#3 Mark Herman BJJ Part I

Transcript

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Hi, Mark. Good morning. Hey, how's it going? I'm glad you made it here. Anyways, I'd like to let everybody know that I met Mark about five years ago, and we were introduced, while doing jiu jitsu. He was, farther in his jiu jitsu journey than I was, and he's helped me along the way. Let me do a little introduction Mark is a father, a body artist, an ultra runner, a recording artist of music, and a Brazilian jiu jitsu brown belt. He's proof that no matter how far you fall, you can rise stronger than ever. Mark takes us through his remarkable journey sharing the lessons he's learned, the battles he's fought, and victories he's earned along the way. Let's get started Mark. So when you're ready Mark, if you can let me know how you grew up, how you were brought up with your parents. My name is Mark Herman. I'm almost 51. I was born in Santa Clara, California in 1974 to Robert and Celeste Herman. My father was a Santa Clara police officer and my mother worked at Kaiser Hospital we were kind of the all American, typical family of the 70s. These two kids. Little home, my parents worked really hard. Yeah, everything was, fairly normal childhood. Most of my life, we packed up I think when I was two or three years old. My dad got hired on it, the Nevada State Highway Patrol. So we went from Santa Clara to Incline Village Lake Tahoe and I spent, my early adolescence growing up in Incline. picture perfect neighborhood, picture perfect life. you know, the forest, the lake, skiing all winter long. How cool is that? It was a pretty beautiful way to grow up. I think it's something that, Me as a parent, I never got to give that to my son and I always felt bad about it, but it's like different circumstances different era But yeah, I spent a lot of my childhood that I remember was all in the incline village Lake Tahoe and then my dad ended up leaving the highway patrol and if I'm correct, he got hired at McDonald Douglas aeronautics so I went from very wealthy, vanilla, life and inclined, all of a sudden we're living in Garden Grove. Wow. And, spent about a year in Garden Grove, and then some stuff had happened with my father, I ended up hopping on an airplane and coming back to Santa Clara and living with my grandparents. Okay. So, that was probably around nine years old. Fairly normal childhood in the beginning. Then we moved to Orange County, my parents always kept their shit sheltered, but my father ended up having a pretty gnarly mental breakdown when I was a kid and, ended up in the loony bin and my mom being a good lady, they put me on a airplane to, Santa Clara to go live with her parents I didn't really know what was going on. Like I said, they kept me pretty sheltered, but my dad had gotten in some pretty serious trouble. Once again, my mom knew the safest place for me to be was with my grandparents. this is my grandma, my grandpa, and I had an uncle. who is still alive, who is mentally handicapped. Very cool. I lived with them and then, a couple years later I should say, my parents ended up coming back to the Bay Area. Later finding out, like I said, my dad had a complete nervous breakdown and then my parents went from being homeowners to, all of a sudden, we're living in an apartment. my parents are having to rebuild their lives and, my mom always worked at Kaiser. After some time I lived with my parents again. They ended up buying a house in Santa Clara. Life you know, it was weird. My, dad was a certain way when I was growing up. I always looked at him like a superhero. He was a big buff cop, had a gun. You know, he used to drive me to school in his patrol car when we lived in Incline. And, when I'd, get to school, he'd turn all the sirens off and all the kids would come running up. it was always a big deal when I got to school. when I started living with my parents again. I knew all the stuff that happened to my dad, but I didn't really know the extent of it. Right. When you're a little kid, it's kids are resilient to trauma. They are. they just kind of go on with their lives. Yeah. Afterwards, for me anyway. And then, I noticed when my dad came home, he was different. All he did was sleep. Didn't work. Right. Do you think it was, his medication that was on a bunch of meds, He, wasn't the same dude, I was, like I said, I was a little kid. I was in la la land and I didn't know what happened. When I revert back to the memories of my life, I remember before I ended up on the airplane going back to my grandma's house, I was in a patrol car of a police car. My dad had a full blown fucking riot in his bedroom with, Garden Grove Police Department at three something in the morning. Then I went off and lived with Grandma and Grandpa and life was back to normal and good, right? Right. How was change from living with your grandparents? How were they with you? we had some conversations in regards to your grandfather. My grandfather was a child of Spanish immigrants, hardworking man, very catholic, first, second generation, Santa Clara people, Spaniards, Mexican and Portuguese people. Grandpa had 11 children, he knew how to parent. Yes. Owned a plumbing business and, just old school, but I think my grandparents, they felt bad for me when I moved there. they babied me. They took great care of me. They enrolled me in school. I remember when I started school, I started acting out. You don't know you're acting out when you're a fucking little kid, right? you're just fucking doing it and whatever's going on through your brain. So I'm living with my grandparents they've got an old school Spanish looking house in Santa Clara. My family still has it. I lived in this little house I had no friends. I remember when my mom put me on the airplane. I had a, I think it was like a old bowling ball back and I had it full of my matchbox cars and I hopped on an airplane in my pajamas. Oh wow. Then this shit happened like the next morning. My dad freaked out, fucking beat up a bunch of cops, even though he was a cop, like full fucking nutcase shit. I don't really remember all the chaos. My dad was fucking loud. My dad was a big tough guy. Fucking big buff guy. he was a boxer. He fought, did judo. very well educated man. Probably one of the smartest humans I've ever met. He had a degree in mathematics and law enforcement. That's sharp. He grew up. Post World War II parents. My grandfather was a lieutenant, it was an officer in the air force, war hero guy, all this stuff, and I, like I said, I come from the era where your parents beat the shit out of their kids and, you know, how it was, spankings were allowed. Yeah. Spankings were allowed and my house, punching your kids in the fucking face was acceptable too. Anyhow, back to it. I ended up getting off this airplane and moving in with my grandma and grandpa I knew I was safe when I was with them. my dad, he was loud, scary dude, My mom was his whole life, you know? never hit my mom, he wasn't that kind of man. He loved her. He loved the shit out of her, but he had no hesitation of fucking up his kids. I will fuck you up. you knew you fucked up, and you knew he was about to come fuck you up after you got fucked up. When you were in Santa Clara, You ended up, hanging out with some skaters, Yeah, like I said, my parents came back, and, I think I was about 9 or 10. got into skateboarding, it was the mid 80s, it's not like it was today. I ended up seeing these guys that were skateboarding in the neighborhood that were older. And I was like, fuck, that looks cool. I come from such a jock household. My father lettered like every sport you could letter in high school. Wrestling, baseball, football. My dad did all that shit. My brother, I have an older brother, who's almost 60 he's full jock guy. I always thought it was lame. I was never that dude who was watching football with my family. I was a little kid that liked to listen to music, liked art, and I grew up with a bunch of sports, my dad didn't understand why I didn't ever want to play football. As my mom said, we signed you up for soccer and you were this little blonde kid and you'd just be standing, In the field, picking the little daisies out of the ground and shit while the whole soccer team is running by. You do jiu jitsu with me, you know how I do it. Yeah, yeah. We're on the same team and I'm still like that. but I just never was interested in playing football. But something about skateboarding, I remember seeing the guy skateboarding and it looked so free. I watched these guys with camaraderie and they were all skateboarding together. I was like, shit, that looks like a lot of fun. they look cooler than my brother and my dad. So I got drawn to skateboarding. my parents left out of town one time and actually let me rewind myself. When I was still in Orange County before my dad got sick, there was this man and this woman. They lived at the end of our court. They were a Latin couple, they skateboarded and they rode these little thin skateboards and they were awesome. And they did it together. Mm-hmm The guy had, like a baja bug that was all souped up. I would go out there and he'd be washing his baja bug and I would, ask him if I could help. He'd let me help him wash his car and stuff. And then one day he gave me a skateboard. It was this little tiny skateboard and I was just like, Whoa, later to find out, this man and his wife were both professional skateboarders and they were a Primo and Diane Desidero. very cool. They were like a skateboarding team. They had their own show at, SeaWorld out in Southern California. That's pretty much where, I really got introduced to skateboarding. Then the stuff with my dad happened and I just got thrown on an airplane and, skateboarding was done. But, back to fast forward. My parents left out of town, I had a party. Some drunk kid left, a skateboard on my parents front porch. So that's really how I ended up with my first skateboard. It was a Sims Jeff Phillips nice early 80s and I rode that thing until it snapped in half and then following Christmas. I begged my mom. We went to this place called Sessions. That's at Sunnyvale, California and I was a little kid and You know I picked up my trucks and wheels and my deck and all that stuff and then it was on after that and then some of the other kids from the neighborhood are still my friends, like Tom and, my friend Larry, we have this little group of skateboarders. then, we all started junior high school. Met the other skateboarders from the other little suburbs of where we lived. You know, we ended up, we were a little gang. 10, 15 kids, all meeting up in the morning, smoking cigarettes. You know, 12, 13 years old and, yeah, my, my life was skateboarding, from, I want to say 12 years old till I'm in my fifties now and I'm still buying skateboards. I board every now and then, but yeah, I've been a skateboarder my whole life. That's great. Awesome. Were there any challenges in your early life that really affected you? I've got a lot of learning disabilities. I've had those since I was a kid. I have always hated school. Started cutting school at a super young age. I remember I just, I'd be at school and I just wanted to go ride my skateboard. I struggled so much. I was always that kid. It was like, from the time I started school, I'm left handed and back in the eighties and everything where we lived, it always have to get pulled out of class. Left handed, I guess, was considered a disability, so I would have to go to another class, and they'd put my arm in a sling, like it was broken, and I'd have to go trace my, do all my cursive with my finger. So they forced you to try to learn Yeah, they put a cookie tray in front of me, full of salt, and my left hand would be a sling, and I'd have to do my alphabet and cursive and write all my stuff with my index finger to try to get me, to become right handed. Wow. Then, time goes by and, I remember I, they helped me back in first grade just cause they were like, he's not ready to go into second grade. And that was a struggle. And I was always that kid to where it was like, I wasn't dumb, but I always had a hard time learning. You know, especially, they call it ADD now or whatever, ADHD, I can focus on shit really hard if I'm into it, but it's if it's something that doesn't spark my interest, it's just, yeah, it's out, It's fucking gone, right. and my dad being a very educated man that he is, and fucking math, it was my dad's thing. Like I said, my dad grew up in a house where if you didn't get straight A's, you got your ass kicked. Oh, wow. That's rough. My grandmother was gnarly. She raised all four of her boys, so my dad passed that down to where not having straight A's in school was unacceptable. It meant you were fucking lazy. Oh. They didn't know I had all these learning disabilities, and I remember, early MTV's out. I loved watching MTV. I love music. And my dad would be like, he'd have my flashcards for math for my times tables. And it would be like three times seven and I would just fucking stare at him and he'd be like three times seven and it's the same shit as jiu jitsu like he showed me the answer even you know and I just look at him fucking just like fuck and my dad would be I'd be like I don't know and my father would be like I listen to you sing all these words word for word. On this fucking MTV shit and you can't remember your fucking times tables, and I'd just be like, fuck, I don't know what the fuck's wrong with me. You just learn different, And eventually I ended up with a tutor. They got me this tutor. She was actually my older brother's girlfriend. I have an older brother. He's eight years older than I am. And this lady was fucking smart enough somehow to where she put my, Times tables to a four count. Just to get me rhythmically knowing the answers. Nice. One times one is whatever. Two times two is whatever, And we'd go over this and she would pound it into my head. The same way, musically. then all of a sudden I learned how to do fucking math because this 18 year old chick that my brother was dating Patient enough to figure you out. Help me add the dots together. school is always hard for me. I've always been that kid that talks too much. My parents, they go do their conferences and they're like other than the fact that, he doesn't retain anything. We tell him he talks too much, and it went like that from my, Elementary school career, junior high school, all the way through, what high school I did. I stopped going to high school in 10th grade. Okay. And it just, always had a hard time with education. So what'd you do when you, weren't going to school? What did you end up doing? I hung out with my girlfriend. I rode my skateboard a lot. Didn't have a lot of direction. then, When I was about 17 years old, I got my girlfriend pregnant. Okay. And my parents were both teen parents in the 60s with my older brother. When they graduated high school, they ended up having my brother. My dad went and got a job at Ford Motor Company as a spot welder while he went to college. I'm not sure what my mother did, but I got my girlfriend pregnant, came home and told my parents. My dad was pretty much check this out. I'm not going to raise your kid and you're not fucking going to school. So you're going to go get a job. This is before all the tech stuff had like really popped off. I went and got a job at this place, I think it was called Media Publications. Oh, It was a big publishing house. All the little tech companies out here started popping off and had this job as a delivery driver. I would have to, show up in the morning. Like I said, I was a kid. I wasn't fucking responsible fucking at all. At this point, I think I was probably around 18 years old. I had a driver's license and that was the only requirement. They gave me a little bobtail truck and, basically I would deliver these giant boxes, just these binders that were just all this paper. Like I said, it was all the old school computer shit. They didn't have discs. It wasn't the way it was, you know, it is today. I was a delivery driver and then I hurt my back. I got in a little accident in an elevator and I ended up blowing out a couple of discs in my back and ended up on workers comp. A couple months later, they're trying to, they're just giving me medication. They're like, oh, you'll get better. You're young. Lots of pills. My girlfriend at the time who, she later went on to become my wife and I had another kid with her later, but she ended up losing the baby. She had a miscarriage and, I was young. I'm a dude. I was just, fuck, this sucks. I'm disabled. No more skateboarding at this point. About a year goes by. just to rewind at this time, I'm already dropped out of school. My kid's mom is now dropped out of school and it was like her, senior year of high school. Oh wow. I don't think you could really walk around pregnant at high school back in the early nineties. She ended up having to go to continuation school because she was pregnant. She ends up having the miscarriage. All of a sudden, from what I recall, she wanted to go back to regular high school. So she goes back to regular high school. at this point, I'm this 18 year old kid. I got a broken back. I'm not working. I'm living at home with my parents. Right. I can barely walk. I spent my days smoking weed and popping pills and, I went from this active skateboarder teenager to, all of a sudden I'm this just fucked up loser kid living on my parents couch in Santa Clara, walking on a cane, right leg didn't really work. I smoked a lot of weed and I ate a lot of pills I was the 18 year old loser dude that would, go pick his girlfriend up from school. when she had enrolled back in school, she had enrolled with this other girl. they ended up having a bunch of classes together. The girl would show up at parties. then, out of nowhere, she always started asking me if I sold weed. I'd be like, nah, I don't sell weed. Right. So, One day, my, my ex and I, we were kids. We used to have this, 68 Dodge Charger. Mm hmm. Big ol gas hog, big 440, engine in it. Big Hemi motor and, 20 back in the day to gas up that fuckin thing. You know? Yeah. From empty to full. And I bought a bunch of hash. fuckin irresponsible kid. Bought a bunch of hash, fuckin then I didn't have any fuckin money. So this girl who always asked me for fucking, if I had any buds. One day I see her in the morning and I'm like, hey, you want to buy some hash? Then what happened? She was like, yeah. So I met her after school. She hopped in the car, we drove away from the campus. I sold this chick. some hash, right? didn't think nothing of it. She gave me,$30 dropped her back off at school and my kid's mom and I drove off. Then life goes on, a few months later, I ended up having back surgery. Oh man. I ended up having to get my, they got me all straightened up again. And this time in my life, I went from I think, before I got hurt, I was about 180 pounds. Then Fast forward, a couple of years of having a back injury, not being able to walk, I've blown up to about 285 pounds. Wow. I just turned into a beefcake. I'm 6'2 and I can carry some weight and still not look like, a fatty. But, at this point in my life, I was a fatty. You gained 100 pounds. Yeah. So I have this back surgery, all this stuff, and it's my girlfriend's, coming up on her prom, and it was, I'll never forget it. It was May 5th. Cinco de Mayo. It was 19, I think it was like 1994, 93. I'd been out of the hospital for about four or five days, and I'm walking down the hallway, and my mom worked at Kaiser, she was always up at five in the morning drinking her tea and getting ready for work. I'm on my walker and I'm walking down the hallway and my mom looks at me and she goes, are you excited for today or da da da da da? She starts talking to me and all of a sudden I hear this fucking knock on her door. And it's like not even 6am yet. Oh yeah. my mom's standing there and I turn to the right And I opened the door and there's fucking 20 men standing on our fucking front porch with fucking windbreakers, beanies, and fucking, you know, some of the dudes had masks on and a bunch of fucking guns. I'm like, what the fuck? And they were like, Mark Herman? And I was like, yeah. And they just fucking came in the house, put me on the fucking ground. My father, at this point, he's working his job. At the time, I think it was like the first year that the sharks, the San Jose Sharks had gone to the playoffs. So my brother had been waiting in line to get fucking playoff tickets. So it's just fucking me and my mom in the house. Dang. Cops fully raid our house. I don't even know what the fuck I did. They had a warrant out for my arrest. I was just what the fuck did I do? You know? You didn't even have any idea? I didn't, but at the time, I was popping so many pills. This is before the opiate crisis, there wasn't so much opiate awareness and, I'm a teenage kid and I'm popping, 10, 15 Vicodin a day and smoking a bunch of weed and driving my car. They came basically, raided the house. My dad had just got home working graveyard at Santa Clara University. He was like one of the heads of public safety there. They threw me in cuffs, fuckin threw me in the back of a police car, you know? You've been to my mom's house, you've seen the neighborhood I grew up in. Yeah, it's beautiful. I remember looking out the window and the whole neighborhood was fuckin just standing on their porches going what the fuck's going on at the Hermann house? Cause I live in this fucking, total suburban neighborhood, white suburbia back in the 80s and 90s, right? I remember seeing the cops and they had this big banner. They were like, trying to hang it up on the front of my parents house. I remember my dad walking up to the police car. My dad was fucking furious. he didn't know what was going on. I didn't, at this point, I didn't even know what the fuck was going on. They just had a warrant for my fucking arrest. So my dad ends up looking at me, and I saw him mouth, you know, the windows are rolled up on the fucking SWAT cars, and fucking my dad looks at me and he goes, whatever they say they're gonna do to you, you keep your fucking mouth shut. He was a cop. Yeah, best advice. He knew I was about ready to fucking go through a ringer. So, he told me to keep my mouth shut, and then, They didn't drive me off right away. They were trying to hang up this fucking banner in front of the house that said, what it said, ANET, we got you. It's like alcohol and narcotics enforcement team. They're trying to mark you. It was the thing they set up. It was like Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, all the, it was a county drug task force. I didn't know this is what I later found out, but yeah, I end up, they drive me back to Los Gatos. I'm like, fuck, why am I going back to Los Gatos? Then all of a sudden they take me to the Los Gatos police department. Right. Put me in a fucking holding cell. then all of a sudden, fucking, I start seeing people from fucking my girlfriend's school. Like some of the older boyfriends and some of the older dudes that were seniors. We're all in this holding cell and everybody's just what the fuck? We just all got woken up at six o'clock in the morning. Oh wow. All of a sudden, they grabbed me again and they put me into like interrogation room. I'm sitting there at a desk in a fucking little light. I'm in my fucking pajamas. I just had back surgery the fucking week before. Dang. It's all shock and awe shit, I was shell shocked. All of a sudden this dude came in, fucking introduced himself, told me he's fucking, detective for, Los Gatos Police Department. And he starts telling me, fucking, I'm being charged with, sales, distribution, transportation. Transportation with a minor in the car cause my girlfriend, you know, was a teen, she wasn't an adult yet. Right. A couple of years younger than me. She was 16. I was 18. It's not weird age gap. I was just like, fuck, but I didn't still know yet what I'd done. Then all of a sudden I'm back in this fucking holding cell. They, they did all this shit. They're like, where'd you get this hash from? It still had a stamp, saying it was from Turkey on it. I wasn't going to rat on my friend. I got it from, so basically make a long story short. I have no idea. I'm sitting in this fucking holding cell now all by myself and fucking downtown Los Gatos and the fucking door opens up and this fucking female cop walks in. I can got her uniform on. I look at her. I'm in complete fucking utter shock. It's this chick that had been in all of my girlfriend's classes. Oh wow, she was undercover. I got caught up in some fucking 21 Jump Street shit. Wow. You know? Yeah, you did. I was just like, fuck, I didn't even know what I You know, when you're a kid, you don't think of a lot of the repercussions of shit you do and little things but like I sold one gram of hash At 18 years old and it changed my whole fucking life and it wasn't like I was out trying to fucking ball or be a drug dealer. Dumb kid fucking hooked on drugs needed 30 bucks to gas up my car and I sold some fucking shit to an undercover cop and she wasn't old. She was only like 24, but she looked young enough she could be a fucking high school student, I always saw this chick, at parties or eating lunch with my fucking girlfriend. Cause it was an off campus high school back in the day, I'd go meet him off campus. She was just fucking little Mexican chick wearing a Metallica shirt. All of a sudden I ended up on a, every news channel in the fucking Bay Area and on the cover of the Mercury news, it was a big deal. At this time, I'd get a slap on the wrist, but back then, any form of fucking concentrated cannabis was the same as getting caught with heroin. It was all felony. Absolutely. So I didn't really know what kind of trouble I was in. They ended up taking me from, Los Gatos to downtown. I ended up sitting in jail, in downtown on West Heeding, that big tower that's sitting right there. And I'm just, like I said, I'm just a fucking kid. I remember sat in there for a couple days and then I think it was day two. I got really sick. I'm in this fucking cell with this little dude coming off of methamphetamines. All of a sudden I got the worst flu of my life. My house just got fucking raided. I just got out of the hospital and I'm sitting in jail and all of a sudden, I got this little fucking tweaker dude, fucking in the top bunk just shaking and fucking crying. then all of a sudden I got the sweats from the withdrawals I got diarrhea and I don't even have any idea I'm withdrawing cause my mom started weaning me off my fucking meds when I came home. Okay. But I had no idea So all of a sudden I'm going through full fucking opiate withdrawal in the jail. A couple of days, go by and I have my first court case and they've got me fucking, in my little jumpsuit handcuffed. I go to court and all I can see is my fucking dad sitting in the courtroom. Wow. I was just like, fuck, leave me here to fucking rot. I don't want to have to deal with this dude. This dude's going to fucking kill me if I get out of jail. Right. And he just, like I said, he gave me this look like you're fucked. So, they're going through and they start reading all the people's dockets and everything. Judge calls my number and my name. I stand up and the fucking DA dude starts saying his stuff and then my dad stands up says his name and says, your honor, may I approach the bench, please? My dad goes up I didn't hear what he said cause he was whispering to the judge, but he'd said something to the fact that, he'd been a cop for years in Santa Clara, serve the community. Can he talk to me, at a different time? I don't know the right terminology, but anyhow, they cleared out the fucking courthouse. Put me back into the, the holding cells in the back. The guards come bring me out, and it's just me, my father, the judge, the DA, and the bailiffs. Okay. The judge starts talking to my dad, and my dad basically had asked the judge. Can I get him out on his own recognizance, because my bail was through the fucking roof. Right. The judge looked at my dad and he was just like, how can we trust you to watch him before we let him out on his own recognizance? I don't care if you're a fucking cop or what you were. He goes, this kid lived in your house and fucking, he's a drug dealer, you know, fucking, and I was just like, fuck. Somehow the dude let me go. I got out on my fucking, O. R. They brought me back to the jail. I remember sitting there being like, Fuck, I don't even know what the fuck's gonna happen to me. I don't even know the severity of the situation. I'm just more afraid of the fact that fuckin I'm gonna have to go home and face my dad. Oh, yeah. They fuckin take me out of my cell. Fuckin let me loose on West Heeding. Like 5:30 in the morning and I'm fucking back in my pajamas that i came in. I'm standing there freezing my ass off and I bum a cigarette off some dude who just got out I'm sitting there fucking smoking. I don't even have shoes on. My dad used to drive this fucking Beefy red 92 IROC Camaro. It's pouring rain outside and all of a sudden fucking my dad pulls up in his Camaro. I'm like, fuck the Grim Reaper just pulled up in his car and walk down the fucking steps of West Heeding out of the jail. I opened the door and I sit down and I go to say something to my fucking dad. motherfucker just throws a right hand. Oh no. That was the last thing I saw was him just turn and a right hand get raised, and then all of a sudden we're going like 120 miles an hour. heading back to our house in Santa Clara and I remember fucking like when I was coming to all I could hear was this rattling In my ear my dad punched me so hard. He knocked the window off the fucking track of the car I fucking smashed it with my head. Oh, Fucking get back to the house. End up going into my room and then I fucking you know, dad broke my jaw. Ouch! Okay, I'm extra fucked. Crashing out, wake up in the morning and our kitchen had all of a sudden been turned into the fucking war room. My dad had already been on the phone with attorneys and my dad knew the law. My dad went to law school. I sat down at the table and he was like, Mark, you've got fucking 13 felony charges. That's a lot to deal with at your age. I was like, fuck. And my dad goes, you're going to prison. I was just like, fuck, I'm going to prison. Uhhuh, I'd seen all the prison movies, so I knew I didn't want to go to prison. Right. They ended up getting me an attorney and, remember going to meet the attorney with my dad. Mm-hmm And the guy was like, you're fucked. He's you don't look good. He goes, You're an 18 year old kid. You got a full fucking sleeve of tattoos. You have no high school education, no nothing. he's like, you look like a total fucking loser. He goes, and that's the picture they're painting of you right now. And truth be told, I was a fucking loser at that point in my life. My attorney was like, you need to go get your GED. So I went and got my GED. The part of my own recognizance shit that I got released on, I had to go check in at this office. So I check in at this office, I got to submit a drug test, three times a week and I've got to be on point calling these people. I'm not even allowed to leave my house. Right. We go to the court date, my first court date, show up with my attorney, they're trying to do all this plea bargaining stuff. I also leave, I've left this out. My son's mom got arrested too. My girlfriend got arrested. Oh no. Okay. I'm out on my own recognizance and my girlfriend's still in juvenile hall and they wouldn't let her out. Her mom ends up getting her an attorney and she's out at this point too, but now she's got to go through a juvenile trial. So they're trying her, and she's in just as much fucking trouble as I am, but she's a kid. And she didn't really do nothing wrong except go to school with this chick and like befriend her. It happened to be my girlfriend, and I was the one who did the fucking dumb shit. I'm not allowed to contact her. They found out she'd been pregnant. So they stuck me with a statutory rape charge. Oh, no. When you get arrested, they throw everything at you and they wait for a couple of things to stick. So time goes by, they start removing some of my fucking charges because they're bullshit. I'm still not allowed to talk to my girlfriend, just same case. My attorney, it was so public when everything happened back in the day that my attorney's we need to fucking stretch this out. It was an election year in California when it happened. All the drug stuff was still super old school. So it was like, yeah, I was in trouble. Then basically time went by they drew the shit out until I was in my twenties. I was about 20 years old by the time, I got sentenced. My girlfriend, you know, we're all reunited now. Her mom, was like this dude didn't do nothing to her. He's her boyfriend, they've been together since they were kids. She's finishing up her trial and then all of a sudden she gets, all of her charges dropped. That's great. My attorney had told her attorney, I'm working out a deal to get Mark, you know, a lot of his shit dropped, just misdemeanor. My dad was a police officer. He was able to pull some strings, very fortunate and blessed. I had parents who had a little more and they were able to do some shit for me. I ended up with a misdemeanor. My kid's mom has her trial and she gets let go on a entrapment. Then her mom ends up on channel seven news. Her mom called the news. What'd she say? Just talking how she's going after the Los Gatos police department. She just won her case and it was against her kid, she's suing the Los Gatos PD. I remember my fucking dad seeing the fucking news, and my dad's she's gonna fuck everything up. For you. For me. So all of a sudden, my ex mother in law ends up on the news. We get a phone call from my attorney the next morning, and they're dropping my plea bargain, and they're throwing all their, everything they got at me. Oh shit. So, all of a sudden I'm fucked again. My dad was like, you're gonna go to fucking prison, you're not gonna come out the same fucking dude you were, we're fucked, she just killed you. He reached out to a friend, and I can't say any names or anything, that was a judge. They used to be cops together. Right. Dad knew some things, I guess. That's great. Said to dude, hey, you know, they're trying to send my kid to fucking prison for a few years. The dude was like, he's fucking in a lot of trouble. Wrapped this little section up. Does the best he can for me. I end up getting fucking a year on house arrest. That's fair. Okay, I end up with two felonies. I end up with felony controlled substance, felony distribution of a controlled substance. I forget what the fucking kind of probation they put me on was. But it was a four year probation. And if I fucked up, I went to prison. Yep. So all of a sudden I'm like, fuck. And my dad's just like, I remember I got sentenced. Come home the next day. I had to go show up to fucking Brokaw Road to the department of fucking probation and shit. My dad looks at me and he goes look man. He goes you've fucked your life up because you're a fucking convicted felon He goes you got a disability because my back, I've been on workers comp this whole time Mm hmm, and you know my fucking my dad Dude dropped like 50 grand and I have this fucking settlement coming from my fucking back injury. So like I said, God bless my father, but he kept me from going to prison and he told me, he said, you're this kid you're covered in fucking tattoos. You're basically was like, you're a fucking loser. He's like, and you're going to either figure some shit out or go to prison. I was just like, fuck, They offered me, my worker's comp. They had to retrain me. It was part of my settlement. That's good. All of a sudden they were like, you got this money for college. So fucking, I got this ankle monitor on me fucking at this point. You know, got to wear this shit for a year. I'm only allowed to leave the house to go to school. Work I didn't have or fucking NAAA meetings. Right. So I end up fucking signing up for a nursing program. It's one of the little, business colleges they used to have out here back in the day. I fucking did that. Then they gave me this like ungodly amount of community service hours that I had to do too. Yeah. So I worked at the, Humane Society of Santa Clara shoveling dog shit, on my free time. At that point, I did anything just to get out of the house. I used to go to fucking, if I wanted a day away from being stuck at home, and I was stuck at home with my fucking dad too. Okay. There was no cell phones back then, fuckin basic cable, fuckin old school Playstation, not a lot. So, I end up graduating from fuckin college, and all of a sudden I start working, I'm at El Camino Hospital, and like I said, I'm in my early 20s. I'm like, fuck, I got this job, I just did all this college. Then, the supervisor comes in, and he's like, you can't, we gotta let you go. I was like, okay, and he's you got felonies on your record. Yep. And I was just like, fuck, can't be around drugs in a hospital, and I got a fucking drug conviction. They end up letting me go and now at this point, I'm just, I'm fucked and was very unemployable. No, no redeeming qualities to say hire me, except felonies and a bunch of fucking tattoos and still being really young. Then I want to say a couple of weeks afterwards, I ended up getting, the financial end of my, workers comp settlement. All of a sudden this check shows up for around a hundred grand. I remember my dad being like, Cool! He drove me right to the bank. Fuckin took half of it. Cause he put up all this fuckin money for my attorney fees. And made me pay my fuckin restitution. He paid all my shit right up front. Cause he was like, You're gonna get violated if you don't pay this restitution. You're gonna go to fuckin jail for a few years. That's where people always fuck up. Then like he had his name on an auto loan for me and then he took me to the car dealership and was like fucking made me pay off my fucking car. We got home and my dad goes cool we've gotten through all this shit he goes you got that monitor on your ankle he goes you need to get the fuck out of my house. I just fucking looked at him and he was like you fucking went and made a baby He goes, you went and got yourself arrested. He goes, you embarrassed the fuck out of me and your mom. He goes, get the fuck out of my house. Wow, that's hard. I fucking looked at him and I was like, when? And he goes, I'm giving you less than a month. He goes, to get your shit together, and get all your fucking shit out of my fucking house. He was like, fuck you. I was just like, fuck. But back then, I had like close to$50,000 in my bank account. Uhhuh, I remember my girlfriend that I got arrested with, you know who I ended up marrying and having another child with. We went and got our first apartment. We walked into this spot. I got 50 racks. I think I'm bawling, you know what I mean? So I'm just like, get us this apartment, furnish it. We're not even working. I think she's got like a part time job and we got this apartment. Right. we're just fucking blowing through this fucking money I have. Wow. I wasn't allowed to leave the house other than going to school, so it was just a lot of delivery, takeout, and fucking just consuming, buying shit. Fucking a year goes by, and all of a sudden I'm fucking broke. They cut my little house arrest monitor off my leg. I gotta go find a job. So I had a whole year of just fucking being on house arrest, going to school, spending money, and then all of a sudden, I gotta find a job, and I couldn't find a fucking job anywhere. A family friend worked at a machine shop, they got me a job at a machine shop, fucking terrible machinist. I was the delivery driver, I was the janitor, they'd throw me on a fucking machine. I had no fucking skills in, the machining shit, doesn't click with my brain. But they just had me there to do whatever. Then, I was playing music with Tom and Larry we have this like little bullshit band and then, Tom ended up joining the Marine Corps. I started playing music with, some of my friends. I'd gotten my house arrest monitor removed, I was playing, trying to start a little band. Right on. And we ended up getting a little studio. like I said, I still have this job at the machine shop, then one day we're jamming. There's this band that's rehearsing across from us and there's no singer. It's just fucking metal band. They're just going ape shit in the room. I was just like, whoa, these dudes are fucking gnarly you know, and I went and I knocked on the door. They're like, come on in. And I came in and I was like, Yo, my name's Mark! And I was like, dude, You guys sound killer, can I just watch? they were like, sure. Dude, He goes, you know how to sing? We just kicked out our singer. And I was like, I can try, So I ended up grabbing the microphone, fucking start jamming out with these dudes, doing my best like Pantera fucking, voice I could put on, and the drummer, he was like, you got a good voice, dude. You scream, it was that kind of music, and I was just like, yeah, and he was like, wanna come jam with us again? I gave him my fucking phone number, it was all pre cell phone and shit, right? I go back to my apartment and I look at my, girlfriend, future wife, whatever, kid's mom. I was like, I met these dudes in this band. And she was like, yeah, okay, fucking, what about your friends that you're jamming with? And I was like, I don't, I don't know. They just asked me to come back and jam. So I showed up like the next day and jammed with them again. they'd already had a CD they'd put out with their original singer. At this point, I'm still in my early 20s. Yeah. I learned all these guys material, on their first record. That moment, became one of the most pivotal moments of my life. I joined a band. Just normal kid dreams of being in a band. Just happy I get to be in a band. Then we start playing shows, then I made an album with them. I ended up, I was in this band called Insolence for about 20 plus years. We're playing shows everywhere, put flyers on every wall. At this point, I was working at a machine shop and working as a bouncer. Just, whatever to make money. There was a famous club in downtown called the Cactus Club, Nirvana played there, No Doubt. It was one of the little places bands went through, before they blew up. Downtown San Jose? Downtown San Jose doesn't exist anymore. They shut the club down over 20 years now. I worked there, the owner was this guy named Calvin Trippett. I was like, I got this band. He was like, I know who you're fucking, little band is I knew them before you worked here. I'd hound him to get shows, and then, we'd start playing these little local shows there, and he'd be like, if you guys can bring in 30 people, I'll give you guys another show. Right. I had a lot of friends, and we were younger, we were kind of all cool kids that, were in this band, and, it was easy for us to get our friends to all congregate in one area. Then all of a sudden he was like, started, he always knew we were going to bring at least a hundred people to our shows. Whenever, these national acts would roll through that hadn't blown up yet to where, the body count of people that were going to walk into the venue was smaller with them, he'd always throw insolence on the bill. Nice. Because he knew we'd bring a hundred people. So we start doing that and we start pulling from these bigger acts and gaining their fans. Then all of a sudden, you know, a couple years in, we're selling the place out on our own. We're moving CDs, and we're moving merchandise. All of a sudden, I'm in the biggest band from the South Bay. All the labels, meaning the big record companies, we'd always pushed our stuff independently. Mm hmm. I'm not going to get into all the details and shit talking, but, we had somebody behind us at that time. They got, they put out the money and took all the money. Oh, yeah. And, You know, the band started blowing up like a System of a Down. Linkin Park, Papa Roach, all these bands, were blowing up. then all of a sudden record companies started finding interest in us. At this point, we're shopping around for labels. Then we had a friend who, helped us and he was like, Hey, I've been going and taking bands out to Europe. For years, I think the European market would like you. I'm still on probation. I'm not even supposed to leave fuckin California. I'm like, fuck. Uh huh. Here's this fuckin monkey on my back. Fuckin you know. At this point, I was in pretty tight with my my probation officer. He didn't fuck with me anymore. I've given the dude 2000 fucking clean piss tests, fucking graduated from fucking college. He had told me at some point down the road, he's like, I don't want to talk to you unless you get in trouble. He's like, I'm not going to fuck with you. I'm not going to bottle you. I'm going to leave you alone. Go live your life. But I was like, fuck, I got to tell this dude. I got to leave the fucking country for a fucking few months to go on tour with my fucking band. I got scared, didn't say shit. We booked this tour to Europe. Right. I remember telling my parents I didn't really talk to my folks much. They didn't want nothing to do with me. And, just to rewind, I'd also had a child at some point. My son. Right. And I got this little baby. I'm playing in this fucking band. my girlfriend is now my wife, and then all of a sudden my band is blown up. We take off to Europe. I remember talking to my dad, and my dad's you're fucking, where are you moving? I was like, I'm moving to Czech Republic. my dad was like, what the fuck are you moving to Czech Republic for? And I'm like, Oh, we met this dude, said our band could blow up out there and he's going to provide us with all of our fucking tours and all of our shit. My dad's looking at me like, how much fucking money do you have to go out there? I fucking saved up$300. My dad's like, you're going to move to fucking Czech Republic. You're leaving the country with$300 for months. I was like, yeah, fuck it. My dad's like, you have a fucking baby. I was like, yeah, he's cool. what about your wife? I was like, she's cool. You know, he'll figure it out. Being the very irresponsible kid that I was, you know, I hopped on an airplane and there was like, it was like band was all I did. It's all I breathed. It gave me everything that I wanted. In my life, just to rewind it back, I had no friends when I was growing up. Like when I was a really little kid, when I was living with my grandparents, I struggled a lot to fit in. I was six feet tall when I was twelve. I didn't stand out for the shit that I wanted to stand out for. I got picked on a lot, fucking all the nicknames, Big Bird, Baby Huey, fucking all that shit, right. all of a sudden, I'm this young man on an airplane and I'm flying to fucking Czech Republic with my band. That sounds amazing. Started my life as a touring musician at that point, we moved out to Czech Republic. it was me and, five of my best friends and we lived in a little flat in a town called Tplitza and the man who was taking care of us was this fucking Czech mobster. His name was Peter. He put us up in our flat and we lived in this little neighborhood called Taplitza. The city that we actually lived in, the suburb, it was called Dubie. We showed up and it was just like fuckin first, first time ever, fuckin any of us had ever left. two white kids, couple Mexican kids, a Filipino dude, and all of a sudden we're in this little village in Czech Republic. It's got all the village vibes. We went and ate at some restaurant the day we went to our flat. Did he take care of you the whole time you were there? He took care of us the whole time, but we had no idea where we moved. We're living in this little town there ain't a fucking 7 Eleven on the fucking corner, like you, you got to buy your own food or you got to go somewhere to eat, that we assumed. So I remember the first night we're there, everybody's hungry. It's like, let's go back to that restaurant we had lunch at, all of a sudden, me and the band would walk down to this restaurant, but the vibe in the restaurant is completely different. What's the vibe like? It's a brothel. So we're sitting there and you know, we're waiting to get fucking food and all of a sudden all these fucking Eastern European fucking women start fucking walking out, fucking, mini skirts, fucking lace, all that shit, sitting down next to us and we're like just fucking here for dinner. We finally figure everything out and then come find out we're living in the red light district. Oh, dang. Okay, In this town and the main street is called Dubie and it goes from fucking Germany into Czech, it's like a hundred miles of nothing but whorehouses and fucking street prostitutes. Okay? Everything's normal town during the day. Night time, this fucking whole place fucking turns into a whorehouse. It was like our home base, basically. Our tour agent manager guy would pick us up in this little Volkswagen fucking bus. Mhm. All of our gear fit in the back of it and we were fucking cramming this little fucking Volkswagen, like sardines with this fucking Czech mobster high on methamphetamines fucking driving us all through Europe. You know, and we're making a little bit of money. He paid us every night. Oh, that's good. He paid himself too. Mm hmm. He bootlegged all of our shit. Like when I remember when we showed up, he had his own t shirts made, the logo on it, and he had his own cds made he'd sell all that shit on the side while we were playing. He got us exposure and he made a few bucks off of us. So we went out there and we did that for a summer and we went all across Europe. How big was the crowds that you would play for? They were some of the biggest audiences we ever played in front of at the time. You know, at this point at home we were playing in front of 600, 000 people. We'd kind of already blown up in the Bay Area. Right. In how to draw. Now all of a sudden we're playing with all these big European bands on these festivals. We don't have a record deal. We're old school, just pimping the CDs out of the back of the fucking minivan, All of a sudden, I'm away from home. I'm away from my wife and my baby. My life before that, I had all my legal shit. I've been sober for a long time at this point. So I watched all my friends having a good time. I'm just this fucking uptight singer of this fucking band, Then I was just like, fuck it, I'm in Europe. My probation officer is not going to come, knock on my door. Okay, So I started partying again. Uh huh. I had a drug problem leading up to this, but it wasn't one that I intentionally created. I got addicted to drugs because I got injured. So, you know, I start telling myself, you're not a fucking drug addict. you can smoke weed now you can drink. So I started fucking smoking weed. Yeah. Start drinking. Yeah. I'm a fucking musician. I party. We ended up flying home and then, the newspaper, Mercury News did an article on us coming back from Europe. And all this stuff. Mm-hmm Then, we started seriously showcasing when we got home for a bunch of big record companies and then nobody was biting at the time. This is before digital music, still fucking CDs, right. cassets The internet had just started popping. Jimmy Ivy, big dog from Interscope. Fucking beats by Dre, the man at Interscope Records. He put a TV show on. It was called Farm Club and they aired it after WWE on Monday nights. You had to get votes submitted to end up on this TV show. We had a friend who worked at Kinko's Copies. He was a manager and there's 40 fucking computers in there. So we would just go in there fucking all day long and he'd have his staff doing it all day long. All of a sudden we won the amount of votes to get on this TV show. So we end up on this show, they fly the whole band down to Universal Studios. There is a band nobody's ever heard of with a bunch of young African American women called Destiny's Child. There was another hip hop group that hadn't blown up yet called, I think they were the fuckin St. Lunatics, which was Nelly. It was all these bands that were getting ready to become superstars. Right. we were the unsigned band. So, we end up doing this TV show. I forget the lady's name. I think it was Allie Landry. She was the Doritos girl for years. She was the host. And that little bald dude, Matt Penfield, that used to be on MTV. It was their show. So we end up doing it. You know, we play two songs. It's a total stage audience. Like when you're looking at this shit, you think it's fucking, kids that are into it. But it's actually just, hey, do you want to be on TV? Right. So fucking all these kids show up and make it look like a packed house. They didn't have all the, little signs telling you to clap and shit. We ended up fucking blowing the roof off the place. we get done and then, back to doing our thing and nothing happens from it except we were on national TV and that was pretty fucking cool. Right. Yeah. We go do another showcase, and we've been turned down by every fucking major record label at this point. People in the band are starting to get fucking discouraged. one of the guys quit. he'd been with us since the fucking start, even before me. what was his position? His name was Joey, he was a guitar player, he's Coach Izzy's cousin. we ended up getting a guy named, Cure. Then Cure quit. It was just like, fuck, man, we can't keep a guitar player at this point. My bass player at the time was like, dude, I know this 15 year old fucking kid. This fucking little prodigy guitar player. We're like, he's fucking 15 years old. He's like, it doesn't matter, he's fucking amazing. Little kid named Mikey shows up, fucking nerdy as fuck, but can play guitar. At this point we've had, you know, we've got a management team working for us and they're big ups in Hollywood, or the kid who was managing us, his dad was a big up in Hollywood and he linked up with our manager and every record company had turned us down. Then all of a sudden, I don't even remember the dude's name, but, we get this phone call, Hey, Madonna's label, Maverick Records is, wants to fly you down to Hollywood and have you guys do a showcase. We'd done hella showcases we were a band that always brought it live and fed off the crowd. But when all of a sudden there's just fucking four dudes standing in front of you and you're in a club that's empty, with four people judging you. They're like, go off, do your thing. We always seem to fucking drop the ball. So, I remember all of us talking and it was like, fuck, this is kind of like our last shot. They brought us into this studio in Hollywood. It was actually Rage Against The Machines fucking rehearsal studio. Madonna's best friend was this, dude named Guy Oseary. He wrote the label, signed Alanis Morissette, Prodigy, Deftones. Cool. All of a sudden we got this dude sitting in front of us. The universe came together and decided we were going to perform that night. Very cool. We get done, dude stands up, he's clapping his hands, and gives us a record deal. All of a sudden we went from local heroes to, a couple days in the paper, San Jose band, signs one point, blah, blah, blah, million dollar, record contract with Madonna's Maverick Records. We fucking blew the fuck up. just as quick as we blew up, we fucking fell apart. You know, me included, everybody's egos. Got fucking real large. We moved to Hollywood. All of a sudden, where these kids from San Jose and we're chumming around with like famous motherfuckers, in the music industry and fucking in the recording industry, movie industry, everything. Great opportunity. You know, biggest thing that ever happened to me in my life. we did all the shit bands did, before the cancel culture, like bands couldn't get away with the shit we did, or they couldn't do it now. We toured, we partied really fucking hard. We lived in Hollywood. I hate saying it cause my son's mom is such a fucking beautiful lady, kind of forgot that I had a family. Kind of forgot that I was married. Kind of forgot I was somebody's fucking dad. I was so young. Yeah, I went and did that Hollywood thing and that music thing for a huge chunk of my life. All of a sudden I was this fuck up kid from San Jose, Santa Clara. With a bunch of fucking felonies. To all of a sudden, I'm on the cover of the Mercury News, picture of my band.