Bright College Days-Part 2

The best part of my college experience was the community and fellowship I found at the Off-Campus Commuter Center.  Being new on campus can be trying under the best of circumstances, but when you don’t even have the home base of a dorm or frat house?  You need somewhere to call your Home Away from Home. 

I attended Bowling Green State University, and because I only lived about 40 minutes away, I couldn't afford paying the extra money to live on-campus.  I was paying my own way through school, so I had to be cost conscious.  Room and board cost about as much as tuition.

I really had it pretty good as far as living at home.  I never had a curfew, nor was I bumping heads with my parents.  They let me come and go as I pleased, and in turn, I stayed out of trouble.  Plus, there was The Barn!  So I never had reason to flee the nest, seeking freedom from parental restraints, like so many of my peers.  Every day, I ran the triangle of home to school to work and back again.

I found out about the Commuter Center during my freshman orientation trip.  They pointed out all the benefits of the facility: the large common room, lockers, restrooms, comfy TV room, food machines, etc.  But they really undersold the vibe. 

The Commuter Center was originally “founded” by a non-traditional student named Hazel Smith.  She was a 40-something who returned to school to get her degree in 1966, and found herself in the Student Union, surrounded every day by a gaggle of commuter students with nowhere else to go.  School officials took notice and soon created a space in the basement of Moseley Hall for commuters like Hazel and “her kids” to call their own.  Hazel became the Director of the facility and organization.

I started my freshman year in the fall of 1979 and graduated in May of 1983.  (Yes, to my amazement, I got a four-year degree in four years!  As I found out, that’s not a “given.”)  So you can say I went to school in the “80s,” but the “80s” weren’t really The Eighties until the mid-80s.  The early 80s were more like the 70s.  And the 70s were really the 60s, only with uglier fashions. 

What I found in the Commuter Center was a kind of outsider’s counter-culture.  We had to fight for a place at the table against the Greeks and the Dorm Residents.  On one hand, the Commuter Center had a governmental body, the Commuter Off-Campus Organization, or COCO.  On the other hand, there was the “non-fraternity fraternity” known as Beta Mu Kappa (or BMK).  Their sole purpose was to be a stick in the eye of the Greek system; messing with it from within.

I naturally gravitated to BMK right off the bat.  I liked the upper-classmen and they seemed to be OK with me as well.  In fact, one of the guys once told me that I wasn't nearly as irritating as most other freshmen! 

BMK’s object was to produce chaos from within.  To that end, they admitted both men and women.  They had great officer titles, which were written right into their charter:  The Grand Poobah (president), the Not-So-Grand Poobah (VP), the Scribe (secretary), the Embezzler (treasurer) and the President (every non-officer).  The thing with the last one is that anyone in the group could legitimately refer to themselves as their Fraternity President on a future resume.  Other positions included Quarter Master, Party Master, Thought Police, Bouncer, Jock Coordinator and Guru.

They considered frat guys to be nothing but “white Anglo-Saxon Protestant alcoholic business majors.”  BMK members would join Greek games and contests, with the goal being to lose, or mock the event.  They would play inter-mural basketball and refuse to shoot.  They’d enter soapbox derby-type races with a dumpster on wheels.  And by playing juuuust inside the rules, there was little the traditional Greeks could do about it.

Unfortunately for me, I juuuuust missed out on when they did all that stuff.  By the time I got there, they had lost their charter and all they really did was throw hellacious off-campus parties.  Now THAT was something I knew a good bit about…  But they still talked a good game.

When I was a junior, I think, I was approached by one of the grad students, who handed me a letter imploring me to help him get the Old BMK up and running again, by agreeing to become Not-So-Grand Poobah.  He said I was right for the job because I “transcended both eras of BMK: relating well to the Old Warhorses as well as the new freshmen.”

I was flattered by being bullshitted so heavily, but I turned him down.  I would have had to do way too much stuff that was far out of my comfort zone, like going to weekly Greek Council meetings and such.  Granted, I was trying to come out of my shell, but not quite that far out.  I wouldn't have had any idea what I was doing.

But within the Commuter Center, I was way out of my shell, or at least further than I had ever been before.  By my sophomore year, I was pursuing a communications degree and was working on the college radio station.  So they tapped me to read the daily announcements over the PA system.  (Naturally, I added jokes and stuff.)  This also led to my hosting various charity events in the Center.

Every year we would hold a services auction to benefit the Special Olympics, called The Annual Lincoln’s Birthday Slave Sale.  It was to my regret when political correctness started creeping in and they dropped the Lincoln’s Birthday reference for a year or two, before eventually calling it The Sell-a-Service Sale.  

The deal was that people would volunteer a service, whether it was treating someone to dinner, carrying their books for them, checking their mailbox, offering proofreading or homework assistance, or whatever.  An emcee would then auction off the service to the highest bidder.  The fun came from the clues.  The auctioneer would create the most lewd and suggestive clues to the service being provided, so the bidders never really knew what they were getting until there was a winner.

I guess I spent my freshman year being enough of a wise-ass that the next year, they asked me to be the auctioneer.  Man, was that fun.  I held the job for the next three years.

This was my senior year, as I auctioned off a freshman.  I was already losing my hair, but geez, I was so skinny…

It could be nerve-wracking for the service providers, not knowing if they were going to get any decent bids.  But that year, we raised over $800 for Special Olympics.

Another year, they held a Gong Show-style talent show, which I also emceed.  I didn't exactly imitate Chuck Barris, but it did give me the chance to show off all my hats.  I remember being bugged because I spent a great deal of time coming up with funny introductions for the celebrity judges (who were school officials), and then at the beginning of the show, Hazel beat me to it and introduced them all herself.

Not being one to waste anything… food, effort, or a joke, I introduced them again.  I obviously hadn't yet learned when enough is enough and when to cut my losses.

Being able to perform in front of a friendly crowd really helped loosen me up.  It was the one time in my life when I was game for anything.  I wanted to be outrageous and unconventional.  I wasn't used to being a performer, and between my Commuter Center activities and all the speech and acting classes, it got me used to speaking in front of people.  The feeling of making a crowd laugh was the strongest drug I knew.

Granted, it didn't last long… I quickly drifted back to writing rather than performing, but I had a ball during my brief time in “the spotlight.”  But whenever I was called on to make a speech or presentation, I had something to fall back on.

I’m going to come back to the Commuter Center in Thursday’s post.  This one originally ran longer, and in an attempt to edit it some, I ended up making it longer still.  So I decided to be kind and make this a multi-part post.

Come see me Thursday for the rest of the story.

But tell me now… what kind of crowd did YOU hang with in school?

Not the Front Row, but I'll Take It

Saturday night I went to see another Orioles game (2^nd one this week) with Sitcom Kelly and her Sitcom Sister and Brother-in-Law.  Going to the games is getting to be pretty commonplace, I agree, but this time, against the Seattle Mariners, we got to use Sitcom Kelly’s Mom’s company seats, 10 rows behind home plate.

A reasonable person might not have gone, just because of the weather.  It rained all afternoon on Saturday, but after examining the weather maps and calculating all possible scenarios, I decided to go and use my sure-fire rain prevention method.  I brought an umbrella.  I used it to get from my car to the subway station, and then I barely felt a drop for the rest of the night.  Works every time.

This was most UNLIKE the time in 2010 when she and I saw the Mariners from Sitcom Mom’s seats, when it drizzled all night.  I wrote about it here.

There was nothing fun about wearing the full body condom all night long.

On the way down to the ballpark, I had to pass the convention center where the Brony convention is going on.  Between coming to and leaving from the park, I probably passed about a dozen Bronies.  I was hoping for something a little more colorful, but all practically the same: 18-22 year old, pale, skinny guys with dark hair and black t-shirts.  They looked like they got lost on the way to a Twilight convention.  Did Edward Cullen make a guest appearance on “My Little Pony?”  (Only one guy broke the mold… he had sandy hair and was much chunkier.)

If I had Misty’s secret ninja camera skills, I would have gotten some pictures.  But my camera is an actual camera and not a cell phone, and I’d have hated to make them look any mopier than they already did.

I met up with everyone at The Bullpen, where SK and I are “VIPs.”  Luckily, they got there before I did and were able to grab a table for four, so we didn't have to stand around and drink. 

At one point, Sitcom Sister and her husband got up to go grab a bite from the street vendors, when we noticed something wrong with the table.  At the same time, both SK and I stopped leaning forward on the table and the damn thing nearly toppled over.  It was almost like a whole leg was missing.  I took a look and there was about a 3-inch gap between the end of the leg and the floor.  That put the table at such a severe angle, it looked like a piece of furniture from Tim Burton’s house.

Luckily, I’m a rather inventive problem solver, and came up with this fix:

Miller Lite and Natty Boh, working together to keep people from spilling their beer.

I made the mistake of pre-crushing the Lite can a little too much, so I had to add a 16-oz Natty Boh to make up the difference.  Eventually, the bar staff noticed our fix, and then promptly found a screw-in footer for the table leg, which had been kicked out.  They admired our solution and said they’d fix the table later.  No wonder they gave us those VIP cards!

One of the best parts of getting Sitcom Mom’s seats is that they’re padded!  All the lower bowl seats between 3^rd base and 1^st are nicely padded.  It’s ironic, because I’d think that anyone with enough disposable income that they can afford these season tickets probably have enough padding on their ass.  Then again, they can probably afford personal trainers as well.  Regardless, I enjoyed the comfort.

In case this seems disorienting, this is the row in front of me, with the seat bottoms up.

This was our basic view:

Darkening clouds creep in over the Eyesore Hilton.

One little fella was having a grand time sitting up so close.  In fact, I think he thought he was backing up the catcher.

He would crouch down like that before every pitch.

It’s definitely cool to sit up that close.  You can see the ball break and hear it hiss through the air until it pops the catcher’s mitt.  The only downside is the netting.  It completely kills what would be some very grand action shots.

Nick Markakis looks one in.

Another cool thing about this area is that team scouts sit there.  At least I think they’re team scouts… they keep score, take notes, use hand-timers, and none of them wear team gear.  I don’t think there are many people who do all that for shits and giggles.

I saw at least four.  The scout whose head you can’t see is holding a hand-timer.  Plus, you can see the guy who operates the scoreboard readout that tells you what kind of pitch it was.  He punches it into the little machine sitting on the wall.

The game was pretty entertaining, in that there were 6 home runs hit.  Unfortunately, the Mariners hit 4 of them, against the Orioles’ 2.  Still, the O’s kept clawing back, with an especially nice rally after their manager Buck Showalter got tossed from the game for arguing balls and strikes from the dugout.  We had a great spot to watch the fireworks.  Unfortunately, we weren't close enough to hear what was being said.

This exchange got a louder ovation than the O’s home runs did.

The Orioles were down by two in the eighth, when Seattle hit their last home run, to go up by four.  That was the signal for most to leave the park for the night.

Even the Oriole Bird was ready to jump.  Don’t let the big smile fool you.

We stuck it out, but our presence didn't do any good, and the Birds went down in flames, 8-4.  I blame my orange Chris Davis jersey, which I hadn't worn before.  I’ll give it another shot in 2 weeks, before I hang it up for the season.

Stolen Moments

Pinky and I went to see the Orioles game Tuesday night.  She’s usually good for one or two games a year, and with the Pirates game we saw in Pittsburgh, this made two.  Because it was a special occasion, and I had a $10 off deal in hand, as a thank you for voting for Orioles in the All Star game, I figured I’d get some better seats than I usually do.

We ended up in the 2^nd row, club section, not far behind 1^st base.  The view was pretty darned nice.

I love club level… it gets you up a bit, for added perspective, but not a mile away in the upper deck.

The game was pretty good; the Orioles were down to the Astros 3-0 but came back to win 4-3, taking the lead on a Chris Davis 2-run home run.  Leading the league in homers, Davis hadn’t hit one since the All Star break.

But the big news for me is that one of the Astros stole home.  I mean, how often does that happen?  And it was a clean steal, not as a result of a wild pitch, double-steal or botched squeeze play.  He just flat-out caught the O’s pitcher (and catcher) napping.

The pitcher, being a lefty, has his back to the runner and is watching the other runner on first.  Then he looks down.  Meanwhile the guy on 3^rd is easing up the line and then just takes off.  He’s a couple steps from the batter’s box before the pitcher even notices him.  Even the catcher is still crouched back behind the plate.

You can see the video right here:

Luckily for the O’s, it didn’t cost them the game, but holy crap!  I so was excited that I was there to see someone steal home!  So when opening the Baltimore Sun this morning, I was interested in seeing what they had to say about this amazing feat.

Here’s what they said… practically nothing!  I couldn’t believe it.  I had to reread the game story a couple of times before I finally found this reference:

“(The pitcher) won despite falling behind 3-0 in ugly fashion when Astros shortstop Jonathan Villar stole home to cap a three-run third inning.”

That’s the whole thing.  Sure, they went on for nine paragraphs about Chris Davis busting out of his home run slump, but barely a whiff of their opponent stealing home.

This exemplifies one of the things I truly hate about this area: homerism to the point of turning a blind eye to even the most noteworthy feats of their opponents.  I don’t know where the blame lies in these chicken or egg cases, with fans who don’t want to be reminded of their teams’ failures, or the media who is afraid to cross them.

It’s the fuckin’ news!  They are supposed to report and analyze what happens, not shield it from the city’s poor, sensitive egos.  At minimum, I expect then to ask the principals what the hell was going on?  Why did the pitcher never look over at third?  How come the catcher never came out from behind the plate to take the throw (which bounced off the back of the runner’s head)?  How come no one hollered (in time) that the runner was coming?

Stealing home is something that rarely happens.  I’ve been to over 100 games and have never seen that before.  Hell, I’ve probably watched thousands on TV, and I’ve seen grand slams and triple plays, but I never saw a steal of home during a game.  (I’ve seen an occasional highlight, from time to time.)  I think it’s completely irresponsible to neglect coverage of so rare a play, just because the home team was on the downside of it.

I’ve mentioned this in the past, mostly as it relates to how the media handles their Ratbird coverage, but this is the best example yet.  I went to bed right after we got home last night, so I never saw how the local sportscast handled it.  If they covered it, it’s probably because the video is pretty amazing. 

Luckily, the play was all over my Yahoo home page, and other non-Baltimore news sites.  I wondered how often the stealing of home occurs, so I found a site that analyzed some stats on it.  The guy looked at the first half of the 2012 season and found that there were three successful straight steals of home during that period.  It was funny, because according to the official scorekeeping, there were 36, but the author whittled most of them out as being flukes, or by-products of other activities (like the aforementioned wild pitches, double-steals and squeeze plays).  In only three, did the guy just outright swipe the base and score.

The Astros may be the worst team in baseball, based on won/lost record, but they have some serious balls.  I have to hand it to them.  It takes a lot of guts to green-light a guy to steal home.

It’s just too bad that no one at the Baltimore Sun thought it was important enough to talk about.

Bright College Days

It was weird going through all my old college crapola over the weekend.  It’s almost as it they were relics from someone else’s life.  I mean, just in looking over some of my class notes, even though I recognized my handwriting, it didn't seem like it came from me.  I was like, “I used to know this stuff??”

I guess I needed some time to figure out how I wanted to blog about my college years; that’s why I “punted” on Sunday.  I wish I could say I came up with something ingenious, but that obviously didn't happen.  But I decided that rather than try to tell some kind of linear story, I’d just hack off a couple of bites here and there.

Books

If you’ll recall my Letter to an Incoming Freshman post, I advised my niece to buy used school books, because not only were they cheaper, they were often marked up by the original owner.  When I first started school, I made the decision that I was going to keep all of mine.  It wasn’t until my senior year, when money was growing tight, that I decided that chances were that I’d never, EVER have reason to crack these books again, and if I could turn them into some cash, I’d be a dummy not to do it.

I have about 4-5 books left, which were mostly from my senior year.  I leafed through one of them, from my class on human sexuality, (hey, it was senior year and all I had left were electives), and while it was highly notated by previous owners, there was only one margin note from me.

There was a line in the text about Casanova, and how in the 18^th century, he was the first to place hollowed out lemon across a woman’s cervix, to act as a diaphragm.  (Citric acid can immobilize sperm.)

My note in the margin said, “the first sourpuss.”

“OK, who’s defiling the fruit around here?”  (Source)

That’s when it dawned on me that if I hadn't intended to keep my books all along, I’d have spent more time putting notes in them, for the sole purpose of entertaining the next owner.  And knowing me, I would have attached a feedback card with my address, to find out how they liked my material.

Major Minor

I mentioned before that I began my college career pursuing a major in journalism, and it didn’t last long because I chaffed at the constraints of journalistic writing.  My first quarter of freshman year, though, I never took any courses applicable to my major.  Somehow, I got into the honors program, where the courses were more demanding than the usual 100-level intro courses, but yielded higher credit for taking them.

That first quarter consisted of classes called, Values Analysis, Evaluating Social Controversy, Seminar on Social Sciences and Varieties of Writing.  Although I didn’t know it at the time, these proved to be the most valuable of my college years, because they taught me how to organize my thoughts and opinions, deconstruct arguments, and in general, how to think.  In fact, I think courses like those shouldn't be part of the honors curriculum; they should be requirements for every major.

Anyway, it wasn’t until the 2^nd and 3^rd quarters that I began taking journalism classes, and was thus turned off by the rigidity.  That’s when I decided to go with a Broadcasting major, and after studying myself in the mirror, selected a radio concentration over TV.  Granted, radio and TV writing have their own structures, but they also rewarded creativity.  Any time I added any kind of flair or a unique perspective in my J-classes, I got smacked down for it.

I also went for a minor in Creative Writing, because I figured it would help with the broadcast writing, plus, it was fun.  I don’t recall if I ever successfully completed the minor, but I took a number of writing and performing classes.

Oral Interpretation was a universal requirement in the College of Arts and Sciences.  Oral Interp is basically the art of reading out loud… sort of like acting for people with a bad memory.  That was great fun for me.  And because I was also doing a lot of writing, I’d sometimes get to read my own material.  That certainly made it easier for me to do the prep work, where you have to explain what the author is trying to say.

Most importantly, I learned how to mark up a script for reading, which is a skill I still use, whether I’m speaking to a group, or just creating a voice-mail greeting.

I also took an acting class, but was never really comfortable with it.  I loved when we got to do improv in class, but I was always uncomfortable when I had to do a memorized speech, like for our final “exams.”  I never got over feeling awkward and self-conscious, so I’m sure I looked quite wooden.  Seriously, it was all I could do just to get the words out in the right order.

I took a number of creative writing classes, which I enjoyed, but for one problem.  There was one class where two thirds of your work had to be prose, and one third had to be poetry, or vice versa.

At the time I thought I was a pretty good story writer, but in retrospect, I wasn't yet.  But I knew I was a lousy poet, and that was no joke.  I still have a bunch of the poems, and I guarantee they’re still cringe-worthy.

I really only wrote one or two that were serious attempts.  One was about an old girlfriend; another was a tribute to Elton John, and believe me, THAT one will never see the light of day.

The others were all spoofs and satire, in marginally poetic form.  (Yes, I refrained from limericks.)  There was one “love poem” where I parodied poems about how blue their lovers’ eyes were, comparing them to the USDA stamp on a cut of meat (they used to do that), Grandma’s varicose veins, smoke from an old Chevy, and other bizarre things.

There was one that was a satire of a Hallmark card that was intentionally over-the-top drippy, with an ending of, “and if you won’t be mine, I shall lay me down and croak.”

I recycled one poem I wrote for a high school assignment, that was nothing but nonsense; just disjointed images and phrases.  I guess I was sick of reading about long-ass poems about an urns or walls, that were in fact about something completely unrelated.  Call it my version of substituting a child’s fingerpaint doodlings into a ritzy art gallery, to see if anyone notices.

Anyway, if my attempts taught me anything, it’s that the talent for poetry in my family begins and ends with my mom.  If only I could go back in time and submit the poems for strippers I wrote on cocktail napkins… I might have pulled my grade up a bit.

My favorite writing project was a short story that was intended to be the last chapter of an English mystery… you know, the scene where all the suspects are gathered in the drawing room and the hard-boiled detective runs down and dismisses everyone’s motives until he finally reveals the killer.

I re-read that one on Sunday… I had so much fun with the character names.  The murder victim’s family name was Bondeanerwintz, after a nickname we used to have for my buddy Brill.  There was also Mr. Waterbaum, the business partner, Mrs. Gumbyboots, the maid, Miss Tittlewhittle, the secretary/mistress, Mrs. Preshrunk, the psychiatrist, Mrs. Sudsworth, the laundress, and Ray Bees, the Kennel Director.  The detective, Nick O’Tyme, finally pinned it on Dr. Herpes, the family physician, who he accused of switching the dead man’s glycerin pills and inducing a heart attack with a cold stethoscope.  It led to this exchange…

Det. O’Tyme: You wanted to use his body for your own medical experimentation.

Dr. Herpes: I say, you’re daft!

Det. O’Tyme: No more than you are, thinking you could get away with storing Mr. Bondeanerwintz in formaldehyde, up in your office. I saw him there when I searched the place last night.

Dr. Herpes: You’re bloomin’ loony.  That was Mr. Emery.

Finally, the scene is interrupted by Mr. Butler, the cook, who shoots the detective and claims responsibility for the crime, saying he chopped up the victim and made him into a stew.

With his final breath, the detective asks, “Tell me one last thing… did you use oregano in that, or a pinch of garlic?”

I wish I could have claimed all the credit for the final twist, but I lifted it directly from my Barn friend, Billy G, who came up with it in a cassette tape he sent to us.  (After he moved out of town, we didn’t write letters, we exchanged recorded tapes.  His were often brilliant.  I lifted a lot of stuff from our comedic collaborations over the years, for use on college assignments.)

More on the College Bluz, to come…

Some Days Ya Got Nuthin'

That’s me today.  I got nothin’ that grabs me to write about, even though I tried.

In fact, if you want my advice, go read my previous post.  I really like that one.  It’s funny and not very long.

Remember how last weekend I cracked my “vault,” to try to milk a post out of the contents?  I figured I’d try again, only this time, I’d use the box of my old college materials that I have stored.  It contains my notebooks and folders from my college years, and a handful of books from my last semester.

I spent about two hours looking through all that old crap, and I’ll be damned if I could find something I wanted to write about.  I mean; there were a few interesting tidbits I may mine later, but it took so long, I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day doing the post.  I accept the points off for poor planning.

Plus, the work I was looking for wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it would be.  Some things don’t age well, and apparently I’m one of them.

However one person who IS aging well is my Lil Mother, who turns 74 today. 

Happy birthday, Mom.  And thank you for teaching that when I don’t have anything interesting to say, to kindly shut the hell up!

What?  That wasn’t you?  You must have been “in on it” at any rate…

WTF-Con

As you know, I work in downtown Baltimore.  A lot goes on in a downtown environment, besides the usual traffic and crime.  In Baltimore, we have sports events, activities associated with the Inner Harbor, tourism and of course, conventions.  Baltimore works very hard to fill its halls and hotels with conventions of all kinds, from professional, to sports and rec, to, well… other stuff.

I always get a kick out of rolling out of the subway station and spying a pack of girls wearing spandex pants with ears and a tail, with whiskers painted on.  That’s usually how I learn that Otakon is in town.   Otakon is a convention celebrating East Asian pop culture, and will be in town August 9-11. 

Otakon, downtown Baltimore, 2012  (Source)

Last weekend, they held a firefighter’s convention.  I emailed Sitcom Kelly about it, in case she wanted to add a buff fireman to her collection of hockey and football players living in the pit she dug in her basement.  At worst, she could sharpen her stalking skills.

I know about these events ahead of time now because I’m on the city’s mailing list for downtown news.  It’s part of the Safety and Security mailings the city does, to keep businesses abreast of anything that might affect them, like local thefts, road construction, rough weather, or things like this that can add to congestion.

That’s also how I found out about another upcoming event that just made me shake my head in wonderment.  They have convention for everything now…

Get this: from August 2^nd to 4^th, the Baltimore Convention Center will be hosting “BronyCon.”  This is from the flyer:

“BronyCon is a convention held by and for the fans of the cartoon, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.  This show attracted an unexpected audience of young adults and teenagers, mostly male, who call themselves “bronies.”  BronyCon is the first and largest convention of fans of Friendship is Magic, the latest incarnation of the My Little Pony franchise.  Since the show’s debut in the Fall of 2010, it has garnered an extremely large and dedicated following of fans of all ages.  BronyCon welcomes all fans in a celebration of the community and values that have grown from the phenomenon.”

The hotels are expecting to fill about 700 rooms with visiting bronies.  700 rooms, housing dudes who like this:

I’m just wondering if this really qualifies as a safety issue.  I mean, I have to think that a convention of bronies makes Comic-Con look like the Sturgis Biker Rally.

In looking for a relevant picture, I came across a blog that had a good rundown of the whole My Little Pony (aka MLP) situation.  In the comments, you’ll find a raging battle between those that think bronies are a bunch of pervs, to the bronies themselves defending their fandom as healthy and positive.

Now I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong here… I just don’t get it.  It’s a little girl’s cartoon.  Young boys watching?  OK, I can see it.  You don’t want to pre-determined gender roles.  Low-end teenagers?  Maybe it’s soothing for those that feel like outcasts.  But grown-ass men in their 20s, 30s, and Christ, 40s???  WTF??

A number of people pointed out in the Comments for the blog I linked, that it beats getting immersed in bloody video games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto and other First Person Shooter games.  I agree, but I think there has to be some middle ground between mindless gory mayhem, and…

I mean, the Orioles are in town, why not just go to a game?  Get a little fresh air, have a dog and a beer, and make friends with real people, instead of fixating on brightly colored, mythical 2-dimensional beings.  But enough about the Kardashians…

This level of commitment to a little kid’s cartoon is dumbfounding to me.  I mean, zoning out in front of a harmless, fluffy cartoon once in a while, or even regularly?  I can see it.  After all, even I have some ABBA on my MP3 player, which is the musical equivalent of MLP.

But traveling to another town, getting reservations in an expensive downtown hotel room to attend a 3-day convention??  For animated, giant-eyed, long-maned equines???  (Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up the Kardashians again.)  I just don’t get it. 

Why not just go to the track and see some real horses?  Granted they don’t come in Crayola colors, nor do they have horns or wings, but a couple of cans of spray paint and some glue could fix that.  Just don’t try to approach the horses during the race.

“Come on, just one quick hug...”

Some of the bronies commented that they were embarrassed to mention their bronyhood to their buddies, but once they got them to watch the show, they became fans as well.  That made me snicker.  I can just imagine trying to recruit MY buddies to become bronies.  (Cue hazy filter and harp music…)

“Hey, Rik, how about we forget about the Tigers game and put on My Little Pony?  It’s all about friendship and bonding!”

"OK, how about you John?  Can we turn off American Pickers and watch the ponies prance and play?"

“Hey, come on you guys!  [thump thump]  Let me out of the trunk right now!  That’s no way to support a friend…” [thump thump thump…]

Yeah, no fuckin’ way.

So did you know about this brony stuff?  And if you have small kids who watch the show, what do you think about a bunch of grown men celebrating the same show?

An Ear for Writing

When I was going though my treasure trove of old documents, (from this weekend’s post) I saw a few relics that reminded me of a time of which I was very fond: my tenure on my high school newspaper staff.  In particular, it reminded me of the time I very casually humiliated a friend in public.

I was only on the newspaper staff for my senior year.  When I was a junior, I was planning on going into the sciences.  I was enjoying chemistry class and thought it might be my calling.  But that Spring I was nominated for the National Honor Society, and one of their requirements was that you have to participate in school activities.

I never gave a shit about school activities.  Once school was out, I was gone… I did my homework during study halls, so after school, I figured I was on my time.  Normally, I wouldn't have even been nominated for NHS, but my GPA was too high for them to ignore.  So I was admitted, with an admonishment from the NHS Adviser to join something, pronto!  So for senior year, I joined the school newspaper.

It was a good fit for several reasons.  First, it went on during school hours, during the final period.  Second, it was graded, so it was a good way to pad my GPA.  Believe me, after struggling through physics and trig, I needed the help.  Third, I liked the idea of having an audience to entertain. 

The newspaper staff was made up of about a dozen students, from freshmen to seniors.  Most were underclassmen, so even though I didn't have any experience, I immediately floated to near the top of the “pecking order.”

What most of the school didn't know was that there were actually two separate staffs.  Each staff was responsible for producing a newspaper every other week, so that the end effect was a seamless weekly distribution.

Now when I say “school newspaper,” keep in mind that this was the 1978-79 school year.  Our graphics capability was pretty primitive.  The whole thing was done on mimeo pages that had to be stapled together.  We’d type up our articles on manual typewriters, cut them apart and paste them into a master sheet, and then add the headlines by using rub-on letters.  One slip up while rubbing the transfer on would make the headline all crooked, so that it didn't look as much like a newspaper as it did a ransom note.

This was our finished product, The General’s Dispatch.  What?  Of course I still have every copy.

Through the course of the year, I fell in love with doing what I was doing… writing reviews and editorials, along with lots of satire and goofy shit.  Basically, I was team-blogging.  I soon found myself as the go-to guy when someone needed a headline, which almost always involved word play and puns, which were right in my wheelhouse.

The first month into my tenure on the newspaper staff, our Staff Adviser, Mrs B, and a sophomore girl on the team approached me with a proposition.  The girl wanted to write an anonymous gossip column about various goings on at the school.  Because of the nature of the “2-staff” system, they needed another player.  I considered the grand opportunity for mischief and was happy to sign on.  We kicked around a number of ideas for the name for the column, and settled on The Ear.

The split staff proved to be a great cover for us, because one of us would frequently publish information that the other would never be in the position to know.  That prevented most people from getting too close to figuring out who we were.  Our identities were a well-guarded secret, and eventually the subject of much speculation as more and more embarrassing stories were told.  But not even the other newspaper staff members knew who we were, other than the two student Editors.

People tried to pry it out of Mrs B all the time.  She would tell everyone that she had no idea who The Ear was; all she knew was that a column would show up on her desk every week.

I didn't tell a soul, not even my best buddies, Rik, John or Brill.  I had one guy from my College Composition class badger me on a daily basis, trying to get me to admit I was The Ear.  By that time, the teacher was reading some of my stories in class, so my work was becoming a known commodity. 

“I know it’s you, Bluz, just admit it.  That’s your style and your wit.  It’s got your name all over it.”

Like I said, the fact that almost no one knew about how the paper was being produced by two staffs, (necessitating two “Ears”), was most helpful in providing cover.  To deflect the guy from comp class, I’d point out that I wouldn't have any way of knowing a couple of events my counterpart provided, because they took place in locations I would never be, (like classes I didn't take, or extra-curricular activities in which I wasn't involved).  He was still suspicious though.

OK, here’s where things got funky…  The Other Ear brought me a juicy morsel about one of our newspaper staff members, a sophomore in the Marching Band I’ll call “Fiery Redhead.”  (Yes, another redhead.  I forgot about her.  We never dated, but we were pretty good friends.)  Coming home on the band bus from a football game in October, the Other Ear saw her making out with another band member.

All I needed to do was dash off a couple of sentences about kissing on the bus, but two words did me in.  Two words were the gasoline that set our newsroom on fire.  And I didn't even mean them; I chose them purely because I liked the way they sounded.  

“Known floozy.”  To me the words just sounded happy, flirty and whimsical.  Boozy, doozy, woozy, floozy… Those sounded like fun words.  I never really meant to call the girl a slut.  She was my friend; I thought it was just a little jab.  In fact, her column in that same issue, which appeared right beside mine, referred to me by name, as “The Wandering Wop.”  Obviously, political correctness had not been invented yet.  As such, I wrote my bit with nary a second thought. 

I look at those words today, and I can plainly see that it’s something I shouldn't have done, and especially not in the high school freakin’ newspaper!  I would never do something like that now.  But at the time, I was a teenage boy who was just finding out how much fun it was to be irreverent.  I thought everything was fair game for poking fun.  Eff’em if they couldn't’ take a joke, right?  I was busting out of my shell and didn't care who knew it.

I began suspecting I misjudged the situation when she first read the column, shortly after it was published.  Trust me, I was never so glad to be “anonymous.”  Poor girl was mortified, although in no time, the ratio between “mortified” and “severely pissed off” was more like 20/80.  She went through the newspaper staff room like a buzzsaw, interrogating everyone about who this Ear might be.

Not surprisingly, Mrs B held her ground, (Thank you thank you!) and maintained her ignorance of the Ear’s identity. I’m sure she wanted no part of that drama. But the funny part was that Fiery Redhead kept coming to ME to help her figure it out!  She wanted to stake out Mrs B’s desk to see who was leaving the Ear column there.  I told her she should get right on that and that I’d help, knowing full well that the desk thing was a ruse.  I turned all my Ear columns in directly to the student Editor.  (Come to think of it, the whole thing is her fault!  She should have cut the “floozy” part.)

I tried to talk her down as best I could, telling her I was sure The Ear didn't really mean any harm by it.  But I said I’d put some feelers out among my friends to try to flush this person out. I even offered to have their ass kicked, if we ever found out who it was.  (OK, I was mostly volunteering Rik and John for that activity.)

She kept at it for months, trying to find out who wronged her so publicly.  I don’t know how much grief she took in her other classes, or back on the band bus, but it became a recurring thing during newspaper period.  Around the newsroom, Known Floozy became her nickname.  Or just “Flooz” for short.

“Hey Flooz, can you toss me the Wite-Out?”

Over time, I've found that you can call someone almost anything, provided you do with affection and a smile. 

At the end of the year, I had to write my final Ear column, wherein I unveiled my identity.  OK, I didn't exactly reveal my name, but I left more than enough clues for anyone that knew me, so underclassmen would still be clueless. I figured if I came out completely, it might ruin the Ear mystique.  I assumed that someone else would step in and run with the column the following year, so I thought it best to maintain a degree of continuity.

On the other hand, I was happy to come clean, as my secret was starting to unravel.  Rik guessed it first.

I had written a blurb that spring about how he and I were racing to see how fast we could squeeze out a pint of blood, during the annual Red Cross blood drive.  It wasn't mentioning him (or us) that gave me away; it was that I called him “Rik.”  Most everyone else in the school knew him by his legal first name; only his closest friends called him Rik, which was a form of his middle name.  So I had to confess, swear him to secrecy, and ask him to provide any juicy material he found.

The guy from College Comp also forced it out of me.  He just kept up the pressure until late in the year, when I finally caved.  He kept going on about how snappy and witty the writing was, and how it was totally my style.  I was so happy he thought so, I eventually confessed.  (Lesson: bullshitting works!)  But neither he nor Rik ever gave me any dirt I could use.  Bastards!

As for the Fiery Redhead, you should have seen the look on her face when she found out it was me all along.  Believe me, I did a LOT of apologizing, and she finally forgave me.  In fact, we’d gotten to be pretty good friends by the end of the year.  That May, our whole newspaper staff took a trip to Cedar Point (amusement park), and had a grand time.  It’s a lot more fun to hang out when you don’t have a print deadline looming over your head.

I also saw some more of Other Ear, who I took to the prom.  (Apparently Sophomores don’t care who they go to prom with, as long as they can go!)  But prom night is a story for another post. 

Believe me, The Ear would have had a field day reporting on that!

Director’s DVD Commentary: As my struggle with higher math loomed larger and larger as an obstacle to my becoming serious with the sciences, I decided to make a run at journalism for a college major.

So I began college by majoring in journalism, but it was short lived.  If I could have gotten a degree in solely being a feature columnist or editorial writer, I would have been much better off.  I chaffed at the tight structure of journalistic writing, and realizing I’d never enjoy doing serious news writing and reporting, I migrated to a major in broadcasting for sophomore year.  Journalism would have been a much better fit if only they’d let me make up the news. 

Also, I was kidding about the whole thing being my editor’s fault.  I pitched a royal fit any time someone altered my writing.  It was bad enough when my mother, the English Teacher, corrected my work; I wasn't putting up with any mess from some underclassman!  Consequently, for better or worse, (in this case, the latter) my copy was very rarely changed.

In 1999, Rik and I paid a visit to our old school, where Mrs B gave us a guided tour.  Needless to say, the state of the school newspaper was vastly improved, although they were still producing paper copies.  They were very slick and professional, utilizing modern PCs, but I’d bet that by now, the whole thing is digital and is emailed out student phones and laptops.  Or maybe it’s part of a school website.  Either way, I bet it’s still a lot of fun for wiseguys like me.

Assessing the Vault

For some time now, I've been meaning to go through some of my old files.  Back when I first moved out, I bought this little file box at K-Mart, in which I could keep my Very Important Documents.  As it turned out my definition of Very Important Documents ran from my Social Security card and Selective Service registration, to bits of past writing, to newspaper and cartoon clippings.  It’s really kind of a time capsule for me, documenting the years from 1974 to 1997.

With the age of digital storage, the old file box is kind of a nostalgic anachronism.  I haven’t added anything to it since I moved to Baltimore.  (You know, where I got a computer and began storing documents electronically.)

Yesterday, I finally found the time will to go through it all and see if I might find some blog material.  I had a couple of particular bits of writing in mind I thought I might recreate for your amusement; I’d just have to find them.

But I learned something as I went through all those old nuggets.  I learned that I wasn't nearly as good of a writer as I thought I was.  Maybe it was the apparent pretension I see now, maybe it was the cringe-worthy inappropriateness of looking at old comic bits through the lens of the current sociological ethos, but it just didn't hold up.

Of course, what else should I expect from a time capsule?

I was particularly disappointed in a story I wrote in the late 80s, about playing sandlot football.  I was so proud of it at the time, and it’s a story I still want to tell.  I was hoping I could just drop it in here as a post, but it clearly needs a lot of work.  I’ll get to it, eventually.

I've previously written about getting into a blackboard verse/limerick war with my high school girlfriend’s older brother, in English Lit class.  (It was an important moment in developing my rep for wise-ass wit.)  In the post, I mentioned that I had some of my limericks, but I didn't know where they were.  Well, I found them in the file box, along with the ones I wrote with another dude during a boring college lecture class.  (We would alternate lines and write about people we didn't like.)

What I learned there was that my blackboard stuff was mildly amusing at best (although still worlds better than the other guy’s), and that the stuff with my friend was ragingly inappropriate for this day and age.  (And its own day an age; I just didn't know it yet.)  Sure, I’d laugh at some of the turns of phrase, but at the same time I was thinking, “OK, that’s never going to see the light of day…"

I found a bunch of old annual evaluations dating back to my record store days.  All that did was highlight how much I wanted to get out of that rat race, not knowing that I was just heading into a different one.  Not that they didn't contain some truth.  With some of the comments, I’d be thinking, “No, that was bullshit.”  Other times, I’d be like, “Yup, that was me… I still suck at that…”

I did manage to find one little nugget I was proud of.  Remember when I was writing about my retail career and I mentioned how in return for posting a local radio station’s billboard in the store, we would receive some free commercial spots?  Being a recent college graduate with a degree in radio, I would write the commercials and the station would produce them.  I posted the audio from my best one.

When I was going through the archives, I found a couple more commercial scripts I wrote.  One in particular, I thought was reasonably clever.  This was a pre-Christmas ad from November of 1985; a riff on the old Night Before Christmas classic.

(Music: “Carol of the Bells”)

‘Twas a month before Christmas

And all through the store;

Peaches shoppers were shopping

And asking for more.

With the Cars and the Starship

At $6.99

I knew that great savings

Were soon to be mine.

Aerosmith, Loverboy,

Heart, Kiss and Sting;

At $5.99

They made my heart sing.

(For brevity’s sake, I’m skipping a couple of stanzas about the glory of blank audio and video tapes.  Hey, YOU try writing something interesting about TDK SA-90s!)

My compact disc player

Was sounding just fine,

With Peaches whole stock

At $13.99.

There were jam boxes, head cleaners,

Headphones and stuff,

With prices so low

I just can’t get enough.

(Music fade up: Tina Turner, “But I Might Have Been Queen”)

But Tina was calling,

And Autograph too,

Both at $6.99

Just like old Motley Crue.

With WASP, Mr. Mister,

Marillion and Cure,

Peaches Records has got

The best prices for sure.

Now bring yourself over

And don’t you forget,

Your ‘RQN coupon

For the best savings yet.

You’ll find it at Peaches,

Your Christmas-time pick

On South Reynolds Road,

Just south of Southwyck.

It’s kind of funny just seeing a list of all the bands that were popular at the time.  Some have held up, others, you’re like, “Who?”

One of the other things I realized in going through the file box was that I lived in an epic era for newspaper cartoons.  I had tons of them stashed away, mostly The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, Doonesbury, and my favorite Bloom County/Outland/Opus.  (Only Doonesbury is still running today.)

I found a clip of what may be my all-time favorite comic.  It was a Sunday strip of “Outland” from 1993.  “Bloom County” was a huge favorite of mine in college, before the author rejiggered it into “Outland,” which eventually begat the Sunday-only “Opus.”  I couldn't believe that this clipping still looked as bright and fresh as if I ran in the paper today.  Most of my other clippings had grown faded and brittle.  Maybe the Albany Times-Union used better newsprint.

Anyway, here is a look at a strip that was controversial at the time, but remains as true now as it was then.  Sometimes the truth hurts…

 (Click the pic, to embiggen for easier reading.)