Language arts

So I took this quiz after The Lesley did it, and I got some similar results...

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast   Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Now, before you say, hey, wait a munkee minute, you're from Pennsylvania, and you didn't get Philadelphia, keep in mind...

I'm not from Philadelphia!

Believe me, my uncle's from Philadelphia and it's a whole different accent. I'm from rural Pennsylvania, which is sort of generic Northeast, I guess. And any Jersey/New York influence probably comes from the facts that a) I live in Jersey now; and b) my parents, who taught me to speak, are from New York. Even though neither one has much of a New York accent, depending on whom you ask.

But the survey reminds me of two stories.

First, there was my time with a British accent.

That's right. Once upon a time, I had an accent that most American women find irresistable. (Right, Jin?)

The downside was, of course, that I was about 3 years old.

Unlike a co-worker who tried so hard to lose his Dutch accent as an adult, only to find out that women love foreign accents, this entire thing was unintentional.

My folks had taken me to England, and because children couldn't eat in the dining room at whatever fancy hotel they were staying in, they got a nanny for the dinner hours. And she was, of course, British.

And so I was spending a couple of hours a day with me. While I was learning to talk.

So by the end of the week, my parents noticed that, sure enough, I was starting to sound like her.

Of course, that was all gone a few weeks after we got home. Too bad.

The second story has nothing to do with me, and also happened when I was younger. So maybe I don't remember it 100% accurately, but hey, this is my blog, so you'll just have to trust me.

There was a professor at Bloomsburg, where my Dad taught, who was a linguist.

And my Dad told me once that this professor had solved a missing persons case with his mad linguist skillz.

See, the authorities had found someone wandering with amnesia, and no ID. So they didn't know who she was, and she couldn't tell them.

So they turned to a linguist, this professor. And he talked with her. And by listening to her accent, he figured out what part of the country she was from. (It wasn't anywhere near where they were!)

The cops went to the police in that area, and sure enough, there was a missing person who matched the description of the woman they had.

See? Having an accent can come in handy.

Ah, New Jersey

A couple of weeks ago, NJ.com had a Star-Ledger article about the development of a part of Northern New Jersey called Vernon Valley.

It brought back memories... back in the days when I was a young developer...

I mean, a young soccer player, and I paid my first, last and hopefully only visit to Vernon, New Jersey. Or as my teammates and I came to think of it over the course of a week at soccer camp, hell on Earth.

I'm not sure exactly where we were, though to my recollection, the T-shirt they gave us said Vernon, N.J. I don't really remember well, because I never wore it. Last I saw it, my mother was wearing it to garden sometime during my college years.

The point isn't really where we were, exactly, so much as the misadventures of the week.

It was the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, and I'd joined the soccer team after sitting out a year due to the perils of puberty: As a result of my late growth spurt (went from about 4'9" to about 5'7" in a year or so) my knees hurt so much, I could barely walk long distances, much less run.

So to launch my comeback, I joined my buddies on the team and headed off for their summer camp. Normally, they went to camp locally, but this year, for some reason, our coach had settled on this New Jersey camp.

I think it was the brochure. Nine fields, Olympic-size pool, tennis courts, scads of high-school teams all signed up for one particular week.

Well, at least they had the international coaching staff right. The pool? Maybe for the midget Olympics. The tennis courts had no nets - which, admittedly, made the game easier.

And of course, coach got the week wrong. And we ended up at camp, not with a dozen other high school varsity/JV teams, but with the Under-13 New Jersey state select team, a group of elementary school day-campers and the very sad older brother of one of the day-campers. More on all them later.

Our team divided into varsity and JV, for the sake of competition, and I wound up on the JV because I hadn't been on the team.

(I spent the season on the JV, too. Mostly because, although I was in line for a varsity backup spot - but probably wouldn't have played much - I got hurt in our final preseason game. Played the game of my life with a spot on the varsity on the line, then managed to bruise my spleen saving a goal. Cost me six weeks, about half the season. I played two minutes of varsity time all year, in an 8-0 blowout in the rain. I got into the scorebook the only way I could figure out how; I fouled somebody. I had another shot at a varsity spot the next season, but I tore up a knee playing AYSO in the spring - my good knee, no less - and missed the season. I like to say my teammates carried me off the field at the end of my final soccer game, and it's true. They carried me off the field to my car, and from there it was off to the emergency room.)

But before all that heartache and injury time, I had to survive soccer camp.

Did I mention the international coaches? Might've been why coach fell for the sales pitch. The camp's head coach was a German named Heinz, who used a styptic pen when he cut himself shaving, and promptly got dubbed "mole man" by our 14-18-year-old demographic, for reasons I still don't quite get. Our coach was a German. Insert your own joke.

Other counselors included Wilson, a Brazilian; Guy, a Frenchman (one of my teammates insisted on calling him "Gay" for most of the week, until they finally got into a screaming match one night; ah, to be 15 again); the captain of the Czechoslovakian national team; and Julian, an Englishman of about 21 who was nearly as unhappy to be there as we were, and spent most of his time sympathizing with us, impressing us with his accent and teaching us creative British curses, mostly aimed at the agent who thought he could make an easy couple grand coaching for a week in the States.

More on them later, too.

First thing you need to know about this camp: It's built on a swamp. All nine fields. And the first day of camp, it just pours.

Oh, wait, before we get to the rain, my buddy Turbo, a teammate - I was his backup, more or less - and my best friend growing up, brought some music, including Nine Inch Nails. My mother heard him talking about it and asked, "Did you say 'Nine Inch Males'?"

I'm not quite sure what to make of that. And I'm not sure I want to think about it, really.

But that tape also was the first time I heard Depeche Mode's "Blasphemous Rumours,"which remains a favorite to this day. But I digress.

So it's raining. And the fields - all nine - turn into what New Jersey as a state turns into when it rains. A swamp.

We got so filthy muddy, the camp people offered to do our laundry for us. I think by "camp people," I'm referring to the coach's wife. But whoever it was, it took so long, I got my shirt back the night before we left.

Oh, and we're bunking outside, in a big cabin. The whole team. In super-humid midsummer weather. In a swamp. We had to use the heater, too, too dry our freakin' cleats for the next practice session.

Let me put it this way: Our starting goalie was licking the bugs off the cabin ceiling for the added protein. And he didn't have to try very hard.

And, you smokers out there, explain this to me? How do a dozen or so pack-a-day smokers of several years (ah, small-town life: I had my first cigarette, thanks to my pals, at 13; but it didn't take) manage to bring about a pack for the week, on average?

Guys were getting twitchy by Wednesday, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of Guy, somebody on the team also managed to bring a bullwhip. Why, I have no idea, but when one of the 13-year-olds called one of our guys "gay," he went after the kid, in his cabin, with the bullwhip. Kid was crying in his bunk. Literally.

This was before one of our varsity guys, in a fit of pique, kicked in every stall door in the group bathroom... only to discover the poor big brother - who was playing on their team - was in one of them.

BAM! Metal door handle to forehead. Concussion.

That was before one of the 13-year-olds - you're thinking we're immature, you should've seen these little buggers - threw a brick at Wilson. A brick. At about the nicest counselor at the camp.

'Twas Friday night, the last night of camp. And we spent the last day running. It was Heinz's revenge for Wilson. He let Wilson make us run with him. Did I mention Wilson was a Brazilian soccer pro? Dude could run all the live-long day.

It's a wonder we didn't go back for seconds on the 13-year-olds with the bullwhip, but our folks were coming to get us.

In between, there I was, playing left fullback on the JV, against the 6-year-olds... and three counselors.

I got stuck as the only guy back on a two-on-one break by Speedy, the fastest of the 6-ers, and the captain of the Czechoslovakian national team. Just me at fullback and Merv, my buddy, in goal.

So the captain - a guy who must've been 6-foot-2, 225 pounds, just fakes me out of my shoes. I try the desperation slide tackle, get nothing but air. So I'm lying on my stomach, watching him do the exact same thing to Merv, who comes charging out to cut down the angle like his hair's on fire.

Cap'n Czech fakes him out, taps the ball with a bit of flair to Speedy, and presto. Me and Merv, on our bellies in the mud, looking at each other, and he says to me, "I just got beat by a 6-year-old."

You wonder why we wanted to go home.

Best thing of the week was that the seniors brought a boombox, and played nothing but Back in Blackall week long. I've had a fondness for AC/DC ever since, and I know most of the words.

Second-best thing of the week was that being stuck in that hellhole actually achieved one of the intended purposes: Building camaraderie.

Not just that, but building camaraderie in the time-honored small-town way of politically incorrect jokes and acey/deucy card games.

First, the card games.

The obnoxious freshman - there's one in every crowd - was the right fullback on the JV to my left, and we hated each other with the fire of a thousand sons. He gave me grief for being Asian (and thus, different; which was OK when the guys I'd known all my life did it, since they were just giving me grief like everybody else got it); and I enjoyed the fact that Merv accidentally elbowed him in the head making a save.

So the one time the dealer, Dingo, gets him to bet the pot on acey/deucy, on an ace-two, the best possible odds, he hits a double-two and has to pay double in. Boy, did that make my week.

As for the jokes, maybe they're the you-had-to-be-there type, but the three primary targets were Woody (the black kid, who was constantly accused of stealing things), me (the Asian kid, constantly urged to say "I drive a Toyota" in a fake Asian accent) and two twins (as opposed to three twins, I know, I know...), victims of the "your momma" jokes.

But when Woody tried to get me to say "I drive a Toyota," I shot back in my best F.O.B., "You stole my Toyota!"

Brought the house down.

Funny how such a miserable experience is really something I look back on fondly, and can tell great stories about. Kind of like that trip to Nice...

9/11

I thought for a long time about what I might write today.

It's been five years since our world changed, and I feel like I should write something. Not in the sense of an unpleasant chore, though some ideas of what I should write felt unpleasant, but in the sense that I don't want to forget, want to pay tribute to the lost, want to speak my mind in that uniquely American way.

But what to write on a day when words seem inadequate, when my own psyche feels inadequate? I watched a few minutes of the Reading of Names this morning, and I really didn't want to hear anymore. I didn't know anyone personally who died on 9/11, but I know enough about the world to know each name is a loved one who didn't come home that day.

Every death that's not of natural causes - and even some that are - is a tragedy. Whether it's the Crocodile Hunter or the teenager cheerleader gunned down in Newark the other day, every life lost is a pain in someone's heart that will never go away. And on 9/11, thousands of lives ended, for reasons most of us can't comprehend, in a way I'm sure some of us still can't believe. And each story is sorrow, is pain... and sometimes, even hope.

So what to write?

Write politically, about the war on terror and the war in Iraq and religion and freedom?

Write simply, a tribute to those gone who I didn't even know?

Write stories, of the man I know who quit Cantor Fitzgerald just days before that fateful Tuesday, and lived to lose so many friends?

Write of fortune, the friend who was supposed to work, tangentially, at the Twin Towers that morning, only to delay the job a few days?

Write of my own experience that day, so far from New York City and yet so near?

I don't know what's best. Today, in some ways, is a day like any other. I ran some errands this afternoon, checked some e-mail, and I'll watch the Raiders game tonight. Free to do what I want, when I want. I'm even off from work.

And yet, is it different?

Do I get nervous later on, when I venture into the city for that movie screening I'm covering for HorrorTalk? (I've been calling it a premiere, it's more accurately a screening. Either way, what's the horror of a horror film compared with 9/11? We'll see...)

That's not so different from how I usually feel when I go into the city - alert - after all, I'm a small-town boy. But I know I've been more wary in the past five years. I don't want to be. I want to be defiant, show "them," stand tall.

But common sense, and prudence, dictate that extra glance around, that extra look to the sky.

Or is it fear? I hope not.

I type the word "free" on a day like this and I often think of Bill Maher, mocking George Bush's "they hate us for our freedom" mantra.

I'm OK with hate. They hate us. I hate them. But it has to be hate well-placed, well-used. Not the hate of bigotry, the hate of generalization, but the hate of righteousness, of hating someone for what he did, not what someone who looks like him did. I don't hate Muslims. I hate Osama bin Laden. I don't hate white workaholic executives. I hate my ex-fiancee's father. Specifics are better. But perhaps I digress.

What about the stories?

On the morning of 9/11, I called my best friend's house, in a panic. He answered the phone, and I said "what are you doing home?" and he said, "I'm watching TV, aren't you?"

And I said, "No, I mean, what are you doing HOME?"

He was supposed to be at Windows on the World, building a display for his company, all that week.

There was silence at the other end of the line.

Then he said, "Oh my God."

I could hear his (pregnant) wife in the background, saying "what is it?" probably fearful something had happened to someone they knew.

He said, "We put it off 'til Wednesday."

For Windows on the World, Wednesday never came, and as my friend said a while later, his son born the next February would never see the World Trade Center. But Ben sees his father every day, and that's a blessing too many children would never have after that day.

I went to work that day, to put out the paper unlike any other I've seen before or since. I did the Business section, my boss getting commandeered to work on the paper's first Extra! in who knows how long. I even tried to joke, later, that me and the Sports editor put out the two sections of the paper nobody read on Sept. 12.

I remember four things about that day.

I remember where I was when I heard - I was asleep, when my parents called to wake me and tell me what had happened. I think I registered "plane," and "World Trade Center" and "collapse" before I went back to sleep. Then I registered the definition of the word "collapse" and I was up and in front of the TV, watching the replays over and over, hoping each time that it wasn't real.

I remember calling my friend.

And then, I went to work. I went a different way, a way that always gave me a view of the New York skyline. And as I came up the rise on the highway to where it was, everybody slowed. Everybody in busy Jersey traffic slowed. Because we could see the tower of smoke rising from where the Twin Towers had stood.

And then, at work, at some lull in the action, me and my (former) colleague, Andy, went up to a room we knew had a view of the skyline. And we watched the smoke rise. He's a good guy, Andy, and we didn't have to say a thing. He left a while later, and wrote a column at his new job on the first anniversary. He wrote about that moment, standing there, in disbelief.

The next time I stood in that room was the big blackout in 2003, when I looked to New York City for lights, in the hope that it was all some big mistake by the electric company - it was - and not something worse.

I remember in the weeks and months that followed, seeing obituary after obituary in our paper with the special logo we'd made for the victims of 9/11. I remember the articles we wrote on two families, very different but united in loss. I remember the start of the war in Afghanistan, sitting reading of families shattered and thinking we couldn't bomb those bastards - as one newspaper called them in 90-point type - enough.

I got a chance to go to the Concert for New York City, and even though I saw Bowie and Clapton and the Who, what I remember most is the people on the floor, police and firefighters and EMTs and families, holding up pictures whenever the cameras swooped by, signs with words like "have you seen...?" and names. It felt so good to cheer, and yet so bad.

I've watched over five years as a nation united in pain, with the sympathy of the world, has become a nation divided again by partisan politics, facing the enmity of so many nations.

I read about more tragedies. Young lives, cut short in Iraq, fighting a war that may be against the wrong enemy, or may not. Another, just the other day. Another son who won't come home.

These days, more tributes, a multiple-of-five anniversary, more stories about those who moved on, those who can't, and those no longer here.

And yet, in so many ways, life goes on. Just another Manic Monday, places to go, people to see, things to do.

I don't want to forget that terrible day. But sometimes, I don't want to remember it, either.

I don't know what else to say, but this:

Let us remember the victims, and their families. The bravest and finest of New York, who did their jobs and gave their lives. The ordinary, extraordinary people, who went to work, got on a plane, one day and didn't come home. And the soldiers who went to war to answer those terrible events. Those who lived, with wounds, with guilt, with memories they can't erase. The families left behind, missing their beloved husbands, wives, fathers, sons, mothers, daughters.

If anything I could say would ease their pain, I would say it. But this will have to do.

God bless you all. God bless America, land that I love.

Zuni "folo"

For Stewie's side of the story... read his post on his Brain, and his Brain on Fear.

Camera-shy: A HorrorFind postmortem

So I've returned from HorrorFind weekend, both the coolest and quietest of the five I've attended.

It was a good weekend, and I spent plenty of time manning the Timewarp table. (Timewarp parter/producer/DP/all-around-great-guy Don Dohler is ill and couldn't attend, so they were shorthanded.)

It didn't seem like a great show for attendance, and it wasn't a great show for buying things.

I wound up getting just a couple of books, a handful of DVDs, a couple of screeners for HorrorTalk and one other thing I'll mention later, because it's a story.

I did get to wear my cool Timewarp shirt every day, though. Yay!

Once, I wandered through the celebrity room. A few celebrities had to cancel, for reasons ranging from illness to an inability to leave Europe after last week's terror scare. Anyway, there wasn't really anybody there who I wanted to get a signature from. I'm not much of an autograph collector, anyway.

But the highlight of the show was undoubtedly the "Dead Hunt" public premiere. Three words for you:

S.

R.

O.

And it got a great reception, to boot. I still love it. And I jumped at the exact same scare I jumped at when I went to the cast and crew premiere.

(I wrote the movie, remember? I knew it was coming, too. And I still jumped. Sheesh.)

Got some nice compliments, including one from Aric, who knows a thing or two about filmmaking.

Anyway, it was really fun to see with a real, non-biased audience. And they seemed to have a good time. And that's what counts. That, and finding a distribution deal. But this is out of my hands, eh?

Plus, "Peter West," my boss from HorrorTalk was there, along with my bestest online pal Stewie. I brought Mookie along for any group shots (he's a member of the forum), but you know what? I took absolutely ZERO pictures. First time I've ever done that at HF. I saw Joe Ripple from Timewarp, of course, and his wife, Michelle, and my main man JP and his gal-pal Heather, plus the Video Kitchen crew and a bunch of people from DH, and plenty more. I met Frank Lama from some of Aric's movies, and other film-type people, too.

Still, the camera never came out of the bag. Like I said, a strangely sedate HF weekend. But it's like I told Stewie, I went to HF for two basic reasons: To hang with him, and to see the "DH" premiere. So it was a very cool weekend, too. Maybe next year I'll have some DVDs to autograph...

And now that you've gotten this far, your reward is the best story of the weekend. Of course, Stewie'll put it on his blog, and he probably tells it better. But here's my version.

Like I said before, there wasn't much that caught my eye, in terms of shopping.

Something caught Stewie's eye, though: a Zuni fetish doll from the movie "Trilogy of Terror." And to think, I just edited one of his upcoming reviews in which he's lamenting how the thing still scares the crap out of him... as a 30-something adult!

So he's pondering whether to buy it to add to his horror-figure collection... after all, it's not cheap, and it's life-size and therefore scary, at least to him.

(To set the stage: We roomed together, as has been our tradition. I know, we're cheapskates... I prefer to think of it as being frugal. Less money for hotel, more money to spend on stuff.)

Anyway, I did what any good friend would do under the circumstances.

When he wasn't looking, I bought the doll. Hey, I wanted to look at it, they said it was the last one, and inspiration struck. A gift! And some fun!

I had it under the table, with a toy I bought for myself (action figures! the women of "Sin City"!), hidden under some free posters I got from Lion's Gate, and when Stewie finally came back just a few minutes before the show closed for the night, I asked him if he could close the table so I could run my toys back to the room.

(Aside, hey, Lion's Gate, or Lionsgate, whichever you prefer... please please please pick up "Dead Hunt" for distribution!)

He even told me later he wondered what all I'd bought, since I had this huge bag and he hadn't seen me pick up anything but my toys, which came in a long, skinny box.

Anyway, like I said, I did what any good friend would do under the cirucmstances.

I hid the doll in his bed, behind those big, decorative pillows you get on a hotel bed. Piece of cake, I figure. He'll walk through the door, toss the decorative pillows on the floor, and there will stand Mr. Zuni, startling the hell out of him and giving me a good laugh for my money.

But no.

Turns out, as Stewie put it, he likes having lots of pillows. Four hours of gabbing, drinking, playing on our laptops, he NEVER EVER moves those pillows.

Finally, it's time for bed. Lights out.

Now, I'm having visions of disaster: 3 in the morning, I'm awakened by a blood-curdling scream, and my pal drops dead of a heart attack, having found the little bugger in the dark throes of some dream about red-headed Asian women.

So I've got to get him to find the thing.

I mention the pillows. He thinks nothing of it.

I tell him they're decorative. He insists he likes having lots of pillows.

I tell him he should move them around. He complies.

And tells me, "See, they're decorative, there's a plastic thing back here holding them up."

Apparently, in the dark, he put the "plastic thing" on the floor.

And I say, "I don't have one."

So, he turns on the light and looks over the edge of the bed to see just what he put on the floor.

You've never seen a guy that big move that fast.

He was across the double bed, back to the wall, covers gathered around him, shaking.

Apparently, he saw nothing but the teeth that have scared him since 1970-something.

I was shaking, too. From laughter.

He thanked me for the gift, put the doll in the box, and put the box in the closet. Facing away from the closet door. And there it stayed for the remainder of the weekend.

Addendum!

Wait! I remembered...

The 9th-grade show was "The Night of Jan. 16th."

The 12th-grade show was called "Special Guest."

Two random lists

OK, I'm off to HorrorFind for the yearly HorrorTalk get-together...

I took today (Thursday) off, even though I'm not leaving until tomorrow (Friday). Why?

Well, let me explain.

You all are probably aware of the big terrorism bust today, right? Big news + Thursday = headache at the paper Thursday night.

Well, I used to just take Friday off, and then these things happened:

• Thursday before HF, 2003: The big blackout on the East Coast, including the newspaper office.
• Thursday before HF, 2004: New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey came out of the closet and resigned.

Needless to say, last year, I took Thursday before HF off, just on general principles. And now, big news happened again.

See.

My other random list of the day was something that popped into my head the other day for no reason at all:

Strange things I had to wear throughout my acting career.

• Childhood ("Waiting for Godot"): A pirate-coat-turned-Halloween-costume. I got it from my father's friend, the director at Bloomsburg University, who liked me in it so much when I went to his house to trick or treat, that I ended up playing the "Boy" in Beckett's strange, strange play.
• 7th grade, winter (hell if I can remember the title): Snidely Whiplash moustache, black hat and cape, and all. Yes, I was the villain. Best story: The running gag is that one character, "Strongheart," has a mother named "Anemia." (Get it? Anemia Strongheart?) Well, the actor playing Strongheart, being an eighth-grader and probably never having heard the word, kept pronouncing it "Anna-MIA" and driving the director nuts.
• 7th grade, spring ("Vaudeville's My Home"): White-haired wig. And a bell, under a hat. Elderly janitor. But I got to play a scene with Shannon, my not-so-secret crush. Of course, she was playing an old lady.
• 8th grade, winter (I don't remember this name, either; the director wrote it; I'm sure my mother could tell you): Tutu. That's right, they put a boy in the throes of puberty in a dress and sent him out in front of all his friends and neighbors. Y'all wonder why I'm such a headcase. 12 going on 13, I'm playing the "fairy godfather."
• 9th grade, fall (some courtroom drama, again, the name is lost to college binge-drinking and brain-cell-killing): Bailiff's uniform. I was... the bailiff. Funniest thing I remember: We called our "jury" and "witnesses" out of the audience, and the girl in the low-cut dress was sitting right behind my father. We call her, she gets up, he turns around at the movement, and she bends down to fix her shoe, and he's (inadvertantly) looking right down her dress. Welcome to high-school drama, Dad!
• 10th grade, spring ("Little Shop of Horrors"): I was only a vagrant in the opening number, despite my best musical auditions ever. So I wore... dirty clothes.
• 11th grade, winter ("The Crucible"): Breeches. With Velcro up the sides, that became safety pins on Night 2 after I almost lost my pants onstage on Night 1. That hasty refastening wasn't in the movie when Daniel Day Lewis played John Proctor. Hey, whatever my problems, I got my first girlfriend out of this show, so I can't have been that bad...
• 11th grade, spring ("Man of LaMancha"): Pantyhose. As "tights," under a costume that I can only describe as William Shakespeare meets a Beefeater. And a suit of armor. Hey, I played three characters. Or one, who was three. Or something.
• 12th grade, winter ("The Night of Jan. 16th"): Sorry, just a plain old shirt-and-tie/jacket kind of deal. Got my second girlfriend out of this show. Which, well, never mind. The rest is probably TMI. But I could tell stories and stories about taking this show on the road. (It was a competition play, which meant... overnight field trip!)
• College, sophomore year ("Lysistrata"): A toga. Which, I might add, I don't recall ever wearing in four years in a fraternity. I also got to kiss a girl who wasn't Michelle. Michelle saw her during rehearsals and snarked later, "she's not that pretty." She was. I didn't have a name in that one; I think I was Athenian Man No. 2 or something. We all made up names ("Speedye," "Quikkye," "Riunite," etc.) but they didn't get into the program.
• Adulthood ("Dead Hunt"): A black, full-face ski mask, which as I referred to it when shopping, "the kind you rob banks with." Oops. My scenes got cut anyway.

And of course, in almost all of these, I had to wear stage makeup. Which makes me break out like crazy.

So, yes. When Norman complained about putting her hose on backward, I could relate. In the "LaMancha" dress rehearsals, I had to get a girl in the show to help me figure it out.

But I'll bet nobody out there has ever taken the stage, as a mid-pubescent teen, in a trenchcoat, and flashed a sixth-grader... revealing a tutu and a holstered magic potion. I can still hear the laughter. Which was good for the show. My psyche, maybe not so much.

At least I can laugh about it now. After years of therapy and pharmaceuticals.

Funny story, or too much information...

I got told again today that my blog is too depressing.

So I'm going to tell a funny story.

I was going to write a longer post, so watch for it this weekend.

The problem with this funny story is, it may be too much information. So consider yourself warned. It's gross, and yet funny.

Thus:

For a while in the mid-'80s, back when terrorists hijacked planes to TAKE them somewhere, my Mother stopped flying.

Unfortunately, my grandparents lived in Florida.

Ever take the train to Florida? 24 hours, in a coach seat, a teen with bad knees next to a 6-foot, long-legged father. Mom's 5-foot-3, she never seemed to mind.

But Dad hated it, and I hated it, so by the third or fourth trip, he bit the bullet and got us those sleeper car chambers (like Pullman cars, but not).

Much more fun, and a whole half-bed to sleep on.

Except for the time I got sick. Normally, I got sick IN Florida - something to do with going from winter in Pennsylvania to warm and sunny, no doubt (we used to go the week between Christmas and New Year's).

But this one particular year, I was sick on the way. Mom gave me aspirin or something, but this was back when I couldn't swallow pills, so she crushed it, put it in yogurt and fed it to me.

OK, I don't know why, but I couldn't swallow pills. For years. I can now, barely. Gag reflex or something. Even the smallest pill gave me problems.

This becomes important later.

Anyway, there's a problem with Mom's strategy. Yogurt is part-dairy. And she put it into a mid-pubescent teen running a high fever.

So I'm in a compartment about the size of a small walk-in closet, puking all over the place.

Needless to say, they put me off the train. In Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

The first time I'd ever been to North Carolina, and my parents were taking me to the emergency room.

So they gave me some drugs to lower my fever (I forget exactly what I had, but it was more severe than the flu or something).

(We were off to a hotel for the night, to resume our journey the next evening.)

And then, when they were telling my parents how to treat me (lots of liquids, etc.) they gave me THE PILL.

It was the biggest pill I'd ever seen, about the size of a .357 bullet.

I looked at my Mother and said, "There's no way I can swallow that."

Mom, Dad and the doctor burst out laughing.

"You don't," she said.

It was a suppository.

(If you, like my 13-ish self, don't know what a suppository is, I'll give you a hint: You put it into a different orifice. Thus, TMI ain't just a nuke plant in Pennsylvania.)

Links:
• Rocky Mount, N.C.
• Amtrak's "sleeping accomodations"
• How to take a suppository

OK, another funny, and similarly themed story. When I was in college, my parents gave me, among other things, a digital thermometer, in case I got sick. You know, one of those plastic kinds, with the digital readout that beeps? They also gave me a box of plastic sleeves - which my friends immediately dubbed "thermometer condoms" - in case my roommate/friends/girlfriend needed to use it.

So one day, Ed asks to use my thermometer. I put the condom on it, give it to him, wait until he's had the thing under his tongue for about 30 seconds and blurt...

"Ed! That's a rectal thermometer!"

He spit it all the way across the room.

My mother, the mouse-killer

So I saw a thing about a flaming mouse burning a guy's house down over on HorrorTalk's forum today, and it reminded me of a funny story.

Several years ago, my parents' house had a mouse problem. There was apparently a hole in a wall somewhere, and in came the mice.

One night, we're sitting in the living room watching TV, and I was probably sitting too close as usual, because I could see into the dining room, and I swore that, in the dark, I saw something run across the floor.

(This must have been pre-cat, and definitely pre-dog. That'd make me 13, maybe?)

Nobody believed me, of course.

Until we came back from a vacation and found mouse poop all over everything in the kitchen. It's a good thing my parents don't swear. Because they had to hand-clean just about every utensil in the house - they wouldn't even let me touch them because they were so overprotective about contaminents. (I figure most parents would've made the kid wash them, but I dunno.)

So my mother gets a mousetrap and some peanut butter (which the guy at the hardware store said worked better than cheese).

Sure enough, next day, under the kitchen sink, there's a little field mouse, just obliterated by this trap.

Eww.

But another mouse got in (my parents hadn't found the hole in the wall yet).

And Mom got another trap.

This time, when she went downstairs in the morning... no mouse.

And no trap.

She found the trap on the other side of the cupboard, a good two feet from where she'd left it.

It looked like (I'm no forensic pathologist, but still) the mouse had reached for the peanut butter and gotten nailed, because the trap was up against something, and the mouse was essentially dangling by one arm, dead. It dragged its little mouse butt across the cupboard before apparently bleeding to death.

Needless to say, this traumatized my very kind, gentle mother. (Who, unlike Dad, was willing to set the traps, and unlike me, was willing to throw out the mice.)

So she bought one of those glue traps.

And I said to her, you know, you're going to go downstairs in the morning and the mouse is going to be stuck to the trap, looking up at you, really pissed off. (Well, I probably didn't say "pissed off" if I was that young.)

So she put the trap in a paper bag. Smartest move of the whole thing.

Morning comes, quick glance into bag, then fold it up and straight to the trash.

I think she bagged five mice before somebody (some contractor, no doubt, called in desperation) found the hole in the external wall and filled it in.

Years later, in my first apartment, I'm lying there at night, watching TV, and I swear I hear something crunching in my kitchen.

This goes on a couple of nights, and I can't figure out what it is. I look in the cupboards and stuff and there's no food or anything.

Until I find some dog food (the hard kind) that must've fallen out of a bag behind the sink or whatever. I dustbuster it, thinking, "wonder what made that noise?"

(The dog had gone off to live with my parents.)

The next night, I'm eating something, I get done, I go to put the dish in the dishwasher and, I shit you not, there's a mouse in the bottom of the dishwasher, looking up at me.

I slammed the door of the dishwasher, and my first instinct was to turn the thing on.

I'm glad I didn't. It probably would've obliterated the little bugger all over my dishes.

The next morning, needless to say, I called the landlord about fixing my mouse problem. That's what landlords are for, right?

Besides, Mom was busy.

Links:
• The house mouse - we had gray ones
• Mouse diseases
• Mouse traps, with instructions
• Peanut butter lovers

And if you're wondering, yeah, I kind of would have liked to have seen what Morgan would have done, face-to-face with a mouse. Though I'd be afraid of rabies or whatever. I'm pretty sure it would've been dachshund 1, mouse 0, and a smiling puppy running up with tail wagging and a mouse dangling from his mouth. After all, they're bred for hunting small rodents.

Plus, I once saw my drama director's cat (an outdoor cat, unlike my parents') actually barf up an entire field mouse once. We're sitting on her porch, talking (I was interviewing her for the paper) and suddenly the cat meanders up, hacks a couple of times, and spews out the mouse, head to tail - you could even tell what it was from the shape and the fur.

The Great Ratelle and Zultek the Magnificent

The Great Ratelle and Zultek the Magnificent...

No, they're not magicians from Vegas.

They're hockey players. From opposite ends of the spectrum (not the Spectrum).

Jean Ratelle was a legendary New York Ranger and Boston Bruin of the '60s and '70s. Matt Zultek's a first-round bust of the late '90s.

I'm a huge hockey fan, but not much of a hockey historian. I started following the game, thanks to my buddy Dave, back in the mid-'80s. Anything before that, well, I'm playing catch-up.

So I used to date this girl, who we'll call Steph (because that's her name), who was a huge Rangers fan. I mean that in the sense of die-hard, not in the sense of waistline, she was a pretty small girl, though she worried way too much about whether or not she was fat. It's really somebody else's problem now.

(I should just put "neurotic girls apply here" on my Match.com profile, shouldn't I?)

Anyway, the fact that she was real curvy for a skinny, athletic girl isn't the point.

The point is, she loved the Rangers to the point of obsession. You guys think I love the Raiders? This was like worse. She didn't just rate the NHL Entry Draft, say, she knew which Ranger scouts had good and bad track records.

I could probably come up with several of the Raider scouts' names, but I wouldn't know 'em if they moved in next door.

So one day, she's telling me about this Ratelle fellow as if he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. (He IS in the Hall of Fame.) And I'd never heard of him. So she gives me pretty much his entire life story. (Girl had a two-track mind: hockey and hockey... well, a three-track mind. But nevermind that.)

The next time he came up in conversation, I sarcastically (sardonically?) referred to him as "the Great Ratelle" - I wasn't even thinking of Wayne "the Great" Gretzky, it just sounded good and snide. So whenever I see Ratelle on my Strat cards or in a hockey book, I always think of "the Great Ratelle."

Perhaps the only real upside to my hideous breakup with Steph (outside of us being rid of each other) is that I regained some semblance of my Strat-O-Matic dignity. I taught the girl to play the damn game, and she ALWAYS won. Like Michelle with Magic: The Gathering. It's a curse, I guess.

That brings me to Zultek the Magnificent, who was placed on injured reserve last week by the Greenville Grrrowl (that's not a typo, that's their name). The Greenville paper's coverage is, frankly, a bit spotty, so I don't really know what's wrong with him, but he's hurt. Again.

I am probably the world's leading expert on Matt Zultek, and possibly his only fan who isn't a family member or personal acquaintance.

Since you've probably never heard of him, a brief lesson in what happens when you combine hype, Dave and OCD.

A few years ago, the Philadelphia Flyers traded for Matt Zultek. Dave tells me this is a steal, because they traded the Boston Bruins a ninth-round draft pick, and Zultek was a former first-round pick - and a former second-round pick.

In hockey, you can get drafted twice - once at 18ish, and if you don't sign in two years, again at 20ish. Every year, several players "re-enter" the draft after not coming to terms with the team that picked them the first time, or just not impressing the team enough to want to sign them.

So Zultek was a first-round pick of the Los Angeles Kings in 1997. Speaking of the Great Gretzky, that pick was part of the package LA got from St. Louis for Gretzky in 1996. So for the greatest player of all time (Steph would say second-greatest, citing Bobby Orr, but I'll go with the consensus), the Kings got a handful of pretty unexceptional players and a first-round pick... which they blew on Zultek.

In my man Matt's defense, plenty of first-round picks (at least two a year) don't ever make it to the NHL, and probably three or four more (at least) don't really do much when they do get there. Extrapolating an 18-year-old isn't an exact science.

The Kings chose not to sign him, so he re-entered the draft - LA got a compensatory pick in the second round, and I read one report where GM Dave Taylor claimed they could get just as good a player with that choice. And indeed, they could have, as Zultek was chosen in the second round, by the Boston Bruins, who chose re-entry candidates - from the same team - with their first two picks. (Defenseman Nick Boynton, you may have heard of; he's a budding star.)

Aside, that's the weird thing about re-entering the draft - some players actually want to do it, even though it seems like 9 out of 10 are chosen LOWER than they were the first time around. There are rare exceptions, but still. Some former first-rounders go as late as the third or fourth round sometimes.

(One of the great stories, a goalie named Mathieu Chouinard refused to sign with the Senators one year as a first-round pick, and the Sens used the compensatory second on... Mathieu Chouinard. Probably just to spite him.)

So Boston chose Zultek in the second round... and he refused to sign.

If you don't sign a re-entry guy after two years, he becomes a free agent. So rather than get something for nothing, the Bruins traded Zultek to Philadelphia.

Enter Dave.

Dave has been one of my best friends since childhood, and he introduced me to hockey and taught me to play. He is a die-hard Flyers fan - not quite as nutso as Steph, but close enough. And believe me, the girl sets a high standard of greatness in fandom, I'll give her that.

Dave, on the other hand, can have an intelligent conversation about something besides the Flyers and his job. Like the Eagles. Or the Phillies. Or Republican politics, which is why we usually stick to talking about sports.

So Dave is telling me all about this Zultek guy, who signed with the Flyers and immediately suited up for their top farm team, the Philadelphia Phantoms. (Yeah, the Flyers have the shortest call-up travel time in the world - the Spectrum is across the parking lot from whatever the Flyers' arena is called now. I still call it the "F.U." from its days as the First Union Center.)

A few weeks later, we're at a game - we have on occasion, and before Dave's second and third children, gotten small season-ticket plans - and it happens to be stick-auction night.

Dave and his wife, I might point out, went home with the prize of the evening, a goalie stick signed by the entire team. Jenni, Dave's wife, insisted he wouldn't be allowed to go crazy, then stood over the silent-auction list like a hawk, snarling at anybody who wanted to bid on the Big Stick.

The Flyers and Phantoms both had sticks in the auction. Not to be outdone... well, to be outdone, but not to be out-sticked, I bought Zultek's.

Hey, it was cheap. The minimum bid was $100, and anything above that was a tax write-off. I bid $125, and I probably could have bid $100. The only three people in the arena who'd ever heard of the guy were me, Dave and Flyers GM Bob Clarke, who'd just traded for him. And Dave had already spent his money.

What is rarer than a Zultek autographed stick, you ask? How about a Zultek AHL goal. He has one. For his career.

Now might be the time to point out he's a FORWARD.

That's why I took to referring to him as Zultek the Magnificent, as any potential investment value in my stick went the way of, well, Zultek's career.

Needless to say, my man Matt has spent most of his pro career not in the AHL, the triple-A minor league, but the ECHL, the double-A minor league.

Where he led the Trenton Titans in scoring one year and won a league championship last season despite a dreadful year.

Sum up his ECHL career this way:

Year 1: Injured a lot, but good.
Year 2: Great, lots of scoring.
Year 3: Championship, but no thanks to him.

This past offseason, he left Trenton after three years - they were the Flyers affiliate, but the Flyers released him a couple of years ago; the Titans kept him around because, well, he was pretty decent. Until last year.

Anyway, he signed with the Grrrowl, and it's been a tough long-distance relationship. I've still never been to a Titans game despite living about a half-hour away, but they're easy to follow in the media. The Grrrowl, not so much.

But I still have the stick mounted on my wall, next to a stick autographed by the entire Phantoms team the next year - that I got for a whopping $25 more than I paid for my Zultek stick.

Don't get me wrong, I still root for Zultek, and follow his career religiously. I'm hoping he makes the NHL, if even for a game, and not just so I can say I knew him when. I mean, he's got a great hockey name, he's huge and... er... I knew him when.

Of course, he's going to be 27 in March, and is on the injured list of a double-A squad while on pace for another so-so year, so the odds are not good.

I guess he won't be the next Great Ratelle. But who could?

Links:
• The Great Ratelle
• Zultek the Magnificent
• The New York Rangers
• The Los Angeles Kings
• The Boston Bruins
• The Philadelphia Flyers
• The Philadelphia Phantoms
• The Trenton Titans
• The Greenville Grrrowl

Yeah, I know. No sooner do I bitch about not having much time to write, than I start posting again. Sue me. I write when the mood strikes me and I have time. So I got struck.

Long, short or shorter

I got my hair cut today. Sadly, my stylist lady is quitting. Sniffle. A good stylist is hard to find when you have Asian hair.

Well, there was that one place where the Vietnamese lady cut my Vietnamese hair. That was good.

I needed a haircut. I was having a bad hair day. Week. Life.

See, as you know, I'm Asian.

And Asian hair isn't like white people hair. Or black people hair for that matter.

Asian hair basically has three styles. Long, short or shorter.

It's black, it's straight. It's stiff and it's oily. (That doesn't sound like I'm talking about my hair. More like... well, nevermind.)

Anyway, I've lived most of my life surrounded by white people and therefore surrounded by white people hair.

And I'm jealous.

Most of my childhood, I had that Asian bowl cut all small Asian children have once they grow hair. (When I was a baby, I had a little bit of hair on top of my head that stuck straight up. After that, bowl cut.)

So in junior high school, at some point, my Mom let me get my hair cut more or less like my friends, or as close an approximation thereof as her stylist - a very good, wonderfuly but star-crossed woman - could do.

Basically, I wound up with the closest thing to an Asian mullet possible. At least it wasn't feathered. I don't think you CAN feather Asian hair.

A mullet is basically short in front and on the top and long in the back. You know what this looks like on rednecks and hockey players. Well, it doesn't look the same on Asians.

But that's about what I had. Short on top - now, after much combing and gelling, parted down the middle - and long in the back. Hey, it was the '80s.

That's pretty much what I wore through high school. At some points the back (the long part) was down over my collar.

The day before I graduated, I cut the back and buzzed the sides. I put my graduation cap on when I arrived at practice that day and my friends thought I'd shaved my head because all they could see was the buzzed sides and back.

But I had hair on top, parted and slicked.

And that's how I arrived at college. Where I kept buzzing the back and sides, but grew the top increasingly longer. At one point, I could tie it up in this little samurai-looking topknot, like one of my fraternity brothers.

And that's pretty much how it stayed for years. One summer, I got the whole thing buzzed. When I grew it back out for the fall, I spent about three months looking like a small porcupine had taken up residence on my head - hair straight, stiff and sticking straight up.

Anyway, I kept up this sort of pseudo-skater-cut of varying lengths all through the rest of the '90s - gel and all.

A couple of years ago, when I turned 29, I decided to spend my last year of my 20s living it up - so among other things, I did something I've always wanted to do - I got my hair colored.

I had my stylist - Sharon, the one who's leaving - cut it short on top (as well as buzzing it all around the back and sides like usual) and spike it up, then bleach/color it blond. (blonde = female; blond = male.)

I thought it would be funny.

Everyone at the office loved it. Especially the women.

(One of my co-workers called me "Spike," after some character on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I still haven't watched my Big Box o' Buffy yet, so I still have no idea who she means.)

So the haircut stayed. I even experimented with color. One month I tried red and blond. One month (at the recommendation of one of the office hotties) blue. But mostly I've stuck with a blond, spiky buzz cut.

But I think I'm going to stop the blond, and only a year late (I was going to stop the craziness when I turned 30, that was sort of the point, but I liked the hair... well, the ladies liked it).

It's just too short to justify the expense. I don't get much blond, and the coloring costs three times the regular cut. Plus I'm not sure I'm prepared to get colored without Sharon, even though the other stylists at the place are good (I've used some in the past).

Ah, the curse of Asian hair. And just when I got comfortable, too.

Links:
• Asian hair: "Thick, black and perfectly straight"
• Asian hairstyles - as with clothes, the women get all the cool stuff
• How hair coloring works
• Spike, fanlisting-style

Watch for a post about my holidays coming up. I'm just not prepared to do it now. Happy Hanukkah to my fellow members of the Tribe. After all, Christmas is over, but we've got six crazy nights left!

I sent it where?

Considering I've only ever had two packages get lost in the mail (knock on wood), one coming and one going, I've had pretty good luck with the Postal Service.

At least, with stuff I would blame them for.

On the other hand, I don't always have the best luck with mail when it ISN'T the fault of those fine, heavily armed men and women in blue.

Today, I'm wearing a sweater/sweatshirt thing my parents brought me back from Alaska, cheerfully emblazoned "AK - Alaska."

It's probably their way of reminding me of my postal misadventures.

When I was a college senior, I was applying for jobs in journalism just about everywhere.

I got one offer. About three weeks before graduation. And seeing as how I was supposed to get married back then, I took it immediately.

"Don't you want to know what it pays?" the Easton Express-Times' news editor asked.

"No. That's OK. I'll take it."

"Are you sure."

"Well, why don't you tell me."

He told me. It wasn't much.

"OK," I said, "I'll take it."

"You don't want to think about it at all?"

"Well, OK, let me think about for a couple of days, then I'll call you back and say yes."

I hope this gives you some idea how desperate I was... a would-be sportswriter winding up on a news copy desk.

Anyway, I'd sent out another resume, earlier in the process, to a place whose ad for a sports-desk-of-one described it as "Ketchikan, AK."

How bad could it be to work in Arkansas, I figured. Yeah, it's the Deep South, but hey, a job's a job.

About three days after I put it in the mail, it dawned on me that "AK" isn't the postal code for Arkansas.

Michelle was aghast. "You applied WHERE?"

My father gleefully informed me Ketchikan, Alaska, gets more rain than Seattle, depends on the fish cannery for its industry and is on an island you have to get to by boat.

And wouldn't you know it, they called. Gave me a phone interview and everything.

I suspect one reason I didn't get the job was I wouldn't commit to three years there, which they were asking candidates to do. I offered two and a half years, the amount of time until Michelle was supposed to graduate from college.

They posted the ad again in six months. Guess whoever they hired didn't like the rain. Or thought they were headed to Arkansas.

Links:
• The United States Postal Service
• The Express-Times, which hired me
• Visit Ketchikan, AK. Bring an umbrella
• Arkansas, which, like Stewie, goes by "AR"

For the curious, the two packages I lost were a bunch of used DVDs I mailed to a reseller, which cost me about $125, and a cookbook my parents mailed to me, which had more sentimental value than monetary value and was easily and cheaply replaced via eBay.

Let it snow, yes or no?

So it finally snowed in New Jersey over the weekend, and it's apparently going to snow again tonight - which should make my drive home a living hell, as usual.

I have mixed feelings about snow.

On one hand, it's a royal pain in the ass to drive in. I paid extra for a FF car (that's front engine, front wheel drive, for you non-"Gran Turismo"-players) with antilock breaks and traction control in part because I was tired after years of sliding all over the road in my FR mini-Mustang.

But even that FF doesn't mean much in Jersey weather. It mostly means I can actually GET home, just slowly and at the cost of added white in my hair (and I don't mean snow or dandruff) and an increase in my blood pressure, which is otherwise doing quite nicely, thank you.

On the other hand, I don't mind the cold, and I don't mind being snowed on. I kind of enjoy it, if it's nice, fluffy snow or light flurries, and not that heavy, crappy kind.

And some of my fondest memories involve the snow in some way.

The first time I ever appeared in a newspaper wasn't a byline, in fact, it was a picture of me as a little tyke, crashing off my sled (one of those big red saucer-discs) on the hill across the street from my house. The one my mother always worried I'd go spinning off into the road.

I should say I only did once. And of course, it was right into the path of a car. Which, fortunately, was going slow enough to easily avoid a small bundled-up Asian and his out-of-control saucer.

My mother probably still has that newspaper clipping somewhere. (Hey, I was a cute little kid. No, I don't know what happened. Puberty, I suppose, which ruined my complexion, and Domino's, which went on the college meal plan and ruined my waistline.)

Then there was the freshman-year weekend, years later, with Michelle at college, the one and only time in my life I've ever REALLY been snowed in somewhere. That was when I learned that the warmth of holding someone you love close to you is the single best feeling in the world. Yes, better than being drunk. Better than sex. Better than victory. No matter what parts of our relationship can and should fade, I can still feel the warmth of her body curled up against mine, the smoothness of her skin. Curled up on some cheap-ass dorm bunk, watching the snow fall through this tiny little window, just in love and never wanting to let go.

Another snow day in college was a Sunday during my freshman year. I worked at the school paper, a weekly, and we did our production on Sunday. One of the deals we had was with Papa John's, which brought us pizza in exchange for ad space. A great deal, except the weekend they brought 10 Hawaiian pizzas (ham and pineapple, if you've never tried it, and I recommend you never do). Ick.

But anyway, that weekend, Papa John's wasn't delivering. I don't blame them. There was probably a foot of snow on the ground - remember, in Pittsburgh, it's always raining. Lower the temperature, and presto!

So Chris Restifo and I drew the task of wading to the only place that was open, the Subway on Craig Street, about a half-mile away. A breeze in the spring. Not so much in the summer. Chris had quit the fraternity I had joined, years earlier, so I didn't know him well, and most of what I knew I'd heard third-hand, in a negative way. But I liked him, and we really had a sort of bonding experience on the trip. Was nice to get to know someone and be pleasantly surprised. And Lord, whomping through that snow may be as close to polar exploration as I ever get. Though I hope not.

And that makes me think we could've used some dog sleds, but that's not the point.

Speaking of dogs, this brings me to one more fond snow memory, and it's a Morgan one.

Morgan, as I've mentioned, was a dachshund, and therefore what I'll charitably call low-slung. And he hated hated hated (to quote another low-slung kind of critter, Roger Ebert) to get his tummy wet.

So walking him in the snow or rain was an adventure. He never got very far and was eager to run for home. He could dodge puddles, and mostly stay out of wet grass, but in any snow more than about an inch and a half deep, he was in trouble.

So he'd hop. Like a bunny, with his back arched and tummy sucked in, back paws to front paws to back and so on, trying desperately and futily to stay dry.

(Is futily a word? I don't know and I don't edit on this blog. Futile-ly.)

And he actually would look miserable the whole while. Very expressive dog.

I still love to watch the snow fall. And I get a kick out of watching the guys who plow the driveways in my complex run their little Bobcat around, popping it in circles and stuff. Hey, I pay for that, and it keeps going up, so I'm entitled to watch and laugh. It so looks like a toy.

Well, I'll think happy thoughts about snow now. I'll be swearing at it in a few hours as I literally sweat my drive home, no matter the temperature.

Links:
• All About Snow
• Front-wheel drive vs. rear-wheel drive
• Why RWD beats FWD, an opinion piece
• Domino's Pizza
• Papa John's Pizza
• Carnegie Mellon...
• ... and its newspaper
• What Roger Ebert hates
• And something I hate

And yeah, I'm a cold-weather person. I'm surrounded by co-workers who are always cold, and I'm always hot. Hey, if you're cold, you can add layers. If you're hot, there's only so much you can take off, unless you're on a beach in France or at a nudist colony.

Boys to men

Today, I was talking with a co-worker about her days on an exhibition gymnastics team.

(She described what she did as parallel bars "and other novelty acts." The invitation to use my filthy mind there sounds like my days on Safewalk, in college. Safewalk was, for lack of a better way to describe it, an escort service. What we really did was walk around with Maglites and walkie-talkies, walking girls too scared to cross campus to their dorms. Well, what we really did was hang around at the sororities, since we averaged about 1 call a shift. Technically, we were "escorting" them. But when people ask what I did, I like to see the look on their face when I say I was part of an escort service.)

Back on point, we got to talking about gymnastics, and I told the story of the gymnastics troupe that visited my junior high school. They were locals, and had a big reputation, and they set up in the gym and did their thing.

So there we sit, eighth-grade boys, bored out of our minds, pondering the curves in the leotards, when this girl falls on the balance beam.

Splat. One leg on each side. WHAM!

Every 13-year-old boy in the audience groaned.

(As Sara pointed out, this is why she stayed away from the balance beam. Yeah, me, too.)

Now I'm sure seeing a good groin shot will make grown men cringe, too, but there's something about being in the middle of puberty that just makes it godawful. I mean, you're already painfully aware of how sensitive you are down there, and how sensitive you are about being sensitive down there.

So I was a bit of a late bloomer, I guess, and a year younger than all my friends, to boot. That doesn't mean much when you're 29 and they're 30 - in fact, that's kind of fun. But when you're 15 and they can drive, when you're 17 and they can vote, when you're 20 and they can drink... who am I kidding. I was a frat boy. I was drinking at 17. But the worst part is, when you're 12 and they're 13, they know all kinds of interesting things they've forgotten to tell you by the time they happen to you.

This isn't really about those nighttime moments, when you start questioning the wisdom of letting your Mom do your laundry.

This is about how I was scarred for life by the eighth-grade Christmas play.

I've been an actor, on and off, for years. I got my start when I was about 10 and the Bloomsburg University drama director, a friend of my father's, needed a "Boy" for his "Waiting for Godot." He'd given me a pirate coat to wear as a Halloween costume, and when I went to his house to say thanks and trick-or-treat, he liked how I looked so much, next thing I know I was on stage. In hindsight, this probably makes me the only person who's ever had any fun having anything to do with anything written by Samuel Beckett.

But by seventh grade, I was more interested in playing soccer than playing a role. But my parents figured being in drama would give me something to do - after all, hadn't I enjoyed the other play? - and make me more friends.

Well, as Meat Loaf would sing, two out of three ain't bad. Good thing I had some good friends already.

So in the seventh-grade Christmas play, I was a Snidely Whiplash-esque villain, down to the fake moustache. (I still can't grow a real one. Sheesh.) They say you never forget the first time, but it was my second play, and I can't for the life of me think of the title. Hell, I even found a photo from the paper of it, when I was digging through some family pictures for the family tree. All I can really remember is one of the characters was named Anemia Strongheart, and Jim Dietterick kept pronouncing it "Anna-mia," thus ruining the joke and driving Mr. Ryan, the director up the wall. But I digress...

In the seventh-grade spring show, I was the comic relief handyman. (I still can't do anything handy, except file key blanks to fit warded locks - see previous post!) This was "Vaudeville's My Home," and the best part was I got a scene with Shannon Laudermilch, who I had a serious crush on. Plus, I got one of the bigger laughs of the show, but it's a visual joke.

And eventually, in the eighth-grade play, I was a doctor, probably raising my grandmother's hopes far beyond what I would achieve in her lifetime. That was "The Velveteen Rabbit," and marked the first time I really got hosed on a role in a musical because I can't sing a note.

But in the eighth-grade Christmas play (this name, I also don't remember, because I think Mr. Ryan wrote it), I was - I shit you not - the fairy godfather. So there I am, 12 years old, in front of the entire school, opening my trenchcoat like a flasher in front of Marci Gerasimoff...

... and I'm wearing a tutu.

Again, I might point out, I got the biggest laugh in the show. And fortunately, I was supposed to look mortified. But if, psychologically speaking, my other ball dropped about a year late, I think this was why. Hell, I was smoking in eighth grade (not the record, by any means; my eighth-grade friends got me started, and I remember little Tommy Riegel was smoking at 10 years old) so I probably had a shot at maturity that didn't really kick in for about another year. Before the dress.

This is one of those moments I remember with a vague sense of disquiet, even as I'm turning them into a joke among friends. Like the time I got really sick in about 10th grade and required one of those Fletch "Moon River!" exams. That's how I learned I wasn't a homosexual. That freakin' hurt.

Shifting gears; two jokes about rectums, neither of them mine.

The vet gave my dog (get well soon!) a rectal thermometer once. He lifted Morgan's tail, and Morgan's standing there, puppy that he was, looking innocently cheerful, trying to wag his tail, when YIP! Head up, eyes bulging out of his skull, accusatory look at me. Maybe that's a visual joke, too.

Other joke: When I went to college, my Mom gave me a digital thermometer, and so my friends could use it, a bunch of plastic sleeves one of my friends immediately dubbed thermometer condoms. So one day, Ed, my roommate, wants to take his temperature. He snags the thermometer (which he's never used), pops on the thermometer condom, pops it in his mouth.

Which was the moment I'd been waiting for, just so I could yell...

"Ed! That's a rectal thermometer!"

He spit the damn thing all the way across the room.

The moral of the story? (The drama one, not the thermometer one, that one should be obvious.)

Never put a boy in a delicate phase of life in a dress in front of everyone he knows.

Links:
• SafeWalk, which still exists
• Bloomsburg Middle School, where I didn't go, because I was in high school when they built it
• The Tumblejets, the gymnasts who performed at the Middle School that awful day
• Samuel Beckett information
• Bloomsburg University theatre arts, a program my best friend from high school flunked out of in one semester
• Put on your own version of "Vaudeville's My Home"!
• Cross-dressing, Wikipedia style
• And slightly later in life, Bloomsburg High School drama, where I learned way too much about acting and life

My latest acting gig? (Blatant shilling!) A small part in "Dead Hunt," coming to DVD this fall/winter from Timewarp Films. Maybe I'll fill in the space between (the high school and college part) sometime.

Randomly, I might mention another embarrassing moment from middle school: square dancing in gym class. Yeah, if they taught you to square dance in school, for a grade, you might be a redneck. That's not the point. The point is, who do they make square dance partners? Me and June Yen. The two Asians. The only two Asians. This is a genetic impossibility, like anti-racial-profiling. Yeesh.

The most wonderful time of the year

So a couple of weeks ago was HorrorFind Weekend, down in Maryland, and it's always one of my favorite weekends of the year.

It's a horror movie and book convention, complete with screenings, celebrities signign autographs and authors reading from their work.

But really, the most fun part is kicking back with the crew from HorrorTalk and having a good time.

This year was the fourth straight year I've gone (out of five conventions) and the third at the maze that is the Hunt Valley Marriott. Who knows if they'll be back, though, since some yahoos set off the fire alarm not once, but twice, and vandalized the building. Stupid idiots always ruining things for others.

One letdown was that the Timewarp guys were hoping to be able to screen "Dead Hunt" this year, but it isn't done yet. Still, next year should be a good year, since it'll be out by then. Maybe I'll get to sign some autographs! Yay!

But that doesn't mean this year wasn't fun. In fact, it may have been the most fun ever, despite the fact that I thought the con was probably the weakest ever in terms of content in the vendor room. They did pack in the people, despite the world's biggest anime convention being the same weekend, in the same area.

So here's the tick-tock on my trip to the con.

Thursday:
I used to go down on Friday (the con starts Friday night and runs through Sunday afternoon) and stay over through Monday, but two years in a row, something major news-wise happened on Thursday. Two years ago, it was the major East Coast blackout, and last year, it was New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey coming out of the closet and resigning. So this year, I did the smart thing, and took Thursday off.

So I drove down Thursday afternoon, and after missing my exit, finally got there Thursday night. It's not far from where a lot of "Dead Hunt" was shot, so I knew most of the route by heart, but jotted down the last exit number wrong.

When I got there, Stewie was there, with the HorrorTalk Webmaster (Peter West, Danger Seeker) and Renaldo. I've roomed with Stewie the past three years now. We don't mind each other's snoring, and we're cheap enough to want to split the bill.

Stewie had rigged everything up so we and Renaldo had adjoining rooms, and both had patios next to the pool. This was cool, because it meant we could spend most of our time sitting outside at little tables, drinking beer. I got eaten alive by bugs, but that's not the point.

So Thursday night, we drank.

We started out in the bar, with all the cool con people, and then headed back to our patios.

There, Joe Ripple, the director of "Dead Hunt," stopped by, and that rocked. Joe ran security (no, the damn alarms weren't his fault) and I hadn't seen him or talked with him much since the end of the shoot (he's working and going back to school for nursing) so it was great to see him. Joe also gave me my very own TimeWarp Films shirt, and that may have been the highlight of the weekend. I put it on Saturday, and I don't think I took it off until I got home, except to sleep and shower.

Problem was, my Captain-and-Coke evening backfired, because the stupid sleep study I had Wednesday night gave me a raging nosebleed that just won't go away. So that night, it started again, and when I honked down the blood, I wound up puking my guts out. Yuck.

I've decided that while barfing is funny when other people do it, it's not so funny when I do it.

Friday:
So Friday starts off with a bang because somewhere in our drunken wisdom the night before, we'd agreed to hit the big ol' breakfast buffet with Peter.

Yeah, like I could eat. I got a nice omelet and I wound up pretty much staring hungrily at three crispy strips of bacon that I was just too scared to eat. It's one thing to barf in the privacy of your room. It's another to do it in public.

So, no breakfast. Spent most of the afternoon screwing around, since the con didn't open until the evening, then hopped on line for my wristband and off we went!

I was finally feeling better by then, I might add. In case you were concerned.

My rule on vendor rooms is this: I make at least one lap of everything before I buy ANYTHING - that saves me money in the long run. Not that I didn't run out, but heck, I run out every year.

So I actually ended up buying virtually nothing on Friday. I did take a picture of Stewie with Sid Haig, star of Rob Zombie's two horror films. No, I have no idea how to post pictures on Blogger. Go to the HorrorTalk forum, and you can see it there. Stewie's the one with hair.

And Friday night, more drinking. Fnordboy and his lady arrived Friday (I think; between the booze and my usual forgetfulness, the days kind of run together). So that was more fun. That was before she got food poisoning.

Highlight of the night: Stewie and Renaldo grabbed some barricade posts that were nearby, blocked off our patio, and put up a sign that said something like "Private Party, Guests of HorrorTalk only, please." So these kids come by and ask us if we mind if they use the pool. Hah!

And then, after they'd hopped the fence and gotten caught, the manager or whoever made them hop the fence to get out (rather than letting them in the hotel-side entrance) and one of 'em just completely duffed it going back over. Clang! Thud! Ow!

This night, by the way, I'd recovered enough to drink this cool new flavor of Woodchuck cider I'd found at the liquor store while buying my contribution to the party. Dry and Dark. Yum, though I must say I like the Granny Smith better.

Saturday:
Saturday, we gave the buffet another shot. And the bacon was good!

And then off to the con. Bruce Campbell was the headline celebrity, and the line for him went around the freakin' hotel. Fortunately, the line for the guys I wanted was much shorter.

That was the cool part of the morning. Rob Long, the guy doing the "Dead Hunt" poster, did a very cool limited edition poster for "Phantasm," and mailed me a bunch of signed copies for the HT folks. So me, Stewie and Renaldo got in line for Don Coscarelli, the director, and Angus Scrimm, the star.

Oddly enough, I've worked with Coscarelli's niece for five years and never put two and two together. One of the other newsroom movie fans told me the day before I left.

So we're in line, and poor Angus - who's not as young as he used to be - had to use the men's room, so they tell us two of us can get signatures and stuff, then he's going to "take five for a minute." Stewie wanted to get to this reading downstairs, so he switched with Renaldo (I was first of the three of us, somehow) and the two of us got our pics and autographs. Both were very cool. Angus Scrimm was a real gentleman, possibly the only person at the con in a blazer and tie. And even moreso considering he had to take a leak. Coscarelli was great, too, and me and Stewie both got our pictures taken with them before hustling off to catch Reggie Bannister, one of the other "Phantasm" stars, and wait for Renaldo.

We got Reggie's autograph and were listening to Renaldo whine about how he didn't get Angus' on his poster, when Joe comes running up asking if we'd seen Angus. Seems he had a senior moment after his return from the men's room and, depending on who you ask, either wandered away from the table or made a break for the exit.

(They found him soon enough. I don't even think he made it out of the room. God bless him, he was a great guy, very nice. I don't mean to make him sound senile, it was just kind of funny. They were so nice to him, walking him to the bathroom and all, and he just BOLTED.)

So after that, we went to a reading by Brian Keene, the author of the drop-dead-cool "The Rising" and plenty more - who named a character after Stewie in an upcoming book, and Stewie swore to us Keene would be reading the excerpt the character's in.

But no, he didn't. Still, it was a great reading - Keene's a terrific reader, and not all great authors are, believe me. He really gets into it. And getting gifts of whiskey from the audience probably doesn't hurt. Watch for "Earthworm Gods," or whatever it's going to be called, coming soon. Sounds great, and Stewie's in there somewhere, just not in the part he read.

Then I bought some books - there's a new genre out there called "bizarro," and I thought I'd give it a shot. As a headline writer, if there's one thing I can appreciate in a book, it's a catchy title. I mean, "City of the Dead" (the sequel to "The Rising") is a cool title, but pretty self-explanatory.

"Dead Bitch Army," on the other hand, virtually demands you buy it to see what's what. And frankly, three books for $20 is a gamble I'll take any day. I wound up leaving with about ten books for less than $100.

And that's without Cemetery Dance, one of my new favorite horror publishers, being there. Another publisher wasn't there, either, but for the life of me, I can't remember what they're called. Which is unfortunate, because I wanted to buy a book from them that I caught at a reading last year, but I can't remember the author - I knew what table was selling the book, but they'd closed up by the time I got down there, and they weren't there this year. Bummer.

Then, Saturday afternoon, I did my first "DH"-related interview. A company called Video Kitchen is doing a documentary on Timewarp producer Don Dohler, and they asked me to do a formal interview with them. That was cool, since I hadn't seen them since "DH" wrapped, either. Good guys and gal. So I hope they don't make me look like an idiot. I tried to be both eloquent and funny, and I hope it worked. They asked me some tough questions, which surprised me. On the upside, I got to wear my cool shirt, too.

Then it was off to dinner with indie horror film director Kevin Kangas ("Fear of Clowns") and his buddies. Fun. I had something called "sour beef," and it was much better than it sounds.

Anyway, Saturday night was our big drinking party. Everybody who was everybody was there, including Kangas and a trio of friends, the awesome actor J.P. Barry ("FOC," plus two Timewarp films, including "DH"), the aforementioned HT members, retired reviewer Supernova, plus forum ladies Freakmagnet and Meatyhook.

The highlight of that evening was the skinny-dipper. Somebody spotted this girl swimming (again, after hours) and so I nudged J.P., who had been working security at the show, and asked him, "So what do you carry that cool flashlight for, if not for moments like this?"

And he lit her up. Like the sun.

And she responded with a moon. God bless the exhibitionists.

Did I mention Kangas brought Coronas?

Sunday:
So Sunday dawned with another go-round at the buffet, where I found the guys eating with Keene and fellow author J.F. Gonzalez. So after chatting a bit with him about writing and work and such, it was back down to the con for some more books. But first, I hung out with the Video Kitchen crew a bit, and saw Joe and his "future ex-Mrs. Ripple," his saintly wife.

After a while, the con petered out, we said our goodbyes, packed our stuff, and for me and Steve and the VK folks, it was off to Don's house to see some footage of "DH." The movie's about halfway done with editing, and it's freakin' TIGHT. Y'all are gonna love it. Trust me, it's just rockin'.

So that was a kick-ass end to the weekend - I was going to stay over at Chez Stewie on Sunday night and go home Monday, but it was still early when we were done at Don's, and Stewie's is the wrong way, plus he had to roll out early (or so he thought). And so I just drove on home, and got what amounted to a free day off to sort my loot Monday.

Besides the books, I picked up three DVDs - I'm working on a review of one - plus another DVD arrived in the mail while I was gone. Working on that review, too.

Now I just have to get that killer poster framed.

It was a blast. Can't you tell?

Links:
• HorrorFind Weekend, the bestest con ever
• HorrorTalk, the reason I go
• TimeWarp Films, Joe and Don's company
• Marauder Productions, Kangas' company
• The Video Kitchen gang
• J.P. Barry, the other half of the "DH" Asian Invasion
• "Phantasm," a horror classic
• Brian Keene, awesome horror author
• Eraserhead Press, publishers of "Dead Bitch Army" and more
• Die Monster Die!, publishers of "The Dead Walk!" and more

This weekend was brought to you by:
• Captain Morgan spiced rum
• Woodchuck Draft Cider
• Corona, with or without lime

And, by the way, Stewie already covered most of this in his blog. I'm just a little slow to report in.

Act your age

Today, I read a wire story that involved an adult man who goes by the nickname, "Bunky."

We probably all had a silly nickname like "Bunky" once. We were also about 4 years old.

I've already written a post about nicknames, but the last time I knew any group of people who had nicknames people called them by was college. And even they made sense.

Sophomore year, my dorm floor (coed, freshman/soph) was full of nicknames. A few guys went by their last name, as usual (Strauss, Storch, Hrynko). But the rest... well, many had nicknames left over from freshman year, and the rest got 'em as they went on.

Not all were imaginative. I mean, Vijay was basically "VJ."

But some of the others had their moments.

One kid was "Newman," like the Seinfeld character. Rotund, annoying, you get the picture.

Jim Hsu (pronounced "gym shoe") needed one for obvious reasons, so one of the guys dubbed him "Ha-soo" (say it like it's spelled... not).

His roommate was "Stevie P." Why? Because Steve Miller was already taken by somebody famous, and Steven P. Miller took too long to say.

(Stevie P. was fond of saying "I don't give two shakes of a rat's ass" about things. One birthday, the guys bought him a plastic rat, so he could.)

"Marky Mark" wasn't a rapper, but he was a crew-cutted, All-American white boy named Mark. And it distinguished him from the other Mark, my pal Storch.

"Lisa Lisa" likewise got her nickname to distinguish her from another Lisa, who we called Jailbait, on account of she was a 16-year-old freshman. ("Lisa? Which one? Jailbait Lisa, or Lisa Lisa?")

The stories about Jailbait would take up an entire 'nother post. And be thoroughly offensive, generally speaking. Though she was always a willing participant in the hijinks, and often the instigator. I mean, let's be honest, on the maturity scale, 16 is somewhere between the 18/19-year-old sophomore level (and the word "sophomoric" exists for a reason) and, well, a grown man called Bunky. Poor girl flamed out young (I don't think she lasted the spring semester), which is why my kid, be he or she smart enough, still isn't skipping more than one grade, max.

One Filipino girl (Lisa Lisa's roommate) called herself "Flipper." We figured it for an ethnic slur, but maybe it was like black guys who call themselves the "n" word. I dunno.

Kroll went by last name for a while, but his luck with the ladies (two roommates, two days) got him dubbed "Casanova." Til the rumor got started he barfed up an entire piece of cheese. Then he became "Yakanova." (Pretty sure he actually barfed ON the piece of cheese... though I did see a cat once barf up an entire mouse, head to tail.)

Mark got called "Buns" by our R.A. for about a day and a half, after a Hrynko pantsing incident went horribly awry - in mixed company, no less - but he threatened us enough we stopped that right quick.

Among the other girls, Mahalynn didn't need a nickname. After all, how many of them could there be? And nobody called Michelle anything, at least to her face, because back then, if she didn't kill them (with her big-sister overhand hammer punch), I probably would have.

And Melissa probably should've been called "Rain Man," or the female equivalent. She was doing her boyfriend's engineering homework, then turned around and cleaned his room so it would be neat when his girlfriend from home came to visit.

Think about that one for a sec.

Yup, you read it right.

Melissa was actually a great girl and provided plenty of comic relief. I mean, you didn't actually have to talk about her behind her back, you could talk about her right in front of her. Once, I told her, "Melissa, just smile, nod and pretend you understand." She actually smiled and nodded before the light bulb went on and she laughed and called me some unprintable name. At least she had a good sense of humor about it.

She's probably making a couple hundred grand a year somewhere right now, so she who laughs last, eh?

Well, this sort of goofball nostalgia kick petered out, didn't it?

So no clever kicker tonight, no witty wrap-up. Just a smile about better times, back when I was younger, and more naive, and more innocent. And wilder, and crazier. And more violent. And a borderline alcoholic. OK, maybe "better" times isn't the right word. But they sure were fun. Mostly.

Links:
• A glossary of ethnic slurs, which informs me "flip" is NOT a slur for Filipino (and my goodness, are some of the entries fascinating)
• Carnegie Mellon University, where all this good fun took place (they've probably disavowed me by now)
• And Mudge House, where I lived sophomore year and part of junior year (and THAT is another long story)

All of this begs a question: What is the statute of limitations on misadventures anyway?

Justice, s'il vous plait?

Tonight's post is going to be just a wee bit schizophrenic.

So if you're a red-stater, keep reading, and if you're a blue-stater, skip ahead to the funny part. The one that begins with the airplane explosion that killed hundreds.

Toward the end of work tonight, we were discussing Natalee Holloway, the high school girl who disappeared on her class trip to Aruba (haven't you watched ANY news since the Runaway Bride?). Apparently, the girl's poor mother has upped the reward for finding her and/or information about her.

Let's set two ground rules.

One is, the girl's dead.

The other is, the Dutch kid in jail, he killed her.

Unless, of course, she went skinny-dipping while he lay drunk on the beach, and a giant shark directed by Steven Spielberg swam up and ate her.

OK, fill in all the allegedlys and reportedlys here.

But I've seen enough episodes of "Law and Order: SVU," or as I often call it, "Law and Order: SUV," to know how it went down.

Let's see if I've got this right: Twice at a party, she shoots the Dutch kid down (no, I can't spell his name, and I'm too lazy to look it up. he's VanderSomething). Then she gets drunk enough, she leaves with him, his buddies drive them to a beach, and she's never seen again.

My vote is, he tries to get it on with her, she sobers up enough to figure out he's a little weasel, and he rapes her. Then he kills her, to cover his ass, in a panic, whatever. Then he dumps her in the ocean.

The only way anyone's collecting that reward is if they cut open the shark that ate the body. Like Dutch Boy's weasel would-be-judge daddy said, no body, no crime.

So the kid's guilty as OJ, and he's sitting in jail, all clammed up. Meanwhile, a girl's family suffers without knowing the truth.

This is why I advocate the torture of prisoners. I mean, if the Aruban government doesn't want to do it, surely Aruba's close enough to Gitmo we can somebody over to go all Lynndie England on this little rat.

I'll tell you what, indulge me a minute, and let me tell you what I'd do if that were my daughter, God forbid.

I'd take out a second mortgage - I've got some old friends back whom who'd do just about anything for money. Then I'd take them down to Aruba, with a boat.

And I'd jump Daddy Dearest, haul his ass out into the ocean and turn him into John Bell Hood. You remember Hood, the Civil War general who lost the use of an arm, then lost the leg on the other side.

I'd think by the time you break the kneecap, he's at least thinking about talking. By the time you break the opposite elbow, he's telling everything he knows. Which would be helpful if she's in the only other place she could be: the VanderWhatsis basement.

If that doesn't work, it's time for a good old fashioned Aruban jailbreak.

(And hey, if you think the Dutch would object, last I saw them, they were in "Band of Brothers," shaving the heads of the women who slept with the occupying Nazis. They do revenge funky.)

Yeah, that's right, I'd bust little whatsisname out, and haul him out on the boat with daddy. Then I'd cut open his thigh and use him for bait. I'm thinking at the first sign of a dorsal fin, one of 'em talks.

And then, hell, if they killed my little girl, I'd disembowel 'em and toss 'em in the ocean for the sharks. Or go all Dread Pirate Roberts on them. ("No! To the pain!") Vengeance is seldom, if ever, the sole property of the Lord.

That whole school-trip-gone-to-hell thing got me thinking about another story, slightly less violent.

BLUE STATERS, YOU CAN START READING AGAIN HERE.

Remember that plane that blew up over Long Island back in '96? The one that had the high school French club on board? The one that inspired the movie "Final Destination"?

Anyway, when I saw that on the news, my jaw dropped. I remember I ended up being late for work, because all they said was the flight had a French club from Central Pennsylvania on board.

I was in a high school French club in Central Pennsylvania. Fortunately for my town, it wasn't the one from Bloomsburg on the plane. There but for the grace of God, and my sympathies to the people of Montoursville.

Anyway, I went on two trips to France with the French club - my French teacher and her husband, the gym teacher, went over about every other summer, taking kids on an "educational experience."

I really didn't have much fun either time I went, the first because I didn't speak French well enough to get around (after two years) and the second because, well, it was Murphy's trip.

And nowhere was that more evident than in Nice (pronounced NEE-sss, not NIGH-sss). And a nice experience, it was not.

(I'll keep the guilty parties anonymous, for the sake of my friends. The nonguilty parties, I'll cheerfully name.)

Let me put it this way, when we left on the tour bus, me and Johnny, one of the guys, sat in the back giving the entire city the finger out the back window.

We'll get to the part that makes the connections momentarily.

First, let's share some of the fun.

We knew we were in trouble when we got the hotel, and the French guide informed my teacher it was a brothel.

How he knew the anorexic-looking woman leaning on the front desk was a "known prostitute" was none of my business. And the guy at the front desk looked like Elvis. I mean, he had a pompadoured rug that would make Jim Trafficant blush.

As Mrs. Coy said, "This is the last time I let the tour company put us in a two-star hotel."

Turned out the place had four and a half floors. The top floor, where they put me, Johnny and Kevin (three of the five guys on a tour with 25 girls from two different states... and the only guys who got any on the whole trip were the other two guys, who unknown to anyone, were boyfriends).

Oh, aside, they combined my tour from Pennsylvania, on an "educational experience," with a tour from Georgia of eighth-grade girls, on a shopping trip. And Johnny, who immediately dodged his chaperone mother to hang with us. We mixed like oil and water. The Georgians sat on one side, the Pennsylvanians on the other. The bus aisle was like the Mason-Dixon line.

Me and Johnny, we were the ambassadors, sitting on the back seat, on the wrong sides, to show solidarity.

Bear in mind, too, on this second trip, I'd graduated the week before we left, there was really nothing they could do to me if I misbehaved (unlike the underclassmen, who'd get suspended).

Anyway, we're in Nice, in the brothel, and Kevin goes up to our room on the top floor. Kevin's about 6-foot, Johnny's 6-4, and I'm 5-9. Kevin's in the dark, in the hall, when runs forehead-first into the expansion. I shit you not, he knocks himself out. He says he woke up minutes later, in the dark, on his back. This was an omen.

The expansion floor, the half-floor, was so short Johnny showed us - fully clothed, you perverts - that he had to bend almost double to get his hair under the showerhead.

That night, while we were exploring Nice (more on that in a minute), Johnny's mother and her roommate (the two Georgia chaperones) got their room robbed. So Johnny actually ended up staying in their room, while Kevin and I blocked our door with a piece of furniture. We had a special knock and weren't going to open for anybody but him. So we spent the night in an armed camp.

The next morning, at breakfast, before we checked out, the waitresses were in French maid costumes. Literally. A shame we didn't call room service.

I told you it was a brothel.

But now to the relevant part of the story, the part that I think of every time some tragedy happens on a school trip (there was one a few years ago where a Jersey cheerleader fell from a hotel balcony, too).

That one night, we all went out on the town - teenagers can drink in France, but even we weren't that hardcore; the first trip (from which I was the only returnee), one of the girls got sloshed the first night on wine so bad we had to drag her back to the hotel, fear of future suspension or worse, a plane ticket home on mom and dad's dime, running through our heads.

Anyway, the chaperones tell us not to go ANYWHERE alone. So the guys, being high school guys, ran in a pack. The girls, being girls, paired up. (Like they do in bars, on the way to the bathroom.)

We're hanging out down by the beach, taking in the breeze off the water. Well, actually, we're up on the street, which is way above the beach, connected by big stone stairwell. It's nighttime when one of the girls comes rushing up in a panic. Turns out, she lost her partner. While we're trying to figure out what to do - that is to say, how to find her without alerting any chaperones - she goes walking by. With a guy. A strange, suave-looking, older guy. Who's just talking her up.

So three of us follow at a relatively discreet distance. They're headed for a parking lot, and we're thinking if she gets in that car, they're going to be off to Monte Carlo and we're never going to see her again.

Now you see the connection to the first part of the story?

Eventually, she catches us and comes back to (angrily) ask why we're following her. We point out she's like 15 or 16 and he's like 30. And she's in a foreign country. Wandering off alone with a stranger. Maybe we overreacted... but then he got squirrelly. And took off. That's when she started crying.

So, feeling good about ourselves (line of the day: "I may not be big, but I can fight," said one of the guys), we amble on back to the rest of our party. Only to discover, they've lost the first girl.

In a word (or four), "merde. Merde. MERDE. MERDE!"

So we're looking around, re-frantic-ing ourselves, when we hear her. Down on the stairwell, sitting on the landing. In the dark. With a guy. Another stranger.

Usually, we learn from others' mistakes, we don't try to out-fuck-up them.

But she did.

So we drag her out of the stairwell, and ask her the obvious question: Did you learn nothing? She says, she was right near us. Which, to her credit, she was. Fifteen feet down, in the dark, out of sight, with a stranger, unknown to any of us. To her discredit.

So she's pissed, and as we're trudging back to the hotel, she's telling us over and over how nice this guy was and how there was no harm in it and how we're overreacting.

The response?

"Then why's he following us?"

We bolted. Running through the streets of Nice, splitting up (into groups), cutting through alleys, etc.

We'd shaken him by the time we got to the hotel. A couple of the guys hustle the girls upstairs, and Johnny and I hung out at the next-door McDonald's, where Johnny could practice his (nonexistent) French, and we could make sure the mystery man just walked on by.

Harmless fun, a story I've entertained friends and family (and now you, dear readers) with for years. But when I actually think sometimes how close we might have come to being the poor bastards on CNN, maybe it's not quite as funny.

What can I say? Of all the places I've been, the one I'm least likely to go back to is France. I'm not going for pleasure, Paris isn't that fun. And the odds I'll be leading a German army anytime soon aren't good, either. So that's that.

Links:
• Natalee Holloway, and here's hoping they find her
• Aruba, which is undoubtedly sorry they let the school trip get through customs to begin with
• The latest from CNN on the Holloway case
• Torture, Wikipedia-style
• "The Princess Bride," for those of you who don't get the Dread Pirate Roberts reference
• Nice, France - I wish I could remember how to swear in French so I could adequately express my feelings toward the city

Let's end with a joke: Why did France and Germany oppose our invasion of Iraq? France didn't want to lose to a country that small, and Germany didn't want to bother conquering a country that small.