You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.
You're listening to mornings with back right low powered by up north news Now for my lake wassota studio.
Here is the founding editor of up north news And great low
and good morning 806 nice to have you back here up north on this Thursday morning October 16th.
We'll have Joseph Becky coming up this hour Chad Holmes as well from 98 9wxco Parker Olson, of course producing things in Madison studio a 2 and Chad has got some some
big news to report from WXCO.
You get a chance to infiltrate his little workspace today as they have a bit of an open house.
Mr. Holmes, good morning.
How are you?
Doing good.
Yep Gonna open up those doors and let the folks come in and let them tell me what they think
Hey, you know what you're still one up on Derek van Orden for having a town hall and letting people come in and say what they think about what you do I think you should be saluted for this
real quickly I was online this morning that I was I was looking at one of the social media sites and there was this story from the Washington Post I don't know if it's a new story
an old story.
It had a picture, a cartoon picture of Michael Stipe of REM, you know, and
The guy looks like the brother of Derek Van Orden.
I would just encourage you to look at that picture.
And it's like, Michael Stipe is the coolest guy around and Derek Van Orden is Derek Van Orden.
And I mean, I thought, holy cow, that's Derek Van Orden.
No, Michael Stipe.
You know, we all have doppelgangers out there and Parker claims that he can be one that his Halloween costume is going to be Pat Kraitlo.
And I'm looking at you, Chad, and it wouldn't take much for you to be a Pat Kraitlo for Halloween either.
Although I don't know why we would scare
of the villagers that way.
So, you know, Derek Van Orton could have a doppelganger too.
I get twice the candy at every door.
You
would say that boy clearly has an appetite.
Let's give him the king size bars.
Yeah, exactly.
So I
want to just mention this open house for Christmas out there because I know that we got the big audience here, but between 10 a.m.
and 4 p.m.
today, we'll open up the doors.
We got some finger food, some food from the Mint Cafe, which is right down the road here in downtown
Washington.
So we're gonna give you some free food.
We got beverages.
We got WXO Sway.
come on in and also we'll let you come into our studios.
If you wanna get in front of the microphones and have a little bit of fun, we'll record you up.
And also just basically love to have you come by, meet me, meet our new news reporter, Isabella Nieto, talk to our salesperson, Aliyah Arroyo, my producer, Ian Welch.
We're all gonna be hanging out here.
And if there's things that you like about what we're doing, we'd love to hear.
But also if there's things that we could do better, we'd love to hear about as well.
And then to put the cherry on top of the big cake, Todd Alba will be doing his show live here from two to four
this afternoon.
I know.
I mean, he and I, you know, both took our shows to Wisconsin Rapids for the open house.
And I unfortunately have a schedule conflict that I couldn't be out there this morning.
I would have loved that very much.
So I hope people come out.
If nothing else, I think the big draw, I mean, you might think it's Todd Alba.
It's going to be Ian.
People have been hearing Ian on your show forever, and they finally get a chance to meet the producer behind the scenes.
That's exactly right.
And we'll have people can sit right next to him, see what he does in that other room across the way.
You
hear that Parker?
How'd you like it if people could come in the room and see what you do?
The thing about it is our studio here is right on the street.
We have the big windows right here on the streets.
You
Oh, you had that.
You had that at you have that at the Green Bay Station.
You had that for a time at the Warsaw Station.
It's nice to have the street level stuff.
Todd Alba, of course, no stranger to live shows.
He was at a theater in the Waukesha area yesterday for the premiere of that Packers movie with the Japanese tourists, which looks like it's going to be just it's going to be a hoot.
So yeah, there's all kinds of ways.
that civic media gets out into the community and, you know, you do it as well with all the live sports you do.
But please come.
It'll make me look good because we have a few folks coming from corporate in and it just looks so bad if nobody comes and then, you know, hanging out here and it's like, you
I
bet you, I bet you you've been doing your long career path.
I've done this in the past.
Have you ever been at a remote that just dies?
You have these two hour remotes, you know, you go to the local car dealership or somewhere and like nobody comes and it's just it's the longest two hours of your life.
Well,
we don't want to believe it.
No, we don't.
So head over there.
Give it.
Let me give you the address 301 North Third Street.
So if you've never been there, go see the radio station 301 North Third Street in Wausau for the 989 WXO open house today from 10 until
four.
Speaking of these live remotes, I don't know.
I think the statute of limitations has expired.
I think I can tell this story now after 39 years.
My first job out of college was at the old WA QE and rice lake, which is no longer there.
It's been swallowed up by WJMC.
But
WAQE, I start there, like the first weekend, I'm told to deliver something, maybe a piece of equipment or something to a local electronics store for where they were doing a remote.
And so, okay, I did.
So I go there and they're doing this remote.
And somebody says, Hey, don't forget to enter our drawing for a VCR.
And I'm
Dumb and young and okay, so I signed my name on the piece of paper and put it in the box and Sure enough a couple of days later.
I get this call from the store saying hey you won the VCR and it was the VCR that we used for you know, maybe almost 20 years after the fact and it took the longest time for me to go You know, I probably shouldn't have been able to win that being a station Nobody at the store knew me and I was just like free VCR.
I like working
It's
so good to be naive at times, isn't it?
I miss it sometimes.
There's many a time you look back at being naive about something and you just wince at your young stupidness and then you get that every so often and you go, oh, it was so nice to be young and innocent before I got old and
cynical, you know?
Oh, it is.
I agree with that 100%.
You don't want to know how the sausage is made.
Yes, exactly.
But today is that way.
Today you get a chance to do it and see how Chad's making sausage over there at WXCO.
I did mention in a previous segment that I was going to ask you for an update on Wasaw schools.
We were talking about how in Hudson they've had to make the decision to close two schools.
You know, Claire, they're looking at maybe closing one or two schools.
And I feel like it was about a year ago we were talking about Wasaw and
kind of a little bit of waffling actually on whether or what schools were going to close.
What's the, did that actually finally happen or is that still just being talked about?
What's the latest
there?
It's actually two stage.
story here because I think the original story that we talked about a couple of years ago was the school board actually voted to combine Wausau East and Wausau West high schools into Wausau High School, which used to be back before 1971.
And then shortly thereafter, they said, no, we're not going to do that.
We're going to go back and we're changing our vote.
We're going to go back to Wausau East and Wausau West, which happened.
And then it was like, it was not the, I would say the smoothest operation at the time.
But then after that they went and started studying the elementary schools and they went through the process and they decided to shut down four elementary schools at the end of last school year and they made the changes for this year.
And in fact, earlier this week on Monday, I had the loss of school board president, Jim Boucher, join us.
And I asked him about that, about how it's gone, because we're now more than a month into the new school year.
And I said that.
I had not heard a lot of rumbling.
Sometimes when those big changes occur, you'll hear those rumbles of discontent.
And I said, well, basically, how is it gone?
And he said, it's gone really well that everybody that's all the stakeholders, I guess you call them, have
been able to adjust accordingly, and it's not been a massive problem.
And did not go deep into the idea of the high schools again, because despite the fact that they made that change, the demographics are not changing.
I still think that this is going to be an issue in this community in the future.
And whether or not they go back and have that discussion again sooner rather than later is something that's up in the air.
I don't think it's going to happen too soon.
But I just think that at some point that question is going to come up again.
And I think you hit it on the head that you look at the enrollments around the state of Wisconsin.
And these questions are going to continue to occur.
And also, again, the ultimate
Bogeyman, there is the lack of proper funding that makes a lot of these decisions even more important, because frankly, you just don't have the money to keep some of these schools open.
And then of course, there's the big story you've been following there with Mayor Doug Denny, you know, taking that Dropbox and this from Eric Fance and the Wausau Daily Herald, the- Fine.
Eric, I know
Eric.
Okay, thank you.
Can I set it like that way too?
They have found that Mayor Doug Denny violated the ethics code by moving the Dropbox and they ordered the mayor to conform his actions to the city's code of ethics.
They did not make a recommendation to the Common Council to censure, suspend, or remove the mayor from office, nor issue fines to the mayor.
A State Department of Justice investigation into the matter remains open.
So one more step in the process.
That's exactly right.
And I think that, I mean, there are probably some folks are saying, well, why don't we have a penalty at this point?
But my opinion on this, and then again, it's my opinion is it was vitally important to get to this decision.
And I do think that the ethics board here in Washington, there's a lot of credit.
There was a lot of pressure.
The mayor has pushed against this from the very beginning.
He's been, you know, fighting back against it, allies of the mayor as well.
It has not been an easy situation for these folks on the ethics committee.
I think this has been the most pressure they've been under in this position for a very, very long time.
So I tip my cap to these citizens who served on this board and made the decision.
And the bottom line is, the mayor was told, you are not able to do that.
Because if you don't, if you somehow had just gone away, would not have been a decision made, they would have stopped the investigation, then what happens the next time?
So this comes out, the mayor basically said that he's glad that this is over, that now the city can go back to work about the mayor.
I mean, the relationship right now between the mayor and the council just is not good.
I mean, he's threatening the veto of the budget now.
This week it came out.
Boy, I mean, I'm gonna be very interested to see if now that
This part of the story is over.
We still have the State Department of Justice investigation that is out there, but there's more.
to the whole relationship and everything that's going on than just this Dropbox situation here at City Hall.
Yeah, and I'm not exactly holding my breath for Eric Tony, the special prosecutor to, you know, do anything other than if even a slap on the wrist for the mayor.
Now, because the ethics committee has now said what they said, I mean, theoretically, could a common council member then put forward a resolution of censure or something like that?
Or is this truly all done?
No, I think that the council does have that option to decide penalty.
We'll see what happens here.
I think it's, again, something that's up in the air right now.
This just came down last night, so we'll have to wait and see if any of the council members come out and stay along those lines that maybe they'll look in that direction in the future.
I mean, it would go a long way if the mayor showed even
the slightest sliver, you know, of not remorse, but you know, just acknowledge that he did not what he what he did, he shouldn't have done.
And there there hasn't been any of that from the mayor as far as I can tell.
So I think this this by and large puts the matter to bed.
But
Frankly, I'm a little surprised that what he did say last night was that, you know, I'm glad it's it was actually he
wasn't
at least he didn't come up.
Yes.
I think that was actually somewhat of a positive.
Gotcha.
You can check out Chad's morning updates on 98 9wxco also on the app or past episodes at wxco.fm have have a great time at the open house.
Chad, thank you.
Thank you, Pat.
All right, Sean O'Malley talking about your money and the markets and Joseph Pecky all on the way.
I'm Pat Crite low.
you're
up north.
Tell you what, we got a thing for doctors on this show.
I'm Mary Dua Doctor.
We've got Dr. Lirely on here twice a week and now we've got Dr. Kelly Snooks who does a video series for Up North News called Raising Wisconsin.
She's a pediatrician in the Milwaukee area who does a wonderful series of videos that you can find at the Up North News Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok pages, all about the latest in health news that you need to know about, especially if you're a parent.
So go looking for Raising Wisconsin, the new video series by Dr. Kelly Snooks.
We are welcoming back Sean O'Malley, who's been away for the past couple of weeks to talk about your money.
and the markets and where some of your money is going.
Sean, welcome back.
How are you?
Yeah, these are these were work trips, unfortunately, so.
did I
Munich.
Yeah, that's that's fantastic.
But when we talk about where where your money is going, we got to talk about how much of your money is going to
Argentina.
And that's right.
And the irony in this.
Tell us more.
So yes, the US government has pledged $40 billion of aid to Argentina.
Their president was going through a bit of a rough time.
So now that $40 billion pledge should shore them up.
And as a matter of fact, it has allowed them to temporarily suspend their export taxes.
Which then meant that they could make a big sell order of soybeans to China how much in soybeans seven million tons of soybeans the sales for the US farmers zero
so We put these tariffs on China China says fine.
We're not buying your soybeans from Wisconsin farmers and others We're gonna go get our soybeans from Argentina and they can do that because they're getting all this aid from from
from Trump you can't
Honest to goodness, you could not even make this stuff up.
If I had told you this a year ago, people would have said, Oh, no, nobody would have done something like that.
But that is where your money is going.
That's
Yeah, yeah.
Next is the way that we're kind of operating in the blind here because of the government shutdown.
Again, a lot of what moves the markets is data and you need a neutral party to be working on the data.
That's what the United States government has consistently done, but we're not getting payroll stats now.
We're not getting payroll stats.
We're not getting CPI data because all of those are done by US government entities.
And now that we have a US government shutdown,
Well then, I guess that's bad news that President Trump doesn't need to worry about temporarily.
But we do have some proxy information on the payroll data, even though we don't really have great proxy information on the CPI side.
ADP, the big payroll company.
uh indicated that uh their payrolls went down in september by 33 000 disproportionately impacting the small and medium sized enterprises so they went down by 40 000 jobs on the small side 20 000 on the medium side and up slightly for the larger companies which led to that offset to 33 000 down in total but still very soft employment picture
Yeah.
And again, you know, the ADP number, it ain't bad.
It's just that it's, again, a private firm as opposed to, you know, government data that would be coming out.
And we're also, we're not going to get some other numbers like consumer price index.
Yeah.
No CPI.
That's what I meant by inflation.
Yep.
So we're not going to be getting, we're not going to see how bad it is for a while.
So that'll be, you know,
of also obscured from us.
But one thing that's getting a little bit of traction though, Pat, is this concept of the AI bubble, the artificial intelligence bubble.
It feels like a bubble.
It feels like, I mean, we've known about AI for a while, but it really feels like this year has been this explosive growth in like promoting it to the general public, which I have to believe when you say bubble has to be impacting stock prices.
We've seen the stock market go up and up and up and I think Last I checked the S&P index was up somewhere around 19% which is just a phenomenal year by any stretch of the imagination Which would be great, but the thing is that earnings aren't going up.
We don't have a great employment picture You know inflation's going up as well.
And so they're starting to talk about this bubble especially around the price of tech
firm company stocks being a little overinflated due to the expectation and there is some skepticism that's starting to creep into the stock market most notably.
Jamie diamond of course the CEO of soon to be outgoing CEO of JP Morgan chase said that we are in some form of bubble territory.
The next day, he took that back and just said that he meant that not everything in AI is going to succeed.
I think we can all agree on that one.
But given the level of the prices, there's a lot of froth.
And even journalists such as David K. Johnston, an appealed surprise warning journalist, has said, now is a good time to increase your financial reserves and
curtail some of your expenses.
I think that's very sage advice given kind of what we're looking at.
Well, that would be even without a government shutdown, which we do have.
And what's the latest estimate of what kind of a hit that's giving to the government?
The current estimate is that it's between $7 billion and $15 billion per week in GDP that's being reduced.
Putting that into other terms, Goldman Sachs came out with an estimate and said that's about
0.2% of the annualized quarterly number that comes out per week that's going down every week that the government shutdown extends.
Yeah, this does not just operate in a single, you know, political prism.
It has ramifications throughout the economy.
These shutdowns
always end up costing taxpayers and end up costing the economy money and This is no exception here.
It all got started with tariffs.
What's the tariff watch tally up to now?
Yeah, well as I promised to making good on my promise is any good broadcaster should the Trump tariff watch tally is now up to 214.9 billion dollars in extra tariff taxes paid by Americans
for 2025 through the end of September.
And that data comes from the US Treasury Department.
So congratulations, folks.
We have all cumulatively paid an extra about $215 billion in tariff taxes.
And that's in addition to the $40 billion we're giving to
our container and the
the farmers.
We're the money
Exactly.
We're just made a money.
Sean O'Malley, thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
We'll talk to you next week.
Back with Joseph Becky after this.
So here now is Joe's pecky to talk to us about things that have been happening in politics this week But first we turn to Joe's pecky sports therapist Joe.
Good morning.
How you doing?
I know we got we got the little brewers baseball this afternoon They're in Los Angeles now.
I think nine other teams is it nine other teams I think have come back in seven games series from being down 0-2 at home to come back and win this thing it's
It's 16% of the time it has happened.
How are you feeling about this?
Can we, can we count on like bucks and six?
Can we do brewers and six?
I also am a believer that history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
And while I was only six months old, you are surely old enough to remember that the only other time, the only time the brewers have made the world series.
They were down zero games to two in the 1982 ALCS So I think history can rhyme and it all starts this afternoon
I didn't think that you were that much younger than me, and thank you for not lumping me in with the 1958 Milwaukee Braves that gave up a 3-1 lead to the Yankees, I believe it was.
So, yes, better times ahead, and they start this afternoon.
And then when that's done, we turn toward the weekend.
Let's start with the No Kings protests, because I've got to get your thoughts on the things that are being said, the pre-bottle, if you will,
And I guess while Sean Duffy's comments about this being all about Antifa and everything, I could comment on them, but it would be insulting to a box of rocks that I might liken it to.
Why don't we have your kinder and gentler spin on how they're pre spinning millions of Americans in the streets this weekend?
So Secretary Duffy stopped at describing anyone who chooses to patriotically and peacefully go and protest.
on No Kings Day, part two, the sequel, as members of Antifa and paid protesters.
And that's just stupid and makes no sense.
It is Republican members of Congress who have gone even further than Mr. Duffy, who I am saving my real ire for.
Mike Johnson, Tom Emmer, Steve Scalise have decided that
If you go to this protest, they get to call you a terrorist.
That if you object to the idea of a king and a monarchy in this country, that makes you a radical and means you hate America.
And I would just remind those gentlemen that this country was founded on protest and that we have not had a king since 1776, nor should we.
And
the idea that these gentlemen who hold positions of trust and authority in the United States government would use words like terrorist to describe peaceful protesters before the fact we cannot like we can't gloss over this no because this you know what this country does to terrorists we kill them
Go ask Osama bin Laden.
Oh wait, you can't because seal team six took him out right and so for every you know appeal by Republicans to To watch our language and for the civility police in the wake of horrific acts of political violence Like I don't even know what to do with this when Republican leaders in Congress think it is okay to tell
grandparents, senior citizens, people who work for a living, who are going to take their dogs and patriotic signs out to a peaceful protest this weekend, that they are somehow pro-Hamas, or that they are terrorists who hate America, is beyond the pale.
And I just think we need to like remind people of that.
So as dumb as what Sean Duffy said is, at least he didn't go further.
like some of the gentlemen he used to serve in Congress with did.
Yeah, I mean, and again, let's get back to the root word.
Antifa means anti-fascist.
What's the problem there?
That was kind of the main goal on D-Day.
So let's be careful how we're making comparisons here.
But again, there's so much
Messaging they're trying just to rather than serve rather than govern they're trying to message and so we'll come back to some of the more serious aspects of the messaging but I do have to take a moment to thank the folks at the Madison Airport and a whole bunch of other airports that have seen the the partisan propaganda put out by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and said
No, we're not showing that video in our airports at the TSA, where she's specifically blaming Democrats for the shutdown of government.
Again, there's got to be some standards.
There's got to be some guardrails left.
And using big brother approaches to a captive audience in the airport, that's got to be one of them.
It's got to be held at bay.
It is a Hatch Act violation, full stop.
That used to be something that
United States governments cared about.
I mean, like, the number of things that I had to get pre-cleared by the Office of Legal Counsel when I was a Obama appointee to ensure I was steering clear of the Hatch Act would shock you.
And here they're just like, yeah, we don't care.
We don't care about that anymore.
We only care about enforcing the laws that we care about.
And, you know, it makes a mockery of the system.
it cheapens the discourse even further.
And it's yet another example that they want rules to apply to other people that don't apply to them.
Yeah.
And again, my own personal view, and I'm getting ahead of myself.
But when all of this is done, whatever this is, I do not want to hear people go, Oh, we should just turn the page.
No, no, there's a lot of graft, grift and corruption that are going to have to be
prosecuted when the time is right.
And I don't want to hear any of this bunk about, oh, you know, let's turn the page and move on.
No, no, thank you very much, because there's already so much harm being done by this shutdown.
Nevermind the propaganda, nevermind the lies, but the actual harm that's being done.
And as you know, we had Leslie Dockon from Protect Our Care yesterday on the program to remind us to keep the focus not on the
party spats, if you will, but on the real impact on Americans through their health care, through their checkbook.
I've never found myself agreeing more with conservative mag of fire brand Marjorie Taylor Green, who continues to accurately point out that her party has dropped the ball on health care.
And if they don't do anything, people like
her three kids who are in their 20s are not going to be able to afford health insurance.
More than 20 million Americans are going to see their costs skyrocket because Republicans would rather play politics than do something to lower the cost of healthcare for American consumers.
I had to sort of, I mean, it's like enough to make you do a spit take every five minutes, but the Trump administration this week is set on bailing out Argentina.
Who is now selling soybeans to China even though our farmers can't but we're gonna give them 20 billion dollars on top of it and Hawaii senator Brian Schatz who's a Democrat pointed out You know for 20 billion we could fund the health care tax credits as part of the Affordable Care Act for a year So this is what the Trump administration is choosing to do rather than choose to lower your costs listener or those of your friends and your neighbors and your community members They are choosing to bail out Argentina
and make you pay more for healthcare.
That is their current position.
I certainly hope it changes, but we can drop the pretense of America first or anything they said in the campaign about lowering costs for you, because they don't care.
They're prepared to let your healthcare costs triple so they can bail out his buddy in Argentina and send $20 billion of your tax money there.
And by the way, they are literally doubling down in saying that the Trump administration is going to push for an additional 20 billion in private investments to go to Argentina.
Of all the things they could try to encourage investors to do in the United States, they choose instead to do for a place that, like you said, is now
A market for China and leaving our farmers high and dry again.
It's just it's just so crazy puzzling But to bring it back to health care here And again Leslie doc mentioned this yesterday as well along with the Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits and along with the trillion dollars of cuts to Medicaid
You also have real harm to Medicare and that does not get talked about nearly enough But I know the folks that protect our care have been making sure this week that you know We don't lose sight of of that development as well.
Yeah at last count the nonpartisan congressional budget office Confirming that Trump administration policies mean five hundred and thirty six billion dollars in cuts to Medicaid over the next ten years and
Guess what seniors, even if you're on Medicare, the premiums that you do pay and out of pocket costs, they're all going up.
So every opportunity, they never miss an opportunity to make you pay more for healthcare, right?
And it's not, like I've gotten to the point where what we need to do is not listen to what Trump says and what Republicans say because it's nonsensical most of the time anyways, but look at what they're doing.
And when the bean counters at CBO,
say it's more than half a trillion dollars in cuts, and when they say that Medicare premiums and out-of-pocket costs are going to go up, that's a thing they're doing.
That the Trump administration is choosing to do to you while they redecorate the White House and raise hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the size of the ballroom.
Does that sound like America first?
Does that sound like somebody who is waking up every morning thinking about how to make your life better, how to make your life more affordable?
No way.
It's absurd.
So stop listening to what they say.
Start looking at what they do.
This is a thing they're doing on healthcare.
And sometimes you may not know what they're doing or what they're saying until after the fact.
But when it does, you should pay attention.
And what I'm doing is I'm leading into the story from Politico about all kinds of young Republican leaders around the country and how some of their text message exchanges have been released or leaked.
And it's not pretty, the rank, sexism, racism that's in these things.
I mean, it is just dripping.
And I'm not saying
that Charlie Kirk would have approved of every one of them.
But I'm telling you, every one of those young Republican leaders would tell you they were inspired by Charlie Kirk.
And for the last 10 years, Donald Trump has been, you know, for reasons passing understanding, the golden king of the Republican Party and of conservatives, which, you know,
We used to understand that conservatives thought the character counted, right?
That men of morals and high character should be in positions of leadership.
That's out the window.
And this is the cost, because the kids are always watching, whether it is unacceptable political violence, whether it is vile political rhetoric, whether it is that candidate Trump making fun of people with disabilities, whether it is reporting yesterday.
that showed that the Trump administration is going to redo the asylum process and the immigration system to only allow English speakers, South Africans who are white and Europeans who are opposed to their own country's migration policies.
That's just racist, period.
It walks like a racist.
It talks like a racist.
It governs like a racist.
At some point, you stop calling it a duck and you just understand it's racism.
And that is what has been atop the Republican Party for a decade now.
And I didn't make that choice.
You didn't make that choice.
Many of your listeners didn't make that choice.
But it's the reality of where we are.
And now we got to figure out how to win some power in 2026 to put a check on it.
All right, Joseph Pecky, when we're back next week, I hope we're talking about an upcoming game six and one game of the new Milwaukee Bucks season will be in the books as well.
We'll talk to you then.
See you.
Back with more after this.
You're up north.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
All right, here to take us home on this Thursday morning, 8.52 right now is Todd Alba.
You can catch his show.
conveniently named the Todd Alba Show on weekday afternoons from two until four across the Civic Media radio network where we find Mr. Alba somewhere in the greater Waukesha Metroplex for what was I hope a very successful world premiere of a little movie yesterday.
Good morning, Pat.
Good morning, Parker.
Nice to see you both.
My voice is kind of going here.
But yeah, it was it was a really cool event.
The movie is called No Packers, No Life, and of the world premiere from the same producers of Just A Bit Outside, the story of the 1980s, you Milwaukee Brewers.
World premiere here last night at the beautiful majestic Marcus Theater in Waukesha.
A good time was out by all of full theater.
And boy, Pat, I can tell you if you enjoy just a bit outside, I think people also enjoy this film.
The synopsis is an American guy from Wisconsin ends up on a business trip in Japan and sees a guy walking towards him with an Aaron Rodgers shirt on, or a jersey.
And so the American guy, Tai, he's like, go, Pat, go.
And then the Japanese guy is like.
go pack go and they start screaming at each other turns out the Japanese guy is on his way to the Japanese Packer cheer team which are a group of Japanese Packer fans that watch these games live Packer games like at two or five in the morning on Monday mornings and then get together at the off season and watch old games and it's the story of bringing about 30 of these Japanese fans to the Mecca of of Lambo Field and and it's looking at
the Packers in Wisconsin through the lens of other folks and Pat is a world traveler.
You've experienced this, I know as well.
You appreciate things about where you're from.
when you see it through the lens of somebody else?
It's wonderful.
I've been to places all over and have looked up the Packer Bar in Scottsdale, Arizona, or Manhattan in the heart of New York City and Sydney, Australia, where I found a bunch of Packer fans who gather at a particular bar.
And there's nothing quite like it, but I love that this movie takes it a step further and says,
These guys are great.
Why don't we fly them to Green Bay and give them the full experience?
And here's the thing.
Unlike the Karen that we talked about at the start of the show from Game 2 of the NLCS who, you know, made a joke, quote unquote, about calling ICE on this Dodger fan, these folks behave themselves.
Nobody was a jerk to each other.
It was the best part of sports fandom that you can actually welcome your visitors and give them the full Wisconsin experience.
That's what happens 99 times out of 100.
Thank God.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
And yeah, I mean, you're right.
And the cool thing was they brought these Japanese fans to Green Bay.
They weren't staying at the fancy hotels.
They stayed with this guy's family and friends in their homes.
And so they were doing ski shots before before the game.
And and there is a line in the film.
I don't think it's ruining it for anybody, but one of the Japanese people ends up they're driving by Lambo at night on the night they get in and he looks out the window and he says, I want to live here.
And it's like, we do live here.
And I think too often we take for granted the magical, the mystique, not just of our sports teams, but in the larger sense, the community that those sports teams reflect and help build, that we do, you know, you're going through a tailgate and somebody says, here, have a beer.
We got an extra broad.
And that's the indication of the Wisconsin spirit, Pat.
I know you've seen that as well.
Oh, absolutely.
When I went to a Packer game last year at Lambeau and now I forget who we were playing, but there were some people in the other.
teams, jerseys.
And I mean, people were saying hi to them, they're saying welcome to Green Bay, walking past somebody's tailgate, somebody yelled out to them, hey, you guys want a brat.
And they, you know, it was getting close to game time.
So they said, no, thank you.
But you could, you could, they were kind of looking at each other like, we're being treated very nicely here.
And you would not get that in most other cities.
So tell people the name of the film again, because it's going to be playing in several theaters.
primarily in the southeastern half of the state, but there's there's exceptions like Rothschild as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
I can go to two websites.
No Packers, no life dot com.
No, by the way, not
K. That's right.
No Packers, no life.
And then also the Marcus theater dot com site.
It's going to be here in southeast Wisconsin, Green Bay, Madison, La Crosse trolling bears fans in Gurney, Illinois, and much like with
with just a bit outside, they hope that if people go to theaters and see this now, it will reach places like Eau Claire, Wausau, and other places as well throughout the state of Wisconsin.
Oh, and we've seen that with other films.
So yes, get out there and patronize it.
Go see the movie, get the full theater experience.
Is the rumor correct that you will be leaving the Waukesha area there shortly to head up to Wausau?
Just a little spelling variation there to take part in the 98.9 WXCO.
And the
words of Peter, Paul and Mary, my bags are packed.
I'm ready to go.
So it's going to be from a walkie-shot to Wausau today.
Wow.
We're honored to be part of the the open house up there for WXCO in Wausau.
The great Chad Holmes, of course, one of the hardest working people
in
civic media.
We're going to be having him on.
Also, Dan Schaefer helps us recombobulate and much, much more.
So we may we may launch investigation into a Pat's VC.
YAR scandal, which I was listening earlier.
I was not aware.
I was not aware, but I was highly entertained.
Uh, I was just so young and dumb and, you know, yeah, ended up winning a VCR for my own stations contest.
But like I said, it was, I'd been employed there like three days.
Nobody knew me.
I, and I didn't know you weren't supposed to do that stuff.
Wasn't it fun to be young and innocent in hindsight?
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
I, I longed for those days, but you know, there's a little bit of something to be said for, uh, getting, uh, uh, the wisdom of it.
experience.
I
also know how low the pay was at the time and had absolutely no sense of guilt about getting a free VCR because I wouldn't have been able to afford one for a long time back then.
So Todd Albus hit in the road.
Safe travels.
We'll hear you from Wausau from two to four.
Dan Schaefer at two thirty five as part of the celebrations.
Drive safe.
We'll talk to you real soon.
Thanks, Patrick.
Bye-bye.
All right.
Take care now.
And thanks to all of you for joining us.
And of course, tomorrow, being Friday, we'll have our usual Week in Review gang here with former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel, journalist Mark Jacob, Jennifer Scholesi, Courier Newsroom's Kia Vacchial, Dr. Kristen Lairley, and Mike Clemens, giving us sports.
I'm Pat Kratlow from Up North News, from Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy news network.
Have a great Thursday.
See you back here up North, bright and early, 6 a.m.
The national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.
