Thursday April 7th, 2011 - Fox Lake, IL Here’s an interesting exercise for anyone at any time throughout the course of life. Who would be the most desirable people to have your life if you were starting it all over again? Make a top ten and work up to one hundred. That’s what I’ve been doing and it isn’t easy. I’m not necessarily a social butterfly, but I’ve always known a lot of people. I would say it’s because I have a lot of interests, and have been a member of several groups in my life. I know hundreds of comedians for example, because I’ve been one my entire adult life. There are probably several thousand people who call themselves comedians, even if the majority of them aren’t full time. It’s also a transient business and we’re always traveling and working with different people each week. The opportunity exists to meet new people, and it’s almost impossible not to. That alone has made my contact list larger than most. I’ve also been involved in radio, professional wrestling as a ring announcer and dabbled in wheeling and dealing sports cards. All those categories have a lot of people in the ranks and I’ve met more people than most. If I don’t have more contacts than the average bloke, it’s my own fault. I’ve had chances to meet a lot of people and I’ve tried to nurture that. That being said, losing my phone contact list has been an extra large hassle I wasn’t in a mood to deal with right now, but when is a good time? Never. It happened when and how it did, and like it or not I’m going to have to rebuild my list from zero. Where do I start? I’ve got a twenty-five year strong contact base built up of comedy friends, radio friends, wrestling friends and just plain civilian friends I’ve made living all over the country doing radio and living in towns like Lansing, Reno, Salt Lake City, Chicago and Los Angeles. I’ve even got a few family members thrown in there and a list of women I know and am interested in. My grandpa always said it’s important to have a farm system of women, just like a baseball team, even if I got married. He did. He said it’s good insurance to stash the numbers and keep in touch with a few women in case things go sour at home. Smart guy. Now, take all those contacts from all those sources from all those years, and choose the best of the best, and start a master list from the ground up. Like draft choices for a sports team, who gets chosen first? Wait, not so fast. Think it over and choose a balanced list of both those who can help and those who need help. Who makes life better by being in it? I’d never thought of it quite that way before, and it was difficult to narrow down who I chose for my top ten, but I did. Then I made categories and chose some more names and raised it up to a Top 40 list, like records. That wasn’t easy either, but it made me think. I’m sure the list will evolve and grow to hunrreds, but I’ll pay attention to it like never before. I don’t want to waste my dwindling time here on dolts, maggots, energy drainers, or Vikings fans. I think we all should have a Top 40 contact list. It’s a foundation of life.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Mercury In Retrograde
Wednesday April 6th, 2011 - Fox Lake, IL OK, I admit it. I’m officially overwhelmed. I’m short tempered and pissed off, and I’ve been told it’s due at least partially to the fact that the planet Mercury is in Retrograde. All I know is, I’ve got B.S. coming at me from all directions and I’m about to blow a gasket. I’ve heard about the Mercury thing before. Supposedly what happens is the planet starts to revolve in the opposite direction somehow, and apparently that trickles over to us here on Earth and screws up communication between everyone. I don’t know how true that is or if it’s true at all, but I’ve heard it from people I’d have no reason to doubt their word. My grandfather would have attributed that theory to ‘moonbeams and stardust’ as he’d call anything to do with astrological events. He didn’t believe in any of it, but I’m not so sure. This would be more of an astronomy thing rather than astrological, and maybe both. If a planet reverses the way it revolves, isn’t there a reaction to that somehow? I know it screws things up on Earth when there are sunspots, and that isn’t moonbeams and stardust at all. That’s a physical fact of the solar system. Whatever it is, I’m feeling off right now. I feel like I can’t keep up with everything, and things just keep piling up for me to work on. I can’t put the time into any of them that I think needs to be, and everything feels like it’s on the verge of collapsing. I don’t know what to do about it other than keep slugging, but I’m at the end of my patience rope which wasn’t very long in the first place. It’s tense. It always seems that people only call me when they want something. I’ve always tried to help as much as I can, and maybe I’m a sucker but I can’t help it. If someone is in need, it bothers me - especially if I feel I can help out. Life is short and I think it’s all about giving but a certain segment of people think it’s all about taking and not giving back. I hate that. I’ve been trying to find a happy medium, and I just can’t seem to do it. I have a friend in need right now who’s between jobs and needs to feed a family. I have a few trinkets that I think can be sold on Ebay, but I have zero time to do it. That person came over today and I made time even though I had none, and we went to my storage area looking for trinkets. We found a few, but they should bring at least a couple hundred dollars in time of need. Then, that person took a phone call that lasted at least half an hour, and all I could do was sit in the passenger seat and hear my day tick away. I know I’m a control freak, and when I can’t do anything about it I feel useless and helpless and it infuriates me that I’m stuck. This is why I always like to drive myself anywhere so I can leave if I want. Today I was trying to help someone else, and put myself in a position of vulnerability and got stung by circumstances. I’m not angry at the person, but I am disappointed I put myself in this spot in the first place. I have my own problems to work on. I am in a rut right now, and I know it because I’m doing stuff like misplacing my keys and glasses frequently. I have way too much going on and I know it. Come on Mercury, turn it around. My head is in Uranus.
Tech No Logical
Wednesday April 5th, 2011 - Fox Lake, IL
Well, here’s another pain in the groinal region I didn’t expect. Losing my phone contact list is turning out to be a bigger deal than I first thought. Why they couldn’t get the list off of my other phone is beyond me, but so is most of the rest of technology. I’m a dumb ass.
It hit me head on and hard today that I’ll have to rebuild my entire list of contacts from the ground up. That’s a big task, and one I wasn’t planning on but I have no choice. This is my life blood in the entertainment business, and I’m going to either rebuild it or starve.
I thought I had it backed up already, but I guess I didn’t. There was apparently a way to protect everything via wireless backup, but I didn’t have that on my phone plan. It’s kind of like getting into a car accident and finding out what isn’t covered. Too late by then.
It is what it is. I know I’m not the first person to lose all contact numbers and I won’t be the last. I’ve had a lifetime of lost notebooks and computers and wallets and documents I was never able to replace so I’m used to it by now. I’ll just have to watch my back better.
Who can do everything that needs to be done? I sure can’t. Damn, I’m overwhelmed on all sides as it is. Now out of the blue I get all my contacts taken away? That makes it even harder, but nobody else cares. They’ve got their own problems. I have to fix this myself.
I sure tried to give it a good start today, but didn‘t get very far. I farted around with my new phone and I felt like a kindergartener looking through a calculus book. I was about as over my head as Obama is running the country and I knew I had my work cut out for me.
I do have quite a few of my old contacts, and I sent out a mass mail explaining what my situation was and return emails started pouring in. I’ve gotten them from other people and know how it is. They just update the info and some I hadn’t heard from in a while said hi, so that was nice. It’s a super slow process loading names in the new phone, but I started.
I’m going to build myself a quality list of people I’m working with now, and I was very careful of who I chose to load in there to build that foundation. I looked over the contacts I did have, and picked the top fifty people that I think are the biggest positives in my life.
I narrowed those down to the top ten, and even though it took way longer than it should have, I loaded them in first. Then I did another ten after that of the best of the rest. This is a great way to build a contact list, and I know when it’s done it will be better than before.
There’s such limited time in life it’s impossible to hang with everyone as much as we’d like so I’m going to be very careful who I choose to associate with from now on. I wasted enough time on idiots, and here I sit with my education nowhere near where I want to be.
This is all part of life, and I choose to let this be both a learning experience and a way to improve myself by improving the quality of people I choose to associate with in my life.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Cell Hell
Monday April 4th, 2011 - Fox Lake, IL As I went to use my cell phone this morning, the screen zapped out and turned white as a blizzard. I wasn’t able to get it to do anything else after turning it off and on quite a few times, and I knew that was the ‘game over’ signal. I’d gotten a lot of use out of it though. I am a flaming techno idiot, and don’t enjoy gadgets at all. Some people are first in line and pay extra to get the latest toy as soon as it comes out, but I’m just the opposite. It took me years to even consider getting a cell phone, and when I finally did I hardly used it. The land line I had worked fine, but like the rest of us the cell eventually was my only phone. Over time, I’ve lost a couple and had a couple others zap out, and I know I’m by far not the only one that’s happened to. I guess it’s the cost of convenience, but each time I go to get a new one, there’s been a major upgrade in the technology. I was lost six phones ago. I don’t think I’ve ever once taken a picture with my phone or used the GPS system. I’m old school when it comes to finding directions. Give me the streets and I’ll find it. That’s the way I’ve always done it, and I’ve survived a quarter century of traveling doing that. I know I’m an old fart and poo pooing technology just like my Grandma used to, but all I really want from a phone is to be able to make calls, and send text messages. That’s one thing I have embraced, because it‘s efficient. A well placed text can save a lot of hassle. There’s a Sprint store by my house and that’s the brand I’ve had since I first got my first phone back in Salt Lake City. I was working for Clear Channel then, and they had a group discount for all of us in the building who hadn’t gotten one yet. There were about a dozen radio stations in one building, so there were a lot of us who took advantage of the deal. I don’t think anyone has ever been satisfied with their cell phone provider, and I’ve had chances to switch companies but I never did. If I was a techno geek I’m sure it would be a major deal, but since I’m an idiot I’m content to stay where I am. Ignorance really is bliss. The new phone I upgraded to is absolutely amazing to a monkey like me. It’s loaded up with so much stuff I’ll never use, I should just give it back and buy some walkie talkies to get me by. I’ll at least understand how to use those. This is going to be a learning process, but it would behoove me to make an effort to master it. This is a big part of modern life. I watched the people in the store whiz around on it as they showed me how to use it and I realized immediately that the world has passed me by. I haven’t even figured out how to play the video game ‘Pong’ yet, and now I’ve got Mission Control in my hands. I’m toast. I wonder what my grandpa would have thought about all this? He wasn’t exactly on top of the technology of his day either. He was HUMAN, and that seems to be the one thing I see missing in all these modern conveniences. How about some imagination? Let’s enjoy life‘s simple things and have fun. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Can't Get It Done
Sunday April 3rd, 2011 - Kenosha, WI I don’t think I was born with the organizational gene, and it’s frustrating. It’s a massive struggle every single day to keep things flowing, and more often than not I let myself drift away from whatever plan I may have made and it ends up throwing everything off course. If I could change it I would, and I’ve tried, but it’s not working. It’s difficult to play the dual role of planner and executioner of said plan, but I have little choice right now. I can’t hire people and pay them what they’re worth to work for me just yet, so I have to find my own way for the moment. I’ve been trying to do that for years, and I’m not pulling it off. Today was a perfect example. My friend Todd Hunt asked me to help him review some new material he wants to use in his speaker presentation. No problem. I enjoy hanging out with Todd, and his birthday was last week and I owed him a meal. He drove up to my part of town to go to the Golden Corral, which made it a lot easier than me going to Chicago. We were scheduled for a 1 o’clock meal, but I’d been up in Milwaukee the night before hanging out with comedians there until 4am. That’s what comedians do, and I can’t say it wasn’t fun because it was. That’s why we do it. It sure was a lot easier in my 20s though. I didn’t get home until almost 6am, and I tried to get some work done after that and did not get to sleep until about 7:30. I haven’t put in hours like that lately, and it shows. I got to the Golden Corral by 1, but was dragging ass to get there. My youth is painfully gone. Todd and I hung out until almost 4pm. We always have something to talk about, and he and I exchange ideas and concepts all the time. Our meetings are productive and fun and I don’t regret doing them, but stuff like that really does cut into a work day as far as time is concerned. My weekly lunches with Marc Schultz are similar. I love them, but they cost. In a perfect world, I’d take a few weeks or months off and get everything caught up and start completely over. That’s not practical though. Who can realistically do that? Life is a constantly evolving project, and needs constant attention to keep everything functioning. How can I focus on any one thing and keep everything else going at the same time. It’s impossible and I don’t see how anyone does it without hiring someone to help. I suppose some people are better at this kind of thing than others, and I know I’m on the lower rung. Tonight I had another Mothership Connection radio show on AM 1050 WLIP, and even though that was fun as well it also takes a lot of time. Four hours on the air is a long time, fun or not. We had our favorite guests on, the ‘Twin Psychics’ Chinhee and Sunhee Park. They’re fantastic guests and have a website chinheeandsunheepark.com that’s got a lot of interesting things to offer including a newsletter. Their readings are dead on, and they fit in perfectly with what we’re doing. Still, after all that effort today it feels like I haven’t done a damn thing productive. I’m letting life play me rather than me take the wheel.
Wade In The Shade
Saturday April 2nd, 2011 - Stevens Point, WI/Milwaukee, WI As much as it might crush my delicate male ego, fact is fact. The closest this Caucasian will ever get to participating in professional athletics on this cosmic plane has passed, and I fell painfully short of my dream to be a star player in any sport. Most regular people do. The closest I will ever get to living that dream so many others have along with me was being an NBA ball boy in high school for two years for my home town Milwaukee Bucks. Even getting to do that was something most people never get a chance do, and it was fun. What made it especially fun was the great group of guys that was assembled for the two years I was there. It was a well rounded mixture of city and suburbs, white and black, Jew and gentile and just about every other diversion imaginable and we all got along together. Usually cherry jobs like that are reserved for coach’s kids or other inside people, but not this time. There was a contest announced on the radio for high school kids who wanted to be ball boys for the Bucks, and the requirements were to write a letter telling why we did. I must have spent three days coming up with mine, and I typed it out making sure there were no mistakes of any kind. I honestly thought I’d have no chance because of so many other entries, but I did get a call back and got to have an interview at the Bucks’ offices. There were quite a few of us there that day, and we were all giddy because we’d gotten a call back. Everyone was friendly, and we were told there was a limited number of jobs and not everyone was going to be hired. We’d get to win the job with our interview, and the losers would get sent home with a bag of Bucks souvenirs. It was an exciting process. I remember getting told I’d made it and feeling like a first round draft choice. In reality, all I was being hired to do was mop up sweat during the game of the real players who fell down on the court, but it was a labor of love and I’m thrilled I got a chance to participate. Many of us from that squad of ball boys have stayed in touch for going on 30 years now. One of our group has managed to make a career out of it and still works there today. He’s obviously not mopping up sweat anymore, but he has moved up the ranks in the office. His name is Wade Waugus and I think the world of the guy, as did everyone else when we were ball boys. He’s from Brookfield originally, and at first he acted like a very cocky suburban kid. Some of us thought he’d be the odd one out at first, but he ended up staying the longest by far. Wade is well known around town, and is synonymous with the Bucks. He’s just a super guy and you can’t help but like him. He plays in a band and loves loud rock and roll. AC/DC is his favorite, and I’m happy to say he’s never grown up. Today is his birthday, and I realized I haven’t seen him in a while and owe him a lunch or dinner or something just to stay in contact and hang out. He’s always come to see me perform over the years and is one of my favorite people ever. Friends like Wade are what life is about.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Go See Jeff Cesario
Friday April 1st, 2011 - Milwaukee, WI/Stevens Point, WI A pleasantly busy day today. I was up early and ready to work. I did two gigantic loads of laundry, and that’s always a treat because now I’ve got clean clothes to wear. I was at the end of the line, and some odd fashion combos were right around the corner - not that my usual wardrobe would ever be identified as fashionista. I’m more like a bachelorista. Anyway, it always feels like I’ve accomplished something when I get laundry done and I have accumulated a lot of underwear and socks so now I won’t have to worry about it for at least a couple more months. The day was a success before 8am, the rest was a bonus. I cleared out a big pile of emails as I did laundry, and also got to relish the sexy charms of Robin Meade on CNN Headline news and baseball highlights on ESPN. I’m glad to see baseball back, even though my Brewers got embarrassed in Cincinnati in the last at bat. I’ll be able to savor the Packers’ Super Bowl win the rest of the year, baseball is a diversion. I hadn’t been on The D List on ESPN Radio 540 in Milwaukee in a while so I swung up to Milwaukee to hang with Drew Olson and Dan Needles on the air. They’ve anointed me with ‘walk on’ status and I can come in whenever I want, but I always check beforehand. Drew said come on up, so I did. Coincidentally, one of the other guests was one of my all time favorite comics Jeff Cesario who is doing a big charity show next Saturday at the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee. Jeff is a fantastic comic and one of the nicest human beings I have ever met in my comedy travels. He’s originally from Kenosha and now lives in LA. Back in the ‘80s Jeff and I worked at a big club in Atlanta called The Punch Line. That’s where Jeff Foxworthy started and in the comedy boom years it was one of THE best clubs in America. Atlanta was smoking hot for comedy, and it was a real thrill to get a gig there. I knew Jeff was from Kenosha, and told him I was a fellow cheese head and he couldn’t have been nicer all week. He gave me some tips and just showed by example how to be an entertainer. I’ve never forgotten it, and have used his example to show others as I came up the ranks. I never wanted to bother Jeff or ask him for anything, but I always admired him. I got a chance to tell him that on the air, and I appreciated it. He was on the phone, and I hope he didn’t think I was a goof but I meant what I said. He really is a top level guy on stage and off. If you have a chance to go see him next Saturday, do it. It’s a charity event, so you’ll have a good time and help a cause. That’s about as good as life gets, so have fun. Speaking of fun, I had lots of it tonight working a great one nighter in Stevens Point, WI at a sports bar. It was nuts to butts sold out, and they were really there to laugh. I thought it was going to be miserable, but was pleasantly surprised. Everything about it was a good experience, from the crowd to the hotel. The owner was a younger guy who’s really sharp and it shows. He treated us great and runs a slamming joint. The opening act was a funny kid out of the Detroit area named Matt McClowry who ripped it up. Good day all around.
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