Who Are These People?

Jess Herbst is someone you may have heard about.  Or you may have heard about the “first openly transgender mayor in Texas as well as the first openly transgender elected official in Texas” that’s Jess, and she has been getting a lot of press, especially in her role as an “accidental activist” for LGBTQ rights.

I first met Jess as Jeff Herbst back in the late 90s.  We were professional colleagues.  I was an editor and also in charge of all the video equipment at ZEE TV, the Indian Satellite Network’s US Headquarters in Arlington Texas.  Whenever I had a technical problem I couldn’t solve on my own, I would call Herbst, the smartest, most logical video and software engineer I’ve ever met.  After we did all the troubleshooting, we would invariably end up chatting about who-knows-what for an extra hour or so and became quite friendly.  And since I had a lot of technical problems we met fairly often.

Flash forward about twenty years, and we reconnect on Facebook, and then last year I notice, Jeff has become Jess, and she’s also entered politics.

Kyle Reynolds is one of the nicest people you would ever want to meet.  I met him years ago when he worked at Half Price Books and Records in the Dallas area. He’s always been a musician and creative person.  You may have heard about an event he organized called the Open Carry Guitar Rally, which was a light-hearted response to Texas gun activists.  He also went off and started an online political cartoon called The End Times found at slugnuts.com and more recently launched the Slugnuts Radio Hour Podcast.

Mike Simeone is someone I met at a very important stage in my life…that small window when you are out in the world as a young adult…struggling to “make it.”  That was ages ago.  We were very close, but lost touch as time went on, and of course, we reconnected much later on Facebook.

Mike is outrageous, he’s outspoken, and a bit odd.  He’s done a lot of things, he’s been a DJ, a film and video producer, and he hosted his own radio show for many years.