June 21, 2003

The following is an excerpt from the July, 2003 edition of Modern Security, a trade publication for the bodyguard and security coordination industry.

CELEBRITY SECURITY

    Frank Nuconti is the President of Celebrity Security, the nation's largest private security consulting firm.  His clients are a virtual "Who's Who" of the American entertainment industry.  Nuconti is very much a hands on manager, but he recently took time out to discuss his business with Modern Security.  When we caught up with him, Nuconti was personally supervising a force of over two hundred bodyguards and security experts called in to cover the VH1 "Rock Armada 2003 Tour" which features classic rock bands REO Speedwagon, Styx, and Journey.  It seems unusual to have such a  massive force assigned to cover a club tour by three washed up corporate rock groups, but Nuconti explains that this case is exceptional.

    "I don't know what it is about these three bands together, but every night on the road we have at least six or seven bomb threats phoned in, and in sweeping the tour bus, we've disarmed over fifty homemade explosives.  From pipe bombs to Molotov cocktails to remarkably sophisticated handmade devices, the tour has been faced with disaster at every turn.

    "Personally, I don't understand it.  Sure these bands sucked.  In the late seventies and early eighties, their brand of oafish corporate rock polluted the airwaves for years, but what drives these would-be bombers into such a state of destructive rage?  People from all over America, just average  normal people with names like Greg Davis, Jay Coogan, Jeff DeMouy, and Greg Ellis have just snapped.  In building a profile  of the bombers, we find they tend to be white males in their forties.  They often are musicians, record store employees, or just people with good taste in music.  For some reason, putting Journey, Styx, and REO in the same bus just sets them off.  We caught one guy, a real nut case named Kevin Carney, in Austin getting ready to throw himself off an overpass onto the tour bus.  He had over eighty pounds of dynamite strapped to his body.  When questioned, he said, 'With just one bomb I can kill them all, Kill Them All, KILL THEM ALL!!!!!!!!'

    "We've tried a lot of different tactics.  First and foremost, we have begun prominently advertising that Steve Perry, the original lead singer of Journey and one of the most hated men in rock, is not on the tour.  That has improved things a little, but every night  we still find grenades, plastic explosives, and limpet bombs jammed under the chassis of the bus.  I suppose it could be worse.  One of my consultants says that if Loverboy was on the tour bus too we would all be dead by now.  They are just lucky I always honor my contacts 'cause I am taking a beating on this tour."

    As you might imagine, Superstar Security has seen it all, but here is one celebrity Nuconti says his company will no longer provide service to.  That celebrity is hated comedian/corporate pitchman Carrot Top.

    "Honestly, I have nothing against Carrot Top.  I know a lot of people just can't stand him, but that has nothing to do with our company's policy.  The fact is we simply cannot protect him.  When we initially took the account, we set up a typical two on two rolling coverage plan for Mr. Top.  Every time he left his condo on Ventura, two operatives would be with him where ever he went.  But our failures were disastrous.  In just the first week, Carrot Top was at a night club after a movie premier.  Everything was cool.  Now I know it is unprofessional and the operatives were disciplined, but both of the bodyguards stepped away for just three minutes to go outside and smoke.  When they came back, an angry mob of nine or ten bar patrons had banded together and had Carrot Top on the ground and were brutally kicking and beating him.  Now he's a little guy, but he sure can take a lot  punishment.  You could tell he has been beaten up a lot over the years.

    "Just a week later, he was in a supermarket in Santa Monica doing some shopping.  One guard had phoned in and was an hour late.  The other guard was on duty and taking care of business with no problems.  Then when they were in line at the checkout Carrot Top dashed out to the frozen food section when he remembered he needed more TV dinners. He left the guard to save his place in line.  Well, after a few minutes, the guard got worried and took off.  He found three angry housewives had Carrot Top by the hair and were slamming his face into a freezer case over and over again.

    "I don't know what it is about Carrot Top, but if there aren't at least two big guys with him at all times people, regular people like you and me, will just spontaneously band together and beat the crap out of him.  We finally realized that we just couldn't  cover him."

    When questioned about any other unusual problems he has encountered recently in his work at Superstar Security, Frank Nuconti  brought up one of his hottest new clients.  Right wing attack dog Fox News analyst Bill O'Reilly has become a supernova among the ranks of the info-tainment pseudo-journalists braying at the mass of resentful middle-aged white Republicans who fuel Fox News' massive ratings.  Nuconti recently took on O'Reilly as a client and has provided security for the smug, self-righteous hate-monger's book tour supporting his newest best seller Tax The Poor.  Guarding O'Reilly would seem an easy, uneventful detail, but the truth is bizarre and compelling according to Nuconti.

    "Although it gets no coverage in the mainstream press, the fact is that Bill O'Reilly has a huge, rabid, Gay following.  At every stop on the tour, our limos would be mobbed in front of Barnes and Nobles stores by hundreds of screaming Gay O'Reilly fans.  Gay accountants, bankers, schoolteachers, and politicians dogged O'Reilly everywhere he went.  I swear O'Reilly is the Gay Beatles.  Yong men would grab him, tear at his clothes, and  chase him down the street.  It was wild.  I haven't seen anything like it since the last Liza Minelli tour.  Originally at the onset of the tour, I had posted just a four man detail and only at the bookstores.  I remember the first stop in Omaha.  As soon as O'Reilly stepped off  his private jet and onto the tarmac, hundreds of gay men pushed through the security cordon, knocked down a six foot fence, and charged the runway.  It took an hour for the local police and the airport's seventy man Marine security force to restore order.  We were finally able to get O'Reilly out and to the store, but we had to shut down the signing after only an hour as a mob of Gay fans outside the store blocked traffic chanting 'Give us Billy! Give us Billy!'

    "We soon learned what we were up against.  Every time we needed to bring O'Reilly into a crowded downtown area like New York or Chicago we tried to throw the fans off.  For awhile we were using disguises, but nothing seemed to work.  We dressed up O'Reilly like a traffic cop, a construction worker, a soldier boy, even as a cowboy, an Indian , and a leather guy, but nothing fooled them, and pretty soon we were back to running down the street chased by a mob of hysterical, screaming Gay men.

    "Personally, I don't get it.  Bill O'Reilly seems like a regular guy to me, but you step out in public with him, and it is Gay gridlock.  Every night when we sweep his suite of rooms in the hotel before lock down we invariably wind up pulling Gay men dressed in g-stings or leather underwear out of his shower, out from under his bed, or off the window sills of his bedroom.  One guy we caught  - I think he was an  insurance underwriter from St. Louis - told me that whenever O'Reilly is on Fox demanding another war, calling for more tax cuts for the rich, or just mercilessly badgering a civil rights advocates it just made him horny as hell.  I don't exactly what it means, but he told me that O'Reilly was '100% prime choice homo man bait.'  To each his own I guess.  It certainly makes the job interesting."