FROM THE NORTH SHORE

CLUE BUS

Here’s a Quarter, Go Buy a Ticket to the Clue Bus - Part 6
By Landon Hollander, Electronics Entertainment Investigator and Integrator • July 2009

My misadventures at Nando’s Punta Mita manse were spiraling out of control. After accepting the fact that I had been lured here under false pretenses (OK, I probably wouldn’t have come if I had known what was really going on…), I was now being forced into a business arrangement with Chad Boyce.  This was stretching the limits of decency; Chad was a card-carrying bottom dweller who had no credibility, no class and, of course, no clue. Nando had just put the gay-posing little creep to a quick test in the Master Suite and I didn’t care to know details, but on quick return, Nando had announced, “Chad just let slip that he may not be of the gayish persuasion after all.  Go figure. Wasn’t up for the Mondo-Nando slipshot in the side pocket.” Talk about TMI. No surprise, it was embarrassingly obvious that Chad had mistakenly figured his shot at Nando and therefore his money, had to be gay- based.  Anyone who has worked with Nando knows that he keeps his sexual preferences very much out of the realm of his business life.

How many different ways to tell him to screw off politely?  “Gee Nando, when you put it like that, how can I possibly refuse? Oh, wait a minute, even though I have no clue what mysterious wrong was committed by the evil Boyce family, and even though you’ve got a room full of boxes that AREN’T full of electronics but are filled with some bizarre foam that weighs different amounts for different boxes, and even though you completely lied to me to get me here in the first place, and even though it’s now way past dinner time and Pix is gonna shit a brick  ‘cause the non-stop wacky hijinx just don’t seem to stop around here and I haven’t had a moment to call her, yeah, how could I possibly say no?” I shook his arm off my shoulders and turned to face him.

“Less than an hour ago, standing right here in this room, I told you something. Do you remember what I said?” I demanded. “Sure, Bro. You said I was completely mental. To which I believe I responded, ‘Was there ever any doubt?’, right?” he calmly replied.

“I’m thinking poster boy for mental doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. Now cut the crap and level with me. What kind of screw-up have you got going on here?”  I demanded.

There was a scary little evil glaze in Nando’s eyes that slowly faded to sad, and far away. The he tensed and turned to me, “OK, but I just hope that Manny can keep Chad occupied for a few minutes.  They looked like they might scare each other off.” He walked over to the shelf where I had put the opened Marantz receiver and hefted it down onto the floor and began to open it back up. “How many boxes did it take you to figure it out? He asked.

“Two. That one you’re holding and the Infinity speaker over there,” I pointed behind me, “…and I’m not so sure I figured out anything except there’s no electronics in any of these boxes.”

“Very good. And you mentioned that you noticed the different weights. Also very astute. You remember Bear?” he held his arms out as far as they would stretch.

Who could forget Roger Bear?  Real name Roget de Cormelié Bayer. French. Parisian no less.  A member in some convoluted fashion of the Bayer aspirin drug dynasty. He had decided to get his university degree at Stanford, and because he could (qualify scholastically and pay for it no less) his snooty family let him skirt the Sorbonne for the foothills of Palo Alto. He was Nando’s roommate throughout their years at Stanford. Because of his, shall we say, large stature, he was coerced into walking on to the football team. Even though he had never played the game, he was all-Pac10 at right guard all three Varsity years. Oh yeah, and a chemistry genius.

I had met Roger a few times when he visited Nando down here and became immediate chums with him.  “Roger developed that material?” I asked, amazed and then not. “So what’s the deal with the variable weight?”

“Don’t ask me how he did it, but all I did was give him the volume and weight, based on the box size and specified component weight, and he mixed each one. I just added an exact amount of water, poured it in each box, and voila! The first few times I gave him exterior dimensions and I had a few exploding boxes, but I figured out to give him the interior dimensions, and then it was simple.” He gloated until I interrupted.

“And what happened to all the components in the boxes? You know, the ones you were so ashamed of not being able to figure out, so you re-boxed them or never opened them and started your now famous Temple of Doom collection?” I asked snidely.

“Matter of fact, I never did use any of them. That part’s not BS. I really couldn’t click with any of them. I am completely and totally audio and video challenged, but that doesn’t mean I’m a freakin’ idiot!  I sold ‘em all to friends.”  He smirked.

Bit by bit, his story was starting to ring true, but I still was missing the big picture, so instead of letting him embellish it with a lot of Nando crap, I finally bit. “So what is the fateful event that has precipitated this, no doubt, soon-to-be-famous moment in history?” I inquired.

“I was getting to that, but since Chad might stumble in here any second, here’s the quick version. You remember I told you about restoring the Diva for Dad when I was in high school?”  I nodded affirmative.  “And he thought I’d be good at the interior because what else are queers good at, right?  So I took it way past that and did the whole damned car and freaked him right out. But I never had to hear fruit, queer, fag, fairy or any of the more colorful clichés he marched out to slap me down again.  And an ironic thing happened.  As part of the interior restoration, I had to buy a Jaguar carpet from a broker in the UK to fit to a space under the console, but the new pile was too dense to fit in this one spot, and I had to basically mow it.  But there wasn’t any tool I could find that would do it right because it needed just a very thin channel of “fuzz” lowered without removing the pile entirely. Long story short, I made a little device that did exactly that. I guess I was an interior designer idiot savant.”

This was the quick version?  Where was this going?  How had we gotten from not empty/empty boxes to his gay-bashing father to mowing carpet? I almost hoped Chad would walk through the door so Nando could just whisper me the punch line. I arched my eyebrows in my best doubting pose. My eyebrows didn’t cooperate and he asked, “Do you have a headache?”

“Yes, but that’s another story. Get on with it and see if you can wrap up before the Mayan calendar expires.” I answered hoping that he wouldn’t take the full two and a half years.

“Alright, pouty-boy.  Hang ‘cause you’re gonna love this. Three or four years later, one weekend, Bear and I come down to the family spread in the Valley for the weekend, a little break from school. Mom and sis were in France doing some research for the winery biz and we had the place to ourselves. Did a fair amount of drinking frolicking and smoking and imbibing of various pharmaceuticals…Anyway, we’re sitting around, totally trashed, and Bear starts pawing at his nose. And I ask him what the hell he’s doing, and he says he’s got this ridiculous itch in his nose because he’s got excessive, renegade nostril hair. That’s what he said, I swear to God, ‘excessive, renegade nostril hair.’ After laughing for probably too long, I had a flash; the carpet mower! So I went out to the shed and found it and after convincing him it wouldn’t send massive electric voltage to his brain, he tried it. Guess what?  Worked like a charm.” He was smirking again.

He continued, “…So Bear, in his infinite wisdom pronounces, ‘Bro, you should seriously market this to the hirsute populace. A dude shouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of rogue nostril fur messing with his vibe.’ I’ll never forget those words. A few weeks later, I met a friend of a friend of a friend who was connected to a marketing development company that took ideas and turned them into industrial designs, manufactured and sold them. I made what I thought was a good deal to develop the device.  That was the first and last time I didn’t read the fine print.  Turns out I had given them exclusive rights once the design fell outside of the exact version I submitted, and I was out in the cold.”  He had that glare back in his eyes. 

“I wasn’t totally naïve, I had asked about exactly that, because I knew that my design wasn’t sexy enough to sell, but the technology and the idea were. He told me absolutely I would share in the profits down the line. Lying shithead.”

I was beginning to have a good idea where this was going, but I gave Nando the pleasure of finishing his story.

“I had communicated via email for the better part of a month with the first guy and then flew to L.A to meet the principal. We signed and shook hands and I came back to school with dollar signs in my eyes.  A full year went by and the few communications I had from them were positive but stalling.  Then one day, I pick up a Sharper Image catalogue and there’s the Turbo-Groomer 3.0 Traveler Nasal and Ear Hair Trimmer. One of many incarnations, by the way. Do you know how much money they made off that little freakin’ device?  You’ve already figured out the other part, right?  Go ahead, show me what a genius you are.”

I swallowed air and managed, “Chad and dad, right?” His eyes provided the affirmative. Holy Jeez, Nando really did get the royal shaft from those guys. No wonder he was in advanced vengeance mode.  I’m surprised he didn’t strangle Chad the minute he saw him in PV. There were still a few missing details, so I prodded him on. “Where does Chad find the cojones to approach you after he and his father scammed you?”

“Here’s the beauty part,” he began, “…Chad never met me, never saw me. Only his Dad.”

“But for cryin’ out loud, Nando, how wouldn’t he know who you are? I mean, you’re a celebrity in the computing world.” I offered.

“Well, luckily, these boys aren’t on the same social or technology page as me. But more importantly, when mom passed away, I took her maiden name. I’d always talked about it after dad died, but she asked me not to.  I mean, the guy was pretty much of a prick to me growing up, but I waited ‘til she was gone to get rid of his name. So, they have no reference point.”  He was really smirking now. “Just for the record, Chad’s asshole dad, screwed himself when he made the deal with Sharper Image; he only got royalties for six months.  Don’t you love Kharma? That’s how he got the money to start the late night TV ads.”

So now that we had cut through all the lies and innuendo and were at the heart of the matter, I had to ask. “Alright, whatever it is, I’m in. As long as there aren’t any weapons, drugs or despotic foreign dictators involved. What’s the plan?”

“I’m glad to have you on board. But I can only guarantee the third item on that request list. Rest assured, Bro, there will be no maniacal banana republic dictators in this little operation.”
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- to be continued

Landon Hollander
E-mail: landon5123@mac.com

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Landon Hollander consults, designs and sells audio and video systems (landoplan.com) and handles sales in the Riviera Nayarit for the PVMirror. He can be reached at: landon5123@mac.com. Landon is currently teaching his dogs French to see if they will obey commands in this language as they appear not to understand English or Spanish.

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