Who is Randy and why is he a dipshit? The full answer may never be known due to our limitations in cognitive science, but here's what is known about him: his journey started out as a long-time fan of mine. Randy first contacted me over a decade ago. He's a fan who's been following my career for over 20 years. He used to send me fan art, chat in my chat rooms, attended my book signings and even made fan videos about me.
Eventually Randy got a job in the art department for a TV show called "Ghost Whisperer" where he even put printouts from my website in background shots of the show. He started "hip-pocketing" me for a management company called Principato-Young, and eventually became my full-fledged manager for a company called Luber Roklin Entertainment, and now started Ronin Entertainment. Randy turned from fan, to friend, to business manager and eventually dipshit. Here's some of the fan art he used to send me:
Randy's weird fan art
It's extremely rare that I write anything like this—or anything at all if the frequency of updates on this site is any indication—but there comes a time when you have to talk about a dipshit because that dipshit has made
such a mess that echos of his mistake are still being felt over half a decade later.
First, a bit about Randy in his capacity as my manager: easily one of the least professional people I've worked with, and I could go at length about the drunk late-night texts, poor communication, anger problems, excessive drinking,
lies and threats he made to close personal friends of mine. But I'll share this 100% true anecdote from a meeting I had with one of the big 4 agencies in Los Angeles a few years ago.
I was in a meeting with an agent where we were talking about our experiences in Hollywood, especially with different managers and agencies. While we were trading stories, he said that most of his weren't too bad except for one
manager he worked with. Immediately I thought "there's no way he could be talking about Randy." It's generally unprofessional to name names in Hollywood, but I sat there for a beat thinking that if I didn't ask, I would be
wondering for the rest of my life. So I decided to take a stab in the dark and said, "this may sound random, and you totally don't have to answer if you don't want to, but just out of curiosity—was the name of the manager
Randy?" I didn't even say his last name and the agent's eyes lit-up.
"Yes! Randy Kiyan!"
"Randy Kiyan!"
We both blurted it out at the same time. We were laughing so hard that it looked like he almost had tears in his eyes. He then shared a nightmare story with me about how Randy had botched a huge deal for one of his clients and they
ended up firing him. I wanted to tell him the bullshit I had to deal with Randy, but we only had 30 minutes for a meeting, not the hours it would take.
So here's the (very brief) synopsis of my experience with Randy: I've been dealing with a smear campaign by an obsessed stalker and an obsessed ex, and Randy has been a tacit supporter of these efforts. I've been silent about it for far too long, so I've finally decided to talk about it for a number of reasons that I discuss in this video. If you haven't watched it yet, you may do so here:
I introduced Randy to my ex-co-host, because he was desperate to get into entertainment, so Randy agreed to rep both of us. When this ex-co-host got caught lying, talking behind my back and hiding financial information, Randy decided
to do the cowardly thing instead of going public and backing me with the information that he had.
When my podcast ended, I asked the podcast host, Libsyn, how to go about transferring the RSS feed to my new show, because it was largely my audience and always my show. Libsyn said I should probably check with my ex-co-host to avoid
any potential drama, and I agreed because I didn't want there to be long any long drawn-out back-and-forth with that loser. But since we weren't talking anymore, Randy offered to liaison between us. So on June 1st 2016, I told Randy to ask my ex-co-host,
Dax Herrera, if he had any issues with it.
Randy called me later in the evening and didn't bring it up on his own, so I asked him:
"What did Dax say about the feed?"
"He said he doesn't care about the feed, all he cares about is the credit card number and billing address on file for the W9s."
I was so relieved when Randy told me that. I thought that finally, despite all the scumminess and back-stabbing shittiness of my ex-co-host, he was doing the right thing and walking away without any drama. Although that was the first
I'd heard of any tax records associated with the income we'd received from the podcast, which I had repeatedly asked Dax for. So I told Randy I wanted those records. I drafted a text to Dax
that night that I never sent, but it said something to the lines of "thanks for being cool about the iTunes feed." I decided not to send it because I didn't want any further communication from him, even a "no problem" from him.
So I logged into LibSyn, changed the billing address to my own, and updated the credit card number. Then the very next day I sent Randy an email to confirm. Here's the proof:
Confirmation to Randy after I made the changes we discussed
Immediately after that email, I started the transfer. The process is irreversible, so once the process has started, it's a really big deal to try to undo it. Literally as the updates were being made, I got a panicky call from
Randy saying that he "miscommunicated" and that we didn't have authorization.
So either:
1. Randy didn't actually talk to Dax, lied to me on the call, and made a mess.
2. Randy did talk to Dax, Dax gave his blessings, and then Dax changed his mind.
3. Randy did talk to Dax, Dax gave his blessings, but later lied about it.
I told Randy that this was irreversible and that he needs to stand by what he told me, especially since I already updated the credit card number and billing address on file. So he sent an email to LibSyn, our service provider,
explaining that we had authorization and that the feed would be transferred. I also asked Randy to ask LibSyn to give me a copy of our tax records since Dax was withholding them from me. That's what Randy is referencing in the 3rd
paragraph:
Confirmation to LibSyn
Of course, as soon as the feed was transferred, Dax used it as an opportunity to victimize himself and claimed that I stole it. It was such a pernicious lie because not only is it false, it's so difficult to even explain what
happened since most people don't understand what an RSS feed is. They just hear "maddox stole something!" And since Dax's follower-base is chock-full of the dumbest sociopaths, on the Internet, they believe things uncritically
from a self-admitted liar.
Dax is the most manipulative person I've ever met and he was trying to provoke me into a response, and when I didn't, he said it was because I was guilty of
something. Randy, in a moment of remorse, texted me and asked me if he should make a statement. I told him "go ahead." I didn't ask him to, he volunteered to do this. So here's the message Randy posted publicly on the forum
for my old podcast:
Randy's Reddit Statement
That came after weeks of Dax's lies and harassment, and then Dax lied and told people I put him up to it. I didn't. Randy knows I didn't. And I have witnesses and a phone call conversation to prove it.
So Randy can come clean and tell the public once and for all what happened. I'm done taking the fall for his mistake. Randy's tales of dipshittery are legendary. I didn't even go into the time he drunkenly accosted me
in a bar and I had to call Luber Roklin on a Saturday night to get Randy to stop helping his client, Dax, with his harassment against me.
More to come! If Randy issues a public apology and statement clarifying that I didn't put him up to the public statement, I didn't ask him to write anything on Reddit, and I didn't steal anything, I will post that statement
here.
Until then, if you or anyone you know has a nightmare story of working with Randy, please feel free to email me. I will keep all sources confidential and anonymous.
