Seeing Red

I got a message last night from my “niece,” (aka the daughter of my buddy Rik, aka “The Chairman of Fuck Off), asking me to be her “peer reviewer” for a writing class she’s taken.

I wrote about her before, in the post about going to visit The Chairman’s family, when she and her sister were wee.  It doesn't matter how grown up these girls get, my first image will always be of the little pixies I first encountered.

The “Gar-girls,” as their daddy called them.

Even though the redhead is a proud mother of two and the blonde one is an 18-year old high school senior, they’ll forever be my babies.  They always had a way of getting me to do whatever they wanted, so last night was no exception when Little Red asked me to review her papers for a night school class.

It wasn't really a stretch… I’d offered my writing help before, so I was honored to be asked.  Plus, I thought, can you really turn down a little red-haired girl?  I know I can’t.

After we discussed some of the details, (which included my telling her to button up because I wasn't going to go easy on her), the thought occurred to me that I should probably do a post about redheads.  I've had the subject on my mental To-Do List for ages, and this seemed to be a good jumping off point.

I never sought to collect a series of redheads in my life, but damned if they aren’t strewn about my past (and present).  They were there even before my redheaded buddy produced his redheaded daughter…

Redheads make up 2% of the American population, yet they represent 16.66% of my sex partners.  (No, Rik, I didn't have to consult a spreadsheet… just the list I made in your driveway 2 summers ago.)

It’s not like I slept with all the redheads I’ve dated; on the contrary, it’s only been a couple.  But the numbers don’t lie.  My percentage is way over a representative amount.

The first redhead who shook me up was a girl at my high school.  She didn’t have the classic orange-red hair; hers was a deep, rich auburn.  God, she was gorgeous.  Believe me, if I were to scan her picture out of our senior yearbook and post it, you’d know why she knocked me for a loop.  Chick was smokin’…

In chemistry class, she and her lab partner worked with me and my partner.  OK, it might have been more accurate to say that she and I did all the work, while our partners goofed off.  But I didn't care because I got to work with her!  She talked to me!  I talked to her!  Sometimes our hands brushed around the Bunsen Burner!  It was all a very big deal to me.  (I was quite the shy-boy back then, rather than the glib wordsmith you read before you today.)

I never dared ask her out; she was way out of my league (not just because she was hot, but because she ran with all the “cool” kids).  But she did let me drive her home from our National Honor Society induction night, when she needed a ride.  I was a nervous wreck, just having her in the car with me. 

To make matters worse, I got pulled over for having a taillight out on the back of the family Jeep Wagoneer.  I don’t think I brought my wallet with me either, (so not to mess up the lines of my safari jacket ensemble), so I was sweating bullets when I saw the cop behind me.  It was sweet when she offered to switch places with me.  I totally should have let her, just so her butt could rub across my lap.  Surprisingly enough, the cop never asked for my license, so I totally dodged the bullet.

I wonder if she ever knew how smitten I was.  I mean, after we graduated, the girl I actually did date in high school asked me, “You really admired [her name], didn't you?”  And here, I thought I was being subtle.  I never, EVER mentioned the auburn beauty to my girlfriend, nor did I ever stare or gawk.  I guess chicks just know these things.

The first redhead I actually dated was a neighbor who lived a couple doors down.  She was the traditional “Ralph Malph” redhead with fair skin, lots of freckles, flaming red-orange hair and a saucy attitude.  As I was becoming interested in her, her family moved out of the neighborhood before anything happened.  But then when I was in college, I ran into her at a local McDonalds, and we really seemed to hit it off.

I asked her out, and she accepted.  We went on one date, but at the end, she said she just couldn't imagine herself “making out with an old neighbor.” 

I was like, “Who said anything about making out?  It’s just a date…”

Of course I wanted to make out, but I couldn't say anything then, nor could I change her mind.  I don’t think I ever saw her again after that.

I've written before about my early college girlfriend, and how we were “off and on” for long periods.  During one of those “off” times, before we really got going, I started flirting with another saucy, orange-haired firecracker.

We ended up going out to dinner and ice skating.  Afterwards, we went back to her house.  Her dad was home, but he was in his basement work room, so we started fooling around.  A few moments later, she said “Come with me,” and led me by the hand toward the… bathroom!  So romantic…

Anyway, she sat me on the toilet, stood before me and just dropped trou.  Zzzzip!  I was like, “Damn, these redheads mean business…”

We didn't get very far though… mere moments later she thought she heard her father come upstairs, so we reassembled ourselves and bolted from the bathroom.  Alas, it was a false alarm, but the mood was killed.

After my relationship with my college girlfriend had run its course, the redhead and I got together again and finished what we had started in her bathroom.

Then in my junior year, I worked with a small group of people at the college radio station.  We’d guest on each other’s shows, do production work together, and conduct DJ training for the new radio wannabees.  We hung out a good bit at the bars, as well.  One of the group was another redhead.  Her hair was a darker shade between orange-red and my old deep-auburn crush, but she still had the light skin and freckles.

We were out one night, celebrating the end of spring semester and our last radio work for the term, and ended up slow dancing and then making out like crazed weasels.  It was too bad we started developing things so late in the school year… she was from the Cleveland area, so she’d be spending the summer 2 hours away from where I was in Toledo.  We wrote to each other throughout the summer and went out again the second she was back in town for Fall Semester. 

That night we ended up making out in the campus graveyard, for lack of anywhere else to go.  (I drove a little Honda Civic hatchback, which was of no use at all.)  We might have gone a little further, but suffice to say, I wasn't the only visitor she was having that evening.

It didn’t last, though.  The day classes started, I was thunderstruck by a new girl who I ended up dating and living with after I graduated.  (This was the “Fiancée” from my Bowling Green Apartment, the Aborted 3-Way and Summer of Bow Chicka Wow Wow stories.  I could probably count her as a redhead too, but that might be stretching it.  Her hair was a kind of strawberry blonde when we first met.  But counting her would take my percentage up to 25%.)

After college, there were no more redheads until Pinky, and that story is still unfolding, for six years running.

But like Pinky when she’s out in the sun, I’m keeping it under wraps.

It’s not like I was ever seeking out the redheads… for some reason, they just kind of ended up with me.  When I met Pinky via Match.com, she contacted me.  Maybe I have some quality that attracts redheads, like fiery moths to a dark and swarthy candle.

If I have a “type”, I guess I have tended to seek women that are the farthest from my own kind.  I have dark hair and brown eyes, and come from a family full of dark-haired, brown-eyed people.  What’s the farthest away from that?  Blondes and redheads.  I've dated a few girls with brown hair, but I don’t think I've ever dated a girl with black hair.  Well, maybe one, but she was a black girl, which is still pretty far from my background.  (And believe me, that’s a story in its own right.)

So what about you?  Do you go for a particular “type?”  Is there a “type” that tends to find you?  Do tell.

97 Years of Awesome

Director’s DVD Commentary: Next month, my Grandpa is turning 97.  It’s really amazing… the dude is a real piece of work.  Ever since he hit 90, I’ve been telling everyone that he’s a shoo-in to make 100.  And you know how I hate being wrong…

Anyway, to mark the occasion, my cousin’s wife asked a bunch of us to send her some material… pictures, stories, memories and whatnot, so she can have it made into a hardbound book.  Naturally I loved the idea.  Not only do I have a warehouse of photographs, you KNOW I love to tell stories.  My challenge was to not over-do it.  I just hope that enough other people send sufficient material so that my thing blends in, rather than dominates.

My original idea was to recycle the post I wrote a few years back, regarding the story of how as a kid, my dad got picked up by the local cops for jumping trains, and Grandpa refused to come down to the station to get him.

Last night I got it all written up and adapted for the book; I just wanted to review it with fresh eyes today before I sent it in.  It wouldn’t do for the Family Blogger to submit a story full of typos and awkward grammar.

But then I had to go and sleep on it.  By morning I had decided to scrap the original idea completely and write something more nostalgic.  And because I never keep anything I write to myself, you can have an early glimpse.

So let me tell you about my Grandparents…

There are so many memories associated with my Grandma and Grandpa, from early childhood up through becoming a creaky old grownup.  I’m betting that most of these will be shared among all of us that grew up visiting their tidy little home in Coraopolis. This is what I remember from our weekly visits, when we still lived in the area, to our annual visits for holidays or reunions.

It starts for all of us in The Lap… Grandpa’s Lap at the head of the table.  Newest baby gets the spot, where he learns how to dunk biscotti in coffee or wine.  I don’t think any of us actually remember being on the lap, but we remember the next youngest kid that displaced us, sitting there.

We older-generation grandkids remember the movie lights.  Grandpa took 8mm movies every Christmas, which were always accompanied by the blindingly bright movie light.  I think the light was so bright so that after it was turned off, the grownups could watch us stumble into things.

In watching some of those movies later, I realized that it was all actually the same movie, repeated over and over:

“Here’s some squinty kids opening presents.  Look who’s coming in the door…everyone say hi!  There’s the baby, sitting in the middle of all the presents.  Time for dinner… look at all the food!  Everyone wave… now let’s eat.”  Then the next year… “Slightly older blind kids opening presents… hey, there’s a new baby… look at the food… Everybody wave…”  Repeat indefinitely…

When we’d visit, the first stop would invariably be the basement; that’s where all the toys were.  I’d always be amazed at the floor.  It was always painted, and so clean you could eat from it.  We’d head straight for the shelves that held the puzzles, blocks, Lincoln Logs and board games.  Sometimes I’d wander through the other section, through the amazingly organized workshop, to the wine cellar.  I loved the sharp smell of the old wooden barrels.

That reminds me of the other favorite pastime: caging sips of the grownups’ drinks.  It wasn’t very difficult, the grownups always obliged, except that one year when they were finishing off the last of Grandpa’s home made wine from 1962.  No sense wasting the Good Stuff on the children.

As the oldest of all the grandchildren, I always tried not to make the “strong drink face,” or else I figured they wouldn’t give me any more.  I wanted to be a Big Boy.  I remember being so happy when I was finally old enough to participate in the post-Mass eye-openers.  After getting back from church, Grandpa would break out the Jack Daniels or Crown Royal and we’d all get an eye-opener shot.  Then Grandpa would say, “Well, we have to open both eyes, don’t we?” and then pour us all another shot.

 Sa-lute!

I always remembered the back yard as being so big… we’d play football or wiffleball there, and it would cause a stampede if we hit the ball over the hedges.  We’d have to run out to the street and try to stop the ball before it rolled down the hill and into the sewer.

It wasn’t until I visited as a grownup that I realized that the yard wasn’t that big at all, and most of it was taken up by two things.  First was the garden.  Grandpa’s garden was a work of art.  He grew enough stuff to stock a salad bar all summer long. 

These shots were from 1992, so Grandpa was in his mid 70s.  At that point, he was taking it a little bit easier.  You can tell because the tomato stakes aren’t all the exact same height, nor are they all painted the same color.  But what you can’t see are the boards laid down between the rows, so he could walk between them securely and care for each plant.

As for weeds?  There were no weeds.  Ever.  I think that whenever a weed dared poke up out of the ground in Grandpa’s garden, he’d stick his head out the back door and go, “Hey, what’choo doing over there?  Get outta here!”

The weed would zip right back into the ground.

I should note that my dad did NOT inherit the gardening gene, as evidenced by the year he used his golf clubs for tomato stakes.  He said it added iron to the soil.

There also used to be a large apple tree in the middle of the yard that yielded the biggest, tartest green apples around.  Sometimes we’d actually race through dinner just to go outside and pick a giant apple or two for dessert.  (Of course I’d have to spend the next day on the pot, but it was totally worth it.)

I didn’t do that for very long, because I quickly learned that the dinner was where it’s at.  Grandma always put out enough food to feed an army.  As soon as we’d arrive from out of town, a huge spread of cold cuts would appear, along with her homemade wedding soup.  I’d build myself a sandwich the size of my head.  And then we still had to eat dinner a few hours later.  It was a dream for a growing teenaged boy.

Don’t even get me started on the Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes.  Best meal of the year, every year.  Man, I miss the smelts.  And the cookies!  All the ladies in the neighborhood would bake dozens of their favorite cookies and then trade them all around.  All of us kids had our favorites… mine used to be the “ravioli” cookies, which looked like raviolis, but had chocolate filling instead of meat or cheese.

Another treat was that we got to have pop with dinner, which we never got at our house.  But Grandma and Grandpa would have those variety cases of orange, grape and cream soda in those returnable 12-oz bottles.

Some summers, my folks would leave us there while they went off for some no-kids time.  We always had a ball and enjoyed the uninterrupted Grandparent face time.  I still remember sitting out on the front porch, drinking our orange pop and listening to Bob Prince call the Pirates game.  We also liked to walk down the hill and watch the trains go by.  It was always soothing to me to hear them go by at night, from up in the guest bedroom.

In the wintertime, Grandma always knitted us slippers, usually in black and gold.  My brother and I constantly wore out the bottoms, necessitating the new models.  I wore them well into adulthood.  I’m sure Grandma never expected to be knitting size-12 slippers.  I still have my last pair, holes and all.  Even though I can’t wear them, they’ll always have a place on my bedroom floor.

When I was managing record stores in Cleveland, Christmases used to be the worst.  Life in retail was crazy during the holiday season, but the saving grace was that on Christmas Eve, I could close up shop and set sail for Pittsburgh.  I’d roll in to Grandma and Grandpa’s about 9:30 and Grandma would be ready with soup and sandwich while Grandpa brought a cold Iron City Light up from the cellar.  And Grandma always had Klondikes for me when she knew I was coming.  At the time, they weren’t yet available nationwide.

That would be the first moment in months that I’d just be able to sit and breathe, and catch up with these two dear people.

My grandparents were the rocks of our family, then and now.  They were always there for us, always helpful and always with the right advice.  Usually it was just to work hard, be honest, do your job and always do the right thing. 

Not to mention there’s nothing that can’t be fixed when you come together around a table full of good food and wine.

Drinking Games

Whenever I think about drinking games, I always think first of the ones my dad taught me.

If you think about it, that last sentence is a real doozy.  Do you have a parent that taught you (and the rest of your neighborhood) drinking games when you were teenagers?  The 80s were strange times.  Or maybe we were just a strange family. 

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about how you never hear about drinking games anymore unless they’re tied to some kind of passive activity like recurring bits on TV shows.  (See my “24” drinking game post from 2009.)  So I figured it was rich fodder for a post.  And here we are.

I’ve been playing drinking games since I was in junior high.  OK, we weren’t actually drinking, but it occurs to me that the games we played could totally be drinking games now. 

See, one of our favorite neighborhood activities was to play these big, communal games, whether in one of our elaborately constructed blanket forts, someone’s RV, or just sitting around the living room on a rainy day.  Remember, there were no video games in the early to mid-70s; we had to make do with playing cards.

Spoons

There were two games I remember playing, which could easily be converted to drinking games.  One was “Spoons,” which is kind of like musical chairs with cards.  You sat in a circle and put a number of spoons in the middle, fanning outwards like spokes, and numbering one less than the number of players.  You pass out some cards, then one person begins drawing from the deck. 

Every time he draws a card, he passes one to the person on his right.  The goal is to collect four of a kind.  Each person passes a card upon receiving one from the person on his left.  When someone collects his four of a kind, he tries to quietly snatch a spoon from the middle, without being noticed.  If anyone sees a spoon being taken, or notices that one is missing, they take a spoon.  They can either try to do it on the sly or just make a grab.  Eventually, it becomes a frenzy and the person left without a spoon is the loser.  As a drinking game, the loser takes a shot. 

Killer

This one is brilliant in its simplicity.  Everyone sits in a circle and is dealt a single card.  One of them is the ace of spades.  Whoever got the ace of spades is the “killer,” whose object is to secretly wink at someone else.  If you’re winked at, you’re dead and announce yourself so after a moment or two.  If you see the killer wink at someone, you bust him, making you the winner.  If the killer winks at everyone without being seen, he wins.  You can either make all the losers drink, or the winner drink, depending on your goals for the night.

Saint Peter/Saint Paul

This is the one that led me to today’s topic.  Back in the early 80s, my dad used to lead a group from our Toledo neighborhood to Cleveland for the annual Steelers/Browns game.  We’d stay at a Marriott, the same one where the Steelers themselves used to stay, basically run wild with the other Steelers fans and drink our faces off.  I wrote about the whole experience in 2009, but I left out this part.  Click that link if you want to see some candid shots of a bunch of Steeler Hall of Famers, or what a bathtub full of Iron City Light looks like.

Once we’d arrive at our rooms and get all the beer loaded into the tub and iced down, we usually had time to kill before going down to await the Steelers team bus arrival.  Or maybe it was after we’d been swimming and met the Steelers bus, and were waiting for the hotel nightclub to get going.  That’s when Dad taught us our first drinking game; one he used to play as a youngster, called Saint Peter/Saint Paul.  Leave it to the Italians to bring religion into a drinking game.

Everyone sits in a circle around a table.  One person is named St. Peter and the person on his right becomes St. Paul, and everyone after that gets a number, one through whatever until you’re at St Peter.  Once names are assigned, everyone drums their hands on the table, creating a fast-paced, steady beat.

The action start when St. Peter calls out his own name, and then that of another player.  The player whose name is called must immediately call out his own name and that of someone else.  All calling must be immediate and in time to the beat.  It goes like this:

“St Peter, number two.”

“Number two, St. Paul.”

“St. Paul, number five.”

“Number five, St. Peter.”

“St. Peter, number fah-six.”

“DRINK!”

Anyone that twists his words or breaks the cadence has to drink.  Once someone drinks, all the names shift over by one person and you start again.  It got to be quite the raucous room and we always had a blast. 

Dad had another game he tried to get us into, but in involved calling out numbers in Italian, so it never really caught on.  I don’t know why the numbers had to be in Italian… it sounded like it would have been a lot of fun, but when it takes, like, ten seconds to remember the Italian word for seven, it takes some of the urgency out of the game.

It’s weird now to think that while I was of legal age, my brother, sister and all their friends were most definitely NOT.  Not only would it be suicidal to teach drinking games to a bunch of minors (AND supply all the beer) but who would let their kid travel 2 hours away with one adult and 20 or 30 other kids, to stay in a hotel and go to a football game?  It was totally a different time.  (And I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.)

Beer Pong

Once we moved up to the farmlands outside Toledo and set up camp in our Barn, we didn’t play as many drinking games, since we could pretty much drink whenever we wanted out there.  We had a ping-pong table out there, so we obviously played some Beer Pong.  It as a simple version where each player had one cup in front of him and you hit the ping-pong ball back and forth, aiming for the other guy’s cup.  If you hit it, he took a sip; if you sunk it in the cup, he had to chug the rest.  We didn’t play that too much because after all, who wants to drink a beer that just had a scurvy old ping-pong ball in it?

Cardinal Puff

This wasn’t so much a drinking game as it was an initiation.  My college girlfriend and I were friends with a bunch of girls that played on a softball team.  (No, they weren’t lesbians.)  They had this “rite” they all did, called Cardinal Puff, where you had to repeat three rounds of a sequence of saying some verbiage and following it up with specific hand gestures.  If you didn’t get it just right, you had to drink and then try again.

It went something like: “Here’s to Cardinal Puff, who is with us for the first time tonight.”  (perform a series of gestures (that I no longer remember) and take a large swig.)  Here’s to Cardinal Puff who is with us again for the second time.  (Perform a different series of gestures and take a large swig.)  Here’s to Cardinal Puff who is with us for the third and final time tonight. (Perform final series of gestures and take a large swig.)”

It always sounded easy, but there was a trick.  In seeing it the first time, you concentrated on the hand gestures, but in reality, it was the wording that you got stuck on.  You had to get each word just right, with nothing added, subtracted, slurred or mispronounced.  And they usually wouldn’t tell you what you got wrong.  Next thing you know, you’re pretty messed up and can’t speak straight no matter what you're trying to say.

I don’t know where it all came from but I can tell you that I was the first male “Cardinal” in the area.  So I got that going for me… which is nice.  Not that I can put in on my resume or anything…

It’s been many, many years since I’ve played a drinking game.  Once you reach a certain age, you no longer have time for games when you need a drink.  But I am looking forward to teaching some of these to my nephew one day.  Do you think he’ll be impressed that his daddy and I used to get snockered in a game his grandpa taught us?

So what drinking games did you play?

Saint Ray

The heck with the Physcyl Clyff deal, the biggest news in Baltimore this week is that Ravens’ linebacker Ray Lewis is retiring.  As if this weekend’s playoff game against the Colts wasn't enough, this town is going absolutely apeshit in anticipation of Ray-Ray’s last dance.

If you've been here before, you know the antipathy I have towards the Ratbirds and their purple-swathed fans.  So let me say this right off: I acknowledge that Lewis is a premier linebacker, an all-time great, and will have a rightful place in the Hall of Fame.  And I can’t stand him… or more accurately, I can’t stand how the locals willfully avert their gaze from his felonious past to provide an unlimited supply of helium for his zeppelin-sized ego.

Director’s DVD Commentary: How funny would it sound if everyone in the stadium took a snort of helium before cheering?  It would be like a football game in Oz.

Seriously, could this guy possibly be any more full of himself?  Is there anyone else in the league that makes such a spectacle of himself just by coming out onto the field during introductions?

If I was a Rattie fan, I’d be embarrassed, but they all talk about how they’ll miss his pre-game “dance.”

Now I’ll admit that I used to kind of like it a few years back, when the Steelers’ Joey Porter would tuck his jersey up under the bottom of his shoulder pads before during warm-ups and stalk up and down the 50-yard line with his cheese-grater abs exposed.  He’d glower at the other team, talking smack and trying to get someone to take the bait.  That was badass.

But a pre-game dance?  Seriously?  A fucking dance?  There’s no dancing in football!  At least not without making a play or something first.  Then you might as well hop, skip and jump, and pound your chest because everyone else does it too.

But it’s not really even Ray that bugs me as much as it is the fans and their blinding hero worship.  It bugs me that they give their guy a free pass on a major violent crime, yet they continue to throw slurs about the rough time my guy had a few years back.  Yes, this comes down to a compare and contrast of Ray Lewis versus Ben Roethlisberger.

If you’re not familiar with the case histories, let me give you a quick summary.

Ray: Convicted of obstruction of justice (to a double murder)

At the 1999 Super Bowl in Atlanta, two hangers-on to Ray’s posse got into a dust-up with two “other guys.”  Next thing you know, the two “other guys” were stabbed to death.  The two-hangers on escaped with Ray’s posse into his limo and were whisked away.  Somewhere along the way, they disappeared the knife(s) and Ray’s bloodied white fur coat, neither of which have ever been found.

Ray could have been a stand-up guy and showed some character, but under police questioning he denied any involvement at all, while lying to the police to send the investigation in another direction.  Eventually, enough of the truth came out that Ray was charged with Obstruction of Justice, to which he pled guilty and served two months’ in prison. 

"Where's the knife, Ray?"

He also testified against the two alleged killers, but with his credibility damaged, they were acquitted.   To date, the murders are technically “unsolved.”  But much like the OJ case, everyone knows what happened.

Ben: Convicted of nothing, charged with nothing (but general douche-baggery)

There were two events, really.  The first one is still pending.  Ben had sex with a hotel employee who came up in his Vegas hotel room.  According to her friends, she excitedly bragged about it the next day, but a year later, she claimed she was raped.  The civil suit (there were never any charges filed) has been kicked around and delayed over the last few years.  The smart play would be to settle just to make it go away, but Ben has refused so far, maintaining that the encounter was completely consensual. 

The “big” event was the thing in Georgia, where Ben was out at a college bar and had some kind of sexual encounter with a student in the restroom.  The girl was really drunk, possibly on some of the shots Ben was buying for “all his bitches.” (His words.)

Whether the girl went in there willingly or not has never been proved.  In her initial statement to the police, she never reported any use of force… not until going back and talking with her sorority sisters.  Then, she and her girlfriends all told an identical new story to the police.  (I read the police reports, (and so can you), on theSmokingGun.com.)

The prosecutor, who was dying to nail Ben’s pelt up over his mantelpiece, was unable to secure enough credible evidence to press even a single charge.

The reactions to both events were wildly different.  The people in Baltimore refused to believe a single word about Ray’s involvement.  Even after he pled out, they were convinced it was a frame job by the prosecutor, the police, and probably the referees too.  Outside the Beltway he was a pariah, in fact after being named the MVP of Super Bowl XXXV, he was refused the iconic “I’m going Disneyworld” ad.  His name was toxic, but at home he remained the conquering hero.

After Ben’s ordeal in Georgia, I saw a poll in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that showed over 40% of the respondents wanted him cut from the team!  (The rest of the responses were divided between trading and suspending him.)  People burned their #7 game jerseys.  Steeler fans were seriously PISSED over him sullying the (team owner) Rooney’s and team’s name. 

I was one of them.  I had a Big Ben t-shirt that I was thiiiiis close to tossing out.  I’d heard tales of his rampant douche-baggery around Pittsburgh, like acting like a spoiled, entitled brat while out in public, and brushing off any fans but the young chickies, so he was never a personal favorite of mine.  But franchise QBs don’t come easily so I didn't think cutting him was the answer, especially with nothing actually proven.  It’s not illegal to be an asshole.  I wanted to see what he was going to do with the rest of his career because he sure dug himself an awfully big hole.

It took some major steps on Ben’s part to even start to win back the fans, especially the female fans.  (Pittsburgh has the highest percentage of female fans in the NFL, as gauged by merch sales.  Fact.  My Pittsburgh blog sisters will have to chime in to let me know if they've forgiven him or if they ever can.) 

Personally, I’ll hand it to him that he got his ass out of the bars, (especially college bars), got married, settled down and recently became a father.  He also became a better leader and teammate in the locker room and more cooperative with the media.

After a big loss, he always steps up and accepts the blame, whether it’s really his or not.  He never shirks his responsibility as a team leader.  Ray, on the other hand, disappears immediately after a big loss, especially if it’s on account of the defense.  Just too brooding and tortured to step up to the mic, right?  Or if he does comment, it’s usually to blame the refs, the schedule or the league.  One time, he actually blamed the Steelers for picking on their rookie cornerbacks.  (As if that’s not exactly what every QB in the league has done since the dawn of time...)

So on to my real point…  Ratbird fans here can’t get enough of slamming Big Ben.  I know he plays for the rival team so I expect abuse, but keep the focus on the field, huh?  Every time it’s Steelers/Ravens Week, it’s “Rapistberger” this and “pervert” that… They totally look past their guy, whose shady past left a couple of guys, who last time I checked, are still fuckin’ dead, to throw stones at another guy, who was never charged with anything but acting like a dick.

Is it too much to ask for a little self-awareness?  It’s like when someone who’s a member of a traditionally persecuted minority, throwing intolerant slurs at some other minority.   You’d think they’d know better, right?  You’d think they’d know from experience.

Not here.  So from now until the end of the season, it will be All Ray, All the Time.  People will campaign for naming him the greatest inside linebacker ever and tell and retell stories of his exploits.  If he’s not named to the Hall of Fame in a unanimous vote, they’ll claim league bias.

Ben Roethlisberger is the criminal here in Baltimore, as Ray Lewis goes dancing into a luxurious retirement.  Good riddance. 

Meanwhile, two families still grieve over dead sons, whose murderers were never brought to justice.

The Year in Bluz - 2012

Well, it’s December 31^st, which makes it the last possible day to do my annual Year in Review.  There’s nothing like that deadline pressure to pry me loose from the couch.  Oh, and I’m not really reviewing what went on in the world this year, as much as what I wrote about.  You can find the year’s news highlights anywhere.  What’s really important is what I think about they year’s news highlights. [snork!]

Now let’s see where we’ve been…

January: After meandering a bit with some multi-subject posts, I hit a sweet spot, after consulting with my friend Judie the Rogue Artist, to produce “Why Heathens Make Good Friends.”  That post also contained my first ever prize giveaway. (A “Heathen” t-shirt, size Boys Large.)  Delurker Day (and some later prodding) managed to shake loose a few non-commenting but regular readers, so I could further identify who is stalking me.  Next, I defended the rights of my favorite show, Modern Family, to have the 2-year old seemingly drop the F-bomb, just as we have the right to turn the channel if we are so easily offended.  I also reported one of my favorite family stories, how my Grandfather once creatively smuggled a stash of booze to his brother, who was stationed in the South Pacific during WWII.  I unveiled my long list of favorite fake names here, and then in one of my more whimsical posts, I imagined what it might have been like if I had known how to play a guitar on the day I was given one, plugged in up on stage, with an attentive captive audience.  To finish out this rather high-quality month, I told a story about the time I absolutely slayed the room with a speech I’d been ordered to cut short.

February: After the 2012 Super Bowl was hijacked by a 2^nd-rate rapper’s middle finger, I wrote my best-received post of the year, where a bunch of celebrities and I give the finger to the Parents’ Television Council.  Than, all cocky from that post, I stepped in it real good when in a multi-subject newsy post, I proclaimed support for ObamaCare to force Catholic institutions to provide insurance that includes birth control.  My Catholic friends really stepped up the “dialogue” for that one!  To get the taste of controversy out of my mouth, I told a couple of favorite stories. Well, one was a series of stories about my Grandpa and his crazy family, and how one of his brothers thought he found the other one passed out drunk one night.  Then it was my own best drunk story about how I ended up zonked on “Hairy Buffalo” and did front handsprings down the front steps of the Bowling Green Armory.  Continuing with The Funny, I explained the endless appeal of “dick” jokes, and excerpted “101 Big Dick Jokes” from a Drew Carey book.  I closed the month with a review of the best lunch I ever had… a real Meat-O-Rama.

March: We started the month on a high note, after the Maryland state government passed a Same Sex Marriage bill.  This would be discussed later, as it ended up having to pass a referendum to stand on the books.  When the Pittsburgh Penguins unveiled a new statue of owner/legend Mario Lemieux, I took the opportunity to discuss his gloried career.  A brush with fame came when the HBO movie “Game Change” was shot in town, near my office.  OK, this month I REALLY stepped in it.  Because I posted about the off-the-wall ways I’ve observed females argue throughout my years of relationships, my blog sisters totally gave me the old what-for in comments.  The funny part is that I was called “sexist,” even though most commenters copped to using some of the sketchy methods I listed.  Shortly after that, I wrote the post that appears on the top of my Most Visited Blog Post list, where I debunked the list of lottery winning “tips” that were being publicized on the news.  (I don’t think there were really that many visitors… I think it was one person who somehow repeatedly clicked a couple hundred times.)  And after a couple years of blogging, I finally wrote my long-planned ode to the vinyl record album.

Vinyl graphics > CD graphics.

April: We opened by wrapping up the Mega Millions saga, starting with hiring the VP of Hell No and the Chairman of Fuck Off, and suggesting an alternate take on what I’d do if I ever won a major lottery.  Baseball started and I took an early tour of the improvements at Camden Yards, and provided a tutorial on not getting clonked on the head during batting practice.  I wrote another of my famous “whimsical” posts, wherein I built a story around the melodious sound of a co-worker’s name.  That one still cracks me up.  Next, I tried my hand at sad Goth Girl poetry, to describe my ex-wife’s fixation with Spots on the Mirror.  I closed the month by telling you about my trip to an Assisted Living facility, where at Pinky’s behest, I told the residents some stories about my aforementioned Grandpa and his crazy family.  It was probably my most rewarding experience of the year.

May: The beginning of the month was taken up by our trip to Florida to see my folks.  Then, I started a series or reasons why I (and everyone should) vote Democratic.  I also covered my first experience donating blood, in probably 30 years.  In this post, I told about how I came to learn that my blog has been banned in Bahrain (hence the masthead notation ever since.)  And just to act all “wise” again, I wrote some helpful advice to a young friend who is on the verge of moving far away from home.

June: I started June by seeking input on how everyone (who is married) runs their financial lives.  After attending a high school graduation, I did a compare & contrast vs my own.  My best story of the year came after leading a bunch of young Pittsburghers down to Camden Yards and then getting into trouble finding the club section rest room.  After that, the shit got crazy for a couple weeks.  I had my annual Toledo trip, which featured our fated walleye fishing trip, and the best pizza in the world.

Myles Pizza, Bowling Green OH.

July: From Toledo, I rolled straight into Pittsburgh for Sisterfish2, (aka Darwinfish Fry 3), which featured meeting of my Pittsburgh blogging friends and a special guest appearance by Jessica of Leelafish.  The next day featured a trip to PNC Park and my Aunt’s house for dinner.  And somewhere in there, I had to live without power for a day or so, due to the infamous “derecho.”  After getting together with bloggers from Pittsburgh so often, I decided to meet one here in town, which led to lunch with Misty of Misty’s Laws.  The friendship “took;” we’ve met up 2 more times since then.  I closed the month with an account of my tortured attempts to set up a home wireless network to accommodate my new iPad.  Geek Squad, where were you?

August: With the Olympics going on, I visited my top memories from a lifetime of Olympiads.  Next, a story about my dad’s mono-fruited fig tree led to a post about bronchitis and my first encounter with a new medical center.  With the election dawning, I explored the 4 State Referendum questions that would greatly affect the rights of Marylanders for years to come.  To lighten up after that, I reviewed the new Jaws Blu-Ray and talked about the effect the movie had on me over the years.  Back to politics, I went off on the musicians who were using their cap-gun brains to shoot off their shotgun mouths.  I also came out in support of Bill Nye “the Science Guy”, who was criticizing the evolution deniers. 

September: I started the month by going ridiculous, talking about how we used to have farting contests as kids, to emulate a very taboo “adults only” cassette tape we’d heard.  Then Sitcom Kelly and I pitched a sure-fire T-shirt idea for a local Orioles bar, and then defended Camden Yards against the annual horde of Yankees fans.  Then, I started a long series about a subject that’s haunted my dreams for years… my long career as a record store manager.  There were posts covering: taking my first store, setting up a new store in Nebraska, moving across town to take an urban, free-standing store, describing the thankless nature of being a store manager, the tricks and pitfalls of trying to maintain a decent staff, then ending the month on surviving Christmas and then blowing town to live near the home office.

October: I continued with a post on making the jump into my company’s home office, before taking a break to cover the Orioles making it into the playoffs, and going to my first baseball playoff game with my brother, and my second with Sitcom Kelly.  I went political again by covering the presidential debates, among other things, before diving back to finish up my retail saga.  I covered working in the home office, getting laid off and taking a new store, then getting laid off again a year later, taking a job in a freakin’ craft store, making a jump to managing a video rental store, and culminated in putting all my experience together to turn that video store completely around within 2 months… and then quitting.  Somewhere in there, I wrote about my experience of waiting for 2 hours to cast an “early vote.”

November: With the election looming, I dove right in with my comprehensive, last best case to vote Democratic.  I know for sure that I changed at least a couple of minds.  Not bad for a two-bit blogger!  Still, I had plenty of election night jitters, but they proved unfounded, as I was able to bask in the afterglow that very night, before moving into post-election analysis.  I still had a few random stories I wanted to tell from my retail career, so I dropped them here, and here, and here and finished it up for good (I promise) here.  I ended November with a post about the OSU/Michigan rivalry, and the time I had to pee REALLY bad in the back of a pickup truck.  Then it was on to the hardship of trying to find an electric carving knife and a big fork.  (You don’t want to know what I did with the old fork.) 

December: I know this stuff is right below, so I’ll be brief.  My dear friend had her wedding shower and then got married.  I went off on the All Guns All the Time crowd in the wake of the Newtown tragedy.  I complained about having to move office cubicles (I’m over it now) and in a fit of self-deprecation, showed you pictures of me violating every modern fashion law known to mankind.  Oh, and by the way, maybe it’s not such a bad thing if some of these trends come back.  I mean after all, it seems our current fashion is altering our basic body structure.  Look what we have now…

Happy New Year, my friend.  Thank you for sharing 2012 with me and I look forward to entertaining you, educating you, or just pissing you off again in 2013. 

That One Part

Do you ever find yourself flipping through the channels, stumbling across a movie you own or know quite well, and then even if it’s late, you tell yourself you’ll just stay with it long enough to see that one part you like?  I do that all the time.  If I had any sense, I’d just pull out my DVD, but I rarely do.  Instead, I hang with the movie, commercials and all, until the part I’m waiting for comes on.

I tell myself I’ll go to bed right after, but that doesn’t always happen.  And sometimes, that one part is near the end, so I’m going to be up late either way.

Anyway, as I was watching the original Karate Kid for the millionth time last night, it occurred to me that I could fluff this idea into a post.  Sure it’s just a list of movies I like, but what the hey… I’m on vacation.  You can’t expect me to do any heavy thinking, can you?

I’m sure you’ll note that these movies aren’t the “freshest” ones around.  But if you think about the premise, they have to be old enough to have made the rounds on TV a number of times.  That rules out anything recent.  Plus, I’m not exactly the “freshest” either.

So, here’s what keeps me up at night…

Animal House: I tell myself I’ll just wait for the scene where Otis Day and the Knights perform “Shout” at the toga party; the perfect blending of music and anarchy.  And if I’ve already missed it, I’ll hang until the guys show up at the Dexter Lake Club, just to see that big dude ask, “You mind if we dance wif yo’ dates?”

Aliens: “Get away from her, you BITCH!”  Sigourney Weaver has never been so awesome.

Blazing Saddles: The Waco Kid shoots the guns out of the hands of 6 bad guys, in the blink of an eye.  OR, the “The Sheriff is Near” bit.  OR, Lili von Schtupp seducing the sheriff.  OR who am I kidding?  It’s a lock I’m staying up to watch the whole thing.  Unless, of course, it’s on the Family Channel, or some other network that cuts out offensive stuff, or in other words, all the funny parts.

American Werewolf in London: No contest… the “werewolf transformation” scene.  It’s a groundbreaking piece of practical effects work.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure: When they let all the historical figures run loose in the mall.  Love how Beethoven jams on the music shop’s organs, while Socrates and Billy the Kid try to mack on the little chicklets. (While Freud is holding a corn dog.)

Die Hard: I’m in till the end on this one, because I have to wait for the scene where Bruce Willis takes down Hans freakin’ Gruber with a gun taped to his back.

Dave: Kevin Kline, impersonating the President, gathers the cabinet together to find money for a pet project but cutting a bunch of stupid expenditures from the federal budget, using nothing but a pencil and 3^rd-grade math.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High: Spicoli’s line about “this Jefferson dude” needing to “find some cool rules, pronto.”  And you thought I was going to say the Phoebe Cates diving board scene…

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: The parade “Twist and Shout” scene.

First Blood: When Rambo, using his guerilla warfare and camouflage training, successfully hunts the sheriff’s posse who is supposedly trying to hunt him.

A Fish Called Wanda: John Cleese’s strip tease while he speaks in Russian and Jamie Lee Curtis humps a rope railing upstairs.  I’ll stay up to watch Jamie Lee hump anything, including Activia yogurt.

48 Hours: The scene when Eddie Murphy tears up the redneck bar, impersonating an officer.

Eddie: Where’d you get this money?

Redneck: Tax return.

Eddie: Nah, you’re too stupid to have a job.

The Godfather: Brando’s speech where he warns the heads of the Five Families that if his son Michael should “hang himself in his jail cell, or get shot by a cop, or get hit by a bolt of lightning,” he will blame the people in this room.  I think it was one of the most elegant cinematic threats ever.

Independence Day: The President’s speech, before hopping into a fighter jet to take on the big ugly aliens.

Jaws: Quint’s USS Indianapolis speech, which is as chilling as anything we actually see the shark do.

Jurassic Park: When the T-Rex breaks out of its paddock and attacks the jeeps.  I always imagine myself under the same circumstances and I don’t see how I get through it with my pants unsoiled.

The Karate Kid: The scene where Daniel-san (and we) realize that wax on/wax off, paint the fence, sand the floor and side to side, were more than just grunt work chores.

Monty Python’s Life of Brian: The Stoning Scene, which unfortunately comes so early in the movie, so I usually miss it.  So then I hang on for the scene where Michael Palin’s speech impedimented Pilate dares his guards to laugh when he mentions his friend’s name, “Biggus Dickus.”

Naked Gun Pt 2: The love scene montage, where they use clips with increasing explicit symbolism, from a flower opening, to a foot-long hot dog, to a monument being erected, to a train rushing out of a tunnel, an oil derrick pounding and finally striking a gusher.  I am always on the floor by the time it’s over.  Every time.

Naked Gun Pt 3: The sperm bank donation scene, where after each of the 3 donations, Inspector Drebin appears more and more disheveled, following increasing levels of commotion behind the closed door.

I’m not including the original Naked Gun here because I will always watch that one all the way through.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: The scene when Keith Richards appears as Capt. Jack Sparrow’s father.  It’s just too perfect… Jack Sparrow source material in more ways than one.

Rocky: I will always wait for the original fight between Rocky and Apollo Creed.  It was the perfect marriage between action and music.  My buddies and I used to act parts of it out, with the Rocky soundtrack on the turntable.

Spiderman 2: When Mary Jane finally learns that Peter Parker is Spiderman.  If they had put that scene in the first movie, Spiderman 1 would have been perfect.

The Terminator: Reece’s speech to Sarah Connor, about how that terminator is out there and will never, ever stop until she is dead.  It was a chilling reality check for the young, fragile waitress, who later turns into quite the badass.

Terminator 2: Sarah Connor breaking out of the asylum, only to run into the very terminator that was responsible for the horror she’s lived over the last decade, not knowing that this Terminator was now working with her son.  It’s a nightmare within a nightmare and it gives me chills every time.  The scene also shows the asylum staff that Sarah wasn’t crazy after all.

The Thing (John Carpenter version): The crab-head bit, the freakiest, most over-the-top-weird bit of SFX that once seen, can never be un-seen.

The Usual Suspects: I’m always up late for this one because I have to see that ending scene were we all find out who Keyser Sose is.  It plays out brilliantly.

Forrest Gump: I put this one out of order and last because it is responsible for more late nights for me than any other.  Every scene I decide to wait for inevitably leads to another one I need to see.  Next thing you know, it’s 1:00 AM and I’m a weepy mess.  Thanks a lot, Hanks.

So what about you?  What movie scenes keep you up past your bedtime?