As far as anyone knows, Dolly Parton never met or had anything to do with Marlon Brando.
My acting coach, on the other hand, made a big deal about knowing or dating Marlon Brando when he was in his prime. The only reason I had an acting coach was because I was a member of AVEC, the American Value Exchange Corporation, a barter organization in Santa Barbara. It was hard to find anything useful to spend barter credits on, so I spent them on acting lessons.
At the time, I was cast as a prison guard in Frank Pacheco’s off-State Street production of Big Brother, a low budget adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. My acting coach had no role in landing me the part. Neither did my acting.
Every Tuesday, I drove up to Santa Ynez with my fellow cast member, Sonny, for our dose of Marlon Brando and some honest critique of how lousy an actor I was.
Frank Pacheco had no idea we were getting coached on the side. I doubt he would have approved.
I didn't know whether to believe the Brando stories or care, but they made me not want to be like that.
Which is why I'm hesitant to share what I'm about to share about Jay Leno. I don't know Jay personally, but I've met him a couple of times and once blew past him on my Guzzi when he was riding back into town from the Rock Store on his jet engine bike.
I was working for Andy for the third and thank God final time, after Glenn got shot by his mother in law. If you ever met Glenn, you'd understand why. His first words to me upon returning from the attempted murder were, “Andy prefers if you do it this way.”
One day, the phone rang, and it was Jay Leno, wanting to talk to me. I’d had it up to my eyeballs with Andy’s passive aggressive growling at me for not being his dream production artist like Glenn was. I had big plans to tell Andy to f*ck off and become a motorcycle broker for the newly announced Muench Mammut, a 2000cc ridiculously excessive remake of a ridiculously excessive classic, only this time you could watch yours being built over the internet, which was practically unheard of (and dare I say, ridiculously excessive) in the early 2000’s.
My wife knew somebody who knew somebody, which is how I got my promo materials to Jay in the first place.
Now he was calling me at Andy's, which was a big deal, because Andy was a big deal as a graphic designer for all the big deal musicians like Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen. Art directors with names like Vartan were involved.
Andy was genuinely impressed.
Jay knew all about the original Muench Mammut. Had I taken notes, so would I. We talked for a while, and I continued to work, because I was on Andy’s dime. At the beginning of the conversation, my Mac desktop was full of clutter. At some point during the conversation, I dragged everything into the trash and emptied it. My desktop was clean, and everything was gone, including the CLIENTS folder.
I interrupted the history lesson and said, “hey Jay, can you call me back tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
I hung up, sick. Andy was an old school designer, raised on pencils and x-acto knives. He didn't have an opinion on backups. He probably would have been in favor, had he known you could have one.
I walked up to Andy's desk. He was hunched over his hand lettering and didn't turn around.
“Hey Andy, I'm sorry, but I accidentally deleted the CLIENTS folder.”
He didn't miss a beat. Without raising his voice, “f*ck you.”
I called three different IT guys. Only one called back. He came down the next day and shared the bad news. No way to recover the CLIENTS folder.
Glenn, who opted not to press charges against his mother in law, had to be completely rewired and lost his spleen as a result of the shooting. But he remembered copying most of the CLIENT files to DVD’s, so it wasn't a complete disaster. In a way, Jay Leno is at least partially at fault (though not responsible, no, that's all on me) for my deleting the files in the first place. None of this would have happened had he called me outside of work hours.
Still, we invested in a backup system. That was the same day Andy brought in muffins, but not for us. They were sitting on his desk, in plain sight. And they were still sitting there at the end of the day, when we went through our weekly ritual of my having to ask him for my paycheck.
I decided that rather than broker ridiculously excessive motorcycles, classic or otherwise, I was having more fun when the computers broke down.
I became an IT guy.
Because no matter what Dolly Parton (who, unlike my acting coach, never dated Marlon Brando) says, it's good to have a backup plan.
Catch me in Boise at the Story Story Night Slammer of the Year competition on Monday, September 21, at 7pm, at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival grounds. Tickets at storystorynight.org.
