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But seriously . . . I have only been the victim of mild rejections, career dissatisfaction and the occasional parking ticket. Here's my story, book report style: Birth and Afterbirth I was born on March 12, 1974 (birthday gifts are certainly welcome, make checks payable to me . . . that's Shandler, with an "S"), in the township of Livingston, NJ. For all you MapQuest junkies, Livingston is located in New Jersey's Essex County, about twenty miles outside of NYC. (Don't let the close proximity fool you. It's still a shlep to Gotham.) My dad, Alan, is a CPA, CFO, VP and would like to be a member of the USGA. Mom Phyllis is a Career Planning and Development Counselor in Livingston High School's guidance department. I would be remiss if I said the only thing she does is help kids pick their colleges, but that's the main bullet in her job description. I also have an older brother, Chad, who like my dad, is also a CPA, as well as a senior manager in a global accounting/consulting firm. A born leader who's good with numbers, Chad wisely chose the family business, unlike me, who still does arithmetic on a calculator shaped like a cartoon professor. Let's move on . . . The Edukayshun of Adam D. Shandler I was reared on twelve years of public school education, and what I lacked in smarts I made up for in schmoozing. I made friends of most of my teachers, but those who gave me a hard time will see their images crafted in one of my future novels. (You know who you are!) My high school career was neither Dawson's Creek nor 90210. It was actually an okay time for me. I was active in band, leading the marching ensemble for two years as drum major, and fell in love with TV production at LHS's own TV studio. Graduating smack dab in the middle of my class, Harvard, Haverford and Hampshire College were the furthest from my mind, so I chose Hofstra, a private full-service university on Long Island. HU's communications department was an up-and-comer and had been the beneficiary of a windfall used to upgrade its TV facilities. There was also some buzz that the Comm Department would soon be accredited as a full-fledged School of Communications -- a la Syracuse's lauded Newhouse School. I was hip to that, plus Hofstra, at the time, had a cool mascot: The Flying Dutchman. (Hofstra has since changed its brand to "The Pride", a move that I consider blasphemous.) I Got Hooked on MegaHertz I learned a lot about TV while in Hempstead, and a little about journalism too. Two valuable internships at New Jersey Network and NBA Entertainment didn't hurt either. Sports was the one area I enjoyed covering most, and I couldn't put a price on the camaraderie I shared with the rest of the campus press. I was courted by some sportscasters at the campus radio station, WRHU-FM, to broadcast some games. I was hooked immediately. It started with a toke of basketball, then a hit of football. By spring of my junior year, I was freebasing play-by-play for Flying Dutchmen Lacrosse. What a high. I couldn't stop. Soon I was hosting a late-night music program with one of my color partners. TV was still cool, but there was something addicting about the energy of live radio. Have You Thought About a Career in the Glamorous World of Radio? Like many college graduates with a communications degree, I left Hofstra . . . unemployed. With all the new cable TV stations popping up, especially in and around New York, you'd think I would be able to land a job as assistant to the assistant to the video label maker somewhere. But no, I was either too qualified or under-qualified for most jobs. At least that's what it said on my rejection letters, which I plan to use in some elaborate work of abstract art someday. I wanted an on-air job in radio, so I spent most of the summer of '96 sending hundreds of my radio announcing tapes to places like Truth-or-Consequences, New Mexico; Warren, Ohio; and Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. I was willing to go anywhere to be on-air, but as luck would have it, I got a call one August day from the sports director at a small station in Pompton Lakes, NJ - a mere 25 minutes from Livingston. I was hired as a part-time, weekend-only sports anchor at WGHT-AM. GHT is one of the few independently owned stations in America and is determined to stay that way. An AM daytimer (only on from sun-up to sun-down), the station churns out 1,000 watts of power, providing the greater metropolitan Passaic County area (a term I made up) with local news, sports, weather and Oldies music. In a two-year span, I was a newscaster, sportscaster, morning show host/producer, internship coordinator, and commercials/promos producer. (Hey, it was a small station.) It was as commercials producer that I really started tapping into my creative writing. One of my spots, "Minute Man Press: The Ol' West", won the coveted and prestigious Crystal Communicator Award, which you've never heard of. My Microphone Goes Dim Well, GHT was the best job I ever had. I was able to wear more hats than a six-headed hat model and had fun doing it. But I wasn't making much money and, after two years, thought it was time to move on, and out . . . of my parents' basement. I got a job as a traffic reporter for Metro Networks in NYC, and reported on the roadways of Connecticut, Westchester and New Jersey. Now I know why traffic reporters have a high rate of alcoholism. You drive to work and sit in traffic, then talk about traffic for eight hours, then go home and sit in more traffic. I met some great people, but after five months, I was out. Mr. Shandler Goes to Washington Radio was taking on a horrible new look: homogeny. Large media conglomerates were buying up all these stations, turning them all into Hot AC clones. That's not a radio I wanted to be a part of, so I waved goodbye to the trade and packed my car for adventure. I moved down to Washington, DC, and sold out to the corporate life. Headhunting was my game now! Let's call up already-rich white folk at one company and see if they want to be richer and whiter at another company! All while I earn one-sixteenth of their base salaries! Really, I shouldn't mock the industry. As a hardcore capitalist, I should be praising the system, except the economics of the system didn't work out for me. There was some value to my stint in executive recruiting, however. I got a quasi-business school education that paid me, was promoted all the way up to Director of Research (which is just a switcheroo of my previous title, Research Manager) and, most importantly, learned to discern B.S. from the real thing. Never did find the real thing, though. Achieving Respectability
So now, I write. I write with honest pen (or keyboard keys) and full heart, thoughtful mind and cramping hand. It's been a dream of mine since second grade, when I would make up stories to impress my fellow classmates. Okay, I was a pathological liar, but a story is a story. I started writing Coaching Ira in January of 2001. After a year's worth of hacksaw editing, heavy doubts and some really good naps, it is ready for the reader's discriminating eyes. There will be more . . . |
