OKAY, OKAY, I WROTE THE BOOK
Chuck is taking a break this week.
He asked Mel Hall to write a few words ...
Chuck is busy this week,
producing or directing some God-awful
infomercial that will, no doubt, add luster to “The Legend”.
Right. “The Legend”. What a piece
of crap this is. Let me tell you
a few things about Legendary Charlie.
Every time he writes a chapter for this column he drives me nuts.
He emails his first draft to me and asks me to ‘edit’ it for him.
Have you ever tried to edit the ramblings of a high school dropout?
Legendary? Give me a break.
It’s 3 O’clock in the morning and the phone rings. “Where do the
commas go? Where do the commas go?
Me: Chuck, do you know what time it is?
Chuck: The big hand is on 20 and the little hand…. etc. etc.
See what I mean? And he’s got the balls to call me his “Editor”.
Well, once you’re trapped in the Chuck Blore phenomenon, there
is absolutely no escape. Here’s a guy who likes to run through
Hollywood screaming “Me!... Me!... Me!.....”
Color Radio? I’d like to tell you how it really started.
It’s early 1958 and I’m working at Mort Hall’s flatulent KLAC.
At 10pm I walk out of the building onto Sunset Blvd. and discover
this glassy-eyed redneck wandering the sidewalk reciting the
names of all the Hollywood movie stars. I offer to buy him a cup
of coffee. We go over to Norm’s, next door, and he tells me his
name is Dwight Sweeney and he just got a job as the new Program
Director at KFWB. Swell. (I thought to myself, Dwight’s what?)
Over coffee, I tell him if he’s going to ‘make-it’ in Hollywood, he’s
got to ‘chuck’ the name and get something more euphonious.
He stares at me for a moment with a silly, open-mouth, wide-eyed smile.
One of his eyes slides over to the side. About 4 seconds later
the other eye follows and I heard this definite ‘click’.
“I like that.” he says.
“Like what?” I responded.
“Chuck, I like Chuck” ( he’s now standing on the seat of the booth),
“Hi everybody, I’m Chuck and I’ve got a job in Hollywood.”
The waitress, obviously annoyed, turns up the volume on this little
Arvin radio over the pie case. Hunter Hancock was playing something by The
Trenier Twins, as I recall. Anyhow, this little radio had multicolor stripes all
over it. Dwight was dumbstruck.
“Look at that, look at that” he gushed. “Look at that color radio!”
I told him to sit down before he blows it, and ……..
Suddenly, he’s cold sober, plops back down in the seat and says,
“I am not a blower,… no sir, no way,… I am not a blower.”
A moments pause…..
“Oh, wait a minute, maybe I am,…… heh, heh, heh….”
I got that sloe-eyed business again, called for the check, as Dwight
spills his coffee in his crotch. “AAAGGGGHHHHH…… “
I hustled his sorry ass outside and watched him disappear down
Sunset Blvd., one foot on the sidewalk, one foot in the gutter,
smiling and repeating to himself, “I’m Chuck Blower, I’m Chuck
Blower, I’m a visionary and I’ve just seen Color Radio.”
Well, now you know how it all began and the rest is legend.
Once you connect with Chuck, he never lets you go.
Consequently, I edit the stuff he writes here and there doesn’t
seem to be an end.
I do enjoy it, though. As I told Johnny Rook a few weeks ago,
“Chuck’s amazing, I fall at his feet. Therefore, he calls me Clumsy.”
Why am I writing this truthful expose? Last night at 3am the phone
rang. My wife reaches over, answers, looks over at me with that
‘this shit has gotta stop look’, and says,
“It’s Dwight.”
Mel Hall
e-mail Mel
melhall.cinira@cox.net
