Table Of Contents

How You Can Get a Job at Walt Disney Studios Without a College Degree

by Eric Muss-Barnes

Copyright Page
Donations Page
Disclaimer Page
Dedication Page
Testimonials
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Curriculum Vitae
Biography
Other Books by Eric Muss-Barnes
Colophon
Backcover

Copyright © 2013 Eric Muss-Barnes. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved under the Universal Copyright Convention and the Berne Convention For The Protection Of Literary And Artistic Works. The author of this book, Eric Muss-Barnes, secures all rights to this book, including the right to reproduce this book in whole or in part, in any form whatsoever, and extends such privileges to absolutely no other parties, individuals or companies. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, by any electronic, mechanical, or other means including, but not limited to, all existing and yet to be invented information duplicating, storage or retrieval systems, without specific permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages.

United States Copyright Law Paragraph 107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

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(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Fair Use of Quotations:

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities which courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations;” As a book which is educational and scholarly in nature, all quotations used herein are for illustration or clarification of the author's observations under Paragraph 107 of the United States Copyright Law as Fair Use. The purpose and character of the use of the quotations is for educational purposes and the substantiality of the portion of quotes is negligible and has no detrimental effect upon the potential market for (or value of) the quotations.

Cover photos by Eric Muss-Barnes. Sculptures by Blaine Gibson in LegendsPlaza.

For More Information Please Visit: www.HowYouCanGetAJobAtDisney.com

PRINTED AND MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

First International Printing: January 2013

Donations

Dear Reader,

As a writer, the most important reason I publish my books is so good folks like yourself can read and enjoy them. Therefore, in order to make my writing available to the largest possible audience, I have decided to make all of my ebooks available for whatever price readers think is fair.

Here is how it works...

You can download any of my ebooks for free and donate money for it later. Instead of having a set cover price, you can visit www.DubhSithInk.com and give whatever you think this ebook is worth. $1.00 or $5.00 or $50.00 or $18.63 or a nickel. Anything you want. Only you can decide how much value my writing brings your life.

If you can't afford to pay for this ebook, simply share a copy with people in your life who would enjoy the story. Some friends. A few family members. A couple coworkers. Anybody you like. Or perhaps, you might be kind enough to write a glowing review for this ebook on the Internet? Whatever helps my writing gain a larger readership is just as generous as a monetary donation.

Perhaps I am naive in thinking I can earn a living by giving away my stories and requesting donations, instead of selling this ebook for a set price. Nevertheless, in a world where greed and digital piracy has divided people into thieves and misers, I believe readers will gladly spend hard-earned money to support writers who pen worthwhile tales. I believe you are exactly that sort of reader, and I humbly hope you will regard me as that kind of writer.

Thank you for your time. May your few short hours spent with this story enrich all the remaining decades of your life.

Respectfully,
Eric Muss-Barnes
www.DubhSithInk.com

Disclaimer

This book is in no way associated with or endorsed by

The Walt Disney Company or any affiliate companies.

All of the opinions expressed herein are entirely those of the author and are in no way associated with or endorsed by

The Walt Disney Company or any affiliate companies.

Dedication

“In order to make good in your chosen task, it's important to have someone you want to do it for. The greatest moments in life are not concerned with selfish achievements, but rather with the things we do for the people we love and esteem, and whose respect we need.”

- Walter Elias Disney

in keeping with the sentiments of Walt Disney

this book is dedicated to

my maternal grandfather

Paul Adolph Muss

February 26, 1919 - July 2, 1998

unfortunately, Grandpa died before I worked for Disney

I'm sorry he didn't live long enough to witness that milestone

I know it would have made him proud

so this book is for you Grandpa

Testimonials

“Eric's love and enthusiasm for the Disney brand is inspirational and contagious! I was fortunate enough to work with him at Disney Interactive Media, as my role changed, one thing was consistent: Eric was always there ready and willing to answer my long list of questions as I tried to understand the tech side of the projects I was producing. As a developer, he went out of his way to make sure that everyone understood the technical processes (and there were quite a few in the Mouse House). Eric was also the go-to for files and background on projects that most people had long ago forgotten. There were numerous occasions where we were searching for archived projects and when we lost hope, Eric came to the rescue. I am confident that Eric will exceed anywhere he may end up, and I'm sure Walt would have been honored to have someone like him with such enthusiasm on the team!”

- Katie Turnbull

Producer, Disney Interactive Media Group

“I consider myself extremely fortunate to have a developer like Eric on my team. He shows great enthusiasm to get the job done and done right. He's a very quick learner and takes initiative on his tasks but also on other work that needs to be done without having to ask. He's able to articulate a problem, idea or any information for that matter to both his peers and to clients to help them make informed decisions and get the project to completion. Eric is also an incredibly positive person who always has a smile on his face. He always has a positive word for anyone that needs it. I would gladly have Eric on my team again.”

- Kathy Bailey

Technology Manager, Disney Interactive Media Group

“Eric was a great guy to work with. A very good web developer who works through challenges or difficulties. Great guy to work with and great team player. He will figure out the right solution to reach the project/product goals. I highly recommend Eric Muss-Barnes.”

- Adam Schricker

Web Developer, The Walt Disney Company

“Eric embodies the ideals of the Disney company. Hard working and full of a desire to represent the company's brand with the respect it deserves, Eric was known to always be standing up for 'What would Walt do?'. In addition, his technical skills put him on a long list of projects on a recurring and growing basis. In any company, this is a thought process of taking a step back to look at the larger vision of the corporation, and execute on that, is a trait that any company should be seeking in their staff.”

- Sean Higby

Flash Developer, The Walt Disney Company

“Eric was a joy to have in the office. He always has a smile on his face, is enthusiastic and full of team spirit. Since he is so passionate about the Disney brand, I always enjoyed bouncing my crazy ideas off of him to see if they would stick. When his eyes lit up, I knew I had a winner. Eric is a multifaceted and talented individual: photographer, videographer, editor, author, developer (and those are just the skills I know about, he could have 10 more). It would be a joy to work with him again. I hope our paths cross in the near future.”

- Jody Belliveau

Senior Producer, Disney Interactive Media Group

“Eric is weird. I mean that only in the best ways. He is enthusiastic and engaged in all of his projects. He looks to over-deliver, often providing supplemental materials and details in a profession that often fights requests for documentation. He volunteers for more to do even, and perhaps most often, in areas that aren't what he's being paid to do. He is passionate about creating and supporting a positive environment for his colleagues. I imagine, however, he would use the term 'friends'. Eric is a professional who seeks out ways to make it easier for others to do their jobs. Y'know... weird.”

- Jason Toney

Director of Editorial & Programming, Disney Interactive

“Eric was the very first person that I got to know at Disney Interactive. He is easily approachable, laid back and yet the consummate professional that never takes his eye off the details. He is a problem solver, a tactician and one who never settles for second best. I have run into several situations where issues arise and he is up for the challenge; on time and on budget. Eric is the must-have person for any team. It has been an honor to serve with him.”

- Adam Brown

Product Manager, The Walt Disney Company

“I didn't realize... that Eric and I had never worked directly together on a project. I know Eric because he is outgoing and friendly. He became one of the people that I regularly hung out with because he was always positive and knew the technologies we were working with well so if I got stumped he could point me or his cohorts in engineering in a new direction. He was a staple of my days at Disney.com - organizing bike rides for his coworkers, showing up every Friday in his Mickey ears, and generally being one of those people who connected others together. If you want someone who works hard and gets things done, I would highly recommend Eric.”

- Malinda Lloyd (www.animegirlie.com)

Senior Producer, Disney Interactive Media Group

“Eric Muss-Barnes is a quadruple threat - computer expert/content developer, film maker, skateboarder and writer! I first met Eric at Disney.com and he is great fun to work with, always takes time to listen and gets excited about every project. He is innovative and experienced and no job is beneath him. His enthusiasm about life makes him a joy to be around.”

- Kevin Reem

Video Producer, Disney Interactive Media Group

Chapter One
A Promise & A Warning

“Every man is captain of his career and there must be cooperation all around if he is to get what he wants out of life. There is no better time to begin learning this lesson than when we are young.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Disney is the dream job I forgot I had.

Allow me to introduce myself, dear reader. My name is Eric Muss-Barnes and I was born during the 1970's and raised by my maternal grandparents in Cleveland, Ohio.

When I was a child, I knew I wanted to work for Walt Disney when I grew up. Nothing special about that. For nearly five generations, every kid in America has dreamed about working at Disney - especially those of us who were lucky enough to grow up watching Uncle Walt on television during the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's. However, most kids don't hold onto that dream for very long. Eventually, parents and teachers, and friends, and life itself, slowly begins to erode those hopes, and most of us simply give up, and resign ourselves to working as gas station attendants instead.

Personally, I never even gave it a try. Working at Disney, that is. Never tried. (And I actually did try to be a gas station attendant, but that's a story for later.) Just like everyone else, I had given up too. I made no attempt to get my foot in the door at Disney. I never felt worthy. I never felt qualified or talented enough. Disney was where the “Best of The Best” all worked. The best engineers. The best animators. The best artists. The best programmers. The best landscapers. The best painters. Even the best street sweepers! The best of every field! It was both an elusive and exclusive club to be a Disney Cast Member. Oh, I could never be in their league. I wasn't that skilled or educated in any area of expertise to be of value to the Walt Disney Studios.

Or so I thought.

Lo and behold, the next thing I knew, Disney came looking for me! One day, when unemployed life had kicked me in the teeth particularly hard and I was at my lowest point, the Walt Disney Studios came knocking on my door. Just like an underdog story in a Hollywood movie, the dream had come true and I wasn't even trying to achieve it! Oddly enough, once I attained that childhood wish-upon-a-star, it was as though living the dream was an inevitability.

Fate stepped in and saw me through.

Funny how that works.

How did I do it? Is that what you wanna know? Yeah?

Well, considering how I entitled this book, and the fact that you're reading it, I kind of had you figured already.

So, you wanna make it big in the flickers too, eh, kiddo?

Sure thing, smiley. I'll tell you how to break into the movie biz. Sit down and let me tell you my story. Take notes.

Many people dream about working in Hollywood. I know I always have. Sure, as I said earlier, I may have given up on the dream of working at Disney, but I never stopped dreaming of living in California. Considering the title of this book is fairly blunt, I'm willing to bet, since you're reading this page, it's because you share that dream of working in Hollywood too.

Now, my dear reader, I know nothing about you. I have no idea how old you are, or where you live, or what you have experienced in your life. One thing I do know however - if you're anything like I was during my teens and early twenties, you may be considering giving up on that California Dream too.

Don't do that.

Never give up.

This book came into your life for a reason. To help you remember some things you may have forgotten. “Don't give up” is the first message this book has to remind you - don't quit on your hopes. Hold steadfast to your dreams. The greatest of stories can truly change our lives. Books and movies can be genuine magic. Stories are powerful things. Sometimes the thoughts and ideals expressed in a storybook can enter our lives at just the right moment. The moment when we need them most. By serendipitous wonder, they come along and kindle our ambitions, enlighten us to new ways of viewing life, and inspire us to achieve our highest truths.

That is what this book will be for you.

You will find this book came to you at just the right time and will change your life for the better. That is why you're reading this. Right here. Right now.

You just have to believe. That's when magic always begins - when you believe.

Despite my own periods of self-doubt, I eventually made my Hollywood dreams a reality. Perhaps not as quickly as I had hoped, but all in due time. As I've reiterated, I wasn't always sure I would succeed. Growing up in Ohio, among a workingclass family in Cleveland, I often questioned if my dream could ever come true. I lost faith quite frequently. After all, no adults in my immediate family ever went to college or did anything all that spectacular. A few just grabbed government benefits and methadone doses before their AA meetings. Not exactly admirable career paths. Not a way of life I ever aspired to emulate. I make no mockery of their hardships. I'm just telling it like it is. That is the road they chose to take in their lives. Such down-and-out folks don't exactly wish upon stars the way I always have.

The admirable adults in my life never did anything too extraordinary either. They fought in World War II and worked as housewives and cops and General Motors foremen. Parents of my friends all came from similar middleclass backgrounds - secretaries and mechanics and postal workers. Don't misunderstand me - there is nothing wrong with those professions. I'm not belittling what they did with their lives. I think their careers are all genuinely noble endeavors and there is no shame in keeping a roof over your family with the blue-collar labor of an honest days work. There is no disgrace whatsoever in what those people do. I respect every one of them. Being folks who are the proverbial “salt of the earth” is honorable indeed. Nevertheless, they just never struck me as occupations brimming with magic.

I wanted the magic.

I was never willing to settle for less.

I wasn't a kid who aspired to be a fireman or a cowboy. My role models were in movies. I wanted to be a Jedi. Indiana Jones. James Bond. (Honestly... I still do.) Growing up during the late 1970's and early 1980's meant experiencing one of the greatest eras in the history of American cinema to be a child. My generation was influenced during gradeschool by 1950's reruns of Walt Disney on television and Starbuck and Apollo on Battlestar Galactica. Meanwhile, in darkened movie theatres, we were treated to the wonderment of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in their heyday.

Star Wars.

Jaws.

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

Labyrinth.

Gremlins.

Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The Goonies.

E.T.

Back to the Future.

The Dark Crystal. (I know Lucas and Spielberg had nothing to do with The Dark Crystal directly. I'm just trying to make a point that I grew up with magical films. Besides, Lucas founded Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and ILM did do effects work on The Dark Crystal. So there.)

These motion pictures forged the foundation of how my friends and I played, what we dreamed, and which heroes we idolized. Every last one of these films, planted the seeds of awe and made our hearts race with anticipation from frame to frame. We were Elliot on his bicycle. We were chasing One-Eyed Willie's rich stuff. We were making sure to never, ever feed a pet after midnight. We all wished we had a friend like Dr. Emmett Brown.

Because of the spirit of those films, every childhood friend I had, all shared the same dream. We all wanted to be in movies. We didn't care how. Acting. Directing. Special effects. Cinematography. Sound mixing. Whatever. We talked about it all the time. We imagined what filming movies was like. We dreamed about what happened on movie sets and in studios. We just wanted to make a living, creating those adventures we loved so deeply.

Unfortunately, beneath the gloomy gray skies of Cleveland, the sunshine of Hollywood felt 10,000 light years away. Those snowy and grim Ohio winters can suck the life of those sunshine dreams right out of your soul.

Over time, taking our respective journeys, down forks in the road, on the Pathways of Destiny, most of my friends followed in the steps of their parents and became another generation of construction workers and financial investors and government employees.

They gave up on those Hollywood dreams.

I never did.

For me, my aspirations were never pipe dreams. They were goals.

Yes, my convictions did falter. My confidence waned. Never did I give up entirely though. Somewhere deep inside, when the soaring flames of my passion died, the embers always continued to smolder - ready to set the world ablaze again, if only something could fuel me to hope once more. California was home. It was where I belonged. Even when my mind had forgotten, my heart always knew it.

Can you imagine - working at Walt Disney Studios? Wouldn't that be incredible? I bet if you look around you, right this instant, and see where you are, the Disney Studios might seem 10,000 light years away too. Just like they did for me. (Unless you're reading this on the bench at Pluto's Corner... which would be weird.)

Right?

Where are you right now? Your bedroom? Riding a bus? At school? On a lunchbreak from work?

Wherever you are reading this, I used to be in the same kind of place where you are right now - a place where the Hollywood dream felt impossible.

Impossible as it seemed, the dream finally became my reality. Some of the twists and turns on my route to reach that dream were Fate, others were sheer will, and I also have to give a heap of credit to pure dumb chance. But eventually, I did it. I made it happen. And with this book, I'll show you how I did it, step-by-step. Now, before we get too far into this story, I'm going to promise you something and I'm going to warn you about something.

First, the promise.

I promise that this book is real and true and sincere. Most important of all - the book is complete and thorough in every detail. I won't leave anything out. I won't make anything up. I will be honest and explicit and forthcoming. I will tell you exactly how I managed to get into Disney, covering every job I've ever had in all my life, plus all the experience I gained along the way. You will be able to see the entire course I took, from my first childhood job, to the Happiest Place on Earth.

That's a promise.

I won't write this book like those evil villains at job seminars. Have you ever heard those jerks give motivational speeches or present a talk? You know the kind of folks I mean? Invariably, a crowdmember will ask something like, “How did you get started writing Hollywood screenplays?”

That evil villain will smile and laugh, answering something like, “That's a funny story. I was parked on the lot at Universal Studios and Brad Pitt was on his motorcycle. We started talking about bikes and the next thing I knew - ”

That lousy son of a gun! (Not Brad Pitt, I mean the seminar guy.)

At that point, you just want to jump up on stage and strangle this jerk! Before he even begins, you already know his story won't help you at all! How did he end up in California? How did he get on the Universal lot? How did he initiate a conversation with Brad Pitt about motorcycles? What about all those details? You can't leave that stuff out! When someone truly wants to offer guidance and inspiration to a kid from Nebraska, they can't start their damn story with, “I was parked on the lot at Universal...” After all, when you're just a kid in Indiana, every studio in Hollywood feels about as far away as the moon and locked down like Fort Knox. You don't just walk onto a motion picture studio lot. How did you get there in the first place!!??

They never tell you that part.

I will.

My point is, those jackasses teaching those seminars don't really want to help you. They don't care about you. They just want to flaunt their success and take your money.

I won't do that to you, my fellow dreamers. I won't leave out any important details. I will tell you my whole story. By the time we reach the part about being on the Disney Studios lot, you'll know exactly how I got there.

By the way, I wasn't totally making up the Brad Pitt story. I think I may have actually parked my motorcycle next to Brad Pitt's Confederate F131 Hellcat Combat motorcycle on the Universal lot one day, but I never got the chance to talk with him. Read this whole book and you'll find out the story behind that too.

I said I would give you a promise and a warning before we get started. Being detailed and honest was the promise.

Second, the warning.

I have to warn you that the cliche is true - serendipity plays a big part in all our lives. Well, I can't speak for your life, but I know serendipity plays a big part in mine. (Obviously it plays a big part, because how many authors reference the word “serendipity” three times in a single chapter?) Therefore, if you attempt to follow my exact path and hope to achieve the same results, you may be sorely disappointed. Your destiny lies along a different path from mine... Hey, where have I heard that before?

In other words, don't treat this book as sage Obi Wan Kenobi advice. My stories aren't intended as a rulebook for you to follow, rather as inspiration for you to find your own road. Yes, I will be honest... but mileage may vary.

Remember, these are guidelines, not blueprints. Big difference.

I don't want to mislead you.

I don't want my dear readers to say, “Jerk! I thought this book was going to show me step-by-step how to get into Disney! Names! Departments! Contacts! All this stupid author does is give his whole story of how he made it to Disney! How does that help me to get a job!?”

By showing you to not give up.

Inspiring a little tenacity is far more valuable than listing a few names and contacts. Trust me. Names and contacts change after all.

During an educational series at Disney, I once taught a class which I called Architecting Your Dreams. The whole point of the class was to show people, step-by-step, how to turn dreams into reality.

Some of my students loved it. They found it useful and inspiring.

Some of my students hated it. They said it repeated things they had already heard, over and over again.

The disparaging students didn't realize that people who find success in their lives often give similar advice over and over again because that advice actually works! That's why we keep repeating the same message! That's why all of us tell you the same thing! It works!

The “secret” to success is when you finally hear someone deliver that same old message in a way which resonates with you. In a way which “clicks” for you.

I used to read all kinds of books on how to be an author. Always looking for tips and advice and hints from great writers. How did they do it? What was the key? What was the secret? And there was one. It was a consistent and universal lesson explained and paraphrased over and over - if you want to be a writer, you have to actually write something.

If you're a writer, you already know that answer.

If you're a wanna-be writer, you haven't grasped that answer yet.

My intention with this book isn't to give you all the answers. No one can do that for you. I'm not able to say, “If you do A, B, and C, I promise you will get D as a result.”

No. You won't get answers like that. Life doesn't work that way. I'm sorry. I know that's what you want. That is what everyone wants. We just want to be told, “Do this, this, and this and you will reach that.”

Unfortunately, such advice requires a precognition I don't possess. As good old Master Yoda said, “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.” No one knows the future so clearly (or if someone does, they don't seem keen on sharing insights with the rest of us!) So, we're on our own, kid. In life, just like Indiana Jones, we're making this up as we go.

All I can do, is tell you what I did, and the path I took. While your path might not be the same, I hope my own course might encourage you to march intrepidly along the best road for yourself.

Honestly, I believe that deep inside, you already have all the answers. You already know what dreams you want to come true. You already know what needs to be done to achieve them. I'm hoping that this book will be the catalyst for you to finally get the ball moving.

This book may contain the message which finally “clicks” for you.

Heed my promise and warning well, my fellow dreamer. I've written this book with the intent of helping you find your way to Hollywood too (it may work for getting folks to Broadway also, if that's where you're looking to arrive). This book isn't written for the kid growing up in Beverly Hills with a dad who is a top producer at Warner Brothers. No. For a kid like that, his ticket to Hollywood has been in his hands before birth. This book is for the 16 year old high school art student in Iowa, for the 30 year old waitress in Louisiana who still secretly dreams of acting someday, for the gradeschool boy in Vermont posting his movies on the Internet, for the kid in London who idolizes Chaplin. This book is for those who dream about getting to the sunshine of Los Angeles and can't imagine how you will ever make it here. You have no money. No education. No contacts. No resources. No hope. No chance.

Neither did I.

I know exactly how you feel.

This book is for you, my fellow dreamers. I'm here to help light the way, because I know the darkness you are in. I know the hopelessness you face. I know the doubts in your heart. I know the friends who mock your dreams and the family who look at you like you're crazy. I know the downtrodden who never improved their own lives and try to make you think your life will suck like theirs. Hopeless people who have forgotten their dreams tell you your life will never change either - even when your instincts scream they are wrong. I know what it's like to have the only light in your life be the timid little candle burning deep in the most private chambers of your heart. I know what it's like to have no one believing in you. I was there. No one ever believed in me either. No one. Not family. Not friends. Nobody. I was on my own. I had to learn to believe in myself, because I knew nobody else was going to.

For those of you struggling not only to work a dream job, but to work at all, I understand that grief too. I was laid off from a total of 5 different jobs in my life before I found my way into Disney.

Think about that.

Five.

Four of those were all in California too! Believe me, “making it” out to Hollywood wasn't all rainbows and unicorns and streets paved with gold and bikini models filling my apartment complex. On the contrary, reaching the West Coast was when the real struggles began.

Laid off five times before I got to Disney. Five jobs. Gone.

Not once. Not twice. Five freaking times! Five times I've had the rug pulled out from under me. Five times wondering how long it would take to find a new job. Five times of stressing out over how to keep a roof over my head. Five times of wondering if I could keep paying for groceries. Five times of screwing up my credit and going deeper into debt, because I had no other way to keep clothes on my back. Indeed, my friends, I do understand your sleepless nights. I know your dreaded mornings of sending out resumes in futility for weeks and months at a time. I know how it feels to apply for hundreds of jobs and never get a single interview. Being unemployed invariably fills one with fear and trepidation. How will you pay the rent? Can you keep food on the table? Will you end up homeless? You're alone upon this earth. No roommates. No friends to support you. No family to take you in. This is it. You alone against the world. Few things are more scary than having to face the trials of life by your lonesome. I know, because that's exactly what I have done. Not to mention the blow to your self-esteem. Is your spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend ashamed of you? Do they think less of you? If you're single, do you honestly think you will ever have a spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend? Why would anyone want to date you? What do you have to offer? Who would ever love an unemployed, dirt-poor screw-up like you? Are you less of a man/woman? Are you a nobody? Are you worthless?

All those defeated thoughts start to plague you.

“Only losers are unemployed. I must not be worth anything. No one values me. I don't matter.”

Deep down, you know those things are not true. But you can't help but hear the evil gremlins whisper those awful feelings to you from the dark corners of your bedroom at night. To all of you wallowing in those shadows, my only advice is - keep fighting. Crawl. Snarl. Claw. Punch. Kick. Scream. Drag yourself through the dirt, no matter how many cruel little imps pull you down. Get to your feet. Keep moving forward. Whatever you do, just don't curl up and go to sleep. I know you're bloodied. I know you're bruised and beaten. I know you're tired. You're exhausted. You just want to rest. But you can't. Don't rest. Don't falter. Keep going. You're stronger than you think. You will make it.

Failure is not an option.

To quote Lieutenant Rasczak in Starship Troopers, “I only have one rule; Everyone fights, no one quits.”

Fallback plans are for people who expect to fail.

There is never a “backup plan” or a “plan B” or a “fallback” in case things don't work out. You forge ahead. You never give up. You never quit. No matter how many times you get knocked down, no matter how many bones break as you slam the concrete, you rise again.

There is no “secret” to success.

Sheer will. Tenacity. Fortitude. That is how you succeed.

There are countless “inspirational” books and films in the world which preach the same lie - you are guaranteed success if you simply pursue your dream and follow your heart.

Allow me to clarify right now, this is not one of those books.

Guaranteed success if you simply pursue your dream and follow your heart?

Absolutely not true.

The success comes not from following your heart, but from tireless work. You can't just fight for your dreams for a week or a month or a year or five years. You must be willing to keep on battling over and over. Fight until your legs are jello and your arms go limp. No matter how many times you get beaten down, you get up and fight harder.

Hey, nobody said it would be easy, kid.

It won't be easy. Not remotely.

In fact, it will be among the hardest things you've ever done.

With fortitude, you can make it.

Eventually, I made it. Not only did I manage to move to California from my humble beginnings in Ohio, but I landed a job working for Mr. Walt Disney himself.

Well, okay, technically Walt died 5 years before I was even born, but that doesn't diminish my loyalty to him. As far as I am concerned, he is still the man signing my paycheck. He is still the one I want to impress. Walt is the boss. As far as I'm concerned, so long as I work at Disney, I work for Walt.

I want to get started, and tell you how I landed my very first job, when I was 10 years old. As promised, I won't leave out anything. I'll tell you the whole story.

But, before I do, allow me one more indulgence. I want to outline the guiding principals which are the foundation of all my jobs.

Holy cow, that sounded boring.

“Guiding principals” and “foundation” of - ? Sheesh. I already sound like one of those awful seminar guys!

Sorry about that.

Permit me to rephrase...

These are 3 important things about jobs I wish to share. Three things which I figured out by screwing up a lot. Took me years to learn these things, so pay attention - it might save you a ton of time. They are just 3 little rules I apply to any and all jobs I ever have.

Ready? Here goes...

First Rule:

ALWAYS WORK TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY

That may seem obvious, but it's not obvious for many people. There is that old joke that if you hate your job, don't quit - just do it really badly. I think it was on The Simpsons television show.

Anyway, the point is, too many folks honestly think that way. They are slackers and try to get away with doing the least amount of work they possibly can. Don't do that. Don't be one of those people. You should always work to the best of your ability. That means you can't cut corners and do things “quick and dirty” just to get it done.

I don't know about you, but I'm also very big into playing “Devil's Advocate” - so anytime anyone tells me I can't or shouldn't do something, it makes me want to do it, just to prove them wrong. Childish perhaps, but I can't help myself. I've always been that way. “Question Authority” seems to be etched in my genes.

Are you like that too?

When you read, “you can't cut corners and do things “quick and dirty” just to get it done” - you end up wanting to show how awesome you can be by cutting corners? Am I right?

Hey, man, that's cool. But such an attitude actually reinforces my point - it's vital to have the character and integrity to give a damn about the quality of your work. Doesn't matter if you are digging ditches or editing movies or serving breakfast - possessing some pride, and having the ethics to approach that job with the determination to be the greatest ditch digger in history, is essential to your success.

No matter what the job, always work to the best of your ability.

Give the same care to shooting a $200 commercial as you would to a $200 million motion picture. Show the same respect to a role in a highschool play as you would to a Hollywood feature film. Put forth that standard of excellence into everything you create.

I hope this first rule is obvious for you. As one of my readers, I hope you roll your eyes at this rule. I hope it annoys you. I hope it makes you think, “Darnit! Buying this book was a waste of time. The very first bit of advice is something I already know!”

Why do I hope you react that way?

Because I want you to have that kind of work-ethic already ingrained in your heart and soul. Working to the best of your ability, creating everything with the utmost quality and care - this principal should already be an integral part of your being.

I once heard of an artist at another Hollywood studio who was taking a great deal of time to work on a simple sketch for a fan. One of her fellow artists, who would carelessly whip something together and send it out the door, asked why she was devoting so much time to it.

“20 years from now,” the woman replied, “no one will know how much time I took to draw this. But my name will still be on it. And that will be all that matters.”

You should have the same attitude of integrity about your own work. No one will ever know how much or how little time you have invested in your work. All people will care about is the quality of what you created. Invest the time. Make it right. Even if your name isn't on it, work as though it will be.

Giving 100% is slacking off.

Give even more. Give to the core of your very being.

Then give more.

One last note - performing world-class work is never, ever about “job security” or junk like that. People who push themselves to do excellent work with the motive of keeping their job, are pathetic and need a new career. Noble are those who push themselves to their highest excellence because they sincerely care about the work they do. Self-respect should be the motive, not fear of unemployment. There is a big difference. If someones only motive to do good work is because they are accountable (and they'd gladly to do inferior work if they could get away with it), they are an immoral scumbag and don't deserve to be employed at any job. One must hold themselves to a higher ideal.

It's not about pleasing the boss. It's not about getting a raise. It's not about being promoted. Those are irrelevant achievements.

It's about being proud of your own capacity to transcend above your previous limitations.

Excel beyond what you believe yourself to be capable of achieving. Push your limits. Become greater than you imagined you could. Not for me. Not for them. Just for you. No one else. Triumph so you may continually forge the pride and self-respect you so richly deserve to give yourself. It's not about impressing anybody but you. It's about impressing yourself and nurturing your own self-worth. When you go to bed at night, you'll be able to go to sleep knowing you did something that made a difference. Aim for greatness, then surpass your target.

There is no shame in living a simple life and enjoying simple accomplishments. But there should be shame in simple ambitions. Dream big. Always strive for excellence.

Second Rule:

ALWAYS WORK AS EFFICIENTLY AS YOU CAN

There is a very common misconception that being a “dedicated worker” will ensure you remain employed. People mistakenly think if they work hard and put in overtime and are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty, they will be rewarded and appreciated and valued by their employer.

This. Is. A. Lie.

I can prove it with a very simple hypothetical exercise.

I can show you why, if you were the boss and the company was being run with your own money, you'd throw the dedicated workers out the door too.

You doubt it? Okay, check this out and play along.

Suppose you are the boss. Imagine you are running your own company. You pay the salaries.

Now imagine you have a group of 5 fast and efficient workers. They get the job done. Their work has flawless quality. They never work late. They never stay after hours. You never have to pay them overtime.

Imagine in addition to those 5 fast and efficient workers, you have 5 devoted and loyal workers. They are not as fast as the other folks. They also produce fantastic quality. They are always willing to stay late. They get the job done too, but it usually requires some overtime to do it.

Suppose times are tough at your company. Money is tight. You're not doing very well financially. You can't afford to keep paying your full staff. Everyone makes the same amount of money and, sadly, to keep the company afloat you're going to have to let 5 people go.

Which group of people will you keep? Which group will you lay off?

Will you keep the slow and devoted people who are willing to bust their butts, but will need to be paid overtime?

Will you keep the fast and efficient people who rush out the door at 5:00 with all their work done at equal quality to the slow folks?

See my point?

You keep the fast and efficient people, right?

Of course you do. That's what any business would do. Simple logic.

As I said earlier, you have been lied to all your life. Companies do not reward devoted workers. Never. Companies reward workers that save the company money by being quick to get the job done. Do not waste time. This applies to any job from retail to education to office work to blue collar labor. Being respectful of the time of others is appreciated in any profession. You will not gain job security by being a devoted and loyal worker who “burns the midnight oil” and stays on the job for all hours. You gain job security by being a meticulous and fast worker.

Trust me, I've seen it happen first-hand and it isn't pretty. This happens at big companies all the time - during a mass-layoff, the devoted workers lose their jobs and the efficient workers remain employed. The devoted people invariably feel hurt and confused.

“I stay late every night! That guy is always out the door 10 minutes early. Why does HE get to keep his job and they let ME go!? I've given 10 years of myself to this company!”

Why are the devoted workers punished? Simple. They've been believing a lie.

Contrary to popular myth, you do not impress bosses by working late and arriving early and putting in overtime. They will even tell you they are impressed. But they are lying. You get noticed and appreciated by being accurate and efficient and speedy. That saves money for the company and “profit” remains the bottom line.

Don't get me wrong, you must still obey and remember the first rule - ALWAYS WORK TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY.

Getting your work done fast is worthless if you screw it up. If the quality of your work is junk, being fast is no longer a benefit. You must have both speed and stellar quality. You still have to do your best and excel at your job. Just remember, a person who is skilled at their job and efficient will be valued more than a person who is good at their job and devoted to the company.

Remember this.

The company doesn't care if you're a nice person or devoted to your work. What matters to a company is that you possess an efficient skillset which contributes to the bottom line. Do you work in a manner which helps the company to maintain profitability? Period.

The key to being appreciated is not tireless devotion.

The key is proficiency.

Forgive me for simply rephrasing the exact same idea three or four times. I just want to make sure this one sinks in and you remember it. My reason for being repetitive is simply because, it's not easy to convince folks to trust an idea which contradicts a lifelong misconception.

Third Rule:

LEARN AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE ALONG THE WAY

No matter what the job, learn something from it. No matter how menial. No matter how small. Always take the time to gain new skills and abilities.

This rule is the one that gives you an edge over those college prettyboys (and prettygirls), so you can go all Good Will Hunting on them.

I don't care what kind of job you are working, when you are given an opportunity to learn a new skill, take the opportunity. Constantly seeking to expand your knowledge will become a habit. You will become a far more diverse and versatile person.

Remember, during the decades I grew up, the working world was undergoing major changes. My grandfather was an autoworker. Retired from General Motors. Right after he retired is when the automotive industry began to collapse in this country. This was a huge influence on my life, although I didn't notice it at the time.

I realized that generations-old, solid, reliable industries were no longer so solid and reliable. Steel workers. Auto workers. These types of jobs were the cornerstone of American workingclass families for decades. When I was a kid in the late 1970's and early 1980's, those jobs all started vanishing. Outsourcing. Downsizing. Sleazebags taking jobs away from fellow Americans and sending work overseas. The men and women who ended up out of work struggled, because they had no other skillsets. These were good, honest, hardworking family folk who had been working the same job for 15 or 20 or 30 years. They had no other experience. What other job could they do?

That taught me a vital lesson - in the future, career longevity would be secured by diversification, not specialization.

The world was changing too rapidly.

No skillset, no career, no industry was safe and secure anymore. The best way to survive was to build multiple skills, so you would be valuable and useful to many industries. Wear many hats. Play many roles.

I could see very clearly, the only industry which would be around for my entire lifetime was the computer industry. Computers would dominate my lifetime, just as the industrial revolution had been steering the lives of many people 150 years earlier. Even so, I knew I'd require immense diversification within the scope of any computer knowledge I acquired. Programming operating systems for fighter jets, or learning Photoshop, or building websites, or making video games, all require computer knowledge. The specifics of those jobs are vastly different, but they all hold the core of computer technology in common.

Therefore, my goal became diversification in computers.

I'm not saying I gained the wisdom to develop diverse career skills when I was 12 years old or anything. I didn't begin to consciously apply these principals of diversification until well into my twenties. I'm just saying the seeds for this way of thinking were planted, subconsciously, at a very young age.

I had no interest in getting a degree or pursuing a specific field of study. That could spell death in this world - just like it did for steelworkers. No. My goal became to just learn as much as possible in similar computer disciplines.

You might consider learning as much as possible too.

Diversify your knowledge. Broaden your mind.

We often hesitate to do this - especially when we are working a job “just for the paycheck”. I mean, when you dream about being an actor and you are working as a construction worker and someone asks if you want to learn to use the jackhammer, you might be inclined to turn down the chance.

“I'm gonna get out of here someday! As soon as possible!” You think to yourself, “I don't need to learn how to use some stupid jackhammer. I hate this job. That's not my path. That's not the career I'm going for. I'm destined for greater things! Why bother wasting my time with that? I won't need that skill in Hollywood.”

You are absolutely right.

Once you attain your dreams, you may never need to use those backbreaking job skills again.

But...

You also never know what kind of benefits those skills will bring your life.

What if they decide to shoot a Hollywood movie in your little town, and your local construction crew is hired to assist with some set building? You would have had the chance to work on the movie, and meet the director of the film, and hit it off with him, and gain your only connection in Los Angeles. All that would have happened if you had learned to run the jackhammer when you had the chance. But since you didn't learn how to run the jackhammer, you get sent out to the suburbs with the team putting up drywall at McDonalds, and you never get to meet the film crew at all.

Naturally, that scenario is pretty unlikely.

Yes, yes, I know. If I start playing Devil's Advocate again, that hypothetical story could go the other way too. The person who did not have the jackhammer skills got to work on the movie, while the jackhammer fella got sent off to the McDonalds. Yes, I know Fate might play a cruel trick like that. Anything is possible.

My point in encouraging you to constantly educate yourself is this: You never know what opportunities might present themselves in your life, simply because you have gained knowledge about an expansive range of subjects. I may be snarky and blase about college, but I am very adamant about continually getting an education.

You know the old saying, “Knowledge is power.”

That is very true. The more knowledgeable you are, the wider the berth of your opportunities shall become. Simply because you can raise your hand say, “I know how to do that!”

If you teach yourself to bullseye Womp Rats in your T-16 back home, you may have gained a skill that allows you to blow up the Death Star.

You never know.

Therefore, always learn as much as possible in your jobs. Pick up new skills. Volunteer for projects that push you beyond your comfort-zone. Frighten yourself. Learn more than you thought you were capable of doing. Every step of the way, keep on gaining intelligence about all aspects of the job that you can. You'll screw up sometimes. You'll fail. You'll make mistakes. You might even get into trouble. And all of those experiences are great and wonderful things. Because all the while, you'll be getting smarter than everyone else around you. You'll understand more than anyone else about what works and what doesn't work. You will know firsthand what is possible and what it takes to achieve the impossible.

Trust me, I understand the skills you perfect may often be useless outside of your current job, but you never know what creative manifestation the experience may spark somewhere down the line in 5 or 10 or 20 years. Learning to use the popcorn machines at the movie theatre was a new skill which has never helped me in any other job whatsoever. It's like those poor kids who join the military and believe the propaganda that working on tank engines will benefit their future job opportunities. No, it won't. It's too specialized. Too exact. Repairing tank engines is an entirely useless job skill outside of the military. But, that's not the point. You can still learn from working on tank engines and gain benefits from those skills in your life. Using that popcorn machine was useless outside of a movie theatre or an amusement park, but if nothing else, I learned the value of managing people and making them feel special by assigning them privileged tasks. And another thing? I gained life experiences that I can use as material in a book 25 years later!

Plus, I also learned to make some damn delicious popcorn!

And really, isn't that what life is all about?

Metaphorically (and sometimes literally!) speaking, the best thing in the world is simply learning to make some amazing popcorn for the proverbial movie of life.

Become educated. Learn. Expand your mind. Broaden your horizons. The more skills you develop, the more valuable you will be. Remember that all relationships are not about what you want, they are about what you have to offer. Romantic. Friendship. Career. Doesn't matter what kind of relationship you are talking about. The more you have to offer, the better.

Think about it - how often do you hear people whine about what they want in a boyfriend/girlfriend or a job? They constantly talk about how they want this and that and how a lover or a career needs to be this way or that way.

Those people never talk about what they have to offer.

Those people never think about what they have to offer.

You need to think about that.

Don't waste your time whining about what you want.

Spend your time refining the qualities you can offer.

President Kennedy said the same thing when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Replace the word “county” with everything in your life.

Girlfriend. Boyfriend. Wife. Husband. Career. Friendships.

Focus on what you have to offer, rather than what you expect the world to give you. Toddlers live life only thinking of what they want for themselves. Grow up a little bit. Stop being a toddler. You need to think about what you can give the world.

Remain childlike all your life, but not childish.

Okay, that covers it.

Now you have my three predominant guidelines:

1. Push yourself to produce the highest quality of work.

2. Do that work as quickly and efficiently as you are able.

3. Learn as many new skills as possible along the way.

Many times, the political climate of a company may stifle those rules. The red tape of a job may make it impossible to be efficient. The way the management pigeonholes the workers may make learning new skills impossible. Whatever the case may be, you must defy authority in those instances. Do not listen to your boss. Disobey their rules. You may annoy your balding, beergut, midlife-crisis, control-freak manager, but you will be benefiting yourself and the company. I'm confident following those principals will help you get anywhere you want to go, just as they have with me.

Maybe I'm wrong. I keep repeating that I always hear the unavoidable “Devil's Advocate” voice in my head - a voice that makes me disagree and rebel against every bit of advice I'm told. Maybe you do the same thing. So, maybe my three rules won't help you. Plus, yes, I know, I warned you that “mileage may vary” by following my advice - and that warning still holds true.

Nevertheless, despite all of those caveats of incredulity, I do think those three concepts are a sound foundation to build upon for any career.

There I go again. Using fancy words for no good reason. “Caveats of incredulity”? Seriously? Who talks like that?

Let me rephrase...

Nevertheless, despite all the reasons my advice might not work for you, I do think those three concepts are a sound foundation to build upon for any career.

Those ideals have been part of my work ethic for years. How far might you go in your own lifetime if you follow those ideals?

Hopefully, you will take those ideals to heart and they will take you far.

For me, maintaining the integrity of those three guidelines helped me get into Disney. Now, as promised, let me tell you the entire story of how I got there.

One last thing, I should note that I've kept a journal in one form or another since I was about 18 years old, so when I tell you the exact date I started or quit a job 25 years ago, you might think, “How the heck does he know the exact date he went on a job interview a quarter-century before?” Now you understand how I remember those dates. Truth is, I don't remember them, I just looked them up in old journals.

Got it?

Okay.

Here goes.

We shall begin our journey with the very first job I ever had - the good ole all-American paper route, back in the fall of 1981.

Chapter Two
The Cleveland Press
c.October 1981 to June 1982

“A child is helpless in choosing what is to be engraven on his mind during the formative years. The awesome responsibility is assumed, for better or worse, by us adults. Today we are shapers of the world of tomorrow. That is the plain truth. There is no way we can duck the responsibility; and there is no reason, except sloth and cowardice, why we should.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Growing up on Behrwald Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio, we had a paperboy named Andy who delivered The Cleveland Press newspaper. He was a couple years older than me and lived a few houses down the street, near the intersection of West 45th.

For younger readers who may not know what a “paperboy” is, once upon a time, printed newspaper companies would employ young kids to deliver papers to neighborhood homes. Once a week, we'd go around to collect the subscription fees. Since most legal statutes require workers to be at least 16 years of age, I'm not sure how or why paperboys were ever allowed to exist. I've always wondered why that was legal. Not that I'm complaining! Making $15 or $20 a week was a huge amount of money for a kid who wasn't even in Junior High yet! Sure beat selling lemonade or mowing lawns or shoveling snow - those jobs required salesmanship and resources (you needed to build the lemonade stand or have a lawn mower or a shovel). Plus, those jobs were all seasonal. Couldn't sell lemonade in a blizzard and you couldn't shovel snow in July! Paper routes were not only easier, but they were reliable and consistent year-round employment. Every kid I knew wanted a paper route. They were coveted jobs in every workingclass neighborhood. Best job ever, when you're under the age of 16.

As our paperboy Andy was approaching his high school years, he didn't really want to deliver newspapers anymore and he was looking for a replacement. Desperate for video arcade money, I was happy to take over his route! I remember he had another kid in mind, but I pestered Andy a lot more than the other boy, wanting to prove how serious I was about the opportunity.

Eventually, by my persistence, Andy elected to give the route to me. I was absolutely thrilled! Soon, I'd be going to the arcade, able to drop $10.00 a pop on videogames! That kind of money went a long way when all videogames only cost $0.25 to play!

Each neighborhood in the city was assigned to a gentleman from the newspaper with a delivery truck. I don't remember the name of the guy who gave me my newspapers. He was a big and surly Italian dude who looked like he should be a bodyguard for Frank Sinatra or something, so we'll just call him Mr. DeNiro. Early in the morning, Mr. DeNiro would drop off a rationed bundle of newspapers on his street corners and the paperboy for that neighborhood would pick up the papers in a big canvas satchel and deliver them to all the neighborhood homes with subscriptions. At the end of the week, he'd stop over my house, and I'd give Mr. DeNiro the money I collected, and he'd pay me my share. I never thought about it until just now, but it all sounds very Mafia-esque. Doesn't it? You know, the burly Italian man makes the kid collect the money, then he takes it and slips the kid a $20 to buy some olive oil and bread for his momma.

Actually, it wasn't remotely as sinister as that portrait. Truth be told, it was a fun way to feel like I was “earning my keep” in the world. For generations of children in Western culture, a paper route was our first introduction to being employed.

My particular route was only about a block long. Not very far to deliver, but nearly every single house subscribed, so that worked out to a good 40 houses or so and meant walking about a mile in total. The Cleveland Press printed a large newspaper too. Must have weighed two or three pounds apiece. Hauling around 80 pounds of newspaper in a canvas bag is rather grueling work for any adult, let alone a 10 year old kid.

As you might imagine, taking over the paper route was far more difficult than I expected. I just thought I'd hand out some newspapers and get money to play videogames. That isn't necessarily as easy as it sounds. Especially during freezing Ohio winters and sweltering humid summers. The creed of postal workers, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” also applies to a paperboy. (Although the “swift” part does slow down a tad during those Cleveland blizzards.) Between the weather and the weight of lugging those papers around, it was rough work.

The other rough part was dealing with deadbeat customers. I can't recall how much a subscription was, but it was a paltry amount. Something like $2.00 a week or thereabouts. Nonetheless, there were people you'd have to harass week after week in order to make them pay up.

There was one family in particular who were always late with payments. They were gypsies and ran one of those shoddy fortune telling businesses out of their home, with a big neon sign out front blinking “KNOW YOUR FUTURE” or somesuch malarkey. Every week, I'd go and ask for money and every week, they'd have some excuse.

“Come back next week.” They would say.

They'd do this for something like 3 weeks in a row. Then they'd finally pay.

Eventually they started making it 4 weeks without paying. Then they'd finally pay. Then it stretched to 5 weeks. Then 6 weeks. Then they just stopped paying altogether and wouldn't answer their door. I guess their fortune telling mojo didn't inform them they'd need to pay in the future.

After awhile, I actually had to complain about their delinquency to Mr. DeNiro and he had to go and demand the gypsy family pay up. You don't want to see Italians battling gypsies over money. That's just a gangster movie waiting to happen.

They never paid Mr. DeNiro either.

So, they had to go sleep with the fishes. Which, in this case, simply means I stopped delivering the paper to the gypsies.

For a brief time, I feared they might place some kinda gypsy juju hex on me for stopping their paper delivery. Hey, what did I know? I was 10. You never can be too careful, you know! Sure, I knew they were probably nothing but corrupt charlatans. But, like I said, I grew up on Spielberg movies. They might have had some ancient genie lamp stashed in the basement or who knows what? One rub on that puppy and I'd grow a donkey tail or something. You never know!

Fortunately (no pun intended), I never did suffer any ills from evil gypsy curses. I guess Spielberg didn't know everything.

When I began the job, it was late fall. The weather was chilly and it was difficult to wake up an hour before school and sling that satchel over my shoulder. Honestly, I couldn't even do it. The darn satchel was too heavy.

Due to the weight being too much for me to handle, I decided I'd only deliver about a third of the route at a time and leave the remainder of the papers sitting on the curb and return for them.

That plan didn't work, because it took too darn long to keep running back and forth to pick up the rest of the bundle. Plus, it annoyed Mr. DeNiro. He expected me to take the whole bunch at once and not leave papers sitting on the streetcorner. I can't say that I blame him. He was right. The longer they sat there, folks could just come along and steal them. I lived in a nice neighborhood and no one ever did steal the papers, but I can see the potential for theft being a legitimate concern.

I remember being really upset. I didn't know what to do. I was simply too young and small to carry all the papers at once. Slinging the full bundle over my arm, I could barely walk. My back was killing me. The weight was cutting off the circulation in my arm and making my hand all tingly. They were just too darned heavy. I couldn't handle it.

I was worried that I'd have to give up my paper route.

I just didn't have what it takes.

Then came the simple solution - Radio Flyer to the rescue!

Ah, yes. The trusty old Radio Flyer. Of course! The salvation of all wimpy paperboys for decades! Why didn't I think of it sooner? Brilliant! And we didn't even need to buy one. We had an old Radio Flyer that had belonged to my uncle when he was a kid. Dragged out the rusty ol' girl from under the porch, gave it a little sanding and a new coat of red paint, and I was all set! Oh, the job was a breeze after that!

Until the winter.

Come to think of it, maybe the harshness of that winter was part of the gypsy curse after all!

With snowpiles stacked high as my head and 2 feet of snow on the ground, delivering newspapers by hand went from “difficult” to “impossible”. Instead of the Radio Flyer (which obviously wasn't going to work so well in 3 feet of snow), I tried to load the papers onto my wooden toboggan. You can imagine how that went. Trudge a few feet, then an edge of the toboggan hits a soft patch of snow. The whole sled tips sideways. Newspapers tumble off into a snowbank. People are getting their paper delivered soaking wet from melted snow.

I had no idea how I was going to get around this one.

Can't carry the papers by hand.

Can't use the Radio Flyer.

Can't deliver them via toboggan.

What to do?

Thankfully, my grandfather came to the rescue with a different wagon. Not a Radio Flyer wagon, but a Chevy wagon. Knowing there was no way I could carry that whole bundle at once, especially in 4 feet of snow, grandpa fired up his old brown Chevy station wagon. We'd load the papers into the back and he'd slowly drive up the street with the rear gate down as I'd grab the papers and run them up to the porches (I know, in the movies, the paperboy would throw the newspaper onto the porch, but I was always afraid I'd break a window.)

Part of me felt guilty having my grandfather assist. After all, the whole point of taking up this paper route was to earn some income on my own! To be the master of my own destiny. To be independent. Not to have grandpa help me. Grandpa helped me enough, paying tuition for school and all. I didn't want to rely on him for this too.

Honestly, I had little choice in the matter though. The blizzard was just too insurmountable. I guess you could say it was a good lesson in humility. Like it or not, sometimes you simply need the resources of others to help you finish a task. There is no shame is asking for assistance, especially after you've exhausted every single option that you are capable of managing on your own. Grandpa and his car was my last resort. Loading papers into the station wagon was my only remaining recourse. In 5 feet of snow, with the toboggan failing me, I had no other choice. (I know the snow keeps getting deeper. But that's the way all “trudge through the snow during childhood” stories are supposed to be told! The snow will be 10 feet deep by the time this chapter is done.)

After the blizzard, the smell of spring was in the air.

This isn't necessarily a good thing.

Especially when I got to the Oliver household.

Did you ever see the movie A Christmas Story?

I grew up about 12 blocks from Ralphie's house. That was my real life neighborhood.

Remember the redhead Scut Farkas? The neighborhood bully?

Well, our neighborhood bully was a kid named Billy Oliver. Just like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, my first fistfight in my life was with Billy.

I know what you're wondering.

“What does that have to do with your paper route? Did he steal your money when you went out collecting? Burn your newspapers? What?”

Nope. None of the above. The Oliver household is significant to “the smell of spring in the air” because they had cats. Lots of cats. Cats which would pee and poo and never get a clean litterbox.

When I stepped into the atrium of their home for the first time, my lungs locked up. Every muscle in my body went stiff. The stench smelled as though someone had just duct-taped a dozen poo-moist cat-butts to my face and I couldn't get them off.

There I would stand, waiting as one of Billy's two 300-pound uncles (not exaggerating, they were huge specimens of human beings) would go get the money to pay for the weeks paper.

I once heard a man give a motivational speech and he said his grandmother once told him, “You can say any awful thing you want about a person, as long as you say 'God bless' right after you say it.”

Personally, I'm not a particularly religious person, but I am particularly snarky, so I absolutely love that sentiment! Like you can say, “He's the ugliest guy I ever saw... God bless him.”

Tacking on that “God bless” just makes everything okay!

The Oliver household was absolutely disgusting, God bless them. However, in fairness, they were always super nice and polite and respectful and they always paid for their newspaper on time. I never had any trouble from the gentlemen. But, my goodness, by all that is holy in the universe, they really could have used some air freshener in that place.

I won't even attempt to describe what it was like trying to endure that scent in the summer. Nothing quite like the smell of baked cat crap marinated in feline urine. Damn near made my eyes water, God bless them!

Many strange and amusing adventures came about in my life as the result of working for The Cleveland Press. Much to my chagrin, the whole experience lasted less than a year. After that, I was a paperboy no more.

How did it all end?

When did I cease to be a paperboy?

The Cleveland Press was published every day from 2 November 1878 until 17 June 1982.

Do the math.

That's 104 years.

That was about 9 months after I started my newspaper route.

Can you believe that?

My first job and I lose it because the 104-year-old company went out of business within less than 10 months of my being hired!

Was this an omen of things to come? Would this bizarre Twist Of Fate inform my entire life in regard to job prospects? I mean, how often do you hear of a century-old company going under?! That never happens! Talk about bad karma!

My memory of the night I lost my job has always been really vivid. One of my friends was over my house and we were playing catch with a ball in the living room. It was a fun game we invented where you had to sit on the floor with your legs spread and throw the ball at each other and you weren't allowed to move. You could lean your body and reach with your arms, but you weren't allowed to stand up. It was actually a really challenging game - because obviously we'd constantly try to throw the ball as hard as possible at each others head. Because, heck, that's what little boys do.

Anyway, my grandmother was on the phone in the dining room and she was talking to someone - I believe it may have been her sister. Apparently, it had just been announced on the evening news that The Cleveland Press was filing for bankruptcy the next day.

As my grandmother explained this to me, since I didn't understand the word “bankruptcy” at the time, I recall being very upset and hurt and disappointed when I realized the only thing that mattered - no more arcade money! Frustrated and sad, I cheered myself up as my friend and I started getting more silly and frantic in the way we were playing our game.

Mr. DeNiro showed up at my house for the last time later that week. I remember he looked really depressed and miserable. For the first time, the implications of losing his job really hit home for me.

Losing my paper route meant I was losing my ability to play unlimited arcade games. Poor ol' Mr. DeNiro had a family to support. He had a wife and daughter. Not knowing how he'd support them, I could see the pain in his face. That moment made me realize what a job meant to a grownup, compared to a kid. My job gave me money that was spent for fun and frivolous things. His job was to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.

That was the instant when I felt guilty for feeling sorry for myself.

Who cares if I couldn't play as many videogames?

My problem was trivial compared to what Mr. DeNiro was about to endure.

Working my paper route was a great introduction to the work-a-day world. The whole experience taught me the responsibility of managing money. Of being punctual. Of communicating with strangers. Of breaking a sweat to earn an honest days work (I know I have already used that phrase earlier in this book, but I really do think the value of physical labor is an important one). Most of all, it taught me that there is no such thing as “job security” and being employed can be a fleeting thing, because even a company that has existed for over a hundred years will one day cease to exist. (Although the venerable Stiftskeller Saint Peter restaurant in Salzburg has been around for over 1200 years, so they may be one exception!)

With the bankruptcy of The Cleveland Press, my days as a paperboy were officially over.

On the bright side, at least I wouldn't have to deliver papers in 25 feet of snow anymore.

Chapter Three
Our Lady of Good Counsel Gradeschool
September 1977 to June 1985

“I think of a newborn baby's mind as a blank book. During the first years of his life much will be written on the pages. The quality of the writing, whatever it be, will affect his life profoundly. Let us multiply that single mind by millions. What is written on that enormity of youthful minds will alter the course of the world. This is how history is determined. It is self - evident to anybody who studies the history of human races.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Considering the subtitle of this book, I figured it was important to include chapters on my educational experiences as well as my employment.

I also promised to include every detail.

So, here goes...

Fingerpainting.

That's it. That's the whole story. Every memorable detail revealed. A one-word paragraph.

In preschool, I vaguely recall standing at an easel and fingerpainting with my mom. No idea where the school was. No idea how long I attended. No idea how old I was. No idea the name of my teacher. I just kind of, sort of, remember fingerpainting. Don't ask what I was drawing either. I have no idea. May have been a swastika. I had a particular affinity for drawing them on my toys when I was a child. I had no idea what the shape symbolized. I was just intrigued by the graphical form of swastikas after seeing them in all those WWII documentaries on television. Made my grandparents a little embarrassed when we had company over the house. There I was, a sweet little toddler, pushing a toy car across the livingroom floor, with a big Nazi insignia drawn on the hood, in thick black magic marker.

Oops.

What do you say to your guests when that happens? I suppose even from a young age I was just born to inadvertently make people exceptionally uncomfortable.

Hey, I was proud of my handiwork! You know how complicated it is to draw one of those as a preschooler? Drew a lot of them backwards and upsidedown and insideout before I got it right. Takes a lot of practice to be a creepy little boy!

Don't remember much else about my preschool years as a unintentional Nazi sympathizer.

Kindergarten on the other hand, I remember quite well. I attended Dawning School at 4430 State Road. Built in 1913, the public school was closed when I was 7 years old, in 1978. The building still stands today, but it hasn't been a real school for a long time. Some independent company purchased it and became one of those weird independent Montessori “charter” schools which were trendy in the 1990's. One of those hippie schools where no one is “judged” or graded. Horrible philosophy which will never prepare children for working in the real world, where your performance is graded and judged on a daily basis.

That isn't what you are thinking about though.

You're thinking about the 100 year old school being shut down once I left. Yes, I shut down 100 year old newspapers and 65 year old schools.

My kindergarten teacher was a black woman named Miss Ticket. That is all I can recall about her. I also had a little “girlfriend” in kindergarten. I don't remember ever kissing her or even seeing her outside of school. I don't even recall her name. All I remember is she and her friend chasing me around the classroom one morning, trying to pull my pants down. Had a pair of girls tried the same thing a decade later, I don't think I'd have been fleeing and screaming so loudly.

The most embarrassing part about kindergarten was my inability to tie my shoes. I got it eventually, but I was one of the last kids in my class to learn how to do it. I don't know why I had such a rough time with it. The whole “rabbit goes into his hole” analogy was lost on me. What rabbit? What hole? I just saw shoelace spaghetti.

I can't be certain, but I think my so-called girlfriend may have lost interest in me when she learned I was a shoe-tying dunce.

Alas, a young lady needs standards. I can't say I blame her.

Or perhaps it was my obsession with the Bingo song.

You know that one?

“There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o. B - I - N - G - O. B - I - N - G - O. B - I - N - G - O and Bingo was his name-o!”

I even went so far as to sign my class paperwork as “Eric Bingo”, an act for which Miss Ticket chided me more than a few times.

In the 6th grade I'd develop a similar obsession with “Boom Chicka Boom” at our weekend camp, but that's another story.

Anyway, where was I?

Ah, yes. Kindergarten.

The first day of school, throes of kids were crying when they had to be separated from their mothers for the first time. I remember being resolutely determined to not cry. Funny thing is, and you may not believe this, but I swear it is the truth - my motive for holding back my tears was because I didn't want to be as wimpy as everyone else. Not many 5 year old children would have enough of an ego to aspire to rise above the frailty of their peers, but I did. I never shed a tear, I'm proud to say. Looking back, I can see a desire to defy what everyone else is doing, is a notion which has stuck with me all my life.

I was never much into playing their reindeer games.

Even in kindergarten, I really didn't like school. After all, do I have any memories of learning anything?

No. All I remember is being chased by little girls, being humiliated because I couldn't tie my shoes, and kids crying.

Oh, and there is the memory of running around in the boys lavatory, screaming like banshees. We thought it was fun because of the echo. The teacher's aide didn't seem to find it as amusing as we did, when she was forced to run in there after us and corral a flock of unruly 5 year old brats.

One morning before school, since I was so loathe to attend, I came up with the ingenious notion to hide all the way in the back of one of our walk-in-closets, so I wouldn't have to go to school that day. We had a closet in our house which was about 4 feet wide and maybe 15 feet long and literally filled with piles of clothes 4 feet deep. I trudged through the swath of clothing like an Arctic expedition hiking through a massive snowdrift and buried myself all the way back in the deepest corner of the closet. Leaving myself a little peephole so I could see anyone who was coming for me, I waited. And waited. And waited.

I had the patience of the Ring of Sauron, just waiting in Gollum's cave for 500 years.

In utter futility, I heard my mother and grandparents hunting for me all over the house. When I finally came out about an hour later, they reacted just as you might expect - angry, relieved, and highly bemused.

I never could figure out why that trick never managed to work a second time. After that, they always found me. Didn't understand how they did that!

Kindergarten was the only year I spent in the Cleveland Public School System. The next 12 years would all take place in Roman Catholic Parochial Schools. From the first to eight grade, I attended Our Lady of Good Counsel located at 4423 Pearl Road in Cleveland, Ohio. They tried to change the name of the church and school in 2010, but since Our Lady of Good Counsel was literally carved in stone on the church facade which was set there in 1917, it will always be Our Lady of Good Counsel as far as I'm concerned. Period.

Now don't worry, I won't rehash every single year of gradeschool. I will say that for my first 6 years of gradeschool, I was consistently an “A” and “B” student. I never got anything lower than a “B” in any class. In the 4th grade, I remember my reading comprehension aptitude scores were the equivalent of the average high school Junior.

Not sure if this fact speaks highly of my intelligence, or poorly of the public school system, but I leave that up to you to decide.

My first “D” in school was in my 7th grade math class. I blame my teacher, Mr. Gaydosh.

Mr. Gaydosh literally didn't teach us mathematics. The selfish jerk, God bless him, used our math class as time to grade paperwork, so he wouldn't have as much work to do after school. You remember those math workbooks with the perforated pages in them? Are you too young for those?

Well, in gradeschool, we had math workbooks that were maybe 150 pages long. Each chapter taught a different math skill or concept. We would tear a chapter of pages out of the book, staple them together, and that would be our “math packet” which we would work on all week. The problem was, as I said, our teacher literally didn't teach us anything.

He sat at his desk grading papers, while we were expected to sit in silence and work on our “math packet” at our desks. We could go up to his desk and ask him questions if we got stumped, but he quickly made it very clear how annoyed he was when we interrupted him. Eventually, everyone stopped asking him for help, because we didn't feel like having him get all bristly with us.

That was my first experience in school where I began to question a lot of things. That was the first time I had encountered a teacher who didn't take the time to teach.

How dare this teacher not do his job?

My grandparents pay all this money in tuition to send me to this school and he's not going to educate me?

Why should I be tested in mathematics when no one is teaching the subject to me?

What right does a school have to grade me and judge me for my abilities when that school is failing to show me how to do the work?

If my teacher is failing to lift a finger to even do his job, why should this reflect poorly upon me? How is that fair?

Yes, indeed. Those so-called “math classes” - heck, who am I kidding? - those “study halls” were the moment when I first began to question the justification and effectiveness of the entire educational system.

That was the moment when I stopped caring about my grades.

Who cares if I was an “A” student or a “D” student? What difference did it make? Why does anyone have the right to judge my intellect based upon test scores for subjects which I am not even being taught? I started to realize that I was playing the reindeer games without even being aware of it. Along with all the students around me, I got caught up in the idiocy of “good grades” like everyone else. Why? What for? Who was I trying to impress? Did it really matter if someone like Mr. Gaydosh thought I was smart or not? He was a selfish jerk. Why should his opinion matter? By extension, why should anyone care about my grades? My grades don't measure anything important. They don't measure passion or decency or ambition or morality or courage or compassion or kindness or any of the things which truly matter in life. Grades don't measure the character of a man. Grades are irrelevant. They measure nothing. Except perhaps the ability to memorize facts. How does that express your value as a human being?

It doesn't.

Not in the slightest.

That was when everything changed. The turning point.

I decided to stop playing the game. I would do enough work to get passing grades in school. But I wasn't going to work for those “A” and “B” grades anymore. I was too smart for that. Game over. No longer was I interested in being the trained monkey who existed just so people would have something to clap for. The heck with that.

That may have also been the year when our school decided to put on a Christmas play and everyone was expected to show up for 2 hours on a Saturday night to perform. My passive-aggressive reaction to this was a telltale summation of my entire school experience.

I was livid. No one asked if we wanted to be involved with this Christmas play. This wasn't a volunteer activity. Everyone was just assigned roles, given rehearsals during school hours, and expected to show up. On a Saturday night? Expected to show up at school? For a play I was being forced to participate in?

Show up at school on a Saturday?

Forget you.

I didn't go.

I never told my grandparents about it. Never mentioned it was happening. That night, I just stayed home and watched Dukes Of Hazzard or something.

Come that following Monday morning, all my classmates and teachers were furious with me. Especially the kid who was forced to play my role and read from the script on stage. He claimed I made him look like an idiot. I just told him, “I refused to participate. Why didn't you refuse too? It wasn't my fault you got up on that stage. You were free to make the same decision I did.”

He didn't see it the same way I saw it. Poor lemming lacked the foresight to agree with me. He was only programmed to obey.

Thirty years later, and one of my gradeschool friends still brings up that whole fiasco and how mad everyone was. Thirty years later, and every time he brings it up, it still makes me laugh.

I was never big on people telling me what to do. You ask me for help or favors and I'll move heaven and earth to assist you. You make demands or expect me to do something and I'll gladly take a nap and ignore you entirely.

Other than those sorts of tales, my gradeschool time was the same as most kids in the 1970's and 1980's in Ohio. I went on fieldtrips. I got crushes on girls in my class. None of them ever had crushes on me. I walked to school in the snow. I got picked on. (Today, they call it “bullying” instead.) I punched kids in the mouth for bullying me. No one dared bully me after that. I made great friends. I won a few fistfights. I lost a few fistfights. I hated doing homework.

I was always a geek. I never wore glasses or had a pocket protector, but I was kind of a goof. Still am. Out of a class of 60 kids, I was literally the “last pick” for teams in gym class. Even the fat kids got picked before me. I have never been overweight or especially scrawny, I just happened to have no athletic ability. Which is an ironic thing to say as I eventually became a skateboarder, motorcyclist, BMX freestyler and hang glider pilot. I guess I'm exceptionally coordinated when it's something I care about. Just never cared much for baseball or soccer or basketball in the school gym, so I was awful.

In addition to getting my first “D” in the 7th grade, our school also got our first computers - a room filled with Apple IIe systems. I just said I was a geek, but I also happened to literally be the very first computer geek in our school, along with my friends Ted and Mike. The three of us would stay after school, each and every day, huddled around our stations in the computer lab, learning everything we could about computers.

That was truly the beginning for me.

Afternoons spent in that computer room, time flew past. Hours vanished in minutes. We were moving from educational tutorials to text adventures to writing our own Choose Your Own Adventure styles of computer games in the BASIC programming language.

I remember one day my English teacher, Mr. Wolzinski, came into the computer room at about 5pm and he was livid, because I had forgotten to make up a test after school, but I had just spent 2 hours in the computer room.

I apologized and offered to take it right then. He told me not to bother because it was “obvious where my priorities are”. He was right. Computers were more important than an English test. Even at that young age I knew two things:

One was that English class was irrelevant. I'd still become a published novelist anyway, even if I failed some Junior High English tests.

Second was that computers would revolutionize the world and I planned to surf the forefront of this technological wave. So, yes, learning computers was definitely a priority over some useless English quiz.

Lo and behold, I was right on both counts. I'm a published author and I work for Walt Disney in the computer industry.

Take that, Mr. Wolzinski! You jerk. God bless you.

Chapter Four
PHOTON
c.September 1986

“Why do we have to grow up? I know more adults who have the children's approach to life. They're people who don't give a hang what the Joneses do. You see them at Disneyland every time you go there. They are not afraid to be delighted with simple pleasures, and they have a degree of contentment with what life has brought - sometimes it isn't much, either.”

- Walter Elias Disney

There is a philosophy in life which reminds folks that things tend to work out for the best, so long as we make an effort.

Reflected in phrases like “God helps those who help themselves”, and the ancient Greek proverb, “Along with Athena, move also your hand”, and the Arabian phrase, “Tie your camel and place your trust in Allah.”

This wisdom is universal. Cultures all over the world reflect the same idea. Proverbs in centuries of societies tell us the same lesson over and over again - If you hang in there, the universe will give you some help, but you have to put forth some effort as well. Such an attitude is the basis of any strong work ethic. The fortitude to accomplish ones goals will reap great rewards. Granted, those rewards may not always be what we had been hoping to accomplish, but something good will always come of a noble effort.

If life hasn't proven that to be true for someone, then maybe their efforts are not as honorable as they lead themselves to believe.

I had that sort of work ethic from a young age. When I was 15 years old, I desperately wanted a job. I wanted to earn my keep. I didn't want to be forced to rely upon parental figures to support me and give me money to accomplish things like getting clothes or a car. I was determined to do those things on my own.

There was a little more behind it too.

Namely?

The Coleco ADAM.

What is that, you ask?

The Coleco ADAM was a horrible, piece-of-junk, personal computer system that came out in the early 1980's. The system was so unreliable and poorly engineered that the thousands of customers who returned the system forced the enormously successful multimillion dollar company that was Coleco to go out of business.

Gosh, that was an awkward sentence. Let me try that again.

Coleco had a lot of money, but so many people returned those crappy ADAM computers, Coleco went bankrupt.

There. That was better.

Anyhow, when I was about 12 years old, the Coleco ADAM was all I wanted for Christmas. That was the only gift I asked for.

Up until that point in my life, I was always given every single Christmas gift I ever requested. Santa always came through. Raised by my grandparents, I was kind of spoiled (as grandparents tend to do). As I mentioned, I lived in a workingclass family. We didn't have much money, but I always had a roof over my head and food on the table and the bills were always paid. We had enough extra money to take weekend trips to Pennsylvania or Michigan for summer vacations, but we weren't the sort of family who could ever afford to fly out to Disneyland. (In fact, although I was not yet working at Disney, I was in my 30's the first time I set foot in Disneyland.)

Forgive my digression. Back to the computer.

My point in telling you about my family is that we didn't have much, but I always got my Christmas presents anyway. My grandparents always found a way to afford what I requested. The Coleco ADAM was really expensive - nearly $800. Keep in mind this was in 1983 cash. I knew my family didn't have that kind of money, but I hoped if I only asked for that one single gift, they might find the means to get it for me.

I was wrong.

They didn't.

Honestly, I don't even remember what sort of gifts I got that Christmas. All I know is, I didn't get a computer and it was the worst Christmas I ever had. I knew the minute I failed to see the huge box under the tree - no way I was getting a Coleco ADAM.

In the end, a friend down the street got one and we quickly discovered how crappy the Coleco ADAM actually was. Breaking down within weeks, the system was a waste. I quickly changed my mind - my curse was a blessing in disguise. How awful it would have been for my family to spend so much money on that hunk of junk. Although, the disappointment of the Coleco ADAM debacle taught me another important lesson too - I couldn't rely on parental figures to always provide my life with what I wanted. No matter how badly I begged. No matter what kind of negotiating I attempted. Sometimes, they would simply let me down.

That is my whole motive for telling you the story of this chapter. To let you know when and how I learned that I'd have to one day make my own way in the world. That was when I learned, I couldn't rely on my parents for everything - sometimes, I would just have to count on myself.

During the fall of 1986, three years later, my fascination with the Coleco ADAM was long gone and I had a new materialistic obsession - I wanted a new Haro Master BMX bicycle.

Now, at the time, the average crappy BMX bike was $60.00 at any local department store. A Haro Master could only be bought in a bike shop and it ran nearly $400.00.

Needless to say, there was absolutely no way my grandparents would be buying me a $400.00 Haro bicycle when similar-looking bicycles were going for almost one-seventh the price. I make note of “similar-looking” because my grandparents didn't understand the quality of a $60.00 bicycle versus a $400.00 bicycle was vastly different. To them, the bikes were visually similar, therefore they were the “same” bike. They'd never spend that kind of money. No way. I learned my lesson with the Coleco ADAM and I wasn't getting my hopes up for a parentally-purchased Haro Master.

I knew if I wanted that Haro, I'd have to buy it myself.

Never wanting to repeat the Coleco ADAM affair, during my Sophomore year in high school, I decided I was ready to have another job.

The question was - where?

The answer came during September of 1986, on Hauserman Road in Parma, Ohio, where the first lasertag facility in the area opened - a place called PHOTON. For those readers unfamiliar with lasertag, it was a lot like paintball guns, but using infrared light instead of paint to score hits upon opponents. Sensors on electronic helmets and a LED chest harness registered the shots. Speakers inside your helmet played sound effects of being hit and firing your weapon. Wearing 18 pounds of equipment was bulky, but you didn't notice when you were experiencing the thrill of being inside a real-life version of TRON and Star Wars combined!

When I was 14 years old, I was still convincing my friends to run around with me in the woods playing “Ninjas” where we'd fight with broomhandle swords and garbage can lid shields and t-shirts tied into ninja masks. Fourteen is a little old to be doing that sort of thing, but I never cared. I loved it. Playing at that sort of thing was paradise to me. I was just elated I could still talk my friends into it.

Naturally, a geek like myself, I was at PHOTON on opening day. I recall being among the first crowd of people to play the game. About two dozen folks were all standing outside the building as a local television news crew, for a show called PM Magazine, gave their corny and enthusiastic review of the experience. The man and woman who were the hosts, Tony Harris and Cathy Brugett, ended their story, claiming they were going to go back and play the game and “blast” each other.

“I'm gonna blast you!”

“No, I'm gonna blast you!”

I distinctly recall being really disappointed when they wrapped their filming, got back in their newsvan, and left. I was so naive at the time, I actually believed them when they pretended they would go back and play a round or two. Honestly, I just hoped to play PHOTON with Cathy Brugett. She was beautiful!

But I digress again.

PHOTON was totally amazing. It has been over 25 years since I played and I still have my original PHOTON photo ID badge. Part of the reason I still have my ID is because I'm nostalgic. Part of the reason is because it was just so wickedly awesome to immerse myself in that world.

The inside of the building was all high-tech and had a snack bar and an arcade. The gameplay arena had its own massive room.

First the players would be lead into a holding area and don the equipment. After you strapped on your apparatus, you'd be taken into a ready room where you were briefed on the gameplay. My heart was racing that first game. It was so exciting. So futuristic. So real. Built on two levels of catwalks and mazes inside of a 10,000 square foot facility, it featured all the lights and fog machines and throbbing science fiction soundtrack you could imagine. Exploring the unknown catacombs, peering into endless smoke, you really got lost in imagining you were fighting epic battles in some faraway alien spacecraft. Surrounding the battle arena was an observation deck where the audience could view the epic gladiatorial carnage. Dividing into teams of red or green, you'd develop your strategy and fight for 6 minutes to score as many points as possible in the labyrinth of shadows and strobe lights. During the skirmish, monitors throughout the facility displayed a running tally of all players scores, with participants using an alias of their choice.

I was always known as “Dragonhawk”.

How's that for a totally awesome 80's teenage science fiction geek pseudonym?

After that first game on opening day, I was hooked. I spent many Friday and Saturday nights running around the place, living out all my Star Wars and Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica fantasies. Skywalker. Starbuck. Dragonhawk. Oh, yeah!

Excited and passionate, I knew I had found the ideal place to get a job!

The idea hit me one afternoon while at home. Why not? This would be perfect! Not only could I make money to buy the Haro bicycle I wanted, but I could get in tons of free games at Photon too! Yes! Genius! This would be magnificent! I couldn't wait to have my grandparents drive me over to PHOTON so I could fill out a job application! Brilliance! Why hadn't I thought of this sooner? Of course I would work at PHOTON! This would be the best place ever to work! Destiny! I was meant to work at a place that cool!

The next summer, I'd be cruising around on my very own Haro Master. Awesome! Yeah, this was going to be great!

Remember when I mentioned “child labor laws” in regard to having a paper route? Unfortunately, seeing that I was only 15 years old and clueless, I had never heard of “child labor laws” and I had no idea I needed to be 16 to work at PHOTON - or anywhere else, for that matter!

Thrilled at my amazing idea, I proudly walked into PHOTON and asked for a job application.

Considering that I've always had a babyface and looked far younger than my age, the guy working at the counter gave me a suspicious look and said, “Um. Hold on a second.”

He stepped away and brought out his manager who immediately asked how old I was.

“Fifteen”, I proudly smiled.

Shaking his head, the manager scoffed. “Sorry. You have to be 16 to work here.”

“Oh”, I replied. “But I'll be 16 in January.”

“Well, then you can come back in January. Legally we can't hire anyone under 16. The minimum age for anyone to work a regular job is 16.”

“Oh.” My beaming smile had faded. “Okay. Thanks.”

He wouldn't even give me an application.

Dejected and miserable, I walked over near a snackbar. I couldn't go back outside to face my grandfather just yet. I was too upset. Wasn't too excited about playing a round of PHOTON either. As I walked past her counter, a gorgeous blonde teenage girl, who looked to be about 17 years old, spotted me. She looked amazingly cute in that navy blue PHOTON t-shirt. Seeing the obvious depression on my face, she asked if I was okay.

“No,” I replied honestly. “I wanted to get a job here. But I'm only 15, so they won't even let me fill out an application.”

“Aww,” the stunning blonde said. “I'm sorry. That's not fair. You're so cute. I would have totally had them hire you, if I could.”

Great.

Was that supposed to be comforting? Knowing the gorgeous blond thinks I'm cute? The gorgeous blonde who would have been my coworker? A girl I would get to see every single day, if only I had been 4 months older?

Honestly, I don't think she said I was cute. It's been 25 years and the mind starts to invent things that never happened. Getting some sympathy from the stunning teenage girl truly did happen. Remembering our actual exchange of words is rather fuzzy. I do think I tried to get a phone number and she claimed to have a boyfriend. So, I got rejected for a job, and rejected by a girl, all within the span of 5 minutes.

That was not a good day.

Actually, I'm lying about the phone number thing too. I was way too shy to be asking for numbers at that age. But I sure wanted to.

There never seemed to be a time when I really had a place in the world. For the most part I was left with my dreams and imaginings. Even so far as my early teens, I was still dragging my friends to play imaginary games and fight epic battles in the woods and climb the ramparts of churches to hide with homemade bows and arrows among the battlements. Everyone else was going to makeout parties and getting girls phone numbers. I was building broomhandle swords in the garage and buying ninja costumes. I suppose that could make me a bit of an irritating jerk. I knew most people were irritating jerks, but I never saw myself as one.

As for my time spent at PHOTON in the weeks that followed, I managed to perk up and enjoy myself. When PHOTON first opened it was a total “free for all”, and I had a fantastic time. I was really good at the game and frequently scored among the top 3 players. When it was “every man for himself” I was pretty kick butt.

That joy was short-lived, unfortunately.

Once groups of friends started going and developing a genuine strategy, I was hopeless. One warrior fighting on his own was no match against a group of 5 people with a plan of attack.

Needless to say, I was no longer scoring too high in those games.

Slowly, the thrill of PHOTON began to lose the luster of the original appeal.

I know what you're thinking.

Why on earth did I write this chapter? Why spend an entire chapter telling you about a job I didn't get?

Tenacity.

Plain and simple.

This chapter is to remind you that just because you want to work someplace really badly and you have a great passion and enthusiasm and determination to have the job, doesn't mean you'll necessarily get it. Tenacity and fortitude are the only things you have to keep you going during those bleak and disappointing times.

My experience with not getting the job at PHOTON was the first time I'd have to swallow that bitter pill of disappointment. It would not be the last.

Being the type of person I am, and considering the kind of life I have lead, it would have been a great story to say my first real job was working at a lasertag arena. Alas, that was not to be. Honestly, that's okay. It's better this way. Being the type of person I am, and considering the kind of life I have lead, it is a greater story to say the world kept my dream away from me, but I was determined to forge ahead anyway.

PHOTON quickly died in popularity and was turned into a teen dance club called DANCIN' within a year or two. Turns out that DANCIN' was closed within a few months too. It happened to be built about 100 feet away from a residential neighborhood and the residents didn't much appreciate loud teenagers leaving the parking lot at midnight or whenever it was they closed. In case you're wondering, yes, I went to the danceclub a few times during my highschool days too. There I found myself patronizing a completely different business, and getting rejected by even more girls (or being too shy to approach them in the first place) at the exact same geographic location. Life can be cruel.

God may help those who help themselves, but PHOTON reminds me that ancient weapons and hokey religions are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.

Chapter Five
White Castle
January 1987 to March 1987

“Despite all the publicity about delinquency, America's youngsters are a pretty good lot. One of the things I want to do is make a picture that shows the good side of teenagers. I get so put out with all these pictures about delinquency. One picture upset me for three days afterward. I think these pictures are a mistake. Children get bad ideas when they see such things on the screen. And I don't think they show a true picture of young people today.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Armed with the knowledge, thanks to PHOTON, that I was unable to get a “real job” until I was 16 years old, I patiently waited a bit longer. Biding my time and always on the lookout for places that would be hiring when I was old enough, I keenly watched for every “HELP WANTED” sign at shopping malls.

That Haro Master would be mine. Somehow. Someday.

Shortly before I became of age, they started building a White Castle Hamburgers joint at the corner of Pearl and Brookpark in Cleveland, Ohio. I saw the construction happening everyday as I rode the bus to and from high school. Odd thing about White Castle, they were founded in 1921, their headquarters had been in Columbus, Ohio since 1934, but they didn't open a restaurant in Cleveland until February 1987. I had never even heard of them until I saw that construction site.

On the southern edge of the construction lot, they had office trailers set up. One day, on my way home from school, there were the signs I had been waiting to see - enormous “NOW HIRING” banners strung across the trailers. At last!

The day those banners went up, I couldn't wait for the bus to get me home! I rushed into the house to ask my grandfather to drive me back to White Castle, so I could fill out a job application. I was still 15 years old. I knew they wouldn't hire me. But I figured it couldn't hurt to turn in an application, since I'd be 16 in about a month. I wasn't sure when the store was opening, but knowing they need a whole new crew of people, if the timing was right, I just might get lucky and slip in with the initial crew. I reasoned, “Well, if they have my application on file and see me take some initiative, maybe a position will open in a month or two and they'll give me a call!”

Excitedly, I returned to the unfinished White Castle an hour later and I saw a handful of folks entering and exiting the trailers. Hopefully I wasn't too late!

Truthfully, I never expected to get a job.

So, when I was hired on the spot, I was rather shocked. More than shocked, I'm embarrassed to admit, I didn't even know I had been hired!

I sincerely don't recall much of what happened, it all took place so quickly. I filled out my first-ever job application (which goes pretty fast when your only prior work experience is a paper route). There were both a man and a woman conducting the interview - each with thick Southern Ohio accents. After completing the application, they asked me a few questions. They asked my grandfather a few questions. That was that. Nothing else to report, honestly. The whole experience was rather uneventful. Nothing extraordinary about it at all - other than the effortlessness with which it all happened.

After I handed over my paperwork, I remember being asked when I could start and so forth. But, since I never had a job before, I was unaware that they were telling me I was already hired. Finally, one of the managers asked, “Aren't you excited to have the job?”

Something along those lines.

Apparently, I was rather lackadaisical. They figured I'd be more excited to have my first job. Admittedly, I wasn't too thrilled and was being a bit mellow, since I wasn't aware I had been hired and I figured I was just filling out a form.

Once I realized I actually had the job, I felt really foolish.

I didn't bother to hide my shame. I was honest about it.

“What? Oh! I'm sorry! No one ever said I was hired. I misunderstood. I thought I was just filling out the application. I didn't know I was hired!”

The last thing I recall happening at that initial interview was being told about the fantastic retirement plan the White Castle company had. Starting a job at the age of 16, if I stayed with the company all my life, I'd be able to retire a millionaire by the age of 40.

Yeah.

But I would also be a person who worked in the fast food industry all his life. No other jobs. No other experiences. Just 25 years of slinging hamburgers.

To me, that was too high a price to pay for a million bucks.

The restaurant was still there when I turned 40 years of age.

I could have become that millionaire after all.

Remember what I said at the beginning of this book - I wanted magic. A quarter century of making hamburgers sounds about as non-magical as can be!

How To Become A Millionaire Making Hamburgers isn't a book I'd write and I'm willing to bet it's not a book you'd read.

My grandfather, of course, immediately tried to encourage me to get that early retirement. Having lived a paycheck-to-paycheck life, he was rather obsessed with the dream of being wealthy. Wealth never appealed to me. For me, I knew money would come in life, as long as I trusted my instincts and followed my heart. Pursuing money was never an interest of mine. Money is just an easy means by which to achieve more important goals. Acquiring money for the sake of acquiring money was about the most worthless pursuit I could imagine. Money would come as a result of doing what I love, not as a goal to attain.

Retiring a millionaire didn't matter to me.

Making money didn't matter to me.

What mattered was that sweet 1987 Haro Master that I'd be able to own. The goal was the appeal, not the means.

I left the White Castle trailers on that cold December afternoon, ready to start my training for my first “official” job. Training started a day before I turned 16 years old. How is that for ambitious? I felt pretty good about myself!

We began our training at some warehouse out in the suburbs. I don't recall exactly where it was, I just remember having to go for about 2 or 3 days to learn how to use the cash registers.

Another very vivid memory during training was setting up our access accounts. They were all based on our Social Security number. Standing in a room with all my fellow employees, we took turns one at a time, getting on the phone with a woman at the Columbus office, and reciting our Social Security number, so our account could be created.

Every single person in that room was able to rattle off their Social Security number from memory.

As a 15 year old kid, I had no idea what my Social Security number was, and realizing I was the only person in the room who had no clue, I was too embarrassed to admit it.

I was able to hear everyone give a 9 digit number.

So what was my plan?

Simple! I would just invent an imaginary 9 digit number and pass it off as my own.

Needless to say, this was a huge mistake.

Unbeknownst to me, the woman on the other end of the phone was logged into some sort of computer system - remember, this was 1987 and personal computers were a rarity in any business, let alone in homes. I wasn't expecting that the woman on the other end of the phone was running our number against our name in some sort of database! So, about 5 seconds after giving her a false number, she told me I was wrong and asked me to give it again.

Suddenly, I panicked!

This was more embarrassing than ever! I could hear the murmurs and chuckles from my fellow employees. Aw. The little kid doesn't know his Social Security number.

“NO! I DON'T HAVE MY NUMBER MEMORIZED! YOU EXPECT ME TO BE BRANDED BY A NUMBER? WHAT IS THIS, AUSCHWITZ!? SORRY IF I DON'T HAVE IT TATTOOED INTO MY ARM!”

Obviously, I didn't say any of that, but I sure wanted to.

Instead of admitting I was clueless, I just dug myself in a deeper hole.

I gave another false number.

“No. That's not it either.” Said the woman on the phone.

Oh, cripe.

After 3 false numbers, my manager saved me by saying, “I'll look it up for you.” He went to get my original job application to get the number from there.

I sat in the chair, awaiting his return, not daring to look back at anyone. I felt so stupid.

Funny how we do those things as kids. These days, I have my Social Security memorized just like everyone else, but if I didn't, I would just blurt out, “I don't remember my Social Security. Can you get my application for me? I know I have it on there.”

My only abiding memory of White Castle training was being an embarrassed little liar.

Actually working at White Castle was awful.

In fairness, it might have been a fine job under normal conditions. However, the Grand Opening of the Pearl/Brookpark White Castle in Cleveland, Ohio was not “normal” by any stretch of the imagination.

White Castle not only had the distinction of being the first-and-only hamburger joint in town to be open 24 hours a day, but we also broke every single opening-weekend record the company had in their 60 year history. Like I said, I had never heard of White Castle. Apparently, I was the only person in Northern Ohio who hadn't. Everyone else in the city of Cleveland was ravenous with anticipation for those little hamburgers. During the first few days, there was a constant stream of so many customers that cars were jammed in the streets and they actually had us out in the parking lot directing traffic.

And keep in mind, like I just told you, White Castle Hamburgers is open 24 hours a day.

Like I said, it was pretty awful.

Imagine that scene. Directing traffic in a fast food parking lot? Day and night? In January? In Ohio?

No. Not fun. Standing in a parking lot, breathing exhaust fumes, while getting nearly mowed down by some angry bovine Clevelander in a Buick, hell bent on stuffing a dozen hamburgers into their gluttonous gut, was not the most enjoyable way to spend brutally frigid January nights after high school.

I did my best to avoid “traffic duty” as much as possible.

Inside, the place was utter anarchy.

There were no less than 3 different managers on staff and my very first night on the job, all 3 of them were working. The problem was, none of them were communicating with each other and they all considered themselves to be “in charge” of the whole restaurant.

So, I kept on getting conflicting orders from them all. One would ask me to get some meat from the freezer. I'd do that. As I was getting the meat, another would ask me to bring up some onions from the basement.

“But I was told to get some meat fr - ”

“ - I don't care what you were told. We need onions!” The manager would bark in his Southern Ohio drawl.

So, I'd go get the onions. While I was in the basement, the first manager would spot me, “What are you doing? Where is that meat I asked for?”

“I was told to get onions from the - ”

“ - No. I told you to get some meat from the freezer!” The first manager would reply.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Conflicting requests.

Being a kid at my first job, I was just trying to make everyone happy. Naturally, these days, I'd never put up with that sort of behavior from the managers. These days, I'd corral all 3 of them together, sit them down and explain that I'm more than happy to do whatever tasks they need done, but I'm not capable of doing 3 things simultaneously, so they need to communicate and prioritize and decide what they want to happen first.

As a 16 year old kid, I didn't stand up for myself like that. Instead, I just nodded and let them yell at me.

I was ready to quit after that first night. Angry customers. Rude managers. Frenzied workload. No thanks.

But I knew if I quit, there was no way I was getting that bicycle I wanted. This job was my one and only ticket to accomplish that goal.

No way was I going to quit. If I quit, they win. There was no way I was going to permit these obese demons of customers and evil screeching Harpies barking out orders to take my dream away from me. I would prevail. I would endure. I made my decision on that first night - I will only work here long enough to earn the money to buy my Haro Master, then I'm out of here.

Things got worse after that first night.

One of the tasks I hated the most was reconstituting the onions.

You see, the hamburgers were cooked on a bed of shredded onions. The shredded onions arrived at the store freeze-dried in big 25 pound bags inside a cardboard box. We would take a big 3 gallon stainless steel pail and fill it with a predetermined amount of water. Then you'd take a stainless steel scoop and dig it into the bag of shredded onions and dump them into the bucket. After the bucket of shredded onions was full, you'd carry it upstairs and put it in the refrigerator so the cooks could grab them and replenish their supply as needed.

Easy job, right?

Easy, yes. But far more disgusting than you'd ever imagine.

Shredded freeze-dried onions are the consistency of sawdust. So, everytime that scoop would chortle into the bag of onions, a big poof of onion dust would billow out of the box. Do that for an hour or two and the whole basement was shrouded in a cloud of onion fumes. You got it in your clothes. In your ears. In your nose. You just reeked of onions and could smell nothing but onions. It was revolting.

“Pew! You smell like onions.” My grandfather said when he picked me up from work.

“I know.” I answered tersely and annoyed, between clenched teeth.

I'd be showering, and blowing my nose for 10 minutes, everytime I got home after doing onion reconstitution.

Bad as it was to work with those onions, at least the basement was cool and quiet and peaceful and I could work all by myself. Working upstairs with the endless barrage of customers was a lot worse. Especially with Mickey Rooney on the scene.

Mickey Rooney, you ask?

Yes. One of the managers looked just like a 20 year old Mickey Rooney and he was a total jerk. He was in charge of the deep friers for the onion rings and french fries.

At this point in the story, I should note, I always wanted to make french fries. Most little kids dream of that.

As a child, I recall going to fast food restaurants and loving french fries and thinking that making french fries would be the neatest thing ever. What a cool job!

Wow, was I mistaken! Making french fries is only slightly more neat than getting kicked in the groin by a donkey.

The deep frier makes you sweat like a pig from the heat. The oily steam billowing up from the basket of fries makes your skin turn all slimy and disgusting until it feels like every pore is clogged by grease. Scalding hot oil snaps and bubbles and pops and gives you little burns on your hands and forearms.

One day, as I was shaking my hand in pain from a grease burn, the Mickey Rooney clone started yelling at me for being too slow. I explained that I had just gotten burned and he just reached past me and grabbed the fries and said, “That's no excuse.”

I love Mickey Rooney. I have fond memories of watching his films. Always thought he seemed like a sweet and funny guy. But at that moment, I couldn't help but have morbid fantasies about dunking the head of this Mickey Rooney look-a-like in the deep frier. Compassionless loser.

I have to admit, that was the moment when I almost snapped. Bicycle or no bicycle, I came really close to telling him off and walking out the door.

I was putting up with this for $3.75 an hour?

But, once again, I had to remind myself - if I go off on this guy, it means they win. I will lose the chance to attain my dream. This jerk will steal it from me.

No. I will not walk out. Instead, I will endure their crap only until the moment when I no longer need to abide their presence. I will use them to get what I want. I am the one in control. I am not playing their game. They are playing mine.

I bit my tongue and pretended that I had to use the bathroom. I had to get away before I actually smashed a basket of onion rings in his face.

Another awful day was when I had to work some horrible schedule like 5pm to 1am on a Friday night. Then, I had to be back at work Saturday for a 9am to 2pm shift. Needless to say, I was exhausted during that 5 hour shift. The only thing I had to look forward to was my lunch break.

Until that evil Mickey Rooney look-alike told me I didn't get one.

I laughed, thinking it was a joke. I should have known better. Another manager confirmed it - “Oh, no. You only get a lunch break if you work longer than 5 hours. Since this is only a 5 hour shift, you don't get any breaks.”

Holy. Freakin'. Cow.

Didn't these jerks know that I had about 6 hours of sleep? I was a kid in high school for goodness sake!

They didn't care.

And I was determined to beat them.

Quickly, I discovered the old trick that all restaurant employees discover - hiding out by the trashbin.

Anytime it got to be too much, anytime I got too angry and frustrated, just grab some trash bags, carry them out to the dumpster and take 10 minutes to go back inside. Worked like a charm.

My favorite part of the job? Well, other than earning the money for my 1987 Haro Master, there were 2 things I loved.

First - the cherry pop. Now, I should note - I completely detest cherry-flavored soda pop. I think it's disgusting. I would never drink that crap. But for some reason, the cherry pop at White Castle was the most scrumptious cherry pop ever. Like it's made from the spit of angels. Delicious.

Second - the basement handrail.

The staircase leading into the basement was a straight flight that must have been 30 or 40 feet long and slightly less wide than an ordinary set of stairs. On either side of the steps was a brushed aluminum handrail. If you got your hands nice and dry, you could hold yourself up and slide all the way down the handrails! It was such dangerous fun. I made sure to never get caught doing it by any of the managers and as the days went on, I got better and better until I could start from the top of the staircase and slide the full length all the way to the bottom! So much fun! It was actually very easy to not get caught. If anyone ever opened the basement door up top or was headed towards the stairs from below, I learned to squeeze the rails to slow down and quickly plant my feet on the steps and start walking as if nothing had happened. That handrail slide was a blast!

Those are pretty much the only things I liked about that job.

Cherry soda pop. Handrail slide in the basement.

Everything else was sucky.

After slightly longer than a month on the job, I was done. I had saved enough money for my dream bicycle. I was out of there.

I didn't give any notice. Didn't announce I was quitting. I just stopped showing up, picked up my last check, and turned in my uniform.

“Can you work this one last day?” One of the managers asked, still desperate for help.

“No.”

Grasping for a way to influence me, she then said, “Well, you won't get a good recommendation from us when you look for another job.”

Nice. I love it when you loathe your boss and they think they can make you work by threatening you with something utterly meaningless. I was 16 years old. Quitting my first job without notice isn't exactly going to weigh against my future career choices. Especially not when the place was run by a bunch of slavedriving losers, God bless them.

“That's fine with me.” I said and walked out.

Gosh, what a wonderful feeling to be liberated of that job.

On April Fool's Day in 1987, I went to Schneider's Bikes on Lorain Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio and purchased my 1987 Haro Master bicycle.

Mission accomplished.

Eric Muss-Barnes: 1. Ventripotent Clevelanders: 0.

(Don't feel stupid, I had to look up “ventripotent” too. I'm just getting fancy with the thesaurus.)

In the end, I learned many things from that job. Namely?

Always speak your mind. Don't hesitate to admit when you don't know something.

Never permit people to give you conflicting orders. Force them to make a decision among themselves before speaking to you.

Don't allow some jerk to make you dislike Mickey Rooney.

And finally?

Make sure you try the cherry pop. It just might surprise you.

Chapter Six
Mobile Disc Jockey
The 80's

“Music has always had a prominent part in all our products, from the early cartoon days. So much so, in fact, that I cannot think of the pictorial story without thinking about the complementary music which will fulfill it. Often the musical theme comes first, suggesting a way of treatment. This was the case with the Tchaikovsky music for Sleeping Beauty which finally formulated our presentation of the classic. I have had no formal musical training. But by long experience and by strong personal leaning, the selection of musical themes, original or adapted, we were guided to wide audience acceptance. Credit for the memorable songs and scores must, of course, go to the brilliant composers and musicians who have been associated with me through the years.”

- Walter Elias Disney

After being at White Castle and working a “real job” for the first time, I planned to avoid real jobs for as long as possible.

“Odd jobs”, on the other hand, had quite the appeal. One of the best odd jobs one can find is being a disc jockey.

Thanks to spinning records, I have been to more weddings than all the clergymen in the Vatican put together.

Well, okay, maybe not that many. But I have been to a heck of a lot of wedding receptions.

From the mid to late 1980's, my uncle worked as a mobile disc jockey - he was the fella people would hire to play music at their wedding receptions or college parties or school dances or whatever. Being the decade it was, all of his music was on vinyl record albums - lots of 12” remixes. Thirty years later, you could carry 4000 albums in an MP3 player in your pocket. Back then, there was no such thing. Compact discs weren't even invented yet. It was all vinyl, baby. And that meant it was heavy. As you can imagine, bringing an adequate selection of albums to a party meant literally bringing hundreds of records. Old plastic milk crates filled with 50 vinyl record albums weighed about as much as 4000 MP3 players!

My job was to carry the crates.

I'd load them into the car, drag them out of the car when we reached the venue, load them back in when the party was over, then carry them back into the house. My uncle would typically give me $5 or so for this. Not $5 for each time I moved the crates. I mean $5 for the entire night of work. God bless him. (Okay, that joke is getting old, I know. I'm done.)

Honestly, I'm not complaining. It was an absolute blast. I loved it. I'd get to stay out late. Get as much free Coke or Pepsi as I wanted (depending on the venue). Listen to great 80's dance music all night. Watch people make fools of themselves on the dancefloor as they grew progressively more inebriated. Learn to mix with the tried-and-true Technics 1200 turntables. The perks were all wonderful.

My uncle didn't own his own equipment - he partnered with a guy named Perry who owned a recordshop in Parma. Perry would book the gigs and set up the equipment and my uncle and I would just show up with the records and play.

I have a million stories I could share about those days.

A few that stand out were things like the wedding that was next to a new housing development. I wandered outside the reception hall on a warm summer night and found a small stand of trees at the edge of the property. Taking a brief walk into the woods, a clearing opened up into a field with about a dozen new homes being built. The Friday night air was still and quiet. Even though the place was brand new, and construction would undoubtedly resume on Monday, the homes had a stillness to them which made each house feel like it had been abandoned for a decade. Walking into the shells of homes, I couldn't help but wonder who would live there? What would happen to these families? How much pain and joy and laughter and tears would happen within these walls? It was a profound moment. An introspective wonderment that one would never imagine experiencing when carrying records to a wedding reception.

Then there was the dance which took place on the top floors of a swanky hotel with massive windows overlooking a vast expanse of the night skyline. I was a teenage boy, but I remember staring all night at this gorgeous 40-something woman in a red dress who was dancing. She looked so classy and dignified and beautiful. I kept on looking at her and wondering if I'd ever date a lady like that. Would a woman of such grace and charm ever be in love with me? I knew in reality she might be an awful human being, but in my quiet teenage fantasy, I could imagine her as perfection. “Lady In Red” by Chris DeBurgh never was a better soundtrack to my life than that night.

Another memorable night was the time we played a hotel out near Geauga Lake Amusement Park (1887-2007), when a bunch of college kids hired us to disc jockey a pool party. There was a swimming pool in the center of the hotel, the entire circumference of which was surrounded by a balcony of second-floor rooms. As kids got more drunk and rowdy, they started jumping off the balcony into the pool! The balcony wasn't even with the edge of the pool, so you had to launch yourself out in an arc in order to clear the deck and land in the water. If anyone had fallen straight down, they'd be landing in a hospital bed instead of an inflatable raft. My uncle and I were cringing, because we were just waiting for some drunken fool to slip on the wet railing and splat down on the 10-foot drop to the concrete. Thankfully, that never happened and everyone who made the attempt successfully landed in the pool instead of bashing into the nearest loungechair.

But the best, hands down, was the biker wedding.

The biker wedding was straight out of a movie.

After doing so many weddings, I got to know just about every single reception hall in Cleveland - but this was a place I had never seen before. I remember the venue had a large stage and there were massive, bizarrely-shaped acoustic-tiles on the ceiling, which looked like they had been stolen from the set of a really bad science fiction film.

You had the clean-cut and conservative bride married to the outlaw motorcycle dude. It was so surreal. My uncle and I were set up on a stage and you could look out in the hall and see a distinct line right down the center of the room. All the tables on the left were full of people in dresses and suits. All the tables on the right were full of jean jackets, Grizzly Addams beards, and motorcycle boots. It was hilarious. And believe me, there was absolutely no mingling among of these two demographics of people. Both sides avoided the other as much as possible. Very strange wedding. But man, was that entertaining! My uncle and I couldn't stop laughing at all the awkward antics of the evening.

During my Freshman year of high school, I joined the Homecoming Planning Committee with the sole intent of getting my uncle hired as the DJ. I figured that would be a shoe-in to become popular in school - have my uncle be the DJ at Homecoming. Great plan, but it didn't work. Since my uncle didn't have a lighting system, he didn't get the gig. Apparently, the rest of the committee felt that a lightshow was essential. I was really bummed. What a fantastic way that would have been to begin my high school experience. Alas, I was outvoted and they hired someone else. I never went to the dance.

I learned a lot of valuable lessons from working on DJ gigs with my uncle. I learned how to mix records and count the BPM of a song. I learned the value of Technics 1200 turntables. Believe it or not, the DJ skills I learned helped me later in life with film and video editing. As a teen, I used to make remix cassette tapes using nothing but the pause button. Sounds lame, I know, but I got rather good at it. There's no doubt that my audio dubbing abilities contributed to increasing my learning curve in film editing.

What does this have to do with Disney?

How does my story of disc jockey work in the 1980's have anything to do with you getting into Disney today?

Simple.

This shows how everything is connected.

My audio electronics experience with the DJ work influenced my future film experience, which formed relationships which influenced jobs in California, which lead to working at Disney.

So, you see, it's not as unrelated as it may seem.

I'm sure a lot of folks have rather innocuous life-experiences in their careers (like being a roadie for a disc jockey) and would never even mention them or consider them relevant. As I promised at the start, I want to include everything.

On the surface, it may seem irrelevant, but everything you do now will shape the path you take in the future.

Obviously, making a few bucks here and there wasn't really adequate, even as a teenager. Eventually, I stopped helping my uncle and started working at the local movie theatre.

After all, considering that I was living in Ohio, working at the cinema was as close as I could possibly get to Hollywood.

Chapter Seven
General Cinema Corporation
August 1988 to March 1989

“The motion picture has become a necessity of life, a part of our balanced existence. It is not a negligible luxury. People are always going to demand and enjoy movies in the theater. Perhaps not as exclusively as they did when public amusements were more limited. Patronage will depend more than ever upon what we put on tie screen. And especially on how well we understand the needs and desires of our younger customers. For their favor we must compete as never before.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Having spent my summer of 1987 enjoying the pleasure of being an unemployed teenager with an awesome new bicycle, I knew my freedom from the work-a-day world couldn't last forever. I didn't want a “real job”, but I did want money.

I often said “money didn't matter” to me. What I meant to say is “excessive wealth” didn't matter to me. Everyone needs some money. After all, I couldn't buy a cheeseburger with a charming smile. In the end, I conceded that meant I had to work another real job after all. I enjoyed having an income and the small independence of not having to rely on my grandparents for everything monetary in my life.

Within a few months, I knew it was time to again seek employment. No more of this “under-the-table” roadie work for me. No. I needed something with a W2 form again.

When a new strip mall called Ridge Park Square was opening in 1988 on Ridge Road, just north of I-480, there was a big sign out front, announcing the arrival of several new businesses, such as a supermarket, a record store, a jewelry shop, and more. Most impressive of all - a new movie theatre with 8 screens!

In later decades, movie houses in my neighborhood would open with upwards of 24 screens. But you have to understand, at that time, the cinema at Ridge Park Square would boast the largest quantity of screens in all the city. Eight screens was simply unheard of! Most theatres only had one or two. Larger movie houses might have 5 theatres. But a full 8 screens?! Back in 1988, that was gargantuan!

Common sense dictated that serving popcorn and tearing tickets was going to be a lot more pleasant than standing over a deep fryer for 5 hours at a time. Combine that with my love for movies and I desperately wanted a job at the Ridge Park Square theatre. Maybe it wasn't as awesome as working at a film studio in Hollywood, but like I said in the last chapter, a state-of-the-art movie theatre was the closest thing to Hollywood I could find as a teenage boy in Ohio.

There was only one problem - there were no office trailers on the construction site, like there were at White Castle. I had no idea how or where to apply for the job!

Then it hit me.

General Cinema Corporation (or as we employees jokingly called it, “GCC - The Place To Be!”) was the company opening the massive 8 screen theatre. They also owned the 5 screen theatre at Parmatown Mall.

Might the theatre at Parmatown be my ticket (no pun intended) into Ridge Park Square?

Sure enough, I was right! They were accepting job applications at the Parmatown Mall movie theatre for the Ridge Park Square location! Awesome!

I was so proud of myself for thinking of that!

I filled out a job application at Parmatown and within a few days, I was called in for the interview, and once again got hired on the spot.

Let me note - being hired instantly into my first two jobs was not a good thing! The experience left me with the misguided notion that job hunting would always be this easy! Oh, how naive I was. But let's not get ahead of our story.

Overall, I really loved working at the movie theatre. The job was a lot of fun and I met some cool people and had some good times. I lasted less than a year at the theatre before I got sick of it. But I lasted far longer than I did at White Castle.

Being part of the opening crew was a great experience, because all the employees started at the same time. This created a very unique work environment because there was no “hierarchy” of people. There was no sense of cliques or seniority. We all started on the same day. We were all equal. We were all learning the ropes together.

The coolest part of the entire job was preparing the theatre for the grand opening. We spent the first few weeks cleaning and preparing the unfinished building. While construction crews were still laying carpet and installing seats, we were mopping floors and vacuuming aisles and shining the popcorn cases into sparkling glory.

In fact, I'm not exaggerating about installing seats. When I started the job, every theatre was an empty room devoid of anyplace to plant your butt. Workers came in with a snapline and a cement drill and carefully measured where to install the bolts in the floor.

Naturally, this left a little anthill-like cone of cement dust around every hole. Each theatre became filled with hundreds upon hundreds of these tiny dustpiles. The only way to clean up the dust was to use our one and only industrial shopvac.

One day, while I was using the shopvac in Theatre #6, some fellow employees became impatient in Theatre #8 and decided they were tired of waiting for me to finish. Instead of the shopvac, they decided to use brooms for sweeping up the dust.

Huge. Mistake.

The cement dust was ground up by the drillbit into the texture of fine talcumpowder. Hitting those dustpiles with a broom sent the powder billowing into the air until the entire Theatre #8 was shrouded in a haze thick as London fog.

I'll never forget one of my coworkers calling me over to check it out and walking into that gigantic space and barely being able to see the moviescreen.

“Dude! C'mere, man. You gotta see this!”

“Oh. My. God.”

Needless to say, the managers of the theatre were not pleased. Not only did they make those responsible vacuum the dust off the floor, but the two guys who did it were also forced to get a ladder and vacuum the dust out of the carpeting on the walls.

They begged us to help and tried to pin a share of the responsibility on me because “it wouldn't have happened if you weren't using the vacuum.”

Excuse me?

The managers didn't buy that excuse and neither did I. I let those numbskulls do the work on their own. They honestly thought I would help them, after they tried to pin the blame on me, for something I had absolutely nothing to do with?

Not very smart.

Most of the crew were fellow teenagers, so it's certainly not as if we were all diligent employees. We were mostly young kids being slackers. One of the best places to slack off was upstairs in the projection booth. Instead of having individual camera rooms for each theatre, our projection booth was actually one gigantic T-shaped hallway, filled with projectors. There were only 3 doors in or out of the projection booth and with cinder-block walls and concrete floors, the place had a tremendous echo. If a door handle clicked open at one end of the booth, you would easily hear it 100 feet away at the other end. One day, while we were still preparing for our grand opening, there must have been half-a-dozen crew standing around with mops, just talking and hanging out up there. The minute we'd hear a door open, we'd scatter and start pushing mops as if we had been feverishly working the whole time.

We knew we weren't fooling anybody. Since when do you need a cluster of 9 people to mop a hallway that's 10 feet wide?

Pretty funny when management couldn't find us, only to discover 90% of the staff was mopping the floor.

I have tons of little stories from working at that theatre.

Like the time I walked into the windowless, pitch-dark stairwell leading down to the lobby from the projection booth, and nearly had a heart attack when I flicked on the lightswitch, because out of the darkness, I saw the life-sized standee of Michael Cain and Steve Martin from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels looking up at me. For that split second I thought they were real people! I jumped about 10 feet.

Or I could tell you all about the chaos of our opening day, when all 8 screens were showing free movies all day long. You've never seen a moviehouse so packed with an audience from dawn to midnight. It was both overwhelming and thrilling to be a part of that spectacle! The crowds were so big, we actually had only one usher assigned to each theatre (during normal business, we'd typically only have 2 ushers working all 8 screens). I volunteered to take Theatre #4 because it was showing Willow all day long.

While all the entrances to the theatres were directly off the main lobby, Theatre #4 was the one exception. It had a long, L-shaped hallway leading back to it, flanked by thin strips of illuminated floor runner lights. On that opening day, there were a pair of grandmotherly old ladies who were afraid to walk down the hall. I remember them staring down at the lights, moving to the center of the hallway, and fearfully clutching each other as they walked. To this day, I'm still not sure what they were thinking. It was as if they thought the floor lights were larger lights that were really far away. As if they saw the lights as car headlights and they were walking a gantry over a nighttime highway. I have no idea what was in their heads. For some reason, those little floor lights really flipped them out though. I remember them making a comment about not wanting to “fall” down to the lights. Huh? Ladies, the lights are 2 feet away from you.

Later that day, an old man walked out of Willow during the final battle sequence. Near the end of the film, I was standing in back of the theatre and he walked past me and said, “That's a really good movie isn't it?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “It's really great.”

“Bah!,” he groaned angrily. “That's the kind of movie that makes kids want to kill their parents!”

...WHAT!?

When I relayed this story to one of my managers, he asked, “So, what did you say?”

“What could I say? I had no idea how to react to that. I didn't really say anything. I just kind of stammered and went, 'Oh. Um. I'm sorry. I... uh... Well... I... Uh. O - Okay.'”

Not much you can say to a crazy old fogey who thinks you're supporting parricide.

Opening day was great fun, despite the lunatic perceptions of some patrons.

Being incredibly busy wasn't always fun and exciting. One night, I was swamped with trying to usher all 8 theatres with just one other person and I was simply too exhausted to keep up. I hid out in the room upstairs where we'd make popcorn, doing my best to avoid the crowds and not do any work. Well, I totally got busted. The Regional Manager found me and asked what I was doing. I pretended to be in a hurry to get back downstairs and mumbled something about just being up in the popcorn room. He said he wanted to talk with me. He took me aside and sat down on some boxes in one of the storage rooms and asked me all sternly, “Up in the popcorn room, doing what?”

I felt like a fool. He knew. I wasn't fooling anyone. He knew I was slacking off. The irritated parent scolding the child. What could I do but admit the truth?

“Okay,” I confessed with much apprehension, “I admit it. I was up in the popcorn room doing absolutely nothing. It's just so busy down there I was trying to get away from it all.”

“That's why we need you, Eric. Because I know you can handle it. We know nights like this will be busy and that's why we assign you to work instead of some of the others.” He replied.

Now he was the one who was lying. But it sure was a nice lie to be told. He certainly knew how to cater to the ego.

Yeah, I have a million little stories from that job.

There was the time the head of the nighttime cleaning crew got fired and brought up on charges of theft, because one of the speakers behind the screen in Theatre #1 just “disappeared” one evening. Since no one could possible sneak behind a movie screen and steal an 80 pound speaker (that's 36 kilograms to my non-American readers) during the day when movies are being shown, it was pretty easy to figure out who/when the thing was ripped off. Not the brightest thief, that guy.

One of my favorite stories of co-worker idiocy was the day we had to stock a new shipment of popcorn. The popcorn was stored upstairs and along with two other guys, we had to haul about 20 bags up there. These bags were enormous. Filled with popcorn seeds, they were paper sacks, the size and shape of burlap feed bags you'd see on a farm. Weighing a good 50 pounds each, and incredibly awkward to carry, I could only lug one at a time. They were packed super tight, so you couldn't get a solid grip on the bag. And they were so big in diameter, you couldn't wrap your arms around it very well and the paper was really slick, so it just kept wanting to slide out of your grasp.

Well, one of my co-workers, an older gentleman who was maybe in his thirties, was trying to show off. “Come on, Eric,” he mocked. “Stop being such a wimp. You need to get some muscle. Can't you carry two bags at once?” He asked, as he hoisted a bag over each shoulder.

I laughed at him. “Uh, no. It's not really a contest.” I said.

Turning away to walk up the stairwell, the next thing I knew, I heard him cuss in a panic a few times, and I looked back just in time to see one bag slipping off his shoulder and - BAM! - the sack cracked into the linoleum floor and burst open like fireworks! The explosion sent a giant swathe of popcorn kernels spilling out across the entire supply room. Those things just poured everywhere, like they had been a 10 gallon bucket of water.

I laughed my butt off.

Naturally, he freaked out. “Dude! Come on, you gotta help me clean this up!”

I looked at him like he was crazy. “I gotta help you? First you make fun of me, then you expect me to help you out? No. I'm not helping you to clean anything. You think you're so big and bad to carry two bags at once, clean it up yourself.”

He never liked me too much after that.

Too bad.

Hopefully he learned something.

Jerk.

One of the weirdest policies we had, for several weeks after opening, was our inane “white glove service” where they literally had an usher standing out in front of the theatre, wearing white gloves, opening car doors for people.

I'm not kidding.

Apparently, this moronic idea was handed down from the upper echelon of our corporate headquarters. Even all the local managers at the theatre thought it was a horrible idea.

Naturally, I tried to avoid being assigned to this task as much as possible. However, I did get suckered into doing it once or twice.

They literally wanted us standing on the curb in front of the theatre and when someone drove up in a car to drop a person off, we were supposed to walk up and open the door for them.

Okay, first of all, this was a shopping mall. Just because someone gets dropped off in front of the theatre doesn't mean they are coming to see a movie. Maybe they're walking to the record shop or the jewelry store.

Second, people who show up to a movie premiere in a Rolls Royce are expecting an usher to open their cardoor. People showing up to a Tuesday matinee in a Ford station wagon typically open their own door so fast, you'll get knocked over before you can even grab the handle.

Third, and most important of all, people are going to freak out when they see a stranger with white gloves reaching over to open their car door! What dad isn't going to lose his mind when some teenage boy is opening the door for his 12 year old girl? And what about the grown men who were ushers? You think they wanted to risk that? Seriously, we were all afraid we were going to get beat up.

Personally, I never opened any doors.

I just greeted people with a smile and saying “Welcome to Ridge Park Square theatre!” Much safer approach. I still felt like an idiot standing out there, but at least there was no danger of being accosted that way.

Thankfully, this stupid pseudo-butler policy didn't last long.

Within several weeks, there was no more “white glove service”.

My favorite story of working at General Cinema came from our grand opening. Our local Regional Manager had his office in our theatre and he brought his children to the free movies of opening day. His 6-year-old daughter was holding a popcorn bag in one hand and an ice cold drink in her other hand. As they waited in the crowd to get into their movie, I heard his little girl say, “Daddy, my hand is cold!”

He looked down at her with those sympathetic parent eyes and said, “Your hand is cold? I'm sorry sweetie.”

His tone indicated that he had no idea how to help her.

I looked at her and said, “Why don't you switch hands?”

She looked shocked I was talking to her (that “I'm not supposed to talk to strangers” face little kids have) but her dad looked at me like I was pure genius. “Switch hands? Here, switch hands, sweetie.” He then proceeded to swap the popcorn and the beverage and his little girl was all smiles again.

I'll never forget his reaction. He looked at me, winked and tapped the side of his forehead in a “good thinking” gesture and said, “Management potential, Eric.”

At the age of 17, that was an awesome thing to be told. More than 20 years later, I still remember that moment fondly.

On a side-note, about 13 years later, I regularly listened to a college radio program broadcasting from John Carrol University hosted by a girl named Rebecca Gellott who played movie score soundtracks. I called her show one day to request a song and told her that I used to work for a guy named Paul Gellott at General Cinema, who looked just like Alan Rickman in Die Hard. She said that was her father. Turns out she was the same little girl I had met on opening day at the Ridge Park Square theatre. I told her the cold-hands/warm-popcorn story. She didn't remember it, of course. Funny small world though. That little girl holding the popcorn who became a WJCU radio disc jockey is now a thirty-something high school English teacher back in Ohio.

One of my fondest memories of Mr. Gellott was one night when I was working as ticket-taker (you know, the fella who tears the tickets when patrons enter the theatre) and Paul and I talked for an hour about The Little Rascals. He was shocked that someone my age knew who they were. I explained that there were reruns of The Little Rascals on television when I was growing up, so I watched them all the time. Like most managerial types, Mr. Gellott was a rather stoic fellow. Not cold or distant, mind you - he just wasn't very quick to laugh or smile in the workplace. Not until that night. We were both chuckling and hooting and hollering as we reminisced about our favorite episodes of The Little Rascals.

Ticket-taking was a pain - literally, it hurt to work that job - standing in one place for 4 hours at a time. Even as a spry and youthful 16 year old, your knees ached, your back hurt, it was brutal. That night, laughing with Mr. Gellott about the antics of Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat, the pain didn't even phase me. I had a wonderful time.

I made two really great friends at that job too - a guy named Steve and another named Ed. Remained friends with each of them for many years. Ed and I were the best of friends for a good 5 or 6 years time. He played bass guitar and got his degree in religious studies from a prestigious college in New York. Steve made a hobby out of meeting celebrities - he had apparently met Cher so many times, she knew his name. Steve and I went snowboarding together and he later opened his own recordstore in Parma. (Incidentally, on another side-note, techno/house music was first getting really big around that time. Knowing a ton about the Cleveland music scene, I told Steve his store should specialize in that genre, because techno would fill a niche that no other record store in town was covering. Instead, his store sold plain old Top 40 pop-music and was closed within a year. The following summer, in 1994, a techno/house store opened in Lakewood called “Grand Poo-Bas Record Shoppe”. They remained open for 17 years. People never listen to me!)

One of the great honors of working at the theatre was making popcorn.

I know that sounds silly.

An “honor” to make popcorn?

Well, it was an honor because I was among the first 3 people chosen to be trained on how to use the popcorn machines. That was pretty cool. Since every single employee was new and hired at the same time, there was no seniority at the theatre. We were all equal. Those of us who showed the most “promise” were eventually given positions with greater authority and responsibility. And, I happened to be given the task of making popcorn. So, although it sounds silly, it was a big honor.

Making popcorn was a lot of fun too! The popcorn room was upstairs, just outside the projection booth. Since you didn't interact with the public when you were making popcorn, you didn't have to wear the work uniform either! You could show up in jeans and a t-shirt. That was pretty neat!

On the downside, the experience spoiled me for good popcorn. Now that I have cooked up vats of fresh popcorn in coconut oil, I can't eat any other kind. Microwave popcorn? Disgusting. Stovetop popcorn? Pathetic. Movie theatre popcorn? Not the same after being a day old.

There's nothing quite like freshly salted and buttered popcorn, hot out of the stainless steel machine of goodness. Gosh, that stuff was heavenly. More than 2 decades later, and I can still taste it.

I never really had a specific reason to quit working at the movie theatre. I think I just slowly became disillusioned with the job. At that age, when a job is completely unnecessary in your life, it makes it a lot easier to be very picky. What I mean is, later in life, when a job is required to keep food on the table and a roof overhead, (sorry, I keep using that phrase a lot, but it's true) you'll tolerate more frustrations and inconveniences. As a highschool student, I had zero financial obligations or responsibilities or concerns. Consequently, if I wasn't having fun at my job, there was absolutely no reason to keep it.

We had a meeting a few days before I quit where we were told a story about an employee at another theatre who had stopped an armed robber from pilfering the boxoffice and got fired. Now that I'm older, I understand why. Employees are required to cooperate with armed robbers, in order to minimize the risk of death or injury to any customers or fellow employees. That's a wise policy. You can't allow some hotshot wanna-be John McClane to be running around your movie theatre wresting guns out of criminal's hands. Too many very bad things could go horribly wrong. I get that now.

As a teenager, I didn't understand that. Instead, I found it abhorrent that a company would fire someone who had risked his life for the company. That story of the renegade vigilante employee contributed to my decision to leave.

When I quit, I just up and left - same as I did with White Castle. Didn't give notice. Never gave them a warning. I was just done.

Just like White Castle, the managers tried to scare me for doing that. “Well,” one of the managers said, “you know we can't give you a good recommendation for your next job if you quit like that.”

“I'm 17 years old.” I laughed. “I have plenty of time to get other jobs.”

Yeah, I was a little jerk.

As you can see, my work ethic wasn't quite so sterling then. Taking my responsibilities a little more seriously came later.

In hindsight, I admit I rather regret quitting the movie theatre. Especially doing so in such an unprofessional manner. The place was fun, the people were good folks, and they deserved better.

Sure, I can say I was young and naive, but that's just a lie - a pathetic excuse. I was old enough to know what I was doing. I was old enough to know right from wrong. I should have handled it better. Alas, if being a bit of a selfish teenage jerk is my greatest crime in life, I guess I can sleep well at night, knowing I'm not all that bad a fella.

Although, the truth of quitting my job wasn't as bad as my grandmother thought.

For some bizarre reason, my grandma was convinced that my only motive to work at the movie theatre was to buy a snowboard. Nevermind that I started the job in the summer and I stayed there for almost a full year. Because I had worked at White Castle just long enough to buy a BMX bike, she was certain I only worked at the theatre for my Burton snowboard.

This wasn't true at all.

Heck, it wasn't even true that I worked at White Castle for the sole motive of purchasing my BMX bike! The truth is, I worked at White Castle because I wanted a job. Period. I hated it after the first night, and I would have quit immediately, if not for the fact that I would never get my hands on that bicycle unless I toughed out staying at the job. I didn't get the job to buy the bike, I merely kept the job to buy the bike. Big difference.

As for the whole “movie theatre/snowboard” thing that my grandma so inaccurately presumed, I earned enough money for a snowboard in about a month, and stayed there for about 9 months. Yet somehow a snowboard was my motive? She actually told me, “Eric, you can't keep getting jobs and quitting just to buy something.”

Huh?

Never could figure out where she got that from.

Grandma, although a relatively sweet woman, never was the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree either. The way she perceived the world, and the way the world actually worked, were often two very different things. She was like Edith Bunker on All In The Family. She meant well. Poor lady.

What did I learn from my stint at General Cinema Corporation?

Honestly, I didn't learn a whole lot. But, at that time in my life, it was the longest job I ever had. I have very fond memories of the experience. I loved being there and having that opportunity, because looking back on it, I feel like it was truly my first foot into the door of Hollywood. I literally was “working 2500 miles outside Los Angeles” during that period of my life. I may not have been playing a huge role in moviemaking during my time at the movie theatre, but the truth is, I was still a genuine part of the movie industry.

The movie theatre at Ridge Park Square was the true beginning.

I had my first taste of Tinseltown.

Chapter Eight
Holy Name High School
September 1985 to June 1989

“School-age youngsters are capable of absorbing and retaining a tremendous amount of learning. Given the chance, they have an amazing aptitude for knowledge. We must not deny them that chance through shortages of classrooms and inadequate educational facilities. Having spent most of my life creating material for children and observing their potential, I feel convinced that a full-time education for our youth is our best investment in the future.”

- Walter Elias Disney

My 12 year sentence in Roman Catholic schools ended on 5 June 1989 when I officially graduated from Holy Name High School at 6000 Queens Highway in Parma Heights, Ohio.

As I mentioned in the chapter on my gradeschool years, I feel it's important to cover a bit of my educational experiences, since the type and quality of ones education can have a dramatic influence upon ones employment prospects.

Hey, I never said an education didn't affect your career. I just said I didn't graduate college.

The movie theatre was my last job before I graduated high school, so in chronological order, this chapter covers the high school days.

Much like your own life, my high school days could be an entire book unto themselves. Don't worry. I'll spare you that much detail.

When I was in Junior High and all the high schools had their “open house” days, I literally only visited one school - Holy Name.

I loved it.

Plus, at the time, Holy Name had the second-lowest tuition of any Catholic school in the city. Cleveland Central Catholic was the only school with a lower tuition. My family thought Cleveland Central Catholic was located in a rather ghetto part of town. They heard “Broadway” and “East 55th” and started picturing the 1966 Hough Race Riots at East 55th and Hough. Those riots happened before I was even born. Even though the school was nearly three miles from there, my grandparents didn't want me waiting for buses in that neighborhood by myself. So, Cleveland Central Catholic was out.

Honestly, I wanted to attend public school. I felt bad that my grandfather was spending his lifetime of pension checks to help pay for my education. Didn't seem right to me. Unfortunately, my grandparents insisted that I attend a parochial school. Public school was out, because they knew the quality of my education would be better.

I figured if they were going to force me to continue attending a Catholic school, the least I could do was pick the one with the lowest tuition. So, Holy Name High School in Parma, Ohio it was.

There were a number of factors which were appealing to me about Holy Name. Funny thing is, most of these deciding factors all had to do with architecture and the vibe of the school and very little to do with the staff or the curriculum.

First of all, the building was only 3 stories tall. That was great because my gradeschool was 4 stories. Having one less flight of steps was awesome!

I also loved that the school was one giant rectangle. It wasn't some complicated building with different wings or a big campus with a huge layout. Nope. Just one long, thin building and 3 floors. Very easy. As an incoming Freshman, things like having an easy time finding classrooms was of vital importance. Rooms were numbered as 100's and 200's and 300's depending on the floor and went up in ascending order. Simple. That was a huge selling point for me!

Being located in the woods was awesome too. My gradeschool was built next to the church on a big hill. So, out the windows on one side of the school, you saw only sky. Out the other side - brick wall. Nothing else. Sky or bricks. Period.

Walking into Holy Name classrooms and seeing trees and squirrels was like magic. Felt like I was in Hobbiton.

This is completely serious, by the way. I want to be clear that I'm not joking. People often think I'm being silly when I talk about picking my high school for the surrounding flora. You must understand however, after being in a school which was nothing but drab gray Cleveland skies and a Pink Floyd brick wall, seeing trees and sunlight and green was a true novelty. Made the whole place feel very welcoming. Gave the school a totally different vibe.

The third factor was the art program.

I was just about the best artist in my gradeschool. One open-house visit to Holy Name and I quickly realized I would not be the best artist in high school. Not by a longshot. I wanted to be better. So, I knew this was the place I belonged.

In fact, my art teacher, Mr. Thomas Halko, proved to be my favorite teacher of all time. Basic principals of art and design, which I learned from him, are things I still use to this very day for graphic design and photography. Concepts like “negative space” and the colorwheel are things I never learned until high school. Well, I knew about the existence of the colorwheel in gradeschool, but back then, I just thought it was simply intended to teach children the colors of visible light. Until Mr. Halko came along, I had no idea about the arrangement of colors and the implication of additive and subtractive colors to the polar opposite color.

Indeed, I learned a lot of basic artistic principals from Halko which I still use all the time.

All in all, I am sincerely grateful for the opportunity to have attended and graduated from Holy Name. Seeing as it was a good school, with some cool teachers, I feel I did benefit from a much higher quality of education than I would have received in the Cleveland Public School system.

I always knew I wouldn't be attending college. My grandparents could never afford that. Our family was barely scraping by having to pay $2000 a year for high school. Impossible for my family to pay $10,000 to $20,000 a year or more for college. Therefore, I think it was a great idea to attend a college preparatory high school, because at least it meant my academic lessons were a bit more challenging.

I have no clue what my high school grade point average was. I think it was like 0.95 or something like that. Then again, I may be bragging. I may have had something as high as a 1.2 or something. I suppose I could take the time to research it and look it up. But, really, who the heck cares what my GPA was? That means nothing. I know it was incredibly low. That's all that matters.

About 2 or 3 years after graduation, I recall my friend Erin graduated with a lower grade point average than me and I was both proud of her and terribly jealous.

As I mentioned earlier, I spent a majority of gradeschool as an “A” and “B” student. Technically, I spent all of gradeschool as an “A” and “B” student. I didn't get lower grades until junior high. It takes special skill and cunning to do the minimal amount of work required to barely pass your classes.

At the time I was so proud of Erin for barely passing, my then-girlfriend, who was maintaining a 4.0 in college courses, was really angry with me. I never told my 4.0 girlfriend I was happy for her or proud of her, but I mentioned being impressed with Erin.

Oops.

Well, the truth is, I honestly wasn't impressed with the 4.0 my girlfriend had. So what? Anyone can study and get good grades. It takes genuine skill and finesse to only do the bare minimum of work to graduate.

Most lemmings don't understand how irrelevant grades are as a barometer to reflect ones determination, intellect or work ethic. Those factors are what contribute to success. Not grades.

Erin, with her awful grades, went to England and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, right out of highschool.

I barely passed high school and got into Walt Disney Studios.

My ex-girlfriend with the 4.0 and the college degree? She became a housewife and never left Ohio.

Who is impressive now?

Ambition matters. Grades are irrelevant.

As a Sophomore, a nun who was tutoring me in history once asked if I owed it to anyone to get good grades. I said I owed it to myself. That was a lie. I didn't honestly feel I “owed” good grades to anyone, but I figured that was the answer she wanted to hear. She became all flustered and informed me that I owed it to her and my grandparents to get good grades. To her, for putting in extra effort to tutor me. To them, for paying my tuition.

Thirty years later and I still disagree.

Teaching me was her job. I didn't owe her anything.

Paying for school was my grandparents choice. I didn't owe them either.

Grades have made no difference in my life. Zero. None. Zip. Zilch. Fantastic grades. Abyssal grades. I've had them all and I'm still doing well for myself. Grades are meaningless.

Success in my life has been determined by fortitude, shrewd decisions, and integrity. Contrary to what that naive old nun believed, my Sophomore year high school history grades have had no bearing whatsoever on my life accomplishments.

Poor nun never seemed to understand that.

I know. I know. I'm a hypocrite. In the gradeschool chapter, I complained about the lack of grades in a Montessori school, now I'm saying grades don't matter.

Grades matter in the sense that our efforts should be quantified.

Grades stopped mattering to me when I realized no one has the right to expect me to prove myself to them, unless they have proven worthy of my own respect and admiration.

The great irony of my blase attitude towards my grades is the fact that I had to attend summer school for failing English class.

Here I am, a published author of multiple books and stories, and the only class I ever failed in my entire school career, and had to attend summer school for, was English.

Although, I must admit, I did it on purpose. Failing, that is. It was deliberate.

Why would I deliberately fail my classes?

Well...

This is a little embarrassing, but...

During my Sophomore year, I had a big crush on a girl who was going to leave Holy Name and attend some lame charter school in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, Ohio, not New York.

Anyhow, since I was upset that my grandparents were paying such high tuition at Holy Name and I wanted to impress this girl (I honestly don't even remember her name anymore - how sad is that?) I came up with the brilliant idea that I'd flunk out of school.

Yes! That's it!

If my grandparents wouldn't take me out of Holy Name, I'd take myself out! I'd get such awful grades, they'd expel me!

I know what you're thinking and, yes, I was too stupid to realize it at the time - IDIOT! IF I FLUNK OUT OF SCHOOL, THE CHARTER SCHOOL WON'T ENROLL ME EITHER!

Oh. My. God.

Duh! Why didn't I think of that sooner!? That's obvious, Eric, you moron!

Yeah, well, I didn't think of that until I was already failing Algebra and English.

Oops.

Then, naturally, that girl I had a crush on? She never left Holy Name anyway! She stayed.

And, being the stupid, socially-inept geek I am, I talked to her and admitted I was trying to flunk out of school, just to transfer schools to be with her. Fool I was, I thought she'd swoon over me attempting something so brash and romantic to win her over.

She, of course, looked at me like an idiotic psychopath and didn't really speak to me much after that.

Oh, that Sophomore year was tons of fun!

Anyway, after that fiasco, I had to buckle down and bring my grades back up. My Algebra teacher, Mr. Palumbo, was super cool. If you went purely by my test scores, I totally failed Algebra. But he was tutoring me after school and he saw me working hard to make the effort, so he passed me. I know I absolutely failed his class if you went by the numbers, but he let me slide, because he knew I was fighting.

My English teacher, Miss Conti, was more of a hag. (I'll let my readers guess what euphemism “Conti” was changed into behind her back.)

Miss Conti went purely on grades and points and didn't cut me any slack. I worked after school and did extra credit assignments and extra book reports and she failed me anyway. Sent me to summer school for Sophomore English. I mean, heck, if you're going to fail anyway, why do all the extra work? Right? I should have just blown off her whole class and never done the extra work if I had known my efforts were going to prove fruitless.

That old shrew never published a book! I have numerous publications and she flunked me out of English?! Whatever!

I know. I know. I should get over it.

Sorry. My teen angst is an endless well regardless of my age.

Summer school was painful. Terrifying, really. Taught me how unbelievably stupid most kids really were. The unwashed masses are indeed horrifying.

My summer school classes were at some public school in Lakewood where we would literally be given a sheet of paper with a single paragraph of text on it and we'd be told, “Circle all the nouns in each sentence.”

Seriously.

For a three hour class, that was our entire assignment.

Circle all the nouns in a single paragraph of text.

Nothing more.

The next day, we might be told to circle the verbs or circle the punctuation marks. I'm not making this up. The work was that menial and mindnumbingly dull.

For something like two or three weeks, I had to do this every single morning, Monday through Friday. Literally every single day, I would be the first person in a class of 30 students to finish the work. I'd hand in my paper within 2 minutes. Then I'd sit there in silence for the remaining 3 hours, bored out of my mind. Some kids were so ignorant, they'd still be working on their paper after 15 minutes or 30 minutes or 45 minutes! I would glance over at kids in their desks and they'd be sweating - genuinely having a difficult time finishing the work. Some of them even went up to the teachers desk to ask questions.

CIRCLE THE NOUNS! Seriously?! How can you possibly have questions about those instructions!? Which part was unclear!? Circle? Or nouns? Which one don't you understand!?

Ugh. What was I doing in there? It was disturbing to see how uneducated these kids were. It reached the point where I started waiting 5 or 10 minutes to turn my paper in, because I was embarrassed by the fact that every single day, I was about 50 times faster than every other kid in the class!

Needless to say, I would never, ever allow myself to flunk and attend summer school again.

I felt like one of those delinquent kids on those television shows where they are shown what life in prison is like, so it will scare the bejesus out of them into behaving. That was me in summer school. Never get dragged into doing time in the lowest mires of the educational system!

I promise I'll be good! I promise I'll do all my homework! Just don't make me circle anymore conjunctions!

(Okay, I'm kidding about the conjunctions. That would have been too complicated for my classmates. Best stick to nouns and verbs.)

Well, I'm sure I've made it clear how little I liked school.

In fact, I hated school so much, I skipped high school on the day they had us take our SAT tests. For those who don't know, the SAT is a Standard Aptitude Test required for acceptance into any college. Once I discovered the SAT tests lasted all day long and they were mandatory only if you were going to college, I figured, “Why waste my time?”

While all the other Seniors in my class were stressed out and nervous for the weeks leading up to the test, wondering about how well they were going to score, I spent the day with my grandparents and we went to the movies. No stress for me! I simply didn't give a damn.

Screw college. Screw the SAT.

Appropriate my grandparents took me to the movies instead. Far more appropriate, don't you think? Considering that I eventually came to work for the most famous movie studio in the world. Movies were my future - not college exams. I was done with people “testing” me and trying to make me prove my intellect to them.

To heck with college. Had no desire to go. No intention to go. All my life I loathed and detested school. I resented being forced to attend. I hated being told what to do. I was constantly irritated by being expected to memorize useless information that I would never use again. I loathed being tested on subjects I couldn't care less about.

One day in high school, a teacher asked the class why we attend school everyday. I raised my hand, prepared to state the obvious.

My answer was that I didn't want my grandparents to be arrested for truancy.

The class and the teacher laughed at me.

I was totally serious. I wasn't making a joke. Not in the slightest. That was the biggest reason I stayed in school. I attended school mainly in order to not have a huge fight with my grandparents or get them in trouble. I was shocked to discover that no one else in my class felt the same way.

If I'm not mistaken, my teacher even ridiculed me and brushed me off for being a wiseguy and not giving a serious answer.

I sat in my desk, brow crinkled, confused why no one believed me. Of course I was only there as a courtesy to my parents. Why else would anyone go to school?

Naturally, the students and teacher gave all the stereotypical arguments:

“Improve your education...”

“Get into a good college...”

“Build a successful career...”

I found myself sincerely unable to relate to any of that. Plenty of highly successful people never relied on school for that stuff. Plenty of miserable failures graduated college. Were these kids truly this brainwashed to think they had to be there? I loathed school with a passion. There was so much I wanted to learn and accomplish in life and school always seemed like nothing more than a huge obstacle to my future. A colossal waste of time that could have been better spent otherwise.

Therefore, the whole notion of college was laughable to me.

Paying thousands of dollars I can't afford, to voluntarily attend a school I am not required to be in?

Are you kidding me?

No way.

Not interested.

Now, let me be clear about my attitude - I have always loved to learn. I know I already said that, I just want to reiterate it. In fact, silly and crazy as this may sound, I consider the mere act of “learning” to be one of my favorite pastimes. Being educated - on countless topics - is something I genuinely love and crave with an unbridled passion. Knowing as much as I can, expanding my knowledge, researching things, broadening my horizons - these are things I yearn for in my life. Few things give me greater joy than the thrill of understanding something new. Learning is part of the lifeblood of my very being.

I just think school is a horrible place to learn things.

School is rarely conducive to truly being educated. Colleges are corporations interested in being profitable by charging astronomical tuition, only to require that you study topics you are not interested in. You are pressured to remember pointless facts. You have to deal with petty cliques of students. You have to put up with ignorant teachers - heck, I once had a Taiwanese gradeschool English teacher who could barely speak proper English! Seriously!? What is up with that!? This person was appointed to educate me on my native tongue when she couldn't even speak it properly herself?!

You know what subjects I did great with in school?

Art. Electricity. Auto mechanics. Aviation. Things like that.

Why?

Because I actually cared about those topics. I was genuinely interested in them. They served practical purposes for everyday life. Well, aviation wasn't an everyday topic, but being a pilot was something I always wanted to do.

History. Religion. Algebra. English. These were not remotely interesting. I did terrible at those things.

Funny thing is, I even find those topics interesting now, but who needs school to study history? Just read a book!

No way was I going to waste my time with college.

Besides, like I said, my family was rather poor. Being raised by my grandparents, my grandfathers General Motors pension checks were barely enough to pay my gradeschool and highschool tuition. It was a struggle and a sacrifice to send me to a good gradeschool and high school. They couldn't send me to college as well. No way. Even the cheapest of colleges cost ten times as much as my Parochial high school. College was a financial impossibility, even if I had wanted to go.

I know. I'm a hypocrite. I say that I liked going to private schools because it provided me with a superior education. Then I say that school is a terrible place to learn anything.

But I'm not hypocritical.

Honestly, I believe both of those things.

Ones drive and ambition and desire to learn are the true motivating factors in a great education. You don't get that motivation from school. Those traits are innate in ones personality. Simply wanting to learn and be intelligent will make a person educate themselves. The mere desire to become educated is the greatest motivation to learn. Such people read more. Pay more attention to the world around them. Ask more questions. Have a wider array of interests. Simple curiosity. These things are the hallmark of one who enjoys being enlightened.

School rarely encourages such traits. School is often too regimented. Teachings too stringent. Professors too caught up in their own ego to question their own knowledge.

Thinking for yourself. Questioning authority. These traits which are vital for survival in the real world are typically replaced by meaningless drivel like “school pride” and “school spirit” and other brainwashing “teamwork” foolishness I could never comprehend.

High school sucked.

But now and then, the black and sooty coalmine of school can provide a gemstone. Something stands out. One good course. One good teacher. These rare moments can make the rest of the filth bearable, if not worthwhile.

Therefore, to praise the merits of private schools and to simultaneously deride the educational system is not as contradictory or hypocritical as it may initially appear. Quality schools are vital for a great education, and at the same time, school is frequently a terrible place to learn anything. Not a contradiction at all. Simple truth.

Graduating high school was wonderful. For 12 long years I waited for that moment when no one could ever force me to diagram a sentence, or do a math problem, or play soccer ever again, so long as I lived. Freedom. The moment of truth.

To this day, I clearly remember how much I savored every spoonful of cereal I had that morning on the last day of highschool. At long last, I was free. No more homework. No more tests. No more getting up at 7am ever again. Best of all, if I ever did have to get up that early again, it will be for a job where someone will be paying me to get up. No more waking up so my grandfather can shell out his hard-earned pension funds to pay for my education. From that day forward, anytime I awake to an alarm clock, someone will be putting money in my pocket.

Who would have imagined, 17 years after my last day of high school, that “someone” paying me would be Mr. Walt Disney himself.

Chapter Nine
Roadway Package Systems
One Night in the Winter of 1989

“People often ask me if I know the secret of success and if I could tell others how to make their dreams come true. My answer is, you do it by working.”

- Walter Elias Disney

My shortest job ever came fresh out of high school.

I worked at RPS for exactly one night. Four hours. One shift. That was it.

I forget what the acronym RPS stands for. “Roadway Package Systems” or “Rotten Purgatory Sentence” or something like that. They were a shipping company like UPS or FedEx or one of those guys.

The story goes like this - after I graduated from high school in 1989, I was thrilled with the opportunity to be a total bum.

Upon graduation, I told my grandparents I didn't want to work for a few months. I explained, “Look, this is going to be the only time in my entire life that I will be able to do nothing. No school. No work. Total freedom. I know it's asking a lot, but can you please let me have this? Just for a little while. Because once I start working and living on my own, I'll never have this opportunity again.”

Growing up, I was pretty spoiled. Naturally. What grandparent doesn't dote upon their grandchildren? So, they were very cool and supportive and were fine with my request to enjoy some time as a lazy jerk.

However, my plans changed for one very tempting evening when my gradeschool friend Jerry called me up and told me about a job opportunity at a shipping company called RPS.

As a high school student, we all heard the rumors of shipping companies like UPS and FedEx and the sort of jobs they offered. Short hours. Easy work. Pay that was triple what you'd get working anywhere in the shopping mall. All you had to do was move some boxes around. Simple! Who wants to get paid $4.00/hour cleaning bathrooms in a fast food restaurant when you can make $12.50/hour picking up boxes in a warehouse? Jobs at all these shipping companies were the same - coveted as mythical Holy Grails of employment among my peers and myself.

Well, somehow, my friend Jerry managed to get hired by RPS and he wanted to know if I was interested in working there too.

“We start at 10:00pm on Friday.” Jerry explained.

“Wait. What?” I asked. “10:00pm?”

“Yeah, it's from 10:00pm to 2:00am.”

Was he joking? “Wait. The interview is at 10:00pm?”

“No. No. There's no interview. You got the job. We just have to show up.” He clarified.

Now it was sounding even more weird.

“Hold on. You're telling me they hired me without even meeting me and we have to work for 4 hours in the middle of the night?”

Allow me to interject at this point - when I was 18 years old, this seemed too good to be true. With the perspective of hindsight, it makes perfect sense - the job was so awful and their turnover rate was so high, they would literally hire anyone willing to come in - even high school kids they had never interviewed.

Friday evening rolled around and Jerry picked me up. This was my first mistake - allowing him to drive. Had I been smart enough to drive myself, I would have worked at RPS for about 20 minutes instead of 4 hours. Unfortunately, since Jerry drove, I was stuck there with no way home.

Then again, I was only about 2 or 3 miles from home. Heck, I should have walked back to my house! Walking 3 miles home would have been a lot easier than what I endured.

Once we arrived, I was assigned to the hardest job in the warehouse and Jerry got the easiest. I'm not kidding.

You see, our job was to unload the packages off the giant 50-foot semitrucks and sort them by zipcode onto the smaller neighborhood delivery trucks. Within the warehouse was a massive L-shaped conveyor belt. Massive semitrucks pulled up to the loading dock at the far end of the conveyor belt while a score of delivery trucks were lined up on either side of the conveyor.

As you might well imagine, stocking the delivery trucks was exceptionally difficult at the front of the line and became progressively easier the further away you moved from the loading dock.

Why? Because packages were manually sorted via zipcode - therefore every package off the semitruck was potentially destined for the first delivery truck. The guy loading the first truck had an incredibly difficult job, because he had to check every single package. Every single one might potentially be destined for his truck. Presuming the 20 or so loaders did a good job and didn't miss any packages traveling down the belt, the fellow at the end of the line had the easiest job of all, because every package coming to him was meant for his truck.

Jerry was assigned to the last delivery truck.

I was given the job of clearing out the semitrucks.

I had help from one other person - some burly musclebound woman who looked like Ernest Borgnine in From Here to Eternity. Together, she and I unloaded a total of 4 semitrucks in 4 hours.

Think about that.

Two people unloading 4 full semitruck trailers in 4 hours. Each trailer was about 50 feet long, 8 feet wide, 13 feet high and they are literally packed to the brim. In fact, the trucks are packed so tightly, when you open the rear door, there's a cargo net stretched floor to ceiling, making sure boxes don't tumble out onto your head. Keep in mind that I was a 5' 6” teenage kid who weighed about 130lbs. I was not exactly Mr. Universe. And there I was, unloading nearly 21,000 cubic feet of boxes for 4 hours.

Brutal.

I was exhausted.

Did I happen to mention it was early winter too? Yeah. Unloading trucks in a warehouse during an Ohio winter. Not only was it grueling work, but you were sweating and freezing at the same time. My fingers were icicles. The whole thing was pneumonia waiting to happen.

Like I said, I would have been better off walking home.

One of the craziest aspects of the work was the psychological mindjob you'd get from the packages. Everything was packaged in a cardboard box. Some the size of a chair. Some the size of a shoebox. Some the size of an office filing cabinet. Every size and shape you could imagine.

Well, a few hours in, I came across some boxes I knew I'd never move on my own. They were literally the size of refrigerator boxes. No way could I move these things! They were massive.

I tried to pick one up and nearly threw it across the room. There was nothing in them! It's like they were filled with Styrofoam and bubblewrap. Must have weighed 5 pounds each.

Later, I encountered the opposite problem. Five packages the size of school notebooks. Looked like they couldn't be more than 2 pounds or so.

Oh, how wrong I was. I swear they weighed 50 pounds apiece! It was like someone just took lead plates and wrapped them in cardboard. I almost wrenched my back out as I bent down to pick these things up from the subfloor of the trailer.

Oh, yeah. Did I mention the subflooring?

No?

Yeah, the burly masculine “woman” who was helping me failed to mention it too. After I proudly announced we were done with the first truck and she said, “Did you get the subfloor?”

“Excuse me? The su-what?”

Turns out, once you finished unloading the entire truck, you had to open plates on the floor which revealed yet another compartment about 3 feet deep and another 30 feet long.

Oh, joy.

There I am, nearly ripping my spine out of alignment while attempting to lift some 900 pound lead notebook out of the floor that I had presumed was about the weight of a can of Pepsi, and Miss Testosterone is nowhere to be found. You gotta be kidding me. I unloaded all the subflooring alone.

But the worst part about the job came at the end of the night.

Dragging my crippled bones to the end of the conveyor line, I grabbed a seat on the bumper of a truck, waiting for my friend to finish the last of his loading, so we could finally head home. As I was sitting there, the third shift crew began to filter into the building. Who comes walking around the corner? A nemesis from high school. He was another Scut Farkus - a redheaded kid that I nearly got into a fistfight with during Sophomore gym class. One of those jerks you hope you'll never see again after graduation.

He looked at me and smiled and said, “Oh! Hey!” - awkward pause - “Uh... What's up?”

Hey? What's up? As if we were old buddies or something!

Thing that pissed me off the most was that he forgot my name. I could hear it in his pause and see it in his expression. Jerk. More than 20 years later, I still remember his name, but I won't do him the honor of printing it. Jerk.

All I could do in my totally beaten down state was roll my eyes, and turn away. Didn't say a word to him. Didn't even acknowledge his presence. Tried instead to pretend he simply didn't exist.

That was the last straw.

There was no way I was returning to that job. Ever.

Honestly, I didn't even want to return get my paycheck. By the time you take out taxes and stuff, what would it be? $30.00 maybe? Why bother?

My grandparents insisted that I go the next week and pick it up though. So I did. Under much duress. Hooray. Now I could cash it and have enough money to buy lunch and a cardboard shipping box.

Lessons learned at this job are easy to see - the grass is always greener and if it seems to good to be true, it usually is. That good old “Holy Grail” of jobs wasn't such a hallowed opportunity after all. It was cold and exhausting and backbreaking work.

All my life, I've been fond of the phrase, “Work smarter, not harder.”

Most of the time, that saying is taken to mean, “Don't mindlessly plow through difficult tasks. Instead, try to figure out if there is a better and more efficient way to accomplish the work at hand.”

In the case of unloading 4 semitrucks in 4 hours, the phrase means, “Go find a different line of work. This is ridiculous.”

Chapter Ten
Odd Jobs of Manual Labor
c.1984 to c.1990

“You don't build it for yourself. You know what the people want and you build it for them.”

- Walter Elias Disney

I wasn't sure if I should include these jobs. There are two reasons to exclude them.

1. Because I honestly don't recall the exact dates I did these things, and I promised I'd be accurate.

2. The jobs were “under the table” side gigs. They are things I did sporadically and don't even bother to put on resumes. There were no W2 forms. No taxes. No regular paychecks. Just little things to earn a couple bucks here and there.

Should I tell you about these?

In the end, I decided to talk about them. I should at least tell brief tales regarding the roofing and pool cleaning jobs I've done, even as a quick anecdote. After all, they are experiences which shaped my career choices - mainly by exposing me to things I had no desire to ever do as a career! Sometimes, learning what you never want to do is just as important as finding what you love to do.

My first experience with roofing was helping my grandfather to reshingle the roof over the front porch of our house. I recall it being a very easy but very sweaty job. Sweat stinging the eyes, kind of sweating. It was brutally hot. Thank goodness the roof was very low in height, at a very mellow angle, and rather small in size. My grandmother made lemonade for us. Strong stuff. One sip of her lemonade could pucker your butt.

The lesson I learned was never, never, ever install roofing shingles without work gloves. Those shingles have fiberglass in the tarpaper and my fingers were all raw, red and itching for days.

About a year or two later, my uncle had a friend in Parma who needed a new roof put on their ranch home. One story house. Also a mellow angle. No problem. It was kind of fun at first. I love manual labor jobs because it provides a real sense of accomplishment. You're doing something to restore someone's home. Something you can physically see and touch and quantify. Your progress and achievement is a physical thing - a creation that is a measurable object in the world. There is something very rewarding and gratifying about that.

On the downside, it's also a freaking tiring and dirty job too.

After a few hours, you realize it's not so rewarding anymore and you still have four days of this work to do. Ugh.

I don't recall what I got paid but I remember getting less than my uncle and his other friend. Apparently this was because they were “older” which was a crock to me. After all, I was up there doing the same work for just as many hours as they were.

Don't get me wrong. If they were professional roofers, certainly they'd deserve more money than me, because they would be far more knowledgeable and proficient at their work. But they weren't. They were unemployed schleps just like me. Sure, they were 15 to 20 years older than me, but they had no more experience with roofing than I did. Why should they get paid more?

Whatever.

That was my first and last real roofing job.

Over in Brooklyn, Ohio my great aunt Bernie (my grandma's sister) had an inground swimming pool. My family couldn't afford that kind of thing. We never had a pool at all. My aunt married a fella named Ray who ended up with quite a bit of money in their family. Not incredibly wealthy, but certainly well-off enough to have a pool. Being Ohio, if you had an inground pool, it had to be drained every winter. If you didn't drain it, the winter cold would freeze the water and the expanding ice would crack the cement and destroy the pool.

Come each spring, you would have a ton of work to do in readying the pool for summer. Repainting the pool. Refilling the pool. Cleaning out the pool (always ended up with a pond of algae-filled muck in the deep end which typically contained at least one frog). My uncle and I would often go over to my aunt Bernie's house and help do all of this preparation. I loved it, because for 2 or 3 hours of work, my aunt would typically slip me $20 or $30.

Painting the pool was rough. During my gradeschool years, I never acquired a sunburn in my entire life. I never wore sunscreen either. I spent summers swimming in Michigan lakes and playing all day in friends swimming pools. Despite all of that sun and never wearing sunscreen, I never sunburned. Not once. Until the one spring as a teenager when I was repainting my aunts pool and had my back to the sun for an hour or two. Plus, the sun was blinding as it reflected off that super glossy paint on the opposite side of the pool.

The next morning, I couldn't understand why my back was all red.

Another lesson learned - don't let sunlight reflect like a mirror onto your bare back for 2 hours. Duh.

Don't let the wind waft muriatic acid vapors into your nostrils either. Learned that lesson as I walked around the perimeter of the pool and poured a gallon of the stuff into the water. Like in a cartoon, you could actually see the vapors billowing out of the bottle. It was wild. Suddenly the breeze shifted and - BAM! - right into my nose. I couldn't stop sneezing for about 5 minutes and it burned like a son-of-a-gun. Nasty stuff.

The best story to come out of my pool cleaning days?

That would have to be the day my uncle nearly blew his face off.

There was a little brown wooden shed in the back corner of the yard, which stored the pool supplies and the water pump and filter and whatnot. It also contained a natural-gas heater to heat the pool water. This gas heater was obviously turned off all winter and had to be restarted each spring.

Can you see where this story is going?

My uncle turns the heater on and nothing happens.

He goes in the house to make a phonecall. He calls his cousin who used to take care of the pool. His cousin explains how and where to light the pilot light for the heater. Meanwhile, the gas pilot has been left on this whole time he's in the house.

We go back in the shed and the entire shed smells like gas.

“Whoa,” I said. “That's not good. We really ought to air out the shed first.”

I was about 14 years old, but even at that age, I was smart enough to know, you don't go lighting matches in a bathroom-sized wooden shed that reeks of gas.

Although he was 20 years older than me, my uncle wasn't quite as smart.

He was going to light it anyway. I thought he was joking at first.

He wasn't.

“Are you crazy!? I'm not staying in here! You're going to blow up the whole shed!”

I got the heck out of there and fully expected the whole shed to explode like something on The A-Team or Magnum P.I. or something.

My uncle couldn't get the match to light and it needed to be thrust into the heater on a 14 inch stick to reach the pilot fuse. He was crouched down in front of the heater, with his face by the pilot light, so he could see where he had to shove the match. When he finally got it to light, I had come back near the door of the shed just in time to see a burst of flames the size of a beachball blast out of the bottom of the heater and engulf his entire head.

The fireball made a - WHOOSH! - sound just like in the movies!

I gasped and just stood there paralyzed in horror. His back was to me and I was seriously terrified that he would just start screaming and turn around and have no face.

He turned towards me, and looked scared to death, but he still had all of his skin.

“Wowwwww!” That was all I could manage to say.

I was just grateful my uncle didn't turn around looking like Freddie Kruger.

The flames had literally singed his eyebrows off. They were burnt to gray ash and the second he touched them, they crumbled like dead pine needles falling off a tree. The fire did a number on his bangs and charred them to gray too, but other than that, he was unscathed. The scent of gas was now replaced by the slight stench of burnt hair.

Needless to say, he listened to me after that about not lighting a pilot in a shed full of gas.

Another genuinely strange odd job (would that be an “odd, odd job”?) was in December of 1989 when my friend Jerry called his other buddy Walt and myself, and the three of us cleaned out a behemoth warehouse photography studio, located Downtown. I believe it was called “Ian Hutchins” or something like that, but I don't know if that was the name of the former studio or the new studio. If I'm not mistaken, the photographer who had his business in that space was leaving and a new photographer was taking over. Something like that.

Whatever. Not important.

What is important was the massive size of the studio. When I say “massive”, this studio space was literally the size of half a gymnasium. The space was overflowing with 20 years worth of props and trinkets and backgrounds and set pieces. Looked like Harry Potter in the Room Of Requirement, when he's searching for the Lost Diadem. Everything you could imagine was in these two giant rooms, stacked to the wooden rafters, and we were tasked with literally throwing out absolutely everything. Gut each of the rooms. Right down to the hardwood floors.

So we did.

Took us days to do the work. One load at a time, we piled into the freight elevator, and down to the dumpsters in back of the warehouse.

After the second afternoon, we were shocked to discover the “two rooms” were not two rooms at all. There was a fake staircase in the center of the warehouse and it was stacked with so much junk, it made a false wall, up to the top of the 15 foot ceiling.

For more than 20 years, I kept a jar of clear marbles I found in that warehouse. Some fake ice cubes too. That place was amazing.

That's about all I ever did in terms of under-the-table odd jobs. Can't think of anything else relevant.

Well, there was one thing.

Have you ever seen the episode of The Three Stooges where they go to work for the census?

I did that too.

I honestly don't recall how old I was when I did that. I know it was after high school and before finishing my first novel.

My uncle somehow found out about the census job opportunity through a woman he met at church or something like that. She was the neighborhood census coordinator and she was our boss who handed out our assignments.

Anyhow, I never knew this, but working for the census just means you go around harassing people. That sounds awful, but in a nutshell, that's what we were doing.

See, you're supposed to fill out and return your census form paperwork when it arrives in the mail. Lots of folks are paranoid about providing such information. Not sure why people get so paranoid, although it is a historical fact that Nazis used census data to help round up people into concentration camps, so, I guess I can see why some folks might be uneasy about sharing all their demographics.

Anyhow, when you fail to return your census form, the Census Bureau gestapo (like myself) come to your house to try and get you to fill out the paperwork.

Ve haf vays of making you tawk!

Needless to say, people who feel uncomfortable sharing their personal information on a form, become even more paranoid when strangers come knocking at their door, requesting the same thing.

Honestly, I never got anyone to answer their door except one frail little old greyhaired lady. She was very sweet and kind and my boss was shocked I got the old woman to talk. Apparently my boss had been trying for weeks to get the woman to come to the door.

But, I was a young, cute, friendly, teenage boy. My boss was a haggard chainsmoking biker chick with frizzy overly-bleached blonde hair. If you were a little old lady, who would you want to let into your home?

Sweet young man? Scary hooker lady?

The census job only lasted a couple weeks. Knocking on doors resulted in no one ever answering. Calling phone numbers resulted in people hanging up on me.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Mr. Johnson. My name is Eric, I'm calling representing the Census Bureau - ”

(click)

But, at least that little old lady cooperated! I guess I accomplished something.

Everything from roofing construction worker, to census employee, to a glorified trash collector, I've done it all at one time or another.

What did I learn from these experiences?

Well, years later, after I moved to Los Angeles, I ended up in an apartment with a leaky roof. At least my past roofing knowledge meant I wasn't afraid to climb up there and spackle the cracks before a rainstorm!

As I said before, mainly I learned all the types of jobs I never want to do for a living. Especially if they involve fiberglass splinters, inhaling dust inside 100-year-old warehouses, sunburn, or huge gas explosions which can potentially char your face into a barbeque briquette.

Chapter Eleven
COX Cable
February 1990 to February 1992

“The growth of television as a medium of mass communication among people around the earth cannot be halted, nor much longer delayed. And eventually every land will want to share in this international audiovisual exchange of ideas, of pleasurable entertainment and closer neighborliness.”

- Walter Elias Disney

My months of unemployment after high school were pure bliss. Sleeping as long as I wanted everyday. Staying up late watching MTV. No job. No responsibilities. No bills. No rent. Pure paradise!

Let's face it, the previous two chapters were not work. One night at a shipping company and painting a swimming pool once a year for $20 doesn't qualify as “work” by any stretch. In reality, I was doing absolutely nothing.

Thankfully, my grandparents were understanding and supportive. I didn't expect to remain unemployed forever and I know they wouldn't have been supportive if that had been my intention. Nevertheless, they allowed me the time to revel in doing absolutely nothing for a solid half-a-year, and for that I will always be grateful.

Sometime in January of 1990, after being out of school and unemployed for a good 7 months, I finally decided I was ready to stop being a bum and go get a real job.

I was thrilled to walk past the windows and see a “NOW HIRING” sign in the Disney Store at Tower City in Downtown, Cleveland!

Could you imagine?

Working for Disney? Wouldn't that be awesome?

After I handed in my job application and called back in a few days, I was told, “We're filled.”

Fine.

But I'll still get to work at Disney someday! You'll see!

In those days, instead of using the Internet for jobhunting, you still looked for employment using the classified advertisements in your local newspaper.

Read the newspaper. Circle jobs that sounded good. Make a phonecall.

That's exactly what I did. Turns out COX Cable, the cable television company in the suburb of Parma, was looking for telemarketing personnel. Nice offices. Good neighborhood. At the end of an industrial parkway surrounded by woods and trees. Big widows all around the office. Pleasant work environment. Only 6 miles from home.

Awesome!

Telemarketing sounded like a fantastic job! An office job where I sit at a desk using a telephone? No lifting 50 pound bags of popcorn? No carrying newspapers through snow drifts? No getting scalded by deep frier oil? Sounded like the greatest job in the world!

Ah, the innocent naivety of youth. That's gonna come up a lot in this book, whether I call attention to it or not!

As with my previous jobs, getting hired was simple. I saw an advertisement in the newspaper, I called to set up an interview, I went in and spoke to two different managers in a conference room, and got hired. My first day was on 19 February 1990.

Easy.

My friend Mike, whom I have been friends with since the 3rd grade, did the same thing I did after highschool. He didn't go to college and he sat around being a bum for the first several months after graduation.

I told him all about the cable company. Sounded good to him too and he joined me and got a job at COX Cable as well. Not only did I get a job for myself, but I helped a lifelong friend get one too. That was a nice feeling.

My grandfather drove me to work for the first few weeks. After that, on 21 March 1990, I bought my first car - a deep red 1978 Chevy Nova (which I soon spraypainted to look like the Millennium Falcon) - and began driving myself to work.

There was one small problem with the job though. I had never worked a sales position before and it turns out I was a dreadful, awful salesman. I still am. I wasn't really cut out to be calling total strangers on the phone and attempting to sell them cable television subscriptions. Not my proverbial cup of tea.

At the time, I was unaware of the fact that telemarketing jobs in any field tend to have extraordinarily high turnover rates. Everyone hates being a telemarketer. Most people survive only a few weeks before they throw in the towel. Having thousands of people rudely hang up on you starts to take a toll. Plus it was embarrassing, because at the end of every shift, we'd all announce our sales for the night. Everyone in the whole office had to shout out what they did.

“4 sales!”

“2 sales! 3 upgrades!”

“1 sale!”

Those tallies would get written up on a big board for the whole office to see. So, if you sucked at sales like I did, and always had a big fat “zero” to announce, everyone knew it. Day after day. Week after week. Sucking. It was pretty humiliating.

You could actually get paycheck bonuses if you met or exceeded your nightly quota of sales. I think the quota was 2 sales per night. One dude who worked there was from England and he was exclusively assigned to selling at a few huge apartment complexes. He would consistently pull in 4 or 5 sales per night. Sometimes more.

I was lucky if I sold one per week.

Yeah, it wasn't as easy as I had expected it to be. Who knew? Like I said - the innocent naivety of youth.

Despite how short-lived my past jobs were, I actually enjoyed working at COX Cable very much. I always showed up on time. Always did my work. I got along with everyone.

However, as I said, I was an awful salesman.

This put my bosses in an awkward position. (I technically had about three bosses. Some fella with a mustache who ran the place. Forget his name. Another guy named Bob. And an incredibly cute blonde chick named JayAnne as my direct manager.) They couldn't afford to keep me on staff as a salesperson, because I never sold a darn thing, but once every week or two. At the same time, they didn't want to fire me, because with their massive turnover rate, it was impossible to find loyal employees like myself. They were in a pickle - I was too cruddy a salesman to employ but too devoted an employee to fire.

What to do?

Their solution was to put me on their new project - a quality control team. Instead of cold calling strangers, I was tasked with calling brand new, existing customers, to give them a short survey assessing the quality of the installation and our personnel.

Thankfully, our existing customers were very willing to talk to me about that. Out of thousands of calls, I bet only a dozen people refused to participate. Much easier job for me. And quite fun to boot!

Our shift was 4 hours per day, from 5:00pm until 9:00pm. On Saturdays, we worked 9:00am until 1:00pm. As a 19 year old kid, these were fantastic hours to be working. There honestly couldn't have been a better gig. I was home early enough that I could still go out with my friends at night. I started work late enough that I could stay out to all hours and sleep in as long as I wanted. Oh, it was magnificent! Truly one of the best times of my life.

In the end, I actually stayed at COX Cable for 2 years. Quite the formative 2 years they were as well. As I mentioned earlier, I bought my first car (when gasoline was $0.89/gallon). Had my first real girlfriend (I realize 19 is old for that, unfortunately I was a geeky late-bloomer with the ladies). Developed a genuine social life and had more friends than I ever had before or since. Was a fantastic chapter in my life. Being there from the age of 19 to 21 was great. I had tons of freedom since my hours were so short. I could easily plan my social life around work, since I had a set schedule. Best of all, my grandparents were proud of me for having a job! So, even though it was only parttime, they never hassled me about getting something better. Plus I never had to pay rent or buy food or anything. They totally took care of me. I was very lucky to have them and their support is something I never take for granted. Thanks to them, I enjoyed all the freedom of an adult with all the lack-of-responsibility of a child. The ideal combination. Heavenly.

As you know, this book is all about the employment experiences which lead me to Hollywood. Funny thing about working at COX Cable is that my job was still a part of Hollywood. Face it, the movies available on cable television were the biggest reason people purchased cable television in the first place. Movies were our biggest selling point. The longest first jobs of my life - a movie theatre and a cable television company - two opportunities that wouldn't exist if not for Hollywood motion pictures.

Strange, don't you think? Serendipity appears again. Looking back, with that 20/20 hindsight, it's interesting how everything was always aligning to a certain course.

Honestly, doing telephone surveys and telemarketing certainly didn't provide any “job skills” that would prove useful later on. Not unless you count learning what a bad salesman I am.

Nevertheless, despite not being much of an experience to broaden my horizons, there isn't a single negative thing I can say about COX Cable. The offices were nice. The people were cool. The job was easy. The pay was good. The hours were fantastic. I really enjoyed my time there.

The only negative thing was the day I forgot it was President's Day and I woke up from a wonderfully relaxing afternoon nap and drove to work only to find the offices closed. Seriously. I actually did that. I felt like such an idiot. Driving into the main gate wondering, “Why aren't there any cars in the parking lot?”

Never have I forgotten about a work holiday since. So maybe I did learn a valuable lesson there!

Yes, I did enjoy that job a lot. I would have stayed there much longer than 2 years, given the chance.

Unfortunately, I think they had higher hopes for me and that was why I wasn't welcome to stay any longer.

Allow me to clarify.

The circumstances under which I left were rather odd. To this day, I am convinced they were trying to force me to quit. Naturally, I'm rather grateful for this in the long run. But at the time, it wasn't so peachy.

Here is what happened.

Every evening I was phoning our customers, I had a quota of surveys which I was expected to complete. At first, I had to reach about 60 customers per night during my 4-hour shift. I always surpassed this quota quite easily.

After nearly 18 months of having the exact same quota, the management suddenly decided my quota needed to be 80 customers per night.

Okay. No problem. I knew I could still attain that rather simply.

I began to consistently reach a goal of 80 customers per night and did so for about a week.

Then the management decided I had to reach 100 customers per night.

Um. Okay.

What's going on here? Within 2 weeks they had nearly doubled my workload?

No problem. I was up to the challenge again.

Although it was exceptionally difficult, I managed to reach 100 surveys per evening. Once again, I was able to meet their expectations.

However, I was beginning to notice a shift in the attitude of the management. People who were once polite and warm and friendly began to behave differently around me. Conversations became terse. Curt. Folks began to be rather snippy. Some managers started talking to me about being “really smart” and “deserving better” and saying I should “go back to school” or such.

I've never ever understood how anyone expects you to attend college courses while not having a job to pay for them.

At the time, I cluelessly thought they were just being kind and generous. I foolishly didn't realize they were trying to warn me that I was going to be getting the boot.

Next thing I knew, the following week, my quota was increased from 100 surveys per night to 150. In the course of three weeks, they constantly increased their expectations of me until they finally imposed a goal which they knew I would always fail to achieve. Remember, my shift was only 4 hours long. Meaning even if I completed a survey every 2 minutes, I'd still only make 120 per night. Doing 150 per night simply wasn't possible, based upon the mathematics of how much time I was in the office, divided by how long a survey took to complete.

At that point, I finally started to get the hint.

They were forcibly trying to get rid of me.

It made me sad to leave, but I figured, why not?

After all, I always found a job as soon as I wanted one. Might as well quit and just start doing something else.

On 12 February 1992, they gave me 2 weeks notice. I was gone.

Screw that.

I actually wrote a cordial resignation letter and quit the very next day. I thought that was the mature thing to do.

The real maturity I gained was learning that people can quickly turn on you. I was pretty hurt by the fact that after 2 years, the company thought they were doing me a favor by forcing me out of a job.

Honestly, it was the first time in my life that I ever encountered that “you're-too-good-for-this-job” attitude from anyone. Flattering, yes. But not very comforting when you have no desire to be admired, you just want to remain employed! “Admiration” won't keep my car in repair.

My last day was on 13 February 1992 - almost 2 years to the day since I started.

COX Cable was a great experience while it lasted.

Sadly, the end of my time there began my first foray into a rather dark phase of my employment-life. One where it became damn near impossible to find a job.

Perhaps you're familiar with that feeling, my dear reader?

I hope you're not. But if you are, that was when I joined the sad ranks of the “perpetually unemployable” crowd.

Chapter Twelve
United States Air Force
April 1991 to September 1991

“As I see it, a person's culture represents his appraisal of the things that make up his life. And a fellow becomes cultured, I believe, by selecting that which is fine and beautiful in life and throwing aside that which is mediocre or phony. Sort of a series of free, very personal choices, you might say. If this is true, then I think it follows that 'freedom' is the most precious word to culture. Freedom to believe what you choose and read, think and say and be with what you choose. In America, we are guaranteed these freedoms. It is the constitutional privilege of every American to become cultured or to grow up like Donald Duck. I believe that this spiritual and intellectual freedom which we Americans enjoy is our greatest cultural blessing. Therefore, it seems to me, that the first duty of culture is to defend freedom and resist all tyranny.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Allow me to backtrack a little in our timeline.

This events of this chapter (and the next two chapters) all have a little overlap with my tenure at the COX Cable company.

Keep that in mind, so I don't confuse you too much.

Months before I left COX Cable, I was feeling rather disenchanted. I was upset when COX Cable forced me out, but deep inside, I had known they were right for months. I knew I needed to do more with my life than work a part time job forever.

Nearly a year before, I knew my life was not where it should be.

I had to do more.

But what?

I had become a completely lost soul. Unsure of where I was headed in my life. No idea which direction I should be sailing. No clue what sort of future I should pursue.

Gradually, while still working at COX Cable, I hit upon the idea that many young men and women my age would consider.

Join the military!

Sure! That was brilliant! I'd get to travel. I'd get free meals. Free housing. I'd get paid. I'd learn a trade. Best of all, I was still young enough that I was the ideal age they were looking to recruit!

One of my closest friends in high school had joined the Air Force when she graduated. Her life was going great! In the service, she met her husband. Had a baby. Moved to California. Worked on secret missions. Had SR-71 Blackbirds at her homebase. Awesome stuff!

Why not?

This was it! This was my answer. All my problems would be solved! Genius!

That is if “genius” means the idea to sign up and join the United States Air Force was one of the worst ideas I ever had.

Truth is, I'm not the military-type. Not at all. I don't like taking orders from anyone - not in school or in the workplace. Because I presume that most people are mindless dolts of inferior intellect (and they rarely prove me wrong), I have a natural defiance to constantly question authority. I'm very vindictive and passive-aggressive and I do a terrible job of masking my disdain for those I find rude or less intelligent. Heck, I don't tend to mask it at all! I'm kind of a loner and enjoy time by myself. I prefer to make up my own rules and if people don't like the way I play, I leave. I take my ball and go home and don't participate in the game, because the world works as I say. I am in command. I am in control. Always. If someone doesn't like my attitude, I can easily throw those people away and find new kids to play with. In other words, I'm an egotistical jerk who expects the world to revolve around me and hence the core of my personality is the polar opposite of what a good soldier needs to be; a respectful and obedient follower who is a dedicated team-player. That isn't me. Not remotely. Not at all. Never has been.

Have you ever read The Lord Of The Flies? When I read that book in high school, at the very beginning, I remember thinking, “If I were on that island, I'd run away on my own and get away from all of these dumb kids. These children are all morons. This is gonna spell disaster.”

By the time I reached the end of the book, I saw that my course of action would have indeed been the wisest decision of all. I was right about those kids.

This is why military life would never have worked for me.

I've never been a lemming. I can't follow the herd. I have to go it alone.

Nevertheless, I did sign up to join The United States Air Force. My recruiter was a super cool guy named Sergeant Ligas. However, he was not the first recruiter I had spoken to.

My first experience with talking to a recruiter was awful.

It happened on 9 April 1991.

There was a tiny little Armed Forces office, not far from my house, that literally had 4 desks in a single room. There they each sat - Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. All the branches represented.

The recruiter for the Navy was about my age and was the youngest guy in the room by a good ten years. He also sat closest to the front door.

He was the epitome of the “hard sell” salesman. Bet he started selling used cars when he left the service. He was ready to ship me off to Naval Boot Camp the very next day. Dude, are you crazy? All I wanted was to get some brochures! I'm not exaggerating. He was literally offering to ship me off to Basic tomorrow.

The recruiters from the other branches were even rolling their eyes at him a little bit as if to say, “Poor dumb kid. You don't try shoving them on a bus the second they walk in the door!”

At this point, I should note that I knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about the military back then. I barely understood the difference between an “officer” and an “enlisted man” and didn't know much beyond the simple fact that I wanted to be a fighter pilot.

“Officers” go to college.

“Enlisted men” just join up.

Right?

I think.

Maybe?

Heck, I had no idea.

All I did know was that I wanted to fly. Everyone knows the Navy has the best pilots and the Air Force has the next best. Sorry, Airmen, but landing on an aircraft carrier is harder than landing on an airstrip. You gotta give those Navy boys credit.

Anyway, after the smarmy used car salesman from the Navy tried to stick me in a submarine the next day, I decided to check out a different recruitment office.

Thinking about my friend in high school, I decided to travel out to the recruiter who was closest to her house. My reasoning was, maybe if I tread a similar path to the route she took, I'd have better luck.

On 23 April 1991, I went out to North Royalton to see the local Air Force recruiter.

That was where I met Sergeant Robert Ligas. Turns out, he was not the same recruiter that my high school friend had seen, but he was an awesome guy.

Ask anyone who has joined the military and they will tell you horror stories about recruiters. Military recruiters have to meet a quota. They are expected to sign up a certain quantity of people each month. Since most candidates are mere children, naive and fresh out of high school, recruiters will outright lie to these kids to get them to join. Make all sorts of false promises.

My recruiter Sergeant Ligas was not like that. He was totally honest and upfront about everything. A genuinely upstanding guy. He explained himself by saying, “Look, the best recruiters get their people through references. If I lie and cheat to get people to sign up, I'll never get any references and I'll have to constantly work my butt off to find new people. But if I'm honest and respectful, I won't need to do as much work, because all my recruits will refer people for me.”

Smart man.

In that regard, military recruiters really were like used car salesmen. The crappy ones are desperate and will swindle every poor dipstick who walks in the door. The great salesmen will be upstanding, so they can get good references.

Sergeant Ligas was a young fella. Maybe 10 years older than me. He was honest in telling me I shouldn't get my hopes up about being a pilot. He explained that only officers become pilots, which means I needed college.

Damnit.

He also explained that the previous year, only 2 new pilots were hired by the Air Force. Two! In the entire Air Force! He explained that because the pay is amazing and there were no wartime conflicts, there was simply no need for new pilots. In other words, no one was getting killed in combat because there were no wars, and no one was retiring. So, no new pilots were required.

My chances of flying were basically zero.

But at least he was honest. Sergeant Ligas was different. He never pressured me or rushed me. He took the time to answer all my questions. He was great.

I decided I wanted to take my time and wait a few months - until the fall - but I definitely wanted to give military life a shot.

Ouch. That may have been a poor choice of words.

Anyway, Sergeant Ligas told me that the basic training was incredibly easy in the Air Force compared to the other branches. Only a two mile run, I believe he said. Now, he may have been lying about that, but I was never a good runner. So I decided to start my own “training” before I got to boot camp. By getting myself in better shape, obviously boot would be a lot easier.

Having never been interested in the military previously and consequently ignoring the ROTC booths in highschool and whatnot, I had no idea what to expect.

Turns out, before you “officially” join any branch of the military, you had to spend an entire day taking a test called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). This test consists of everything from reading and arithmetic skills to standard physical exams, plus tests of hearing and eyesight. ASVAB scores combined with your Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT) and the AFQT score determines whether you're qualified to enlist in the military. Scores also determine your chances of getting the job and signing bonus you want.

In other words, these tests are how the military determines who has a brain and who is a mindless grunt. Doing well on the ASVAB is important if you don't want to be scrubbing toilets all day.

Great.

I skipped the SAT and now I get stuck having to take the military equivalent of the exact same test.

I should also note that the Air Force has the highest ASVAB score requirements of all four branches of the military. In other words, yes, we Airmen truly are the smartest branch of the Armed Services. Sorry, all you Army grunts. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting!

In fact, I recall sitting in a makeshift classroom taking my test and breezing through it while I saw all the jugheads around me sweating bullets. Kind of like summer school all over again. Poor guys. Into the cannon fodder line for you! I'll be fixing jet engines.

You take this test at your nearest Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS), which, in my case, was a hotel in Downtown, Cleveland.

Since I had to be there at some ungodly early hour like 5:00am or something on 29 April 1991, I elected to spend the night in the hotel. Typically, only people who live an hour or more away stay in the hotel. I could have stayed at home, but then I would need to get up even earlier and drive the 20 minutes into Downtown. Heck with that. Give me the free hotel and breakfast, thank you!

Considering it was only a single evening and day, I have a lot of stories from that experience.

One of the funniest was seeing Sinbad on the elevator. For those who don't know, he was a celebrity who was pretty famous during that time for his stand-up comedy. Being in Cleveland, a celebrity-sighting was a rare thing. To this day, I'm still not sure it was him. But it was hilarious to see the reactions of the remaining half-a-dozen people on the elevator as we all shot glances at each other and said, “Was that Sinbad?”

“I don't know! Sure looked like him.”

“Totally looked like Sinbad.”

“Couldn't be Sinbad. What would he be doing here?”

I meant to check and see if he had a show in Cleveland around that time, but I always forgot.

One thing I wished I could forget was my bunkmate.

He was a tall, scrawny, unshaven and gangly dude. Not a handsome guy by any means.

Well, he tried to strike up a conversation and asked if I had noticed one of the girls who was also signing up for the ASVAB. I had noticed her. She was a frumpy blonde who looked like a total white trash chick.

Apparently, my bunkmate had the hots for her.

I'll never forget his grotesque, cringe-inducing statement when he said, “Yeah, I'd dip in it.”

Ugh.

That was a visual I did not need in my head.

“Dip” in it?

These were two very unattractive human beings. The thought of either one of them having intercourse was a bit revolting. The thought of them copulating with each other was like being psychologically violated by Cthulhu.

Just when I was feeling better, I wandered the halls later only to see the two of them with their arms around each other in the hotel pool.

I nearly puked.

All I kept thinking was, “Dude, if you try to bring that girl back to our room, I will kill you!”

If I was laying in bed and heard those two “dipping in it” in the bed next to me, I would get up and vomit on them.

Thankfully, he didn't.

Bet they are still together today, have 7 kids, and are still in Ohio, living in a trailerpark.

Anyhow, the next morning, we took the tests. The ASVAB tests were typical written tests covering basic intelligence - reading comprehension, mathematics, and so forth. The AFQT tests were all physical tests and were honestly kind of fun.

Among the AFQT tests we had to do was a vision test.

Thankfully, I didn't have to put my own eyes out after seeing that couple together in the pool.

The most difficult vision test for me was the Ishihara test which tests for colorblindness. Apparently I'm among the 5% of the male population with a slight case of deuteranomaly, which is a weakness in red-green perception. I say “apparently” because at other times in life, I have taken the same test and done better on it. So, who knows? Many people misunderstand colorblindness and they think it means you can't tell the difference between colors. That is not true. Deuteranomaly doesn't mean a person can't distinguish green from red. It means certain, very specific, shades of green (typically very light/pastel shades) take on a slightly reddish tint. The irony of this is that over the years, I've become an exceptionally good color-correcter in photography. I'm actually excellent at distinguishing colors and reading the temperature of light, thanks to my years with Photoshop and cinematography and graphic design experience. That's because 99.9% of the time, I never have encountered a situation where the deuteranomaly makes any difference. Nevertheless, doing bad on the Ishihara test is an instant disqualification for any sort of piloting work.

So, they aren't hiring pilots.

I need college to be a pilot.

And my vision is not adequate for piloting.

Huge disappointment there.

My hearing on the otherhand?

Apparently my hearing is rather superhuman.

For the hearing tests, they sat us down in a soundproof room with headphones on.

Anytime we could hear a sound-tone in the headphones, we had to hit a buzzer.

Well, apparently I was able to easily distinguish some abnormally high and low frequencies. I actually had them stop me in the middle of the test to ask if I was truly hearing things and pushing the button or was I some charlatan who was making lucky guesses.

I assured them of my honesty and the Navy recruiters started staring at me like a 12 year old boy stares at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

Why was I suddenly a commodity for the Navy?

One word - sonar.

Suddenly, the Navy desperately wanted me as a sonar operator. Whether on submarines, or aircraft carriers, or battleships, the Navy still needed a pair of ears listening for the enemy.

No thanks.

Didn't want to be Navy.

Didn't want to be stuck in a tincan hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean. Nope. I'm Air Force all the way, baby. Sorry, sailors.

While they had great faith in my hearing, one thing every branch of the military seemed to doubt about me was my drug use - or lack thereof.

At that time in my life, I was growing my hair out. After a long 12 years of oppressive Roman Catholic school dresscodes, I wanted to experiment and see how I'd look with some flowing locks.

“How I looked” was like a total stoner kid.

I hadn't cut my hair for 2 years at that point. It reached about to the middle of my back.

Now, truth be told, although I may have looked like I was totally a stereotypical burnout, I've never been interested in doing any illicit substances. Never in my whole entire life have I tried any drugs whatsoever. Never one single hit off a joint. Never one single puff on a cigarette. Never been drunk. Never had a beer. Nothing. Drugs and alcohol in any form have never appealed to me. Don't want anything to do with them. Just not my style.

Now, I have tasted alcohol. I mean, after all, I was raised Catholic by the WWII generation. That means I had sips of wine at church on Sundays and as a little boy my grandparents would give me a shot of Jack Daniels when I had the flu. I had champagne at my uncles wedding when I was about 8 years old.

But that's about the extent of my drinking.

I just want nothing to do with that stuff.

Many people find it hard to imagine a young dude with hair halfway down his back isn't blazing the hippie lettuce. People in the military find it unfathomable.

I was asked, “Have you ever done drugs?”, more times than I can count. Multiple times, throughout the course of the day, I must have literally had the same conversation six times.

“You've never done drugs?”

“No, sir.”

“No? Not once?”

“Nope.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, sir. I'm sure.”

“Never tried just one joint? Just one little hit?”

“No. Never.”

“You sure?”

“Yes! I'm sure I've never done any drugs!”

They just couldn't see me beyond a stereotype.

Looking like I did, and still being a totally sober clean-living hardcore straightedge, was incomprehensible to them.

As the long day was winding down, I was just starting to look forward to leaving so I wouldn't have to answer that line of questioning again.

“No. I. Never. Tried. Drugs.”

Right at the end of the day, I had a moment when I thought everything was going my way, when I heard “Dreams” by Van Halen on the radio.

You see, the music video for that song featured the Blue Angels soaring among heaven and earth. I know. I know. I realize the Blue Angels are Navy and Thunderbirds are the Air Force, but that's not the point. The point is, I concocted this superstitious notion that since I loved that video and it featured the world's greatest military aviators, the next time I heard the song or saw the video would be a “sign” signifying the wisdom of my decision to join the Air Force.

Like, if I heard it on the way to a funeral - bad.

If I heard it on the radio while losing my virginity - good.

Funny thing is, I was actually in the Navy office when I heard the song.

Turns out, some Naval officer had heard about my hearing test scores and pulled me aside and was again attempting to recruit me into the Navy. Still trying to make me a sonar operator. Since I was totally naive and clueless about the procedures of ASVAB and I was being told where to go and what to do all day long, I naturally didn't question the Naval officer who asked me to come to his office.

Well, within a minute or two, one of the Air Force officers burst in and was pretty livid at the Navy guy for trying to steal an airman.

I found it all highly amusing.

Never knew I had such superhero hearing abilities!

When the Air Force officer asked why I had gone into the Naval office, I shrugged and innocently explained I was just doing what I was told.

The Air Force officer looked even more angry, knowing the Naval officer was just taking advantage of my naivete.

Anyway, my point is, I heard “Dreams” by Van Halen while at the MEPS and became thrilled that this was a sign that I was on the correct path!

Total load of bologna, since it was just a self-fulfilling prophecy. But, at the time, it made me happy.

In the end, my day of testing went great and I officially took the oath and was sworn-in as a delayed-enlistment airman in the United States Air Force.

Having been a Drill Sergeant in the Army during World War II, my grandfather was quite proud and excited when I told him my intentions of joining the military. Honestly, that's one of the reasons I am the happiest I made the decision - just to see him light up and hear his own stories about Army life. Like most men of his generation, my grandpa didn't really talk about the war. Not at all. Not ever. But he prattled on like a schoolboy regaling his first fishing trip when I came home and announced my plans.

That was the best part of the whole experience, honestly. Hearing those tales from my grandfather about his experiences in the war. Some funny. Some disturbing. All compelling. I just loved hearing about his life when he was my age. After all, I knew him as a grandpa. Being his first grandchild, I am the one who made him a grandpa. Thus, I knew all of those stories. To me, it was exciting to hear stories about the times when he was a soldier, or a son, or a brand new father. Those were the stories I didn't know.

My grandfather had a Purple Heart. He never told me that story. The story of how he got it was something I don't think he ever told anyone. Another common trait of his generation. Those stories were only told to fellow vets behind the walls of the Joseph J. Jacubic American Legion Post 572. Like good old Forrest Gump, he was “shot in the but-tocks”. Now, like everyone would, I want to see my grandfather as noble and brave and heroic. But if I'm brutally honest with myself, let's face it, you don't tend to get shot in the backside unless you're fleeing a situation. The macho side of me hates to think my grandfather may have been running away from a fight. Although, let's face it, if the man had been killed in the war, he wouldn't have fathered my mother, and I wouldn't have been born. So, I can't complain even if he was retreating! Besides, he had an honorable discharge, so if he was retreating, I'm sure it was under orders. Yet, knowing what a punk little troublemaking bully he was as a strapping youth, I doubt he was fleeing anything. He was so badass, he was probably just running into the skirmish backwards. Therefore, I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was saving the lives of Bubba and Lieutenant Dan. Whatever the story, it died with him.

After he passed away, I made sure I got his dogtags.

That was all I wanted.

No clothes. No tools. No furniture.

Just his WWII dogtags.

It really made me happy to see my grandfather so proud and excited for me. In all my life, I never saw him react that way to anything. Then again, he was very proud of his military service, as he should be. His two sons never became soldiers, so I think he was elated with the idea that his first grandson would follow in his footsteps.

Unfortunately, I had to disappoint him.

As the weeks dragged on toward my deployment date, I began to question the Air Force decision more and more. I long considered myself a pacifist and I also had a lot of friends who felt the same. The more I talked to some of them, the more they got me questioning myself.

What was I thinking?

Well, that is the problem right there. I had stopped thinking. I just came up with an answer and I was too tired to question it anymore.

When I first got out of high school, you know what I wanted to do with my life?

I wanted to be an English teacher.

Seeing the film Dead Poets Society - for those who don't know, it was a movie about an inspirational teacher - had a profound influence on me. (Incidentally, the studio which made Dead Poets Society was Touchstone Pictures and Touchstone was owned by Disney.)

There was a night when I recall sitting in the car with a girl-I-was-almost-dating named Tanya and she was telling me how I shouldn't join the Air Force and I should pursue my teaching dream instead.

She was right.

Pursuing a military career was never a dream of mine. Sure, as a child, one of my hopes and ambitions was to become a pilot and an astronaut. But, let's face it, even Sergeant Ligas admitted that wasn't very likely. If joining the Air Force wouldn't head me down the path to be an astronaut, why was I doing it?

Fear.

Plain and simple, I was doing it out of fear. I was so scared I'd never amount to anything. I was so afraid I'd never land a job. I was so fearful of being a great big nobody. That was why I joined the Air Force. I thought it would give my life some direction. That was the only reason I was resorting to joining the Armed Forces.

Not patriotic pride.

Not a sense of duty or obligation.

Fear. Nothing more.

That was my only motive.

That's not me.

I'm not that person. I can't live making the most important choices of my life based upon fear. That won't put me on the path of my destiny. If I have a destiny at all.

No. The military is not where I belonged.

Remember when I said Sergeant Ligas was a very honest man? Well, as it turns out, you can quit the military at just about anytime. Most recruiters lie and tell you there is no way to leave and you're legally obligated to stay and you can be arrested and so on and so forth.

Sergeant Ligas explained that during times of war, or when there is a military draft, the rules change. In those instances, no, you can not just up and leave your service. However, during peacetime, he admitted, “You can step off the bus when you arrive at boot camp and turn around and go right back home. They'll try to scare you and intimidate you into staying, but the military has no legal authority to keep you. At war, you can be arrested for deserting. So long as it's peacetime, you can up and quit anytime you want. They have no right to stop you. You can walk away and head back home, so long as we're not at war.”

Because of his previous honesty, I knew getting out would be easy. I just knew it was going to be hard to disappoint him.

I was right. It was really difficult. Like I said earlier, every military recruiter has a quota. Turns out that on the day I walked in his office to hand him my resignation letter, he had literally lost something like 4 or 5 other candidates that week. I had met some of the other gentlemen at an orientation meeting, so I knew all of them. Sergeant Ligas looked really bummed out and he told me about the others. Looks like he went from exceeding his quota to missing it, all within a few days.

I felt really bad.

But he was super cool and understanding.

On 17 September 1991, I officially left the United States Air Force, having never gone to boot camp.

Like I said, he was a great guy, so Sergeant Ligas was very gracious about it. “You have to do what you think is best with your life. Military life is a huge commitment. If you feel it's not right for you, then you shouldn't do it.”

Again, from the stories I've heard over the years, I think Sergeant Ligas may be the only recruiter in the history of the military to say such a thing.

Months after I had dropped out of the Air Force, Sergeant Ligas actually called to wish me a happy birthday.

He didn't try to sell me on the Air Force again. He wasn't trying to see if I had changed my mind. He really just wanted to wish me a happy birthday. Nothing more. How incredible is that?

Like I said, he was a good cat. Upstanding fella.

Everyone was right about me, even Sergeant Ligas - military life wasn't where I belonged.

Heck, even my grandfather honestly didn't seem too disappointed or surprised. Clearly, I was feeling pretty lost and had no clue what kind of decisions I was making.

By the way, remember that friend I mentioned? The one from high school who had joined the Air Force? Military life didn't turn out so great for her after all. In fact, her family story turned into a colossal tragedy full of divorce and child molestation and suicide and prison sentences. No lie. Not exactly the idyllic journey it appeared to be at the beginning. More like an abyssmal nightmare. I'm not blaming the Air Force for her tragic fate. I'm simply pointing out that the grass is not always greener. Sometimes that lush lawn we envy is already dead and brown, and someone just spraypainted it green, so it looks good from the distance.

Life can do that sometimes. Next thing you know, your “romantic comedy” turns into a veritable “horror film” and no one told you the script was changing!

Remember what I said at the start of this book?

Do not try to follow my path.

Look at the path my friend took. It was awful. I never should have tried to follow hers. I needed to find my own.

The Air Force was not the path I belonged upon.

I was still at COX Cable, but I didn't belong there either.

What else should I do?

I was such a tortured soul.

What was I doing with my life?

How could I hope to find my way?

Was college truly the answer after all? Should I pursue an English degree like I said I was going to in my Air Force resignation? Why not? What else could I do?

Chapter Thirteen
Cuyahoga Community College
April 1991 to August 1992

“The age we're living in is the most extraordinary the world has ever seen. There are whole new concepts of things, and we now have the tools to change these concepts into realities. We're moving forward. In terms of my work, I believe people want to know about this universe that keeps unfolding before them. But let's be clear about one thing - I'm not trying to teach anything to anybody. I want to entertain the public.”

- Walter Elias Disney

To say I never earned a college degree is true, but that's not to say I never attended college at all.

During my years working at COX Cable, and enlisting with the Air Force, and trying to find my way in life, I took a few courses.

In fact, over the span of nearly 18 months, I took exactly three and three-twentieths of classes at Cuyahoga Community College in Parma, Ohio and Downtown Cleveland.

Cuyahoga Community College (CCC) is also known as “Tri-C” or as my friends and I called it, “Tri High” because, like any community college, it was just an extension of high school for us slackers who couldn't get into real colleges for lack of money or grades.

“Three-twentieths of classes?”, you ask.

Yeah. Three courses where I only attended about a twentieth of the classes before dropping out.

You see, the first course I ever took at CCC began on 4 April 1991 and was a General Aviation course to get a private pilots license. I completed that class and aced the class itself, but never did go through with things and get a license. Turns out I couldn't afford the cost of actual flying lessons... or fuel surcharges... or airplane rentals.

Years later, I would become a United States Hang Gliding Association (USHGA) certified hang glider pilot instead. But that's another story.

Another class was a year later, on 6 April 1992, when I signed up and attended a Photography class, but I didn't know you needed your own camera and had to pay for film and paper and stuff. I didn't have a camera and couldn't afford the other expenses, so I dropped the class after half of one lesson. That too was at the Parma campus.

At the Downtown campus, I vaguely recall I maybe attended one Fencing class. Don't recall the exact dates, but I know I dropped out of that too, when I discovered I couldn't afford the associated expenses of foils and whatnot.

You starting to see a trend here? Yeah, I was dirt-poor and continually discovered that anything and everything I was interested in learning required additional expenses I simply couldn't afford. Too bad or I could have become a professional photography pilot fencing master!

I also took two or three American Sign Language classes, but dropped out of that on 15 January 1992. Don't recall anything about sign language except knowing it's based on French grammatical structure. Well, I also vividly remember seeing a girl in my class with her jaw wired shut in this amazing-yet-horrific contraption strapped to her head looking like a medieval torture device. Poor girl couldn't brush her teeth, obviously, and this unfortunately meant she also had the absolute worst breath I've ever smelled in my life, God bless her. (I know I said I was done with the “God bless” joke, but seriously, her breath was more rank than jalapeno farts.)

And who got paired-up with her to practice signing?

That's right, kids. Yours truly. I was her partner.

Ugh. My eyes were burning her breath was so nasty.

I felt sorry for her. It wasn't her fault.

But it was still hideous to stand across from someone who smelled like she ate toddler-corpse cereal for breakfast. She could strip paint with that breath, I swear.

There you have it. Those were most of my college courses.

One Private Piloting course, which I totally aced.

One half of a Photography lesson in 1991.

One night of a fencing class circa 1991.

One or two nights at Sign Language in 1992.

Most of that was before the Air Force.

As I indicated in the previous chapter, within my resignation letter to Sergeant Ligas, I told him I was leaving the Air Force in order to attend college and pursue my dream of being an English teacher.

What I didn't know at the time I wrote the letter was how long it would take to get an English degree.

Since I had never taken the SAT test, and I was dirt poor, and I had an GPA lower than a snake scrotum (do snakes even have - ? - oh, nevermind), I would never be able to attend a real college. I'd have to take a class or two, here and there, when I could afford it, at Tri High, because it was truly my only option.

After meeting with a guidance counselor at Cuyahoga Community College on 30 September 1991 and telling her my plans, she told me it would take about 11 years to get my degree.

ELEVEN YEARS!?

Foolishly, I had never bothered to do the math, but she laid it out very simply for me - I required X number of classes to earn a degree and with only one class per semester, it would take at least Y number of years to complete all the courses.

Oh.

Great.

Now what?

Needless to say, I became incredibly disheartened at that meeting.

I had just quit the Air Force a few days prior.

I wanted to become a teacher, but if that goal was 11 years away, what was the point of trying it? Eleven years? Heck, it only took them 8 years to reach the freaking moon!

I decided I should go for it anyway.

What else was I going to do?

Remember I said I finished three classes?

One was the aviation course. The other two classes I finished were English courses taught by the late Mr. Sheridan. Well, he was “Dr. Sheridan” actually. As much as I respect him and credit him with much of the success of my future, I still have a difficult time calling someone a “doctor” when they have a degree in anything but medicine. Sorry, but a PhD in English doesn't really qualify someone to be addressed as a “doctor”.

Anyway, after testing into and acing his Honors English class (take that Miss Conti!) which began on 16 September 1991, he invited me to participate in a self-study course over the next summer. Invent my own curriculum. Pretty cool! I decided to write a novel, which is a story to be told at a later time.

I think part of the reason Mr. Sheridan liked me was because I hated Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck and he had us do a book report on it. Or maybe it was Ordinary People by Judith Guest. I don't recall. One of those awful books. Anyway, whatever drivel we read, he loved the book and was shocked that I ripped it apart and was articulate about it to boot.

There you have the remaining classes of my college experience.

One Honors English course in September 1991, which I aced.

One self-study English course starting 23 May 1992, which began my first novel.

That's all the college I needed.

Actually, maybe I could have used that English degree.

My apologies. Did you follow any of that?

I'm sorry. Organizing the timeframe of this chapter is confusing to me and I'm the one who lived it! I feel like I did a really awful job of explaining things.

Wait!

I totally forgot about another class!

I took a Film Appreciation course which showed science fiction and fantasy films! Honestly, the only reason I took the class was to see free movies on the big screen!

Man, I completely forgot about that class.

The teacher was awful. She was some lady who worked at a local television station and she literally hadn't seen about 80% of the films we watched. Before a majority of the films, she would ask the class what the movie was about, then pretend to be really excited about seeing it.

After the film, she would give us a ten point quiz, which she wrote while watching the film with the class!

How can you teach film appreciation when you've never seen the movies being studied!?

What a joke. Like I said, she was an awful teacher.

She had us write some big essay at the end of the course. I never wrote mine. Why should I? I was only there to catch some free movies. I didn't care about the class. Especially when it was being taught by some incompetent teacher who got her job only because she worked at a television channel. How could this woman possibly have any authority to grade my essay when she wasn't even familiar with the films she was judging me upon!?

Sorry, lady. You're a waste of my time. Just like college itself.

She told me I'd fail the class without the essay.

I just smiled and said, “Yes, I know.”

She looked very confused and said, “Um. Okay. As long as you're aware of that.”

Give me a break.

Who cares?

Failing a film appreciation class at community college is about as detrimental to your future as failing a fingerpainting class in preschool.

Seeing the movies sure was fun though!

And I did learn something in that class which has always stuck with me - villains in almost every movie always fall to their death. This is supposedly a throwback to various primitive Messianic religions and their collective mythology of Hell. The belief that “bad people are punished” and “Hell exists down below” means villains always die falling into a metaphorical Hell. Ever since I learned that, I saw it was true. In about 90% of movies, villains always plummet to death from a great towering height. Watch for it. You'll see it's true.

Sorry.

Now you'll notice that in movies for the rest of your life too.

Don't blame me.

Blame that awful teacher from the television station.

Chapter Fourteen
Brooklyn Memorial Youth Center
March 1992 to July 1992

“The way to keep children out of trouble is to keep them interested in things. Lecturing to children is no answer to delinquency. Preaching won't keep kids out of trouble. But keeping their minds occupied will.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Like I said earlier, after leaving the cable company, I entered my first real “dark period” of unemployment.

For the first time in my life, I was out of school and without a job.

I mean, sure, I didn't work for several months after graduating high school, but this was different. I wanted to be unemployed then. After leaving COX Cable, I was unemployed, even though I really didn't want to be.

Losing my job at COX Cable was awful.

Sure, things worked out in the end. I mean, I ended up working at Disney! So, I really can't complain about the course my careerpath took. Nevertheless, it was rough after leaving the cable company.

As I said, they were forcing me to quit anyway, so I didn't have much choice and that sucked. However, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, once I became unemployed with no college degree.

Remember how I said being instantly hired into every job of my life was actually more of a curse than a blessing?

You don't remember that?

Oh. Wait. I guess I never quite said that. But that is what I was trying to imply! It's what I was thinking. Tell you what, let me say it now...

Being instantly hired into every job of my life was actually more of a curse than a blessing.

After I left COX Cable, at that point in my life, I had only worked three jobs (four if you count the paper route) and I literally just walked in, filled out an application, and was hired on the spot every single time. Consequently, I was misguided into thinking my life would always be that simple. Finding a job was the easiest thing in the world for me! I had no reason to think that would change. It would remain easy forever. I would never be unemployed! I would spend my whole life just going out and getting every job I ever desired.

Right?

That is what life had been like for me. Why should that change? I'd done it three times in a row! I could walk in a place and get any job I wanted. Easy. Simple. Like some old movie with a HELP WANTED sign in the window - I'd just pluck up that sign, hand it to the fella behind the counter and announce, “I'm your man!”

Yeah. Sure.

If only it was that easy.

I was in for a bit of a shock after leaving the cable company.

Three years out of high school, with no college education, and suddenly the entire job market had shifted. I was no longer the cute and ambitious young teenager that everyone would hire. I wasn't the struggling college student either. Now, I was just a dumb, long-haired loser with a high school diploma. Naturally, I never saw myself that way. At the time, I had no idea the world saw me that way.

Once I was unemployed again, I applied at places like...

Parmatown Waldenbooks on 14 February 1992.

Multiple applications at Randall Park Mall on 16 February 1992.

Internship requests on 10 March 1992.

Westgate Waldenbooks on 17 March 1992.

Tower City Waldenbooks on 20 March 1992.

It's Comedy Comedy Club on 28 April 1992.

Two restaurants along the Cuyahoga River on 6 May 1992, Headliners and Baja something or other.

Sunglass Hut at Parmatown Mall on 3 June 1992.

Believe me, there were dozens more places too.

Places I went in person and searched for in the newspapers too. The ones I just listed are merely the ones I wrote in my calendars.

None of them ever called me. Not one.

The one that bothered me the most was being ignored by the internships. No response on internship applications!? Seriously? The fact that no one even wanted to let me work for free was really depressing.

As I said earlier - lost soul. When one is a lost soul, I thought perhaps the solution can be found in striving to be a light for others?

While looking to find work, I kept hearing advertisements on the radio, talking about volunteer tutoring jobs.

Seeing as I used to dream of being a writer, I reasoned that it might be a good idea to take some time and help people learn to read. After all, what if I did become an author someday? What good were my dreams of writing to those who were too uneducated to understand them? Helping people to read seemed a noble cause for all aspiring writers. What do I have to lose?

The more I thought about it, the more it felt like the right thing to do. I knew there was no pay involved, but maybe Fate and the universe would help turn my life around, if I tried to do something generous for those in need. Maybe I'd find a job for good money if I gained some teaching skills through volunteer work.

I called the number and for the next several weeks, starting on 31 March 1992, found myself at the Brooklyn Memorial Community Youth Center on Pearl Road, just north of Denison.

This was a wonderful experience in my life. Why spend 11 years in college to become an English teacher when I could become an English tutor instantly?

Plus, being a young dude with long hair was actually a benefit for this job. I was seen as a cool peer, not some pothead degenerate.

The kids at the youth center were all “high-risk youth”, in there for some rough things. “High-risk” meaning “these kids are going to end up in jail within the next year or two if they stay on this path”. Kids under my tutelage were in there for things like car theft, carrying concealed weapons, even blowing up a house. Don't ask me how they blew up a house. I never asked. Didn't want to know.

Apparently, one of the girls in the program, a very cute blonde girl, was telling some gang kids she was dating me. Considering that I never tutored the girl, or even spoke to her outside of the youth center, that was a bit unsettling. Apparently she was trying to make a boyfriend jealous. Great. Just what I needed. Jealous teenage gangbanger thugs wanting to beat me up over a girl I barely even said hello to? Well, like I said - troubled kids. Comes with the territory.

Thankfully, nothing whatsoever ever came of it.

The nicest thing about the program was the freedom I was given. The director of the program, Holly Darus, really cared about these kids and wanted to reach them, so she allowed us to invent our own curriculum, with her approval of course. Anything we thought would work. From 4:00pm to 7:00pm, I was there Monday to Wednesday.

I was trying to teach the value of language and poetry, but I knew these kids wouldn't give a damn about Shakespeare.

Instead, I used rock lyrics.

I would write down lyrics and go over the words with the kids as poetry.

Then, I'd play the song in order to show them how music and presentation would change the tone of the words and the meaning could fluctuate.

I believe the song Summertime Rolls by Jane's Addiction was my first attempt at doing this. It was certainly the most vivid. The kid I was teaching was an AC/DC and Rolling Stones kind of guy. I knew he'd never heard the genius which is Jane's Addiction. The song tripped him out.

Another way I tried to reach my students was by getting them to read things they were into. One boy told me he wanted to go to vocational school and learn to be a welder.

Obviously, by this point in this book, I'm sure you know that isn't a profession I ever considered and it's something I know nothing about. Consequently, I couldn't give him much insight into it.

Having hated school so much, I knew how to be an effective teacher. The approach was quite simple, really.

Remember what I said in the chapter about high school - The mere desire to become educated is the greatest motivation to learn.

Thus, I encouraged my student to go to the library and get a book on welding and we'd use that to practice reading. He really got excited by that idea. For me, it was so gratifying to see him light up the way he did. He actually became enthused about reading. Suddenly this tutoring thing would be directly helping him to attain a dream. A dream that would be far more difficult without the tutoring. He now had a positive motivation to continue showing up at the Youth Center instead of just showing up out of some fearful requirement to avoid juvenile detention. Encouraging the kids by getting them to learn skills for things they valued was far more effective than forcing a curriculum down their throats.

Sadly, one of the other tutors really was trying to teach the kids Shakespeare. Needless to say, the kids responded to me much better.

I defended my fellow tutor and told the kids how beautiful and magnificent Shakespeare was. But I also noted that kids who blow up houses and bring guns to school are not going to relate to A Midsummer Night's Dream at all. They live a very different life. They needed to ease into Shakespeare. Best to start with welding textbooks instead.

Another kid in the program was a pathological liar.

Getting through to him was a lot more difficult.

When he showed his apathy and asked why lying was bad, what difference did it make, I had a hard time answering.

I tried to explain that he should look at the extremes.

I tried to explain that trust and honesty were essential in order for society to function. What if the people who constructed the building we were standing in had lied about everything? No one would get the right blueprints. No one would get enough construction materials. The measurements would all be incorrect so none of the doors or windows would fit.

I don't know if it worked.

I always felt I had given a poor example and I could have done better.

He seemed to just phase me out. I hoped I got a point across.

Not so sure I succeeded.

Not so sure when or why I stopped tutoring either. If I'm not mistaken, I kept it up until the end of the school year, then I just never went back to it.

Blind leading the blind.

Lost leading the lost.

Who was I to give advice to these kids?

I couldn't find a job myself. I had no business giving life and career advice to anyone. What did I know about anything?

They say karma only works if done out of true altruism. You can't help people simply because you hope you'll get something in return for your efforts. You must do it with a purity of heart.

That's what they say anyway.

Karma only works with true altruism?

I'm not so sure I believe in karma.

I'm not so sure I believe true altruism is possible either. After all, what is the definition of altruism? Does it mean you must do good for others and the thought of good things happening to you in return is not allowed to ever enter your mind? Simply considering the possibility of being rewarded negates your eligibility for the reward? Well, how is that even possible? Anyone with half a brain sits there and ponders all the possibilities in life. We question and wonder what Fate lies in store for us. Everyone does that.

Or is true altruism a question of motive instead of thought?

You can think about the fact that good things might come of your actions, but if your motive is to have good things happen, they won't?

Heck, I have no idea.

Like I said, I wasn't so sure I believed anyway.

All I knew was, doing good for those kids didn't really bring me any job opportunities. Maybe I was being too selfish. I didn't know what to believe anymore. Would this ever end?

My faith in most things was fading fast.

No one would hire me into a paying job.

Working a free job didn't get me any closer to gainful employment.

What else could I try?

I was going nowhere.

Everything I tried seemed to be pointless.

Chapter Fifteen
Our Lady of Good Counsel
25 May 1992 to 30 June 1992

“Educational films will never replace the teacher. The three R's are basic (reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic), but their advancement by means of the motion picture screen will give more people in this world an opportunity to learn. Pictures can make both teaching and learning a pleasure. And educators agree that when a student has begun to learn and like it, half their problem is solved.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Where do the downtrodden go to find faith?

Four months after quitting the cable company, I was still struggling to find work.

During their youth, my grandfather, and even my two uncles, had spent some time working as janitors at our church - Our Lady of Good Counsel. Yes, that's right. My old gradeschool.

Since the pastor of Our Lady of Good Counsel (OLGC - irreverently, but affectionately, also known as the “Old Ladies Gambling Casino”) was, at that time, a childhood friend of my uncle, and therefore a lifelong friend of the family, it was pretty easy for my grandfather to make a phonecall to Father Rick and get me a job there too.

In the summer of 1992, I became the Freddie Kruger of my gradeschool. A glorified janitor. I started part time for $36 a week. That was so humiliating I might as well have remained unemployed.

My first day was horrible.

We had a furnace at the school and they actually burned garbage in the furnace. Full plastic trashbags, just get tossed in there. By this point in my life, I had been in the foul stench of horse stables being cleaned on a hot summer day with the odor of urine and horsecrap baking in the sun. Even that horrific and stomach-churning nastiness of horsebutt ammonia didn't compare to the smell of burning garbage in an ancient steel furnace. It smelled like nothing I had ever smelled before. The toxicity of the crap I was inhaling would probably kill me within the week. Plastics. Metals. Styrofoam. Cloth. Old random objects with undoubtedly toxic paint on them. You name it.

Who knows how many environmental regulations were being violated by incinerating this filth. I was astonished that the school actually did this and could get away with it. Talk about a throwback from another era. You don't just go tossing any old bits of trash into an incinerator!

That was the first day and it just got worse.

Within a week or two, it was switched to fulltime but my employment only lasted for the month of June before the pastor fired me.

Why did I get fired?

Well, the story goes like this...

The full time janitor for the parish was a guy named Roger. Don't recall his last name. He was my boss. I was his assistant.

Apparently, Roger was one of those lowly weasels who would complain about you behind your back, but never tell you face-to-face that you made a mistake. So, when I screwed up, I never even knew. He didn't tell me. I never had the chance to fix anything or make amends, because Roger never said a word to me.

Every summer, they wax the floors of the school. Classrooms. Hallways. Everything. They were all hardwood. By the end of the schoolyear, the wood had become dull and matted. Over the summer they get waxed and buffed and polished so they shine like mirrors that first week of school.

Before a classroom floor was waxed, all the desks in the room had to be moved out into the hallway. After the room was finished, the desks were brought back into the room.

Roger helped me slide the desks into the hallway and he did all the waxing in the room while I washed the windows.

When the first room was finished, he went off to another building and told me to put the desks back in the room.

That's exactly what I did.

What Roger never told me was that the desks were supposed to be carried in. We slid them out. So I slid them back.

Turns out, sliding them leaves slight little scuff marks on the floor.

So, Roger was all angry about this and complained to the pastor and the pastor fired me.

Roger never told me to pick the desks up and carry them.

He slid them out of the room with me. Why wouldn't I just presume they go back into the room via the same method?

Besides, you could barely see the scuffs. They were literally only visible at certain angles when the sunlight glare made the floor look frosted. Otherwise, the scuffs were completely invisible. Heck, I didn't even notice them until Roger pointed them out.

But, as I said, he never told me it was a big problem. He saw the scuffs and told me I was supposed to have picked up the desks. He didn't make a huge deal out of it and I apologized. I figured that was the end of it and now I'd get it right on the remaining 15 rooms of the school.

Yeah, that's right. One room! We had 15 more rooms to go! I certainly didn't think he'd turn round and make it a big issue and get me fired for it.

Ridiculous!

Getting fired for that was a crock and totally unfair.

My grandfather was quite upset when I told him what happened. He made me drive back to the parish with him and marched right up to the rectory to give Father Rick a piece of his mind. Grandpa was determined to get my job back for me, since it was clearly unfair to fire me for such an irrelevant issue.

The pastor would have none of it. By the end of the conversation, the priest actually flipped off my grandfather. Talk about being shocked and disgusted. A priest flipping off a grandfather? Doing that to any grandfather would be rude, but to my own was obviously inexcusable. What kind of immoral pastors were working at that church? Quite an educational experience, to see a supposedly “reverent” and pious representative of a religious institution showing a vile and inappropriate level of disrespect that I myself would never dream of showing to anyone's grandparents. It was refreshing and inspiring to know that my own sense of morality was indeed far superior to that of this deplorable priest of the Roman Catholic church.

Two or three years later, I hooked up a little portable radio to my home phoneline and was able to sit in my bedroom and eavesdrop on any telephone conversation that someone was having in my house. Originally, I had purchased the recording device in order to conduct telephone interviews with musicians for a cable-access television show I created. The unexpected and unintended side-effect was the ability to listen-in on any conversation on the landline.

Why is this relevant?

Because it explains a little about the attitude of Father Rick towards me.

In hooking up my radio like this, I eavesdropped on a lot of telephone conversations my uncle was having and quickly learned that my uncle was a bit of a two-faced backstabber. While he was usually kind and considerate to my face, he often spoke terribly ill of me to all his friends. He painted a picture of me being rude and selfish and arrogant and disrespectful. Quite heartbreaking for me to learn that my loving and kind uncle was constantly saying nasty things about me to his friends, while typically being warm and affectionate to me in person. Explained a lot about why his friends were always very cold and aloof towards me. He had portrayed an awful image of me to them, so of course they never liked me. This explains why the pastor of the church fired me so quickly. No doubt, his impression of me was already tarnished by the slander of my uncle.

Oh, well. Such is life.

I didn't really want to have the same career as Freddie Kruger anyway.

For all my trouble, I had earned a whopping $217.

And probably Black Lung.

Again, you may ask, what is the significance?

I could have omitted the stuff about the priest flipping off my grandpa or my uncle telling all his friends what an awful person I am.

Why share that?

Why mention it?

Because I know I'm not alone.

Because those are the kind of life experiences where you must maintain your resolve and your dignity. I made it to Disney by having faith that I would get somewhere. No matter what anyone else said. No matter what anyone else thought of me. If I actually allowed immoral priests or backstabbing relatives to influence my life, I would end up being just as horrible as them.

These were times when I had to learn to rise above them.

That's why it's part of my story.

You have to remember to rise above those jerks in your life too.

Be of better quality and character than those who run you down.

Chapter Sixteen
Pyramid Scheme Marketing Interview
Summer 1992

“I think it's important to have a good hard failure when you're young. I learned a lot out of that. Because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you. Because of it I've never had any fear in my whole life when we've been near collapse and all of that. I've never been afraid. I've never had the feeling I couldn't walk out and get a job doing something.”

- Walter Elias Disney

After my one humiliating month as a janitor in my gradeschool, my search for a full-time job continued.

The next few months would be spent in much the same way other young fellas and dames in my situation end up - desperate and wandering aimlessly. In retrospect, I felt a lot like Ethan Hawke in the movie Gattaca - brimming with lofty dreams and ambitions in a world that disregarded me before I was ever given a chance. In the movie, you were tossed aside if you didn't have flawless genetics. In my world, you were tossed aside if you didn't go to college. Worst of all, those of us in those situations easily become the victims of scam artists and false promises. Especially when we're too young and inexperienced to recognize them as such.

One particular instance of being duped by false promises was a newspaper advertisement to work for a company doing sales and promising, “no telemarketing involved”.

There is an area in the suburbs of Cleveland full of cheap office buildings. You know the type. Three or four stories. Brick. Bland. Boring. Riddled with low rent subdivisions. Packed with gray cubicles and tinted windows that can't open to overlook a parking lot. Living along the shores of Lake Erie, most of those offices were out somewhere in Strongsville or Middleburg Heights or something. You may never have been to those suburbs yourself, but I'm sure you've seen them 1000 times. Those drab office complexes exist everywhere.

Anyhow, I get to the office for the job interview and it's literally two rooms. The first room was the size of two living rooms and was completely empty except for a single desk in the middle of the room, with a secretary seated at the desk.

Weird.

There wasn't even an extra chair for me to sit in. The room was completely bare but for her desk.

Very weird.

Looked like something out of a David Lynch film.

So, the secretary picks up the phone and calls her boss to announce my arrival and in a minute or two, the only other door in the room - a door off to the right, opens. Some 30-something blonde guy with a balding patch opens the door and invites me in.

His office is smaller than the main room and also outfitted with a single desk. There's a chair for me to sit in and another single wall of those tinted windows.

We start to talk and he gives me his sales pitch. Turns out this company sells Halon fire extinguishers for home use.

Oh. Joy.

Worst of all, the jerk is running a pyramid-scheme to sell these things.

After he tells me all about them and gives me a demonstration (which I must admit was super neat - Halon makes an amazing fire suppressant), he asks me for money! He expects me to buy these fire extinguishers and resell them.

I was simultaneously furious and sick to my stomach. Once again those same old two emotions - simultaneous anger and depression. Seems that's all I tended to feel those days. Rage and sorrow. I explained to him that I came there looking for a job. A job where I would get paid. Not some scam where I'd have to pay someone else!

Plus, I was an unemployed, dirt-poor guy still living at home. I didn't have $400 sitting around to buy fire extinguisher equipment, even if I had wanted to! The “interviewer” then had the nerve to ask if I could borrow the money from my grandparents.

I CAME HERE TO GET A JOB, YOU LOSER! NOT GET SWINDLED INTO BUYING SOMETHING SO I CAN “RESELL” IT TO PEOPLE!

Like I said - simultaneously furious and sick to my stomach. I was so disheartened in that moment.

Sitting in that room.

Talking to this scumbag.

My mind starts wandering and wondering, “Is this it? Will this be my life from now on? Struggling to find work? Wasting my afternoons to go on pointless interviews? When will I catch a break? When will this change? When will this ever end?”

“When you least expect it.”, rang the cliche in my head.

Gee, thanks. Not very comforting.

Because I keep expecting it to change every damn day!

And it never was.

Months and months of the same humiliation.

I couldn't take much more of this.

The trick was to lose all hope? That's when I'd “least expect it” to get better. Right?

What a stupid cliche.

One of the things that upset me the most was the gas money it cost me to drive to that interview. I only had a little over $100 to my name. Every gallon of gas I put in my car had to count. And this whole trip out to Strongsville was a huge waste of gas and time.

All I wanted was a damn job. I wanted to work for a living. I wanted to earn my keep. I wasn't some lazy bum loafing around and expecting the world to do me any favors. I just wanted to be a productive member of society. Why couldn't I have that? Why wouldn't anyone give me the opportunity to contribute something to the world? Surely I must have some worthwhile capabilities. Why was it so hard to get hired into anything?

My life can't be about working in suburban office complexes for unscrupulous con artists.

I'm better than this!

Right?

There were a few other pointless job interviews I went on during that time. I honestly don't even remember all of them. One which I do recall quite vividly, simply because it was so eerily cinematic, was at a company in a very old and small building in Downtown Cleveland where I sat with a roomful of applicants filling out an insane 10-page application.

Seriously. Not exaggerating. 10 pages. It asked all kinds of weird detailed personal information like grade point averages for individual classes in gradeschool and what kind of occupations your siblings have. I'm not kidding. It literally had questions like that. In other words, tons of things you either didn't remember, or had no bearing on your job qualifications, or was simply none of their business.

There I am, sitting in this cramped darkened room with 20 other people, all silently huddled over our paperwork, scribbling away at these pointless questions, stressing out over the stuff I didn't have the answers for, feeling like I was in the Purgatory of some strange dystopian science fiction film, and I finally realized the absurdity of it all.

I eventually just started laughing. Busted out. Couldn't stop. People looked up from their applications nervously at the crazy person who was reacting like a lunatic and I just stopped what I was doing and walked out. Heck, I don't even remember what the job was for at this point. I kept the application though. Held onto that thing for years, just to remind myself of how desperate to never become. When I began to write this book, I searched high and low for it, so I could share some of the questions with you. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it and I vaguely recall throwing it in the trash many years ago. Wish I had kept it, just so I could have printed some of the exact questions in here. Trust me when I say, they were ludicrous.

The experience with the Scam Artist Fire Extinguishers taught me two important lessons.

First - be careful in job hunting. There are many unscrupulous people out there who only seek to take advantage of you. As I mentioned at the start of this tale, there are many “companies” and evil scam artists like this in the world. Be extra careful when you are in your teens and early twenties. People that age are prime targets for these charlatans to swindle. Much like I felt, you want to be independent and take charge of your life, but at the same time, many college-aged kids are still very naive and inexperienced and can easily succumb to the lies of these “business” people.

Be smart.

Trust your instincts.

You know that old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Know when you need to walk out of an “interview” that is actually a sales pitch.

The second lesson I learned is that Halon is a very remarkable liquid. They really need to start putting that stuff in kids chemistry sets! The fun I could have had with a few vials of Halon when I was 12 years old! You know it evaporates instantaneously? If you stick your finger in a glass of liquid Halon and pull it out, your finger is literally completely dry the second it comes out of the liquid. Freaky stuff.

But it still didn't earn me a paycheck.

When would this end?

Would I ever have a real job?

Chapter Seventeen
Neodata
20 July 1992 to 8 July 1992

“You reach a point where you don't work for money.”

- Walter Elias Disney

You read that right.

I worked at Neodata for 8 days.

What was Neodata?

They were a telemarketing firm hired to sell Sprint long distance telephone services to people. Found an ad for them in the paper. They said the training period was paid. I was desperate for money, so I went in for a week of training and quit.

No way I was going to actually attempt to do telemarketing again. I knew I was awful at it anyway.

I managed to pocket a few bucks.

Was that kind of sleazy of me?

Yes.

But I was desperate. You know the saying, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

I'd been looking for work for 6 months and no one was even returning my phonecalls. I did what I had to do. I'm not proud of it, but I literally had about $200 to my name at that point in my life. No savings account. No trust fund. No inheritance awaiting me. $200 was all the money I had in the world. Being 20 years old and feeling like such a miserable failure was a strong catalyst to be slightly immoral.

So, I took the Neodata position just to cash in - knowing right from the start that I'd never keep working there.

Unfortunately, I hadn't reached the point Walt was talking about in his above quote; I still worked for money.

I still do now!

Perhaps when I cease to work for money and understand the full implications of his statement, I might start earning a lot more!

Then again, it's easy to dismiss the importance of money when you have millions in the bank.

Chapter Eighteen
Electrolux
13 July 1992 to 2 December 1992

“All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles have strengthened me.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Life can be brutal.

While burning trash in your gradeschool incinerator, you begin to think you've hit the rock-bottom of job opportunities. Can't get much worse than giving yourself Black Lung at the age of twenty.

Then you find out, no, you still have further to fall.

Ever see those door-to-door salesmen in the 1940's and 1950's wearing tweed sportsjackets and fedoras, walking down the street attempting to sell vacuum cleaners to housewives?

I was one of those guys.

Seriously.

I literally did that exact job.

No lie. No exaggeration. I did that for real.

Except I started that career about 40 years too late. Housewives in 1992 weren't too keen on letting long-haired dudes wearing fedoras into their homes.

Being a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman began out of my continuing crazed desperation to find gainful employment. In my endless quest, I discovered a job fair being hosted out at a hotel in one of the wealthier suburbs of town.

That was actually my first and last time at a job fair.

Have you ever been to one?

Job fairs are just as awful as you would imagine. A sea of down-and-out business people, trying to impress potential employers, while the stench of gloom hangs in the air thicker than fornicating gorilla sweat. Drowning in droves of despondent white-collar workers, who are milling about in hotel conference rooms, is not the way I suggest anyone ever spends their afternoon. What makes these events so tragic is that most of these folks are not fresh-out-of-college graduates. Most are older ladies and gentlemen who had lucrative careers and fell victim to “downsizing” and are now lost in a vortex of misery they never imagined they'd find themselves experiencing. And the BMW isn't even paid for.

Considering that I was smack in the midst of my college years, and those ladies and gentlemen were likely given the boot by some jerk my age, they all leered daggers at me. And who could blame them? The perverse and ignorant age discrimination, rampant in the American workforce, undeniably made things much harder for them than for me. Guilt by association, from some youthful fresh-out-of-college scumbag who sent their jobs overseas, made me ashamed to be in my early twenties.

One of the companies looking to hire was Electrolux. I didn't know a lot about them, but I had heard the name. Didn't they make toasters or refrigerators or something?

Ah. Yes. Vacuum cleaners. I knew it was something like that.

Have you ever met someone that just gave you a bad vibe from the moment you saw them?

That was exactly how I felt when I walked into the room and saw my future-Electrolux-boss sitting at the head of a conference table. I can still picture exactly what he looked like, but my eventual loathing of the guy has made me forget his name. Sure, I could go look it up in those old journals, but for now, I prefer to keep it forgotten.

The presentation for Electrolux was in a conference room filled with chairs. Must have been 100 people in that room. Easily.

As the sales-pitch went on, I noticed more and more people looked aggravated and disgusted and began to get up and leave the room.

I should have taken that as a hint.

Remember my warning about being young and falling for charlatans? Yeah. That would be exactly what I was doing that afternoon.

The worst part about the job was that it was “commission-only” - meaning you made no money unless you sold things.

Now, let me pause for a moment here.

As you know, I was a horrible telemarketer.

Why on earth would I ever think I could sell things in person if I had no charisma to sell them over the phone? This is the same reason why I know I'll never make a living as an author! I can't even sell my own books! I'm just not adept at sales and marketing. Never have been. I detest the whole process.

Although, back in the summer of 1992, I didn't know this about myself yet.

The people who were walking out of that presentation in disgust were clearly people who were older and wiser and knew how awful a “commission-only” sales job could be.

I was about to find out.

I took the job and started showing up to work at this little office out in a stripmall in North Olmstead by Stearns and Lorain. I wore dress shoes and a sportscoat and tried to look all dapper. It was so not me. I'm a jeans and tshirts kind of guy. Always have been.

But, I was desperate for work and I was determined to make the best of this.

I would learn the trade.

I would become a great salesman!

One of the gentlemen at the place was about 70 years old. He truly was one of those guys who started out back in the 1940's. He was all gruff and ornery and didn't need to make any effort anymore because he had a customer base stretching back 40 years.

Everyone else was 35 to 50 years of age.

At the age of 21, I was just a little kid.

I felt so clueless, and I was!

Older and more experienced folks tried to help me out. Train me. Take me under their wings. But part of the problem with commission-only jobs is - why should they?

Every potential sale is a cutthroat scramble. Why assist each other? Why help anyone else? Every sale someone else makes is a sale you missed.

How did you get new customers?

Well, they had this awful bait-and-switch scam going.

We'd advertise “carpet cleaning” services for very low prices. Then, we'd get to a house, do a demonstration where we use these powerful vacuums and show how much dirt is in the carpet, then try to sell the vacuum.

Pretty lame.

But that was the main technique.

Now you wonder, “How did you get people to request carpet cleanings in the first place?”

Any way you could!

I was so naive.

I tried making cheesy homemade fliers and got them photocopied and went around my neighborhood passing them out. The term is “canvasing houses” and I must have canvased a total of 300 to 500 homes. I was so clueless, I honestly thought I'd get at least one phonecall out of every 50 or 100 fliers.

Obviously, I didn't get any calls at all.

Not one.

Hours wasted making fliers.

Hours wasted delivering them to houses.

I even did the door-to-door thing with one of the other sales guys who was a former car salesman.

He took one side of the street.

I took the other.

Picture that. Two guys walking down the street in suits, on a hot summer day in Ohio, dragging vacuum cleaners behind them and ringing doorbells.

That was how low I had sunk.

That was how desperate I had become.

I just wanted a real job!

What the heck was I doing?

Walking down a suburban sidestreet dragging an upright vacuum cleaner? This is what my life had become? 21 years old and this was the best I could do? Kids my age were interns at NASA, or flying military training jets, or dancing on Broadway, or starring in movies.

I'm some pony-tailed idiot trying to sell $500 vacuum cleaners out of a car in Cleveland. This is my life?

Keep in mind, we had some vacuums that cost as much as $1200. My commission on a $1200 vacuum was about $400. If I could just sell one of those per day, I'd be earning a 6-figure income!

I never did sell a $1200 vacuum, but I sure wanted to.

In 5 months of working there, I literally sold one vacuum cleaner.

One.

Some Hispanic family purchased an upright when we went to do one of those carpet cleaning demonstration things.

I wasn't even happy I sold it, because the whole process just felt so deceptive and smarmy.

I really wanted to leave the job.

My boss convinced me to stay though.

He promised that my job would not be commission-only, but he'd actually pay me a salary. He said as long as I was out there trying and making an effort, he'd make sure I got paid.

I was so excited!

Maybe I was wrong about him.

Maybe he wasn't such a bad guy after all!

Going out and attempting to sell vacuum cleaners to people in private homes was awful.

I felt a lot more comfortable doing it in stores.

After all, the store is honest. You're not pretending to wash a carpet just to try selling a vacuum. You stand in the aisle and talk to customers who are obviously in the market to purchase a machine. Nothing deceptive or shifty about that at all.

We had a store near my house called Sam's Club. It was one of those membership stores where people get big discounts and stuff.

This was perfect!

I could hang out in the vacuum aisle in the store by the Electrolux machines and do demos and hopefully sell some. If I didn't sell any, I'd still get paid anyway! Awesome!

Never managed to sell one in the store either.

Of course I didn't. You can't expect to sell a $500 vacuum when there is a $60 one right next to it.

Since I was so dirt poor and was close to home, I would go back to my house for lunch, then head back to the store afterwards.

My boss started calling me at home.

Wouldn't even say “hello” when I answered the phone.

“Working a half-day again?”, he would bark at me.

“No,” I explained. “I'm going back to the store, I just come home for lunch.”

“Don't play games.”, he'd chide.

“I'm not! I can't afford to buy lunches so I come home for lunch!”

In the end, the guy started paying me about 20% of what he had promised.

When I confronted him on it, he said I was not working full time because I was at home when he'd call.

I was furious.

Okay, I take it back. My first instinct was right.

This guy was a scumbag.

Not only did he never pay me what he promised, but he then had the nerve to report my non-existent income to the Internal Revenue Service! So, a few months after I did my taxes, I get a letter from the IRS, claiming I was withholding funds. I had to write a letter back explaining that my boss was lying and I had no money. I mean, I couldn't provide any documented proof! There's no paperwork or receipts to show that someone did not get paid. Right?

I was so naive.

But, again, I was desperate. It took me half a year to get hired into an awful job. Who knows how long it would take to find a job if I quit?

My boss was a horrible human being.

One day, he took me with him on a sales call and he used really intimidating strongarm sales techniques to push a new machine on a widowed old lady.

Jerk.

At the time, the machine he was selling was on sale for about $150 off. He didn't sell it to her at that price. He didn't tell her about the sale. He sold it at full price.

I was utterly repulsed and when we left, I asked him why he had done that.

Did he forget it was on sale?

That's how naive I was.

He laughed at me and assured me, he didn't forget about the sale price.

As we drove away in the car, he defended himself by saying that, “Old people like her always have extra money stashed away.”

Oh, really?

And that makes it okay to deliberately lie to old ladies?

I grew up with my grandparents and I know for a fact we were poor and had no money “stashed” anywhere.

What a vile person my boss was.

The dirtbag had no morals whatsoever.

Weeks later, we worked a tradeshow together. It was out at the big IX Convention Center by the Cleveland International Airport.

The display we had featured one of those sideshow gimmicks where the vacuum cleaner sucked a bowling ball up a big clear plastic tube. The whole thing is a trick, of course. The tube has holes in the bottom, which means the bowling ball is being pushed up by atmospheric pressure, not pulled up by the vacuum.

Anyhow, in the midst of a Cleveland winter, we had to carry that huge demonstration contraption into his car.

There was one brief moment, when he was struggling to wrestle this 5-foot pipe with a bowling ball into his backseat that he slipped on the ice and pinned himself on the seat momentarily. As he strained to regain his composure, I had a few milliseconds where I was smiling and fantasizing that he was actually having a heart attack.

When I snapped out of my daydream, I was horrified.

That was when I knew this job was not for me.

Sure, he was a sleazebag of a guy, but he didn't deserve to have heart attacks wished upon him!

What was wrong with me?!

I was disgusted with myself for thinking that way.

What kind of crappy person was this job turning me into?

Not long after that night, my final day at Electrolux arrived on a cold and damp December afternoon. For those of you familiar with that region of the country, you know that wet and bleak days of an Ohio winter are a dreamlike fog. Clouds so thick and overcast you can't tell 10:00a.m. from 3:00p.m. because the dark grey of the sky never changes.

I was on my way to pick up a repair at a customers house out in Huron or someplace. That was about 50 miles west of town. Long drive. And as I got further and further out of town (keep in mind these were the days before the Internet, so I couldn't push a button and see how far I needed to travel) I just kept on asking myself, “What the heck am I doing?”

My commission on a repair was about 10%. Even if this was a $200 repair, I'd be making $20 for this. Driving 50 miles out of town, then 50 miles back, then doing it again when returning the repair afterward! Four hours of driving. 200 miles on my car. And for all that, I make $20?!

This was crazy.

What was I doing with my life?

This job sucked.

My boss was a liar and a thief.

What. Am. I. Thinking?

Like some Joseph Campbell cliche of living the Hero's Journey, the family I met really acted as messengers from the universe too. Pushing me. Prodding me.

The woman of the house started asking me all kinds of personal questions as I picked up her Electrolux. I guess she could see how distraught and unhappy I was in my job.

She started telling me that I should look into some sort of government handouts and subsidies. She was convinced that I was eligible for things, since I never knew my father.

I don't know what the heck the lady was talking about.

You don't get free money just for being a bastard child.

Besides, I didn't want handouts. I wanted a good job!

But she did get me thinking about the fact that I was not on the correct path anymore.

Let's flashback to July of 1984 when I was 13 years old and my whole life changed in the movie theatre at Parmatown Mall in Parma, Ohio. That was where I saw The NeverEnding Story for the first time and I realized what I wanted to do with my life.

I wanted to make a living as a writer. A novelist.

That dream stuck with me for years, but I never really did much to make it happen. I did all I could to enrich my imagination. Read about writing. Recorded episodes of Twilight Zone and Amazing Stories on VHS tapes with the VCR. Saw every Speilberg movie that came out. I was steeped in imaginative stories. But I never made much effort to write any myself. Sure, I wrote some short stories in junior high. I came up with a script for a Robin Hood movie in high school which never got made. I was a wanna-be. Nothing more. I talked a lot. I daydreamed a lot. I never really did any actual work. Never really took the time to get ink on paper. Not in a serious way.

On my way back home from Huron, with the Electrolux vacuum safe in my backseat, I turned off the road and headed toward Lake Erie. I have no idea where I ended up. Some beach I had never seen before. Maybe something in Vermillion? I honestly haven't any idea where I was. I just needed to get out of that car. I needed to hear the water and taste the crisp air and feel the breath of the Ohio winter on my face. Ohio has very old, old magic on the wind.

I needed to think.

Much like the deep green of Hinkley woods, the heartbeat of Lake Erie was sometimes the only sound which could clear my mind. The only realm wherein I could see a path. The waves lapping the shore. The seagulls overhead. The countless shades of gray in sky and water and barren trees and sand. The brisk frost on the air which kept the beach completely deserted, save for myself. That afternoon, out in the middle of nowhere, miles from home, I found myself at a true crossroads. A turning point. A moment when I can honestly say everything changed.

Standing on the beach, I had a revelation.

I was working my butt off. I was miserable. I was dirt poor.

If I were to quit my job and write a novel like I had always wanted to, I would still be dirt poor, I'd still be working my butt off... but I would be happy!

That was my answer!

So simple. Crystal clear.

Suddenly it was so obvious. There was no reason whatsoever to not pursue my dream. I had sincerely reached a point where I had absolutely nothing to lose.

Why work long hours, for no money, and hate my life when I could instead work long hours, for no money, and love my life?

I guess I understood the Walt Disney quote about not working for money after all!

This was it.

This was my answer.

Finally, the simple truth hit me - throw all my effort into fulfilling my lifelong dream of being a novelist, I'll still work long hours, I'll still make no money... but I'll be happy!

Yes!

I realize I just repeated the exact same concept three times, but that was how it hit me. My mind was reeling from such a realization and I kept rephrasing it to myself over and over, continually blown away by how profound it felt everytime I rehashed it.

No income + Long hours + Crappy job = Depression.

No income + Long hours + Writing novel = Happiness.

Simple math.

I was shocked that the answer was so simple.

I'll have direction! I'll have purpose! I'll have a goal! Something to strive for! Something to keep me motivated! Something to achieve in my life! Best of all, I could publish the book myself! Why not?

The time had come.

Massive gears of the universe shifted and clicked into place.

Distressing thoughts can etch away like poison in our minds, giving us cause to never even want to get out of bed in the mornings. Few can argue that mere health, a sense of purpose, freedom, and love in our lives can dispel any shadows. When we are lacking in these things, it is often the root of any despair. Apathy is great passion which has simply lost faith. This was my moment to consciously decide to start believing again. Restore my faith. Abolish apathy. Care once more.

After all the other jobs I had done, after all the other careers I had attempted to begin, I was finally on the path where I belonged.

That was it.

I was done.

I left the beach and quit Electrolux that afternoon.

The day I quit working for Electrolux, I began my lifelong dream of being a novelist.

Little did I know just how incredibly long it would take me to write my first novel. When it was finally done, it would change my life in ways I never expected, and lead me upon roads I never would have dreamed during that cold December morning along Lake Erie.

Life usually doesn't work like that. The moments in which our lives are irrevocably altered aren't typically so cinematic. Usually, they are subtle. Subdued. Unassuming. Looking back on it, perhaps that day at the beach was a humble moment too. To outside eyes, it may not have held any drama whatsoever - I was just a guy walking on the brisk winter beach. But for my life, it was an epic few minutes. Grand. Sweeping. Dramatic.

That was the moment.

That was the day when everything changed forever.

Chapter Nineteen
The Gothic Rainbow
2 December 1992 to 3 January 1996

“Everyone has been remarkably influenced by a book, or books. In my case it was a book on cartoon animation. I discovered it in the Kansas City Library at the time I was preparing to make motion-picture animation my life's work. The book told me all I needed to know as a beginner - all about the arts and the mechanics of making drawings that move on the theater screen. From the basic information I could go on to develop my own way of movie storytelling. Finding that book was one of the most important and useful events in my life. It happened at just the right time. The right time for reading a story or an article or a book is important. By trying too hard to read a book that, for our age and understanding, is beyond us, we may tire of it. Then, even after, we'll avoid it and deny ourselves the delights it holds.”

- Walter Elias Disney

As you read this book, I imagine you are a young dreamer who aspires to be a successful artist - perhaps a musician, actor, dancer, author, illustrator, or the like. Since I promised to tell the story of my career path, I must include a chapter telling you about writing The Gothic Rainbow. Moreso than any other life-experience, sharing the yarn of how I created The Gothic Rainbow is a wonderful chance to encourage youthful daydreamers by regaling the story of how attaining my dream both altered and enriched the entire course of my life. Every subsequent success in my life was influenced by the publishing of that novel. I guess you could say, I have a good story on my hands, and it would be good to speak for people who have no voice.

But we'll get back to that later.

The story of writing The Gothic Rainbow begins with watching the movie The NeverEnding Story. I know I already mentioned that in the previous chapter about working at Electrolux, but bear with me and permit me to elaborate - the impact of Michael Ende is an important tale and warrants repeating.

I'll never forget sitting in that air-conditioned movie theatre at Parmatown Mall in Cleveland, Ohio during the summer of 1984 and seeing The Childlike Empress (undoubtedly the prettiest girl I had ever seen at that age) speaking to me and the others in the audience about sharing the adventures of Bastian and Atreyu.

I don't recall seeing “the fourth wall” broken in a movie before. If there was another film to do such a thing, it was never that powerful or memorable for me. It was astounding to witness The Childlike Empress doing it. What if the things she said were true? What if the power of dreams and wishes truly could span other worlds and alternate realities? What if all we dream somehow exists, in some other realm? As a young boy, that was the first time such notions were ever presented to my fertile imagination.

The wonderment and magic of that concept genuinely changed me forever.

A childhood consumed by Star Wars and AD&D (“Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” for you non-geeks) finally made sense - I was always a storyteller; but up until then, I never knew it. (Whether or not I am any good as a storyteller is a different matter entirely, but I've always been one.)

Thanks to the influence of seeing The NeverEnding Story as a film, I read the novel written by Michael Ende. Reading it was another exceedingly magical event, and a significantly powerful influence. Although, as was so often repeated in the novel: That, however, is another story and shall be told another time.

Afterwards, I started to read other books and anthologies incessantly. I got a subscription to Amazing Stories Magazine and read every issue cover-to-cover multiple times and collected comic books and even more role-playing games like Star Frontiers and Gamma World. Nevertheless, as Mr. Coreander pointed out in his bookstore, I didn't read classics that were “safe” stories. To this day, I'd rather hunt bookstore aisles and trust my intuition to lead me to the enchanting novels on the shelves; the ones no one else knows about, but speak to me.

All through my teens, thanks to that film and book, I knew writing was what I wanted to do; to make a living as an author.

When I turned 18, I finally felt ready. I began to pen my first novel, a high-fantasy book called The Gothic Rainbow. The title was derived from a castle in the story with huge, arcing, obsidian spires - similar to the Skeksis castle in The Dark Crystal.

I remember that first attempt very vividly. Taking my first martial arts classes, I stopped attending after 3 or 4 weeks, because I became so obsessed with writing. (I didn't mention martial arts classes with other schooling because I only took them for about a month at some vocational school.)

Slightly beyond 100 pages into the story, I got stuck. I had no idea where to go next.

Crap.

I had read about famous authors like Ray Bradbury and how he'd sit down at his typewriter and bang out entire novels with no outline. He could just write. I aspired to accomplish the same thing. (On a side note, I had the great honor of meeting and shaking hands with Mr. Ray Bradbury on Halloween in 2007 at Walt Disney Studios where we watched Something Wicked This Way Comes in the theatre. Still shocks me to think I had the opportunity to do something that awesome. Corny as it may sound, it brought a tear to my eye as I walked back to the parking lot. One of those “I'm living the dream” moments. But, I digress...)

Unfortunately, I had to scrap my whole book and start over.

My second-attempt at penning a novel ended the same way.

So did the third.

Needless to say, I was quite frustrated and disheartened at that point. Here I had over 300 pages of material, three novels, none of which were complete. Defeated, I put aside the notion of writing. Why bother? I couldn't seem to finish anything I started. I was just a wannabe. I was no Harlan Ellison. I was no Ray Bradbury. Who was I fooling?

Remember during the early 1990's, I was taking a few classes at Cuyahoga Community College in Parma, Ohio?

I mentioned I took that advanced English course, wherein my professor, Dr. James Sheridan was very supportive and encouraging of my writing. He invited me to participate in an independent-study program over the summer in 1992, a course in which I was afforded the opportunity to design my own curriculum.

Taking him up on the offer, I proposed writing a novel.

I thought if forced to write with a deadline, it would help me finish.

Dr. Sheridan approved the idea, with a caveat that skeptically inquired, “Umm... Do you realize how long it takes to write a novel?” He didn't think I could do it. Heck, he had a PhD in English and he never wrote one!

Nevertheless, I was sure I could finish! I had all summer! Each of my other books had reached 100 pages in a week or two. Surely I could complete a full novel during a whole three months! Would be easy.

Oh, how naive I was.

At that time in my life, I was a hardcore clubkid. Two or three times a week, I'd be at Cleveland nightclubs like The Alter House and Smart Bar and Metropolis, dancing to the likes of The Cure, Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb, The Sisters of Mercy, and Siouxsie & The Banshees. I was also playing lots of Vampire: The Masquerade Role Playing Game published by White Wolf. (No, I was not into LARPing - there are avenues of geekdom that are even too geeky for me. I had to draw a line somewhere. No dice on no dice - I was all about rollin' the d10, baby. Which is admittedly a hypocritical attitude for someone who was still dressing up like a ninja when he was 14 years old.)

Some of the oldest advice for writers is: “Write what you know.” Hence, due to the influences of clubbing and role-playing, instead of a traditional fantasy novel with wizards and elves, I decided to pen a dark and brooding mythological tale. I was still deeply rooted in the mentality of fantasy stories, but in addition to that vibe, I wanted something that reflected sinister faerie folklore magic, mixed with the modern fetish/underground/alternative nightclub scene. I never saw any movies or read any stories with a goth/industrial “faeriepunk” setting and the idea sounded incredibly cool to me. Filling the story with references to alternative music and reverting to the title of my first novel, I began to write a brand new vampiric faerietale, also called The Gothic Rainbow. This time, the title was describing the flying buttresses of a cathedral-turned-danceclub - “arcing like gothic rainbows”, as the book said.

For my final project to Dr. Sheridan, starting on 6 July 1992 (yeah, I procrastinated and never used my full three months) and ending on 13 August 1992, I turned in a whopping... eleven pages. (Along with a dash of embarrassment and profuse apologies.)

Gee, I guess he had been right after all - writing a whole novel over the summer wasn't so easy.

Thankfully, he was kind enough to give me an “A” on those eleven pages. Sadly, Dr. Sheridan died of natural causes at the end of that summer and despite his encouraging grade, I never had the opportunity to hear his opinion of my story. We never talked. Disappointed in myself and discouraged for not finishing under my deadline, I put those eleven pages aside and forgot about them.

I'm sad that he died, rest his soul, but on the bright side - I can honestly tell people that the first person who read my vampire book died right after reading it. That is some wonderfully creepy credibility! I bet none of the current crop of rich-and-famous vampire-authors can lay claim to that!

Sure, you sold millions, but, did your vampire book kill anybody?

No?

Pssh. Amateur.

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the summer I began writing The Gothic Rainbow for my English course, I was working that terrible job selling Electrolux vacuum cleaners.

After much soulsearching during that cold and overcast December morning on the beaches of Lake Erie, I quit Electrolux that afternoon and began writing every single day. Owning up to the fact that I didn't possess the Ray Bradbury-esque talent to just pound-out complete books with no planning, the first thing I did was outline the entire story, beginning to end, to avoid getting “stuck” as I had in my first three novels.

Still living with my grandparents, I announced unto them my plans. Much to their credit, they were kind enough to be supportive, allowing me to remain unemployed and write until I was finished with the book. Thank goodness. I couldn't have done it without them. I figured it might take me a year to write the whole thing.

It took three.

Three years of no job.

Three years of nightclubbing.

Three years of everyone thinking I was a lying bum. After all, no one has any faith in aspiring writers.

Considering the drastic inaccuracy of my time-estimate, as you might expect, the journey of writing The Gothic Rainbow was far more difficult than anticipated. Slowly, I realized The Gothic Rainbow would be a gargantuan book. I didn't want it to be that big, so I changed it to become two novels.

The Gothic Rainbow: Beginning Volume of the Vampire Noctuaries would be the first.

Annwn's Maelstrom Festival: Concluding Volume of the Vampire Noctuaries would be the second.

Finished the beginning volume in 1996.

Wrote the concluding volume in 2013.

For the purposes of this story, I will just focus on the first novel.

My writing style often becomes very surreal and dreamy in the book. In order to reach the mental-state to write such ethereal prose, I need to deeply immerse myself into the tale psychologically. Part of the difficulty in immersing myself so deeply is the concentration required; the other difficulty was lingering in such depressing emotions for extended periods of time.

The advantage to writing that way is gaining the capacity to envision an extraordinarily vivid world. The most common compliment I ever hear regarding my novel is that my story is extremely easy to visualize - that reading my work can be like watching a movie. Oddly enough, that is quite similar to how I imagine passages I write; but instead of a film, it's more like remembering a dream. I don't just see what I write; I hear it and smell it and taste it and feel it too. My fiction is completely tangible to me.

As I wrote The Gothic Rainbow, single scenes would play in my mind over and over. I simply wrote each scene in multiple passes, slowly adding more details each time. Subsequently replaying the movie in my head would reveal more and more layers and textures to the sounds and scents and the tone of dialog. Gradually, I would simply elaborate upon the missing nuances until an entire scene was fleshed out and articulated as clearly as I was envisioning it. If you have read the book, you will notice that even the dialog has certain letters of words italicized; because I could hear the way characters were speaking, and for the sake of clarity, I knew it was vital to convey every little nuance and inflection of speech.

Naturally, going into this project, I knew writing a novel was a long and difficult process. I just had no idea how long or difficult it would prove to be. Plus, I wasn't the only one who had a hard time with my book.

Friends and family had difficulty with my writing too, because I kept the entire story a secret from absolutely everyone the entire time it was being written. Not one soul on this Earth knew anything about the tale; Nothing about the characters, or the plot, or the genre, or anything. Not even the girl I was dating on-and-off for 4 years knew a thing about it. The entire yarn was a secret. People only knew I was writing a novel. Nothing more. Couple that with taking three years to complete and plenty of people doubted I was writing a book at all. Like I said before, no one ever has any faith in aspiring writers.

Remember that device which allowed me to eavesdrop on any phonecall in my house? I once overheard a telephone conversation between my mother and grandmother where my mom asked, “Is he still writing that dumb book?”

My grandmother replied, “Oh, I don't know what he does in his room all day. He's lazy just like his uncle.”

If you have the means, I highly suggest eavesdropping on family conversations. You learn all sorts of things about the way people really feel. That's why the “thank you” section in my first novel goes on for page after page, paragraph after paragraph, but my family gets one sentence - “Thanks to those in my family who offered any support.”

Let's just say the length and phrasing of that “thank you” sentence was very deliberate.

Not that it matters. To my knowledge, none of my family members ever read my writing anyway. My mother might, but I'm 90% certain no one else ever has and 100% certain my grandparents never did.

So, yes, that conversation between my mom and grandmother was quite the revelation. Those who brought me into this world didn't even have faith in me. That was an awful feeling, considering I worked so hard on that book, every single day.

There's an infuriating and ignorant attitude among most people that financial success somehow legitimizes the validity of one's efforts. Someones writes a 20,000 word bestseller, they are respected as a legitimate author. Someone writes a 190,000 word novel which sells 100 copies, and they are not a “real” writer.

How is that fair?

Obviously the 190,000 word book took a lot more work than the 20,000 word one. Why is the shorter book respected as “real work” and the longer book is just a “hobby” to people? Effort is work. Nevertheless, the workingclass culture I was born into only sees money as equaling work.

Make money? You did hard work.

No money? You weren't working.

Stupid and ignorant, but it's the way most blue-collar people think.

Same thing applies to musicians. You start a band and put out a 90 minute double-album and you only sell a few hundred copies, then everyone thinks being a musician is your “hobby”. But when a major pop artist puts in less effort, and creates a 45 minute album which sells 4 million copies, they are “professional” musicians.

Why?

Your 90 minute independent album took far more work than their 45 minute one.

Why is your independent band seen as a joke?

Strange, isn't it?

No one really cares about the quality, or the time, or the passion, or the dedication you have committed to your craft. All your efforts and blood, sweat and tears are insignificant. You are only “working hard” when your efforts produce substantial financial rewards. Only money equates to being a “hard worker”, and anything less than monetary gain means you're not really working. And not just meager, respectable, monetary gain, but it must be a windfall.

Infuriating.

This is why many creative people have a chip on their shoulders.

When no one believes in you, it either makes you depressed or it makes you apathetic. You have two choices. You either choose to be saddened, because of others deeming you worthless, or you cease to care about their feelings altogether.

Care about their opinions and you'll be hurt by them.

Learn to become apathetic and no one can touch you.

Eventually, experiences like that taught me to never care about getting approval or validation from others. The way others think and feel about me is irrelevant. Only my opinion of me matters.

Perhaps if folks knew more about what I had been writing, they'd have taken me more seriously. However, I never revealed anything whatsoever about my story.

Why did I keep my book plot a complete secret?

Because I had become very superstitious about my writing. I realized that every single time I spoke about any of my dreams or ambitions, I would never attain them. Every book I began to write was incomplete. Every project was unfulfilled. Every dream vanished before it was done.

Finally, I realized, why talk about my dreams? Every second I spend talking about my ambitions is a second that I am not working towards achieving them. Why not just keep my mouth shut and make it happen?

Let me repeat that.

Every second I spend talking about my ambitions is a second that I am not working towards achieving them.

Think about how that might apply to your own life.

I was all talk.

Most people are.

I didn't want to be that kind of person anymore. So, I never told anyone what my novel was about. People knew I was writing a book, sure. But no one read it. No one knew the plot or the subject matter. I kept it secret.

Lo and behold, my superstition worked. For the first time ever, I actually finished writing a book. (In case you're wondering - no, I never even told anyone I was writing this book either. Nowadays I just say, “I'm writing.”)

On a cold night in January of 1996, the last sentence of The Gothic Rainbow dripped from my pen.

Finished. At last.

Yes, you read that right - from my pen. I wrote the entire novel by hand, in notebooks. Once it was done, I spent 3 weeks, working 12 to 16 hours a day, typing it into a borrowed Canon StarWriter 30 word-processor (it was 1996, I didn't own a computer yet).

The night I finished the handwritten version was pure bliss. I went out to Whipps Ledges that night and walked through the dark, snowy woods and stared up at the stars as my breath steamed on the icy wind. That place was my sacred church. That was where I could thank the universe and come to sense my future.

When the book was finally done, I sought to self-publish the story. I intended to get a job, work full-time, take out a loan, print up copies of the book, and sell them.

That proved harder than expected, as I shall share in later chapters, but eventually, it all worked out and I started earning a steady income from a full-time job.

In a few months, I was able to save up enough cash to get a car. A little while longer and my grandfather co-signed a loan for me, so I could get my novel printed. (Where, oh, where, was the technology of on-demand book publishing when I needed it?)

The book was sent to the printers McNaughton & Gunn in Saline, Michigan on 9 January 1997 and delivered on 12 February 1997.

My grandparents weren't too thrilled having three or four big wooden pallets stacked with 1000 copies of a vampire novel in their basement, but they tolerated it. Like I said earlier, I know for a fact that until their dying days, neither of them ever read it. My grandmother once commented that she thought I was writing a “nice” story and she never would have supported me being unemployed if she knew I was writing “that kind of junk”.

Way to congratulate your first-born grandson on his biggest accomplishment. Bravo.

Finally, 4 years after I began, The Gothic Rainbow was real. I was no longer a wannabe novelist. I was a real novelist. It was no longer a dream - this was reality. I did it. I conjured it from thin air. Magic. A dream that only existed in my mind was now a physical presence in the world; I could hold a copy of a book in my hands and say, “I wrote this.”

The Childlike Empress had spoken true after all - when we do what we dream, the magic becomes real.

The magic begins when you believe.

All our lives we are told if we work hard, and trust our hearts, and fight to reach our dreams, we can attain them. We can do anything.

I don't believe that anymore.

What life has shown me is even better.

I've learned that life is a journey, and there are no goals to attain - only endless successions of paths to travel. Life has shown me, if we trust our hearts and strive for our dreams, the journeys will rarely lead us to the goals we anticipated; yet frequently give us greater rewards than we ever imagined.

Where did The Gothic Rainbow lead me? Everywhere. Wonderful places. And nowhere near the places I had hoped.

I once saw a movie where a grandfather was speaking of his grandson and he said, “I'll tell you something about him, and I say this with love - he's a failure at everything he has ever tried... except life.”

That is a great way to describe how my journey has gone with The Gothic Rainbow. The book itself didn't go far, but it carried my life in amazing directions. For example, thanks to the computer skills I taught myself in the fields of publishing and layout and Photoshop during the process of putting my novel together, I moved on from a one-hour photo lab job and landed a job at a professional photography lab, working in the digital department; Learned tons there about photography, graphics, printing and design.

To promote my novel, I shot photographs of my friends who were all gothic and punkrock kids in the nighclub scene. Using my then-girlfriend's computer, I composited crazy fliers in Photoshop. When a local fantasy artist named Joseph Vargo saw the fliers, he was so impressed, he invited me to have a showing in his art gallery! Consequently, my novel even gave me my first artshow!

Turns out, right around that time, this new thing called the Internet was getting really popular. “Maybe I should learn to build websites and make one to promote my book?” I thought. So, I learned. Thanks to those skills, I secured a better job at a tradeshow company, building a photographic database to track all of the graphics in their warehouse. From there I moved to a web design firm, then to a Creative Director position, then all the way out to entertainment companies in Hollywood, and eventually to Disney.

Even my relocation to California was funded from a settlement of copyright infringement upon The Gothic Rainbow.

But I'm getting way ahead of my story. I will share the details of all those experiences in the chapters to come.

However, it wasn't just career and residency improvements that were seeded from the creation of my novel. Personal relationships were affected too.

I met a schoolteacher who read my novel and invited me to her highschool as a motivational speaker to inspire her students. Since I've always been a “closet wannabe English teacher” ala Mr. Keating in Dead Poets Society, it was a wonderful opportunity to step into that role, even if only for a day or two. I met bands and musicians I respected and gave them copies of my novel - Toni Halliday, Switchblade Symphony, Henry Rollins, Siouxsie Sioux and more. On the flipside of meeting artists I admired, I discovered I had fans also. At a Faith & The Muse concert, and again at an art gallery where I was showing my artwork from the book, I met a gorgeous teenage gothgirl named Lisa who couldn't believe she was talking to the author of The Gothic Rainbow. Who knew novelists could have groupies? I had no clue! We hung out at the gallery that night and... well, let's just say that afterwards we had a few really great evenings together.

But to again quote The NeverEnding Story...

“That, however, is another story and shall be told another time.”

The list goes on and on - countless extraordinary people and opportunities, all of which can be traced back to my novel. The point I'm trying to make is this - the book never sold many copies, thus for a long time, I was displeased and felt I had “not been successful” with it. Blindly, I was looking only at finances and sales.

Just like all these dream-crushing imbeciles in my life, I was brainwashed into thinking “success” only came from money.

Foolish.

No, my novel was never a financial success. But who cares? In terms of all the other fortunes it bestowed upon my life, it delivered far greater riches than I ever dared imagine. I'll take fantastic career opportunities and amazing life experiences (especially with cute goth girls from art galleries) over booksales any day!

My novel failed at everything I ever tried... except life.

Ultimately, what was the point? Why did I write the book? Why do anything creative? From novels to movies to photography, I am always telling stories in different artistic mediums. Why? Why am I a storyteller?

The traditional answer is self-expression, right? That is what most authors and painters and musicians will speak about. Self-expression. Telling the world what they think and feel. Making a social commentary. For me, that answer never seemed valid. The notion of self-expression always holds a certain presumptuous arrogance and narcissism that doesn't feel true to who I am.

Self-expression?

Who cares what I have to express?

Who cares what I think?

My thoughts and experiences are no more or less valid than anyone else. Why should any of my social commentary hold greater relevance than what someone else has to say? Maybe that was why I always instinctively shunned the label of “artist” - I never wanted to be associated with the arrogant delusions of grandeur that “artists” profess by their stereotypical motives of self-expression.

Then I saw an interview with the late Cameron Duncan, a 16 year old New Zealand filmmaker. In the interview, he spoke about making a short film regarding his life and said, “I have a good story on my hands, and it would be good to speak for people who have no voice.”

That quote blew me away.

That was my answer.

This young kid possessed the wisdom that eluded me for years. His one sentence gave me a whole new perspective on art I never considered before.

Why do I do creative projects?

Why do I write?

Why do I make movies?

Why do I shoot photos?

Why am I a storyteller?

Because when you have a good story on your hands, it is good to speak for people who have no voice.

Yes. That is it.

If the power of dreams and wishes can change the world, just like The Childlike Empress said, then being that voice is my highest motivation. No. More than that. It is my obligation. Other people can call themselves artists for the sake of self-expression. For me, I require a loftier ambition. I am of the opinion that art is far more admirable and noble when done not for self-expression, but for human-expression; To convey thoughts and feelings in the hope that fellow members of humanity can relate to those emotions, and find a voice to speak things they lack the vocabulary to articulate. So they might use my words to express things to others which they themselves do not know how to say.

Clearly, with all my novel continues to bring to my life, altruism of that nature does have personal rewards too.

This is why the book meant so much to my life.

The Gothic Rainbow changed everything.

Once I finished writing the book, it was time to get a job again.

However, as I noted earlier, some elements of this chapter aren't quite chronological in my story. I've already gotten a little ahead of myself.

Let me backtrack a little.

During the three years I was writing The Gothic Rainbow, I never had a standard 9-to-5 job. I never had a paycheck or a boss or filled out a taxform. Nevertheless, I did work occasional odd jobs and had some very interesting opportunities which were also a great influence for me getting to Hollywood.

I promised I'd tell you everything, so before I tell you what happened after I finished The Gothic Rainbow, I need to go back and tell you my employment experiences which happened concurrently with writing it. Ugh. Another awkward sentence.

Let me rephrase...

Here's some jobs I did while writing my first novel.

That chapter of my life begins with American Greetings.

Chapter Twenty
American Greetings (Freelance)
5 February 1993 to 14 April 2000

“I haven't drawn a single character in over 30 years. It's not only that I have no time for it any longer, but I've found development of the stories themselves much more intriguing than drawing. This seems all the more amazing when one considers that each film, no matter how many people have worked on it, has what is called the 'Disney Touch.' The secret is teamwork. Each character is arrived at by group effort. An artist might have a lot of talent and come up with an excellent idea, but if, after it is thoroughly analyzed, the character cannot be adapted and worked with by the group, we discard it.”

- Walter Elias Disney

While I devoted myself to writing my novel in December of 1992, I was still looking for work from time to time. Only now, I could be more picky. Now I'd only take a job at someplace really cool like a bookstore or a record shop. No more vacuum cleaner sales for me.

Having grown up in Cleveland, there was never much of an opportunity for creative work. After all, a city like Cleveland has always been a blue-collar, working-class town. For those who thought of a “good job” as working in steel mills or auto factories and a “fun weekend” as drinking beer and watching football on television, Cleveland was wonderful. Unfortunately, my idea of a “good job” was working at major motion picture studio and a “fun weekend” was skateboarding at the beach. Options which were mere pipe dreams in Ohio.

That's not to say Cleveland was devoid of a creative culture. The Cleveland Orchestra is highly respected and world renown. Thanks to Alan Freed, it is also considered the birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll. American Greetings has their headquarters there too. Any illustrator or graphic designer who actually liked living in Cleveland, all aspired to work for a place like American Greetings.

Although I had decided to devote all my time to writing my novel, I also decided I'd take any job opportunities that came along if they were really exceptional.

Well, one came along.

When I found a HELP WANTED advertisement in The Plain Dealer newspaper calling for creative artists to help design toys for Those Characters From Cleveland, I was thrilled. Those Characters From Cleveland is now defunct, but was the name of the toy design and licensing division of American Greetings. They invented intellectual properties and designed toys and franchises which were immensely popular and successful in the 1970's and 1980's such as Care Bears, Holly Hobbie, Strawberry Shortcake, My Pet Monster and Madballs to name a few.

Like most of those types of jobs, they wanted someone with a college degree in the arts and whatever, whatever, whatever.

My way of applying for the job became to write a letter which was basically a short story. In the story, I was talking with a stuffed animal about applying for the job, and why they should hire me, while the stuffed animal was telling me it was a waste of time, because I had none of the qualifications.

I still have a copy of the story which landed me an interview.

~

Sammy The Seal is a stuffed animal. I hadn't seen Sammy for quite awhile. Not since I was about seven...Hmm. Okay, I guess it wasn't that long ago after all! Anyway, I was writing away on my typewriter and there he was, climbing up to see me. He sat up on the corner of the machine.

“Whatcha doin'?” He asked. Children and their stuffed animals remain pals forever. Ask anyone. It's an unspoken pact made between every child and their beloved fluffy pals - no matter how old they are, boy or girl. That's why Sammy didn't feel the need to act as if he were all excited to see me again. I knew. We had our pact. Our understanding.

“Oh, hi, Sammy! Um, I'm writing a resume.”

“A resume? For what?”

I reached over for an ad in the paper that I'd torn out. At the top, it said, “Think Toys.”

Sammy read it over as I continued to type. He was quiet for a long time. He looked at me. He looked back at the ad. He glanced down at the paper in the typewriter and slowly looked at the ad again.

“Uh, Eric?” He finally said.

“Yeah?”

“Um, aren't you - Didn't you say - Um, you're writing a story, aren't you?”

I stopped typing. I was confused. “Yeah, so?”

“Well, it says here they want a resume.”

“Oh... I know. But this is more creative!” I smiled.

Now, as we all know, stuffed animals - though appearing young and impractical - are actually some of the wisest creatures on earth. They have to be. To dispel childhood fears and be children's best friends, they have to be very wise and very brave. Of course, being my seal, I saw Sammy as one of the wisest and bravest of all.

“But, Eric. This is for a job. A business. These people want you to be professional. You can't go writing them cute little stories.”

I was hurt. “Why not?”

He showed me the ad. “Look. It says here they want people 'with the proven ability to conceptualize and propose totally innovative girls toy products'.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, where's your 'proven ability'?”

I scoffed and shook my head. I smiled as I began to type once more. “Oh, Sammy, you silly goof. They just say those kinds of things to weed out those who aren't confident in themselves. The ones who aren't dreamers. Come on! I can still get into Neverland, can't I? I can invent toys.”

Sammy sighed, and looked away.

I was irked. I tried ignoring him. I kept on typing. Finally, he said, “Have it your way.”

“Oh, what!? Now what?” I stopped typing. Again. I smiled at him. A smile of loving annoyance. “What now?”

“I just don't think it'll work. Toy companies want to make profits. They need employees who will help generate profits. Who do you think runs this company? Willie Wonka?”

I sighed. “No, silly. Wille Wonka makes candy. Not toys. Sheesh, you should know that.”

“Well, maybe if you just made it a bit more factual.”

“Factual?”

“Uh, huh.”

I threw my arms into the air and started to traipse around my room. “Oh, sure. Factual. Do you honestly think they'll care about factual stuff?” I changed my voice to a deep and serious tone. “I attended Our Lady Of Good Counsel gradeschool where I took a deep interest to art, writing and fieldtrips. From Holy Name High School, I graduated in 1989. I spent 2 years in Drama, 4 years in the Art Club, the Science Fiction/Fantasy Club (which incidentally voted to name itself “Mindrealms”, a name I invented) and the Still Last To Be Picked For Team Sports In Gym Club. I had the gradepoint average of Holden Caulfield and Peter Pan - 4.0 in Window Gazing.”

“Since then, I've worked at movie theaters, cable TV companies and vacuum shops.”

I reverted back to my real voice. “Come on, Sammy. Who's gonna care?”

He pulled out a pair of bifocals. I don't know where he got them. I doubt he needed them. But it made him look much more sophisticated. “But, it says here you need a highly creative imagination.”

I sat back down, winked, and gave him a thumbs-up. “Check.”

“A strong conceptual background?”

“Roger.”

“Basic illustration skills?”

“Yep.”

He set down the ad and looked directly in my eyes. “Do you really think they're going to call you?”

At that moment a tap came on my window. I rushed over to draw the curtains. It was Tink!

Quickly, I opened the window. She flew in with the tinkle of bells.

“What's that, Tink?... Hook stole Doc Brown's DeLorean?... Okay, I'll be right there!” I stumbled through my cluttered room for a jacket.

Stuffed animals, you know, must always have their questions answered. Not to mention that it is just plain rude to ignore them.

“Eric?” Sammy was suddenly upon my windowsill, blocking my way.

“Oh, Sammy! I gotta go!”

“Do you think they'll call?”

I smiled and instantly relaxed and slowly spoke. “Sammy, even if they don't, wasn't it terribly fun to write this story?”

He slowly smiled back and nodded.

I rubbed his head and leapt over him. “If anybody calls, tell them where I'm at.”

“Second star to the right.”

I paused for a long time. Sammy pointed out the window. “What's wrong? Get going! Tink needs you!”

“I need a happy thought.”

Sammy grinned and handed me a crumpled piece of paper. “Here.” He said. I read it, laughing, and flew off into the night.

At the top of the paper, it said, “Think Toys.”

~

It worked!

Kind of.

I didn't get the job, but, Those Characters From Cleveland were so impressed with my creativity, on 5 February 1993, they brought me in for an interview and elected to hire me as a freelance consultant.

I was so excited!

The person who called me, George Chanter, said my submission was “certainly the most unique.”

Finally, there was someone, somewhere who appreciated my creativity! Finally, there were people who placed some value on what I could contribute to an artistic enterprise. Not people who thought I should be incinerating trash or pimping $500 vacuum cleaners. Finally, someone was starting to see my potential! I was completely elated!

Since I wasn't hired for the original position, it took a good two or three weeks to get the phonecall. Naturally, I had given up by then. I presumed I'd never hear back. Getting that phonecall was pure bliss.

Driving over to their headquarters in Brooklyn, I was shocked at the size of the place. Living in Cleveland all my life, everyone knew where American Greetings was located. Their facilities were nestled back behind stands of trees off of two big main roads, so you couldn't see the size of their campus until you actually cruised up the long private drive onto their property.

The place was huge.

When I found the correct building and was greeted by the leader of the team, and he ushered me through a winding series of corridors to a conference room.

Since their whole business division was developing and licensing intellectual property, they were hilariously paranoid about anyone seeing anything they were working on.

When I glanced over at the literally hundreds of sketches littering the walls and commented that, “This looks really cool!”, I was immediately chided for it.

“I'm sorry, you can't look at that.” He said.

I chuckled, thinking it was a joke.

“I'm serious. That's all confidential. You can only look at material for the project we're assigning to you.”

What?

You got to be kidding.

Give me a break.

Why the heck did you bring me into a room with confidential material hanging on the walls if I'm not authorized to see it!?

Surely there were other conference rooms or offices that did not contain “top secret” stuff. Why on earth would anyone bring a visitor in for a meeting and conduct that meeting in a room with confidential projects on display?!

Whatever.

My first assignment was to elaborate on a line of toys they were developing called “Plumpkins” which were plush pumpkins. They already had basic ideas. They just wanted some additional concepts. I can't recall what I'd get paid, but when I asked for $200, I was told without hesitation, “Okay. You got it.”

Sure beats making $36 a week burning garbage.

Naturally, I took advantage of the opportunity in the hopes of landing a full-time job. I was asked to do 16 hours of work, but went far above and beyond the assignment in my attempt to impress them with my drive and creativity.

It didn't work.

I still didn't get hired.

Nevertheless, they were pleased with the things I presented and as a result, American Greetings continued to hire me on and off for various consulting and freelance work for a good 7 years. I maybe did a dozen projects for them and never made more than $200 per project. Wasn't much money, or a ton of gigs, but at least it was enjoyable, creative work.

As the years went on, I became an artist for the Create-A-Card division, using Photoshop to redesign and create new greeting cards for digital kiosks. Later, I also got hired as a creative consultant on the little-known “Body Wars” series of toys, where I invented character personalities and costumes, which eventually became a line of action figures from Tomax in 1994. They are big collectors items now, since so few of them ever existed.

That was very exciting for me.

As an intellectual property company, we invented countless characters which were never used. Hundreds of characters didn't get picked up or licensed by anyone. They never made it out of the confines of the walls of those “secret” conference rooms. My first project of “Plumpkins” were ones that never went anywhere.

But now and then, something would hit.

So, even though “Body Wars” was unpopular and the toys were only on the shelves for about a year, it was very exciting to have worked on something that actually got made.

My last interactions with American Greetings became very odd.

Obviously, when I started on projects in 1993, there was no Internet presence for the company.

Six years later, they had an entire building full of people running their Internet department. My, how times had changed.

I'm jumping ahead quite a few years here, but I wanted to finish out all the American Greetings experiences in a single chapter.

So, I found a job opening online for a web designer position at American Greetings in 2000. On 14 April 2000, I had my second-interview for the position. That was also the last date I ever conducted any business with them.

That truly proved to be one of the weirdest interviews I've ever had.

The most bizarre thing was, when I walked into the building, some girl from Human Resources immediately grabbed me and took me into a conference room to talk to me about benefits.

What?

I was baffled.

This was just an interview.

Right?

No company ever gives you a folder detailing all your health benefits and 401K plan until after you actually get hired. Why was she showing me this now?

“Do you have any questions?” The girl asked at the end of her spiel.

“Uh. Well, do I have the job?” I wondered. “I thought this was just an interview. I've never been given full disclosure of benefits for a job before I get hired.”

“Oh, no!” The girl exclaimed. “You still need to be interviewed. You're not hired yet. We just like to provide all the information ahead of time.”

Oooookay.

Weird.

Then it got stranger.

For my readers who do not know, when you design a website, you typically use what is called “lorem ipsum text” or “dummy text” to fill in sections that would have words.

Allow me to give an example.

Suppose you are designing a news website.

Obviously, there will be an area of the page dedicated to the printed text of the latest news articles. Since you don't know what that text will be, you use “lorem ipsum” text in place of it. “Dummy text” is a series of nonsensical words in Latin which have a visual sentence structure similar to a typical English paragraph.

Here's an example:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec pellentesque rutrum mollis. In sed sem felis. Etiam ac leo diam. Donec placerat varius purus, eu congue turpis rutrum vitae. Nulla sodales, turpis vel tempor ornare, dolor ipsum lacinia dolor, non condimentum neque lectus sed tortor. Vestibulum blandit lorem imperdiet ligula cursus tincidunt. Duis convallis rutrum vestibulum. Phasellus sodales justo nec augue pharetra tincidunt eget vel nisl. Suspendisse facilisis ante et risus elementum viverra venenatis lacus porta. In lectus lectus, pretium ut venenatis ut, molestie ut mauris. Donec odio velit, elementum a varius id, ullamcorper non ante. Etiam porttitor tincidunt sollicitudin. Mauris fermentum, eros a mollis cursus, velit dui condimentum metus, sed adipiscing lacus massa sit amet arcu.

Inserting a block of lorem ipsum text allows the designer to plan for spacing and aesthetic requirements.

During the interview, I was asked what my typical workflow was when I was doing design work.

When I got to the part where I explained I use loreum ipsum text, the fella interviewing me interrupted and said, “Oh, no. We don't have you do that here. We have a department to write dummy text for you.”

I was impressed that they planned so well ahead.

“Oh, cool!”, I said. “So the final text is all prepared already?”

He corrected me. “No, no. It's not the final. It's just temporary dummy text.”

I was stunned.

We had to be miscommunicating.

No company could possibly be this stupid.

Could they?

“Wait. Did I hear you right? You have an entire department of people... dedicated to writing fake text?”

“Yes, they sit right over there.” He pointed them out - a guy and a girl, sitting at desks in the corner.

You need two people to create fake text?

I had to be hearing this wrong. I said, “So, let me get this straight. When I'm designing a site and require temporary dummy text as a placeholder, I can't insert that text myself. I can't make it up on my own. I can't use lorem ipsum text. There are people here on staff, getting paid, to create text which never gets used?” I couldn't believe what I was saying.

“Yes. It makes things more efficient that way.”

Ha! Oh, really? Requiring that I cease working so the nephew of the CEO (really, who else could get a job like that?) can concoct some fake text for me, that makes workflows more efficient?

I couldn't make up my own phony stuff.

I had to use phony stuff created by someone else.

Unbelievable. To this day, I can still tell that story to any web developer and we laugh and laugh and they all look at me with the same shock and disbelief I had on my face when I was being told this!

Remember my 3 rules at the start of this book?

Always do your work as efficiently as possible?

Having to wait on other people to do a menial task you can do yourself is clearly not efficient. As I reiterated at the start, doing work with efficiency is one of the most vital elements of any job. And, sometimes, corporate policy and idiocy will prevent you from doing your job efficiently.

At that point, I was starting to realize, I didn't think I'd fit in with the American Greetings workflow. Not my kind of culture.

Not at all.

These people were clueless.

The moment when I knew I'd never get a job offer was later that same day when I was interviewed by 5 people simultaneously.

Again, one of the strangest interviews ever.

Later in life, I actually would experience interviews with upwards of maybe 4 or 5 people participating simultaneously. However, those interviews were always conducted at tables in conference rooms. My interview with 5 people at American Greetings took place in a cubicle!

Half the people were standing in the doorway, because, obviously, the average-sized office cubicle just can't possibly accommodate 6 people all at the same time. People were crammed halfway out into the aisle and hanging on the divider walls.

That was the part of the interview when I was questioned about my degree - “It says here you have a Graphic Design degree from Cuyahoga Community College. But they don't have a graphic design program.”

I clarified, “Well, I have attended Cuyahoga Community College and my resume says I have a Bachelor of Arts equivalent in Graphic Design.”

“But you don't have a degree?”

“No,” I said, clearly agitated. I explained, “I wasn't attempting to be deceptive. I freely admit, I do not have a degree. I have the equivalent work experience. Job postings often request that candidates possess a degree or the equivalent work experience. My resume states I have the equivalent of a degree, because my years of work experience gives me far more knowledge of graphic design than any student with a Bachelor of Arts degree.”

Some of the 5 people in the interview began to filter out at that point, claiming to have “other work” or “another meeting” to attend.

I knew they were lying.

They were just blowing me off, because I didn't have a college degree. Even though I'd been working in the design field for longer than most of them, my experience was viewed as irrelevant.

Now I realized why they packed 5 people in a cubicle.

They wanted to be witnesses to the mockery. They passed my resume around the office and had a good laugh, because they all thought I was lying. They thought they were going to put me on the spot, and they wanted to see the candidate squirm.

That really ticked me off.

I was furious.

I didn't squirm. Instead, I threw it right back at them.

And they scattered like rats.

My background proved I had already done creative projects with American Greetings over the course of 7 years. My work with American Greetings spanned from creative writing to illustration to computer graphics to character development. In addition to that, I was a published novelist and had a book filled with my photography and Photoshop work. I had already been invited to showcase my digital artwork in multiple art galleries around the city, where I had sold several pieces to collectors. Online, I could show examples of my website programming, creating destinations for the likes of commercial photography studios, the prestigious opera company Lyric Opera Cleveland, the Chamber of Commerce, and the World Trade Center. There were video clips on the Internet, highlighting my cinematography and design skills, featuring live webcasting projects at a cutting-edge studio I helped to build from scratch. There were demo reels online from a music video television program I marketed, produced, wrote, edited and directed and did all the conceptual design for as well. If that wasn't enough, I also had experience doing layouts and color-correcting and professional printing for government trucking fleets at KSK Color Lab and for Disney tradeshows with The Rogers Company.

Yet, despite all that knowledge, American Greetings didn't want to hire me as a webdesigner, because these fools felt those experiences didn't qualify as being “equivalent” to a graphic design degree?

Excuse me?

My creative design skillset far exceeded that of any new college graduate! I had been earning a living as a professional designer and developer for over 3 years at that point! Of course my real-world experience in the workforce exceeded the equivalent education of a Bachelor's Degree, you idiots!

Let's just say, their attitude began to really forge and solidify my resentment of corporations who care more about college degrees than capabilities.

Also made me start to realize that Cleveland might be filled with people too stupid to appreciate what skills I have to offer. Maybe I wasn't the problem. Maybe the problem was in the people who were surrounding me. Maybe I needed to get away from them.

Honestly, I'm glad American Greetings didn't hire me.

I'm sure it would have been a fantastic place to work, and consequently, I may have ended up staying there a long time. After all, American Greetings is still the “best deal in town” for creative professionals in Cleveland. They are truly the greatest company any artistic Clevelander could ever hope to be employed with, and had I started working there, and I may have remained stuck in Ohio forever.

Disappointing and infuriating at the time, being rejected by American Greetings was truly a blessing in disguise. The last thing my life needed was a solid and stable job in Cleveland, which would keep me in that miserable city for the rest of my life.

Let's face it, even the Wright Brothers only invented their airplane in Ohio. They left the state to fly it.

In other words, geniuses might give birth to their ideas in Ohio, but you have to leave the state if you ever want those ideas to soar.

Chapter Twenty One
Dreamdancer Motion Pictures
1993 to Present

“Movies are a medium of expression, say, like a symphony orchestra. Or like a painter's brush and canvas. The brush and canvas have been creating and presenting pictures for hundreds of years, but I haven't heard anyone say that painting was old - fashioned and had reached its limits. It's the painter - and the movie maker - the artist and the entertainer who have to be considered - not the tools of their trade. Like painting or music, it's the ideas and the material that get into the screen that's important. Moving pictures can be and will be new and fresh and exciting as long as there are ideas and talent in the world... and there's never been any sign that creative people are disappearing from the world of entertainment. What is needed in addition to the creative ability is courage - courage to try new things, to satisfy the endless curiosity of people for information about the world around them. Movies became popular because they found new forms, created new sensations and explored new fields of popular appeal.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Back to 1993.

The whole fiasco with American Greetings was truly a mixed blessing. I was thrilled to be working for such a prestigious company and doing such creative work. Yet at the same time, I was completely devastated over the fact that they were only willing to hire me as a freelance artist and I had no chance of working there full-time.

How else could I get some income while writing my novel?

“Dreamdancer Motion Pictures” was the answer.

“Dreamdancer Motion Pictures” is the name I coined on 24 April 1994 for all of my video production work.

My first crush was a girl I met in high school. We never even dated or kissed, but she was the first person I ever felt a true connection with.

One day, she was on the phone with someone and wanted to end the conversation because she was expecting a call from me. She used to call me her “dreamwalker” but she messed up the word and told the person on the other line that she had to go because she was expecting a call from her “dreamdancer”.

I loved it.

Dreamdancer.

Years later, that became the name of my video company.

Now, let me clarify - Dreamdancer Motion Pictures was never a real “company” in a practical sense. I never had offices or studios or employees. It was just me. Sole proprietorship. But it certainly looks more impressive on business cards to print Dreamdancer Motion Pictures instead of “I'm Eric and I make videos and stuff.”

My first projects began in 1993.

My friend Mike Rozack from gradeschool had an uncle named John who was a retired police officer. John was single with no kids, so he had a heck of a lot of money. For whatever reason, he was obsessed with video and computer equipment, but he never really created any videos with it. He just bought tons of stuff and never used it. Cameras. Decks. Video switchers. Editing computers. Microphones. You name it. He truly had a complete video production suite sitting in the corner of his livingroom.

Since John never used his stuff, Mike and I started playing around with it.

At first, we just went out collecting video footage from the car. Shooting out the sunroof and cruising around Downtown Cleveland, Mike drove and I shot.

We brought the footage back to John's and just started layering special effects on it with the Amiga Video Toaster computer setup. Lots of it turned out really cool and we were just screwing around, experimenting and having fun.

Another friend of mine, Mike Bostwick, whom I had met while hanging out at Cuyahoga Community College, had a band called Pipe Choir and he was going to the South By Southwest Music Convention in Texas. We thought it might be cool to shoot some music videos for a few of his songs. We started scouting for locations on 28 November 1993.

Next thing I know, I was using a Steadicam Junior and running around at various local clubs shooting Pipe Choir concerts and walking around The Cleveland Museum of Art gathering clips.

We had a blast.

We weren't doing it for money. We were just having a good time with it and learning what we could do. The videos were all finished by 15 March 1994 and were a huge hit for Pipe Choir at the convention.

One of my big breakthroughs came when a camera started to malfunction.

You see, we didn't have professional cameras or editing systems. This was all amateur and consumer level stuff. This was also the day and age of videotape. We were just on the cutting edge of non-linear editing technology.

Now, in the days of linear editing, when professional productions shot a video, they used a technology called “timecode” to synchronize the video with the music. Since the playback speed of analog machines had slight variations in motor speeds, the video would play back at slightly different speeds. It wasn't enough to notice - only a few milliseconds here and there - but added together over the length of a 4 or 5 minute song could mean the audio was out-of-sync by a full second or two.

Our equipment had no timecode. So, we couldn't do lip-sync videos.

Or so we thought.

One night, we shot a Pipe Choir concert at The Phantasy Niteclub in Lakewood, Ohio using 2 cameras. The audio on one of the cameras began to distort and crackle until finally it cut out all together. The camera shot in Hi8 format and included a digital PCM track at 48kHz which could be used for overdubbing.

I reasoned, why not take the good audio from the “B” camera and overdub it onto the “A” camera PCM track? After all, the “A” camera audio was already ruined. What could it hurt if it didn't work?

Listening for an audio cue in a portion of the video before the audio dropped out, I paused the playback at the exact same spot on both tapes. Since all the gear was Sony, I was able to use a Sony remote to unpause both video decks exactly simultaneously.

It took a few tries to get it right, but eventually, I got the two tapes playing perfectly in sync while one dubbed new audio onto the other.

Lo and behold, the experiment worked!

More than 30 minutes into it and the tapes were still flawlessly synchronized.

This opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for me!

No longer confined to random visuals set to accompany a song, I now had the means to do traditional lip-sync music videos.

Since I was heavily involved in the local music scene and I knew all the clubs and bands and all the great college radio stations, I began to approach various local bands about making music videos.

I built those relationships over a good 2 or 3 years, simply by going to shows, and attending concerts, and calling college radio stations, and hanging out in the club scene.

Another local Cleveland band, State Of Being, had a very cool electronic dance sound and I ended up doing a video to their song “Virtual Addiction” starting on 9 July 1994.

The way the lip-sync would work, I recorded the track from CD onto the PCM track of Hi8 tape. We'd pop the tape into a Hi8 Sony Watchman and plug the RCA audio-out cables into my little portable radio with RCA inputs. That would be our reference track. I would use that to playback on location during the shoot.

Back in the studio, I just resynched the audio like I explained earlier and there you have it - lip-sync music video with PCM digital audio for “Virtual Addiction” by State Of Being without using any timecode.

Not knowing a darn thing about white-balance made the “white room” scene lit with tungsten light look yellow, but, as I said, this was all a learning process. My college filmschool was all hands-on.

The best part about the State Of Being shoot?

We got paid for it!

No, I didn't make a lot. Only a couple hundred bucks. But when you are living at home with your parents and have no debt, rent or grocery bills, that's a significant amount of money.

Finally I was doing what I loved - writing a novel and creating motion pictures - and I was getting paid for it!

During the video shoot for State Of Being, I recall telling the band and their manager that I planned to create a video for Tori Amos and give it to her.

They scoffed and said that wasn't very realistic and asked how I planned to do it.

“I don't know”, I said. “That doesn't matter. First I have to make it. Then I'll worry about how I give it to her.”

Within a few weeks, I was in Toronto with my then-girlfriend and we were shooting footage for a video to the song “Sister Janet” by Tori Amos. On 7 July 1994, I went to see Tori perform at the Music Hall in Downtown Cleveland and I waited outside the venue with about 30 or 40 other fans after the show. She greeted each and every one of us and I personally handed her the video. Just like I said I would.

I was the only person in the crowd who got a hug from Tori.

When I say I'll do something, I will do it.

I may not know how or when, but I'll get there eventually.

People always ask if Tori ever watched the video. Heck, I have no idea. I never heard from her. That's not the point. She could have tossed it out the car window on her drive to the airport. I don't know. The point wasn't to get her reaction. The point was to give it to her.

Another local musician who was often described as “Tori Amos meets Robert Smith” gave me the first opportunity to do non-linear video editing. Her name was Pepper Acton.

When I first started these video projects, I was using a NewTek Video Toaster on a Commodore Amiga computer. NewTek eventually upgraded their system to the Video Flyer, which then became the first “affordable” non-linear desktop video editing system for home computers. “Affordable” was still “crazy expensive” to me, but now, standard video editing was no longer confined to the exclusive realm of $100,000 systems in Hollywood studios. The NewTek Video Flyer was genuinely revolutionary.

John upgraded to the Video Flyer and we were thrilled.

The system had a 1GB harddrive for audio.

Two 9GB drives handled all the A-B switching for video. The 9GB drives cost $2000 apiece and had their own tower enclosure.

Twenty years later, you could spend $30 to get a 64GB USB drive small enough to slip in your pocket. Crazy.

Pepper Acton's “Couldn't Know” was the very first video I created with the Video Flyer.

Pepper was roommates with a guy who knew one of my bestfriends. My friend had mentioned Pepper to me a few times, so, that is how I had heard of Pepper and her music.

One night, Pepper was doing a live broadcast from Case Western Reserve University on 91.1FM WRUW and I decided to listen.

I was blown away.

She was amazing.

I called the radio station and spoke to her. She had heard of me through our mutual friend and agreed to meet with me the next day, on 14 April 1995. She told me she couldn't afford to pay me for a video, but I told her I was still learning the trade and I needed the experience.

We shot over the course of a few days, at her apartment, and some gardens along Martin Luther King Boulevard, and an amazing abandoned train station along I-90, which was unfortunately razed shortly thereafter.

No longer needing to worry about timecodes, the non-linear editor was awesome. For the first time, we tried to script out a project and come up with specific visuals instead of just throwing random things together.

Years later, even after finishing my novel, Pepper would introduce me to people as a “filmmaker”. I loved that.

By this point, I was getting pretty confident in my abilities, so I wanted to push things a little more.

The local cable television company, North Coast Cable, had about 3 or 4 public access channels on it and I decided to create a music video program. With a title coined from the idea of hearing the ocean in a seashell, my show was called Shellsongs and would feature alternative/gothic/industrial acts.

Remember, this was in 1993, way before people were getting on the Internet. In order to get music videos for use on the show, I had to start writing letters and requesting them. I got a lot of record label addresses from inside CD liner notes and the rest I got from a DJ at a college station who offered to help me out when I told her about my ambitions for the show. My then-girlfriend and I went over the DJs apartment one night and she gave me something like a 10-page list of record company addresses. Awesome!

Slowly, after writing to them all, the videos poured in from the likes of Nettwerk Records, Wax Trax! Records, Projekt Records and more. In a few short weeks, I had a dozen hours worth of music videos and press kits.

The show was great fun to make and I learned a lot about television production and making video graphics for broadcast. The show featured CD reviews and I interviewed bands like Die Krupps from Germany, and I did feature stories on nightclubs like The Phantasy, and clothing stores like Chain Link Addiction.

Since it was on public access and broadcast all over the city for an hour every week, the show actually gained a small following. I put out fliers at local clubs and record stores, where I knew fans of this style of music would visit. Slowly, people heard about it. Gradually, people were tuning in to watch it. IndustrialnatioN Magazine did a review and said, “If only MTV's 120 Minutes could be so good.”

Wow. Quite a compliment!

My family never noticed. Shellsongs aired twice a week, every week, for almost a year. 9:00pm on Friday and 12:00pm on Tuesday for 9 months. Anytime I'd go over to the television at those times, my grandparents would still ask me, “You wanna watch somethin'?”

I honestly don't think they realized I created a television program.

I think they may have thought it was a videotape or something.

Since there was no VCR in the livingroom, it couldn't be on videotape. I don't think they realized that though.

Honestly, it was odd. I sincerely think that they didn't know I was actually on television, even though you could see me and hear my voice. The idea of me being on a television show was too difficult for them to grasp. I truly don't think their brains ever quite processed what they were watching.

Others took notice though and as a result of the notoriety gained from the Shellsongs broadcasts, I was approached by the producer of another public access show and she began to send me a few paying gigs.

Thanks to her, I covered a huge jazz concert called the “Night of the Cookers” and I even produced an annual report video for one local branch of Huntington Bank on 2 December 1994.

I ended up shooting numerous wedding videos.

Did a music video for a local band called Jehovah Waitresses.

Shot a modeling video for a girl named Chanda Busselle.

Made a promotional video for a local record label, Jevan Records.

Not bad for a couple of guys who had no clue what we were doing and gained all of our skills though trial and error.

To this day, when I shoot videos, I still use the name “Dreamdancer Motion Pictures” from time to time. All those years of work paid off eventually. In fact, 20 years later, my various skateboarding videos on the Internet have well over 1.5 million views, so I guess people finally started paying attention to what I create.

Not bad for starting out in someone's livingroom with a borrowed Hi8 camera.

I'm quite proud of those old video projects.

Looking back on them, they are filled with every single amateur flaw you can imagine. Poor lighting. Shaky camera moves. Totally botched white-balance.

But I think the passion for the work shines through. You can see what I was striving to accomplish, even in those videos where I didn't quite manage to get there.

Thanks to my efforts with Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, I learned an immense amount about filmmaking. Many doors of opportunity were opened. Numerous connections were made and professional relationships formed (even some personal relationships too).

Maybe it wasn't Hollywood.

Maybe it wasn't working with Lucas or Speilberg.

But there was still a grand satisfaction with all the videos I created.

Shooting my grandparents 50th Wedding Anniversary, I came to a profound realization that shooting photographs, and especially video, is the singular most important thing you can do at these milestone events in life.

Sure, people get irrationally shy, and run away from the lens, and get annoyed, and yell at you to put the camera away.

But you have to ignore those requests.

Even if they think you're being rude or inconsiderate, shoot anyway. Capture everything.

Because one day, most of the people in that movie will be dead and buried. I know that sounds morbid, but it's true. They will be gone from this earth and the only things you will have to remember them by are some photographs and this old home movie.

To me, that isn't morbid.

To me, that just goes to show how valuable our time truly happens to be. How essential and important such a video becomes.

Maybe it doesn't mean a lot at the time you are shooting it.

But in 10 years or 20 years, that video may transform into one of the most precious heirlooms of your family. Because it shows friends and relatives and loved ones who are no longer with you. You can see them. You can hear them. You can listen to that same awful joke they tell over and over. You can enjoy their laughter and glimpse their smile. That video becomes priceless.

Maybe I didn't fill out a W2 form for my employment with Dreamdancer Motion Pictures. Maybe I never had an office. Maybe I never turned a profit. But everything I was doing was a lot more important than making telemarketing calls or cooking french fries.

Chapter Twenty Two
Double Dragon Film Crew
18 June 1993 to 2 July 1993 (8 Days)

“The motion picture still has great things ahead. Equipped with its big screens, its color and sound fidelities and all its perfected devices for illusionment, nothing is beyond its range and powers. Itself a marvel of science, it can and will serve with equal facility the space enthusiast looking beyond the sun, and the homebody content with the warm familiar earth and all its bounties when he goes with his family seeking entertainment and inspiration.”

- Walter Elias Disney

As an author, I feel I can speak for most authors when I say - we all aspire to make every chapter of our books rich and compelling.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

No matter if we write epic fiction or hard-nosed journalism, every author knows, once you get into a book with hundreds of pages, some chapters will invariably be better than others. Some will flow smoothly and effortlessly. Others will prove to be a struggle. Some will be blissful and easy to write. Others will by difficult and trying.

This is a chapter I've been looking forward to writing, because it's about one of the coolest jobs I ever had.

I know this chapter will be easy to write, I just hope the words flow and you find it rich and compelling to read. Goodness knows, it was so much fun to live this chapter of my life!

While I was an “unemployed degenerate” and writing my novel, one of the best job - er, um, no. No. Scratch that. What I meant to say was, while I was a “struggling author” and writing my novel, one of the best jobs I had was working as a stand-in for Jeff Imada on the set of the movie Double Dragon.

During my years living in Cleveland, the only significant “big budget Hollywood movies” shot there were A Christmas Story and Light Of Day and Double Dragon. I know two of those titles are not much to brag about, but, hey, it was Cleveland. What do you expect? We had to take what we can get.

How did I manage to get a job as a stand-in for a martial arts expert?

Well, it was a very weird twist of Fate.

During the early 1990's, as I mentioned before, I was a bigtime club kid. I would be out dancing at alternative/industrial/goth/undeground nightclubs for a good 3 nights a week. Nightclubs with names like Metropolis, Smart Bar, The Boiler Room, Alter House, The Phantasy, The Chamber - these were all my haunts. As with any club scene in any major city, most of the clientele were college age kids and most of the regulars were all beautiful boys and handsome girls.

One of the handsome girls in my circle of gorgeous friends was a fashion model named Heather who was represented by an agency called David & Lee in Downtown Cleveland. Turns out that David & Lee was hired to do the extras casting for all the scenes being filmed in Cleveland for the movie Double Dragon.

There was going to be a nighclub scene in the film. They were shooting at Metropolis and needed to fill the club with 300 extras. So, the management of David & Lee asked all of their models to help recruit talent. Tell all your friends. Spread the word. Basically, anyone and everyone between the ages of 18 and 25 would be cast as an extra for the club scene. Looks were less important than age. They simply needed bodies to fill the space. Heather told me, all you had to do was go to David & Lee and sign up.

Awesome!

I informed two of my friends, Attila and Mike, about this opportunity and they jumped at the chance too. I mean, working on a movie with Alyssa Milano and the liquid-metal Terminator from the second Terminator film? How cool is that!? No one in Cleveland ever gets to do that sort of thing! We were all interested and eager.

Go sign up at the Statler Building, downtown. Show up between 12:00pm and 5:00pm.

The three of us drove to David & Lee the next day, 21 May 1993, and I'll never forget the look on their faces as we rode the elevator. A couple of the agency fashion models had gotten in with us and my friends and I nearly dropped dead. None of us knew there were girls this hot in Ohio! These chicks looked like they had walked right out of a Vogue Magazine spread. Astonishing. We tried to play it cool and not freak out, but we all shared a lot of silent “OH. MY. GOD!” glances at each other.

We walked in and the receptionist gave us one of those condescending, “Ew. What are guys like YOU doing here?” looks. We obviously weren't there for a GQ shoot.

Telling them we were there for the Double Dragon casting, they quickly took us into a side room. I guess they needed to avoid the possibility of us contaminating the truly beautiful people.

A young girl interviewed us and told us the details. It would be shot on 15 June 1993 from 6:00pm to 6:00am. We get $50 for the night.

Awesome.

An important-looking woman came out, I presume she was the director of the agency, and she was all excited to meet us. She told the young girl she had “some really great looking guys here!”

Total lie. My friends and I were frumpy and we knew it. We were not “great looking” by any stretch of the imagination. But now I see why she ran a modeling agency. She knew how to be kind to the male ego.

She took down our vital statistics and got a Polaroid of each of us and explained the shoot again. They'd call us in a week or two. We should tell more of our friends if we knew of anyone who would be interested.

That was that. She sent us on our merry way and we spent the rest of the car ride home talking about how unbelievably hot the chicks were in the elevator and the office.

A few weeks later, Kathy of David & Lee (so that was her name!) called me at 11:38 in the morning. They still wanted me to be an extra in the nightclub scene that weekend, but in addition to that, they wondered if I might be available and interested to be a stand-in for one of the actors for 2 or 3 days. I'd have to report to the set at 7:00am sharp the next day on 18 June 1993. This crew position was paid, by the way. I'd get $60 a day.

Was I interested!? Working on a movie set tomorrow morning?! For $60 a day!?

Absolutely! Yes! I'll be there!

My contact was a girl named “Katie” and I was to look for signs marked “D2 Parking”.

I hung up the phone, totally thrilled.

I didn't tell them I had absolutely no idea what the hell a “stand-in” was.

They didn't tell me a “day” working a movie set was typically about 12 hours long. Or 13 hours. Or more.

In the end, I wound up working on the set of Double Dragon for a grand total of 8 days! I was so elated. It was one of the most exciting opportunities of my life. Working on a real Hollywood movie!

The irony is, the shoot went over schedule and the big clubscene at Metropolis was never filmed. All my friends never had their chance to shoot the movie for one night and I worked on it for 8 days! Just because I was skinny with long hair, just like Jeff Imada.

I'll explain that in a moment, but first allow me to say, I nearly got fired before I got started!

My first day reporting to set, I had to go to the Hannah Theatre in Downtown Cleveland and I had no clue where it was. I somehow turned off my alarm and got stuck in traffic and totally lost, so I ended up being an hour late to the shoot! I was freaking out. When I finally arrived, they informed me they were going to call David & Lee to replace me if I hadn't shown up in 5 more minutes.

Whew!

I apologized profusely and got to work.

I learned what a stand-in does too.

The concept is pretty simple.

Shooting movies takes a long time to set up each scene properly. You have to position cameras and set up lights and practice camera moves and so forth.

Now, you can't have actors standing around the set under hot lights for an hour before they are ready to shoot. Their makeup would run. Costumes get sweaty. It would be a big mess.

Therefore, you hire stand-ins for the actors.

Stand-ins are people who are the same physical appearance as the actor. Same gender. Same height. Same build. Same physique.

The stand-in literally “stands in place” for their actor while the crew adjusts lights, figures out camera angles, and generally blocks the scene. We are the ones who get sweaty. Once the director is ready to do the actual shoot, we stand-ins step away and the actors come in and perform the scene.

I happened to be the same height and build as Jeff Imada. He was one of the actors and he was also the stunt coordinator. In later years, he would choreograph stunts for movies like Iron Man and Fight Club and Armageddon and Waterworld and The Green Mile and most awesome of all, Serenity. As an author of vampire novels, I can also brag that he worked on films like From Dusk Till Dawn and Blade and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. Most folks won't care, but for those of us who have Hollywood dreams, that puts me within two degrees of separation from some pretty amazing actors and directors! Unlike the Hollywood cliche, I don't namedrop in order to brag. Not at all. I'm just sharing my excitement over being in proximity to these folks. I kept on wondering how I lucked out to even be there! I was truly so honored.

Jeff was a good guy. Two things that stood out most to me was that he was exceptionally meticulous about safety on the set. Once he had the edge of a countertop get covered with padding for a fight scene, even though the scene was taking place 20 feet away from the counter. The second thing I noticed, he was quite softspoken and withdrawn.

Years later, I would discover that a mere 2 months earlier, Jeff had just come off of being stunt coordinator on The Crow where his bestfriend Brandon Lee was tragically killed on set during a stunt.

Suddenly, being overly cautious and wistfully withdrawn made all the sense in the world.

Like I said, he was a good guy. Was heartbreaking to discover why he had such a cloud of sorrow around him. Who could blame him?

As for a more uplifting story from the set of Double Dragon, I had lunch with Alyssa Milano! Like most boys from my generation, Alyssa was a huge celebrity crush. Grew up watching her and lusting for her in movies and television shows and now here I was, working with her on a movie! Pretty amazing.

Alyssa was dating Scott Wolf at the time and Double Dragon was one of his first movies. I'll never forget the day I was sitting in some chairs in the theatre, waiting around to be called to set, while Alyssa and Scott sat behind me talking. Alyssa was trying to convince Scott to fly to New York City with her for their day off, so she could go shopping.

All I could think about was the immense gulf between our lives.

Scott Wolf was just starting his acting career and he was already living a life I will never, ever have.

I will never have a gorgeous celebrity girlfriend. No way. (Although, if Alyson Michalka reads this, call me!) It's impossible for me to ever date someone so wealthy and successful that she'll be asking me to accompany her to New York City for one day just to go shopping. That won't become my reality.

I may have been sitting 3 feet away from Scott and Alyssa, but they were a million miles removed from my life.

Hell, I was unemployed and had about $300 to my name!

It was a very surreal moment for me.

Kind of like that scene in the movie Gattaca when Ethan Hawke's character makes the comment about not knowing how far he was from his dream until he was standing right next to it.

That was me.

I may have been working on a Hollywood movie, but the dream sure was far away.

These two, Alyssa and Scott, had Hollywood careers.

I was just some wide-eyed dreamy kid in Ohio, schlepping around as a stand-in for a week. I may have been on the set, but I was still on the outside looking in.

There was a moment a few days later when I was hearing some folks on the crew complaining about the rigors of moviemaking. They were right, it is hard work. The hours can be excruciatingly long. But they were still living the dream.

“You guys are so lucky!” I said, frustrated with their ingratitude. “There are people all over the world who dream about working in Hollywood and working on movies. Heck, I'm one of them! Yes, the hours are long and exhausting and you spend a lot of time away from home. But you make great money and you get to live a dream that some people will never have. I'm lucky that I get to experience this right now in my life. But it might never happen again for me. This could be the one and only chance I ever have. So, I cherish every moment I'm on this set. You should be grateful that you get to live this everyday!”

They looked at me very strangely.

I couldn't quite read them.

It looked kind of like, “Gee, you're so right.”

It looked kind of like, “Shut up, you naive moron.”

I suspect it was a little of both.

Everything about being on that set was a giddy thrill. As a stand-in, just knowing that I was being framed by a real Panavision camera? A camera that may have been used on Jaws or Star Wars or something. That was an amazing moment.

The camera operator looked at me like I was crazy.

“Studios rent their cameras!” I said. “Right? So that means, you don't know what other films that camera has been used on. That may be the same camera used to shoot scenes from E.T. or The Goonies! And now, it's pointed at me. That's fabulous!”

All in all, it was an amazing experience.

The first day alone, I met so many celebrities.

Meeting Robert Patrick (I learned he was the polymimetic alloy Terminator - I never knew his name before) and having him ask me about Nine Inch Nails (because his brother Patrick was in the band and I was wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt). Meeting Shelly Blanks, daughter of Billy Blanks the Tae Bo fitness founder. Meeting Scott Wolf before he was famous and Marc Dacascos, who went on to play The Crow in the TV series. Meeting cool stuntmen like Al Leong who played Genghis Khan in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Henry Kingi who had a small role in Stir Crazy. Gorgeous Hollywood ladies like Sazzy Lee Varga was on set as a production assistant, while Kristina Malandro hung out with me and was constantly sweet and classy.

Then there was McGill.

I've been an avid skateboarder since about 1987. Mike McGill of the Bones Brigade was there to do a skateboard stunt. In those days, my friends and I totally idolized the Bones Brigade. I remember sitting in the theatre seats and McGill walked past and Scott Wolf shouted out, “Hey Mike!”

I was shocked.

My eyes wide as skateboard wheels, I looked at Scott and said, “Um. Scott? Excuse me? Was, uh, was that... Mike McGill?”

Scott was totally nonchalant about it. “Uh, huh.”

Oh. My. Gosh!

I leapt up all excited and introduced myself. Mike was super cool and all down-to-earth and just awesome. I always kept my skateboard in the trunk of my car and he told me to go get it and we skated together. It was so much fun! There was a miniramp in the theatre and Mike and I were skating it on our lunchbreak.

I hadn't skated for about a year at that point, so I totally sucked. Despite my sadly rusty skills, McGill was constantly respectful and supportive and encouraging towards me. It was pretty amazing.

Of course, once we got caught, the producer or AD or someone came over and made me stop skating, because of “liability” or insurance or whatever. But, still, for a few minutes, I was having a skate session with a member of the Bones Brigade!

How cool is that?

Living the dream.

Having lunch with my childhood crush, Alyssa Milano.

Skateboarding with one of my teenage idols, Mike McGill.

Working on a movie set.

At that point in my life, those were truly the most wonderfully exciting 8 days I had ever experienced.

The best part of the entire shoot?

Getting kissed by Julia Nickson. She is the amazingly gorgeous Asian woman who was guiding Rambo through the jungle in Rambo: First Blood Part 2.

Here's the story.

Julia played an adoptive mother-figure to the two main characters in the film. She worked on the film for many days and we talked a lot on set and she was really sweet to me.

The day she wrapped, there was a huge circle of cast and crew standing around. Literally about 12 to 15 men and women just milling about and Julia was saying goodbye to all of us. She was shaking hands and giving hugs to everybody and people were wishing her well and saying they'd see her back in Los Angeles.

Julia was very polite and took the time to shake hands and give hugs to every single person in that huge circle of people.

The last person Julia said goodbye to was me.

And she gave me a hug.

And she leaned in close.

And all of a sudden, she kissed me! Just on the cheek, but still! She didn't kiss anyone else. Not one other person. Out of that entire group of people, no one got a kiss but me.

Everyone saw it and started giving each other looks.

Keep in mind that I was 22 and shy and had only lost my virginity 2 years before, so I had no idea how to react. I was not the suave and charming James Bond figure you see before you today. I was more like Inspector Clouseau.

I stood there shocked and silent and I'm sure blushing into 30 hues of red. Everyone looked shocked, not just me.

Julia just walked away and stepped out of the theatre.

As soon as she was gone, everyone started teasing me.

“Wooo! Eric! What was that all about?” One grip said.

“Yeah, what's going on with you and Julia?” Another asked.

I stammered, “I - uh, I - N - Nothing. Nothing is going on. I have no idea what that was about!”

Some guys looked at me like I was crazy and pointed out the door, “Well! Go after her!”

“No. No.” I said. “She was just being nice.”

The guy got all stern on me. “Dude. Go after her. Seriously.”

I brushed it off. “No. She's married. She's not into me.”

The crowd dissipated with a lot of disappointed sidelong glances cast my way. Everyone thought I was a moron and they were all right.

Married?

That was my excuse?

Years later, looking on the Internet, I would discover she was going through a divorce at the time.

Not chasing after her remains one of the biggest regrets of my life.

How could I have been so naive?

What the heck was I thinking!?

Of COURSE I should have gone after her! A woman doesn't make a point to kiss a guy in a crowd like that, unless she likes him!

What a fool I was!

My Double Dragon story could have ended with, “Julia Nickson and I dated for the next 5 years and I moved to California with her.”

But, no.

Alas, instead, the day ends with, “I drove my rattletrap old Chevy Nova back home to my grandparents house and never got to visit Los Angeles until 11 years later.”

Crap.

I might have become Julia Nickson's boyfriend and I blew it!

Idiot.

I messed that one up!

Speaking of messing up with the ladies, that's a good segue into the story of Alan.

One of the producers on the film was some guy named Alan Schechter. Apparently, he was originally from Cleveland, so he was very excited to bring the film back to Ohio.

Alan Schechter was very odd. He seemed to have this attitude like he was some sort of bigshot. At first I thought he was joking because, after all, truly bigshot producers don't make cheesy movies like Double Dragon. Bigshot producers make bigshot films, not goofy movies based on videogames. According the the reviews on the website Rotten Tomatoes, the film Double Dragon remains the lowest rated video game movie adaption of all time. In 2009, Time Magazine ranked it the worst videogame adaptation film ever made, out of a list of 30 movies. We weren't making Gandhi here.

The more time I spent around Alan though, I started to get the sense that he actually believed he was some successful Hollywood celebrity. It was laughable and pathetic, yet because he had such a misguided yearning to be accepted, it made Alan strangely endearing. You just wanted to give him some cookies and milk and pat him on the head, even as he was trying to convince himself he was better than you.

The guy would constantly hit on cute girls on the set, like extras and my fellow stand-ins. One day, I was sitting around the theatre with this pretty blonde and Alan came over and was putting the moves on her. She was already engaged and was having none of Alan. She was not impressed by him at all. The girl just laughed in his face, but he was undaunted and kept right on trying to hook up with her. Odd thing was, he didn't do it with confidence. It was more like cluelessness. As if he didn't notice he was being rejected.

Alan was a strange cat.

Two years after I had moved to Los Angeles, Alan Schechter ended up killing himself. Climbed into his bathtub and put a gun to his head, in a humble two-bedroom apartment off Ventura Boulevard, in Studio City. He was only 40 years old. I didn't find out about his suicide until he had already been dead for a few years.

Like they say, life is what you make of it. Hollywood can make your dreams come true or it can become a living nightmare. What your version of Hollywood manifests will be up to you.

Alan was a nobody who tried to tell himself he was a bigshot. I wondered how many other tragic people like that get chewed up by Hollywood.

There's nothing wrong with being a nobody. I'm not insulting Alan by saying he was a nobody. I'm a nobody too. The nobodies behind the scenes are the ones who get the real work done. In the entertainment industry, as well as any industry, the nobodies are the ones who make all the difference. The grunts. The low men on the totem pole. We are the foundation.

The difference is, I'm okay with being a nobody. Alan wasn't. Being a nobody doesn't make me suicidal. On the contrary, being a nobody makes me happy I don't have to sign autographs when I hang out at Santa Monica Pier.

Although, I did beg Alan for a little notoriety.

I asked him if I could get a credit in the movie. Being involved with a Hollywood movie was a lifelong dream. I'd be glad to give up the money, if it meant my name was up there.

I told him they didn't have to pay me for my work. Just put my name on the silverscreen.

Alan said no.

But he was nice about it. He explained that if every person who worked on a film for a couple days got a credit, the credits would be 30 minutes long.

I understood. He was right.

So, I'm uncredited.

Before I moved to California, I met Alan again at an event for the Cleveland Film Society and he gave me some of the best advice I've ever gotten about filmmaking. In fact, it was the advice of Alan which ultimately decided the location where I shot my 2002 short film, The Unseelie Court.

“Never shoot,” he said, “at a hostile location.”

He explained himself by talking about shooting at Tower City for Double Dragon. Apparently, some shop owners weren't thrilled with the film crew being there and made the whole shoot very difficult. He didn't go into details, but it was clearly an unpleasant set to be on.

“Here's the thing,” he said, “no matter how much time you've invested or how many contracts you have signed, all it takes is one phonecall to the cops to shut down your whole production. If you're shooting at a business and the business owner gets ticked off, you're out of there. Doesn't matter how much you've paid him. Doesn't matter how big your film is. He calls the cops, it's private property, you have to leave. Period.”

Alan said he learned his lesson. Never shoot a hostile location. Only work with people who are happy and excited to have you filming there. If a business owner shows the slightest hesitation or gives you a hard time in any way during scouting and negotiating, walk away. Do not shoot there. Hard as it may be to sacrifice a great location during a scout, it's a lot worse to loose that location halfway through your shooting schedule on the day of the shoot.

Alan was absolutely right.

Here's to you, Alan. Thanks for inadvertently helping me with my movie. Thanks for bringing Double Dragon to Cleveland. Sorry you decided to exit the story of life so soon. You may have been a cocky jerk and totally full of yourself, but thanks for playing a role on my stage. You deserve better than being left out of the credits.

Chapter Twenty Three
Glamour Shots
9 May 1996 to 12 May 1996

“I've always been bored with just making money. I've wanted to do things; I wanted to build things, to get something going. What money meant to me was that I was able to get money to do that for me.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Working on my first novel was a period of my life which provided a freedom I knew I'd never have again.

Once it was finished, I knew that for the rest of my life, I'd never have the luxury of so much time and leeway to create and dream.

Afterwards, I knew, one of two things was going to happen - either I'd become a successful novelist with an agent and a publisher and deadlines, or (more likely) I'd work 9-to-5 jobs the remainder of my days. No matter what the future were to hold, I knew my endless license to write at my liberty was going to cease, and never again return.

That was my one and only shot to live such a life of leisure.

Once I was done, my primary objective was to land some gainful employment and save up the money to self-publish the book.

This proved to be far more difficult than I ever imagined.

In my naivety, I thought completing a novel would look amazing on a resume. After all, tons of folks dream about writing “the Great American novel” someday. I figured people would be really impressed with me. I thought I would be admired for my tenacity and ambition and my fortitude would be enough to impress anyone into giving me a job.

How wrong I was.

Instead of looking good on a resume, my book actually made my prospects worse. Permit me to explain.

I was willing to work anywhere. Retail stores. Fast food restaurants. Gas stations. Janitor. I didn't care. I just needed money for my book. Creating my novel was my obsession for so many years, I had to put it out there into the world, no matter what the job that paid for it. Willing to endure any possible employment, I applied everywhere I could. If there was a sign in a window, I was filling out an application.

The problem was, I had inadvertently hurt my chances by writing that novel. With no practical work experience for over 3 years, no one wanted to hire a bum like me. Plus, when they found out I had written a novel, they suddenly saw me as being very ambitious. That worked against me too, because places such as gas stations and convenience stores reasoned I'd quit after 3 months to take a better job, so why hire me in the first place?

Too little experience to be hired for a good job.

Too much ambition to be hired for a cruddy job.

I was screwed.

I thought potential employers would admire my accomplishment. I thought they would see my dedication and devotion to writing as a strong and noble work-ethic.

I was sorely mistaken.

Most of the time, I wouldn't even get a callback. I would send out 38 resumes at a time and every single one would be ignored.

On Sunday 16 June 1996, I even went through the phonebook and sent a resume to literally every single video production company in the entire city of Cleveland. Over 100 resumes in total.

Not one response.

Took me 2 months before I even got my first interview. I didn't get hired at that job because it was $4.50/hour for 15 hours a week and I admitted I'd keep jobhunting because I couldn't afford to be making $67 a week.

Took me 7 months to become gainfully employed. That's 7 months of looking everyday, all the time. Even my very-supportive-girlfriend was starting to doubt me and act like I was some kind of lazy slacker by the end. No one could believe that an ambitious, hardworking, intelligent young guy could have such a difficult time finding work. My grandparents were, of course, convinced it was my haircut. Failing to land interviews had nothing to do with long hair. Apparently they weren't smart enough to realize that potential employers couldn't see my haircut in a resume!

Like I said - Edith Bunker. Not too bright.

Clearly, I must have been doing something wrong or not trying hard enough. That's how everyone saw me.

That was painful - to know in my heart that I was doing everything in my power to find work, yet having no one believe in me.

Being surrounded by family and friends, yet being completely alone, is a rough place to be in.

But that is a recurring theme in my career story, isn't it? No one had faith in me. Ever. I kind of began to realize that I just had to get used to it. My mom asked if I was “writing that dumb book”. The redneck construction worker stepfather of my ex-girlfriend called me a “lazy asshole” the whole time I was writing my novel. My grandmother still called me “lazy” even after I had authored a book, directed 5 music videos, and produced 13 episodes of an hour-long television program.

I accomplished all of that, but I was “lazy”.

I wasn't “working”.

Yeah, right.

And all those years, I knew exactly what I was doing - trusting my instincts, following my heart, ignoring those people who never accomplished anything, and laying the foundation for my future. My path was carefully constructed. It wasn't random chance. It was planned. It was charted. It was engineered. I always knew what I was doing. That doesn't mean I always knew my plans would successfully have the desired outcome. Not at all. But I was always sure of my road.

The frustration of unemployment was hard to swallow though.

As I wrote back then in my journals, “Perhaps the self-respect I gain from my efforts to attain my ambitions is the only achievement my tenacity will ever succeed to merit.”

I applied at places that were hiring and places which weren't. I looked in the newspaper classifieds. I drove around town and looked for “HELP WANTED” signs in windows. I asked friends to hook me up. I applied for positions I was overqualified for and underqualified for. I applied for jobs I would love and jobs I would hate. I went on multiple interviews and sent out mass mailings of resumes. I sent out over 40 copies of my demo reel video. I applied for jobs that paid $13/hour and jobs that paid $5/hour. I sent resumes to California, New York, Chicago, Toronto and even Australia. I spent over $200 jobhunting just on stamps, envelopes and photocopies alone. I made follow-up phonecalls and mailed follow-up letters.

All to no avail.

Once I read a fantastic essay by writer/director/actor Sylvester Stallone where he spoke about the difficulties he encountered in making the film Rocky. He wrote about how difficult it was to be dirt poor and living a down-and-out life and getting huge money offers for his screenplay. Difficult because he kept rejecting those offers, knowing in his heart that he had to play that role of Rocky.

Looking back at Glamour Shots feels sort of like that.

As I was struggling for so long to find a new job, I knew I had to work. At the same time, I couldn't take just any offer out of desperation.

Unfortunately, after 4 months of jobhunting, I did succumb to that desperation.

Glamour Shots was a portrait studio franchise located in a mall. Great Lakes Mall, to be exact, which was a good 40 minute commute. It was one of those places which has makeup artists and costumes and soft filters on the camera in order to make the 35 year old moms look like teenage girls again.

They had posted a newspaper ad looking for photographers. No experience required. I was very excited, because in addition to my video work, I was learning photography too. In fact, I had started doing tons of 35mm film photography and borrowing my then-girlfriends Macintosh computer. Using that, I began teaching myself Photoshop in order to put creepy, vampiric-collage poster images in the back of my novel. My knowledge of photography was expanding.

Glamour Shots sounded ideal!

This could be exactly the kind of job I had been hoping to get!

Except for that commute.

Did I mention my car had died back in 1993?

Yes, on 27 September 1993, the day after my high school crush committed suicide, my good old 1978 Chevy Nova fell apart on me. The left front balljoint had rusted out and snapped 3 years earlier. Had been sitting in the backyard rusting even more, ever since.

The only way to reach a job out at Great Lakes Mall was to borrow my grandfathers car. Since my grandparents did nothing but pester me about finding work, grandpa was happy to let me use the car. But, understandably, he wasn't too happy to be without the car all day.

Not that it mattered.

I worked at Glamour Shots for a grand total of about 3 days before I quit.

The job was awful.

The manager of the store was some chubby blonde girl who was a few years older than me and she looked like one of those mothers who puts their 4 year old daughter in a beauty pageant. She didn't have children, but if she did, you just knew she'd be the type.

She would literally stand in front of the store and heckle people to come in for photographs - “Heyyyy! Come on in! Come and get your Glamour Shots!” - It was embarrassing. Hooting in her redneck southern accent. She'd go for everyone. Mainly women, of course, but age didn't matter. Teenage girls. Middle aged moms. Grandmothers. This chick didn't care. Everyone was fair game. They were all potential customers.

Then she started clapping.

Clapping!?

(CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!) “Hey, come and get your Glamour Shots! Get your Glamour Shots right here!” (CLAP! CLAP!)

Oh, dear God.

I was standing there watching this thinking, “Wow. What the hell have I gotten myself into? Could this get any worse?”

And it did.

She expected me to start heckling too!

What?

Hold on a minute, sweetie.

I flat out told her, “Um, I answered a classified in the paper to be a photographer. Not to stand in a mall and harass people.”

No way was I doing that.

Naturally, she got all offended and defensive and told me it was part of the job and so forth.

Whatever. No, it's not.

I'm a photograher. This is a shopping mall. Not a “Guess Your Weight” booth at a carnival.

I smoothed things over and told her I was sorry but I was embarrassed and I couldn't do that and so forth.

But it still got worse.

During the course of those three days I did go in, I never got to shoot a single photograph! The photographer who was working there was leaving to another job and never started to train me.

Naturally, I complained about this too - “I was told I was hired to do photography. Instead I'm messing around with paperwork and expected to start heckling people who are shopping in the mall.”

There was always some new excuse for my not getting trained.

I was livid.

On my final day at work, exasperated and yearning to go home, I walked out to the parking lot only to discover my grandfather's car had a flat tire.

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding.

All I wanted was to go home! Now I have to sweat my butt off in the parking lot, changing a tire.

Great.

Suddenly, I flashed back to Electrolux and thought about the time I got a flat on I-480 on the way to work and had to change a tire along the median of the fastlane as trucks blasted past at 80mph.

Not fun.

“Well,” I reasoned, “at least in the Great Lakes Mall parking lot, I'm not risking my life with the imminent possibility of getting squished by a passing Cadillac. Things are looking up after all!”

Joking aside, that was the last straw.

I changed that flat tire and I was done.

I was told I'd be a photographer. Instead I'm driving 40 minutes everyday to be a sideshow performer in a shopping mall and yelling at people, “Step right up and try your luck, ladies and gentlemen! All spins are only one dollar!”

No thanks.

I'll keep looking.

Regrettably, after quitting Glamour Shots, it would be another 3 months before I found a new job.

Chapter Twenty Four
MotoPhoto at Golden Gate Plaza
12 August 1996 to 30 March 1997

“Money is something I understand only vaguely, and think about it only when I don't have enough to finance my current enthusiasm, whatever it may be. All I know about money is that I have to have it to do things. I don't want to bank my dividends, I'd rather keep my money working. I regard it as a moral obligation to pay back borrowed money. When I make a profit, I don't squander it or hide it away; I immediately plow it back into a fresh project. I have little respect for money as such; I regard it merely as a medium for financing new ideas. I neither wish nor intend to amass a personal fortune. Money - or, rather the lack of it to carry out my ideas - may worry me, but it does not excite me. Ideas excite me.”

- Walter Elias Disney

More than 8 months of searching, and 150 resumes, and 40 demo reel videos, and still no job.

Then in August 1996, the planets finally aligned.

After my endless futility of job-hunting, I eventually got a break at one of those one-hour photo labs from Mr. Rick Santich out at Golden Gate Plaza. All the MotoPhoto stores were an independent franchise and the store owner, being an entrepreneur, admired the ambitions of my novel and wanted to help me out.

At last!

Finally it worked!

Someone who admired my efforts!

He didn't think I was lazy. He didn't worry that I'd quit in 2 months. Instead he wanted to help. He treated me with respect and dignity. He admired what I had done instead of belittling it. At last, someone had some faith in my dreams.

Lots of people in my life could have learned a thing or two from Rick Santich.

Thanks to him, I finally had a decent job!

At the age of 25, I finally had my very first full-time job, working the standard 40 hours a week. Never had that before!

From that point on, I remained employed at various jobs for more than 5 years.

By the way, after my first 2 weeks on the job, my then-girlfriend was hired for the exact same position at a different MotoPhoto store.

Can you believe that?

I look for a job for 8 months and can't find one. She already had a job, went jobhunting for 5 days, and landed the exact same job as me, for higher pay!

I was so mad.

And you wonder why I felt jinxed in my jobhunting?

Like most of my prospects, I found the MotoPhoto job in the newspaper. The day I walked in the store, I had a copy of my resume and talked about my novel. This piqued the interest of Rick, the owner. He and the manager asked me more about it and I let them know I intended to get a loan and self-publish the book.

Rick pretty much hired me on the spot!

It was awesome!

The store had a small portrait studio and a one-hour processing lab. I would run the lab.

Getting to work was rough. I still didn't have a car - I had sold my broken down 1978 Chevy Nova to a junkyard for $50. Just like Social Distortion sang - my broken down Chevrolet.

No transportation. The Millennium Falcon was no more.

Did I mention I painted my car to be like the Millennium Falcon? Well, I know I mentioned it, but I never elaborated on what I had done. It was a deep maroon red when I bought it, but I spraypainted it white and used black paintmarker to draw misshapen haphazard “panels” all over it. Put “HAN SOLO” under the drivers door window and “CHEWBACCA” on the passenger side. The white plastic hubcaps said CORELLIAN ENGINEERING CORPORATION on them. That car was sweet.

But I digress again. I was talking about the difficulty of my commute.

Like Great Lakes Mall, the job for MotoPhoto was still a 40 minute commute across town during a Cleveland winter. I had to borrow my grandfathers car or get a ride from him in order to get to work. Thankfully, he never complained though. As with the other job, since my blue-collar grandparents had a strong middleclass work-ethic, they were so thrilled I landed a job, they were more than happy to assist with transportation.

In their eyes, writing a novel wasn't an achievement. They never praised me for it. Never acknowledged my television show or my music video projects either. When I finished writing my book, the first thing I believe they said was, “So are you going to get a job now?” Accomplishing a lifelong ambition was irrelevant to them but making minimum-wage was something to be proud of. As with most blue-collar families, money was more important than dreams.

They were deranged.

In a few weeks time, I got my second car - this one, a gray 1989 Pontiac Sunbird SE. Didn't paint this one. But about a year later, I would use adhesive vinyl to create an InGen company logo and make it an InGen company car. InGen (short for “International Genetic Technologies, Inc.”) the fictional company which engineered the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

Those InGen stickers actually got me out of a ticket once when I had expired plates. When I explained that it wasn't a real company car and that InGen is a fictional company that made fictional dinosaurs, the Metroparks Ranger just looked at me like I was nuts, laughed and told me to, “Get the heck out of here!”

Once I had the freedom of my own car again, getting to work was far easier. Believe me when I say, I worked that job all the time. I busted my butt at MotoPhoto.

The manager who was there when I got hired ended up leaving and he was never replaced. As I mentioned earlier, we had a portrait studio in addition to the lab. The photographer who ran the portrait studio and myself were the only employees, so I was there all the time. That was fine in the fall.

However...

Come December, every family in town would come in to get Christmas photos. We had snot-nosed little kids in that store all day long. And what happens to little kids all winter? They get ill. They catch colds and the flu and are walking little germ farms.

So there I was, gagging and choking and breathing virus-infested air for 2 solid months. I'm not exaggerating when I say I was literally sick for the entire month of December. I simply couldn't get healthy because I was endlessly exposed to illness.

But I had tried too long and too hard to find this job, so I was determined to tough it out.

Now, personally, I hate it when people are sick and they show up to work or school or any public place. I find that to be incredibly rude, selfish and inconsiderate. Stay home and get well! Like I said though, I was constantly exposed anyway. If I had called off work and attempted to get healthy, I would have just ended up ill again the moment I returned. Plus, there was literally no one else to run the store. It was only two of us. I had to be there. I couldn't let down the guy who finally gave me my big break after 8 months of job-hunting.

Having a decent job allowed me to invest in my first computer system. Funny that I had been using computers for 12 years and never owned one because I was too poor to afford one!

Finally getting my own system allowed me to get very serious about educating myself in graphic design and learning programs like Photoshop and Freehand as I designed everything for my novel. I had learned the basics with my ex-girlfriends computer, but having my own system really allowed me to hone those skills. Creating posters and fliers and advertisements and the book cover and stickers and postcards - you name it. I learned all about the software and printing technology and graphic file format conversions between vectors and bitmaps. I even used Fontographer and learned to create fonts from scratch, including the font I invented for the cover of my novel.

Having access to a photography lab made it far easier to learn more about photography and processing and color correcting.

I processed thousands upon thousands of rolls of film. During my time, I must have printed hundreds of thousands of images. Once upon a time, I recognized a portrait of a friend I hadn't spoken to in years, just from seeing her face on a 35mm negative a customer brought in.

Seriously.

I could recognize faces from 35mm negatives. That was when I knew, I had truly processed a staggering amount of film!

All the color correcting I did at work was also a massive help with my Photoshop work. Yellow to blue. Green to red. Magenta to cyan. Knowing those simple opposites and building the savvy to recognize the slight variations and tints in a photograph were immeasurably important skills to develop.

Sure, I had already understood the basic colorwheel concepts from highschool art classes. But it wasn't until I had to opportunity to utilize that knowledge in a real-world scenario - like while correcting hundreds of thousands of photographs - that I really became phenomenal at it.

That photographic printer taught me a heck of a lot.

Although I do have one great “embarrassing moment” story with that printer.

Get this.

As I said, at Christmas time, the studio was jumping. We were incredibly busy. Portrait sessions were scheduled with young families all day long. Constant stream of parents and little kids.

Well, every now and then, customers would bring in some rather “risque” film to be processed. Keep in mind, this was 1996. Digital photography was still in it's infancy. Sure, there were digital cameras. But they cost about $800 and could only shoot 1MP images. So, nobody had them. Film was still dominant. So, when a guy wanted to get some nudie shots of his wife or girlfriend, he had to take them to a photo lab to get the pictures back.

With me so far?

Families in the studio.

Occasional nudie shots from customers.

Well, sometimes, the printer would get jammed.

Can you see where this story is going?

So, the way the photographic printer worked, there was a gigantic roll of photographic paper in a cartridge at the far end of the machine. The roll had to be loaded in a pitch black room and it was literally about 100 feet long and 6 inches wide. Now, if you were printing standard 4”x6” pictures, the printing machine would expose the image onto the 6” wide paper and as the roll came out of the machine, a little guillotine blade would drop down and slice the paper every 4”. That's how you'd get 4”x6” prints from a 6” by 100' roll of paper.

Well, about once a month or so, that guillotine would stop working. So, the next thing you know, you have this massive stream of photos spilling out of the machine and flying all over the lab like some mad serpent from a vaudeville act.

Sure enough, wouldn't you know it? One day, the studio is filled with kids, and a guy brings in a whole roll of film that is nothing but nude shots of his wife, and the guillotine gets stuck.

Once you start printing images, you can't just stop. The photochemical process is a long process. That photographic paper twists and turns inside the machine for dozens of feet, going through various chemical baths to be properly rendered. There I am, frantically trying to stop this thing while breast and vagina shots are spilling out all over the room and little kids are staring all shocked and parents are giving me horribly dirty looks.

Okay, I lied.

It was not embarrassing.

It was hilarious!

Even at the time, I was trying so hard to not laugh, because I knew the parents would just get more angry.

Besides, the photos were totally tasteful. The woman was just laying on the couch or sitting outside in the backyard. There wasn't any freaky or weird naughty business going on or anything. Just a naked lady sitting on her kitchen counter.

Man, that was funny.

Not all parents who came in the studio were prudish.

There was one woman who looked 20 years younger than her age. It was astounding.

She was gorgeous and appeared to be about 23 or 24 years old and came in to see proofs of her daughter's school photos.

After I got her last name, I looked in the files and could only find pictures of a girl who was about 18 years old. The photographer wasn't in the studio at that time, so I couldn't ask him if the pictures were still out at our external lab or something.

I went back to the woman and apologized.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I can't find them. Under your name I only see pictures of a much older girl.”

Rolling her eyes, the woman said, “Let me see them.”

I shrugged. “Okay, I can show them to you, but these can't be the pictures you're looking for. The girl in these pictures is way too old to be your daughter.”

I showed her.

“That's her.” She confirmed.

“What!? That's your daughter?”

“I'm 44.” Said the woman.

“Seriously!? You're 44? Wow. I never would have guessed. You look like you're 23!”

The woman bristled, “I know. I know. I hear it all the time. It drives my husband crazy. He can't stand it.”

I didn't understand. “Why not? I would think having a wife who looked really young and beautiful would make any man happy.”

“Because we're the same age,” she explained. “And he looks his age! So, anytime we go out to dinner or something, people give him these dirty looks like he's some old pervert creeping around with some college coed. And he'll just be going, 'She's my wife! She's 44!'”

We both laughed about it.

I nodded, “Yeah, now that you put it that way, I could see it kind of getting under his skin a little bit.”

Thankfully, I seem to have her aging genes too!

Crazy customers came in as well. Like the Star Trek guy.

Get this.

This dude looked to be in his mid-thirties and nerdy as they come. But not harmless and endearing nerdy. More like the creepy I-may-be-a-serial-killer kind of nerdy. Ready to snap any moment. He came in the studio to get professional photographs of a spaceship model he had designed. He had some misguided notion that if he got professional photos, that would protect his copyrights on the design of the ship. He believed these photographs, would somehow provide legal insurance against his “design” being stolen.

His intention was to send the ship to Paramount Studios and get them to hire him as a model maker or designer or something on Star Trek because he had invented this “new” Klingon spacecraft.

Okay?

But here's where it gets even more twisted.

He didn't design a new ship at all!

He went to the store and purchased a model of a Klingon Bird Of Prey and glued the wings on upside down - so instead of the traditional downward curve, the wings now curved up. Then he painted the whole thing metallic blue.

That's it!

That's all he did!

He built a store-bought model with the wings installed wrong!

The plastic still had a Paramount copyright stamped into it!

And this guy honestly believed he could trademark this as a “new” design of a Star Trek ship and it would land him a job in Hollywood.

Now, as this book is meant to assist you with getting to Hollywood, let me tell you - don't try his approach. I'm quite sure it didn't work.

Crazy customers.

Like the old woman who came in the store all angry because all her photographs were blurry. She was blaming us, saying someone “shook” the film canister.

I swear I'm not making this up.

“I have a brand new camera my daughter bought for me. So I know there can't be anything wrong with my camera!”, she scolded. “Someone here shook the film.”

I tried to explain, “Uh, ma'am, you understand that film doesn't work that way? It's physically impossible for shaking the film canister to make the photographs turn out blurry. Pictures turn out blurry from the camera being set incorrectly.”

She became more irate. “Don't talk to me like I'm stupid! I know they shook the film!”

Wow.

Nothing quite like working with the public!

Some of those lemmings are unbelievably ignorant.

The oddities are not reserved for customers. One employee was strange too, but in a very good way.

For a few weeks, we had a retired gentleman working with us. He had spent something like 35 years working at Kodak. Very cool fellow. Cordial. Polite. Congenial.

Almost too polite.

In the evenings, I would have him tear down and clean the printing machine. That was just part of the nightly ritual.

Everytime he finished, he would say, “Pardon me, Eric. Do you have a minute to check over my work?”

Now, the first time he did it, that wasn't a big deal.

Obviously if you're new at a job, you'd like a double-check to make sure you did things properly.

This became strange because he never stopped asking. Every single night, without fail, he'd seek my approval.

“Excuse me, Eric. Is this done to your satisfaction?”

“I don't mean to disturb you, Eric. Was my work done properly?”

Keep in mind, he was about 65.

I was 26 years old.

I was nothing but a snot-nosed little kid barely out of diapers. He was a senior citizen. We were equal employees - neither one with any seniority over the other. Yet, he treated me like I was his boss.

Very strange.

I loved his mannerisms and his slight southern drawl and his immense courtesy. I certainly didn't feel he needed to be so formal with me, but truth be told, having a man old enough to be my grandfather behave with all the courtesy of Little Lord Fauntleroy was quite delightful. I liked him immediately.

Like I said, he was odd, but in a very good way.

Despite all the nutty customers and employees, and wacky malfunctioning printer spitting nude photos all over the room, and the difficult commute, I was finally earning a steady income.

I was finally ready to publish my book.

I went to the bookstore and did research on self-publishing and sent out a request for quotes to printers all over the country.

Keep in mind, this was in 1997 and the days before on-demand printing technology. Digital printing was in it's infancy too. As a matter of fact, to get an entire book printed, sending computer files was actually more expensive than sending boards!

For those who don't know, a “board” in printing terminology is a sheet of paper with a single book page printed upon it. In traditional printing, the board is photographed, a lead plate is extrapolated from the photograph, the plate is coated with ink and the plates are pressed onto pages using old printing press technology.

That is how the first edition of The Gothic Rainbow was printed.

Boards. Plates. Presses. The age-old method.

The best price I found would cost $5000 for 1000 copies.

I asked my grandfather for one last big favor - would he co-sign a loan for me?

He grumbled about it, but since I was working, he agreed.

The funny thing is, the bank approved it without hesitation and never even asked what it was for.

In my life, $5000 was more money than I'd ever imagined before. Since I had no credit record and that was a huge amount of money, I figured they'd turn me down flat.

To the bank $5000 was so insignificant, they didn't much care what it was all about. I had no credit-rating, but my grandfather had fantastic credit. So, I was approved. Just like that. Easy as pie. No questions asked.

Wild.

Always will I be grateful to Rick and MotoPhoto for having faith in me and giving me my chance. He owned a couple other MotoPhoto stores around town too and when he hosted an employee dinner for a bunch of us, he called everyone to attention and actually toasted the publishing of my novel to all the employees at the table. I was blushing and embarrassed, but I loved it. My own family never lauded me for my accomplishment. Sure was touching that my boss did so.

At last I was a published novelist.

All thanks to having a job at MotoPhoto.

Grateful as I was for the chance to work there, it couldn't last.

While it allowed me to purchase my second car and publish my novel, I was still making minimum wage. I couldn't afford to live on my own while earning that kind of money.

I really needed to get my own apartment.

That meant I needed a higher paying job.

I found one at KSK Color Lab in Solon, Ohio.

This time, I gave the courteous two-weeks notice to MotoPhoto and left in March of 1997.

Chapter Twenty Five
KSK Color Lab
March 1997 to January 1998

“The growth of television as a medium of mass communication among people around the earth cannot be halted, nor much longer delayed. And eventually every land will want to share in this international audiovisual exchange of ideas, of pleasurable entertainment and closer neighborliness.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Considering that I never went to college and had no intention of ever doing so, I knew I had to come up with a different approach to my career path. I needed to be smart. Had to be savvy. But I also had to be creative. I couldn't follow the paths anyone else had taken.

These ideas were at the forefront of my mind since high school. This was nothing new. I was well aware of the challenge I was about to face.

Being very cognizant of the rapidly changing pace of the world, I had my doubts over the practicality of getting into a career and staying there my whole life. The culture had changed during my lifetime. We no longer lived in a world like my grandparents had - where the husband goes to the same job for 30 years and the housewife stays home and raises the family.

Things were different now. Companies close. Jobs get sent overseas. Loyal workers get laid off after 20 years of service.

There were no guarantees anymore. No loyalty. No certainty.

The Cleveland Press taught me that lesson at an age when I was too young to articulate it.

The writing was on the wall. I could see where the world was headed. As I mentioned in the first chapter, the key to my survival was one word - diversification. Rather than specialize and excel in a single field of study, I needed to hone my skills in a variety of disciplines. That way, when my jobs inevitably get outsourced and downsized and automated and my skillset becomes obsolete, I'll still have expert, world-class skills in another area and thereby I will always remain relevant to a company and the workforce at large. And that is exactly what I have done. Graphic design, cinematography, programming, video editing, photography, writing. Being involved in all these fields has been a great benefit in my life. When it's hard to find work in one area of study, I can just shift gears and focus upon another.

Even purchasing a good computer system was part of that mentality. All part of the plan.

Once I began working, I could have started taking more classes at Cuyahoga Community College again.

I never did.

I reasoned it was a wiser investment in my future to spend thousands of dollars on a computer system and educate myself.

My thinking was, if I invest in a computer, I'd spend a ton of money, I'd become educated, and in the end, I'd have a computer to do more work with.

If I invest in college, I'd spend a ton of money, I'd become educated, and in the end, I'd have a piece of paper to show for it.

My own computer was clearly the wiser investment.

Consequently, furthering my need to advance my skills and broaden my horizons, shortly after starting at MotoPhoto, I went right back to job hunting and found a position to work in the digital department of a professional photography lab. How exciting! That was right up the alley of everything I had been planning up until that point!

I was already adept at photography and film processing and printing and color correcting because of all my Photoshop work for my novel and working in the lab at MotoPhoto.

Also because of my novel, I understood art and illustration and graphic design using computer software.

KSK Color Lab was located in Solon, Ohio. They were slightly closer to home (perhaps a 40 minute commute instead of 45) and were offering slightly more money in a professional lab setting. No more retail customers! I'd be in a commercial lab!

Finding this job in the newspaper too, I was thrilled to go on my interview.

The place was so impressive.

They had a massive traditional photography lab and a huge area for a digital department. The traditional imaging lab did old school photochemical processing and prints of all sizes. The digital department did printing of all types, from large format inkjet printers that were 4 feet wide, to electrostatic printers used to make giant graphics on trucks and vehicles, to dye sublimation printers used for photographic quality prints. We printed to slidefilm, created Kodak Photo CDs, and had a very expensive, very large, high resolution drum scanner. We also happened to be one of the first of 2 or 3 labs in the country to get a Durst Lambda - at that time, one of the first and the biggest and most advanced continuous-tone laser photographic printers in the world - the Durst Lambda could expose traditional photographic paper by using an RGB laser directly from computer files, eliminating the need for an inter-negative. This meant the highest possible quality with no generation loss from intermediary formats.

The night of my first interview, I felt like I had stepped onto a spaceship. I remember seeing someone go into the electrostatic printer room and literal steam was billowing out the door as he ran in there! It was astonishing!

Later, I would learn the electrostatic printer required its own room with a very specific temperature and humidity. The steam I had seen was from the humidifier going off to regulate the precise humidity the printer required. This was necessary because an electrostatic printer literally uses an electrostatic charge to draw the ink onto the paper. When the temperature and humidity were out of range, the electrostatic charge would be disturbed and the machine simply wouldn't print correctly. Hence the reason for the humidifier in an isolated room.

Pretty cool stuff.

Loading that electrostatic paper was awful too, because the paper was 5 feet wide and it had to be perfectly smooth as you threaded it into the sophisticated twists and turns of spools within the machine. Everyone had a hard time using it and unfortunately, I became one of the employees who was the best at doing it! Which meant I got asked to change the paper all the time!

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The fellow who interviewed me almost hired me on the spot too!

He was really impressed with my experience at MotoPhoto, but even more impressed with my novel and my video work and my Photoshop experience. He told me that my creativity and ambitions reminded him of the way he was when he was my age.

It sure was cool to walk into a job interview with a novel in hand.

In past interviews, I could say I wrote one, but it wasn't until this interview that I could physically produce a copy to hand over.

If I recall correctly, KSK Color Lab offered me the job pretty much by the time I had gotten back home on 14 March 1997. Walked in the door and there was the phonecall.

Not only did this job give me the chance to broaden my skillset, but I'd be making about $2.50 an hour more than I was earning at MotoPhoto! That worked out to an extra $100 a week! That means an extra $400 a month! That means enough money to pay rent!

I was so excited!

After a few months, during the summer of 1997, I finally moved out of my grandparents house and got my first apartment with the girl I was dating at the time.

The relationship didn't last, but the apartment was great!

More than a year after finishing my novel, it looked like this job was finally turning my life around for me.

Strange thing happened on my first day of work - everyone was wearing dress shirts and ties. I thought it was some sort of prank being played on the new guy.

Turns out they honestly did have a dresscode, but they also had “casual Fridays” and I happened to interview on a Friday. That's why everyone was in jeans and tshirts when I showed up to interview, but in dress shoes and ties when I showed up on a Monday.

Oops.

No one told me!

Now, after spending 12 years in Catholic school with a shirt and tie dresscode, I was rather resentful that 8 years later, I had to wear dress shoes again.

My solution?

I thought of that old urban legend about Albert Einstein always wearing the same clothing, so he'd never have to waste brainpower on thinking about what to wear. Sounded wise to me. Thus, I went to the store and bought 5 black dress shirts, 5 black dress pants, a pair of black dress shoes, and 3 black ties and I wore those Monday through Thursday every single week.

I got the nickname “Johnny Cash” shortly thereafter.

Get it?

The Man In Black.

Other than the silly dress code, KSK Color Lab was a great place to work. Good people. Good environment. Great opportunity to expand my job skills. Printing fleet graphics for trucking companies and learning publishing software like QuarkXPress and doing jobs for big clients and large corporations like Nestle and Little Tikes. Really a fantastic opportunity. I loved it.

One of the most flattering experiences was talking to one of my coworkers about going back to school. He was actually a teacher at Cuyahoga Community College. He taught Photoshop courses and graphic design.

I mentioned that I was considering returning to the college and taking some classes. He looked at me like I was crazy.

After laughing, he asked, “Wait. Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I figured I could improve my abilities.” I explained.

He shook his head. “No, Eric. Don't waste your time. Trust me, you already know more than anyone else.” He said with total sincerity.

“What do you mean?”

He elaborated. “I work there, Eric. I know the whole staff at that college. You are teaching me things in Photoshop I never knew. Don't waste your money. Trust me, you know Photoshop better than any teacher in that entire school. They can't teach you anything. You should be the one teaching courses there.”

After all my time spent struggling, all the years of no one having any faith in me, those were some of the most incredible words of validation I ever heard.

Finally, someone who truly knew what they were talking about, appreciated my capabilities. I was really speechless.

Our customers sincerely appreciated my Photoshop skills too.

We had a customer who came to us for some digital photo retouching. Apparently, the customer was very difficult to please and she angrily returned the work 2 or 3 times over the course of a couple weeks, always dissatisfied with the results. It had gotten to the point where the Vice President of the company became involved, trying to ease the tension and calm the woman down.

We had a few talented retouchers there. Apparently, none of them were good enough for her expectations.

So, I took a crack at it. Started from scratch and finished the work in a single afternoon.

Honestly, I didn't understand why this job took weeks of being sent back. Was pretty darned easy to fix, if you asked me.

When the customer got the image the next day, I was called out of the lab to the front counter. That sort of thing never happened. We lab personnel never interacted face-to-face with any customers.

Great.

I braced myself, figuring she hated what I did and would start screaming at me too.

Nope.

Quite the opposite.

Apparently, the woman was so pleased with my work, she wanted to meet me and thank me in person. In front of the entire front counter staff, the Vice President, and my manager, she told them I was an asset to the company. She reiterated that I accomplished in a day what others failed to attain over the course of weeks.

I couldn't do much other than blush and smile and say, “You're welcome. I'm glad you're happy with it.”

I thanked her and let her know it made my day.

Pretty amazing.

I wonder how many people who called me “lazy” over the years have ever been publicly praised like that for their work ethic.

The owner and founder of KSK really appreciated his employees too. He was an older gentleman, somewhere in his 70's I believe, and he would walk around that entire lab every single day and say, “Good morning!” to ever single employee in the building.

Every. Day.

Every employee.

Without fail.

I was truly impressed. He didn't have to do that. Nowhere else I have worked did anyone take the time to do that. Plus, that was no tiny lab. The place was huge! Considering that he was getting on in years, that was a bit of a hoof for him to greet every single person in the four corners of the facility. But he still did it. Everyday.

That says a lot about a man's character.

He also gave the biggest Christmas bonus I've ever had at any job.

In fact, come to think of it, he gave the only Christmas bonus I ever had. He would call each and every employee into his office alone and talk to us for 5 minutes and give us a check for $1000.00.

When he told me it was a $1000.00 check, I thought he was joking. I was only making $7.50/hour at that job. That was the most money I ever made at a job, but that still only works out to $300.00 a week. Getting a bonus that size was almost equal to a month's pay! I was shocked!

Like I said, he was a good guy. Truly a gentleman who treated his people with decency.

KSK Color Lab was a place which really prided themselves on quality. Not only did I improve my color correcting and color matching abilities, but I really honed those skills to perfection. Learning to match to proofs and get printers calibrated and altering colors in software to compensate for printer nuances were things I did on a regular basis.

I learned so much at the job, but I started to feel undervalued again. Near the end of my employment, I was working on creating Kodak Photo CDs and that became my only job. Day in. Day out. Months of scanning 35mm negatives onto CD. Pretty dull and menial work. Scanning. Scanning. Scanning. For 8 hours a day.

When it came time to hire a new Photoshop specialist, they hired someone from outside the company who wasn't as good as me and they paid him more money than I was making. Lots more. Like about $10-$12/hour versus my $7.50/hour.

Remember that professor from Cuyahoga Community College?

The one who told me that I was better than him at Photoshop?

After I found a new position, he pulled me aside and told me all of that. He said he lobbied for me to get that job. He said he was proud of me for leaving, because I deserved better.

Sure was amazing that people were finally having faith in me.

However, he was right about the situation too. I was never going to get anywhere staying at KSK Color Lab. I learned all I could.

Once again, after a few months, I knew it was time to move along and gain some more experiences.

Diversification, remember?

Chapter Twenty Six
The Rogers Company
January 1998 to July 1998

“I'm just very curious - got to find out what makes things tick - and I've always liked working with my hands; my father was a carpenter. I even apprenticed to my own machine shop here and learned the trade. Since my outlook and attitudes are ingrained throughout our organization, all our people have this curiosity; it keeps us moving forward, exploring, experimenting, opening new doors.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Once again, I learned about my employment opportunity at The Rogers Company in the newspaper. Although the Internet was getting bigger and I was online since sometime in 1996, they still didn't really have “job board” websites back in 1998. They'd exist in a couple more years, but before then, jobs were still discovered via ink on paper instead of pixels on monitors. In those days, I still just used The Plain Dealer classifieds.

Before working for The Rogers Company, I didn't even know companies like this existed. They built tradeshow booths.

Can you believe that?

Maybe you don't find that surprising, but I sure did.

I had no idea there was an entire competitive industry centered around the construction and design of tradeshow displays. We did booths for all sorts of big clients. I worked on graphics for A Bug's Life from PIXAR before I even heard of the film. We had contracts with Nestle and Diebold and Stouffers and Smuckers and Ernst & Young. We even had a behemoth two-story Rubbermaid booth that cost $3 million dollars. The scale model alone cost $10,000 and it was only about the size of an average boardgame.

Founded in 1945 by Van Rogers, the most fascinating aspect of the company was that literally everything was done in-house. The entire business was run out of our single building. Sales. Marketing. Construction. Design. Storage. You name it, we did it, all under one roof. As you can imagine, a building which houses all corporate personnel, marketing, salesmen, architects, engineers, graphic designers, and construction workers, plus a full storage facility for these massive multimillion dollar tradeshow booths, is absolutely enormous.

In particular, the storage warehouse was spectacular. Two stories tall with row after row, stack after stack, of wooden crates, housing endless old tradeshow booths. It honestly looked like the warehouse in the final shot at the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. If I looked long enough, I fully expected to find a crate with the Ark Of The Covenant back there.

Yes, I looked.

Nope, never found it.

Surreal to have white-collar workers wearing suits in cushy little offices with couches, then you literally walk down the hall, open a door, and you're in a gargantuan construction area with dudes in jeans and boots, wearing welding masks on top of a 15 foot tall I-beam, sparks flying everywhere.

I was hired to be a graphic designer, but my job was going to have even more responsibilities than that.

At the interview, I was told they needed to come up with some kind of system to organize various graphics in the storage facility. Many had tried before me and the systems always failed to work effectively. When I started the job, that would be my primary task - figuring out how to organize the storehouse.

The company was headquartered out in Mentor, Ohio which meant my third job in a row with a 45 minute commute. I couldn't seem to land a job close to home, no matter what!

While my primary task would be organizing the storage facility, my official department was graphic design.

In keeping with my rule of learning new things, what opportunity did I have? After all, I learned just about every single type of printer in existence at the previous job.

At The Rogers Company, I got to learn the vinyl plotter.

This was a super cool machine.

In essence, it used vector-art to physically cut the shapes into giant sheets of adhesive vinyl.

As a personal project, I used it to make a set of gigantic Jurassic Park logos to be used on a Ford Explorer. Unfortunately, I never ended up having the money to get a truck, so I never used the logos. Sure would have looked amazing though.

How did I do it? I actually scanned the logo into the computer off the CD cover for the Jurassic Park soundtrack. I then imported the scan into Freehand and meticulously converted the entire logo into vector art by hand-tracing every single curve. There was an auto-trace feature in the software, but it often left a lot of extra plot-points which made the vinyl plotter work overtime. Best to have all the points done by hand, so it would be as smooth and succinct as possible.

Once the many hours of tracing were complete, each color of the logo had to be isolated to an individual layer, in order to represent each roll of vinyl that would be used.

I stored those logos in my closets for years. Regrettably, the glue starts to go bad after 5 years or so, if you don't use them. After a good 8 years and still no truck to adhere them to, I threw them out. Quite a shame. But I still have the computer files, so I can recreate them anytime.

Maybe I'll make myself a Jurassic Park Jeep someday!

That would be cool.

There was an old dye sublimation printer in the office, collecting dust under a drafting table. I got that up and running too! My coworkers said it was just a transparency printer. Apparently they had inherited it from the acquisition of another company and it was only used to print transparencies there.

“Uh, no.” I corrected. “I know what this is. Trust me, it does a lot more than transparencies.”

Built by Kodak, I went on their website and found the proper drivers and got the thing running on my Macintosh.

Sweet.

Purchased new ribbon and paper and viola!, we had a working dye sublimation printer in the facility.

My primary goal of organizing the storage facility was daunting.

When I spoke earlier about the Indiana Jones vast warehouse, that wasn't mine to organize. That area just stored the basic architectural structure of the booths.

I was in charge of the graphic storage. About 12 rows of crates, each 15 feet tall and 50 feet long.

Within those crates were divided smaller bins containing all the posters, banners, photographs, translites, foamcores, backdrops, murals, and whatever other random graphics might be used and reused on the display booths.

The place was a haphazard mess. Plus, being tucked away in the corner of the construction facility, it was dusty and dirty too. As old graphics would sit in these storage bins for months at a time, sawdust would collect on them and scratch and fade the graphics.

So, the first task was to get the construction guys to enclose the entire storage area. They built a massive, floor-to-ceiling, 20' tall wall around the storage crates, thereby isolating the whole place into its own room. That would greatly reduce damage done to the graphics by sawdust and any other construction residue.

Once the “storage corner” was transformed into a “storage room” it was time to label the aisles and rows. Using big plywood panels and taking foamcore and numbers created with the vinyl plotter, I numbered every single aisle and bin.

Row 1, Bin A.

Row 1, Bin B.

Row 2, Bin A.

Row 2, Bin B.

And so forth until all of the 100 or so bins had a numeric and alphabetical designation.

That stuff was the easy part.

Next I had to figure out how on earth to correlate this neatly organized storage area with each individual graphic.

I got small adhesive labels and began to innumerate every single graphic with corresponding designations:

Row 1, Bin A, Graphic #1.

Row 1, Bin B, Graphic #7.

Row 2, Bin A, Graphic #13.

You get the idea.

Once everything was labeled, you knew exactly where it came from and exactly where to return it. No computer needed. No databases. No fancy recording system. Just look at the sticker and you will see where this items belongs.

Problem solved.

Stored graphics can now be easily and effortlessly returned to where they were found, everytime.

Now to solve the obvious other problem - how do you find what you're looking for in the first place?

That took a little more effort.

Luckily, the company had a digital camera and I found a shareware version of some image management software.

Keep in mind this was 1998, so digital cameras were still a very new technology. It recorded 1MP images onto a 3.5” floppy disk, but it worked.

I began the long and arduous process of photographing every single one of the thousands of graphics and getting them into the computer. After they were photographed, I went through the entire database and individually tagged each of the images with appropriate keywords. Colors. Text. Shape. Descriptions. Row. Bin. Everything you'd need to identify the graphic.

You could just load up the software, type in the keyword of what you were searching for, and the corresponding thumbnail images would appear. Simply click the thumbnail of the correct image and look at the image description and see the row and bin where it was stored.

Easy.

Simple.

Elegant.

Naturally, this means the storage system I invented required a 3 tier process:

1. Entering new graphics into the system.

2. Retrieving graphics from storage.

3. Returning graphics to storage.

Each one of these 3 things required some instructions.

Now, I could have used Microsoft Word or something to print out the directions for people, but that seemed rather primitive.

A website would be better.

Yes! A website would be far better!

I could update a website on a whim. It wouldn't get lost. People could access it from any computer. That was perfect!

I knew I could build a site for The Rogers Company because I had learned to build websites thanks to my novel.

Shortly after publishing my book, I woke up one morning and thought, “Hey! Maybe I should learn to build a website which I could use to promote my novel?”

So, I did.

Back in 1997, every America Online account offered 2MB of free drive space to build a website. They also offered the download of a free WYSIWYG application to construct websites called AOL Press.

That afternoon, I grabbed a copy of AOL Press and began to read all the instructions and figure out how to build websites.

As you can imagine, my first website was not very big, looked awful, and took the good part of a week to finish.

But, I did manage to get a functioning site up and running for my book! Over time, I changed it and revamped it through countless iterations. However, in 1998, when I was at The Rogers Company, the site for my novel remained one of the only sites I had ever built.

The other was a portfolio, but I'll tell you more about that later.

Creating a user guide for my Rogers Company image retrieval database would represent my third website.

The pages I constructed explained everything from how to label the images, to how to upload them, to using the database software. There were photographs and screenshots and explicit directions for every aspect of the process.

All these years later, such ideas are not innovative things, but believe me, back in 1998, this was a revolutionary way to present educational material.

When all was finished in terms of instructions and process, I still had a ton of images to shoot and data to enter. Hundreds of them.

On the morning of 2 July 1998, I was at work photographing new graphics when I got the call about grandpa.

I complain a lot about how unsupportive my grandparents were, but it was just emotional support. So they didn't have much faith in me? Who cares?

When it comes to financial and physical support, they were always there for me. I was never threatened with being kicked out of the house. I always had a roof over my head and food on my plate. From a sense of basic human needs, they were unwavering in their reliability. They sacrificed a lot to raise me. For all those things, I remain eternally grateful. They may never have given any emotional support, but the fact remains that if it wasn't for them helping support me financially when I wrote my novel, I wouldn't have accomplished all I did.

Who cares if they never read it?

What difference does it make if they didn't care about it?

So what if my grandma disapproved of it?

None of that changes the fact that I couldn't have achieved it without them.

My grandmother joined him on 24 September that same year.

She couldn't live without him.

As I said, I was right in the middle of shooting photos for the imaging database when I got the call. The intern was assisting me.

When I returned to work a week later, I finally had enough material in the database to conduct a little experiment.

I gave a hypothetical graphic to the intern and sat him down at the website instructional page. My only directions to him were, “Find this image outside in the storage area.”

I told him nothing more.

He read my website. He walked outside to the storage area. Withing a few minutes, he came back to me holding the graphic! He had found it!

This was really a special moment for me.

It had worked!

My system was effective and successful.

I couldn't wait to tell my boss. I knew he'd be really happy with me and impressed at what I had accomplished. Everything he asked for and more was now complete.

Organized storage facility.

Image tracking database.

Even an online instructional tutorial.

I had truly gone above and beyond with this project.

When I excitedly presented the website to my boss to illustrate all the effort and hard work I had invested in this project, he scowled and said, “I hired you to make graphics for us, not build websites. If you're not going to do your job, I can find someone who will. Especially for what I'm paying you.”

I was shocked.

He had no comprehension of what I had just shown him.

That night, I went right back to the job classifieds.

No way would I tolerate being treated like that.

He had a great point, I have to admit.

He was right.

He wasn't paying me to build websites.

Especially not for what he was paying me? True! In fact, people who make websites get paid a heck of a lot more than $9.00/hour to build them. I decided to listen to my boss, and go find a job where I get paid what I deserved.

Once I put in my two-weeks notice, my boss literally stopped speaking to me.

Not hello.

Not goodbye.

Not good morning.

Not anything.

I could walk past him in the hall and say hello and he'd literally walk past me as if I didn't exist. Wouldn't say a word. Totally ignored me from the moment I announced I was leaving.

Unbelievable.

Sure made my job easy though! I barely worked at all those final 2 weeks. My boss wasn't assigning me anything, so what was the point?

Once again, I try to always look at the positive things.

Sure, my boss at The Rogers Company was clueless about what I had built and he didn't appreciate me.

However, it was his disdain for my awesomeness which lead me to a better job where I earned more money.

Who could complain about that?

Besides, I had to get out of there. My coworker played nothing but jazz music for 8 hours a day. I don't have a problem with jazz, but if I had to listen to one more Miles Davis song, I was gonna scream.

Chapter Twenty Seven
ACME Express
20 July 1998 to 24 March 2000

“It's sound and animation through electronics. It's opened a whole new door for us. We can program whole shows on a tape. The tape sends signals and the little figures go to work and they sing and act and move according to the impulse that comes from the tape. And this is all possible because of this big drive that we've had on the space age development, the electronic age.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Back in gradeschool during the 1970's, I saw my first videogame. My uncle had borrowed a PONG console from a friend and had it hooked up to our livingroom television.

It was one of the most miraculous things I had ever seen - actually controlling objects on a television screen?! Astonishing.

Up until then, I'd only seen television screens broadcast images. That was the first time I'd ever seen a device which allowed you to actually interact with the television picture. It was magical. I had no comprehension of how this mysterious device worked.

That was my first personal experience with computer technology. I can certainly credit things like the PONG video game for being my first introduction to the digital revolution.

Ever since, I've been intrigued by technology and try to stay on top of what all cutting-edge technologies are capable of doing. Perhaps I'm not knowledgeable about innovations to the extent of a DARPA engineer, but I like to be looking further ahead than the average Joe.

That being said, shortly before I left The Rogers Company and began working at ACME Express, I built my first portfolio website. I am especially proud of this fact, simply because no one else had one. There was no such thing.

However, jobs were finally starting to appear on websites. The corner had turned and now it was quicker and easier and more sensible to search for jobs on the Internet than it was to use the newspaper. Especially when seeking technology jobs.

At that point, I had already made a digital portfolio on a 3.5” floppy disc to show people - in fact I gave copies to both KSK Color Lab and The Rogers Company during my initial interviews. This was also a first. Both of those employers were impressed and commented that no candidate being interviewed had ever done such a thing before. I was sure to be memorable.

Thus, my next breakthrough idea was to make a portfolio website! Why put a portfolio on a physical disc when you could just provide a URL in an email link instead? That was the next logical step in the evolution.

After all, those 3.5” discs held far less data than a website. I could make a much fancier interface online.

My then-girlfriend was very snotty and skeptical about it.

She was one of those nimrods who only did what she was told in college and none of her dimwit professors ever talked about Internet portfolios. Of course not. What did they know about technology? Need I remind her that I had already worked with a professor from her college who had admitted that I knew more than him?

“No one does that.” She scolded. “Why waste your time? People don't want to look at a website to see your work.”

Okay. Whatever.

The fool had no vision.

Obviously, I didn't pay any attention to her.

Of course everyone has an online portfolio today. As usual, I was simply way ahead of my time.

The portfolio I created back then landed me an interview with ACME Express.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the job.

I knew as I was walking out of their offices that I was not qualified. I used the WYSIWYG interface in AOL Press too much. They needed a programmer who really knew his way around handwriting actual code. Someone who could type HTML and read it. That wasn't me. I can do that now. I couldn't do it then.

Since I knew I didn't have the job, I suggested my gradeschool pal Mike for the position. He's the same guy I worked with at COX Cable. The same fellow geek who stayed after school with me, writing programs on the Apple IIe at OLGC. He knew a lot more about HTML code than me. I reasoned that he would be a better candidate for the position.

Turns out that ACME Express agreed.

Mike was hired.

How did I manage to get a job at ACME Express?

For the first time, I did not rely on a classified advertisement!

Turns out about 3 months after Mike was hired, the graphic designer at ACME Express was leaving the company. I wasn't a great programmer, but I was a great graphic designer. Mike suggested me for the position. I interviewed, and they hired me.

See, kids?

It pays to recommend your friends for work and help other people get jobs.

By giving Mike the job I tried to get, I ended up getting hired at the same company after all! Everything worked out in the end.

If you have been keeping track, most of my jobs up to this point only lasted a few months before I was ready to move on. At ACME Express, I stayed for nearly 2 years.

The reason I remained at ACME Express for so long was simply because it was a great learning opportunity. In terms of programming and innovation, I had tons to educate myself on. Plus, I was earning more money than any other job had ever paid me. Not only that, but the offices were located in Downtown Cleveland! At last, I had a 10 minute commute! No more sitting in traffic for an hour! It was fantastic. I really enjoyed that job a lot.

Plus, I was making about $12.00/hour at ACME Express. That was nearly double my KSK Color Lab salary from the year before. That was amazing!

Finally, I was making enough money that I could afford an apartment on my own! No need for a roommate!

At last, I had reached the goal I had been wishing for and fighting for all these years - I was earning my keep. Making my way in the world. No help from anyone. No one supporting me. I was able to take care of myself on my own.

Fantastic.

Working at ACME Express even earned me my first planeride!

When I was living with my grandparents, we were very much a simple paycheck-to-paycheck kind of family. Our vacations consisted of driving one state away for a weekend. We couldn't afford airfare anywhere. So, I'd never been on an airplane.

Funny, I had become a certified hang glider pilot and spent hours flying solo in hang gliders, but had never been in a plane.

But for ACME Express, I got to work a tradeshow in Chicago and flew there! I was so excited! My first time in a jet plane. I don't think I stopped staring out the window for the entire flight!

Although it wasn't a “start-up” company, ACME Express was fairly small. We had only about a dozen employees or thereabouts. Founded by an Italian physicist named Don Scipione, we created a lot of business websites. The founder of the company was brilliant. Earning a PhD in Experimental Elementary Particle Physics, he was writing white papers with titles like “The Excitation of the Level 12C(15.1) by 17 Gev Protons and the Quark Model” and “Deuteron Stripping at 6Bev/c and Production of a Tagged Neutron Beam” when I was just a baby.

I still have no idea what the heck that even means.

Like I said, a brilliant guy.

Don had started his business by writing truck routing software. It took into account all the details of shipping and freight trucks and load balancing and plotted the most efficient route to drive a truck from one city to the next. Pretty impressive accomplishment, especially since it was a standalone application using no data from Internet mapping or the like. To this day, I still never really understood how it worked.

Since the company was so small, I was the only graphic designer on staff. My friend Mike was the only programmer. Therefore, I had a massive amount of time to learn how to build sites and program in HTML and ASP and tying into SQLServer databases. The best part about SQLServer databases was that they could be built off of simple Microsoft Access databases. So, without full knowledge of the SQLServer backend, I could still construct systems using a localized Microsoft Access database and simply upgrade it later and just change the string which makes the database call, because all the other table data would remain identical.

Twelve years later, Active Server Pages (ASP) would be an outdated technology. However, the basic principal of using server-side programming was still exceptionally popular with languages such as PHP, which actually uses a syntax very similar to ASP.

I realize those last two paragraphs are completely alien to you if you're not a programmer. Sorry. Didn't mean to make you glaze over.

Suffice to say, I learned a lot at that job, considering that when I started, my idea of building a website consisted of “click on the picture and drag it over there and magical code will be mysteriously written automatically in the background.”

By the time I left ACME Express, I could actually write that sort of code by hand and even make a website do that stuff automatically from a database. Pretty cool technology.

Some sites I designed and helped program were for the Greater Cleveland Growth Association, Lyric Opera Cleveland, World Trade Center Cleveland and The Organization of Women in International Trade.

Not especially exciting websites, but it was something.

After all, this was my first chance to really start delving into Internet technology and I was getting paid to learn it! Can't ask for more than that!

The best was working on the site for Barney Taxel. He was a local photographer and when he needed a site redesign, he allowed us to update it at our leisure.

Mike happened to be in the midst of a huge site redesign, so I was given the permission to do all the programming on Barney's site and take as long as I wanted to finish it. What an amazing opportunity! I was given all the resources to learn and ask questions and perfect things, but with no pressure of a deadline. Fantastic!

An even bigger learning project came with a site called GlideLog.

A few times now, I've mentioned that I had recently earned my hang glider pilots license. I studied at a flight school up in Michigan. I was flying nearly every weekend, so long as the weather was good. I had some incredible flights, some lasting over an hour and soaring above the earth at 6000 feet. I logged dozens of solo hours and became quite adept at reading the sky and coring thermals.

Just like airplane pilots, hang glider pilots keep flight logs. We record our flights and times and distance and altitude and so forth. Typically, this is just done with pen and paper in a logbook.

The idea occurred to me that it would be fantastic to have an Internet-based flight log. This would provide several advantages over paper:

1. You could run statistics on your flights such as longest, highest, furthest and so forth.

2. You could still print the pages onto paper if you wanted.

3. Best of all, a database could compare statistics of all registered pilots in order to gain an overall cross-reference for the entire sport of hang gliding. Compare highest flights per day. Longest flights in a given state of the union. Highest overall altitude. Whatever combination of data you wanted!

The more I thought about it, the more excited I became.

This was a spectacular project.

Nothing like this existed!

Imagine the value of a website which would record the flight data of every hang glider pilot, all around the world. That would provide an astounding resource of information for the sport!

Plus, on a personal side, building such a website would allow me to learn all aspects of database driven web design. Creating accounts. Checking passwords. Entering data. Deleting data. Running queries. Doing mathematical calculations. You name it. This one elegantly simple idea provided a cornerstone of endless education for my programming knowledge.

Unfortunately, the site only existed for a year or so and never became very popular. Never had more than a score of members or thereabouts. Even 12 years after I made it, no one has ever created anything similar. The concept was simply too far ahead of its time. Before retiring the site, I even offered to give it to the United States Hang Gliding Association. Not sell it! Just give it to them and let them be in charge of it. I was so proud of what I had created, so excited about the potential, and I knew unequivocally that my application would be an enormous asset to the history of modern hang gliding. The United States Hang Gliding Association never even had the courtesy to respond to my emails. They totally ignored me. Like I said, what I built was too far ahead of its time. People just didn't “get it” at all. The aggregate data of more than a decade of use would have made it an invaluable historical record of United States hang gliding.

Alas, people just aren't ready for that sort of technology yet.

Story of my life. Seems I constantly have ingenious ideas, yet no one ever has the foresight to appreciate the implications of what I'm offering.

Sometimes life just reminds me that I never exactly fit into the world. I get the feeling you might be able to relate to that, my dear reader.

In 1999, the new Star Wars film was released - The Phantom Menace. One day in the office, my manager at ACME Express berated me for watching the Star Wars trailer online, saying “that has nothing to do with your work at ACME.”

This was ironic.

My manager at The Rogers Company said my job had nothing to do with websites.

So, I quit and started building websites at ACME.

Now my ACME Express manager tells me my job has nothing to do with movies.

I realized two things.

1. He was right.

2. I needed a new job, involving movies.

Time to start jobhunting again.

This is where things get oddly serendipitous once more.

One afternoon at ACME Express, I was told that they were “unhappy with my performance at work” because of an incident where the vice president promised to print some brochures I designed and he broke his word and never followed through. Even though he volunteered to take responsibility for the printing, I got blamed for the project not being finished, since I was the graphic designer.

Totally unfair.

Totally unjustified.

The liar gave me his word and I trusted him.

His work performance was unsatisfactory. Not mine.

Claiming to be unhappy with my performance was a joke, because they have proven that my work at ACME Express was stellar and among the best work anyone ever created for them. After all, even to this day, if you look at their website, 20% of their portfolio continues to feature all of my designs and sites, 12 years after I left the company.

I know for a fact they have had multiple designers since I left. Considering I was only there for 2 years and 12 years later, my work still dominates 20% of their portfolio, I'd say that makes my performance better than any other designer they have ever had.

At the time of my little “evaluation”, I had already been given a new job offer at a company called PRWebcast and they were offering me an $11,000 payraise. I was just waiting to accept the offer.

Why didn't I accept the offer immediately?

Well, I'll cover that in the next chapter.

For now, just know I had a fantastic offer sitting on the table and I was just waiting to grab it.

Knowing that, I was extra cocky and irritable towards my manager at ACME Express and his false accusations of “poor performance” at work. I was more than happy to point out the failings of the vice president to his face, saying, “He promised to get the brochures printed. The moment he offered, the responsibility became his. I was not responsible for printing anything at that point! I trusted the vice president to keep his word.”

They still didn't see it that way.

Whatever.

I still had the ace up my sleeve. A better job awaited and clearly it was time to take said offer.

Here is where a third piece of the serendipity puzzle begins to converge.

At that time, there was a local filmmaker in the Greater Cleveland Area named Jason Tomaric, who was making an epic independent science fiction film called ONE (later renamed CL.ONE) which was shooting all over the city. The film was incredible. He was using 3000 extras and shooting at NASA and even had local celebrities in cameo roles. Plus, Jason was 4 years younger than me!

Being involved in the local film and video community with Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, I heard a lot of rumblings and rumors about Jason and his film.

Everytime I received some new tidbit of information about how amazing his project was, I kept on telling myself, “I have to get in touch with this guy.”

But I never did.

For whatever reason, I would get distracted and forget about it.

The day of my “evaluation”, the president of ACME Express tells me he's having a meeting for us to build a website for a local filmmaker who is making an epic independent science fiction film.

I was so excited!

“ONE?” I asked. “You mean Jason Tomaric's film? We're going to build the website for ONE?”

“Oh, you've heard of it?”

How is that for weird?

Cleveland may not be New York or Los Angeles, but let's face it, the place was still a fairly sizable city with a decent number of Internet companies. What are the chances that Jason would approach my company to build his website?

Fate steps in and sees you through?

As if the universe was saying, “Fine. You won't go see Jason? Then we'll bring him to you.”

That night, after work, I accompanied the president of ACME Express out to Jason's house and met him for the first time.

I was blown away by Jason's footage and his computer editing system and his special effects and everything. The whole thing may have been tucked away in the corner of his parents basement, but it was far more impressive than what John had tucked away in the corner of his livingroom.

The more I saw, the more jealous I became.

I kept telling Jason, “You're making my movie!”

See, for years I had been mulling over some brilliant independent film ideas, but never acted on them. My plan was nearly identical to what Jason was creating.

Shoot with low-cost gear and make the end product totally professional looking.

Get local celebrities involved, for the publicity and the legitimacy it would provide.

Approach local special effects companies to do visual effects shots.

Hire some makeup effects artists from local haunted houses and theatre people.

All these great ideas were things which none of the Cleveland independent filmmakers had ever attempted. That was my plan. And I knew I could pull it off and create an amazing project if I did all of that.

Now this kid, Jason, comes along, and he's 4 years younger than me, and he's got a 3 year head start on making the movie that I was planning to create! He was utilizing all of my ideas and more!

You know how strange it was to secretly have all these ideas in my head, then to see someone else doing all of them and having it work spectacularly?

“You're totally making my movie.”

I was happy for him, because it was great to see all of my ideas succeed so well. Plus, I was terribly envious, because these were all my secret concepts!

I got what I deserved.

That's what I get for just sitting around thinking about it, but never bothering to actually do anything to make it happen.

However, I quickly realized this was one of those “if you can't beat 'em, join 'em” moments. Because he did have a huge headstart on all the spectacular ideas I had been ruminating over, why not work with him? After all, he was truly the only filmmaker in town who shared my vision for what was possible.

No one else had ever tried anything like this.

When I hinted at these ideas in talking with other directors, they never even understood what I was telling them.

That is what excited me the most about Jason.

Here was someone else who dreamed big and went for it.

I wrote an epic novel.

He was making an epic movie.

People like Jason and I simply didn't exist in Ohio.

It was refreshing to have a like-minded person around.

A kindred-spirit of creativity.

I informed Jason that I really wanted the chance to work with him on the website, even if I leave ACME Express.

Meeting Jason and seeing someone else creating my dream movie project really kicked me in gear. In that moment, I knew I had been dragging my feet for too long.

It was time to get moving.

My manager was right when he chided me for watching movie trailers at work. Films had nothing to do with my work at ACME Express. And filmmaking is exactly what I needed to be doing.

The next day, I gave my two weeks notice at ACME Express and accepted the new job at the webcasting company. I can't tell you how gratifying it was to get unfairly chastised one day, then to walk into work the very next morning and deliver my resignation letter. Damn, that felt good.

Destiny awaits.

Time to move on.

ACME Express was a fantastic experience. Thanks to that opportunity, I gained a tremendous amount of knowledge about Internet development which I had never known before. By the time I left 2 years later, I knew more about programming than Mike knew when he started the job!

Dynamic pages.

Serverside technology.

Databases.

These were all things I never created or used before ACME Express. My official title may have been a graphic designer, but I turned my job into some real-world schooling for web development and handcoding and application engineering.

Truly my whole start as a web developer, I owe to ACME Express and the chance they gave me, and for that I will always be grateful.

Even the circumstances of my leaving ACME Express were quite wonderful in hindsight.

My next job at PRWebcast was a job I desperately needed at exactly that time in my life. PRWebcast seemed too good to be true and I was a little hesitant to take the offer, because I honestly thought the company might be some sort of illegitimate scam.

Had things not turned so sour at ACME Express, I may have declined the offer from PRWebcast. Heck, I might not have even been looking for a job in the first place! And it's quite clear to me that missing out on PRWebcast would have been an enormous mistake.

Therefore, even the uncomfortable departure from ACME Express was truly a blessing in disguise.

Perhaps difficult to recognize at the time, everything was unfolding as it should.

Chapter Twenty Eight
PRWebcast
24 March 2000 to 2 October 2001

“It is good to have a failure while you're young because it teaches you so much. For one thing it makes you aware that such a thing can happen to anybody, and once you've lived through the worst, you're never quite as vulnerable afterward.”

- Walter Elias Disney

People often reiterate the sentiment that “it's healthy to have a failure when you're young.”

They say this because life is full of failures, so it's good to learn that lesson fast. The most successful people are not people who never had failures. They are people who forged ahead in spite of setbacks.

But sometimes, when I hear “it's healthy to have a failure when you're young,” I feel a bit more cynical. After all, the only people who say that are the ones who become really successful! You never hear a person in the midst of a painful failure talking about what a “healthy” experience they are enduring.

“Hooray! I sure am lucky that all my youthful dreams were just dashed to pieces before my ego got too big!”

No one ever says that.

Perhaps failing keeps successful people humble. For the rest of us, it hopefully stokes our tenacity.

Near the end of the previous chapter, I promised to explain why I hesitated to take the job offer from PRWebcast.

In a nutshell, I suspected it was a scam. Plain and simple.

Let me paint a picture for you.

Searching on the Internet, I found a vague job description about a company looking for a designer. I emailed a resume and the link to my portfolio. Got the phonecall shorty thereafter to swing by the offices for an interview. When I showed up, the vibe of the place made me instantly flashback to the fire extinguisher guy. Remember him?

The founder of PRWebcast, Ray Harris, was renting a tiny little one-room office in Rocky River near the intersection of Wooster and Detroit. A nice area and a quaint office, but still disconcerting since the guy was sitting at his desk in shorts and flipflops.

Shorts and flipflops?

In March?

In Ohio?

To conduct a job interview?

Was this dude for real?

In retrospect, he was from California, so the attire really wasn't odd at all. I understand, now that I've been a resident Californian for over a decade. Californians are cool like that. Ohioans are decidedly not.

The job which Ray began to describe sounded fantastic. Too good to be true. He was the former president of a company called Optibase and they built the very first computer hardware for streaming and encoding video live over the Internet via a digital Firewire connection. The reason this was so revolutionary is because of “video noise” and the way digital video eliminates it.

Let me try to quickly explain the massive advantage of this technological breakthrough without making your eyes glaze over and boring you with too much technical information.

Since the start of television broadcasts, analog video signals all had a little static or “noise” in them.

This static was unnoticeable to the average viewer, but it was there and the trained eye could see it quite clearly.

In order to process video signals over the Internet, computers need to compress the frames of the video and literally compare every single pixel in every single previous and next frame. The less those pixels change from frame-to-frame, the easier it is for the computer to process. For example, an interview with a person sitting still and talking will compress way better than an action adventure battle sequence where everything is moving.

The noise produced in an analog signal means all the pixels are constantly changing, even in the seated-interview example. This static makes it very difficult for the computer to process the image and causes the images being streamed to the website to look very distorted and buffer a lot.

Digital cameras have no noise.

Digital camera images are created differently, so the signal is “clean” and has no static. By using a digital camera and capturing a digital image and piping that image into the computer via a digital Firewire signal with the Optibase card, you never introduce any analog noise into the picture. Everything starts digital and remains digital throughout the entire process, resulting not only in clearer images to the end viewer, but with less taxing on the processing power of the computer. Hence, less buffering.

As I wrote this paragraph 12 years later, websites like YouTube were constantly doing live 1080p broadcasts over the Internet. Back in 2000, most computer users never even knew there were videos on the Internet! They had no clue.

In other words, the video card created by Optibase was truly revolutionary stuff, at least a decade ahead of its time.

PRWebcast was a startup company being created with the intent of providing video streaming services for public relations firms. In addition to hosting promotional videos, the most exciting aspect was doing live webcasting from the PRWebcast studio space, using a computer outfitted with the Optibase card. Even more thrilling, we would be doing live webcasts from remote locations with a portable computer! Not a laptop, mind you - this was a full sized desktop which was designed to be portable. Cool stuff.

Like I just said, keep in mind this was 2000. No one was doing live webcasts back then. The fastest Internet connection in most places was ISDN lines which were only 128K. Broadband didn't exist yet. No DSL lines. No cable modems. No satellite connections. No fiber-to-the-home. Nothing. We were truly pioneering something which no one else was attempting.

As I mentioned, PRWebcast began in a one-room office in Rocky River. We would have to build out a full production studio, and streaming servers, and create a website, and generate marketing materials, and harvest a client base, and so on and so forth. Truly a “start up” company, starting from scratch.

There was one other employee, a salesman named Brian, but he wasn't in the office the day I interviewed.

The whole time I'm sitting there, wondering if I can trust this guy.

He's all alone in a one room office!

He's bragging about studio space and clients and on and on.

Was this a legitimate company?

Did he have any money?

Were there any investors in this enterprise?

All of it seemed rather fishy.

My portfolio website at the time had some of my music videos on it. Ray was impressed at the quality of the encoding I had done. Back then, high speed internet was just starting out. Most of us were still on 56K modems, so encoding video for streaming was a very sketchy artform as well as science. Not many people took the time to do it right.

I did.

Based upon my varied job skills, I was truly the ideal candidate for a startup webcasting company. I knew design and programming and video production. All my jobskills could be easily utilized in a single position. I could literally do the work of 3 people - graphic designer, Internet programmer and video cinematographer.

Ray asked what I'd want my title to be and I hemmed and hawed about it. I never cared about titles. So what? I'm a graphic designer. I'm fine with that.

“You're a lot more than that.” Ray said. “How about Creative Director?”

Sure.

Whatever.

Okay. I can be Creative Director.

That sounded kind of cool.

The most amazing part about that interview was my salary.

I was making about $29,000/year at ACME Express and that was more money than I had ever made in my life. That works out to around $14/hour - meaning it was double what I had been making at KSK Color Lab! I felt truly wealthy at ACME Express!

However, after doing some research, I discovered that I was still being highly underpaid in my field. I should have been in the $35,000 range. So, my salary expectation on my resume was $30K to $38K.

“There is one problem I see with your resume.” Ray said. “Your salary range. I wasn't expecting to pay that much.”

“Oh.” I said, quite disappointed.

I guess the guy didn't have very good investors after all.

Ray continued, “Yeah, I was planning to pay at least $40,000 for this position. Would you have any issue with that?”

Needless to say, I was shocked.

He just offered me $2000 more than I requested?

No employer ever does that.

Never.

Ever.

An $11,000 raise over my current job?

I couldn't get over it.

What was his angle?

Man, I really hoped this dude wasn't running a scam!

Although it has a different name today, twelve years later, Ray is still running the company, so I guess it was real after all.

Ray told me he was 99% sure he wanted to offer me the job, but he had another interview scheduled and he felt it was only fair to give the girl a chance. So, he would talk to his next candidate, then decide.

The day after I interviewed, he called me with an offer.

That was the same day ACME Express threatened to fire me in 2 weeks because of the incompetent vice president not keeping his word and blaming me.

I called Ray back and accepted.

Working with Ray was fantastic. He had a great positive influence on me and his philosophies became truly impressionable during that period of my life. There were lessons he taught about management and leadership which I will always carry with me.

“His philosophies became truly impressionable?” That is a really awkward sentence. I should phrase that better. But, you know what I mean. He had a big influence on my work ethic.

Ray was a firm believer in flex time. He didn't care when I worked or how much I worked, he just wanted me to get things done.

For example, when I first started in the office, I had some files and software I needed back at home. I told him I'd grab them when I went home for lunch.

“Do you really need those files to do your work?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“Then go get them now. You don't have to wait for lunch to leave the office. Just do what you need to do to get things done.”

I was blown away by his attitude. I'd never worked with anyone who had such a sensible outlook on completing a project.

Most bosses are idiot drones who just insist that you be on the clock. For most bosses, “when” you work is far more important than “how” you work.

Ray was my first boss to ever understand that getting it done right is more important than when you do it.

He would let you screw around and surf the Internet as much as you wanted. His explanation was simple. “Look, people are going to surf the Internet for personal use. There is no stopping that. I have two choices. I can monitor the Internet use and look over people's shoulders and make them so uncomfortable they will want to find a new job. Or I can give people the freedom to do what they want and just ask them to meet their deadlines.”

He emphasized to me over and over that “people behave the way they are treated.”

If you are distrustful of your employees and treat them like lazy slackers, that is what they will be.

If you have faith in their abilities, empower them to do their job, and they will be hardworking and honorable.

When I was ill with a cold and tried to “tough it out” and keep working, he made me go home and rest. He would repeat over and over, “Your health is more important than your job.”

I never worked with anyone like him before.

I choose those words carefully.

As he reiterated to me, I worked “with” Ray and never “for” him.

He really emphasized the difference when I saw him at our new studio space one weekend.

As I said, we did have a legitimate business and we remained at the tiny office only for a very brief time. In a couple weeks, we moved into an amazing studio loft on the Superior Viaduct, above Spaces Art Gallery, in Downtown Cleveland. About the size of a highschool gymnasium, the space was fantastic. There were huge vaulted ceilings. Exposed brick. Hardwood floors. Spectacular views out of massive windows overlooking the Cuyahoga River and the Cleveland skyline. Incredible.

One Saturday, I brought some friends down to show off the studio and Ray was there, painting his office. I introduced him to my friends as my boss and Ray pulled me aside and got mad at me.

“Don't ever call me your boss.” He said. “At this level of working together, I'm your business partner. Don't think of me as your boss.”

He drove that idea home more than anything.

“This is your company.” He would repeat. “You don't work for PRWebcast. You are a partial owner of PRWebcast. You are invested in this company. It belongs to you.”

Feeling you own the company where you work makes you far more personally invested in the success of the company than if you work for a company. Very intelligent psychology behind that.

Did he mean that?

Did he just say it to manipulate me into working harder?

Perhaps a little of both.

Either way, his attitude definitely served to boost my morale. He knew what buttons to push. He understood how to make people work hard. Make them comfortable. Show them respect and trust. Pay them more than they think they deserve. Give then a sense of ownership and empowerment.

It was a very effective way to manage people.

It certainly worked on me.

Catering to my ego, I busted my buns at that job.

It was a fantastic place to work. I was entrusted and empowered to build out our broadcasting studio. There was no need for “approvals” or confirmation or permission. On my own, I selected and purchased our camera gear and microphones and mixing boards and lighting systems. Totally my responsibility, I was given the authority to just get it done. On the weekends, I would come into the studio space and set up my own photo shoots and video projects. I was there pretty much every single day of the week. I never left.

As I mentioned, we were in the same building as Spaces Art Gallery and I even had a chance to do my second gallery showing there! Continuing my photography hobby after the publication of my first novel, I built a cool custom display and showed my work in Spaces and had a full opening reception and everything. It was fantastic. So much fun! I even sold a few of my photographs there.

Heck, I even had the chance to do some really fun physical labor! Specifically, I built my own desk - this behemoth of a thing which swept around in a huge arc in front of the main windows of our office. Ray let me purchase the wood and I brought in an old jigsaw from my late grandfathers garage and cut it out and put Ikea table legs on it and - VIOLA! - I was sporting an awesome custom-built computer desk. Looking out over the Cleveland skyline, I was truly master of all I survey.

This was my golden moment.

I had made it.

Finally, I was at a point in my life where I was making more money than ever; working in an amazingly impressive office space; access to my own studio for photography; utilizing my abilities in programming and graphic design and cinematography all in the same job. I was finally valued. I was finally appreciated. Someone finally recognized the worth of what I had to offer. This was the job I had been dreaming of finding.

Everything had worked. Everything had fallen into place.

As my skills built from my novel, to design, to video projects, to programming, everything converged in this one position. PRWebcast was the first time I was able to use all of my skills on a daily basis.

It was fantastic.

Creative Director indeed.

Naturally, I learned a lot too. My knowledge of programming became more refined and clean and slick.

The experience I gained in video encoding was massive. For days and weeks I would be testing and experimenting and retesting and encoding and compressing. My insights into codecs and bitrates and video file formats became quite vast. This was all cutting edge stuff and as computers and television media began to converge over the next 15 years, my necessity for understanding these technologies was immeasurable.

Live webcasting was an enormous challenge too. I purchased a portable computer system which allowed us to hook up the Optibase card and we would go out to meeting facilities like Landerhaven and broadcast events back to our studio over ISDN lines. Again, this was pioneering and revolutionary stuff. No one else was using technology like this.

I realize I've repeated the “innovative/pioneering” line over and over again, but it's important to emphasize just how new and different this was. Today, that sort of technology is ubiquitous. Back then, it was unheard of.

Even my fundamental understanding of basic camera lighting and cinematography was increased by my work. My control over cameras improved. My ability to recognize the color of light became far more polished. In short, I finally started to get really good at everything!

As I promised myself, I also began to slowly get more involved in independent filmmaking too.

Jason Tomaric was shooting pickups for CL.ONE and I was on set doing all of his behind-the-scenes coverage.

I started attending events for the Cleveland Film Society and getting to know people there.

But, then I hit upon my best idea.

In my freetime, I constructed a new motion picture website called “Filmed In Cleveland” which was designed to be the one and only ultimate independent film resource for the city. The site was like “Glide Log” without all the math!

You could research everything on this website for filmmaking in Cleveland. There were links to local businesses which sold gear and equipment. There were charts providing the sunrise and sunset time for every day of the year. Charts explaining data rates for encoding your video clips on websites. Directors could post casting calls for their film projects. A social networking feature of the site allowed actors to create a profile to post their headshots and acting resume.

That's right. I built a website for actors to post acting profiles.

This was years before Friendster.

Years before MySpace.

Years before Facebook.

I created a site that was once again, far, far ahead of its time.

And, again, it was slightly unappreciated and not fully understood.

Nevertheless, I was very proud of FilmedInCleveland.com. Thanks to that site, I was able to cast my movie and meet Michelle Krause. But those are stories for a later chapter.

The point is, you name it, my site could do it.

The greatest feature of the site was makebelieve (yes, the “m” was intentionally lowercase) which was an interview video series I started with local filmmakers.

makebelieve episodes featured anyone and everyone involved in the Cleveland independent film community. Directors. Actors. Special effects people. Stuntmen. Musicians. You name it, I interviewed them all. I even did an episode with the head of the Cleveland Film Society.

Every single episode of makebelieve was shot in the studio at PRWebcast on the weekends.

My ulterior motive for both the site FilmedInCleveland.com and the show makebelieve was the same - this was a way for me to meet and befriend everyone I could find in the Cleveland film community. That way, when I was ready to do my own film project, everyone would know me. By establishing these relationships first, I wouldn't need to “prove myself” to anyone. I wouldn't face that problem which confronts all new filmmakers of people saying, “Who is this guy?”

By carefully taking the time to create FilmedInCleveland.com and makebelieve, everyone in the Cleveland film scene knew who I was.

The plan worked great.

By the time I was ready to work on my own projects a year or two later, I had established some great connections.

When things at PRWebcast really began to pick up, Ray was ready to hire more people. He put me in charge of hiring.

“You do everything here.” Ray said. “One person can't handle it all. So pick what you like doing the least and hire someone into that role. Programming? Design? Video? Which thing do you want to hand over to someone else?”

I didn't even need to think about that.

I wanted to hire Mike to do the programming.

That was the clear choice. He was better than me. He enjoyed the work. He was someone I knew and trusted and was confident of his skills. And even though I genuinely enjoyed programming too, that was my least favorite responsibility.

Design and video were the fields I wanted to stay in.

It took me a few weeks of trying to convince him, but eventually I got Mike to leave ACME Express and come work for PRWebcast.

That was now the third job I had found for him.

He worked incredibly hard at PRWebcast too, just like I did.

I would often come in around 11am and work until midnight.

One night, I recall glancing over at the clock and noticing how late it was and Mike said, “Yeah, just another 14 hour day here at PRWebcast.”

I laughed and said, “No. That's kind of an exaggeration. It's not actually... - Holy cow!... You're right! This was a 14 hour day!”

That is how much I sincerely loved my job.

I honestly didn't notice how much time I was spending in the office! I had no clue.

I thought it may have been 10 hours or so, but not 14 hours. No way. Couldn't be.

Indeed it was - just another 14 hour day at PRWebcast.

After hiring Mike, I hired a graphic designer - a young girl named Elizabeth. Men and women designers tend to have very different design aesthetics and I liked the more “feminine touch” she was able to bring to our branding.

This was an incredible experience for me.

Keep in mind where I had come from.

Three years prior, I couldn't get people to hire me at a gas station. I was standing in a shopping mall being expected to clap my hands and harass people into “Getting their Glamour Shots!”

Now, here I was, the manager of a team of programmers and designers in a spectacular loft studio.

How amazing to finally be appreciated!

At last, I was recognized as valuable.

That's the trick to great leadership. True leaders can read the personality of workers and instantly understand what motivates them. Some people respond to praise. Some people respond to fear. Some people respond to kindness. Everyone is different.

Sadly, many bosses are condescending and belligerent to their subordinates, because they themselves are only able to respond to fear and therefore, they presume others only respond to fear as well.

When you encounter someone with an ego like mine, that isn't going to be effective motivation. I'll just up and quit, like I did with ACME Express and The Rogers Company. Threats don't influence me to work harder. They influence me to leave. In order to get through to me, you have to appreciate me. You have to praise me. Give me some acknowledgement. Ray knew exactly how to do that.

In fact, I was appreciated far more than I imagined.

One day, I got a phonecall from Ray when he was out with an investor and he told me that I was the “golden child” of the company and he wanted to give me a raise.

He was changing my salary from $40K to $50K.

Funny thing was, I didn't freak out at the time, because it didn't really sink in how huge that was. After we got off the phone and I pulled out the calculator and realized a $10,000 raise represented an increase of $834.00 a month, I nearly fell out of my chair.

My official title was also promoted from “Creative Director” to “General Manager” of the company.

Titles don't mean much to me. They especially don't mean much in a company with 5 employees. But, I guess it looks good on a resume to those who value titles.

That's why I spent so much time being angry and depressed in the past - being undervalued and judged by idiots with fancy titles.

Remember that jerk who was paying me $9.00/hour and acting like he was doing me a favor?

Did I suddenly become so valuable to earn $25.00/hour?

No.

The difference between earning those two salaries wasn't because of an increase in my skills.

The difference was finding people who appreciated what I was worth, versus people who didn't have a clue about the value of what I truly contributed.

That's the trick.

Find those who value your skill.

Avoid those who undervalue all you have to offer.

Obviously, as much as I loved PRWebcast, the honeymoon didn't last forever.

Due to some legal issues with one of our investors, we actually went out of business, then reopened a week or two later under the name Webcast Group Incorporated.

We had a really difficult time drumming up business and getting clients. Our salesman had his work cut out for him. I felt bad for him. Seriously, he had a really hard job. What we were selling was just too difficult for most companies to comprehend. What we were doing was so far ahead of what anyone else was thinking about. How do you convince companies to spend money on a technology they don't understand? We literally had no competition whatsoever. Our challenge wasn't to beat our competitors. Our challenge was to educate our potential clients and explain why our services were even a value.

Then, we landed a big client, Diebold, and had a huge live webcast and I screwed it up. I ruined the audio. It was awful.

We went to the venue days before the presentation.

We ran tests.

Everything worked fine.

On the day of the broadcast, I got our system set up and ran a successful preroll video. Before a live broadcast, I always sent out a test stream off the camera feed, to make sure everything was working correctly. Well, Diebold didn't want that, because they didn't want people accidentally seeing the test stream.

I did as they asked.

Huge mistake on my part.

I never should have honored their request.

Stupid of me.

“The customer is always right” is a lie! Never listen to the wishes of the customer when you know their request will be disastrous. Always do what you know is best.

I know that now.

I didn't then.

So, although the preroll was fine, the audio was misconfigured for the camera and didn't go out live. It was literally one little checkbox in a configuration menu that I neglected to check. I would have instantly spotted the problem, if I had been able to test things first. Needless to say, Diebold was really unhappy.

I didn't get fired for screwing up our biggest event with our biggest new client, but I know my “golden child” trophy became a little tarnished.

Ray complained that we could make no more mistakes. “Live television makes no mistakes. We need to be just as good.” He would say.

I defended myself by saying, “But live television studios have 30 people on staff. There is one person running the camera. One checking microphones. Another monitoring audio. A director. A gaffer. People running switchers. Every job has a single person who is dedicated to that one task. That is why live television broadcasts are always so flawless. Because everyone has a single job. In our studio, I am one person having to monitor all of those things by myself. Lights. Audio. Stream. Computer. Camera. I'm all by myself, I'm in charge of making every single element run smoothly.”

Of course mistakes would happen!

He was being really unfair in his expectations. I was single-handedly running the equivalent of a television studio! Considering that 9 out of 10 webcasts were flawless, including live remote webcasts with portable computers over ISDN lines, I'd say that makes me a veritable genius!

Within a few weeks, I started to get very disillusioned with the job.

I had my programmer.

I had my designer.

With no webcast jobs coming in, what was I doing in the studio? Nothing.

At one point, we came very close to being bought out by Cisco, and we would have all made tons of money.

That never happened.

One of our biggest investors pulled out.

Our salesman couldn't find us any clients.

Things were looking rather bleak.

My enthusiasm for the job was starting to fade and Ray knew it. I just didn't have any passion for the work anymore. We were standing still. There was no more momentum.

I wasn't working 14 hour days anymore, that's for sure.

Late at night on 1 October 2000, I stopped by the office. In our main lounge area, there was a chart drawn on a dry erase board with everyone's names and responsibilities outlined on it.

My name was missing from the list.

The next day, first thing in the morning, Ray asked me to meet with him.

We took a drive over to Edgewater Park and sat on a picnic bench where he proceeded to tell me he was laying me off.

Now, if you've been reading this book from the start, you know this had never happened to me before.

I had been consecutively employed since 1997.

MotoPhoto.

KSK Color Lab.

The Rogers Company.

ACME Express.

PRWebcast.

I had never been laid off from a job in my life. I would quit one job and moved into a new one for more money. All the time. That was how I rolled. I'd never taken a paycut. I'd never been fired! Ever.

Okay, sure, I was fired from being a janitor at my gradeschool, but I'm talking about a real job. That job was a joke. The janitorial work was a part-time handout. I didn't earn that one. Plus, I was still living at home back then. I had never lost a real job where I need to keep paying the rent.

This job was one I earned.

I got in the door on my own merits.

Being laid off was devastating.

Losing a job when you still live with your parents is no big deal. They still buy food. They still cover the mortgage. When you need that job to keep paying your own living expenses, everything changes. Losing a job suddenly becomes a very big deal.

What happens if I can't find another job?

Where would I go if I lose my apartment?

I was crushed to be unemployed. Ray clearly didn't enjoy doing it, but he knew I just wasn't performing anymore.

He told me, “You're like a classic underachiever.”

Obviously, I was pretty offended by that.

Me?

An underachiever?

Screw you, man!

I had achieved more by the age of 28 than most people achieve in a lifetime. I fly hang gliders. I write novels. I produce television shows. I construct websites. I sell my photography in art galleries. I direct music videos. A few months ago, I was being lauded as a “golden child” by this very same person, now suddenly I'm an underachiever?

“Underachiever? I don't think so.” I said.

“You are, Eric. You never give your all. You only give 90% to what you do. The problem is, your 90% is better than most peoples 110% and you know it. You know how good you are. You have more talent and skill than I do. I wish I had your talent at your age. You know you are better than everyone else, so you always stop short of your potential. You never want to go those extra few steps.”

Damnit.

Maybe he was right.

No.

He was definitely right.

That's exactly what I do.

Crap.

I didn't realize I was that obvious.

Most of my humility is a false humility, because I figure people get tired of how awesome I am. Yeah, I'm a jerk like that. He was right.

That night, I went to visit a friend in Akron who was running his own video production studio. On my way back home, near the I-480 and I-77 interchange, I saw a brilliant shooting star. One of the brightest I had ever seen.

When you wish upon a star...

Makes no difference who you are...

I sure hoped so.

What should I do now?

I still wasn't making a movie.

Should I focus on that?

During the fall of 2001, even before I was unemployed, I became obsessed with making a short film. Fearful of how difficult it would be to make a respectable independent movie in Hollywood, I knew my only chance to make something with decent quality and production value was to make it in Ohio.

One night, I got this overwhelming feeling to create a page on my website, promoting a casting call for my movie trailer conceptual idea.

To this day, I have no clue how it happened, but on 3 September 2001, literally within 10 minutes of creating the webpage to promote the casting call, I got an email from Michelle Krause. Michelle was an actress living in New York City. She wanted to audition.

How could she find the page a mere 10 minutes after I posted it!?

I have no idea.

Blew my mind.

Michelle was radiant. Brunette, long, curly hair. Early 20's. Dark eyes. Mysterious lips. Italian ancestry. I wrote back to her. We started to correspond via email and telephone and we really hit it off. Instant mutual attraction. The story goes something like this:

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn't.

She was gorgeous. I fell head-over-heels in no time at all. I was convinced that this girl was “The One” who could change my life. Surely that was why the serendipity was so powerful! This was symbolic! This was destiny! This girl was magical! I knew it!

Yes, I was a hopeful romantic. It was rather pathetic. But, if you're feeling less cynical than generous, you might call my romantic idealism endearing instead of naive. At least, that's what I tell myself.

We met within a few weeks. She spent the weekend with me. Had a great time. I felt sparks. She didn't. I was crushed. I never saw her again.

The following Tuesday, the day after she went back to New York, was the day I was laid off from PRWebcast.

Fought back the tears in the airport as I saw her off to her plane, knowing she'd never return. I could see it in her eyes - rejected again. She wasn't into me like I was into her. Story of my life.

First, I lost the Girl of my Dreams.

The very next day, I lost my job.

You see why I wrote this book? I'm telling you, my dear readers, if I made this stuff up for a movie script, people would say it was unrealistic and hokey. My reality frequently reads like fiction, man. Of course I ended up in Hollywood. My life is a movie. I don't have to make up crazy plot twists. They happen all on their own.

I know what you're thinking. Why did I mention Michelle? What did she have to do with jobs or employment?

Trust me, I have good reason. Remember her. Remember Michelle Krause. I mentioned her now because she plays a vital role in my professional career later. But believe me when I say, she is pivotal in a way you can't possibly imagine right now.

For the first time in my life since living on my own, I was out of a job.

For many people, losing a job in your twenties means moving back home with mom and dad. That was not an option for me. My maternal grandparents raised me. Theirs was the only home I had ever known and they had both died, 2 years prior.

I had no home to return to.

Metaphorically speaking, I was an orphan. Going back home wasn't an option. If I couldn't find another job and start making money, I'd be homeless.

Once I lost my job at PRWebcast, I was heartbroken. I was scared to death. I felt like my life was over. All those years spent building up my skills and now I was useless.

Rejected by the girl I liked.

Rejected by my job.

There was only one thing I wanted to do. An idea I became obsessed with, really - I had to visit Los Angeles.

At that point in my life, I had attained many dreams. I had made a great living. I had published a novel. I was a licensed hang glider pilot who had flown over a mile up in the sky. Director. Producer. Editor. Photographer. So many of my dreams and ambitions had been accomplished. I was at a loss for what to do next.

Where was I headed? Where was my life going?

Being unemployed, I had plenty of time to think about these things. Lots of time to sit around and contemplate the “big questions” in life. Thinking about who I was and where I needed to be.

There is an old saying I love - “The last act of a desperate man is to change.”

California was the one dream I still hadn't accomplished.

I had never touched the Pacific Ocean.

It was high time I do so.

There is an odd “sour grapes” mentality towards California which seems to permeate among many adults in the Midwest. I specify “adults” because I think a lot of kids love the idea of California. Grown-ups don't. They are often too jaded. There were even one or two people in my family who had lived briefly in California and returned to Ohio. They hated the West Coast. They thought the people were shallow and vapid, but I think you attract the kind of friends you deserve. My relatives had the delusion that their fellow chainsmoking television zombies of Ohio were somehow more “down to earth” than Californians.

That is something I never understood. How could anyone leave the land of sunlight and dreams only to return to the dreary gray of Cleveland winters and sports bars? You abandoned 12 months of sunshine and beaches for months of freezing temperatures, lethargy and beer bellies?

No thanks.

California is the dream of countless people the world over and for a short time, I am ashamed to admit, I began to fall for the sour grapes mentality.

During my childhood, I never had that attitude.

During my childhood, California was awesome. Who wouldn't want to be there? Palm trees. Hollywood. Beaches. Movie stars. Mountains. Surfing. Skateboarding. Movie studios. Girls in bikinis all year long. What's not to love?

I finally remembered the sour grapes were a bunch of crap.

I finally remembered that Los Angeles is what I always wanted.

Yes. The time had come.

After getting laid off from PRWebcast, there was only one choice of what to do next.

I needed to go home.

Not home to my grandparents house, but home to where I had never been - home to California.

2 October 2001 was my final day at PRWebcast.

5 October 2001 was the date my plane arrived for my first visit to Los Angeles.

Little did I know at the time, my job at PRWebcast was the last full-time job I would ever have in Ohio. I struggled in Cleveland for the next 2 years and never found full-time employment again until I moved to California.

But those are stories for later chapters...

Chapter Twenty Nine
Digital Domain
11 October 2001

“We developed so many talents as we went along that I lay awake nights figuring out how to use them. That's how we became so diversified. It was a natural branching out.”

- Walter Elias Disney

My first visit to California was not all that great.

I was so stressed out over having just lost my job, and there I was buying plane tickets and rental cars. What was I thinking? This seemed way too foolish. Brash. Couldn't help but think this was a very unwise way to spend what little money I had.

Was this smart?

Had I done the right thing?

When I wasn't stressed about finances, I was still hung up on that Michelle chick too. As a result, I spent most the trip feeling lovesick over her and depressed over the fact I was unemployed for the first time since having my own apartment.

I was really in a bad place emotionally.

So, I didn't really enjoy the trip.

I was tense the whole time.

On the bright side, something special did happen in terms of my career during that first visit.

I went to Digital Domain.

Yep. The one and only Digital Domain in Venice, California.

Never worked at Digital Domain, but I did interview there.

Why include them in this book if I didn't work there?

Because landing a job interview with the prestigious Digital Domain, on my first visit to California, was a great milestone in my journey to Hollywood. Remember at the beginning of this book how I spoke about Los Angeles feeling like it was 10,000 miles away?

Landing a job interview at Digital Domain made me feel like I was a lot closer. Now I was in Los Angeles. Now a company like Digital Domain wasn't 10,000 miles away. Now I quite literally had my foot in the door. I couldn't believe it! This was so exciting! Things were finally turning around for me. Made me feel that the “right people” were starting to take an interest in me. I was getting attention from people in the proper places. I wasn't being totally ignored anymore.

Maybe this crazy yearning to move to California would pay off after all! Maybe it would all work out.

Now, I have to apologize.

I promised that I'd include all the details of getting in to jobs and interviews and I sincerely have zero recollection of how I got into Digital Domain.

Honestly, I think it may have simply been an email.

Like I literally looked at the Digital Domain website, found some email addresses and sent them a link to my website saying, “Hey, I'm going to be in Los Angeles, I'd love to meet with you.”

Seriously.

That's all I did.

I know for certain that I had no “connections” or friends who worked there. No one to “pull some strings” to grant me an audience.

Nope.

If I recall, I think I simply emailed a bunch of cool companies before my trip. Places I always wanted to visit. Things I always wanted to see.

Digital Domain was the only one who responded to me.

A guy named Kevin Cooper answered and he agreed to meet with me.

Pulling into the parking lot and walking around their studio was humbling. This was a studio working on Lord Of The Rings. Founded by legendary filmmakers like James Cameron and special effects master Stan Winston. Winners of multiple Academy Awards for visual effects for the likes of Titanic, What Dreams May Come, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Honestly, I recall very little about the interview and conversation. I was just so enchanted by the fact I was standing in that building. I couldn't believe it.

I do recall my feeble attempt to impress them by bragging about my diversity and having it backfire. Kevin emphasized that the strength of Digital Domain was in specialization. People who were world-class masters of their craft were employed at Digital Domain. They didn't have any “jack of all trades” kinds of people on staff. No one like me.

Oh.

I knew that.

I just didn't expect my greatest strength to be perceived as a weakness.

Nothing ever came of it, of course.

That my one and only time to visit Digital Domain.

Nevertheless, it was wonderful to be invited to meet with someone there. For my first visit to Los Angeles, that really was one of the most incredible highlights. Just knowing that I made it. Knowing I was good enough to get their attention for a little awhile. Maybe I wasn't just some nobody from Cleveland after all. Maybe I had a chance. Maybe I really was worth something.

During that first trip, I also rented a convertible and drove up the coast to San Francisco. My reasoning was, I had never been out here and I might never come again. So, might as well take in the sights while I have the chance.

Driving back to Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast Highway, I had the radio on and guess what song came on over the airwaves. A song I had never heard before.

“Pacific Coast Party” by Smashmouth.

No fooling.

Talk about serendipity.

Needless to say, the lyrics left me in shock. For those who don't know the tune, it's a very happy, upbeat pop song which sings about driving up Interstate 1 and packing your bags to California for the party lifestyle. Talk about a cinematic moment. My life literally was a movie and the universe had just summoned a soundtrack about that precise moment in time.

Bizarre.

Let me pause here and kind of review a bit of my story.

After all, this moment is a key experience in this book.

Remember, I promised that I'd explain how I got my foot in the door of Hollywood from humble beginnings in Ohio?

Well, it was largely due to having an impressive creative portfolio.

At this point in my life, I had a lot of things to show people:

Music videos.

A novel.

Photography.

Plus, I learned how to build websites which could showcase my creations in a portfolio format.

As for getting out to California, how did I afford that when I was only making minimum wage a mere 4 years earlier? Well, like I said, I was making $50,000 a year at PRWebcast. When I was laid off, I had a number of credit cards with very low balances (maybe a couple hundred dollars at most) and about $5000 in savings. So, a plane ticket wasn't that difficult to afford. I was also eligible to collect unemployment benefits. Plus, this was mere weeks after the 11 September 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City. No one was flying. Round trip to Los Angeles from Cleveland was literally about $200.

As for the cost of staying in Los Angeles, that was free. I had a friend who lived in Los Angeles and I was staying at her place. She was a little goth chick I met online when I was promoting my novel. There was an old website called “Goth Babe Of The Week” where a dude would find cute goth girls and post their pictures and links to their websites.

Yeah, I know it's corny.

But I used it as a way to contact hundreds of girls who might be interested in buying my novel. Vampire books and goth girls go hand in hand, after all!

My friend was one of the “Goth Babes” from that site.

I emailed her about the book. We kept in touch. We became pals.

So, you see?

These were all long and intricate pieces of the puzzle. Everything was interconnected. Writing the book. Going online to promote it. Making connections. Building relationships. Learning programming. Directing videos. Meeting filmmakers. Establishing myself as a photographer. Having gallery showings of my artwork.

All these experiences contribute to the whole.

That's how I got a foot in the door to Digital Domain.

This is why I try to emphasize the importance of keeping your horizons broad and always learning. Never forget that the decisions you make today will change the way things are unfolding in your life 10 years from now. Keep your whole life in perspective. Don't just look 5 years ahead. Look back to preschool and look decades beyond your retirement. Look at everything.

This is why being “true to your heart” and all those cliches of preserving your sense of nobility are truly essential.

The steps you take now are altering the future of your path in ways you can't imagine. Therefore, do your best to make good choices. Make righteous decisions.

Goodness knows, I still had a lot of decisions to make.

The most important of which was, “Where will I find a job?”

Chapter Thirty
American Splendor
10 November 2001 to 20 December 2001

“The motion picture will never fully replace the printed word, but it will go a long way in becoming its most valuable adjunct. There seems little question that the human mind will absorb picturized information much quicker than by means of the printed word.”

- Walter Elias Disney

At the start of this book, I mentioned that I was laid off five times before getting into Disney.

The first time was definitely the worst.

Emotionally speaking, PRWebcast was the hardest to cope with.

I've told people that getting laid off is kind of like being a cop and getting shot. The first time you take a bullet, I'm sure it's a traumatizing and devastating experience. You fear you're going to die. You're in terrible pain. Your heart is racing. You're scared. You panic.

After you've been shot 5 or 6 times, you're a wicked toughguy. You just look at the doctor and say, “Ah, rip the bullet out and splash some antiseptic on there. I'm fine! I'm going back to the station.”

Doesn't phase you anymore. You've been shot before. You know the drill. You're a madman.

Back in 2001, I wasn't such a toughguy. I was freaking out.

Can I find a new job? Can I pay the rent? Can I buy food? Can I pay the rent? And what about the rent?

Once I got back from Los Angeles, the only thing on my mind was jobhunting.

Remember when I talked about creating makebelieve and using that as a way to befriend people in the Cleveland independent film community?

Well, knowing people in the film community is how I found out about American Splendor.

Produced by HBO Films, the movie American Splendor was originally slated to be a direct-to-cable film. The picture ended up being so good, it earned both a limited run theatrical release and an Academy Award nomination.

American Splendor was based upon the comic book of the same name, which was written by Cleveland file clerk and jazz-aficionado, Harvey Pekar. Famous character actor Paul Giamatti was featured in the starring role of Harvey while Hope Davis portrayed Harvey's wife, Joyce Brabner.

Because of all the connections I developed with so many local filmmakers and the Cleveland Film Society, I managed to get a few contacts to people making the movie and I kept on emailing them to see if I could work on the crew.

I was constantly ignored. No response to any emails.

When I discovered there was a big extras casting call for American Splendor, I decided to show up. Maybe they'd pay attention to me if I was there in person.

That worked.

I landed a 5 minute meeting with one of the assistant producers and he had an opening for a PA (that's film-industry slang for “production assistant”). However, to be a production assistant, he asked me if I could drive a 30-foot mowhoe.

“A mowhoe?” I asked. “What's a mowhoe?”

He looked annoyed. “A MOtor HOme. A moho. You know, like an RV?”

Moho. Not mowhoe.

“Ohhh! A big motorhome? Sure. I can do that.” I said without batting an eye.

“You sure?” He looked a bit incredulous. “Because a lot of people are intimidated by that. People don't want to drive a 30-foot moho.”

I shrugged. “I'm a hang glider pilot. I'm not intimidated by driving a motorhome. Piece of cake.”

I got the job.

On the way home, I was freaking out - ERIC, ARE YOU CRAZY?

HOW ON EARTH DO YOU EXPECT TO DRIVE A 30 FOOT MOTORHOME?

Hey, I needed work.

Working on a movie sure beats incinerating toxic trash in my gradeschool basement.

Sure was humbling though, to go from earning $50,000 a year as General Manager of a cutting edge technology company, to $85 a day, driving a motorhome.

Ouch.

Thank you universe, for teaching me humility... I think.

My first day as a production assistant was rather amusing. The production designers were on location at the house being used to represent Harvey's apartment and they needed something like 8 gallons of paint delivered to them.

I was given the paint and the address and told to drive over there.

I get to the house and Harvey Pekar answers the door.

Fools gave me the address to Harvey's real house instead of his movie-version of a house.

This was back in the days before I had a cellphone, so I borrowed Harvey's homephone to call back to the production offices and get the correct address. Thankfully, Harvey had the number to the production offices because I didn't.

Apologies were made. New address was provided.

Naturally, it was all the way across town. Literally. We're talking 30 minutes in the opposite direction.

I drive from Coventry to the West Side can't find the house.

I go up and down the street. Again. And again.

The address they gave me simply didn't exist.

I didn't have the phone number of the production offices on me. The number was back at home. At that point, my apartment was closer than the offices, so I went home.

When I called the office a second time, it turns out someone had transposed two of the numbers - the address was 1241 not 1421.

Ugh!

By the time I got to the correct house, it was 3 hours after I had left. Should have only taken me 20 minutes to get there.

The production designers just went and bought paint themselves by that point.

I hate to say it, but the whole “paint/address fiasco” sort of set the tone for the entire film. There was quite a lot of disorganization on that show. The cast and crew and the directors were great, but some members of the production team were a little flighty.

Well, “flighty” is being a bit generous. “Rude, brainless scumbags” is more accurate.

For example, one afternoon, an assistant director asked me to go retrieve some of the extras from the holding area. Two minutes later, I returned with extras in tow, as requested. The AD then yelled at me, “What are you doing? Why did you bring them here?”

I laughed in his face, “Because you told me to. Idiot.”

“Well, we don't need them now!” He stormed off in a huff.

Morons, I tell you.

The first two days of principal photography were brutal.

I was accustomed to working 12 or 14 hour days on the set of Double Dragon, so I knew what to expect on a filmset. I understood what I was getting into.

The first day on American Splendor was 16 hours.

I went home and got 4 hours of sleep.

The second day was 19 hours.

Needless to say, during the last few hours of the second day, I was ready to curl up and fall asleep on the sidewalk.

The first morning was beautiful. Call time was around 4:00am and we were on set at around 5:00am and for the first time in my life, in the dark of early dawn, I saw the Leonids meteor shower. Endless shooting stars for my first day on my first big picture.

When you wish upon a star, like dreamers do...

Made me feel like everything would be okay.

I know what you're thinking - “Wait, Eric, you worked on Double Dragon. Working on American Splendor wasn't your first big picture.”

True.

I mean, sure, I worked on Double Dragon, but that was only 8 days. American Splendor was my first movie where I was on the crew for every single day of principal photography.

Once things got rolling, I wasn't really a standard “production assistant” for that show. I wasn't running around doing everything like a typical gofer. Instead, I spent 99% of my time taking care of the motorhome for Hope Davis. I drove it. I cleaned it. I made sure the sanitation trucks came by to empty the restroom tanks. I gassed it up. I kept the heater running so she wouldn't freeze in there.

Remember, this shoot was in December in Ohio.

It got cold.

Some days the temperature was in the teens and twenties.

Most of the time, I was “security” for the motorhome too. Meaning I spent 12 hours a day, pacing outside the vehicle like an idiot, to make sure no one went inside and messed with the trailer while Hope was on set.

That was my biggest bummer working on the film - I was literally never on set but once or twice. The rest of the time, I was out on the street, standing next to the trailer.

Occasionally, I'd do things like escort the stars to the set.

For some odd reason, the stars were never really allowed to go from their trailer to the set alone. When I was commenting about this to Paul Giamatti one time, he said on other films in Hollywood history, apparently there were instances of movie stars wandering off and doing cocaine and people couldn't find them. So, policy became to escort them to and from the set.

He and I both thought this was a bizarre and hilarious explanation. So, when I'd stop escorting him and let him walk the final 100 feet alone, I'd joke, “Don't do any cocaine on the edge of the sidewalk between here and your trailer! I'm watching you!”

Another time, while shooting on a street in a predominantly black and Latino neighborhood, a bunch of schoolchildren saw him as we walked down the sidewalk and accosted him for autographs saying, “It's the guy from Big Momma's House! Hey! You were in Big Momma's House!”

Paul was very kind and accommodating and signed autographs for all the kids. As they were walking away, he laughed and said, “I don't know what it is, but of all the movies I've done, I always have little black kids recognize me from Big Momma's House. That's like my biggest fan base.”

That still cracks me up to this day.

The stars of the film were great. On the second day of the production, Hope Davis saw me standing outside the motorhome and totally freezing. She asked me why I wasn't sitting inside.

“The assistant producer specifically told me that I wasn't allowed to be inside your trailer if I wasn't actually driving it.” I replied.

“What?” Hope said. “That's ridiculous! It's freezing out! I'll talk to the producer. You can wait in my trailer anytime you want.”

After that, I spent all my time inside keeping warm whenever it was nipplies-cutting-glass cold outside.

Very sweet of Hope to do that for me.

I developed a good relationship with the actors and the directors. One thing I found very strange was the bizarre “hierarchy” associated with a big budget film.

Remember, I came from the world of independent movies. There is no ego on an independent film set. No one is famous. No one is getting paid. Everyone is equal. Everyone helps out and chips in to assist.

Apparently, crews on big budget films don't think that way.

(I know that by Hollywood standards, American Splendor was an “independent” film, but that's ridiculous. Independent films cost $3000 on a few maxed-out credit cards. When you're spending $2 million to make a movie, that's a big budget, major motion picture.)

Anyway, the story about weird Hollywood hierarchies goes like this...

On the second or third day of shooting, we broke for lunch. The production had rented a big dining hall at a local church. By the time I got my food, every single table in the hall was full, except one. There was nowhere else to sit. Naturally, I went over and sat at the empty table.

It turns out that the stars and the directors and producers broke late for lunch, so they were the last ones to come in. The only table remaining was the table where I was sitting.

Obviously, they all grabbed seats around me and ate lunch with me.

Well, apparently this didn't sit well with some other members of the crew. Murmurs started among people about “who does he think he is?” because I was sitting with the directors.

Excuse me?

They chose to sit with me.

I was there first.

I didn't go sit at their table.

They sat at mine.

The most infuriating part was the simple fact that the room was full. If people had been paying attention they would have seen I was sitting at that table first. Maybe they should have had the courtesy to scoot aside to give me a seat, instead of spreading rumors.

Like I said, apparently some of these New York and California film crews have a juvenile and primitive sense of hierarchy which I don't pay any attention to.

No one is better than me just because they are making more money on a filmset. Who cares? I'm Eric Muss-Barnes! No one is superior to me - especially not due to the fact their bank account is bigger than mine. I was a friend to all. Everyone is a peer on a film set. No one is better than anyone else. I had no problem talking with anybody I wanted and I met some great people.

I befriended a lot of fantastic actors and actresses on American Splendor, but the best was meeting Madylin Sweeten. Madylin is the only one I kept in touch with after the fact, and years later, once I had moved out to California, Madylin and I became incredibly close for quite a number of years. She was confiding a lot of teenage drama in me and asking me out to the movies. We would go jogging together all the time. We'd attend horse shows together at the Equestrian Center in Griffith Park. We drove home from her sweet 16 birthday party with a carload of her girlfriends. When she was younger, I babysat her siblings. She invited me to the drive-in with her and wanted me to come to her softball games. I took her to Disneyland on her birthday. We were zipping around on my motorcycle and having dinner dates at fancy sushi restaurants together. She even appeared in my instructional skateboarding DVD project. Fantastic girl. We've had a lot of good times and being with her all those years was truly one of the best things to come from working on the film.

The strangest thing about my relationship with Madylin?

After all our years together, I've still never seen a full episode of her television show, Everybody Loves Raymond! How weird is that?

What can I say? I really lost interest in watching television once I started living on my own.

After working on American Splendor for a week or two, I decided to give copies of my novel to all the “higher ups” on the film. I gave copies to the main actors, the husband-and-wife-team of directors, and the executive producer.

I never really expected anything to come of it.

I didn't think the producers would decide to purchase the film rights or anything (yes, I fantasized about it, but didn't expect it).

I just wanted to show that I was a lot more than a guy driving a motorhome. I wanted to prove I actually had other abilities, beyond making sure the toilet wasn't clogged.

The reaction I got was wonderful.

Shari Springer Berman, one of the directors, was really impressed and said, “I've only written screenplays. You're like a real writer!”

Coming from a woman who would get an Academy Award nomination for her writing, that meant a lot to me. Bless you, Shari. What a sweet thing to say.

Handing out my novel was interesting.

People began to treat me differently on set after that.

The way the dynamic shifted was intriguing because it polarized a lot of people. What I mean is, the more important people on set, like the directors and producers, started to regard me with more respect. No longer was I simply a crewmember. Now I was a novelist who was working on their film.

Lots of the people who were “lower on the totem pole”, such as struggling production assistants and gofers, started accusing me of being full of myself and thinking I was special because I wrote a book.

“What? I never said I was special.” I replied.

“But you like all the attention you're getting from the directors and actors now. You totally have an ego about it.” Said one of the PAs.

I was really irritated. “Um. Not really. I just gave people a book. I can't control how they react to it. If they choose to treat me differently, that's cool. But the way other people choose to behave is not my responsibility.”

Interesting.

Those who had achieved things in life were happy for me.

Those who had achieved nothing in life were envious of me.

Who knew that sharing copies of my novel would inadvertently become a sociological experiment?

After giving copies of my novel to everyone, Paul Giamatti returned the favor and gave me one of his favorite books - A Voyage to Arcturus by Scottish writer David Lindsay, first published in 1920. Strange freaking book. I enjoyed it, but it was really weird. It doesn't follow the standard Hero's Journey story structure, because the narrative kind of ends without a real resolution.

Bizarre novel. Fascinating concept.

There are a lot more stories I could tell.

Meeting Molly Shannon. Having a teamster park the motorhome at the Cleveland Airport in an impossibly tiny parking lot. Walking into the extras holding area where there were 150 women and having them go dead silent when I stepped into the room. Watching hilarious test videos with Paul and Hope in Paul's trailer. Dating one of the incredibly cute production assistant girls (well, it was one date, but it was still fun).

Crewing on American Splendor was a truly fantastic experience.

Yes, the hours were long and the weather was brutal.

But I had some fun times and met some excellent people and genuinely enjoyed being on a film from beginning to end. It was great.

When the movie finally came out 2 years later, in 2003, I had already moved to Los Angeles. A month after I arrived in California, my friend Jason Tomaric moved here too. Jason and I went to see the flick at good old Laemmle Sunset 5, on the corner of Sunset and Laurel Canyon.

American Splendor was nominated for an Academy Award that year for Best Screenplay Adaptation.

My name was in the credits.

At last.

My official title was “Production Assistant To Cast”.

Sounds better than “Guy Driving Hope's Trailer”.

My name is now forevermore in the credits of an Academy Award nominated motion picture and I watched it on the silverscreen in Hollywood, California.

Living the dream!

But in the chronology of my story, I wasn't quite there yet.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

The part of the story where I had just stopped filming American Splendor wasn't quite so uplifting.

I was done shooting.

Everyone else went back home to California and New York City.

I was still stuck in Cleveland.

Now what?

I lost my job in October.

In November I sent out over 70 resumes without landing a single interview. Not one response. As usual.

I spent December working on a film.

What now?

Gratefully, since I was “laid off” from PRWebcast and not “fired”, I was eligible to collect unemployment benefits.

For you younger readers who may not know how that stuff works, let me explain.

If your boss “fires” you from a job, you get nothing.

If you “quit” your job, you get nothing.

If your boss says you are “laid off” from your job, you are typically given something called “severance pay” which is basically an extra paycheck covering a certain amount of time. Some companies give no severance at all. Some give 2 weeks. Some give a month or more. All depends on the business.

When you are “laid off” from your job, you are also eligible for unemployment benefits from the government. These are checks which are intended to subsidize your living expenses. Unlike welfare which is pooled from taxes of the general public, the source of unemployment benefits stems from the tax funds collected from businesses themselves. Again, like severance, the amount of money you receive, and the length of time you receive it, will vary. But, it's typically enough to “keep you afloat” for a few months while you look for work and find a new job.

Once my little American Splendor gig ended, after I did all the necessary research and submitted an application online for the unemployment benefits, I just waited a few weeks for all the paperwork to go through. I vividly recall opening the envelope with my very first unemployment check and literally breathing a sigh of relief and collapsing on my couch, like Bastian falling onto the gym mats in The NeverEnding Story right after Atreyu narrowly escapes from Gmork.

Those checks meant I could spend the next several months, no longer fearing impending homelessness.

Come January of 2002 I had sent out another 60 resumes.

That's 130 job applications.

Not. One. Interview.

Not one.

Ohio was a wonderful place to grow up, but I was beginning to realize it was a horrible place to spend your whole life.

Harvey Pekar may have had a great affinity for our hometown, and being born there, I used to have a great affinity for it as well; but by 2002, I was starting to really resent Cleveland.

A lot.

Going from earning a $50,000 salary one month, to spending the next month sending out 130 resumes and being totally ignored?

Cleveland had become a dead-end-town for me. She had changed. She was no longer home. Cleveland had turned into a snotty little passive-aggressive girlfriend who doesn't have the guts to break up with you, so she just starts acting really aloof and stops returning your calls until you get the hint.

I was starting to get the hint.

Perhaps Cleveland just didn't want me around anymore.

Chapter Thirty One
Freelance
December 2001 to October 2003

“I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Freelance.

I always loved that word.

Being a geek who grew up with fantasy films and Dungeons & Dragons, the word “freelance” always conjured images of a solitary knight, making his way in the world all alone. Compelling word. Evoked a gun for hire. A pirate. Han Solo. A templar brandishing a free lance.

After losing the best job I ever had, maybe this was the answer I had been searching for. To go into business for myself! No one to answer to. Be my own boss!

Maybe.

After all, I always had a problem with authority.

What if I had no authority? Answer to no one. Brave the world. A man alone! The lone wolf!

This would be amazing!

The more I thought about it, the more excited I became.

Yes. I didn't need a job! I would create my own work. Find my own clients! I had so many skills! I could build websites. I could shoot video. I could make local commercials. Music videos. I could do graphic design work. I had professional experience in all of these fields!

It was like the planets aligning.

Maybe this was my answer.

This is why I had built all these skills. So when this moment arrived, I'd be adequately prepared to strike out and forge ahead all by my lonesome. Answering to no one. Making my own way in the world with no help from anyone.

Freelance.

It was sounding far more noble and romantic the more I thought it over. This is it. This is my answer. And I had all the passion to get it done to boot. Having the skills and desire to be a freelance artist is absolutely wonderful and one of the most rewarding career experiences anyone can hope to experience.

At least, I imagine it would be.

I wouldn't know.

Although I had a strong desire to work freelance, my “skills” were non-existent. Once I had the opportunity to try it (or more accurately, once unemployed and forced to work freelance, because I had no other choice) I discovered I was horrible at freelance. I loathed freelance work. If I had been good at it, I may have loved it. But I totally sucked. It wasn't fun at all.

Freelance.

I used to love that word.

Not anymore.

The problem with freelance is that you have to be a great salesman. Only this time, instead of selling cable television or vacuum cleaners, I was selling myself! Selling my own skills and talents.

We've already established and reiterated my salesman skills. They can be summarized in one word...

Awful.

Working for a steady paycheck means you do an interview, then you show up to work everyday. Working freelance is like getting interviewed every single day, forever. With every new client, with every new job, you have to sell yourself. Explain why you are the best choice. Exhausting. Stressful. Nerve wracking.

Some folks are cut out for that.

Not me.

I hated it.

Chapters like this are difficult to write, simply because it was a very difficult time of my life. Looking back on those years is just painful to remember. I'm not a very fatalistic person, but it does seem as if the universe was trying to get me out of Cleveland for a long time. I mean, when you consider my skillset, how could a person with my abilities be unable to find work in a major city for 3 years? By all sense of reason, that seems impossible. Novelist. Photographer. Programmer. Cinematographer. Graphic designer. Sending out literally hundreds of resumes. All for nothing.

How was it possible that I couldn't find work? Perhaps other forces in the universe were conspiring to put me on a better path? Those who believe in Fate might say, it seemed like Fate was desperately trying to get me to leave Ohio.

As I mentioned earlier, after American Splendor, I qualified for unemployment. I figured I'd easily get a new job before the unemployment ran out.

I was wrong.

Savings was gone.

Months came and went.

Unemployment ran out.

Only one thing saved me - my inheritance. As I mentioned, my grandparents had passed away in 1998. Four years later, my family finally got around to selling their house. The place was worth about $100,000 at least. They sold it for $80,000. By the time all the fees and taxes and funeral expenses were taken out and the money was divided, I only got about $10,000 or so out of the deal.

Not much, but enough to keep a roof over my head for a few more months.

During the time I was doing freelance work and trying to earn a living with video production work, I directed a couple of bellydancing instructional videos for a teacher named Carrie Konyha, I edited an independent feature film called Losing Hope, I made some motion graphics for an advertising company, and I released a DVD of an award-nominated short film called The Unseelie Court which I wrote, edited and directed in the spring of 2002.

Each of those projects paid less than $1000.

Heck, making my movie cost me about $700!

Although, of all those projects, The Unseelie Court was definitely the most gratifying.

The description I wrote on the DVD cover reads:

The Unseelie Court is a 33 minute fictional short film with an odd and unusual plot, very much in the tradition of an old Twilight Zone episode. It was shot in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio with a budget of under $1000.

A heavily dialog-driven tale, it is also a true “art house” style of independent motion picture, designed to showcase a far more slowly and realistically-paced film than most. The story takes place all in one evening, during a thunderstorm, at a mysterious pub called Storytellers Tavern.

Renown for their good stories, it is a tradition for patrons at Storytellers to have strange and unusual tales to tell. Those who are regular visitors are into hearing and telling stories, just as much as they are into having a drink and spending time with their friends. It is not unusual for strangers to gather in circles around the fireplace to hear the latest tale or for a person to be sitting in the corner, writing a novel or composing a poem.

Storytellers is very deserted this evening, because of the storm. Hardly any customers are there except for a young girl reading a novel, a few young punker/gothkids in the corner, and a vagrant homeless man.

Vivian, a pretty young woman in her twenties, is a regular at Storytellers. She comes in to the place, without any concern for the storm, and strikes up a conversation with the bartender. Initially, she is disappointed. The storm has ruined the television reception so there is no chance for watching Twilight Zone reruns. And the place is so deserted, Vivian figures she has no chance of hearing a good tale this night.

However, she finds out from the bartender, there may be an interesting story waiting in the shadows this evening after all...

While I did all the second-unit cinematography, Jason Tomaric was kind enough to be my cinematographer for principal photography. I learned an immense amount about his masterful post production techniques at the time, because it was the first project he ever shot but didn't edit.

Jason had built a reputation for his ability to make low quality MiniDV footage look as good as film. He made quite a name for himself in Ohio and was even gaining the attention of Sony and Hollywood for what he had achieved. Since he obviously wanted his final work to look good, he revealed a lot of his secrets to me for my editing purposes. I was the only person he ever revealed his post production secrets to. That was quite an honor, because he really was incredible at making video look like film. It was cool to see my source footage slowly transform in Final Cut Pro from video into that-sure-looks-like-35mm-film image.

One reviewer of my DVD actually complimented my “transfer” as being “pristine” because she assumed it was shot on 16mm. Nope. All done on video. That's how good it was.

The advice of Alan Schechter played a pivotal role too.

Remember what he told me?

Never shoot at a hostile location?

I told you I'd mention the details later. Well, I encountered exactly that problem! He was right. Hostile locations should be avoided at all costs.

The bar originally intended to portray “Storytellers Tavern” was a place called The Harp on Detroit Avenue and was secured for about 2 or 3 months before the shoot. The woman who owned the place was very sweet and cordial and excited to have us shooting there.

I expected the shoot might take 2 days.

Once Jason looked at my script, he wanted more time. He said it would be at least 3 days.

I told this to the owner of the tavern a week before shooting was to begin. Never heard from her. Literally, the day before the shoot, she pulled out. She emailed me to deny me permission. Two days of shooting was no problem, but the moment I requested more, the whole thing apparently became too much trouble.

I had organized a crew of a dozen volunteers. I had 6 actors coming to set, some from as far away as Columbus and Detroit. Everyone was going to be arriving in about 30 hours and the location screwed me over! I actually went to the tavern in person, to try and plead my case. If I see her face-to-face, I thought I could charm the owner and be all sweet and polite and implore her to give me the chance. She was having none of it. She rudely and literally walked away from our conversation, saying she had “no time for this.”

I was shocked.

For three months, everything was fine, then she destroys my whole shoot with one day notice.

The shoot had to be canceled.

I was angry.

I was depressed.

Incidentally, if you want to get involved in the movie industry, get used to feeling those two emotions a lot. Rage. Sorrow. Constantly.

The whole next day, I was driving around looking for a new location. The worst part was, it started snowing. Not just snowing, but a blizzard. The film was supposed to take place during a blizzard with snow outside the windows of the bar. In other words, the weather cooperated perfectly for the day of my shoot, and I had just lost my location. I couldn't believe it. We barely had any snow that winter. Then on the day and night I had hoped and prayed for snow, it arrived by the ton.

And I couldn't use it.

Because I was forced to cancel my shoot.

I was furious.

I was miserable.

I was exhausted.

I was cold.

I was unemployed.

Here I am, driving all over Cleveland in a snowstorm when I should have been preparing to shoot a movie which calls for this exact weather.

That was an emotionally exasperating day.

All alone, driving in a blizzard, I felt like such a loser.

What was I doing with my life?

What a nobody I had become.

Well, all I could do was forge ahead. Hope things turn around.

I literally visited about 9 different taverns trying to find the best replacement. Most of them were in Cleveland and there were even one or two in Akron and Columbus.

Eventually, I settled between two places.

One was over in Rocky River or Lakewood someplace. I forget the name. It had two floors and a balcony overlooking a huge stone fireplace. The setting would have looked spectacular on film. Unfortunately, this one proved to be another “hostile location” which Alan had warned me about.

The other location was Flannery's Irish Pub on Prospect Avenue in Downtown Cleveland.

The owner of the cool I-forgot-the-name/hostile-location gave me permission to shoot at his place, but he was always very bristly about it and never very enthused.

I explained to him that I may need to change my dates around. After what happened with my first location, I wanted to make that clear. When you are attempting to coordinate a shoot with two dozen people and no one is getting paid, it can be very difficult to coordinate schedules and make sure everyone is available and committed to show up at the call time.

Right away, the owner of the hostile location started to give me a lot of grief. He needed exact dates. I couldn't keep changing them.

Okay.

Not a good sign.

I explained that Jason and I would need to stop by before the shoot, so Jason could test circuits for lighting and find the breakers. That's just standard practice for lighting on a low-budget film. We couldn't afford to rent generator trucks.

The owner of the hostile location didn't want us messing with his electrical system.

Okay.

Another bad sign.

Despite all of this, he was still going to let me shoot.

He didn't back out on me.

Flannery's Irish Pub was the polar opposite.

The location didn't have the cool balcony or the gargantuan stone fireplace. It wasn't as “cinematic” and grand. Nevertheless, it did have a quaint charm to it, which could be made appropriately dark and mysterious with the proper lighting.

When I met with Christine Connell, the manager of Flannery's, she couldn't have been nicer. She was quick to set a time to talk. She was bubbly and enthusiastic. She had no problem with changing dates. She had no problem with shooting multiple nights. No problem with testing the electrical system. Everything I threw at her was met with smiles and positivity. She didn't even ask to read the script!

I finally understood what Alan Schechter meant when he said, “Never shoot at a hostile location.”

He was absolutely right.

Flannery's Pub won out.

Why should I shoot at these other locations who were being jerks? They were way too hostile. They gave me a hard time with every little request. I didn't need that added stress and pressure of knowing I might get thrown out or screwed over in the middle of my shoot.

No thanks.

We shot at Flannery's Pub over the course of 3 weeks. Three consecutive Sunday nights, from around 7pm to 7am.

In terms of the location, everything went great. No problems. No issues. Totally smooth and flawless. No worries whatsoever.

Thanks to the advice of Alan Schechter and the wonderful cooperation of Flannery's Pub, my little film The Unseelie Court looks fantastic and I couldn't have been happier with the courtesy and hospitality of the location and our gracious host.

And that blizzard outside the windows?

Well, since location scouting pushed the shooting schedule ahead to the spring, the blizzard was changed to a rainstorm, and I think the story is better for it.

Writing and directing a movie was sort of my last big dream.

The one last thing I could think to accomplish in Ohio.

Once I was finished, what was I supposed to do now?

Once I completed it, I found myself feeling more uncertain of my future than ever before. I had run out of ambitions.

No.

More than that.

I was out of excuses. There was nothing to lose anymore.

California was the only thing left. California was the one thing I wanted, yet was afraid to do.

Wanted to be a published novelist. Became one.

Wanted to be a photographer. Sold my images in art galleries.

Wanted to do graphic design. Got hired by American Greetings.

Wanted to direct music videos. Created my own TV show.

Wanted to program websites. Made $50,000 a year doing it.

Wanted to be a filmmaker. Directed an award-nominated movie.

Wanted to work on Hollywood films. Crewed on two of them.

Wanted to be a hang glider pilot. Logged over 50 solo hours.

What else was left?

What did I still want to accomplish?

That was a distressing time in my life.

I should have been happy. I should have been celebrating the fact I had done so much before the age of 30. Instead, I was depressed that I couldn't find a job and irritated with myself because I had no idea what else to do with my life.

Living in a state of constant fear over money is something I truly hate. Maybe other people aren't like that. Maybe other folks can relax. Maybe there is something wrong with the way I think. Maybe that's why I was horrible at freelance work. Maybe I can blame that droning “did you get a job yet?” mentality drilled into me by my grandparents.

I don't know.

All I know is, when I'm unemployed, I literally worry about finding work during 90% of my waking hours.

Remember how I said my family acted as if money is the only measure of success?

I have a confession to make.

They got to me.

I think the same way.

I hate having such an attitude. But I have it.

See, the worst part is, despite all I have achieved in my life, I still don't perceive any of my accomplishments as “work” if there are no monetary rewards associated with them.

Isn't that ignorant?

Like I said before, if an author writes a 300 page novel which is a flop, did he spend less time writing it than someone who pens a bestseller?

Probably not, right?

They probably both spent months pouring blood, sweat and tears into those books.

The one who makes a lot of money is seen as a “writer” who was “working” on something.

The one who wrote a flop is just some unemployed moron who should have been out looking for a job!

Right?

That is idiotic!

The flop requires investing just as much work as the bestseller!

Yet, that is how society thinks and judges people.

Worst of all, that is how I continue to judge myself.

Hard work which earns no income is illegitimate as “real” work. Even when a project remains equally as difficult and time-consuming to achieve as work which is financially lucrative, it doesn't “count” as working if it earns no greenbacks. Cash. Coin. That's what matters.

Honestly, I think that may be half the reason I wrote this book - so I can simply list and defend my accomplishments and say, “Gosh, maybe I'm not such a huge screw-up after all. Maybe I really have done something worthwhile now and then.”

Yes, my dear readers, I hope to inspire your own ambitions.

But, my ulterior motive may be to validate my own as well.

No one likes to be around people who are arrogant and conceited. However, I would also contend that there is a fine line between “arrogance” and “confidence” and the side upon which one falls on that line is frequently, exclusively, in the eye of the beholder.

One of our base and primal needs as human beings is to be appreciated and valued. Thus, when a person attains a lot in life, but no one ever gives them credit or acknowledgment for anything, the frustration of being unappreciated often leads to having a big ego. When no one thinks too highly of you, it's only natural to want to boast about why they should. Unappealing as such arrogance may come across, it's understandable and arguably, even justifiable.

But not always.

I once read an interview with someone who had done a Kickstarter campaign to publish a photography book.

For those who don't know, Kickstarter was a website where people would fund their projects by begging for money from strangers. The project could be anything from publishing a book, to financing a new invention, to paying for a musician to record a new album. Whatever crappy enterprise some hippie slacker wanted to create, these lazy jerks with a grotesque sense of entitlement would post on the website and feel justified in cajoling cash from people. Panhandling for bums who could use technology. Instead of asking for handouts on the street corner, they get to do it from the comfort of their livingroom. How convenient! The buzzword for this freeloading was “crowdfunding”. I even saw a filmmaker use Kickstarter to try getting $100,000 to edit a movie they had already finished shooting. Finished shooting! In the can! Done! What the heck did they need $100,000 for!? When they failed to reach the $100,000 goal, the swindlers reduced it to $10,000.

What made them suddenly able to complete the post-production work with $90,000 less than they “needed” that first time?

Ridiculous.

All a bunch of crooks is what they are.

Anyway, back to the photographer. In this interview, the would-be photographer complained that he “learned who his real friends are” when many of them weren't willing to contribute even a single dollar to help him fund his photography book.

I wanted to strangle this moron when I read that.

Instead of earning his own money, he expects his friends must financially support him, or else they aren't truly his friends?!

How pathetic.

I have published all 5 of my books myself. Five. One of which was 1000 copies and 500 pages long.

I alone paid for printing all 4 of my art gallery showings.

I produced 2 movies on DVD, one of which I funded when I didn't have a job! I hired actors. I hired crew. I rented locations. I did all the editing and writing and directing. Never asked anyone for a dime. Did it myself. Never took handouts.

And this guy expects others to pay for printing less than 300 copies of a 140 page book?

In case you can't tell, I'm a wee bit resentful of the entire concept of Kickstarter. As someone who fights and struggles to survive on my own in this world, and actually earn a living, it makes me a little bitter and infuriated when people attempt to fund their schemes by begging for charity. Makes me even more livid when these lazy thieves turn resentful because no one wants to contribute (or, more accurately, “fall victim”) to their scam.

Don't misunderstand me. I'll donate money to someone suffering from a calamity or illness. I've donated money to worthy causes. I've done a lot of volunteer work and helped people who have fallen on hard times. That is utterly different. A benefit effort for someone enduring a hardship is something I believe folks should rally behind and support. Monetary donations for that are fine. That is what friends and family are for - to get us through the rough times. Financially. Emotionally. Physically. But expecting strangers to fund your personal hobbies and art ventures is for worthless and lazy sleazebags.

Get a job and pay for your own “art” projects, you sissies!

Why am I ranting about the Kickstarter photographer?

Because, the moment I read that interview, the first thing I thought was, “When I complain about my financial woes in this book, I need to make sure I do not come across as some miserable jerk, like that photographer, expecting pity and handouts.”

See, I know there are people out there who have it much harder than me. Life can be cruel. People get crippled. People end up in jail. People are violently assaulted. People contract terminal illnesses. People become evicted. People are abused by family members. People die of starvation. Awful things like that happen to people everyday.

I was lucky.

I was just some guy, living in a great apartment, in a safe and respectable neighborhood, who was having a hard time finding a job. My life wasn't so bad. I know that. The last thing I want is to sound like I'm whining or full of self-pity. I understand many of you have it much harder than me. I understand I have nothing to complain about. I understand that getting a $10,000 inheritance may be more money than some of you have ever seen in your life. Heck, it was certainly the most money I had ever seen!

But remember, I was spending months literally sending my resume to hundreds of jobs and never getting a single phonecall. That $10,000 would eventually run out, and at the rate I was going, it was looking like it may run out before I find employment.

I wasn't full of “woe-is-me” self-pity.

I was simply exasperated and nervous about my future.

I don't want to sound like that ungrateful photographer who expected his friends to give him handouts to publish his book.

I wasn't remotely ungrateful. On the contrary, I am extraordinarily grateful for all the good fortune which was keeping me above water during those years. Honestly, my life was great. I kept my apartment. I wasn't living on the streets. I never got evicted. I didn't have my car repossessed. I was able to pay my bills. I kept on buying groceries. Truth be told, I was blessed by quite a dollop of some good magic in the world. While it may seem the greater respect to keep such wonders a secret, I would hope, in this instance, the goodly magic would regard me more respectful by voicing my gratitude, and encouraging others to keep some faith in it. Things really weren't bad at all.

What was “bad” was the endless fear.

Living in the constant state of fear that such bad things might happen if I run out of money in another month, or two, or three. I might lose my apartment if I don't find work soon. I might be eating tuna and crackers if I don't find work soon. I might. I might. I might.

That nagging fear and uncertainty were the difficult part for me.

That is what haunted me day in and day out.

What if I don't find a job?

What if? What if? What if?

Heck, maybe I'm just a big coward.

My only comfort was an intuition in my head which spoke softly and firmly and kept on reassuring me that everything would work out fine. Not to worry.

Funny, but that reassuring voice sounded a lot like Falkor in The NeverEnding Story, telling Atreyu the same thing.

“Never give up. And good luck will find you.”

I was ready to give up. Yeah, I know - Failure is not an option. Well, I honestly didn't know how to give up, even if I had sincerely wanted to. I was just feeling dramatic. But I sincerely didn't know what to do anymore either! Good luck apparently had nothing to do with it. Pure dumb luck was keeping me afloat. Nothing more.

Freelance wasn't working out.

Unemployment benefits were long gone.

Inheritance money was almost entirely spent.

Jobs hunting had been fruitless for nearly 2 years.

I was fast running out of options.

I only had two or three months of savings left.

I know I've mentioned this stuff already. I'm just trying to emphasize the dire straits I was in. I really didn't have any options remaining.

What was I going to do?

Fate took her cue and needed to intervene.

She manifested using the name “Michelle”.

I was lost in the dark.

Michelle was the light.

Michelle was my miracle.

Chapter Thirty Two
Copyright Infringement Settlement
8 December 2001 to 2003

“Before sitting down to count my blessings, I want to make you a promise. I promise we won't let this great honor you have paid us tonight go to our head - we have too many projects for the future to take time out for such a thing. On top of that, after 40-some-odd-years of ups and downs in this crazy business of ours, we know too well - you are only as good as your next picture.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Remember in the beginning of this book I spoke of serendipity?

Michelle Krause was my greatest.

Remember? Michelle? The gorgeous actress from New York City? The one who visited me for one weekend and I never saw her again? I told you she would come up again later in the story. Well, this is the part where she comes up again. This is the part where she proved to be pivotal.

As I said, I never saw her again after she came to visit me. Although I never saw her again, we did remain friends and we kept in touch for another few years after we met.

Turns out, I was actually right about her after all!

She was “The One” who would change my life.

She was magical.

She was my savior.

But not in the way I imagined.

Right from the beginning, everything my instincts told me about her were correct. I just didn't understand the meaning of her influence on my life until much later.

Months after we met, she had moved from New York City to Florida and rang me up with a phonecall that would transform my entire life forever.

7 December 2001 was the day I picked up that phone.

60 years after the Day of Infamy, I had my own.

“Eric, did you know about this journal at the mall with the picture from your novel in it?” She asked.

“Um... The what? Mall journal?... What are you talking about? What picture?”

“That's what I thought.” Was her mysterious reply. “I figured you would have told me.”

Perplexed, I asked, “Michelle? Uh, what on earth are you talking about?”

Turns out a large corporation had stolen artwork out of my novel, reprinted it in a journal, and were selling it in shopping malls all across the country. Michelle just happened to randomly find a copy in a Florida store and recognized the image.

Astonishing.

I never would have made this discovery on my own.

No other friend in my life ever told me about that journal.

Michelle was the one and only person to have found it.

If it hadn't been for her, the corporation which stole the image would have gotten away with their crime. I never would have known about the theft.

So you see? In the end, I was right about her!

Michelle was indeed a girl who changed my life. She was my dream come true after all.

Just not in the way I had imagined.

The next day, I went to Parmatown Mall and checked the shelves of the franchise store Michelle had told me about. Lo and behold, there it was. Just like she said. Sitting on a shelf, I found a copy of the journal containing my stolen image. I immediately bought two copies as evidence on 8 December 2001 at 12:24pm (I still have the receipt), and went home to make a phonecall.

One of my friends, Joseph Vargo, (He was the one who opened the art gallery where I had my first art showing. Remember?) who is a very successful dark fantasy artist in his own right, constantly has people stealing his artwork. As a result, Joe had a very experienced copyright lawyer who won him many lawsuits. I called Joe to get the name of his lawyer and began the process of suing the corporation that stole from my book. When I presented my case to the lawyer, he actually thanked me because he said it would be so easy. The whole thing was so clear cut and obviously illegal, there was no way the defendant would win.

At first, I had lofty dreams of getting a huge windfall of money from this. After all, who knows how long this merchandise had been around? They may have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from this book! Statutory damages for copyright infringement can be as high as $250,000!

I was thrilled!

Within a few weeks I might have a quarter of a million dollars in the bank! This was fantastic!

Oh, how naive I was.

That never happened.

Instead, the company dragged their feet and took forever.

They also “claimed” they had a hard drive crash and thereby lost all the sales data. Right. Sure.

My lawyer explained that's how it works.

Defense attorneys deliberately drag legal proceedings out for ages, in the hopes the plaintiff will give up.

Only when deadlines are surpassed and new legal threats are made do they move forward to the next step.

Disgusting to think that is how dishonorable the legal system has been rendered by lawyers.

Sleazebags.

After more than a year of threatening legal action and negotiating a settlement, I was finally awarded thousands of dollars from the unscrupulous company that tried to rip me off. It wasn't the massive amount of money I had hoped for. Not a windfall. Not by a longshot. Just enough to pay my rent and living expenses for another year or thereabouts.

I knew this settlement money was most likely the last opportunity in my life where I'd ever be handed a large sum of cash.

This was it.

This would never happen again.

This was my moment.

I had a decision to make.

Do I stay in Cleveland where everything was safe and familiar and use the settlement money to support myself until I maybe find a job?

Or...

Do I use the money to move to Los Angeles and finally attain my dream of living in California?

My life wasn't a metaphor for Joseph Campbell's famous Hero's Journey at that point. It was quite literally the moment when I had to choose to go on the quest.

The dark forest was right there in front of me.

Do I step inside and brave my journey?

Do I play it safe and ignore the calling?

Honestly, did I have any choice in the matter?

Who was I fooling?

Cleveland didn't want me anymore.

No matter how hard I looked for work, I couldn't even get interviews anymore.

I had made 3 separate visits to California in the past 16 months. California is clearly the place where I wanted to be. Like some wimpy bridegroom, I was just too scared to commit to Hollywood.

Los Angeles was my girl.

I simply needed to place a ring on her finger.

I knew I had to decide quickly. After all, every month I spent in Ohio meant my savings account was getting smaller and smaller. Hesitate for too long and I won't have enough money left to move two blocks away, let alone all the way across the country. This was my moment. My one and only chance.

What to do?

Time is ticking.

The hourglass is running out.

The sun is getting low on that horizon.

Need to make a decision.

Stay or go?

The familiar road?

The perilous journey?

I was Luke Skywalker, staring at the binary suns of Tatooine, looking away to the future, to the horizon. Never my mind on where I was. What I was doing.

Time to be reckless.

To use another movie quote - “You have been down there, Neo. You know that road. You know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be.”

You already know my answer. Just as I did.

All at once, it was the most heartbreaking and exhilarating decision I ever made.

By the end of April 2003, my whole apartment was packed up and on a truck getting shipped out to Los Angeles. I had no job waiting for me. I had nowhere to live. All I had was a little savings and a lot of ambition.

I loaded up my Macintosh into my Chevy Lumina (so I could keep editing a Tori Amos music video for a contest I was entering) and said my final farewells to the city where I spent 32 years of my life. During my last few weeks, I seriously spent many late nights riding my mountain bike all over the city. It was difficult to say goodbye to the only home I had ever known. Farewell to my gradeschool. To my highschool. Through my old neighborhood streets. I knew these might be the last times I ever see some of these places which shaped so much of who I had become. I knew I was never coming back. Even my uncle made that comment to me - he knew I'd never come back to Cleveland. Not even to visit. Not ever.

Just like Luke Skywalker. “I'm never coming back to this planet again.”

Maybe I would. Maybe if I ever have a wife and children, I'll show them my hometown. But I have no other reason to ever return. I look forward. I forge ahead. I never go back. That's not my style. Wistful and melancholy, my nostalgic farewell to Cleveland was indeed a long goodbye.

Time to move on.

Incidentally, allow me to add - drive across the United States at least once during your lifetime. Make time for it. Seeing the country is truly an awe-inspiring and breathtaking experience. I had no idea how vast and beautiful America truly is, until I saw her from the open road.

Ohio was a wonderful place to grow up.

But it never felt like home anymore. Ohio had become a loving parent who had to kick me out for my own good. I didn't belong there. It was time to go. I may have been born in Cleveland, but honestly, all I truly did was spend my whole life living 2500 miles outside of Hollywood. California is where I belonged. It's where I always wanted to be. California was always home.

Cleveland was a great town to be from, but an awful place to spend my whole life.

Living on the West Coast was never a choice. Gazing into the Pacific Ocean was my destiny. Preordained before birth. I didn't realize it at the time, but deciding to live in California was always a question of “when” and never a question of “if”. Everything I had done, all I had accomplished in my life, was in preparation for this moment.

At last I was ready.

At last the journey of my life was truly about to begin.

All thanks to a phonecall from a girl named Michelle, who I never saw again, and who never liked me as much as I liked her.

Everything else in my life was a prelude.

This is when the story actually starts.

California, here I come...

Chapter Thirty Three
ODVD Games
14 October 2003 to 26 April 2004

“My big brother Roy was already in Los Angeles as a patient in the Veteran's Hospital. When he got out, we had more in common than brotherly love. Both of us were unemployed and neither could get a job. We solved the problem by going into business for ourselves. We established the first animated cartoon studio in Hollywood.”

- Walter Elias Disney

At last I had made it! This was it, baby! Tinseltown. Hollywood. Los Angeles, California. The Land Where Dreams Come True!

Or in my case, The Land Where I Lost More Jobs During My First 3 Years Than I Did During 32 Years Living In Ohio!

Yeah!

Woohoo!

...Hey, wait a minute.

What?

That's not how my story is supposed to go!

I finally attain my dream of living in Los Angeles only to end up unemployed more often than ever before!?

Seriously. Yes. No joke. That is true.

I know that is not what you were expecting to hear. This was my moment of glory! My lifelong dream accomplished! I was supposed to be starting a life where the streets are paved with gold and the world was my oyster! Days overflowing with wine, women and song! Master of all I survey!

Um. No. Not quite.

Turns out that Los Angeles was not the potted gold at the end of my proverbial rainbow of struggles. Instead, California was a whole new chapter of hardships. Just like it did to dear Walt Disney and his brother, Los Angeles kicked my butt when I got here. Moving to Hollywood is like joining some brutal streetgang where they beat the snot out of you, just to determine if you're tough enough to hang with them and take the pain.

California beat me up quite a few times those first few years.

I was laid off once during 32 years of living in Ohio.

In Los Angeles?

I was laid off from 4 different jobs within my first 3 years of moving to California.

Honest truth.

That doesn't even take into account all the other problems I encountered when I first got to Los Angeles; my apartment leaked and flooded in a rainstorm and destroyed all of my carpet; I lost 2 different jobs and spent 6 months unemployed; I crashed my motorcycle 3 times, resulting in 2 expensive visits to the hospital (without medical insurance); I could not walk and was on crutches for 2 weeks due to spraining my ankle in one of the accidents; my car was vandalized and totaled after I had to leave it on the side of the road, because the brakes went out in the mountains and I nearly died trying to stop the car without sailing off a cliff; since I couldn't afford a new car, I became forced to ride my motorcycle everywhere; and I had half a dozen romantic relationships, which each lasted less than a week.

All of that was in the first year alone.

California. What a great idea.

There were times when I really thought I may have made a huge mistake. Maybe leaving Ohio wasn't such a great idea after all.

Many people will tell you how rough and merciless Los Angeles can be. They ain't lying. The City Of Angels is host to both beautiful seraphim and demonic fallen cherubs alike. She can be a savior or a harsh mistress. She can make your dreams come true or turn your nightmares into reality. Loving Los Angeles is like being madly in love with a sociopathic supermodel drug addict - she's beautiful and irresistible, especially to the tourists, but if you're living with her, you have to love her unconditionally, or she will murder you in your sleep.

You know the old saying, “A wise woman never tries to kill a man when he's awake.”

That's Los Angeles.

Once my relationship with Los Angeles improved, she proved to be pretty amazing. She cleans up nicely.

Once she knew I loved her and wouldn't leave her, the city started to treat me differently.

A friend from New York once came to visit me for a few days, and near the end of her trip, she told me how one of her friends had tried to talk her out of coming. He told her Los Angeles was dirty and creepy and depressing and full of unsavory people and nothing but gangland ghettos.

The awful picture he painted really got to her.

She almost didn't come.

After spending days with me, she admitted to being baffled by his sentiments.

“Los Angeles is the most beautiful city I've ever seen!” She said. “Now I understand why you love it here so much. I don't understand why my friend hated it like he did.”

“Because life is what you make of it.” I explained. “Los Angeles is the most beautiful city you've ever seen, because I've shown you my version of Los Angeles. What I have exposed you to these past 4 days is the city I choose to live in. Your friend didn't lie to you. His version of Los Angeles truly was awful, because that's the way he wants to live his life. Let me ask you this - is he an optimistic person? Is he positive and upbeat? Or is he kind of cynical and down on everything?”

She thought about it and said, “Yeah, now that you mention it, he's not very cheerful about anything.”

“See? And that's why his Los Angeles was a horrible place. He gravitates towards the awful stuff. He chooses the shadows and the negative. I choose to live in the light. Life is what you make of it. I choose to live in the best of what Los Angeles has to offer, so it becomes a magical and beautiful place. He chooses to live in darkness, so all he sees and all he associates with is the gross and dirty underbelly of a city.”

I still believe all of that.

You have to create what happens in your life.

You must strive to build something good.

That is what I was striving to do from the moment I arrived.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I did so with no job and no apartment. Picked up and left everything I knew with no sense of direction. Threw caution to the wind. Did something crazy. Granted, I had a flawless credit rating and a few grand in the bank, but it was only enough money to survive for a few months. If I was unable to become employed within 6 months or so, I'd be living in my car. Seriously. Considering that I couldn't find a job for nearly 3 years in Cleveland, I have to admit, my 6 month deadline terrified me.

Although I was jobhunting every single day from the moment I arrived in Los Angeles, it took me about 5 months to find my first job in California. 30 more days and I would have been couch surfing. Considering I only had 3 friends in Los Angeles, that's not very many couches to surf.

Talk about cutting it close!

My first task when I arrived in Los Angeles was to find a place to live. With my belongings safely shipped to California and arrayed in a storage facility, I lived in an extended-stay hotel while I looked for an apartment.

After about 2 weeks of hotel-living, once I found an apartment and got settled in, I began my search for my first California job! Woohoo! Exciting times! My quest for employment in Los Angeles relied on the Internet. No more newspapers these days. All online. I had a profile on the Monster.com job board and searched for weeks. And weeks. And weeks. And weeks.

Weeks turned into months.

The I'm-Turning-My-Dreams-Into-Reality excitement faded fast, as I slowly began to realize just how far away I was from the dream.

Hundreds of resumes later, I was never given a single job interview.

Not one callback.

Not a single reply.

I might as well not even exist.

Every resume I sent out was ignored. Hundreds of job applications, all submitted in futility.

Great.

Landing interviews and failing to be hired is depressing. But when no one even wants to interview you in the first place, it's downright humiliating.

Just like Ohio. Nothing had changed.

Wait. That's not entirely accurate. One big thing had changed. Los Angeles was just as hard to find a job as Cleveland, plus my living-expenses and rent were almost doubled!

Great.

What a nightmare.

So much for living the dream.

Looks like I was rapidly headed towards being one of those people for whom Hollywood would prove to make horrid nightmares come true instead of idyllic dreams. All my savings (which could have lasted nearly a year in Ohio) were rapidly decreasing to nothing in California.

I had made a huge mistake.

I never should have left Ohio.

What was I thinking?

What a fool I had been!

Should have stayed where everything was safe and familiar.

Looks like I didn't belong in California after all.

But now I was stuck! I couldn't afford to move back to Cleveland. I didn't have enough money. Even if I did move back, where would I go? Where would I stay? I had no friends or family I could live with in Ohio. I was alone in the world.

Remember, there was no “fallback plan” in case California “didn't work out” for me. There was no “backup”. Backup plans are for sissies who are anticipating failure. Having a fallback is for people who expect to quit. I don't quit. California was my life. California was home. California was my fate. There was no turning back. I had no choice but to forge ahead. Keep moving forward.

Failure. Not. An. Option.

One of my Los Angeles friends worked at Disney. She worked at the company day care center. She suggested I try applying at Disney for some design or Internet work. I dismissed the idea completely.

Disney? No way. That's crazy. Disney is a world-class company. The largest and most successful entertainment company in the world! I'm not good enough. I have nothing to contribute to Disney. Besides, I checked out their job listings. All of their job openings were way over my head. Disney people were more gifted than me. Better writers. Better cinematographers. Better designers. Better programmers. Better engineers. No. Absolutely not. I wasn't worthy of Walt Disney. Why bother?

If crappy little production companies wouldn't so much as grant me an interview, why would Disney? Right? That's ludicrous. I ignored her suggestions. I never applied at Disney. Why waste my time?

On the bright side of being unemployed in Los Angeles, I went out dancing at a lot of cool goth/industrial nightclubs. Lots of dancing at 80's nights. Good times. After all, with no day job to wake up for, who cares if I was staying out all hours dancing? At least I could get lost in the music and be blissfully distracted from my employment worries for a few hours.

There is an old saying, one which many people particularly emphasize in Hollywood - “it's not what you know, it's who you know.”

This saying is a lie.

Many people who move to Hollywood ignorantly believe that old saying. They try to “network” and “mingle” and think if they meet a lot of folks, get to know a large array of successful people, they too will be successful.

Not so. This never works and it never has.

No one cares if you know them or not.

The truth is - “it's not who you know, it's who knows you.”

Everyone who succeeds in Hollywood learns this.

It's not who you know, it's who knows you.

You see, in showbiz, you can meet the most powerful movie producer in town and get her number. That doesn't mean anything. Because, let's face it, she won't take your calls. She won't even remember your name.

When you meet the most powerful movie producer in town and she is calling you, then you have made it.

The people you know don't matter.

The people who know you are the ones who influence your success.

Vital distinction.

When I eventually landed my first job in Los Angeles, it wasn't something I found online. My job was discovered thanks to someone who knew me.

Remember my friend Jason Tomaric? The one who directed CL.ONE and did the cinematography on The Unseelie Court?

He moved to Los Angeles at the same time I did. An odd coincidence, he and I had been friends for 2 or 3 years, and we just so happened to decide to move to Los Angeles within one month of each other. I arrived in May. He showed up a few weeks later in June. The bizarre thing about our simultaneous moving to Hollywood is that we never discussed our relocation plans with one another. We had no idea that either one was planning such a trip until the last moments. We mutually simply felt it was time to leave Ohio behind.

Jason did the same thing I did - picked up and moved with no job and no apartment. Just like me, he threw caution to the wind and made the big leap. Since I had a place by the time he got here, instead of holding up in a hotel like I did, Jason actually stayed with me for about a week, until he got his own abode.

Just like Walt Disney and myself, Jason had a difficult time finding work as well. We hung out a lot, lamenting our mutual frustrations at being two out-of-work dreamers in the City of Angels.

I was willing to do anything - writing, design, programming, anything I had experience in.

Jason wanted to direct.

No, seriously. I know that's the Hollywood cliche joke, but I'm totally serious. He was a very successful director in Ohio and he wanted to direct in Los Angeles. I had “money in the bank” when I moved to California, but I know Jason had twice the talent and literally about 10 times more money than I did. I'm happy to say that things eventually worked out very well for Jason and he has gone on to be a very successful cinematographer and runs his own production company.

However, in the beginning, Jason and I weren't so fortunate. We were both struggling. Quite a blow to the ego when you are admired for your craft in your hometown, only to have your talents disregarded in Los Angeles.

Big fish. Small pond.

Small fish. Big ocean.

So, as I said, we hung out a lot. Once you have sent out all your resumes for the day, there isn't much more you can do with your time. Exasperating to be so idle for two people with big ambitions and a strong desire to be productive. Nothing makes you feel less important than knowing you are struggling to passionately realize a dream shared by 9 zillion other people who live just up the street, all of whom are in the exact same predicament as yourself.

Welcome to showbiz.

Here's your lemming costume.

Ugh.

Sometime around September 2003, Jason finally got a break and was hired at a startup gaming company in Hollywood called ODVD Games. They were looking for other designers and Jason suggested me. Long story short, ODVD called me for an interview and I got the job! Cutting it close, I was quite literally less than 60 days away from running completely out of money and being homeless.

At last!

My first real job in Hollywood!

I was so thrilled!

I was the fourth employee to be hired at ODVD. Truly, I was a founding member of what would become a revolutionary new gaming platform. Our offices were on Sunset Boulevard, in a penthouse highrise, in downtown Hollywood.

Talk about living the dream!

Foolishly, I only asked for a $40,000 salary, because I still didn't think I was worthy of a lot. I should have asked for $60,000. Stupid of me. They were hesitant to pay $40,000, but agreed.

The job itself was really awesome.

We made a movie-themed trivia game which was played on a standard home DVD player. The technology was the first of its kind. The founder of the company had figured out a way to access the small amount of memory in a DVD player and use the disc to tally the scoring between two opposing teams and everything. It was pretty awesome. No boards or dice or anything involved. Everything was on the television.

Rounds of gameplay varied.

Mostly the objective was to identify various movies using clues provided on the disc. You might get shown a film quote and have to identify the movie. Random words associated with a film might appear. You might see a filmclip and have to figure out where it was from.

My favorite round was “Still Crazies”, which I invented.

There was competing game, which used a board and game tokens too, and would show a still from a famous movie scene and erase one element from the image. You'd have to identify the film before the time was up.

Instead of erasing one thing from the frame, I got the idea to use Photoshop and erase multiple elements from the scene and animate them back into the shot.

Those rounds turned out super cool and they proved to be one of the most enjoyable for the test groups. I was thrilled that I had contributed such a cool idea to the game. Truly, it made the other rounds of gameplay pretty lame by comparison.

This was awesome. Securing my place in a great startup company by contributing the best ideas!

My job was highly varied too, which is always great fun.

I did a huge amount of Photoshop work, designing graphics and images and buttons and game screens for the entire game. I also did a large amount of editing various clips in Final Cut Pro along with a little bit of keyframe animation as well.

Things were constantly jumping.

I had finally made it. This was it! This is what I was meant to do!

Working in Hollywood. Innovating. Creating.

Cutting-edge part of the entertainment industry.

Pure bliss.

At last.

I was home.

One of the happiest moments for me was around Christmas in 2003, when I was in the office all alone.

Everyone else was off on vacation for the Holidays.

I recall staring out the windows, gazing across the dusk lights of Hollywood, thinking, “I made it.”

That was it.

I made it.

Everything I ever wanted to accomplish. All the things I attempted to achieve. Here it was. I was working a great job, high above the city lights, in a penthouse office overlooking Hollywood, California.

I made it.

I got here all alone.

On my own terms.

I didn't compromise my ideals.

I didn't play by the rules.

I didn't have anyone accompany me on my journey.

This was what I had been working towards my whole life.

I. Made. It.

All I could think about was my grandfather and how proud I knew he would be.

That was a very good night.

Too bad it didn't last.

Must the hero of the story always lose everything when he is at the zenith of his greatest joy?

Crap.

Things kind of began to disintegrate after that.

At the age of 32, I encountered my first experience with “ageism” from one of the editors there. During a meeting when we were discussing getting some new DVD authoring software, which I was personally eager to learn, the 20-something editor brushed me off and said, “No, you can't do it. I want someone younger, like an intern or a college student.”

Ordinarily, that would be shockingly offensive to say in private.

However, it was about 100 times more offensive, because multiple people in the meeting nodded and agreed and completely ignored my input! Everyone brushed me off as if I wasn't even there. By that time, we had a group of several employees and, with the exception of the person leading the meeting, everyone else in that room was under 26 years of age.

What the hell?

Personally, I have always loved working with older people. They always have so much more knowledge and experience and understanding of things. In the few times I have been privileged to work closely with older folks, I have always learned a lot from working with those who have been upon this planet longer than me. Such as that retired man from Kodak when I worked at MotoPhoto - he was a gem. Older people are just more savvy at things. They have the best experience. The best stories. They are wonderful coworkers.

Here, I was barely even 7 years their senior and these people were treating me as though I were 137 years old and out to pasture. Didn't any of them understand that I had an extra 7 years of experience with literally everything they knew? Design. Programming. Filmmaking. You name it! Heck, I even knew more about women! I was out photographing and dating 6'0” runway models and actresses when these nerds were still pimply-faced losers in highschool!

Who do they think they are?

Why was I putting up with this?

Shouldn't I be the person whom they really pay attention to?

Shouldn't my opinions be among the most valuable and respected and regarded in that room?

Apparently not.

So much for working as a team. Then again, any company which lauds teamwork never has any. Speaking the word “teamwork” aloud is evil.

Allow me to explain.

Bear with me a moment. It might seem like I'm going off on some weird unrelated topic, but it all connects together in a few paragraphs. Trust me. Just come along for the ride.

I have a theory about romantic relationships - the best ones are the ones people never talk about.

Think about your own life, and you'll find this to be true. When people complain and whine and moan about the person they are dating, that frequently spells doom for the romance. However, the opposite is true too - when people constantly go on and on about how great a lover is, they are typically trying to convince themselves. Those relationships die too.

That's not to say you can't get mad at someone or be excited about something. Of course you can complain at times. Of course you can be elated at times. I'm referring to people who constantly complain. People who constantly praise. There is a big difference and I'm sure you have personally witnessed the distinction.

Both extremes are bad.

People who are truly in love, never talk about it. Love is like breathing. When it is working fine, it's just part of your life - an essential ingredient which requires no special attention.

What does this have to do with teamwork?

My fellow Cast Members at Disney have the greatest sense of teamwork I've ever known. We all help each other. We are always supporting each other. But no one ever talks about it. The word “teamwork” is never brought up in meetings. It is never emphasized in presentations. I've never seen it shown as a bullet point in a slideshow. At Disney, we don't need to discuss teamwork because it remains an integral part of who were are and what we do.

Like breathing, you don't talk about it unless something goes wrong with it. Bronchitis. Choking. Pneumonia. Strangulation. Asthma. These are reasons to discuss breathing. When breathing is working fine, it's not a topic of discussion.

Companies who brag about teamwork and encourage teamwork and boast about teamwork are the ones who don't have any. Those are the awful companies where everyone is out for themselves and no one is helping each other. So, within those companies of self-serving jerks, there is a constant need to reiterate the value of teamwork.

That is why teamwork is an evil word.

Never work for any company when they encourage teamwork. Because when people have genuine and heartfelt teamwork, there is never a need to bring it up. There is no need to discuss it or convince people of its merits. Genuine teamwork is like breathing. It simply is. Teamwork is in the blood. People only talk about teamwork when it's not there.

Sorry, that was a big tangent.

I just got distracted in thinking about how rude that dirtbag editor was and how being prejudice over a coworkers age shows a true lack of teamwork.

I was starting to feel quite unwelcome.

Not fun when you're the fourth employee at a startup to get the sense you are being shown the door.

My good friend Jason, who got me in the door, wasn't around to be in my corner. Disillusioned with the job at ODVD Games, Jason quit by just not really showing up to work anymore. At first he worked from home a little. Then came into the office less and less. Then just never showed up at all.

He didn't need this.

Jason was masterful at running his own business.

Once he gathered his bearings in Los Angeles, he didn't need to waste his time working a 9-to-5 job for someone else. He made three times as much money working for himself.

Why should he keep this job?

Personally, I actually enjoyed the job quite a bit.

I was hoping to stay there for a long time.

However, suddenly, quite unexpectedly and completely out of the blue (yes, I realize that was horribly redundant, but it sounded good in my head) I was laid off for no good reason in April.

Of course, they waited until I finished my gargantuan amount of Photoshop work on the “Still Crazies” images, because they didn't have anyone else there who could do the work as well as me. I invented the darned thing after all.

I was never really told why they were getting rid of me. I worked overtime. I brought people in for gametesting. I volunteered for extra projects beyond the scope of my job. I dedicated my creativity to the project and made significant contributions to the products. I got along with my coworkers. I never argued or fought with anyone. I never made any mistakes or screwed up. There was no legitimate reason to let me go. I was doing everything a person should be doing as a valuable asset to a startup company.

The whole experience reminded me of girls who break up with me - they never really tell me why. Never given a solid answer. They just hand me this passive-aggressive “it's not working out” malarkey. Some unkempt hipster with Hobbit hair who had it in for me was the one who axed me. I bet I'd never recognize him on the street. Those little coffeeshop hipster kids all look alike to me. Can't recognize one scraggly beard and fixie from another.

The part that really infuriated me was when he expected me to be more grateful, because he was giving me 2 weeks severance pay.

Two weeks?

The scumbag had the nerve to reiterate that he was not legally obligated to pay me any severance. Just wanted to bring it up, in order to remind me how “nice” he was.

Wow.

Yeah, whatever helps you sleep at night, buddy. That makes me really appreciative, you worthless slug.

To make matters worse, more than half-a-year later, he tried to chisel me out of my unemployment benefits, by claiming I wasn't looking for work.

I know why.

When companies lay people off, the government raises their taxes. They tried to rake me over in a feeble attempt to save money.

First of all, no one at that company ever kept in touch with me, so they had no idea if I was jobhunting or not.

Secondly, jobhunting is all I did for the next several months!

How dare they!

We had to attend a legal “contestment hearing” on 12 November 2004, someplace over by Sepulveda and Ventura, with the Los Angeles Courts or the Labor Department or something like that, regarding their false accusations. All the evidence I required in my defense was to bring the months and months worth of printouts from my scores and scores of email job applications. The judge took one look at those and shut them up immediately. Find for the defendant. Case dismissed. Morons.

Indeed, Hollywood wasn't all sunshine and puppydogs and rainbows. It was also just evil wicked unicorns with flamethrowers and princesses imprisoned in towers shooting pornography and employers who toss you to the curb and try to ruin your finances through unscrupulous legal actions.

So ended my first job in California.

Got laid off 4 times in Los Angeles before getting into Disney.

This was the first.

One down.

Three to go.

Chapter Thirty Four
Pacific Elementary School
23 September 2004 to 14 October 2004

“The American child is a highly intelligent human being - characteristically sensitive, humorous, open - minded, eager to learn, and has a strong sense of excitement, energy and healthy curiosity about the world in which he lives. Lucky indeed is the grownup who manages to carry these same characteristics over into his adult life. It usually makes for a happy and successful individual.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Back to struggling to find work again.

The worst part about being unemployed is that I work too hard. Sounds silly, but it's not a joke. I'm serious. Once I'm unemployed, next thing I know, I'm writing books, directing movies, producing educational videos, refining my portfolio, crewing on film sets and reconstructing websites, all at the same time. It's exhausting! I end up getting 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night and wearing myself out.

Most people get more “free time” when they are not working.

Not me.

I end up with a heck of a lot less free time, because I suddenly feel compelled to work on every single project in my head. That's never easy either, because it becomes hard to fund things when you're not working. The mere 6 months at ODVD Games allowed me to start saving a little money and the unemployment benefits helped augment that.

Still, it took another 5 months to find work.

I kept cutting it really damn close to homelessness.

How do so many people land new jobs in 2 or 3 weeks!?

It's not fair!

On the bright side, I got at least 8 job interviews in there. At least that was perking up. Sure, I still wasn't getting hired, but at least people were starting to give me an opportunity.

Granted, I can't pay my rent with an “opportunity” but I also can't get hired for a job unless I'm getting some interviews.

So, yes, the interviews do uplift the morale.

Things were looking up a little.

Eventually, I did get a little part time job down by the beach.

This was an awkward job.

Sounded like great fun when it was first offered to me, but it slowly got less and less fun once the true details were revealed.

An Orange County independent film producer I knew, through a filmmaking friend back in Ohio, heard about my jobhunting woes and she offered to help me out with work.

She was starting up an extracurricular animation class for Pacific Elementary, a big gradeschool nestled down in Manhattan Beach, and she required teachers.

On paper, that sounds fantastic!

I knew a bit about animation.

I loved teaching.

This would be great!

This class was only a few hours per week, so I was not making much money at all. I made it very clear to the woman who gave me the job that I'd have to quit if I found fulltime work. She totally understood and I told her I wouldn't leave her hanging and I'd make sure to give her enough time to hire someone in my place if I were to find another job.

Unfortunately, she didn't reveal a few very important details about the job until a day or two before I had to start teaching the course.

“Oh, by the way, the class isn't in the school.”

What?

Turns out that since I wasn't a certified faculty teacher and it's an “after school activity”, it has to be taught outside the classrooms.

Excuse me?

“Oh, by the way, that means no access to school computers.”

What?

“Oh, by the way, the kids don't have laptops either.”

“Oh, by the way, you have to teach it in the cafeteria area.”

“Oh, by the way, you have to use your own laptop.”

You mean the laptop which I didn't own?

Yeah, she never told me any of this beforehand. She dropped all these details on me like 2 or 3 days before I had to start teaching.

I also found out that the kids were told I was a Disney animator.

What!?

When I worked at The Rogers Company, I printed posters for Disney. That was 6 years ago! That's all. I was in no other way ever affiliated with Disney! I was certainly not an animator for Disney! Saying I was a Disney animator is not even an exaggeration, it's an outright lie!

My enthusiasm for this job waned a ton at that point.

These kids are under the false pretense that a Disney animator is teaching their computer animation class. How on earth am I expected to teach computer animation to a bunch of kids with no computers!?

Ah, you have to love the ignorant and bullheaded politics of the worthless American education system!

Like all teachers who are forbidden from providing children with a proper education, I had to improvise.

I borrowed a laptop, but it still wasn't easy to teach a class on animation to a class of 15 gradeschool children with only one computer. Therefore, I used the computer to illustrate basic concepts, but I had the kids use traditional oldschool pencils and notepads to make actual animations.

My biggest problem was - how on earth do I make this last for a one hour class for 12 weeks!? I had no idea what type of curriculum to create. After awhile, I decided to simply repeat some lessons and concepts and let the kids work on their own.

The kids were very young, ranging from about 8 years old to maybe 12 years old. They always say you have one student who stands out. There was one little blonde girl in the class who was amazing. Sadly, I don't even remember her name. But she was one of the youngest kids and she was adorably cute and she was actually a really excellent animator. She took to the art so easily and was very creative and clever and I was so impressed with her.

Like so many of we artistic kids, she was very quiet and shy and introverted. But she was also really gentle and sweet.

One afternoon, her mother came by and I went on and on, praising her daughter to her. Mom was beaming with pride.

That little girl made it all worthwhile.

About 8 weeks into teaching the class, I landed a fulltime job at a printing company in Chatsworth.

When I informed the woman who was running the program, she got angry with me. She told me I was “screwing her over”.

I calmly and rationally told her I would gladly continue to teach the class until she found a suitable replacement for me. I had no intention of screwing her over. I was not going to abandon the class or the students. I would continue to teach every week, as long as I needed to do so. I also reminded her that I gave her this stipulation when I accepted her offer for the job.

Despite my kind and cordial response, she remained angry and spiteful, “No. Just go. Forget it! You don't need to teach anymore classes! It's not your problem! I'll find someone else.”

People in Los Angeles were starting to strike me as monumentally stupid. I really hoped it wouldn't rub off on me. Do you need to be born here to be that much of a jackass, or does it permeate into your bones from the water or something?

This woman lied to the school and to the students about my background.

This woman failed to give me adequate access to the school to teach properly, then failed to reveal any of this information to me until the last minute.

Then when I inform her that I must quit to work fulltime, but I'm willing to keep working as long as she needs me, she gets angry about it. What a loser!

I was sorry to leave without saying goodbye to my students.

Hopefully my star pupil, that little blonde girl, has grown up to do great things. She really was something special.

Chapter Thirty Five
Printing Company
20 October 2004 to 16 December 2004

“To some people, I am kind of a Merlin who takes lots of crazy chances, but rarely makes mistakes. I've made some bad ones, but fortunately, the successes have come along fast enough to cover up the mistakes. When you go to bat as many times as I do, you're bound to get a good average. That's why I keep my projects diversified.”

- Walter Elias Disney

This job sucked.

My instincts were right on the money with this gig and I knew it was bad news from day one.

After ODVD Games, it took 6 months before I finally managed to get a job at a printing company in Chatsworth, California. This is one place I worked that I will not mention by name. The job was so short-lived and owned by such a deceptive sleazeball of a human being, I even keep it off my resume and never mention it.

However, this printing company is another story with some beautiful serendipity and as gratitude for that karmic good fortune, I will share the tale with you good readers.

In short, the company was a struggling print shop. They literally had one boss and two employees. Apparently, they had once been a huge facility with dozens of workers, but now they were crumbling. They needed a website and that is what they hired me to build. The job advertised was for an Internet developer. The day I interviewed for the position, once he told me more details, I said to the owner, “Are you sure you need me to work full-time on this? I mean, it sounds like you just need a website built and you won't need me once that is finished.”

“No, no.” The owner reassured me. “It's not like that. I really need you to help out with other duties around the company after the site is built. Since you have experience with graphics and photography and printing, I could totally use your help.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Absolutely. This is a permanent full-time position.” He promised me.

Unemployment benefits from ODVD Games were running out.

Teaching classes in Manhattan Beach wasn't even enough to pay for half my groceries each week.

I needed a job! So, although I still didn't trust this guy, and he was paying me a ridiculously low salary, I accepted his offer. I really had no choice.

When I took the job, I explained to him that I was teaching these animation classes one day a week. I told him I'd have to finish those out, so one day a week, I'd have to come in early and leave earlier.

He was cool with that, but as I said in the previous chapter, the woman running the program just told me to leave outright, so I did.

The great thing about this job was that the people running the printing company knew nothing about the Internet. Therefore, I was given total control over everything and I only had to answer to the owner of the company. There were no other designers. No engineers. No technology personnel. Just me alone, doing all visual design and programming. That website was 100% me every step of the way.

I love working like that.

Building the site took months because the order form functionality he wanted was very complicated. He wanted customers to have the ability to order printing jobs like business cards or postcards on the website. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be too difficult. Most of it was standard HTML and CSS and not too sophisticated. The difficulty stemmed from the fact that I also had to include weight-based shipping costs from the shipping company, plus the ability to upload graphics, and he wanted all of this functionality on a single webpage. In other words, as the customer entered data, the customer couldn't go to a separate shipping form. Everything had to work all on one page.

This was very challenging.

I pulled it off though!

I built a Microsoft Access database which stored every single permutation of shipping weights for the product options. I built a JavaScript calculator to add the weights. I created an iframe which contained a shipping API from UPS. When you entered your zipcode and calculated shipping, the child-frame would call the parent-frame data for the weight totals and the API would spit back the results based upon starting from a hardcoded address which was our printing company itself. Then the iframe child would post the shipping cost back to the parent form.

It all worked quite elegantly, but it literally took the entire 2 months time I worked there to get it all running.

As I was wrapping up the project, my instincts started to work overtime and a few weird things happened.

First, as I was on my way to the post office to mail some credit card bills and I got this overwhelming feeling that I should not pay them.

Turn around.

Go home.

I've learned to trust my instincts, so I did just that.

Sometimes, it's hard to trust your instincts - especially when they tell you to ignore the basic financial responsibilities of running errands.

But I trusted them and I didn't pay those bills.

My finances were very low. Even though I was working, I was making so little money and I had spent so much savings, I was really down to the wire. I was pretty much at a point where I was living paycheck-to-paycheck.

I am not a paycheck-to-paycheck person.

Screw that.

I hadn't lived that way since my days with ACME Express.

Well, whatever. If my instincts tell me to hold off on paying the credit card bills, that is exactly what I did.

A few days later, I got the sinking feeling to go jobhunting.

After all my complaining about how horrible my jobhunting luck always is, something amazing happened.

I finished building the website for the printing company.

That night when I went home, I applied to about 3 or 4 jobs.

The next day, I went in to work and I got laid off.

I was furious.

I knew he was going to do this to me!

I knew right from the beginning!

Didn't I say so on the very first day?

I told him as much, “I knew this would happen. I knew you just wanted me to build your website and then get rid of me.”

He became all defensive, “Fine! Then go! Just get out then! You want me to call the police!?”

Was this guy kidding me?

Call the police?

For what? Because you fired me?

I didn't raise my voice at all.

I just looked at him like he was an idiot. “Call the police? What for? You think I want to stick around and hang out? Don't worry. I'm leaving.”

The guy then offered to call me for occasional freelance jobs.

You've got to be kidding.

For weeks, this scumbag would call me and I'd literally hang up on him everytime I heard his voice. He finally got the hint.

The day he laid me off, I gathered my things and when I got home, I was mortified.

Welcome to layoff number two.

Laid off twice in less than a year.

I literally had a couple of hundred dollars to my name.

Good thing I hadn't paid those credit card bills after all! I was right.

Rent was due in 2 weeks and cost over $1000.

That old fear and anger was setting in again. This time worse than ever. This was an incredibly low point.

I had no idea how on earth I was getting out of this one.

My head was spinning.

This was it. I was going to become homeless. What was going to happen to me? I had to find a job within 2 weeks or I'm on the street. And you know my luck with jobs. It always takes me months and months to find something. Always!

I was frozen with fear.

What was I going to do this time?

I was screwed.

Bigtime.

In a couple of hours, as I sat around at home in a panic, frantically searching job websites, I got a phonecall from one of the places I had applied to the night before. An autoparts company was looking for a graphic designer. Could I come in for an interview the next day?

Yes! Absolutely!

And so ends the printing company chapter...

Chapter Thirty Six
4Wheel Parts
17 December 2004 to 18 March 2005

“Of all our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.”

- Walter Elias Disney

... And so begins the 4Wheel Parts chapter.

Less than 48 hours after I lost my job at the printing company, a rockstar with a music video on MTV hired me into a new position down in the ultimate South Central 'hood - Compton.

Yeah, you heard me right. Straight outta Compton.

Gimmie a whut, whut! Ya'll know I represent, cuz'.

I rode my motorcycle down to the interview and met with Danny Blitz. He and I talked for about 30 minutes and he pretty much hired me on the spot. I couldn't believe it! This guy saved my butt more than you could imagine.

Unemployed less than 48 hours?! Amazing! After years and years of jobhunting for months and months at a time! Finally things worked out for me quickly! I was saved! It looks like things were turning around for me!

Little did I know, things were not turning around and in fact, I'd be laid off from two more different jobs within the next year. But we'll get to that later...

4Wheel Parts is the world's largest supplier of aftermarket truck accessories. People who are into off-road racing or just pimping out their pickup or Jeep or SUV, go to 4Wheel Parts to buy all the gadgets and gizmos to add on their vehicle. Lighting. Suspension. Roll cages. Winches. You name it. If it goes on a truck, 4Wheel Parts carries it.

Before I could start the job, I had to take a drug test. This was the one and only job of my entire life which required mandatory drug testing.

Ironically (or perhaps appropriately), it was also the only job I ever worked where a few coworkers would occasionally disappear for a few weeks, because they were in rehab clinics. Seriously. It happened more than once.

“Where is so-and-so? I haven't seen him for awhile.”

“Oh, he's in rehab again. He should be back in 3 weeks or so.”

What!?

Again?

So, his missing work for rehab is a repetitive thing?

Totally nonchalant. Like he just took a long lunch or something.

Maybe that's why I got along with people so well! Like I said, I came from a family where addictions like that were commonplace, so even though I've never done drugs or alcohol my whole life, I tend to vibe and relate to the down-and-out crowd. I understand the downtrodden tribe. I was born into it.

The job was truly a lifesaver, but it was also the longest commute of my life. Each day, from the Valley to Compton, I was facing about a 2 hour commute each way. I would wake up at 6:00am and get home by about 7:00pm. So, between working and driving, I was spending about 13 hours a day with the job.

There I was in a tiny, windowless office with 8 other people, sitting in front of a flickering monitor all day. All I did was sleep and work. No time to go out. No time for friends. It was quite trying on me.

Even though I was working, my finances were the worst they have ever been in my life. Well, the worst since living on my own, anyway. Therefore, I was really stressed-out as I struggled desperately to crawl out of the financial void I had fallen into. Since I was so tense, I kept getting sick. Within 2 weeks of starting at 4Wheel Parts, I got bronchitis and was out of the office for a week. Since I just started the job and here I was taking a week off work, I was really scared I'd get fired. But I could not go to work. I was so ill, I was literally having coughing fits every 5 minutes.

After 7 days off, I still felt horrible, but went in anyway.

I was coughing so much that my entire room full of coworkers insisted that I stay home. They were all freaked out they would catch whatever I had. I just wanted to prove I was telling the truth about how horribly sick I was.

There was no doubt I was telling the truth after that.

“Okay! You're obviously not faking. Please go home and stay away from us until you're better!”

I had been doing everything to avoid illness - getting plenty of sleep, eating extra food, taking vitamin C, taking echinacea pills, drinking lots of liquid, washing my hands more often than normal. But it seemed to be of no use. I had three separate bouts of flu in the course of 6 weeks. I kept getting healthy, then getting sick all over again. When I was not at work, or stressed-out over money, I was usually too ill to do anything but sleep.

My motorcycle - my only means of transportation - died on the highway just after I started at 4Wheel Parts. The motorcycle was less than a year old and I bought it with the specific intent of having a brand-new, reliable means of transportation. A wise plan that seemed to have failed miserably. The engine tore itself apart because of an incompetent mechanic at a Santa Monica dealership who botched a valve adjustment. Since it was still under warranty, I needed to wait for parts to come in. I purchased a rental car, but had to eventually get rid of it, because I simply did not have the money to keep it any longer. As a result, I had to start car-pooling to work. Although, I lost the phone number of the person I was supposed to ride with. I had to cross my fingers that my coworker wouldn't forget to pick me up.

The people I worked with were great. I don't know what it was about the company, but it had a very strange dynamic to it. Strange in a good way. I loved the vibe at the place. Most of the memorable experiences with 4Wheel Parts had to do with the time spent outside of work, hanging out with my coworkers at concerts and nightclubs and BBQ parties. Each and every employee in that building seemed to be some odd and unusual character.

There was a gorgeous and feisty Latino girl who I really wanted to date, until I saw her puke in a trashcan at the BBQ and instantly lost all interest.

We had this young gay boy who was incredibly loud and flamboyant and made Rip Taylor look like Eeyore.

Two of the guys in the office were rockstars and in bands. One was playing gigs at Hardrock Cafe, the other, as I mentioned earlier, was getting play on MTV.

Then there was the dude who was a marketing guru who would manage to get everything in his life for free. Even his brand new car! How he pulled that stuff off, I'll never understand.

Like I said, quite a cast of characters.

My job was mainly graphic design. I created advertisements for print and for email campaigns and website graphics.

The weekly emails would be directly responsible for generating anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000 in sales every single weekend. So, they were kind of a big deal.

I also designed and built the website for the wholesale division of the corporation which alone generates approximately $60 million a year.

The owner of the company was a man I only met half a dozen times. Apparently he was a crotchety old man who would be all full of vitriol and vinegar and scream at people. Everyone was terrified of the guy. Everytime I spoke to him, we got along great. He loved my work and I didn't understand why everyone else had such difficulty with him. The man was a cool guy to me.

The people were great.

The job was good.

Even the neighborhood was nice. Compton was not the scary ghetto portrayed by the media. In fact, we often went out to lunch at a quaint little Italian deli a few streets away, in a respectable and clean neighborhood, bustling with people. The teramisu was amazing.

I was paid well.

Everything about the job was cool.

But, that commute was brutal.

I couldn't handle spending 4 hours stuck in traffic everyday.

The drive was just killing me.

I needed to find something closer to home.

After I had been there for awhile, I learned that I was literally the only person Danny interviewed. He posted the job the day I applied. He called me in the next day. He interviewed me. Hired.

Apparently, some of my coworkers didn't trust that I'd be any good. They confessed to me later, after they had a lot of faith in my work, they were skeptical and thought Danny was crazy to hire the first person he met.

Thank goodness, for my sake.

My boss, Danny Blitz looked genuinely bummed out when I handed him my 2-week notice resignation letter. It was touching, really.

Even though I was only there for about 3 months, I can honestly say that 4Wheel Parts was truly one of greatest jobs of my life. The job was a miracle. Financially speaking, it truly saved me. The job defied all my patterns of “bad karma” and my series of one job rejection after another. The job saved me from the fate of living on the streets. Danny Blitz was my hero. He didn't know it at the time, but his hiring me quite literally pulled me from the jaws homelessness.

Chapter Thirty Seven
Weider Publications
21 March 2005 to 14 June 2005

“You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Weider Publications ended up being layoff number three.

Not fun.

Sorry. Did I ruin the surprise?

Okay, let's not get ahead of ourselves again.

Allow me to start with how I got the job.

Like all my jobs during that time, this was another I found online. I don't recall exactly where, but I'm 99% sure it was on Monster.com, since that was all I really used in those days.

Weider Publications is a publishing company which was started by Joe Weider. They published bodybuilding magazines and started some of the first big bodybuilding competitions. This was the world of media where guys like Arnold Schwartzenegger got his start.

They needed a graphic designer for websites for their many publications.

Like all printed magazine companies at that time, Weider was in a very turbulent and unstable state, due to the Internet causing such a huge impact on the publishing industry. People simply weren't buying magazines like they used to. They were getting everything online instead.

When I went in for my interview, the place was fairly deserted. Always unsettling to walk into a mostly-empty office because you know a lot of people have been laid off. Those countless empty cubicles obviously weren't always bare.

However, it's also reassuring to get hired into such a place, because you know it's stable. After all, you don't hire people into positions which will be eliminated in 3 months.

See how naive I was?

The interview went well.

The commute was far shorter - maybe 30 minutes away instead of 2 hours. That was the main reason I wanted the job!

Best of all, they were offering $50,000!

I hadn't made that much money since being promoted to General Manager of PRWebcast! I was so excited!

Good job.

Solid company.

Reasonable commute.

Plus, the highest starting salary I had ever been offered.

Can't beat that!

Everything was going my way, at last!

Weider had been purchased by a very large eastern syndicate called American Media, and they own more than a dozen magazines from fitness publications to tabloids to Playboy.

As a graphic designer, my job responsibilities were quite varied. Sometimes I was simply gathering images from our photographic database for a tabloid like Star or the National Enquirer. Other times I was building an entire website from scratch, like the 2005 Mister & Miss Olympia Fitness Competition website. That was all me.

I mean, hey, it's not like I built the Great Pyramids or the Eiffel Tower or something, but it was kind of cool to create things like that and do it entirely by myself.

The job was cool, but there were a few female coworkers there who were rather horrible. Most of the gentlemen were fine. One of the girls in my department was nice and friendly and I never had an issue with her. But the other two chicks were lunatics.

For example, there was one blonde girl I spoke to and worked with everyday, who lived two blocks from me. Since I only rode a motorcycle and the forecast called for torrential rain the next day, I asked her if it wouldn't be too much trouble to let me carpool with her. I just didn't want to get drenched and be sitting at work soaking wet all day.

Carpooling is a pretty normal thing. Right? Nothing weird about that. Coworkers carpool all the time. Most major corporations even encourage it and give special incentives to employees to participate in carpooling. I figured this was not a strange request or a problematic thing to ask. After all, since she only lived two blocks away from me, my apartment was on her way. Wasn't like it was an inconvenience to her in any way to drive me. Plus, we'd get to use the carpool lanes. A winning situation for both of us!

She had no problem with it. She was totally nice and agreed and picked me up. Everything was fine. We had a good conversation. We get to work. She drops me off in the evening. No big deal.

The next day, my manager calls me in his office and says I am not allowed to talk to my coworker about carpooling with her or anything outside of work responsibilities. She was uncomfortable with the fact that I asked her.

What!?

I was absolutely furious.

Who do these people think they are?

First of all, my manager had no authority whatsoever to tell me whom I can and can not speak to, nor did he have any right to tell me what subject of conversation I'm allowed to discuss with my coworkers. There is absolutely nothing inappropriate about asking someone to carpool! Were these people insane?! I wasn't asking her out on a date! I didn't flirt with her or make any inappropriate comments. How dare he tell me that I can't speak to her about anything outside of work.

Go jump off a bridge!

Dirtbag!

Second, why didn't she tell me no?

What kind of passive-aggressive monster was this broad?

If she's so “uncomfortable” with me, then all she had to do was turn me down! Just politely tell me she can't do it! Don't be kind and considerate and agreeable to my face, then turn around and stab me in the back and make me out to be some weirdo.

Truly an evil woman.

Wait. I take it back when I said my male coworkers were decent. No. Some of the gentlemen weren't very gentlemanly either. I nearly forgot, the IT guys were terrible human beings too.

Since I know a heck of a lot about computers in general, I was actually given additional duties along with my design work, to act as a liaison assistant between my department and the IT department. Basically, I was working a dual role to help lighten the load for IT and assist my own department personnel. When the two guys in the IT department found out about this, they started to totally ignore me. Literally, I'd walk over and ask a question and they acted like I wasn't there.

“Hello? Excuse me?” I'd say.

They'd just walk away.

I was astonished.

Never before, not at any job, had I worked with grown adults who behaved like gradeschool children. It was rather mind blowing.

There was another girl who was equally bizarre, working in the cubicle next to me.

As I have mentioned, I rode a motorcycle to work. As a safe and prudent rider, I always wore a full leather suit over my clothes. The leather jacket and leather pants slipped over my jeans and dress shirt similar to a winter snowsuit. When I got to work, I'd take off my jacket and the pants in my cubicle.

Apparently, the leather pants freaked out the girl in the cube next to me and once again, she complained to our manager without ever confronting me or telling me she had a problem.

I was called in to meet with my manager again, because this nutjob of a girl claimed I was “undressing” in my cubicle.

Excuse me!?

The pants went on over my jeans! I wasn't standing there in my underwear! I had my jeans on the entire time! It was exactly the same thing as taking a jacket on or off!

Keep in mind, I also wore my full leather suit to work at ODVD Games and at Breene Graphics and at 4Wheel Parts. Putting on and taking off the leathers at my desk was never an issue in any of those other companies. I would take my leathers on and off in front of an entire room full of men and women at 4WheelParts. Not one person ever said a word about it being strange or inappropriate. Heck, I even wore it to teach at that gradeschool in Manhattan Beach! No parents or teachers or students freaked out or thought I was some weird pervert. They were smart enough to know that this was a protective leather suit worn over the top of normal street clothing.

Despite taking my suit on and off without incident at 4 other jobs, including one where I worked with children, for some odd reason, this idiot girl at Weider Publications perceived it as “disrobing” in public. Regrettably, my manager was too much of a pansy to stick up for me and tell her she was a moronic psycho.

After that, it was requested that I only take my leathers on and off in the men's bathroom.

Ridiculous.

Like I said, lots of screwed up psychotic little girls working at that place. Never experienced anything like that before.

Thankfully, that girl quit after my first month. Good riddance.

Much less fortunate was the fact my boss announced he was quitting on my second day.

Seriously.

On my second day of work, my manager gathered all of his team together for lunch. There were about 7 or 8 of us, including the two psycho chicks. Not a huge group.

We get to the restaurant and he announces that he had put in his two weeks notice.

Naturally, this was a bit awkward for me. My boss is leaving my brand new job? Who do I talk to about all the tasks I should be working on? Where do I go for resources for everything?

As I said before, our parent company owned a lot of magazines. They had headquarter offices in New York and Florida. Over the course of the next few months, one of their Floridian managers came out to Los Angeles to visit a few times. We all knew the drill. This was standard operating procedure in corporate America. Our boss was gone, and was not replaced. That's always a bad sign. That meant the Floridian wasn't there to help or offer guidance. No. He was assessing the dynamics of our team and trying to figure out who was necessary and who was not. Who could they lay off?

In their opinion, I was one of the “not so necessary” people.

One afternoon, the other graphic designer and the administrator for a woman's health website were called into the human resources office along with me.

The supervisor from Florida was on the phone and “regretted to inform us” that we were all being let go.

They laid off all three of us at the same time.

They were going to hand our graphic design work over to people in Florida and New York. Apparently, the women's health site was just going to get shut down entirely. That seemed crazy, since it still had hundreds of paying members on it. Plus, the system was so old and complicated, the guy who ran it was the only person who knew how it worked! I figured there's no way he'd ever get laid off. I was wrong.

Three months after starting the highest paying job I ever had in California, I was unemployed once again.

Unbelievable!

Los Angeles jobs were almost leaving me faster than girlfriends!

The most infuriating part was the fact I had left a good job to go there! The commute to 4Wheel Parts was awful, but otherwise I really enjoyed that job and the people were fantastic.

I gave all that up for Weider Publications, then Weider lays me off within a mere 90 days!

That sucked.

When my colleagues over at 4Wheel Parts found out, they were angry for me. The corporate lawyer over at 4Wheel Parts was ready to represent me in suing Weider Publications.

I didn't want to sue Weider.

The 4Wheel Parts lawyer was trying to talk me into it!

After he bought me lunch, we talked it over and suing wasn't an option. Unfortunately, I had no money, so I had no choice but to accept the Weider severance package. Obviously, you can't legally take the severance money, then turn around and sue. With the Weider severance, I could remain unemployed for about 4 or 5 months. Without it, I was looking at something more like 4 or 5 weeks.

Suing was out.

I'd have to suck it up and make due.

Even though I had little reason to be cheerful, I did my best to maintain a positive attitude about these events. All things considered, it was the best severance package I had ever been offered.

When I say I tried to be cheerful “about these events” I'm talking about more than my job. I'm talking about all those other hardships I was dealing with in my life.

Remember, much crap happened those first years in Los Angeles.

Always tried to be positive.

Sure, my apartment flooded. But, I always wanted new carpet. And as a result of the flood, I got it. I lost 3 jobs. Sure, that is exasperating. But, I also managed to find 3 jobs in the first place. And that is encouraging. I may have crashed my motorcycle multiple times, but I owned a motorcycle. That is something I had wanted since I was a child! So, it is rather inspiring to know I had fulfilled yet another childhood ambition. Although I couldn't walk for 2 weeks after one of those crashes, it was the result of massive crosswinds blowing my motorcycle off the highway at 70MPH. For most people, such an accident would spell death or a permanent disfigurement or crippling injury. The fact that I managed to escape with only a sprained ankle is quite fortunate indeed. Although my car was vandalized and too expensive for me to repair, I gave the vehicle to charity. So, the value of my car assisted the Make-A-Wish Foundation and helped make kids dreams come true. As for the far-too-brief encounters with womanly romance, well, at least I had those opportunities in the first place. And really, that's not so bad at all.

No, I really couldn't complain.

So I was unemployed again?

Who cares?

Whatever.

Life was good.

In fact, I was only unemployed for about a month and I actually landed upwards of 10 interviews during that time!

Finally!

It was wonderful that people were actually paying attention to me now! They actually wanted to speak to me!

Because I landed a new job so quickly, I never had to go on unemployment and my severance didn't run out. So, in fact, I made more money by getting laid off than if I would have kept the job.

Not bad at all.

Incidentally, my apologies that these last 4 chapters were so short.

I promised I'd give you all the details of my jobs and I'm not backing out on that promise by trying to rush through them or glaze over the experiences. These 4 jobs were simply so brief that I have very little to share regarding what happened! There's simply not much to tell. I wasn't employed long enough and the jobs weren't interesting enough to garner any new skills or worthwhile anecdotes.

They were simply a series of revolving doors.

All spinning me out, so I could eventually land at Disney.

Chapter Thirty Eight
Vivid Video
14 July 2005

“I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty. Call the child innocence. The worst of us is not without innocence, although buried deeply it might be. In my work I try to reach and speak to that innocence, showing it the fun and joy of living; showing it that laughter is healthy; showing it that the human species, although happily ridiculous at times, is still reaching for the stars.”

- Walter Elias Disney

They say folks can lose their innocence in the devil-harsh sunshine of Los Angeles. For every shining dream that comes true beneath the bright lights on the red carpet of Hollywood, there's a nightmare of shattered hopes, strung out junkies with the shakes, puking next to a dumpster in the backalley, behind the star-studded theatre.

After losing my job at Weider Publications, I was really depressed.

I quit a good job with great people at 4Wheel Parts to start at Weider and then Weider screws me over three months later.

Awful.

Once again, I was back online, sending out resumes and filling out job applications. In the 2 years I'd been living in Los Angeles, I swear I spent more time searching for jobs than being employed.

As I said in the previous chapter, every now and then, I was starting to get some interviews. This was a good sign. When I had first arrived in Los Angeles, I was ignored completely. Couldn't even get responses when I first moved to California. At least now I was gaining a little attention. A computer company in south Los Angeles here. A publisher out in Calabasas there. None of them panned out, but the mere fact that some folks occasionally wanted to talk with me, gave me a little sense of hope.

Engineers at one computer company were so impressed with my website code, they refused to believe I had written it. “We've never seen any self-taught programmer write such clean code.” They explained. “Only people who have studied in college ever write code this clean.”

Oh? Sorry. Thanks. Yes, I am just that awesome. They looked skeptical and envious all at the same time. Never offered me the job, but it was one of my favorite interviews ever! Wonderful for my ego!

Landing an interview at American Idol was another exciting opportunity. I had never been asked so many technical questions in an interview before. Made me happy to be asked all those questions and realize that I had enough knowledge and confidence to actually answer them all. Never really expected to hear back from them either, but I was psyched that American Idol wanted to meet me.

A place I desperately wanted to get hired was a small company over in Burbank which made LCD picture frames. Very nice offices. A mere 4 or 5 miles from home. What a dream! No more driving for an hour on the 405. I could even bicycle to work! How awesome would that be? Alas they never gave me a return phonecall either. They hired someone else.

I should stop my story here and note that all these interviews I'm speaking of came about directly as a result of using job boards on the Internet. No agencies. No newspapers. No references. No contacts. I didn't have any resources whatsoever, other than posting to the same old employment websites that everyone else was using.

Remember earlier I lamented I never even got any interviews? I don't want to give you the false impression that my job hunting methods had changed. Nothing changed for me. I didn't alter my resume. I didn't stumble onto some amazing website resource. I didn't get signed up with a placement agency. I just kept plugging away, doing the same old thing I had always done. Sending out literally 30 or 50 or 100 applications before I'd get a single phonecall.

So, if you are having a hard time getting anyone to interview you too, don't get discouraged. It remained difficult for me too. I'm not saying it suddenly got easy. I promised at the start of this book to give you all the details and I still hold to that vow. I'm just leaving out the boring parts, because, well, I think we all know what it's like to be rejected and ignored over and over again. And again. And again. Therefore, I'm skipping over a lot of the “I never got called back” interviews. There were so many of those depressing things that I purged many of them from my memory.

I may have shared a little story about 3 or 4 interviews at this point, but believe me when I tell you, I literally sent out 500 or 600 applications to get those 4 interviews.

One of the really disappointing ones? I interviewed with a professional commercial photographer in Augora Hills who needed an assistant. He was friends with actress Charlize Theron! I had dreams of meeting her on a photoshoot, she falls madly in love with me...

Well...

I can dream...

He never called me back either, because I had never studied photography in college.

Great.

There goes another one.

Forget my skills. Forget my Photoshop ability. Forget that I had my photography shown in two art galleries in Ohio and two more since moving to California. No. No. I must suck, because I never got a photography degree in college.

Jerk.

Believe me, I was rejected a lot.

Finally though, one of the interviews paid off.

Less than a year before I began working at Disney, I had a job offer as a programmer at one of the largest and most successful adult video Internet companies in the world. They had clients ranging from Hustler Magazine to Vivid Video.

I wasn't so sure I wanted to work for an adult video company. I was scared of being blacklisted by mainstream companies, if I went and worked in pornography.

Do they do that? Do people get blacklisted that way?

I honestly didn't even know.

Actors obviously do. Once you star in adult movies, you can never get a career as an actor in legitimate Hollywood films.

Sure, they might humor a pornstar with roles in 2 or 3 irrelevant movies, write up a bunch of lies in a couple entertainment magazines about being a “breakthrough” actress, but, face it honey, you're never going to be Meryl Streep.

That wouldn't happen with websites too? Would it?

I doubt it.

But did I want to take that risk? Would it be held against me? Would working at one of those places become a black mark on my resume? The one hesitation repeating through my head was, “I want the chance to work at a place like Disney someday. Do I really want to do this?”

Although working for Disney has become a dream-come-true, there is an important little sidenote I should add here. Namely, there were two tiny problems with my loyalty to aspirations of being a Disney Cast Member:

1. I was not doing well financially and was quite desperate to work as soon as possible. Beggars can't be choosers, you know. Rent was due.

2. I had absolutely no connections, no applications, no “foot in the door” to a place like Disney, in any way whatsoever.

That girl who worked at the day care wasn't there anymore.

Yeah. In other words, I was “holding out” for the dream of working at a company where I had absolutely no hope of ever working in the first place!

Why was I so worried about ruining my chances at Disney, when I had absolutely no way of ever getting into Disney? I have no idea. Call it instinct. Something just told me - Be careful or you're going to screw up everything you've been fighting for.

I know what you're thinking. “Well, why did you apply at an adult video company in the first place? Pervert!”

As I have explained, and to use the classic cliche, “I was young. I needed the money.” I was in dire straits.

How dire?

My finances were so bad, I had no savings. No money in the bank. Maxed out all my credit cards. This was the end of the line. No options. No alternatives. Los Angeles had kicked my butt and I had no more resources. I needed work. Period. Didn't much matter where it came from. My Firefly was going to be on the drift and that ain't me. Serenity don't bust. That is why I was putting in applications with adult website companies. Given that I was staring at the potential future of genuine homelessness in a few months, programming nudie websites didn't seem all that immoral. Sure beats living in an alley with those junkies behind the theatre.

Nevertheless, my decision to accept or reject the adult video position created a huge moral dilemma and conflict within me. Do I take the opportunity and have financial security? As the Lee Ann Womack song says - Do I sell out? Or do I reconsider? Time was ticking. I was getting down to the wire with finances. I may not have a choice.

I may have to compromise my morals a little.

Honestly, I had no desire to be part of the adult movie industry. I truly feared I'd be pigeonholing and blacklisting myself. Just like an adult film star will never be permitted to break into mainstream movies, I feared becoming involved in the “behind the scenes” of their industry, I'd never be able to leave. It would likely be a blemish on my resume that traditional media companies would hold against me. I worked to build a career all these years so I could one day be in places like Disney or Warner Brothers or Universal Studios. Not places like Vivid Entertainment or Digital Playground or Hustler Magazine. I had come too far to diverge onto that path. I belonged with the likes of Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, not Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner.

While in the process of weighing my decision, something wonderful happened which had never happened before in my life.

I was given another job offer.

The second offer was from American Idol.

It was the first time in my life I ever had two job offers at once.

Strange.

The metaphorical angel and devil were now literally on my shoulders. Bad and dirty industry on one side. Wholesome and respected iconic brand on the other side. They were almost the same distance in terms of a commute. Almost identical salaries. Both at the top of their industries.

Beggars can't be choosers. But suddenly, I was no longer a beggar anymore. Suddenly I had a choice.

My decision may surprise you...

I picked the adult video company. Yes, you read that right.

I decided to work for the adult entertainment company.

Hey, I figured they'd have better Christmas parties! Plus, maybe Brooke Banner would attend them! And maybe she'd think I was cute! Woohoo!

I stayed at that job for about... oh... 10 minutes.

On my first day, I was at my desk, filling out the standard W2 tax paperwork, listening to my obnoxious male coworkers making crude comments and being complete idiots regarding the latest bombshell starlet exposing her girly bits on one of their company sites. My boss was an amazingly attractive brunette in her mid 30's, and she was just as crass as the guys! The office was dark and dreary and completely windowless. The place was physically the darkest room I had ever worked in. No overhead lights. Only desklamps. Felt like I was trapped in a freakin' cave with a juvenile highschool football team and an unscrupulous ex-cheerleader.

No. Worse than that. These were computer geeks. It was more like being trapped in a cave with the ribald marching band.

The angel on my shoulder wouldn't shut up: “Seriously? What are you doing here? This is not where you belong, kiddo. What are you thinking? You're not prude, but you have a little innocence and purity left. You want to stay in this kind of industry forever? To be surrounded by these people constantly? Is this the kind of environment you want to work in every day? You want these zeros as your peers? Sitting in a dark and dreary windowless office with these neanderthals? Seriously, Eric, is this really where you belong? This is not your path. Be honest - you love sweet and upstanding young ladies anyway - even if Brooke Banner met you and thought you were totally hot, would Brooke Banner really be your type? You've never drunk alcohol or smoked a cigarette or done drugs of any kind. You think pornstars are on your same path? You are virtuous. You are noble. You are chivalric. Honorable. These aren't empty words to you. These are ideals you truly strive to uphold and live by. You are destined for greater things. You're better than this, Eric. Pornstar girls are not out of your league - you are out of theirs.”

Wow.

Harsh, that angel.

No. I was not on the right path at all. Every instinct and intuition screamed - GET OUT! After a few more moments of inner-struggle and awkward discomfort, I turned in my blank paperwork and told my devastatingly gorgeous female boss I couldn't do this. Naturally, she was rather upset. “Why did you even come in if you weren't going to take the job?!”

Whatever. Sorry. Fantasies of meeting Brooke Banner filled me with a moment of weakness! What can I say?

I hadn't turned down American Idol yet. Maybe deep down, I already knew I would end up there. I went home, called American Idol, and told them I was accepting their offer. They never even knew of my temptation to be involved in naughty pixel pimping.

Like the song said, I had indeed come close to selling out.

I reconsidered.

Trusting that instinct was the best decision I could have made. In a few short months, I would be registered with Aquent placement agency and land an interview at The Walt Disney Studios. But, obviously, I'm getting ahead of myself again. I'll give you all those details later.

The moral of our story, boys and girls, is the same one you've heard 1000 times in your life (mostly in Disney films): Always follow your heart. Trust your instincts. Stay true to the essence and the core of who you are. Hold steadfast to your dreams, even when it seems they can never come true.

All my life, people have told me that I sell myself short and underestimate myself. I guess that proved true yet again.

What did my one boss call me?

Classic underachiever?

My life had enough of that. Time to start overachieving.

Chapter Thirty Nine
American Idol Underground
25 July 2005 to 6 February 2006

“No matter what the provocation, I never fire a man who is honestly trying to deliver a job. Few workers who become established at the Disney Studio ever leave voluntarily or otherwise, and many have been on the payroll all their working lives.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Never having known about my potential decision to make naughty websites, I accepted the offer from American Idol and started working for them the very next week.

As with most of my other jobs, I simply answered a job posting on the Internet and was called for an interview. Our offices were located down in Culver City. That was a bit of a trek from the Valley, but still not as bad as that 2 hour jaunt to Compton.

The interview was interesting because the whole company was building upon ASP.NET technology which is an Internet programming language that actually requires compiling. I was familiar with .ASP from my days with ACME Express, but ASP.NET was new to me and I had never worked with compiled software before.

Since I'm a self-taught programmer, I know a lot of things without knowing the correct terminology for it. For example, I was once asked in an interview if I had ever built a 3-tier-database. I had no idea what that was. The person explained it was a website with a frontend interface which could read, write and delete data from the backend database. Read. Write. Delete. Three tiers.

“Oh! Yeah! I can do that!” I said.

I had built a 3-tier-database site the multiple times with ACME Express projects and with Glidelog and FilmedInCleveland and another side project site called CaliforniaBikeNights.

Of course, I looked like a lying fool because I didn't know the “industry term” for what it was called. Plus, all those websites were defunct, so I couldn't show what they looked like.

That happened on another interview when I was asked about the “box model” in CSS. I had no idea what the “box model” meant. Nevertheless, I had used the box model all the time, because it simply describes the structure of nested DIV tags and the margins and padding therein.

I didn't know there was a term for it, so again, it made me look like a clueless dork who was lying about my aptitude.

When I interviewed with American Idol, that interview was held in-person instead of on the phone, and I was able to answer everything quickly and intelligently and they gave me rapid fire questions about ASP and CSS and JavaScript and regular HTML.

Considering all the times I ended up sounding like a clueless nimrod during telephone interviews, I was pleased with myself for being able to rattle off correct answers so fast.

I guess American Idol was impressed too, because I got the job.

The most frustrating thing I learned about the computer industry over the years is the trendy idiocy of software engineers and lead technology personnel. Considering that these are the people who grew up as uncool nerds in high school, and never were hip to the latest trends, they are now making up for lost time. Trying to be cool in their own little clique.

The awful truth?

The computer industry is never about finding the best solutions or allowing people to work in environments where they are the most productive. No. These pretentious nerd computer engineers, in every single company, all care about nothing but keeping up with what is “trendy” among their peers in software and work methodologies.

One programming language becomes unpopular and something else takes over. If you are still using the “outdated” language and not up on the latest trend, you are considered an inferior programmer.

Took me years to understand this, but I finally figured it out.

Such an attitude would be considered laughable and insane in any other industry. In the technology industry, these nerds have always behaved this way. In technology, this stupidity is regarded as perfectly normal.

Being trendy matters more than being productive.

This is due to an accepted falsehood that “newer is better” across all computer technologies.

Such an accepted falsehood could only be believed by idiots.

Newer technology is not always better.

Often, it just plain sucks.

.ASP fell out of favor, then people moved to ASP.NET. JavaScript was cool, but then you had to learn jQuery libraries (“libraries” are nothing but complex blocks of code which have already been written for you - in other words “jQuery” doesn't actually exist - it's really nothing more than “pre-written JavaScript”). If your workflow is based upon Waterfall methodologies, you need to start doing Agile and Scrum. HTML parameters can control everything on a page, but you needed to start doing the same work using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Then CSS became trite and you had to know CSS3. Knowing HTML wasn't good enough, since you had to know HTML5. Then people stopped writing code and started using “frameworks” to program websites. Frameworks are horrible programs which also compartmentalize and reuse blocks of code, thereby creating tons of overhead and exceptionally complicated bundles of code, instead of letting programmers work from scratch to build something streamlined and efficient. “Framework” programming is kind of like a person mastering how to paint frescoes freehand, then being handed a lame Paint-By-Numbers kit and being told it's better. Don't forget to learn DHTML, also known as DynamicHTML - until you find out DHTML doesn't actually exist either, it was just a trendy buzzword for using CSS and JavaScript on normal HTML pages.

Like vapid teenage girls, buzzwords are very important to nerds.

Ridiculous waste of time.

Computer software and Internet languages are nothing more than tools. They are nothing more than hammers and nails. They are not cool. They are not trendy. They are just screwdrivers and measuring tape. When an Internet design firm disregards the skills of a developer because he does not use the latest in vogue programming languages, it's the equivalent of saying a carpenter is incompetent because he doesn't have the newest hammer. Naturally, that is pure ignorance. The man can still build a house just as well as any other carpenter, if not better. In fact, his experience would likely allow him to build a much better house using his “outdated” tools.

The tools being used are immaterial.

What matters is the craftsmanship of the final creation.

These computer nerd morons are so busy trying to be cool and follow the latest computer fashions, they forget the most important variable of all - the users (or the “Guest” as we call them at Disney).

The user visiting your website doesn't care about any of that techno-jargon junk. All they want is a website which works and is easy to use. The user doesn't care if websites are built with “waterfall” or “agile” workflows. The user doesn't care if a website uses PHP or HTML5. The user doesn't care if the site has CSS or CSS3 behind it.

None. Of. These. Things. Are. Relevant.

Ever.

But 99% of the Internet industry is managed by astoundingly ignorant computer engineers who sincerely believe these insignificant things are of vital importance. They are all fools.

Real developers create for the users, not for their own egos.

Real developers create for the users, not to impress their manager.

Was a movie shot digitally or on film? No moviegoer cares.

Was a photograph shot on Canon or Nikon? No viewer cares.

Was a painting done in oils or watercolors? No observer cares.

Was a dresser built with Stanley or Black & Decker? No one cares.

Was a website constructed using Java or HTML? No user cares.

Only the nerdy idiots of the computer industry care about those worthless technical details of how a website was made. Did it use the latest technology? Did it use some “outdated” language from 2 years ago, which we can ridicule for being so out-of-fashion?

Nothing more irritating than pretentious nerds earning six figures.

They never possess the slightest sense to care about what the user is experiencing. The enjoyment of the user is an afterthought. First and foremost is showing off their own egotistical knowledge regarding their proficiency with the latest computer trends. They only care about jumping on the bandwagon of every “latest and greatest” technology, just because it's there, not because it's a marked improvement.

Kind of pathetic.

Allow me to give an example of trendy crap.

In computer code, you can often invent a word called a “variable” to hold a bit of information. When working on a large project with multiple people, it's possible that another programmer might pick the same word. For example, if you have a website with an order form and a sign-up page, both pages might use a variable called “firstname” and you need to make sure those variables don't conflict later.

People with brains can easily see, you avoid this problem of duplicates by inventing very explicit variable names - “signupfirstname” and “orderfirstname” for example.

Programming nerds came up with a moronic solution called a “namespace” which is basically a block of code which encapsulates a variable, assigned to the variable. Yes, you read that right. A variable... for the variable.

Seriously?

That's the best these dunces could come up with?

Assigning a namespace involves about twice as many lines of code, making things far more complicated than it need be. All a smart person would do is use better naming conventions. All a computer science fool does is write more code.

Truly “namespaces” are one of the most ignorant, illogical, senseless solutions any intelligent person could imagine. But, we're not talking about intelligent people. We're talking about trendy computer nerds who want to be cool.

By the time you read this, “namespaces” will undoubtedly be deemed unhip and replaced by some newer idiotic workflow.

I understand they are doing sophisticated programming.

I understand they make $50,000 more than I do.

I understand they have a Masters degree.

I understand they posses skills which exceed my own.

I understand they still aren't smart enough to impress me.

“Sophisticated” doesn't automatically equal “intelligent”.

Anyway, sorry about that tangent. Forgive me for ranting. Thinking about being grilled for technical questions in interviews got me riled up and standing on my soapbox. I just reached an “Allegory of the Cave” epiphany about the mentality of the entire Internet industry and it started to drive me a little batty to know everyone else is wrong and they believe the shadows are reality.

“I FIGHT FOR THE USERS!”, as TRON says.

Enough of my ranting about the rampant stupidity in of one of my many professions.

Back to the job.

What we did at American Idol Underground was basically the online version of American Idol. Bands and solo musicians would submit songs to the website, then a panel of music industry people would judge the songs.

However, unlike the television show which would enlist A-list celebrities, the judges for our website were all third rate musicians no one ever heard of, because that was all we could afford. We'd have people like some guy who played saxophone with John Lee Hooker 30 years ago or a dude who was an assistant producer on a 10 year old Aerosmith album. People like that.

The worst part was, their plan of how to make money was to charge the musicians $50 per song to upload their music for consideration.

This was in 2005, which was right around the time when MySpace was just starting to really take off as a huge social media platform and MySpace offered free music uploads to musicians.

Needless to say, most bands would rather get exposure to 10,000 people for free on MySpace than to get judged by Otis Redding's former roadie for $50.

American Idol Underground was a joke and the company was destined to crash and burn. I knew that from the start.

Why did I take the job?

Why work for a company I didn't believe in?

Again, I did it because I knew American Idol would look better on my resume than Vivid Video and Hustler Magazine.

Plus, I had rent to pay.

During my interview, I made it clear that I was good with .ASP but I had never worked in ASP.NET. They were okay with that and were willing to teach me.

My job as a programmer slowly evolved into that of a deployment engineer. In essence, what that means is I would take the completed files from the senior programmer, compile them, look for errors, and if everything looked good, I would then move the files into our testing environment.

The updated test site would get checked for errors by a quality assurance (QA) engineer. Once he approved everything, another deployment engineer would move the files to the live website.

Being a fast-paced startup company, I didn't get to learn as much ASP.NET as I had hoped. Plus, truth be told, our senior engineer was a bit too brilliant to teach. Ironically, he was a former college professor, but he was terrible at teaching.

Perhaps you know the type?

He couldn't answer a simple question without attempting to turn it into a 15 minute educational exercise. Sometimes it was as simple as, “Where is this link being called from? I can't find it.”

He couldn't say, “Oh, that link is over here in this file.”

No.

He'd pull out the whiteboard and start diagramming things and explaining elements of the entire site structure and I'd get totally lost and confused in the process.

I understood his motive. He was trying to educate me on principals, so I'd be better equipped to figure things out on my own.

The old “give a man a fish / teach a man to fish” thing.

Yeah. I get it. He meant well. His heart was in the right place and I appreciated that.

But sometimes, it was frustrating as heck when I just needed a 3 second answer instead of a 15 minute lecture.

Like I said, brilliant guy, but an awful teacher.

After a month or two, we got a new graphic designer and those two would get into big arguments over the same frustration.

At least I knew it wasn't just me!

American Idol represented the third start-up company I had worked for and being that versatile Jack-Of-All-Trades often allows me to really excel at start-ups. I say “often” instead of “always” because some people have proven too ignorant to appreciate all I have to offer.

Anyway, I had the chance to contribute some of my video production skills at American Idol by conducting interviews with musicians for our launch party and then actually shooting the launch party itself. That was a lot of fun. The launch party was at some big club in Hollywood right near The Arclight. I forget the name of the place, but it had a cool tropical decor to it.

The band interviews were done at a recording studio on Sunset which was used by Social Distortion. Yes, indeed. Hallowed halls wherein Mike Ness made albums. Awesome. The clips I shot were as part of an introduction for our premiere contestants. During the launch party, they showed on monitors all over the club, then, after the introduction, the band would play a set on stage.

I really enjoyed that whole evening.

Good time.

Good folks.

There were a lot of good people there at American Idol. We had one guy who was a nerdy oldschool programmer. He was the total computer nerd stereotype. Thick glasses. Dress shirts with a pocket protector. Started programming back in the early 1970's. Brilliant guy. He was handicapped and in a wheelchair. I think the “politically correct” term has become “disabled” instead of “handicapped” but that's too bad. My grandparents grew up saying “colored” instead of “black” or “African American” and I grew up saying “handicapped” instead of “disabled”. Deal with it.

Anyhow, I really liked the nerdy guy. He and I worked together a lot and he taught me a great deal about backend administration of computers and Windows services and all sorts of things I had never learned about the ins and outs of server technology. I always talk about learning as much as possible at a job. At American Idol, I may not have learned a lot of ASP.NET as I had hoped, but I did learn a lot about server technology from the nerdy guy and I was really excited to be educated on that stuff.

Everything at the job was cool. Then one day, I was called alone into our conference room and I was informed that I was being let go and blah, blah, blah...

After getting laid off so many times, you really start to zone out and not listen anymore.

Oh, we're doing this again?

Great.

Yeah, I've heard it all before.

Whatever.

That was it. No severance. No nothing. Just tossed me out.

Apparently, I was being let go as a scapegoat. I asked, why? Did I do something wrong? Were they unhappy with my performance? Did I make a mistake? Was it my fault?

My boss and the vice president were in the room and they both looked very uncomfortable. As if they had been worried that I might ask this question. The answer they gave? They didn't look me in the eye when they said it - I was told that a week or two prior, I had allowed a site to launch with a broken order form and that was unacceptable because we lost revenue.

Wait. What?

Excuse me?

That was their justification?

I allowed the site to launch?

Me?

I already explained our workflow.

I didn't launch sites live. Ever.

First of all, the site was only broken for about 12 hours, and it was overnight, when we barely had any traffic anyway! I doubt that had any relevant impact on revenue.

Second, I couldn't launch any site upgrades live. I didn't have the authority or the access to launch anything live.

Thirdly, I did not program anything on the site. If something in the functionality is broken, if an order form was not functional, that was the responsibility of the programmer who built the form. Not me.

Fourth, we had a quality assurance tester on staff.

His job was to check for mistakes like a broken order form. He gave the stamp of approval for launching a site live. That wasn't my responsibility. I wasn't tasked with testing for such errors. I was assigned the job of compiling the files and moving them into the testing environment.

Finally, we had a second deployment engineer who moved the files from the testing stage out onto the live site. So, if anyone was ultimately responsible for what went up on the live website, it was that guy. Not me.

Did he get blamed?

Did the QA guy get blamed?

Did the programmer get blamed?

Nope.

No one got blamed but me. Me. The guy who simply moves files to the test site got blamed for a live site problem.

Are they crazy!?

Clearly, this was an excuse.

That wasn't the real reason.

In other words, there were at least 3 other people in the chain of command who were far more directly responsible for a live site error than myself.

As I said, I was a scapegoat and that was a weak excuse.

That order form glitch wasn't remotely my fault and they knew it.

Besides, no bands were paying $50 to upload their music! Lost revenue? Give me a break. That order form could be broken for a week and we wouldn't lose a dime.

The truth is, they wanted the quality assurance guy to take over my job. In the weeks before they showed me the door, they had me training him, since I was the only one who knew how to do what I was doing. They claimed it was so we'd have some “diversity” and “knowledge sharing” but it was really “grooming the other guy so we can throw you out on your butt”. No matter what your field, everyone can tell that passive-aggressive edict for “training” another person is typically nothing but a lie. They wanted him doing my job, because he was an intern and was working for a lot less than my $45,000 a year salary.

That is why they didn't “fire” me and I was “laid off”, because they knew they didn't truly have any justification to fire me, and they felt guilty about screwing me over.

Obviously, they went out of business shortly thereafter.

Their website disappeared entirely.

Their business model was doomed to failure from the start. I had worked with struggling musicians and the independent music scene for years. These bands had no money. Charging them $50 per song to be judged by third-rate music-industry people no one had ever heard of? That was never going to be a profitable business. No way.

Nevertheless, they provided a nice looking brand on my resume and a respectable paycheck for awhile.

Now the paychecks were gone.

Seven months of steady work, now unemployed again.

That made four jobs lost in Los Angeles.

Four.

Let go from four jobs and I had only been living in California for about 1000 days.

Heck, I had lived in Ohio for 32 years and only got laid off once!

Los Angeles? Four jobs lost. Four times in 3 years.

FOUR TIMES!

Didn't know whether to laugh or cry, man.

This was getting ri-freakin'-diculous.

Honestly, I was barely upset.

Yes, losing a job is always disheartening, but it gets easier each time it happens to you.

Like I said before, getting laid off is terrifying the first time. By the fifth time, you just shrug and say, “Whatever. I'm going to the beach. Later.”

Chapter Fourty
Aquent
April 2006 to April 2007

“If I were a fatalist, or a mystic, which I decidedly am not, it might be appropriate to say I believe in my lucky star. But I reject 'luck' - I feel every person creates his own 'determinism' by discovering his best aptitudes and following them undeviatingly.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Once upon a time, I was dating a girl who could find a job easier than a nun can find habits in a convent. Seriously. I don't know how the heck the dame did it. But that girl could consistently mail out 4 resumes, schedule 3 interviews, and get 2 job offers. Literally. I saw her do it more than once. It was uncanny.

Once I finished writing my novel, I seemed to possess the karmic antithesis of that capability.

She'd send out 4 resumes and get 2 job offers.

I'd send out 100 resumes and wouldn't garner a single phonecall. How is that fair?

Remember when I talked about sending all those resumes to video companies? I was so sure I'd get a job after mailing 100 resumes to every single video production company and graphic design firm in all of Cleveland.

But, no.

For all my effort, I didn't even land one interview. Not one. I even used my girlfriends resume as a template for my own! I had the exact same formatting that she used! Didn't help me at all.

At first, said girlfriend was very supportive and understanding. But after awhile, even she began to doubt me and think I was a slacker or lying or somehow doing something wrong. After all, if it was so easy for her to find work, how could it possibly be such a challenge for me? Right?

Could I blame her? No. If our roles had been reversed, I would have likely treated her with the same skepticism and incredulity. If she had spent 8 months job searching while I scored new jobs in 8 days? I would have thought she was screwing up too.

Ten years after that relationship ended, I lived 2500 miles away in California.

Not much had changed.

I know I've said all this before in previous chapters. Forgive me if I am sounding redundant. I know I've kind of been repeating this same idea for a few chapters now. I don't mean to sound like some awful author who beats an idea over your head. I just couldn't pull myself out of that rut. No matter how long I fought. No matter how hard I tried, it seemed I was never getting anywhere. Those were just really disheartening experiences. I reiterate them because, even looking back on those moments, I'm astonished I had such terrible fortune.

Plus, I get the distinct feeling I'm not alone in my misfortune.

You may be going through the same thing.

I'm repeating my exasperation over and over because I know you might be experiencing that sense of futility and rejection over and over as well.

So, forgive me if I'm being monotonous.

That's not my intention.

I'm just trying to show solidarity towards your own troubles.

I think the worst part about job hunting is where to look. Back then, during 1996, there were newspapers and HELP WANTED signs in windows. Not much else.

In California, a decade later, what job hunting options were there? You check the Internet. You talk to friends and see if they have connections. You maybe sign up with a placement agency, if they will have you. Realistically, once you have done all of that, how much time can you devote to job hunting? Once you have applied on all the job websites, they might only add a couple new jobs per day. At most, you are only spending an hour or two per day looking for work, because there are no other resources. Then, you feel like a slacker, because you're not actively “job hunting” for 8 hours a day.

What more could I do?

Was I missing something?

I still knew people who would get laid off and literally land new jobs within a week. For me, it invariably would take months. And months. And months. The only exception to that was 4Wheel Parts. That was the only time in my life that I found a job incredibly quickly. One exception-to-the-rule in more than 30 years of work?

Clearly my pattern and karma were pretty darned consistent.

My crappy employment karma followed me across this great nation from Cleveland to Los Angeles and haunts me with apparent misfortune to this very day. (I say “apparent misfortune” because my ever-optimistic side wants to believe that my negative experiences are merely illusions on the path to greater opportunities!)

As an example of my apparent misfortune, look at what happened with Weider! I accepted a job at Weider Publications, one of the largest publishing companies in the world. Great! Stable company. Fantastic salary. Fairly short commute. Wonderful! I was thrilled!

Two weeks after starting, my boss announced he was quitting.

Ten weeks after that, they decided to fire my whole department and move our jobs to the Florida offices.

Nice.

Well, I've already told those tales. The tale I really wish to tell now involves what happened to me when I was working for a placement agency called “Aquent”. Check this out. You're going to love it.

First, let me backtrack to sometime in 2005 when I was again jobhunting.

I interviewed at a computer gaming company in Venice called Zugara. The woman I interviewed with was a chick named Ingrid Moon. It was truly the most enjoyable job interview I ever had. The company was hip and high-tech and cutting-edge and Ingrid was this super cool, really tall, science-fiction/gamer girl. We're the same age. So, we talked for almost 2 hours and went off on tangents about Star Wars and fantasy novels and role-playing games because we grew up steeped in the same morass of geekdom/pop culture. Honestly, I've gone on first dates that were a lot less fun than that job interview.

As it turns out, I didn't get the job.

But I lobbied so hard for it, Ingrid and I actually remained friends and we stayed in contact. Thanks to her husband, she now has a bouncing baby boy that she germinated inside of her like some science-fiction pod person. I really dig Ingrid. She's a very cool girl and a good friend.

Now we jump ahead to a year later in 2006.

I was again in the midst of jobhunting, post American Idol.

The good news is, I got signed with not one, not two, but three placement agencies! Namely Aquent and Creative Circle. The third agency is not relevant to this story, because they never found me any interviews and were a colossal waste of my time.

As for how I got signed, again, I just found these agencies online and applied and signed up with them.

So here is what happened.

This part of the story gets a little complicated, because I suddenly found myself juggling a ton of potential jobs all at the same time. Bear with me and I apologize if it gets hard to follow.

Ready?

Here goes...

One week, a representative named Ryan from Aquent called me about a freelance job in Van Nuys that would be a temporary contract position. Normally, I would never be interested. I wanted full-time and permanent work. But the cool thing is, I would be performing the job from home, doing web programming. I met with the client on 29 March 2006 and the client even said, “You can work on it at 2:00am if you want. I don't care. Because you can just do it at home. You don't need to come to the office.”

He would send me the first of the files on Monday 3 April 2006, so I could get started.

Awesome.

The same week, a representative named Caroline from Creative Circle calls me about a job in Beverly Hills that would be an “open-ended, temporary to permanent position” - in other words, it would be full-time and if they like me, it would become permanent. Great. The interview was set up for Tuesday 4 April 2006 at 11:00am.

Rad.

Two opportunities? This is great!

Next thing I know, a representative named Karin from Aquent also called me about a job in Hollywood at an Internet video company. This job would also be an “open-ended temporary to permanent position” - wherein, it would be full-time and if they like me, it would become permanent. That interview was set up for Friday 31 March 2006 at 3:30pm.

This is fantastic! Looks like my bad karma of jobhunting is finally turning around, huh?

Well, it gets better! Check this out. We get back to Ingrid.

Ingrid knows I'm looking for work. She has a friend starting a new company in Century City. I meet with the company. Everything seems cool, except they want to start me out as part-time, for pay that is way lower than I am accustomed to getting.

But, there is a chance the Century City job could become full-time and I figured, “Eh, why not? I can work part-time, make some extra money, and have lots of freetime on the side. If a full-time opportunity comes along, I'll take it. But this will tide me over in the meanwhile. Cool. I'll do it.”

Besides, none of the other potential full-time gigs made an offer yet.

I agree to start working in Century City, part-time, for Ingrid's friend and go into the office for the first time on Friday 31 March 2006. I enjoy the place. I like the people. Should work out great.

After my time in the office there, I go to the interview in Hollywood at the Internet video company.

The interview goes extremely well. I'm very excited.

When I get home, I have several messages from agents at Aquent and need to get back to them. Karin speaks to me and asks how the Hollywood interview went. I tell her it was great and she tells me that the guy already called her and he really liked me and wanted me to start the following week.

Fantastic! Plus, the job is 10 minutes away and the pay is $15,000 more than I've ever made in my life! $65,000. Amazing!

So, I will do the Hollywood job during the day, and at night, I will work the Van Nuys temporary contract from home. I'll be making truckloads full of money for a month, and El Caminos full of money after that. This rocks! I will need to call the Century City job with Ingrid's friend and tell them that I have had another offer.

Ah. At last. My karma really is turning around! Fabulous! After all these years of struggling! All is right with the world!

Or so it seemed...

In the next few moments, like an underdog in a Hollywood movie, everything began to fall apart...

Quickly.

I have Karin transfer me to one of the other agents who called me. I tell the other agent that I am returning her call about the positions she had open.

The agent sounds annoyed. “Well, you can't work any other jobs because you are only allowed to work 40 hours a week through our agency and you are already talking to other agents about work. You took that freelance job in Van Nuys, with Ryan, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“The clients don't pay you directly. You get paid by us. So you can't work over 40 hours a week or it's overtime.”

“Oh. I see. I didn't know that. Okay. Thanks.”

Lovely. Now what?

I now have the temporary Van Nuys job with Ryan that I agreed to do from home, and the full-time Hollywood job with Karin that I agreed to start next week! But I can't do both? Ugh!

I get transferred back to Karin and tell her the situation. By this time, it is late on Friday and Ryan has already gone home. So, basically I'm in limbo until Monday morning. Friday evening, I decide to keep my Beverly Hills appointment for Tuesday and my Century City part-time job for Monday, because I have no idea how things will pan-out come Monday morning.

Monday rolls around.

So let's recap.

Two jobs from Aquent.

One temporary working from home.

One permanent working in Hollywood.

I want to do both.

Meanwhile, I have a part-time job in Century City that Ingrid found for me which I have worked for one day and I need to be there again that afternoon.

Plus, I have a job interview on Tuesday in Beverly Hills from Caroline through Creative Circle.

Whew! Got it? Okay. Let's proceed.

Monday morning, I speak to Ryan and Karin and am told that I will need to just pick one of the jobs. I told them, “Well, I want to do both because I said that I would. But, if I have to pick just one, obviously I'd rather go with the one in Hollywood because it's full-time, possibly permanent, and more pay.”

They understood.

Later that afternoon, I had it confirmed - yes, I am booked for the full-time job in Hollywood. I will be starting Wednesday.

Okay. I felt bad because I didn't want to turn down the work-from-home job. But, hey, this was still fantastic! It was a short commute, to a very cool job, for way more money than I have ever made before in my life.

Cool!

Once it was all confirmed, I immediately contacted the Century City job and told them I wouldn't be able to come in anymore because I had taken this full-time position. I copied Ingrid on the email too. I figured since she helped me get in there, it was the least I could do to be polite.

For some reason, I didn't cancel my 11:00am job interview slated for the next morning.

I should have.

Tuesday morning rolls around. 4 April 2006 to be exact.

I get a phonecall from Karin at 9:30am telling me that the Hollywood job decided to back out. They didn't want to hire me. They reconsidered and really need someone who knows a completely different programming language.

No. Freaking. Way.

And of course, Ryan already found someone else to do the freelance Van Nuys job from home too.

A little imp laughed in the corner of my room, pointing and saying, “Sorry, Eric. You're screwed all around. Schmuck! Ha, ha!”

I just turned down the part-time Century City job that Ingrid helped me get, and I look like an ass because I was so wishy-washy about the job to begin with, then I declined the offer one day, only to need it back the next.

I just turned down the freelance Van Nuys job that I could have done from home (I would have made about $4500 to $6500, just working in the evenings for a month or two).

And the job that I turned both of those positions down for decided to back out at the last minute and leave me hanging with nothing!

Nice.

I was so depressed.

But don't worry, it gets worse!

It was now 10:00am. I had no job. No leads. But I still had an interview scheduled in Beverly Hills in an hour.

Remember I don't own a car. I only have a motorcycle.

Why is that relevant?

Because when it rains, it pours... and rain was pouring from the sky in sheets.

Nevermind that the rainy-season is supposed to be finished in Los Angeles by April. We are supposed to be back to nothing but sunshine. But not this year. Nope. That day the street outside my apartment had enough water coursing down it to float a damn ark. And the rain kept on coming. Harder. And harder.

In a panic, I check bus routes. No way I can make it there in time. All the buses will take me at least 2 hours. Taxi? Way too expensive. It will cost me $40 to get there and back. I call a friend to see if she can drive me. She can't.

Great.

So, I did what I had to do. I hopped on my motorcycle and rode 10 miles to Beverly Hills in torrential rain. I was literally drenched when I got to the job interview. Completely saturated. I am not exaggerating when I say it was as if I had jumped into a swimming pool with all of my clothes on. I sat in their conference room, shivering, squishing, and dripping water all over their floor. When I put my elbow on the table, I left a wet-print and water trickled off my sleeve into a puddle.

Oh, yeah. Real professional.

Needless to say, they weren't making me any job offers in Beverly Hills that day, thank you very much.

On the way back home, my teeth were chattering. My jeans were sopping wet. Water was seeping in my jacket, all over my shirt, and trickling down the shivering skin of my chest. Ice-cold pools were splashing around inside my boots. At most intersections, I had to ride through puddles that were 20 feet wide and 6 inches deep. Rapids were flowing down Laurel Canyon Boulevard up near Mulholland. Seriously, the swaths of water in the road flowed so deep, they literally had little whitecaps on them; going up Laurel Canyon was truly the equivalent of riding my motorcycle through a creekbed.

The whole time, all I kept on thinking was, “If those jerks in Hollywood hadn't backed out, I would be laying in a warm bed asleep right now, eagerly anticipating my big salary and my short commute.” Instead, I was getting hypothermia in the middle of spring in Southern California.

Next time, I'm canceling the interview.

No more motorcycling in the rain. Ever.

Not unless someone I love, or myself, is on fire.

When I got home, I took an incredibly long and hot shower. Must have stood under that nozzle for 30 minutes, just watching my hands slowly change color from deep purple, back into something resembling human skin.

Getting out of the shower, all I wanted to do was crawl under my covers and sleep for about 3 days.

That afternoon, I got a phonecall from another placement agent at Aquent named Emily. She set up an interview for me two days later, on Thursday, at Universal Studios.

The rain was supposed to stop by then.

What was that line in the movie The Crow?...

“It can't rain all the time.”

Let's hope.

Chapter Fourty One
Universal Studios
7 April 2006

“Certainly we have all had great confidence at one time in our lives, though most of us lose it as we grow older. Because of my work, I've been lucky enough to retain a shred of this useful quality but sometimes, as I look back on how tough things were, I wonder if I'd go through it again.”

- Walter Elias Disney

No rain.

My motorcycle ride to Universal was met with the typical warmth and blue skies and sunshine Los Angeles is famous for.

Thank goodness.

I really thought I'd get in at Universal.

I had spent so long, going on so many interviews, and getting so near to being hired. Something inside told me I was close. Something great was just around the corner. Like a skateboarder always coming in last at every contest, then suddenly placing in the top 5 all the time. (Most authors would use baseball or football for a sports analogy, but I'm a lifelong skateboarder, so I'm using skating.) Once you improve that dramatically, you know you just have to win anyday now! Things are turning around. You keep getting just below the threshold. This losing streak can't last forever. You are right there. Right on the cusp. You can just feel it in the air!

Why not have things turn around at Universal Studios?

Seems as good a place as any.

There is something undeniably special about interviewing at a major motion picture studio. Maybe it's just being a dreamer from Ohio. Maybe it's because this is where I always wished I was living. I can't really pinpoint it.

All I know is, when you walk onto Universal Studios lot, knowing you might get a job there, it's pretty awe inspiring.

I had already been there as a tourist many times. I'd gone on the backlot tour and seen the themepark and ridden the Back To The Future ride and been on Jurassic Park.

Those things were fun, but that still doesn't compare to walking into the place knowing you could get hired. Knowing you might be part of the filmmaking history of those movies. You might work there. Walking onto the lot with that knowledge changes everything.

I told you at the start of this book that when I had the opportunity to interview at a movie studio, you'd know exactly how I got there.

Now you know. Just as I promised.

Incidentally, the Universal Studios lot is gigantic. They have the largest lot of any film studio in Los Angeles.

How big is it?

Well, when I later began working at Disney, I lived 1800 feet from the Disney offices. Literally. No joke, I had a commute of two blocks. When I went to Universal Studios for my interview, the walk from the parking structure to the interview was further than my commute from home to Disney. Honestly! I'm not trying to be funny or make a joke. I'm completely serious. My commute to work at Disney was a shorter distance than my walk from the Universal parking garage to the Universal offices.

Speaking of the parking garage...

Way back in the beginning of the book, I also promised to tell the tale about seeing a motorcycle owned by Brad Pitt on the Universal lot.

So, here is the story.

As a motorcyclist, I like all styles of bikes and I try to keep abreast of what the current models are all about. There was a company in New Orleans called “Confederate” and they made some of the coolest custom motorcycles I'd ever seen. Each and every model of their line had an incredibly unique and recognizable style. If you can imagine a futuristic version of steampunk - lots of artistic lines and smooth curves, but at the same time, very stripped down and raw. Turn the brass and brown of steampunk aesthetics into silver and black, and strip off everything superfluous, and you get the idea. Gorgeous machines. These are not fancy and flowery custom motorcyles by any means. Their elegance lies in their minimalism.

The bad thing about Confederate bikes is that I will never be able to afford one. Their “cheapest” model is $50,000. Others go for twice that much.

After my interview at Universal was over, I walked back to my motorcycle in the parking garage and sitting next to my bike was a Confederate F131 Hellcat Combat. She was so sexy. That was the first and only time I had seen a Confederate in person! The photos and videos on the Internet didn't do these beasts justice. She was exquisite.

Naturally, I wanted to talk to the owner and ask a million questions. How long have you had it? How many miles are on it? Do you ride it a lot? What kind of gas mileage do you get? Is it fun in the twisties and canyons? How easy is it to handle? How fast does she go? CAN I PLEASE RIDE IT!?

The owner was nowhere to be seen.

I went home, drooling with thoughts of the Confederate.

When I got to my place, I went on the Internet and posted on a motorcycle forum that I had seen this gorgeous Confederate at Universal.

Someone replied that it likely belonged to Brad Pitt.

Apparently, rumor has it, Brad owns one and he was at Universal shooting a film. I don't know how true that is, because if I check the Internet Movie Database, I don't see any films released in 2006 or 2007 or even 2008 starring Brad Pitt, which were produced by Universal. Most of his movies during those years were Paramount and Warner Brothers productions. Perhaps they could have been shooting pickups at Universal? Who knows?

Anyway, all I know is, supposedly that might have been his bike. Sure, there are plenty of wealthy people in Hollywood who could afford a Confederate, but how many of them would have a rare $50,000 motorcycle parked in a movie studio parking garage? There you go. That is my story of how I might have almost met Brad Pitt, possibly, on the lot of Universal Studios. Maybe.

Oh!

The interview!

I never did mention that!

Not much to tell, really. Was another web developer position. Just like Digital Domain, I didn't get in, but interviewing was important because it was my first time to interview at a major studio.

Remember at the beginning of the book, I talked about Hollywood being so far away and unattainable?

Now, here I was! Landing interviews at film studios!

I'm telling you, even though I was unemployed, even though I was not getting hired, this sort of experience was utterly blissful.

Who cares if I didn't get the job?

Universal Studios wanted to meet with me!

That's incredible!

Now you know how I did it too. No connections. No favors. No networking. All I did was remain persistent. Make good decisions in my career moves. Maintain a lot of diversity in my skillset.

Doing that landed me with some quality placement agencies.

Finding those quality placement agencies and getting registered with them was just a matter of looking on the Internet and sending an email. Nothing to it.

Getting to California was the key.

That was the hard part.

Then, once I was here, making sure I had the tenacity to remain here and not go cowering back to Ohio once things got rough.

Like I said before - no fallback plan!

Ever onward!

Into the brink! And all that other macho stuff!

You never quit. You never fail.

Move. Forward.

Fight.

A few days later, I get another call from Emily Brewer at Aquent recruiting agency. She set up my Universal interview, but now she tells me something even more shocking. She tells me something that totally blows my mind. “Disney wants to meet with you.”

“What? Disney!?” I replied.

“Yeah. They saw your profile on our list of candidates for a position and they are interested in you.”

I couldn't believe it. “Disney? The Walt Disney? Mr. Walter Elias Disney himself? Walt Disney Studios wants to meet me?”

That's right. Disney wanted to meet me.

She didn't say, “We want to send you to Disney because we think they would be interested in you.”

No.

Disney wanted to meet me. As in, “We showed Disney your profile and they want to talk with you.”

Disney requested me.

I was stunned.

Disney!?

Seriously?

This isn't me applying for a job at the Walt Disney Company. No. The Walt Disney Company is looking at me. They wanted to meet with me. I didn't have to do a thing! Disney wants to rap with me!

I was so thrilled, I can't describe it. My nightmare of job hunting had suddenly become a dream. The moment was so surreal.

Emily wanted to know if I would like to schedule an interview.

Are you kidding!?

Does a dolphin pee in the ocean?

At that point, I obviously didn't know if I even had the job, but that wasn't the point. Simply knowing Disney requested to meet me, I was so proud of myself. After all these decades of struggling. After the layoffs and crappy bosses and being unappreciated and undervalued, Disney, of all places, finally saw some worth in me. What an honor that was! I must have done something right after all!

I lived so close to the Disney offices that I was able to literally walk to my interview. I don't need to tell you that “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” played in my head the whole way there! It's the truth! It's actual! Everything was satisfactual!

Honestly, I never expected to be hired by Disney.

They wanted to meet me, sure. But with my run of bad mojo, I never expected them to actually offer me a job. No. No way. Even with the knowledge that they wanted to meet me, I still felt inadequate. I still regarded myself as “not good enough” for the likes of Disney. My joy stemmed from the simple fact that, for just a moment, they thought I might be worthwhile.

Perhaps that humility is what landed me the job. Maybe it was my excitement and gratitude for the mere opportunity to be interviewed. Who knows?

Whatever the reason, I was quickly called back for a second interview and the next thing I knew, I was earning the largest salary of my life, sitting at my very own desk, in the hallowed halls of Disney. Just like that. Nothing to it. Within days, it all fell into place.

Those instincts about potentially working at Disney were right.

Expecting the unexpected wasn't so foolish after all.

For years, I never told people I work at Disney. I mean I told no one. No friends. No family. Nobody.

I wasn't ashamed of it. On the contrary, I was happier and more proud than I had ever been!

That joy and pride was the problem.

Unfortunately, I was surrounded by far too many negative people in my life. Discouraging people. Pessimistic people. Jealous people. I didn't feel like hearing all their inevitable defeatist comments. I didn't want to deal with the snarky remarks. I wanted to enjoy my success without anyone trying to take it away from me.

Sadly, that meant keeping my greatest career accomplishment to myself and not telling anyone about it.

In the past, people in my life would actually say things like, “Let's see how long you can keep this job.”

These worthless jerks were supposedly my friends. Some others would say things like, “Well, as long as you don't get laid off again.”

When I got other jobs, I would hear, “You think this one is going to last?”

Excuse me?

Those were seriously the type of comments “friends” would tell me, anytime I got a new job.

Never would get a “Congratulations!”

Never heard a “Let's celebrate!”

Never an “Atta boy!”

Never a “Good for you! I knew you could do it!”

Not once.

Just like the time I was talking about publishing my novel, after I had already written it, and family members still said things like, “Are you sure you can sell 100 copies?”

No matter how much I accomplish, no matter how many things I achieve, I hear nothing but doubt from people.

I don't blame my friends or family for this. Obviously, I'm the one 100% responsible for picking crappy and unsupportive friends with no faith in me. The blame is fully my own.

I'm not whining in self-pity about my “unfair misfortunes”.

I'm angry at my foolishness for associating with these people.

Nevertheless, when I landed my job at Disney, I decided I was telling no one. None of my friends. None of my family. I knew none of them would ever be as happy for me as I was. So, I kept this one to myself. This was my accomplishment. This was my milestone. This was my achievement.

There was no one in my life who would ever suggest to celebrate my joy or toast my success. I was surrounded by people who were filled with nothing but cynicism and I was never going to let the cynics of my life take the joy of Disney away from me. I didn't want to jinx myself and lose my job at Disney by filling my life with all the gloomy energy of people who doubted my ability to remain there. Maybe someday I'd have the honor of meeting people who knew how to take pride in the accomplishments of friends and family, but until I found such a circle of people, I was keeping this happiness to myself.

When people would ask, “Where do you work?” or “What do you do for a living?” I would just say, “I work in computer technology on the Internet.” That was not a lie. It was the truth.

What's more, since I knew people didn't really care, I was never expected to provide anymore details. Saying “I build websites” would always suffice. In the rare instance that some did inquire more deeply, I might say, “We build corporate and entertainment websites for the movie industry.” Also true. Vague enough that I never mention Disney and specific enough that they usually leave me alone. If anyone did ask for specific names, I could always truthfully say, “I got it through a company named Aquent.”

I simply didn't want to share the details, because I knew too many people who would love the chance to deride my greatest accomplishment.

The heck with them.

One of my favorite quotes is from Mark Twain and it says, “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great, make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Someday, I still hope to find the “really great” and I can eschew all those “small people” who would belittle my ambitions. (I love the word “eschew” because it always makes me think of the other famous Mr. Twain quote, “eschew surplusage”.)

Until such time, Disney was mine.

I wasn't sharing it with anyone.

No one deserved it.

This accomplishment belonged to me and to me alone.

As time went on, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I needed to share it. Not with my friends and family, but with you.

My dear readers are the ones who needed to know my story.

Two types of people will read this - cynics and dreamers.

The cynics will scoff and deride it as they are wont to do.

This wasn't written for them.

I don't care about them.

This was written for you, my fellow dreamers.

Ignore the cynics. They don't matter.

This book speaks to you, because you remember how to dream.

However you found this book, it came to you at the right time. Maybe a friend gave it to you. Maybe you stumbled into it at random in a bookstore or on the Internet. Maybe all of Los Angeles was destroyed in a giant earthquake and this book is now part of a priceless historical record. Who knows? (And I sure hope it wasn't for that last reason!)

Rest assured, however you found this story, it came to you for a reason.

I wanted to share my tale of reaching Disney in the hopes it might inspire you, and uplift you, and kindle your heart.

I know I'm not alone in the world.

There are others like me. There are other dreamers out there. There are others who are struggling. Others who believe in themselves while the whole world doubts you. Eventually, I came to understand that I needed to share my success story with the world, in the hope that the tale would reach those who need to hear it.

Enlightenment. Encouragement. Inspiration.

Those are the things I aspire to contribute unto your life, and the world, via this book.

To give the world something good. Decent. Uplifting.

To remind you that your dreams can be reached too.

My motive, as Mark Twain so eloquently said, is to be a person who does not belittle your ambitions, but makes you feel that you, too, can become great.

The world is changing fast and people are finally starting to realize that ones competence and qualifications goes far beyond scholastic education or past employment experiences.

Integrity is measured by your friendships.

Fortitude is illustrated in your hobbies.

Knowledge is proven through the quality of what you contribute to the world.

The old methods of hiring people don't apply anymore.

The world has evolved.

The dynamic of a whole individual is the true mark of ones worth.

You know this as well as I do.

Stick to your ideals. Never give up. They will be valued someday.

Just might take awhile.

People always say “pursue your dreams” and “make your dreams come true”, but they never tell you why.

Right?

What do you gain by turning your dreams into reality?

Does it guarantee you'll make a lot of money? No.

Does it promise success or accolades or fame? No. No. No.

Does it automatically bestow that elusive and intangible concept of “happiness” which our culture misguidedly thinks everyone is entitled to experience 24 hours a day? Nope.

Why then should you pursue your dreams, if there is no guarantee of wealth, renown or joy?

What's the point?

The point is this - turning your dreams into reality gives you something much better than all of those things - namely, the gears of the universe start to mesh again. Your entire life changes for the better. You begin to be presented with wonderful opportunities you never would have experienced otherwise. You meet people. You go places. Astounding things start to happen. Bizarre and marvelous serendipity begins to coalesce. This isn't about finances. This isn't about success. This is about the sense of awe at being truly alive. Of feeling you have a place in the world. That your existence has purpose. You'll come to find a vibrance in your life and a sense of accomplishment and self-respect which instils a bliss far exceeding mere happiness.

You evolve.

You learn.

You shine.

Well, that just about sums it up. Now you know the whole story of how working for Mr. Walt Disney became a part of my life. You see how I got where I am, and where I'm starting for the rest of the trip. That's my story, kids. And I'm sticking to it.

Stick to your own ambitions as well. Hold steadfast to your wishes. Cling to those dreams. You may not reach them as quickly as you hope. You may have countless setbacks and be forced to fight for them longer and harder than you expected (and once you get there, they may not bring your life what you'd imagined). But if you keep moving forward, you will attain anything.

You are destined for great things.

You've always known that.

Have faith in that resolve.

Imagine. Wonder. Dream. Live. Love. Laugh. Believe.

Do. Not. Give. Up.

Never falter. Never quit. Never surrender. Failure is not an option.

Never “follow” your dreams... Catch them!

Chapter Fourty Two
The Walt Disney Studios
20 April 2006 to 5 September 2012

“Get in. Not choose, but get in. Be part of it and then move up. I've always had that feeling about things. And it upsets me so much when people want to get into something but they're too darn choosy about what they want to do. Get in while you have a chance to at least look and see and out of it might come something.”

- Walter Elias Disney

Getting in at Disney has been the greatest opportunity of my life.

I made myself a promise when I started writing this book that I wouldn't actually talk about my experiences at Disney.

Why?

My reason for this is simple - because the intention of this book is to inspire you good people with the tale of how I made it into Disney, not to talk about Disney itself.

At the same time, I felt it was rather unfair and rude to my dear readers to not mention anything at all about Disney! Therefore, I will say this much - working for Walt is everything I ever hoped for and more. Getting hired by Disney was truly one of the greatest moments of my life and one of the accomplishments I am the most proud of attaining. At the time I published this book, I had worked at the Studio for more than 6 years - which is the longest I've ever worked at any job in my life. I am utterly awestruck to have such an amazing experience and I cherish every second of my Disney career.

Literally every single day, I count how lucky and privileged I am. Working at a place, where thousands upon thousands of people all over the world wish and hope and dream of being, is an honor. How grateful I am that I get to work everyday in a place where even talented and ambitious people would truly envy what I do. Being a Cast Member for The Walt Disney Studios is a privilege I will never take for granted as long as I live. I could be sweeping the floors, and I'd still feel blessed for the opportunity.

Disney is not merely a “dream job” for me.

Disney is home.

Skeptics may wonder, “Why Disney?”

A valid question.

What makes Disney so special? What makes Disney so important?

After all, now that you have read this book, you know I've worked many places in my life. You know ever single job I've ever had. You don't see me writing a book called How I Landed A Job In Cleveland At A Company No One Ever Heard Of Before.

No one would be interested in reading such a story.

But Disney? That is different. Disney is a story people actually care about.

Why do people care so much about Disney?

Simple.

Because it's a place we all dream about when we are kids. We all want to know how to make cartoons? How to work at Disneyland? How to be on a Disney television show? How to get a job at PIXAR? These are the dreams of every child in the world. So when someone makes it, when someone actually does get a job with Disney, the little kid in all of us wants to know how he got there? What makes him so special? What did he do that you didn't?

As you can see - I didn't really do anything all that special. Just followed my nose and let my heart be my guide.

But there is more to writing this book than the simple sharing of a childhood dream fulfilled. There is a much bigger reason Disney is important to me.

Why mark Disney as a career milestone in my life?

Because from the moment I set foot in the doors of Disney, I knew I never wanted to work for anyone else ever again. Because I knew Disney was the one and only place I wanted to retire from. Because out of all the companies I have ever worked, Disney is the only job where I woke up everyday feeling that I was doing something which mattered. Other jobs I worked never really made a difference in the world. Success in other businesses simply earned money. Success in other businesses put food on the table and paid the rent and lined the pockets of stockholders and owners. The world as a whole did not benefit from selling truck parts or hamburgers.

Disney is different.

Disney makes a difference.

Disney influences wishes and hopes of families the world over.

Every single Friday, I wear Mickey Mouse ears in the office.

I've had a number of people ask, “Did you lose a bet?”

Jokingly, my fast answer is, “Other companies have 'Casual Fridays', so I figured Disney should have 'Mouse Ears Fridays'.”

That's my quick and easy “water cooler conversation” response. Sometimes I will add, “I always promised myself when I became a full-time Cast Member, I'd wear Mickey Ears every Friday. So I do.”

Although my answers are true, they are superficial. No one wants to have an engaging conversation about it - so in the interest of diplomacy and “social graces” I provide a “sound-bite reply” I can spout in 5 seconds. People seem satisfied.

However, none of those reasons delve into my ulterior motives. The truth is, corny as it may sound, wearing the Mouse ears has a far more meaningful purpose. One of the most important is to remind us where we are and why we are here; Especially since the Internet building was not on the Studio Lot, it was easy to lose perspective and forget - HEY WAIT! WE DON'T JUST WORK IN AN OFFICE BUILDING! WE WORK FOR WALT DISNEY! HOW COOL!

Another reason? You can never take yourself too seriously wearing Mickey ears. That's an important thing.

Our job is the most fun, easy, laid-back, stress-free career you can imagine.

We aren't curing terminal diseases or landing spacecraft.

We aren't running into burning buildings to rescue infants or pursuing armed criminals.

We are providing entertainment.

Everytime someone spots me wearing the ears and they smile or chuckle a little, I'm reminded I'm wearing them and next thing I know, Mickey is making us both grin.

Walt understood this. Our beloved founder called himself an “idea man” and he certainly was. Showmanship. Entertainment. Making people smile. Sharing the gift of laughter. Finding the “kid at heart” in everyone. That's what our company is all about. Those are some of our fundamental aspirations.

Today, more than 90 years after Walt Disney Studios began, we all stand in the unique and enviable position of having grown up with Disney. Unlike fellow Cast Members of the 1920's and 1930's who only created Disney Magic as adults, we all grew up experiencing Disney Magic as children. Now, as Cast Members ourselves, we carry on their creative distinction. However, unlike our forefathers, our creativity is augmented with memories of how great our own childhood experiences with Disney were.

I am convinced this is the driving reason behind our work at Disney easily maintaining world-renown standards of quality and integrity; We simply remember how magical and wonderful and perfect everything Disney represented when we were kids, and we wish to responsibly uphold that legacy - and more importantly - that magic and awe. We have a sense of obligation to maintain that childlike exhilaration for all our Guests. Now that we are entrusted with keys to the Magic Kingdom, we can't let them down - because during our own childhoods, the Disney Family never let us down! Now we are part of that Family. We are the chosen few. We are the torchbearers. We must raise that flame proudly and high.

Many large corporations often attempt boosting the morale of employees by speaking of lofty ideals like honor and tradition. Typically, their pontificating sounds phony and forced and unemotional. After all, selling widgets is not exactly a thrilling “tradition” to maintain. Understandable that employees cynically scoff over such notions at those “other” companies.

Not so with Disney.

The Disney Family has tens of thousands of Cast Members who feel sincerely and genuinely blessed to inherit traditions going back almost 100 years. At Disney, “quality” and “integrity” are not empty words spouted at corporate meetings; They are indelible character traits which construct the foundation of a heartfelt work ethic. After all, Disney is not in a dry and unemotional business. We are in the business of fulfilling dreams - of inspiring wonderment and joy. That is our bottom line.

We don't sell widgets.

We build imaginations.

However, even at Disney, our true purpose can be easily forgotten when faced with deadlines and financial plans and budgets and updates to computer code. Sitting around in meetings never feels like “building imaginations” at all - not even at Disney. We can get tunnel-vision and forget to see the big picture. We can forget how privileged we all are. We can forget our lives and our stresses really aren't that bad. We can forget this is a beautiful time and we are incredibly lucky to be here. We can forget it's all gonna work out and these truly are the “good old days” of our lives. We can forget these moments will be missed someday - and when we look back at it all, many decades from now, these will be fondly remembered as some of our proudest and most joyous years.

All of those things can be forgotten.

... Until you see someone walk past you in a pair of Mickey ears.

Then just for a moment, you can giggle, and remember, and regain some perspective, and say to yourself, “Oh, yeah... That's what this is all about.”

At Disney, one carries on a legacy. At Disney, one is a storyteller. Storytelling inspires our dreams and kindles our ambitions, thereby encouraging all people to uphold their most noble ideals. Since the birth of humanity, every culture in the world, has thrived on the telling of tales. From cavewall drawings to campfire minstrels. From library shelves to theatrical stages to computer screens. Storytelling is the lifeblood of the human condition. With stories we comfort our fears, celebrate our triumphs, bequeath our morals, and uplift our sorrows.

Those who are blessed to be Cast Members at Disney command unprecedented mediums for sharing stories with all the world. From engineering rides and attractions at Disneyland, to choreographing Broadway shows, to sailing worldwide cruiselines, to animating groundbreaking motion pictures, to invoking the wizardry of the Internet. Humbly serving our Guests, we touch the emotions of an audience far more vast than any other storytellers have ever been able to reach in the history of mankind. Trailblazing advanced technologies, we stand upon the brink of the frontier. There are no rules. There are no limits. There is only the pioneering spirit of a boundless sky.

Since 1923, Disney has conjured a magical legacy unto which all Cast Members proudly contribute. As my own voice enriches our legend, the story of Disney is forever changed. In the grand scheme of Disney history, perhaps my voice is not very loud. Perhaps my voice doesn't alter entire chapters of the Disney tome. Nevertheless, my mousey little squeak does contribute a verse or two, and that alone instils me with immense pride. As Walt once said, “I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse.”

Being part of Disney, I sit among the most influential storytellers to ever live upon this earth. The immortal Grimm Faerie Tales and folklore, retold in Disney stories I grew up with through childhood, all teach us the same themes - that if we are true to our hearts and follow our dreams, they can come true. We can live happily ever after.

The stories also warn us the dark side of the promise - following the honorable path will lead to great hardship and adversity too. There will be Evil Queens aplenty along the way, who will give us poison apples, and place curses upon our blissful lives. But if we remain true, righteousness will always prevail. Light will eventually overcome darkness. Good shall triumph over evil. We just have to keep fighting. No matter how long it takes. No matter how difficult the battle may become. The struggles are worth it in the end. There is no giving up. Ever. Virtue is truly it's own reward.

Disney teaches us the first stories which remind us to always believe.

That is why Disney matters so much to me.

That is why Disney is better than any other job I've ever had.

That is why Disney is the place I aspire to retire from.

Unfortunately, just before I published this book, after working there for over 6 years, I was laid off from Walt Disney Studios along with dozens of talented fellow Cast Members, during a large reorganization of their Internet division. My time working for Uncle Walt had lasted for exactly 2392 days - from 20 April 2006 until 5 November 2012. That's 6 years, 6 months, and 17 days.

John Lasseter, the head of PIXAR Animation Studios and the Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Studios Animation, was fired from his first animation job at Disney in 1983, after working there for 4 years. He admitted in an interview in 2009, “I'll be honest with you. I told the world that I left on my own. To be fired from the place of my dreams was something I just couldn't admit to anyone.”

Well, I freely admit I didn't leave on my own. I'd never leave Disney voluntarily. Regrettably, I know exactly how John Lasseter felt. The loss of Disney was truly the most disappointing loss of my professional life.

My time at Disney holds great historical significance too, as it was during my tenure of years that we purchased PIXAR, Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm LTD. Who would imagine I'd someday get to work with Luke Skywalker, and The Avengers, and Mickey Mouse all at the same place!? Amazing. ' Nuff said. May the Force be with you.

My ambition is to return to Walt Disney Studios someday. There's no place else I'd rather be. We shall see if my fate will lead me back there again, or perhaps, as life has shown, my destiny shall diverge onto a completely different path, even better than I can possibly imagine right now.

I have no idea.

Time will tell.

I don't know where your destiny will lead you either, dear reader. Nevertheless, I hope this book has inspired you to have even more faith in finding your freedom and trust in traveling your road.

My road to arrive at Disney took many years to travel and I couldn't be more appreciative for being a part of Disney or more reverent for the fortuity to be there. I thank you, my dear reader, for spending part of your journey through life to read about my own voyage to Hollywood.

Looking back over the years and my time spent at Disney, I am reminded of how precious a gift time truly happens to be. Time is the only thing any of us have in life. We can lose jobs, friends, family, health, wealth, freedom - you name it. The one and only thing we are guaranteed is a finite amount of time upon this Earth to experience those moments in life.

Everything else is fleeting.

Time is everything.

Because time is so valuable a gift, our only gift, I hope you found your time spent with this book to be worthwhile.

Everything in life happens for a reason. Serendipity is a very real magic. My dear reader, this book came to your life now because you needed it just at this instant.

“Like a bolt out of the blue, Fate steps in and sees you through.”

Remember?

This book came to you with these words to remind you that you must stay upon the path. You are a dreamer. You always have been, even if you may have forgotten from time to time. Remember that, dear dreamer. Remember who you truly are. Rekindle those dreams. Believe. Persevere. Endure. Hold steadfast to your hopes. Hold true to your soul. Trust in the universe and that flame in your heart. Life will provide and your dreams will come true.

I know it can be hard to believe that sometimes. When the trials and setbacks of life have beaten you down one time too many, and you are ready to throw in the towel, that is when you must find the fortitude you truly possess. In your darkest hours, that is when your convictions are put to the test. When no one believes in you. When friends discourage you. When your finances are hanging by a thread. When family turns away and refuse to support your hopes. Those are the moments when you must have faith in you. In the face of all adversity and cruelty and incredulity and ignorance, stand proud and tall. Trust that your dreams are guiding you steadfast and true, no matter how futile it seems. No matter if no one else believes. Especially if no one else believes. That's when you must believe in yourself most of all.

Remember this - those people who discourage you have never accomplished anything. That is why they do not believe in you. They failed in their own lives. They failed their own dreams. They never made a single wish come true. That may sound harsh, but you know it's the truth. They haven't done a thing worth mentioning. They never achieved a single hope. That is why they drag you down. They don't want to see you fly free. Flying free scares them, because they have never had the courage to fly themselves. They never had the guts to try, so they can't imagine you're brave enough to give it a shot.

You know that old saying about, “Jump from the cliff and have faith you will sprout wings” or something like that? The late, great Ray Bradbury, whom I once had the great honor of meeting at the theatre on the Walt Disney Studios lot, after a screening of Something Wicked This Way Comes, once said, “Stand at the top of the cliff, and jump off, and build your wings on the way down.”

Mr. Bradbury's phrasing of the sentiment is wonderful. The slight change in nuance says it all - not merely having faith the wings will appear, but building them yourself as you fall. Subtle difference, yet huge. It implies not merely a blind faith that the universe will provide for you, but rather, the notion you must have the courage and the belief in yourself - that you already have in your possession that which you need to make your dreams take flight.

Beautiful.

When I taught my Architecting Your Dreams class at Disney, that was my main message. I had all my students fill out a sheet of paper, where they would list dreams and accomplishments they already achieved in life. Then, I had them list the obstacles they had to overcome, in order to reach those goals.

Next, I had them write down the dreams they had not yet attained. Likewise, they listed the obstacles keeping them from those dreams.

Obviously, both lists of obstacles were similar.

That was the point.

The exercise was designed to show the students they already had the answers. They already knew what they had to overcome. Plus, they had already overcome those same obstacles before!

There were no excuses.

Remember that Mark Twain quote, “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Think about that.

Do you want to take advice from people who are mean and cynical and have given up on their dreams?

Would you rather take advice from people who are positive and optimistic and have attained all their aspirations?

Do you want to listen to those who never jumped from the cliff?

Would you rather listen to those who jumped from the cliff and built their wings and learned to soar?

Only those who have never accomplished anything belittle people who have achieved great things.

To this day, no one ever believes in me. Even though I have proven myself time and time again. Even though I achieve everything I ever dream. People still doubt.

Why? Because, as Mark Twain said, I too often make the mistake of associating with small people.

Look at Walt Disney himself! He went through the same thing in his own life. He was a massive success. Thriving studio. Innovative filmmaker. Revolutionary animator. A genuine achiever of all his dreams, by any measure. Yet, no one believed in him when he wanted to create Disneyland. Everyone thought it would be a huge failure. Even his own wife, Lily, had her doubts. Walt said, “When I started on Disneyland, my wife used to say, 'But why do you want to build an amusement park? They're so dirty.' I told her that was just the point - mine wouldn't be.”

Walt believed.

He believed in himself so strongly, he has his entire family fortune invested in the project. Had Disneyland failed, his whole family would have been broke. That's how much he believed in himself.

Fifty years later, the first Disneyland had proven so successful, multiple incarnations were constructed in various countries, all around the planet. At any given moment, 24 hours a day, a Disney themepark is open somewhere in the world. Once again, Walt stuck to his dreams and proved everyone wrong. Even Lily.

One thing I learned about life long ago is that the kids know more than the adults. Kids have dreams and ideals and the stubborn ambition to attain them. Those who retain their childlike lofty ideals and determined righteousness into adulthood, those who remain uncompromising, are the people who make their dreams come true.

Those who fall from grace by abandoning their ideals?

They get nowhere, and they try to drag you down with them.

I have every faith I will accomplish everything I want, because eventually I attain every single dream I possess. Novelist. Hang glider pilot. Motorcyclist. Californian. Skateboarder. Equestrian. Disney Cast Member. Film maker. Photographer. There is nothing that I ever failed to accomplish (well, except for that whole fighter pilot/astronaut thing, but that wasn't entirely my fault, since those goals demanded a college degree and flawless genetics for eyesight).

I never doubt my dreams. Neither should you doubt in your own. Hold onto that childlike determination. Never let it go. No matter how harshly or frequently the dregs of humanity belittle you for having faith in your ideals, never compromise those ideals. Always believe in yourself. I've learned to always believe in me. Especially when others do not. In fact, the more others doubt, the more I feel reassured of being on the right course.

The more others tell me something is a bad idea, or impossible, or not to try it, or it's going to fail, the more I know I'm headed in the proper direction. The stronger their doubts, the more resolute my convictions.

In those moments, I've never been wrong.

Never.

Time and time again, life has proven to me that the old saying is true, “The world is what we make of it.”

When people mock your dreams and ridicule your insights and tell you that “the real world doesn't work that way”, what they are really telling you is, they have no idea how to live the sort of life you aspire to create.

Maybe their world doesn't work that way.

But they don't live in your world.

Your world will be whatever you make it.

Stay on your path, my friend. The road will be longer and harder than you imagine. The goal at the end will never be what you thought you were going to attain. But you will get there. And it will all have been worth it.

After all, as Jimini Cricket said...

If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.

When you wish upon a star.

As dreamers do.

“If you live right, things happen right.”

- Art Linkletter, quoting Walter Elias Disney

Epilogue

“The first thing I did when I got a little money to experiment, I put all my artists back in school. The art school that existed then didn't quite have enough for what we needed so we set up our own art school.”

- Walter Elias Disney

The subtitle of this book is “without a college degree” and having told you my whole story, I highly suggest that you get one. A college degree, that is. Stay in school. Go to college. Play the game. Conform. Obey the rules. That is the best way to find success in life. Do what you are told. Become a cog in the machine. Think like everyone else.

Seriously.

I'm not being sarcastic.

All our lives we are taught to follow our hearts and make our dreams come true. Never go along with the herd. Think for yourself.

That is terrible advice for most people. That path of independent thought is a hard road. I should know. I have walked it myself. Look at how long it has taken me to get anywhere!

Don't go that route.

Do what the world expects of you. Don't rock the boat. Fit in. Be like everyone else.

That is so easy. That is the simple path to success.

Take that road and your life will be fine.

Breaking the rules. Forging your own path. Questioning authority. Thinking for yourself. Following your heart. People who possess that mentality tread a difficult road which you are not prepared to travel. Trust me, you don't want to come this way. Our path is the more challenging route. Don't follow in our footsteps. You'll regret it. Fighting against the established flow is just asking for trouble.

You don't want this.

Stay in school.

Go the college route.

I'm bestowing this advice for a reason you have never been given before. You shouldn't stay in college for the experience. You shouldn't go for the opportunities. You shouldn't go for the relationships you will build or the resources you will have. You shouldn't go to secure fantastic internships or workstudy programs. You shouldn't go to college because it will earn you more money. Not at all. That crap is all meaningless. Above all, you most definitely shouldn't go to college to get an education.

No.

Those are all the reasons other people have told you to attend college. They are all lies.

The truth is much simpler than any of that.

The truth? The real reason to go to college?

College graduates stick together.

That's why.

Let me explain a little “secret of life” that folks never talk about.

Ready?

Here we go...

College does not provide an education, it provides a clique.

There, I said it. I know that 99% of college graduates will disagree with me and say I'm clueless, but that's okay - with a subtitle like “without a college degree”, they will never read this book anyway!

Why is college nothing but a clique? Because many companies in the world will only hire you into executive positions if you possess a college degree. That applies everywhere from private corporations to the United States Military. That is company policy. Period. Unless you founded the corporation yourself, in your parents garage, you will never be given a position of high rank and authority in any career without a degree. No matter how much experience you have. No matter how intelligent you are. No matter how many years you have spent “proving yourself” on the job - you will never get promoted into a position of true authority without a college education. Lesser qualified (and lesser intelligent) people will be offered the promotions and you will find yourself the subordinate of nimrods who are your intellectual inferior. But those inferior nimrods will have that framed diploma on the wall, which they incorrectly believe validates their genius and prestige.

Why?

Why would a company only promote college graduates and ignore more experienced/qualified people, simply because they lack a degree?

If you ask the company, they will say it's because they want people with better education and the discipline of study and all sorts of other deceptions. They can provide a litany of reasons which will sound very rational. None of those reasons are true. You don't need college to be educated. Like it was said in Good Will Hunting, college teaches nothing you can't learn with a library card. All you need is diligence and a library and you can give yourself the same education you'd get at Stanford.

Passing college courses and getting good grades are never evidence of intelligence. School doesn't “prove” intellect. Based upon the methodologies of teaching and testing, school simply proves ones ability to memorize and regurgitate information. I've known some damn stupid people who were Honors Students. They could get great grades, but had no Common Sense whatsoever. They could learn facts, but had no capacity for simple deductive reasoning or to gain wisdom through basic contemplation of experience.

Who do you think knows more about computers? Some college computer science major who has taken 1 or 2 classes a day for 4 years (with summers off), or a person who has worked in the computer industry 8 hours a day, every day, for 4 years?

Who do you think knows more about engineering? Some college engineering major who has taken 1 or 2 classes a day for 4 years (with summers off), or a person who has been a construction worker actually building things 8 hours a day, every day, for 4 years?

That's not to say those without an education are inherently smarter either. Not at all. Obviously, those with no schooling whatsoever can be the biggest dolts of all. I'm simply talking about the annoying “intellectual superiority” which most college graduates possess, at the tender age of 22, after their Alma Mater hands them a $200,000 sheet of paper. To me, accumulating such debt and adopting such a pretentious mentality within the sheltered universe of academia, and so little working knowledge of the real world, is an enormous sign of idiocy, not brainpower.

Go to college, but remember those two simple truths:

1. College doesn't equal knowledge.

2. College is a clique.

How is college is a clique? Simple. Everyone goes in debt for astronomical amounts of money and comes out with barely a working knowledge of their field of study (cluelessness which they humbly discover after two or three years in the real world and lose the arrogance of presuming they are the “World's Authority” on their major). Often, I suspect the collective resentment college graduates feel over this humiliation is their true motivation to stick together and only hire fellow graduates into positions of authority.

Not intelligence.

Not ability.

Not experience.

Only the clique.

The clique is all that matters.

You never need to join a fraternity or sorority. Pledging is irrelevant. Simply attending and graduating college puts you in the fraternity and sorority of prejudiced higher education.

And what's more, you have to follow the rules. You must conform to the path. You can't go back to school and get your degree at the age of 35. Nope. That won't get you into the clique. You will still be an outcast. You have to attend college on the same timeframe as typical graduates - a year or two after high school. That's your window. That's the end.

Am I just jealous, bitter and angry?

Darn, skippy! (I'm kidding. I realize no one says that anymore.)

If I sound resentful, it's because I am. I won't deny that. I told you I'd be honest in this book and, yes, I totally feel resentment when I have been told to my face by hiring managers that a college degree weighs more on employment decisions than experience and knowledge. That should infuriate any intelligent and hardworking individual - knowing that you are dealing with people who do not believe in hiring the best people for the job, but instead will only support the college clique. Yes, that is upsetting. Yes, you better believe I resent it.

So, as I said at the start - stay in school. Do not follow my path. Skipping college is the harder road. Play by their rules. Conform. Obey. Do as you are told.

Get an inexpensive liberals arts degree though. No sense in going to Yale and ending up as a barista. I've personally known people with Harvard degrees who ended up as secretaries. I even know a fellow who graduated the hallowed halls of an Ivy League, only to end up as a movie theatre usher upon graduation. Funny thing is, he was a movie theatre usher in high school! So, really, what career benefit did that degree provide? College provided an education which landed him right back in the kind of job he had as a high school student. Plus, he then had tens of thousands of dollars in loans to pay off.

Twenty years later, he was doing odd jobs and still living in Ohio. No joke. That's where higher education got him. Nowhere.

Now that I think of it that way...

Forget this whole epilogue.

I take it all back.

Don't go to college. To heck with that!

What a colossal waste of time and money!

Want to be a doctor? Go to college.

Want to be a lawyer? Go to college.

Want to be an architect? A marine biologist? Go to college.

However, I'm willing to bet most of my dear reads do not aspire to the medical profession or the judicial system. Those who aspire to be artistic and creative don't... need... college.

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer, took 6 months of classes at Reed College before dropping out.

John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil, merely took a 10 week business course at Folsom's Commercial College.

Howard Hughes dropped out of both the California Institute of Technology and Rice University. Never earned a degree.

The great author Mark Twain? Never attended college.

Peter Jennings and Walter Cronkite, each famous newscasters? No college degree.

Clint Eastwood, Halle Berry, James Cameron, Robert Redford, George Clooney, Hillary Swank, Charlie Chaplin, Tom Hanks, Charlize Theron, and Julia Roberts have all won Academy Awards, but not one of them possess a college degree.

Astronaut and Senator John Glenn dropped out of college to join the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Never earned a degree.

United States President George Washington. No college degree.

President Abraham Lincoln. No college degree.

Need more proof?

How about the most important of all?

Walt Disney never went to college.

In fact, Walter Elias Disney was a high school dropout.

He quit high school to join the Red Cross during the first World War, leaving to France when he was only 16 years old.

Walt Disney never went back to school.

Curriculum Vitae

Herein lies an extended listing of various skills I have acquired over the years and where I developed them. Again, as with the rest of this book, the intent is not to brag about my own experiences, but rather, to help readers to understand not merely my skillsets, but the “how” and “why” behind my developing those skills. That way, you can consider your own ambitions and discover how you might develop the capabilities you seek to learn. What are you learning? Where will it lead you? How will the skills you gain today, benefit you tomorrow?

PUBLICATIONS:

How You Can Get a Job at Walt Disney Studios

(Without a College Degree)

January 2013

www.HowYouCanGetAJobAtDisney.com

This book you're reading right now is a 140,000 word vocational autobiography intended to inspire and encourage readers to pursue their passions in life. Unlike most books which tell of “success stories” this one gives readers a step-by-step explanation of how everything came together, in the hope that it can give readers a clearer understanding of their own paths. Thanks to the Schooling Your Boss to Not Suck project, I already knew how to make an ebook for this publication.

Annwn's Maelstrom Festival

Concluding Volume of the Vampire Noctuaries

January 2013

www.AnnwnsMaelstromFestival.com

The 90,000 word sequel to my first novel which was published in 1997 and entitled The Gothic Rainbow. When my first novel was conceived, I had already attempted to write a few novels and always got “stuck” and had no idea where to go next. The Vampire Noctuaries are the first books I outlined before I began. Realizing the book would be too massive as a singular story, I decided to split it into two volumes. Annwn's Maelstrom Festival completes the tale and picks up where The Gothic Rainbow finished. The book was the first novel I composed entirely on a laptop computer. Over the years, I really enjoyed the tactile pleasure of putting pen to paper and writing by hand. Learning to get into a creative mindset via typing took awhile, but the benefits were worth it - namely, I didn't have to retype it all! Publishing the original book in the series, The Gothic Rainbow, helped me to have all the knowledge on how to do this one.

Forever Loving You

January 2013

www.Forever-Loving-You.com

Written from 1993 to 1997, the 14,000 word book Forever Loving You is a tongue-in-cheek title for a series of lovepoems inspired by a wide array of people. The original intention was to publish the book under the title In This Harsh World... Draw Thy Breath In Pain and to release it shortly after The Gothic Rainbow was published. That never happened. Fifteen years later, it was finally released with the new title.

The Skateboarder's Journal - Lives on Board (Anthology)

“Origins” (Short Story)

January 2010

Contributed a tale to the 325-page anthology by Jack Smith, featuring stories from scores of skateboarders and chronicling the history of the sport. With an introduction by world champion skateboarder Stacy Peralta, the stories are real-life experiences of skateboarders from all over the world. The concept behind the project was to create a history of skateboarding from the point of view of average people, instead of professional skaters or the skateboarding industry. The story I wrote was based upon my first experiences with skating and what aspects of skateboarding had the most profound influence upon me. The opportunity arose after Jack Smith spotted an essay I had posted on a skateboarding forum and he approached me to see if I'd care to contribute to his project.

Schooling Your Boss To Not Suck

March 2011

www.SchoolingYourBossToNotSuck.com

This is a business/human resources book authored in the winter of 2011. Schooling Your Boss To Not Suck is very short (only about 22,000 words) but it gave me the chance to learn self-publishing technology on Amazon and Lulu. The book was converted by hand to the two most popular eBook formats. Programmed an .EPUB file using XHTML and CSS. The resulting .EPUB file was then quadruple-validated against FlightCrew 0.7.1, Sigil, epubcheck 1.2 and epubpreflight 0.1.0 to check for errors. Used KindleGen 1.2 to covert the valid .EPUB into a .MOBI version to be used on Amazon as a Kindle book. For the PHP website itself, it utilizes my own highly-effective SEO methodologies I've developed over the years. The cover art for Schooling Your Boss To Not Suck was crafted by me in Photoshop and as vector art in Freehand. All design and layout for the website and marketing materials were also my creation and done using Photoshop.

Gothic Beauty Magazine (Issue #10)

Fall 2003

Three-page photography spread featuring models Donna Ricci and her husband Jozua Watts. The photos were taken near the Walt Disney Concert Hall, in the bellydance-themed livingroom of one of her friends, and at a ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles, not long after I moved to California. Donna was a person I met while promoting The Gothic Rainbow on the Internet. Discovering her online portfolio of gothic/alternative modeling, I sent her an email and we began to correspond. We had known each other for about 6 years when we shot these images. She knew the publishers of Gothic Beauty, so we did the photoshoot and our images were published soon thereafter.

Dark Realms Magazine (Issue #2)

Spring 2001

Founded by Cleveland artist Joseph Vargo, I met him while out at an event promoting my novel. A local nightclub was having a “grave” - a gothic rave. Get it? (g)rave? There were multiple vendors set up at the grave - artists, clothing companies, and so forth. I attended to promote The Gothic Rainbow. Joseph saw my fliers and digital artwork and was impressed. Thus, I was interviewed in his Dark Realms Magazine for my work in digital photography and art showings.

Tales From The Dark Tower (Anthology)

“Born Of The Night” (Short Story)

February 2000

A gothic romance anthology based upon artwork by Joseph Vargo, I was one of less than a dozen featured authors. My particular story was inspired by the piece Born Of The Night - one of the most well-known of Mr. Vargo's paintings. All the writers created stories around a central character named Brom and his experiences in an ancient haunted castle, known simply as the Dark Tower. The book is available online and published by Monolith Graphics. By the time the book came out, I had already been friends with Joseph for about 3 years, so he simply called me and asked if I'd like to participate.

Outburn Magazine (Issue #9)

Spring 1999

Outburn is a magazine I became acquainted with after sending them promotional copies of The Gothic Rainbow. For this issue, I did an interview with an underground Cleveland band called Bath. I knew the band because they were involved in the Cleveland club scene, just like me, and I became friends with them that way.

Outburn Magazine (Issue #8)

Winter 1999

Interviewed an underground gothic band called The Machine In The Garden, which happened again as a result of promoting The Gothic Rainbow. Discovering the website of the lead singer, I emailed her and we became acquaintances and kept in touch for a number of years. When Outburn was looking for more content, I suggested an interview with The Machine In The Garden and it went from there.

Outburn Magazine (Issue #4)

Summer 1997

When I first approached Outburn, they were not interested in writing a review of my book. They said they were a music magazine and didn't do book reviews. I explained that I had references to over 180 songs in music which fit the genre of the magazine, so it might be of interest to them. I was thrilled to discover that after the editor read my book, not only did she want to do a full 2-page interview with me, she actually started to carry the book in their music and back issue catalog. That is how I ended up being interviewed for my novel The Gothic Rainbow in Outburn Magazine.

IndustrialnatioN Magazine (Issue #5 - Issue #9)

1996 - 1997

After getting to know the editors of IndustrialnatioN by sending them a promotional copy of The Gothic Rainbow and placing advertisements in their concert programs, I began to write a recurring article on the Cleveland underground nightclub and concert scene. Being so heavily involved in that scene, I knew every club and every concert venue and attended pretty much every show and alternative dance night the city had to offer.

The Gothic Rainbow

Beginning Volume of the Vampire Noctuaries

January 1996

www.TheGothicRainbow.com

My first novel was published in 1997 and took about 3 years for me to complete. The story began as a project for an invitation-only Honors English course I took in the summer of 1991 at Cuyahoga Community College in Parma, Ohio. The entire book was written by hand with pen and paper, then retyped into an electronic word processor - not even into a computer - a word processor with a 3.5” floppy drive and a LCD screen. Took me approximately 3 weeks of working for 12 to 16 hours a day to retype it. The Gothic Rainbow is a 190,000 word story set in a dark, faeriepunk version of the 20th Century underground nightclub scene. The tale tells the journey of a young male vampire and his relationship with a teenage mortal girl, Helle. Thinking he is only a spirit that communicates with her in dreams and rituals, Helle slowly comes to discover that he is very real and will change everything in her life forever.

PROJECTS:

Skateboarding California (YouTube Channel)

February 2010

www.SkateboardingCalifornia.com

After making my Learn To Ride A Skateboard video project, there were additional skateboarding topics I wanted to cover which didn't fall into the “educational” category. Shot and edited entirely in HD 1080p, Skateboarding California captures skateboarding with long takes, no fast edits; wide angles, no fish eye lenses; and absolutely no cliche background music. Those are the three guiding principals behind the “look” of the show and the catalyst for bringing Skateboarding California to life. Audio was recorded with Azden WR-PRO wireless microphones. All video was shot on HD cameras using AVCHD compression at about 17Mbps VBR. Additional footage was shot at 1080p using the GoPro HD Hero and the GoPro HD Hero2. The clips were then converted to Apple ProRes and edited in Final Cut Pro. All DVD and Internet encoding was done with Compressor and authoring was done with DVD Studio Pro. All graphics and design from the website to the video content was done in Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. The website itself is built upon PHP and CSS3 featuring a backend constructed on a MySQL database, administered via phpMyAdmin for updates. I have written, directed, edited and conceptualized every single episode of the show which has over 370,000 views on YouTube. This brings my total YouTube views for my skateboarding projects to well over 1.5 million.

California Girls Skateboards

April 2009

www.CaliforniaGirlsSkateboards.com

California Girls Skateboards is a project I began in the spring of 2009. They are skateboards which feature photographs of swimwear models as graphics. I thought it would be a lot of fun to combine my years of experience with photography with my love of skateboarding. The question of “what kind of photographs?” was answered rather quickly. Living in California. Skateboarding at the beach. The answer soon became self-evident. Every model was hired and photographed by me. The entire website was completely designed and programmed by myself in PHP. Using phpMyAdmin, I conceived and engineered the MySQL database which contains all the information for the individual skateboards. In addition to the PHP scripting, the site also has a strong foundation in HTML, CSS and JavaScript technology. I single-handed wrote all text on the website and scripting in the promotional videos. All of the graphic design and layout for the skateboards, merchandise and website were created by me in Photoshop. Audio was recorded with Azden WR-PRO wireless microphones. Most video was shot on SD cameras using MPEG compression at about 8.5Mbps CBR while newer models were shot with HD cameras using AVCHD compression at about 17Mbps VBR. The clips were then converted to ProRes with MPEG Streamclip or Compressor and edited in Final Cut Pro. The promotional videos for the boards have over 240,000 views on YouTube. This brings my total YouTube views to well over 1.5 million.

Learn To Ride A Skateboard (DVD)

April 2007

www.LearnToRideASkateboard.com

Learn To Ride A Skateboard is a DVD video project I created in the summer of 2007. After researching what was available, so I could improve what was out there, I enlisted the assistance of Holly Lyons, who was ranked the Top Female Bowl Skater in the World at the time we shot the video. The video also features Madylin, Sawyer and Sullivan Sweeten, the real-life siblings who played siblings on the Everybody Loves Raymond television show. The website allowed me to convert my ASP knowledge to PHP scripting equivalents, using HTML and PHP variables to control the loading of YouTube clips and SEO optimization. The entire video project is also available as a DVD download which required splitting and using FTP to upload a large .ISO file which can be automatically restored using WinZip or StuffIt, depending upon your home computer. All of the motion graphics in the video were designed and rendered by myself. The artwork and layout of the DVD cover was also my responsibility, choosing the color scheme, fonts, layout and finalizing the design. Audio was recorded with Azden WR-PRO wireless microphones. All video was shot on SD cameras using MPEG compression at about 8.5Mbps CBR. The clips were then converted to DV with MPEG Streamclip and edited in Final Cut Pro. All DVD encoding was done with Compressor and authoring was done with DVD Studio Pro. The DVD is available for purchase as well, through sites like CreateSpace which is a division of Amazon. The accompanying YouTube channel has over 1,000,000 video views - the equivalent of filling the gargantuan Los Angeles Coliseum ten-times over. This brings my total YouTube views to well over 1.5 million.

The Unseelie Court (Short Film)

March 2002

When I wrote, edited, produced and directed The Unseelie Court in the spring of 2002, the body of the film was shot over 3 nights from 7pm to 7am at a bar in Downtown Cleveland. The film was screened at multiple film festivals and nominated for an Innovation Award at the 2002 Ohio Independent Film Festival. Running about 30 minutes long, The Unseelie Court is a short film with a plot, very much in the tradition of an old Twilight Zone episode. The story takes place in one evening, during a thunderstorm, at a mysterious pub called Storytellers Tavern where patrons come to hear strange and unusual tales. Vivian, a regular at Storytellers, comes in without any concern for the storm. Initially, she is disappointed; the place is so deserted, Vivian imagines she has no chance of hearing a good tale tonight. But, there may be an interesting story waiting in the shadows after all.

VOULENTEER WORK:

Habitat For Humanity

Disney VolunteEARs

Brooklyn Memorial Youth Center

Venice Surf & Skateboard Association

EMPLOYERS:

The Walt Disney Company

April 2006 to November 2012

Web Developer

As the single largest entertainment company in the history of the world, The Walt Disney Company needs no introduction. Spending more than 6 years at the studio, I did a huge array of different tasks. For the Walt Disney Internet Group, I did streaming media encoding for multiple business units including D23 and Walt Disney Family Museum. Had the responsibility of being the first official and exclusive photographer to document biannual corporate meetings at Disney Interactive. Also contributed my video editing and animation skills to video productions for those meetings. Coded in PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash and XML for websites ranging from The Disney Channel to Hollywood Records to Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment and more. Utilized a proprietary Disney CMS (GoPublish) for template updates and did alterations to graphics in Photoshop. Became fluent in both agile and waterfall methodologies, Sharepoint, Teamsite, Beyond Compare, JIRA, and Perforce. Outside of work I did numerous volunteer jobs on the weekends with Disney VoluntEARS. Taught classes to fellow Cast Members on topics like longboarding, bicycle maintenance, photography and HTML for the educational Disney Interactive Media Group Insight Series. In my freetime, I built an internal application which allowed random Cast Members to sign up and have lunch together - a way to assist the social interaction in our huge organization. The Communications Department requested that I build an internal website which I constructed from scratch using PHP and MySQL with a custom CMS that I built, using phpMyAdmin to change data. Some divisions of Disney which I developed websites for are:

• Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment

• Walt Disney Family Museum

• Disney Movies Online

• Walt Disney Studios

• Walt Disney Records

• El Capitan Theatre

• Disney Publishing

• Hollywood Records

• Disney Corporate

• Disney Channel

• Radio Disney

• Disney Home

• Disney XD

• ABC

• D23

American Idol Underground

July 2005 to February 2006

Deployment Engineer

American Idol Underground was the “online version” of the American Idol television show. I was exclusively in charge of deploying C# builds of the site to our live web servers and general web development using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a Visual Studio .NET environment. Developed highly successful SEO implementation for entire domain. Wrote JavaScript validation code for membership forms and maintained data integrity and file transfers for customer-uploaded media. Used my video knowledge to shoot and edited videos for $100,000 launch party using Final Cut Pro and Photoshop for all the graphics treatments and 2D animations. All DVD encoding was done with Compressor and authoring was done with DVD Studio Pro.

Weider Publications

March 2005 to June 2005

Creative Producer

Weider Publications is a sister company of American Media Inc., one of the largest magazine publishing houses in the world. Our titles included fitness magazines such as Flex, Muscle & Fitness, Shape, and Men's Fitness plus, tabloids such as Star and National Enquirer. During my tenure, I was responsible for daily changes to graphics with Photoshop and for new designs and HTML layouts for over a dozen publications, including the redesign of the American Media Inc. corporate site. That summer, I single-handedly created all the graphic design and programming for the new Mister & Miss Olympia Fitness Competition website for 2005.

4Wheel Parts

December 2004 to March 2005

Lead Internet Designer

4 Wheel Parts is the largest distributor of aftermarket truck accessories in the world. As the lead graphic designer, the sole designer actually, in their Internet Department, I mainly did artistic work, but also designed and programmed the ASP website for the wholesale division of the corporation (the wholesale division alone generates approximately $60 million a year). Among my responsibilities, I designed a way to modify an online .PDF catalog to integrate into website sales and managed graphic additions to the online catalog. I was responsible for creating weekly e-mail advertising campaigns which generated anywhere from $30,000 to more than $100,000 in sales each weekend. The photographs used in all of the advertisements were stock photographs or images that I personally shot, from my own collection of photos I had archived over the years.

Printing Company

October 2004 to December 2004

Internet Application Developer

Built an ASP website in VBScript for a Chatsworth, California printing company. I did all of the design, layout and programming including a great deal of JavaScript communicating with an iframe and sending data back and forth through a parent/child relationship between the main page and said iframe. The site also required the integration of an API from UPS, in order to calculate the shipping costs of various order configurations. All the data was stored in a simple Microsoft Access database. Knowing it would be a low traffic site, there was no reason to use a full SQL database as the Microsoft Access one could handle 100 simultaneous connections.

Pacific Elementary School

September 2004 to October 2004

Animation Instructor

Taught basic handdrawn animation skills to gradeschool students. While I would show them some concepts on a laptop computer, I would then have them use traditional pencils and notebooks to make little flipbook drawings. The class consisted of about 10 to 15 students and was a great introduction to the diplomacy and nuance required to keep 9 year old boys and girls disciplined and engaged during an afterschool extracurricular activity.

ODVD Games

October 2003 to April 2004

Digital Artist/Game Designer

Hired as the fourth employee and designed and created a majority of the graphical aspects of world's first DVD movie trivia game including writing and digital design. Authored testing DVD-R's using DVD Studio Pro. Created 2D animations from Photoshop files in Final Cut Pro. Headed and invented the most visually complicated round of gameplay entitled “Still Crazies” which involved digitally removing and reanimating elements into the stillframes from famous motion pictures. Designed print materials with InDesign including brochures, and business cards. Additionally, I used Photoshop to create the corporate promotional website.

American Splendor

November 2001 to December 2001

Production Assistant To Cast

Credited as a “Production Assistant To Cast”, I was in charge of driving the 30-foot motorhome trailer for Hope Davis. That was my job on the whole show - driving that thing through the treacherous streets of a snowy Cleveland winter.

PRWebcast (later “Webcast Group Inc.”)

March 2000 to October 2001

Creative Director/General Manager

Promoted from Creative Director to General Manager in 9 months. In charge of marketing, design and corporate identity for entire company. Responsibilities included designing print advertising, logo design, promotional materials, tradeshow booth displays and so forth. Programmed complex ASP website which allowed users to access, post, and retrieve data while tied into a database through any web browser. Specialized in webcasting streaming media and live video content delivery over the Internet. Keep in mind, this was in 2000 when most people still had dial-up 56K Internet connections. Also did video editing, encoding, and purchased studio equipment. Managed, hired, and coordinated efforts of all members of the creative design team. Was responsible to manage a team of programmers, graphic artists and webcasting videography personnel.

ACME Express

July 1998 to March 2000

Web Programmer/Graphic Designer

Head designer for all websites, creating the “look and feel” of sites ranging from e-commerce sites to the Cleveland Public Schools to the Cleveland Ballet. Honed skills in hand-coding HTML using VisualInterDev. Created conceptual art for website designs using Photoshop. Designed print advertisements and tradeshow booth graphics. Programmed websites using ASP and VBScript on a SQL server. My programming knowledge I harnessed in these 2 years helped me to be offered the job at PRWebcast. Twelve years after leaving the ACME Express, 20% of their portfolio still continues to showcase my design work.

The Rogers Company

January 1998 to July 1998

Graphic Designer/Database Coordinator

Single-handedly developed and created the use of a digital archive system, using a Macintosh database and digital photography, to organize thousands of physical graphics stored in the company warehouse. Graphic designer of artwork for tradeshow displays of major international corporations such as Ernst & Young, Rubbermaid and Stouffers. Used vinyl plotter machines to cut large graphic displays on translights and foamcore or whatever other materials required the imaging. The website I built to explain the usage of the database helped to get me the job at ACME Express.

KSK Color Lab

March 1997 to January 1998

Digital Output Specialist

Head of image scanning department using a Macintosh-based drum-scanner and a Kodak Photo CD system. Responsible for all scanning and resolution conversions for high-resolution projects. Large format printing output using inkjet, dye sublimation and electrostatic printers. Spent a great deal of time color-correcting and matching output to proofs for color accuracy. Worked for clients such as Rubbermaid, Little Tikes, Nestle and printed adhesive fleet graphics for city vehicles. Processed jobs using Quark X Press, Pagemaker, Illustrator and Photoshop. Photographic retouching for a variety of digital output requirements. My knowledge of printing machines helped to land my job at The Rogers Company.

MotoPhoto

August 1996 to March 1997

Photographic Printer

Ran the photo processing lab working with traditional 35mm film and photochemical processing of prints and negatives. Did a lot of color correcting on tens of thousands of photographs, interacted with customers in a retail mall environment, and kept the store in order. My experience here helped me to land the job at KSK Color Lab. My desire to self-publish my book, The Gothic Rainbow, impressed the entrepreneurial owner of MotoPhoto and I was hired in part because of that ambition.

Glamour Shots

May 1996

Photographer

Hired as a photographer but never had the chance to do any photography. Instead, I was expected to harangue mall customers into entering our store. Waste of time. Horrible job.

Double Dragon

June 1993 to July 1993

Stand In

Was a stand-in for actor and stunt coordinator Jeff Imada. Learned a massive amount about the movie industry such as; call times are more like “suggestions”; stand-ins are thankfully regarded as crew; the AD works harder than the director; when a lead actress flirts with you, don't let her get away; and finally, if you're a lowly extra, you'd better keep your greasy paws away from craft services.

American Greetings

February 1993 to April 2000

Freelance Author/Graphic Designer

Design artist and composition for “Create-A-Card” division. Used Photoshop to redesign and create new greeting card layouts for digital distribution to kiosks. Creative consultant on “Body Wars” line of toys. Invented character personalities and costumes for line of action figures. Being appreciated for my creativity in this job helped impress the hiring manager at KSK Color Lab.

Electrolux

July 1992 to December 1992

Salesman

Sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door more than 50 years after anyone stopped selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door. Other than learning I was not a good door-to-door salesman, the biggest lesson I learned on this job was that working is not always better than unemployment.

Neodata

July 1992

Telemarketer

Did training for telemarketing then quit. On this job, I learned that I hate beige-brick office complexes, gray cubicles, fluorescent lighting, windows that don't open, swivel chairs, overhead projectors, and white foam ceiling tile.

Our Lady of Good Counsel

May 1992 to June 1992

Janitor

In time, the position would be called a “sanitation worker” instead of a “garbage man” but that's a big fat lie. There's no “sanitation” involved in burning garbage in an incinerator. I was a janitor and a garbage man. Period. I cleaned windows, school desks, and prepared rooms for floor wax until I unknowingly scuffed the hardwood and was dismissed. Being the janitor of my Catholic gradeschool was the one and only job I was ever fired from. Thank God. (The question is, am I thankful that is the only job I was fired from, or am I thankful for being fired from that particular job? I leave that to the reader to decide...)

Brooklyn Memorial Youth Center

March 1992 to May 1992

English Tutor

Taught troubled teens in English. Being near their age, hopefully, I connected with them and made a difference and had a positive influence on their lives. Who knows?

United States Air Force

April 1991 to September 1991

Enlisted Airman

Signed up to be an Airman. Discovered I had amazingly good hearing and only average eyesight, so I couldn't be a pilot. Never shipped out to Basic.

COX Cable

February 1990 to February 1992

Telemarketing/Quality Assurance

Spent a few weeks attempting to sell cable television subscriptions to strangers and doing horribly at it. Spent the next two years doing telephone quality assurance surveys for existing customers to assure their service was running smoothly. Did really well at that one.

Roadway Package Systems

One Night in the Winter of 1989

Unloader

Unloaded 4 packed semitrucks in 4 hours. Never again. The only thing that job taught me was that I need to workout. The idea that physical labor is “easier” when you're a teenager is a lie. If you're not working out, unloading a full semitruck is never “easy” no matter what your age.

General Cinema Corporation

August 1988 to March 1989

Usher

Hired among the first crewmembers at the new flagship cinema at Ridge Park Square in Brooklyn, Ohio. The only job I never did was sell tickets. Other than that, I did everything. I tore tickets. I was an usher. I made popcorn. I worked the concession stand. Whatever was required, I helped make it happen.

White Castle

January 1987 to March 1987

Floor Staff

Also hired as part of the very first crew in the very first White Castle in Cleveland, Ohio. I bussed tables. I took orders at the front counter. I took orders at the drive-thru. I cooked hamburgers. I cooked french fries. I reconstituted onions. I took out the garbage. I did whatever needed to be done, including directing traffic in the parking lot where zealous slobs would nearly run me over.

The Cleveland Press

October 1981 to June 1982

Paperboy

Delivered 10,000 papers a day, through snow 47 feet deep, on sweltering August days, with 134 degree heat, uphill the whole way, in a Louisiana swamp. Even a paperroute can be an adventure, it all depends on how you choose to remember it.

35mm FILM & DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY:

PHOTOGRAPHER:

• State Of Being - Virtual Addiction CD Cover - 1994

• 2nd Annual Organ Grinders Ball Fetish Fashion Show for Chain Link Addiction, March 1997

• 3rd Annual Organ Grinders Ball Fetish Fashion Show for Chain Link Addiction, March 1998

• Cloud 9 - Promotional Photography Hang Gliding School, 1998

• Pepper Acton - Marrow CD Cover - (unpublished) - 1998

• Fetish Playland Fashion Show for Chain Link Addiction, October 1999

• Torrent Streaming Media Appliance - Product Shots StarBak Communications, 2000

• Look For The Woman - Promotional Photography Independent Film - Plato's Cave Pictures, 2000

• All Hands Meeting - Disney Interactive Media Group, 2009

• California Girls Skateboards - Product Shots, 2009

• TRON: Legacy - Preview Screening Disney Interactive Media Group, 2010

• All Hands Meeting - Disney Interactive Media Group, 2010

• All Hands Meeting - Disney Interactive Media Group, 2011

• All Hands Meeting - Disney Interactive Media Group, 2012

PHOTOGRAPHY MODELS:

Kathryn Barnes

Pepper Acton

Erin Ritchie

Jenn LeBlanc

Michelle LaRock

Adrianne Ambrose

Sarah Hilker

April Bodig

Sheryl Hemlock

Lisa Novak

Thomasina Castillio

Leah Hutchinson

Victoria Vertuga

Catalina Cruz

Xanthia Pink

Cali Ford

Shiva Sharifi

Brandy Bayless

Morrigan Hel

Michelle Villa

Donna Fripp

Molly Kalejs

Katie Kalejs

Erin Brutvan

Dave Chercourt

Lydia DeLaCruz

Natalie Ditinger

Kimberly Rocco-Shields

Evan Ford

Carrie Konyha

Angelina Kuhn

John Rossi

Tim Smith

Val Stoneking

Sandy Suran

Larry Szyms

Sara Maraffino

Leah Estella

Gwendolyn Sweet

Michelle Tomniczak

Tiara Lanai

Katie Lohmann

Deanna Webb

Alana Curry

Nerlande Daniel

Enyta Romo

Sherri Snyder

Stacy Smith

Courtney Watkins

Pamela Mars

and many more...

ART GALLERY SHOWINGS:

The Realm - Cleveland, Ohio (14 Pieces) November 1997

Spaces Art Gallery - Cleveland, Ohio (32 Pieces) May 2001

SOHO Gallery - Studio City, California (8 Pieces) December 2004

Ultrastar Gallery - Hollywood, California (4 Pieces) December 2004

Lightspace - Los Angeles, California (4 Pieces) June 2005

PHOTOSHOOT LOCATIONS:

Cleveland/Northeast, Ohio

Saline, Michigan

Detroit, Michigan

Webberville, Michigan

Niagara Falls, Canada

Toronto, Canada

San Francisco, California

Los Angeles, California

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY:

Offering over 20 years of experience in wide ranging skills for web design/development, video/graphics/photo integration, programming, coding and proactive technical leadership. Track record of exceeding expectations through the conceptualization, design, development, and implementation of multi-sized projects. Skillfully synthesized an artistic background, business acumen, emerging and established technologies to achieve high-level functionality as specified by corporate or client requirements. Numerous technical proficiencies, recognized subject matter expertise and quick learner. Results-achieving team leader and collaborator, reputable for routinely delivering high-quality projects well within set deadlines.

SOFTWARE:

Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Flash Video Encoder

After Effects

AOL Press

Beyond Compare

Commodore Amiga OS

Compressor

CVS

Dreamweaver

DVD Studio Pro

EmEditor

epubcheck

epubpreflight

Final Cut Pro

FlightCrew

Font Lab

Fontographer

FreeHand

GoPublish (Disney Proprietary)

Illustrator

InDesign

JIRA

KindleGen

Macintosh OS9 / OSX

Media Cleaner Pro

Microsoft Office Suite

Microsoft Windows 98/2000/XP Professional/7

MPEG Streamclip

NewTek Video Flyer

NewTek Video Toaster

Open Office

Perforce

Photoshop

phpMyAdmin

QuarkXPress

QuickTime

Sharepoint

Sigil

StuffIt

Subversion

Teamsite

Ultimatte

VisualInterDev

WAMP Server

Web Browser - Chrome

Web Browser - Chromium

Web Browser - Firefox

Web Browser - Internet Explorer

Web Browser - Opera

Windows Media Encoder

WinZip

INTERNET LANGUAGES & TECHNOLOGIES:

AJAX

ASP

CMS (Content Management Systems)

CSS

CSS3

EPUB (eBook format)

Firebug

HTML

HTML5

JavaScript

jQuery

MOBI (eBook format)

MySQL

NCX (eBook format)

OPF (eBook format)

PHP

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SQLServer

TEA (Disney Proprietary)

VBScript

XHTML

XML

MOTION PICTURE EXPERIENCE:

DIRECTOR:

• Skateboarding California (43 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2009 - 2012

• Learn To Ride A Skateboard - DVD Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2007

• David Wittkowsky Farewell Gala Cleveland Film Society, 2001

• makebelieve - Webcast Talk Show (14 Episodes) Webcast Group Inc., 2000 - 2001

• 100% Digital Live Remote Internet Broadcasts (12 Episodes) Webcast Group Inc., 2000 - 2001

• Shellsongs - Music Video Program (17 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 1996 - 2001

• 1st Annual Organ Grinders Ball - Fashion Show Chain Link Addiction, 1996

• Virtual Addiction - Music Video - State of Being, 1995

• Couldn't Know - Music Video - Pepper Acton, 1995

• Greg Bandy's “Night Of The Cookers” - Live Jazz Concert Cuyahoga Community College, 1994

• Chanda Busselle - Modeling Portfolio, 1994

• Huntington National Bank - Corporate Presentation, 1994

• Disconnected - Music Video - Jehovah Waitresses, 1994

• Sleep/Savior - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Gemini - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Domonot - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Waterfall - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

EDITOR:

• Skateboarding California (43 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2009 - 2012

• Learn To Ride A Skateboard - DVD Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2007

• Losing Hope - Feature Film Epic Films/Stone Kap Productions, 2001

• F(r)iends - Short Film - Stone Kap Productions, 2001

• The Dance - Bellydance Instructional Video Whole Life Resources, 2001

• 100% Digital Live Remote Internet Broadcasts (12 Episodes) Webcast Group Inc., 2000 - 2001

• makebelieve - Webcast Talk Show (14 Episodes) Webcast Group Inc., 2000 - 2001

• Annual Investors Meeting StarBak Communications, 2000

• Shellsongs - Music Video Program (17 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 1996 - 2001

• 1st Annual Organ Grinders Ball - Fashion Show Chain Link Addiction, 1996

• Promotional Sizzle Reel Music Video Jevan Records, 1995

• Virtual Addiction - Music Video - State of Being, 1995

• Couldn't Know - Music Video - Pepper Acton, 1995

• Greg Bandy's “Night Of The Cookers” - Live Jazz Concert Cuyahoga Community College, 1994

• Chanda Busselle - Modeling Portfolio, 1994

• Huntington National Bank - Corporate Presentation, 1994

• Disconnected - Music Video - Jehovah Waitresses, 1994

• Sleep/Savior - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Gemini - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Domonot - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Waterfall - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

PRODUCER:

• Skateboarding California (43 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2009 - 2012

• Learn To Ride A Skateboard - DVD Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2007

• makebelieve - Webcast Talk Show (14 Episodes) Webcast Group Inc., 2000 - 2001

• 100% Digital Live Remote Internet Broadcasts (12 Episodes) Webcast Group Inc., 2000 - 2001

• Shellsongs - Music Video Program (17 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 1996 - 2001

• 1st Annual Organ Grinders Ball - Fashion Show Chain Link Addiction, 1996

• Virtual Addiction - Music Video - State of Being, 1995

• Couldn't Know - Music Video - Pepper Acton, 1995

• Sleep/Savior - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Gemini - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Domonot - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Waterfall - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

HOSTING/ON-CAMERA TALENT:

• Skateboarding California (43 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2009 - 2012

• Learn To Ride A Skateboard - DVD Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2007

• makebelieve - Webcast Talk Show (14 Episodes) Webcast Group Inc., 2000 - 2001

• Shellsongs - Music Video Program (17 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 1996 - 2001

GAFFER:

• Skateboarding California (43 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2009 - 2012

• Learn To Ride A Skateboard - DVD Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2007

• makebelieve - Webcast Talk Show (14 Episodes) Webcast Group Inc., 2000 - 2001

• 100% Digital Live Remote Internet Broadcasts (12 Episodes) Webcast Group Inc., 2000 - 2001

• The Dance - Bellydance Instructional Video Whole Life Resources, 2001

• Shellsongs - Music Video Program (17 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 1996 - 2001

• 1st Annual Organ Grinders Ball - Fashion Show Chain Link Addiction, 1996

• Virtual Addiction - Music Video - State of Being, 1995

• Couldn't Know - Music Video - Pepper Acton, 1995

• Sleep/Savior - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Gemini - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Domonot - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Waterfall - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

STAND IN:

Double Dragon - Feature Film - Imperial Entertainment, 1993

PRODUCTION ASSISTANT:

American Splendor - Feature Film - Good Machine/HBO Films, 2001

ACTOR:

CL.ONE - Feature Film - Spectrum Warrior - Quantus Pictures, 2001

CO-PRODUCER:

F(r)iends - Short Film - Stone Kap Productions, 2001

GLIDECAM/STEADICAM JUNIOR OPERATOR:

• How-to-Make-a-Hollywood-Caliber-Movie-on-a-Budget-of-Next-to-Nothing - Quantus Pictures, 2003

• Behind The Scenes of CL.ONE - Quantus Pictures, 2001

• The Dance - Bellydance Instructional Video Whole Life Resources, 2001

• Shellsongs - Music Video Program (17 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 1996 - 2001

• 1st Annual Organ Grinders Ball - Fashion Show Chain Link Addiction, 1996

• Virtual Addiction - Music Video - State of Being, 1995

• Couldn't Know - Music Video - Pepper Acton, 1995

• Disconnected - Music Video - Jehovah Waitresses, 1994

• Greg Bandy's “Night Of The Cookers” - Live Jazz Concert Cuyahoga Community College, 1994

• Chanda Busselle - Modeling Portfolio, 1994

• Huntington National Bank - Corporate Presentation, 1994

• Sleep/Savior - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Gemini - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Domonot - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Waterfall - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

CINEMATOGRAPHER:

• Skateboarding California (43 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2009 - 2012

• Learn To Ride A Skateboard - DVD Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 2007

• How-to-Make-a-Hollywood-Caliber-Movie-on-a-Budget-of-Next-to-Nothing - Quantus Pictures, 2003

• 100% Digital Live Remote Internet Broadcasts (12 Episodes) Webcast Group Inc., 2000 - 2001

• makebelieve - Webcast Talk Show (14 Episodes) Webcast Group Inc., 2000 - 2001

• The Dance - Bellydance Instructional Video Whole Life Resources, 2001

• David Wittkowsky Farewell Gala Cleveland Film Society, 2001

• Shellsongs - Music Video Program (17 Episodes) Dreamdancer Motion Pictures, 1996 - 2001

• Behind The Scenes of CL.ONE - Quantus Pictures, 2001

• Behind The Scenes of A.R.E. Truck Cap Commercial Stone Kap Productions, 2001

• 1st Annual Organ Grinders Ball - Fashion Show Chain Link Addiction, 1996

• Virtual Addiction - Music Video - State of Being, 1995

• Couldn't Know - Music Video - Pepper Acton, 1995

• Disconnected - Music Video - Jehovah Waitresses, 1994

• Greg Bandy's “Night Of The Cookers” - Live Jazz Concert Cuyahoga Community College, 1994

• Chanda Busselle - Modeling Portfolio, 1994

• Huntington National Bank - Corporate Presentation, 1994

• Sleep/Savior - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Gemini - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Domonot - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

• Waterfall - Music Video - Pipe Choir, 1994

VIDEO & PHOTOGRAPHY HARDWARE:

Azden Wireless Lavaliers

Beachtek Audio Adapters

Behringer Audio Mixers

Canon GL-1

Canon Optura Pi

Canon Rebel DSLR

Canon XL-1

Canon Lenses

Glidecam Pro 2000

GoPro HD Hero

GoPro HD Hero2

Hi8 Format

Joby Gorillapod

JVC GZ-MG505

JVC GZ-MG555

Logitech USB Microphone

Lowel Lighting

Macintosh G4

MacMini

MiniDV Format

NRG Lighting

Oppo BDP-93

Panasonic HDC-TM300K

Panasonic PV-DV-100

SLIK Tripods

S-VHS Format

Steadicam Jr.

VHS Format

Videonics DV Mixers

PERSONAL SKILLS & INTERESTS:

Published Novelist & Short Story Author

Gallery-Exhibited Photographer

Licensed USHGA Hang Glider Pilot - Hang 2 Aerotow

Licensed Motorcyclist (M1)

Skateboarding

Snowboarding

Freestyle BMX

Mountain Biking

Swimming

Equestrian

Telekinesis

Teleportation

(not really - just checking to see if you're still paying attention)

ACADEMIC PREPARATION:

Holy Name High School, Parma Heights, Ohio

1985 - 1989

College Preparatory Diploma

Cuyahoga Community College, Parma Heights, Ohio

1991 - 1992

Coursework

Honors English

Visual Communications

Biography

Raised by the 1940's swingkid generation of his maternal grandparents, Eric Muss-Barnes was born in Cleveland, Ohio. There he spent the first 32 years of his life, before picking up and moving to California, with no job and nowhere to live, in the spring of 2003.

In addition to his professional career endeavors (which you already know all about, since you've read this book) he has written, directed and produced an award-nominated, critically-acclaimed short-film entitled The Unseelie Court, which was screened in numerous film festivals across the country and is available on DVD. His writing has been published in numerous magazines around the world and within multiple anthologies, such as Tales From The Dark Tower and The Skateboarder's Journal - Lives on Board, while his professional photography has been exhibited and sold in art galleries from Ohio to Hollywood. His second book, entitled Schooling Your Boss To Not Suck, regales amusing tales of unfortunate managers at various jobs he's held over the years. Forever Loving You is the tongue-in-cheek title of a book of poetry and axioms he has written. He also wrote an epic vampire duology entitled The Vampire Noctuaries which begins with The Gothic Rainbow and concludes with Annwn's Maelstrom Festival. Please look up the word “duology” if you don't know what it means.

Beyond his artistic endeavors, Eric has been an avid freestyle BMX rider, snowboarder, mountain biker, equestrian, bodyboarder and runs a 5K a few times a week. A certified Hang 2 pilot with an aerotow rating from the United States Hang Gliding Association, and involved in medieval martial arts with the Society for Creative Anachronism, he is also a passionate motorcyclist (Eric doesn't even own a car - he prefers a bike) having organized multiple grouprides in the mountains of Southern California. Eric has remained a fairly diehard skateboarder for decades, riding skateparks and pools all around Los Angeles, creating the revolutionary educational DVD video entitled Learn To Ride A Skateboard with Holly Lyons, who was, at the time, ranked the top woman skateboarder in the world. His various skateboarding videos have accumulated well over one-and-a-half million views on the Internet. Combining two passions, Eric also released a successful line of skateboard decks featuring his photography of bikini models, called California Girls Skateboards.

He believes in the saying, “Scars are tattoos with better stories.”

Much like you, Eric has loved and lost, been in schoolboy fistfights (won and lost some of those too), dragged by horses, dated gorgeous fashion models and rockstar goddesses, dislocated joints and popped them back into place like a Hollywood action hero, built snowforts, suffered multiple “unexpected dismounting experiences” while motorcycling, and suspects coconut milk ice cream is ambrosia.

Wait. You've never been thrown from a horse or gotten off a motorcycle sooner than you had been planning? Oh. Nevermind.

Anyway, he spent his childhood climbing trees, and racing bicycles through the woods, and having broomstick swordfights in friends backyards, and wishing he could visit Disneyland. He seeks to make a positive difference in the world and hopes to leave it a better place than he found it. He's never been interested in cigarettes or drugs and although athletic, he disregards all sports involving “teams” or a “ball” of any sort. Never has Eric had any desire to drink alcohol or politics, and prefers dating fellow-lifelong-straightedge girls without piercings or tattoos (although he once eloped in Vegas at an Elvis Chapel with a lovely MENSA astrophysicist and she was covered in ink).

Eric lives in Los Angeles where he hopes you will commute via bicycle if you move here too, as there's already too much traffic on the 405, even with a motorcycle. He highly doubts any of his books will ever be financially successful or earn him a living, and he's convinced no story he writes will ever be optioned for film rights.

At the time of the initial publication of this book, in January of 2013, Eric was hoping to get rehired at Disney, or perhaps another major studio, rather than meeting the fate of being forced into homelessness and wandering the seedy streets of Los Angeles like a skid row vagabond (presuming those vampire novel film rights never pan out).

Eric gets a kick out of writing about himself in third-person, and hopes you, and everyone you know, enjoyed this tale, so you will buy his other books, thereby assuring he can keep paying his rent.

Books authored by novelist
Eric Muss-Barnes
www.EricMuss-Barnes.com

Voodoo & Loveshadow
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Ever since he was a little boy, Rusty Stratford always believed he was destined for great things. Now, with his 40th birthday fast approaching, Rusty is starting to suspect he might only be destined for mediocre things. A bachelor with few family members and fewer friends, life hasn’t quite panned out the way Rusty hoped it would, and he’s beginning to resign himself to being alone and unimportant.

All that changes the night he meets the precocious ghosts of his unborn twin daughters, Isabeau and Oona. Quickly, he comes to discover the universe is a strange brew of fate and happenstance wherein Isabeau and Oona only have a small window of time during which their spirits can be born. Can the little girls help their father find the woman destined to become their mom? Or will Isabeau and Oona miss their chance to exist?

If you squandered decades of your life awaiting “one true love” who never arrived, if dreaming of an idyllic “soulmate” kept you alive through your darkest hours and they didn’t show up, this magical tale will comfort your heartache of missed chances and abandonment with an empathy like you’ve never known. Voodoo & Loveshadow kindles hope in the loneliest of hearts, assuring when the world has given you up for dead, you may still conjure reasons for life, love and laughter to prevail...

The Gothic Rainbow: Beginning Volume of The Vampire Noctuaries
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Helle Tompkins has reached the end of her days as an outcast, suburban teenager. Ever since her beloved father killed himself, and they released Helle from the mental hospital for trying to join him, she’s been in a place where her pain is far deeper than high school melodrama.

No more hiding behind black lipstick and a mohawk. Now she’s playing with pagan charms, Wiccan rites, and the scrying sorcery of her Ouija board. It’s the perfect distraction until she summons the attention of a charming and sinister faerie prince. A seductive spirit lurking in the shadows of treebranches shimmering upon her walls, he may be something much more horrible than he claims.

Will she succumb to bewitching promises and find salvation in his cruel embrace, or will his own agonizing secrets draw Helle into even deeper heartbreak?

“...The Gothic Rainbow by Eric Muss-Barnes is, frankly, one of the most absorbing novels that I have read in quite some time. ... I’ve found the book well worth my time, and I hope you will give it a shot. ... At the end, I think you will agree that Eric Muss-Barnes will be a name to watch...”
- Christopher T. Miller, Book Stacks Unlimited

“... The Gothic Rainbow gives solace and escape for those who feel trapped in a messed-up world full of heartaches and misunderstandings. There is plenty of sex and violence to stimulate, but it’s the delicate beauty and passionate writing of this novel that will touch your soul ...”
- Octavia, Outburn Magazine

“... if you’ve ever listened to The Cure in the dark, danced to The Dead Milkmen, lost a loved one, hung out with skaters, hated your parents or hated preppies, or if anyone’s ever called you a “freak,” I think you’ll find a little of yourself in this book. Its honest representation of this subculture - from the music to the fashion - is spun throughout the web of fantasy ...”
- Cynthia Conlin, Implosion Magazine

“... it’s quite a page-turner, with lots of shocking vampiric escapades. This book, on the whole, is extremely well-written with a wonderful poetic style. I’m glad I didn’t let the slow start scare me off ...”
-Susan Moon, The Nocturnal Lyric

“... One aspect of the writing that I appreciated is that the author uses different styles of writing throughout this novel. Muss-Barnes excels in his literary descriptions of buildings, character dress, and dreams. ... the choice of words and inflection of mood hit dead on at what I anticipated I would find when I first picked up the book ...”
-Dan O., IndustrialnatioN

“... Eric effectively blends elements from different genres and literary styles in a duet between mortals and Fey. Highly unique, believable characters, and a musical playlist to boot! I found the book compelling and charming (in a twisted way), and would gladly read the book again ...”
- Chelsea, Thistle Magazine

“... I’m utterly mystified that this book worked as well as it did for me. It’s written for readers with a firm grasp of the Goth subculture (I don’t qualify); it doesn’t attempt to have a plot as such; and the vampires are hopelessly larger-than-life, with their expensive cars, outrageous acts of violence, and nonstop scorn for mortals. (In fact, the vampires consider themselves so godlike that pronouns referring to them are capitalized, a typographical idiosyncrasy that I found rather disconcerting.) Perhaps the book’s appeal lies in the sheer honesty of the narrative. ... Self-serving but sincere, The Gothic Rainbow is definitely worth checking out ... I know that’s a strange kind of thumbs-up, but The Gothic Rainbow is a strange kind of book. It’s certainly not for everyone. ... It is a book of dreams and fantasies, power and pain, and bittersweet Goth-flavored wish fulfillment ...”
- Catherine B. Krusberg, Sphere Fantasy Online

Annwn’s Maelstrom Festival: Concluding Volume of The Vampire Noctuaries
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Fetishes claw inside of you. Ones you dare never admit. Desires you could never reveal. Claims of being free of all their taboos has never made you stop fearing your own carnal wants... For none could ever endure your passions and live.

Whips and chains are for prudes.

Fangs. Talons. Blood of full moons. The darkest hungers never die. Tell us the tale of your lusts. Succumb to the story of your deviance.

Or pretend this isn’t you at all. Wonder how far burns the flame, but fear to melt the wax. No matter. We have you eternal. Wondering. Wanting. Trapped with no escape from the blackest scenarios you envision.

Know no remorse. Submit to this dread sensuality.

Mock my every word, for still, this is you.

There is a vampire legend within us all. You have felt it for years. Yearned to hear of it. To read of it. See it in a tangible form. Live it. Hungered. And yet no one has ever even spoken of it. No one has ever given that saga a voice... Until now...

This is the myth of the vampire as you have always dreamed it should be told. The one we have all secretly shared, but never expressed.

Hear how she wants every boy and girl?

The dawn of eternal night has come.

More than 17 years in the making, Annwn’s Maelstrom Festival is the long-awaited conclusion to The Gothic Rainbow. When you thought the shadows could become no darker, Annwn’s Maelstrom Festival: Concluding Volume Of The Vampire Noctuaries takes you further into the tale of Elric and Helle DuBois. Told from Helle’s perspective, the story picks up where The Gothic Rainbow: Beginning Volume of The Vampire Noctuaries ended. We learn the true motives of Camillia, and the mystery of mortals played as Pawns, in centuries-old Killing Games, by the insidious DuBois sisters.

The secrets grow deeper. The passion becomes stronger. The fury knows no limits. There is far more to Elric and Helle than they have ever dreamed. Welcome to Annwn’s Obsidian Sideshow & Maelstrom Festival, where the love of Elric and Helle will cause dominions to fall and tragedy and death be left in their wake.

How You Can Get a Job at Walt Disney Studios Without a College Degree
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Working for Walt Disney is a childhood dream, shared by millions of people, from all across the world. Since the founding of the studios in 1923, only a small fraction of individuals have ever experienced the bliss of making that dream coming true.

After working at the illustrious Studio for more than 6 years, author Eric Muss-Barnes shares his story of how that wish-upon-a-star came true for him, starting from humble beginnings in a bluecollar family in Ohio.

Told with warmth and humor, you learn every job, every experience, every career move he made. Starting from his childhood paper route during Cleveland blizzards, he explains how he journeyed all the way to sitting with Minnie Mouse, as a Cast Member, at the Disney Studio lot, on a warm Summer day.

How You Can Get a Job at Walt Disney Studios Without a College Degree is not merely about landing a job at Disney. Rather, it’s a tale regaling every trial and tribulation which lead Eric to Los Angeles, told in the hopes of inspiring you to continue the pursuit of your own dreams, whatever they may be.

You still have time to make your dream come true too. It’s never too late.

As Jiminy Cricket promised, if your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme...

The Page of Wands
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Legend has it, an ancient walking staff, known as “The Wand”, first presented itself to old widow McCreadle, along with The Three Rules.

1. You may use the magic wand for 3 days.
2. You may only use it in your profession.
3. You must secretly bequeath it to an anonymous stranger.

As the power of The Wand is entrusted from one Los Angeles resident to the next, randomly falling into the hands of noble and corrupt citizens alike, the city is brought to both bliss and ruin. But, when things finally spiral out of control in neighborhoods infested with aliens, dragons, dinosaurs, and superheroes, can a misfit group of townspeople set the world right again, before The Wand must be passed on once more?

Grandpa Steiner Saves the World (from Illegal Aliens (from Space))
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Grandpa Steiner offends everyone. He doesn’t mean to. It just happens. During his youth, his attitudes were commonplace and perfectly acceptable. As the conventions of society change around him, and more and more of his opinions become derided as obsolete, Grandpa Steiner decides to start a blog, to vent his frustrations upon the Internet.

Little does Grandpa Steiner know, when a race of space aliens secretly decide to obliterate mankind, they regard his blog as the only redeeming quality of humanity. Grandpa Steiner inadvertently causes the aliens to reconsider, thereby sparing the world from annihilation.

But when his popular essays cause a media backlash and his family convinces Grandpa Steiner to stop his politically incorrect rants, will the prevailing “culture of damn sissies” spell doom for the Earth?

Schooling Your Boss To Not Suck
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Schooling Your Boss to not Suck takes a fun and sarcastic journey into tales of horrible bosses. There are countless books on improving the workplace, but nothing quite like this.

Is your boss a supervillain? Need a superhero to straighten him out? Instead of being written by another stuffy “expert”, author Eric Muss-Barnes (who barely squeaked out of high school, let alone finished college), offers a lighthearted slant on leadership from the viewpoint of the common worker.

True stories. Real experiences. No silly parables here, folks. No “puppydogs and rainbows” like those other motivational books. Just genuine events of piss and vinegar from the American middleclass workplace.

Eric is just an Average Joe, like yourself, telling it like it is. If your boss sincerely wants to learn how to motivate and inspire the people, it’s time the boss stopped listening to other leaders and started listening to what regular people like you have to say. It’s time someone stood tall, whipped off those mild-mannered glasses, and schooled your boss on how to not suck!

Forever Loving You
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Years ago, after author Eric Muss-Barnes had the cover photo for this book taken, a friend ridiculed him and said, “Who do you think you are, Michael Bolton? This looks like a cover for an album of rock ballads. ’Eric Muss-Barnes, Forever Loving You!’” Twenty years later, instead of an album cover, it became a book cover for a compilation of cheesy lovepoems.

Colophon

Printed Editions Colophon

• HP Pavilion dm3t Notebook PC (3GB RAM / 160GB SSD)

• Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit OS

This entire book was composed on a solid-state laptop computer system. Ever since my first handwritten novel, I like listening to music and writing in bed. Not at a desk. Not in a coffeeshop. But in the bedroom. The solid-state laptop works great for that, because it is absolutely silent and simply never overheats, despite sitting on blankets and bedsheets.

• EmEditor Professional 4.13

• Open Office 3.2.0

Plain text of the initial draft was started using EmEditor. After I do that draft, I move into Open Office for the final formatting. Why do I write in plain text then convert? No good reason whatsoever. I'm slowly working on eliminating the plain text draft of my works.

• Adobe Photoshop CS2

The cover was designed in Photoshop, using photographs I took on 6 September 2012 at Legends Plaza on the Walt Disney Studios lot. My vision of what I wanted was pretty clear. I always saw the front as being the “Partners” statue with Mickey and Walt and the back being me sitting next to Minnie. The day I became a Blue Badge full Cast Member, I sat next to Minnie to “drink it all in” and bask in my great fortune. The day I took that photo was the day after I was let go. Full circle. “Now it's time to say goodbye, to all our company...”

• Apple Mac Mini 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

• Macintosh OS 10.6.2

• Font Lab 4.5

• Fonts: Burbank Lot, Souvenir

The main text of the book uses a font called “Souvenir” which is the same font used in the original Choose Your Own Adventure series of books. That series was first published in the 1970's, when I was in gradeschool. Being a huge fan of those books and realizing this story was my own “career adventures”, it seemed an appropriate typeface to use. The cover title font, “Burbank Lot”, is one I developed on a Macintosh using Font Lab. It is a modified version of the font created by Kem Weber, used on all the original building signage at the Walt Disney Studios lot, in Burbank, California.

eBook Editions Colophon

• HP Vostro 400 Desktop PC

• Windows XP Professional OS

The eBook editions were created on a desktop computer, converted from the original Open Office .ODT files used in the printed version of the book.

• EmEditor Professional 4.13

• WinZip 9.0

In order to make the book available to readers digitally, the original Open Office .ODT files were rebuilt as an .EPUB file. Being a programmer, I engineered and constructed the .EPUB files by hand - coding all of the CSS, XHTML, OPF and NCX files in a plain text editor. Once that was complete, I used WinZip to package my .EPUB file which was then quadruple-validated against epubcheck 3.0, and epubpreflight 0.1.0, and Sigil 0.6.2, and finally in Flight Crew 0.7.2.

• Kindlegen 2.7

Using the command-line utility KindleGen, I converted my .EPUB file into .MOBI format for sale and distribution online using Amazon and other .MOBI-based eReader systems.