faulker009

For those of you who have never been to Las Vegas, I’ve got two little words for you... DON’T DO IT! Oh, three little words. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE LAS VEGAS. For about eight hours at a time. Any more than that and you are guaranteed to have a nervous breakdown. Going to college in Los Angeles, we used to make many a spur-of-the-moment trip to Sin City. We would do the four-hour drive, in closer to three, always stopping in Barstow for a burger. We’d spend all night gambling.   Grab a half-pound kosher dog at Slots O’Fun for 99 cents. Nutrition is important. And drive home with nothing in our pockets. Almost every time. It was the one in ten where you actually won something that motivated you to come back. Kinda like that great eight-iron shot on 13 during your round of 107. We were clearly ignoring the odds and the fact that the hotels were getting bigger each time we went back. I love gambling. I love the slots.  I love the tables.  I love the sports book. But the g...

In 1984, when I was a Freshman in college, I wrote an amazing term paper on the birth of Cable Television.  I got an A.  I really did my homework on that one, contacting all the big players in the business at the time -- MTV, ESPN and CNN. It was so good, I used the same exact paper again as a Sophomore and Junior. I think I got an A on those too. Why waste a good thing, right?  I was green before green. Well, little did I know at the time that cable TV would be responsible for putting food on the table for my wife and kids. Little did I know at the time that I would actually have a wife and kids. After working for eight years in local TV, I spent the next 17 years working behind-the-scenes for the top cable sports networks in all of the land. Talk about dreaming the impossible dream. Unfortunately that dream came to a crashing halt a year-and-a-half ago, but yesterday I made my triumphant return to cable TV in a much different role -- in front of the camera. I was on air...

Tonight we got the band back together. At least for a night. I have spent the last couple of days in my old stomping ground, the city where I went to high school and college. I made the return home to help an old colleague with a little project and tonight, three of my oldest friends and I got together for dinner and a trip down memory lane. Of course, it took about half a second to hop into the way back machine. These three amigos have been with me for pretty much all of my memorable moments from teenage life on, including marriage, parenthood, job and now unemployment. My friends have all enjoyed tremendous success in the working world, two in my field, well my former field, and one in a world I know nothing about. The stories we shared tonight ranged from professional to preposterous, but they all felt right. Whether it was about that crazy night in college – TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO – or something that one of the guys is working on now, there was never a pause in the c...