That Embarrassing 70s Show - I Was In It!

Oh dear. It's all about to come out of the closet - and I'm not talking about my gayness - although from this photo, you've got to wonder. Note particularly, my full-length denim jumpsuit (I'm on the far left) and my buddy's not-so-delicately-cross-hatched pants. Fucking hilarious, you've got to admit.

This photo comes from Sylvia, a really good art-friend during our freshman year in college and the dude standing next to me is my best friend at that time, Tom Nelson, or "Nels" as everyone knew him. I was known also as "Carls" at the time and together we composed a most deviant organization called "The Swedish Mafia", a clandestine cooperative dedicated to art, beer drinking, cigar smoking, classic car repair (we both drove junk piles of ever-changing make and model including Studebakers, Ford Mustangs a Buick "Invicta" and a Datsun) and the chasing of many women who were essentially bad for our mental health, although many times more than good for our physical health. From that was born another private club, "The Porker Brothers", but that's another story entirely. Tom now makes a "clean" living in custom homes.

In these days, we were both obsessed with getting through school (Black Hawk College in this photo) and finding jobs in the ad business (His mother was an art teacher and his dad had an advertising company of some sort) and Sylvia was a bit of a Tom-boyish art buddy of ours who was just really, really sweet and truly a good friend as well. Little did we understand that these days would pass quickly and this photo is probably the last time I saw or spoke to Sylvia. Until now.

Over the last year, since starting the blog and posting thrice weekly at least, my Internet presence has increased exponentially. Along with Facebook and LinkedIn, I'm pretty easy to find and any great number of voices from my past have popped up recently - and interestingly enough, primarily female - the account executive from my first TV shoot with Bozell & Jacobs in Dallas, the researcher and media woman who worked on the Nintendo Game Boy account with us in the early 90s, and another woman with whom I had an affair with at Leo Burnett. Oh, dear. If 25 year olds start popping up calling me "daddy", I'll start to worry. But that hasn't happened, yet. Yet. So there is definitely another side to being a Web 2.0 provocateur. A side that tax collectors, old enemies and older ex-girlfriends might find to use to exorcise antique angst. But that isn't what has happened to me at all - conversely, everyone I have re-met has been just so sweet and nice that it makes me wonder what kind of a guy I really have been? Even Tom and I are still in contact. Wasn't I supposed to have been a Porsche driving, cocaine snorting, advertising-creative-hero-in-his-own-mind, sort of asshole in all those years up the ladder? Well, we'll do a call-in show for that later. I'm sure we can find a guy I bullied in gym class - or maybe art class for sure. Are there art class bullies?

Thanks so much to Sylvia for this, and for letting those of us who have spent time in divorce court know that there is another side to that 50% figure. Sylvia and her husband in the photo, Jim, are still married. But no damn thanks for the fashion faux pas "outing". Damn that hurts!