SCRAPBOOK #1

Did I mention that I don't throw away ANYTHING? Old habit. So I've got drawers and boxes and closets filled with lots of mementos of my past. So I just thought it would be kind of fun to slip some of them on the scanner and share them here. No particular chronological order. Just throwing them up. And I'm sure there'll be another gallery of them down the road (so I'm calling this one "#1"). Note that some links go to numerous images.

	RANDOM I.D. CARDS. Just a few I.D. cards of mine from over the years. Some quite scary. (3 images)
	That's my first business card as a writer, when I first started trying to break in back when I was living in Arizona in the early-to-mid 90s.
	Yes, I was a babe MAGNET when I was a freshman in high school. A few us of us into comic books (Marvel Comics, specifically) formed ourselves into the Sacramento Marvelite Association. And we each had membership cards with our favorite Marvel character on them (I was a Hawkeye fan). As I recall, I was president. As a historical note, I wrote a letter on our behalf reviewing Alpha Flight #1, and since they got too many letters on that first issue to put in their letter column, they just listed the names of people who sent letters, so my name (not the group's) appeared in Alpha Flight #2 (or #3, can't recall). Which pissed the group off. Yeah, like I said...MAGnet.
	I was a big radio listener back in high school, and regularly called in to win contests. Won lots of movie tickets and albums (yes, albums...we're talking vinyl, baby). In this case, my junior year, I won a chance to appear in a commercial for one of our local theater chains, courtesy of KWOD-106. Not a televised one, just one to be shown before movies in the theater. I think I took Tim with me to the filming. Can't remember. Can't even remember if we made it on screen.
	Ah, but I hit it big my senior year, when I ended up winning $102.00 from FM-102! Woo hoo!
	No, didn't win a Night Ranger concert at my school. But still had this ad around from when I saw Night Ranger in 1987 during the "Big Life" tour. This is a band, for some reason, I was obsessed with. Sure, you could enter and win the concert thing, but more importantly...up to $2.50 off on Edge Gel or Agree Shampoo! Daaaamn!!
	Speaking of concerts, I got to get backstage at a Whitesnake show in 1990, oddly enough because Bad English was opening for them and my mother used to babysit the stage manager for that band. Small world... Here's the article I saved on the concert, my ticket stub, and my backstage pass. Got to rap with David Coverdale for a while, and drool over his wife (Tawny Kitean, whom you may remember from the Whitesnake videos...or from starring in Bachelor Party with Tom Hanks) in person.
	Check out the program for my 8th grade graduation, why don't you? I won a scholarship, which was announced (to my total shock) during that ceremony. Not for academic reasons, believe me. Pretty much just for being in a wheelchair. Membership has its privileges.. (4 images)
	No, I didn't just graduate junior high. I went all the WAY, dude! As proof, here's my high school graduation announcement. Class of '86, baby! (5 images)
	Okay, you're right. An announcement doesn't actually prove anything. I could have announced and then dropped out. So take a look at the actual high school graduation program. My name's in it, I swear! (8 images)
	And speaking of graduation...check THIS out. While I was looking for stuff to put on this page, I was digging through a drawer and found this. This is a check from my Uncle Joe and Aunt Kitty as a high school grad gift. A check which I seem to have not only never cashed, but apparently never even FOUND until twenty years later! I wonder...have they been going crazy wondering why their checkbook hasn't balanced for two decades? Sorry, guys...and thanks! The thought that counts... (3 images)
	Let's stick with that high school theme. As you might recall, the ULTIMATE in high school coolness was to get a girl to give you one of her school photos and write something on the back. Okay, so I wasn't ultimately cool, so I didn't get too many, but got a couple here and there (I'm sure I got more (or am I just deluding myself?), but I can only find three of them). Here's one from my friend Lisa Belton from senior year. (2 images)
	And here's one from Jennifer Rau from junior year.(2 images)
	And another Jennifer pic, from senior year. (2 images)
	NAMETAG-O-RAMA. Here's a page of nametags (and sometimes business cards or I.D. cards) of friends of mine, just for fun. I became the keeper of all these for people somewhere along the way. Enjoy, my friends, this memorable walk down Crappy Job Lane... (16 images)
	Okay, I don't want to brag...but I DID reach the score of FOUR SQUADRONS in Activision's "Robot Tank" on my Atari 2600 my freshman year. Like I said...babe MAGNET. I guess there was this thing where if you reached that score, you were supposed to (as instructed) take a polaroid of your TV screen to prove it and then send that in so... Hmm. I'm not really sure what "so". Looks like I meant to (hence the dorky, ass-kissing letter), but seeing as how I still have the letter and the photo, seems I never did. That's okay. The point is that both you and I know that I was a Robot Tank MASTER. That's reward enough for me.
	I seriously have ZERO memory of this! Apparently, as a freshman, I was suspended from World History class, as this letter from the principal proves. Why? No idea! And does the fact that it's still in my possession mean that it never made its way to my mother? Hmmm...
	Oh, and in case you're wondering what could happen to you for getting yourself in hot water at my high school, here's a copy of the probation policy. Did I ever get that far? I don't seem to recall that I did. But I have a copy of this, so maybe I did...
	Par-taaaaaaay! Looks like there was a party at Michelle Dial's house my senior year that I was invited to. Yeah, I finally left the comic books and Atari games behind. Check the wicked 80s neon card! Stylin'! Bring CLOTHES for the hot tub? That ain't the kind of hot tub party I'M used to, baby! Heh HEH! Hmm. No, I couldn't pull off sleazy back then, either. Some things never change. (2 images)
	Here's a postcard from my sister, Shelley, from her awesome Euro trip in the summer of '85 (just after her senior year, just before mine started). This one came from Greece. As for the reference, we had a black cat named "Stoney". (2 images)
	And here's a postcard from my buddy Wayne from his Navy days, when he was hanging out in the Philippines in 1989. I think he'd been in for two years by then. Maybe three. Viva Olongapo! (2 images)
	Speaking of Wayne... It was '87 when he and Tim and I took ourselves a little trip from Sacramento to San Diego for a few days. Specifically, to go down to TIJUANA (aaaiiieee!!!). That town had some draw to it when you were, like, 17 or 18 and could sit in a bar and order drinks. This napkin was a memento of our time at Margarita Village. Sadly, it's the only memento, since the way-cool 8x10 photo we had taken got dropped by...well, me...going back across the border. Why? Let me think. I'd just spent a night in T.J....oh, yeah! I was REALLY REALLY DRUNK!!! Sorry, guys. But you can still remember the photo, right? At least we know it LOOKED really cool... No, they're never letting that go...
	Oh, and here's the card for the cheap-ass National City motel we stayed at on the other side of the border (how we made it all the way back there alive I have NO idea). When you're really drunk (and you're a guy) you think of every girl you ever knew who might still want to talk to you, so Tim decided to call this girl he'd met at a party at Jennifer Rau's house on New Year's Eve (this girl was visiting from the midwest, I think, and was back home at the time of this T.J. weekend). So he's chatting away (long distance) for maybe an hour or more. And as soon as he hangs up, at, like, 3am, management suddenly calls us and makes us come to the office and pay our phone bill in advance. At 3am. Yeah, that was our master plan. Pay for a motel room so we could make long distance calls and ditch. Guess we must have come off as dangerous, disreputable youth. Sweet!
	Top 83 Songs of 1983. But let's jump back to high school again, with further evidence of what an exciting social life I had in my early H.S. years. Sophomore year. I actually spent my New Year's Day listening to the radio (probably KWOD) ALL DAY as they played the top 83 songs of 1983. And I wrote all of them down. See, we didn't have the internet back then. You couldn't just look this stuff up. Some dedicated historian like myself had to write it all down for future generations. So here they are, future generations. Put on your Vans and get off the WALL, baby! As you'll see, in the age before the internet, we also didn't have spellchecking... (4 images)
	Okay, this will mean pretty much nothing to you if you didn't know Brian Beck. If you did, you are now totally jaw-dropped at this amazing piece of preserved history. An original Beck's Wrecks business card! This has to be circa '82 or '83, I think. You KNOW you want your Datsun mini tricked out by Brian and Joe, you swoopmaster, you! Because nothing says "trust" like a shop that apparently doesn't even have a phone number...
	Party at Kim Bitzer's house! Woo hoo! I think this might have been in junior high. So now you know how to get to her house. Two problems. One, the party's already over. And two, she doesn't live there anymore...
	In 1984, when I was a sophomore, I had spinal surgery to have a couple of metal rods fused to my spine (which did a lot of good, considering they started breaking soon after and are STILL broken...). Here's my hospital bracelet from the adventure.
	So as you can imagine, I was in the hospital for a while. But classmates of mine managed to send a couple of nice cards along the way to keep me company. Here's one now.
	And here's another one. This was one of those big fold-out ones, though. Cliched cat shenanigans on the front, writing on the back. (6 images)
	In 1985 (my junior year), our school band got invited to play at Reagan's second inauguration in Washington, D.C. I went to a pretty small school, and the majority of the students were in the band. And the school didn't really want to leave the few of us that WEREN'T in the band behind. So those of us non-band types got to go along and be called "Band Boosters". As in, the band got to stay in a hotel, and we all got stuck in unused dorm rooms in a local Adventist academy. They had their own bus. WE stood around in the snow (in D.C. In January. The temperature was NINE) and took public transportation. But hey...we got to go, and got to be part of history. And we had more goof-off time than them, too, so we got to see a lot of sights. Read all about the whole thing here...
	And we got to wear these cool buttons to announce to the world that none of us could play instruments. You know, the Nazis had "flair", too...
	And I saved my air travel stub from that trip, too. I've still never yet seen more of Pittsburgh than the airport during that layover...
	Ah, but I was an actual participant the following year, when I was in the choir and got to go on the band and choir trip to the World's Fair (Expo '86) in Vancouver, BC. My buddy (and fellow crooner) Mike Fanselau picked up one of these postcards on the trip and wrote this note as the card to go with my grad gift from him at our high school graduation not long after. (2 images)
	Okay, again...don't mean to brag...but I was a Toastmaster. No, not THAT kind of toast (that came later...). We had a student version of Toastmasters International ("Tyro" Toastmasters) going on in our school, and I was not only in it, but was Toastmasters president (and somehow, with that on my transcript, I still didn't get into Harvard. Huh. Maybe I should have put down the Marvelite thing instead...). Here's my official certificate. Yeah, I was just trying to get some practice for my big Oscar acceptance speech. Notice that I'm still practicing...
	By the way...in the late '80s, in Sacramento, you weren't $@#& if you didn't have one of THESE on your car. Notice how I say that like I HAD a car in the late '80s? It was all about hair bands in Sac, and radio was therefore all about 93 Rock. You might get away with a KZAP sticker, but that pretty much meant you were just a Deadhead (and let people know that if they had some cash and needed some weed, yours was probably the car window they should knock on). Forget your FM-102 (please. I was SO over that). Forget your KWOD-106. Bunch of top 40 crap (pssst! Hair band music pretty much WAS top 40 crap in '89...).It was all about 93 Rock. Sometimes in my sleep, in the quiet of night, I can still hear the monotone words "Coming up next, forty-five minutes of non-stop rock-and-roll. Keep it here."
	Oh, and I went to college. Sort of. In 1986 I got out of high school and went right into American River College. Which pretty much was STILL high school, but with ashtrays... This is back when they still called it "junior college" before changing it to the less offensive "community college". You know I got an A.A. degree for fifty bucks a semester? And it only took me four years... Anyway, I saved my first counseling appointment card.
	On my 21st birthday, my sister put together the mother of all surprise parties, brother! Me not being very bright helped, because when it went down, it was a TOTAL surprise. A limo picked me up (and my friends, who were in on it), took us to this big hall in Folsom, where pretty much everyone in my life (all sides of the family, school friends, new friends) was waiting. Still probably holds the honor of being the best night of my life. And here's the flyer from the big event. (2 images)
	And what did I do ON my 21st birthday, a couple of weeks later? Reno, baby, RENO!!! Me, Tim and Rich loaded up the car and headed for Reno (we all turned 21 right about the same time) for a drunken sleepless adventure. We stayed at the Fitzgerald Hotel and Casino, where I swiped this coaster.
	And what did we do in the middle of the night when we took a break from gambling to get some food in us? Keno, baby, KENO!!!
	Speaking of surprise parties, my buddy A.T. had one for his 18th birthday, thrown by his sister (and our pal) Shannon. Took place at the Hilton in Sac. And being such good buddies of his, when the scary drunk girl was all over him, we ditched his ass and left them in the room alone. Heh heh heh. There here be the flyer.
	Probably the best concert of my life (and I saw many) was one of my first. I caught Oingo Boingo (woo hoo!) at U.C. Davis in my freshman year of college. I highlighted the part about the person being carried away in the stretcher because that person was my friend Sara (too many wine coolers + too close to the stage = stretcher). This article was from my campus newspaper (the American River College "Current") and was written by the paper's editor, and an old high school pal of mine, Jeff Doleman. He became my editor when I wrote for that paper (briefly. I was a journalism major for a whole ONE semester).
	Ticket-Stub-Fest. Speaking of concerts...for the life of me, I can't seem to find the envelope I KNOW I have somewhere with all my concert ticket stubs from the late '80s and early '90s! Rats! I'll keep looking. Here's a collection of other ones, though. Some sports, a movie, a concert. (9 images)
	Speaking of tickets? Six tickets to paradise, baby. In 2001, at the (near) height of Kings mania, our pal A.T., working at Tower Records at the time, was able to score six tickets to the Tower luxury box at Arco Arena...for the playoffs. It was Kings vs. Suns, game two. Aaron and I grabbed Tim from L.A. and we all drove North. We met up with A.T., Greg, and Tim's dad, Art, and we hit the Arena. First class all the way. A great view, our own TVs, our own bar, our own bathroom, and our own waitress. And it was a game where we absolutely blew the Suns OUT. A night I'll never forget, spent with all the folks I'd want to have shared it with. Here's a scan of the tix.
	Hey, want to take a look at some pages from the program I got at the game? Come, you KNOW you do... (3 images)
	And here's a random note my friend Cindy left on my door on the 4th of July, somewhere between '88 and '90. No one answered the door? Of course not. I was PASSED OUT! And you think your friends know you...
	Random Tim Sketches. Yes, famed Nice Guy artist Tim Watts has been drawing for a long time. Came across three sketches he did when we were all just sitting around goofing off in 1988. (3 images)
	Oh, and back to high school for a sec. This is the ballot I made up for the senior class awards for graduation. Yes, there were a whole 28 people in my graduating class. And we had a three-day graduation thing, and the Saturday night part was called "Class Night", sort of a more laid-back and fun talent show kind of thing. I thought it'd be fun to do class awards during that...so I decided to make some. 28 people, 28 awards to win. Do you THINK some of the awards were specially made for certain people? The whole class voted, and the results were MOSTLY honest (hey, I had to bend the truth a LITTLE...everyone had to get an award). Those notes next to the awards aren't the actual winners. I'm not sure what I was doing there. Maybe I was writing down who I thought would win which one on this copy? Anyway, if you want to find out who ACTUALLY won what, you'll just have to watch the Class Night video. Order yours today! And I actually DID win Wildest Imagination, fair and square, and by a landslide, thank you. Too bad. I was holding out for Best-Dressed Girl...
	Shanghai Mailers. The band that played at my 21st birthday party was called Shanghai, a group of guys my sister had become friends with. I became a fan, naturally, and since I had just turned 21, I could now get into all the bars and clubs where they were playing. And I did so. A LOT. I was also on their mailing list, so here you can check out a selection of their mailers announcing upcoming shows, and experience the 1990 Sacramento local rock scene for yourself. Historical note: Along the way, Shanghai changed their name to "The Broken". And then they broke up. THAT's irony. (11 images)
	There was another band I knew well back about that time (1991, actually...if memory serves). My high school buddy Kris got himself a band together, one called "Wildflower". They had a hot chick singer (with a psycho Nazi boyfriend), they got some gigs, and for one glorious summer, Kris knew (local) rock-n-roll fame. They broke up before they ever actually went anywhere, but Kris had a great time while it lasted...even if he did hate the name. Here's the flyer for their very first show (third billing, but hey...it WAS their very first show) at the Cattle Club in Sac.
	And at their second show, which Rich and I videotaped for them (including cool backstage pre-show footage), I had all four Wildflowers autograph a napkin for me. Ah, the brief, sweet taste of fame...
	I had this thing I started doing about that time, when I was out with friends. I'd peal off the neck label of one of the beers I was drinking, and on the back I'd write the date, what bar we were at, and who was there. And in another great "for the life of me..." moment...I can't find them! I only found the one, and this was from well AFTER I'd quit drinking (hence the O'Doul's label), in the summer of 1995 near the end of my time living in Phoenix. This was a happy hour thing with my work people from the Dial Corp. Good group of folks. (2 images)
	Oh, that's just WRONG! Yeah, speaking of Phoenix... Everybody ends up with one of these, don't they? The photo booth smooch shot with their ex. I'm no exception. Some end up throwing such things out after the inevitable end comes. Not me. I'm Irish! We EMBRACE our pain! Mostly because the pain gives us an excuse to drink more... TOO-ra-LOO-ra-loo-RAAAAAAL...
	Comic-Con Badges. Hey, did I mention I went on to become a working comic industry professional? Honest to gosh. And as a comic pro (he says with nerdy superiority), I of course had to attend the biggest comic convention in the world! And I did so, quite a few times. Here's a collection of my badges from various San Diego Comic-Cons. Note that this event gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "stinking badges". (10 images)
	And my main claim to fame in comics, of course, is writing The Nice Guy, with artist and co-creator Tim Watts (shameless plug alert!). Here's a flyer from one of our live autograph appearances at A-1 Comics in Roseville, in this particular case for their "Free Comic Book Day" event (I think this was for the one in 2005). (2 images)
	And being in comics sometimes gets you more than just any woman your heart desires (shut up! It's MY fantasy!). My connection to a Nice Guy fan, one involved and connected in the whole Firefly experience, plus mine and Tim's tireless work in promoting both Firefly and the big-screen Serenity on our site, got me (and my pal Tony, since Tim couldn't make it) to my first big Hollywood premiere! Here's my ticket to the big event. And you can read about the whole star-studded experience here, if you like.
	And not just the movie itself, but to the after-party to mingle with the stars and the director! Woo hoo! Here's the ticket to that one.
	And since you weren't allowed to take cameras in to the party, all I got to take home was the memories. Well, that, and this cocktail napkin from the bash.
	And here's something I just had to save, from about 2005, I think. Why? Because I realized how rarely a guy comes home from work and finds a note like this on his door, placed there by his hot neighbor. You just have to cherish those moments. They don't come along often (unless you're Kevin). That was a very interesting evening, but I'll not share that story here for A.T.'s sake (A.T....dude, get over it. Tim...dude, LET him get over it. It was funny!).

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