Apr 19, 2019
Transcript: Thanks Allan, this is David Brower with your 20 minute podcast. Our special guest today Wayne D. McFarland. Author of Tales From the Day, a fellow Coloradan just down the road in Colorado Springs. So we're both kind of freezing our rumps off today. Huh, bud?
Wayne D. McFarland: Boy, you're not kidding. Five degrees. I left Minnesota to get away from this.
David Brower: Well, welcome to the show. My wife got up and went skiing at Loveland Ski Area today, and when she got there it was two below. And I was like, have fun. I'll be here with the dog. Oh my God.
Wayne D. McFarland: Light the fire.
David Brower: Right. Light the fire. That's exactly right.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, heat up the hot chocolate. That's good for me. Yeah.
David Brower: I'm intrigued by your book man. Tales from the day, life shaping events that truth be told all happened under the heading of oops. I wanna read this one paragraph from your book.
It says: Wayne McFarland wandered away from a small Midwestern town some years ago with no planning at all. His history is one of stumbling into one bog after another from the Dakotas to California, from [inaudible 00:01:10] to Paris. His main claim to fame is mostly and surprisingly not being dead. Plus getting involved with a lot of strange stuff. Usually unwillingly or by accident hence the word oops.
Where did this all come from, man? I'm laughing my rear off and I haven't even opened the book yet.
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, thanks. Actually where it came from was that a lot of people who are getting more mature these days.
David Brower: There you go. There you go.
Wayne D. McFarland: Suddenly wake up in the dead of the night and think that the world is gasping with anticipation to hear how life really was, and no one cares.
David Brower: Right.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. I was talking to some of my friends about this stuff. I was like, you know if you can't write about the craziness of life. Not about the old days of playing Kick the Can, or putting skates on your shoes at a skate key. If that's all you got, you don't have anything.
David Brower: Right.
Wayne D. McFarland: Life in my view is full of just a lot of craziness. Most of what happens is you don't plan it, you just kind of wander along. If you get out there, things happen. If you've got the eyes to see it. You know it has some kind of universal appeal I think.
David Brower: Yeah.
Wayne D. McFarland: Even if it's just because it's nuts.
David Brower: Well, yeah and being open to that stuff has gotta be the trick. I mean we all walk through life and don't even see stuff that's right in front of our face. For you to be open to these amazing stories is what fascinates me.
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, thanks so much. Yeah. I used to get free beer with daily people in bars and some of these stores. I thought well, maybe I can regale people on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Yes, David, that was a shameless plug.
David Brower: As it should be.
Wayne D. McFarland: I put these together, and most of them aren't very long. I mean space do you need about blowing town with a monkey.
David Brower: Right.
Wayne D. McFarland: Leaving Minnesota with a monkey. You don't need a lot of room.
David Brower: This will give you the insight to his humor, folks. When you open up a book normally and you get to the copyrighted material page. Of course it has all the legal stuff, all rights reserved, blah, blah, blah. First printing. Then it says, this is a memoir, not a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead or actual events is intentional. I love that.
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, thanks. My publisher gave birth to a live cow.
David Brower: Oh my God.
Wayne D. McFarland: When I did that. Yeah.
David Brower: Right.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. It was not exactly a normal thing. I thought, why ... A. It's all true stuff. I changed a few numbers not on the guest mail there to keep people out of jail. That's about it.
David Brower: When did your journey start? How young or old were you?
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, I think probably the oldest story here was taking a trip with a buddy of mine to Trinidad where he lived.
David Brower: Okay.
Wayne D. McFarland: We ended up after a series of misadventures, his uncle taking us down to the beach one night in the dead of night. And having us take our pants off so we could stand in the surf and shark fish in our underwear.
David Brower: Oh my God.
Wayne D. McFarland: Now, you only do that kind of stuff when you're pretty young. One of the very few pieces of advice I have in my book is, a piece of travel advice is: If you go somewhere and you're doing something that in your own hometown would be considered completely crazy, you probably should not be doing it.
David Brower: Whoops. Too late for you.
Wayne D. McFarland: Whoops. Yeah, no kidding. That evening ended when the uncle caught a huge, I think moray eel. We took it home, and yes we ate it. It was pretty good as I remember.
David Brower: I'll be darned.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah.
David Brower: I'll be darned. What's your most recent oops? Your most recent experience.
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, probably one about we recently sold a business we had. We created movies and PowerPoints with audio for corporations and later on wrote software for them, various things. One thing I found out early on, which I suspect you have as well. In you know doing your promotional work is that when you're discussing creative ideas don't do it before you have the deal.
David Brower: Yeah.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. Well, you know. Once you have the deal, and somebody doesn't like what you have to say, they just go well, give me another idea I didn't like that. But if you do it before you have the deal. It could cost you the deal.
David Brower: Absolutely. Always get the deal.
K Wayne D. McFarland: Always. I was this young guy. Give you a source or some friends. I explained all this to them. We had nailed a really juicy contract. I mean one of those involved clackers and overhead shots, and crew.
David Brower: Wow.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. We're going down to get the deal. I explained all this to them. I said, well, just a be a fly in the corner. You're gonna be working with this guy. Remember no discussion of any creative ideas at all until he hands us the contract.
David Brower: Yeah.
Wayne D. McFarland: We get there, and the guy he ran us ... He built the sprinkler company, David from nothing. From being a one person gardener to this international corporation.
David Brower: Wow.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. I liked him very much. We're gonna do this movie about his thing. He has the contract, and he says, well, first thing, let's ink this thing and get started. As he's starting to sign his name. He says, do you know how you're gonna approach this. I started, a doable no. We bring in a team, and we bring in people.
David Brower: Right.
Wayne D. McFarland: My new assistant goes well, yeah. Yeah. My heart stopped. You know. Now the guy puts Thomas again, what? What are you gonna do? I started, well, no we don't wanna talk about that now. Whatever. No, no, guy has to say. He turns to the young assistant, and he says, what do you think we should do? He gets up, and he says, okay ... He was a recent grad of USC film school. Right. He gets up and he looks up into the sky and he says, we open with a shot of the sun, the giver of all life. The guy's going, yes. Then we pan down to a green, green field being watered by your products. The guy's going, yeah. Then what? He says, then we pan down through the soil into the good, rich hummus of mother earth.
David Brower: Oh my God.
Wayne D. McFarland: The guy's going. My assistant says, and then we focus in on your mascot. The guy says, what is it? What is it? My assistant says, an earthworm.
David Brower: Oh no.
Wayne D. McFarland: I mean to tell you. If you've ever heard the old question about what happens when you drop dog doo in the punch bowl.
David Brower: Yep.
Wayne D. McFarland: I can tell you what happens is this massive silence. This guy looks up at me and he says, do you mean to tell me that you think I spent 40 years of my life working to be represented by a worm?
David Brower: Wow.
Wayne D. McFarland: That as they say was that.
David Brower: Was that. Exactly. What happened to your assistant if he's still alive?
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, he was the [inaudible 00:08:40] of a very, very wealthy family in the unrated business. I'm kind of ashamed to admit in my entire life, I ran businesses for a while. There's only been one human being I've ever fired when we walked outside of a meeting and that was him.
David Brower: Yeah, understand.
Wayne D. McFarland: I was so heartbroken. It was probably one of the best deals I had ever put together. It could of been really something. He went back home, and eventually he had a mediocre rise and became president of his family's vitamin supplement business. There you go.
David Brower: There you go. End of story.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah.
David Brower: Did he have an earthworm as a mascot?
Wayne D. McFarland: I hope so. Either that or an eel, one of the two.
David Brower: One of the two. That's funny, man. How long's your book been out?
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, it's pretty recently birthed. It was launched towards the end of November of last year.
David Brower: Nice.
Wayne D. McFarland: We're just starting to get a word out. I am very pleased to tell you that another shameless plug here-
David Brower: -Please do.
Wayne D. McFarland: Tale From the Day on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, the reviews have been very kind.
David Brower: They have been. I've been reading them. It's all five stars on Amazon. High praise. When somebody references you to Will Rogers, I mean seriously. How does that work?
Wayne D. McFarland: I've made a mental bile that I will never fly in a small plane with a one eyed pilot.
David Brower: Well said. Well said.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, it's only been out for a short time, so we're kind of waiting to see overall how it does. I keep sending copies to the Cohen brothers, but they keep sending them back. I mean-
David Brower: -Well, that's not very nice. Come on.
Wayne D. McFarland: No, you gotta have a sense of humor.
David Brower: I mean autograph it Will Rogers, and then send it to them.
Wayne D. McFarland: Well am I worth No Country For Old Men, right?
David Brower: Exactly. Are you doing any promotions? Are you speaking to people? Or are you just in the let's get this thing up and running mode right now?
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, really my main interest in doing promotions is I was invited to tell a couple of these tales in some theaters in Denver and some other places. I'm mainly interested in finding people like well, you know you. And being able to talk with them. Splitting that between the in the fit of drunkenness the publishers asked me to create, see if I can create a second follow-up book. I'm writing up some more tales.
David Brower: Nice.
Wayne D. McFarland: I'll run out eventually. You know.
David Brower: Are you sure?
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, unless I start making stuff up, which I've already been accused of.
David Brower: Well, when you read through some of the chapter titles, The Day My Grandfather was Tagged as a Psychopath, The Day I Had a Hot Date and We Fell Out of the Sky, The Day We Blew Town With a Monkey, The Day Johnny Cash Hit On My Wife. Let's talk about that.
Wayne D. McFarland: You know, David, I gotta tell you. To this very day she will not tell me what he said to her.
David Brower: How funny.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. We were doing, it was kind of a spin off from some of our corporate work what we did a lot of. Now it's old hat. I mean, you know you're in the professional side. Where you put visuals up on kind of a backdrop screen to band that.
David Brower: Sure.
Wayne D. McFarland: At the time, it was when we were invited to get involved with kicking off a country music show.
David Brower: Okay.
Wayne D. McFarland: It was live to about a third of the country and whatever. It was the production side of it was kind of a hilarious disaster, which yes you have to buy my book to read.
David Brower: Well, of course.
Wayne D. McFarland: The punch line with Cash is that's the only name drop in the entire book. Poor guy, I love his music and he's gone now.
David Brower: Yeah, I do too.
Wayne D. McFarland: Of course. Anyway, he was you know rumored really not to screw around.
David Brower: Right.
Wayne D. McFarland: I got out of the backstage bar following our rather interesting presentation. Which again, is in the book.
David Brower: In the book.
Wayne D. McFarland: And here's this huge group of people standing around something. I couldn't see, so I got up and scaffolded. There in the center of the group this guy in a black outfit and my wife. By the time I get down to it ... Now mind you, Gloria had come out to see the show. I lied really spectacularly to tell her Tulsa, Oklahoma was great. She's getting her PhD at the time in molecular biology. I mean I can hardly even say it.
David Brower: Right.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, my plane doesn't fly up there really.
David Brower: Exactly.
Wayne D. McFarland: She was not exactly into the music scene. I get down, and the crowd's dispersed. I walked up to her, and I said, you know who that was? She looked at me, and she kind of shook her head. I said, what'd he say? She says, just a bunch of nonsense. That's all she's ever said to me about it.
David Brower: Oh my gosh.
Wayne D. McFarland: You know I've been picking on her, yeah. You sure you don't know who that was? She said, no. I said, that's Johnny Cash. She looked at me, and I swear to God, dude. Seriously. She said, who's Johnny Cash?
David Brower: Oh my God.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. She's a molecular biologist.
David Brower: Exactly.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. I said, I told her, well, there's one for the book.
David Brower: I gotta bust your chops on one thing though, man.
Wayne D. McFarland: What?
David Brower: You name dropped two people, not just Johnny Cash. You name dropped Mickey Mouse.
Wayne D. McFarland: God, yeah.
David Brower: You know what I'm saying?
Wayne D. McFarland: I figured as the cartoon character you know there's no slander to be had.
David Brower: That's funny. You got like 19 chapters, 19 stories. It's just funny. I mean, gosh. I just ... Seriously. I'm not much of a book reader, in fact I had an interview with a guy a couple of weeks ago that I was really engaged with, really loved everything about it. He sent me his book. I sat down and read the book. You know, I do audio books. I actually sat down and read the book. I'm going, well, crap. I'm gonna get Wayne's book. This is silly. How can I not have that? You know.
When are you gonna do an audio book?
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, actually they had me do one as the author. Years ago I did a little narration. If you do audio books on an ongoing basis. I gotta tell you, my hat's off to ... that's a lot of work.
David Brower: Yeah, I do audio books.
Wayne D. McFarland: Do you?
David Brower: Yeah. Not very often. I've done about six or seven of them. Yeah.
Wayne D. McFarland: That's a lot. There any particular genre?
David Brower: No. Well, I think they're all pretty much true story stuff. I mean there's one about a biblical thing. There's one about Alex Spnnos who came from Greece and it was his autobiography and how he owned the San Diego Chargers. You know history of the Christian religion from historical point of ... Just really interesting off the wall stuff.
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, here's what I'm gonna do. I get the second book done. Which we're calling, wait for it. Tales Two. There's an innovative.
David Brower: There's an innovative. Yeah.
Wayne D. McFarland: What I'm gonna do is I'm going to mail you the only gun I have. It's a Glock. I'll send a clip. If I agree to narrate it myself, just shoot me and put me out of my misery.
David Brower: Done.
Wayne D. McFarland: I'll give you a call. And I'll say, David, this is yours.
David Brower: Well, at least let me audition for it, man. I would love to. That would be so much fun.
Wayne D. McFarland: Well, I think it'd be like ... I'm hoping ... I'm hoping to have the-
David Brower: -I've got a question about the sequel. Why isn't it called Tales From the Night?
Wayne D. McFarland: I really haven't had any of those kind of experiences. Don't start.
David Brower: Your wife's on line two by the way.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yes, exactly. Saying that's a lot of nonsense.
David Brower: That's funny. That is so funny.
Wayne D. McFarland: That's great.
David Brower: Tales From the Day, and you can go to talesfromtheday.com, you can go to amazon.com, you can go to probably Barnes and Noble. Right.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, that's really true.
David Brower: Where else? Probably all you need.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, that's all you need. They're around in a lot of different bookstores that primarily are online stores. They pretty much feed from the big guys.
David Brower: Yeah. Absolutely.
Wayne D. McFarland: You can leave a review there, or go to my blog and send me an email. The only thing I ask for a friend of my said his worst review was two words. It sucks.
David Brower: Oh my gosh.
Wayne D. McFarland: If someone's inclined to write a review like that, do like three words. It really sucks or something.
David Brower: Yeah. Make it impactful.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yes, exactly.
David Brower: Don't dilly dally. Come on. Just let's go.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah.
David Brower: Oh my God. Where can they find your blog?
Wayne D. McFarland: You mentioned it, they just go online to www.talesfromtheday.com.
David Brower: Okay.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yes, my picture is there, which makes the journey worthwhile.
David Brower: It does. Yeah, it really does.
Wayne D. McFarland: I can be contacted through that. Leave emails.
David Brower: Okay. There you go. Interviewing, storytelling, speaking engagements.
Wayne D. McFarland: Which I wish would ... I know they're gonna come rolling in.
David Brower: Well, yeah.
Wayne D. McFarland: Here we go.
David Brower: Here we go.
Wayne D. McFarland: Here we, yeah. Here we go.
David Brower: Hang on for the ride, brother.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, no kidding. Well, this was you know we're just reaching the top of the roller coaster ride with this. I just really, really enjoying this. I got a couple that are pretty off the wall. I don't think I should mention. Let's just say one of them involved flying saucers.
David Brower: There you go. There you go.
Wayne D. McFarland: I wasn't quite sure how to bend the book around back.
David Brower: Yeah, well said. Well said.
Wayne D. McFarland: Yep.
David Brower: This has been so much fun, Wayne. I just really appreciate taking the time with you. And you taking the time with me. It's just been a kick in the butt to talk to you. Talk about your book, your life, and I can hardly wait for the sequel man.
Wayne D. McFarland: Thank you so much, David. I really appreciate it very much.
Allan Blackwell: Listen to your 20 minute podcast with David Brower on the go. Downloads are available on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, iHeartRadio, Spotify, any podcast app and our website at davidbrowervo.com/yourtwentyminutepodcast. Until next time, thank you for listening.