Rip Van Winkle cat-napping

(Grand Rapids)  —  The big ArtPrize contest gets underway Wednesday in Grand Rapids. More than 12-hundred artists from around the world will be vying for a 250-thousand-dollar top prize.  The second-place finisher will get 100-thousand dollars, third place will be good for 50-thousand dollars, and fourth-through-tenth place finishers will take home 7-thousand dollars apiece. The Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation is funding the awards. The artists represent 41 states and 15 nations, and their work is on display at 159 locations in and around downtown Grand Rapids. The winner will be chosen by a public vote, and voting is free. But you must register in person at one of 14 registration locations within the ArtPrize district through October 7th. There are a variety of ways to vote, mostly involving the use of social media, such as the Internet, mobile-phone texting, and the like. The contest was the brainstorm of entrepreneur Rick DeVos.

Hi, Patty. You ought to give Joe a shout. He’d probably love to hear from you.

To listen to the station, go to www.wjrwam.com . I’m on from 4pm-6pm, although there’s about a 6-minute digital delay…so it’s more like 4:15pm that we start on the computer. In the upper right corner it says "Listen Live". Click that. Another box will pop up that says "Click here to Listen Live". Click that. Now, just wait for it to buffer a few seconds. Make sure your speaker volume is up on the computer (there should be a little speaker icon on the bottom right of your computer screen). Cheers.

I bet a buddy before the season that the Lions would go 8-8. He phoned me yesterday with: "That steak’s going to taste awfully good, Jimbo. Mmmm."

I was pumped about Michigan beating Notre Dame. Sorry about that Phil Donahue, wherever you are. My mother liked Notre Dame and Michigan. She was born in Kalamazoo, MI., which is probably less than 100 miles from South Bend, Indiana, where Notre Dame (just south of the Michigan border. She said when she went to school, some students joking sang their fight song as:

"Beer beer, for old Notre Dame. You bring the whiskey, to heck with the game. Send those freshmen out for gin, don’t let a sober fellow in. We never stagger, we never fall, we sober up on pure alcohol…while our Loyal Sons are marching onward to victory!"

Funny. But you have to respect Notre Dame…a great Catholic institution. I was raised Catholic. Still subscribe to many of their believes/principles…but, as with any faith, there are always some whackos who twist words and meanings.

 Thanks, Patty. Are you a Giants or Jets fan, living in the Big Apple? I liked the Jets when Joe Namath "guaranteed" a victory in the January 1969 Super Bowl versus Baltimore. That led to the AFL-NFL merger the following year.

Cheers.

Frankly, my dear…I do give a darn. Yep…they cranked it out loud and hard. Just an awesome, professionally done show.

Have fun at the Peanut Fest!

I don’t know where to start, there are and have been so many amazing things going on in Grand Rapids. Last night (9-12), I saw an awesome concert at Rosa Parks Circle outdoor amphitheatre in downtown Grand Rapids. The Concussions opened up for The Edgar Winter Band. Both bands were scintillating on an ideal-weather night. There were a few thousand outside for the show.

 Grand Rapids launches an amazing international art contest next Wednesday called ArtPrize, with the winner getting $250,000. I’ll post a link below to an AP article about it. One guy I interviewed live on WJRW radio, Rob Bliss, plans to have 100,000 multi-colored paper planes dropped from a series of skyscrapers downtown at the same time, to form a kaleidoscope of colors. A huge throng of musicians will be on the street below playing a theme song.

Another guy was standing on top of an "International Peace Bomb" for 24 hours that was hoisted up 45 feet by a crane. He stood on that reconceptualization-themed art bomb sketching two paintings among 84 that he will piece together into a giant painting called, I Do Have a Dream, with Dr. M.L.K. JR and other stuff on it. Each set of paintings will be crafted while the artist is performing a different stunt, such as while skydiving.

Another lad needed two huge cranes to help install a giant artwork at a bridge over the Grand River. This week, a renowned New York artist will have her artwork installed on Calder Plaza, the huge outdoor epicenter downtown. The Calder, itself, is an artwork that was installed in 1969 and has been part of the city logo ever since. You can read more here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30371090/#storyContinued

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/32631146 (The Man in the Van)

Then, another event that will bring national publicity to my hometown of Grand Rapids begins Sept. 14-15. It’s called the Velocity program, run by a group titled, CEO’s for Change. A group of heavy-hitters in business, etc., will launch it Monday and Tuesday in G.R. Please check it out: How can cities deliver a new and much-sought after American good life that is both sustainable and delightful to citizens?  That question will be at the center of a two-day creative salon of 40 select experts from a variety of fields held in Grand Rapids on Sept. 14-15, which will launch VELOCITY, a movement to imagine and cultivate the best future for our cities and city living. To jumpstart the thinking on VELOCITY, our team developed a brief framing piece that demonstrates how cities are the best and most logical place for a new American dream to be realized. Read it here. And if you haven’t read it, check out Carol Coletta’s blog post on GOOD that sets…

http://sustainablog.org/2009/08/24/ceos-for-cities%E2%80%99-velocity-american-dream-20/

That’s amazing! Yep, 760 WJR- Detroit, the legendary "Great Voice of the Great Lakes." It was so sad when it came out last week that Ernie Harwell, the radio/TV voice of the Tigers for decades, has incurable bile-duct cancer. I don’t know if there is one person in the United States who is more beloved. I mean, I have never heard one bad word about Harwell, but everyone - and I mean everyone! - just RAVES about him. He is so very beloved. A great Christian, gentle, a baseball historian, and to many people’s ears, the greats baseball voice ever.

But giving him a run for the money is his long-time sidekick, Paul Carey. Paul has the deepest voice on the planet. He makes the so-called "Voice of God" on NFL films sound like a little girl. Paul is a magnificent character, too, and like Ernie, extremely humble.

Being on the new WJRW (Citadel owns both stations) in Grand Rapids has been phenomenally exhausting, but exciting at the same time. Today, I went to that all-faith service, as you may’ve heard live on our stream at wjrwam.com . Then, there was a nutcase (alleged) who gunned down 2 people in Owosso, Mich., today (Friday).

But your work at WJR impresses me! I’d love to know what years, and if you did it live in the JR studios. I assume your were in the Fisher Building, where WJR still sits "high atop the golden dome". I’m a huge fan of old-time radio. Once upon a time, it was king. It’s slowly been whittled away into a pile of commercialized crap over the decades. But I think a comeback could be in store, as smart-thinking corporations like Citadel are realizing that radio must return to its local roots to survive. Rather than playing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ 87 times a week, they’ll have to do something creative, because people can play their own tunes anytime they want on iPOD, YouTube, whatever. Satellite radio has become a falling meteorite in a very short time, for that very reason. Same with the music biz.

The epiphany? That the pioneers of radio and music did it right!