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American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior week 6: A Thorny Legal Issue?

26 Sep

September 26, 2010

A Quinn Martin Production

Act One: A Matter of Law

I am in no way an expert on business matters or the workings of foundations and donations, but something struck me wrong this week. Paul Sr. and OCC were involved in building a bike for the FBI. About halfway through, Senior was informed that the underwriters for the FBI bike had pulled out. I take this to assume that the FBI was not paying for the bike themselves, and rightly so, as I can’t see any justification for a government agency to be spending my tax money on a vanity bike. I am just speculating, but I guess the bike was going to be paid for by the FBI equivalent of the Policeman’s Benevolent Association, or some other charitable organization. All fair and good.

At any rate, the money disappeared. Paul Sr. decided that his OCC foundation would donate the bike to the FBI. OCC would fulfill it’s obligation and the FBI would get the bike. Again, fair and good. But here is where I got lost. Perhaps someone could explain this to me.

Once built, OCC would donate the bike to the OCC foundation (because legally they are separate entities despite being all Paul Sr.) and OCC would get a nice big tax write off for the donation. So far, so good. The problem is, the bike was still in the building stage and parts needed to be bought and expenses paid for, all of which now would come out of Sr.’s pocket.

To make up the out of pocket expenses, Sr. planned to auction off one of the OCC regular production bikes. So not only will Sr. make back his expenses from the auction, and likely make a profit too (which is fine- he is running a business, and he was not doing the FBI job for free) but with the foundation, he will also get a large tax write off. So in effect, he is donating a bike he is not paying for to himself (via his foundation) and reaping another payoff down the road, a second payoff for the bike which cost him nothing to build. The OCC foundation would donate the bike and get whatever credit they normally get for a donation, yet this asset was really only theirs through the dint of some paperwork and they wouldn’t actually be spending any of their charitable assets.

Something sounds wrong, especially when you consider that he could build the bike, recoup his expenses and a profit via the production bike auction, and them give it to the FBI right from OCC- no foundation needed.

I may be wrong, but this really sounds like the same strange transfer of assets that made a court-appointed appraiser determine that the value of OCC stock was zero. That the whole business of bike building, which Paul Sr. spent twenty years building, was valueless. I don’t know what, but something sounds fishy to me.

Act Two- A Matter of Ethics.

So how hard is Paulie really working?

Since he began the new web bike, Paulie has said over and over how they have little time to get it done, how many long days they have to put in, how late they have to work. But this is the third show since they started the bike and Vinny said “this is the first time we’ve put in really long hours.” It is? But what about all the times Paulie said they had to work really hard and stay late? Then I remembered all the times in the last few weeks that we’ve heard Paulie say  “that’s good work, let’s call it a day” and closed up while the sun was still shining.

Sr. claimed that he’s heard that Paulie doesn’t show up at his shop until 10am and leaves early, and while I am inclined to take anything he says with a grain of salt, I think the evidence shows that he may be right.

Paulie hired a guy to come in and help them out, a person who had been fired from OCC. According to Sr. (again, grain of salt) he quit after only two days because he couldn’t work in such a lazy environment. I know Sr. was trying to tamper with him and hire him away, but the fact is he never went to work for Sr., was never lured away, so I am again inclined to believe Sr.’s description of the events.

Neither Paulie not Vinny are fabricators and they need help. They had problems getting started with equipment and personnel. I get that. but now that they have two bikes to build and a very short deadline, why haven’t they put in the hours?

Paulie hasn’t changed.

Epilogue: Senior is a jerk

Trying to hire away Paulie’s workers, riding up and down past the shop, killing a replica of his son- Senior says it is all a part of the game. What game? No one else is playing a game. Paulie, to his credit, is staying above that kind of nonsense. If Senior wants to play his mindless mind games on his sons, then there is a serious problem with him. In the last few weeks since Paulie and Mikey didn’t respond to his half-hearted attempts at reconciliation, Paul Senior really seems to have snapped. He’s stooped to badmouthing his kids to strangers. Speaking on the phone to a wife of a man he fired, Senior said that “all three of my sons are bums.”

Stay classy, Senior.

And to the rest of us, stay tuned.

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The Fast Life of Johnny Exeter Jr.

26 Sep

September 26, 2010

Johnny Exeter Jr. lived fast and died young. He was the apple of his father’s eye, but the apple was rotten.

My name is Russell. Hollywood they call me. Hollywood Russell. I hear things. And this is a story of wrecked cars, wrecked marriages, and wrecked lives.

From a young age, it was clear that Johnny Exeter Jr. was trouble. By age 13 Sr. had had enough. More than enough. It was off to the military academy for the kid. It was 1915 and Sr. was angling to get the kid a commission. But like a bad penny, the kid was back- and so were his hell-raising ways.

Sr. pulled some strings and got the kid into Stanford when he was old enough, but they cut the strings some enough and tossed Jr. out. Allegations of booze and fast women were only the printable rumors.

Records show that Sr. shelled out a lot of dough covering the kids bad habits. The small checks were simple- $274 to pay for a wrecked car. The big ones not so simple- $25,000 to send pregnant girlfriend Flossie Windsor to France for a couple of years.

By 1926 Jr. was engaged and it was Daddy buying the ring. And the house, and the honeymoon. In Sr.’s mind, little Johnny Jr. could do no wrong, and his marriage to Helen Audubon was just the thing. Never mind the little matter of the Windsor woman and her little Exeter Junior Jr. cooling her heels in France.

 By 1928 Johnny Exeter Jr. had a house in New Haven Estates, a wife, and a blackmailer.

A tiger can’t change his spots, and Jr. was a tiger when it came to women. This is where Tony Sponetti entered the picture.

Sponetti was a cheap hood I’d rolled up a few years before for some petty larceny. Now he was back and the skel had an eye on the Exeter cash. On a trip to Atlantic City while his wife was home, Sponetti noticed that Exeter Jr. was making time with Michelle Lander, a dancer in a small speakeasy off the Boardwalk.

Michelle Lander was a sexy platinum blonde with an eye for money and a body to get it. Exeter was no easy mark- he was the easiest. He hooked himself. Soon Sponetti was getting $500 a week, from daddy Sr.’s account, to keep his trap shut. It was sweet.

Sr. had spared no expense when it came to his son. First the wedding expenses, then the Sponetti dough, then the quickie Reno divorce.

By 1929 Helen Audubon, a woman who looked the other way, and often, finally had enough and Jr. dropped her without even a thank you. That put Sponetti on ice, especially when Jr. did the legal ring-a-ding and remarried. But not to Michelle Lander. That honey pot had been left in Atlantic City to attract the local bees.

From here the Exeter Jr. story falls into the usual mess a man with limited morals and unlimited cash makes for himself. Married and divorced three more times by 1935, in debt and bailed out a dozen more, Exeter Jr. was finally making a go of a small gin mill when Sponetti came back.

Sponetti had stewed since he lost the cash from the Lander deal, and now he had a way of making some more. Johnny Jr. was into him for a ton of dough from the dog races and Sponetti was calling in his marker.

 But daddy wasn’t going to save him this time. It was 1936 and the balance in the bank account was low enough to notice and Sr. told little Johnny that enough was enough.

 Gathering his courage and acting like a man for the first time in his life, he stood up to Tony Sponetti.

 And Sponetti shot him dead.

No moral here, no lesson to be learned. Just another story I picked up in the hills of Hollywood.

I’m Hollywood Russell and that was the singular tale of Johnny Exeter Jr.

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