Im-Poster Child for Insecurity

Pittsburgh blogger Jayesel (pronounced Jay-ess-el) wrote a post this week about “Imposter Syndrome.”  Red Pen Mama also chimed in on the subject, on her blog.

Jayesel defined “Imposter Syndrome” like this: “…it’s the phenomenon (particularly among overachievers), where we are in complete denial of our gifts and skills- too wrapped up in hoping nobody finds us out as IMPOSTERS, so filled with self-doubt that it often clouds our ability to do our jobs well, even if we are truly talented and good at them.” 

Further, she brought up how so many people have trouble accepting compliments on things the do well.  She then went on to list 7 things that she is good at and asked her readers to do the same.

I commented on Jayesel’s post, but as you know, I’m not too proud to stoop to a little self-plagiarizing if I can co-opt it for a cheap post idea. 

I totally identify with Imposter Syndrome. Any second, I expect someone to come in and go, “What are YOU doing here, working for this respected company in this nice office building?” and whisk me away…  In the back of my mind, there’s the ever-present fear that someone in charge is going to realize that I’m not nearly as clever as I may seem and that I would serve society so much better if I were off doing some kind of manual labor that features the use of long-handled tools.

I think we deflect praise in order to appear humble. Since I was a kid, I hated being around braggarts. I figure, if you’re good at something, I’ll notice… if you have to tell me about it, you must not be that good.  I am aggressively unimpressed by people that constantly toot their own horn, so consequently, I have a hard time doing so myself.

For example, I sometimes get told I’m a good photographer (of anything but people). I always feel funny about that… I usually point out that the sunset (or forest or flower or pond…) was already there looking beautiful and I just happened by and snapped the picture.  I liken it to the rooster taking credit for the dawn.

I know that’s not exactly true… I have to recognize the photographic potential in a scene, frame it in an aesthetically pleasing fashion and take the shot without jiggling.  Oh, and I have to have the forethought to have my camera with me!

OK, I may not have created the pond, but I did realize that the flower, upright in the foreground, would be a cool contrast to the upside down reflection from the pond.

But OK, to follow through with the original request, here are some things I’m good at:

1.  I can write things that make people laugh.  I’m hopeful that if you’ve been reading me a while, you’ve noticed that about me.  When I was younger, I was more of a performer, but I never felt comfortable in that role.  I love the crafting of a funny line and getting it out there.  The drawback is you don’t have that instant feedback that comes from live performing.  That’s why blog comments are so important.  I admit it.  I'm a feedback whore.

2.  I’m good at finding flaws in logic and picking apart an argument.  Chalk it up to a basic logic class in high school and a couple critical thinking classes in college.  That’s why political ads, speeches and Fox News get me in such a twist.  I can recognize so many of the devices being used… the misdirection, the loaded language, misleading statistics, skewed imagery, etc. 

3.  To go right along with that, I have a very healthy skepticism.  Being skeptical leads directly to the finding of facts.  Influence-peddling media of all leanings prey on the fact that most people will believe what they’re told from a position of authority, especially if it supports what they want to believe.

4.  I can reach things on high shelves.  I swear, that’s why my parents bred me this way.  Someone has to be able to reach the cobwebs, paint the ceiling, or put the top ornament on the tree.

5.  I take a nice landscape picture.  (See above.)  The rub is that I have no idea what I’m doing.  I’m sometimes told that I have some kind of eye for composition.  I don’t even know what that means.  I just take a shot that looks interesting.  I guess it works…

6.  I don’t usually hold a grudge, unless it’s reeeeeeeally earned.  I can get pretty pissed off at someone, but over the years, I’ve learned that it just takes too much work to stay angry.  Once I get a little distance… maybe an hour, maybe a day, maybe a month or a year, but eventually I’m back to square one and all is cool.  If my dating past taught me anything, it’s that the opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.  Once you reach that, it’s easy to slough off the hurt.

7.  I’m good at coming up with ways to do things efficiently.  I did a post on this once… I’m forever in search of the best way to do things, and more often than not, I’ve found it for things I have to do with any regularity.

So there… that’s what I’m good at.

Now, the things I need to work on… much longer list.

And it starts with “brevity.”

Myron Cope

Once I got into a football vibe with the last post, I started thinking about the upcoming Steelers season.  Aside from the actual game playing part of it, I started thinking about the legend that was Myron Cope (1929-2008).

If you’re from Pittsburgh, you know all about him, and you and everyone you know has probably imitated him at one time or another.  This will be a trip down memory lane.

 

If you’re not from Pittsburgh, let me tell you about this guy.

Myron was a tiny little guy, a well-accredited sports writer for newspapers and for Sports Illustrated.  Almost on accident, the Steelers put him on the air, broadcasting Steelers games.  It was quite a risk… Myron has a voice like no other.  He sounds like a pissed off hardware store owner.  He is not polished or smooth and is prone to sputtering when he gets overly excited.  But to Pittsburghers, he’s one of us… our surrogate up in the booth that tells us what’s going on.

Besides broadcasting the games, he also did his own sports call-in show as well as sports commentary on TV.  Granted, his face was suited for TV about as well as his voice was suited for radio, but his sparkling wit, intellect made him a Pittsburgh household name, as well as his complete fearlessness of making a fool out of himself.

I could go on describing some of his regular bits, but they’re already all over the web, and quite Googleable.  I should also mention that he’s the guy that invented the Terrible Towel.  That story is Googleable as well, but let me point out that long before he passed away, he signed over all royalty rights for The Terrible Towel over to a school/home for autistic children.  Think about the cash involved there.  Ever see how many Terrible Towels are out there?  Consider that they are NOT given away at the stadium, like every other copycat team in the league does.  Every fan twirling a towel bought it for about $7.00.

This is going to sound funny, but I’ve hardly ever listened to him.  I didn’t live in Pittsburgh while he was broadcasting, so the only opportunity to hear him was the rare occasion when we were visiting.  And in those cases, we usually had the game on TV.  (Yes, I know that many people turned the TV down and listened to Myron on the radio, but we didn’t.)

Once I started going to some games in Pittsburgh, we always listened to his locker room show on the way home.  That was often as much fun as the game itself.  But I never really got to hear his radio calls until the early 2000s and I was living in Baltimore.

The Steelers would be playing but they wouldn’t be on TV.  I was too broke to go out to a sports bar, so I’d listen to the radio call over my new-fangled PC.  That’s when I finally got to hear Myron in his element.  Hearing him get all worked up on the radio was just delicious and just the tonic a lonely Steelers fan needed.

I’ll never forget listening to one preseason game against the Redskins, who were in a state of disarray after a bumpy off-season.  Myron kept referring to them as the “Redfaces.”

New owner Daniel Snyder sent one of his lackeys into the booth, to tell Myron to stop calling them the “Redfaces.”  Myron went ballistic, on the air.

“If that Boy-Owner thinks he can tell me what to do, he can go stick his head in a bucket of paint!”

I almost pissed myself laughing.

My brother with Myron, circa 1981.

Anyway, I could write about Myron forever and not come close to having you know what he was like to listen to, so I won’t try.

Instead, I spend the last two nights putting this “video” clip together for you.  There have been Myron Cope sound bytes available on the web for years.  I downloaded a ton of them from one site in particular, probably the first month I had a PC.  I would credit and link the site here, but alas, it seems to have been taken down.

Lucky for me, I still have all the clips, so I picked out my favorites, tried to group them into some kind of logical order, added some signposts and assembled them into one YouTube video, which you will find below.

Now trust me… sports fan or not… you gotta give a listen.  At first, you think it’s a miracle this guy lasted 10 minutes on the radio, as opposed to 30 years.  But soon, you come to see the humble, homey, homely brilliance. 

Plus, if you’re going to be painting a room soon, this will loosen the old coat for you.

If you want to indulge me in comments, tell me which clip you liked best.

Cope… you’re on, buddy…

Note: The "COPE" picture at the top is available on T-shirts and more from CafePress.

Pre-Season Smack

I promised Woman: Confused that I’d do a sports post and I’m nothing if not a man of my word.  I’ve been pretty much leaving sports alone since the Stanley Cup playoffs, but now the 2010 football season beckons and it’s beginning to draw my attention.  And not even in a good way.

The Ratbirds had their first pre-season game last night.  It was against the Carolina Panthers and broadcast nationally on ESPN.  For some reason though, they also saw fit to broadcast it on the local CBS affiliate here, and in the process, pre-empting Big Brother.  Pissed me right the hell off.  I mean, it’s the same exact broadcast; why does it need to be on two channels?

Yes, yes, I know… for all the people that don’t have cable.  What’s that, about a dozen in the Baltimore metro area?  I want Big Brother damn it!  It was eviction night.

Oh well, I’ll catch it on On Demand.  Crisis solved.  My downward spiral into Lowest Common Denominator Television continues.

OK, we were talking about sports…

I don’t know what it is about me that revels in counter-cultural activities.  (As you may remember from last season, I despise the Ravens, and spelled out my issues with this band of idiots in a post from November.)  I work in a big building and since it’s located in downtown Baltimore, it’s populated with about 80% Ravens fans.  But there’s a small, secretive group of us Steeler fans that scurry along the baseboards and pop out at unexpected times.  We covertly acknowledge each other in the hallways, maybe trade tasty links once in a while.

This year, we decided to organize.  One of the executive admins and I decided to compare notes and come up with a list of all the Steeler fans we knew in the building and see if they might be interested in getting together for lunch every so often, to talk a little Pittsburgh football.  The response was unanimous… everyone wanted in.  It’s especially good that we have one of the Executive Vice Presidents in the group… that kind of pull gets us the boardroom for lunch!

If we’re going to have a secret club, I decided we needed to have a name and logo.  So this is what I came up with.  I still have to see if the group approves.

Anyway, we’re having our inaugural lunch before the opening game.  And I mean a real game, not freakin’ pre-season.  I really don’t follow pre-season at all.  Games are totally meaningless.  The scrubs take most of the snaps and the teams don’t game-plan for each other.  All I want to see is my team not take any injuries.  If the starters look sharp, that’s just gravy.

As you may have seen before, I’ve never been a bashful fan.  My cube is always tricked out with Steelers (and Penguins) decorations.  There is never a doubt where I stand.

My current cube, shot a couple seasons ago.  There are 2 more Terrible Towels just to the right of the palm plant.

One thing I like to do is tack up negative Ratbirds headlines on the outside of my cube wall.  I just want to make sure the Rattie fans’ heads don’t get too big, you see.  But back in 2005, I took this to an art form, literally.

I was in my previous department and was surrounded by a lot of Ravens fans.  When the Ratbirds opened the season with a couple of losses, I decided to make a collage out of the press clippings.  I figured I’d do it for a few weeks and have a little fun with my purple-clad co-workers.  It started out like this:

Click the pic for the larger, more detailed version.  Same with all the shots to come.

Well, the losing continued and the headlines and pictures were just priceless.  The thing was, this was the local paper… the cheerleaders!  The Detroit game was especially juicy because the Rats committed over 20 penalties and completely melted down.  So I kept the board going.

I had my growing collage hung on a big pillar, above the height of the cube walls.  You could see it from all over the floor.  I had one friend in particular that was especially rabid about the Rats, so just to twist the knife a little further, I affixed his name to it.  I told him it was an honor I was bestowing.

The losing kept up all season so I kept at it… the headlines, pictures of angry faces, fumbled footballs and celebrating opposition.  The biggest problem is that I had limited space.  I had to keep covering up older items to make room for the new.  By the end of the season in January, the thing was packed.  Now, I present my tribute to purple futility:

I don’t think Jason ever forgave me, especially when my Steelers went on to win the Super Bowl that season.  Or when they won it again in 2009.  But by that time, they barely came around me during football season any more.  I can’t imagine why…

Tykes on a Plane

With all the news about America’s Newest Hero, the guy that finally had enough abuse from airline passengers that upon landing, he commandeered the plane’s PA, told everyone to fuck off, grabbed two beers and pulled the escape chute and dashed off onto the tarmac to make his escape.

His story, though not directly related, reminded me of a post I did about the bane of my aviating existence: little kids.

I wrote a thing about it on my old site a couple of years ago and have been tempted to revive it here a number of times.  The last time I was thinking about it, Ginny from That’s Church went and did a post about how tough it was for her to fly with her young kids, and how much she appreciated the kindness and sympathy of strangers to help her through the ordeal.

So I thought I’d better sit on it a bit longer.  I mean, I’m generally sympathetic to the parent’s plight in trying to travel with kids.  I know all Mom wants is a quiet flight too. 

But Jesus, I didn’t pay $300 so I could listen to screaming for 2 hours, or get my seatback kicked every 7 seconds, or have some little monkey staring and babbling at me, smearing jelly and crumbs all over my pants, or God forbid, have to get a diaper change from 3’ away while captive in a stuffy plane cabin.  Chances are; I’m either hung over, or about to be.  I need rest.

So I wrote this post right after flying back from somewhere or another and getting my last nerve ground right down to a pulp.

*****

I’m just back from a short vacation, and I’m working on a new Law of Nature:  “The perceived cuteness of a child is proportionate to emotional connection.”  I call it, “Urchin’s Law.”  Consider the chart below:

Connection	Perception of Child
Your child	Approaches “deity”
Child of sibling or close relative	Has looks of an angel, wisdom of Buddha
Child of close friend	An angel, with just enough devil to pay back your friend for their prior indiscretions
Child of distant relative	Instrumental in carrying on the family name, not much else
Random child in street or store	Target practice
Child on a plane	The Anti-Christ

This whole thing occurred to me on my plane-ride home on Southwest Airlines.  I was checked in early, with the coveted “A” boarding pass, which allows you to board among the first third of the passengers.  This is important to me, as I strongly desire an aisle seat, which allows me to stretch my legs and trip any prospective terrorists running down the aisle, before pelting him with stale nuts

So I’m in my aisle seat, with some other slob on the window, with the middle open.  Now the stewardess wants to know who will move up so that a woman with her 2 kids can sit together.  At least that’s what I figured out she said later.  I had my headphones on so all I heard was “Whonk whonk whonk,” like it was Charlie Brown’s teacher.

The Window Slob jumps at it, and next thing you know, here comes the lady with her entourage… a little blonde baby boy, a little blonde boy toddler, and a safety seat the size of a Barca-Lounger.  I stand in the aisle for about 20 minutes while a team of experts straps the Barca-Lounger into the window seat.  Mom and the baby, who looks like a quality control reject from the Cabbage Patch Company, sit in the middle.  Finally I can ease back into my aisle seats, and am free to resume defense against running terrorists.

Having determined that the plane is terrorist-free, I pull my hat down over my eyes, turn up the MP3 player, and commence napping.  And for most of the flight, it was fine, save for a lot of bumping and squirming, but I try to remain tolerant… I know it’s a tough gig schlepping a couple of rug rats across the country.

About a half hour from home, the screaming starts and thus begins the Descent Into Hell.  The little one starts and stops, but mostly just screams… the older one keeps up a low moan, punctuated with an occasional shriek.  Each shriek pushes the younger one up an octave.  Here I am, strapped into this speeding metal tube, thirty thousand feet in the air, along side a couple of Howler Monkeys.  Pretty soon I’m tempted to stand up, claim control of the plane in the name of Allah, and maybe bait an Air Marshall into throwing a couple of shots between the eyes… me, the mother, the baby… whomever.  Just make it stop! 

To complete the job of screwing me, the stewardess picks this as the time to ask us to turn off all electronic devices. I took this to be their personal payback for me not listening to their important safety lecture about how to undo a seat belt.  The headphones were the only buffer I had, so now I’m getting the full force effect… a couple of dentist drills in Dolby 5.1 Surround-Sound.  Maybe if I offer to hold one of them, she’ll be too busy with Toddler-Demon that she won’t notice me stuffing Baby-Demon into an overhead bin.  Hey, I’d use the one holding all the pillows… I’m not totally insensitive.  But before I could act, I felt the thump of the wheels touching down, and by the time the reverse-thrusters stopped, the screaming was over.  Maybe this is a new way of ensuring that all flights hit their ETA. 

Now before everyone starts explaining how babies cry because of the change of altitude during descent, let me just say this:  Bullshit!  There was a baby about 10 rows up, and didn’t hear a peep from him.  I’ve also flown with my nephew when he was a baby, and he was practically perfect.  (See chart above.)  That’s why I feel safe in my conclusion that these children were evil, and sent to torment me.  But I’ll get even though… they’ll be sorry when they’re paying for my retirement and early-bird dinners with record FICA deductions.  

Mwaa ha ha haaaa… Revenge is mine…  

The Belle of the Firehouse

OK, let’s lighten the mood, after that last political spleen venting and get back to telling stories.  Dad, I know you’ve been waiting for this one… why, I don’t know, because you know the flippin’ story in the first place.

I try not to spend too much time dwelling on my marriage, now 13 years in the past, back in Albany NY.  There’s no real up side to carrying around a lot of anger and upset.  When I have to think about that period of my life, I try to remember the good parts.  And this story was definitely a good part… for me, anyway, because it’s been one of my story-telling staples ever since.

I was at work one Sunday in February (retail job) and got a call from Future Ex.

“Well,” she said, in her New York honk that sounded exactly like Carmella Soprano, “I almost died today.”

I was like, “Holy crap, what happened?” 

Here’s what happened.  We had a small, unfinished laundry room area just off the downstairs family room.  The washer and dryer were up against the wall.  There was no drywall… just the unfinished studs.  That left a gap between the appliances and the actual wall.

That afternoon, she dropped our rechargeable screwdriver down behind the dryer.  She was fairly tall and slender, so she figured she might be able to reach behind and fish it out.  So she climbed up on the dryer and began reeeeeeeaching down behind it, blindly grasping for the screwdriver.  She reached further and further until all of a sudden, her weight shifted and took her past the balance point pitching her headfirst into the space behind the dryer; the wall studs on either side of her.

She was trapped with one arm forward and one arm back, so she had absolutely no leverage to push or pull herself out.  She was stuck there, with only her long legs waving back and forth from behind the dryer, like stalks of wheat waving in the Kansas breeze.

So I had to ask her the main question that had been racing through my mind, “Oh my God, what were you wearing?”

She said she was wearing a long t-shirt and sweat pants, which was a huge relief.  See, that’s about 2 articles of clothing more than she usually wore around the house on the weekend.  Her normal attire was a long t-shirt (maybe) and a scowl; nothing else.

“Thank God”, I said, “so what did you do?”

She said she yelled for her 9-year old son from the other room and asked him to call her father, who lived 10 minutes away.  He said he’d be right there.  But she began to panic.  She was getting light headed and began to actually fear for her life.  She said she thought she could die from being in this position.

I was like, “Are you kidding?  You can’t die from that!  Have you ever seen a headline before that said, ‘WOMAN DIES FROM BEING UPSIDE DOWN TOO LONG’?  The last person that happened to was St. Peter, for cryin’ out loud.”

OK, I didn’t really say that out loud.  On the phone I said, “Oh, dear, that must have been so scary.  Then what happened?”

She didn’t think her daddy would get there soon enough so she then directed the boy to call 911.

That’s when I lost containment and busted out laughing.  She explained how the fire truck came screaming up, a half-dozen of local firemen came tromping down the stairs, saw her stork legs waving from behind the dryer, and yanked her out of her domestic bear-trap.

All I could think was “Thank Christ she had some pants on.”

The firemen rescue her, chuckling the whole time, she’s wobbling around trying to apologize AND not fall on her face from all the blood rushing away from her head, all the while fretting about how they’re tracking mud on the carpet.

I’m sure they talked about that one down at the firehouse for YEARS to come.

Photo by dragonman

She seemed to be pissed at ME for not being there.  I told her it was much better that I wasn’t there, because I guarantee I would have pulled out the video camera first and shot a couple minutes of tape.  Probably would have won 10 Gs on America’s Funniest Videos too.  Damn… maybe I should have been there.

When I told my dad this story, I thought he was going to shit himself laughing.  And in fact, later that month, at a company meeting where everyone was supposed to introduce and tell a funny story about themselves, Dad said, “I don’t have a funny story about me, but let me tell you what happened to my daughter-in-law.”  He killed the room with that story.

Since I still have some room here, let me tell you the follow-up story to this, because I always tell them as a pair.

We had a house that had a ground-level deck behind it.  There was a little 6-foot hill directly behind the deck, which led to a heavily wooded back lot.  It was like our own little “woods,” with a clearing for horseshoes and a tree swing.

One nice Spring Sunday morning while I was talking on the phone with my parents, she decided she wanted to go all Earth Mother and prance around our backyard wood, naked as a jaybird.  I’m looking out there and she’s flitting around, looking at flowers, examining strange tree-fungus and stuff.

I continued with my phone conversation for a few minutes more, but the next time I looked out, I didn’t see her.  At first.

Then I saw her peeking out from around a big tree, her eyes as big as saucers.  She began frantically pointing to her right.  The neighbors were pulling up their driveway, coming back from church.  Our yard had a lot of privacy, but not so much that they wouldn’t see the blinding whiteness of the Earth Mother out there in all her glory.

She gestured wildly toward the downstairs and I picked up her meaning.  I ran downstairs and threw open the sliding glass doors.  She came bolting out of the woods, down the hill and straight through the doors into the house, like a pasty Olympic sprinter.  ZOOOOOOOOOM!!

I almost pissed myself laughing, and Dad had another story for the next meeting.

Unrelated Housekeeping Note

You may have noticed the visual changes around here… I updated the basic template I’ve been using since I started the site.  It really used to bug me about all the empty, wasted space that was on the far left and right of the screen.  I HATE wasted space.  If you ever saw the walls of my apartment, you’d understand. 

But I didn’t like how the main writing space was all squeezed up.  It made my already longish posts seem that much longer.  Anyway, I hope you like the changes.  I’m still just as long winded, but at least you won’t wear out your mouse finger getting through it all.

Odd Bits - Weekend Edition

It’s been a great week in political What the Fuck!

First, I saw a CNN Poll that said that 41% of Republicans believe that Obama was definitely or probably born in another country. 

Sigh.  We’re still there?  I guess it just goes back to that “Opposing fact only hardens beliefs” post I did a couple weeks back.  How is the country supposed to get on with business if almost half the people believe an out and out, provable falsehood?

What the hell are they looking for?  I’ve seen the birth announcement in the local Hawaiian newspaper.  The State of Hawaii has released the common birth document that is made public for all such inquiries.  Hawaii is actually one of our states!  It says so right on the 2009 quarter.

These idiots won’t be satisfied with anything short of a personal declaration from the Lord Jesus himself.  But of course, He was a “foreigner” too, so I imagine no one will listen to Him either.  And if he comes here via Arizona, he’ll probably just get picked up and thrown in jail.  I wonder if they have any Aramaic translators in Arizona?

Ground Zero for Common Decency

Cassie from Sisters from Different Misters sent me a video clip from The Daily Show where Jon Stewart takes the House of Representatives to task for voting down a bill providing health car for sickened 9/11 First Responders.

Think about that.  Is there any possible reason that our country not be treating these heroes with anything they may need, after what they’ve done?

Apparently, there is, and they are the usual suspects:  money and politics.

You know how the Republicans have been shit-canning everything the Dems try to do, on the basis that it adds to the deficit?  Well, this bill is paid for.  So what’s the objection now?  They claim it raises taxes.

That would also make sense, if you were a Republican, except that as usual with them, it’s not true.  What the bill does is close a loophole that allows corporations doing business in America to avoid paying US taxes by maintaining offshore shell offices.

So in short, the Republicans booted this bill to protect their corporate benefactors, at the expense of the people that risked their lives and livelihoods by rushing to dig out a smoking pile of rubble and got seriously sick from it.

Nice.  This is the party that loves America, family values, the Lord, the flag and apple fucking pie (if you pay attention to their PR), and they’re basically waving their private parts at the firemen, policemen and construction workers that they use feature so prominently in their advertising, in the name of protecting the profits of the giant companies that make money here, hand over fist, but duck paying their taxes.

 

Even more disappointing to me is that the Democrats allowed it to happen, by using a parliamentary maneuver that made it require a 2/3 majority to pass the bill.  In return, they removed the option for the Republicans to add amendments that would be embarrassing to them.  This is where the “politics” comes in.

When the hell are they going to stand up and proclaim, “We’re not taking this shit anymore!  You fuck with this bill and we’re going to run the clip of you voting ‘no’ or attaching superfluous amendments every hour on the hour, come November.”

Watch the Jon Stewart clip… it’s classic.  He builds the case like a freakin’ District Attorney.  And if it doesn’t piss you right the hell off, you may be seriously lacking a soul.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

And why, may I ask, has it been left up to the goddamned comedians to bring this stuff to light?  I never saw a single story on this in the paper, online, or on the news.  Something tells me that the politicians on both sides want this story to be buried even deeper than their integrity is.

 

Propping Up the Indefensible

At least the week wasn’t without some good news.  A federal judge overturned the noxious Proposition 8 referendum in California, which barred gay marriage. 

I love the fact that the judge did it with hard, cold facts and reason, boiling down the Prop 8 supporters’ argument to “it’s icky and my religion says it’s wrong,” which fortunately for the rest of us, is not the basis for the law of this land.

I spelled out my position on this issue last November, back when the citizens of Maine enacted a similar referendum, in that case, overturning a new law.  If you’re new here, you should click the link and check it out.  But suffice to say; I think gay people have every right to marry and be just as miserable as the rest of us.  Nothing they do in their bedroom or in front of a judge is going to diminish anyone else’s marriage or life.  People should stop worrying about what others are doing with their lives and maybe work on their own lots in life.  Maybe then they can do something about that 50% divorce rate.

When in doubt, mind your own fucking business.  That’s Bluz 3:17.

Type Cast

To end on a lighter note, near the end of the day, yesterday, my cube neighbor at work was telling one of my bosses about how I make her feel inferior, because all she can hear from me is the sound of my very rapid typing.

Later I told her not to feel so bad… what she doesn’t know is that half the clicks come from my feverish working of the backspace button.

The "Other" Event

While judging from the previous post, you’d think I was only in Pittsburgh to meet up with a bunch of bloggers, the weekend was actually about something totally different; family.

Saturday was the big family dinner to celebrate my parents’ 50^th anniversary.  My dad’s family is all right there in Pittsburgh.  Mom’s family had to come from Chapel Hill NC, Madison WI and San Jose CA. 

Mom’s brother Joe drove out in his Prius.  He drove.  From California to Pittsburgh.  Uncle Joe is a “car guy.”  Loves cars and driving… always has, always will.  I remember one time he drove out to Green Bay WI to visit the folks back in the mid 80’s.  That time, he took his Ferrari.

In that circumstance, I understand making the drive.

Anyway, we’ve had a number of family get-togethers over the years, but it’s always one side of the family or the other.  Nary does the twain meet, at least not since the ‘60s, when so many of us left Pittsburgh.

I was late coming into town… I got a late start and using Cassie’s directions, took a bit of a longer route, but avoided any major traffic snafus.  Immediately upon landing at the hotel, I was summoned to go directly to Segnari’s for the weekend’s first monster fish sandwich.

After dinner we all went back to my Aunt and Uncle’s place, about 10 minutes away.  We retired to the deck, had some drinks and noshed on the usual snacks… (as if it was possible that we didn’t get enough to eat at the restaurant!)  But there was fruit, a bowl of nuts, pepperoni cheese and crackers, etc.  OK, that’s what most of us ate, except for my brother Ed and brother-in-law Scott.  It seems Tastykakes are a bit of a delicacy to Scotty and are hard to come by where he lives.  So Ed picked him up about 9 boxes, 3 of which they opened right there on the deck.  There was quite a compare and contrast session, with a discussion of the merits of white cream filling vs. chocolate cream filling vs. solid cake.  Rather, make that “kake.”

My poor aunt couldn’t believe her eyes.  She doesn’t understand the chocoholic tendencies of my brother.  (His specialty is opening up two Oreos with double-stuff and making one with quadruple-stuff.)

The next morning, Mom, Ed and the boys went down to the Strip District, where mom’s siblings and their kids were staying.  I originally thought we would all go down to the shops and eateries in the Strip District market, but they had decided that it would be best to visit Schenley Park, near the campus of Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh, so the kids could run around some.

The first order of business was to get a picture of all the second-generation cousins, none of whom had met each other before.  It probably would have been a better idea to take the pictures later, after everyone had acclimated, because at that point, it was like herding cats.  Every time my cousin’s wife got one uncooperative kid in place, another one would bolt.

Times like this make me glad I’m just an uncle.

Soon, we got a soccer game going, which I did everything in my power to avoid.  I was successful, too, until my Uncle Gordon came out of the game, very firmly put the clamp on my shoulder and said, “You’re in.”

Not exactly a regulation soccer ball…

We played 5 on 3, kids against the grownups.  By my scoring, we won.  (My scoring = I didn’t pass out.)  I am NOT a soccer player… never played as a kid except for once in gym class… but I had at least one semi-moment of glory.

A ball popped way up in the air, right to me.  I had no choice but to try to head it, which I did, and it turned into a reasonable shot on goal.  Don’t laugh!  How many shots on goal did YOU see during the World Cup?  Hours could go by without one, and I had one in my first 5 minutes.  So there!  And so what if I saw stars for the next couple of minutes!  Remind me never to try that with an actual soccer ball.

After the soccer, Uncle Joe decided we needed hot dogs, so we made our way by car and on foot to a hot dog/burger/beer place near the Pitt campus. 

The Cathedral of Learning, on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh.

On the way, we also crossed through Carnegie Mellon and encountered this… thing/sculpture/bit of pop-art.

I don’t know what it’s trying to be, probably trying to intimate that an education would lead you to the top, but it was cool. 

Another thing I noticed lots of in downtown Pittsburgh that I don’t see so much of in downtown Baltimore; flowers.

Once settled in for lunch, I sat across from my nephew, Daniel, who ordered a cheesesteak.  Who knew it would be as big as a horse’s leg?  I told him, “you have to expect ‘Pittsburgh proportions” when you order a sandwich here.”

The thing must have been 14” long.  I’d have liked to know for sure, but I didn’t have anything handy to measure it against.  Well, OK, I did, but it would have been rude to bring that out in public.

On the walk back, Ed and I found the last remaining remnant of the old Forbes Field.

You don’t see many ballparks anymore with outfield walls that are 457’ away from home plate.

We went back to the hotel to fetch Mom, who had ridden with the others.  This led to the line of the night:

We were trying to peel Mom away so we could get going.  Ed still had to load a bunch of pictures from our thumb drives onto his laptop, for display during the dinner.  He told Mom, “Come on… I still have to set up the audio-visual stuff.”

Mom said, “What audio-visual stuff?”

I said, “The Count Basie Orchestra is very specific with their PA demands.”

Riffing on that, Ed said, “And I have to show Tony Bennett to his room.”

To which Mom said, “Show him to my room.”

We got back to the hotel and got cleaned up for the big soiree.  The room was done up very nicely.  My sister and sister-in-law did a beautiful job with the decorations.  Plus, they’d gotten the hotel to give us a projector and screen to use for the old picture slide show.  (We were just going to set the laptop up on a table.)  This way, we could just let the old shots run all night and everyone had the chance to see them.

Ed approached me and suggested that since I’m the oldest, I should do a toast.  I wasn’t sure… I didn’t think that just because I came along first that I should automatically get to be spokesperson, and said as much.  I didn’t exactly decline, but I didn’t exactly jump at it either.  I spent the next hour chewing on what I’d say, and trying not to get too many drinks into me and making the notion of my speaking clearly to the group, moot.

Right after we sat down for dinner, I began to wonder where I should stand, so I wouldn’t have my back to half the people in the room.  Just as I was about to seek Ed’s opinion, he got up, went to the front of the room, dinged a glass and began the toast.

“I know I’m not the oldest, but Bluz deferred, so you can probably read his toast in his blog…”

Great opener… He then went on to give a far more collected, funny, elegant and perfect toast than what I had been tossing around in my head.  Sometimes things just work out for the best.  No regrets!

Still, I know I have to work on giving clearer signals.

After Ed spoke, my dad got up to say a few things.  He said, “There are two reasons we’ve managed to be married for 50 years.  For one, I married an angel.  And the other… I traveled a lot….”

Afterwards, Mom got up and said, “Everything he said is true…”

The rest of the night was a yummy dinner (prime rib for me… no fish sandwich tonight), then circulating and trying to talk to so many people that I haven’t seen in ages.

Daniel was killing me though.  First he spent dinner talking with me about his new-found love for AC/DC and 80s music.  Then he killed the night by entertaining his much older cousins with more music talk and discussion of the Revolutionary War.

Daniel being entertaining.

We also managed to get a more coherent and cooperative kid cousin picture:

Daniel and Sammy bookend the lineup in their coordinated outfits.  Daniel’s “Spiccoli shoes” kill me.

Throughout the night, I found myself violating one of my primary rules… you know… the one about mixing alcohol that I wrote about here?  I was mostly drinking gin & tonics, which are my go-to wedding drinks.  But then there were bottles of red and white wine on the tables too, so I latched onto the white wine during and after dinner.  Once the event was over, Ed, our sister Ann, Scotty and I went over to the hotel bar for a couple late beers. 

Now I don’t mean to sound like I was really drunk, but by the end of the night, I had a crush on this chick in a beer ad:

Nah, I’m just kidding… But back when I used to collect beer cans as a kid, we loved finding new “Olde Frothingslosh” cans.  There was a whole series with this lady on the front.  It was kind of a joke beer: “Olde Frothingslosh, the pale, stale ale.”  I got a kick out of seeing an ad for it in the bar.

But the next morning was a little brutal.  Like I mentioned in the prior post, I woke up with a cracking headache.  Luckily it was nothing that a breakfast buffet and a little time didn’t cure.

Well, you already heard all about Sunday so no rehashing is needed here.  My initial plans called for staying around on Monday to go see the Pirates/Reds game at PNC Park.  The only drawback was that there was no one to go with… all my out of town relatives were heading back home, and my Pittsburgh relatives were either occupied or had jobs and stuff.  So I ended up just coming back home early, which worked out because it gave me a whole day to write the D-fish Fry post.

With all the traffic troubles and construction that had been tying Pittsburgh in knots all weekend, I opted for a different route home.  I took I-79 south to I-68, which took me back east across the northern border of Maryland.  That’s a much more scenic route than the dreary old PA Turnpike, but the real up side is a complete lack of traffic!

This is what it looked like, practically the whole way home.  It was about 40 miles longer, but I made it in 45 minutes less time, with almost no stress.  Had the cruise control on about 75% of the time.  On the other hand, I would never use this route without cruise control!  The whole time you are either going up or down a hill.  Maintaining a consistent speed is almost impossible to do manually.

So… it was a great weekend all around.  Friends!  Family! Fish Sandwiches!

Now what am I going to look forward to?

Ooh, I know… Podcamp!

We’ll see…