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The Jewish editor got me. Set up like a bowling pin with no way out and no way in. The guy who won an Emmy sent me to the OFFICE. I knew it didn’t bode well after I was fired from Yellow Taxi. I had called Mr. J at Mountain Valley and he said that the boy I had turned over my route to was doing such a terrible job I couldn’t get any money. “He’s your employee—you turned my route over to him—you bought my business.”
“Sorry,” he smiled over the phone, “wait until summer.”
I called my accountant. “You’re broke. You owe me money,” he said. “You told me not to get a lawyer,” I said. “Oh, well, I’m an accountant.”
I was being sent to the office of the HEAD MASTER at Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts a week after signing new forms with the financial aid office. The HEAD CHEESE was five foot two and about 150 pounds of high energy. “I’m the producer for Shaquille O’neal’s new rap album.” He chattered while seated behind his desk, thumbing through a folder. “You’re classmates are afraid of you,” he said glancing over the top of his folder. The office had industry posters plastered on the walls along with gold records and Emmies and a bronzed upright penis muddled in with the trophies on a corner table.
“Dick?” I asked.
“You’ve also been accused of sexual harassment,“ he chattered on.
“I’m a student.”
“You’ve made anti-Semitic comments to one of our instructors and I quote, ‘some of my best friends are Jewish’ and ‘Jews control the entertainment business in New York.” He said.
“They may be big babies and I think their belief system may be out of date, but some of my best` friends are Jewish,” I said. “I was raised a Catholic and I think that’s a lot of hogwash too. What kind of school is this? And don’t get me started on the Moslems” I figured he was recording the entire sequence since it was a recording arts school.
“We had a meeting and we decided you won’t be graduating with your class.” He said.
“Why?” I asked.
“They don’t like you,” he said.
“They don’t like you either!” I answered, “They don’t like anybody.”
“And you stink.” He said.
“I bathe every chance I get—what about the guy with the dreadlocks—have you ever sat next to him?”
“This is all about you,” he said.
“No it’s not,” I said, “If I’ve offended anyone, I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry.”
“I said I’m sorry,” I said.
And he really said this: “If you’re sorry, you’ll leave school now, and after your class graduates you can come back and finish.”
I stood up, turned around, patted myself on the behind and said, “Kiss my ass.”
Little Gary called security.

Once SONG OF SELF was chosen as a class film project the real truth happened. Intellectual property rights and usage were an issue even for a student project. Since a book was going to be used for the readings I contacted the publisher of the book and got permission even though Walt Whitman is generally in the public domain. I also contacted Amtrak for permission to film at the Winter Park Train Station and then finally CSX since they owned the train tracks. The class auditioned actors and wanted some passionless banker to read Whitman as though he was praying for a gay lover. I fought for Fred, a fire and brimstone preacher, and won and lost at the same time—the gap widened. In Set design the class participated until Christmas break when most of the class went away. Me and Veronica were left with the task of building a spiral staircase which was somebody else’s bright idea. I called Decker in Ocean City and ordered 20 pounds of smoked tuna to feed the cast and crew. Mr. J got Mountain Valley to write off ten cases of Mountain Valley Water I picked up from the local distributor. He still wasn’t paying me money owed but the water cost him nothing and I took it as a good faith gesture. I found someone to let us use a variety of wall clocks for the indoor set and a garden lady donated plants for the outdoor ambiance on a luggage cart at the Winter Park train station. I had participated in as many projects as I could up to that point in everything from security to wrapping cables and working the camera dolly or just carrying things. I very seldom saw any of my classmates at any of the other projects. They really didn’t care.
While crossing the train tracks at the Winter Park Train Station I tripped, fell on the tracks and cut my elbow. That night while driving the taxi a woman wanted me to hold her child while she looked for her money—the child smelled of stale urine. I worked until six a.m. before I was able to go home to change and cleanup which was a rarity.
During our three day film shoot the members of the class had an opportunity to trade off jobs as part of the hands on training of Full Sail and the opportunity to play with the toys. No one liked the tuna but everyone ripped off the left over bottled water. I was so far out of touch with the rest of the class I was left with breaking down most of the set on my own. When the class began for makeup I had contracted impetigo and bubbles had formed on my wrist and elbow and I was completely segregated from the rest of the class. The editing instructor was an Emmy winning editor from the Guiding Light. “Anyone can be set up,” he told the class. He was of Jewish ancestry and spoke how his brother wrote books and was very involved in what being a Jew was about. He said that he didn’t care about any of it. I told him some of my best friends were Jewish and that he was the first Jewish person I met at the school. I also commented on how the New York entertainment industry seemed to be controlled by the Jews. He smiled at me and ignored me the rest of the class. In the film history class the instructor was one of the heavy weights of the school; he had produced and directed the “Swamp Thing” franchise we were told. The final film project was chosen. It was to be about kissing being outlawed by the government and people spying on one another. The treatment was by Ben, one of my fellow students trying to get me booted out of school. The treatment Norman Iland had written was called “Passion Eight”, a rip off of Max Headroom where the video journalist gathers news and reports with a video camera on the run–the news gatherer was a lesbian living with her lover and son.
The head of the film department had been given a copy of IMMUNE about the origin of AIDS.
He commented on how he liked the drama but it was a bit too political. In March, during the editing class I was asked to go to the office. While in the office I was asked to sign papers regarding my student loan. That week I was called into the office at Yellow Taxi and told that I was no longer employed—someone had complained. A week later during the editing class I was once more asked to go to the office.