Guest Opinion | Carl Kozlowski: Sleeping With Kevin

Kevin Uhrich saved my life on more than one occasion. He also made me laugh harder than almost any man I’ve ever known.

Combined, he was the most influential man in my life ever outside of my own father, and he provided so many opportunities to others that he was like a father figure, crazy uncle or older brother to many across Pasadena.

And on hearing of his passing last Saturday after a long illness, I’ve felt compelled to share my story of knowing him because it was definitely unique.

I moved to Pasadena from Chicago in October 2002 to pursue my dream of making it big as a standup comedian. I had everything set up perfectly: transferred in my job from the Windy City to its branch in Glendale, was renting a big house and had a couple of roommates I’d met already and actually wanted to be around.

But I also had an absolutely crushing sleep disorder that made many doctors tell me that I was worse than a narcoleptic. I could fall asleep anytime, anywhere, without warning – and when I started conking out at my transferred job, I was unceremoniously kicked out the door.

I had moved 2,000 miles only to completely fail within two weeks. Shaken, I walked the streets of Glendale on the day of my termination, wondering what I would do next. I had worked as a journalist in Chicago for six years doing quirky profiles of unusual people and businesses, but how was I going to pull that off in a city that was totally foreign to me?

Then I stumbled across a newspaper box for Pasadena Weekly. I had made my name in Chicago at a weekly called Newcity, and so a spark hit me and I started flipping through the PW quickly to get a feel for it. It was pretty serious, and I thought they could use a little humor. So I called the office and asked to speak with the editor.

And thus I was introduced to Kevin Uhrich, who growled throughout my pitch to write quirky stories for the Weekly. He finally barked, “Have you even READ our paper?!” and I said, “Yeah and it’s boring.”

Of course, he hung up on me. But pulling my head out of my ass and realizing that that was NOT the correct answer to his question, I dialed him back and begged him to meet me for a half hour the next day so I could show him 10 story ideas. He very reluctantly agreed, no doubt muttering one of his trademark exclamations of “Christ!”

I came in the next day with ideas like dressing up in a Santa suit and doing 12 naughty things around Pasadena in a weekend for their Christmas issue, or a story on a guy who specialized exclusively in styling butt-length women’s hair. With each idea, Kevin grew more apoplectic.

But his trusty deputy editor at the time, Joe Piasecki, was laughing WITH the ideas, not at them. And by the time, I walked out, he convinced Kevin to buy all 10 of them.

I suddenly had a new newspaper gig, right when I thought I was gonna have to pack up and go home. Reporter (and eventual PW deputy editor himself) André Coleman told me the secret to actually landing a job there was by claiming an empty desk and just showing up every day until I’d worn down Kevin’s hackled defenses.

I soon was making quite a display in the office – passing out asleep, snoring louder than a bear caught in a trap, even occasionally face-planting smack into my keyboard – all while sitting directly across the aisle from Kevin.

Thank God, he found it all funny. Any other boss on the planet would have tarred and feathered me before running out of town.

When I managed to be awake, I was having the time of my life, because Kevin proved more open to fun and funny ideas than I could have ever imagined. When he was barraged with emails about joining the Universal Life Church and becoming an online minister, he ordered me to get “ordained” and write about the phenomenon by finding an actual couple to marry. Thus I found myself on a beach in Malibu overseeing an obvious green card wedding between a wannabe 50-year-old rocker and his 20-year-old Russian mail-order bride, while wearing a gold and black gospel choir robe that André had won as collateral in a card game.

And Kevin had me pose in the getup for that week’s cover image in the paper!

He had me investigate Scientology when I wouldn’t stop mocking Tom Cruise for jumping on Oprah’s couch in 2005. And then Kevin safeguarded me by making me hide under my desk when Scientologists in suits showed up at the office angrily for days afterward.

I got to press the argument that RFK Sr’s accused assassin Sirhan Sirhan had actually been subjected to CIA brainwashing experiments. And when I did the Santa story and panicked that I had only done 11 naughty things with deadline fast approaching and needed to run back out onto Colorado Blvd in my Santa suit, he yelled “Honest to God, it was funny ONCE! You’ve got 30 minutes!”

One nutty idea after another spewed forth from my brain, and Kevin always laughed and said “Go for it.” His standard was that he would run a story if I was passionate about it and could find proof to back them up.

And when I complained about the fact my paycheck was impossible to live on, he made it tolerable by letting me work from the office Mondays and Tuesdays and then Wednesdays til 1, and do whatever else I needed to do to survive the other 20 hours a week as long as my five stories were always done on time.

I ran an entire podcast business for three years from my cubicle and my apartment, but Kevin saw the added value that I could get big names to appear in the Weekly if I told them I’d get them exposure in both the paper and on my podcasts.

And don’t even get me started on our weekly editorial “meetings.” Kevin would always march the whole gang of us up Colorado Blvd and spend two hours on the front patio of the 35er bar, buying at least three pitchers of beer and fully encouraging us to get our drink on.

It’s a marvel we could even remember our assignments by the end.

But aside from the incredible creative freedom he gave me and others, Kevin treated me like I was part of his family. I was prone to illnesses and many hospitalizations in my time at the Weekly, but Kevin always gave me extra leeway to get things in.

The first time I had to stay five days at LA County Hospital, he had known me for just a couple of months – but me still visited me all five days despite having to travel far from the office to do so. And he also stormed into the publisher’s office, slammed the door shut and said he wasn’t leaving until the publisher hired me from my freelance to full-time status so I could finally have health insurance.

When I learned he was severely ill last fall and that he had never managed to finish his dream book (an incredible true-crime story that also doubles as a history of a lost small-town America called “Death in the House of Broken Hearts”), I resolved to make the book a reality so that he could hold a copy in his hands by Christmas. I managed to meet that deadline, and the book is sold here, a perfect testament to this remarkable journalist’s writing at its finest: Amazon.com: Death In the House of Broken Hearts: The Story of the Fifty-Year-Old Unsolved Murder of Teenager Peggy Reber: 9798877192133: Martha Shaak, Kevin Uhrich With: Books

I highly recommend buying the book as a tribute to his incredible writing and legacy. I and Pasadena Now editor André Coleman (yes, my former Pasadena Weekly colleague) will use all proceeds to set up the Kevin Uhrich Memorial Beer Fund, which will enable the fine folks at the 35er bar in Old Town Pasadena to treat the downtrodden to a cold one.

Throughout all these memories, funny and dead serious, I can only marvel and say “What kind of boss does that?!”

Only the best one, and his name was Kevin Uhrich and I will never forget him.

Carl Kozlowski is the former arts editor of the Pasadena Weekly. He never slept with Kevin, but he fell asleep around him dozens of times.