| Monday January 31, 2000 Noah Grey is poised to return from hiatus. “This
time I mean it. =)” proclaims his home page this morning.
Noah immerses himself in his site for months at a time, then closes up and drops off the
radar, also for months at a time. Such long and frequent hiatuses are unusual in this
medium, but it’s the way things go in the rest of the arts.
The creative juices ebb and flow. Painters and sculptors spend months locked away in the
studio then months of doing shows and galleries. Writers too spend months at the keyboard
followed by months on book tours. So when Noah goes on hiatus, I’m not usually
alarmed.
This hiatus seemed different. It came on suddenly, without warning and I’ve not heard
a peep from Noah in months. More unusual, was that he also took hiatus from his
involvement with the Male Abuse Survivors’
Support Forum, which he founded and continues to host on his site. That worried me for
a while, but he remained a subscriber to my Notify List, so I knew he hadn’t
fallen off the edge of the planet.
I can’t wait to see what Noah has cooked up for us this time. With each rebirth
I’m awestruck by his feelings and their expression through his artistry. I guess
I’d better put his link back on the Personal Sites page…
Evening, Tuesday February 1, 2000
I got my W2 form in the mail yesterday. I just did my state and federal
income taxes online and electronic filed them in just under an hour for free.
The online tax service I used for the past three years was SecureTax. Intuit bought them
during the past year so this is my first year using Quicken
TurboTax for the Web. For the most part I was pleased with the experience. The
information from last year’s returns transferred over flawlessly. I even remembered
my password!
The process of entering this year’s data was much easier than the way SecureTax did
it, even though there seemed to be endless screens where I had to answer “No” to
everything. Notice I didn’t say it was quick? It seemed like most of the hour was
spent looking at a screen that said, “Updating” in a browser window that said,
“Done”. On the other hand, February 1st is a pretty busy tax filing day, and it
was free.
My other beef is that it won’t let you leave the phone number fields blank. I
don’t like to give my phone number to potential telemarketers. Recognize that this is
only potential here, none of this has happened. Yet. They already have my postal address
to send me junk mail and my email address to send me spam. They want to annoy me by
telephone as well?
On one screen it wanted home and work numbers. That was easy. I’m unemployed so I
left the work number field blank. It didn’t protest. Then at the end it reported
there were errors on my return. It would not process the return without a
“daytime” phone number. Grrrr. And being the obedient twit that I am, I entered
my real phone number. Grrrr.
Now it doesn’t take a Harvard MBA to figure out I’m a cheapskate. I could have
run out and spent $30 to buy their program. No, I decided that free over the web was a
better buy. Just what do they think I’ll purchase if they’re giving away their
only product/service that I use?
The hardest part of the whole affair was convincing Jeffrey that I couldn’t include
him as a dependent. This required a trip to the IRS web
site and printing the pertinent pages from Publication 501 for him.
Despite my gripes, which admittedly are more like pet peeves, I recommend Quicken TurboTax for the Web. It was easy enough,
although slow by cable-modem standards, it took a lot less time than running out to a mall
tax service, and it’s cheap.
Free is a real good price and there’s no charge for the preparation or electronic
filing if, like mine, your return qualifies for the 1040EZ form, (Standard Deduction with
no dependents) or if your return requires the more complex 1040 or 1040A and your adjusted
gross income is under $20,000. Worst case, for 1040 or 1040A filers with an AGI of over
$20K, the fee is only $9.95, $20 cheaper than buying their program.
Oh, and what were the results?
Of the $5,007 the feds withheld during the year, they decided to keep $4,374 of it and
give me back $633. That’ll get directly deposited to my checking account. New York
State wasn’t satisfied with the $1,421 that they took out of my pay. I have to send
the state a check for $40.
It’s not the $633 refund or the $40 check I keep in mind on Election Day. What I
think about as I listen to politicians prattle on and on about taxes is the $4,374 and
$1,461 ($5,835 total) that they kept. And don’t even get me started on the $2,510.34
in Social Security and Medicare taxes. I’ll probably never see those benefits.
Debuting on the web today is
the latest incarnation of Noah Grey’s site. Now
I know why he’s been so quiet. He’s been busy. With the exception of the Male Abuse Survivors Support Forum, Noah has
recast the entire site in Macromedia Flash.
If you’ve visited Noah’s site before you’ll immediately recognize his
trademark style, which is to say understated elegance with tremendous attention to detail.
Now take his original graphics, his visual style and throw Flash animations into the mix.
I’ve found myself just staring at the screen or playing with the mouseovers.
There’s really too much for me to describe adequately and I haven’t even
mentioned content yet. Just visit and see for yourself.
Two caveats: 1) Unless you already have the Flash 4 plug-in, you’ll need to download
it from the link on Noah’s site. 2) Flash animations are CPU intensive. If you have a
tired old PC like mine, 100% CPU load is not uncommon. (Which makes everything seem
sluggish.) Don’t expect to have anything run in the background.
Many Flash animations, including Noah’s, bring my PC to its knees. It started
whimpering when I opened a second browser window to see how well Noah compensates for
different window sizes (very well) and to compare it between Netscape and Internet
Explorer.
Maybe I won’t put that tax refund toward something sensible like rent or bills or
groceries. Maybe a shiny new Pentium III…
Afternoon, Thursday February 3, 2000
My landlord called at 9:45 last night demanding to know where my rent
was. I politely explained I would have the rest of the money today or tomorrow depending
on when my check came and I would drop it off then. She got on her high horse and sternly
admonished me that the rent is due on the first of the month and if I didn’t have it
to her in full on Thursday, she would begin the eviction process. The last time I checked,
rent had to be 30 days in arrears, not one day, in order to go to the courts.
Apparently she’d forgotten that I paid half of the January rent two weeks early and
included the full late charges when I paid the second half, one week late. I also pay cash
in large denominations and I hand it to her personally in her office. She doesn’t
have to wait for the mail or for checks to clear, or hassle with a pound of twenty-dollar
bills.
The mail hasn’t come yet and I have time to decide. I’m strongly considering
buying a money order at 7-11. It turns out, 7-11 money orders are the most distrusted
negotiable instruments on the planet and banks insist on a full five banking days for the
things to clear. This means she would have to credit me for having paid on the 3rd, but
wouldn’t have use of the funds herself until the 10th. It’s tempting.
I appear to be the sole source of her financial difficulties. She’s holding last
month’s basement flood against me because there were condoms clogging the pipes. She
had seen condoms in my apartment when she came in with the plumber back in November when
the kitchen sink drain fell apart. There happen to be three other adult tenants in the
building, all of whom I can testify, lead active sex lives.
When I inquired about the squirrels in the attic she replied that she hadn’t put them
there and she had been thinking of coming over here “with a gun to shoot the little
bastards.” This from the woman who insisted I risk life and limb climbing through the
ceiling panel to bait her Havahart trap in her attic.
She said she was angry because they had created a fire hazard up there by chewing on the
wires. Then she told me that sometime this coming summer, after they had moved out, she
would have someone board-up the holes so they couldn't get back in.
Of course when the subject of fire hazards came up I told her I didn’t appreciate all
the debris from the basement flood being piled chest-high at the bottom of my fire escape
ladder.
Then she asked, “Is your fire insurance paid up?”
“What?”
“Oh, you probably think I’m the wicked witch of the west or something. I’m
not usually like this. I took in 28 stray cats last year.”
“What?”
I think the woman is seriously off her rocker.
Circular Reference: Patrick
wrote Wednesday about doing
his taxes online after reading my entry on Tuesday. Back to you Patrick! 
Von debuted the new look for her site yesterday.
She’s only been threatening for weeks! Actually, I don’t know how she finds the
time with everything going on in her life. I’m glad things are getting back to normal
for her after the snow and ice storms and the power outage and the kids being home from
school for a week. That sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen in North Carolina!
Her new look is very tasteful and understated. Everything is organized and easy to find.
There’s no Flash, no dazzle, nothing to detract from what she calls her
“thrilling, entertaining and amusing” life. She’s not done completely with
a few parts of the site, but that shouldn’t keep you from visiting and it’ll
give you an excuse to return. As if her journal weren’t reason enough.
I feel the need to expand a bit on what I wrote about Noah’s new look the other night. If my comments about
his Flash animations running slowly on my PC scared you off, don’t let it. I have a
very old, very tired PC. Five years old last month, to be precise.
It began life as a Pentium 90 with 32MB of RAM, back when a 486-66 with 8MB was considered
adequate and anything with 16MB was extravagant. It came with Windows 3.11 on it because
it pre-dates Windows 95 by eight months. The processor and memory upgrades have helped
keep it fairly usable, it’s now a Pentium 180MMx with 128MB of RAM. But it still has
the same antique video card and I don’t think the drivers were ever fully optimized
for Windows NT.
To give you an idea of how underpowered it is, simply moving the mouse consumes almost 10%
of the processor capacity. Highlighting a paragraph in Word drives the CPU load up to
nearly 60%. By comparison, most of Noah’s pages consume 75 to 85% of the
processor’s capacity. Other Flash sites peg it at 100%.
In short, don’t be put off by my reports of sluggishness if your PC is even fairly
contemporary and you don’t stupidly open multiple browser windows of the same page
like do.
I’m procrastinating. I
haven’t written a single word for my writer’s workshop tonight. Part of it is
I’m having trouble choosing between several topics, part of it is that writing in
general hasn’t come to me easily this week, and another part of it is I’m
intimidated by how well things went last week. All the memories of school and work when
I’ve been told, “This isn’t up to your usual high standards” come
flooding back striking me with paralysis.
Early Afternoon, Friday February 4, 2000
I started on the assignment for the writer’s workshop around 3:00
yesterday afternoon. I went back to the journal entry for June 1, 1999, copied two paragraphs and
pasted them into a new document. It gave me a start and the piece took off from there. I
wound up keeping only two sentences from one of those paragraphs.
The story seemed to grow all by itself. I didn’t know where it was leading me. All I
did was follow along, jotting it down as it unfolded, as if I was laying down a trail of
breadcrumbs in the forest. I was as surprised as anyone by where it went and how it got
there.
Around 5:30, Eudora announced I had mail. I needed a
break, so I read what Carlos had sent. Here’s part of what he wrote along with my
reply.
On the writing that you posted...
I've always liked the way you write. Yours is the first journal that pulled me in. I
love the way you choose words. I LOVE your sense of humor. I have never heard your voice,
but I can hear you saying these things as I read them, with the voice I've made up for
you.
I make up voices for writers too! You know, I wrote Chris just the other day and mentioned
reading his entries to Jeffrey. He wrote back that he never dreamed someone would read his
stuff aloud to someone else. Yet, that's what happens in my head as I write. I think,
"How would this sound if I read it aloud?"
The only difference I noticed in the formal writing piece, was that it
felt like you were working harder at it (which I imagine you were), and it lost some of
that wonderful flow I get from your journal. Granted, it's a WRITING exercise, so just
take my comment for what it is: my opinion.
That sounds about right. It's good, but it's not quite me.
One difference about the piece was that it's a story from the past as opposed to the
immediate daily stuff that goes into the journal. So the very nature of the work is
different. Plus, I had a week to think about it rather a couple of hours.
I also consciously reined myself in from the wandering about that has become the
hallmark of Scenic Route. I wanted to digress as usual and drop in parenthetical
anecdotes. But I've also been told my writing sometimes lacks focus (so does my life, go
figure!), and tighter focus was something we were told to work at in order to maintain the
reader's attention. |
It was exactly what I needed to hear at that very moment.
The ego boost that comes with every piece of fan mail, well Carlos is more friend than
fan, gave me renewed vigor. And he had hit on exactly what had been bothering me but
I’d thus far been unable to identify in “Red”.
It was too focused.
In those rare instances when I’m able to apply some lucid thought to writing as I do
it, besides “voice”, one of the things I think about is weaving the story
together from individual threads into whole cloth. That distinct lack of focus is what I
hope brings texture, color and pattern to the fabric of the story.
Many times after the fact, I see that weaving is more akin to that of a drunk on the way
home from a bar on Saturday night.
Still, I make my best effort. Sometimes it works, sometimes it stumbles, bouncing off
trees and parked cars. But whether it works or not, that’s what makes it mine.
I attached a draft of what I was writing to my reply to Carlos and returned to see where
the story had wandered off. When he wrote back, he had zeroed in on the very part of the
story that had issues. By then, I knew where the story went, how it got there and that it
suffered only by my transcription.
I dicked around with that section until I had no more time. I printed seven copies and
dashed over to Writers & Books.
I’ve decided to refer to my classmates by the colors we were given for last week’s assignments. We’re a
colorful cast, so it fits. Our instructor, Camy, naturally didn’t get a color, so she
remains Camy.
Blue was at the hallway water cooler when I came in. We exchanged thoughts that had
developed about the pieces we’d written last week. The nature and style of his
writing is closest in the group to mine, so we had a lot to discuss.
Once in the classroom, Camy also had some further critique on “Red” and had
critiqued two other pieces I’d left with her. We talked about them and wound up
sharing one, “Of Pringles’ and Pigeons” with the class.
Then we started with the reading and critique of our assignments. As you may recall, the
topic was “Choose a fragrance, smell or odor, and tell of the memories it
evokes.”
Orange went first. He traced his story from being babysat Friday nights by his
grandparents, through riding in his uncle’s convertible to his first car, all carried
along by the scent of warm motor oil. We agreed that his was the most improved writing
from last week, which is no small feat considering he’s an engineer and technical
writer. It’s hard to put aside the thought processes that go with that type of
writing.
Purple’s heart wasn’t in the piece she brought, and she told us so right off the
bat. She’d been unable to hook up with her father during the week to verify
background and such for the piece she wanted to write. Still, the piece she wrote carried
better than she thought. She told how, although she’d worked in a flower shop during
college, flowers didn’t mean much to her until after the birth of her first child
when she arrived home to find the place filled with flowers.
Blue, who shared the story of the birth of his newest grandson with us last week, wrote a
story of walking with his oldest grandson, then only 18 months, and splashing in puddles
to remove the dog poop from his grandson’s boots. While it never intended to answer
the question posed in the title, “Who Had the Most Fun?” it wandered around
beautifully, just like it’s subject.
It was wonderful to see Green simply blossom as we reacted to her piece. She seemed so
unsure of herself and of her writing last week. And I’m sure she felt intimidated by
those of us who process our words when she writes longhand in pencil. I think the
encouragement we showed last week helped her a lot, as did the after class discussion when
we all hoped she would write about her first reaction to the topic.
She did, bless her heart!
Green grew up near the last working dairy farm in the suburbs, an island of agriculture in
a sea of tract houses. As you might imagine, her story begins with the smell of manure in
the springtime. Where it winds up though, is with “a thick aroma different than a
campfire, more like a steakhouse” as the barn burns down.
I think Green enjoyed telling us how she wrote the story more than telling the story
itself. And she discovered that she has three or four more stories to build from pieces
she edited out of this one.
Yellow wrote of her dog’s encounter with a skunk. I can just see the hapless Yellow
with twelve gallons of tomato juice in the bathtub when her Labrador shook himself dry!
She framed the story however, in the underlying unspoken frustration of a mother given the
present of a dog when it’s the rest of the family, not she, who wants one.
Before reading my piece, I hoped to deflect the “focus issue” a bit. I told how
writing for the journal is self-analytical and anchored in the present even when it deals
with issues in the past. And I shared the Flannery O’Connor quote you see on the Present
page, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
I’m certain it was as much the way I read the story as the story itself that captured
the class. All that training in radio still comes in handy years later. After taking it in,
they all pounced on the same segue Carlos had.
Discussion was lively to say the least. I’m sure our voices carried all the way down
the hall to the front door. Camy temporarily lost control of the group and sensing that,
in an ironic twist, I brought us back into focus, “I think we’re all arguing for
the same thing. The transition belongs in the piece. It just needs to work better. How do
we fix it?”
And so, incorporating the suggestions of all, I present “Musty Old House”.
Late evening, Saturday February 5, 2000
I’m bored.
I got up around 8:00 this morning, making it three days in a row I’ve awakened at a
“reasonable” hour. I’m taking it as evidence that my body clock is has
finally found its way back to Eastern Time. As you may recall, a few weeks ago it thought
I was somewhere over the Pacific. Arising at 8:00 seems like it’s too late for the
workweek and too early for a weekend. Both terms are meaningless when you’re
unemployed, so it seems I’m taking the average. I can deal with that.
The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the squirrels were having a hell of a good
time in the attic. While the PC was booting I put up the blinds, made some OJ and thought
about whether to have breakfast or not. Or not won the decision since I ate an entire
tuna-noodle casserole before retiring last night.
I usually get by with eating half a casserole, but it’s been ages since I made
tuna-noodle and I just couldn’t stop. I’ve always had a healthy appetite.
I’m no longer waif thin, but I’m not fat either. Age takes its toll and like
most guys my age I carry an extra ten pounds or so. No one really notices except me, and
I’m not bothered by it.
It made me wonder how they come up with the serving sizes for these things. Allegedly,
this casserole would feed four. Who, bulimics? Or maybe normal people, but only when
served as part of a seven-course dinner? Somehow I can’t imagine tuna-noodle
casserole as part of a seven-course dinner. But that’s just me.
Anyway, deciding against breakfast this morning, I settled in at the PC for the morning
routine. There was no mail. It’s not unheard of, but it’s unusual. Next I read
the paper. I read five newspapers online daily. Rochester’s Democrat & Chronicle, the Toronto Star, the Las Vegas
Review-Journal, the Arizona Republic and the Albuquerque Journal. There was little of interest in
any of them today. I was done in twenty minutes.
I read five television news sites daily. Rochester’s Channel 13, ABC, CNN, the
BBC and the CBC.
Apparently, the news took the day off in the electronic media as well. Another twenty
minutes and I was done.
So it was off to journal land! No mail meant no journal update notifications from the
half-dozen or so journals where I subscribe to their lists, so I skipped them. That left
another half-dozen. Of those, two updated. Ten minutes. Last night I’d gone through
the ones I visit only occasionally, so that was out.
I decided that since there was nothing new in the world, there was no reason to remain
conscious. I went back to bed at 9:00 and slept until 1:30.
“Certainly something must have happened by now!” I thought when I got up. Alas,
no. No e-mail, no postal mail, no journal updates, no phone calls, nothing. The site logs
can sometimes be interesting so took a look. Nine visitors between 1:00AM and 9:00AM, zero
since. Okay, it’s a slow day all over.
I had time for a little extra analysis, so I examined the log closely. Of those nine
visitors, four were new. Usually a good sign. All of them found the site through a web
ring. Also usually a good sign. All four visitors went directly to the Photo Album looked
at one page, then left. This is not a good sign. It means I’m listed next to porno
sites somewhere.
I have nothing against porno and porno sites. I have more porno than I care to admit.
It’s just that since I don’t run a porno site I don’t particularly care to
be located next to them on a web ring. It’s a waste of everyone’s time and
effort. It throws off the stats I collect from the logs and it frustrates the porno
surfers.
On further research I discovered I’m wedged between porno sites on two of the three
non-journal rings to which I belong, Queer Ring, Out and Proud and
Gay Ring.
I’ve been lax in keeping my ring listings current, so I took it as an excuse to
update them. This of course meant finding my ID and password for each them.
I joined those rings ages ago, so I had to go rummaging around looking for my e-mail
archives. When I found them, I created a new folder in Eudora
and copied them in. So now I have every e-mail I sent or received since I dumped AOL
towards the end of 1996, right at my fingertips.
I looked up all my IDs and passwords and updated my site data on each of the rings. The
new descriptions and keywords should help when surfers navigate the rings from the ring
indexes or from “previous five” or “next five” links. It won’t
change anything for those who simply click “previous” or “next”. They
never get to see a description.
While I was editing my ring entries I had some trouble with the Gay Ring and sent an
e-mail off to the ringmaster asking for help. It turns out there was a discrepancy between
the information he was given when he took over the ring and the actual site IDs. It was
solved in short order. During the course of our exchanges he expressed his frustration
with the proliferation of porno sites on Gay Ring. He’s in the process of cleaning
out the dead wood and porno sites, so that should solve my problems there.
In any event, his name is Chris and he runs an online Pride shop called Allpride.com, from his apartment in Columbus, Ohio. He
seems to carry all the usual stuff, and one or two unusual things. His prices seem
reasonable as well. It’s worth a visit.
After my updating frenzy, I
figured it was about time to search for new territory. I visited sites from each of the
rings trying to be as open minded as possible. Of the hundred or so sites I checked out, I
added a half-dozen to my Favorites list on a probationary basis. If they keep my attention
for a month or so, I’ll add them to the Personal
Sites page.
In searching for new journals there are a few things that turn me off immediately, which
explains why only six will be getting return visits. Generally it’s the same things
that apply to all web sites in general. Some sites are hard for me to read, or have
cryptic graphics, or they’re hard to navigate. It makes me wonder why their owners
went through all the trouble.
During all that, my first e-mail of the day arrived. It was an update notification from Kym. Her entry today includes a rant about online
journals and links to a Dave Van
rant about online journals, which in turn links to yet another rant about online
journals by James
Valvis.
[After posting this I found that Noah Grey had
also written on this same topic today, although his is not a rant and he makes several
points I've skipped over here.]
After reading all these rants, I thought I’d hop on the bandwagon.
I had nothing better to do today…
I like reading online journals.
I’ve been reading them for well over three years now. I’m pretty loyal to those
I read and feel betrayed when people give them up. It’s part of the reason don’t
I seek out new journals very often. It seems that when I find new journals and I get
hooked, their owners abandon them.
What gets me hooked on a journal?
Personality. I have to like the person who writes it.
Whether they live an exciting life or an ordinary one, it doesn’t matter. If
they’re insightful oracles on the human condition or simply write about their cat, it
doesn’t matter.
If they display awesome mastery of graphics, HTML and all the other acronyms in web design
or simply throw some words up on the screen, it doesn’t matter. Whether they turn out
mellifluous prose or seem barely able to string together a sentence, it doesn’t
matter.
All that matters is that enough of the person has to shine through to make me want to get
to know them and take an interest in their lives.
I like writing an online journal.
In light of my taking that writing course, I feel the need to respond to some of what the
rants say about the writing and motivation for keeping a journal.
I’ve stated my motivation pretty clearly in the "Mind Space" part of the About The Site page. All I can add to it here is that I
meet a lot of nice people through doing this. I can make friends and remain a recluse!
I don’t keep a journal in order to practice writing so that someday I can write The
Great American Novel. I’m not taking the course at Writers
& Books so I can write for newspapers and magazines. I doubt any of that will ever
happen. If it does, fine. But that’s not the goal.
I’m taking the course so I can improve the writing in the journal. I want to learn
how to be more expressive in my writing so that more of what I feel, see or experience
comes through. Yet it’s not for the sake of writing itself that I want to become more
expressive. It all goes back to the self-analysis that I get out of the very act of
writing.
I’ve said it before. The whole reason I drugged for 20 years and find myself drawn
back to them when things get out of hand is because there’s so much shit swirling
around inside my head that I can’t begin to make heads or tails of it. Nor can I turn
it off.
Unless I have to capture it and put it down in writing. When I have to make enough sense
out of it so that someone else can follow and understand it, suddenly, so do I!
That’s why that Flannery O’Connor quote means so much to me. It says exactly
what happens to me as I write:
“I don’t know what I think until I read what I
say.”
I learned a lot in writing “Musty
Old House”. I told yesterday of how I had no idea where the story was going and
that I was simply following it along. It kinda wrote itself in that regard. But it gave me
some startling new information.
I never knew why I stopped going to the lake. I never knew why my every attempt at
interpersonal problem solving degenerates into a shouting match. I never knew why I put so
much effort and self-sacrifice into trying to make the people I’m close with happy so
I can try to avoid those conflicts in the first place.
Knowing why, is the first step toward learning how to deal with issues such as those.
I also learned why, even though I'm satisfied with it, “Red” wasn’t as fulfilling for me to write.
It didn’t deal with self-analytical things. Still, I learned something from writing
it. I learned that I need to say the kinds of things I said in it the to people I’m
close with before they pass from my life, rather than as a tribute after the fact.
In writing both pieces, the exercise in learning to be more descriptive and expressive,
and in organizing my thoughts better met the goal of better writing, which met the goal of
getting to know myself better.
That’s why I’m taking the course and that’s why I write the journal. And
it’s an interesting mirror image of the reason why I read journals.
Evening, Sunday February 6, 2000
Just before I drifted off last night, inspiration struck. I hit on the
story to tell for this coming week’s workshop assignment. The topic is “Write
about a journey or trip. A real life trip rather than a spiritual or virtual
journey”.
The story I’ve chosen is from 22 years ago, the weekend after my 21st
birthday. The trip is one that was shrouded in an alcoholic haze and has further dimmed
with the passage of time. So I wouldn’t lose the idea or the faded memories that had
started to flow, I got up around four and worked until 5:30 making some notes and starting
an outline.
I’ve been digging in one of my nostalgia boxes all day doing research. Along the way
I found a couple of old photos. I wondered, “Who is that cute little twinkie?”
Why, it was me of course! They were from back in my radio days when I was still blond and
could grow hair on the top of my head. I hope to scan and post one or two. There have
never been many photos of me taken, so stumbling on some, let alone some that corroborate
how I remember looking, was a real treat. I’ll have to properly archive them somehow.
I also found my first resume from when at the ripe old age of 18 I was fired from my
first, and only commercial radio job. Oh the joy of ratings! Where did I think I was going
when my only job skills were things like “Air Personality”, “Production
Director” and “Advertising Sales”?
Air Personality meant I could talk or read aloud and operate electronic equipment at the
same time. Production Director meant I could operate multiple tape machines at once and
splice tape in order to make commercials and promos. The ad sales thing was really pushing
it too, because I can’t remember selling more that one or two. Hmmm, can talk,
operate machinery and can use a razor blade safely.
As Tom in Arizona is finding out, working in
radio doesn’t provide you with many useful skills for the real job market. I hope he
has better luck in his job search than I had in mine 24 years ago. Shit, I hope he has
better luck than I’m having right now!
It promises to be an interesting trip down memory lane this week as I pull this thing
together. It’ll probably be too long to read in class even after I lop out lots of
the details and all of the racy parts.
Like when, as a 21-year-old longhaired blond twink I went unescorted one evening to the
legendary original Mineshaft S&M/B&D club in New York City. I remember after a few
beers going downstairs to the men’s room and discovering that all they had were
bathtubs. Every one of them was occupied… |
