Trial Balloon: January 12, 2009 Archive

Oh My God, I Won!

Posted at 4:47 AM on January 12, 2009 by Dale Connelly (20 Comments)

I'd like to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Academy, the Guild, Tony, his sister Emmy, the Board of Directors, the Cabal of Opinionaters, the Brotherhood of Luminaries and every single one of the Powers That Be for giving me this amazing award. You guys are awesome! And also all the people who worked with me on this amazing, amazing awesome project, I love you! Most of you, I can't remember your names right now because it was over a year and a half ago and I'm working with a whole bunch of other awesomely amazing people on something totally different at the moment, but you know who you are and I hope you remember me. This prize is for you.
I'll keep it at one of my houses, but really, really, really, it's yours.

The awards season is great for watching beautiful, impossibly sleek, stylish, somewhat bewildered, occasionally goofy and very, very thankful people in the entertainment industry as they accept prizes for their work; especially this year when so many very talented people in all walks of life much closer to home seem to be getting pink slips, regardless of what they've done.

Prizes are nice. I used to be smug about being in public radio where we were too dignified to have contests or give away tickets or trips or anything that would make somebody say "Oh My God, I Won!" Our only prizes were the t-shirts and mugs and tote bags we gave as thanks for your contribution, and even then they weren't really prizes. You paid for them. So when it finally became possible to give something away that was actually, well, giving something away, and I got to talk to the winners on the phone, I realized how happy people get when a surprise, even a little one, falls out of a gray winter sky. It's fun to be part of that.

Our first Radio Heartland give away was a trip to New Orleans (courtesy of American Routes and the State of Louisiana) and it went to Lorraine, a lovely person whose day-to-day job involves keeping people in her office from chewing up bandwidth by listening to internet radio stations at work. In that role, she is our sworn enemy, and yet we're helping send her on a mid January junket to the French Quarter. That's when I clearly saw that the hand of a whimsical God is in this give away business, and that made it all right. At least while Lorraine is out of town, the people in her office can listen to Radio Heartland.

So here's another one - a bit less grand, but well worth entering.
We have a pair of tickets to a John Gorka concert at the historic village hall in beautiful Marine on-St. Croix this Friday night.
It's not New Orleans, but there aren't huge tax ramifications to winning, either.
So sign up for it! And prepare your acceptance speech.
The window of opportunity closes at 1pm this afternoon, and we'll announce a winner tomorrow. Good luck!

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