Confessions of a Gen-X Mind
A podcast about life, love, work, and the strange trip of growing up in the weirdest generation alive. Gen-X kids were raised on contradictions.
We were latchkey philosophers who worshipped Ferris Bueller, Marty McFly, Run-DMC, Metallica, and MTV as our holy texts. We grew up in the shadow of Reaganomics, the War on Drugs, “Just Say No,” moral panics, and ozone holes. We were told to follow the rules by adults who were breaking every single one behind the scenes. Some of us had BMX bikes. Some of us had skateboards.
Some of us had uncles who preached Jesus on Sunday and ripped off the federal government on Monday.
I had… all three.
Confessions of a Gen-X Mind is my attempt to make sense of the stories, traumas, cultural whiplash, and dark comedy that shaped my life. I grew up rich-adjacent in Texas, transplanted from Detroit, surrounded by pious fraudsters, land-flipping schemes, bankruptcies, private planes, jet skis, and family drama that could’ve made an entire season of Dallas look understated.
Now I’m a grown man, a voice actor, a creative, and an autistic Gen-X survivor with a front-row seat to the collapse of institutions, families, and the myth of the “Good Christian Businessman.”
This podcast blends:
- Personal stories from the S&L scandal era
- Growing up neurodivergent before we even had the language for it
- Love, loss, and late-in-life clarity
- Music, media, and the culture that raised us
- Dark humor and no-BS reflections on work, adulthood, and what it means to grow up with chaos and come out the other side
If you were shaped by skate videos, mixtapes, Sunday school guilt, and the sound of a modem connecting…
If you ever felt like the adults were making things up as they went along…
If you’ve lived enough life to finally tell the truth about it…
Welcome home.
Pull up a chair.
Grab your Walkman.
And let’s dive into the confessions.
Sleep Stories, By George and other stuff
A soothing collection of sleep stories, originally written for someone special, now shared with anyone in need of calm. Told in a warm, reassuring Texas voice by Gen-X storyteller George, each episode blends comfort, connection, and vivid imagery to help you unwind, feel safe, and fall gently asleep.
Confessions of a Gen-X Mind
The Ticket, Why Radio Guys Still Do It, and That Time Psycho Dave Got Stabbed in the Back (metaphorically)
If you’ve ever worked in media, broadcast, production, or any industry that quietly automated itself out from under its own workforce, this one will feel very familiar.
This episode is a re-visit of a long, candid conversation I recorded years ago with my old radio pal, Psycho Dave Martin.
It’s an unfiltered look at what it was really like working behind the scenes in radio as the industry shrank, automated, and quietly pushed people out. We talk about remote gigs, bruised egos, thin skins, and the strange hierarchy of personalities that defined local radio in the early 2000s. We swap stories about hosts, engineers, board ops, promotions, and the moments that stuck with us long after the microphones were turned off.
But this isn’t just nostalgia.
It’s about survival.
Dave talks openly about getting laid off, starting over, clinging to stability in a collapsing industry, and learning automation systems just to stay employable. We dig into the reality of radio becoming less of a career and more of a calling, something closer to community theater than a sustainable profession for most people.
We also talk about why people stay anyway. The validation. The love of operations. The satisfaction of making the signal go out clean. The strange joy of being close to broadcasters you respect, even when the money, security, and future prospects aren’t great.
This episode pairs naturally with The Death of Gatekeepers and serves as a ground-level companion piece. Not from executives or on-air stars, but from the people who actually made radio work.
In this segment of Confessions of a Gen X Mind, we shift gears a little bit to an interview segment we did with Dave Martin, aka Psycho Dave, the famous boredop from the hard line on Sports Radio 1310, the ticket here in Dallas. We'll find out what he's been up to, how he got fired, and why he still loves the radio business. Check it out. So what happened? I I don't know if we've ever even talked about it. How did Psycho Dave get fired from the ticket?
Dave:I was supposed to have a meeting with uh Jeff Catlin, who was the program director by this time, and Mark Friedman, who was the assistant program director. And uh I walked in the meeting and uh they asked me for my card and they said, You really don't have any room for advancement here, Dave. Uh we'll give you a letter of rec recommendation, we'll help you any way we can, but we've got to let you go. And that was it. It was a pretty quick, it was like maybe 10 minutes, maybe. Wow. And I was gone. I was done.
George:And just out of the blue, there wasn't anything that happened. It was just, hey, this is what the deal is.
Dave:I don't think so. Not that I know about.
George:And and this was in 04, is that right? 04, October 22nd of 04. It was a Friday morning. Wow, okay. 10 o'clock. So not long after I I left. I had stayed on the payroll for a long time until like 2005, but I worked my last remote sometime in 04.
Dave:Uh-huh.
George:Maybe in April. Like I did, I ended up like the last thing I did was like the Dallas Desperados with George Dunham and Grego doing the long time ago.
Dave:Okay.
George:And I think and I I graduated, I had graduated from UNT and took the job working for Jim in um like April or May of 04. And I stopped working ticket gigs. So not it so you you didn't stay on very much long after I left.
Dave:It was October of 04 is when it was. And I went to CTX Mortgage because I was young and stupid more than anything. But um, I said I wanted some job security, which that's just not an existent really. You gotta prove yourself and keep it. Um and then uh this was about oh eight, oh nine, it was in the housing market crashed. So did CTX Mortgage, and they laid me off. And so after that I went to work. I was working at K Sky part-time, but it he and they didn't have anything full-time at Salem at the time. Asked David Darling again, I said, Hey, is there anything full time? If you have anything, could you let me know? I mean, I just emailed him and said what I had to say, and he said, I don't really have anything, but I do know of something upstairs if you would if you're interested. And he gave me all the information I needed to do it and everything. And uh it was a board op for the Janet Mefford show because Bobby was gonna be moved over into the producer seat, so to speak. Uh-huh. And um I said, All right, and that was real scary and a leap of faith because I'd already heard rumors about her, and uh I was like, this isn't gonna last, but I'm gonna try it. What the heck? I want out of I want out of this place. I don't like my boss, I'm just gonna try it. And um so I did, and it wasn't long before Janet got rid of me, but it after that, and it was a rocky road for a little bit, but once I got to overnight's things seemed to really start picking up for me, and I started proving myself and understanding how things work, and everybody likes me up there now.
George:Salem is a really solid company. It was I I you know it was where I went immediately after graduating from college and kind of giving up on the ticket a little bit, realizing after five years that it was it was gonna be very part-time, never any benefits, and you know, if you wanted the privilege to work there, you're gonna not have to rely on it as your primary source of income if you really wanted to do it. So Salem wasn't a it wasn't a I didn't love the content as much, but it was a solid place to go that ha that offered benefits and my first salary in radio. You know, I'd made a lot of hourly before that, but the first time I got a you know, it's this amount per year plus will give you insurance. So it's like, oh so it was a kind of a consolation price.
Dave:Did you still have to clock in and all that?
George:Um no. There was no we didn't clock. Oh I then not that I know of. No, the only thing we had to do was like discrepancies by email. Yeah.
Dave:And see, I had to we have to clock in and I've had to do it ever since I've been at Salem. But I mean, they on the current it's called Ulti Pro, but the current little thing you clock in on, it shows you what your annual salary is and how much vacation and everything you got.
George:It's cool. I don't I don't remember having to to uh clock in. Yeah, but maybe they used your your badge in your badge buzz in. I don't remember. Uh-huh. But uh I was always late. I was so happy to be out of that business so I could so I I I and and to to move to a home office because now I don't ever have to rush in traffic for a live broadcast. I'm always right on time. I just step right up. I'm like, hey, we're going on the I've got a webinar at 9 a.m. Like, we're good. I'm ready to go. That's pretty cool right there. I'd like to try something like that. Well, I mean I'm working on a couple of different projects right now to I the only way I figured out how to do it was adapting, taking everything I knew about radio and operations and applying it to this. And that's the only way it made sense to me. So you could certainly do it.
Dave:Just I don't know. I mean, as much as I do want to stay there, I mean, it doesn't mean I'm open to not trying something. I wanted really I'd like to venture out a little bit.
George:Well, with the the the last two years of and during COVID and whatnot, the usefulness and like the the utilization of virtual learning and Zoom meetings and things like that have just exploded, and so many more people are now aware that you could do that. And Thompson Reuters has already been doing it for more than a decade, you know? Oh wow, yeah. So it's something that certainly there's gonna be a lot more demand for. And somebody like you and me who have have worked behind the scenes in radio and on the mic a little bit, are uniquely suited to do work like that and e-learning and any kind of uh corporate environment. There's certainly a place for us there as well. For you know, when if if radio ever one day doesn't work out for you, there's a whole nother business you could walk right into and be very good at because of your experience in radio. It's pretty amazing, actually. It's like how far behind it is. Like the complexity of the shit you've been able to accomplish behind the scenes in the radio business for like for like 20 years is so far advanced of stuff you can just now dream of doing in WebEx or in your corporate meeting software. It's starting to get there. But it's like so having all this all this great knowledge of what's possible, like what you could possibly accomplish in broadcast engineering, it's been fun to bring that to the corporate world because they know so little about the full scope of what you could do with these tools. Like, like, hey, you're using like a nantienth of what you could possibly do here. So, you know, that's where a unique perspective of a broadcast background comes in. So you could certainly I know you could do the job that I do with each so easily.
Dave:Because I'd I mean, I'm to the point I'm making the most money I've ever made, but I'd like to get to the next 10 grand if I can now.
George:Hey, I'm right there with you, man. I'm hanging on as long as I can.
Dave:Is this I don't want to get to that next one now?
George:I'm as the middle-aged white guy, I gotta be like, okay, like I gotta hang on as long as I can while I still can.
Dave:And then like that's where I'm at. I'm just hanging on. I'm trying, like, okay, I'm gonna be thankful for every week they don't, you know, escort me out the door.
George:Right. Well, now I've just gotta like if there's ever gonna be any hope of any retirement, you know, like do every I'm just trying to get every taking every side gig I can get. Like I'm doing the congressional town hall a couple times a week, and you know, just doing anything because that that's the side effect. If you want to work in radio business, you better better have a good retirement plan for yourself because there's no doubt about that.
Dave:Well, that's the thing we're not getting rich. No. Well, and that's something that I'm thankful for that happened to me whenever I was at the ticket.
George:Do three, three, two, one. In this segment of Confessions of a Gen X Mine, in this segment of Confessions of a Gen X Mine, we shift gears a little bit to an interview segment we did with Dave Martin, aka Psycho Dave, the famous boredop from the hard line on Sports Radio 1310, the ticket here in Dallas. We'll find out what he's been up to, how he got fired, and why he still loves the radio business. Check it out.
