Get back

© Universal Pictures

I overheard a conversation, well, okay, I was eavesdropping on this conversation between a couple of businessmen-at-lunch-wearing-yellow-power-ties today. I feel sorry for anyone who has to wear a starched shirt and a tie on a 93 degree day.

But then I remembered that this is America damn it, and we all can make our own choices. Then I didn't feel sorry anymore. I just felt sad for their poor weather-related fashion choices.

Anyway, the part of their chat that caught my ear was when one of them said, "If I could go back twenty years I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't want to live through those years again."

It struck me as strange, because if you tell me I can go back twenty years, I'm saying, "What time do we leave?"

Of course the one caveat I have is that whole "If I knew then what I know now..." thing. I'd have to be able to take back everything I've learned in the back twenty.

For starters, Apple stock at 1994 prices. And lots of it.

Same for homes. And lots of 'em.

I'd lock up long-term CD bank accounts for as many years as I could.

I'd eat better and exercise more (well, it sounds good).

I'd buy up that run down warehouse district, and develop it. If you gentrify it they will come.

Finally, I'd be nicer to the people I knew I was going to lose. I'd make a point of spending more time with them. I'd make their lives easier in any way I could, knowing full well what the road ahead held for them. I'd be less cynical around them, despite how often it's required - they don't need the negativity. I'd steer them towards the personal habits and medical studies that might help prolong their lives, if only for a short while.

And I'd write down all my memories of them. The little turns of phrase, or crooked smiles or knowing looks exchanged. It would be a detailed journal that would keep them vividly alive for me, even after they'd departed twenty years on.

I'd also love them more. I'd be demonstrative and free with it. I'd let them know as often as I could. And when they looked at me with that "Who the hell are you?" expression, and asked why the love fest, I'd tell them the one bit of wisdom that I brought back with me from the future.

Life's too short.

Danny

I don’t know if other industries are like this, but the ad community is a small one. Especially in L.A. Because of that, you wind up seeing a lot of the same faces at different agencies around town. Sometimes a good thing, sometimes not.

In the case of Danny Alegria, it was more than a good thing: it was a blessing.

Danny either worked in the studio or was the studio manager at three agencies I had the good fortune to work with him at: DBC, DDB and Y&R.

Ad agencies just love their initials don’t they?

Danny was always a bright light in what could be a dark environment. Being in the studio, he was ground zero for stressed out account and creative people throwing fits when it came to getting something they usually needed yesterday out the door to a client, or materials for a big presentation or new business pitches.

Regardless of the pressure and tantrums that came his way, he had a good word for everyone (something extremely difficult to do at agencies). And there was never a question about him getting what you needed done.

Even though I’d known him for years, I’d never really sat down and talked to him until one very slow day at Y&R about nine or ten years ago. We wound up sitting down and literally talking for over three hours. He told me about his time in the Navy, his background as a singer, his years as a jockey, exactly how horseracing worked (not the way you’d think or hope), his family and more.

I couldn’t believe this fascinating person had been steps away from me for years, and yet only now was I just discovering who he was and learning about him.

I had always loved horseracing. In fact, when I was in college I loved it a little too much, to the tune of rent money on occasion. Danny and I made an agreement we’d take a trip out to Santa Anita, and he’d give me the lowdown on the horses and be my betting Yoda.

Sadly, we never got to make that trip.

Danny was diagnosed with cancer. But like everything else in my experience with him, he handled it with grace, honesty and dignity.

He would post unflinchingly on Facebook about how he was doing - the progress of both the treatment and the disease.

As to be expected with cancer as widespread as his had become, there were good days and bad days. But even on the bad days, the really bad ones, there would be a thread of optimism.

On one of his good days, he invited me to come see him give what he knew would be his last singing performance. I wouldn't have missed it. Not only did I get to see Danny perform, I got to see a lot of long, lost friends from agencies past we'd worked with over the years, who were also out in force to show support for him, and his talent that we didn't get to see nearly enough.

Danny was in great form that day, but it tired him out. It was easy to see the toll his cancer was taking.

I would text back and forth with him. I told him I'd come out to where he lived in Riverside and take him to lunch, or if he wasn't up to going out, bring it to him and we'd eat at his place and talk about the race track. I believe he was confined to his bed at that point, but even so he just told me he wasn't feeling well, but as soon as he rallied we'd do it.

Shortly after that conversation, on July 10, 2012, Danny died at the age of 60.

For me, it's certainly a personal loss, as I know it is for his family. But it's bigger than that: it's a global one. The world simply can't afford to lose people as decent, caring and loving as Danny always was to not just his family and friends, but everyone he encountered.

His Facebook page is still active, and every now and then I find myself re-reading some of the posts he put up as he was going through his ordeal. They are honest, inspiring, funny, heartbreaking and hopeful. I'm also friends with his daughter on there, and though I've never met her in person I feel as though we have a strong connection.

She is funny, bright and optimistic. Just like her old man.

Not a day goes by that I don't think about Danny and the meal together I was so looking forward to.

It's comforting knowing he's finally resting in well-deserved peace.

And that he's making heaven a much more rockin' place.

On our Mark

For many people, this time of year kicks off a certain kind of joy. It’s the exciting and festive start of the holiday season, with at least one major celebration a month from now until the end of the year. The air is thick with anticipation.

But for me, October brings something a little darker now – a little more Woody Allen in attitude.

It's a reminder the year is running out of time. The days get shorter, the night comes earlier, the chill lasts longer. Also, every October is one more year my lifelong friend Mark Geldman has been gone.

Mark died of cancer in October 2007, but not before living a wild, full and adventurous life. Not only was he one of my very best friends, he was also an artist, a poet, a writer, an activist, an entrepreneur and a ladies man. He was married four times. Some people just never learn.

In high school, there were three of us: me, Mark and Sandy Frey. We were inseparable and unstoppable. Together, we stole our parents cars before we could legally drive (note to my kids: don’t even think it). We organized a political demonstration that shut down our junior high school for a few days. At the time, Mark was a member of the Young Socialist Alliance, and his parents belonged to the Socialist Workers Party. If I heard one lecture about Eugene Debs I heard a hundred. (As a side note, years later when I asked Mark if he was still a socialist, he told me he worked in Hollywood, where everyone including him was a devout capitalist).

Anyway, like friendships that have been so close for so long sometimes do, we went our different ways after high school.

About 14 years ago, I was reading the Calendar section of the L.A. Times. It was some article about Mickey Rourke and how impossible he was being (I know, I was as shocked as you are) with a project he was involved in. The article listed the screenwriter as Mark Geldman. I hadn’t seen or heard Mark’s name in a very long time, and wondered whether it was the same one. So I called 411, asked for his number, and got it. Then I called him.

I think our first conversation was two hours – two wonderful hours catching up on the years that’d gone by.

I wound up reconnecting for a short time with Mark. My wife and I had dinner at his house. We met his wife and kids. They came to our house. It was a great time. The thing about knowing someone so long and well is they can fill in the blanks for you. Among other things, Mark reminded me of a dinner we'd had years earlier at an Indian restaurant in New York called Nirvana (I didn't even remember being in New York). And of the Tribeca apartment he could've signed a 20-year lease on for $300 a month.

It’s easy for me to recall the last time I saw Mark because I have a good milestone to remember it. It was the night before my daughter was born. Together with our wives, we had dinner at L’Opera in downtown Long Beach. It was a drizzly Sunday night, and we were sitting by the large windows looking out at the Metro Blue Line as it came and went. It was all very east coast, and it felt right.

And then he was gone. I never spoke to him again.

Fast forward to the end of September, beginning of October 2007. I got a call from Mark’s high school girlfriend and fourth wife, Jodi. When I answered, in tears she said, “We lost Mark.” When I told my wife Mark had died, the first words out of her mouth were, “You have to tell Sandy.”

I couldn’t even remember the last time I talked to Sandy, so I took to the interwebs and Googled him. Turns out Sandy was a partner in a prestigious law firm in downtown L.A. Come to find out in what I now refer to as the lost years, he done good.

I emailed him about Mark passing away, and I now know when he got the email he was in a client meeting and had to step outside because of the tears in his eyes.

When Jodi let me know the date of the memorial service, Sandy and I got together beforehand for a reunion of our own. Even though Mark wasn’t there, he couldn’t have been more present. As Mark and I had done, Sandy and I spent the time we had before the service filling in the blanks for each other, rekindling both memories and a friendship that had never really been gone, just dormant.

At the service, although we didn’t speak, we were spoken about. People talked about Mark’s friends Sandy and Jeff because they’d heard about us from Mark.

While a lot of that day is a blur, the thing I remember most is after the service and get together at his cousins house, Sandy and I were walking to our cars with Ron Yanover, Mark’s writing partner. He told us how often Mark had spoken of us over the years. Then, he stopped for a minute and said, “We had the best of him.”

What brought all this on is now, every year since Mark's service, Sandy and I get together around October 8th, Mark’s birthday, to have dinner at Blair’s in Silverlake and raise a glass to Mark. Then we have dessert at Pazzo Gelato, the shop Mark opened with his neice and nephew.

I think it’s strange yet comforting Mark managed to bring Sandy and I back together. The three of us were always, and I mean always, together. When Sandy and I are together, it feels like we still are. We both have a fierce determination never to let the years slip away again. At least we know we’ll always see each other one night a year.

Next Wednesday night, you’ll find Sandy and me at Blair’s, talking about ourselves, our work, our lives and Mark.

And remembering we had the best of him.