Ten Damn Good Years (Cigar Smoke 7/30/09)

Wow! I can’t believe the Pasadena Weekly is 25 years old. (That’s 475 years old in regular peoples’ ages, not counting the blood, sweat, cigarette ashes, grime, tears, ink stains, and pulled stress muscles and torn aortas.) I guess the paper had been around for four or five years before we bought it in 1988. Those guys did a nice job of getting it off the ground and then they sold it to my ex-wife, who owned another newspaper, and discovered that owning two papers at the same time was kind of like being one of Michael Vick’s dogs. So, after she stopped crying, she sold it to Marge and me and we had it for exactly 10 years. After a decade of forehead-vein popping, we sold it to the commie LA Times in 1998. Hey, I kid the commies. But, of course, I took the commie’s money. It’s just as green as environmental causes.

And then the Times sold it and it turned over a couple more times and the new publishers have put life and spirit back into it and the Pasadena Weekly lives. I am glad it has survived and I wish it many more years of good journalism and good times.

Anyway, the 10 years we owned it were 10 pretty damn good years. I think we took the paper in a new direction — a direction most people still haven’t quite figured out. I like to think the direction was up. But whatever, I think we definitely put our stamp on it. And I was proud to be associated with the professional people we had. We had such a great staff and we all worked our flabby buttocks so hard that eventually we had firm buttocks and we had so much fun doing it, it was like it was illegal. I’ll always remember it and always be grateful for the best 10 years of my life. OK, so it took off 10 years at the end of my life — who needs 80 to 90?

I’d like to go down memory lane a little ways. However, I’m not going to talk about what was actually in the paper for those 10 years because I’m semi-senile and I don’t quite remember a lot of it, and because, of course, I’m a shallow person who tended to get extra happy when we had big issues where we sold a lot of ads. And who wants to hear about ad sales? Except me.

I remember enjoying just going into the office every morning. I loved the routine. I would unlock the door, punch the code into the security alarm system (many times accurately), turn on all the lights, get a good feeling just looking out at all the empty desks, most of which I had literally assembled, and then going into the break room and starting a pot of coffee and checking the refrigerator for any uneaten leftover sandwiches or other goodies. I particularly liked to remove the little signs that said “Do Not Eat This!” on them. I would remove the signs, eat whatever was in the little white Styrofoam box, and then put the “Do Not Eat This!” sign on another Styrofoam box that contained something I didn’t want to eat. Oh, the memories.

One time some enraged Styrofoam box person stormed into my office and screamed, “Laris, did you eat the last half of my French dip sandwich? Please don’t tell me you ate it! Please don’t tell me you would stoop that low.” I had to fess up. I remember telling her that, no, it wasn’t me, but I did happen to see Fred Bankston (my ace ad rep) in the coffee room earlier and I couldn’t be sure but I thought I had heard the squeak of Styrofoam. Last I saw her she was heading for the ad department. I probably should have taken the stapler out of her hand.

Speaking of ad reps, one day I remember walking into the ad department and a new sales rep was, and I’m not making this up, standing on her desk, pounding a nail into the wall with the heel of her shoe. Another time I was eating lunch with an ad rep I had to let go, and as we were eating I noticed there was blood running down her lip into her food. She was so tense she was biting her lip and tongue and she wouldn’t open her mouth to talk to me. I didn’t know what to do. Check, please.

On the editorial side, I would pick up the phone and there would be a string of obscenities that even made me blush. No introduction, no hello, no nothing. Just obscenities. And finally after a while, he would stop for breath, and I would say, “Hi, Isaac. How you doing?” Yes, Councilman Isaac Richard was expressing his opinion. And then I’d hear someone standing at the front of our office singing the National Anthem at the top of his lungs. Some guy named Roy who had brought his bike up to our office was belting out a pretty good rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Oh, I miss it all. I especially miss all the great people who worked for me. Thank you everybody. Thanks for your hard work. Thanks for the fun. Thanks for the memories. It was truly a special time.

Here’s to another 25 years for the Pasadena Weekly!