First News with Keeler in the Morning Show Notes for Friday, August 2nd

6am Hour:  Ariel Castro:

Speaking before his final sentencing, admitted Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro pleaded with the judge not to consider him a "monster" like the prosecution has claimed, instead insisting that he is "just sick" with a "sexual addiction" and far from a violent person.

During his 10-minute statement, Castro repeatedly claimed he is "not a violent person," and, at one point, suggested much of the sexual activity in the house was consensual because the girls would "ask for sex." There was "harmony" in the home, he said, contrary to reports of violence, sexual abuse, and terminated pregnancies.

"I'm not a violent person. I simply kept them there so they couldn't leave," he said.

Watch full video here:

Willie Waffle was on with a preview of the weekend's movies.  http://www.wafflemovies.com

7am hour:  This Mayor is on Fire videos produced by the city of Utica

Here's a link:  here

Here's Keeler's 'Fire' song about Utica's Mayor.  Tongue in cheek...

8am hour:  Andrea was in from the Utica Zoo promoting Brew Fest.  This Saturday night from 6 to 9.  Click here for more

8:40-

An inspiring story about a man who beat the odds.

Howard Shulman’s remarkable book, FREAK: Memoir of an Outcast, brings into sharp focus his experience of growing up marginalized by society. Attacked by an infection that ravaged his face, destroying his nose, lower lip, eyelid, and upper palate, and then abandoned by his parents at the hospital when only days old, he became a ward of the state of New Jersey (thereafter referred to as case# XUG-950). His early childhood was spent confined to a dreary South Bronx Hospital in New York where he was put under the care of an experimental state surgeon. Enduring years of innumerable skin and bone grafts and reconstructive surgeries, his body was left butchered and scarred.

From being misdiagnosed as learning disabled and placed in a grim special ed school, to his years as a student at an elite private boarding school in Massachusetts, his journey was an improbable one. Shuffled between foster homes he was finally emancipated at l6, whereupon he began his new life working as a dishwasher and living in a one-room walk-up in New Jersey. Determined to rise above his lowly beginnings, he would eventually live in an oceanfront beach house and own a nightclub in San Diego.

At 38, his life takes another turn when he meets his birth mother. Though frustrated in his quest to find answers, his meeting with his birth mother is an inspirational insight into the ineffable human spirit, a pivotal encounter that proves to be the catalyst for healing the past.

Click here to learn more about Shulman