[This section was written about 4 days after the previous page.
I had promised my "audience" that I would have completed this a couple of
days before]
So, first I'll say to anyone who thinks I'm trying to "string
you along", it's not true. I always forget how it upsets me to write about my
teen years. So here we go. First a couple of stories to fill some gaps.
The boy scout/cub scout thing: The day I was supposed to
officially join the boy scouts, I was supposed to go home with the son of the troop
leader, who swore like a construction contractor (his father).
As he was explaining to me how we'd meet after school, every 5th or
6th word was some pretty raunchy language. So, I reminded him that boy scouts weren't
supposed to swear.
After school, he ditched me. Given that the walk home from
school was over 7 miles, and that I was too naive to realize he ditched me, I waited
around for about 3 hours... until someone came looking for me. No biggie, that's
just what happened. But, it's another role model example... for him. I think I
was in the 3rd grade then. :}
[This next part was written after being "lead" to watch the
movie "The Majestic" starring Jim Carey.]
All in all, I believe the record would show that, except for the
little run in about marijuana, I was a decent student, reliable, and most definitely not
known for being a rebel or for confronting authority. Then, we moved to Arcata,
California.
Upon arrival, I was immediately interviewed for "Boys'
State".
I was a true high school subversive. :} I say that jokingly,
given the context of what occurs in the movie "The Majestic"... which just
happened to have been filmed in Humboldt County.
In my junior year, the first year I was at Arcata High School, I
brought the politics of the bay area with me. And, there were a couple of young
women, Jeannette and Roxanne, who were also very politically minded.
This was at the time of the SDS Student Strike. We were concerned
because Jeannette and Roxanne had achieved causing the school board to allow one of the
first implementations of non-voting student reps to the school board, and one of the
primary issues we agreed on was about students not having skills appropriate to become
employed in the Humboldt County economy. When people graduated, they left and went to San
Francisco, Sacramento, and a lot of other places. Me too.
So, we talekd about bugging the principal's office so we could find
out what was really going on, and started our own student activist group called the
SBS. Actually, they did. I was amused. What we did learn was that the principal was
the road block, and his partner was the President of the school board.
Imagine our surprise when we were called into the office to hear him
request that we not hold a student strike. We just stayed quiet, because we were not
involved in the SDS at all. The SBS stood for Students Against Boredom in School.
My silence in that meeting got me labeled as "aloof" and untrustworthy.
We just didn't know what to say without giving it all away. And nobody asked what
the organization was about. [In fact I had no idea what the SDS was]
When I ran for the school board, it actually was because the most
popular guy in school decided to run for class president. And, he was a native of
Humboldt County. Still lives there. Politically, I knew it would be a wasted effort.
So, I decided that the way to get visibility on the issues was to run for the
school board.
According to the Associated Press, I became the youngest person in
the history of the United States to run for an elected office. That was in 1972. [As an independent. People thought that was significant. The truth was, it
was during the Nixon years, I'd done a little political reporting and wasn't
thrilled with either party, and frankly, not even being old enough to register to vote, I
hadn' t given much thought to party affiliations. I guess that does mean I was
independent.:} Remember, I was only 17 years old.]
Imagine my surprise when my PE coach approached me (he was the one
who didn't believe me when I told him I couldn't wash my gym clothes every day because we
only cranked up the electric generator on Saturdays to do wash in the wringer washer... so
he was constantly chewing me out) He was worried that I would win and get him fired 2
years before retirement. I just told him he had nothing to worry about.
And, if I had continued my campaign I would have been on the board.
I was amazed by the response... people appreciated my straight talk. All over
town, people were taking down posters, and covering names of other endorsed candidates to
replace them with mine. Like I've said before, I didn't want to win. I was a
17 year old kid with a message. [If I'd won, I'm sure I would
have done a good job. It wasn't that frivolous a venture to me, and I had some good ideas
that they actually began to implement themselves about 15 years ago.The truth was, I
became ill for about 2+ weeks - being where we lived, no phone or mail, I had no way to
even respond to newspapers and reporters. By the time I was well enough to go into town
again, there was only about a week left, and most people had thought I had just dropped
out. But I still did well in the election]
But, imagine my disappointment afterward when I went to my student
counselor and asked for help getting college scholarships, and his reply was "What do
you want me to do?". I said "How do you help other people?" He
just stared at me.
These were the people who were supposed to be training me to
be a good citizen. I wasn't happy with it, but I took it in stride. Role
models.
Kinks
- Around the Dial
The good part though was my Radio/TV teacher, Bob Berkowitz. He and I
disagreed about politics a lot. But it never interfered with our ability to work
together, and we did a lot. He was most definitely a mentor to me. And I helped him
clear his property of brush, helped build his corrals... he worked us hard, paid us well
and fed us our favorite food.
Interestingly, he's another guy who's done a great deal of good in
education and politics, and few people understand him. Like he always told me, work smart,
and don't sweat the details. Like I said, he and I have had our disagreements, but good
work is good work.
He was very much involved with bringing Pelican Bay Prison to
Crescent City, California in order to help boost the economy of the most financially
depressed county in California. And he had a lot to do with forcing manufacturers to
include FM receivers in radios.
Crescent City, by the way, is a pretty amazing little community.
It's my favorite example of the way people in a community should interact with each
other. Because it's a small town, everybody basically knew everybody else's
business. And, even though there is a high rate of alcoholism and drug abuse, people
treated each other with respect and care. So, while Gasquet burns (in Southern
Oregon, just a few miles north of Crescent City) I'm concerned about a great community of
my friends, as well as some incredibly beautiful country and wildlife.
So, we'll move on.
I moved to Santa Cruz again, leaving home, when I was 19. I
moved into my brother's house. He was rarely there, being busy with a woman who has
now been his wife for going on 30 years. My brother is a pacifist who spent most of
is work life working on guidance systems for cruise missiles. (Always thought that
was interesting too. 1-2-3 what are we fightin' for...) Anyway. He's also the anchor
of our family. He's 9 years older than me.
I moved there to go to Cabrillo College and study under a teacher
named Ed Pollock, who had a reputation for being the best in teaching broadcast
engineering in Junior Colleges. I never got my FCC 1st class license, but even before I
stopped taking classes, the FCC dropped the requirement for the license except in extreme
cases.
I went to school full-time until I felt I simply wasn't learning
anything. At the same time, I worked at a department store, and worked part-time at
KMBY in Monterey. The folks there taught me alot, and I had fun. That's where
I was known as Johnny Sunday.
At the store, I was called a floater, but was assigned to the
tv/stereo department, where I did a great deal of paperwork and took care of stock and
orders for the record department. And, I worked in personnel, I was a telephone operator.
People would call and say, this isn't really the store name, you're not a woman.
Sometimes, when I was in a crazy mood, I'd tell them to check the
number, call back again, and if I answered the phone, it must be the store. I was
always good at pulling that sort of thing off without offending people. They knew I
was playing with them.
I worked at that store 30-60 hours per week, part-time, limited
benefits. When the time came for my first raise of 25 cents per hour, I was informed
that the policy had changed, and went into effect the day before my raise was to be
issued. So I got a nickel.
Then, after a long time without time off, I set it up weeks in
advance to take a Sunday off with my girlfriend. That Sunday morning, they called up
and wanted me to work. I told them no. They called back and called back... I kept
telling them I deserved a break, and had given them plenty of notice, and since they
couldn't respect that, I would settle the argument. I quit.
A week later, they convinced me to come back. I'm glad.
Because this skinny boy will likely never get paid to be Santa Claus again (and rightfully
so). You should have seen the parents trying to explain that this was really just
one of Santa's helpers. The Santa they really hired had gone on a drinking binge,
and couldn't make it.
Meanwhile, at the age of 19, I took it upon myself to write a report
as to why KMART was going to clobber them in the marketplace, and told them what they
needed to do to compete. About 2 weeks later, some business magazine wrote their own
report that said exactly the same thing I did. I didn't know it, but they then started
putting me through a management training course. It was unofficial though, because
apparently I was the first person to be placed in the program without a college degree.
There's another story that goes with the writing of that report, but it's another
story.
They decided to give me more responsibilities by having me analyze
pricing structures in their varied retail entities. It was interesting. And, I was
working in the accounting office. For some reason, a worker told me about another
worker I knew who had worked for them for over 20 years. Someone my mother worked
with before this store became a large store in Santa Cruz.
Turns out that this woman made less per hour than I did. I
couldn't believe it. And I don't know how it got out, but she found out, and was
incredibly upset, and quit. In the midst of it, as I was threatening the management
with unionizing the store, they promoted me to the same department as this woman. My
agreement was I'd work all they wanted me to, but I had to have weekends off to work in
radio.
Before long, they complained that they needed me for Sundays, I told
them I wouldn't do it. They scheduled me in anyway. So I quit.
About 2 hours later, without a phone call or anything, the manager
and the store security guard came to my door at home, and insisted on talking to me. I
looked around, said, sure, but remember, I didn't invite you here, so anything you see is
off limits. They came in, and I continued to smoke my joint while they proceeded to
tell me why I should come back to work. I did a few days later, but I was unhappy
about continuing to work there. I also needed the job.
A week or so later, I arranged a job at a stereo store in Eureka, Ca.
as the manager of the record department, as they were planning to put up a radio station,
and the implication was that they wanted me to work there to start it.
We'll get to that later.
Dave
Edmunds - I Hear You Knockin'
When I was writing that competitive report about KMART, about 3 in
the morning, I suddenly heard someone banging on the outside door of my room, in the back
of my brother's house. I yelled and told the person to go. They tried coming
in even harder. I woke up my brother and his wife, and the guy still tried to keep
coming. they got on the phone, I yelled to my brother to get a gun, which he refused
to do, and the guy still kept trying to come in. So, I finally found my little pellet-gun,
cocked it a few times so he'd hear it, and banged on the door from the inside. He
went away.
In moments the police were there. I didn't wear pajamas, so my sister
in law handed me one of her bathrobes. She gave another one to my brother.
When the police got there, about all they seemed to care about was why there were 2 men in
the house with one woman, both wearing women's bathrobes. I convinced them to deal
with the criminal, and not their perversions.
They had completely surrounded the neighborhood. Seems they had
numerous similar reports on a direct path from UCSC. Just about then, a neighbor 2
doors down came home, saw all the police hiding behind their cars, asked them what was
going on, and they told him. But they weren't doing anything about it.
So, being a Vietnam vet, he went into his house, got his M-16 rifle,
and went into the back yards, checked it out, then emerged to give the all clear signal.
The next day I proved to my brother that the only thing that saved us
was the fact that the door opened outward, and the guy was trying to push it in. And
it turned out the guy at the back door was John Linley Frazier, a pretty well known mass
murderer.
I showed my brother how I could pick the lock on that back door in
less than 3 seconds. (My brother taught me how to do that. Which explains the
astonishment of a number of late teachers at my elementary school, whose classes were in
their chairs waiting when they arrived. I don't think they ever figured out who did
that.)
Now, through all these stories, you might think I was a guy walking
around with an attitude. But it's not true. I was a true team-player who felt
responsible to speak up when I saw things occurring that were inappropriate. And, I
had my deal with God.
Back to the store in Eureka, Ca.
Things were a little unusual in this store. I'll just mention a
couple of things. They told me I had a budget of $1000. I asked them if that was for
a week, a month... whatever. They just gave me a blank stare. So, I decided I
would take that thousand, put in a classical and country section, and then just keep
recycling the $1000 as long as sales warranted it. The new sections sold out in a
weekend. But, they didn't want classical or country in their store, and said I was
over-spending my budget.
Then, when Elton John's Rock of the Westies album came out, I ordered
40 cases. Humboldt County was very big on Elton John. They kind of panicked.
I got chewed out, but the albums sold out that first day. The next day,
another 20 cases arrived. They sold out. I got chewed out for spending too
much money. I couldn't figure out why they were upset about making that much money
on album sales.
Time went on, until Christmas... KMBY called me up and wanted me to
come down for a full-time job. So I went to my boss, told him I had this job offer,
I told him I was aware the store wasn't doing very well, and that I was aware I was the
last hired, and likely to be the first laid off. And, I told him this radio station
wanted me to work for them, but they would wait til after Christmas for me to arrive.
My boss said, don't worry about it, you have a job here as long as you want.
About a week after Christmas, they laid me off. I had already turned down the other
job.
So, I went to work for a station in Eureka. I had a great time there,
but was a little surprised when we had a contest giving away a date with playmate Randi
LiBrandi... and found out that it was a setup, and that the winner was a friend of the
program director's.
After that, I worked at Sears, in Eureka, in the tv and stereo
department. Worked with some good guys there. No real complaints there. That's
where I had the last contact with an FBI agent (I presume) regarding my father.
I continued to work at the radio station part-time. The last night I
worked there, I went into the studio following a guy who had some kind of grudge against
me, though I don't know why. I think it started back a ways because he thought I was
in his way of getting a job. I really don't know. What I do know is that paper
had been stuffed into every crack of the studio, which I thought was strange, but
considered that maybe we were having trouble with sound containment, so I left it alone.
The next day, I got a call from the Program Director chewing me out
for stuffing paper everywhere. I had known this guy for a few years. So I
asked him if he really thought I would do something weird like that. He just hung up
the phone.
Meanwhile, I was planning to go back to the San Francisco Bay area,
and told my roommate 3 months in advance that I would be leaving so he could decide what
he wanted to do to make up for the money he would need to come up with for his house
payments. This was a guy who used to get a lot of teasing because he was sort
of effeminite, until I stepped in and told the people doing it to knock it off. And
they did. Anyway..
So about 2 months into this process, all of our common friends
stopped talking to me. I didn't know why. I found out later he was mad
because, even though I moved out 2 weeks early but still paid him the rent, he was
anxious to have his house to himself. And, he was telling our friends that I was
dragging my feet about leaving and hadn't paid him rent and all sorts of weird things that
weren't true. Go figure.
O'Jays
- I Love Music
In the meantime, I had met a woman who was a traveling baby
photographer, and she later joined me in Santa Cruz, where we were married. Who
proceeded to have an affair with my business partner.
I was working at a small retailer in Santa Cruz, managing the front
of the store while others dealt with the installing of auto sound products in the back.
At a certain point, the owner of the store moved the primary operation to another
store in a better location. We made a deal where I would stay on his payroll and run
this one store by myself. All of my stock would be purchased from his inventory.
And installations would be done in his shop. 3 months into that, he
walks into the store I managed and claimed that I was putting him out of business.
Apparently, I was doing more business than him. He was a master sinse at martial arts, and
was threatening me. (people told me he was kind of crazy ever since he purposely ran his
car into a tree to collect insurance to float his failing business.)
At that point, I started a disco promotion company, called Pelican
Promotions, that rented out an old 1860's opera house on the beach. It was a
beautiful venue. The purpose of this was to provide disco entertainment for
minors. My specification was "no alcohol". The owners didn't like
that, because they depended on alcohol sales to make the real profits.
So, they specified that if we didn't sell xxx amount of tickets, we
would have to pay $3000 up front on the contract. It was a setup, because the
building didn't hold that many people. I recognized it. They told me to write the
contract. I guess they thought this kid was stupid. So, I reserved every
weekend date on the calendar for the summer, knowing full well we would never make the
number of sales they specified. So, in essence, it was set up that in return for the
$3000, I basically controlled the use of the building for 3 months. I told them
anytime they wanted to use it, just let me know, and I'd be glad to accommodate them. And
I did.
They responded by calling the police 2-3 times every night.
These kids were constantly being searched, and no one was ever detained or arrested
because it was a clean operation. Their security guards let people in the back doors
10-20 people at a time. So I got security to watch them. It was crazy... and all
because I wanted a clean venue for kids.
When the contract ran out, we moved to the civic auditorium. We
had paid back all but $2000 of the original loan I took out to finance the operation.
So, we were doing pretty well. But, on that last night at the civic, the main radio
station that we needed to advertise the events played a commercial from weeks before.
So, very few people showed up, and it put us out of business. I later found out
that the owner of the Opera House, who paid this radio station tens of thousands of
dollars a year in advertising, set it up. Bottom line: they wanted us out of the way
because they wanted to run disco shows.
I took a job at Radio Shack as an assistant manager so I could make a
living and pay back the other $2000. One morning, I went out to go to work, and my
car had been vandalized beyond repair. The police wouldn't even take a report, saying that
it wouldn't do any good, because they would never catch the person anyway. Then, the
person who loaned me the money in the first place started coming to my job 3-4 times a
week and chewing me out in front of customers. So, I moved to LA where I knew I
could make more money so I could continue to pay them off.
I get to LA, hadn't even gotten a job yet, and these people show up
at my door and make a lot of trouble. I turned them away. They got their money
later.
By this point, I started thinking I must have a serious karma
problem. And then I'd remember, I had this deal with God.
I ended up going to work for a magazine, where I started out as an
editorial researcher. They had a Wang word processing system that was, at the time,
state of the art. I did things with it they said weren't possible. After
proving it to them, they asked if I wanted a contract to do some for other people. I
declined, but worked with them anyway just for fun.
Meanwhile, on our own system, it would get fragmented about every 6
weeks. At that point, I would have to back up the system and format the hard drive,
and then restore it, because there were no defrag programs then. I could tell when
it was going to start having problems a few days before it would crash.
I took a process that previously had taken 6 weeks of manual labor
per edition, and automated it to take 3 days per month. Period. So, being bored,
they gave me the title of assistant technical editor, and I took it upon myself to become
their music critic, since I knew how. I interviewed and worked with all the hottest groups
at the time, and went to a ton of concerts, reviewed albums and movies... companies
started contacting us to place advertising, and the magazine refused them. I
couldn't understand it. I did, however, notice the sign above the general manager's
desk. It said "Be the screwer, not the screwee".
They hired a person to work on the editorial side of the magazine.
I made I think, $650 per month. They paid her $2000 per month for 10 hours per
month. The difference: she was a college graduate. And, she would come in a few hours a
week, tell us about her most recent experiences at freebasing cocaine, and then leave.
So, I wrote a memo requesting a discussion about my pay. No
reply. I asked my boss. No response. Meanwhile, the Wang started having trouble, and
I informed the staff to back up their materials, because the system was likely to crash in
the next couple of days.
2 days later, it crashed, and they had not backed up anything yet.
I can only assume they blamed it on me.
After restoring things, and after they had to re-do the work they
hadn't backed up, I sent another memo to my boss saying I would like to leave the job, but
recognized I was a key employee, and didn't want to harm the operation. I told them
it rarely took me more than a few days to find more work, but I would stay on until they
found my replacement, and if for some reason I hadn't found another job yet, I would
appreciate it if they would either continue my pay for a few days while I searched, or
allow me to go on unemployment. I figured it was a fair proposal, to their
advantage.
The manager was out of his office for a few days. He had been
at the local law library. Then, he came back, took me to a conference room, and fired me
on the legal basis that my letter requesting to be put on unemployment constituted a legal
resignation, and I had 15 minutes to get my things and leave. And, of course, the
appeal I made, which included other complaints, was judged in their favor.
I had the last laugh on that one though. They had to hire 7
people to replace me.
Still, with all of the things that had happened, including my
teen years, I was stunned. That's when I sought a few months of counseling for what
I called post-traumatic stress. That worked out well. I had a good
therapist.
My wife decided I should get on disability. I didn't agree, but
I went through the process. And, in being honest with the person interviewing me
about how long I thought I'd be off work, I didn't really think it would be long. So
it was denied. And rightfully so. I was just taking a break between jobs like I
usually did.
Manfred
Mann - Chance - 101 - Lies (Through the 80's)
That had been my first work on computers, and I really liked it. So I
took a job at an accounting firm as a data entry operator. The firm touted that it
was fully staffed by financial counselors who were all ministers. I thought, good,
this one should go well.
So, I started my next career in accounting. My boss was an old banker
from Nebraska. He taught me things like how to plug retained earnings, burying
income and reducing profits by claiming receivables as unrecoverable income, all sorts of
neat, illegal things that I had never heard of before.
And, they'd always send me to deliver the "audited"
accounting reports to clients because I couldn't answer their questions. Questions
like, why does it show that my bank account is missing $10,000? Questions like that
which caused me to read some books on accounting myself. Things that caused me to
understand why we had 2 sets of books, why the prospecti we were sending out to investors
were based on the fraudulent books, how the investments they were selling in real estate
were oversold 2 to 3 times their value... and how the owner of the business could afford a
3.5 million dollar house on a business that was in the red. This was in the late
70's.
It seems I had graduated from witnessing mischief to actual criminal
fraud. It took me a while to figure it all out... and when I did, I looked for another
job. There's a lot more to this story, but this is enough to give you the idea.
I answered an ad for a morning show sports personality at a radio
station in Los Angeles. They said they liked my stuff, and to come on down. So
I quit my job and did. When I arrived for work the following Monday, the week before I was
to go on the air, I was informed that they had a friend of the morning man from Las Vegas
who just happened to have come into town, and they were going to let him have the job.
Instead, they wanted me to be an intern in the news department, and handle public
affairs. I thought, might as well, and then proceeded to do that. I was on duty, for
example, the day Ronald Reagan was shot. That was a fun one to manage.
Meanwhile, I got them all kinds of interviews from people like Smokey
Robinson, Toto, Christopher Cross... many others, my favorite being Jermaine Jackson, who,
after the interview, gave me an album signed something like "To Chuck, with all my
love, Jermaine". In that same period, I edited an interview with Tom Bradley.
Apparently it bothered someone else that I was doing all this great
work. So, I was told that I wasn't supposed to do any more interviews, and that any
other stars I lined up should be re-directed to another person who, from what I could
tell, was doing nothing.
So I thought, okay, and I made an appointment with the program
director. She was a very nice woman about 23. When I went into her office, she
didn't seem to know what to say. So, I very simply requested that she listen to my
demo tapes of my previous air work, and consider me for a full-time show. She looked
at me funny, and asked "So, what would you like me to do with this?" I thought
that was odd.
The next day, the music director, and son of a very famous KLOS (too
hip, gotta go) program director, came to me and read me the riot act for bothering the
program director. He said, "All on-air positions are my decision". I
thought, that's odd, but it was their station. I said "Everywhere else I've
ever been, the program director was in charge of these things". He just said
"Oh, you don't know" and walked away.
The next day, I found out this program director knew nothing about
broadcasting, but was the girlfriend of the station manager. That was her job. Okay.
So, then, I was working at 3 different places, so my schedule was
pretty busy. A couple of guys asked me if I wanted to go to a computer show with
them, which I did, but I just didn't have time. The next day, I was told there was a
rumor around the station that I had a problem with gay people. I didn't have a clue
who or what they were talking about. Until I found out they were talking about those
2 guys. Okay.
Now, just as a side note... I'll mention that the station was really
close to my boss's house in North Hollywood. So, we'd usually go there for lunch. And, at
least once a week, she'd come out of her bathroom naked. I was a devoted husband,
regardless of how good looking she was. So, I'd always laugh at her, and tell her to
put her clothes back on, and then everything was fine for a few days.
The other job I had was at Golden Egg Productions, and it ended up
being my last job in LA I was a radio station syndicated program
salesman. Station Relations, they called it. I wasn't a fast closer, so they assigned
me to all the major market PD's who required a little friendlier, slower approach to
convince them to run the show on their stations. I was talking to some of the most
famous Program Directors in the country. It was fun.
That was actually a good job, no surprises, good people, decent
hours, the works... which was going just fine until the company's funding went dry.
You might remember the controversy about MAPS, Muhammad Ali Pro Sports? Turns out, the guy
running that fraud scheme was using us as a tax shelter. And when he got caught, we
bellied up. It's a longer story than that, but that's the gist of it.
Ricky
Martin - Livin' la Vida Loca
So... My wife and I had already decided to move to Seattle, and we
figured it would take us another month or so to move. I had picked up a programming
project, so the money was good. 6 weeks after leaving Golden Egg, my apartment
manager knocks on the door, and hands me an eviction notice. Apparently, our check had
bounced because my last paycheck had bounced. We never got a notice about it, and
the apartment managers had not said a word before that. I offered to pay it... we had more
than enough money in our savings account, and they refused.
So, I showed up for the eviction hearing, and low and behold, all of
my neighbors were there. It seems that the truth was that the apartment people had
never tried to cash the check. Every one of us had the same story. The truth
was, they wanted to clear out the building of residents so they could remodel. Let's
just say I convinced their attorney that they didn't want me to go before the judge with
all my witnesses to tell the story about it all. I negotiated the deal so that none
of the people were evicted, and none of us had to pay the rent. And, I needed a
couple more weeks before moving, so I took it for free.
Now, don't get me wrong, I had many good times in Los Angeles. Lots
of them. What I described were the strange things I observed and experienced.
Then we moved to Seattle. I think it was 1981
I got a good job at a firm that specialized in client accounting
computer systems. It was a good job. I was Director of Customer Support Services.
I frequently got bonuses and lunches for good work, and for being the key to some
very large sales on a regular basis.
Then, when PC's came out, my boss wasn't sure about them. He
was from the Royal Computer days of old, and believed in mini-computers. So, I went
out and bought a PC for about $3,000, and took it to and from work everyday so that they
could demonstrate PC's to our customers. Finally they were convinced we should sell
them as one of our regular products.
There was only one problem; PC's were expensive back then. And
my boss wanted to save people money. So, despite the quotes and specs I would give
him on what needed to be in the computers, they would short the order by leaving off
things like memory, hard drives... important things like that.
Meanwhile, the customers liked me so much, they decided I should also
start managing collections on unpaid bills. That was interesting, because I would
just be really nice about it, listen to what people said their payment problems were, and
then very politely ask them to send what they could. My boss said he'd never had
such good luck on collections before.
They sent me to one client that owed us over $10,000 for custom
software. That's when I realized there was a real problem. Because the
customer was completely right, that we had not supplied the services contracted. It
began to be more common to find that to be true. I finally decided to leave because I
didn't want to be a part of it anymore. No big blow up. And I continued to do
some odds and ends for them.
I became aware of 3 law suits that my old boss decided I should
testify in on his behalf. I sent word through an associate that they should not call
me, because I would have to testify against them. I sent it that way because the associate
was working directly with my old boss, and I was doing odds and ends for "the
associate", and he thought he could better communicate what I had to say.
And, he was concerned my old boss would stop doing business with him.
I got called in anyway, and had to testify against my old boss.
They were shocked, because they had never been told by my "associate",
who didn't tell my old boss because he was concerned about what the reaction might be.
And the business he would lose.
So, I struck out on my own, and I did pretty well. And then a
few things happened.
First, I had the reunion with my sister that really through me for a
loop. The one where she blamed me for allowing my stepfather to rape her.
Then, I went into one of my prolific songwriting stages. I could sit
down and begin writing one song, and write 5 more before the first was finished. I
write these silly little love songs. It's almost embarrassing. So, my wife
decided to start accusing me of having an affair, which wasn't true.
What was true is that she was having an affair, and had just found
out when she decided to inform me she couldn't take my "screwing around"
anymore.
We actually almost got back together very soon after. But,
that's when she told me she was attracted to me be cause she thought I would be rich one
day. And there was one other thing. She had one more date with another guy,
the son of a man whose father was, let's say, there the day John Kennedy was shot. His
father worked for the CIA. I guess I was just supposed to understand.
That was enough for me. I lost interest in the business, and finally
started catching myself making mistakes I normally didn't make. I had a very good
reputation for doing good work, and even though my clients didn't know it, I was making
mistakes.
Elton
John - Tumbleweed Connection - 201 - Where To Now Saint Peter
Meanwhile, my old friend in Eureka kept telling me to move down
there. Share the house with his wife and kids, and basically hang out with family. He
finally convinced me.
There was a problem. His youngest child seemed to be
afraid of him, and they said they didn't know why. One day the little boy informed
me. Lets' just say there was good reason. So, I brought it up to my friend as if it
was a new discovery.
The next thing I know, one of our common friends took it upon herself
to ask me a question. It was "How can you stand yourself? Why are you mooching
off him?"
Well, I wasn't. I was paying my way, and to that very day, they
were trying to convince me to stay, even to build another room onto the house for me to
stay in. I really didn't want to do that, but I thought it was nice. And then other
friends stopped talking to me. It was the same thing all over again.
So, I went to work at a radio station in Crescent City, owned by my
old radio/tv teacher. I had a great time. He decided to let me do the morning show
on the AM side of the simulcast, so he dubbed me the program director, and away I went.
I had commentators (Randy Looney, a take off of Andy Rooney, and Mark Falpert of
the Shirley McClaine Future Facts Channeling Network (Marv Albert), and a radio
satire/soap opera program a la Loman and Barkley in L.A. called Ed & Joyce, an
American Country Family from Crescent City, with their son Dave, Daughter LaRue and a
parrot named Pepe. The final show had them on tv with Richard Dawson on the Family
Feud. It was Ed & Joyce Hatfield vs Don & Eve McCoy.
I'd get together with a couple of the other DJ's and cut the shows
once a week. We called one of the guys Dr. Professor. They were both
alcoholics. It's the only time in my life where I ended up around alcohol alot. The
deal was, whoever blew their lines had to take a shot of Southern Comfort. They blew
their lines a lot. :}
It was a good time, but I knew I had to get it together and move on.
And, there was this indie record rep in Texas who had been calling me for months.As
time went on, we became friends. I figured I had nothing better to do, so I decided I
might as well go try Texas. It wasn't as simple as that, but close to it.
Restless
Heart - Bluest Eyes In Texas
I had it set up so that I had a job at a station in San Antonio.
When I got there, the station manager and program director had been fired, so
nobody knew who I was. And I guess this woman's father must have thought I was just
some worthless disk jockey or something. She suggested I have a talk with him, so I
called him up to schedule a time to talk, and he decided that was a bad idea, and
threatened to track me down and shoot me with a shotgun. Okay.
So, I decided I'd had enough of that already. 3 days later, I
was headed back to California.
I got back to Santa Cruz, got things set, and then made a phone call
to KLRS in Santa Cruz. They hired me the next day. I had a good reputation for
doing good work. Still, I was surprised at how quickly they hired me.
I got there the first day, and Mark Hammond introduced me to the
staff. Then, I asked the music director, who had been doing most of the production,
to show me the equipment in the production room. He said "According to what I hear,
you're such hot shit, I couldn't possibly teach you a thing". Okay.
The truth is, I had a great time there. I had great record
company contacts, so I got to do a number of live interviews. I did production
all day (which I love), wrote 90% of all the copy in the station, and produced special
serial programs on tennis and golf and things like that. At night, I did my show (which
was not part of the original deal)
Then the announcement came, we were going to start broadcasting a
satellite service instead of live. Mind you, this station was rated #1 from San Jose
to Monterey. Average listening time to the station was 6 hours. That's a
phenomenal stat. But, our sales staff didn't know how to sell it.
At that time, I was producing spec spots that were good enough that
people wanted them to run on other stations, just not ours. The station manager and
sales manager told me not to cut any more spec spots unless there was a signed order.
One day, the sales manager, who was under a lot of pressure for failing to do his
job, came into the studio, and decided to take it out on me.
So I said "Tell ya what, why don't you go to your office and
we'll pretend I don't work here until the station manager gets back." That
wasn't good enough, so he decided he was going to get violent. I went out to the
parking lot and waited for the station manager to return.
After the Program Director talked to the station manager, I was
called in. The Program Director said, don't worry about it, it's all handled. But,
the station manager said instead "Gee, I guess we can't resolve this. Can you
find another job?" I was stumped. I walked out, someone asked what
happened, and 5 or 6 people went into the station manager's office, to no avail.
Turns out, the station manager was in a rehab program for cocaine, and the sales manager
and he were both off the wagon together.
They finally asked me back, so I worked there part-time doing
production for them. But I went on to get 2 other part-time jobs at other stations
as well. It was confusing. I had to write on a piece of paper what station I was at,
what name I was using and keep it in front of me on the control panel. .. it was pretty
funny really... I did that for a few months, did all the vacation fill-ins at the
stations, but decided to get back into computers.
But, I kept the part-time and fill-in job at KWAV in Monterey.
It was fun. I found out later that I was number 1 in my time slot, the morning shows on
the weekends.
That's when I went to work for Intuit. And, for the most part it was
a great place to work. The one thing I did notice, though, when I first got there,
that a couple of people were not the best for the job of supervising employees. Many
people were looking to leave. What I noticed most is that few of them had any
experience, and they were lying about their qualifications, and getting great jobs. And, I
also noticed that you couldn't get an interview without a degree, which I didn't have.
When I left to work at Borland, another good move, something else had
happened. I was at KWAV one evening when another DJ came in, and showed me her
latest project. She had been really sick one day, and, while watching the news about the
upcoming war in Iraq, she created the prototype for the Saddam Hussein Pull Apart Doll.
She knew I was a promoter and had a business background, and wanted
to know what I thought she could do to market it. So, I called the Associated Press, and
asked them what they'd want to know to run a story. They wanted to know
everything immediately. I said I'd call them back. A few minutes later, I
called them back, said it was $19.95 (of course) gave them my name address and phone
number and ordering instructions.
A half-hour later, we had reporters in the studio interviewing her
from San Francisco to Monterey. The next day, just to see what would happen, I sent a fax
to CNN about it. A few days later, orders started coming in from all over the U.S.
I didn't see any of this as a problem, because I knew I could get
this to work. I called a friend who was the creator of the stress ball, and founded
Atari's Activision division. He had a company that brought toys to market.
He was responsible for Teddy Ruxspin as well. So he got on the phone to a
manufacturer in Mexico, the same as Teddy Ruxspin's, and they agreed to manufacture the
doll, and they'd cover the production costs.
There was only one more piece we needed. Money for distribution.
Meanwhile, we were doing interviews all over the Bay area. I
remember one tv station doing a teaser for their report on the doll, and when the anchor
realized what she was going to be reporting on, and came back from a commercial break, she
basically hammered the idea. She didn't like the image the cameraman set up of
Saddam Hussein's head rolling down a hill. I just thought, any publicity is good
publicity.
The problem was, people wanted to know where the doll was being
manufactured. I put them off.
I went to a venture capitalist who loved the idea. A couple
days later, he came back with some numbers that said we'd earn $40 million net in 6
months. So I set it up with the creator to come to a meeting. The problem was, in
all 3 of the meetings we had, she changed her mind in the middle of it, and would act
disgusted, and tell them she would only give them 5%. After the third meeting like
that, they didn't even want to talk to her. What a fool. I kept telling her,
take your $12 million and run. For some reason, that seemed like a bad deal to
her. I only wanted a million.
I'm not sure what happened after that. I'd made a deal with the
Manager of Borland tech support that if I couldn't pull off the doll thing by a certain
date, that I would give it up and report to work. He was great about it, and
encouraged me to do it.
These investors liked the idea so much, they pursued me about it, and
said all we had to do was give them the idea, and they'd give us 2%. I just referred
them to her. I have no idea what happened after that. But, we did sell a few that
were hand made interstate, which technically means the idea is protected. Anybody want to
buy a doll? I'd bet she'd take a smaller percentage this time. :}
I worked at Borland for about three years... would have stayed their
too, if the company hadn't fall victim to two cases of corporate espionage. I made
it through 3 layoffs, before they started outsourcing their support services. That's
when I decided to take a couple companies up on their offers in Atlanta.
That's where the real trouble began. Not just the typical
gamesmanship that happens at jobs. Criminal activity, that I got stuck in the middle
of. And that's where we'll begin on the next page.
On the road to Atlanta.
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