Subdivided We Stand Meets Marathon Man

I Was Kneed In The Ass By An Evil Leprechaun

In honor of St. Paddy, today's entry is a re-post of one of my most popular entries ever.  From March, 2003, may I present to you:

I Was Kneed In The Ass By An Evil Leprechaun

OR

He's After Me Lucky Charms!

Immediately upon completion of graduate school, I did what most people who've just spent the past two years of their life trying to avoid getting a job do -- I polished the resume, slept late, watched a lot of tv, and went to a lot of free Pirate games, courtesy of my scalping buddies Paul and Martin.

After a few months, however, I decided that it was time to start earning some cash. Quite by accident, I developed a two-pronged plan for money gathering. Step 1: I went back and took the same job that I had in high school -- specifically, bussing tables at Monroeville's fine, fine Palace Inn.

Needless to say, coming back to my high school job, 12 years and three degrees later, was a humbling experience.

But not humbling enough, apparently. I also signed up with a temp agency, and was rewarded with what anyone would consider a dream job -- provided, of course, that your dream job is hanging out with guys on parole and getting covered, head to toe, in ink.

You know how, every week, a little piece of mail called "The Pennysaver" gets delivered to your residence? If you've ever bothered to open up the Pennysaver, and by God I hope you haven't, you've found a number of single-page inserts stuffed inside. Usually, the inserts are Pizza Outlet coupons, Giant Eagle flyers, and the like.

Well, friends, lemme tell ya -- them flyers don't get in your Pennysaver by themselves.

Nope. They're stuffed in there by a team of about 20 people who can't be bothered to find menial labor on their own, so they've had to turn to a temp agency to find menial, degrading work for them.

And yep, for a brief and (whatever the opposite of shining is) moment, yours truly was stuffing your Pennysavers.

It actually wasn't that bad. It was mindless, at least. And one thing about working at a no-status job -- at least you don't have to worry about internal office status.

Or so I thought.

Turns out, there's an elaborate hierarchy among the Pennysaver stuffers. And I, having neither criminal record nor boobs, was at the bottom of the rung.

Somewhere near the TOP of the Pennysaver food chain was a fellow that I like to call the Evil Leprechaun. He stood about 4-10. Patchy, dirty red hair hung in clumps off of his mis-shapen head. Teeth, such as they were, that had been worn down to spikey points -- and each of those points was held together by about three decades worth of plaque.

I tended to mind my own business at the Pennysaver. One day, however, Evil Leprechaun came over to chat with the woman who was standing beside me. I blocked out the conversation entirely -- but must've given some indication that I was listening. The unholy sprite must've made a joke -- and I was the punchline. Really, I still have no idea what he said. But when he got no reaction out of me, he walked behind me and crammed his knee up my arse all the way to the large intestine. I felt a tingling in my tailbone, and a sick feeling in my stomach.

I've never been in a fight in my life. Never even close. But trust me when I tell you that I could've broken the Evil Leprechaun in half.

For whatever reason, I ignored it. There was about a minute of "Oh my God, what's going to happen" tension in the room -- then, everyone went back to stuffing Pennysavers. A few weeks later I got a temp assignment with Westinghouse, which was far more suited to my skills. There, I spent eight hours a day, five days a week over several months peeling off little pink stickies and slapping them onto pieces of paper. Far more suitable work for a man with three degrees.....

(2005 update -- I should've noted in the original that the Westinghouse temp job is where I met Mrs. Subdivided, which is certainly a fair trade-off for having to endure being kneed in the ass by an evil leprechaun.)

Act Naturally

Since it's Oscar weekend, it only seems appropriate that we take a few seconds and discuss the acting career of one of our generation's most seriously under-rated and underappreciated actors.

The year -- 1971.  Gene Hackman and Jane Fonda won best acting Oscars.  "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "No No Nanette" were wowing 'em on Broadway.

But back on the storied stage of the All-Purpose Room (which earned its name by serving as cafeteria, gym, and assembly hall all in one, resulting in a smell that can exist nowhere else on this planet -- a delightful melange of tater tots, green beans, sweatsocks, and overpowering lunch lady perfume) at Northern Pike Elementary, one young actor surpassed them all in his role as the Attorney for the Defense in NPE's production of "Tuffy the Tooth vs. The Tooth Decay Seven."

Yes, it's not easy playing the heavy in grade school productions, but yours truly must've been up to the task.  Two years later, I was tapped to play "Lord North" in some sort of Revolutionary War epic.  I had the largest part, and I was also the only one who didn't forget his lines.

It was here that I earned my first review, from a kid named Doak.  I'll never forget the magic as he said to me, "Jesus!  You were the only one who didn't suck!"  What can I say?  The critics have been kind to me over the years.

That was pretty much it for my acting career, at least until "graduate school."  Since we were ostensibly there to study "Television, Radio, and Film, " we all ended up having to act in each other's productions quite a bit.  I had several small roles as a reporter and as a guy who, for some unknown reason, was carrying around a mounted deer head.  I just missed out on a bigger role, when, during my audition, I mimed going to a stove and ladling a substance into a big bowl.

"What the hell are you doing?" my producer asked.

  "I'm getting my famous chili, just like it says here in the script."

"That would be famous CHILL, doofus."

"Oh."

Anyway, that was pretty much the end of my acting career, except for one memorable production in which I played a pacifist priest who was being held hostage by the Iraqi's.  There were four of us in the show, and we were killed off in order of acting talent, worst to best. 

Needless to say, I died first.  And I also died worst.  After weeks of rehearsing being suffocated by a pillow, and perfecting my struggling then submission, I went and done died too quick.  I think they barely had the pillow over my head before I croaked.  (Hopefully, the producer of said production will chime in on this.  He's said in the past that I wasn't as awful as I think, but I think he's just being nice.)

I bring all this up because I've been asked to perform in another production, for a friend who's taking video production classes at Pittsburgh Filmmakers.  I'm hoping that I get another crack at a death scene.  I promise to die real, real good this time.

A History of Bad Haircuts

Ahh, best laid plans and all that.  No time to post the multimedia extravaganza I had planned for today -- so instead, let's fall back to the old standby...

Photos of the Blogger as a Young Dorcus Mallorcus

Today's entry hails from the glorious Ford administration.  1974, to be exact.  Sixth grade.  And striding the halls of Northern Pike Elementary was the following:

Why yes, my parents DID cut my hair back in those days.  Why do you ask?

Good lord.  If you ever needed proof that I've patterned my life after Bobby Brady, there it is.  And by the way, the blonde-ness was more-or-less natural.  My hair was a bit lighter back then -- but in those days, I used to go swimming nearly every afternoon in the summer, so the sun and chlorine would bleach me out to the lovely shade you see above. 

Feel free to caption/mock/whatever.  And in case you were wondering, the logo on the turtleneck is a snowmobiler.  Go figure.

Please Note -- that's JOE, not JAY

Man.  Busy week.  Apologies for the moderately lame bloggage.

Which will continue today, mind you -- but just for the heck of it, I thought I'd share a little document that I think is pretty cool.  Depending on your interest in sports, and of course the college sports teams in which you're interested, this may not mean much to you -- but again, I like it.

A little background...and my apologies to those who've heard this story ad nauseum on this blog...in 1984 I was stricken by a delightful virus, which resulted in an equally delightful paralysis known as "Guillain-Barre Syndrome."  I recovered fully, eventually, but for about a month I was flat on my back, unable to move a muscle.  (For those who are interested, I did three days worth of write-up on this topic back on the old hideously ugly site.  Dig in if you're so inclined....)

Anyway, during my stint in the Critical Care Unit at the former Forbes Regional Health Center in Monroeville, I received a piece of mail from the Penn State Football Office.  Click the thumbnail below to view.

Ol' Baldy

Yar.  Sick.  Tired.  Sick and tired.  And nary a bloggage topic in sight.

And you know what that means...Photos of the Blogger as a Young Dorcus Mallorcus.  Enjoy.

This one's from May, 1963.  If it's not the exact day my parents brought me home from the adoption home, it's close.  VERY close.  I do actually believe this is my first day as a Braughler.

And actually, for once, I'm going to have to say -- not too dorky.  (Dorkage didn't come on strong until, I'd guess, somewhere around the third grade...)

Oh, and this photo serves as a vivid reminder as to why I'd deathly afraid of getting a buzz cut -- I do, in fact, have a weirdly shaped and oversized melon.

Pimpin' Ain't Easy

Just going to pimp a couple of things today -- but if you're real nice, and read what I have to pimp, then you'll be rewarded with a brand new Dorcus Mallorcus picture at the end....

Item the first -- Pittsburgh Blogfest #2.  Wednesday, January 19 @ Finnegan's Wake.  Here are the complete details.  Yours truly is going to try to make it, which may be either incentive for you to go, or incentive for you to not go I suppose...

Item B -- Go buy some of Mrs. Subdivided's beaded jewelry.  She's the Bead Babe, dammit!  Seriously, Mrs. S makes nice stuff, it's reasonably priced -- and it's all on a Web site that I can't quite figure out how to edit!  (In other words, I KNOW about the apostrophes not showing up.  I'll figure it out sooner or later...)

Item the third -- heard from old pal The NorthFace Guy yesterday.  If you happen to be in the market for North Face apparel, you can do far worse than checking out what TNFG has to offer...

Item the last -- if you're one of the tens of people who enjoy Subdivided We Stand, I invite you to check out what my pal Joe's most excellent blog.  He's re-branded and re-focused, and exploring life as a displaced northerner now living among the NASCAR set.  Enjoy Life in thisLowcountry (formerly "Remembrance of 'Tangs' Past and formerly formerly "Freckle-Faced Strawberry.")

Still here?  Lovely.  Enjoy this photo from June, 1971 -- also known as "That Championship Season."  Yes, you're looking at the legendary Monroeville Baseball Association "C" League Champion "Ted's Gulf" squad. (Click the photo to enlarge -- and guess which one is me.)

I'd like to report that yours truly was only a role player on that team -- but that'd be an out-and-out lie. 

In truth, I was a hindrance.  One at bat and one inning in the field per game.  I played with a beat-up glove that a neighbor kid had found in his grandmother's attic, and I'm not joking when I say the thing was probably a 1940's vintage. 

Didn't matter -- I wouldn't have caught a ball even if one had ever been hit to me out there in right field.  But none ever was, so I had plenty of time to ponder the important strategic elements of the game, such as "will anybody notice if I run into those woods over there and take a leak?"

Just to prove that I wasn't hopeless as an athlete , I should in all fairness report that eventually I improved to the point where I was downright mediocre.  By my next year of "C" league, I was a starter.  On a very mediocre team, perhaps, but a starter nonetheless.

When I showed my dad my "C-League" trophy, he told me to "enjoy it -- you'll never win another one."  Dad was and is the eternal pessimist.  Every year during the 70's, he'd predict a losing season for the Steelers.  "Don't Get Your Hopes Up."  That's the Braughler creed, right there.

God Rest Ye Dorky, Gentlemen

Had a lovely little plan for today's entry -- a plan that was ruined by the short battery life of my digital camera.  Yar.

So while the ol' batteries recharge, let's revisit nobody's favorite topic: Portraits of the Blogger as a Young Dorcus Mallorcus. 

Today, we revisit the late 1960's.  I'm going to guess that yours truly (that's me on the left) is around 4 years old in this one, which places it firmly in 1967.  We're wearing jackets, so it's probably just a few months past the Summer of Love.  Sgt. Pepper's was only a few months old at this point.  Jeez.  (I remember that jacket like I wore it yesterday, by the way.  Those little round patches on there are baseball team logos.  The Pirates HAD to be on there somewhere -- my mom wouldn't have bought it if it didn't.  I can spot a Cubs logo, on my right shoulder, right underneath the other guy's hand.)

Anyway, the fellow I'm lovey-dovey with there is my next door neighbor, Billy F.  We remained friends, although not particularly close friends, throughout high school.  While I was at PSU, he would occasionally show up in State College, where he had reserve duty from time to time.  Last I heard, he was married, living in Texas, and I'm pretty sure he's the father of twins.

The guy in the back is Bill's older brother -- who is there to remind us all that while I've been a dork for 41 years, dorkier folk DO exist out there.

For those of you keeping score at home, here are links to all of the previous entries in the Dorcus Collection:

• Ninth grade glasses dork
• Disco Dork
• Ice Cream Dork
• That 70's Kitchen Dork
• Boy Scout Dork
• Concert t-shirt dork
• Bozo Dork
• Mary Lou Retton dork
• Mullet Dork

 

Greased Lightning

It's nice to see that the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse and the Robotics Foundry have merged into one giant blob of vague ideas and empty promises.  It's always a positive step to leverage synergies into new paradigms of...of....ummm....

That last sentence is exactly the kind of crap I spewed out when I wrote the copy for one iteration of the Digital Greenhouse Web site.  Honestly, I would've liked to have written some concrete information about what the Greenhouse did -- but beyond "leverage new paradigms" and that sort of happy horseshit, there was no "there" there.

I believe that Web site won a bunch of awards, from others involved in the industry of obfuscation.

But the b.s. on the Digital Greenhouse site was NOTHING compared to the whoppers I fabricated for a Pennsylvania economic development initiative called "Lightning Manufacturing."

A few years ago, I was toiling away as a marketing copywriter for an "Interactive Marketing Agency" -- itself a long way around of saying "we build Web sites."  (And not very good ones, either.  PRICEY, yes, but not very good.)

One of my first assignments at said agency was to write the copy for a Web site about a new Pennsylvania economic development initiative, to be called "Lightning Manufacturing."

Fair enough.  I was given some background documents, most of which described the partners behind the initiative, and some vague descriptions of the desired outcome.

What was MISSING, however, was any description of what "Lightning Manufacturing" actually was.  Nobody could explain it, nobody had a clue what it was about -- and I had to write copy for the Web site.  Eventually, I gave up trying to figure out what the damn thing was, and just wrote some crap and sent it off to the client.

My thinking was that by sending them copy for approval, they'd have to come back with revisions that actually contained some specifics.  No way they'd let my little wisps of b.s. actually go out and represent a Commonwealth of PA economic development initiative -- would they?

Those of you who've worked with government agencies probably already know the answer.  They switched a couple of "ands" to "buts," and added a few more instances of the word "leverage," and greenlighted the whole mess.  I had fabricated PA economic development policy out of thin air.

The kicker was when we Web-cast Governor Ridge's press conference to announce the initiative.  About 30 seconds into his speech, it started to all sound very familiar. 

He couldn't be.  Could he? 

Oh yes, my friends.  There was our governor, later to be charged with the protection of us all -- there he was, reading my idiotic drivel, pretty much word for word.

(Sadly, they've finally taken the Lightning Manufacturing site down -- BUT, through the magic of the Wayback Machine at www.archive.org, we can enjoy most of the beauty -- the splendor -- the magnificent vapor that was Lightning Manufacturing.  Enjoy!)

Straight Ballin'

It's nice to know that no matter how inept a softball player you are, you can still claw your way up to middle management.  The single worst softplayer I've ever witnessed -- a woman so bad that you had to wonder if she even grasped the concept of the game -- gets some publicity in this week's Dateline P-G.  (It's not the woman featured as the "Profile of the Week, though.)

More about her in a minute.  First let's backtrack a bit.  Earlier this week, I shared some misery from my junior high years.  By high school, I'd managed to ditch those losers and worm my way in with a slightly better class of people.

Band fags.

That's what our school called us, and we more or less took that handle, made it our own and wore it as a badge of honor.  We WERE geeks, but entertaining geeks, I think -- and while we were miscreants and boozers, our shenanigans came nowhere near to the felonious nature of that of my previous pals.

At some point during our senior year, my fellow band fags and I began playing softball after school every day.  Talents ranged from moderately bad to moderately good, and it was fun.  At some point, one of the guys began bringing some fellows from his neighborhood -- for the most part, some very good players.  Very good.  We played mostly every day between my senior year and heading off to college.  (That places this story somewhere in the summer of '81, for those of you keeping score at home.  Also, others may disagree with my chronology -- in my mind, our softball shenanigans date back to the band fags, but perhaps these other guys were already playing elsewhere, and we just kind of mingled the two groups.)

During this time, I was dating my first girlfriend of any seriousness.  She was a pretty good athlete, and sometimes she'd play along.  Unfortunately, though, in addition to being a pretty good athlete, she was also pretty short and relatively slow.  She could hit a ball over the infielders heads on a regular basis, but eventually the guys learned to cheat in on her -- and they started throwing her out at first from the outfield.  Had to hurt.

Nonetheless, our little throng of s-ballers continued to grow.  Most of the band fags dropped out, eventually, but friends of the new bunch joined in until we had a pretty substantial crowd.  Eventually, it got to the point where no matter how good or how bad an athlete you were, chances were that you could join in -- and there'd be people both better and worse than you there.  Being a pretty mediocre athlete myself, that was pretty comforting.

Surprisingly, the softball continued the next summer, when a bunch of us got back from college.  At this point, one of the guys was dating a girl I'll call "Sally."  Offhand, I have three distinct memories of Sally (who was also a friend of my gf.)  In no particular order, they are:

• She shaved her toes
• When she joined me at Penn State a few years later, she developed a habit of coming over to my apartment every afternoon at 3 pm to watch Guiding Light with my roommates and I, and
• A story that I can't share and maintain my self-imposed PG-13 rating, but I will tell you the punchline, which is, "Well, what the hell do you think you just did?"

The last I heard of old Sally, she had dropped out of school, was following the Dead, and owned a goat.  The bet here is that she probably stopped shaving her toes around that time period, as well.

So Sally decided to play softball with us one night, and brought a friend -- the woman I mentioned way back there in the first paragraph.  And she was awful at softball.  Really, really bad, bad enough to make even the worst of our lot look, well, not so bad.

But at some point, she must've managed to get on base, and then to second.  At which point, the next batter hit one into the outfield, and her teammates told her to "go home!  home!"

Now this girl may have been no softball player, but she did have a solid grasp of certain mathematical principles -- in particular, she knew full well that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  Home she went...right over the pitcher's mound.  I'm not sure if this next part is true or not, but in my mind we called her safe and counted the run.

Anyway, the fun & games continued for at least the next two summers, and possibly longer.  Every summer, you'd get the call:   "Softball.  Tonight.  Mount Mercy."  There were too many characters to mention -- Smilin' Mike, the leftie who couldn't hit anywhere but right field to save his life -- Martin, the guy who seemingly took great delight in driving every first pitch about a 90-degree angle from home plate and across the road -- Juan the Torpedo...a guy with the inexplicable nickname of Fozzie, or sometimes Silk...C-Bubba, a guy named after the hiccupping refrain from a Tom-Tom Club song...hell, it was a good bunch, and we had fun.
-----
Speaking of fun, looks like Mary Worth is advising a neighbor to go after a married man:

This is a radically new approach for the formerly-dowdy old Mary.  Perhaps in the sunset of her life, she's decided that monogamy really ain't all it's cracked up to be.  What's next -- a naked romp in the apartment complex pool with Professor Cameron?  A three-way with Tommy and Smitty Smedlap?  Go for it, Mare, you dirty old broad.

Just for the record, I asked my wife to share her response if she learned that one of my old flames was trying to contact me. 

"Yeah.  I'd have a problem with that."

Livin' Good in the Neighborhood

Now that's the type of weekend we used to have when I was a lad -- Gateway, PSU, Pitt, and them Stillers all winning....

(And yes, I'm well aware that my support of both PSU and Pitt makes me a pariah in both places.  Don't care.  I grew up rooting for both, and loyal to both I remain.  More to PSU than Pitt, but still...)

The pleasant weather and the good (well, at least winning -- I don't think even the most die-hard Paternoite would describe a 4-point win over the Loosiers as "good") football put me in mind of autumn, 1976.  I had just entered junior high, and my first class was way in the back end of the building, back by the band rooms.  Health class, with Mr. Paczek -- a converted gym teacher with massive biceps, and a pretty decent fellow as I recall.  Mr. Paczek began shilling Gateway football tickets, and I bought in.

Now by this time, my friendships with the kids in my neighborhood were strained, at best.  I'd known these kids since I was five years old, and we'd been pretty chummy most of that time -- but by seventh grade, their favorite pasttimes of petty vandalism and cigarette-smoking had advanced to tire-thievery and boozing and pot, and I was gradually becoming the object of ridicule for not going along with the pack on these issues.  I was moderately polite, reasonably intelligent and respectful of other's property in a neighborhood that valued none of these things. 

Nonetheless, when presented with the opportunity to bond over sports with my friends, I jumped in feet-first.  My pals agreed, reluctantly, to allow me to tag along with them to the opener.

What I didn't realize was that they had some pre-game festivities on the agenda.  We met before the game at the house of one of the older kids in the neighborhood -- a kid with older brothers who were widely known to be highly intelligent, and also mostly just high.  My two best friends were there, along with another kid from the neighborhood with whom I had once been friends, up until the time I began to realize that he was a major loon.  I think it may have been his habit of carrying his puppy to the top of his driveway stairs, lifting it over his head, and throwing it down, full force, onto the concrete driveway below.  Over and over again, until his mother would come out and suggest that maybe he should go do something else.

Turnpike Gardens was and is regarded as a nice neighborhood.  Certainly not the nicest in Monroeville, but not the worst, either -- and even the worst in Monroeville isn't (or wasn't, things may have changed) all that bad.  Most of the neighborhood dads were blue collar -- machinists, railroad men, and the like.  In Pittsburgh in 1976, being a union blue-collar worker meant a pretty decent living.  The rest of the neighborhood was filled with low-level engineers for Westinghouse and U.S. Steel.  So we were smack-dab in the middle of the middle class.

It was in this atmosphere that I experienced my first tailgate, Turnpike Gardens-style.  In the middle of the room was an object that, years later, I would be able to identify as a bong.  A gigantic, multi-stemmer, like something out of a Dragnet episode about drug abuse.  I was ushered over to a pinball machine in a corner, and told to play away to my heart's content.  And I did, only looking back once -- to see one of my buddies tying off and jabbing a needle into his arm.

The rest of the evening was a blur -- probably not so much for me as for my friends, but still, I don't remember much.  There were some shenanigans in the woods on what was known as Radio Hill, where I think more substances were ingested.  At one point, I know we walked down the hill to Winky's.  I'm sure there was a game, too, but I don't remember it in light of everything else that was going on.

That was the beginning of the end of my relationship with my neighborhood chums.  I do recall them standing by and cheering as some of the bigger kids in the neighborhood commandeered my bike -- my beautiful, green bike with the green metal-flaked banana seat -- and hauled it to the top of the park maintenance building and tossed it off, smashing it to bits. 

My last adventure with those guys came a few years later, after one of the miscreants had acquired a driver's license.  We went out for a big night on the town, stealing tires and smashing windshields in hotel parking lots, finally topping it off by turfing a lawn in the back of the plan. 

"These are the best years of your life," my parents used to tell me.  And they were.  Fabulous, fabulous years.  I miss them, and Turnpike Gardens, with all my heart.

Gotta get back there real soon.