenue… I’ll miss having access to a hallowed ground where so many Chicago radio titans were made… but most sorely missed will be seeing Steve and Johnnie every week… two really gracious and sincere people that have made me feel welcome and at home since the day that I met them. I’ve really gotten used to them in my life and plan to keep them there whenever they’re not in Nashville, Panama City Beach or wherever else their travels take them. But as all things come to an end, I guarantee I’m just one of legions feeling the sting as the overnight institution of Life After Dark draws to a close, at least at WGN…

Degrees of separation have always been an intriguing notion to me… and how I ended up on Website Wednesday Night with Steve and Johnnie ends up a case of 5 degrees that I consider now with wonderment. More interesting is that other occurrences earlier in life that could have led to such a union didn’t… and the chain that actually did couldn’t have been predicted in a million years.

I was a child of the radio… my Dad has listened to WGN pretty much every day of his life, so those mighty call letters have been rattling around my head since the days of Wally Phillips, Roy Leonard and Paul Harvey. In middle school I spent every spare moment listening to rock radio… WLUP and WMET were amongst my presets, but most of my time was spent on WLS (AM89) as I was addicted to their weekly charts flyers I could pick up at the local Rainbow Records in Park Ridge along with their stable of premium rock DJ’s like John Landecker, Tommy Edwards and Larry Lujack. Coincidentally, I fell asleep almost every night listening to Steve King who was working the overnights even back then. Also around that time it turned out that my Mom was a nurse in the Glenbrook hospital system and one of her co-workers was Peggy Weber, whose father Clark, was of course a big-time radio personality at WIND AM… this led to a tour of their studios and the opportunity to interview Mr. Weber for a school project… this was also the station that Steve would meet Johnnie just a few years later… and then as I’ve mentioned on-the-air before, I came within 2 degrees of separation in the late 70’s when Dan Fabian, the WGN Program Director that eventually hired Steve & Johnnie to set off their current chain of over 6,200 shows, was also my Park Ridge Little League coach for the mighty team that was Nelson Funeral Home that year.

Anyway, you would think that one of those experiences would have been what led me to Website Wednesday Night… but the actual answer to that riddle turned out much more circuitous. Here’s the 5 degrees of separation, bear with me… my parents get divorced in the late 80’s and both re-marry. On my Dad’s side I gain a step-brother named Scott. Scott works for a company in Northern Indiana that sells color-copiers and I work for an architecture firm in Chicago that needs a color copier. Scott sends me their Chicago rep, a guy named Ruben who I buy a color-copier from. Just beginning to get deep into web design, I ask Ruben if he has any recommendations in the web-hosting ISP department… he recommends a company named Forward.net that was owned by none other than Gray Rothkopf, whose name many of you will recognize as my predecessor in the Mac chair on Website Wednesday Night. Gray and I became fast friends… we both socialized and did business together during his run on the Steve & Johnnie Show which gave me cause to tune in many a Wednesday evening to listen in. I let Gray know that I’d love to accompany him to the studio some night to watch everything go down in person… That night ended up being February 13th, 2008 which also marked the start of my own run in the Mac chair for Website Wednesday Night.

As I’ve told the story before… Gray didn’t tune me in to the fact that the evening was more like an audition… this didn’t become clear to me until the two of us were pulling into the WGN lot before the show… Gray told me to be careful to not swear on the air (I’m quite the pottie-mouth off air) as I objected to the fact that I would be on the air at all… but in retrospect, waiting until the last minute to break the news was the best thing he could have done, didn’t give me any time to over-think it… hopefully if any of you end up on the radio at some point, it can happen for you in the same manner… almost like ripping a band-aid off fast.

So since that fateful February night, I’ve done approximately 180 shows give or take… and every last one of them has been appreciated. I’ve had a ton of experiences and met a ton of people, my professional network has grown as well… all made possible due to two outstanding human beings… Steve… Johnnie… I’ll miss our weekly rendezvous’ here in the immediate future… but here’s hoping there’s yet another home to be had in your illustrious radio careers and that I’ll be able to weasel my way into that one as well 😉

Much love and godspeed.

(Editors note; for those of you that are regular visitors to my Website Wednesday Night Show Site… that site will now enter a hiatus. If you care to stay in touch, FOLLOW my Optiflux Facebook page which I just brought online today for that very purpose… Last, here’s a link to the audio mash I did to commemorate the final show… and as always, thanks for listening!)