A few days before he died, I was having an ongoing conversation with Mike Miller in my head. Having been out of touch with him for quite a long time, I was struck with an acute sense that I should write to him, and as I went about doing other things I maintained on ongoing conversation with an imaginary Mike, working out what I wanted to say. I wanted to check in on him, yes, and to know that he was okay. I also wanted to tell him about being in a new place, and to share with him how much it has got me thinking about the early days of Review, and understanding, now more than ever, what a gift it had been, not just to Kansas City, but to me personally. I wanted to express to him how grateful I feel for that time, for the collaboration that we had, for all of the ways that he empowered (and also indulged) me, for all that he gave and all that I learned from him. I wanted to thank him, and to tell him that I loved him. I am so sorry that I did not have the chance to do that. When I picture Mike, most often I envision him chuckling, the mischievous grin on his face manifesting genuine childlike glee mixed with a salty dose of sardonicism; very much Mike. I also remember him snoring, very loudly. For most of my days at Review, our office in the Hobbs building was one and the same as his domicile. We had a fairly particular routine the last couple weeks of the month as we approached deadline for that month’s issue. Mike would wake up very early in the morning, work on laying out copy I had finished editing the night before, then go to YJ’s for coffee. When I came in around 10 or 11, he would progress to making his daily phone calls to advertisers, using his cryptic, custom “tickler file” a rubberbanded bundle of a few dozen carefully ordered index cards with handwritten phone numbers and maybe a few notes. Next we would likely spend an hour or two sitting together in front of his dusty Mac, he often with two Camel Unfiltereds burning at once as we made text corrections, added cutlines to images, or argued about headlines. Later, he would go to the Snappy Store to get dinner (typically a bag of potato chips, a boxed sandwich, and a root beer), finally sinking in to one of his black or leopardprint bean bag chairs—acquired through ad trade with Temple Slug—to eat while watching CNN. Ultimately he would fall asleep and begin snoring, breathing in air thick with cigarette smoke and hair from Bobo the Cat. At some point I would grow blearyeyed from editing hard copies of tabloidsized pages printed on lettersized paper in the dark and would go home. I remember Mike’s loud crunching of those potato chips and his sawlike snoring driving me mad. But then I would think, here is this man, twice my age, living this way in order to make this crazy thing happen, driven by his own passion, curiosity and love for a specific community of people and ideas, as well, I think, as a great desire to provide a platform that would allow me and other people involved to grow. When I think back on it, it was quite a miraculous thing, and those days being part of it were some of the most fun and rewarding of my life. While he could be crabby, Mike made the process of creating Review each month an adventure, and he made it fun. Many nights when our brains were fried from working, as well is in the blissful few days after the paper had gone to press and we had a short reprieve, we would go to Harry’s Westport, or to the Grille on Broadway, where, it seemed, we had unlimited credit from ad trades, though I am not sure we could have possibly run enough ads to earn all of the credit we took advantage of. As well as creating space to brainstorm, plot, or, most often, just have a release, these nights, I know, were also Mike’s ways of showing care, of making sure that I and we were being taken care of. They were often wonderfully indulgent—perhaps irresponsibly so— but were absolutely essential to making the whole thing work at that particular time.
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.