I posted this on facecrack last night and people seemed to like it, so I thought I’d put it up here since I didn’t really have anything to put up today. The photo I’m using is me and my brother Jim eating popsicles in a much more innocent time. It’s nice to look at that. Okay, Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for 1958
1958 to 1963: I was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1958. I lived there with my family until 1963. Fun fact: When my parents brought me home from the hospital after I was born, my two-year-old brother Jim walked over to me and promptly hit me right in the mouth. That punch was the start of the closest relationship I’d ever have in my life.
1963 to 1969: In 1963 my Dad got transferred to go and work in Louisville, Kentucky, so the rest of us tagged along. Louisville is a great city and I liked living there. Fun Fact: In the spring of 1966, on a visit to the mall (one of the first malls ever) my brother Jim and I saw an early edition of NRBQ playing in the parking lot. I’ve been a fan ever since.
1969 to 1976: My Dad got a promotion and we moved back to Peoria in 1969. While I liked Louisville, Peoria always seemed like home to me, so I remember being somewhat happy to be coming back here. Fun Fact: I started drinking and smoking in 1972 when I was in the eighth grade. In 1973 I started smoking pot and doing drugs. It was this point where my brother Jim and I became juvenile delinquents and we used to sneak out of the house around one in the morning and go and steal cassette players out of cars in the neighborhood. If we stole your stereo, three words: Statute of Limitations. We would either sell the stereos to other kids or trade them for drugs. My parents deserve high praise for putting up with our shenanigans through the years!
1976 to 1977: My one and only years of college was at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. I didn’t really want to go to college, but my brother Jim was going there, so I went for a year and pretty much just drank and got high for the whole year. Fun Fact: My final grade point average was 0.0, because I just stopped going to classes. After this my Dad suggested that I start looking for work. A year later the movie “Animal House” came out and I had a weird sense of pride when Bluto Blutarsky/John Belushi had the same grade point average.
1977 to 1978: I worked some odd jobs and then convinced my parents to let me try to get in to an art college in Chicago. The college was called The American Academy of Art and you had to present artwork to one of the teachers to get approved. I went there with my parents and some guy looked at my artwork and asked me questions about why I wanted to go there and I got accepted. My cousin and her husband had a townhouse in the city and I lived in their basement. I really hated all the kids that went there, they were pretentious and smarmy and I missed my brother Jim. I quit after the first semester and moved back to Peoria.
1978 to 1980: I moved back to Peoria, worked some odd jobs and in 1979 I started working at Murray’s Department Store. I also moved in with my friends Moon and Chris and we bought over 3,000 hits of speed to mark this occasion. We spent nine months doing speed, drinking straight gin and generally acting like monsters. We pretty much lost all of our friends and at one point I was chasing Moon down the street with a butcher knife as our neighbors looked on in horror. Fun fact: I ended up getting what my doctor called, the worst case of mononucleosis he had ever seen. He told me if I continued to live like I was that I’d probably be dead in less than a year. I moved back to my parents house and it took over six weeks to recover, but I I felt the effects from it for about six months. In that time I decided I’d kind slow down on the drinking and drugs.
1980 to 1985: I was still in Peoria, but this was a new phase of my life. My Dad got me a job at Fleming Potter (he was in sales) in the art department, as a film stripper. If you don’t know what a film stripper is, don’t worry, it’s a trade that technology totally killed in the early ’90’s. I was in a graphic arts union and was making really good money, but I always felt that there was something else I should be doing. Fun fact: As I said, the money was good, in 1982 I made over $50,000. The only problem was 1982 was also the year I discovered cocaine, so it all went up my nose!
1985 to 1993: This was definitely another new phase of my life. In 1985 myself and my friend and co-worker Greg Owens created the game “Trivial Trivia - The Idiot Edition.” It’s a long story, but the short story is we ended up being interviewed by Jane Pauley on the Today Show and the game really blew up. Greg and I did more projects and ultimately found out I liked to write and people seemed to enjoy things I was writing. I ended up taking my Trivial Trivia money and started publishing the magazine, “People of Peoria.” I really learned how to write and edit doing the magazine and in 1991 I started doing freelance writing for the Pekin Daily Times. Fun fact: A fat fucking bitch on wheels at the PJ Star told me that: “You don’t just walk in and write for the Peoria Journal Star!" She said this after I told her that I didn’t go to college and I taught myself how to write. I vowed on that day that I’d show her.
1993 to 2010: While publishing the magazine, I made some contacts in New York City, including Dick Stolley who was the Editorial Director of Time, Inc. at the time and he was originally from Pekin. Another long story, but I ended up meeting Stolley and moved to New York with the hopes of getting a job at People magazine (I got an interview, but didn’t get the job.) I moved there in July of 1993 and within my first week I was getting published in the weekly papers. That didn’t pay the rent so I started looking for a night job and got a job in April of 1994 at a pre-press service bureau. That started me on a 19 year run in New York City which was filled with adventures and exciting times. One of my highlights was writing and publishing the fanzine, fishwrap. It was a fanzine that made fun of mainstream media. It became a cult hit in the world of fanzines and we got press in the NY Post, NY Daily News, New York Press, Sassy magazine and Men’s Journal. Fun Fact: I ended up writing freelance stories for the NY Daily News, the NY Post, New York Press, Time Out New York, Gadfly magazine and many others. I felt like I finally showed that fat fucking bitch from the PJ Star.
2009 to 2012: This was a new phase in my New York life. In 2009, I decided to hang up writing for print publications and start blogging online. My first blog, “The Marty Wombacher Show” was a complete and utter failure. I was really disappointed that no one liked the blog, but I took a step back and kind of figured out what I was doing wrong. My next blog, “A Guy Walks Into 365 Bars” went viral before I know what going viral meant. The blog’s focus was about me going to 365 different bars in 365 days, mostly in New York City. After about three months I happened to meet a feature writer for the NY Daily News and she wrote a feature story about the blog for the newspaper. The U.P.I. Wire Service picked up the story and put it on an international wire and it ran in newspapers and online blogs all over the world. One of the highlights was appearing on the Today Show in Australia. After that crazy year, I did two more blogs, “Marty After Dark” and “Tripping With Marty.” Neither duplicated the success of 365 Bars, but they were popular New York blogs.
2012 to 2020: I lost my job in New York and couldn’t find another one. During this time I got real depressed but I realized I had accomplished pretty much everything I wanted to do in New York. I decided to move back to Peoria, get a job and start a Peoria blog. So I moved back and “Meanwhile, Back in Peoria” was launched in December of 2012. I feel lucky because things have gone good for me, the blog has a great audience and thanks to everyone who reads it, you truly don’t know how much it means to me. In 2018 I started writing, producing and starring in The Marty Monologues. I’ve done four different shows, all of them in Peoria, one in Chicago and two in New York. They’ve been a terrifying experience but people have told me they enjoy them and once again, I’m so grateful for the kind words and the support from the people that come to the show. Then a month ago we all know what happened. But so far we’ve been fairly lucky in Peoria, my heart goes out to my friends in New York City. I hope somehow in a year we can look back on all of this and laugh and shudder at the same time. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading this, it means a lot to me. I had some time on my hands (and yes, I'm washing them often), as we all do, and this was fun to write and remember.