Category Archives: Personal History

Brushes with Near Greatness: Captain Kangaroo

Posted on by

We’ve all experienced brushes with near greatness. These pulse-pounding moments can range from a drunken limo ride with Courtney Love to an elevator ride with someone you’re pretty sure plays for the Cubs. A brush with near greatness does not require that you actually speak to or with the great one, or that they even know you’re in the room.

Today we debut what we hope will be a sustaining feature at smays.com. David –a friend and co-worker– has had not one, but two brushes with near greatness and he was kind enough to share them here. You can download the MP3 file for now and we’ll podcast as soon as I can figure out how to do that.

 

Office make-over

Posted on by

They’re painting all of the offices along our hallway so I’m homeless for a couple of days and the webcam is offline. The office make-over is taking forever and god only knows the price-tag when it’s over but Learfield will be one very nice place to work when everything is complete. I can’t imagine working in nicer surroundings. And today the company had a cookout, just for the hell of it. Someone invited the the guys doing the work on our building so we were all sitting around drinking beer and eating ice cream and feeling fortunate.

Cliff Birklund

Posted on by

I’ve been thinking a lot about advertising these days. Radio advertising in particular. I have met hundreds of radio sales people during the past 30+ years. My father sold for many years.

Cliff Birklund (I don’t remember how Cliff spelled his name) was hired to do news at KBOA but eventually moved into sales. In a previous life, he was a commercial artist and I’ll never forgive myself for not saving more of his doodles. This one is a classic (have I posted this before?) but I’ve always liked this self-portrait.

Update: Bob Heater asks how Cliff could have –in 1978– doodled something on a 1989 calendar page. I left KBOA in 1984 so I must have salvaged the drawing on a later visit to Kennett.

Where is Mike Neely?

Posted on by

When we last heard from him, boyhood friend Mike Neely was living the good life in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. But the last email address he used is bouncing. Mike, send me your current address. Joe Browning wants it, too. If anyone else has any contact info for Mike, please send it to me at stevemays at Hotmail.com.

Update: Joe Browning came up with Mike’s phone numbers and address. Won’t post them here but will provide upon request.

Great places to work

Posted on by

The firm where Barb works had a fund-raiser today for the hurricane relief effort. Her boss, prominent attorney and fun guy Harvey Tettlebaum, agreed to wear a clown suit if they raised $2,400.

And everyone in my department at Learfield Communications received this email late this afternoon from our chief financial officer:

I’ve scheduled an off-site meeting the afternoon of September 14 at Clyde’s (our CEO) house. This is a very important meeting and I expect you all to attend if you can. We will watch the movie “Office Space” and drink beer. Please mark your calendars.