I had two stints of full time employment at Characters Typographic Services. Looking back, the first gave me the opportunity to pay my rent as an 18 year old, and the second gave me the chance to grow as a young man.

Both times it was thanks to the kindness of Mike DeCrescente…”Mike D” to all of us in the shop.

I will never forget him.

The first stint began in 1982 when I was fresh from dropping out of Syracuse University’s school of Visual Arts after 2 weeks of complete and total social discomfort.

I wasn’t able to live at home and so after I got the job as the nightshift proofboy, I remember sleeping on people’s couches during the day while they were working normal person’s hours. Some months into my first job, my mother helped me get a studio apartment on St. Mark’s Place in New York’s East Village. I think it was $500 a month for a 500 square foot studio. Needless to say, I didn’t think I had much of a life. On the way home in the mornings, I’d buy a bagel at a bakery on first avenue and 5^th street, with a slab of cream cheese.

One night about 9 months into my new career, my cigarette butt somehow ignited the plunger that was used to dispense the acetone we used to clean the films before processing the proofs.

Immediately the can erupted in flames and I tried to pick it up and throw it out the fire escape door. The door was locked. My hands were burning and I dropped the flaming can.  To clarify, we worked on the 5^th floor of a small building on 36^th street in New York, one elevator, and a host of toxic and flammable materials, film, photographic developer, and the like.

40 plus years later, in retrospect, I realize this could have killed all of us on that night shift and many more if it weren’t for the quick actions of a film stripper named John. As I remember, John was a Vietnam vet, and he put his experience in the jungle to use that night, grabbing a fire extinguisher, putting out the fire, and saving all of our lives. At the time, however, it was just about getting the morning’s work out to the clients.

Lenny the salesman would come in every morning at 6am to check on his client’s proofs and make sure all was in order. He was a short, rotund guy with a combover, but he was always the first salesman in the shop and the guy with the pharmaceutical accounts that brought in top dollar. So to him, and the rest of us, the smoke filled type shop was just a problem we had to overcome at 6 in the morning; check the proofs, package them up, and get the messengers out the door and to the clients. By the time Mike D came in, my head was down; I was almost in tears and thought I’d be fired for sure.

Well, all that happened was that Mike instituted a no-smoking policy on the shop floor, and I was back to work the next night.

The crew those nights was a hardcore typographic unit:

There was Joe, the night manager, Appelbaum, the head proofreader, Tom, Mori, and John, the film strippers, a gentle giant in the typositor/darkroom, a rasta guy who operated the linotype machine, and a crew of typesetters headed up by a guy who lived 2 hours away on a farm upstate. It seemed to me that guys were making some money. (More about them in another post)

Then there was me and a deaf mute guy pulling the proofs.

Fortunately, Mike D. hired a guy named Paul to help me out in the back, a guy who I recently reconnected with during the past year. Paul was putting himself through art school at the Parsons School of Design, schooling himself during the day and working nights with me at the shop. We quickly became friends and Paul schooled me about the east village.

He seemed to know everybody around, had a beautiful girlfriend, and was dedicated to the artist’s lifestyle. I still remember being off on a Friday night and getting a call from him at 2 am: wake up! We’re going to that after hours club next to McDonalds on first avenue and 6^th street!

At the time, the east village was the center of punk, art, and new wave music; the atmosphere was pumping. My weekends were spent in the clubs, bars, and after hours joints; my weeknights were spent working the night shift at the shop.

I lasted about a year during my first period of employment at Characters Typographic Services.

1.15.12

DYSTOPIA AND THE FILM INDUSTRY

My name is Benjamin Beardwood and I have worked in post production here in Los Angeles since 1992.

It has been instructive to talk with my fellow union members over the 2012 holiday break:

I have learned I am not the only one.

I am not the only one who feels isolated from the business;

I am not the only one who is about to lose healthcare benefits;

I am not the only one who has a handicapped family member in need of uninterrupted healthcare benefits.

I am not the only one who has seen their income decline by 50% over the past few years.

I am not the only one re-evaluating my professional life while entering my 50’s, wondering if the benefit packages I have contributed to during the course of my career will be available to me when I enter my 60’s.

Speaking with my fellow union members is like looking in the mirror;

Many of us in the entertainment industry sit at home during periods of unemployment and think it’s just us.

Reality check: it’s not just you and it’s not just me.

Our industry is changing drastically and I don’t see anybody in positions of leadership helping the membership. On the contrary, the entertainment corporations and their representatives are taking the same short term unsustainable economic position that so many American industries have taken in the past: bleed the American worker, export American jobs and American expertise offshore, and recycle previously produced material rather than create new content with the expectation that the worldwide economy will fill the gap.

This thinking will hopefully be short lived.

We saw this mindset in Detroit years ago and it is beginning to come full circle after a taxpayer bailout and a local economic disaster.

Can the entertainment industry avoid the same perils of short-term profit taking?

A recent October article in “The Financial Times” indicates that labour costs in China and other developing countries combined with shipping costs are pushing manufacturing jobs back into the U.S. This after years of job exportation for short term cost benefits.

As industry giants cry foul about foreign piracy, they continue to count on the foreign market to deliver the bottom line, releasing films like “Tintin” abroad before releasing them here in the U.S.

It’s a great business model until there isn’t a sustainable consumer base here in the U.S. and Los Angeles in particular, to create, support and promote the film industry’s product.

Piracy is not rampant here in the U.S., but in foreign countries.

Without the Los Angeles industry professional as the entertainment industry’s creative force and supporter, creating content here in Los Angeles will become a thing of the past, and theme parks will become the base moneymaker. See Disney Studios on this subject.

As California continues to struggle to keep production (and post production) jobs in state, producers and filmmakers continue to seek tax-benefitted locations out of state and out of country.

Another major issue affecting industry employment numbers is the recycling of previously produced content in the form of 3-D releases.

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times states that Disney Studios will be re-releasing 4 popular films in 3-D: ‘The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Finding Nemo,” and “Monsters,Inc.”

Paramount is re-releasing “Titanic” in 3-D. This film showed in theatres 15 years ago in 1997.

CUT!

Here are 5 potentially new productions that could have created thousands of well paying jobs and generated millions of dollars for the Los Angeles community in “trickle down” income.

The Los Angeles Times reported on January 12^th, 2012, that there is real talk of moving the Academy Awards presentation out of the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood to a downtown venue. This after the Hollywood and Highland project which includes the Kodak Theatre was designed and built purposefully to accomadate the Oscar presentations at a cost of 625 million dollars and 3 years of construction.

Upon looking at any industry website, with glowing reports of talent signings and post production legends, I am reminded of a word coined by George Orwell, “dystopia.”

Look it up.

Good luck to all of us in this new year.

Benjamin Beardwood

benjaminbeardwood@yahoo.com

With Poise and Grace

April, 2001
I first saw you by the window,
Standing with poise and grace,
A stone hung from your neck, dangling
Deep green significant I thought.
Beautifully intriguing calm and strong
I thought wise and long
What would I say to you at a later time
And so the inevitable happened
In my room you were all right
You sat with poise and grace
Language pronounced and elegant
Later in the bamboo shade
We talked of our lives made
I mentioned the results I’d had
Of bad choices and bad luck
We laid our towels under the sun
I watched as you slunk your sarong
And I questioned your confidence
Worry not was your response
Those early days of courting
Were magical to me, the heat
Your bed, your cat Toe and the fan
We made love early and often
As the months passed we cycled
We danced the dance of love
You danced with poise and grace
Movement and talk I smile inside’
We live together now with Kai and Toe
I’m happy inside to have you here
We’ve got three maybe
You’re wondrous with beauty
Things sometimes take time
So we’re still two, we cried hard
But I have you and you have me
We’ve got a whole life ahead of us
Jack isn’t well and we’ve got to help
Time to think of him and not ourselves
We will put our life aside for now
He needs you now and I will help
I know how hard it is for you
To watch a love waste away
Twenty years, a lifetime- he knew
Of the time you’d spent, so many days
Well now it’s you and I and Jack
The three of us will see this through
The terrible task of love and death
Long after his last breath
He will remember you
He will remember me
He will remember us
And we will remember Jack

This Island

For as long as I’ve had and as long as I’ve got
A trip to this place smelt like diesel and dust
Seaweed and smoke, marble and wine.
This earth, it’s as red as never I’ve seen
It’s the blood of the people. Kind in their way
And in their being. It is their bond.
But the reason we flew, the reason we left
Good, no great, no new, New York City
Was for the two in the clan who’d made it to almost sixty
Years spent together. Years that were up, some that were down
Yet one or the other never left town
Well I’ll admit there was a screw loose, perhaps even two
But haven’t we all. I know I do.
However I say it, we’re all here today, the family and I
There’s a few of us left though another just died
To join the last one
The father, the major the boss you might think
Thought we’re not too sure. It’s a bit dodgy darlings.
I’d like to know more
But it’s grandma, I say, at the end of the day
Who still strikes a chord with all of us
Her strength, her resolve, she had the right stuff
And so to the two that we love, our Leslie and Jay.
I’m long on reflection and lacking in words
To the daughters, however, this day, it’s important
That pain in your heart, the crippling, the gait
Soon will be dull, even gone, just you wait
Though they’re no longer alive, dead, but not gone
Ay, its them that’s in us, and that is our bond.

An early black and white photo in the ring

I watched an episode of “Finding Hulk Hogan” tonight and it gave me serious thought.

I met Hulk Hogan on 45th street between 10th and 11th Ave during the time I worked overnight at a typesetting shop named Cardinal Typography. We’d work from 1am to 8am with a required lunch break at 4am.

(Times Square back in the day)

They would be loading the trucks for the next days papers as I would walk  by every day “round midnight.

a warrior’s business card. Ready for the next show.

Driving home last night, I dialed up the volume in my car after “Deacon Blues” by Steely Dan came on the radio. It reminded me of why I do what I do. I’ve always had an appreciation for aural stimulation, though I carry a chip wanting to be the creator rather than the editor of the audio soundtrack.

My European journalist father was an adamant classical music afficianado; I have memories of wafting Gaulouise cigarette smoke, Mozart, and scotch while the music played on a “quadraphonic” stereo, predating today’s 5.1 systems.
Interestingly, the quadraphonic system was rejected at the time (late 70’s) and never caught on… look where we are today with multi-channel home audio and theater systems. I remember my dad talking about cable television and the miracle of the handheld calculators. He was right on all three counts.

As a young guy, perhaps 8 years old at the time, my mother dated a writer/trombone player who had 2 sons, both musical prodigies. Their penthouse apartment on Sheriden Square in New York’s west village was an altar to all things musical and intellectual.

Evening discussions on Salinger, Vonnegut, and contributors to “The New Yorker,” were interwoven with watching airliners circle New York from the roof, and trips to the Village Vanguard to listen to friends perform.
The boys jammed in their soundproofed bedroom, and the living room walls were filled with books, records, and reel to reel tapes along with a Teac ½” reel to reel for playback. I remember the release of the YES album as a major event; we stopped at the record store on 6th avenue (not far from “Crazy Eddie’s”), bought the album, and stopped at the 4th street basketball courts to shoot hoops in the dark, before taking the album home for a serious listen.

On the weekends, we’d go upstate to a hippy town not far from Woodstock, It was a weekend cabin with an outhouse, no running water, and a handpump to get things going. The place had a name, “Suit’s Us,” and it had a 50 foot tower antennae for some reason. I somehow connected a receiver to this behemoth and tuned in to stations from Canada and Nova Scotia to the western United States. I’d lie there in my sleeping bag during the dead of winter, warmed by the pot-bellied stove, tuning in voices and programming from all over the eastern seaboard.

For my 15th birthday, my grandfather gave me 500 dollars. I promptly went to Harvey Sound on 45th street to get myself a “real high end stereo.”
I had been listening to my aunt’s Sherwood receiver when I could, but I didn’t have my own stereo system.

Harvey Sound was New York’s audiophile shop of the time, and the sales team certainly reflected that attitude. However, I did know a bit about audio equipment as my classmate’s dad owned the magazine “Stereo Review.” The salesman set me up with a Kenwood integrated amplifier, a pair of ohm speakers, and a direct drive turntable with the oscillating speed control. I was set, and they even showed me how to use my aunt’s Sherwood receiver as a tuner with my new setup so I had a tuner to boot, and it sounded absolutely great.

I’d lay in my bed with those great Koss headphones and listen to Alison Steele, aka, “The Nightbird” on WNEW FM. After a puff or two, Pat Metheny and “Don’t Fear the Reaper” resonated in my brain with an intensity that actually brought a smile to my face there in the darkness of my bedroom.

Where’s the landscape? The Hollywood hills are distant through the heavy Los Angeles air. It seems like the good life is falling through our fingers not unlike grasping water.

I think of the Saturday morning my wife was released from the hospital after her first operation 2 years before. I was astounded to find that the behemoth hospital goes into hibernation on weekends, a skeleton crew on the watch.

Wheelchairing out, I clutch my wife’s prescription for pain. The hallways are dark, empty, and quiet. I see an empty bed in a nearby room. Yesterday, he was surrounded by family members, I wonder what happened…did he make it out alive? I have a dead feeling.

First stop, the pharmacy for medication. Fresh from the hospital, three days after the operation, my wife limps; we wait, walk the isles; we find a chair for her to sit in by the blood pressure machine. My pressure goes up when we are told Cooper did not fill out a triplicate and we need to call his office. After we reach the answering service we wait and hour and a half before this is sorted out. The pain medication from the hospital has worn off and my wife is in tears. I walk the pharmacy isles.

The steep lot near Dodger stadium was no place to recover from spinal surgery, so we set up a stay at hotel in Pasadena. Wheelchair requested for our arrival and nowhere to be found when we arrive. Our room isn’t ready. We should have gone  back to the steep lot. I spend the first night looking for a 24 hour pharmacy.

Discogram: A procedure during which a needle is inserted into a patient’s lumbar disc, the disc pressurized, and the patient is awoken to confirm the source of the pain.

Dr. Graff admonishes my wife out loud in the waiting room for having diarrhea from too many painkillers and too much wine the night before.

As she recovers, I man the tabloids in the waiting room. I overhear Dr. Graff and Dr. Fuller in a moment of levity. They chuckle that my wife will be “shoveling down the vicodins.”

Thanks, boys, I won’t forget it, I have not. I never will.

“You need a fusion, but I won’t do it Dr. Theodore tells my wife. His associate instructs me to leave the room during a later examination.

The search begins and it ends at the lumberyard where a man recognizes my wife’s pain and exclaims: “ Dr Bray saved my life!”

I look at the scars and the braces on his body.

More tests, scans, EMG’s, and opinions.

“Periformis is a possibility, but that guy says everyone has periformis syndrome. It’s his specialty.”

I am at the medical supply store perusing the wheelchair rentals. I buy orthopedic pillows, ice packs, and heating pads. I am preparing for our visit to the wizard. He is in the same building as the Cedar’s Pain Clinic only he’s on the top floor enjoying the view.

The Cedar’s Pain Clinic sports the likes of Dr. Ferdik and Dr. Zambriskie.

Dr. Ferdik is Eastern Bloc specializing in epidurals while fronting the mad doctor apparatus on his head (lights and mirrors) and a mask over his face.

Dr. Zambriskie, or “Dr. Z.” as he is known specializes in dispensing “compounds” of pain medication to pain patients. He will not tell the patient what or how much he is administering. He had some balls to stand in the same elevator as us.

Wheelchair action onto the curb, up the ramp, and into the elevator. The 12^th floor opens and we wheel into the waiting room. It’s busy with crippled patients and flatscreen televisions. Down the hall I push the wheelchair, my wife is pensive. My mother has come along for support and strength in numbers.

This is the kind of Saturday our courtship enjoyed. Miles of open road, the wind at our backs and no thought to the future. Those days are gone never to be recaptured: the pain is too much and the depression overwhelming.

THIS PAIN STORY begins with gardening, an exercise in fixing up the bachelor pad on a steep lot near Dodger Stadium. She was Westside and I was east, so she went to work and improved my lot.

The back is many splendoured, and it lies quietly performing life’s motion.

But wake the lion and it will excruciatingly raw. Hard to tame and may never come back

Being Westside, Liz’s brain surgeon, Cooper gets the call. He is cerebral, cold, and and has an Eastern Euro nurse. Pain pills are dispatched: enough for dependence, not enough for the pain.

A laminectomy, microdiscectomy,  a cut in the back of me is performed.

I open the door slowly, quietly. I see a small girl with inflatable bags on her legs. A child. Is she paralyzed and they just didn’t tell me? Well in a metaphor, that came later. But it worked for  while.

Life events are transforming in a multi-directional way, up, down, high-low, side to side. Are we going anywhere, really?

And so the pain returns in wheelchair form. Epidural, nerve block, cortisone injections, bulghar sacks, facet block- to the spine and all points in between.

How many could you take, reader?

I hear screams from behind the curtains in the evening at an empty surgery center in Santa Monica. Later we go to dinner.