Madden Mischief

Help, I’m Drowning!

That’s a fuzzy picture of me at 21 where I used to work.  That was my age then, not me at “21 Club” in Manhattan where much later in my boomerang life I’d hang out with my then boss Fred Silverman unwinding after long stomach churning workdays at 30 Rock in NYC.  That’s a picture of me when I was a lifeguard in the city where I grew up, Atlantic City, NJ.

At “21” in Manhattan, Fred and I would recoup our calm after another nerve-wracking day at NBC where he was the TV programming genius and CEO and I was his VP and special assistant whom he had brought over with him from ABC when we both jumped ship back in the early 80’s. 

Yes, I grew up in “The World’s Playground,” Atlantic City, not far from Monopoly’s blue properties, Boardwalk and Park Place.  My summer job there was saving lives.

I was a lifeguard until one day I dove from my lifeboat, struck my head on a sneaky sandbar and it fractured and dislocated my 5^th and 6^th vertebra, which they called “a broken neck.”  It took me almost a full year to save my own life, but thank God, eventually I fully recovered. 

Today AC’s sinking at a breakneck rate of about an inch a year due to rising surf caused by global warming plus the weight of so many of those casinos.  This droves me to create and trademark Planetary Lifeguard™, a character starring in my latest book: Planetary Lifeguard, Blowing the Whistle on Climate Change.

“Shh! He’s practicing!”

My dad was a concert violinist.  He was more concerned about his fingers than playing catch with his only son from his second marriage, ME!  Still, my mom and I appreciated how his violin put food on our table, especially the desserts.  His son Don from his first marriage was an amazing artist whose full-page cartoons ran each month in Playboy Magazine for 50 years.  Sadly, Don passed this year. 

Eventually I got used to my mom shushing me while dad practiced the works of my three greatest adversaries who kept stealing his attention away from his wannabe athlete son.  Oh, growing up how I resented Mozart, Mendelsohn and Brahms.

Today, I’m an artist myself, an author of six books, hundreds of published articles and my weekly blog at www.maddenmischief.com.  I’m also CEO of TransMedia Group, an international PR firm headquartered in Boca Raton, Fl, which I started when I left NBC, where as I said I was Vice President, Assistant to the President. 

‘SPIN MAN’

Before I wrote my first book, “SPIN MAN,” I worked in TV’s sleepless tinsel town, Manhattan, where my first major position was at American Broadcasting Companies. 

My job was promoting TV shows and my boss, TV wunderkind Silverman, liked my writing so much, I was the only exec he took with him from ABC to NBC.

Featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, for a time I was the talk of the town, well at least the people who knew me. 

Before my rise to network stardom, I was an account executive on the Kellogg cereal account at Dudley Anderson Yutzy, a top PR firm in Manhattan where I snapped crackled and popped with ideas to keep Tony the Tiger alive and well, including writing speeches for Kellogg’s Chairman reprinted in The New York Times for which he’d fly in to thank me personally, alas over breakfast at The Plaza hotel, then then owned by that shy billionaire destined for the highest office Donald Trump.   

‘The Big Easy’

Before that I was a college professor down in New Orleans where I lived with my first wife Angela, now passed, and our three kids, Andrew, Angel and Adrienne, the latter now president of my PR firm, TransMedia Group.   We had a home near Lake Pontchartrain and to support the family, I taught journalism at Loyola U.  

Previously, I graduated from two major universities, Temple and The Annenberg School of Communications at Penn, and was a star reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

For a brief time, I studied acting but all I was able to land were bit parts Off Broadway and the only person who ever asked for my autograph was a tax preparer . . . on my tax return. 

Now in my senior years, I haven’t stopped working, not for me, but for my PR firm’s clients, for whom my publicity has made many business owners rich and famous, some like the late Carl DeSantis, billionaires.  

I was Carl’s right hand PR guy when he owned Rexall Sundown and I brought him another company he purchased that made him even wealthier, the energy drink Celsius.   

Found Love Again

Today, my beautiful Brazilian wife Rita and I live adventurously high up in a luxurious oceanfront apartment in sunny South Florida. 

We each believe we’re cast in starring roles in our respective spheres, mine public relations, hers the insurance industry, a marvelous company called Five Rings.

If I ever decide to run for President, I’ll let you know before I toss my hat into the ring hoping you’ll not hold my numbers against me. If I do run, I promise not to slur, stumble or forget names in debates.  I’ll stand tall and walk straight. 

I’ll do my level best to inspire and never . . .  Make America Geriatric Again.

I won’t talk mean and derisively about my opponents like other candidates.  And I promise I’ll shave every day and comb whatever hair I have left after seeing pictures like this of my dauntless daughter jumping out of airplanes. 

NOW PLEASE DO WHAT’S RIGHT FOR AMERICA!    JUMP OUT OF YOUR BEDS, OFF OF YOUR COUCHES, LEAVE YOUR OFFICES AND VOTE!  IT’S A LOT SAFER THAN SKYDIVING!