My first childhood hero was Evel Knievel. One of my earliest memories was watching his jump at the L.A. Coliseum with Dad. I was captivated by the stadium, Evel in his cool red, white, n' blue jumpsuit, and how he rocketed that bike down a ramp from the seating, over 50 stacked cars, and back up another ramp to high ground in the seating. It was kick ass.

At the end, he actually overshot and crashed into a fence, which Dad and I found to be a hoot. Unfortunately, that bit of a buzzkill (for some) seems to have been removed from all videos of the event I've been able to find. Oh well.

Along with the madman Evel were The Fonz and Roger Staubach. Fonzie was even cooler than Evel, got all the chicks, and Henry Winkler came off in interviews as a very kind and humble man. Staubach was, well, really good at playing a children's game. I guess that can count for something to a 3rd grader who's not yet very developed.  That bit of idolatry, though, was forced upon me by The Golden Psycho John

Thankfully, I evolved and started reaching for higher hanging fruit.

Spock: The Logical-Ass Choice, Bitch 
As I studied logic in school and on my own, I developed an affinity for the iconic Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame. As time wore on, the contrasts between his calm rationality and sense of honor and the sleazy chaos I kept witnessing and hearing about in my family became increasingly apparent.

Other paragons of excellence such as Louis Pasteur, Sir Brian May, George Carlin, Roger Waters, Mike Portnoy, Maynard James Keenan, Mikael Akerfeldt, and the incomparable Steven Wilson were added over the next half-century. My heroes club is not easy to get into.

A catalyst for that evolutionary reaction was the downfall of Evel Knievel, an interesting story that turned out to be relevant to this day. Allow me to explain.

Make Like an Oyster and Clam Up 
I come from a background and culture in which keeping one's mouth shut is preferred. Mom used to regularly tell me to "never write anything down," meaning one should refrain from documenting personal matters. Interestingly, the only other time I've heard about one demanding such from another, the one was a pimp (and not a mere shit pimp) and the other was a victim.

In school, I kept quiet unless someone really needed help. Snitching absent serious reason was frowned upon in my peer groups. Later, as a harmless outlaw for many years, my discretion standards were forged in iron and set in stone. People often confide in me, too, so I'm holding some heavy secrets for many, including multiple Flozberks.

However, I've kept journals and data since not too long after I learned to write. Such would seem to be my nature. I find that as important as photos, not just as a historical record, but also as an illustration of how my noggin evolved across many years. Such is clearly more important than, say, one video after another of the same goofy kid jumping into the same swimming pool.

It's one of many times I'm deathly relieved I didn't listen to Mom. Documenting life is a fine thing and those bizarrely opposed to it tend to be guilty of much wrongdoing. Clean people tend to not fear the light. 

Not Jumping the Sharks Before Jumping the Shark 
Riding the Jaws wave gripping the nation (and me) in 1977, Evel Knievel planned to jump a tank of likely-benign sharks on live TV in a massively-promoted event. Instead, he ate it BIG time on the landing ramp during a practice jump and got all bashed up. The jump was cancelled and I was bummed out something awful. 

Shelly Saltman was Evel Knievel's promoter and manager, a giant in the media world, and the first president of Fox Sports. With Evel's permission, he wrote a book about their time together that contained nothing inaccurate or malicious and was signed off on by Evel's own lawyers.

Evel's Gone Evil 
Knievel thought the book damaged his reputation, so he did what any reasonable gentleman would do - he went to California, casts still on both broken arms from not jumping the sharks, and tried to kill cohort-restrained Saltman with a baseball bat, severely injuring him. Saltman's elderly mother had a coronary upon learning of the beating and died soon after.

That lunatic was on top of the damn world and he fucked it all up. Sponsorships dried up, his outrageous stable of stupidly-bought possessions was repo'd, and he became a violent felon joke tooling around the country in an RV selling what he claimed was his art as a massively reduced gaggle of slack-jawed mutant fucktards continued to adore him.

That succession of letdowns dried up my childhood hero. I read the book in question and found nothing calling for a severe bat beating of a helpless man. This was not working for me. Fuck this guy.  

And so fell Evel from grace undeserved to start with.

Jumping the Shark, for Real-Like 
Later that year, other hero Fonzie would actually jump the shark, creating an iconic idiom. Funny how things sometimes turn out, eh? Sadly, I don't recall Spock, Staubach, May, Pasteur, Carlin, Keenan, Portnoy, Akerfeldt, or Wilson jumping any sharks, but battin' .500 on two sharky heroes of the group of ten ain't half bad. 

Oh, wait...it's exactly half bad.

Words Mean Things. That Matters. 
As emphasized in an earlier work, I disfavor the abuse of starkly absolute terms. One day reading the news, I clicked a link claiming that Paulina Porizkova was "baring all." Well, she wasn't. Not even close. Like Dad used to tell me, "Sonny, if'n ya can't see where the speculum, catheter, and enema nozzle would fall, then the nice lady did NOT bare all."

Oh...wait, yet again - that wasn't Dad; it was this old drunk I used to know, but it's the point that matters.

Like "bare all," "tell-all," which adds a hyphen interestingly not found in its counterpart, is wildly abused. Certainly I've read a few that left me asking plenty of questions. Clearly, there have been very few, if any, actual tell-alls. Even a tell-most is a challenge. This work, thorough and excruciatingly revealing as it is, is merely a tell-some, a tell-much at best, and certainly not a tell-most, for I've only scratched the surface.

Any way one phrases it, though, spilling the beans is some heavy shit, especially for one disinclined to do so. But, sometimes we take the plunge even if the consequences are burned bridges, hurt feelings, legal wrangling, or having a goddamn maniac with both arms in casts beat the snot outta yer ass with a baseball bat.  

This story is so ludicrously bizarre, juicy, and fascinating that it must be told, and told well. The Flozberks are sufficiently a menace to make warning others of them reasonable and prudent.  The hatchet n' snatch-it job they laid on me is outrageous and begs straightening. The way they trashed the ends of my parents' lives in pursuit of living beyond their means is appalling. Dad's documented wishes that I pursue fairness are of utmost importance.

And, here we are. 

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