Outlaw Inbox

That actually went pretty well.

As previously stated, I was a little worried about writing last week's blog. My 'Outlaws- groupie' period is not a great memory, and getting ignored by the record company when I tried to break their single just made the whole story feel a little unsatisfying.

But I guess the details of my obsession to make guitarist Billy Jones wear the correct hockey jersey; my dogged dedication to getting their song played; and the awkward moments I spent getting dissed inside their tour bus, were enough to make last week's column fairly entertaining. At least that's what the comments and emails told me, so thank you.

Of course the elephant in the room is how the story ended. As I've said, I try to research the information in these blogs as much as I can and sometimes I find things out about my own experiences that even I didn't know!

So here I was last week, going through all the parts of the Outlaws story in my head, recalling things I had totally forgotten, and basically shutting myself off from the outside world (except for the flat screen over my shoulder which always has either a game on, or Turner Classics with the sound down,) banging out the story.

When I got near the end, I reviewed the obit for guitarist Freddie Salem to make sure I had all the facts right. When I was done with that, I thought to myself, 'I wonder what happened to that weasel, Billy Jones?' So I googled him and read his short bio.

I got a few emails and comments this week from people who say they actually gasped when they got to the end of the blog and saw that Jones had shot himself. Well, so did I! I figured ol' Billy had retired to some Florida assisted living home, or was sitting on his back porch shootin' squirrels. Trust me, I was as shocked as you were when I read about his demise.

I got up from my computer after about six hours that day, stiff-legged and groggy. I had trouble remembering the last time I had eaten. But y'know what? THIS is what makes writing fun!

Which, conveniently enough, leads me to next week's column. I've admitted that I'm starting to run out of good stories, and have been saved recently by remembering some of the cool stuff that happened when I was a kid. Following that time-line, we'll move on to the 'formative years':

I've had a lot of people ask me when I started to know I loved to write. (Nah, maybe one or two people have asked me that, and they were just making polite conversation.) But I often ask myself that question when I have nothing else to think about, and it always unearths examples of how I used my writing for different purposes over the years. It even includes a tale that took place during my days at ABC television, a place about which I had recently thought nothing special had happened in 21 years that was worth blogging about...

I might have been wrong about that. We shall see.

IG