BLOG has MOVED

After much ado - Mike's Hot Sheet has been renamed Mikey's Muse and now resides at http://mikeysmuse.com.

Please update any links you might have created for this blog to reflect the new title and address.

Sorry for the inconvenience....

Who's Your Daddy?!?!

The shock of learning that my mild-mannered father was a hard core porn writer was hardly worn off when I got a Sunday morning call from the Left Coast. Now I've got to tell you ... aside from some infrequent emails me and "real" dad don't communicate much. Seeing a California number on caller ID made my heart skip a few beats. My grandmother was in her 90's and I was dreading "THE" phone call.

"Hello..." I answered.

"Hi Mike, it's Dad." he replied.

"Is everything all right?" I ask in my normal, blunt manner.

"Oh, everything's fine. Hope I didn't wake you? Just thought I better get hold of you as soon as I could." he said.

Considering it was maybe 7 in the morning, his time, a lot of alarm bells were going off in my head.

"What's up?" I asked, wondering if I really wanted to know the answer.

He continued "Well, a fella from Texas contacted me yesterday. Said he ran across my name on the internet, did some digging and decided I must be the person he was looking for."

God damn that web site! I was gonna take those pages off and erase every trace of my family history.......

"Turns out I'm listed as his father on his birth certificate."

Pregnant pause then all that came to my head and out of my mouth was "Bummer Dude!"

He went on to tell me about his tryst with a nurse in Korea during his tour of duty. A twelve week love affair between my mother and wife #2 as best I can figure. He reckoned as how the guy could very well be his son.

The reason he was letting me know all this was my new half-brother wanted to contact me since he didn't have any real family and wanted to get to know his half-siblings. Oh joy. I was just shitting my pants with excitement.

We eventually talked, he wanted to know more about "Dad" and was sorely disappointed that I only knew a little more than he did about our common link. Haven't talked to my new half-brother in a long time (I think that's still a coon's age in Texas) and that's just fine, I've got enough going on without strangers popping out of the woodwork.

My wife's only comment was - "I'm holding my breath that the same thing doesn't happen to you!"

Thanks sweetie!

How I Found Out My Dad Wrote Porn

“The abductors follow this note up with a second one, accompanied by more Polaroid snapshots showing Trish in ecstasy under the orally sexual ministrations of Horowitz, whose face has been blacked out.” -Black Abductor

My fraternal grandmother was contacted by an author in the ‘40s who was trying to gather information for a book about the Rusk family. The author sent my grandmother the information she had acquired and requested any other information my grandmother could provide. I stumbled on the information in 1965 when I was visiting Grandma and Grandpop Rusk in California for the summer. She told me the story and copied the pedigree information onto new sheets for me while I typed up the 10 pages of notes on her Royal typewriter. At the end of my stay I bundled up my treasures and brought them home with me to New Mexico.

Over the next 30 years I would occasionally pull the aging, dog-eared papers out of my underwear drawer and read the story to my kids. They were bored but humored me to stay on my good side. I was sad this was the extent of sharing. It was my intent to pursue the family tree and add more names and history to our story. But I lacked a way to find any potential contributors (read that as “people with the last name ‘Rusk’). I had no money to actively search for people and definitely had precious little time.

Along came the World Wide Web! My company started exploring the internet as a marketing channel in 1995. I seized the opportunity to set up a company funded “sandbox” for myself. Armed with a $70 domain from Network Solutions and a web hosting account from a Southern Maryland ISP I commenced thinking about what the heck I was going to do with this new toy.

Then I remembered my family tree! The burning desire to share my family history could now take shape in HTML. I decided to display all the information in a chronologically sorted list beginning with the oldest event at the top. Birth, marriage, death, moving, emigrating, publishing, graduating or any other identifiable milestone became an item on the list. Events like my father writing Land of Plenty, Tug of the Dwarf Star and Space Slaves. Satisfied with the result I published my magnificent piece of work.

Lacking an immediate flood of emails in response to my site I ventured out to Yahoo! Remember this was back in the infancy of the web and Yahoo! was just an ordinary directory company. I added my site in the proper categories and tried to find other directories for listing the site “RuskFamily.com … the Legend Continues”. New information dribbled in by email and I scoured newspaper sites for more tidbits to add.

During one of my daily inbox scans in ’97 I came across an email that read “Hi, I am trying to find the author of Black Abductor and I think the author, James H. Rusk, Jr., you have listed on your web site might be him. I need to contact him. Do you know him or have his contact information?” Being the cagey, paranoid person that I am I slyly replied “I’ll see if have anything more on this person and let you know.” I couldn’t tip my hand too early and admit that this was my father.

First thing I did was lean back in my chair and mutter “what the f**k” (we didn’t have WTF back then). Then I started laughing, the laugh you do when you realize your parents had sex to have you. The email was too hot for email delay so I picked up the phone and called Dad. After we said our hellos I popped the question – “Hey Dad, did you write Black Abductor?” Damn, it got so quiet I though the phone had gone dead! Finally he replied “Yes, where did you hear about it?” I read him the email and he agreed to contact the guy and asked me to forward the email to him.

He proceeded to tell me the story. His dream was to quit working and become a full time writer. He was doing some contract writing under pseudonyms for publishing houses that put out romance novel series under one author’s name. He’d get an outline and crank out a story and get a check. He was also trying some writing under his own name hence the books we all knew about – the ones his mother knew about. But on a darker note he was trying his hand at getting published writing his own brand of novels under another pseudonym – so his mother wouldn’t find out.

During the day he was the Clark Kent of engineers down to the pocket protectors, glasses, white shirt and socks and the narrow tie. But by night he transformed into a lecherous, pervert author breathing hard as he pounded out his pornography (done it myself a few times, guess it runs in the genes).

By chance, a bored newspaper publisher in New York decided he wanted to become a porn writer and randomly collected a sample of books to use as a guide. Black Abductor was one of the novels in his box. He certainly read the book because as the Patty Hearst kidnapping unfolded in 1974 he had a feeling of déjà vu and unearthed the book. He followed along with the details that came out after the kidnapping was over and eventually notified the FBI.

The FBI agreed the book was too close to what actually happened to be just a coincidence and set out to locate the author. The publisher was out of business and the California media reported the author who admitted to using the pseudonym ‘Harrison James’ denied writing the book. Not satisfied with the media’s investigation, the FBI showed up at Dad’s desk at his office. Back then there was a little more respect (fear) of authority and Dad admitted he had written the book. After extensive questioning the FBI concluded that Dad was not part of the SLA and did not plan the Patty Hearst kidnapping and they released him.

Worse than all the embarrassment, questioning and harassment at work was the fact that his mother found out what he had been doing in his spare time! Thus ended his career as a porn author – unless he switched to a new pseudonym!

Oh the guy who sent the email? He was an English representative of a Japanese television production company that was going to do a series of shows on strange coincidences. He had stumbled on articles about the book and the kidnapping on the web and tracked Dad to my site. Last time I asked, Dad and the company were trying to work out royalty arrangements for the book – that was in ’99 – the subject has not been discussed with him since. But you can bet the story is embedded in our folklore and will pass from generation to generation. In an inexplicable way we’re proud of him!

Hurry Up Health Care Reform!

A little story about Do-It-Yourself medicine! It can be done and I'm sayin' necessity can point us in the right direction.

I mentioned to my Primary that my heel was really hurting as if she hadn't noticed by my pronounced limp walking to the examining table. Just so happens a Podiatrist co-habitats in her office space - how convenient. She was able to twist a few arms and get me in immediately.

Plantar fasciitis was the diagnosis (I already knew that from digging around on the internet) and a custom orthotic to "permanently" correct the problem was the recommendation. First things first, he checked my insurance and they don't cover orhtotics but it would be "only $600" and custom-fitted to my every joint, hand-crafted by slave labor in downtown New York and guaranteed to cure what ails me.

I said "What about Dr. Scholl's?" You can probably guess the reaction but I left with the empty promise to "think about it".

The very next weekend I was in WalMart looking for the machine I had seen on TV with all the doctor's lined up behind it. Found it, tried it - the directions were a little quick for me and I must have looked like an idiot lifting one leg then another trying to keep my balance! Jeez! Slow down - this is WalMart after all!!

After four tries I finally got the hang of it. It had come up with the same answer every time so I felt somewhat relieved with the consistency. I grabbed the #430 as instructed, paid my $50 and went away secure in the knowledge I had saved myself $550 plus untold office visits, x-rays and cortisone shots!

I went back to WalMart for the ankle braces and wraps - and was still way under the $600 I would have spent on the orthotics.

The crutches did up the ante a bit but by golly I was still way ahead of what that bastard was gonna gig me for.

Well now, the walker did probably eat up the last of the $600 but I was still ahead on the office visits and shots after all. I'd show him and his custom crap!

I didn't realize how damn expensive wheelchairs are!! I guess I'd have to call it even now! Ah...but wait there is one last thing...I do get a handicap placard for the car and now I can park up front at WalMart!!

But at least I didn't have to buy his damn custom orthotics!