Weekly Planet is sort of the one that got away, if I dare compare relationships to career choices. I still have truckloads of my clips, and I cherish the time I was there, which was about Oct. of ’95 to Oct. ’01.
Much of my first three years were spent mired in calendar data entry hell, in addition to writing music stories and such. Ah, the thrill of the old Reo Street office, so dirty and neglected. I should probably share the rat story sometime. It’s a doozy.
I’m still grateful to Susan Dix for recognizing and rewarding hard work — she, somewhat out of the blue, promoted me to staff features writer (not many of those in the alt-weekly world, at least last time I checked). I hadn’t asked, but boy was I ready. And with the “features” part of my title, I didn’t have to suffer the newsy wrath of John F. Sugg’s editing.
“Balls on Bayshore” was one of my favorites — as a gift, my wife had framed the four covers I appeared on, including that one. I also liked 2001’s “Idiot Island,” a parody of Survivor back when it was new, which Todd Bates shot — I think he inspired the title, too. Dressing in drag for a day (“Skirting with Disaster”) was another. I got to be on the cover in all of those, an added treat. (The fourth was one of my first cover stories, a humorous account about following the campaign for governor in ’98.)
My two favorite cover stories that I wrote, but didn’t star on the front of: the one about down-on-their-luck folks living in a rooming house and drinking in the adjacent bar, which opened early in the morning. I was honored to write about the hardscrabble men and women there; it ran in the fall of ’98, right around the time I was promoted to staff writer.
The other, from 1999, had a cool X Files-like cover and was about my trip up to the Panhandle to revisit the Gulf Breeze sightings 10 years or so after they peaked. I stayed in a lousy tent in a state park and came back tired and loaded with material.
One of my last stories was about John Heath and his St. Pete-based crime scene clean-up business. It’s a story that everyone’s done, but I did get excellent feedback for how unsensational and accurate it was, from my main source.
My time at the Planet definitely led to what I’m doing now: I’m a features writer at the Bulletin, a daily in Bend, Oregon. When I got the offer, Sugg and Susan Edwards offered me my own column to keep me, but the money was better in Bend, and I was young enough to be curious about what life here might be like. (Short answer: It’s cold — 28 degrees when I went running this morning — but a great place to raise a family.)
I wear a lot of hats here, and I’m still interviewing a lot of the same bands and authors now as they roll through here. Pretty strange but cool to talk to someone like Duane Peters (U.S. Bombs, Die Hunns) or Mike Ness and say, “Actually, I interviewed you back in 1999 when I was in Tampa.” Now, I also write about the outdoors and arts, and do general features. Occasionally I get to do funny ones, like a report about taking the Mensa test, but the Bulletin hasn’t unleashed me to use my humorous voice as often as the Planet did. I also don’t have nearly the freedom to swear on the page as I did in my Planet days. I was particularly fond of my interview with Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander. I believe my lede was, “My sister would shit — shit! — if she knew Robin Zander was on the phone.” I also mocked Misfits’ Glen Danzig before it was cool to mock Danzig, asking if he still taped every episode of Hee-Haw.
I have fond memories of life at the Planet office. One moment I particularly cherish took place during one of our editorial meetings. Sugg was pontificating as usual and I was trying to stay awake. Then he said something about how before the Gandy Bridge was built, people had to go around the peninsula to St. Pete in horse-drawn buggies.
In his perfectly droll way, Snider cuts in, “And how was that, John?”
Maybe you had to be there, but it killed me. Before he got health-conscious, Sugg used to come in every morning with a small bag of Dunkin’ Donuts, so the circ guys, especially Joe Juan, labeled him “Johnny Bag ‘o Donuts.”
I kind of liked that, too.
Dave Jasper’s six years at the Planet (1995-2001) took him from intern to editorial assistant to events editor to, finally, features writer. He lives in Bend, Oregon with his family.
This article appears in Apr 18-24, 2013.