Australia Must Have Some Badass Lo Mein (And Why Is A Marsupial Serving Bordeaux To Don Henley?)
Starting a business is a dirty job. Best to pack lots of disinfectant for your flight Down Under. And leave your winged shoes at the door.
It must totally suck when a bird eats your liver every day for eternity.
When my daughter Sabrina was little, my wife (aka Randommoiselle) worked in 30 Rock, the legendary tower that sits above Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. Sometimes, I would pick up Sabrina from school and we’d drop by to say hi to Random.
Passing through Rock Center, we’d always see the glowing statue of Prometheus, the Greek Titan, hanging over the ice-skating rink. His story is an ominous warning for camera-toting tourists: If you steal fire from the gods and give it to mortals, you will suffer the eternal torment of having a vital hepatic gland eaten by an eagle, only to have it regrown overnight and then consumed again. Every damn day. Forever.
Yeah, tourism is all hotel sex and selfies...until you piss off Zeus. But hey, at least that liver-munching scavenger is getting his daily recommended allowance of iron. 
I’m a liver, not a fighter.
Now leave me and my family alone, you vultures!
This (otherwise extreme) example of repetitive bird-of-flight behavior reminds me of the subject of today’s story.
Steve - a successful financier from Chicago who was helping my partners and I raise money for our new business - was likely the most colorful character I have encountered in my business life.
He was smart, likable, spoke loudly, sounded faintly like Thurston Howell III from Gilligan’s Island, used last names to address people and had several idiosyncrasies, the most prominent of which was the need to put disinfectant on his hands with alarming frequency.
Steve would even place a small-sized squirt bottle of Purell on the restaurant table in front of him and pump it into his hands, like clockwork, every 30 seconds or so.
During a business dinner in 2000, I watched Steve excitedly display his new Hermes tie and then place it gingerly back into its branded box, punctuated by pumps of Purell throughout the process.
As this scene unfolded, I thought not about the luxury brand but rather the O.G. wingman himself: Hermes, the famed Greek diety with wings on his sandals who traveled between worlds to deliver messages from the gods.
And I wondered what message Steve - in his wingtip shoes - was charged with delivering to ME.
Were the gods secretly advising that I play the long game and corner the market on cheap disinfectant, in preparation for a global pandemic twenty years in the future?
Could it have been an Olympian suggestion to up my neckwear game, to impress the local Aprodites and Persephones?
Or perhaps Steve, as he watched me eat my salad, was meant to relay a far more practical message, direct from Zeus himself:
I desperately needed to increase my iron intake.
"A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Then I splurged and had this arresting orange jumpsuit de-liver-ed to me from Hermes.” (Photo: Hermes Paris, MGM Studios)
Steve is also media-famous for purchasing a lifetime, unlimited first-class ticket on American Airlines for $250,000 in 1987. He racked up around $20 million in flights before the airline terminated his ticket in 2008 (unfairly, in my opinion).
That means Steve flew approximately once per day, EVERY DAY, for 21 years straight. Talk about putting flying birds to shame.
Years of litigation between Steve and AA followed and the case was settled without the pass being reinstated. 
The flight to Gilligan’s Island was splendid but the gift shop there sucked liked Oedipus on a milk bender.
A common friend once told me that Steve would live in the air if he could. In fact, he loved flying so much that he would routinely jet from Chicago to Australia (!) for Chinese food. Flying 25 hours to grab of plate of shrimp lo mein is like hiring Meatloaf to sing Happy Birthday in an underground bunker. Do you really want to expose your eardrums to that much deafening overload in a closed-off space just to say you did it? [ ✏️ Editor’s Note: Meatloaf passed away in January, 2022. Now, he's a strictly underground performer.][ ✏️ Editor’s Note: Too soon?]
A meatloaf made with liver is called pâté de campagne.
I would do anything for lunch…but I won’t do that.
Well, I don’t care how damn persuasive the Australian Board of Tourism is; if it expects me to fly a full day to eat some oily wok-pasta, it had better arrange a koala sommelier for my meal and a quick tryst w Kylie Minogue before my flight leaves. 
How is a beaver like a koala? He eats bush and leaves.
[ ✏️ Editor’s Note: The name “Kylie” is of Aboriginal origin, first emerged in Australia and means “boomerang”. The name “Beaverton” is of Abnormal origin, first emerged in this blog and means “ding-a-ling”.]My partner and I put every dime of savings we had into launching our business and needed access to capital to grow beyond a start-up. The plan was to bring in a small round of seed funding, followed by a multi-million dollar private placement.
And since it was 1999, any business with the magical “dot-com” at the end of its name was positioned for the ultimate prize; “going public”, a shorthand way of saying a business would be listed on a public exchange with its corporate stock available for retail purchase. That would become our directive as well.When we pitched Steve our idea for a (way-too-early) digital music platform, he slammed his hand down on the table and called it “a home run”. He decided that the best way to meet our goals was for his close circle to provide quick seed funding and then introduce us to potential investors for the next (larger) round.
Then Steve said something important, yet with the kind of casualness generally used for ordering a Chicago-style hot dog:“Now, we’re gonna fuck you on the first round."
[ ✏️ Editor’s note: A popular order of the midwestern frankfurter is “dragged through the garden”, which will net the happy eater a litany of colorful toppings including bright green relish, yellow mustard, white onions and tomato slices]. What we didn’t relish was getting dragged through the garden of giving up 25% of our fledging business for $25,000.
Geez, if you’re going to lead with that kind of weiner-reaming, the least you could do is buy us lunch.
Seed capital, Chicago-style; bun’s on the bottom, topped by a sour pickle.
Hey, at least Steve was up-front (I always give points for honesty). And it’s not like we had a choice. Plus, he was directly responsible for us eventually meeting all our goals, which is why I look back on him with fondness. Yet, I’ll save the more specific details of our business origin for a later story (oh, it will be good). Since Steve is the star today, I need to include one last anecdote about him. It contains one of only two moments in my life where, when I look back, it seemed to happen in slow motion because it was so damn unbelievable.[ ✏️ Editor’s Note: The other slow-motion memory is contained in Martin J.’s prior story entitled All Employees Must Wash Bear Paws Before Returning To Work (and May I Offer You a Hershey's Kiss...of Death?). You’d be a damn fool not to read that one next and I know your mama didn’t raise any fools.]Steve helped us complete a seven-figure raise and then we quickly turned our attention to going public (which, for us, meant a reverse merger into an existing "shell" company with a publIc exchange listing, far less expensive and time-consuming than an IPO).Steve's and his cohorts also owned the shell we would merge into. Again, he was honest about this and it meant that they would control a substantial - but not majority - interest in the new, combined company. And because they owned their shares for a longer period, they could sell immediately.
The day the paperwork was signed at our law firm's office, I spent 16 brutal hours dealing with details and was mentally exhausted by the end. When I put my signature on the last page, I was told that a feast awaited in the conference room.I opened the double doors to the gathering space and saw Steve - undeniable giddy and wearing a three-mile smile - who said the following words:Beaverton, do you have any idea how much money you just made me?
I shook my head to indicate that I hadn't a clue. I was too drained and hungry to care. And then...it happened.
The slow-motion incident. Steve walked toward me and it seemed like he was going to give me a hug (very out of character). Yet he stopped short - around a yard away - got down on his hands and knees and KISSED MY SHOES.
The guy who likely did laps in an Olympic-sized pool of Purell PUT HIS LIPS ON MY LOAFERS.
The guy who, mere days before that moment, looked askance at my outstretched hand and would only shake it when I confirmed I had just washed it, FONDLED MY FOOTWEAR.THIS CLEAN FREAK CANOODLED MY COLE HAANS.Geez, Steve - if I knew you were going to get my shoes wet with kisses, I would have waterproofed them first.In a strange twist, the primary funding for our business eventually came from a wealthy Australian family that owed a prominent insurance company. But I doubt their umbrella policy covered acts of shoe vandalism.
🎵 So I called a koala, Please bring me my wine 🎵
Mercifully, some Eagles prefer pressed Australian grapes to Greek liver.
And that, dear reader is what we call “coming full circle’.
Subscribe to Follow The Beaver™️.
I might actually post something of value someday. It would be silly to miss that.