I’m not sure all of you will approve of these stories either, but now that you have some idea who I am, you might be wondering whether I had any run-ins with the police in my lifetime. I can honestly say that I had several notable experiences but was fortunate enough to escape relatively unscathed in every sense. I can also say that I was still the same easygoing fun person I am today. I never thought of myself as some crazy rebel who hated the police or anything—I just didn’t (and still don’t!) believe that other people had some magical authority over me in terms of forcing “naptime” upon me at age 4 or telling me I couldn’t drink a beer or smoke a plant at age 16. I guess I was always hard wired to be an anarchist libertarian. At the end of the day, I’m grateful for my run-ins and close calls with the police at a young age because it made the concept of freedom crystal clear to me and gave me a healthy fear of what authoritarians could do to you if you weren’t careful. And holding freedom as one of my highest values allowed me to enjoy life waaaaaay more than I otherwise would have. (And I think they are pretty funny and ironic stories you may enjoy…)
My First Close Call (1978)
It was in 1978, and I was 16 years old at the time. Back in the 1970s, a steady supply of weed was difficult to come by consistently, particularly since we lived in Wisconsin about 1,500 miles from the Mexican border. Since my buds and I were regular weed smokers, it was a bummer when the town went “dry” for a month (usually in the winter when we needed it most!), and this pissed me off considering that we lived in a so-called “capitalist country.” My solution to the problem was quite rational (or so I thought at the time!)—I simply decided to buy quarter pounds of weed instead of smaller amounts (called “nickel bags” and “dime bags” back in the day because of their respective $5 and $10 price tags) so at least my close friends and I wouldn’t have to suffer during the dry spells. I would have enough in my inventory to sell to my friends for a while, and it had the added benefit of reducing the per unit cost by about 40% so I would get to smoke for free! (Yes, I was a capitalist even as a weed-smoking teenager!)
I had just returned to our local burg from my downtown high school where I scored a “QP” (quarter pound) of so-called “Gold ‘Lumbo” (it was probably grown in some hillbilly’s greenhouse in Kentucky—Hahahaha!) and went over to my friend K’s empty house (his parents had put it up for sale but he still had the keys) to divide it into smaller quantities I could share with my friends. We went inside for a while to smoke a quick one and shoot a round of pool, and I divided the bulk weed into 16 quarter ounces in sandwich baggies (how 1970s!!). We locked up the house around 5pm or so, hopped in K’s car, and were just about to take off when literally at least a half dozen cop cars (and at least twice as many cops) pulled into the driveway surrounding us! I was sitting in the back seat behind K, and was quickly getting pretty freaked out! A few thoughts went through my head (none of them good!) as I frantically stashed the bags of weed under the back seat of the car. Not only did I have weed; I had a quarter pound of it, AND it was in 16 separate baggies which automatically made me an evil “dope dealer!” Things could have turned out badly for me indeed!
I was sweating my ass off in the back seat and having visions of making the dreaded phone call to my parents…
Fortunately for all of us, K had the presence of mind to jump out of the car and immediately greet the first “Officer Friendly” who was walking up to the car. K quickly explained that he was the owner’s son and that his Dad sent him over to check on things or some BS story. While this was going on, one of the other cops peered through the windows at the rest of us, and I thought for sure he was going to search us or the car or both. Thankfully, K was such a great schmoozer that the cops bought his story and let us ride peacefully away in a few minutes. We were all sweating bullets of course and glad to have escaped unscathed. But that left a really important unanswered question…
I’m sure you’re wondering why all those cop cars would pull into the driveway of a residential home in a small town without suspecting a thing about us. I know I was confused, and it turns out that K’s dad (unbeknownst to K) had given the local cops permission to use his house and 5-acre lot for “training purposes,” and that’s why nearly every cop on the force showed up at once. For a training exercise. Talk about an unlucky coincidence! But it worked out much better than my next interaction in “Fun with the Police-Chapter 2…”
Back in the 1990s, I did a lot of work on old-school fashion catalogs, most of them out of New York. My ex-wife Sandy and I had East-West Productions, and at the same time Marc & I were partners in a production motorhome via Cinemasters. I used to do everything in those days—Be the local producer/location guy and chauffeur everyone around in the motorhome. I honestly can’t remember the particular client, but Heidi Klum was one of their regular fashion catalog models long before she became famous. I had worked with her several times by then with the same client, so we knew each other on a casual professional level. She was in her early 20s or so and was always a really fun, easygoing person who never took any of this stuff too seriously.
We were shooting down in Tucson on one of Arizona’s rare rainy days. The photographer was struggling a bit to find overhangs to park the models under in Tucson’s barrio district, so each shot was taking quite a bit of time. I think he was shooting a double or triple (we usually had 3-4 models each day), so Heidi and I were the only ones in the motorhome, and she was a little bored. To relieve her boredom, Heidi got the bright idea that it would be fun if she did hair and makeup on me, a rather plain 35-year-old dude who was not remotely photogenic. I looked at her quizzically, but within a nanosecond or so thought: “What the hell—If Heidi the Hottie wants to fondle my hair and face for a while, who am I to disappoint?!!!
At this point she told me to sit at the hair and makeup station but that I had to remove the mirror so I would have no idea what she was doing until she was done. Who was I to say no? For the next 45 minutes or so I got a complete makeover from one of the most beautiful (and funny!) women on the planet. To her credit, Heidi gave me the complete treatment including face makeup, eye makeup and a completely new hairstyle (good for her and I that I actually had kind of long hair!) I got the curling iron, hairspray, and the whole nine yards. Coincidentally, I had taken a couple of years of German in high school (thank you, MUHS!!!), and I could still remember a few hundred words or so. I’m sure she was impressed—NOT—Hahaha!
As we were finishing up, I asked Heidi when I would get to see her fine work. I was honestly imagining that I had become some kind of beautiful drag queen from the neck up and really was curious to see what I looked like as a femme gay dude or a “woman” (long before the days of #LGBTQXYZLMNOP, etc.!) She then explained that we were finished and she was ready to “model” with me outside live in front of the entire crew!!! I asked if I could at least see what I looked like first; Heidi refused of course, and led me arm-in-arm down the sidewalk toward the rest of the crew.
Well, as soon as we got close enough for them to see me, everyone broke out into derisive laughter! Of course, I didn’t know exactly why but the photographer and his assistant were more than happy to show me via their Polaroid camera. They snapped a few Polaroids of Heidi and I arm-in-arm on the sidewalk, and I waited anxiously for the Polaroids to develop (yes, I know I’m old, dammit!) When they finally came out, I looked something like the image at the end of this post from the neck up. I was appalled on the one hand but totally laughed my ass off on the other hand, because after all: “If you can’t have fun doing this, you’re doing it wrong!” And Heidi obviously agreed wholeheartedly with this sentiment.
So the obvious question remains in terms of where the original Polaroids are and why the hell am I not posting those? Well, I sure wish I had those to share now, but I have only myself to blame. I took the Polaroids at the time, tossed them on the dashboard of the motorhome and finished the shoot a few days later. We had all had our laugh and I didn’t think anything more of it. Stupid, stupid me got back home with the motorhome and while cleaning it up after the job, mindlessly threw the polaroids in the trash!!! I never gave it a second thought. We had our laughs on a rainy day, and Heidi wasn’t a household name yet, so why would I save them? Who would have thought I’d kill to have them now to share with the world. Thank you Heidi! That memory is unique and priceless and I’m extremely grateful for it. I am glad you stuck to modeling and didn’t get into hair & makeup though!
Eric “Mrs. Doubtfire”
I didn’t look exactly like that, but you get the ideaHeidi in her younger days when we were doing this catalog stuff. Imagine posing for a photo with her! Even if I looked like Mrs. Doubtfire–Hahahaha!!!
I think the photo speaks for itself (most of the time!)
I’m not sure all of you will approve of these stories, but I am grateful
that I took some risks in life and had some amazing experiences as a
result. Liberating the mind and opening
the famous “doors of perception” made for some very interesting experiences! And with death staring me in the face right
now, it’s particularly interesting to contemplate exactly what reality is in
terms of life and death. My friend Tim
has been talking lately about the entire universe simply being a high-tech
simulation of sorts, and I find that rather intriguing as well…
My First Trip (1978)
It was the summer of 1978 and I was 15 years old at the time. My friend Shelly and I had smoked weed a few times, and she thought it might be fun to turn the “newby” on to LSD one Saturday afternoon. Shelly’s mom worked in the office at the local bank, and she and her boss normally spent Saturday afternoons somewhere his wife wouldn’t look, so we had her house to ourselves for a while at least. I rode my bike over to Shelly’s around 11am and took the psychedelic plunge. To Shelly’s credit, she was a great acid coach in terms of telling me what to expect, and she explained that we were just going to chill in her peaceful yard and let our minds explore the universe. The trip was textbook in every way, from the initial giddy laughter to the visual trails and philosophizing about life as much as you can as a teenager. Around 5pm Shelly’s mom arrived home, and I started getting a little nervous. The way my mind felt, I was sure everyone else would know I was hallucinating, etc. and we would be busted for sure. Shelly was very reassuring, and sure enough, we sat down and talked to her mom for almost an hour and she didn’t suspect a thing!
Of course I told all my
friends about my experience, and a few of them were dying to try it. At that point, I started becoming the “acid
king” and the rest is history. Here are
just a few of over 100 psychedelic experiences I’ve had between ages 15 and 28.
I quickly became known as “Crickey the Acid King” because I was on a mission to “coach” everyone who was willing to achieve psychedelic nirvana. And most of the time we did!
Dosing the HS Football Team (1979)
Before I got involved with dosing about a dozen of the local football players, I first had an experience with some close friends (K & T) who were local jocks but regularly smoked weed and drank with my best friend Kevin and I. One night, we went over to K’s house and Kevin and I decided to drop some acid. Our football friends were definitely opposed to the idea and gave us “freaks” the stinkeye for doing it. But a couple hours later when Kevin and I were laughing our asses off and seeing trails, these two decided that they wanted to try it now. The only caveat was that we had to keep it a secret from their football buddies so they wouldn’t be ostracized or thrown off the team for hanging out with “the freaks”—Hahahaha!! The only problem was that I had only brought the two hits for Kevin and I, and the rest was stashed in the kitchen freezer at my parents’ house! After a little convincing, K’s sister drove me back across town where I surprised my parents (while tripping my ass off—Thanks for the lesson in “maintaining” Shelly!) and made up some lame excuse about forgetting a record album or something and snuck into the freezer for a couple more hits when they weren’t looking.
I dosed K & T when we got back and within a couple of hours all four of us were pretty much on the same mental page. Listening to music, hallucinating a bit, laughing a lot and the “jocks” were really having a great time on their first trip. Shelly had trained me well to be an “acid coach” and everything was working out fine. Just then the doorbell rang (surprise, surprise!) and it was my ex-GF Kim and her friend Terri who was visiting from Florida. Now my Kim was certainly attractive, but her friend Terri looked like some femme fatale version of a voluptuous cartoon that had come to life! Our tripping football friends weren’t quite sure if this was reality or some alternate universe and frankly I wasn’t so sure myself!
Terri was from somewhere in Florida and spoke with this surreal sexy southern accent that drove the boys crazy. And of course it was the summer of 1979, and Miss Voluptuous was literally wearing nothing more than tiny shorts, a cropped T-shirt and tennis shoes. (And I mean nothing else!!!) Nothing happened (except in our minds of course—Hahaha!), but that was that was K & T’s first foray into the land of psychedelia. I think they enjoyed it on several levels!
Of course, Kevin and I kept our promise to keep our friends’ trip a secret, but within a week I was getting phone calls from other members of the local football team wanting to know if I could “turn them on” too. Apparently, the experience was so intense that the boys just couldn’t keep their own secret! We lived in a small town, so my Mom knew that I didn’t hang out with the jock crowd and was wondering why they were calling me all of a sudden. I think my Dad figured it out, and he made some cryptic comment to me that he knew “something was going on.” But I don’t think he ever found out the truth! The truth was that I ended up dosing about a dozen members of the local football team a few weeks later, and what a “trip” that was for me to be “coaching” a bunch of high school jocks on the joys of psychedelia—Hahahaha!
Larry’ Bad Trip (1981)
My best friend Kevin’s friend Larry (MUHS Class of ’81 boys) had a trip so
bad he completely lost touch with reality.
I was a class ahead of Kevin (Class of 1980), so he and his Class of
1981 friends came out to visit me while I was a freshman in college at the U of
Wisconsin—Madison. It’s important to
know that UW Madison (and Wisconsin in general!) was a “party hearty” place like
no other I’ve seen since, especially where alcohol was concerned. In this case, Larry brought some LSD with him
so we could have a dose and enjoy the music festival going on that weekend.
Larry & I dropped some acid (and many beers of course), but Kevin and
Zach stuck to only weed and beer. When
the acid started kicking in for Larry and I, we all went cruising around the
backyard parties on Mifflin St. during the “Mifflin St. Days” festival, ending
up in the backyard of a house watching a pretty good Doors cover band.
During the show, Larry grabbed my arm and said something like: “Damn—Jim
Morrison is really awesome!” I thought he meant that the singer was doing
a pretty good job and I agreed that yes he was doing a very good Jim Morrison
impression. Larry looked at me in a strange and anxious way as though I
were nuts for not understanding that the guy was REALLY JIM MORRISON. The
weird part was that the singer was kind of a shorter half-Hispanic guy and
didn’t actually LOOK like Morrison at all! Kevin and I noticed Larry’s
increasing disorientation and anxiety and kept a very close eye on him. We stayed for a bit longer and I thought
Larry would eventually figure it out, but he kept making comments about how
awesome “The Doors” were! At one point I actually stated flat out that
Jim Morrison had died 10 years earlier, and this was strictly a tribute
band. Larry sort of looked at me in
disbelief, and my concern definitely increased at that point!
Kevin and I decided it might be best if we head back to my dorm room and get Larry out of his delusion, so we trekked out of there and stopped at the local liquor store (where I was quite well known by the owner for buying at least a case of Point beer every week!) on the way back. I grabbed the case of Point, threw it on the counter and then realized I had forgotten my wallet. I asked Larry if he would loan my $5 (yes, a case of swill beer was actually $5 in 1981!), so he pulled out his wallet, started looking at me and the liquor store owner quite strangely, and dashed out of the store without paying! The liquor store owner knew something was up, told me I could bring him the $5 tomorrow (imagine that!), and suggested I better keep a close eye on my friend. I told him I hoped the beer would help…
We went back to my dorm room to chill to some music (and not The Doors!!!),
and see if Larry would come back to reality at some point. He eventually
did, but things definitely got much worse before they got better. During
the next hour or two (my sense of time was bit distorted), Larry lost further
touch with reality and started saying that we (his HS friends) were cops,
totally freaked out, and tried to eat all of the drugs in his pocket!!!!
He had quite a bit of speed and acid in that baggie and could have died!
Thankfully, we were able to stop him in time and wrestle the drugs out of
his hands and pockets. He still didn’t know who we were. We kept
talking to him and trying to get him to recognize us and come back to reality,
but he just sat there breathing hard and looking paranoid as hell.
About an hour later, there was this loud crackling sound in my Witte Hall Madison dorm room, and we all looked around at each other as the universe completely changed. At first I thought it was an illusion in my tripping mind but we all audibly heard it. Even Kevin and Zach, who had ingested no psychedelics whatsoever, confirmed that they heard it too, and we all looked at Larry and knew he was 100% back to reality in that instant. He knew who we were and didn’t remember much of his bad trip at all. When we told him about it he reacted in total disbelief. We had to show him the bag of drugs we wrestled from him, and we definitely didn’t return it to him until the next day!
I’m still not sure what all that means, but perhaps it is something about
“The Doors of Perception” which speaks to my friend Tim’s theory about changing
the simulation. One door closed and another one opened in an instant.
Very strange…
My Last Trip (1990)
I had at least 100 good trips before I had a bad trip and then I was done.
My good friend Brian was there—We saw the Doors movie (what is it about
The Doors? Hmmmmm…) that had just come
out in the theaters and it depressed me and messed with my head a bit.
Nothing too serious—I knew who and where I was, but it was a total downer
nonetheless. Brian took the exact same stuff and dose and felt fine as
far as I remember. I can understand why psychedelics can be scary to many
people, and I certainly saw a few others have bad trips much worse than mine.
I remember our mutual friend Jeff being afraid to try acid, so we had
mercy on him and didn’t dose him without his consent anyway. We did
contemplate it briefly, but my libertarian side would never go for that!
Crickey the “Acid King” (one of my many nicknames—I owe that one to Kevin!)
When I moved back to Milwaukee briefly in 1989-90, I had the privilege to get into a band with a couple guys who were waaaaaaay better musicians than I was. The bass player was Miko Montgomery (jazz icon Wes Montgomery’s nephew), and our drummer Steve was certainly no slouch. The only reason I passed the audition was that I knew how to play all the grooves (funk, reggae and ska) Miko was looking for, and apparently no other guitarist in Cheeseland had that figured out at the time!
Our promo poster before the internet existed!
We played a bunch of gigs at local bars (of which there are many in Milwaukee!) and even got to play at the famous Summerfest music festival once. For me, the real achievement was getting to record a couple of tracks with these guys and our guest keyboardist Jeff Stehr. I was also lucky enough to know a guy named Jeff Solper from work who had a full-blown recording studio in his basement! Jeff dialed in a guitar sound that made me sound waaaaay better than I was, and for that I am eternally grateful. I’ve attached our songs here in case you are curious, and if you like them you can download them in the links just below.
ActivatorStanding on the Verge of Getting it On/Sex Machine
“Activator” is actually an instrumental ska/rock piece written by renowned Phoenix guitarist Donnie Dean of “The Effects” fame. I was a huge Effects fan, and Donnie taught me how to play “Activator” one day so I had to record it for posterity. I don’t think even Donnie has recorded it, but I’m sure his version would be better than mine. Thanks, Donnie!
The second song is a medley of Funkadelic’s “Standing on the Verge” and James Brown’s “Get Up/Sex Machine” and was Miko’s doing. Again, playing with people much better than I was made me sound much better than I was. Thanks, guys!!!
Try not to laugh too hard at the pics, and remember that I was never a real rock star–I just liked “playing one on TV”–Hahahaha!!!
At the Leinenkugel tent at Summerfest 1990
“Back of the Bus, White Boys”
Most of our gigs were playing at local bars as you can see from the photos, but Miko got us a gig playing at the Wisconsin chapter of the NAACP annual awards banquet. As you can also see from the photos, we set up like a typical rock trio–The drummer in the center rear and the two guitar players/singers/front men out front on either side. Pretty typical. However, this was not to be allowed at the NAACP gig because a condition of Miko getting the gig for his band with two white dudes was that he had to be the sole front man and lead singer! Even songs I normally sang lead on and that I had brought into the band I would not be allowed to sing, so we reconfigured our stage lineup (and song list!) so that “Steve the Ghost” and “Cracker Eric” were on the rear of the stage left and right, and our “Bro Miko” was front and center all by himself.
When I first heard about these conditions, I must admit I laughed my ass off at the irony of it. Miko was cool and said that if we crackers didn’t want to do the gig, he would totally understand, but to be honest I was rather intrigued by the concept of being on the other side of “racism” or whatever the hell you want to call it, and I was also quite curious about what the vibe would be towards me on gig night. Steve pretty much shared my attitude, and we figured that it would be interesting to see what it really felt like to “ride in the back of the bus” so to speak, and whether the NAACP people would be cool to us (other than the initial conditions!) in general. Besides, the gig paid about $500 for the band, which was about double the going rate at a club in those days. I’m certainly no whiny snowflake (Ha!), and the most important color of the evening was definitely green for me!
The gig was in a mid-size hotel ballroom, and I think there were about 200 NAACP attendees. Of course, Steve and I were the only white dudes in the room, and I have to say that everyone was really very cool and friendly to us the entire evening. Like any event of this type, they of course had a catered buffet which was actually quite good! A really nice lady coordinating the event invited all of us to help ourselves to the fried chicken entree, a variety of tasty side dishes, and of course watermelon for dessert. The food was all quite good, and I honestly didn’t think there was anything unusual about the menu, but Miko sure did! He pointed out the irony of an organization like the NAACP promoting black stereotypes by serving fried chicken and watermelon, and he steadfastly refused to be seen eating either of those items! Of course Steve and I had no qualms about chowing down on the tasty fried chicken and watermelon, and we taunted Miko mercilessly by holding our plates out to him offering up the food while munching on it and saying, “Mmmmmm…Tasty!” and shit like that–Hahaha!!! We experienced a lot of irony that night, and besides the decent money, we (well, we white boys at least!) got all the fried chicken and watermelon we could scarf down. We made sure to eat Miko’s share as well!!
I was born
in 1962 and adopted by my parents Bob and Peg when I was two months old. I am very grateful for this since they treated
me with the greatest of love and raised me in the positively idyllic setting of
Mequon, WI in the 1960s and 1970s. Abortion
and single motherhood were much less common then for a variety of reasons, and I
am extremely grateful to my birth mother for making two really good choices,
without which I may not have been able to have the awesome life that I
have.
Being a
typical dude, I’ve only been mildly curious about my birth parents and never
made any effort toward finding out who they were until my girlfriend Sherry
made an offhand comment to me one day while we were hiking. Sherry and I were avid hikers, and we would
typically hike for 1-2 hours several times a week. Sherry was of almost all Irish descent, and
would always cover up her awesome body and delightful alabaster skin with
hiking apparel, sunscreen or both! I
couldn’t blame her because when she missed a spot, she would burn, burn, burn
in a nanosecond or two. I on the other
hand, only wore athletic shorts, no shirt, and I don’t even own any
sunscreen.
Sherry & I Conquering the Mountain
One day after a particularly long hike, Sherry noticed my golden brown all-over tan and asked me about my genetic heritage. I told her what I had always been told—I was Irish and German. She kind of snickered in disbelief and said, “No way dude—I’m Irish and look at my skin compared to yours. You’ve got Greek skin!” I had never considered that before and told her she was nuts, but the more I thought about it, I realized that Sherry indeed had a point. What Northern European can walk around barely clothed in the blazing Arizona sunshine constantly and almost never burn? Sherry knew I was adopted and strongly encouraged me to do the Ancestry DNA thing, which I quickly agreed to. She was absolutely right in saying I really didn’t know shit except for some third-hand story I’d been told since birth.
Well, I spit
in the magic tube and sure enough the results came back in a few weeks. I’ve posted them below and it turns out the
lovely Sherry was not only beautiful but quite smart! This “German/Irish” guy turned out to be
about 25% Southern European and barely German at all!
“Surprise, surprise, surprise!” said this Gomer Pyle…
That was in 2016 and I pretty much forgot about it until my neurological problems started getting worse in mid-2018. I had heard you could download your raw DNA data and have it analyzed for health purposes, so I went back on the Ancestry DNA site for the first time in two years. When I signed on I noticed that I had a 6-month old email from a guy named Duane, and it said we were very close relative in the first cousin range. He told me a little bit about himself and was curious about how we might be related. After a few more emails, we figured out that his older sister Denise (or “Dese” as the much younger Duane called her) was indeed my birth mother! Their family were hard-core Catholics and Denise would never have considered an abortion (Thank you, thank you, thank you, Denise!), and my parents adopted me (I really shouldn’t tell you guys this!) for the princely sum of $5 and a modest donation to the Catholic Church (probably $100 or so). So I am definitely one of the cheapest bastards on the planet—Hahahahaha!!!
I can certainly see the resemblance, but I’m going with Uncle DQ’s opinion!And it’s not like Uncle DQ and I look all that different either. Who knew that Ancestry DNA shit really worked?!!!
After Duane (or Uncle DQ as I now call him!) and I hit it off pretty well during our email thread, we started exchanging photos, and I’ll leave it to you to decide whether I look like my birth mother Denise or not. I know Uncle DQ thinks so because we did eventually meet for lunch last winter when he was vacationing here in Arizona. He is a super chill guy who is actually crazy enough to live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in a town on Lake Superior (He’s a freakin’ “UPer”—Hahahahaha!), and we had a great time meeting for lunch at the Space Age diner in Gila Bend of all places. (Uncle DQ went camping in Why, AZ for 3 months and hates big cities—Ya think?!!) All during lunch, he kept staring at me and smiling, telling me it was exactly like looking at his older sister again. She had died of breast cancer at age 64 many years ago (he was 12 years younger than Denise), and I was so glad to be able to give him that gift. We still stay in touch via email, and this story is so full of gratefulness all the way around it could make one’s head spin.
I debated telling my adoptive parents Bob & Peg about this for many months, but as my disease got worse I decided to open up one day and tell them the story. My Mom was practically in tears and expressed her gratefulness for the decisions young Denise made in allowing them to have me as their son all these years.
There is one thing for which Denise and Peggy both deserve some blame though. If you find any of my writing or musical shit on this blog to be annoying, you only have these two women to blame. Denise was an opera singer/piano player, and she taught English and music as a career. My Mom knew all of this about Denise when she adopted me and always pushed me hard in both areas because she was convinced I had natural talents in music and writing. (Nature or nurture; talent or no—I’ll let you readers be the judge of all that—Hahaha!) I ended up playing guitar because I quit the viola (can you blame me?!) at age 12 when I became interested in rock music. But Mom insisted that I take up another instrument to my liking and adamantly refused to let me quit playing music altogether. Drums were my first choice, but I’ll leave you to guess which member of our household vetoed that idea—Hahahaha! (Hint—It wasn’t Mom…) And I had a 10-year career in writing which you can read about in my story “Do You Have the Term Paper Blues?” Nature or nurture? I’ll leave that for you to decide, although my mom certainly didn’t encourage my writing career in any way, shape, or form!
Thank you Sherry for your very wise observation about my “Greek Skin.” Many people owe you a debt of gratitude for leading us down the road almost not taken!
A couple more pics of Dese
And there’s “Grandpa” playing a ’52 Les Paul. Music really does run in the family!
:15 Version on YouTube–The :30 has a lot more Scruffs!!!
We were doing a couple of PetSmart commercials at one of my Arcadia homes (thank you, Shawna and family!) and everything went according to plan on the first spot in the morning. I knew it would be a long day to shoot two spots, so just for the hell of it I decided to bring my dog Scruffy (aka “the Scruffs”) to “work” with me so he wouldn’t be home alone all day. He wasn’t cast in the shoot or anything–We already had talent dogs for that.
My good friend Denise was the producer and about 90 minutes after lunch ended she came out to the garage talking to me in a panic. Apparently, the “talent” dog they booked to do the “Dinner Dance” was great at the audition, but now that there were lights, cameras, and 25 people watching, the poor thing got stage fright and wouldn’t do the dance. The conversation quickly moved in the direction of what the “Dinner Dance” entailed, and it was really nothing more than a boy holding a treat up in the air while his dog danced around on its hind legs.
“Can the Scruffs do something like that?” Denise asked me. I smiled and chuckled and said that for $10K the Scruffs could do whatever you asked him to! (I really didn’t say that but I wish I would have–Hahahaha!) I explained that the Scruffs would do it for me, but I had no idea whether he would do it on set either. With nothing to lose of course, we brought Scruffs in the house and he must have done 30+ takes in an hour or so. You are such an awesome dog, and I love you Scruffs!!!
I could sit here until 2022 posting production stills, but you get the idea. It sure beats a “real job!”
Feel free to share your stories and memories or send me some cool stuff we worked on together. Man, it was fun working with all of you! (Most of the time 🙂
“Instinct de Morte” in Monument ValleyUh Oh–I know whose camera car that is!!One of many PetSmart shoots over the decades. Gotta love “shooting dogs”–Hahahaha!Jaci & Amber working hard!Jaci and Eric working hard!
AMW at the Border 2003
GoDaddy with Danica 2009
Nike and Amare Stoudamire 2007
Wish the wimpy German client would have chosen this version. Only humor can make bug spray interesting!
Just another day at “the office” in beautiful southern Utah.
Yet another day at “the office” about 45 minutes from my house…Ivo the German car photographer always had a sense of humor…
One of the
things I’m most grateful for is that I never had to work a “real job” after
graduating from ASU in 1987. If you’ve
read my story “Do You Have the Term Paper Blues?” you know about 10 years of one
of my accidental career paths, but the bulk of my career (almost 28 years!) was
spent working on photo and video shoots for advertising projects.
My career in
advertising production began completely by accident as well when I was
introduced to Marc by my friend Robert or my neighbor Rick (I think—You guys
can let me know how Marc and I actually met.)
Marc and I were casual friends for a while, and at some point Marc gave
my number to another Mark who called me a few weeks later (July 1991) asking me
if I wanted to be a production assistant (PA—a fancy word for “go-fer”) on a
beer commercial that was shooting the following day. I had never been on a set before, so Mark was
authorized to offer me the princely sum of $75/day for an unlimited number of
hours working in 115-degree heat! Me
being me, I thought “what the hell—I’ll give it a try,” and the assholes with
attitude from a Miami production company worked my ass from 4am-10pm for the
next two days! I did ask Mark though
what the hell anyone would be doing out in the middle of the desert in the
dark, and he told me that I would soon find out.
In hindsight I did manage to do something smart after I got Mark’s call for the job though. I called my friend Marc who had about a year or two into the film production biz by this point, thanked him for the referral, and told him a little bit about the gig at 4am the following morning. I shall be forever grateful for the two pieces of advice Marc gave me before my first PA gig. The first thing he said was to let anyone’s snotty attitude roll off you “like water off a duck’s back.” And the second piece of sage advice Marc gave me was to look around closely on set and see where I wanted to end up in terms of my ultimate job goal. He told me being a PA was strictly entry level and I needed to figure out what I really wanted to do as quickly as possible to have any long-term success in the film biz. He briefly described the various departments to me, and I was off to the races on a few hours sleep (imagine that—Hahahaha!) Life-changing advice to be sure. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Marc!!!
When I
showed up at 4am at the corner of Hayden and Dynamite roads in Scottsdale
(vacant desert then—now upscale homes worth seven figures!), a few other PAs
and a location manager were wandering around in the dark with flashlights
telling people where to park, etc.
Someone grunted that I was “the new guy,” told me where to park and to
get out and follow him, be quiet, and do what I was told. I followed Marc’s first piece of advice and did
exactly that! I was still wondering what
the hell was going to happen out here at zero-dark-thirty am, and as the sun
rose all my questions were answered. By
6am the dark, lonely desert was full of cars, trucks, motorhomes, horses, piles
of equipment, and about 100 people or so.
I soon found out that we were shooting a Stender beer commercial, and
the client was from Holland I think.
As the
initial shock wore off and the sun rose ever higher, I began to follow Marc’s
second piece of advice and look around at the various departments and what they
were doing. I immediately ruled out the
grip & electric department when I saw about 10 dudes sweating their asses
off unloading 18Ks and such from a couple of 10-ton trucks! It was pretty much the same for the art
department as I watched them build a set as fast as they could in the blazing
heat. At some point, I had to go into
the production motorhome to meet the Miami production team and get my first “go-fer”
assignment. When I saw a bunch of people
in a mobile office working on typewriters, calculators, etc. (yes—Stop telling
me I’m old—Hahahaha!) in a somewhat air-conditioned space (hey–90 degrees in
the shade sure beats 110 in the sun!) I made a mental note that production was
definitely something I could do. I had a
college degree and some organizational skills, so I knew production was a
strong possibility for me.
As the day
went on, I eliminated some obvious things like hair, makeup, and wardrobe (no
straight dudes back in those days, although dressing beautiful women certainly
had its appeal—hahahaha!), and I knew I didn’t have the technical skills or
patience to learn them required to be a camera geek. About mid-afternoon I noticed a guy sitting
in an SUV with the windows rolled up, the motor and A/C obviously running, and
he was looking at a map. Now I had
always loved geography and maps as a kid (I was one of those geeks who stapled
all the National Geographic maps to my bedroom wall–it was literally almost
completely covered much to my Mom’s chagrin!), and that guy seemed to have the
best job on the set at that particular moment.
I asked someone who that was, and it was Mike the location manager. I asked what the location manager did and was
told that he scouted and photographed various location options for the client
and then negotiated all the details in terms of prices, logistics, paperwork, made
maps, etc. and made sure it all went smoothly on the shoot days. Ka-Ching!!!
Production job #2 was staring me in the face!
Marc and I
eventually bought a production motorhome and both ended up as location scouts
and production coordinators before Marc got a more steady corporate gig as a
cameraman, which is what I think his goal became at some point. I continued on as a location scout/manager
and producer for the next couple of decades, and damn I miss not doing it
anymore!
There are
literally hundreds of production stories any of us in the industry could tell
(and I’ll probably tell a few pretty soon), but I’ll sum up what I loved about
production in a few bullet points and let all of you share your own memories,
stories, photos, etc. in the comments (or send me an email if you don’t want to
go public—Hahahaha! I’ll keep your
secret—“Scout’s Honor!)
–I had the pleasure of traveling all over the state (and occasionally a few other states) to more amazing locations than I ever dreamed possible. I’ve seen the most scenic spots imaginable, the rattiest underbellies of cities and towns, and been in mansions and hundreds of other places I never would have been in if it weren’t for my “job.” (Remember—It’s not a “real job!”)
–I had the
even greater pleasure of working with a lot of amazing local people who I
consider friends to this day, and I met clients, crew, actors, models, etc.
from all over the world. Although we
often worked very long 12-18 hour days, there was typically a lot of down time
on set when some of us were free to stand around and socialize, tell jokes,
talk about life, etc. waiting until someone needed us. I’ve met everyone from famous athletes,
actors, rock stars, and models to regular folks just like me from all over the
planet. Who wouldn’t be grateful for all
of that?!! It sure beat sitting in the
same cubicle day after day like many people do.
Thanks again, Marc, Mark, and all of you I met along the way!
Please read this post first so you understand why I’m doing this. And please feel free to reach out to me either on the blog for some fun group chatting or at my personal email: erichofstetter62@gmail.com. FYI–If you view me on your computer instead of your phone, a menu of about 50 stories (and increasing!) will appear on the right. They are in no particular order, so please select whatever looks most interesting to you! And feel free to share with whoever you like. My life is a (mostly!) open book…
From “Heavy Lifting”To “Crip Central” in about 18 months. Note the “Sanchez” hanging on the wall–Thanks, Peter!
Hello
Friends (and even “Enemies”—Hahahaha!)
Thank you so much for checking out my blog!! Yeah, it’s kind of a weird idea I guess, but I think you all know that I’ve been a bit “outside the box” in life, and I’m sure as hell not going to change now! I’ll get the bad shit out of the way first, and then we can have some fun reminiscing and ruminating on the meaning of life! To be very clear up front—Other than this opening essay and one other post so far, my blog is not about the medical technicalities and torture of my illness (there are already a TON of books and blogs about the torture of ALS by other victims)—On the contrary, it is an expression of gratitude and a celebration of the awesome life I’ve been privileged to live before my health went south.
As a lot of
you know, I’ve been diagnosed with some form of ALS, PLS, or cerebellar
degeneration (depending on which doctor you ask), but the sad reality is that
all these motor neuron diseases (MND) of the brain are debilitating,
degenerative, and ultimately deadly. ALS
is the most common form (about 80% of cases, I think) and is the one you know
as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.” I’ll let all
you Dr. Google types check stuff out on the web if you want all the gory
details, but I’ll give you a brief synopsis of where I am and how I got here
over the past 18 months or so.
The gist of it is that the motor neurons in the brain (the ones that control movement in the body) gradually die off, and it becomes increasingly difficult to walk, talk, write, get dressed, brush your teeth, eat, swallow, or move any part of your body in any way at all. These symptoms affect each patient at different rates and in a different order, but it’s definitely a torturous way to go that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy (or even on Donald Trumpf or Hitlery Clinton—Hahahaha!). The sensory and autonomic portions of the victim’s nervous system aren’t affected much and dementia usually isn’t involved, so you are fully aware and can see, hear and feel every bit of the physical degeneration as it happens day-by-day. You slowly become a prisoner in your own body, and what eventually kills you is that your diaphragm muscles become detached from the motor nerves in the brain to the point that your lungs won’t expand enough to breathe, and you suffocate. I just read another victim’s blog who described having ALS as the feeling of “being slowly buried alive,” and as time marches on I can appreciate this truth more and more. Damn—The Marquis de Sade couldn’t have dreamed up something worse than ALS!!
On a personal level, I’ve gone from a gym rat and 10K trail runner to a homebound cripple in about 18 months. I first noticed I was losing my balance after having a few beers, but I was nowhere near inebriated enough for this to be happening (just ask anyone who really knows me!). I honestly thought I’d been “roofied” at the concert I was attending that night (an awesome Rolling Stones cover band with my awesome friend April!). A few weeks later I started having trouble maintaining a running gait while perfectly sober out on my favorite South Mountain trail. I was having increasing low back pain at the same time near the L5 disc I herniated five years earlier, so I assumed it was a back problem and was pretty bummed out thinking I might need back surgery or something. (Ha—If only!) I’d honestly be better off with Parkinson’s, MS, HIV, cancer or a toasted spine and at various points in my the testing process I was indeed hoping I would test positive for one of these things. Can you imagine HOPING you had cancer or HIV?!! Talk about the ultimate irony!
After seeing a dozen doctors and spending $30K on tests, I got my official bad news of a motor neuron disease in January 2019. By then, I could no longer play the guitar, was having considerable trouble writing, some trouble speaking, was walking with a cane, and starting to have a tight feeling in my chest more often. Things have since degenerated to the point that I use a walker around the house and a wheelchair everywhere else. My level of fatigue is extreme, but it’s important to me to focus what little energy I have left on the awesome life I’ve been lucky enough to have. Nobody is safe as long as I can still type in the age of the internet!
Life is short (apparently sometimes shorter than we expect!), and I want you guys to laugh at some of the funny pics and stories you may not have known about me; tell your own stories (email a Word doc and I’ll do the rest); correct, criticize and give me shit about my stories, and maybe even learn something about life or yourselves in the process. (Okay—that’s a pretty lofty goal, but what the hell…I’m trying my best as either a very crippled dude or a dude from some other universe, depending on when you are reading this page—Hahahaha!!! Or not—Maybe the Zen Buddhists are right and life simply begins and ends with nothing… I’ll try to let you know what to expect if “The Force” allows it! BOO!)
You all know me from a variety of places, activities, and the stuff of life, but I’d like to think I always enjoyed my family, my friends, and my life regardless of the reason we were hanging out. As my friend Ernie once said: “If you can’t have fun doing this, you’re doing it wrong!” He was referring to libertarian political activism (which I enjoyed immensely), but I realized that his philosophy applied toward pretty much everything in life. I honestly feel that I’ve had what I’m calling “55 rock star years” on planet Earth, and I’m soooooooo lucky to have had that. I’m crying as I write this, but many of the tears are tears of joy because I love life so much and am simply missing the awesome life I once had.
At the same time, I’m experiencing new tears of joy as my illness made me realize how many real friends I truly have, and that I wasn’t even aware of how much love and respect my friends had for me. I am truly grateful for all your love and support. I’ve tried hard to earn some of it by living a good and honest life, but you guys are way more than I deserve. Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart! I love you too; I loved my life before, and I’m doing my best to love it now and take full advantage of the time I have left to be grateful for everything I had.
Eric (and many more nicknames to come…)
Ric/Rick/Ricky/Rico
Crickey
And I’ll
think of a few more as the stories evolve…
P. S. I was never a big movie buff, but if I had to choose I’d say my favorite movie was “This is Spinal Tap,” because of my intense love of music, sarcasm, absurdity, and irony. In a lot of ways, my life has been like that. And a hell of a lot of fun!!!
I think everyone has the “term paper blues” at some point! I can’t take credit for the phrase in my ad though. I stole it from that mail-order term paper place that used to advertise in Rolling Stone and other music mags back in the 1980s.
I graduated from ASU in August of 1987, and after working full time during my last two years of college, I decided I deserved a short break. I had money in the bank and rent in 1987 was only $275/month for a decent one-bedroom apartment in Tempe! I had earned a degree with honors in journalism with a marketing minor, but there were really no decent jobs to be had back then. An entry level journalism job paid about $12K/year, and the only business careers available to me were commission sales type gigs that would require me to get a haircut and wear a suit and tie. Pardon my French, but fuck that shit!
College had taught me one valuable skill though, and that was how to research and write “A” papers. I actually learned this skill at Marquette High School in Milwaukee (it was identical to Brophy here in Phoenix), so just for the hell of it I decided to post the ad as an editor/tutor on the old-school kiosks at ASU in 1989 or so. I figured I could show other kids how it was done, and It’s not like I needed to earn a fortune to make a $275 rent payment!
My college track record of writing “A” papers. I was perfectly trained for my first “career”–Haha!!
Things were kind of hit and miss for the first year or so until I met a student named Niki. At this point I need to be very clear about one thing–I was NOT writing students’ papers for them at this point. I was strictly helping/tutoring/editing, etc. as my ad promised. That all changed when I met Niki at the Hayden Library one Saturday afternoon. Niki had a five-page English 101 paper to write, and it required sources, etc. as you would expect. It quickly became clear that Niki had never written anything like this before, so we spent about 3-4 hours in the library starting from square one on what was really a pretty standard project.
After the research was done, I handed Niki the stack of photocopies (yeah–I know I’m old–Don’t rub it in!) and told her to follow up with me in a week or two when she had her rough draft completed. She asked me what she owed me for that day and I think I told her $40 or $50. She then asked what she thought my editing phase of the project would cost, and I told her about the same, but that it really depended on how good her rough draft was. She could definitely save some money by working hard on it (I had already given her a rough outline) and leaving me less editing work to do. Without batting an eyelash, she segued right into the question that changed my life for the next 10 years and probably beyond. “You seem like you know what you’re doing. How much will it cost if you just write it for me?”
I know a lot of you won’t believe me, but I was honestly taken quite aback by the question. What I didn’t realize was that Niki (and a lot of her friends I soon found out!) were a bunch of rich East Coast kids who came to ASU for sunshine and fun, not a serious education. I ruminated for a minute as I did my mental calculations and figured out that it would probably be more work for me to edit whatever she came up with than to just do it right the first time! I think I told her an additional $75 or so for me to write it, and although I didn’t know it at the time, it was off to the races!
After a couple more of these deals with Niki (and she got A’s on all the papers of course!), I got a call from her roommate wanting me to start writing her papers. Of course I agreed, and it turned out that Niki’s roommate was the president of a sorority of rich Jewish and Italian kids from the East Coast, and (get this) her boyfriend was the president of the fraternity of the same crowd! Within 6 months I became “the term paper guru” to a slew of rich kids and was working nonstop at my desk for the next 10 years. I don’t think I put up an ad again. And by the way, I did almost none of this sober. I would usually do my research during the day and then chill out at my WORD PROCESSOR (hahaha!) smoking a bowl and swilling a few beers. Hey-most of that shit was pretty damned boring to do sober!
At the end of my unexpected career I probably wrote about 700-800 papers, earned 15 college degrees worth of “knowledge” (and I use the term loosely!) and I even wrote two master’s theses (no nothing in medicine or engineering for you judgmental worriers out there!) in marketing and music. My average was in the 93-95 range, so I had a lot of happy customers, I made good money, and I didn’t have to have a “boss” or a “day job.” My “cubicle” was my own desk in my own house, and it wasn’t very far to the refrigerator in the kitchen. Who wouldn’t be grateful for those 10 years of great luck-I was well paid to stay in college, and I actually did do exactly what college trained me to–Hahahaha!
My Talk Radio Interview About My Term Paper Biz. The interviewer is my best friend Kevin so he didn’t use my last name!
An very old photo of most of my 10-year output.A lot of boring-ass topics in there…
My friend Sandy is mocking all my hard work–Hahahaha!!! My response to her was that the only two bogus words this “Bullshitticus” put in his papers was the “client’s” first and last names!
Ironically, one of the regular spammers on my blog is a guy who markets term paper writing!! Now that’s funny. The irony of life never ceases to amaze me!
