Viva Las Vegas

Greetings from Vegas! I'm walking through a crowded casino so i'll keep this short but I just wanted to share some things from my journey. I'll blog more and again soon!

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Is Rusty Still in the Navy?

Yes, its Christmas Vacation time. And not just the movie, although I still haven't watched that this season... But also for me! I head out bright and early tomorrow morning and fly to Kansas City where some friends will be picking me up and whisking me away, eventually back to Omaha. I'm rather excited to be back and see some friends. I've been down here for a week shy of 9 months now and have only been back to Omaha twice, and neither time really got to spend any time with people.

I'll get some good quality time with my friends and family, including the traditional Christmas at Grandma's where we will more than likely eat dinner in the cold, dark basement, and open gifts, followed by the annual decorating of the Christmas Jeff.

Then Friday afternoon, I fly out to Las Vegas to help watch my niece and nephew. I'll have a Vegas New Year, before flying back to Tulsa on January 4th. Yep. Really looking forward to the next 2 weeks!

I'll try to do some mobile blogging while I'm gone, and who knows, maybe even another Vidcast?

i love you,

dw

Top 10 Things I've Learned in Oklahoma

I arrived in Tulsa on April 29th, 2008 which means at the end of the month, I'll have been here for 9 months. With this celebration, I present to you:

The Top 10 Thing I've Learned While Living in Oklahoma

10. How to throw change left-handed. Turnpikes! I remember pulling up to it the first time and awkwardly throwing my change in the catch like Scotty Smalls on his first attempt to throw a baseball and wondering how the person in front of me did it so effortlessly. It's second nature now and I can, like a true Tulsan, do it on the fly.

9. "Boomer Sooner":

Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner,

Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner,

Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner,

Boomer Sooner, O-K-U!

Oklahoma, Oklahoma,

Oklahoma, Oklahoma,

Oklahoma, Oklahoma,

Oklahoma, O-K-U!

I'm a Sooner born

And a Sooner bred,

And when I die

I'll be Sooner dead.

Rah, Oklahoma! Rah, Oklahoma!

Rah, Oklahoma! O-K-U!

Thpbpbpbpbpbpb!!!! {said with tongue flailing and thumb pointed in a downward direction}. "Boomer Sooner" is all I ever hear. I never hear people yelling Giddy'up or whatever it is the OSU Cowboy fans yell. THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE NEBRASKA!!!!

8. There are 2 kinds of Oklahoman accents on women. One annoys the crap out of you, the other is kinda hot. Oh, and no guy sounds intelligent with an Oklahoma accent.

7. No one in Tulsa is from Tulsa. I kid you not, I've met 2... two people in 9 months originally from this town.

6. I'm organized. Who knew?

5. 50 degrees and sunny is cold and it "could snow any minute" as one fine upstanding gent put it. And yes, he said it with an Oklahoman accent

4. Never throw away a contact. In this business, its all about who you know

3. Working at Quick Trip is a completely respectable job. People in Iowa drop out of school and end up working for a gas station. In Tulsa, its considered a career. And a good one at that.

2. Turn signals aren't important, you must either go 20 above or 20 below the speed limit, a yellow light means speed up, and a red light means you only have 5 more seconds to get through the intersection unless its a turning lane, in which case you have 10.

1. No one is a good driver {see above} including Cops. If you turn on your signal and slow down you'd better turn or (nearly) get rear ended. And for the trouble he'll pull you over for an "unsafe lane-change". "But officer, I didn't change lanes" will not get you out of a ticket. "I'm sorry officer, I'm from Iowa. See-my license and tags clearly show that"; will, in fact, get you off with only a warning.

The Other Side of the Radio

So far my resolution to blog more isn't going stupendous. I'm working on it.

I was thinking about my blog name today and the meaning behind it. Originally when I decided on it, it was because I would share with you all what happens on the "other" side of the radio. While I do try to do this from time to time, its more about random thoughts, websites I come across, TV shows, and other things that happen when I'm not working (and admittedly, sometimes when I am!). Maybe I should have chosen "The Other Side of the Morning Commute" as my title.

But today I wanted to share with you "the other side of the radio." I stole the title from a song by Christian artist, Chris Rice. I vaguely remember the song from my years interning at KGBI over 5 years ago, but ask me to repeat a line from the song without looking, and all I could come up with is "Here I am on the other side of the radio." I read the lyrics and they do a pretty good job of portraying why I do what I do, just substitute singing for speaking.

Music is one of the most effective means of reaching people. I sat at a concert the other night and all I could think about was how many people this guy must be reaching (that and the ridiculous dancer in the white pants who seemed to serve no purpose to the music). It wasn't just a good Christian concert, it was a good concert period. My friends, both Christian and non-Christian would have enjoyed it and walked away thinking it was one of the greatest concerts they've been to. You have no idea the kind of impact relevant Christians can make on the rest of the world. I know for a fact that many of them don't feel you can have fun and be a Christian. I grew up surrounded by fun-loving Christians and I forget, not everyone has a children's pastor who's podium spews fire. (Not for visual effects mind you, but for convenience!)

We're changing somebody's world from the other side of the radio. Oh, and it makes my day to see the smile on their face, and in some small way I remember my place.

That's a line from one of the verses to the song and time and time again, I've seen this. I'm blessed to be working for a station that believes in what they are doing. Not only do I hear it from the listeners, but I am constantly hearing from my "contemporaries" of how lucky I am to be where I'm at. Success is a reflection of leadership, and this is a station that is owned by a man who's grandchildren run the halls and who (before direct deposit) insisted on personally handing out each pay check. His son manages the station but also teaches a Sunday school class. The Program Director is greeted by nearly every artist and label representative with a warm hug. He's a man whose advice was almost immediately sought after when a musician lost his little girl. These are the things I've noticed in the 9 months I've been here.

I'm proud to be where I'm at and thankful for the opportunities I've been given. The Bible tells us to "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation". I believe music can reach people nothing else can reach. Not Billy Graham or Joel Osteen, TBN, or "testamints". Music is my world. The Bible says we are the light of the world and we are to let it shine before men that they would praise God. Ghandi basically said the same thing when he said "Be the change you want to see in the world." We, as Christians need to present ourselves in such a way that people look at us and hear us and say to themselves, "I want that." Ghandi, by the way, also said "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Of course I love having that "all access pass" at concerts, and I love talking to artists where my content is not "what inspired you to write this song", but "how's your family". And I'll never forget the first time someone said "Oh my gosh, you're David Wage!" But, with God's help, I'll also never forget why I do what I do.

Promised Thanksgiving update

Ok, in my last post I said I'd send out another "recap" blog over Thanksgiving and obviously, that didn't happen, so here it is... better late than never.

I'll try to summarize best I can, but I've been keeping myself pretty busy with lots of concerts, live remotes, and a few little projects soon to come at KXOJ.

Back in October, mom and my aunt Rhonda came down for a concert with Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman. I'm sure there was another reason they came down, but free tickets didn't hurt. My boss is very close with Steven and Michael, so I really felt like I had the pleasure of meeting a different side of them than most. With Bob there and being backstage, it seemed they both had their "fan guard" down.

From my end, the concert was a big success as well. It was our first experience with the new Spirit Bank Event Center but it was a great one. Especially for me. The deal with them is they take care of most of the finer details as part of the rental price. Those finer details are normally my responsibility so my job was limited to finding merch volunteers. Their merch manager was great working with and I even got to show off a little for him. In talking, he expressed gratitude for finding all the volunteers and said that was not the case for the next night and he was getting a bit worried. Knowing the next night's show was Omaha, I gave him a hand and jumped on my phone. Before long I had 5 volunteers lined up for him. Again, he was thankful.

On to November, and two more concerts! The first, was Creation Festival Tour with Kutless, Thousand Foot Krutch, Pillar plus half a dozen or so more. We also chose to have our "Bible Across America" stop on this day. Zondervan Publishing contacted us a couple months ago and presented this idea to us about a handwritten bible they were putting together. They went from city to city having people come out and sign their very own scripture in the Bible. We got a HUGE response that day with I believe just shy of 600 people over a 6 hour period. This was their largest 6 hr stop and I believe we could have added 100 or so more had they had an additional podium (by the end, the wait was nearly 2 hours in line so many people left). We were also able to get many of the bands to sign, and they were quite excited about it as well.

The concert went well with over 2000 seats sold, which we were pleased with. Tulsa has become very concert saturated and ticket sales overall are way down. Many concerts are being cancelled and if not, the numbers are very low and promoters are losing big. I didn't actually stay for the show because by that point I had been there for 10 hours, but i heard it was awesome.

Mom and dad came down a few days after that for Thanksgiving. Mom made her annual huge Thanksgiving feast which I couldn't eat! I had been going through some back pain that day and by dinner time it was so bad that I had almost no appetite. Plenty of leftovers though! Had a great time with mom and dad that week and we did our annual trip over to the Rhema lights. For my readers who aren't from Tulsa, and aren't familiar, Rhema is a bible college down here that is right across the street. Every Thanksgiving, they begin their annual display which this year includes nearly 2 million lights all over their campus park! Its truly a site. This year, they included a LED display set to music.



Mom and pop left Sunday afternoon, and that night we already had another concert. Casting Crowns was joined by Natalie Grant, Avalon, Michael English, and more for the Christmas Celebration Spectacular or something like that. Before hand, Natalie Grant joined by about 90 listeners went down to John3:16 Mission to do some caroling. Even though it was a little chillly, we had a blast and collected a lot of warm items! You may remember John3:16 Mission from a previous blog.

So far this month has been pretty calm less a lot of remotes. Its Wednesday and i still have 2 more this week, then a concert Saturday night. This concert will be a blast though. TobyMac, Relient K, Family Force 5... I'm excited!

Just 13 days and I fly back to Omaha to see lots of family and friends for Christmas! Then on the 26th, I fly out to Vegas to help my sister and brother-in-law with the kids while they are working. I'll be out there through January 4th, and fly back to Tulsa. I'll do a mega picture post when I return!