Tag Archives: Mission Control

Daily Grind

Kindergarten Hero & Tuxedos on Mission Control

Leave a comment

And now, more adventures from your favorite kindergarten hero, Kevin D. Hendricks. Today he read the thrilling account of one Miss Ridinghood and her encounter with a flesh eating wolf to groups of squirming children. And he read the story not once, but four straight times! He also comforted crying kids, banished a misbehaver to the corner, and amazed many a five-year-old with his rubber ball-kicking ability. (cue superhero music)

Today also brought a record breaking night for Mission Control. With only six hours of lead time Mission Control produced an extremely successful poster and e-mail campaign. The radio station is having a free stuff week (which is the norm for Mission Control), and my show was given the honor of giving away a free tuxedo rental. That’s a prize you just have to plug. Who wouldn’t want a tuxedo? Heck, even if you don’t have a date, it’ll extend your laundry window, or be a nice pick-me-up in the middle of the week (everyone smiles at people who dress up, trust me, we did it tonight for the show). Anyway, the last minute campaign worked extremely well. I was especially proud of the simple yet effective flyer I designed in under twenty minutes.

While I’m plugging my own radio show, we also added sound clips of the infamous Hostage Takeover to our web page. It’s a multimedia event! You can listen to the abduction and read the ransom note at the same time. What a deal. Check it out at: http://listen.to/missioncontrol (follow the link to the hostage clips).

Just for Fun

Mission Control Taken Hostage

Leave a comment

Wow, what an evening. Once again the events transpiring on my radio show are taking the stage on of my daily ponderings. Tonight on Mission Control we had a live hostage situation. I’m not making this up, and I’m not joking. Seriously. We were planning a semi-normal Mission Control (normal by Mission Control standards), giving away concert tickets and such. We were also planning to apologize to some people who didn’t get some of the free stuff we were passing out last week. My cohost, Josh, was going to go to an entire dorm that got overlooked, and one person’s room in particular in another dorm. We got through about half the show, and Josh was venturing to this one person’s room in another dorm, and things got weird. I was in the station, and Josh had called up from this person’s room. I put Josh on the air live, and he starts telling me how he’s walking in, and how the person (we’ll call him Bob) had pizza and food for him. Then he puts Bob on the phone, and everything goes nuts! People are screaming, the phone starts getting fuzzy, loud shouts are heard. I’m sitting there in the station trying to figure out what’s going on. We didn’t stage this, and we had no clue what was happening. Finally some order was restored and Josh was put back on the phone. He had been taken hostage by the Getsch 3rd floor boys and they were giving him a list of demands. It was nuts. The episode went on for half an hour, and involved a friend of ours being taken hostage as well, then I was taken hostage, a guest on our show Andy Fast was taken hostage, and finally we were all released in good fun.

It’s amazing where a radio show can take you. We couldn’t have staged a better stunt. It was so spectacular. We thought last week’s show was good. Wow. The drama, the suspense, the shear hilarity. It certainly is true that the listeners make the show. Josh and I have been having fun with Mission Control since the fall of ’97. We’ve always wanted to put on a fun show that people will enjoy. I think tonight we’ve taken that to a new level, and we didn’t even do it. Our listeners did. What more can you ask for? It’s a good thing we have three weeks off before our next show, we’ll never be able to top this. Of course, that’s what I said last week.

Just for Fun

Mission Control: Remote Location Night

Leave a comment

Tonight on Bethel Radio my cohort and I truly created a radio phenomenon. We did a “Remote Location Night,” where my co-host, Josh, ran around campus giving out free stuff and telling people about our show. What a response! There were cheers, shouts, “Welcome Josh!” signs, strobe lights, air horns, and even a “King of the Radio” crown that was presented to Josh. He came in contact with over 150 people and back in the studio (where I was) the phone barely stopped ringing. Wow. All the hard work finally pays off. I can breathe once again. Except for that homework I still need to do for tomorrow. Doh. Oh well, it’s time for bed.

Music

Ben Kyle and Luke Jacobs on Mission Control

Leave a comment

My radio show, Mission Control, returned to the air tonight. Ah, it feels good to be on again. Tonight Bethel Students Ben Kyle and Luke Jacobs came on and played a three song acoustic set. It sounded really good. Ben’s Irish and not only has a really cool accent, but a great singing voice. I guess I could describe it as raspy and airy. But I don’t claim to be a good music critic, so take that for what it’s worth. It just sounds different, and I like it.

With a beat up and chipped guitar the musician plays his heart. I’ve got to hand it to them, they’re a very brave breed. I can write something and stand a million miles from my work. The musician (speaking of the live performance of course) has nothing between him and the hostile audience but a microphone stand. That takes guts. It’s also performance based, which doesn’t give you much chance for editing, one of the writer’s best friends.

While introducing one of his songs Ben made a comment that I thought kind of captured the essence of music. He said that he didn’t like to explain songs too much because you’re supposed to catch the meaning of the song by listening to the song. It sounds so simple, but so often we want to hear what the songwriter thinks, and we don’t just listen to the song and see what it means for us. That’s the beauty of music. It doesn’t need an explanation. The music puts meaning to the words and encourages you to feel the emotions that the words are expressing. That’s what makes music such a powerful instrument. (no pun intended)