Betting on the Bunny

SARATOGA SPRINGS - David Breeze is standing in his bedroom on the top floor of an apartment overlooking Broadway. Posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a young bodybuilder hang one side of the wall. Just below the posters is a corkboard where push pins hold up snapshots of Shania Twain.

Breeze points to the photos of the singer and lets out a sigh.

‘Shania Twain. I’m going to go see her on Saturday. That will be the fifth time,’ the lanky 32-year-old says with an equal mixture of pride and just-can’t-help-it sheepishness.

A long table occupies most of the space on the other side of Breeze’s room. On the table are stacks of neatly piled magazines, each individually encased in protective plastic and carrying the Playboy magazine masthead. They are lined up, 10 rows across, three rows wide and six or seven issues high, each beaming back youthful faces of the famous, the infamous and vaguely memorable or long-forgotten actresses, supermodels and TV stars.

‘I’ve got to get rid of these,’ Breeze says. A gold crucifix dangling from his left earlobe dances as his body shakes in laughter. ‘They’re starting to take over my entire room.’ The Maryland native began collecting memorabilia long before he relocated to the Spa City a year ago.

‘I’ve been a collector my whole life. It’s something that comes from my dad,’ he reckons. ‘They say you inherit certain things from your parents, and my dad’s got more baseball cards than you would believe. My grandfather collected coins, and he had a collection that was just ridiculous,’ Breeze says, shaking his head and recalling the vastness of it.

‘When he died, he left the coin collection to the family and he left me his books, the car that I drive and his magazines. Some of these were his,’ he says, pointing to the table-top display. ‘Between his collection and my collection, there are a lot of issues.’
About how many?
‘There are 268 issues of Playboy from 1981 to 2003. I’ve got nine different Pamela Anderson cover issues, all three Madonnas, Suzanne Somers, Drew Barrymore, you name it,’ he says, picking up a 1985 issue with Goldie Hawn on the cover, and an earlier edition that depicts actress Nastassja Kinski.

‘Look at this,’ he says, moving a ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ James Dean clock out of the way. He opens up a closet area where hundreds more individually plastic-wrapped magazines are stored. There are nearly 200 issues in a Penthouse Magazine collection dating back to the 1970s, and dozens of copies of other similar publications from the ‘70s. One that immediately captures his fancy is a copy of OUI Magazine from 1981 with Demi Moore on the cover.

In all, there are more than 500 individual magazines in Breeze’s collection, the value of which he estimates at about $25,000. They are up for sale at the seemingly bargain price of $500.

Why so cheap? ‘The reason I’m doing all this is for the game,’ Breeze says. He produces a document from the Patent & Trademark Institute of America that lists him under the title of ‘inventor.’ ‘I have been told by people there (at the Patent and Trademark Institute) that I have a real good idea. They seem to think about a year and a half after I get the patent, I’ll be so rich that I can retire,’ he says.

The kicker? Breeze has to come up with $10,000 for the 10-year patent. So far, he is nine months into a temporary one-year patent that cost him $800. Of the 10 grand needed for the full patent, he has already raised about $8,000 and has less than three months to come up with the last two grand.
‘That’s why I am selling all of my stuff,’ he says.

His idea is based on the drinking game ‘A**hole,’ a game played using a deck of cards. For his version, Breeze has created a board game using a new set of rules, player roles and board pieces.

‘I first got the idea when I heard about this guy who got a patent for the wheelbarrow. After that, he was all set for life. You never know what (everyday items are) out there that nobody has taken a patent out on. So I thought, ‘OK, there’s got to be other things out there,’ and I thought of this game. It’s one that I have played from a young age,’ he says.

Breeze is putting together a business plan.
‘This game thing is a really big deal for me. I have been working on getting sponsors to get things ready for production,’ he says.
He hoists a hefty scrapbook-sized case from a shelf that is filled with plastic covers and stuffed with homemade CDs.

Music is his main passion, he says, and his once extensive CD collection dates back to the 10 years he worked as a disc jockey. The CDs in his possession now are hand-marked with an artistic flair, from Aretha Franklin and Rush, to Metallica and Kiss. He once owned more than 4,000 CDs, the best of which he burned onto these discs before selling off the entire collection. Breeze lives in a buy-and-sell world.

‘I sold my comic book collection for $1,000 then used that to start my Web site,’ he says, about his online contest site. ‘I’m looking to sell the magazines, then to sell the Web site,’ he says. ‘I sold my TV, my VCR, my CDs and DVDs. I am basically selling my entire life for this game.’ It doesn’t come without a certain emotional cost, though.
‘You really do get attached to things,’ Breeze says as his cats Taz and Tigger come barreling through the room. ‘It’s hard to let go of these things.’ He still mourns the loss of a collection of Playboy magazine he accumulated in his earlier years.

‘I lost that collection because of my mom. One day, when I came home from school, suddenly they had all disappeared. My mom never said anything about it, but I knew,’ he says.
Assuming all goes as Breeze plans and his game takes off, what’s next? ‘My music,’ he says simply. ‘I want to start my own record label, have a recording studio and record my own music. When I was growing up, all my friends listened to all kinds of music - rap and metal and country and alternative - and going back to the 10 years I spent as a DJ.... I like a lot of different kinds of music, all kinds of music,’ he says.

Breeze says he stops in at Bailey’s Café for open mic night to rap with area musicians.
‘I would like to start my own label and sign other people to my label as well. It’s pretty amazing in Saratoga - the amount of talented people I have met here. So music is my main thing, or one of my main things. The other is finding the girl - that one perfect girl,’ he says, before pausing for thought.

‘The only thing is she would have to put up with my music.’

by Thomas Dimopoulos
The Saratogian, Oct. 10, 2003