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Facebook Posts Turn Into Book For Walter Meyer

 June 22, 2021 at 10:13 AM PDT

Speaker 1: 00:00 The pandemic forced a lot of people to be more contemplative while sheltering at home for much of 2020 for Walter Meyer, former manager at Lambda archives, it prompted him to take to social media in a way that created content for a new book called. If you weren't here, this would not be happening plugs from my life. KPBS arts reporter, Beth Armando speaks with the author about his collection of anecdotes about his life. Speaker 2: 00:28 Walter, you have a book out now called. If you weren't here, this would not be happening. So first of all, explain how this book came to be and how the pandemic played a role. Speaker 3: 00:40 Well, like many of us, I was a little frustrated and bored when we first got locked down last March. It's hard to believe it's been over a year, but it has been. And, um, it was a way to fill the time actually, but it came away about accidentally. Somebody had posted something on their Facebook page about Charlton Heston. And I responded with a comment about my brief encounter with Charlton Heston, which led to me posting the story of my meeting, Shirley Jones and the Partridge family, which led to another story, which led to another story. And each day for over 250 days last year, I posted a story on Facebook. One plot at a time, as I was calling them a plot, being my own invention for a post that became so long, it was long enough to be a blog. And if this was one story after another random moments from my life, everything from my childhood to weird jobs, I've had two celebrity encounters people I've interviewed for my writing, all sorts of stuff Speaker 2: 01:39 And explain exactly what this title Speaker 3: 01:41 Means. The title of the book. If you weren't here, this would not be happening. Seem to sort of sum up my, my whole life. And it came from one of the plugs that I posted. I was the middle of a shootout in Washington, DC. I was visiting a friend in DC and we got caught in the crossfire between a liquor store owner. The would be liquor store robber and the DC police. And we couldn't go anywhere. So we just fell to the floor of the car and we're covering our heads. And he looked at me and said, if this, if you weren't here, this would not be happening. And that seems to be the case. Weird stuff happens when I'm around all the time. So I have numerous examples of that in the book of just random things and people who know me well after a while, say, you know, if you weren't here, this wouldn't be happening. This is on you Speaker 2: 02:28 To give people a little flavor for what the books like. Can you read a little sample? Speaker 3: 02:33 Sure. One of the jobs that I had for many years, which taught me a lot about life and gave me a lot of good stories was I taught comedy traffic school. And this is a, uh, one of the stories that came out of that when I taught the two part evening Travis school class, which was three and a half hours each evening, I encouraged my classes to bring food and have a potluck. The second night of class one particularly memorable holiday party comes to mind the second night of a class in San Diego a week or so before Christmas people out did themselves many dress for the occasion and Christmas sweaters and Santa hats and reindeer antlers. I brought cookies and pies and cakes and more one, one particularly should be having a wonderful time. Laughing, joking, being overly festive. I had noticed her the night before she slowly transformed from being Doward to laughing almost a bit too much. All of my jokes, a winning sitting next to the laughing woman finally sent to her in a not unkind way. I know the class is fun and no offense to Walt, but not that funny. What's with you. You haven't stopped laughing. Since we got here, the woman said, I know I'm getting carried away, but I haven't laughed in 14 years. Speaker 2: 03:43 I'm going to leave that as a cliffhanger. And if people want to hear the rest of that story, they can go to kpbs.org. When you were writing these plugs, did you ever think you were going to put them together into a book? Speaker 3: 03:55 I did at some point, but not initially that I was doing this mainly just to keep myself from going crazy during lockdown and more and more friends seem to be liking them. And people started sending me friend requests saying, oh, my friend, Cindy has been reading your blogs. Can I read them too? So I, my following started growing on Facebook. And then at some point it's like, I should actually start assembling these. And I have enough now that I could do five or six volumes books of the plugs and still have many more stories to tell. Speaker 2: 04:26 And I have to ask you about one, because you mentioned somebody that I adore and that's George Romero. You actually worked on a show that he was involved in. Speaker 3: 04:36 Yeah. Yes. My first job in Hollywood, cause I had moved from, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to California to work in Hollywood was ironically enough for a guy based in Pittsburgh. I thought it was funny. I moved all this way and my paychecks came from the Boulevard of the allies in Pittsburgh. But George Romero, who's famous for producing night of the living dead and SQLs hated Hollywood. So he stayed in Pittsburgh and sent line producers out to California to oversee things while he stayed in Pittsburgh. But the show was tales from the dark side, which was kind of a low budget Twilight zone. So low budget. We didn't have a soundstage. We actually shot in an abandoned mattress factory in, uh, south LA where they had tacked mattresses on the wall to soundproof it. But every week we had a different guest star. So I got to hang out with some of my, you know, people I had admired for years. People like to be Hendron and, and Keenan Wynn and being the big film buff you are, you could just imagine what it would be like to talk movies with somebody like Keenan Wynn, who was in probably 150 of them in, in some amazing, small, but great role. Now Speaker 2: 05:44 The pandemic kind of forced people to be a little contemplate of on a certain level. So how did this whole pandemic play out for you in terms of how did you start on your life? Did it make you see things differently? Did you come to any kind of, I don't know apifany or realizations while you were writing me? Speaker 3: 06:06 Uh, very much so, you know, you get to a certain point in your life and especially when, you know, the whole world hits the pause button, you have time to think about these things. And you know, obviously I worked in Hollywood to try to sell screenplays. I've had numerous screenplays option, none ever made it through movies. And at some point you think, well, if I sort of like failed at life, and then when I started looking back at this amazing amount of experiences, I have add all the interesting people famous or not that I have met all the great places I have visited. And I realized that sort of the theme to the book and the theme to my life is that life is an amazing adventure. If you choose to look at it as one, sometimes we just kind of sleepwalk through our lives and don't realize there were all these great moments that actually add up to a great life. Speaker 2: 06:54 You have an event coming up on June 30th. What can people expect from that? Speaker 3: 06:58 Uh, I will be talking more about the book. Uh, it's my hometown library in Buffalo park, Pennsylvania. It's at 4:00 PM Pacific time, seven Eastern that are accommodating their audience over there. I've done other speaking engagements at my hometown library for my other books. And, uh, we arranged to do this one on zoom because we weren't sure the world would have been reopened by by June, but, um, all are welcome to attend. It's free. You can Google Bethel park library, calendar, and find the link on there. And they'll send you a link to the zoom. Speaker 2: 07:31 All right. I want to thank you very much for talking about your book. Speaker 3: 07:34 Thank you so much, Beth. It's always a pleasure talking to you. That Speaker 1: 07:38 Was Beth Armando speaking with author Walter Meyer for more information about the June 30th event and to hear more of his readings, go to kpbs.org.

The pandemic prompted many people to reflect on their lives as they quarantined at home. Author Walter Meyer did that and ended up with a book, "If You Weren't Here, This Would Not Be Happening: plogs from my life."
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