So I don’t give a flying fig newton what explanations Jay Leno and/or NBC executives give.  If Jay @10PM isn’t working out, then Jay needs to find another legitimate gig on his own merit (or lack thereof).  Fairness and rationality both dictate that The Tonight Show is not an option for him.  He retired from there and handed the reigns to a worthy successor.  His claim on that turf has — voluntarily — passed.  No man of character, no matter how great or small — especially not even Carson himself — would consider muscling back in over the corpse of that successor.

Even if the sequence of events that Jay laid out on his show last night is accurate, he should have said, “no!”  That NBC considered that option demonstrates moral bankruptcy.  But America expects moral bankruptcy from corporate executives, right?  What’s surprising (and more reprehensible) is that Leno is going along with it, a decision that can only possibly be at his own peril.  I expect — and hope — that Leno’s ratings (and career as a whole) will crash into total disaster.  It’s a justice that he and NBC both deserve.  To that end, SAG and other entertainment industry groups should seriously consider blacklisting Leno’s Tonight Show, denying him guests of consequence.

The institution of The Tonight Show will most likely survive this.  Leno’s second stint as host is destined to be short.  I have to believe, after fifty-four years of legend, that someone of character and a modicum of grace will accept the challenge of restoring respectability to it.  So cry not for the show, or anyone involved.  Just snub Leno like he deserves and show your support for Conan, which he deserves.  Even if you don’t watch his new show because it’s opposite Letterman or Ferguson…

Excelsior!

There are many mistakes that stand out.  The one that irritates me the most for some reason is that they explain why Six resigned.  In the original, it ended up being quite key that we never knew, precisely because it was irrelevant.  (And, of course, asking the question was the obsession of his captors.)  The original stayed on target with the theme of a man who maintained his identity (and therefor his freedom) despite his circumstances.  It didn’t cloud the issue with irrelevancies, most especially in the early episodes.  Why can’t American TV writers resist the urge to tell the audience everything.  Less is more, dammit.  Besides, in this version just what the heck is it They want from Six?

A more fundamental difference in the new series (and ultimately a mistake) is that the residents of The Village (including Six) have apparently been memory-wiped.  In the original series, I got the impression that everyone fully remembered their past, they just chose not to think about it (either through fear and/or willing self-delusion; most, with notable exceptions, accepted their fate in The Village).  The memory-wipe approach is a writer’s cop-out.  It simplifies things because there is less psychology to deal with in the characters.  Now…  it could still make for a decent premise, albeit less cerebral than the original series, except that it’s pulled off inconsistently in the two hour premier.  Especially with Six; he seems to shift back and forth between remembering his past clearly and only vaguely remembering a shadow of it.  It’s almost like the teleplay writers forgot as they were going along whether Six was suppose to remember his past or not.

Lack of mood:  The music sucks.  Other than a strain of accordion in one scene, it’s way too conventional.  The sets and costumes suck, too.  The original series communicated mood through sound and imagery.  The gonzo sound and imagery, in fact, was just as key to success of the show as the theme, scripts and Patrick McGoohan’s acting.  The only thing they do in the new series to communicate mood (besides the retention of Rover, overused desert shots and the sameness — abandoned shortly into the show — of the Village residences) is disjointed rapid-cut edits.

(Number) Two is handled completely differently in the remake.  He’s a permanent character, with a family and some back story that presumably we’ll get more of each night.  I’m ok with that, as long as it works in the long run.  Which it could.  We’ll see.

I’ll keep watching and see where it goes.  McGoohan’s Number Six is an iconic hero because his strength of character is absolutely incorruptible.  It’s already been established that the new Six is more vulnerable.  I’m anxious to see if that’s on purpose and the remake ends up being a successful new interpretation of the Prisoner concept, or whether it’s just sloppy writing.  I’m guessing the latter.

In late 1988, I transferred from USS Reeves (CG-24) to USS Hepburn (FF-1055).  The Reeves was nearing the end of its deployment in the Persian Gulf and about to head back to home port at Yokosuka, Japan.  Of course, no US warship at the time passed that way without stopping in Subic Bay, RP (Republika ng Pilipinas) (a.k.a. “PI,” for Philippine Islands), for some R&R.  But dates are dates and I left the Reeves in Bahrain.  No PI for me.  My orders were to go enjoy some leave stateside, and (if I recall correctly) check in at a small Navy base on Cape Cod at a certain date to get final travel arrangements to wherever the Hepburn was going to be.

I had a great leave.  They flew me from Bahrain to Boston so I could visit family in New England.  That was a long flight, with a couple pit stops (Frankfurt and Rota, Spain, I believe).  When I picked up my travel orders, they said to be in New Orleans on a certain date, so I arranged travel to NO (on the Navy’s dime of course), via Florida to visit more friends and family there.  In fact, I saved ‘m a few bucks by taking a bus from Gainesville to NO so I could stop by Pensacola and visit a bud and his wife (Bill & Carol Corr, where are you!?).  I also got what remains my one and only evening on Bourbon Street.

The morning after enjoying Bourbon Street, I went to the airport and caught a TWA flight to St. Louis.  From St. Louis, I flew on Hawaiian Airlines to Ontario (thinking, “why the hell are we going to Canada?!”) and then on to Anchorage…  In Anchorage, we couldn’t take off again because ice was accumulating on the wings faster than the de-icing equipment could work.  So we were moved inside to spend a few hours in the empty airport and wait for dawn, when the sun could do it’s thing.  Finally, back on the plane…  Next stop, Tokyo.  After that, the final stop was supposed to be Manila.  The pilot said he was going fast to make up for the time we lost in Anchorage…  Funny that, as a couple hours later he decided he’d been going too fast and we’d need to add a stop in Okinawa so we could take on enough fuel to make it to Manila.

All tolled, my travel time from New Orleans to Manila was 30.5 hours.  I hadn’t slept the whole way.  And remember that I’d been partying on Bourbon Street the night before departure.  So.  At the Manila airport, I was shown to a bus that would take me to Subic Bay Naval Station, where the USS Hepburn was supposedly in port.  Add an hour or two for the bumpy bus ride and I am so looking forward to laying down in a Navy rack and sleeping for as long as possible!

I get to the Hepburn just before 10 PM.  It’s tied up roughly here (red circle):

The officer of the deck checks me in and says that hot water will be turned off in 15 minutes, so if I want a shower, haul butt.  I do.  Between the butt hauling and the hot shower — and my proximity to Magsaysay Drive (which, in its day, was at least as wild as Bourbon Street on a typical night!) — I soon found myself NOT collapsing in a rack for a long rest.  No, I was dressed and headed to town for a night of drunken debauchery, like any good sailor.

Off I went, on pure adrenaline.  First, a few beers in Olongapo (the city just outside the gates).  Then, on to Barrio Barretto (next town out).  There I am, walking down the street in BB…  And I hear…  I hear familiar voices.  They’re yelling, “Jones!?!  What the hell are you doing here!?!”

I was standing in front of a haunt of the guys from my old division on the Reeves.  And it was full of…  well, it was full of guys from my old division on the Reeves!  “No,” said I, “what the hell are you doing here?!”

Turns out the Reeves was still on its way home from the Persian Gulf.  And guess what.  They were tied up about here (blue circle):

I hadn’t seen the Reeves because of the buildings in between.

Now listen, I’m grateful things worked out how they did.  I got to visit family and friends in both New England and Florida.  I got to see New Orleans and eat at The Court of Two Sisters (which my grandmother had been raving about since 1942).  But the facts remain as follows:

I’d been in Subic Bay, on the Reeves, as we headed to the Persian Gulf months prior.  From there, we steamed across the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf.  Then, the US Navy flew me from Manama, Bahrain, to Germany, then Spain, across the Atlantic Ocean to Boston, then Jacksonville, New Orleans, St. Louis, Ontario (which it turns out is in California), Anchorage, Tokyo, Okinawa and finally Manila…  Completing, for me, a westward circumnavigation of the globe …

…instead of handing me my seabag and pointing (yellow line = possible alternate travel itinerary):

Excelsior!

There used to be an annual comics convention in Orlando called OrlandoCon.  It was the biggest deal around for me in jr. high and high school.  In 1982, my dad sent me a couple hundred bucks before the event to “get some good investments”.  It was the year that Frank Miller was really starting to get attention for his work on Marvel’s Daredevil comic.  At the con — tho Miller was not there — there was a lot of buzz about him.  So much buzz, in fact, that the prices of Miller items rose over the mere two or three days of the show!  Dealers were pulling their copies of Spectacular Spider-Man #27, for example, out of the dollar boxes and tacking them to the wall with $10 price tags (that was the first book, in 1979, where Frank Miller drew the Daredevil character).

Well, I managed to get that book for a dollar before the wave hit.  But more importantly, I decided to forgo quantity in favor of quality; I spent the majority of the money my dad had sent on two pages of Frank Miller original art — Daredevil #175, pages 5 & 6.  Most Marvel original pages at the time were going for $15-25, depending on the artist; really popular artists, maybe $40 or $50.  Not sure how those pages were priced at the beginning of the show, but by the time I got to them I paid $75 each.

Me showing off my OrlandoCon booty, 1982

Now…  if you’re not into comic books, you may think $150 is a lot of money for a fifteen year old kid to be spending on funny book miscellany.  And it was, then.  However…

I won’t go into why Frank Miller is so freaking awesome as an artist and storyteller.  If you want to know, start with the Wikipedia article linked above.  The point is that no matter how popular he got in 1982, that was just the beginning of an outrageous career that’s still growing.  He went on to do some of the most successful and revolutionary comics in the history of the medium, including Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.  That seminal work has influenced the comics medium at least as much — if not more than — Watchmen.  Frank Miller has also written and/or directed films such as Sin City, 300, and The Spirit.  His cult following has grown significantly, and the appetite for key Miller original artwork (like, say, pages from the book that first established his name, Marvel’s Daredevil), is now huge.

So it’s 2007 and we’re hurting for money.  I decide it’s time to cash out on my investment.  I loved that artwork!  It hung on the wall in my office and (along with my original 1973 Led Zeppelin concert poster and some other interesting items) served as great conversation fodder with the constant parade of nerds who pass through the office of a software product manager.  But off to eBay I go and post an auction:

The Artwork

Daredevil #175, October, 1981, pages 7 & 8 (story pages 5 & 6)
Story Art: Frank Miller
Finished Art: Klaus Janson
Letters: Joe Rosen

Two consecutive pages from the mid part of Frank Miller’s early Marvel career.  By this point, Miller’s style had evolved and he was really showing the world how pictures can tell a story by themselves.  These two pages are especially interesting to Miller buffs — there are actually two narratives going at once, one in words and one in pictures.  In words, we have Foggy Nelson casually catching a cab, thinking to himself and chatting about life with the cabbie, exactly the sort of scene that words are optimal for.  Meanwhile, all around him (but completely unknown to Foggy), there is a fugue of action as Daredevil fights off Ninja to save Foggy’s life — exactly the sort of scene that pictures are optimal for.  The juxtaposition of these two narratives — one written and one visual — is brilliant.  I bought these pages myself in 1982 precisely because they are such a definitive representation of Miller’s story telling ability.

The pages are in exquisite condition, just as originally purchased by me at OrlandoCon ‘82.  After purchase, the pages were immediately framed using museum mount, acid free matting and U-V filter glass.  There was a soft fold at one time, in the upper-right corner of the second page, which was flattened out by by the time I bought them (looking carefully, you can just barely make out some slight darkening where the fold used to be).  They’ve spent the majority of their lives hanging in a dark room.  There is no discoloration of the original drawing board.  Artwork will be packed appropriately for shipping (and insured), to protect both the artwork and the framing/glass.

The response was pretty wild.  I was only looking for a few $K or so (I think I had the reserve set to $4k), but the quality of my pages relative to other Miller Daredevil pages recently sold on eBay at the time was high.  When the bidding got to about $6K or $7K, I was contacted directly by one of the bidders asking me to sell to him directly for $10K cash and to remove the auction from eBay.  That’s one of the things your not supposed to do.  And eBay etiquette aside, letting the market set the price is, after all, the good Capitalist thing to do, right?  But this guy was unique.

Daredevel #175

The buyer who contacted me was building a personal collection of all the original art from Daredevil #175.  He’d been working on it for years and had more than half the pages already.  He couldn’t possibly achieve his goal without going through me.  Plus, get this, he was (is) a screenwriter who had just recently scripted a kids movie that Gwen really liked!  I checked him out a bit and he appeared to be who he claimed, with the motive he claimed.  Yes, I briefly considered milking the hell of out him (hey, I’m only human!).  But no, I was going to either sell direct or let the auction run its course and make him fight it out online.

I asked a buddy for some moral advice; he just said, “do what you think is right”.  Finally, I decided that as much as I needed money, clearly I was going to get a lot more than expected for these pages.  $10K was a pretty good haul, especially on a $150 investment; a 6567% yield, even over 25 yrs, is success by any standard.  So what if I might be compromising another grand or two.  I cared about the artwork; I wanted it to go to an appropriate new owner, not just a loaded one.  Who more appropriate than the guy who (with my help) might soon be displaying the entire book in his home?

It seemed like destiny to me, and I didn’t want to risk the artwork falling into another’s hands (forcing the guy I was talking with to either give up his goal or go crawling to the interloper and having to pay even more).  I told the screenwriter, “ok, $10K, as long as you add enough to cover the PayPal fee and send Gwen an autographed movie poster or something.”  He agreed and I canceled the auction early.  In fact, he sent Gwen the movie book autographed by him and the other two screenwriters! 

So…  I got some much-needed cash, on great terms.  The screenwriter/collector made progress on his passion.  Frank’s artwork found a good home.  And Gwen got a unique memento that she can show off to her friends.  I’d say that’s a pretty fine outcome to a twenty-five year long story.

Excelsior!

Beth is a (damn!) smart, artistic, empathic, sensual Earth-mother type.  She introduced me to lentils, jazz-rock fusion and Petty’s Past Pad (a former Tom Petty residence in Gainesville that was converted into a party/jam house), among other things. After completing a masters at UF in Gainesville (in English, I believe), Beth lived in Tampa for a bit (the rest of her family was there at the time) and then taught at Vanderbilt for a couple years. I visited her there on my way back from San Diego when I got out of the Navy, the famous “Scott² and Chuck (minus Chuck) North American Tour.”

Me and Beth in Nashville, January, 1990

After Nashville, Beth went to Japan for a couple years to teach ESL.  [I lived in Japan from late '86 through late '88, and it frustrates me that that I've had three good friends live there also, but after I left.  Sure would have been nice to have Beth, Roy and/or Steve nearby while I was in Yokosuka!] I believe she worked for the conglomerate Sumitomo, which I remember because a gigantic “Sumitomo” sign along the western shore of Tokyo Bay is visible from miles out to sea, and it welcomed us home when the USS Reeves returned to port.  While there, Beth met an engineer named Toshikazu Mizobuchi (Mizo) and they eventually got married.

Beth and Mizo, Three Years Later

[Now let me take a moment here and say that Mizo is one of the luckiest guys on the planet. 'Cause Beth's one of the best people I've ever known -- beautiful, brilliant, creative, capable, and loving. I'm very grateful for having had her as a friend, and will always consider her one of the most important people in my life whether we re-connect or not.]

After Japan, Beth visited Gainesville a couple times. I remember watching July 4th fireworks with Beth and Mizo one year, from the parking lot of the Harn Museum of Art. I’d invited along a coworker with a similar tale; she’d gone to China to teach ESL and came home with a Chinese husband. I figured they’d get on great (and the ladies did), but it was a little funny (and educational) to watch the two expatriate hubbies interact (both engineers, but one staunchly capitalist and the other staunchly communist).

The last time we saw each other was in ‘96 or ‘97.  Beth stopped in Gainesville with her new daughter and had lunch with me and Elizabeth. They were headed back to Japan for a couple more years, if I recall, as Mizo had landed a good job, but they expected to return to the US after his contract expired.

Beth’s another one that I would expect to be all over the Internet. However, the only evidence I’ve been able to find of their continued existence is the minutes of a PTA meeting in South Carolina a few years ago, where Mizo’s name appears.  Other than that, I have no leads.

Beth — are you out there?!  Anyone know where she is?!  Please contact me, or pass on my contact info: Scott Jones, PO Box 62, Zephyrhills, FL 33539, 813-782-5062, hsjones@sisna.com. Excelsior!

theshaggyshow (3 weeks ago)
he said we are a democracy… he is wrong… we are a REPUBLIC…

Bartleby1701 (1 week ago)
Yes! Which is a FORM of DEMOCRACY pinhead! I’m very glad you so well educated that you know the “difference”. We are all SO impressed! However, people who DON’T feel the need to point out useless and meaningless distinctions for whatever reason? We all just use the word democracy and know that smart? people know that that is synonymous with republic these days…. otherwise – since there ARE no pure democracies anywhere in the world – one couldn’t use the word at all. Duh, genius.

hsj469 (6 minutes ago)  (me)
There are hundreds of pure democracies in New England small towns, like the one I grew up in (Boscawen, NH), with more in Europe.

Regardless, I don’t believe it’s mere intellectual posturing to point out the true nature of our federal government. The masses hear “democracy” and assume that means the majority gets to decide what is right in this country. I think it’s sad (and dangerous) that so many Americans think that’s how it works.

Too many actually believe that if the majority of people support criminalization of homosexuality, for example, that’s how it should be. They don’t understand the dangers of the tyranny of majority, a threat to freedom which the founding fathers guarded against by adopting a constitutional republic, NOT a democracy. So I think it’s very important to call out the distinction and to help people understand that might (or majority) does not make right in the US — our system strives for higher justice.

(The parts are restored that I trimmed out to meet YouTube character count constraint.)

hsj469 (4 minutes ago)
I never used Pirate Bay, but I sure did use the original Napster a lot. Soon as it went “legal,” it became irrelevant and pointless and I dropped it immediately. I’m guessing Pirate Bay users will feel the same way.

hsj469 (9 seconds ago)
To any RIAA employees or agents reading this, yes, I do still have and regularly listen to the +/- 1000 MP3s I obtained free from Naptser. If you really want to waste the tens of thousands of dollars in revenue that I’ve generated for your members over the years — by purchasing over 2500 45s, LPs, tapes, CDs, and DVDs, 100+ concert tickets, multiple t-shirts, posters and other merchandising, hundreds of paid downloads, plus the revenue I’ve driven via word of mouth and my published record reviews, with interest — you are invited to sue me.

Knock your ignorant, evil socks off!

Original post, March 23, 2009:

Tho it’s early in the year, the brilliance of this campaign speaks for itself. And I doubt it will be topped. I’ll be booking my next flight on JetBlue, if only as a “thank you” gesture! Read and then click the graphic below.

Probably.  But not always.  There are a handful of people, a couple of them very important to me, that I’ve never been able to track down.  Since I’ve tried almost everything else, I’m going to try posting here about my two main missing friends that I’ve a) lost contact with and b) cannot for the life of me find current info for online.

First — in no particular order — April-Dawn Maria Ortiz Romero Tortorello (ADMORT):

April

I met April in 1983 or so, in APA Centauri.  Her zine was called ” …but it was only fantasy… ” and she wrote a lot about Pink Floyd, one of my obsessions at the time.  We became friends through the APA and direct correspondence.  Then I visited her twice at her home in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, in May of 1985.

That May ‘85 trip up north was extremely significant for me.  I won’t go into it all now (or probably ever, publicly), but let’s just say it was a case of the right people in the right place at the right time.  The course of my life was changed permanently for the better, and April was the critical element.  She’ll have a special place in my heart and mind for the rest of my life.  When I left New Jersey, April gave me the photo above, which she said was the only photo she had of herself.  I’ve kept it nearby in a safe place ever since.

We continued to correspond, and April was planning to come down to Florida before she started at Dartmouth that fall.  I don’t recall exactly how we lost contact, as my life went kind of haywire about then.  In fact, I ended up joining the Navy before year end.  But I know April did start at Dartmouth in the fall of ‘85, and I’m pretty sure she graduated three years later.  I did once (mid ’90’s) send a letter to the Dartmouth Alumni Association to forward on to her last known address, which they did, but I received no reply from her.

On one hand, it surprises me that April isn’t all over the Internet.  She is intelligent and creative in the extreme, and it seems to me that she would be utilizing the Web to communicate and create just as she once used APA Centauri.  On the other hand, I can also see how she might have grown up to be a very private person, protecting her identity carefully.  So…  I figure the almost complete absence of any references to her on any publicly searchable Web site is either intentional or… because she died before she got herself out there in Etheria’s realm (Etheria = The Goddess of the Internet).

I hope that death is not the explanation!  I hope that April is out there, either using the ‘Net anonymously or pseudonymously.  Or that somehow technology just isn’t part of her life, and she’s out there somewhere living a more natural life.  Whatever the reason or circumstance, I hope that April-Dawn Tortorello is alive, safe and loved.  And that we will meet again some day.

…

In case April is trying to protect her identity, I don’t want to reveal too much more here about her.  I’ll just add that she grew up in New York City, is about 41 yrs. old now, and also attended Princeton for a year before she went to Dartmouth.

If anyone reading this knows April and can contact her, please pass on my contact info and ask her to ping me!  Scott Jones, PO Box 62, Zephyrhills, FL 33539, 813-782-5062, hsjones@sisna.com.  Thank you.

Excelsior!

Dvorak was a guest speaker at an Altiris ManageFusion conference a few years ago in Vegas. Our PR director came looking for volunteers to attend a hospitality dinner with our guest. I jumped at the opportunity, as I “grew up” reading Dvorak’s columns and considered him an industry visionary (which he was, at one time, but that time is long past… ).

He regaled us with talk of his wine collection and his world travels, revealing his caustic attitude toward just about everything and everyone. At one point, knowing that Altiris is based in Utah and that most of the people at the table were from Utah, he talked about the “gene pool crisis” there. He said he noticed the narrow eye placement and protruding foreheads as soon as he got off the plane in Salt Lake. I took exception to that, saying I’m from somewhere else and people in Utah look no different. He asked where I was from. When I replied, “Florida,” he said, “well, there you go — you have the same inbreeding problem down there.”

So… Not wanting to create an incident for Altiris, I ordered a drink and shut up the rest of the evening. There was another product manager with us, from Australia, who was both diplomatic enough to hold conversation with Dvorak and drunk enough to endure it. He pretty much saved the evening for us from a PR perspective.

The Southern Mustang soon became a favorite at my parties.  A friend once gave me, as a Christmas present, a bartender’s guide with the Southern Mustang added in.  He also gave me a battery-operated drink stirrer that became my official “Mustang Maker”.  Now here is the recipe for all the world to enjoy:

• Use standard 18 oz. plastic beer cups (red SoloGrips brand preferred)
• Fill cup with crushed ice
• Pour in 1 oz. Jack Daniels black label
• Pour in 1 oz. Southern Comfort gold label (100 proof)
• Fill with Cherry Coke to just south of the rim
• Stir vigorously, preferably with an electric stirrer, leaving a nice froth on top

Enjoy responsibly.  These are very smooth and can be ingested quickly.  However, like a Mustang, they have serious kick!

This is an extremely southern drink, between the Tennessee whiskey, Southern Comfort (Kentucky-based) and Coca-Cola (invented and headquartered in Atlanta), plus the combination being conceived in Gator Country!  Ye-haw!  But it’s not all that complicated of a recipe, so I’m curious whether this mixture has arisen elsewhere under a different name.  If you’re aware of that, please let me know!

I have no good stills of John, just this back shot (John’s on the left, with his sister, Noe):

John, Noe and Friends

…but here he is in two videos (with Gwen):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83mZBnar1XU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgNcUdZOQK0

Q: Is he a good mouser?
A: He’s never been given the opportunity to mouse. In Utah, we kept the cats out of the downstairs, so the mice just quarantined themselves to the safe half of the house. (We were on a mountain side, so there were exterior entrances both upstairs and downstairs). But I’m guessing he would be good; he’s the most playful of our cats and can chase/catch any yarn, ball, etc…

If you can help, or know someone who can, please contact me ASAP. Tomorrow will likely be the deadline before he must go to the shelter… hsjones@sisna.com, or 801-362-0341

I’ll drive as far north as Atlanta to deliver John to a good home!

TIA!!

This story is one of the first things I ever posted publicly on the Internet. Way back in maybe 1995 or ‘96 (maybe even ‘94, I dunno for sure), I tried one of those “Ten Gazillion Hours Free!” disks from AOL. C’mon, admit it — didn’t we all do it at least once back in those days? Well, the only thing I found on AOL that was remotely interesting to me was the Led Zeppelin discussion board. It was there that I posted this true story from 1989. It appears that the content of those boards has not been preserved anywhere online, so I’m going to tell the story again here.

For most of 1989, I was in San Diego on the USS Hepburn. I’d bought a new car, a Ford Escort named “Tennessee Jed” (I may hate the football team, but I love the Grateful Dead!). Pretty much every non-duty day, I was in Jed — usually with a buddy or two — headed to Sunset Cliffs after knocking off work early. After an hour or two of getting some sun, it was off to O.B. for some chow, or maybe up to Mission or Pacific.

I’m a rockin’ blues fan, and the best thing about San Diego for me was that just about every night there would be two or three (or more) good blues acts to pick from, so after sundown we’d hit the clubs. Then it was music and alcohol until the wee hours. This went on, as I said, pretty much every day for months until finally my enlistment ran out. Boy was it great. A real renaissance year!

So anyway, very late one weekend night — actually early one morning — I found myself after the bars closed walking along the north stretch of one of the beaches. Not completely positive at this late date which beach it was, but I’d guess Ocean Beach if I had to. Picture it: 3 AM, maybe 4 AM, on a weekend. Dark. Mostly quiet, except for the waves. A dozen or so people milling about here and there. And I’m by myself, a drunken sailor just getting some air ’cause he doesn’t feel like going back to the boat yet. So I’m walking along and up ahead, right near the short “fence” that demarks the beach from the street, a handful of people are gathered around and I hear an acoustic guitar.

I walk up and stand with the crowd watching this guy with medium-length, curly black hair seated and hunched over a guitar, playing some sweet blues. He’s good. We listen for a while, everyone smiling and enjoying, and eventually he pauses and takes his applause. He asks, “any requests?”

I piped right up with a typically drunken sailor reply, “how ’bout some Led Zeppelin!” I was actually trying to make a joke, I think. Someone in the group of onlookers groaned. Regardless, this guy — with zero hesitation — tore right into a solo acoustic rendition of most of Led Zeppelin I. I mean he didn’t just play it like he’d learned it (very well); he played it like he owned it. And we were all — including the guy who’d groaned at my request — totally freakin’ dumb-struck.

Now… Jimmy Page has very distinctive eyes, as any Zep fan knows. Whether it’s in his boyish headshot on the back of Zeppelin I or recent photos from Zep reunions and other gigs, the man’s eyes haven’t really changed over the years. He’s instantly recognizable as Jimmy Page, no mater what age or what he’s wearing or how his hair is. And this guy — I had noticed it when he looked up and asked for requests — this guy had Jimmy Page’s eyes. And I didn’t really think too much about it other than, “oh, that’s cool — he looks like JP.” Until, that is, he started playing the Zep music! I may be slow, but I’m not stupid. I added 2 + 2 and said to myself, “holy Fuck!”

Jimmy Page, c. 1968

Jimmy Page, c. 2008

By the time he finished that bit, the crowd had about doubled, but was still pretty small. After all, there’s not that much foot traffic at 4 AM +, even on a San Diego beach. We clapped; we cheered; he smiled and nodded thanks. Still not completely 100% sure — I mean what are the odds? — I leaned in and just said to him, “hey — has anyone ever told you, you have Jimmy Page eyes?”

He looked right at me, grinning, put a finger to his lips, and whispered audibly, “shhhh, it’s a secret.”

That was the end of the show. He got up and shook some hands. We dispersed. The guy had only said a handful of words, so I wasn’t able to detect whether an English accent was present or not. But in the ’70’s, Led Zeppelin did spend a lot of time in California. And it’s not inconceivable that Jimmy Page might have been out on a beach in San Diego in 1989, playing guitar at 4 o’clock in the morning. But whatever the truth, I went back to the ship that day with goose bumps and one hell of a story.