A few people know how i ended up in the midwest and why, but for public record i will let the rest of you in on the deal.
My best friend from the time we were two years old in New York, Josh, and i grew up together. My mother would go to the farmer's market and buy fresh veggies from Josh's mother Mary. Josh's parents owned an 800 acre gentleman's farm in upstate New York. Insanely academic and intellectual bunch, that family. Doctorates from every highbrow insitution of higher learning. But they weren't very profitable farmers. ANYWAY -
they had a stand at the farmer's market and that is how my mother made acquaintance with Josh's mother.
Through the years our families remained friends. I dated Josh's sister in high school and he dated my sister.
When we went to apply to colleges he was fourth generation lagacy at a college in tulip city (michigan) and had to go there and begged me to go to school with him there. he told me how much i would love it, how beautiful it was.
i told him that he was on crack if he thought i was going to live in the midwest. and i went off to school in boston and L.A. to be in tv news - an anchor man.
Why that? well, growing up from the time i was a young child i wanted to be an architect. i was always out and about on the property building forts, making stone dams on the creek on the property, making forts in the house.
then when i was ten years old my father made me start reading the newspaper every day and watching World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Dave (my father) told me that i was old enough that i needed to be aware of what was going on the world. And so i read the papers and watched the news.
A couple of months later, there was a terrible hotel collapse in Kansas City while there was a ball room dancing competition happening and people died. and they showed some woman, dead, crushed under a steel i-beam.
it turns out that the collapse was the fault of the architects.
Huh. so i thought at the age of ten that i could not bear the consequences if i did something wrong and people died.
Ok. so time to think of a new career path.
well, i admired Peter Jennings and thought he was great.
But then the local news came on and the local news people were like mongruls by comparison. ugly, badly dressed, badly spoken. eeewww.
so somehow at the age of ten, i decided that i was better looking. better dressed and better spoken than the uggo local news people and hell, if they could do it, i would do it and be brilliant.
SO - that is what i decided and i went to school in boston to study broadcast journalism. i only applied to one school since i knew i would get in. i did. off i went to boston and then to L.A. to check out the entertainment side of things. I decided on real news and went back to boston.
Upon graduation, my advisors told me that i had to go somewhere in the mid west to get on some small mid west network affiliate.
F-U-C-K.
Gee, who did i know in the mid west? yup. lifetime best friend josh that knocked his college girlfriend up in a broom closet and stayed amidst the tulips.
SO, i arrived on the shores of lake michigan and began the search for a tv position. i applied in ohio, indiana, michigan and illinois.
in the meantime i took a job as a waiter at some schmancy joint. parlayed that into work as a gardener for one woman i waited on and a personal assistant gig to another woman i waited on.
the search continued. and i kept getting rejections from tv stations. i finally had a rejection from some station in Gary, Indiana
and after a year and a half i was pissed OFF and let the guy know this in no uncertain terms and asked him WTF was the problem?
He agreed to tell me off the record why he wouldn't hire me, or why other stations wouldn't hire me. FINE.
WHY? well....he proceeded to state the obvious as far as i was concerned. that i was a male, that i had blonde hair and blue eyes, an excellent education, an excellent camerea presence, good writer, good editor...blah, blah, blah.
Then he told me 'what a shame that was. i wasn't ethnic (people wanted ethnic), that i wasn't a woman, i wasn't gay, i didn't have speech impediment, that i was the anti-christ of tv news'.
Well FUCK ME RUNNING!!! having just blown a hundred grand on this great education and i wasn't a lisping, ethnic gay!!!
Well, i decided I would look ethnic. nothing a dark tan and dye job wouldn't remedy. Off to the salon i went to get dark dark hair.
Well, the dye job went horribly wrong and my blonde lockes ended up looking as though i had smeared black shoe polish on my head. but since i was going for the whole thing to be 'real' i had my eyebrows done to match. more black shoe polish.
as horrific as this was with my pale white skin, i thought a nice dark tan would make it all better. off to the tanning booth. well, that didn't go quite right either. it seems that i don't tan. i just get bright red and sunburned.
So GREAT! i look like some kind of stan worhsip freak with third degree burns on his face and piercing blue eyes. Ethnic? YEAH....
riiiiiiiiiiiight. OMG. I don't THINK so.
Then i looked back on the stations i applied to and there were four stations in four states that some guy from india, beaten with the ugly stick, badly dressed and speech impediment got hired instead of me!!!
i don't care who gets the job, but just be better than me somehow. but nope. not the case.
and so this began my exile in the American mid-west.
My best friend from the time we were two years old in New York, Josh, and i grew up together. My mother would go to the farmer's market and buy fresh veggies from Josh's mother Mary. Josh's parents owned an 800 acre gentleman's farm in upstate New York. Insanely academic and intellectual bunch, that family. Doctorates from every highbrow insitution of higher learning. But they weren't very profitable farmers. ANYWAY -
they had a stand at the farmer's market and that is how my mother made acquaintance with Josh's mother.
Through the years our families remained friends. I dated Josh's sister in high school and he dated my sister.
When we went to apply to colleges he was fourth generation lagacy at a college in tulip city (michigan) and had to go there and begged me to go to school with him there. he told me how much i would love it, how beautiful it was.
i told him that he was on crack if he thought i was going to live in the midwest. and i went off to school in boston and L.A. to be in tv news - an anchor man.
Why that? well, growing up from the time i was a young child i wanted to be an architect. i was always out and about on the property building forts, making stone dams on the creek on the property, making forts in the house.
then when i was ten years old my father made me start reading the newspaper every day and watching World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Dave (my father) told me that i was old enough that i needed to be aware of what was going on the world. And so i read the papers and watched the news.
A couple of months later, there was a terrible hotel collapse in Kansas City while there was a ball room dancing competition happening and people died. and they showed some woman, dead, crushed under a steel i-beam.
it turns out that the collapse was the fault of the architects.
Huh. so i thought at the age of ten that i could not bear the consequences if i did something wrong and people died.
Ok. so time to think of a new career path.
well, i admired Peter Jennings and thought he was great.
But then the local news came on and the local news people were like mongruls by comparison. ugly, badly dressed, badly spoken. eeewww.
so somehow at the age of ten, i decided that i was better looking. better dressed and better spoken than the uggo local news people and hell, if they could do it, i would do it and be brilliant.
SO - that is what i decided and i went to school in boston to study broadcast journalism. i only applied to one school since i knew i would get in. i did. off i went to boston and then to L.A. to check out the entertainment side of things. I decided on real news and went back to boston.
Upon graduation, my advisors told me that i had to go somewhere in the mid west to get on some small mid west network affiliate.
F-U-C-K.
Gee, who did i know in the mid west? yup. lifetime best friend josh that knocked his college girlfriend up in a broom closet and stayed amidst the tulips.
SO, i arrived on the shores of lake michigan and began the search for a tv position. i applied in ohio, indiana, michigan and illinois.
in the meantime i took a job as a waiter at some schmancy joint. parlayed that into work as a gardener for one woman i waited on and a personal assistant gig to another woman i waited on.
the search continued. and i kept getting rejections from tv stations. i finally had a rejection from some station in Gary, Indiana
and after a year and a half i was pissed OFF and let the guy know this in no uncertain terms and asked him WTF was the problem?
He agreed to tell me off the record why he wouldn't hire me, or why other stations wouldn't hire me. FINE.
WHY? well....he proceeded to state the obvious as far as i was concerned. that i was a male, that i had blonde hair and blue eyes, an excellent education, an excellent camerea presence, good writer, good editor...blah, blah, blah.
Then he told me 'what a shame that was. i wasn't ethnic (people wanted ethnic), that i wasn't a woman, i wasn't gay, i didn't have speech impediment, that i was the anti-christ of tv news'.
Well FUCK ME RUNNING!!! having just blown a hundred grand on this great education and i wasn't a lisping, ethnic gay!!!
Well, i decided I would look ethnic. nothing a dark tan and dye job wouldn't remedy. Off to the salon i went to get dark dark hair.
Well, the dye job went horribly wrong and my blonde lockes ended up looking as though i had smeared black shoe polish on my head. but since i was going for the whole thing to be 'real' i had my eyebrows done to match. more black shoe polish.
as horrific as this was with my pale white skin, i thought a nice dark tan would make it all better. off to the tanning booth. well, that didn't go quite right either. it seems that i don't tan. i just get bright red and sunburned.
So GREAT! i look like some kind of stan worhsip freak with third degree burns on his face and piercing blue eyes. Ethnic? YEAH....
riiiiiiiiiiiight. OMG. I don't THINK so.
Then i looked back on the stations i applied to and there were four stations in four states that some guy from india, beaten with the ugly stick, badly dressed and speech impediment got hired instead of me!!!
i don't care who gets the job, but just be better than me somehow. but nope. not the case.
and so this began my exile in the American mid-west.