Jim Morrison Said It. Neil Young Said It. Melissa Etheridge Said It. I'm Outta Here.

Have you ever packed your life into boxes, traded the familiar for the unknown, and found yourself at a humorous crossroads? Join us as I take you on a cross-country leap from the verdant realms of North Carolina to the awe-inspiring landscapes of Arizona, driven by dreams and the pursuit of skies without limits. I'll regale you with a tale of my unexpected encounter with Melissa Etheridge, a nod to my military family roots, and the quirky mishaps that come with assimilating into a new environment. Discover how learning Spanish in Spain as a kid hilariously backfired during a job interview, proving that fluency is a relative—and sometimes embarrassing—concept.

Ever step into a job interview only to realize you're the punchline of a joke you didn't know was being told? Let's peel back the curtain on the world of corporate aspirations, where a simple question about solving business problems left me grappling with the stark realization that the boardroom might just not be my battlefield. I'll share the awkward, ego-bruising moments that come with chasing the almighty dollar and the laughs that emerge when career ambitions collide with the desire to just "make a buck." Because sometimes, the biggest lesson is understanding that our professional paths are as diverse as we are—and that's perfectly okay.

Transcript

Blade: 0:02

The fun way to start off a show, blowing smoke in your face. And café, the greatest of all drugs, whatever's is in it. I don't know what's in it, but you know I live in Arizona, so I speak Spanish all the time. Café. I gotta have something. That's just how I am. I moved to Arizona in 2013. Lived in North Carolina for I don't know, 30, 40 years, something like that. And you know it comes a time when you just got to move. I guess some people love to live in the same place their whole life and don't want to move. I know plenty of people out here in Arizona that are like that, and some people just got to move. Grow up moving. I grew up moving all the time. Father US Air Force grew up changing locales, changing friends every single year for the first 13 years of my life until he retired. But you know, gotta move. So moved out to Arizona just because it's beautiful and because Jim Morrison once said the West is the best, and I believe that because it's beautiful out here, north Carolina is beautiful too. It's got its mountains and it's got its ocean. And then you got Raleigh, which is landlocked, but it's got all these beautiful trees in it.

Blade: 1:20

I remember picking up Melissa Etheridge from the airport right off of I-40, r airport. One day she was coming to my station, w, to do an acoustic show back in the 80s maybe an 87 or 88. And I picked her up and she had her you know guitar strapped on her back acoustic guitar. She's going to come to a live show in the afternoon. Drive with Brian McFadden for us and it was great and that look it up because that YouTube video of her doing it is incredible. I think it's a YouTube video. No, it's not. Back then we just had sound. I think you could find the audio of it. But that in itself is terrific. But we're driving back and I was in the front seat and she was in the passenger seat and she's just looking out the window the whole way in I-40, just looking, looking, looking and not moving, just looking, looking, looking. And I was throwing small talk out there. I mean, what are you going to do? And she ignoring it all and not paying attention to any of it or anything I said and which is a lot like my radio show. But, and finally, one point after about 10 minutes she turned around and looked at me and said, man, it is sure beautiful out here and I'm like, okay, all these beautiful trees, okay. And I found out afterwards she's from Leavenworth, Kansas, which is nothing but planes right, I think there's a prison around there somewhere. And so she thinks all the trees are beautiful.

Blade: 2:50

I've lived around trees my whole life. That's all I've seen. In fact, there are so many trees out here, you can't see anything but trees. You can't see a sunset, you can't see anything, it's just trees. I'm not a tree person, you know. I'm not a tree hugger. You know trees to me are overgrown weeds. The West is the best because you can see, you can see things like sunsets, and they're out here every single night. But I moved out here.

Blade: 3:16

Radio job ended because it comes at time, right, as Neil Young once said. And you know, got to find a new job, got to find new work. Let's try the corporate world. Let's see if I can be good at corporate stuff. Am I any good at corporate stuff? Cause I've never done corporate stuff. If you're a corporate guy in radio, you're going to be a flop of failure. You know, can I do the corporate world? I thought so because inside I'm just a regular Joe. In radio I had this character that I was playing inside. I'm just a regular guy. Let's see if I can be successful as a regular guy, start this baby all over at 55 years of age, which I was.

Blade: 3:54

And so I nailed down an interview with this translation company. Like I said, my father was a United States Air Force guy. We lived in Spain when I was a boy, two to three to four, and I learned Spanish fluently. We lived in Central America for a couple of years in the seventies, El Salvador, no less and his job, the gig he had, was to sell jets to the Salvadoranian army. Now, do you want to know of a fucked up country? That is one messed up country even today, and it gets worse and worse and worse. And it was a mess back in the seventies. So he was there to sell United States jets to the Salvadoranian army, and they couldn't afford them so. And so my father said well, here we'll sell you helicopters, you know. And they couldn't afford that. So we left and went back to the United States I think it was 1974, but at any rate, uh, moved around so much and I spoke a little bit of Spanish after all of those years in those foreign countries, and so this translator job was for this hiring company, a labor company who hired, uh, mexican Americans to do work. Um, and some of them, believe me, we're not Mexican Americans yet, you know what I'm saying but, and they needed translators to fill the positions.

Blade: 5:08

And so the woman calls me, the nice lady calls me, two o'clock one afternoon and and she says are you ready for the interview? They want to see how well I can speak my Spanish. And I said sure, and she rattled off three sentences in Spanish and I whoa, like what, excuse me? Uh, big pause, you know, on the end of the line and she said could you try that again? I'm like, and she's like sure, and I, and I'm listening on the phone, you know and and she does it again, and I'm here to say, out of all my quote, unquote, fluent Spanish, that I speak. I didn't understand a word. She said, not a single word, you know, it's like well, uh, you know well. And she was like well, thank you, we'll be getting in touch with you soon. And I said, sure, no problem, no problem, wh, what a corporate answer, you know. But of course I never got to call it back from that.

Blade: 6:00

So job interview number two in the corporate world ended up being at a dental school. Blade goes to work at a dental school and over the years I'd done really well in this hobby of mine which is video editing, and they need a video editor for their dental school videos. And I sent over a sample and they liked it and they called me. HR did and said we'd like to set up an interview with you. Do you want to? And I'm like sure.

Blade: 6:27

So a day or two later the HR woman calls me and says well, welcome to the interview. We think you'd be a good fit with our company. I'm just like it's a corporate interview and I know they're gonna ask me the questions. Let me see if I can get through three of these questions. A question number one is well, what makes you think you'd be a good employee for Spears Dental School Already? I want to throw up at this point. Well, look, and I'm acting like this. Look, I'm a good video editor. I've been doing it for 20 years. I know all the Adobe platforms, all the programs, and I'm good at audio and I can do a good job for you. And I said it like that, believe me, I was not eloquent about it because I was ready to hang up the phone.

Blade: 7:08

And question number two is would you identify, please, a problem that you had in your business world and how you solved it and how it affected the workplace? Now I'm really ready to have a heart attack and pass out, because I can't stand it and I'm thinking and it took me minutes, maybe probably seconds, but it felt like hours. There's this pause on my end and pause on her end and I said well, I one time figured out how to add closed captions to a 30 minute video and it only took me 10 minutes to add the closed captions. So that was a big success in my head, which I thought was an OK answer. And she said well, how did that affect the workplace? And I was like I don't know. I'd given up at that point. I don't know. And so how did you solve that? And I said I just did it. That's what I'm saying.

Blade: 8:01

Big pause, which I love. She's probably rolling her eyes back in her head and she's sitting there going, wow, this is a flop, this guy is never going to work, but I love that pause. It's uncomfortable and what's uncomfortable is funny and it's fun. And some question about how did you fix it, and I don't know. And then, finally, the last question is after all these horrible pauses, what are your ambitions and your goals in life? And I said, look, I just want to make a buck, I just want to make a buck.

Blade: 8:34

Big pause on her end. And I'm thinking at that point isn't that everybody's ambition and goal? I haven't had a goal since I was, since I dropped out of college. Even then, the goal was negligible. It was like well, I just want to get a job and pay the rent is all. It is Goal. I don't have a goal, I just want to make a buck. And there was silence on her end and before she could get through the well, we'll be in touch, you know, once we go through the. You know, I hung up at that point. And so the corporate world. It's not for everybody, it's surely not for me, but it is for some people. I understand that. But it's not going to work for Blade, it's just not, you know. And now that I'm all