Over at Site of the Week, you can check out one of the few TV studios to have its own swimming pool out back – and today on Toppy, we fill out the Lansing, Michigan FM dial (including the FM signal that used to broadcast from that motel-esque studio!)
The AM sounds of Lansing
We spent a very busy afternoon last August, Blaine Thompson and I, driving maniacally from one Lansing, Michigan studio to the next to see just how much of this capital city’s broadcast scene we could see and hear in a few hours. You can start to see the results on Tower Site of the Week (the first of three installments) – and you can hear the Lansing AM dial in this week’s Toppy update.
It Was Summertime in (Western) Michigan
Unlike Mr. Rock, we will not attempt to rhyme “things” with “things” in this week’s update. (And yes, that lyric irks the heck out of me.)
What we will do, however, is offer up a bunch of IDs from our August 2017 trip into the Mitten State, as well as a few strays from 2016. Tune in and hear the sounds of St. Joseph-Benton Harbor, Grand Rapids, Muskegon, Ludington, Cadillac and Big Rapids – and then come back next week for a whole lotta Lansing. (And see the pictures over at Tower Site of the Week, too…)
New sounds from the neighborhood
It’s been a while since we updated some of our neighboring markets here in western and central New York, and it was time to fix that – so today’s update kicks off with fairly complete ID sweeps from Buffalo and Syracuse and the northern half of what we call the Ithaca NY market, which really should be “Finger Lakes.”
And we have some IDs that somehow never got posted in 2016 from visits that spring to Wheeling WV, Parkersburg WV-Marietta OH and Cambridge OH. Now they’re up on the site. (You can see the matching Site of the Week pictures here and here.)
Translated from the original French, it means “THE Moines.”
OK, perhaps our French is getting rusty. But we did in fact spend a pleasant day in Des Moines as part of our cross-country travels last summer, gathering a near-complete update of IDs. And we also picked up a good chunk of some nearby markets: brand-new Cameron MO on the way up I-35, then Cedar Rapids IA and a very complete run of the Quad Cities IA-IL market, too.
Enjoy – and check out some matching photos from the trip over at Site of the Week!
We’ve lost a member of the Toppy family
There would be no Tophour.com without Brian Davis. He was the founder of this site and is still our spiritual guru, even long after he handed off management of the site to the current bozos.
One reason Brian had to dump Toppy duties on our heads was the ongoing health battles of his wife, “TLMD, the Lovely Mrs. Davis,” or simply Heather. Her long fight ended last week and we all miss her dearly.
Brian asked that in her memory, we share her self-penned death notice as widely as possible. And we’re happy to do it, because the woman was funny as hell. (No, really – you thought Brian’s posts here were clever? He married up. Way up. We’re just saying.)
So we send our deepest condolences somewhere way out I-80 to Iowa and the Davis and Neal families as we share Heather’s farewell.
(PS – when she writes that “she tolerated her husband”? She really, truly did. Even the parts with all the boomboxes and airchecks. And that’s a rare thing indeed.)
—
Heather Lynn Davis told this world to get lost on Friday, February 16, 2018.
She was born on July 28, 1973, and adopted shortly thereafter by Walter and Rose Neal. Turns out you really can choose your family. Upon realizing that she’d proven that piece of conventional wisdom wrong, she decided to make proving the world wrong her life’s goal.
Well, that and becoming Mrs. Donnie Wahlberg. You can’t always get what you want.
She graduated from Wahlert High School and Northeast Iowa Community College. In a moment of apparent weakness, she married Brian Davis on April 17, 2004, and upon realizing her mistake, adopted three fur babies of her own: Bob, Gordon and Chuck.
She liked musicals, bad movies and TV procedurals. She loved to cross stitch and read. She was into Chinese food, wine and her mom’s pie. She liked making the house look like Santa threw up each December. In much the same way some people buy underwear, she bought purses. She worked in a bakery but still liked donuts. She went to Mexico. She went to Hawaii. She went to Spain. (She did not go to Oklahoma). Like many kids her age, she became obsessed with New Kids On The Block and Janet Jackson. Unlike many kids her age, she got to meet them, and the aforementioned Donnie Wahlberg palmed her head like a basketball. It was difficult to get her to wash her face after that. She transcribed doctors’ notes at a mental health clinic, ran the art department for a craft store and liked the people at her cancer center so much, she went to work there.
Yeah, she had cancer — three times, and two of those times, she wrestled it to the ground, gave it a noogie and made it cry “uncle.” She also had two heart transplants and a kidney transplant. She spent entire years of her life in hospital rooms, convalescent areas and doctor waiting rooms. She did not complain. Much.
And she loved The Lion King. Like, really loved it. Like, had multiple copies and pretty much every tchotchke that had a Simba on it. (She also loved the word “tchotchke”).
Heather loved her family, and just about everyone became family. She fiercely loved her parents. She adored her brother Phillip, his wife Crystal and their children and grandchildren. (Especially the grandchildren). She loved her in-laws, Kim and Laura Davis, her sisters-in-law, Amy, Sara, Beth, Katherine, Lizzie, Elizabeth’s husband Dustin and their boy, Sterling. She treasured the women who became her sisters, Julie, Lora, Shannon and Tina, their husbands and children.
She loved and missed those who went before her: her grandparents, Horacio and Rose Gonzales and Wesley and Nellie Neal; many aunts and uncles; and her Baby Gordon.
She admired and was grateful to her doctors, nurses and staff at Finley Hospital, the Mayo Clinic (Transplantation at Mayo Clinic), and Gift of Life Transplant House in Rochester, Minnesota.
She tolerated her husband.
In keeping with her wishes, there will be no visitation or services. Those things creeped her out.
One last thing: Heather apologizes for referring to herself in the third person in this obituary.
