Victorville, Episode 1

Today, then, was my first day of work. I woke up at 6:00am and, after languishing in bed for one extra 'snooze,' left to embark on the great experiment that is entrepreneurship (or something like that). My travel companions were two old boomboxes with internal tape recording decks. My plan: to record local radio in hopes of hearing clues about advertisers who might be interested in a custom jingle. I took a class about jingle writing once, so this isn't simply a harebrained scheme. But almost.

I navigated the tangled web of numbered freeways--directions courtesy of google maps--to Victorville, California (I was shooting for a neighboring city called Apple Valley, but took a wrong turn somewhere around step 13 or so). Situated nearly 100 miles away from home base, Victorville is far enough to have escaped the mammoth radio aegis of Los Angeles County. After all, I figure, how many jingle writers are there in L.A.? If I want to find customers, I'd better seek them out where I have a prayer of offering a unique commodity.

The drive was a beautiful sleigh ride into the lost region of California known as the High Desert. The sun wasn't at full tilt yet and the chapparel landscape looked like a massive dustbin. About 15 miles outside of Pasadena the car radio began to fizzle; jazz and balanced news reporting gave way to country and Christian rock on the FM dial. I knew then that I was entering something like what Americans affectionately call "The Heartland." Actually, up until this morning I hadn't realized we even had any Heartland here in the Governator's Occidental Sunshine State.

(It just goes to show that this crazy undertaking will prove, above everything else, a learning experience for me.)

After combing several stores for a couple of cassette tapes, I parked my bruised 4Runner in the parking lot of a park on Amethyst Street. I set each stereo to record one of two popular local stations: Talk 960, an AM conservative political channel and Y120, a top 40 FM music station. Then, grabbing a water bottle and J. D. Salinger's "Nine Stories," I set off to relax in the park, catching a tan and observing the local fauna. I had some fruit with me but opted to leave it in the car; the awful pastry I had picked out from the local Stanton Bros. grocery store was holding my insides in check for the moment.

I returned to the car every 45 minutes or so to flip or change the tapes, checking each time to make sure they had recorded and troubleshooting my own mistakes with the equipment. Other than that I was able to while away the time in thought and observation. I wondered, for instance, whether how the denizens of the High Desert compared to L.A. people, if there even is such a thing as "L.A. people." While I sat there I heat of a full summer's day crept up on me; it took me an hour or two before I had the sense to put sunblock on and catch a bit of a tan, laying out on a beach towel I keep in the car for such emergencies.

My first day of work. Just sitting around, reading Salinger's short stories and watching the bees buzz by. Not too bad, although it remains to be seen if I can make any money this way. I returned at 1:00 in the afternoon bearing my very own nectar -- six radio hours total recorded onto four cassette tape. These I will comb for any faint sign of professional opportunity.