I was an account executive at a medium sized (but very creative) advertising agency. That was before I ended up here with these hostages holed up in a small Houston liquor store. In Texas you can’t buy liquor at the grocery store, like you can in California or some other states I’ve visited, you have to go to a special package store, where they also sell beer, wine and snack stuff.
I hope I don’t have to kill any of these people. So far I’ve only killed the people I had a good reason to. I hated them and it was justifiable. Unfortunately I was starting to hate everyone. Working in advertising does that to you. You hate clients – that’s what we call anyone who pays us to make ads – because they say incredibly stupid things and expect you to do what they say. How can you follow the bidding of an idiot and not grow to hate them? You hate the people you work with because they are so stubborn and won’t do what you tell them. You hate the people who watch your commercials because they are so stupid they can’t see the art we are producing for them. They see commercials as an annoyance. They change the channel, or write to complain, or worst of all they don’t increase the sales of the products we’re selling in their key demographic areas. So at the end of the day you end up hating everyone.
Maybe I’ll ask around, do a small focus group if you will, to see if any of these people like the commercials I’ve done. The person who claims “not to watch television” or “hates all commercials” will be the second to go. The first will be anyone who directly bad mouths any of my work. Any fans of my work will be held to the end and used as a human shield to get to the get-away car. If they make it home alive they can say they were taken hostage by the guy that makes the Miller High Life commercials.
The sad thing is I am not the guy who makes the Miller High Life ads. I am only an account executive. I don’t write the words. I don’t draw the pictures. I don’t choose to run the commercial on SportsCenter. I contributed nothing concrete to one of the most ethereal professions in the world. I don’t come up with the ideas. I just “sell” the ideas. And not even in the sense that I take a written copy of the idea and leave with some money in my pocket after the exchange. I basically read the idea aloud and ask the people across the table from me not to change it too dramatically. If they agree I make a phone call saying we got the idea approved. Of course the idea will change another dozen times before you ever see it on TV,
One of the problems with working in advertising is that you consume too much media. What I mean to say is I’ve seen too many movies and watched too much TV. My escape strategy from this hostage situation is based entirely on what I think people did right and wrong in Dog Day Afternoon, John Q and Killing Zoe. And the ER episode where Ewan McGregor took some hostages in a 7-11.
Here is my plan. I am not going to answer the phone. In every movie the cops seem to get the upper hand when you answer the phone. Remember how Robert Duvall smiled when Denzel Washington picked up the phone? He had that in, he could start to see what the guy was made of. I don’t want that to happen to me. I don’t want them inside my head. I remember some other movie where they didn’t pick up the phone and the police became very nervous. So that sounds like the way to go. One of the hostages will answer the phone. I’ll write a script for him to read. I’ve got it half written already.
I’m really good at ignoring phone calls until I know what I want to say. When you are at the whimsy of insane creative people and their schedule you get used to hearing clients say, “Yes this is the second urgent message I’ve left in the last hour. When am I going to see the new work I asked for?” There’s a cop who’d like to leave that message for me right now if he could.
I have to admit that writing this script is harder than I thought. It’s hard to believe, but I am actually feeling sympathy for some of those bastard copywriters. Writing something eloquent under a heavy time pressure is a challenge. This is when you fall back on the business writing class you took in college. Be clear and to the point. I need to sell these cops on the fact that I’m only coming out on my terms and that I will kill if pushed.
OK, now I need to audition some of my cast here to see who’s going to read my little letter. Part two of my plan is that I am going to have a different person answer the phone each time the cops call. That way no one will know who’s running the show. I’ve also been lucky in that I don’t think anyone really got a good look at me. I’ve got everyone sitting in a circle looking out, away from each other, with their shirts over their heads covering their faces. For some reason I think it’s important that they don’t know each other. Some cops going to ask, “Can you identify the hostage taker?” and they’re going to hear, “I can’t even tell you what the others in the store looked like.” I haven’t been using my real voice. I’m just sitting in the circle with them. Every now and then two of us are going to get up to answer the phone.
Here goes the first call. I’ll be using the tall white guy. I have a great memory for faces, but not names. I can remember a face forever, as long as it doesn’t change or get older. Anyway he looked pretty literate so he’s up first.
He picks up the phone. “I need a white panel van outside the front of the store, full of gas in 15 minutes.” He hangs up. That went pretty well. We all go back to our seats in our little circle. The guy who answered the phone completes his script, “no talking or I’ll kill you.”
I pass a note to the guy on the other side of me. It says, “ask the group to each give their opinion of the latest Nike advertising.” He does as he’s told. The third voice to my right, a woman says, “I hate advertising, that’s why I got my new TIVO.” She rambles on about the TIVO for another minute or so before I poke the guy on my right and point to his script. “no talking or I’ll kill you” he parrots. In 13 minutes 16 seconds that woman gets it if there is no van.
We sit quietly for the next 13 minutes when suddenly one of our party falls over with a loud thud. My guess is he had a heart attack or a stroke or some such thing. Am I culpable for this? Either way I am going to use it to my advantage. I walk over to him and stick him a few times with my pen knife in the belly. I remember in Reservoir Dogs they said a gut shot provides a lot of blood but probably won’t kill you. They’re right, a few jabs and the white shirt is a bloody stained mess. I enlist another of the store patrons and we hoist him up and out the front door. I instruct a third person to pick up the phone and read out, “times up, where’s the god damn van?” He quickly hangs up and walks back to the inverted pow wow, repeating the mantra, “no talking or I’ll kill you.” In my mind I am thinking the store owner and the cashier are thinking, “are we the only ones not in on this?”
Bullhorn: “The van is here.” We form a rugby scrum and stumble to the door. Sure enough a van is there. It’s not white and it has some sort of state prison transport sticker on it, but it’s a van. The scrum slowly moves around the van looking for the hidden cop. You’ve seen Raid on Entebee and the movie about the hostages at the Olympics in the 60’s, there’s always a cop hidden in the car. Someday they are going to get really smart and sew him into the upholstery. Our cop is as dumb as a ton of bricks, he’s hanging onto the bottom of the car like Sideshow Bob in the Simpson’s spoof of Cape Fear. I push a note to the ad hating woman. In a stilted voice she reads (she’s making no attempt to make the words her own) “get out from under there and move away slowly.”
We climb into the van where we are followed by several cars and at least one helicopter. My plan is to let people out of the van in incriminating places and make them run like hell, hoping that the cops suspect that each one could be part of the criminal gang until I divide them as much as possible. But first we have to make a stop. The reason I am in Texas in the first place is that I grew up in Houston. Great place to grow up, but not anywhere I would want to live now if it weren’t for my family who all live there. I wasn’t trying to make that corny last visit to the family ala Catch Me If You Can, before I made out for Mexico if that’s what you are thinking. I wanted to track down Shannon Kelly. In 1983, my senior year in high school, I lent him my Cars bootleg album and he never returned it.
My best friend Kirk had already faithfully returned three albums he has been “holding” for me. When I left LA to move to Portland I decided it was time to get rid of all my albums. I had about 600 and I was sick of carrying them from move to move and CDs had pretty much taken over. So, I sold them all in the yard sale, but that night Kirk pulled out the Judy’s first EP (very rare), the Judy’s Moo LP (I saw this going for $120 on Ebay the other day) and a Killing Joke LP. He said I would regret it if I let those ones go. The truth is he was right on this one. Almost eight years to the day, I am browsing the web and I hit this awesome Judy’s site. Some guy who seems to be a year or two younger than me has collected all their music, bios and stuff I hadn’t seen in 20 years and put it on a site. I love the Internet. I tell Kirk this and the next week he Fed Exes my old albums back to me. Except the Moo album was missing. He sent a Joe King Carrasco album in its place, but I still want that Moo album. Maybe it’s at his parent’s house. If I have time I’ll stop by there too.
Shannon is easy to find as he is a celebrity of sorts. He was the starting QB at the University of Texas and is now married to that loveable pixy and gold medal winner Mary Lou Retton. I’d seen them together in line for a movie a half dozen years ago but forgot to ask about the record. I really feel that this is one of the things I am going to need (and possibly the Moo album) if I am going into exile. I am a little worried about how I am going to convert it into an MP3. Long story short this van is stopping at the Kelly-Retton house. Mercifully it is not far from the liquor store and traffic is light.
A stroke of luck, they have a circular driveway on a busy street. Most of the streets in the neighborhood I grew up in are dead ends or don’t provide through access. I think the reason they do this is to keep the riff raff out – if you don’t live here you have no reason to be here. Another stroke of luck, I am being pursued by the Village Police not HPD. They are real cops, but mostly their job is to keep the riff raff out. I am guessing they are not schooled in the ways of hostage negotiation and their egos have kept them from calling the SWAT team. I am also pretty sure I went to high school with the police chief.
I lay on the horn outside the Kelly-Retton house. After a solid two minutes a person who looks like she may be a cleaning lady comes out (a Mexican-American in this neighborhood is usually working here not living here). Shannon’s not home. Can I call him? Yes, she’ll go get his number. No rush. Another two full minutes and I’m dialing Shannon’s number. After a few courtesies I cut to the chase: where’s my Cars bootleg? He’s still got it and he doesn’t want to give it up. He’s offering me $40 bucks for it. I am insulted, I’ve never seen another album like this and if he’s kept it in the same quality I would have it’s worth at least $200. It tell him that’s not going to work for me and the scrum exits the car and starts rifling through his house. We find the album, a gold medal and a couple of autographed footballs that one of the other guys wants, but I’m thinking Christmas present for my brother.
We’re back in the van and the cell phone rings. That was fast. I run over the Kelly-Retton mailbox as we leave.
At this point I figure there’s three people who know who I am. Who ever saw me and reported me to the cops when I was in the liquor store, the liquor store owner (no scratch that he knows what I look like, but he doesn’t know who I am, unless he reported me, but why would he know me?) and possibly the police chief if Randall did indeed get the job. I’m guessing the average cop following me doesn’t know me or have a good idea of what I look like. At best a short description from the person who reported seeing me. So if someone goes running like hell from the van wouldn’t they have to chase them thinking it could be me? OK, I’ve wasted a little time with this stop so I need to start jettisoning people quick. First stop, Memorial City mall. Its crowded with shoppers. I pass my first escapee a note, “when I stop the van run like hell and don’t stop until they catch you or I’ll kill all these people. Will he buy it? Maybe, he didn’t look too smart. I stop. He jumps out and tries to head for the parking lot. I block his way with the van as I pull my finger across my neck. He gets the message and heads for the crowd. It works, a few cars empty and the cops take out after the guy. Next stop the park and ride a few blocks away before the freeway. A few more car loads of cops peel off to chase that guy.
My confidence is building. I suddenly remember this great date I had in high school. I was acutely attracted to this girl Anne, she was a few years older than me and would never consider dating me, we were friends. So I asked her only marginally less hot sister out, she was the same age as me. We went to see INXS (Adam Ant opened), but after we parked and on the concert there was a guy climbing one of the big buildings downtown. Literally, with suction cups, he was some kind of human fly. There were 100’s of cops on and around the building. Then right before he gets to the top it looked like he jumped. Holy s--t I think, he’s committing suicide. But there is no splat, so I look back up and he has launched a parachute and is drifting off. The cops are running like mad to catch him. We all ran after him too and when he lands we try to block the cops from catching him. Unfortunately the human fly is tangled up in his chute and he can’t run. It’s costing him valuable time. When he finally gets out, he makes a run for it but he is caught. He couldn’t overcome the chute set back. I’m shout out, “I don’t have chute to tie me down, I’m going to make it.
The only question now is where to go? How long can I keep depleting the cops before they get major backup? We make a quick switch, the ad hater is now driving. I drop another passenger at the megaplex movie theater/skateboard park a little further down I10. We’re playing musical chairs in the van and exchanging clothes. I decide I am next to go, but where. Memorial Park. I’ll blend in with the joggers. I strip down to my boxers (solid blue, could be running shorts) and undershirt.
Three of us get out at the park, we look like a bad jogging gang. I pass a note to the driver and the liquor store owner, “drive back to the liquor store or I’ll kill these people.” Do they have a conscious? Who knows, but they are driving off. I send one captive off down the path east and we head west. The last time I was jogging on this path was with my brother. I had started an ill fated marathon training program that my brother had completed the year before so we felt we should run together. The only problem is that Houston is hotter than hell and infinitely more humid than Portland. I somehow thought the hills I had been running in Portland would even out the Houston weather. I was very wrong. We were half way around the three mile track when I thought I saw the girl I was in love with in college. I said to my brother, “was that Elliott?” He was sure it was. For the next mile and a half I hoped it would be her, because I had just had dinner with some high school friends the night before who knew her and we had talked about her, albeit briefly, but it was still a cool small world incident.
We got back to the beginning and sure enough there she was. I introduced myself and she looked at me like, “of course I know who you are, but I’m not really that glad to see you.” Maybe she was upset that the first time I had seen her in years she was all sweaty. Southern girl thing, but she looked great and I’d never known her to be vain. Well it turned out I didn’t know her at all anymore. She has two kids (we’d sworn we’d never bring more kids into the world. I have kept my end of that promise) and she married Ben Young, the son of Ed Young the minister at second Baptist. I hear he also rides in a helicopter to preach out in Katy every Sunday as well as at Second Baptist. Ben is a fraternity brother of mine, but I can’t say he is one of my favorite people. He was a little too serious for me. Maybe this is a weird karma thing. I started dating Heidi Barcus when she was supposed to be with Tony Bisagno, his dad is the minister at First Baptist.
Anyway we said our goodbyes and I can’t help but feel that she was happier to have seen my brother, who she hardly knew, than she was to see me. But most people do love him so I can’t blame them. At my wedding he got up and told a funny story about when he first met my in-laws. I had made an ass of myself by drinking way too much. He was the star of the family. This is a trend has been repeated many times throughout our lives.
This jogging track is a great place to loose the cops. There are a lot of people around and I’m soon lost in the crowd. I jump in the back of a truck that’s leaving the park and 20 minutes later I’m outside the city and small icehouse drinking a beer.