I just remembered one of the more amusing bits of fallout from The Case. We had to pay $5000 each in restitution, but none of us had any money. We came up with inventive ways to solicit sex for pay, but of course we were never serious about it. I’d say exactly what the catchphrase was for our business model but taken out of the callow context of its post-adolescent inspiration it might sound offensive.
I don’t know what value there might be in crafting a less chaotic account of The Case. The story of three or four guys talking to each other via hijacked VMBs sounds boring to me but maybe that’s just because I lived it. I did describe it to some of the reporters I’ve encountered. I mentioned the interesting response from the Readers Digest reporter but as far as I can recall the others all said it was just youthful hijinx not worth mentioning in the context of a story about a payphone website.
If the recent spate of recollections has unearthed anything of interest it is the fact that I appear to have crossed paths with Kevin Mitnick. I clearly remember hearing someone introduce himself as Condor but it was only after I wrote the previous ramble about The Case that I thought to look up that name and see if it was connected to anybody on record. It makes perfect sense that we would have crossed paths in that context and at that time in the late 1980s. I don’t have any enduring interest in Mitnick (no offense if he’s reading this) or the phreaking scene but it puts things in perspective about what a small community of phreaks and that a dabbler like me somehow caught a piece of it.
I cannot second-guess that memory. The name “Condor” still echoes in my mind like I heard it today, not 28 years ago.
That might have been savage radio if I had the wherewithal to actually put what I was hearing on the air. I don’t remember having any kind of gadget to record phone calls back then, so patching the phone into the studio’s mixing board would have been the only way I had to capture on cassette a little of that audio world, which I would describe as both chaotic and determined. If I could have anything back from those days it would be to hear that sound again from The Bridge.
I should go back to not thinking about this anymore.
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I listened again to some of the Apology tapes from the early 1990s. There was one call from someone I think of as the Bubblehead guy, not because he was a bubblehead but because that was the term he used to describe Apology callers who he said made false claims about their supposed crimes. The Bubblehead guy made his comments, they were well-spoken, but then he settled into himself and just kept talking, like he was delivering some kind of testimony or an on-the-record speech. Who was he?
Another Apology caller as well had me asking, who the hell was that? This caller was something of an Apology groupie, it seemed, familiar with the failed HBO film, the pulp fiction novel, and other works based on calls to Apology. I had thought of the callers to that line as being insulated from the extracurricular media appearances of Apology but evidently Allan’s dalliances into extending what I guess you’d call the Apology brand was not the guarded secret I might have thought. I didn’t think Allan would let on about or announce these things on the line for fear of looking like a sellout. This was an appearance about which he was studiously aware during the discussions of making Apology a pay service.
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I made a decent recording yesterday of my unplanned jaunt to the St. Joseph Mausoleum at St. Michael’s Cemetery, where I spent only 15 or 20 minutes. If I don’t croak before the new mausoleum across the parking lot opens I might end up in the building I entered yesterday, where I’ve been several times. I made the recording using only a Galaxy Note 5, nothing fancy like the expensive field recorder or whatnot. The quality of the recording was better than expected but the jacket I was wearing made a lot of noise, which I did not realize as it was happening.
I found a copy of the first ever issue of Time Out New York, with Mira Sorvino on the cover. Is it worth anything? I doubt it.
