What was once a wooded setting for raising polo ponies is now a grand, country estate in northwest Oklahoma City. Jerry Ellis and Gina Volturo-Ellis learned of the property three years ago and bought it to complement their lifestyle that includes cooking, entertaining and raising horses. The Ellises share the estate with Frito, a donkey, and Sister, an affectionate Australian shepherd dog.

The 10.5-acre setting features the 7,000-square-foot home, a stable with indoor/outdoor arenas and a smaller home nearby.

A winding road through a secluded area sets the stage for this idyllic portrait of exquisite country living. The home’s two-story entry foyer makes a dramatic first impression.

“We made no structural alterations,” Gina Volturo-Ellis says. “Most of the changes were cosmetic, and we repurposed many of our furnishings. This is our little ranchette. The interior design includes Italian, a little French, a little Western, and a whole lot of eclectic.”

The spacious floor plan is ideal for entertaining. Several areas were renovated for more inviting seating. One was hidden under a stairwell. Ellis used a sofa from her past to create an intimate conversation nook.

The Ellises wanted design drama – thus, a rich palette of turquoise, salmon and orange and a mix of prints. Some white walls are accented with pale tints or glazes.

“I’m definitely not afraid of color,” Ellis says.

Unusual furnishings, upholstery, art and accessories enhance the home’s grandeur. Ellis’s heritage shows in Italian art and accessories, including Byzantine and Moroccan influences.

This home now reflects the couple’s mutual interests, including golf and estate sale shopping. Both have home offices for their oil and banking careers. Jerry Ellis’s office overlooks the formal living room. Ellis’s cozy atelier is adjacent to a guest bedroom. A closet became her gift-wrapping studio.

The renovation’s magnitude required professional help. Ellis knew exactly who to call.

“Dindy Foster and I have been friends since childhood,” she says. “Our mothers were close friends. This is the seventh house Dindy has helped me decorate.”

The owner of Dindy Foster Interiors in Tulsa, Foster, and her associate, Lesa McClish, designed interiors reminiscent of Ellis’s childhood home.

Ellis wanted jewel-tone colors, comfortable but distinguished furnishings and a unified feeling throughout the home.

Working with existing furnishings, the designers added texture with tile, marble, leather, velvet, silk and linen. Shutters provide privacy in many rooms. Existing herringbone-patterned floors enhance eye appeal. Animal prints – foxes, zebras and birds – bring wildlife inside.

“It’s a peaceful setting, and the house is so comfortable, yet elegant,” Foster says. She and McClish were houseguests while the interior was morphing into a grand showcase.

“Staying here is like being on vacation,” Foster recalls.

Guests enjoy the home’s welcoming spirit. The kitchen, adjacent den and cozy dining room are the heart of the home. Guest bedrooms have restful motifs. The poolside cabana is home to bright colors and casual furnishings.

“The result is traditional design with a sharper edge,” Foster says.

Among the home’s surprises is a “19th hole” golfer’s oasis for Jerry Ellis – an unexpected birthday gift from his wife. It includes all the trappings for entertaining his golfing friends, including a golf course simulator.

“The view from every window is beautiful,” Ellis says, especially the pool area – the centerpiece for outdoor entertaining. The terraced lawn leads to a fire pit, with rustic seating.

Although the polo ponies have moved on, the tack room is getting a facelift for additional guest quarters. With the Ellises’ love for hosting visitors, the welcome mat is always out at this company-friendly home.

It was healthy competition that drew Shannon Thomas into the world of bodybuilding.

“I saw one of my old high school football buddies at spring break, and he was actually [getting] ready for a competition in a few months and told me to consider doing it,” says Thomas. “We started hitting the gym together, and I got third in my first competition.”

His friend came in second.

Thomas has participated in six more competitions around the country and has since turned pro in the world of bodybuilding. He specifically competes in the Men’s Physique category, which differs from the classic form of bodybuilding where competitors work to develop their muscles to extremes.

“It’s more of a proportional look,” says Thomas. “It’s not about being the most muscular; it’s more about aesthetics, like a fitness model.”

To get that look, Thomas works out at least four to five times a week to sculpt and grow his muscles. And to call his diet strict would be an understatement. It’s precise amounts of protein and carbs that ensure optimal muscle and fat; Thomas’ diet even accounts for his skin appearance. Once a body is as finely tuned a machine as his, everything that goes in is about producing muscle and looking good on stage.

“About a month before a competition I switch protein to fish,” he says. “And before that I’ll be eating sweet potatoes as carbs, then change to red potatoes.”

A cheat meal might be a lean steak, no seasoning. Even something like water intake becomes regimented before a competition.

“I start depleting my water. I just start dropping and dropping until the day before competition, and I just have two glasses of water [that day],” says Thomas.

He puts himself through this strict regimen in the hopes of getting to the Olympia Fitness and Performance competition in Las Vegas, bodybuilding’s premier event.

“My goal [for 2015] is to make it to the Olympia stage. I’m actually a sponsored athlete now, so I can get some more support,” he says.

For all of the depravation and hard work, Thomas works with something bigger in mind to the reach his goals.

“My mom is the reason I try as hard as I do,” he says. “Growing up and seeing her hard work and dedication has inspired me to strive to do better. She battled cancer for five years before it took her life. The reason I can’t give up is because she didn’t.”

Publicity material for Politically Incoherent, a new disc from Oklahoma’s Mike Hardeman, calls it “a contemporary cousin” of The First Family, that trailblazing 1962 album by comedian Vaughn Meader and a host of voice actors that spoofed then-President John F. Kennedy and those close to him.

Certainly, there are plenty of similarities. Both were recorded with ensemble casts. Both feature political humor. Both owe a lot of their success to the radio. And, while Politically Incoherent hasn’t matched First Family in sales – few records have – it’s done all right for itself, jumping into the top three of Amazon’s comedy albums and peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard magazine comedy chart.

There is, however, one big difference between Politically Incoherent and its 50-year-old predecessor, one that Hardeman believes has to do more with the changing times than with the nature of the material.

“Nowadays,” he says, “you can’t just have [political] humor, because if someone doesn’t like the perceived political point of view that’s being expressed, they’ll shut down and not even listen to you.”

Considering that it was created in Oklahoma City, the capital of what many people perceive as the reddest state in the Union, some will find it surprising that Politically Incoherent leans decidedly left, as comedy bits such as “Tea Party Harmony” (a parody of eHarmony dating website ads) and “Citizens United Airlines” make abundantly clear.

“Certainly, on the next album, if we do one, we’ll make our comedy a little more even-handed,” he adds. “But it had to do with time. We had to take a lot of the bits that I’d already produced for the show, and I didn’t have time sit down and think, ‘Well, what is this going to be? Who’s it going to be marketed to?’ I basically kept going with the kinds of things I’d been doing. I just thought, ‘Oh, this’ll be a collection of things we’ve done for the radio show, and people who listen to the show will be able to buy it.’ I didn’t realize the potential for going beyond that scope. And even if I had, I’m not sure I could’ve gotten the material together in time for the release date.”

The “show” he refers to is The Stephanie Miller Show, a nationally syndicated progressive political talk and comedy program originating in Los Angeles. Hardeman’s relationship with it began in 2007, when he began sending the producers short comedy pieces he’d created in his home studio.

That was hardly the beginning of Hardeman’s radio career, however. In fact, if you’re an Oklahoman of Baby Boomer age, there’s a pretty good chance that you heard his radio voice sometime during the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

“I graduated from Charles Page High School in Sand Springs in ’73 and went straight to Oklahoma State University, majoring in radio-TV-film,” he says. “That fall, I went to work at KXOJ in Sapulpa, a 500-watt day-timer right next to Frankoma Pottery. I’d come in on Saturday afternoons and do 2 p.m. until sign-off. Then I started working at the OSU college radio station, KVRO. So it’s been 40 years since I started in radio.”

After a couple of years at OSU, Hardeman left to take a radio job at KXXO in Tulsa and ended up working, he says, “everywhere.”  He was in Little Rock, Ark., when he took the name “Michael Evans,” which he continued using during his time on Tulsa’s airwaves. Michael Evans was best known for his time at the adult-contemporary station KRAV, but he also did stints at KELI, KAKC and KMYZ, where he served as program director in the early 1980s.

“Then, in ’84, I made the decision to go back to college and get a real job,” he says, chuckling. A few years later, armed with an engineering technology degree from Oklahoma State University, he began his current business career.

But, to slightly amend the old expression, you can take the boy out of radio, but you can’t take radio out of the boy. Hardeman would periodically return to the microphone, notably for a period from 2001 to 2006, when he hosted the ABC Radio program America’s Best Country Countdown, heard Sundays on more than 150 stations. It was his last regular radio job to date.

Just about a year later, he happened upon The Stephanie Miller Show. By that time, he was doing a lot of home recording and, he notes, “Being the frustrated morning-show guy I am, I’d send in little bits pertaining to whatever the events of the day were. Over the years, it just kind of grew.”

The cover of the Politically Incoherent CD states that it’s “From the mind of ‘Rocky Mountain’ Mike,” a moniker Hardeman picked up when he was living and working in Colorado. At the beginning of 2013, he relocated from there to Oklahoma City and took a new job. At about the same time, he was contacted by Marshall Blonstein, a veteran entertainment-industry executive whose credits include working with the likes of Carole King, The Who, Cheech & Chong and radio personality Rick Dees. A fan of The Stephanie Miller Show, Blonstein had tried to contact Hardeman for some time about doing a CD for one of his current labels, Audio Fidelity. For whatever reason, however, the messages had not been forwarded from the show to Hardeman.

“Finally, they sent me his emails, and I agreed that doing an album would be a good idea,” recalls Hardeman. “I’d thought about it for a long time myself, but I didn’t know how to swing the copyright issues and the problems of distribution and all that. Well, that was his bailiwick.”

Once the record deal was done, Hardeman produced the disc over a four-month stretch, assembling his cast from a variety of sources.

“Ken Picklesimer, Tom Shafer, Debbie Kelley and P.S. Mueller – who’s also a well-known cartoonist – came from Ken’s online podcast show, which had kind of formed off to the side of The Stephanie Miller Show,” he explains. “Mary Dixon and Audra Tracy were fans of the show; we connected with them because we found out they could sing. I met them in the Stephanie Miller Show chat room, which is where I met Richard Henzel. He’s a voice actor in Chicago and a great talent; he’s the morning disc jockey whose voice wakes Bill Murray up in Groundhog Day. Then we got Jim Ward, who’s on The Stephanie Miller Show, on board, which was a major coup.”

Two others recruited for the disc go all the way back to Hardeman’s days at OSU, where he worked at KVRO with Brent Walker, now running Soundscape Studios in Little Rock, and Jeff Hoyt of Hoyt’s Greater Radio in Seattle, who recruited an additional five actors for the ensemble.

The result, he says, “is something I’m real proud of, something I spent a lot of time working on, something that represents a lot of the kinds of things I was doing back in my radio years.”

And even though he’s fully aware that today’s political culture often makes people tense, angry and unwilling to listen to opposing points of view, he’s also hoping that some who’d dismiss Politically Incoherent out of hand because of its left-leaning nature might give the disc a listen anyway.

“I’d like for them to put aside the politics,” he says, “and just look at it for the comedic value.”