My once and longtime agent, Phil Edgerly, came into my life working for an insurance company, and looking for "space art" to use in an ad. Leaving my studio that day, he noticed a small framed piece on the wall displaying Visa and MasterCards with my space art on them. They had been done by Lamar Savings, a Texas firm set to have the first bank on the moon.

This bears repeating.

Yes, Lamar Savings Association of Austin, Texas, held the legal rights to the first bank on the:

Not only had they bought several large original paintings of mine to hang in their bank, Lamar had licensed the right to use my space paintings on their credit cards. And boy-oh-boy did they fall hard during the S&L scandals of the late 80’s / early 90’s. Gee ... I wonder why? I have a small photo from Time or Newsweek hanging on the bottom of my framed credit cards now, a story that reads in part:

Well, you can never have enough hand-carved ivory tusks.

The photo shows the Bentley amidst piles of other stuff, including what could be one of my paintings leaning against the back wall, no doubt between the kitchen sinks.

I related the story to Phil and soon discovered he had a sense of humor not only bent, but folded back over itself at least six times ––– as in 666. Phil’s idea of a joke was taking me to a late night showing of, “Henry ––– Portrait of a Serial Killer,” in New York’s SoHo. If you haven’t seen it, by all means, think about it carefully before you do. The SoHo audience laughed all the way through the movie. I doubt the west coast audience laughed even once. In New York they roared, especially when Henry’s serial killer buddy, Otis, got into “something nicer” for a “night out” together. That is, his favorite shirt, a polyester number with an over all pattern of large globs. As we left the theater, two SoHo-ites were descending the steps behind us. One said to the other,

“So hows’bout let’s go kill somebaady ...”

“Hey, good idea...”

Phil loved that moment on the steps of the movie theater the same way he appreciated Lamar Savings’ lock on the: MOON.

That first day in my studio, Mr. Edgerly offered to look for some other credit card companies and perhaps an airline that might be interested in using my work. I said sure because after being beaten about the head and shoulders, not to mention my rustic Norwegian ass, by so-called art galleries for the past ten years, believe me, I was looking for any way I could think of to regain at least some autonomy, if not the luxury of an outright divorce. At the time I didn’t really think Phil would find much. Mainly, I sensed he genuinely loved my work though. And I knew from gallery experience, that whenever a salesperson had genuinely loved my work, they did great with it. And while it was true enough that Phil did not know the phony baloney “Art Industry,” I didn’t care because the people who did pretend to know it were, well ... let’s put it this way: scum seeks its own level.

We ended up working together for many years. Phil quit selling insurance and moved from Philadelphia to the west coast where he began representing artists and working in the Hollywood movie business.

The first show he arranged for me was a disaster. It was at a fantasy gallery in Annapolis, Maryland. The lighting was terrible and at the last minute Philly Phil and I were running around a hardware store buying huge light bulbs, then crawling up a ladder to change them. The turnout was fairly good but the gallery room was small, bordering tiny, and the heat was unbearable. The new light bulbs added hellfire to the already warm July air.

The hor o’deruve’s, more accurately ––– horror o’deruve’s ––– were tuna mounds on large round crackers. Soon the room smelled like the cat wing at the Humane Society. Worst of all, I was trapped in that tiny room for hours while people held their tuna crackers on napkins, attempting to avoid actually eating them. At one point I thought I was going to pass out from the stench. And when the occasional tuna lover did finally bite into one of the dreadful things, they continued talking to me, causing bits of Charlie to fly out of their gobs and stick to the lapels of my beautiful new navy blazer. I would not look down. Chewed meat “stars” covered my jacket. Phil saved me from SADS ––– Sudden Artist’s Death Syndrome ––– by mugging faces at me over people’s shoulders.

Around that same time Phil got a six page spread of my work in Omni Magazine by walking a portable light table and color transparencies into the main headquarters of the magazine in New York. He proved to be a great “one–on–one” man, getting me book, magazine and album covers as well as coming up with ideas I never would have thought of.

For one, he got me a great show at the Hayden Planetarium in Central Park in New York. My work hung there for the better part of a year. Once again he did it through personal contact and in the case of the Hayden, managed to pull off a first. Although the prestigious planetarium had had countless showings of space art over the past decades, never until mine, had they featured a show of space fantasy images. The scientifically based planetarium had always presented “realistic” space paintings, impressions of what might actually exist in outer space. Although I liked much of that sort of work, I was never interested in illustrating space, but in making art objects. Phil convinced the Hayden to take a chance and we met with great success.

Another show Phil put together in New York was at the world headquarters of AT&T on Madison Avenue. This one really got me going. A few weeks before Phil called, saying he’d secured a show there, I’d found a broken glockenspiel in a junk shop and carted it off to the studio. Then over the months leading up to the show I taught myself to play a mean version of, “New York – New York”.

I was high. Anyone visiting the studio had to endure a glockenspiel concert, usually twice. “Start spreddddin’ da news ... !” One on the way in, then again, on the way out. I even bonged innocent telephone callers, wrong numbers and all. And I got fitted for a cool tuxedo at Nordstrom and a four hundred dollar pair of Salvatore Ferrigamo’s, and even a great double-breasted.

Ah, Madison Avenue.

Phil flew out from Philly to direct a photo shoot for the invitation. He wanted me shown with electricity splashing everywhere, wearing dark glasses, with my arms crossed over my chest.

“It’s the Big Apple Dave, show some attitude!” I hated the resulting photos, but he insisted.

I stayed at the Hyatt Regency in a fabulous ––– as in "queer fabulous” ––– room, overlooking Times Square in the heart of everything, and nothing. My first night there was spent gazing out the window at the river of yellow cabs below. Actually, this was after seeing Robert Morse play Truman Capote on Broadway. We sat near William F. Buckley who looked like an amniatronic puppet. As though he might own several copies of himself so he could be in more than one theater at the same time. During intermission we were in the lobby having a coke when Buckley brushed past us on his way to the men’s room.

“Wanna pee with William F. Buckley?,” Phil whispered.

I smiled thinking, “Excuse me, I ––– after all ––– am opening tomorrow night at 550 Madison Avenue, thank you. Perhaps Mr. Buckley would care to PEE with me”.

Setting up the show, Phil had been working with a woman at AT&T. Dianna Maurer ran the Infoquest Center in the building, where my show would be held and up until a few weeks before the opening the two of them had been getting along great. Among other “musts,” my agent had insisted “homo-gen” lighting be installed for each painting and Dianna had agreed to all requests. Everything was going well until Phil saw the full color invitations, which, unfortunately, had been printed slightly off register. It was too late to redo them. Phil and Dianna stressed over it. Then they “agonized”. I knew things were deteriorating rapidly when Phil began referring to Ms. Maurer as, “Dianna. Manurer”.

The day of the opening I was hyperventilating so badly I almost passed out shaving in my hotel room. At the last minute, I decided to chuck the tux and go for a double-breasted. I fumbled with my suit until I was mad with anxiety. I’d purchased a expensive silk tie in Sausalito ––– one to die for ––– and wanted a scarf to match. The only one I could find in New York was in Sax Fifth Avenue for another hundred bucks and back in my room I spent a good hour cutting out pieces of the damn thing with my Swiss Army knife scissors trying to make it just the right size to fit in my breast pocket without either being too big or too small. Then at the exact last second, the collar button on my perfect shirt flew off and I had to get a housekeeper to come to the room and sew it back on. I was flop–sweating like a cold beer glass. I longed to shoot heroin and die.

Finally, I met Phil in the lobby where he pronounced me perfect and off we went in a cab trailing star dust. The show was a huge success ... except for one thing.

Nobody came.

I mean: ab-so-lute-ly-no-body.

Zip.

Mrs. Manurer is seems, had sent the thousands of invitations late, or perhaps not at all.

I suppose it’s not fair to say nobody came. There was a rent–a–cop guy. And a food caterer who kept twiddly-diddling over chaffing dishes of simmering meatballs and weenies, as if they needed extra care now that no one would be eating them. Dianna went nuts. She went numb actually, questioning the dead air, “WHY ... OH WHY,” explaining that the invitations had gone out on time, and there was no reason for this, and that AT&T shows were always packed ...

Phil took on the pallor of Bela Lugosi, circling the immaculate show, always returning to me, whispering encouragement. The odd thing for me was how unaffected I felt. It didn’t seem to bother me in the slightest. Of course, I was in the grips of the first of Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ five classic stages of loss: (1.) DENIAL

(2.) PLEA BARGAINING ––– (3.) RAGE ––– (4.) DEPRESSION

(5.) ACCEPTANCE ...yea, about three years later.

We all left the show an hour early, when clinging to a thread, Dianna invited us for food and drinks at a place aptly called: The Iguana. I remember a fifteen foot lizard, blue I think, hanging upside down from the ceiling. As I walked beneath it the Iguana opened it’s ugly mouth and said, “Welcome to NYC Dave,” then it shit on my head . The club was crowded with a noisy rock band blaring my ears off. I remember Dianna and Phil slugging down quite a few hefty drinks, then getting into a barely containable bitch fight. I could not eat and had a Pepsi. I especially remember Dianna’s last words to Phil: “You sir, are a needle–dicked bug–fucker”.

The last we saw of our host was from the window of our cab as we left, hailing one for herself, wobbling on stiletto heels, defeated, her purse nearly dragging on the sidewalk.

Yes, the opening was a complete disaster. The show however turned out to be a great success in which we sold many pieces.

Then Phil arranged for me to be picked up by a company in New York that licensed uses of my work. We both thought it could be great, even though we had to accept that there would be certain uses we wouldn’t like. Years later I was still finding my paintings in magazines with computer components, boom-boxes, and headphones floating around in them. This would have been easier to take if we’d ever made any money. Selling your body, if you have one, is better.

The problem was, although the main offices of the company were in New York, they were franchised all over the world, and the fine folk in Yugoslavia, not to mention, Argentina, don’t pay all that well. Once, on my computer readout for uses, I was paid exactly seventy two cents for something in Greece. What? They used one of my smaller moons on a fetta cheese label? Argentina must have needed a comet on a cola cap for one dollar and twenty four cents. Oooooo.

The final insult with this Big Apple licenser was when my work was used as decoration on Big Gulp Slurpee cups at 7–11, as well as in store posters and banners for the 25th Anniversary Star Trek® Sweepstakes. I loved the tacky cups. I still have some. What hurt was that two million of them were made using my art and I got around six hundred bucks. The day I found out, I ran through my studio like Michael Jackson with his hair on fire shouting curses to demons, “KILL! KILL! KILL THEM ALL!!! TORTURE! TORTURE! SCRAPE THEIR BONES WITH KNIVES!!!” I know, half a loaf is better than none, but sometimes this really got to me.

This company ––– supposedly the largest, and so–called, “most prestigious,” stock image house on earth ––– sold the rights to my painting “Dragon Chase” through a Texas franchise for $3200. The New York office got 40% of that, which they split 50–50 with me. After paying my agent his cut which don’t get me wrong, I’m not begrudging, there you are. And to gall us more, the money came in over the next year because 7–11 paid in three installments and we got paid quarterly from New York.

Early on in our working together Phil asked me about Star Trek®, The Next Generation.

“Let me see what I can do,” he said. I honestly thought he was about to waste his time but didn’t say anything. A short time later he called and said Star Trek wanted images of my pieces to decorate the Enterprise. I was stunned.

As he had done with Omni Magazine, Phil made an appointment at Paramount Studios and showed up with a portable light–table. He also had an original painting. Once on the set ––– a bit early for the appointment ––– he leaned the original against a wall and was looking around for a plug for the light–table when Star Trek production designer, Richard James walked around a corner and saw the original leaning against the wall.

“Where did this come from? This exactly what I want!”

Phil introduced himself, adding, “I have transparencies I can show you”.

“If they’re like this, I don’t need to see them, just get some pieces here as soon as possible”.

My work was used to decorate the Starship Enterprise on two seasons of Star Trek® – The Next Generation, then later two Trek movies.

Hail Philadelphia Phil!

Of course, after many years, the time came when we no longer saw eye to eye.

Why is a fair question.

You want to know why bubbie? Shit, we went blind together in pursuit of American fame and money grubbing. Period, that’s it.

I hate the so-called “Art Industry” for that reason more than any other, and believe me, I hate the “Industry,” for a lot of reasons. Mainly, business always gets in the way of what I hope is friendship. It’s the Immutable Law of Business Clowns, that whatever begins as a true adventure at the level say, of climbing the “Seven Most Difficult Mountains On Earth,” and enjoying the view together along the way, always ends up in some unholy mud hole in bumfuck Fresno with no car, no motel rent, and a dinosaur of a hangover.

This time I woke up to something very disturbing indeed. Something that I cannot get out of my head, heart, and soul, and never will.

Never.

That is, if Americans ever finally sell each other enough crap and services, so that every last bozo gets to have their version of whatever they think of as the so-called,“American Dream,” it will have been at the expense of all of the most important things in life: friendship, wild nature, and true liberty. All this, in exchange for computer isolation, simulated life, and grinding techno-slavery.

You know, maybe we could all set a date, time, and place, and just plow all of our SUfuckinV’s into each other at the same time in one big national car crash and get it the hell over with. In the meantime ––– my Viking ass ––– call it the: “American Scream ...”

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