On December 8, 2023, I will become 75 years (despite every effort in my life not to make that happen).

From 1974-1998, I lived my second twenty-five years attempting to break the time barrier by fitting as much living as impossible into the universe’s space-time continuum. Unbelievable, I say, as I look back on it. It was a time of fast living, faster dying, trying hard to be a typical middle-class professional while testing the boundaries of recklessness and insanity.

When I last left you in 1973 (Part One), I was a television reporter trainee and a radio host in Washington, D.C. I thought I was living large, fulfilling my dreams and best plans. There was, however, the small detail of being in one of those intimate relationships you know is a disaster in the making. Yet, I could not admit that I had made a horrible mistake (something I seem to do regularly). But, again, these are separate stories, and I don’t have time to tell you all about them because there is not enough time in the world or the universe. It’s essential to know that my thinking back then was flawed while, at the same time, I was on a fast track to success. Contradictions much?

The second twenty-five years of my life began at high speed: from reporter intern to full-fledged television reporter in Hartford, Connecticut (1974-1978), where the news was all over southern New England, covering everything from cat shows to murder trials to my neighbor shooting out his partner’s car window with me as a witness (my day off at home) and police responding only to have one of them fall on his gun and shoot himself in front of me (he later died). I did work for Eyewitness News, but this was a little too much eyewitness.

I once figured out that in four years of reporting, I must have totaled some fifteen stories per week times fifty weeks times four years equals some three thousand news stories. Those four years alone qualify as a “Seen it, Done it” life experience that taught me so much about people, about writing, how fast life can be, and that if we don’t chill now and then, we will overheat and disintegrate.

Sorry I didn’t live the lesson I learned. I married a second time, had a child, and bought a house, and we lived happily ever after. Yeah, I was kidding about the last part. (Don’t say anything. I accept I was a lousy husband and father who didn’t seem to learn anything from the experience). She left with our child and returned to D.C.

That’s how I ended up back in Washington, D.C., for a second go around.

Okay, I will rush through the rest of the second twenty-five years because you and I don’t have all day. 1978. Trying to save the marriage. 1979. Go to work for the Mayor of Washington, D.C. Say his name. M.B. 1980. The beginning of a four-year relationship that I call “Sex, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll.” (I’ll get back to that later). 1982. Appointed Director of a commission charged with bringing cable television to the nation’s capital. Picture this: a 28-member commission with a staff and a chairperson who saved my butt more times than I can remember and a city government oversight that made life sometimes tricky and sometimes made me wish that I had followed my father into a career as a truck mechanic. We had our share of controversies, but nothing like the controversy I brought to the job.

As I said earlier, I lived another La Vida Loca from 1980-1984 (Reckless in Sodom and Gomorrah), but this one had disastrous consequences. All I can say about it now is that there was a federal indictment of a person I knew, and I was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator. I lost my job and my dignity, although some might argue that I had lost that long before this shock; I lost my mind and friends. Yes, I know, there is no need to cry over milk spilled nearly forty years ago. Anyway, one good thing came out of this craziness. I moved to California to find peace and a fresh start. Oh yeah, there was a woman (not another one).

1984-1998. Ask me if I had ever ridden a motorcycle before I bought one so I could become a motorcycle courier on the freeways of Los Angeles, unfamiliar roads. I traveled without GPS, only a Thomas Guidebook. Why bother asking? You already know the answer. No. Next, the Airport Shuttle driver. The things you hear and see from the front driver’s seat. How about a bartender at a German-themed restaurant where I was constantly asked by European emigres where I was from, and when I told them The Bronx, they would follow up with the No, where are really from question? I thought I would feel trapped in this hell hole for the rest of my life. How could I be in the middle of the entertainment capital of the world serving drinks to a drunk person from Buttfuck, Kansas, who’s trying to tell me that I’m not a real American (no, really)?

Then, I was saved. First, the American Film Institute chose me to participate in a two-week workshop in TV Drama Writing. Then, a friend asked me if I could produce a behind-the-scenes interview in Long Beach (we were living in San Pedro, a part of Los Angeles), where a film was being shot. Of course, I said yes. One thing led to another, and suddenly, I was working for a new cable television network called Movietime, which became E! Entertainment. Then I eventually became Executive Producer of Live Events (you know What Are You Wearing on the Red Carpet), where I was living another La Vida Loca (what’s with me and La Vida Locas?) with growing Red Carpet productions, traveling to New York City, Florida, San Francisco, with international travel locations after 1998. More on that later. I was flying high.

And speaking of flying high. During those second twenty-five years, I met this woman from Compton, California, before I came to the state—long story (you can read some of it HERE). We had a son. We’ve had a long life together, forty years when you count the year I met her.

Those second twenty-five years were a whirlwind of life too fast, falling into a chasm of the same old habits and dead-end lifestyles that we knew where this was headed. But you don’t care about those things when living the imagined time of your life. However, deep down somewhere in your brain, you know the truth. I am headed toward that hole again; nothing will prevent me from falling in. The only question I should ask is, “Can I get out alive?” If you’re reading this, you know how the story ends. It’s not the ending that’s important, though. It’s the journey that always counts.

Next Week: Part Three, 1998-2023.