Happiness is the Key to Success – By Frank Pace, The Mook

How do you define success?   One word HAPPINESS.  A very good friend once told me if you have your health and are surrounded by people who love you, you have everything in life you are entitled too. How do you define career success?  That’s something different. That can change. Let’s say you are an actor and your goal in life is to “be a star like Tom Cruise.”  Or a singer and your goal in life is to be Taylor…

MAYBE….By Frank Pace, The Mook

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that I am no fan of Donald Trump.It may surprise you to hear me say, “Give him a chance.”  Maybe, just maybe, he is on to something.  Government budgets are out of control.Maybe Elon Musk and Vivik Ramaswami can curtail some of Washington’s wasteful spending.  The U.S. government for the first time has spent more than $1trillion this year on interest payments for its $35.3trillion national debt,…

AS TIME GOES BY – By Frank Pace, The Mook

Saturday night, my wife Karen and I attended the Billy Joel concert at the Los Angeles’ spanking new Intuit Dome. For me, the past and future merged.  Billy Joel is old, reliable and reassuring. The Dome is new and intimidating. Just getting to the venue proved to be a curious intermingling of current and future technology. The Intuit Dome was built by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at a cost to Ballmer of more than $2…

ROD CAREW  – Citizen, By Frank Pace – The Mook 

Legendary baseball player Rod Carew became an American citizen last month. As his long-time friend, I had the rare pleasure of attending his swearing-in ceremony. Fourteen-year-old Carew arrived here from Panama 64 years ago, and if baseball GMs had any idea of the impact that he would make on the game, they would have sent a limo for him. Rod won nearly every award a professional baseball player could: the 1967 American League Rookie of the Year, the…

REMEMBERING GENE WILDER By Frank Pace – The Mook

Netflix is currently running an in-depth documentary entitled,  Remembering Gene Wilder.  This great comedic actor starred in such seminal movies as, The Producers, Willie Wonka,  Bonnie and Clyde, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Stir Crazy, and so many more. I had the privilege of working with Gene on a short-lived sitcom that I produced called Something Wilder.  While Gene’s on-scene persona was that of an extrovert, the real Gene Wilder couldn’t have been more different. There were…

Stirring The Pot….A New(er) Direction. By Frank Pace  (The Mook)

Over the course of the past three years A Mic A Mook and A Mic has produced 165 video podcasts. That is more than seven day’s worth of non-stop programming.  It is assuredly better than a lot of that stuff you have been binge watching on Netflix or Hulu.  Billy, Derrec and I have had to pleasure to speak with people from all walks of lives.  The famous, almost famous, never famous, used to be…

An Outtake from ‘If These Lips Could Talk’

(Editor’s Note:  The following is an outtake from the book IF THESE LIPS COULD TALK by Frank Pace & Billy O’Connor. It never made it into the book. Nevertheless, we thought you might like to read it. To purchase the book, go to: https://amickamookandamic.com/product/if-these-lips-could-talk/ _______ My father used say “Frankie boy, if bullshit was music, you would be the whole brass band.” I learned how to “spin” at a very young age. I was working…

Things that make me go……hmmmm ?
By Frank Pace (The Mook)

Perhaps at our next breakfast my friend, Nick the attorney (who has way more book smarts than me), can explain these random thoughts I keep having, because I sure as hell can’t figure them out… Why does the US keep making pennies and nickels? Did you know it costs 2.72 cents to make a penny? According to an April 2023 article in MONEY magazine it is even more expensive to make nickels. Would you believe…

The Over the Hill Gang…Swings Again!
By Frank Pace

When Thomas Wolfe wrote You Can’t Go Home Again in 1940, the classic novel proposed that nostalgia causes one to view the past in an overly positive light. Going home is never as good as one remembers. The Writers Guild strike in Los Angeles inadvertently gave me the opportunity to test Wolfe’s theory.   l flew in from California to attend a loosely organized reunion of my childhood friends. We grew up playing baseball on the sandlots and…

Keeping Pace with Santa
By Frank Pace

A collection of random thoughts, as I embark on my 73rd holiday season…. I am forever thankful for all the blessings I have shared, and for those I look forward to in the future. To family and old friends who have blessed my life and have gone to a better place…  and to those who continue to make my life better like my wife Karen, daughter Erin, Son-in-Law Charlie, and my two granddaughters Frankie &…

ELVIS, ME & TCB
by Frank Pace

I just saw the feature film, ELVIS, which featured a career defining performance by Austin Butler as the King. The bio unexpectedly brought back memories of Dr. George Nichopoulos.  Dr Nick served in the Army Medical Core in Germany before graduating from Vanderbilt Medical school and becoming Elvis personal doctor in 1970. The “feel-good” doctor was supplying drugs to the King of rock and roll throughout the 70’s, which contributed to Elvis’ passing on August 16,…

The Beat Goes On…

I spent one terrific Memorial Day, poolside, surrounded by my family, eating bbq and watching my two granddaughters play as if they didn’t have a care in the world because they didn’t.  So young. So innocent. So precious.  In Uvalde, Texas, however, 21 families and an entire community suffered the realities of life as we have come to know it.  Nineteen precious children and two brave teachers’ lives were snuffed out in yet another senseless…

FAME vs CELEBRITY

(The following is an excerpt from the book, IF THESE LIPS COULD TALK, by Frank Pace with Billy O’Connor) An internet meme of Howard Cosell with his arms around Bruce Jenner and O.J. Simpson reads, “Folks, I’ve just looked 50 years into the future.  You’re not gonna believe what I have to tell you.”  America’s fascination with celebrities has reached epic heights.  Hell, we elected two reality-TV stars President.  Running for President is one talent,…

HOW I HELPED CREATE AN OLYMPIC SPORT

My assistant said, “Carl Thomas is on the line.”  Carl Thomas was the Vice President of Marketing for Speedo, the country’s leading swimwear manufacturer.  Armen Keteyian and I were working as a two-man P.R. group for a small San Diego based marketing firm called The Phillips Organisation, Ltd.  (That is the correct spelling).  Speedo was our client. “Put Carl through,” I said.  It was early 1982. Carl had just gotten off a plane from Kona, Hawaii.  He…

COWBOY JOE…One of a Kind

(Excerpted in part from the book, IF THESE LIPS COULD TALK)   How did I become pals with Cowboy Joe West, the man who will set the major league record for most games umpired in baseball history (5,376) tonight (5/25) in Chicago?  The man of whom someone once said, “This is a guy who will walk into a blast furnace with two gasoline buckets, he doesn’t give a damn.”     Racquetball.  That’s right, racquetball.  You remember racquetball.  It was…

My Dinner with Don Rickles

The highlight on my career was an invitation to Don Rickles 70th birthday party. It was an incredibly star-studded event, even for Hollywood.  The guests included Frank Sinatra, Robert DeNiro, Sharon Stone, Bob and Ginny Newhart, Milton Berle, Marty Scorsese and Red Buttons along with movie moguls Marvin Daly and Bob Daly. My wife and I were seated with comic Jack Carter ,his wife and noted cosmetics maven Tovah Borgnine (wife of Academy Award winner,…

Tempus Fugit or Time Flies

Time flies.  One year, I’m 19 years old and watching Artis Gilmore lead Jacksonville University to the NCAA finals, the next thing you know I look in the mirror to shave and see a 71–year old man.  We really do have to make the most of every day.  As trite as that saying may seem, nothing is promised. Two recent tragedies remind me of that adage.   The death of the 19-year-old Kentucky guard Terrace Clarke…