Putting on our Rally Caps for a locally inspired baseball film

Jodi Cutler tells old pal Nestor the local story behind the upcoming movie Rally Caps and bringing awareness home

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

cochlear implants, movie, dad, italy, son, italian, started, film, jody, baseball, friends, baltimore, hearing, rally, judd hirsch, deaf, year, point, caps, book

Nestor Aparicio  00:01

What about W en s, t, Towson, Baltimore and Baltimore positive, we are going to get the Maryland crabcakes. We’re back out on the road presented by the Maryland lottery, in conjunction with our friends at Goodwill and window nation. We’re going to begin at G and a Coney Island hot dog. Yes, we’re gonna have crab cakes. And I thought join my buddy. And he’s been owning it. Oh, all my life. He’s moved from island town up to Whitemarsh. We’re gonna go visit with him to start the new year. And you know, to start the new year, I’ve got resolutions. And you know, I want to have more fun this year than I had last year because I did not have enough fun last year. And I want to add to that. And, you know, this person has been in my life a long, long time, probably from the beginning of my radio career. I don’t I let her explain how she found out about me. She was a bit of a baseball head back in the early 90s. We all were. And she became my friend. And we’ve been friends forever. But she’s lived in Italy, for the last two decades plus, has moved back to United States and it’s been involved in this. And this project that we’re frankly only one to one Oreo game in 2022. And it’s because she had like an extra ticket at six o’clock and I was downtown Lexington market anyway and fatally so met some friends we did our thing. She has been involved with cochlear implants with her her son being born deaf. So I want to introduce Jody Cutler to my worlds a lot of folks out there that know you from your rally cap story and now being a native and domestic back here in the United States of America. But always a Baltimore always have what I call you Pikesville. Always Mills, what would your homeland be

Jodi Cutler  01:38

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born and bred and Randallstown transferred to pikes.

Nestor Aparicio  01:43

Leaving Owings Mills out.

Jodi Cutler  01:45

The combination has worked well for me.

Nestor Aparicio  01:48

Yes. And I’m from Dundalk. And I don’t know the delineation from where Dundalk don’t talk in Essex a resume is a bridge and there’s a poop plan so we can figure that out. But I don’t know Whitemarsh from Fullerton from Perry Hall from like, we’re neighborhoods beginning it all on your Baltimore you’re one of us, right?

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Jodi Cutler  02:04

Correct. 100% rally caps

Nestor Aparicio  02:08

I know of my friendship with you. We’ve remained friends forever holiday friends have you come back sometimes from Italy for various things and we would meet up have a beer your your family was always involved because you’re back visiting them. Give me the rally cap story because like I know of your fondness for your father and your father’s fondness for baseball. But I don’t know the whole story. All I know is I got two free tickets in Oreo game last year, and I’m appreciative Thank you very much God.

Jodi Cutler  02:38

No problem. I’m not sure if I should begin at the air supply concert, or memorial or Memorial Day. This

Nestor Aparicio  02:46

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is what happens when you get to be old like me. I said I’ll have someone like you in my life. And I know moments with you in the 90s that we celebrated together. We were games and I remember all of that. I probably went to the Baja beach club with you or something like that. So like that Arab but the but they I met you I don’t know. So you remember the day you met me? And it involves data GOC and grant Yeah. And grant Russell that I want to know about it.

Jodi Cutler  03:15

You were with Barry and I was with my friend Susan. And we were at the air supply. CERT I forget the blind, very weather. I don’t know I don’t think it was very weather. But but but I don’t remember I blocked a lot of that part of my life. But I mean, I grew up at Memorial Stadium and because my dad was really passionate about baseball, Miracle 30 Thursday when we just we just had a great childhood growing up with the Orioles in those days. And so baseball has always been a part of our souls. to fast forward really quickly. I moved I participated in exchange program in high school in 1989. I went to Pikesville and that’s where I met my ex husband and I thought he was hot in the middle of the streets of Grosseto, Italy. The consulate of Grosseto was of a Baltimore was from Grosseto. So he had an exchange program, and I fell in love went back and forth had the whole Italian romance and then moved to Grosseto with Jordan, who at that time was 10 months old. And my husband lived there at a government job so I’m like I can move to Tuscany and drink

Nestor Aparicio  04:28

Yeah, she tell you did you speak you didn’t speak any Italian when you move?

Jodi Cutler  04:33

I spoke zero

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Nestor Aparicio  04:36

air supply I mean you you knew you could sing air supply songs but you couldn’t sing in Italian?

Jodi Cutler  04:42

Yeah, zero Italian but so I got to Italy with my son and really excited tiramisu and a lot of fettuccine and tell you that Leigh and one month later my son was diagnosed with profound bilateral sensory neural hearing loss so he was deaf. Really Deaf. And so the doctor tried telling me that in Italian, I didn’t understand a word. So I like looked at my husband like you have to translate. And the doctor said, you can’t speak any English to your son, you can only speak Italian or it will confuse him. Nowadays, that’s not not the way things roll. But back then in 96, well, at that point was 97. My son was 11 months old and diagnosis deaf and Jodie had to speak Italian. No more English. So that started our road to trying to help my son speak now.

Nestor Aparicio  05:31

How did you learn? I mean, like,

Jodi Cutler  05:33

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I’ll tell you so like, I mean, seriously? No. Well, I mean, I had to go full in full on full immersion, because, well, I had some people saying you need to learn to sign. And I was not against signing, I went to find out how I could sign but the people in Italy in my town with Grosseto were like, Italian sign language is not the same as American Sign Language. So I did I learned had I learned the Italian sign language, I wouldn’t have been able to communicate in the United States anyway. And then I would have had to learn the Italian sign language and the Italian language, and I was just, it was too much.

Nestor Aparicio  06:11

Good thing. You’re smart. Oh, thanks. Yeah. I mean, like, literally, because you have to be smart to learn languages when you’re you were 25 years old. Right?

Jodi Cutler  06:18

I was. That was good. And that started was I was 25. And so I had speech therapy, paid by the Italian government, everything was paid by the Italian national healthcare service. So my son right away, was fitted for hearing aids, ear molds. We changed his hearing aids once a year, we had speech therapy three times a week, and I learned Italian with him, I would come home repeat the lesson that we learned and I started teaching English in Italy and made all of my students repeat the Italian to the English that I said so slowly, I was able to make the two things mesh and learn how to speak Italian. My son did well with hearing aids. He started getting frustrated when he was about eight years old. And I had done my research. We had Hopkins and John DeMarco in Baltimore and I was in was like the best cochlear implant surgeon at the time. And I was across the world and trying to get information about cochlear implants and Pisa. And my son ended up having cochlear implant surgery and Pisa. And I actually

Nestor Aparicio  07:22

was this like, right, I remember this technology that came on and I’m like, her son can hear now we can hear like that’s

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Jodi Cutler  07:30

my son for the type of hearing loss my son was born with. Hearing aids could take him only to a certain point, he had absolutely no ability to have incidental spontaneous language and he was really smart and really frustrated. The cochlear implant in it’s different from hearing aids, hearing aids amplify the sound. Instead, cochlear implants reproduce sound more similarly to how we hear as adults. And I mean, as you know, hearing people, so because he suddenly had access to spontaneous language, he took off, he had had a lot of good speech therapy, he was a pretty good hearing aid user with a cochlear implant, it gave him that extra access to sound that allowed him to suddenly become more affectionate, less frustrated. And he at that point, I saw him become autonomous, independent. And it was like a huge weight of the world was lifted for me. Now, in the meantime, my dad about three years earlier had sent me a short story that he had written about him getting hit by a baseball bat. And I had I never said this to my dad, I’m like, Oh, that’s a really cute story. You know, it could actually be transformed into a book. From the moment those words left my mouth. My dad started saying write the book. So my relationship with my dad for three years while I’m dealing with Jordan, cochlear implants was God write the book, write the book, and I was not in the mental space to be able to do that. However, when I saw my son doing well, I had this desperate need to thank the medical professionals who had helped us reach the point where he was suddenly happy. And so I said to my dad, Okay, I’m ready to write the book with you. So I was in Grosseto, Tuscany. My dad was in West Palm Beach, Florida. And via email, we would send, I would write a chapter, he would correct it and add some baseball because he was like, really great at the baseball stuff. And I just wanted to create the character with a cochlear implant who could speak not sign because traditionally, the characters in literature could sign and not speak. However, my son had no representation in literature and I wanted there to be a strong Deaf character who could speak with cochlear implants. So my dad gave me the possibility to do that. There was a lot of Camp milldale in the in the rally camps book and the characters and so between my dad’s camp Belgrade, my camp milldale and our shared explorer, variances with the Baltimore Orioles, we created this book. Now it’s as insanely determined as my dad was to get this book made. And to get the story made into a book, he was that determined and persistent to get it made into a movie. Because we have no contacts with Hollywood we are serial like we don’t know anybody. But my dad started sending emails started sending letters. Once the book was published, and people liked it. He was like it has to become a movie. And he found our director, Lee Chipola, who was in between a job with Disney and deciding what he wanted to do next. And 15 years after the first time, my dad contacted him, he wrote to us because apparently he had gone on this hike in the mountains of Colorado and had this epiphany that he wanted to do a sports baseball family movie. And he wanted it to be rally caps. So he called my dad and they started working together. I said to my Okay, so that’s the first part of the story. So rally

Nestor Aparicio  11:03

caps was a book. Correct? Correct. That was written in 16 1718. What you were talking about here.

Jodi Cutler  11:13

It was written in 2007.

Nestor Aparicio  11:17

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Seven, but but and was physically out in 2000 789.

Jodi Cutler  11:23

It was basically out in 2007. And then the Italian version was out in about 2008.

Nestor Aparicio  11:30

So the movie idea comes when

Jodi Cutler  11:34

as soon as the first person read the book and said that would be a great film.

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Nestor Aparicio  11:38

And then when does actually boots happen on the ground to make it into a film? Because you’re talking about a 15 year arc here? At what point did the movie thing become some semblance of reality? Because I saw you talking about it in social media and various ways. I know of your tour last year and and I would think that the COVID in the plague didn’t do this any justice as well. And the last time I reached to have you on the show, you’re wearing a gas mask, and everybody over here is laughing at the Italians. While you guys are like everybody’s dying in Italy, on the first wave of the plague, which was three years ago this week. Right? And you were just trying to stay safe and get groceries at that point, right?

Jodi Cutler  12:18

That’s really funny that you should say that you’re really good at isn’t Esther, I’m not gonna lie. Okay, so in March of 2020, my dad calls me and says, Lee Chipola is ready to make rally calves. And I said, now’s not a great time to take Route chaps. Because I don’t know if you’re aware of what’s happening. But COVID is going to be a thing. And nobody is going to be making movies during COVID. I mean, I’m literally

Nestor Aparicio  12:48

you in Pearl Jam knew that Pearl Jam canceled the tour and everybody’s like, eff Pearl Jam, man. Like we’re three weeks away from rockin and they never did play the royal farms arena. By the way, I do have the coffee in my cup, but they never did. Yeah, they never played the gigs, right, obviously. And I remember being angry. They were the first, like, how dare they cancel for this plague. And then two weeks later, we’re like, oh, yeah, they must have done a little bit of reading, you know, must listen to Dr. Fauci in the beginning. But you had a different experience because you were in Italy. And it was real serious real fast there, right. I remember seeing the Italian mares, like on the video, cursing it everyone and tell them to stay home and like, nobody

Jodi Cutler  13:33

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wants that. Right. I was trying to I was trying to keep every one of my friends and family all over the world because of the cochlear implant groups. I have contacts all over the world. So I was trying to give them a day by day of what we were living in Italy, which was not pretty. I mean, we’re talking body bags in trucks moving through bad gummow. So I mean, I had a really hard dose of COVID reality and my dad was like, in another world. Keep

Nestor Aparicio  14:00

in mind, like your dad’s probably watching Fox News and Trump’s telling everyone, it’s it’s just the flu. You know what I mean? Like, we were getting lied to as a society here.

Jodi Cutler  14:11

I know. I know you’re worried because literally day by day and giving you the truth, but you know, it is what it is.

Nestor Aparicio  14:19

But making movies during this is not easy to do.

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Jodi Cutler  14:22

So to make a long story short, my dad and Lee started moving forward. We were supposed to film in June or July of 2020. But that did not work because of COVID. It actually was a good thing because Lee took the screenplay, and he transformed it into something that was so phenomenal in the time from June 2020 to January of 2021

Nestor Aparicio  14:48

story change, serendipity took overs what your story

Jodi Cutler  14:52

evolution, and in the meantime, it just kept getting better and better than we had a table read and I met Carson miniere I met James Hello, who’s coached ballgame if you don’t follow coach ball game and you love baseball, give him a follow on Instagram. He’s He’s like the man is unbelievable. Then. So things move forward and in about, I’d say April, one of our producers Amy Williams said, you know, the movie is amazing. The screenplay is great. I want to send it to Amy Smart. And Judd Hirsch and Leah. My dad are like, alright, I mean, we have a budget for a small indie film. But let’s see what happens. They both love the screenplay. They both want to do rally cats. So our little indie film got suddenly beggar. They started filming in LA in June.

Nestor Aparicio  15:39

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I’m not familiar with AMI smart. I’m familiar with Judd Hirsch, obviously from taxi and, but but with film. Well, what does that mean that they’re interested in April of I guess, 21.

Jodi Cutler  15:50

They’re, they’re well, they’re well known stars, which means that our little film talking about how, you know, strong characters with cochlear implants who are dapping, it speak can suddenly become more visible, because the whole point of that character is to smash stigma. So if our film concentrates on the ability and disability and has well known actors, we have more of a chance to get that message out to the public, to the mainstream students so that we can have inclusion and accessibility and more information. And so their names bring a lot more visibility.

Nestor Aparicio  16:25

Jody Cutler is my guest rally catches her book or film or dad, we left him out, we cut him out on this one. So she and I can have some quality time here together. She is if you’re familiar with Jody from being around town, Randallstown Pikesville, from 30 years ago, and living over in Italy and cochlear implants in her activism and incredible hard work on all of this. So full circle, Film, film gets made bring me into the baseball tour last year. And quite frankly, I haven’t seen it other folks. Give me how we can be involved here in this as well as just this incredible, pulling back the curtain of how this miracle movie got made. Right.

Jodi Cutler  17:08

Okay, so I’m gonna try my very best to make this synthetic and short and sweet. To make a long

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Nestor Aparicio  17:15

time here. This is not you. I don’t have a commercial break in four minutes. We’re good. Okay. All right.

Jodi Cutler  17:21

So let me let me just go back to when we filmed all right, Chad Herschend ABC smart. They did their part in June, we, Ben Carson and Lee went to Field of Dreams to film, a dream scene, a dream sequence and that was an experience in and of itself.

Nestor Aparicio  17:39

into the field. Yes, no,

Jodi Cutler  17:41

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we’re the corn stocks haven’t been there yet. But I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there because I was still in Italy at this point. So I missed the June shooting. I missed the the Field of Dreams shooting but apparently there was like a tornado warning and a brief period of time spent in the barn at the Field of Dreams. But that was a thing and it ended up being perfect. So after that, we needed to find more investors. And that’s when I entered and started becoming a producer and got an education got a huge Hollywood education. So little Jody living in Grosseto, Tuscany ends up back in Pikesville. Baltimore, trying to find investors to be able to finish this movie and we were blessed from above with a lot of luck and a great producer. Again, Amy Williams came through with that in the meantime, we have William Garcia who was handling budget and getting things organized for our shoot in at Camp scatto in upstate New York. So we managed to get everything that we need done. We transfer to camp scattered go for two weeks. There’s an and we’re like in the middle of COVID. So everybody’s wearing masks we have like COVID Jenny who’s like you keep your mask on and and all the kids. So we’re, we’re in upstate New York for two weeks, no Wi Fi no video games, and everybody’s playing dodgeball. It was just the most amazing experience filming this movie. And there was a lot of love on set. And that is transmitted in the movie. You can see all the love. Well,

Nestor Aparicio  19:11

the movie came out when what was the timeline on that?

Jodi Cutler  19:15

The movie is not out yet. We had I just want to say one more thing before I get to that

Nestor Aparicio  19:21

because she did the baseball tour last year and I was trying to figure out everybody’s trying

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19:25

to figure out why I’m having you on the show. I don’t know what Jodi did fill me in.

Jodi Cutler  19:31

Okay, so I just want to add really fast that Curtis Pride deaf Major League Baseball player is in the movie. And there’s a sequence At the end that’s like so unbelievable. So

Nestor Aparicio  19:43

locker room at Curtis Pride back we played so if you ever remember him well.

Jodi Cutler  19:47

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The greatest guy his wife Lisa is an announcer for the Cardinals. The minor league baseball team and his kids are both in the movie. His son has single sided deafness and his daughter has bilateral sensory Little deafness like my son and she had cochlear implants at age 12. So we have representation in the movie their whole family’s in it now. Fast forward. I decided together with another producer Her name is Eileen Jones, she’s deaf, wears a cochlear implant and had a foundation called the gift of hearing Foundation. She had done a tour with Jacob Landis deaf bilateral cochlear implants, who rode his bicycle to every single major league baseball park in the United States, got hit by a car as he almost finished the tour in Miami, ended up coming back and then finishing the tour in Miami, but she had contacts with all major league baseball stadiums and I was like Eileen, we need to do a rally caps hearing. We need to do a rally caps hearing loss Awareness Day for better speech and hearing month in May. Can we do that? So she started knocking out all the contacts. We organized the stadiums right in the middle of the strike. So we literally were trying to talk to all these baseball stadiums.

Nestor Aparicio  21:05

There weren’t sure there was going to be a season.

Jodi Cutler  21:08

There was going to be a season. So we lost all of our sponsorship to do the rally caps hearing loss Awareness Day. And but we were determined to do it. So instead of doing all the stadiums we had planned, we did eight. So we did we started with the Mets and Citi Field. Then we went to the O’s a Camden Yards we went we did the Guardians, the Cardinals, the Cubs, the Marlins, the Brewers, and the rays. And what we did was we offered free hearing screenings in Baltimore. We had the help of Amanda Kozlowski from Towson State Hearing and Balance Center, Regina Presley from GBMC Steve Bowditch of Hopkins, and Alan Oh Schinsky from the hearing Wellness Center who has a free hearing screening van that he donated to us to be used so that the fans can get their hearing check. Because what we’re trying to do is emphasize how healthy hearing and safe listening and that’s what we wanted to do. Now, the stadiums let us show a clip of rally caps. It still wasn’t a movie at that time.

Nestor Aparicio  22:13

In the clip when I was at Camden Yards, right? Yeah. Okay, I’m just making sure. So the movie, nobody’s seen the movie yet. Now. What am I going to see the movie?

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Jodi Cutler  22:27

Well, so the good news is that the movie had its premiere at Heartland International Film Festival, we actually want to an Audience Choice Award for Best Narrative. So that was really exciting. It also sold out all virtual links, because there’s so many hearing loss associations that want to see their kids represented and movies. And we just had a Los Angeles premiere. John Hirsh was there and that was unbelievable like Getty Images, the whole deal. I’m like gliding through this. Just shocked about everything observing. And so now we still were in the process of putting the finishing touches on the audio and the score we have. Katherine and Kim Coogee who are doing our score, they did Martin Scorsese, Martin Scorsese film, I want to say silence and they’re like so talented. So they’re putting the finishing touches on lead. Chipola is busy with Catherine Borda or other producers, our creative producer, finishing everything and we will have our next festivals. They will be on January 22nd in Dallas at the Cannes Film Festival. And then we’re having our Florida premiere at the Donald M Ephram Palm Beach Film Festival. The movies of Lake Worth on January 29 CMX. Downtown the gardens on February 5. So now what happens is we need to sell the movie find a stream or distributor. We’re finishing it, we should be sending it out within a month. So we’re hoping someone’s going to pick it up. At that point. I’ll know how to tell you how it’s going to be available.

Nestor Aparicio  24:05

This is why you’ve been so elusive to me because there you’re still in the middle of baking the cake is what you’re really doing right I mean, it’s

Jodi Cutler  24:14

a frosting it. I’m frosting it.

Nestor Aparicio  24:15

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I’m just checking. I’m just saying Jody Cutler is here. I have the website up it is rally caps the movie, I’m gonna pull it up here so everybody can check it out. And if you get out online rally caps the movie Judd Hirsch AMI smart Carson veneer, and the cast your little faces even on here. There’s Joey Jodi Michelle Cutler, but I looked here, Brooks Robinson Jr. Tim Kurkjian is on here to tell tell me more. Tell me more about this thing.

Jodi Cutler  24:45

Okay, my dad participated in a couple of fantasy camps. And I mean, he’s always been big on memorabilia like anything signs and he met Brooks and they became friendly and Brooks his Oh He’s been so kind to my dad and my dad’s always loved him and so he was really excited to be a part of the movie there’s a scene with an autographed shot of Brooks Robinson where John her says he’s this guy and, and the number five throughout the movie is an important part. Tim Kurkjian is another person who my dad was friends with he became friends with and he is just a stand up guy. So so kind and generous and amazing. And, you know, we we had really great experiences with with all of the baseball players and also MLB that they’ve been amazing. Well, we

Nestor Aparicio  25:35

get to the other 22 stadia. I hope there’s a grand tour. So this is this is, I guess, the segment that this is the beginning you’re gonna have another story in four months or six months or eight months as this continues to happen for you. Because it’s it hasn’t it’s not done, you’re still in the big your frosting the cake is you’ve we’re gonna

Jodi Cutler  26:00

write, we’re just getting started. There’s gonna be a lot of cake with a lot of good stuff in that cake. And we’re excited.

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Nestor Aparicio  26:07

Yeah, well, I appreciate you taking some time. So you’re back United States, Italy, just on the side because I talk a lot of travel, you’re in different stuff. I’ve had a lot of friends in Italy recently. That’s a heck of a decision a life decision to to move back and to move there. I I thought you were just a real Trailblazer Back then I thought, man, you know, she’s moving to Italy. She didn’t speak Italian. And that’s what I’m thinking 30 years ago and looking at your life has turned out but winding up back here and back in the states have an interesting decision this time.

Jodi Cutler  26:40

Yeah, Nestor, I’m 51 years old and completely starting over taking everything that I learned in Italy. I can make a mean tiramisu and bringing it back to the state of West Palm. That’s it don’t mean I have to say I’ve been really lucky. And you know, we’re really we’re really happy. I’ve met amazing people in Italy, and I’m meeting more amazing people here in West Palm Beach and back with family. And you know, it’s been a really interesting life. I have a lot of stories.

Nestor Aparicio  27:10

What are some of them we’re gonna get off the rally caps. The movie.com is the way to find all the information about this film. And she’s always putting up pictures and Judd Hirsch and they’re winning awards and doing stuff and at some point, little old Nester from Dundalk from 30 years ago will have a chance to watch your work and your Dad Hey, love your dad. Tell Steve I said hola as well. And I mean, I look Brooks and Tim Kurkjian. These are all friends of mine. They’re get there in the movie as well. So I’m looking forward to bringing some folks together. Maybe we’ll have cold beer, some hot dogs and crabs, crab cakes at work. All right. You can get them in West Palm Beach. I tell you what we’re starting the year with friends old and new Jody Cutler’s a longtime friend of mine I’m inviting a whole bunch people on that I’ve been meaning to like gather and grab and for whatever reason I haven’t been able to get a crab cake with them resume with them. So we’re starting the year off strong we’re doing the Maryland crab cake tour beginning next week. Andy from GNA Coney Island hot dog he’s also been very very elusive since he left me and Highland tan and I can’t drop by for hot dogs on the arm with some proper chili on there and maybe a little bit sauerkraut as well. We’re gonna be doing that as well as the crab cake next Thursday with Andy so you’ll find all that it’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery conjunction with our friends at Goodwill and window nation. You know, I wore my state fair shirt to make Jody really really sorry she left Maryland because it has the Maryland flag on it. And we’re gonna be overdoing a crab cake towards State Fair in the coming weeks as well over in Catonsville to start the year the right way. And speaking to Maryland, former congressman and Maryland superstar Tom McMillan’s coming on this week as well, so a little plug there for the Terps I am Nestor we are wn st am 1570, Towson Baltimore, and we never stop talking rally caps. Baltimore positive.com Stay with us.