This month’s article marks the 100th original Straight Up with a Twist. Those who have read this monthly column regularly have watched as I morphed in front of their eyes from a carefree, 30-year-old playboy into a married, proud father living in Arcadia, eyeing 40.

In that time I’ve written about everything from childhood summers in Scottsdale to cussing at my wife in the jetway at Sky Harbor Airport as we grappled with our colicky child during an especially stressful time of our lives. This month we’ll explore some of the back story of how this column – and its author – started out.

Writing has always been a perfect release for me. I’ve been gifted with an over-active imagination, which usually got me into trouble in school, until I learned to keep it to myself. In high school, I started creating bizarre internal dialogue and grandiose fictional scenes to go with. For example, I used to sit in Freshman Biology and concoct elaborate “How Far Could I Get?” theories.

While the teacher droned on about internal organs or something, my mind would create this: What if I walked up to the front of the class right now and took off all my clothes? Well, of course people would laugh at me – but would the teacher actually try to physically restrain me? What if I walked up to the teacher and punched him right in the face? Then I’d run out of class – still naked – and steal Big Todd Walsh’s IROC-Z. Then I’d top it out at 130 and slam it into the Hoover Dam, unleashing a horrific wall of water that I would boogie board all the way down the Colorado River to Mexico. When is lunch? I’m hungry for snack cakes with crumb toppings.

I had my own internal cineplex with at least two “features” running all the time, but trying to animate these stories to friends just never worked out right. I was always too far ahead of everyone else, so when their inane high school stories morphed into fantasy and open discussion, I was already making out with some hot chick who lived on the moon and kept black rhinos as pets, which was interesting because her mother and father forbade it – the rhinos, not the kissing, and... well, you see what I mean? These guys would be talking about some girl they tagged last summer in Canada – which was on my matinee feature hours ago.

In my early 20s I started writing some of this stuff down, but most of it was useless. I was an angry young man for some reason and I hadn’t yet learned to harness my extracurricular thoughts. Thus, nearly every thing I wrote, from stories to love letters, involved some maniacal and volatile main character who went on murderous rampages. I still have dozens of these short stories in my possession, as a reminder that I have exhausted that particular genre.

In my mid-20s I started to write a novel. Trying to veer away from my murderous rampage writings, I decided to do a real cliffhanger about a guy who goes after a guy who is on a murderous rampage. I wrote 10,000 words in two months, which was a great start. But then I lost interest and shelved the project. I was working in telecommunications sales at the time and my career was starting to gel, so I focused my efforts there. Years would go by before I would pick up the pen again.

Two weeks before I turned 30 I started questioning my occupational choices, so I resigned from my high-paying sales position at Sprint. I decided to embark on a journey around this great country of ours – in my Jeep. I was reading a lot of Kerouac, Hemingway and Thompson in those days, and I think their lifestyles re-stoked my fire.

I borrowed a laptop and spent the next four months chronicling my adventures in America. The ensuing unpublished book is titled Tales from the Scenic Route but it could just as easily have been called Drunk & Disorderly: My Journey Through the United States.

Having finally written a non-slaughter saga (they should have a section for this in the bookstore), I realized I may be capable of hacking this stuff out for a living. I knew I’d never get rich as a writer, but at least I’d be happy.

I walked into the office of this esteemed community newspaper nearly ten years ago and asked the editor if I could submit some articles for consideration. I was terrified when she said yes, as I had nothing really prepared. So I sat down and cranked out two columns in two nights and delivered them on a Monday morning.
I was shocked when I received a call back on Wednesday. By happy hour on Friday, I was celebrating my new gig as a humor columnist for the Arcadia News. That night also spawned the title of this monthly column when I ordered my Sapphire Martini straight up with a twist of lemon.

So here we are, one hundred of these puppies later. Thank you for tagging along on this fortuitous journey, dear reader. If it weren’t for you, there may be some maniac loose out there on a murderous rampage.