Connecting the Spots

Whenever I talk to aspirants hoping to make a mark in the media and/or sports businesses, I always stress how interconnected the various facets of the industries have become. With video on the internet, radio on TV, and rappers in the sports business, the expertise one gathers and the connections one makes in one place may well pay off somewhere else. Even if they want to work in one certain medium, a job in another can help them get to their preferred career more effectively than ever before.

Last week, the Fort Worth Weekly put a photo of me on their cover. The story inside talked about a documentary project on which I’m working and also covered much of my career. It has resulted in social media attention, a few double takes at restaurants, and, hopefully, added credibility in future endeavors. It has been a positive event.

It also got me to thinking about the path that led to it coming out in print. I realized the events followed one of those unplanned trails of diverse experiences inimical to today’s interconnected world.

Let’s start with the project that got the paper interested. Like many endeavors a long time coming, this one started with my father, whom we’ll call Salvatore. I’ve decided to change the names of the people in this story, partially in case they don’t want to be mentioned and partially because it will amuse those who know them (including me).

Anyway, back in the day when Salvatore was athletic director at a university I’ll call Kruger College of Industrial Smoothing, he recommended me for a job doing announcing with a local cable outfit televising some of the school’s athletic events. That job grew into a regular gig, and when the local pro hockey team won the Wonderful Hockey Association of Texas championship, I got to write and produce a documentary on the season that led to the WHAT title. A few years later, when the local baseball team, the Lagrave Leopards, celebrated its history, I wrote another documentary.

Meanwhile, I had also begun to work full-time for another baseball club. We’re going to call them the Randol Mill Rutabagas. At the Bagas, I worked making commercials with a co-worker ostensibly named Callie Kringle. Callie was exceptionally competent and helped make my work better. She also had a better half. Her husband and I got along well because we both liked the taste of a beverage called whuskey (some varietals are spelled whusky).

Mr. Kringle is an architect and he and I talked about doing a documentary on a project he was working on. We never gained any traction with it, but the work we did on it, plus his knowledge of my creative background, led him to recommend me to a former colleague. The colleague now worked at the architecture firm rebuilding the damaged schools in West, Texas. The company wanted to create a documentary about the process and must have decided the credentials accumulated through my work with the Rutabagas, the previous documentary projects, and the recommendation of my whuskey-drinking friend made me the guy to spearhead the project.

That project got the attention of the newspaper. They assigned their film writer to cover the story, and, consequently, me. But how did they find out about it? That tale has its roots in television, treks through music, has a baseball element, and, once again, involves drinking.

While I was doing sports announcing, I simultaneously held a full-time gig at a local TV station we’re going to pretend is named KOWW. At KOWW, I worked with a colleague named, for our purposes here, Bruno. Bruno and I both liked music, and bonded over it. Many years later, he put together a jam, and some of those musicians and I later got together in a blues band called A Little Cake and Some Icing. We played a lot of fun biker shows and saw some things we’ll never be able to forget. After that band broke, up a couple of the members and I started a band called Loda Dimes. I went ahead and used its real name because nobody’s ever heard of it anyway.

In an attempt to establish a stronger presence for Loda Dimes in the music scene, I joined the local music co-op. There I met and worked with its driving force, an MC whose name we’ll say is Elric Gryffindor. Elric and I both liked music and baseball. He worked at the Fort Worth Weekly. Aha, you just said, I see where this is going! But then, suddenly, he left the Weekly!

But later Elric went back to the paper. At some point after his return, he and I went out to drink a beverage we both liked called “boor.” While we consumed some microboors, I told him about the documentary project. He went to his editor with the idea that a story about a local guy doing a movie related to an important event might interest folks. She agreed, the story got done, and my face got plastered on newsstands across Tarrant County.

The point of this whole blog post you’ve managed to digest is that it wouldn’t have gotten done without the interplay of varied experiences in the entertainment business. From college sports to TV to pro sports to music to documentary films, they all helped lead to a positive career development.

I often tell folks the most important thing for advancement is demonstrating to people that you’re not crummy at what you do. I actually usually use stronger language, but you might be reading this to your kids. Tell them to never miss an opportunity to do show their competence, no matter what the endeavor.

After all, who would have thought that playing blues in biker bars, watching hockey fights, and drinking whuskey with architects would get a guy on the front page of the paper?