C’mon man, bail me out!

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Just got a note from someone who said they spit their coffee out when they read a line in my most recent blog, Are You Employee #1? about some outfits still using Yellow Pages and Drive-Time radio. “Good line”, he said. “you should use that in one of your e-strategy talks”. I probably will, ah, but alas, if it weren’t so. It wasn’t even a bit of a stretch. If you’ve followed any of my rantings on The Enlightened Rogue, you’ll know of some of my escapades in the land of the would-be creatives. The kind of like, un-good ones.

It’s a rough and tumble world, full of politics, miscommunication, hubris, sleight of hand, back stabbing and fade offs. A fade off is when they just stop returning your calls or e-mails after they’ve started the project. Even after you’ve posted it sometimes. It happens. If you’ve ever sold capital equipment you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. You can take a drink and water your plants at the same time if you’ve done it long enough. Gratefully, I have some wonderful folks I partner with. Without them I’d need a substance. Eh, I’d probably take it anyway.

I got the usual “ya gotta help me, man” from an old associate who just took over the top marketing position in an international plasma gathering company. Competition is fierce and so is the work ethic. They eat, drink and sleep volume. Hire low, pay low and keep opening clinics, in malls, empty office space and anywhere they can fit ten people. 20 clinics a year, minimum. They get push back from some of the communities they’re trying to move into because of the element it draws looking for some easy money. They line up around corners first thing in the morning and draw the ire of local denizens. You’re not drawing Wall St. employees here. They have to screen the users out.

It gets worse, so I’m not going to get any deeper. But, suffice it to say, the pay sucks, the culture really sucks and none of the thousands of employees has any idea who resides in the home office in Florida. That’s where “ya gotta help me man,” came in. He told me, any executive from the home office can walk into any location in any part of the world and no one will recognize them. Maybe they have a reality show on the side. They ain’t gettin’ none o’ my blood.

We’re talking blood here, not urine samples. In one of my blogs, as part of my supervised therapy, 🙂 I wrote him a letter venting my disapproval of how this whole thing suddenly got derailed on a whim and how unprofessionally he handled himself after leaving me hanging and screwing me out of some considerable change that I had up-fronted. To this day he never got back to me with any type of explanation. Note: You don’t want the likes of me drawing any conclusions. Trust me.

The point of this whole rag is to let my inquirer know that I didn’t make up the Yellow Page/Radio marketing thing. People just keep putting their head down and doing the same old tired approach 20 years into the digital revolution.

Another reason I was brought in, was to do cultural videos and manage the digital signage program as they are sitting on a powder keg of unhappy, not on the same page, employees. Very dangerous, as he explained to me. I guess those 40 screens are on their way back to Samsung or Sony. My therapist is urging me to hang in there, he enjoys these stories plus, he has kids to put through college.

Used to be, when a big company gave you the shaft, you just had to chalk it up. But, it seems, I ran out of chalk.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

I’m an asset! Dammit!

I love these people who take umbrage when they hear “employees are our greatest asset”. “I’m not cattle or a piece of furniture or something you own”.

Oh, yes you are. Lock, stock and barrel and you can be disappeared in a New York Minute.They know down to the penny how much heat, light, water, air conditioning and potty flushes you are capable of. They know how many cubic inches you take up and what your yield is. Which should be at least five times what they’re paying you.

My wife is always asking me why I always get agitated when I get on the corporate BS bandwagon. She thinks I’m still looking in the rear view mirror. Actually, I’m not. I still have to deal with corporate entities all the time and I still see the same winks and nods coming off the C-Suite and HR Departments.

I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night thinking of all the crazy things that actually went on in my corporate career. Some of it makes me laugh, some of it makes me angry and a lot of it still has me scratching my head. Most of it, I can’t talk about cause it makes me cry.

I think what did me in was the Bristol Myers Squibb buyout of Dupont Medical Imaging, after which I was relocated back to the home office. Having always been insecure about my lack of formal education, (I studied music at Berklee College of Music on the GI Bill,) I worried that I would be discovered and banished to the cafeteria or shipping dock, where I could be better utilized.

I thought I was heading back to the utopian high road fortress of all that is great and noble. After 13 years in the field, it didn’t take me long to re-learn corporate fear and paranoia, accompanied by loose stools and unexplained stomach pain. There was always someone coming into my office, looking over their shoulder, quietly closing the door behind them to tell me what some jerk off said about me at a meeting. Did you know you can’t expense Gaviscon? Even if it’s work related?

If five years of that doesn’t ready you for a career in politics, nothing will. I sometimes wish I had never came back in, never seen what I had seen, stayed in the field and retired out under a false illusion.

So what’s the point of all my kvetching about all the dark side (is there a light side?) of working for a large company or organization? The point is, if you don’t see what’s coming by now you never will. You will be automated, digitized and double dutied right out into the street in a few years and you should spend some time thinking about what you have to offer the world.

You. By yourself. Who are you without that sticker on your car that allows you access to your building? What skills set you apart? How can you market and monetize yourself? Most of you never give it a passing thought because of your MBA status or your current V.P. position.  In reality, those labels can actually make it harder for you to get a new position. Ask any VP who’s been on an extended job search. And don’t ever let anyone tell you there’s no such thing as age discrimination.

Everything’s in play. That’s my position. That’s my hot button. If the thought of life and death by your own hand makes you squeamish, know this: whenever they can roll you out, they will. Whenever the economy will allow them to play with the headcount, it’s on. Ever wonder what happens to all your work when you go on vacation? Hmmm.

So yes, right now, you are an asset. Property. Chattel. You reside on a spreadsheet. It’s nice and warm and snuggly in here, isn’t it?

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Ever wonder where companies get the content they pump onto their websites?

Just had a company reach out to me to see if I would be interested in writing some blog content and maybe a tweet or two for their clients for a fixed price per blog or tweet. The deal was, they would show me the client’s web page and I would research topics relevant to that business. I was told I would get little to no input from the client-company as long as I stayed in the general industry and delivered on a weekly or monthly basis.

The blogs were to consist of around 4,000 words per article. The tweets have their own guidelines and you needed to push out two or three a day.

Can’t say I was totally naive to the practice as I had a writer friend who used to do some work for a local PR agency and he did exactly that. He tweeted and blogged for an opthalmologist in Seattle who never saw any of the content. Too busy I guess. Nor did he ever inquire. He just paid for his on-line presence.

My friend used to just Google benign references to the eye ball and post them every day. He told me this particular agency did this sort of thing for all its clients.  I thought it was pretty shabby at the time and he actually got paid peanuts. He said it was so easy it didn’t feel like work. He could actually post while sitting in meetings with other clients. Nice work if you can get it. He got it.

What I never knew until recently, was how wide spread the practice is. “Content fillers” as they are called, are pushed to fill acres of vacant web space with unoriginal blogs and tweets for cash. They are actually pretty lousy jobs, paying anywhere from $8.00 to $50.00 per piece. Nobody ever sees $50.00. Man, that’s a lot of hustle and the turnover rates at these sweat shops are high.

You’d probably improve your writing chops quickly but it’s not a very fulfilling experience for what you’re paid. And the subject matter, which can be science and technology or worse can be a technological nightmare. What a bullshit world we live in. How unoriginal, uninspiring and untrustworthy.

I read a book once “Trust Me I’m Lying” by Ryan Holiday. He’s a media manipulator. In a world where blogs control and distort the news, his  job is to control blogs-as much as any one person can. It’s a good read but you’ll probably feel bad about all the content companies fling at you that doesn’t contain one ounce of originality.

Hey, I pump out a lot of content but at least it’s my own shit.

Which brings me to a larger point. In the years I spent in big pharma, Bristol Myers Squibb in particular, as a creative producer, I was always trying to get whoever was at the top of the food chain to consider blogging to customers and internal employees. (I use food chain for a reason) I would cite all their captive plane time to at least jot down their personal feelings down about how he or she felt about the direction of the company, the employees’ efforts and how proud he or she might be of the organization. But knock off the corporate bullshit I would advise. Everyone can smell it.

I thought, since they can’t always get mic time or stage time, this would be an informal conversation from the general to the troops in the trenches. If you could get nowhere faster, you should let Elon Musk know. In those BMS years, I grew extremely cynical of large companies and their haggard, cautious, sometimes paranoid (with good reason), and overwhelmed leaders. Of course, any heartfelt, original thinking, would have brought out the nanny state, HR, Legal and Corporate Communications to micro manage the message down to something you could get off the back of a cereal box.

When I have to check out the web site of a potential client, I keep a trash can close by in case I lose it. I’m looking at a medical imaging web site right now and it is 1997 all over again. An afterthought right out of the Sales Prevention unit. Why bother having a web site if you’re not going to use it as a tool to gain interest and provide information? Lame is the only description for this excuse to keep a domain name.

While I’m on the subject of lame, for whom are these agonizing company highlight videos intended? Fifteen minutes of talking heads and calculated b-roll rattling off how long they’ve been there, how they all get along and how they wake up every day to fulfill the company’s mission, vision and values. Is it a recruitment tool? Is it an onboarding tool? Damned if I know, but most of them are the most sleep inducing, self indulgent, rambling travelogues I’ve ever seen. But hey, it’s up there. Check.

I’ve produced hundreds and the formula hardly ever varies despite my protestations.

So when you need to check out a company for whatever reason, just be aware that a PR agency is responsible for most of the content. If there is a CEO blog, it’s been vetted by the gestapo and half the employees on that hostage tape have either retired or died.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Ever wonder where companies get the content they pump onto their websites?

Just had a company reach out to me to see if I would be interested in writing some blog content and maybe a tweet or two for their clients for a fixed price per blog or tweet. The deal was, they would show me the client’s web page and I would research topics relevant to that business. I was told I would get little to no input from the client-company as long as I stayed in the general industry and delivered on a weekly or monthly basis.

The blogs were to consist of around 4,000 words per article. The tweets have their own guidelines and you needed to push out two or three a day.

Can’t say I was totally naive to the practice as I had a writer friend who used to do some work for a local PR agency and he did exactly that. He tweeted and blogged for an opthalmologist in Seattle who never saw any of the content. Too busy I guess. Nor did he ever inquire. He just paid for his on-line presence.

My friend used to just Google benign references to the eye ball and post them every day. He told me this particular agency did this sort of thing for all its clients.  I thought it was pretty shabby at the time and he actually got paid peanuts. He said it was so easy it didn’t feel like work. He could actually post while sitting in meetings with other clients. Nice work if you can get it. He got it.

What I never knew until recently, was how wide spread the practice is. “Content fillers” as they are called, are pushed to fill acres of vacant web space with unoriginal blogs and tweets for cash. They are actually pretty lousy jobs, paying anywhere from $8.00 to $50.00 per piece. Nobody ever sees $50.00. Man, that’s a lot of hustle and the turnover rates at these sweat shops are high.

You’d probably improve your writing chops quickly but it’s not a very fulfilling experience for what you’re paid. And the subject matter, which can be science and technology or worse can be a technological nightmare. What a bullshit world we live in. How unoriginal, uninspiring and untrustworthy.

I read a book once “Trust Me I’m Lying” by Ryan Holiday. He’s a media manipulator. In a world where blogs control and distort the news, his  job is to control blogs-as much as any one person can. It’s a good read but you’ll probably feel bad about all the content companies fling at you that doesn’t contain one ounce of originality.

Hey, I pump out a lot of content but at least it’s my own shit.

Which brings me to a larger point. In the years I spent in big pharma, Bristol Myers Squibb in particular, as a creative producer, I was always trying to get whoever was at the top of the food chain to consider blogging to customers and internal employees. (I use food chain for a reason) I would cite all their captive plane time to at least jot down their personal feelings down about how he or she felt about the direction of the company, the employees’ efforts and how proud he or she might be of the organization. But knock off the corporate bullshit I would advise. Everyone can smell it.

I thought, since they can’t always get mic time or stage time, this would be an informal conversation from the general to the troops in the trenches. If you could get nowhere faster, you should let Elon Musk know. In those BMS years, I grew extremely cynical of large companies and their haggard, cautious, sometimes paranoid (with good reason), and overwhelmed leaders. Of course, any heartfelt, original thinking, would have brought out the nanny state, HR, Legal and Corporate Communications to micro manage the message down to something you could get off the back of a cereal box.

When I have to check out the web site of a potential client, I keep a trash can close by in case I lose it. I’m looking at a medical imaging web site right now and it is 1997 all over again. An afterthought right out of the Sales Prevention unit. Why bother having a web site if you’re not going to use it as a tool to gain interest and provide information? Lame is the only description for this excuse to keep a domain name.

While I’m on the subject of lame, for whom are these agonizing company highlight videos intended? Fifteen minutes of talking heads and calculated b-roll rattling off how long they’ve been there, how they all get along and how they wake up every day to fulfill the company’s mission, vision and values. Is it a recruitment tool? Is it an onboarding tool? Damned if I know, but most of them are the most sleep inducing, self indulgent, rambling travelogues I’ve ever seen. But hey, it’s up there. Check.

I’ve produced hundreds and the formula hardly ever varies despite my protestations.

So when you need to check out a company for whatever reason, just be aware that a PR agency is responsible for most of the content. If there is a CEO blog, it’s been vetted by the gestapo and half the employees on that hostage tape have either retired or died.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Does it always have to come down to this?

Sales gives me the creeps. All the years of conditioning by sales trainers, managers and marketing pukes never sat well with me. I hate asking for anything. Not exactly the attribute you would be looking for in a sales rep but there I was, playing liar’s poker with a five million dollar territory.

I sat through hours of training videos and role plays where the would-be rep would close the sale after rattling off perfectly memorized features and benefits and getting their victim to commit on the spot. It was nerve damaging. Is this what they thought we were doing out there? I certainly wasn’t and it troubled me deeply. It made me feel inferior and inept.

“Ask for the business,”  was the mantra coming out of the home office and off the stages at sales meetings. Sales. That word carries a lot of connotations and none of it good.

Games, games, always the games. A wink and a nod from the older guys who’d been around but that was about it. They didn’t care about the business you already had, it was about your conversion rate and new business, cause every year that number was going up and that monster had to be fed.

This actually happened I swear:

One year my boss threw down the gauntlet and told us she wanted to witness a confrontation with a competitive product user. She wanted us to score point for point with someone while she was standing right there. You know what the odds of that happening were? Zilch! I couldn’t imagine that happening on command like that. Never happen.

So she set up three days of travel with me and we set out itching for a fight so she could fill out her agenda for the year. Three days should give me plenty of time, right? On the last call of the last day of her ride along, we were in the bowels of Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, talking to a couple of techs and the radiology manager.

I was resigning myself to failure and rehearsing my better luck next time speech, when in walks this cardiologist, the decision maker, an enormous asshole with an out sized ego (excuse the redundancy) that I had heard about but never met, and he starts ranting about all the things he didn’t like about Cardiolite. Huh?

Oh my God, is this a set up? I couldn’t believe it, a toe-to-toe with an ill informed clown right in front of my boss? He threw me so many softballs my arms got tired. He never had a chance. He ranted and raved at such a pace I had to wait for the sound of him drawing a breath to get my licks in. Which I did, with gusto.

Finally, he whimpered off and said he would try our stuff again to see if I was right. It was amazing. I could (should) have blown the guy. Never in all my years had anything like that ever happened to me, forget about my boss standing there. And I never asked him for a thing.

I just stated my case and referenced papers and other successful users. I remember her rubbing my shoulder as we got off the elevator and saying what a great job I did. Surreal.

After dropping her off at the airport I remember wondering, on the ride home, how long I could keep this shit up. Marlon Brando couldn’t have pulled that off.

Here’s the way I look at it. If you have a product or service you think is good then get it seen, heard and talked about. You shouldn’t have to ask. Your mileage may vary, but that’s the approach. But that’s not what the home office people think. They think you are little robots who use all the tag lines and approaches they have created in the confines of a meeting room.

I’ve been following a guy on line who, right out of the gate, broke all the rules. He tore down all the bullshit misconceptions people have about business and marketing. He revealed what companies really think about their employees and their phony values systems. My kind of guy. I bought two of his books because he had a way of revealing himself that was refreshing. He bared his soul and he moved me. He was definitely not mainstream.

But his last move was the coup de grâce. It was time to cash in and go for “the ask”. He went mainstream on me. Offering thousand dollar coupons, time pressured deals, discounts off his new book, WTF? Where was my guy? If you have the goods you don’t have to resort to that bullshit. He turned into Tony Robbins, Michael Hyatt, Chris Brogan and Marie Forleo, et al. Creepy.

Yeah, I’m a business owner, an entrepreneur, an artist and a producer. I have a product. I need to make you aware of it and all its benefits but I’m not not going to go to my knees on you and create pressure where there is none. You get it or you don’t. You want it or you won’t.

Now rinse and spit. Simple.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

To: You know who you are,

It’s been a month since you reached out to me for help with your upcoming Company Meeting in September. We spent close to 8 hours on the phone pulling this together. Talked in depth about the many cultural problems in your company and how we could address them. You didn’t even know where to begin. We also covered a lot of personal ground.

Maybe I gave you enough info to shop the project around, common practice for some of the grinders I come in contact with.

We go back a long way and understand the way the world works.You have lofty goals, as do I. After many lengthy conversations, we reached an agreement and the time and date was set. I asked about wiggle room on those dates and you said there wasn’t any.

We are talking about a great deal of time and effort overall and an upfront outlay of cash and resources.

I made travel and equipment arrangements and had to cancel out some gigs and re-arrange others because Aug 10-11 were so tight. We also talked about your concept of “The Faces of US” which I would have gladly included in the package. It was a go on my end. I really wanted to get involved and help your company. That will never happen now.

So all of a sudden the big guy gets camera jitters “changes his mind” and everything comes to a screeching halt. Fair enough, shit happens. A lot. I got an e-mail on Friday night at 5 pm with “HOLD” in the header and not much else information.

But you saying you were blindsided and didn’t know what happened and then…nothing, says a lot about you and your company and it’s top down culture. I’m not gonna pull your dress up too high here, so don’t worry.

I sent you invoices for my up front out of pockets (which were considerable) for which I have never even received confirmation. If I never receive it I won’t go broke and I’m not crossing my fingers. It’s on you.

Pay or don’t pay. Lesson learned.

Am I pissed? You betcha! But not at your company which doesn’t seem to have an ounce of employee empathy in it’s business plan or mission statement, but at you. You!

You could have picked up the phone and explained what happened so I wouldn’t have been caught in the cross hairs and hanging in the breeze. You don’t know how much that impacted my business. It hurt me personally too, even after all the SNAFUs which come with the video production territory.

You Know Better.

I am sorely disappointed at the whole situation and especially in you. I thought we were professional friends but all of a sudden, I must have contracted Ebola.

Not the way to do business these days my friend. Social media is a bitch. I run a very successful organization and could have added a lot to your efforts and I understand they left you swinging. I wouldn’t get too comfy there if I were you.

But to cut our communication so abruptly, and leave me in the dark, to me, is unforgivable. For you, this might be business as usual, for me, the last straw.

I don’t and won’t take abuse from people I am trying to help.

I run my own very successful business and have the good fortune to pick and choose who I do business with.

I earned that privilege, every bit of it.

You should have “manned” up to let me know what was going on and ease my suffering but you chose to move on like nothing happened. I’ve been here before, many times. Got the scars to prove it.

So don’t call me, I’ll call you.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Some of the clan in front of the infamous kitchen bathroom door.

In our house, sometime in the late sixties, right about the time we found out that Ken Kesey had used the term “cuckoo’s nest” without our permission and our father stopped thinking he was Jake LaMotta, we would sit around the kitchen on Sunday mornings and tease each other about our shortcomings (mostly instigated by my mother) and of course, with all the denials and signifying it got to be quite rowdy. My father had  become almost civil by this time (more likely, worn down) and enjoyed looking at the mess he made. Picture twelve people in a very small, smoke filled kitchen with the only bathroom, a converted pantry right there next to the fridge.

The only thing that made the escaping noxious odors tolerable, was the smell of bacon and burnt toast. Most of us had acquired hangovers by then and the sounds emanating from the toilet/pantry would be the cause for groans in unison and the sounds of silverware (a fork, maybe) hitting melmac. God help the poor bastard who emerged from there to a chorus of “close that goddam door, whaddya dead?”

The five girls, with the exception of one, found nothing humorous in the functions of the human body full of day old Ripple and stale cigarettes. It was a cacophony to be sure, until someone would inevitably say, “Dad, tell us some of the stuff Bobby would do when he was a kid.” This was never a good idea. Nobody even knew what a therapist was back then. This usually always ends badly…for me.

He’d light an L&M, sit back in his boxers and revel in the joy of all my travails, pooping in people’s cars, stealing the Xmas bulbs off the big tree in Davis Sq., tipping over all the ash barrels on the street so it looked like a war zone and when he sent me out for the Sunday paper for the first time, I thought I’d save him the quarter and scooped all the neighbor’s papers and brought them home. He would spend the rest of the day trying to find out where they came from. He loved to hear the gasps and the “Oh my Gods” as the stories got more insane and horrifying.

But then, as we know, all good things have to come to an end. During one of his declarations of victimhood and why, when he dies, he should just be waved through at the Pearly Gates after all he’s been through, something would snap. Whose fucking idea was this anyway?

The aggregation of aggravation would reach its tipping point and he would start to get somber. Slowly, quiet spaces in his speech would betray the dark imagery that was starting to settle in behind his eyes. My mother would narrow her gaze at me signalling it might be time to go. By now, he was morose and silent. He didn’t even notice me slip out the second floor kitchen window. He would slowly pick up his paper, his cigarettes and his shaving bag and shuffle off to his room without a word. I thought I heard him sobbing in there once.

I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. He died at 57. From cancer, not exasperation, as one would expect. I hated him. He hated me. But I miss him now. We would get each other now, I think. We could just look at each other and never speak and communicate everything between us. There are no flowery phrases or regrets to be spoken just, thank you.

Used to be, when you wanted to broadcast an event to a worldwide audience, there would be 40 foot trailers queued up behind your presentation halls. Not so, anymore. Technology has allowed us to pull off this incredible feat with an internet connection, a laptop and a little ingenuity, in incredible quality and versatility. The impact is enormous and the cost savings are incredible. Plus, you can record the complete session for video on demand.

It is actually a TV studio with camera angles, commercials, breaks and graphics. (Plus, it sure beats the shit out of GoToMeeting.) Zzzzz!

I’ll  let the following video do the talking from here, but if you ever want to make an impression, (worldwide) let me know. This is one of the coolest things we do. Reaching the world and making an impact. Very rewarding.

Disclaimer: I was expelled from St Clement’s Catholic School in the eighth grade so I’m not Lucifer, but I’m close.

On May 20, 1979, I took my last drink, pill and snort forever and commenced to worry about my liver, my kidneys and my salvation, in that order. Fearing I had inflicted irrevocable damage to all three, I proceeded to make amends.

In short order, I became a track star, a health nut and I was of course, “born again.” I read the Old Testament, ( scared the shit out of me) the New Testament and started sending every cent I made to every televangelist that popped up on my screen every Sunday morning.

I had soon created my own personalized version of hell and became adept at finding spiritual loopholes for all my earthly desires.

Self pleasure and Satan were always lurking. It was a lonely and confusing existence for a not half bad looking single white male. But sex was only for procreation, remember?

When all the christian scandals erupted in the eighties, I saw my escape route and took it. Life was getting good again. I was guilt free and stopped waiting for the rapture. I started making up for lost time until Magic Johnson got A.I.D.S. If he could get it, I had to have had it. Remember the making up for lost time thing?

I still had enough sense not to go back to that other thing where Satan and Jesus were locked in deadly conflict over my soul.

In 1990, I took a sales position in Arizona for thirteen years and for the most part, I was alone. Except for the occasional living nightmares that would enter my existence until Susan came to the rescue. When you are in your mid-forties, single and travel extensively, a quick hit and run in a Best Western in Carlsbad N.M. is about all you can expect.

Sometimes you have married customers who just can’t stand the thoughts of you running around the south west unsupervised. This is where the “how bad do I need this account?” question comes into play.

Your choices in a companion at this stage of life range somewhere between the school yard and the nursing home and most of the goods have been tampered with. Hey, I’m damaged goods too, but two wrongs don’t make a right.

Enter Theresa, a 6’4″ ball of spiritual neurosis that was looking to settle down in a hurry. She was also good friends with a dangerous gas bag customer that would take enormous pleasure in further destroying my unrecoverable and soiled reputation as a scoundrel and Lothario. One hospital administrator told me I wasn’t allowed to speak to any females in the building. Aw, that was so cute, I thought.

My first date with Theresa was a brunch. I had learned to use daylight or the harsh lighting at Dunkin’ Donuts as a first pass on any further encounters. She proceeds to tell me, (did I mention, first date?) that she hopes I will stick around because all the other guys she has dated just suddenly upped and left town. Without a trace.

She has no idea why. She says with all her conditions and being in her mid 30’s she will most likely not be able to walk, she is blind in one eye and the other is in doubt.

Theresa’s main objective at this point is to get married and have a bunch of kids before all that happens. Now, I am desperately looking for a fire alarm that is conveniently located on the way to the men’s room. I have worse stories for sure but when she orders her second platter of Eggs Benedict complete with beans, burritos and quacamole my heart rate doubles.

Soon, she is tipping this enormous platter on it’s side and rubbing it furiously with a taco shell to get all the egg off the dish. I think I know where those other guys went. They’re not in the United States.

I’m thinking, just make a run for it. Make up a story. Everyone in Arizona knows how fucked up I am. They’ll forgive me. Someday. Maybe. Theresa says there’s a 4:00 mass at the church where she goes and she would like to have me go with her. Ah, a test. Been here before.

At this point, anything is better than sitting here drawing bewildered stares from customers and wait staff so I agree. When we stand up, it hits me not only how tall she is, but how much bigger than me she is in every way. Her hands were twice my size. I remember staring right up her nostril pipes. I feel a compelling need to exact my revenge on someone for this. He’s a customer, so poison might have to be an option.

So, we end up at some Catholic church in Mesa, in the balcony, and the place is packed. I don’t remember the ceremony because I was too focused on the stand up sit down thing. When the “Peace be with you” part came and she grabbed my hand, I realized how physically damaged I could end up if things went off the tracks at this stage.

Once all the ceremonial stuff was over, a rather handsome, well spoken, late thirties looking priest takes the stage. He is good. He has the presence of mind to stay silent until all the fidgeting, coughs and the usual audience restlessness subsides. Now, you can hear a pin drop. That takes practice.

Then he proceeds, with a straight face, to insult the intelligence of every form of life on the planet. My breathing becomes more shallow. My eyes start darting all over the sculptured ceiling. I scan the audience for some crack in the veneer of one of these hapless participants. I could get very specific about what he said, but not a word of what that man uttered is worthy of a key stroke from me.

He goes to a flip chart and starts drawing out the battle field where Michael the Arc Angel and Lucifer will duke it out. (Michael’s gonna win because good always prevails, but it will be close.) I think the fight is fixed.

He tells us how many cubits our houses in heaven will be. He tells us how Mary is trying desperately to intercede on our behalf to a jealous God who would like nothing better that to use us for his own special weenie roast.

He continues. He was amazing. Still, he’s not getting any laughs which confuses me. He prowls the stage from left to right and back again to see if he has lost anyone. He needn’t have worried, he had ’em, hook, line and holy water.

It was a beautiful December afternoon. 1998. Prime time in Arizona. I remember the relief I felt as the sun hit my face and we moved silently toward Southern Ave., a main road in Mesa to get to my car parked on the other side.

Southern Ave is a big thoroughfare, totaling six lanes in both directions. This has been a rough go all day and I’m feeling the worse for wear. Six lanes gave me enough time to compose an inquiry on Theresa’s feelings on what we had just witnessed.

Once we got in the car, I waited a beat or two for some response from her. Nothing. When I asked her if she believed all that stuff about the Garden of Eden, Hell, the Snake, Lucifer, Purgatory etc. She said, “yeah, I guess.” what do you mean you guess? I pressed. You believe everything that guy just said? She said, “If that’s what they tell us to believe, then I believe it.” By now, I am actually contemplating oncoming traffic.

She called my house for months after that. She worked my network to the nub. She got some of my customers to make me feel guilty but to no avail. Another circus had left town.

I met my beautiful wife less than a year later. My nine year nightmare ended on August 9, 1999. (About time, honey) Maybe there is a God after all. Him and his pet snake.

Listen to the podcast for the story behind the story.

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I woke up with this from a dream about when we were kids. This is up there with the day we accepted that there was no Santa Claus and TV was fake.

Here’ s the strict definition:

“In order to enjoy movies or TV, the audience engages in a phenomenon known as “suspension of disbelief”. This is a semi-conscious decision in which you put aside your disbelief and accept the premise as being real for the duration of the story.”

So. In my house in the 50’s with twelve humans crowded into a single apartment, food, as you can imagine, was always scarce and there were strict rules with regard to extracting (if you dared) anything from the refrigerator.

Especially when my father was home, you had better be making a deposit instead of a withdrawal out of that thing. On Sundays, which was the only day he had off, we all tiptoed around lightly and either stayed out of the house or used sign language so he wouldn’t have to yell, “shut the hell up out there.”

We all knew full well to stay away from that white monster in the kitchen. Even as he perched himself in another room smoking L&Ms and watching sports, he could either hear the suction break on the fridge door or feel the cool air from it being open. He spent the day in his boxers, so his senses were acute. As soon as he became aware of this mid-day, unauthorized transgression, he would yell, “Hey, what the hell are you doing in there?” You had better have a good story.

One night, after we were washed and ready for bed, my brother John and me sat spotlessly on the couch and we heard “And now it’s time for Ozzie and Harriet” about the Nelson family whose story lines made Seinfeld episodes look alike an action adventures.

 Once in a great while, Susan and I will get into it and “all being fair in love and war,” all bets are off when it come to cleaning out your “blast from the past attic,” looking for something to either defend your self, or KO your opponent. A favorite of Susan’s is,”what about the time, when I was in Arizona, and you went to see your old girlfriends?”

Disclaimer: When you reach your sixties, you don’t want to revisit old flames. It is very disappointing. For both parties. Not a good idea. Timing wasn’t exactly kosher, either.

Susan had been out west all winter at our second home, with all five poochies, and I was compelled to go see about Linda, who I had read, just passed away unexpectedly and an other old  flame, Debbie, from out of the sixties that found me on Facebook. I have always been friendly with old girl friends and saw no harm in a little nostalgia.

Debbie was my first legit girlfriend. It didn’t last long but she was my first, so that meant something, and was at least worth a lunch and a “count my blessings” ride home from Luigi’s afterwards in shock at what time can do to you. I can only imagine what she thought.

Now, Linda, bless hear heart, who I lived with for eight years, got left in the dust as soon as I got sober in ’79. I wouldn’t be alive today if I had stayed. She was an enabler of the highest order. Nothing was too good for her baby boy. Me.

She bought me all my guitars, helped me get through music school and whatever I wanted or needed was mine. But I was completely messed up with alcohol and so totally drug addicted, I used to look out my front window every morning just to see if my car was there. If I parked in a different spot, panic set in.

One surefire barometer of my self survival with Linda, and to ease a nagging doubt, was to carefully lift the sheets while Linda was sleeping. If she had a night gown on, I was usually in big trouble and it was time for an early morning ride to Dunkin’ Donuts to get my brain cells to regroup so I could at least defend myself. From what? I had no idea. Total blank.

At one point, when my band was really cranking, the fact that I was in the throes of alcohol and drug poisoning didn’t matter in the least to Linda. In fairness to Linda , she never really knew the extent and severity of my disease state. She was oblivious, except for the fact that “this shit costs money” as she would always say, coming out of the walk-in pantry with an almost empty half gallon bottle of J&B she had purchased for me late the previous afternoon.

These lectures usually came as I was drinking my morning coffee (laced with her Kahlua, unbeknownst to her) with her shaking that big, green J&B bottle with the handle at me. After my morning shower, and a few hits off a warm beer I had stashed behind the tub, I could get myself halfway straightened out. If I used baby powder, my first thought when I saw all that white stuff on the bathroom floor was, well, I don’t have to explain that do I?

Now, Linda was gone. Suddenly, and at a relatively young age, I happened to see something on line about a “Friends of Linda” get together at a VFW in Arlington on a Sunday afternoon after she was buried. I decided to go. It was with some trepidation, because the split was not Linda’s idea and there would be folks there that were always very protective of her. Linda had lots of friends and a lot of them were not happy with me. Rat bastard that I was.

So I walk in to the hall and over to the left, there’s a little table with a lot of pictures from Linda’s life and a book to sign in. Right there, out front with all the others was a big, framed shot of me and Linda. It was taken at a gig I was playing and I was replete with leisure suit, a full beard, a drink in my hand and a set of red eyes that weren’t caused by camera flash. Then I heard some woman say, “He was the love of her life, did you know that? ” That was surreal. I stepped outside and wept. She was good to me.

Now, we’re going to veer of into the spooky, spiritual side.

That previous Friday night, in my big, empty house, I am awakened by an itchy, tingling sensation in my right ear. Like someone sticking a wet finger in there. Freaked. Me. Out. I jumped out of bed covered with goose pimples and start ripping bed clothes off of our king bed. I got a flash light, turned every light on in the house then ran into the bathroom to see what was crawling in my ear. After a lot of self talk and thinking I might of had an ear infection, I coaxed myself bad into bed. Very strange.

I keep a futon in my studio for clients, guests or a place to deposit my dogs while I teach them the fine art of video editing. It is also the most convenient place in the house for naps, an old habit I stole from Thomas Edison. He used to work, work, work, crash, repeat. This is how I usually roll too.

It’s Saturday afternoon and I am in the depths of despair cause I am in the middle of a mindless video mess courtesy of Bracco Diagnostics. I am staring at the screen and whimpering.

I am totally feeling sorry for myself and wondering what I was thinking when I quoted this incoherent, digital clusterfuck for Bracco.  Exasperated, and exhausted, I hit the futon. Time to rewind.

Give me a half hour and I’m usually pretty good. A cup of Joe, a pants hitch and I’m back at it. As I’m coming out my slumber I feel it. It’s back. That tingly thingly feeling in my ear. This time it’s daylight and I am not in my REM state. Now, I’m somewhat amused, still fearful, but amused. Aha! Got you now you little bastard! I slowly reach up to trap or squash the little fucker that is wreaking havoc on my sanity. Nothing! Back to the my goose bumped, frantic, mad dash to the bathroom. This was back in the days when I had not yet discovered the wonders of anti-anxiety meds.

If you know me personally, this will come to no surprise that I am a hypochondriac of the highest order. In my mind, I have had everything. I’m pretty sure if I ever get a bad diagnosis, I will yawn in their face. But Bracco is torturing me and I have a hard deadline. The next day will be a much needed change of scenery and I will be losing myself at “Friends of Linda.”

On Sunday afternoon, when I arrive at the VFW, I nervously walk up the stairs and much to my surprise, (even with her current boyfriend there) I’m treated very warmly for the most part. Some of these old geezers might suffer from short term memory loss, but not long term, not for a second.

It was then when someone said “Boy, your ears must have been buzzing, we’ve been talking about you all week, you know, Linda still loved you right to the end, don’t you?” The “ears buzzing” hit me like a tank. I must admit to getting a little week in the knees. That was definitely Linda’s style. Be just like her to let me know I wasn’t rid of her yet. I am totally non-spiritual but….

If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, and what you’re thinking, is what I’m thinking, good thinking, cause that’s exactly what I’m thinking.

This is a picture of Fitzy, me and David Hamilton shortly before I dropped Dave off at the air field to go to Saigon to be reassigned. There are a lot of unanswered questions surrounding his death and his month long stay with me only creates more.

I walked into a makeshift USO quonset hut one afternoon and saw these three guys horsing around.There was Dave and Fitzy, who I didn’t know, and a guy I did know, Cliffy Perkins, a mortal enemy of mine from Somerville. We had a knock down drag out at a New Years Eve party as 1965 turned to a fateful 1966. Talk about mixed emotions. I had been gunning for this guy and now, here we are in a war zone in a foreign country face to face. You get over yourself real quick in a situation like that.

So the four of us bonded and were soon spending our nights getting high, eating C-Ration hamburgers out of a can, packed in lard and watching gun ships dropping parachuted flares and strafing the ground on the other side of the bay. Every sixth round was a tracer and it was quite a show. Like fourth of July every night. Dave said he was in transit and asked if he could stay in my hooch with me for a while.

He slept under my cot and it wasn’t long before people started talking. “Who was that guy?” “Where’s he supposed to be?” You didn’t walk around a war zone without a function. Didn’t happen. Dave drew a lot of attention to himself. He wore sergeant stripes, airborne wings and sported a combat infantry badge. He was also the first guy I ever knew personally that had lumps on his arms and chest called muscles.

As the TET offensive had yet to commence, things were heating up around our base camp and my unit was readying itself for something, they knew shit was going to happen. Intelligence was pouring in from listening posts all around us. The scrutiny around Dave’s presence intensified and the flames were being fanned by a guy named Norton, who didn’t like Dave because when pressed about his airborne wings, Dave said he only “simulated” the jump. Norton, who sported airborne wings also, was furious, because you don’t get those wings unless you actually jump out of a plane. Things were heating up and I was running out of excuses.

This is Norton behind me, who had a big problem with Dave. Dave took this shot.

My first sergeant, who was looking to put me in Long Binh jail anyway, for using my truck to bring prostitutes onto the company area for my buddies, (another story) told me if he saw Dave again, he would have him arrested. He was eating our rations, using our showers and drinking our beer for more than a month. Me and Fitzy and Cliffy also were puzzled by Dave’s presence and his fuzzy answers. Dave had to un-ass this property. Fast.

The truth was, Dave was some type of clerk who typed his own orders and had a romantic notion of war and gallantry. He wasn’t going to be no clerk. Not in an opportunity like this to be a hero. The sergeant stripes, the wings and the combat infantry badge were all by design. I mean, no one could prevent you from slapping all those insignias on your uniform, not if you could type your own orders. So it was time to go.

When he jumped out of my truck at the Cam Rahn Bay airfield, we promised to write and stay in touch. He was heading to Saigon and that was the last I saw of him. Who knows what he had up his sleeve.

Fast forward six months and I had my ETS, (estimated time served) in Viet Nam, and was in a chow line at Fort Hood, Texas, when I opened a letter from my mother. There was a scandalous article in there from the Boston Globe about how Dave was killed in an ambush and his funeral cortege was charged for going through the Sumner Tunnel. He was getting a hero’s burial and this was an outrage. Needless to say, this upset everyone in the Hamilton family as well as all the surrounding communities.

Then it went national. My mother said the girl, as you will read below, went on Johnny Carson and things went south from there. There was a colonel on the set to represent the Army and when questions were asked about the circumstances surrounding Dave’s death came up, there were no good answers. It got awkward real fast and as Johnny Carson is well known for his quick thinking, he went to commercial and when they came back everyone was gone. End of story.

Here is what I found last night on the internet. I have been telling my wife this story for years and she said I should google it. This is what I truly believe happened, with caveats.

This is the true story about what happened to Brandi Perry and The Bubble Machine in VietNam July 1968.
SP4 David K.Hamilton U.S.Army who was assigned to the HQ Company, 1St. Logistics Command volunteered to drive a pickup truck with the band and Brandi (Paula Levine) to a camp for a performance when they were ambushed by Viet Cong forces on Highway 15 in the middle of a combat zone, according to Miss Levine, Hamilton, a Malden MA. native was covered with wounds when he threw himself over the actress and ordered the rest of the troupe to “play dead”. Two band members died and two survived, the survivors credited SP4 Hamilton with their survival by listening to his commands to stay still and play dead so the enemy wouldn’t kill them. The actress Paula Levine flew from Hollywood to Malden MA to attend the funeral and bring Hamilton’s belongings that he entrusted to her before he died. Hamilton was 19 years old, his name is etched on the VietNam Memorial Wall along with over 58,000 of our brave American heroes.

On July 5, 1968, the bus gets the band “Brandi Perry & The Bubble Machine”, which is carelessly traveling without military protection, in South Vietnam on the way to Vung Tau in an ambush, either by troops of the Viet Cong or the South Vietnamese army. The drummer and keyboard player Phil Willis + Kurt Pill, both only 17 years old, are killed, the bassist and vocalist Jack Bone + Paula “Brandi Perry,” Levine are injured more or less difficult.

“Brandi Perry & The Bubble Machine” are also the subject of the documentary “Entertaining Vietnam” by Mara Wallis about musicians who attended the American troops in Vietnam.

Note the word, “carelessly” in the story. Somehow Dave had recreated himself again, strapped on a .45 and volunteered to drive the band around. Amazing how he could pull these things off. The crush on the girl singer was pure David Hamilton.

So, the way I heard it, and why there was so much confusion and lingering questions was that when Dave and the band came up to a road block, manned by South Vietnamese soldiers, they were told it wasn’t safe to travel at night and there had been fire fights recently on Highway 15. Dave told them he needed to get the band to their next destination and he would handle it. As they were proceeding along in the dark they took a bullet to the windshield. This doesn’t sound likely, but Dave supposedly got out of the truck and was yelling in the darkness that they were Americans and not to shoot.

It was then that David started taking rounds to his body. His profile says it was a grenade but that’s not true, and I believe it was South Vietnamese soldiers who shot him or he never would have gotten out of the truck like that.

Now, after taking all the rounds meant for that girl, he is mortally wounded and they fly him to Osaka, Japan, where they don’t expect him to last much longer as the marrow from one of his bones has entered his lungs. They call his mother in Malden and tell her to get on a plane if she wants to see her son before he passes.

I got this from her so I know it’s accurate. She makes the long flight, (I don’t know who paid for it) gets to the hospital where the staff is waiting. On the way in, they tell her to brace herself and rush her through the swinging doors where he is laying on his side with one leg elevated. I have no idea why, but that’s what his mother told me.

She rushes over to her dying child and cradles his head. He says, “Ma” and he’s gone. Just like that. Like he was waiting for her. Her handsome, loving son was gone forever. I can’t imagine what the trip home was like. My heart breaks for her.

Now, with regard to the Army and David’s situation, there are tons of questions. How did this happen? Who was he assigned to? Who authorized him to travel with the band? Where are his orders for sergeant, his airborne status? It’s a mess. The Army has no answers and Mrs. Hamilton who had been in touch with my mother and trading photos is wanting to talk to me when I get home.

I am avoiding her at all costs. She’s gonna ask me questions I don’t want to answer. But she keeps calling. What I don’t know, is somehow she is connected, if you know what I mean. I am home under a month and shooting pool at the Day St. Bowling Alley when these two goons walk in and approach me as I’m going to take a shot. They must have seen a photo because they just walked up to me and said “let’s go,” like they knew me.

I am in the back seat of a big car smoking a cigarette and no one is talking but for some reason, I know where I’m going because we cross over the Malden line. The fact that someone has to come and get me let’s me know this might not be a pleasurable experience. And it wasn’t.

When I come through the front door and into the living room, I see Mrs. Hamilton and about a dozen other people gathered around her and I get a very chilly reception. The questions started coming at me fast and furious. I am stuttering and trying to think on my feet when one of the goons moves closer to me as if to prompt me to get to the point.

There is no way I’m gonna tell that poor lady what her son was up to. As a matter of fact, me, Fitzy and Cliffy were upset with Dave after he left for reasons I won’t mention here. After about two hours of being peppered with questions and accusations, screaming and yelling, I was summarily dismissed. No hugs. No love. Nothing.

When I get outside with the two goons, I started walking to their car, thinking they were going to take me back. The guy took my hand off the door handle and told me to “screw.” I got home very late that night.

That was it. It has been buried in my mind all these years except for once in a while when I would look at old Viet Nam photos. These two are all the photos I have of Dave and me as my mother gave Mrs. Hamilton everything she had when the news got out.

I wept so hard when I found that story on line. 19. Are you kidding me? He was a baby. 19. I can’t get over that fact now. It’s almost 50 years and I am crushed by this whole mess. 19. You can’t be serious, can you?

Here’s a video from documentary from a surviving musician. Notice he mentions “sergeant” and omits Dave’s heroic part in saving the girl’s life and more importantly never mentions Dave’s death. How pathetic.

Been struggling with a nasty, sneaky, slowly escalating xanax habit since 2008. I was working with someone who had been using it and would extol the virtues of it all the time. Truth is, he would drive me shithouse writing these scripts I had to shoot that even Spielberg would find challenging. I would really lose it sometimes. I’m wound pretty tight.

When we would go to lunch he would be under the influence sometimes and he would get food everywhere but in his mouth. He had an unmanageable beard and a penchant for creamy, greasy, messy foods that would drive me up the booth. He even said to me once, “you make me nervous when we go out to lunch.” Really?

He would constantly have the phone out and always let out a howl when the inevitable would happen – a big old nasty grease stain on his shirt. Funny, he always acted like it was the first time it had ever happened.

But I digress. One day he gave me a couple because I was becoming unhinged on a shoot that he was involved in. He said “here, take a couple of these and you’ll feel better.” I slipped them into my pocket because I wasn’t sure what effect they would have on me.

The next week, I had to go to Puerto Rico on a spec shoot with some marketing folks on an early morning flight. After many years of flying I have grown to hate it and everything about it. So after the first delay, I remember the xanax my writer friend had given me. Once we boarded, I slipped one under my tongue and drifted pleasantly off into unconsciousness. I woke up as we were landing.

While we were waiting for our bags, these people I was traveling with were complaining of all the fits and starts to our journey. One of them said, “All those delays were one thing, but changing planes was the real killer.” Changing planes? I didn’t remember changing planes. Or anything else for that matter. As a matter of fact, I felt great. Refreshed, even.

As I’m fond of saying “anything worth doing is worth overdoing” and here we are today. Off and running. Or not.

About a year ago, I decided to kick the xanax. I was on a very short leash with my prescribing physician, who kept lowering my dose while my Jones was raging and kicking in the stall. At this point, I’m not getting any buzz or any pleasantness from this shit. But God help you if you miss a dose. It’s what I call diminishing returns. Pure misery.

I jumped off without her involvement because she hasn’t a fucking clue. Period. I felt like she had me where she wanted me and there I would stay. I’ve called on docs for thirty years and I know dead bang sure a lot of them only know as much about the side effects or efficacy of a drug as their rep tells them. This I know.

So, after twelve very uncomfortable days and nights, I start to feel a ray of hope. I’m still jiggy but I can see some daylight. But let me tell you, some of those days were hell. It feels like a cold wind blowing through your innards and hopelessness is your only friend.

One day, CVS texts me and tells me my next scrip is ready. Knowing that I’m a dyed in the wool junkie, I call and tell them I’ve discontinued the medication and cancel the dose. Finito.

I don’t know how this works but somehow my doc gets word that I’ve jumped and hits the panic button. I’m in my mid-sixties and they get concerned (all of a sudden) with my mortality. The nurse calls my house and says my doc wants to see me immediately. I get over there in an hour and she wants me in one of the exam rooms pronto.

I’m feeling pretty cocky at this point. I’m like “hey doc, you know that little game we’ve been playing for the last six years? It’s over! It felt like dumping a cheating girlfriend. But this girlfriend doesn’t care to be jilted.

I’m sitting in the exam room looking at all the charts of diseases I’m pretty sure I don’t have, when the three of them burst in. Two docs and a physician’s assistant. They pull up stools with wheels and move in.

One starts getting my vitals while another is holding my hand. My blood pressure’s up to like 145 over 80. I’ve been there before and lots higher due to that practice’s ineptitude, so I’m not sweating it.

So my doc exhales deeply and says, “what do you think you’re doing?” I says, “I’m sick of this shit and I’m not gonna play any more.” I tell her I have 12 days and counting. She says, “you were on a pretty high dose and you aren’t out of the woods yet.”

“Anything can still happen. This drug is very uncontrollable and unpredictable and I’m worried something will happen to you.” I can’t believe this happy horse shit. ” I want you back on immediately and we’ll do a step-down over a longer period.”

I am very disappointed, but that little monkey inside me wants to play. It’s like your aunt wants to buy you an ice cream and your parents don’t want you to spoil your dinner.

So the monkey starts rattling the cage and I admit I have still been feeling shaky and I say, well, OK, if we can do a supervised step down, maybe I can go back and kick without all the suffering I’ve endured. She calls CVS and tells them I’ll be right over.

I am a very foolish man.

And here we are today, a year later and deeper in the grip of my monkey boy. A month ago, I ended up in the emergency room with a skyrocketing blood pressure and shaking like a go-go girl, all due to a miscommunication with my prescription.

I’m building an ass kicking machine in my garage to remind myself what a moron I am. This time though, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. I’m suffering through another miscommunication and paying the cost, but I will prevail this time.

If there’s one thing I hate more than drug addiction, it’s being controlled. That’s something I can’t and won’t abide.

Let it kill me.

As Etta James once sang, “I’m gonna break up all this signifyin’, somebody’s got to go!”

Wait! Should I go counterclockwise?

When you do creative, strategic, professional work and you’ve been doing it for a long time you are very likely to encounter what we call “grinders” in my line of work. Sometimes twice a week. The call. They talk fast. They won’t answer any important questions or give specific details, which by the way will end up losing you time, money and brain cells.

First they pretend to know more than they do. They tell you it shouldn’t take any time at all to produce, meaning it shouldn’t be very expensive. To them.

I learn to be very still during these queries and trust my gut to let me know if something doesn’t sound right. God help you if you offend them by asking if they have a specific budget in mind or a visual idea of R.O.I. or even what they think should happen when the product is released. What is the audience supposed to walk away with?

You hear the tap dancing on the other end or the old soft shoe. “Look just tell me what you will charge. Based on nada, zip, zilch, zero. We’ll send you the script. that should tell you every thing you need to know. It’s just a simple, quick, no hassle video. We can really have anyone do this, it’s just a straight shoot.” Post production is a blur to them. Just glossed over.

“And by the way, we have a lot of other vendors vying to do this job, so you should keep that in mind”

So they send you the script and a link to their last debacle. It’s basic. Anyone can aim a camera these days. Some illegal music laid in and a few cheap graphics and they think they’re Madison Avenue. You could shoot and produce something like this without taking the lense cover off. All that corporate huffing. Pure windage.

All that effort to make you feel insecure and lucky they found you in the phone book. Sorry, too old for that. I been rode hard a put up wet too many times for that.

So you wait a few days and send them a nice thanks but no thanks. You were right, you can get anybody to shoot this thing, especially given the fact you have a very small budget and it’s such “a simple, quick, no hassle video.” We appreciate the call though, give us a call if you need any advice or insights working with one of your other chosen vendors.

What’s that old saying about if you let a bird go free and it doesn’t come back it wasn’t meant to come back anyway? Sometimes you have made it easier for them to go with the vendor they had in mind in the first place (an old ruse) or you have just pulled their pants down. Way down.

So let’s say, just say, all that other stuff was just bullshit. Bluster. They forgot to read “Negotiation for Dummies.” Well, just so happens I forgot to read it too. But I have an advantage. I’m very busy. I’m booked up the giggy and don’t have time for your nonsense.

Well that deadline is looming. They had no back up vendor and now they’re all pointing fingers at each other cause I had all the capabilities they needed, they’ve seen my work and like it, heard good things about me and the pressure is mounting due to a company mandate, town hall meeting or trade show. Priceline Negotiators!

Here kitty, kitty, come to papa. Someone’s gonna get a spankin’.

Psychological Mindfuck #189

So they call back and decide maybe they should give you a break cause they kinda like you and you would rather work with someone you like rather than all those other vendors that are beating their door down. Can you get over here tonight?

I’m like, well, I like you guys too. I am very grateful for the opportunity to work with you. I won’t let you down.

“Well, we thought you’d feel that way Bobby boy, that’s why we called you back.” You lucky devil!

Games. Needless aren’t they?

A little birdie was telling me something!

Those birds. Hear ’em? They’re back. Those early signs of winter’s transition into spring. You know, those little chirps that lull you with “Hey, it’s time to come outside. No, leave your jacket. Everything’s wonderful and new again. Open up, relax, breathe.”

Those goddam birds.Those sounds. Fill me with a mix of anticipation and dread. Especially on an overcast Saturday morning as I stare over the top of my monitor at the still bare trees and the dissipating snow mounds. Early signs of life, but don’t get cocky.

They say smell has memory, as do sounds. It’s this time of year when I am most aware of my existence, my frailties and all that existential crappola I have to jam down my gullet just to get through to the next phase.

Those birds again.They fly me back 36 years and shove all my stifled miseries and regrets back in my face again. I’m there in an instant and have no idea why I still exist, given the odds.

In my memory’s eye,

I’m sitting in a dingy, smoke filled, bottle littered, pigsty of a bedroom. If it could be called that. I am in an alcohol and drug fueled, emotional briar patch. There are tears of frustration and failure trickling down into my beard. I can’t physically get high enough to pass out but I can’t function either. Helpless at the moment, call back later.

Now I know why those old drunks were so miserable. There is no rest, no peace, no life, no death. You can’t sit up, you can’t lay down. Hell. Worse, purgatory. My family knows. My mother knows, she’s in denial. We’re Irish. We all have our own problems.

I remember being particularly worried and confused, staring at my black plastic film case. The lid is popped off and I’m trying to remember if I did all those eight hits of speed myself, or I was gracious enough to share with a friend or a band mate. Not likely.

I usually rationed eight hits of pharmaceutical grade speed a day. I did it in the morning before I left the house so I wouldn’t go overboard. After all, I was a responsible adult.

I was in a serious band. I was using heavily. If it’s good enough for Gregg Allman, it’s good enough for me.

My estranged girl friend, who used to cohabit this dump with me in its better days, was just caught having an affair with my little sister’s fiancé to get even with me for leaving her. She needed protection from my sisters, who had already destroyed her car, to get her stuff out safely. Leaving me back in my own apartment. Alone, with the bottles, trash, amps, guitars, keyboards and a powdery residued mirror lying on the kitchen table.

I used to make my drinks in a small vase for convenience. It was called an O’Hearn Special in the Old Mr. Boston drink book. Straight brandy, a splash of soda with a sprig of mint. I replaced the sprig with creme de menthe and a hit of fitz water. I would sit in my large leather recliner and slowly watch one TV morph into two. When two turned to three, I called it a night. Or, it called me. That routine got me through two years at Berklee College of Music. Compliments of the G.I. Bill. Vietnam had some benefits.

My windows are wide open, it’s mild and a bit balmy for this time of year. The TV is on and the news of the day is about this kid named Chad, who has cancer and his parents don’t want him to have chemo, so they smuggle him off to have this new drug called laetrile. It doesn’t end well. Jimmy Carter, Iran and the technicolor patchwork of the dead and bloated bodies of the Jonestown Massacre. Very, very, dark thoughts.

And those goddam birds.

I have been up all night trying to overcome the heart pounding experience of speed and coke with the deadening and numbing effects of alcohol and weed to no avail. I have back to back gigs that day. This doesn’t make sense. How can the sun start coming up to produce a fresh new day when I am all alone and dying in this shit hole. I hear Skeeter Davis singing “The End of the World.” in my head.

Now I’m in trouble with my band. I am using so much that I am forgetting lyrics, breaks and even names when I do the intros. I am constantly speeding and weaving my comedy routine into the middle of sets without restraint and there is talk. Lots of band talk. Resentment. Who does he think he is? Aren’t we supposed to be playing music? Tell him to shut the fuck up. Then the clincher: “the band is okay… but we really enjoyed that funny guy.” Tick…tick.

Now, it’s 7:00 am. In the middle of a long drag from my fourth or fifth joint, staring at the TV, they appear. They suddenly fill my red, swollen, old before my time, eyes. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. The PTL (Pass The Loot)  Club! This is more than I can endure. They waddle onto the stage to the throngs of adoring audience members and she launches into a bad Tiny Tim imitation of “Jesus Loves Me.” And she is looking c-r-a-z-y! Tears and mascara everywhere. I cough uncontrollably on that last hit.

Insanity! This is my garlic, crucifix and wooden stake on one screen. My agony is indescribable. I must be Satan. That’s what my problem has been all along hasn’t it?

I’m the Anti-Christ and no one ever told me. How am I supposed to deal with that? I’m already driving over to the St. Clement’s Rectory in the middle of the night to talk to priests. In AA, they call this “spiritual loss.” I needed  help and was desperate for answers.

For the record, I never got what I thought was a satisfactory response to anything. All leaned on blind faith. Oh, and maybe I should get sober. Sober? What does that have to do with anything?

I feared the combination of speed and alcohol was going to stop my heart and I needed to know what I might expect over yonder. I had enormous functional capacity but believed my body could only handle so much. 32 going on 80. I could go at any time.

Leaving the house without vomiting first was unthinkable. All it took was two cigarettes and a cup of coffee before the shakes came on and the games began. I believe I perfected “depth charge” hurling. It sounded like a fat kid doing a cannon ball at the pool. Complete with back splash.

Skipping my routine once, I remember being on Mystic Avenue listening to WBCN and a song came on called “Boogie Til You Puke” by Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band. They recorded someone gagging during the piano solo and it was all over. Next thing I know, I can’t see out my windshield and car horns are blaring while I’m hanging out the driver’s side door, retching.

The PTL Club was the last straw. Murder surely must be permissible, no, required, in this instance. I can’t believe this circus. Send in the clowns and the calliopes.  Aren’t I the one supposed be in an altered state? Aren’t I the one who is so fucked up? How do you put a straight jacket on by yourself?

Whoa! This is madness. These people appear to be sober. This is “The Lawrence Welk and Jesus Christ Road Show.” Pink Flamingos without the Egg Man. Like waking up under Frank Zappa, the joke has been on me all this time. I almost came to my senses. Stop the presses. Where’s reverse on this thing?

This could have been the day when I might have had my enlightened moment. I could have hit my final bottom. My screech region. I’m worried about being anesthestized twenty three and a half hours a day and …. what… this?

I light a cigarette, run the shower, get a beer from the fridge and reload my speed ration into the Kodak film container.

Oh, I was gonna have my “you have just reached your bottom’s bottom, day” but it certainly wasn’t gonna be that day. Not after that! It would be here in a few months… with a vengeance.

I grab my guitar, my stash, my cigarettes and car keys then …I’m… sorry, I don’t remember anything after that.

Except those goddam birds.

A little birdie was telling me something!

Those birds. Hear ’em? They’re back. Those early signs of winter’s transition into spring. You know, those little chirps that lull you with “Hey, it’s time to come outside. No, leave your jacket. Everything’s wonderful and new again. Open up, relax, breathe.”

Those goddam birds.Those sounds. Fill me with a mix of anticipation and dread. Especially on an overcast Saturday morning as I stare over the top of my monitor at the still bare trees and the dissipating snow mounds. Early signs of life, but don’t get cocky.

They say smell has memory, as do sounds. It’s this time of year when I am most aware of my existence, my frailties and all that existential crappola I have to jam down my gullet just to get through to the next phase.

Those birds again.They fly me back 36 years and shove all my stifled miseries and regrets back in my face again. I’m there in an instant and have no idea why I still exist, given the odds.

In my memory’s eye,

I’m sitting in a dingy, smoke filled, bottle littered, pigsty of a bedroom. If it could be called that. I am in an alcohol and drug fueled, emotional briar patch. There are tears of frustration and failure trickling down into my beard. I can’t physically get high enough to pass out but I can’t function either. Helpless at the moment, call back later.

Now I know why those old drunks were so miserable. There is no rest, no peace, no life, no death. You can’t sit up, you can’t lay down. Hell. Worse, purgatory. My family knows. My mother knows, she’s in denial. We’re Irish. We all have our own problems.

I remember being particularly worried and confused, staring at my black plastic film case. The lid is popped off and I’m trying to remember if I did all those eight hits of speed myself, or I was gracious enough to share with a friend or a band mate. Not likely.

I usually rationed eight hits of pharmaceutical grade speed a day. I did it in the morning before I left the house so I wouldn’t go overboard. After all, I was a responsible adult.

I was in a serious band. I was using heavily. If it’s good enough for Gregg Allman, it’s good enough for me.

My estranged girl friend, who used to cohabit this dump with me in its better days, was just caught having an affair with my little sister’s fiancé to get even with me for leaving her. She needed protection from my sisters, who had already destroyed her car, to get her stuff out safely. Leaving me back in my own apartment. Alone, with the bottles, trash, amps, guitars, keyboards and a powdery residued mirror lying on the kitchen table.

I used to make my drinks in a small vase for convenience. It was called an O’Hearn Special in the Old Mr. Boston drink book. Straight brandy, a splash of soda with a sprig of mint. I replaced the sprig with creme de menthe and a hit of fitz water. I would sit in my large leather recliner and slowly watch one TV morph into two. When two turned to three, I called it a night. Or, it called me. That routine got me through two years at Berklee College of Music. Compliments of the G.I. Bill. Vietnam had some benefits.

My windows are wide open, it’s mild and a bit balmy for this time of year. The TV is on and the news of the day is about this kid named Chad, who has cancer and his parents don’t want him to have chemo, so they smuggle him off to have this new drug called laetrile. It doesn’t end well. Jimmy Carter, Iran and the technicolor patchwork of the dead and bloated bodies of the Jonestown Massacre. Very, very, dark thoughts.

And those goddam birds.

I have been up all night trying to overcome the heart pounding experience of speed and coke with the deadening and numbing effects of alcohol and weed to no avail. I have back to back gigs that day. This doesn’t make sense. How can the sun start coming up to produce a fresh new day when I am all alone and dying in this shit hole. I hear Skeeter Davis singing “The End of the World.” in my head.

Now I’m in trouble with my band. I am using so much that I am forgetting lyrics, breaks and even names when I do the intros. I am constantly speeding and weaving my comedy routine into the middle of sets without restraint and there is talk. Lots of band talk. Resentment. Who does he think he is? Aren’t we supposed to be playing music? Tell him to shut the fuck up. Then the clincher: “the band is okay… but we really enjoyed that funny guy.” Tick…tick.

Now, it’s 7:00 am. In the middle of a long drag from my fourth or fifth joint, staring at the TV, they appear. They suddenly fill my red, swollen, old before my time, eyes. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. The PTL (Pass The Loot)  Club! This is more than I can endure. They waddle onto the stage to the throngs of adoring audience members and she launches into a bad Tiny Tim imitation of “Jesus Loves Me.” And she is looking c-r-a-z-y! Tears and mascara everywhere. I cough uncontrollably on that last hit.

Insanity! This is my garlic, crucifix and wooden stake on one screen. My agony is indescribable. I must be Satan. That’s what my problem has been all along hasn’t it?

I’m the Anti-Christ and no one ever told me. How am I supposed to deal with that? I’m already driving over to the St. Clement’s Rectory in the middle of the night to talk to priests. In AA, they call this “spiritual loss.” I needed  help and was desperate for answers.

For the record, I never got what I thought was a satisfactory response to anything. All leaned on blind faith. Oh, and maybe I should get sober. Sober? What does that have to do with anything?

I feared the combination of speed and alcohol was going to stop my heart and I needed to know what I might expect over yonder. I had enormous functional capacity but believed my body could only handle so much. 32 going on 80. I could go at any time.

Leaving the house without vomiting first was unthinkable. All it took was two cigarettes and a cup of coffee before the shakes came on and the games began. I believe I perfected “depth charge” hurling. It sounded like a fat kid doing a cannon ball at the pool. Complete with back splash.

Skipping my routine once, I remember being on Mystic Avenue listening to WBCN and a song came on called “Boogie Til You Puke” by Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band. They recorded someone gagging during the piano solo and it was all over. Next thing I know, I can’t see out my windshield and car horns are blaring while I’m hanging out the driver’s side door, retching.

The PTL Club was the last straw. Murder surely must be permissible, no, required, in this instance. I can’t believe this circus. Send in the clowns and the calliopes.  Aren’t I the one supposed be in an altered state? Aren’t I the one who is so fucked up? How do you put a straight jacket on by yourself?

Whoa! This is madness. These people appear to be sober. This is “The Lawrence Welk and Jesus Christ Road Show.” Pink Flamingos without the Egg Man. Like waking up under Frank Zappa, the joke has been on me all this time. I almost came to my senses. Stop the presses. Where’s reverse on this thing?

This could have been the day when I might have had my enlightened moment. I could have hit my final bottom. My screech region. I’m worried about being anesthestized twenty three and a half hours a day and …. what… this?

I light a cigarette, run the shower, get a beer from the fridge and reload my speed ration into the Kodak film container.

Oh, I was gonna have my “you have just reached your bottom’s bottom, day” but it certainly wasn’t gonna be that day. Not after that! It would be here in a few months… with a vengeance.

I grab my guitar, my stash, my cigarettes and car keys then …I’m… sorry, I don’t remember anything after that.

Except for those goddam birds.

Hmmm, we’re not sure what’s wrong with you, Bob

I will be 70 in two years. If it works out that way. I’m not going to say “if I’m lucky” cause I don’t think like that. There’s too much crazy shit going on in the world to think that something catastrophic or terminal isn’t going to whack me in the ass, so I will be content with the now. The present. Besides, I am very interested in finding out what this was all about. You have your ideas and I have mine. I have been extremely reflective of late so who knows, I could be closer than I think.

I just came in from two hours of vigorous snow shoveling and I loved every second of it. I’m even saving huge piles of snow and ice that aren’t really blocking anything for tomorrow. Can’t wait. Man, do I feel alive. I feel like I’m in the best condition of my life. No aches, no pains. There’s not a teenager on the planet who can feel better than me when my feet hit the floor. I can’t imagine a more robust existence. The added bonus, I’m not afraid of anything. Well, anymore.

But it wasn’t always so. I have dealt with so many chronic, imaginary illnesses, physical limitations and defects I couldn’t catalogue them here. Every relationship I’ve ever had up until now has been plagued with one chronic illness after the other. Real or imagined. Some complained bitterly that I was too much work. “There’s always something wrong with you.”

And there was.

When I was a kid I wet the bed. I didn’t just wet the bed like some kids. I wet the bed with such ferocity the people downstairs complained of water damage. I wet the bed until it rotted and there were just springs left. The kids at the school yard used to call me “pee pee in the cellar” from the smell that I was obviously not aware of. It was the one thing that no one in my family was to bring up outside. Ever. I could verbally abuse you to such an extent in return, that it would be suicide to cross that threshold. One of the gifts I got from dear old Dad.

And my father blamed me. The level of disgust he had for me cannot be measured. He tormented me about it and told me I was just afraid to get up at night. How could I be afraid? Was he joking?  There were 12 people in a small apartment in Somerville. There were bodies everywhere.

At night the couches had to be opened up, people slept on a big desk in the living room, on floors and in closets. The only place that was off limits was the kitchen table. So it certainly wasn’t fear of the dark. Besides, waking up on a cold winter morning soaking wet wasn’t exactly my idea of heaven.

My father showered at work. Everyone took bird baths because the tub was full of dirty, crusted clothes all the time. I started showering when I got put away by the state at 16 and thought I was in Aruba when I went to Vietnam. They had MPs overwhelm me to send me home.

But, that’s another story.

I have often written about what a vicious bastard my father could be and my bewilderment at how you can “closed fist” a kid who doesn’t even come up to your testicles. Someday I’ll find out. I’ve moved on (I think) and I hope he has too. Wherever he is.

When I started to drink, my bed wetting went to a whole new level. Think fire hose. I remember the brisk autumn night I lifted that brown glass half pint of Seagram 7 to my lips for the first time down at the railroad tracks. First the bitterness, the hit to the senses, then the warmth in the belly and the self consciousness falling away. Release. I remember it like it was yesterday. This is it! The cure for everything. This would be my life come hell or high water, forever. I was fearless now, me and my bottle of balls. I was about 13.

Not long after my introduction to alcohol, Marion Martin decided to throw a party at her house on Willow Ave. in Somerville, while her parents were out. Which I remember none of. I think I came as close to alcohol poisoning and dying as physically possible. From what I was told, the cops raided the house and everyone started to scatter.

There was only one problem. Me. I was unconscious and no one could revive me. So the Fitzgerald brothers dragged me down the back stairs, zipped up my jacket, hoisted me up and hung me on a fence, where an amused pair of cops found me and brought me to the station. I remember coming to a few times, yelling, screaming, crying, a severe beating and then, nothing.

They called my mother at about 11:00 pm. Seeing I was a juvenile, I could be released in her custody. My father was asleep and she wasn’t about to wake him. It was Friday night and he had probably had a few himself. That would be World War III. So my poor mother and one of my sisters had to catch the last bus to the police station in Union Square to retrieve me.

10 kids. She loved us unconditionally.

My mother said she was at the sergeant’s desk signing my release when they carried me out. She was horrified. I was still out cold and couldn’t stand on my own. And I was drenched. From the waist down it looked like they pulled me out of a pond. ( I am sobbing now from the thoughts of all I put her through)

They didn’t know what to do with me so they planted me on the corner of his desk while he finished up my release. Then, my mother sees it. No one else does, yet. The big yellow puddle that starts to spread and inch its way toward the sergeant’s right hand. The horror was more than my mother could possibly bear. (I’m sobbing again, sorry) She let out a frantic warning scream and ran down the front stairs, caught a cab and went home.

I woke up the next day, Saturday, in a holding cell, just in time for juvenile court. The cops wanted the name of the guy who bought me the booze. Unfortunately for me, the only name I could give them was “Harry Dinkles.” Harry was a really weird guy who used to make pizza in Davis Square, where we all hung out. The cops thought I was pulling their crank so they batted me around a bit. One cop punched me so hard I thought I was home already being “chastised,” by my father.

Harry’s last name was Ward but the older guys affixed him with “Dinkles” because of his weirdness. I got labelled a “fink” for a few weeks until Harry got put away for something else.

I continued to drench myself in alcohol for the next twenty years but judgement day was coming. May 20, 1979, a gray, ominous Sunday morning in a crappy motel on Route 1 in Saugus. The girl I was with happened to mention that my skin color looked a little “blue.” Still don’t know who that was.

But, that’s another story.

I never drank again but strange things started to occur. After years of stunting my emotional growth and never having to go to bed sober, I started to become symptomatic. It was like coming out of the womb at thirty-two. I was an emotional and spiritual wreck and stayed that way for years. I anticipated liver, kidney and heart failure. (I also loved speed and coke.)

I had a level of remorse that was utterly unbearable and I had to deal with it… sober.

Strangely, in all the years I drank and did drugs, I never got into a car accident, injured anyone or got pulled over for any infractions of the law. I was really very good at it. But once I got sober, I got cocky. I had two car accidents the first year, fell down a flight of stairs and almost burned my kitchen down on numerous occasions.

I once put cod liver oil in a frying pan instead of olive oil and forgot about it. The stink would make me gag for weeks. It permeated the walls, my clothes, the curtains and killed all my plants. There were sea gulls flying around my house for six months.

The addictive attitude stayed with me though. I went to a few AA meetings and learned about compulsion. I learned I can addict myself to anything. So I did. I lost 50 lbs, quit smoking, became a track star, started body building, learned to meditate, fasted, took vitamins, ate organic food, went back to church and took yogurt enemas.

But, that’s another story.

The one thing I was not compelled to do was to continue going to AA meetings. “I get it already. I’m not gonna sit here with you guys every night and talk about this shit over and over.” What a fucking morbid existence, I’m thinking. I’ve got stuff to do, like world domination. Screwing everything with a pulse. If I have to be sober, the universe has to pay. Big time.

The change in me was radical. I quit the band, shaved my beard, started bathing regularly, had my apartment fumigated and got a job. This, incredibly, was more than my family could take. They pulled a mini-intervention on me. They all told me they loved me but were very worried about me. I was scaring them. Can you imagine?

When Susan moved in with me in 1999 while living in Arizona, I completely fell apart. Everything that could go wrong physically and mentally came on with a vengeance. Apparently, having real, true love, come into my life, was too overwhelming. My back, my neck, my feet, I had tinnitus, my prostate, I had AIDS, Desert Fever and a different form of cancer every other day. I’ve been to more emergency rooms than most healthcare workers.

I was a real pro in a crowded ER. I could hold my chest and rattle off cardiac symptoms just to get to the head of the line. Then it would always be me, in a wheel chair, crashing through those swinging doors, ahead of everybody.

I would faint, have panic attacks, break out in rashes, allergies and not sleep for days worrying. About what? Anything. Just before Susan arrived I was making out my will. My friends who were PA’s and medical professionals who knew my past were always telling Susan I needed to be on medication.

Everyone around me thought I was just a funny guy who didn’t give a shit about anything. I wish. I once went three full days without sleep because I was worried about a Miraluma meeting in Salt Lake City. The ER at the Church of Latter Day saints rounded out my resume of midnight visits.

That was the way it was, always. I lived alone and had no one to slap me and tell me to “snap out of it!” Fear and insecurity festered and grew, unabated.

As chance would have it, I happened to pick up a book about back pain by a Dr. Robert Sarno. He theorized that most pain in the body is some type of deferred rage that the mind creates to distract us from all the hurt and pain we have accumulated in our lives.

Every slight, kick, slap, criticism, rejection and loss is always bubbling just below our consciousness he believes. It creates a distraction to keep us from picking away at the scabs of our existence. It started to make some sort of sense to me.

That’s when the haze started to clear.

But, that’s another story.

Note to reader: I inadvertently hit the publish button, now I’m committed.

Hi, my name is Bob O’Hearn and I’m an asshole. (Audience) HI, BOB!!!

I became aware of this fact when I realized that I was powerless over my addiction to being one. So I decided to turn to a higher power and found that there was no higher power other than me. (Another reason I’m an asshole.) I am so repelled by mundane business and marketing phrases that I once ingested a computer mouse to keep from screaming.

I am stubborn, opinionated and judgmental. In most cases, unbearable, according to my wife. She might have a point.

I have been pilloried by these corporate terms and non phrases for so long that I am choking on my own bile. There are words that do not work any more. Repeat after me. There are words that do not work any more. They just… don’t!

My wife and I got into a huge kerfuffle this morning over an upcoming business non-event, hosted by a local entrepreneurial group, featuring a well recognized writer. He has a CV as long as your arm and the event is being billed as a fire side chat (which I consider code for no deliverable.) Like sitting next to Harry Reid on a bus to Searchlight, Nevada.

After reading his bona fides, you realize you have absolutely nothing in common with this over educated intellectual from another universe, especially given the fuzzy topic.

When my wife read me the title, “What Drives Success?” I had a visceral reaction something akin to hearing your china cabinet tip over in the other room.

“Well, that’s fucking original” as I start my metamorphosis into a hyper-caffeinated, raging anal cavity. “I can get this shit from a leather couch.” Then I get the “Why is it every time?” thing from my wife. So, as is my nature, I start to challenge the premise of this cozy little fustercluck. Now I’m a gaping (see above).

It’s not like I have something else to do that night, I would probably go, I just wanted to discuss why, in this day and age, someone would be so lacking in creativity and use such pedestrian language to attract an audience. “Networking for Nitwits” would have really grabbed me. Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.

True story: As Rodney Dangerfield’s father lay in his death bed after a long life, Rodney asked him, “Dad, you’ve done and seen everything. Tell me, what is this all about? What’s the secret of life?” He said “kid, it’s all bullshit.” And he died.

I’ll leave you with this:

“Say something sweet, say something funky, make me lay back and grin like a monkey, with just a little bit of wit, spare me that same old shit”

Sound of flushing toilet then fade to black.

Spiral Marketing: If your primary care physician writes you a prescription for xanax or alprazolam, congratulations, you have just become part of their patient retention program. You aren’t going anywhere for at least 3-5 years. (Don’t ask!)

Please, as in to subjugate yourself. My parents are gone, school’s out forever and I left the corporate world more than six years ago. It takes a while to right the ship after pulling the cord on the second chute. I had a mini lesson in re-birth when I went into sales and moved to another state years ago. A total shock to my system. My auto pilot got shut off.

Like being institutionalized, entrepreneurial freedom feels a bit wobbly at first but once you get going there’s no looking back. Inside the chalk lines you knew the landscape and how the game was played. Show up, work the ropes, add a little political panache, size up your immediate boss with his boss in the corner of your eye (cause you never know) and proceed accordingly. You know, work the system. Until the next re-org.

I always thrived in the corporate environment because the rules were clear and you did what you were told for the most part. But curiously, not much more. If you did something out of the book that they couldn’t gauge, you saw first hand how inflexible the system was. As I did. The price you pay for a safe harbor. I was sometimes handed a check and/or a plaque in a restaurant, bar or hotel room. Not at a sales meeting or home office. I mean, the out of the mainstream stuff I did always got out, but it was awkward to say the least.

Here’s what I would have posted on my bathroom mirror.

Hi, my name is Bob and I am a people pleaser. Once you come into my sights there is nowhere you can run. I will exploit your primary tic right down to your mating habits if I can and make you wonder how you ever lived without me. I will daze and confuse you and put my carriage before your horse every time. Every time.The system is made for me, not for you. My needs are less than yours. I require less food, less sleep and hate vacations. On weekends when you are recuperating, I am planning for Monday. To me, balance is a protein bar. Game on.

Then you wake up one day and realize the way you measured success in your life has changed drastically. There’s nobody left to run with. Your world has flipped and the reason you either jump out of bed or drag your sorry ass to the bathroom in the morning is on you. It’s not promotions or bonuses anymore, it’s survival and self satisfaction.

Abject fear slowly turns to exhilaration. Roll credit (1), cue bouncy music and fade.

Welcome to the jungle.

If you’ve made it this far down the page and think you can endure more of this nonsense, click the subscribe button and get free delivery. You can also leave a comment with suggestions  on where I can get professional help. Thanks. E.R.

“Honestly, with all due respect!”

Honesty. What a bullshit term. “With all due respect” (another loaded term that translates into “here it comes,”) to Billy Joel,  I know people who pride themselves on their honesty and candor while they use it as an excuse to bludgeon everyone around them. “Well, I’m just being honest.” Truth be told, if I was totally honest with myself every morning I wouldn’t be here right now.

Your inner bullshit is what keeps you breathing. You can call it optimism or any other fluffy, pie in the sky terms you like, but without that bullshit narrative going on in your head you would most likely dissolve back into your sneakers. Let’s call it what it is, programming. Yes, along with “You Are What You Eat,” you are exactly what you think and tell yourself.

When I look in the mirror I can absolutely trace my lineage back to my grandfather’s grandfather’ time. If I can’t see that gaping blowhole in the back of my head that hasn’t seen or felt hair in decades, it doesn’t exist. If I tell myself that 220 lbs is the correct weight for my height and age, then goddamit, that’s what it is. I run on those fumes and continue to get great mileage.

When someone says to me, “Can I be honest with you?” or “In all honesty,” that conversation is over. My butt muscles tighten and I start thinking of something funny that happened to me when I was kid. You are some faint echo drowning in my earwax. You think I’m going to let you stomp all around in my fantasy garden and destroy my beautiful plants? Here, get a whiff of this!

So let’s be honest about about honesty.  You are who you think you are. End of story. You write your book and I’ll write mine. Cross referencing is not allowed.

Make up your own honesty!

Look, if one more person calls me up and tells they’re worried about me and asks if I’ve been taking my meds, I will start start doubling up on the dosage. I am using this magical medium to share my thoughts with the world, how ever crude and non linear my thinking. I’m am purging the remnants of a long, well lived life. Am I aiming at the wrong audience? Possibly, but any audience will do right now, thank you very much. Where am I going with all this? Who knows.

Comedians, satirists and even jesters provide a service to humanity in the way they serve up the inanities of life and rub your nose in them. Sometimes not so gently. They catch us off guard and make us laugh because we have been made aware of the hypnotic state in which we exist, what we accept as fact and what we don’t even dare ruminate about. I won’t pretend to be any of the above but I will take my cues from those who went before me.

So am I angry? Yes! Am I depressed? No! Do I think I’m a little harsh and critical of the total asinine crap we accept as gospel from people who should know better? Yes! Will I tone it down and stop making my friends and loved ones neurotic? Probably not.

At some point in our life, we all metabolize our existence and come up with a hypothesis or supposition as to what we’re supposed to be doing here in the first place. The goal, for all intents and purposes they say, is to reach enlightenment, that awareness which frees a person from the cycle of rebirth, or, as I like to think of it, as making the same mistakes over and over again.

As I have grown and learned to take inventory of my life experience, I have found tremendous value in the ability to be still. To watch. To absorb something and not pour forth on a second’s notice. Although you might not deduce that from my writings, I can assure you I am entirely premeditated in my approach.

So as I log in my contributions (as I like to think of them) and weigh in on the sum total of my experience, I would like to think of what I say as not just another “sharp stick in the eye” but rather the reflections of someone who has led a full and incredible life and does not accept as rote the silliness we endure on this planet. I read once that the people who make the most mistakes are the most intelligent. That would make me Einstein.

Editor’s note: Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government or society itself, into improvement.

Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon and as a tool to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. So now that we have that out of the way, let’s have a little fun.

Full disclosure. I am 68 and I like it. I like everything about it. I especially like the fact that I won’t live forever and that a nice comfy dirt nap is waiting for me and that Jesus, Santa and the Easter bunny were all part of the same joke. I’m looking forward to a little peace and quiet, and as that pussy, John Kerry, would say, “bring it on!” I have even arranged to be buried upside down with my ass sticking out of the ground so all my fans can park their bicycles when they come to pay their respects. I’ve had a good run and I am proud of my generation.

As many of you might not know, Flip Wilson was a comedian in the 60s and he had a running joke about stand ups who stayed on too long. The ones who didn’t leave their audience begging for more, most likely weren’t asked to return. Which brings me to the title of this rant.

To all the bands and vocal groups from the 50s, to let’s say, the 90s, I would like to say, IT’S OVER! Didn’t you get the goddam memo? Why do we have to drag this shit out until we have to look away in abject horror at the wasted fragile remnants of our symbolic youth. Stay home. I have the record. Let me die thinking I wasn’t some decrepit douche bag who still fantasized about dry humping his girl friend at the drive in. Nooo! Thank you! Those days are over and good riddance!

Gregg Allman is toast. His Whippin’ Post now has a bed pan hanging off of it. Lynyrd Skynyrd is dead. I can’t bear to watch the Rolling Stones prance around the stage with that hanging thing under their chin still moving 20 minutes after they stop playing. Who’s booking these people? I don’t need to be reminded how close to the nursing home I am. They used to be the symbol of rebellion. Who are they rebelling against now? The night nurse? Please, just go away.

I met B.B. King once in a medical clinic in Las Vegas. He told me that if he had to tell the story of how he named his guitar “Lucille,” one more time, he would take his own life on stage. How’s that workin’ for ya B.B.? John Fogerty, who is now my age, has dark brown hair and getting darker every year. Sadly, the last time I saw Aretha Frankliin, some stage manager had to prop her up against a piano so she could finish her number while grabbing her chest.

The show must go on is meant for the circus. James Brown, rest his soul. (Pun intended) The last time I saw him was on a 45 minute special from Las Vegas. True to his old tradition, 40 minutes of that was introduction. He stayed way too long. Had he lived, I’m sure we would have caught him up there with the Doo Wop groups on PBS during pitch season.

Now I come to that special place I hold out as the total object of my derision. The person who makes me want to pour gasoline on my testicles and get a frontal lobotomy to wipe out any past memory of my youth. The Boss. The boss of what you might ask? I don’t know and I’m sure he doesn’t either. I might object to his lyrics but I have no idea what he’s saying. Toss in a massive under bite and a tempo that would clock 350 beats a minute on any legal metronome and you have to even wonder why he’s big in China?

I hadn’t a clue until I saw him perform live at some arena on the east coast. When the camera panned the audience, who was absolutely rabid, I realized the attraction. The males looked like pudgy, unemployed, car wash attendants, who still lived with their mother.They wore cut off sleeveless t-shirts with bandanas and punched their flabby arms into the air with reckless abandon, while the girls who still had those 80s Venus Flytrap hairdos and “The Boss” tattooed across their butt cracks shimmied frantically to keep the beat.

Meanwhile, back on stage, there was the boss himself, along with his incoherent counterpart, Stevie, who were up close and personal on the same mic totally rendering incomprehensible the lyrics to “Rock The Casbah” from a teleprompter. Whatever video producer called in that shot angle must be surely looking for work today. Stevie, you might remember, made millions playing himself on the Sopranos. I saw him on a morning show once talking about healthy eating. Screeeech! What? Yeah, I know. Let’s move on.

I know “Live fast, die young and leave a good lookin’ corpse” is a lot to ask, but really? Really? You have earned the right to a cup of tea, to put your feet up, and maybe have a nap. Have you thought of politics? How about a TV show? Dinosaur Nation! Worked for Al Sharpton.

As for me, I’m thinking of heading up to the attic to find some of my father’s Nat King Cole records and if I’m lucky I’ll pass away in my sleep.

I read James Altucher’s article the other day “10 reasons Why You Have to Quit Your Job This Year,” and I have to say that every syllable, every word, and every sentence knocked me on my ass and wouldn’t let me get up. It wasn’t so much news as it was confirmation of everything I said and felt in the last six years since I quit mine. He says it all so I won’t quote him.

Vindication! I had been scattering my provocative thoughts all over the east coast to anyone who would listen. So, while hiking this morning at my second home in Arizona, where I go to shake off the long, sedentary winter, I heard a Bob Seger tune that I had always loved but it took on a new meaning after reading Altucher’s article.This is how I feel about my friends still locked in battle for their integrity and self worth in a dungeon built for only second best.

“Beautiful Loser”

He wants to dream like a young man
With the wisdom of an old man
He wants his home and security
He wants to live like a sailor at sea

Beautiful loser
Where you gonna fall?
When you realize, you just can’t have it all

He’s your oldest and your best friend
If you need him, he’ll be there again
He’s always willing to be second-best
A perfect lodger, a perfect guest

He’ll never make any enemies, enemies, no
He won’t complain if he’s caught on his knees
He’ll always ask, he’ll always say please

Beautiful loser
Never take it all
‘Cause it’s easier
And faster when you fall

– Bob Seger

I know I post a lot of wild, sexually driven, profanity laced, inappropriate content on here. I realize it might offend groups of any age, gender, social class or species. I mean, if that’s OK with you.

These insensitive, incoherent and drug induced ramblings, interspersed with F-bombs, double entendre and sexual innuendo are surely over the top by any standard, and are designed to keep you on the edge of your examining table.

I can assure you that these disgusting entries will be removed shortly, as they are to be included in an upcoming children’s etiquette book to be released in the fall. In an effort to show them how NOT to act in mixed company. Children learn by example I am told. I use “I am told” because I am not allowed to re-produce in the sate where I currently reside. But I am very excited about this project and I know you must be too. What’s not to like?

The publishers and myself are working around the clock to get this book into your hands as soon as possible. The artwork is posing a challenge but we are up to the task.

I know you share my excitement and enthusiasm for such an entry into the literary world. You can sign up here to be notified of any early release dates and upcoming book signings.

Please tell your friends, family and associates that they will be blessed and uplifted by the messages weaving through every page.

Cash is always appreciated and thank you for your support. The Enlightened Rogue.

I love morning. The earlier, the better. It’s magic. In fact, I give it such a go in the beginning, I have nothing left for afternoons. A nap in the middle of the day brings on melancholy and anxiety in equal measure. Worse than waking up all over again.  It’s not new anymore. It feels  harsh, garish, like it’s somewhere in mid-sentence.

Act II is nothing like Act I. Like shift workers at the time clock, the Am guy gives the PM guy a sly, knowing look, ”yeah, I know, I know.” Afternoons find me rummaging through orange bottles with child proof caps to mitigate the sadness, lethargy and ennui.

Act III is wonderful. The third shift comes in and is oblivious to the struggles of the other two. It’s quiet, reflective, you can work in peace for a while until you get sleepy. Then it’s time to shut down production. You can breath and take a few minutes to watch the sun go down. No energy left for needless, repetitive thought. Leave that for the first shift. Mercy… at last.

I am an outsider. I have never fit. I am a disruptive, attention seeking missile that veers off the highway of the rote. I have been given jobs and opportunities based solely on my personality. I have been denied for the same reason.

I have the ability to contort myself into whatever current conditions require. In other words, a shape shifter. I do it willing and with malice and aforethought. I have very few basic requirements besides a little food, water, and a place to plan insurrection.

At this stage of my game, I can barely endure the silliness, sameness and sordidness of this one act play called life. I think everything is either funny or ironic and have punchlines ready for either occasion. My creativity knows no bounds.

I am at the “Whoa…wait a fuckin’ minute!” stage of life. I am constantly arguing with my lizard brain and repeating, “If not now, when?” I have proven to myself over all these years, that I was right all the time. My instincts are spot on. Always! I was right then, (not that it matters) and I am right now.

I wake up every day and hug myself and thank the closest person to me (some days it’s a dog) for the cacophony, confusion and unconscious state we find ourselves in. Without that, I would be just an other impoverished kid trying to watch the ball game through the knotty hole in a wooden fence.

Having become more familiar with my feelings and reactions to events around me, I now know that breathless, tingly, runny bowel feeling was really unbridled excitement at the random, the unknown and even the unthinkable.

I now realize, after living a semi cautious existence, that I was always ready, always excited, always anticipating, the completely shithouse next big thing, and can’t wait for more.

I have a LOT of experience with Human Resources. I even dated a specialist for a while. So I guess that makes me an expert, free to weigh in on all the negative press these organizations are receiving and to exact my revenge while they’re still on the killing floor. To be clear, these clueless, paranoid, oxygen deprived, pack of shadow boxers, don’t live anywhere near the planet on which we reside. In other words, pimples on the ass of progress. I mean that in a good way:)

As a video and streaming media producer with 30 years of sales and marketing burned into my hide, I had to work in concert with various groups to produce quarterly meetings where live and on-line streaming audiences would participate. Then I had to sit sit down with HR and a “steering committee” to refine (and water down) the message. Needless to say, their priorities were a bit different than others of our species.

The head of HR was the type of guy who used to hold a gun on himself while shaving. I could never have dreamed up the conspiracies that were nibbling away at his amygdala. When he shared one of his ideas, I would wait for either hysterical laughter or applause and maybe even an apology. “I was only shittin’ you”! It never happened.

A couple of big issues they had were, keeping the CEO on the reservation in front of an audience that just might be paying attention in case the truth slipped out, and the anonymous employee feedback spreadsheet. I never really knew why they rolled their eyes when they mentioned the CEO, but they did, as well as sigh, wrinkle their noses and gaze at each other approvingly.

Regardless of how successful these “Town Hall” meetings went, if they got one negative comment on oh, just about anything, like the videos were too good, they must be expensive, to my seat was too hard, the meeting went five minutes over and why does he always start with the weather?. The shit house U-turn would commence. Appeasement of the squeaky wheel was the order of the day.

Fluff! Let’s keep it fluffy! Let’s just have a picnic and a group hug and all will be well.

My mother used to have a line she would use on me when I wasn’t being truthful. “Don’t shit the troops” she would say. They would have liked my mother.