The True Story

Pith, Marrow and Media:
The True Story of Daedalus Howell and the DHowell Media Group

This is a “living document” seeing as the subject is also living. Amendments, corrections and elaborations are encouraged in the comments section below. If you feel your contribution to this story was unrecognized or omitted, please know that is likely the result of protecting your privacy (and reputation), which can be rectified at your own risk.

Chapter 1.

Our hero is born Daedalus Christopher Howell Ferguson on July 19, 1972, and promptly sequestered in Sebastopol, CA, to begin conditioning as a cultural icon. Nixon is still president and the area that would later become known as “wine country” is still apple country. His parents spare his youth and opt to call him Christopher. Meanwhile, they study English, film and theater at Sonoma State University and bring their son to classes. He is read James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake as bedtime reading and sees all the films of the French New Wave by the age of four. At this time, it is not yet known what impact these events will have on the boy. At age 3, his brother Shannon Ferguson is born and begins a trajectory toward mid-level rock stardom despite (or perhaps due to) harassment from his elder sibling.

Chapter 2.

“Chris F.,” as he comes to be known so as to be differentiated from the dozen other children who share his name, does poorly in school, sports and most activities outside of drama, petty thievery and small cons of neighborhood children. At age 8, he commandeers the family Super 8 camera and remakes Star Wars, but with a more existentially honest ending (everybody dies). By the early 1980s, the family has moved to Petaluma, CA, the former epicenter of the poultry industry (now, mysteriously, also known as “wine country”). Chris F.’s parents (now MBAs working in the banking and tech sectors) upgrade their young auteur to VHS video equipment. Several cinematic epics are began and abandoned. In the sixth grade, Chris F. appears as Nick Bottom, the jackass in A Midsummer’s Night Dream, who is mistakenly adored by the fairy queen. Unbeknownst to the pubescent player, he is rehearsing a romantic pattern that he will repeat for the next two decades. He quits his paper route for the Petaluma Argus-Courier and pursues the arts full-time while cutting his junior high classes and perfecting his English accent to the chagrin of everyone within earshot.

Chapter 3.

Chris F. augments his dismal academic record by becoming a disciplinary problem. A ribald theatrical staging of Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb results in first suspension from high school. Subsequent star turns and suspensions follow. Though Chris F. had discovered girls at an early age, girls finally discover him. A lifelong pattern of affairs and breakups ensues.

Chris F. leaves high school to pursue a career in poetry in the cafes of Petaluma, CA and girls. His first volume of verse, Ballad of a Saxon’s Daughter and the Book of Job, is followed by other small press publications. Meanwhile, Chris F. randomly attends junior college and starts and disbands several musical street acts, one of which eventually formalizes as The Lids. Chris F. devises a self-branding plan and changes his name to “Daedalus Howell” for a variety of arcane reasons, which hearken back to early exposure to James Joyce’s writer-hero “Stephen Dedalus.” Later, he learns how to spell it.

Chapter 4.

In the early 1990s, Daedalus Howell launches a subsidy publishing company with his cohorts, which folds under the duress of being 19. Soon after, he launches SCAM Magazine, a satire tabloid, which he supports through modest advertising sales and his diabolic prowess as a telemarketer. Having accidentally accrued enough units at the junior college, Howell transfers to San Francisco State University as a Creative Writing major. This will later prove to be a colossal mistake, which takes nearly a year of heavy drinking to rectify. Howell relocates to Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco and continues pursuit of street musicianship. Returns to Petaluma, returns to San Francisco and returns to Petaluma again.

Chapter 5.

At the behest of a girlfriend, Howell answers an ad that read “Seeking reporter,” for the newspaper he delivered as a child. Armed with clips from SCAM Magazine, Howell becomes the arts editor of the Petaluma Argus-Courier. He is later recruited by the North Bay Bohemian as a theater critic and then the San Francisco Chronicle as a stringer. During this time, Howell’s friend and street musician alumnus Abe Levy begins directing independent films. He casts Howell in a string of gradually smaller roles. Contemporaneously, Howell pens his confessional comic novel The Late Projectionist, which is subsequently read by screenwriter Jerry Rapp who, encouraged by Howell’s chutzpah and naïveté, introduces him to the dark side of the screen trade.

Chapter 6.

Relocated to Hollywood, Rapp and Howell embark on a series of ill-fated and increasingly bizarre schemes (the best of which are linked here – tomb rubbers, Hollywood Confidential), while stewing in various modes of “development hell” (back lot stories) with every major studio sans Walt Disney Company, who, thanks to our management, could care less. Minor triumphs include the R&H Educational Films on Showtime and creating music videos for mid-level rock star kid brother. Later, Howell is recruited to star in Petaluma pal Raymond Scott Daigle’s film Replica after three other actors pass. He and cinematographer Abe Levy spend 10 days on location in a copy shop franchise as Daigle helms film. Throughout, Howell makes list of favors to cash in from Daigle at a later date.

Chapter 7.

With all major projects frozen, Howell wanders back to Northern California for a three-month hiatus. Encouraged by the success and wine-drenched mentorship of sommelier Christopher Sawyer, Howell concocts “Big Fish, Small Pond Theory of Micro-Celebrity” and uses taps burgeoning brand awareness of Sonoma as a platform. His popularity swells in North Bay, at least with The Contessa, whom he marries 18 months later.

Chapter 8.

Howell begins tour of duty at media startup, where he writes columns, edits a magazine, appears on radio and television and produces over 40 short films – until he and his colleagues (including Raymond Scott Daigle) are disgorged in a spray of corporate bloodletting. They regroup and form strategic partnership led by Howell and vow to right the wrongs of the world through creative media and branded entertainment. They adopt the slogan “Ars gratia artis” but abandon it when they learn it means “Art for art’s sake.” The more ambitious slogan, “Ars est pecunia,” (“Art is money”) is adopted instead.

Chapter 9.

Meanwhile, Howell has been appointed “Lifestyle Ambassador” of Sonoma County and, with Daigle, produces and appears in the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau’s video series entitled Inside Sonoma after focus groups reject the title Inside Daedalus. Howell begins the fourth regular column of his career at the Sonoma Index-Tribune to quell potential riots from his ravenous local readership.

Chapter 10.

A stickler for paperwork, Howell officially launches DHowell Media Group in Spring of 2009 and sets up offices in downtown Sonoma. Though he has mysteriously maintained the 310 area code on his cell phone for years, he is committed to growing his empire in the 707 area code. And perhaps later, the 310 and eventually the 666.

Chapter 11.

Invoking principles of quantum physics, Howell successfully places himself both in front and in back of the camera – simultaneously – in an experiment dubbed DHowell.TV. The results are released weekly on a variety of social media and video sharing platforms. The show purports to feature interviews with important figures, brief monologues and sketches (as well as interviews with sketchy figures and monologues of brief importance).

Chapter 12.

Howell and company commit to a course of producing branded entertainment and transmedia projects. After some discussion, they also commit to ascertaining the meaning of the terms as well. However, budgetary concerns lead the Group to instead commit to redefining the terms according to its own vision. And what they kind of sound like.