As a child in a dream I spent my free time in the forests tracking small animals.
I perused any books having to do with wildlife and it was only a matter of time before I became a biologist. Then I entered Mrs. Rybicke's sophomore English class and by the time I graduated from Chilton High School I was no longer a man of the forest. I was a writer with a new dream. Fame and fortune.
Somewhere along the way I failed. Failed as a writer. Failed as a dreamer. While a grad student in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia I was expected to graduate in three years and go on to grand things. Perhaps even my own sitcom. What happened?
A common question I like to ask people is, "If you could do absolutely anything for a living what would it be?" You'd be surprised how many people are devoid of dreams. Sometimes I envy them.
I've been living in a van on the streets of L.A. for six years and one month. It is a world of the disenchanted and disenfranchised. A world of mad dreamers and disappointed survivors. Show business is not kind to the elderly. For me, at my age, the best I can hope for now is to die in my sleep by the end of the week. And yet every morning I wake to the sunshine blinding me through the windshield. I just can't catch a break. On the bright side my overhead is low. A bottle of Windex now and then.
During my standup comedian days I followed some of the greats like Freddie Prinze long before he shot himself on a couch. I don't have a suicidal bone in my body or I'd be swapping jokes with Freddie right now.
I can't even imagine taking my own life and I can imagine a lot.
Improv comedy caught my attention way back in 1980 while I was a grad student in Vancouver, Canada. We waited in line at midnight until they struck the set from that evening's play and then would enter and compete without any guidelines or rules. Improv was new and exciting. Then it drifted south of the 40th. parallel and developed a code of ethics.
America claimed improv as its own and mutated all the fun out of it.
I'm not without any dreams. I still want to put together an improv act. "Fortune Man" would be a parody of the psychic hotlines. I would, of course, be Fortune Man along with other improv comics and audience members participating in mock seances, channeling and tarot card readings. A speakerphone to the After World would allow audience members to talk with a dead uncle or JFK . Comics backstage would be on the other end of the phone playing those roles.
I'm going to level with you. I started writing in blogs only after Bill Gannon from Yahoo suggested I convert a year long string of stories from my newspaper column into blog format after I applied for an editor's position. It took me two and half weeks to convert all 12 stories as well as writing four more, including this one. I never heard back from Mr. Gannon after numerous emails. Don't you just love prospective employers who just leave you hanging? I am assuming that Mr. Gannon either had a massive stroke or just isn't civilized enough to let me know where I stand. If I'm lucky it's both.
As I've said many times I wish I had grown up dreaming of becoming a plumber. There's far more security and better pay in that. Instead I grew up dreaming of becoming a famous comedy writer and comic. I expected to have my own sitcom, own property in Malibu and fly my own plane by the age of 30. Instead, at 57, I'm a bum in a van.
One monumental payoff from writing this blog has been the emails. Not only from appreciative readers but others from my past as well. My first wife, Jessie, whom I hadn't heard from in over 35 years, wrote me her version of how we met in a blog. She followed it the next day with a blog describing her second marriage. Jessie's turned out to be a better writer than me even though she makes her living as an attorney four blocks from the White House. Good for her. She deserves to be finally recognized for her creative brilliance.
Trust me, you don't want to live in a van anywhere in L.A.
I've woken up at 3:00 in the morning to find a crackhead sitting the passenger seat trying to steal my stereo.
I've had a gang of skateboarders break all my windows while I was sleeping inside. I've been in gunfights, fist fights and hooker fights. And that's just in one night in Echo Park!
Life goes on as I stand still. I'm a bum in a van.
The son that I raised by myself , Tyson, lives only 19 miles away yet he couldn't drive over to visit me on my birthday. I've never been very good at making friends while my son has some of the best people you could ever meet as close friends. The only joy in my life has been my four year old granddaughter but I don't see her anywhere as much as I would like to. Perhaps a common complaint among grandparents everywhere.
I don't envision writing another entry into this blog. I hope I've entertained and amused some of you and perhaps irritated a few. Hopefully those people won't learn where I park my van at night. It's fairly safe to say we all look for a piece of ourselves in everything we read. Maybe you've found a facet of yourself in something I've written here or in any of my other posts in this blog.
In the final analysis we are responsible for the decisions we make. I've been afforded an excellent education and should have made better personal and career decisions. I came from an era of hippies and bohemians who glorified the life of people like Jack Keroac. Today I sold blood just so I could afford the gas to keep driving over to the unemployment office. I sat for an hour with a needle the size of Michael Jackson's penis in my arm just for twenty bucks. Is this truly the life of an artist?
I left a small farming town in Wisconsin to chase my dreams West. Now, a hundred years later, my dreams have chased me into the back of a Toyota Previa with a blown head gasket. What happened? Ain't life full of surprises?
If you don't see another post in this blog I am in jail, dead or both.
Goodbye.
For more comical info on the writer of this blog go to: WorldHumour.bravehost.com
Tom Neuhoff
World Humour
"Funnier Than You"
Hollywood Daze/Blogger
Hollywood Daze/Yahoo 360
There are no comments.