Prophet and Loss

I'm sure you've seen the ads, 1-900-PSYCHIC, he was just like a friend. Maybe you've seen those infomercials, as well, you know, the ones where a bunch of old out of work actors and the cast and crew from General Hospital sit around and talk about their own personal psychic friends.

If you watched these back in the early nineties there's a good chance you may have seen me, too. I was on one of those myself—along with Erik Estrada, Jenilee Harrison, Stuart Damon, Richard Roundtree, and a host of others. My little blast with prosperity consciousness aired throughout the U.S. and Canada twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for about a year and a half, all the while serenading multi-billionaires to sleep with its sweet clanging song while simultaneously robbing lonely hearted waifs and welfare mothers who could not possibly afford the calls.

On TV my name was Obsidian, like the rock, and for just $3.99 a minute, you, too, could call and talk to me, or one of my caring professional assistants, from the privacy of your own home. Of course the sad part of it all was that for your $3.99 a minute you were more likely than not going to end up with some apprentice witch with a bad haircut, with no talent, no experience, no compassion and absolutely no idea what Pandora's Box her little song might unleash in the collective psyches of late night America.

The phone lines were populated--for the most part anyway--by a subculture of six dollar an hour aliens hooked up to an oral IV of the nation's secret ills. And these physicians of the soul were often times none too well themselves.

But, of course, the old adage "man who sleep with dogs wake up with fleas" seems to fit my role here pretty well. These lines were billed (and I do mean billed) for entertainment purposes only, although in my brief tenure there never once did anyone ask me anything that sounded remotely as it they were seeking entertainment.

Most of the people who call these lines are desperate for answers, any answer, and they are obviously willing to spend real money in order to find one. What is so sad about the whole affair is that most psychic predictions are based on probabilities, not absolutes, but this doesn't seem to sell quite as well as cosmic omnipotence so the real story gets pretty much swept aside.

Misery loves company and quite a few enterprising entrepeneurial types have capitalized on that notion in a pretty big way. Back when I worked on the lines, in 1992, a Prime Time Special aired on ABC and at that time Prime Time's "media expert", Ken Macaldowny, reported that these lines earn well in excess of one hundred million dollars a year. (I read recently that this figure has now gone up to Nine Hundred Million per year, just on the phone lines alone).

Add the millions that are spent on crystals, audio and video tapes, and assorted novelty items such as ouija boards, affirmation stickers and tarot cards to that figure--as well as books; people into metaphysics (no better example of that than me) are readers--and you can see that metaphysics is a much bigger market than people would initially assume.

Forbes magazine once estimated back in the early nineties, that the New Age market did 3.43 BILLION dollars in annual revenues with over a billion dollars being spent annually on New Age books alone. That number most certainly has gone way up.

The prophecy business tends to do well when times are tough and times were tough back in 1992 when King George I was still perched on his hollow throne. The early nineties, in my opinion, was the ultimate bull market of late night metaphysics, the IPO go-go years before the reality of just how bad some of the telephone psychics really were became known.

However, with an ever-growing social and economic malaise sweeping like wild fire throughout America, under the dauphin King George II and the watchful crossed eyes of the imperial regent Sir Dick, I wouldn't be surprised to see the metaphysical marketplace rebound a bit in the coming years.

The target demographic for most psychic phone lines are minority women, particularly women on some form of public assistance, and as a collective these women probably see America's social ills more clearly than all the psychics in the world combined. It may seem curious that an economic group so poorly equipped to absorb eighty-five dollar phone calls should form the financial backbone of a multi-million dollar industry. But they do.

Since I expect the ranks of those of us seeking public assistance to swell in the near future, the market base for supplicants at the house of what's in store for me next is likely to be strong for Round Two.

This is really pretty sick, don't you think? And since the money involved is so incredible, and the overhead for most of these operations so relatively minimal, the budding entrepeneur is awash in financial possiblities. (Bad karma aside) Like its bastard cousin, the "Busty Babe" hotline, the 900 number business is BIG business. But as the volume of calls escalate manpower problems become very important. The IP's (read: money men) who front the money for these lines are not just going to let the money set on the table, manpower shortage or not. So they hire whoever they can.

I've seen people come in, right off the street, literally. who taped interpretations to the backs of their tarot cards and read them off, card by card. Nothing more. Certainly nothing that anyone else with twelve dollars for a tarot deck couldn't do for themselves.

I agreed to do the infomercial because of one thing. I knew my appearance on national television meant money--serious money. Initially it was going to go straight into the till for the producers but I knew that all this TV exposure could also have a pretty strong trickle down effect for my own account as well. After all, if fifty million people see a bunch of TV stars sitting around saying I'm one of the premiere psychics in the world today, some of them are bound to believe it.

And when my accurate prediction that Jenilee Harrison, Suzanne Sommer's replacement in Three's Company, was going to start doing live theatre was included at the end of the infomercial, thus proving that these really were the best psychics in the world (better than that old Linda Georgian's), especially me, well it didn't take a marketing genius to see the kind of money I could potentially make.

All I had to do was change my name. No problem. Andrew is not my real name anyway; my first name is Rudolph, so I had absolutely no ethical dilemma about changing my name from an infamous Christmas icon to a big black rock.

At least that was the plan. But after I was there for a few months I began seeing that all was not well in the metaphysical world. People were being hired to answer calls who had absolutely no business doing so. I didn't care so much that they were amateurs but many of them were amateurs with bad attitudes. Neurotic cynical misanthropes.

And these neurotic cynical misanthropes were getting the opportunity, partly because of something that everyone in America had the opportunity to see me actively promoting, to plunk their little neurotic cynical misanthropic selves down right next to me and give absolute bull-shit advice to a lot of deperate people who truly needed help.

And then laugh about it when they were done.

So I quit.

I don't have access to the media buys for the infomercial in which I appeared but I can guesstimate that in the eighteen months it aired, at approximately 150 times a week, nationwide and in Canada, that the take from it had to be close to $75-$100 million, maybe more.

I don't know who calls these lines but I do know that they must have their phones conveniently placed near their TV. Since the average call lasts about nine minutes (at $3.99 per) and many callers call back week after week, sometimes three or four times, my guess is that somebody is making (or has already made and stashed away somewhere) some serious money.

Karmic debt meets Dun and Bradstreet.

"A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road" -- Alexander Smith

For the past fifteen years I've vanished from the metaphysical world. Only now I'm back and my approach and understanding of all things "psychic" is much much different than before. Hopefully my TV legacy is pretty well behind me. It is the spiritual self that matters most. Love and compassion for others, sharing your kindness with others--that is what's truly important.

As we move towards more and more difficult times, it is important that we hold true to our spiritual nature. Don't let anyone tell you that you cannot make a difference. As a famous man once said "love is all you need."

Peace and love to all.