For the Love of Lots and Lots and Gobs of Money!

I love money, and I want lots of it! I want barrels, and drums, and crates, and plastic storage tubs filled with cash! This lust for loot may not jibe with my liberal hippie political affiliation, but it falls right smack in line with my Taurean traits.

I know there are people who are happy without money, or having just enough to get by. I think that’s great. It’s honorable and shows integrity. But not me. I want shipping containers filled with money, pallets stacked 10 feet high, dump trucks full of cash spilling out their load into my olympic-sized swimming pools already overflowing with hundred dollar bills.

The best things in life are free.

Like starving, losing your teeth, dying from lack of health care. Eviction is always free, and that’s always a good thing. Right?

I still have yet to find out what best things in life are free. Legos are awesome—they are not free. Giant wall-sized TVs are awesome—they are not free. A car would be great. I haven’t had a car since June 2005. Cars are not free. Neither is gas, insurance, or repairs. Without a car YOU ARE STUCK. I speak from 6-and-a-half years of experience. Food is not free, cool electronics are not free, a Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar, an acoustic bass guitar, a Back to the Futurized DeLorean. A really nice house in a nice neighborhood. Life size movie and TV replicas. For $25,000 I could get a life-size reproduction of the robot from Lost in Space. These are the good things in life, and they are far from free.

“The best things in life are free” is something poor people tell themselves so they won’t feel so horrible about being poor.

Friendship, I’ll give you that. A good friend is always free, and one of the best things in life.

Love? Well…sort of, but not really. Money gets your foot in the door. If you’re dirt poor, women aren’t going to glance at you. I’m not saying all women are gold-digging money-grubbers, but you don’t stand a chance of getting past “Hello” when the douchebag who steps out of his BMW shows up, and all you have is a bicycle.

But if, IF Miss X can get past your insignificant dust mote of a bank account, and she STILL wants to go out with you, then yes, in that case love is free, and fantastic. But without money, don’t expect a lot of first dates.

So I want money. Lots and lots of money. I want to jump out of bed everyday and be hip deep in piles of hundred dollar bills throughout my vast mansion.

Money won’t solve all your problems.

Well, actually, yeah, it would, since all of my problems are money-based. I live off of cereal, tuna, and milk because I don’t have enough money. And I can’t afford healthy food. I haven’t been to a dentist in seven years because I don’t have enough money. I pick and choose what prescriptions I get each month because I don’t have enough money. I can’t go to a doctor because I don’t have enough money. And I’m in my early 40s. At this point health issues aren’t going to go away. They’re just going to pile up from here on in.

I can’t go anywhere because I don’t have a car. I can’t travel because I don’t have the money for train tickets, a car rental, hotels, or food. So, the source of all my problems is lack of money.

Some would think not having a girlfriend or wife in my early 40s would be a concern of mine. Not really. I’m deliriously happy being single, so lack of a romantic partner is not a problem. Actually, from my experience, it’s the source of a whole slew of different problems.

I don’t want all the money in the universe just for me. Well, a lot of it would be for me, but I would help people. I would like to help my friends get out of debt, pay off their student loans, get them out of the dump they’re

living in and into a nice joint. They have hospital bills, or can’t afford medical care they desperately need.

If I haven’t made this clear yet, I want my closets to be stuffed with stacks of hundred dollar bills. I want super-sized Death Stars stuffed pole to pole, equator to equator, and all spaces in between jammed full with piles and stacks and bundles and wads and mountains of money. Lots and lots of money. Instead of leaves, I want to jump into a mound of money every Autumn.

You can’t take it with you.

Well, no, you can’t. But you sure as hell can enjoy the sweet bejeebus out of all the fantastic things money gets!

New Parking Lot

Three acres of parking freedom were paved over the desert to make life easier for students with cars at Paradise Valley Community College.

After two months of construction, begun in the brutal heat of July 8 and finished in the brutal heat of Sept. 20, 235 new parking spaces were created north of the Center for Performing Arts Building at the northeast corner of campus by 34^th Street and Union Hills Drive.

Before the arrival of this asphalt and lined automotive placement savior, the old lots and overflow dirt spaces were packed every day by 10:30 a.m.

With the current college boom, students bring their cars and waste precious time circling the three lots (four if you count the Q building) desperately hoping for an open spot in time to rush to class. With the new parking lot there are now 2,932 available places to put your car.

And this asphalt concrete mix free of recycled rubber, like most lots in Phoenix, is loaded with all kinds of special features. There are three spots in the new lot for employee parking, and not just one, but eight handicap spaces. EIGHT! That’s more than the minimum of handicapped spaces required by the lot formula of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Not only that, but there is a 27-foot by 18-foot concrete slab where up to five motorcycles can park.

Managed by Oridian Construction Services, and built by Valente Contracting, Inc. of Phoenix, the $410,100 cost was paid for from the PVCC Fund 2 Auxiliary resources for special projects. The parking orgy doesn’t end here, though. Yet another parking lot is due to spring up during the next MCCCD Bond cycle.

All rumors that the lot was built on an old Indian burial ground, or on top of the underground bunker where Hitler

killed himself were flatly denied.

When “Don’t Want To” turns into “I Can’t Do This Anymore.”

Since my age was in the single digits I’ve wanted to be on the radio. Slight problem, though…since birth I’ve been a painfully shy, socially inept goober. I’m not a talker, and radio requires a lot of talking, so I couldn’t understand why I had a powerful pull to radio.

I’ve always had a fascination with the magic of radio. Even though Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds scared the bejeebus out of me when I was a kid, I listened to it over and over again. But the thing that really pushed me over the edge happened on Monday February 9, 1981 at 5:53 a.m.

The music alarm went off on my clock radio and I heard KZZP’s new morning man Jonathon Brandmeier. That sealed it! That’s what I wanted to do! I was 11-years-old, and I wanted to spend my life doing what Brandmeier did. It was fun listening to him, and he seemed like he was really having a good time doing it.

BUT, I’m a painfully shy, socially inept goober. Throughout my entire life if you put me someplace full of strangers I will find a room to hide in until the party’s over. I’m not a mingler.

When I was 13 and 14 my friend Mike and I would play radio. He had an interest in radio, too. Not only that, but radio was in his gene pool. His grandfather used to work on the air at a radio station in the 1940s. I loved hearing the few surviving airchecks Mike had of his grandfather.

On April 17, 1945, in a plain-spoken, no frills voice he read the promo for one of the station’s shows: (read-along link… http://archive.org/details/KgkyNewsApril171945) ”This is KGKY your CBS station in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. You are cordially invited to attend a house party on this station Monday through Friday at 2 p.m. It’s full of fun, laughs and information. So join The House Party guests every afternoon, Monday through Friday, at 2 p.m. over KGKY. We rejoin the Columbia Broadcasting System.” We recorded our “radio” shows, and they weren’t half bad. Mike was very outgoing, smart as a whip, and funny as all get out. Even at 13. Some of the most fun I’ve had in my life was doing those radio shows in the early ’80s. Time went on, and I found talents more suited to my introverted temperament. Music, writing, comic stripping. I loved doing all those things, but radio was also a pipe dream lumped in with them.

High school ended, and it was time to make a decision. I wanted to go to college for radio, but my mother was always quick to say, “But you don’t talk!” combined with a withering stare that said, ‘Get real!’ Well, she’s right, I don’t talk. Working on the radio is an unrealistic fantasy.

In 1989 I made a decision…I was going to be an internationally syndicated cartoonist with animated holiday specials and unending merchandising. Of all my talents, tooning was my best shot of the lot. So, I put my energy into drawing toons, and submitting them to syndicate after syndicate after syndicate. Now, I loved stripping. I wouldn’t do something for 20 years and get rejection letter after rejection letter after rejection letter if I didn’t love something. But as much as I loved tooning, and was so great at it, I still wanted to be on the radio, too. But, if you haven’t figured this out yet, I’m not very outgoing.

I stumbled into a job at Target. The whole six-and-a-half years I was there I was thinking, “I don’t want to do this.” I want to be a stinking rich syndicated cartoonist or on the radio. Or both. But, if I haven’t made this clear, I’m very shy.

I wound up becoming a data entry clerk for United Healthcare in 2000. Wasn’t bad, but the whole time I was thinking, “I don’t want to do this.” I want to be a syndicated cartoonist, or on the radio.

That job was outsourced in 2005 and I was out of work for six months. I did look at the job boards for radio stations. I wasn’t expecting to get an on-air position, but anything at a radio station would be a good start. But every position required experience, or a degree, or both. Neither of which I had. I went to Glendale Community College in the early ’90s, but didn’t get a degree, and wasn’t there for one. Mostly I went to kill time until a syndicate picked up my brilliant comic strip. Which should happen aaaaaany time now… Twelve years later…

I got another data entry job, and the same thing was running through my head…”I don’t want to do this…I want to be on the radio…” Every morning before I started working I would load up the iTunes on my work computer with songs, radio show podcasts, and put them in order as if I was listening to my radio station I’m programing. Music and shows were put into a playlist to last through the nine hours I was there with shows starting and ending at the same time every day. Even at my office job I was playing radio.

On April 16, 2008 I was laid off because there wasn’t enough business coming in. Back to looking for work again. I looked at some job postings at radio stations, but they all wanted experience and a degree.

In October that year I was staring down the beginning of a new data entry job. Before I even started I was already thinking, “I don’t want to do this.” A week before I started the gig, I went to Paradise Valley Community College and took the placement tests.

The next week I started working for a company that did medical claims for the military. It was awful. So many stupid rules that were never an issue at any place else I had worked. I had to wear shirts with buttons, dress pants. I HATE dress pants, and I didn’t have any. The dress codes for the same jobs I had before were pretty lax. You could come in wearing a sweat shirt and pajama bottoms! As long as you weren’t naked, or wearing something offensive, it was good. During lunch I wasn’t allowed to sit at my desk and nap. They told me to do that in my car. I DON’T HAVE A CAR! You couldn’t listen to music while working. That’s the only thing that makes data entry tolerable and distracts you from the mind-numbing tedium. Take off your hat when you’re inside. And the pointless never ending training. HIPPA regulations, sexual harassment lectures, how to do this, how to do that. IT’S JUST DATA ENTRY!!! It’s not neurosurgery! Type what you see on the form into the computer. Jeez-a-loo, just turn us loose and let us do the stupid job already!!! Much like the military (I would guess) it was stiff, and filled with useless over-training. God, I HATED it! Hated it so much that when the temp agency called two weeks later to tell me I didn’t have to go back, I did a happy dance in my apartment.

Time went by, I kept looking and applying for data entry jobs. As much as I wanted to be on the radio my head was stuck on the notion that if I want to avoid living with my parents in my 40s, I have to get a soul-numbing office job. And one came through at the end of May 2009.

By this time I had applied to PVCC, and was kind of half-hearted about going. Maybe I’ll go through with it. Maybe I won’t. I’m 40. By the time I finish school, taking one or two classes at a time while working, I’ll be near 50. Not many radio personalities get their start at 50. Plus, I hate owing money. I didn’t want a mound of debt on my back.

My natural sleep schedule is to go to bed at 3 a.m. For this job I had to get up at 5:30 am. I did it anyway because I thought I had to. Just remembering that job brings back that dead feeling in the pit of my gut. Like a shot-put laying in my stomach. It was another soul-deadening, life-sucking, painfully tedious office job I cared nothing about. Doing data entry for Waste Management. The few people who talked to me said it was a great place to work. Nice pay, lots of benefits. I wouldn’t care if pizzas were delivered every day by pleasantly plump swimsuit models, it still wouldn’t make up for the feeling of my soul dying inside. Wasting MORE irreplaceable time typing in numbers.

The sleep deprivation, the wasting away, the voices screaming in my ears to get out of this finally turned “I don’t want to do this” into “I can’t do this anymore.”

I picked my classes for the fall, and applied for aid hoping it wasn’t too late. I can’t take another rotten office job. I have to do what I’ve wanted to do since I was 9. Getting a radio gig at 50 is better than never getting it. And if I become a wildly popular, highly paid radio personality I’ll be able to pay back all that aid quickly. Or, knowing the life span of men on my dad’s side, I’ll die before I have to pay off my student loans. Either way I win!

I continued doing far less than a half-assed job at Waste Management, and for good reason. I didn’t want to take the chance of getting stuck in another life-crushing job. And when I was escorted to the door two weeks later, I was thrilled.

When I told my friends I was going to college to get a degree in broadcasting they were proud of me. Even my mother thought it was great. Everyone thought it was brave of me to do this. That’s nice to hear, but going back to school for radioing was nothing more than a matter of survival. I could die a slow death at a desk in a windowless beige cubicle aching to do what I’ve wanted to do for 30 years, or go back to school to get a job doing what I’ve always loved.

By my mid-30s I felt kinda lifeless. Just going through the motions. Going back to school at 40 and chasing after what I wanted, instead of wishing for it, rejuvenated me. I felt alive again. And I did something I’ve never done before. I got straight A’s in my first semester. And in August 2010 I started doing a weekly radio show on the Internet. I’m not as bad at radio as the realists and dream-killers said I would be. Now if only someone would pay me for doing The Eric Paul Johnson Radiotrola Program.

Would You Like a Diaper with Your Cigarette

Smoke ’em if ya got ’em, cuz as of July 1^st you won’t be able to smoke on any Maricopa Community College campus. There are only two things I don’t like about this new rule.

1. It goes into effect AFTER I graduate. (They couldn’t have put this into place three years ago?)

2. The whining and insane reasons I’ve heard from smokers NOT to ban smoking on campus.

The image of smokers is someone who’s tough. So tough they can crush any of the endless list of cancers and fatal diseases they WILL (not may) get if they keep smoking. But they will whine, and cry, and kick up a fuss like a baby in a dirty diaper if you take their death-inducing pacifier away from them.

One of the more ludicrous excuses I’ve heard from smokers not to take their coffin nails away from them, is that smoking relieves stress. I have a way of relieving stress, too. But if I did that in public I’d be arrested, put on some sort of list, and have to get my neighbors to sign a piece of paper every time I move into their neighborhood.

Using stress relief as a reason to spew your toxins into the air is about as stupid as saying sitting in your garage with the car running relieves stress. There are a bazillion other ways that are better for you, and innocent bystanders, to relieve stress. I nap, play music, or write snotty articles.

Another laughably, clinically insane, poorly thought-out bit of “logic” from a smoker I heard about secondhand smoke was, if they ban cigarettes on campus, what’s to stop them from banning junk food?

I tell you what, Chesterfield, when random strangers start going up to other random strangers, force open their mouths, spit chewed junk food into their mouth, and force them to swallow it, then yes, your analogy that junk food is akin to smoking would be a legitimate point. Until that happens, your argument is not only invalid, but stupid. It shows the ignorance of smokers about what their habit does to others.

Unlike junk food, what you put into your body when you smoke, then release from your body, drifts to other people. Most who don’t smoke, don’t want to smoke, have never smoked, never wanted to smoke, and have this crazy idea of trying to drag out their lives as long as possible. And what they don’t need is some self-centered smoking psycho upping their chances of cancer with their noxious fumes. I came here to learn and get into a career I want, not to get a tumor.

Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh. Perhaps a compromise can be reached by me, someone who’s never smoked and has seen family members die in their 40s and 50s from a lifetime of smoking, and you, the smoker. I make this deal with you: if my nose picks up your smoke, I get to belch in your face. Seems fair. You put something disgusting in my face, I put something disgusting in your face. I see no reason why this shouldn’t work. Fair warning, though…I love onion dip.

COMEDY DIES!!!

The world mourned the loss of comedy legend comedy. It was announced on April 6 that comedy died after a long battle with an aneurism after too many years of people not getting it.

Doctors at the Moe Howard Memorial Hospital put in a valiant effort to save comedy, but after many hours of surgery, treatments, and sight gags, comedy succumbed to the last laugh.

Head physician of the effort, Dr. Glovencough, said at the press conference, “We did everything humanly possible to save comedy. Knock-knock jokes, whoopy cushions, joy buzzers, we even dipped a napping friend’s hand in warm water. But nothing could fight back the disease that had ravaged comedy’s body.”

Comedy’s death has been a long time in coming. The autopsy report showed that deterioration due to fear gave comedy it’s final punchline. Dr. Cad Adver-Poker, chief coroner at the University of California Carrot Top, said, “Evidence showed that comedy had been suffering a slow decline since the late 1980s. Without worrying about where to live, getting food, staying warm or cool, people found other things to be frightened of. It was around this time when a skittish population became afraid of humor. People were afraid of offending someone, confusing people, not getting a joke, or the joke being too ‘in.’ With those constraints on humor’s heart, people stopped being funny, or letting others be funny, and thus, comedy died.”

The news struck a blow to many who made their living from comedy. Warehouse of Yuks, a comedy supply shop, faces an uncertain future in this new glum age.

Manager of Warehouse of Yuks, Harcourt P. Yuks said, “I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do. We’ve been the oldest consistent provider of top quality comedy props, and material going back to the year 1044 when Wadard Yuks created the first fake dog poop out of mud. Bartholomew Yuks brought many much needed laughs to the passengers and crew of the Mayflowerwhen he made the very first fake vomit. Comedy is all my family knows. We’re trying to adapt to the new normal, but things aren’t going well. I’ve got shelves of seltzer water going flat, and look at those pies! I’ve discounted them to below cost, but nobody’s buying. I don’t know what to do with them. I can’t sell them to restaurants or grocery stores.They’re throwing pies, not eating pies. I even thought of killing myself, but all my guns just shoot flags that say ‘bang!’”

The economic effects of comedy’s death reach beyond X-ray specs and rubber chickens. Produce farms, and farmers markets across the country have already shut down and declared bankruptcy since Gallagher retired.

The entertainment industry has been hit hard. Plans for reviving the old Art Linkletter show People Are Funnyhas been redeveloped as People Are Not Very Entertaining. “Weird Al” Yankovic became just plain Alfred Yankovic, architect. However, it’s obvious that the lack of comedy in the world will not affect Jay Leno in any way.

Not everyone is feeling the pain from comedy’s death. 78 year-old Felicia Prissypinched of Atlanta, GA said, “I’m relieved comedy is dead. I no longer have to live in fear of my delicate nature being offended by a joke, or hear a black man make fun of white people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been shocked into the vapors from inappropriate humor.”

Another fan of humor’s death is Hugh Jass, a 43 year-old accountant from Hillsboro, OR. “You don’t know how hard my life’s been. The jokes about my name have left deep, deep scars. You’d think the jokes would have stopped after high school, but people don’t grow up. They still seem to find humor in poking the Hugh Jass name. Maybe now I can live a normal life.”

Jass’ sentiments were echoed by Amanda Holdenkiss in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada, Dick Hertz of Ottumwa, IA, Ivana Tinkle of Novozybkov, Russia, and of course Jaques Strapp in Châlons-en-Champagne, France.

With the death of comedy everything has lost it’s humor. Nothing is funny anymore. Not Spike Jones, not Monty Python, not even fabricated news stories in the humor section of community college newspapers.

The Sugar Crash Rock and Soul of Cait Brennan

Cait Brennan describes her music as “sugar crash Rock and Soul.” What does that mean? From a quick listen it’s a mix of Beatles, Monkees, a helping of melodic Punk/New Wave of the late ’70s and early ’80s, some Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, with a touch of everything else.

Brennan's influences come from a childhood spent being shuffled between Phoenix and Omaha. Her mother trained race horses, and her great-grandmother was a seamstress who designed and sewed the “silks” the jockeys wore. Being a seasonal enterprise there was a lot of traveling.

“In the 1970s,” Brennan said, “before everything became the same, the music that would pour through the AM radio--70s power pop, 1930s Tin Pan Alley and vaudeville, Tejano, Bakersfield country, Boss Radio, polka, Norteño, distant voices, alien static, everything you can imagine. I soaked it up like a sponge, I could not get enough. And I think that's who I am, musically. I love the music of the 80s and 90s, the punk and postpunk things I discovered in my teens and adulthood, but everything I am musically came out of that tinny Rambler radio on that midnight highway. Oh, I think I just wrote a country song!”

Her talents also come from a gene pool that includes a rich musical history. “My father ,” Brennan said, “was a touring and studio musician for over thirty years, appeared on shows like Shindig and Hollywood Palace and was generally awesome. His mom, my grandma, was also a singer and guitarist. My aunt, cousins, etc, are all musicians and singers. On my mom's side, my grandma, great grandma, great grandfather, uncles, aunts, were all pro or semi-pro musicians at one time or another.”

Inspired by the newfound fame of “Weird Al” Yankovic, and local radio personality Jonathon Brandmeier, mixed with Brennan's quick wit, she started writing parodies when she was in junior high. It wasn't long, though, before parodying took a back seat to serious songwriting.

“I've always loved wordplay and comedy,” Brennan said, “and started off writing goofs on radio hits. But I guess there came a point when I realized I had things to say, stories to tell that weren't best suited to be sung to the tune of "Break My Stride." And at first people would not take me seriously because I'd done funny stuff and therefore I could not do meaningful stuff. And I felt I had to make a choice so I chose to go for "serious" music.”

Her new songs showed she wasn't just a gag writer who could string together a few chords on the guitar. She produced well-crafted catchy pop songs, and touching, introspective crooners with meaningful words that spoke to people instead of just giving them a giggle.

Brennan's been making music for well over 35 years, but things really started to fall into place in February 2010. Previous Brennan recordings were just of her and a guitar. This was due to the limitations of home recording. But thanks to Garageband, and a wonderful, supportive partner in Wendy, Brennan was able to create the full Cait Brennan musical experience. “Jenny Said” featured the sound of a full band creating a rousing Rock number that made it impossible to sit still. And on top of that, she played all the instruments, and did all the vocals.

Brennan soon started playing open mic nights at Long Wong's in Tempe, and the Tempe Center for the Arts. All this performing and recording lead to being picked as one of the featured musicians at the 2012 Phoenix International Pop Overthrow. Her, along with members of Tempe's Rockaroke band Zen Lunatics, and her aunt Tana LaFollette on backing vocals, performed a set of Brennan originals with a contagious energy that just exuded out of the performance.

She went on to be one of the hand-picked performers for the first “In the Spotlight” show at the Tempe Center for the Arts on April 6, and she's scheduled to do another full band show at Hollywood Alley (2610 W. Baseline Rd in Mesa) on Saturday April 28. Cait Brennan, with a band, take the stage at 12:15 PM. See why novelist Neil Gaiman recently said of her performing "wow" and "that's glorious!"

She will also be opening for Namoli Brennet at a show in late July, and playing at the Flagstaff Folk Festival at the end of June. She also has a regular gig with the Zen Lunatics at The Sail Inn's Rockaroke every Thursday night.

And there's even more news. She's currently working on an album she describes as, “heavily piano based and not very bubblegum (but definitely Beatley/glam rock/'70s piano pop) with the Cait sense of humor and twists and brainy lyrical weirdness.”

The best place to hear Cait Brennan's music, see her videos and keep up with the latest news and shows can be found at facebook.com/planetcait, or reverbnation.com/caitbrennan.