Out on the Town

Saturday night was the Penn State Graphic Design students’ annual Film Follies. I’ve been going for a long time—I think this might be the third venue I’ve seen them in—the first place has long since been demolished and replaced with something bigger and better. (Actually, just bigger.) It’s a fun marker of the end of the spring semester at Penn State, though each year I’m a tad more astonished than the last at how young college seniors are. It’s been a long time since I burned my candle at both ends at Dear Old UVa.  

Very few of the follies in the Film Follies are live action films—they’re typically slide shows or animations. And they’re brief too. Don’t go expecting an undergraduate’s take on The Ten Commandments or Gone with The Wind.

 

Generally speaking, the subject matter is about issues important to undergraduates—stuff like getting drunk, hooking up, and the bathroom, not to mention the combo platter of getting drunk and hooking up in the bathroom. But there are also projects about serious subjects like global warming and bullying. This year they were a little more serious than usual: there wasn’t a single project covering masturbation in the library or flatulence during a calculus exam. What is this world coming to?  But the kids are creative, some even have a sense of humor, and I marvel at the technology that they use. By the end of the show of digital extravaganzas I wondered if they even knew where to purchase an Xacto knife and a jar of rubber cement.

The fashion scene there is always quite something. Graphics students seem to be a fashion forward lot and so they’re in a lot of black, which is the universal uniform of artistic credibility. But this year the kids went out on a limb and did black and white. At the same time. Yowza.

After the FF, my chums and I met some friends we don’t see very often for drinks. They didn’t want to go someplace loud, and they were emphatic about that, since, of course, everyone knows that my first choice is always to go to a cavernous dance club with deafening music located between a stone quarry and the end of the main runway at O’Hare Airport. While I see their point (a bit), if I wanted to have a drink someplace quiet and boring, I’d stay home.

Working under the theory that it would be quiet enough even if the house drink wasn’t the Geritol martini, we went to Zola, State College’s upscale hipster restaurant. I wasn’t expecting it to be as full as it was, but it was quite crowded. The bartender told us that it was fraternity and sorority parents’ weekend, to which I replied, “Great. Two generations of assholes in town.” 

Since a bunch of seats in one place wasn’t happening, Pam and I sat at the bar while the others crowded around a small cocktail table out of earshot.  

On my right were three macho enough types. After I checked them out I checked out what they were drinking (for those of you keeping score at home, white wine is an instant DQ). I did a double take when I noticed that the guy in the middle was drinking something golden and frothy from a martini glass.  “Uh, excuse me, what’s that thing you’re drinking?”  And that was how we met Nick, Wes and Nick. Or maybe it was Wes, Nick, and Wes. My head was a little unclear on that the next day. One was a physician’s assistant, the second a former surgical equipment salesman now selling organic/artisanal hooch, and the third, the one drinking the beer, was an attorney. They were doing the rounds of State College bars, spending some quality time with their friend John Barleycorn and enjoying the parade of pre-cougar female pulchritude that is State College on a Saturday night. We listened to their elevator speeches and they seemed like good guys.

The golden and frothy drink in question was a Fig Kiss. Yeah, someone really invented that. Its claim to fame is that Lady Gaga ordered one. It’s made with something like limoncello but made with figs, so it might have been called figicello. Wes (or Nick) offered us a slurp and Pam pronounced it tasty. Although I’ve slurped on worse things, that cocktail wasn’t something I needed to try. 

After the three guys left, Pam and I joined our friends at their cocktail table and yakked about weddings, the Boy Scouts, foreign countries, and differential equations.

Zola isn’t a late night place, and when it cleared out the others decided it was time for their beauty sleep. Pam and I headed to Chumley’s, State College’s best bar, for a nightcap. Ellen, the manager, is a super host and makes everyone feel at home. It’s sort of like Cheers meets the Algonquin Round Table meets a gay West Virginia road house. In other words, what’s not to like?

It was crowded. And loud, though OSHA regs didn't require us to wear ear protection. The crowd was pretty jolly. It wasn’t a night for my usual M.O. of standing around and not saying much.

No, this isn't Kenny. It's not even in State College. But hey, if that guy in green trousers doesn't have a place in my blog, I don't know who does.

Kenny, a biology grad student slash foodie, greeted me with “Say Rick, that guy you were in here with the other day…is he gay? He gave me his phone number.” I thought of typing LOL into my phone and handing it to him. Instead, I did things the old fashioned way and laughed out loud. I said, “No, he’s not gay. I went to his wedding. To a woman. Definitely not gay. Knows no show tunes and wouldn’t know a pelmet from a peplum.”  

He asked if I were sure, all the while giving me that look that said, “You so do not know what you’re talking about.”  OK, maybe I’m not as sure as I thought I was. But I’m still pretty sure.

All the while I was thinking, “I can’t believe he’d pick Mr. X over me.”

Kenny was accompanied by a gaggle of guys. It included Jeff, who’s in toxic waste dumps and is from New Jersey but claimed not to know which exit. (As fibs go, it ranks right up there with I’ll respect you in the morning, and I won’t, well, you know in your you know.)  In discussing Mr. X, Jeff claimed to have great gaydar, and I said that I wished that he could give me some pointers, since I was well into Season 2 of Will and Grace before I figured out that Jack was gay. In quick succession I met Dan the nuclear engineering student, Kyle the accounting major, and Ryan who did something else. And then there was a second Pam who was with Steve. Pam works at a social service agency with one of my friends and Steve, well, he did something else too, though probably not the same as Ryan’s something else. I gathered, however, that he probably wanted to do Ryan. The guys were bright and witty—Fred Flintstone would have let out a yabba dabba doo or two—and much more fun than a quiet drink at home. 

Mindful of the show biz adage that you always have to leave them wanting more, and before someone bought me a Geritol martini (once ordered by Lady Gaga's grandfather), I decided that it was time to head home. I had to usher in church the next day and that’s the sort of date on which you need to smell like Old Spice rather than Old Grand Dad.    

Bunny Club

I went to an Easter egg hunt yesterday. I don’t get to do that every day—even in the Easter season invitations to egg-centric fêtes don’t grow on trees. Of course, there’s the public one sponsored by the Centre Region Parks and Recreation—7,000 eggs (seriously!) in Orchard Park. It seems like The Bigs in terms of egg hunts, but as a childless person in State College…well, let’s just say that it’s not really a receptive climate for single, middle-aged men to hang around at public egg hunts, even if, weather permitting, it would be a good place to meet and greet some MILFs and DILFs.

The Easter egg hunt I went to was at my friend Donna’s house. Donna makes the run-of-the-mill Tiger Mom look as if she lies around all day watching television, scarfing down Ho Hos, and reading Harlequin Romances. She’s a successful professional in a field I'm too thick to understand, a mom who makes parenting look easy, and she throws a great party, too. So it’s not really a shock that Donna’s egg hunt is practically camera ready for the editors of Martha Stewart Living. She’s got an adorable kid, a beautiful house, and puts on an unreal spread. If Banana Republic or J. Crew would style the guests there'd be a magazine spread in her future. Yes, Donna’s doing her part, while her guests, well...most of us dress for State College and not the pages of a glossy lifestyle rag.   

 

This year Donna asked me to come over to hide the eggs before the guests arrived. When I got there, I shouldn’t have been surprised that Donna and her sidekick Aunt Patti had sealed the driveway, installed geothermal heating in the house and garage, and laid out a brunch spread that not only would appeal to little kids, but also just begged to be devoured by bunch of guys with sweaters tied around their necks as they discussed if they would check luggage or just do carry-on if Ryan Gosling were to run off to Belize with one of them that very afternoon.

Donna had a large shopping bag filled with colored plastic eggs, each with a prize inside. My job was to hide the eggs in the backyard, remembering that the most of the customers were going to be preschoolers. In other words, hiding eggs in the downspouts or behind the weed killer in the garden shed were bad ideas.  

I no sooner had the eggs in place when the first guests arrived. And then the second set, and the third, and so on. Donna had said that she’d invited lots of kids, and she was right. The only one missing, as far as I could tell, was Bruno, my Starbucks chum. He had a better offer with his out of town grandparents.

Most of the guests were prompt so there was an intense burst of “My! How you’ve grown!” “This is the new baby? He’s adorable!”  When that was finished we all went to the backyard patio to wait for the official opening of the egg hunt. Eagle-eyed kids scoped out the yard for low-hanging fruit while the parents chatted each other up. Donna’s daughter and co-host G. made sure that each guest had a sticker, while Donna, using her best teacher voice, put the egg hunters under starter’s orders.

Donna explained that kids had to collect the whole rainbow of smaller eggs and one larger egg which could be any color. While she may have meant it to be a simple modification of last year’s rules where kids were assigned a particular color (“Jimmy, you’re peridot; Suzy, you’re cerulean; Max, you’re that purple that men wear.”) I took this to be silent commentary on the Supreme Court’s recent double header of the Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. vs. Windsor. Perhaps that was just a happy coincidence. Perhaps not.

As soon as Donna had explained the rules, the kids raced into the backyard, like thoroughbreds bolting from the starting gates at Churchill Downs. Unlike the three-year-olds at Churchill Downs, lots of the children had parents in their wake, viewing the action through the lens of their iPhones. Au courant parents clearly do not subscribe to my parents' notion that there were no childhood events worth photographing that did not involve a new car, a recently caught fish, or fun with guns, or better yet, all of the above.

When all the eggs had been collected, Donna had the kids gather around her to check out their haul of eggs. She called out each kid’s name and gave them all personalized gift bags. There wasn’t a Rick, Bill, Bruce, or Chris in the bunch. All the names sounded like Jackson, Maxon, Claxon, and Flaxen to me. I think Piper was a no-show. This robbed me of the chance to see if Piper was a boy or a girl, and if he or she had a brother or sister named Cessna. I suppose I should have been grateful that one of the boys wasn’t named Mr. Darcy. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that someone, someplace, did that to their kid.

The girls’ bags each held a Hermès Kelly bag while the boys got a 72” flat screen TV. OK, maybe not that exact stuff, but the looks on the kids’ faces told me that it was something like that. During my childhood gift bags were a present for the Electrolux. Oh my, times have changed!

After the bags were passed out, the Easter Bunny just happened to stop by for a photo op. I’ve got to admit, I don’t exactly get the Easter Bunny. He’s a large bunny who wears a vest and hands out colored eggs? Since when have bunnies laid eggs? Oh and he also hands out chocolate bunnies and if you’re Catholic, maybe a chocolate cross on a stick. Got it. How many times has the Easter Bunny seen Harvey? Does he (or is he a she?) have a life partner? If so, are they multiplying like rabbits? How is he (or she) related to Beatrix Potter's bad boy Peter Rabbit? As I’m sure you recall, Peter Rabbit was a snazzy dresser (blue jacket, shoes, his own fashion Tumblr) and an early proponent of a locally-sourced vegetarian diet. He had sensibly shod sisters, Flopsy and Mopsy, and a trashy sister, Cotton-tail, now working for Hef in the Playboy Mansion in L.A.

Kids don’t seem to have a problem with the Easter Bunny or his (or her) New Normal relations. Perhaps there is something to running around the backyard looking for eggs. It might not be going to Belize with Ryan Gosling and a carry-on, but as something magical, it's good enough for me.

But It's A Wet Cold

I can’t pinpoint the moment that I decided that a dip in the ocean in New Jersey in early March was a good idea. Perhaps it was during an episode of wistfulness at not having dressed up as Richard—or better yet Pat—Nixon to run in the Phi Psi 500. It also might have been the result of my regretting not wallowing (still in Wahoo regalia, of course) in the red Virginia mud during Easters Weekend at UVa. No matter the motivation, the moment they announced the date of the 2013 Stone Harbor Shiver, I was in. And so were my chums Bruce, Martha, and Pam.

Interestingly enough, the Stone Harbor Shiver—a winter dash into the ocean— raises funds for a Cape May County mental health agency. Doing something crazy in the name of mental health is apparently The Garden State way.  

Since there aren’t many tourists in Cape May County in March, the Stone Harbor Chamber of Commerce puts the pedal to the metal with events like this to provide a little economic stimulus while giving the locals (and tourists) an outlet for a winter’s worth of pent up tomfoolery. So it wasn’t just skip into the briny deep and call it a day, but the event included a couple of meals, a costume contest, filming of the obligatory Harlem Shake video, and so on, all in the name of mental health and tourism.

The weekend’s festivities started with Friday night buffet supper at the Yacht Club of Stone Harbor. I don’t think of Stone Harbor as a yacht-y sort of place, but nautical types have enjoyed the club for years. The YCSH is located in a small, old-fashioned frame building on the bay—think country club in a town that you didn’t think would have a country club. Even the casual passersby can tell that it’s a yacht club since there are reserved parking spots for the Commodore, Vice-Commodore , Future Imperfect Commodore, and Visiting But Not Staying Too Long Commodore. Unlike the rest of the Commodores, Lionel Richie did not rate his own reserved parking space.

The building is decorated in the way you’d expect, with nautical touches here and there. There were a couple of big reception rooms with a long narrow bar facing the bay. At least I think the bay was out there, it was dark at the time and I didn’t feel the need to take a long walk off a short yacht club deck.

Stone Harbor’s Mayor-for-Life Suzanne V. Walters came by our table to chit chat. We told her that our costumes for the parade were inspired by the anecdote she told us eons ago during one of her star turns as a waitress at the annual Lions Club Pancake Breakfast. While she was shoveling out the short stacks she told us that shortly after she moved to Stone Harbor, the cliff dwellers on the Stone Harbor Borough Council accused her of being an "itinerant speculator" when she went before them to get a zoning variance in order to add a dormer to her home. After a couple of chuckles, well, shouting chuckles, it was loud in there, she set us straight that she was accused of being a transient speculator rather than an itinerant speculator, meaning that we (as in Martha) had to re-logo our costumes.

Saturday’s events kicked off at 9:30 with Kegs and Eggs at Fred’s Tavern. We chowed down on our eggs at home, but managed to get our stuff together and in plenty of time for a spin through Fred's to see what the bar flies were wearing and the the costume parade down 96th St. to the beach. We would have been even earlier except for the slight delay caused by my shutting Pam’s hand in the car door.

There were about 25 different groups in costumes, from Dr. Seuss characters to some folks dressed as skunks toting signs that said “We Skunked Superstorm Sandy”.

Someone should tell this fellow that if you are going to dress in spandex you should have a bigger dachshund.

Pam, Bruce, Martha and I dressed as construction workers and called our group Demo Sale. A demo sale is what takes place just before a modestly-sized house is demolished (hence demo) and a McMansion put in its place. Builders try to squeeze every ounce of moola out of the house before it’s demolished so everything is for sale. And I do mean everything. You’re quite welcome to make an offer on the kitchen, the bathroom, windows, or anything else you can saw away from the carcass of a perfectly nice 1960s cottage. Otherwise, the contractor is going to have to pay to dispose of it next to a long lost mafia don in one of the Garden State’s finer landfills. In a way it’s like going to the dog pound: whatever you don’t take home doesn’t have much of a future.  So we dressed as construction workers and all wore cardboard signs around our necks, just like the signs you see at the street corner with an arrow pointing at the house that’s about a day from the wrecking ball.  On the back of our signs, we’d written a somewhat political message. There were four signs and so they said in order, Tearing Down, Building Up, Cashing In, and Moving On. Just like real itinerant, no, transient speculators. Tableaux vivant, meet performance art.

 

 I love women (and men too) in nun costumes as much as the Protestant, but wearing a rented costume is a big fail in my book. But these nuns were jolly and boozy and smoked up a storm. They had the whole nun thing going on expect for rapping boys on the knuckles with a ruler. Somehow I never got around to asking them if they knew the joke about the Mother Superior’s constipation. There was one solitary guy in bad drag. He didn’t seem to have any friends so I wondered if he was just using the opportunity to get his freak on in a kicky thrifted number from the Jacklyn Smith Collection at K-Mart not to mention bone colored heels (before Easter—egad!). There were stogie chomping golfers wearing several different kinds of plaid, and hula skirted folks also pretending to enjoy a La Stinkadora. It’s interesting how many people think a big stogie makes any bad costume so much better. I always wonder how often those folks dream about trains going into tunnels.

The local ice company created a rudimentary truck-mounted ice throne for the King and Queen of the Shiver. I could tell that they were the King and Queen since they were wearing crowns and he was carrying a scepter; his orb must have been at the shop. Shortly after I said hello to the King of the Shiver he laid into me like nobody’s business for wearing a nail apron from Lowe’s instead of the just down the street Seashore Ace, which, he pointed out with a snarl was having Free Paint Day. I didn’t take the time to point out to Good King Frozenballs that free paint didn’t do me much good when I really wanted a nail apron. As my inner Madame DeFarge started telling me “knit one purl two”, I walked away thinking that this jerk never heard of getting more flies with honey than you do with driveway sealer.

After the Kegs and Eggs were kicked, it was time to process to the parking lot of the Women’s Civic Club parking lot where the costume judging would take place. 

The two sets of judges, King Frozenballs and his Queen, and Mayor for Life Walters and another local nabob, sat in lifeguard chairs, just like real lifeguards except not as hot. I mean, not hot at all. In fact, as far as fantasy constructs go, they were probably colder than the Atlantic Ocean. But that’s just me, there is probably an adults-only web site devoted to hot Garden State costume contest judges.  I took pains to point out to King Frozenballs that I’d turned my nail apron backwards so that the Lowe’s logo didn’t show he said that it was a good thing or else we’d have gotten a one from him.  All class that guy.

Some of the costumes were cute but lots were well, bad.

Alas and alack we didn’t win. We were beaten out by a group dressed as a turtle crossing. And they deserved to win, they had a great costume and a little performance too.

After the costume contest, it was time to do the Harlem Shake (naturally) and then time to head to the beach, where there were even more people milling about. There were also a bunch of emergency vehicles parked on the beach. Not so reassuring. As soon as we got to the beach people started to strip off their layers of clothing, and someone stood on a lifeguard stand to read instructions through a megaphone to the crowd. At least I am guessing they were instructions. They sounded a bit like an announcement at the airport that your flight to Omaha is delayed or maybe at a different gate or did they say it was cancelled or was that is now ready for boarding?

 

Then there was a whistle and suddenly everyone made a mad dash for the water. That is, everyone but Bruce who stayed behind to hold our towels.

The water was cold, alright. Forty-one degrees Fahrenheit to be exact.  But I ran all the way in, and once I’d dunked myself entirely I ran out just as fast as I could.  I think I might have been in the water a minute, and well, there was about a year’s worth of shrinkage in that minute. I figure I’ll move from soprano to tenor in time for the Arts Festival in July. I’m not sure that I’ll ever get back to my pre-shiver baritone.

After we finally warmed up and changed clothes, we went out for a celebratory dinner, a postprandial kerfuffle with an unmanned toll booth on the Garden State Parkway, and a victory lap at Fred’s Tavern. Of course, we could have done those things any weekend. But this time I, at least, was secure in the knowledge that while I might not have been dressed as Richard —or better yet Pat—Nixon, or covered in the red earth central Virginia, I was still stupid enough to run into a really, really cold ocean just for fun. 

Flower Power

 

Valentine’s Day was a few days ago and once again I had the chance to jump into the action as a floral assistant. I think it was my 13th year of donning my red sweater and bringing my own special kind of L-U-V to Happy Valley. Valentine's Day gives me a whole new perspective on "saying it with flowers".

How did I get to be a floral assistant? The brother of my co-worker Carol is a retail florist in State College. Carol, the closest thing I have to a work wife, is in charge of recruiting the legion of day laborers necessary to make 400-odd deliveries on Cupid’s Special Day. So for one day a year, the flower shoppe has a mix of folks taking a break from real life and retirees spending the day delivering flowers.
 
We work in teams of two: a driver and a runner. Ever since the parking garage of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC jumped out in front of my van during another floral adventure, I play the role of the guy who runs the flowers from the van to the lucky recipient. I used to work with my friend Bruce, but he drives too much like a law abiding citizen of a certain age plus 30 years. Now I’m paired with my sister. Carolyn is a NASCAR fan who can drive the van, put on makeup, participate in a conference call, drink coffee, and share her feelings out the window with some yahoo in the other lane…all at the same time. I have a difficult enough time participating in a conference call from the safe confines of my desk, so her multitasking is all the more remarkable in my book. Oh, and a swanky Washington hotel parking garage has never jumped out in front of her car. Can't forget that!

Valentine’s Day is as busy as it gets in the flower business. Guys who like girls send them flowers on Valentine’s Day. Guys who like guys arrange and deliver those flowers. It’s kind of an odd dynamic but there's something (e.g. sex or money) in it for for everyone.

When Carolyn and I reported for duty at 8:00 a.m., there were about a kabillion flowers to deliver. Or so it seems when we walked into the floral shoppe work room. While Allen, the florist, seems to know where everything is, to me the studio looks like the set of The Really, Really, Really Gay Hoarders of Atlanta on the Logo network. There are boxes, boxes, and more boxes of candelabra, vases, candles, floral supplies, and whatnot, especially whatnot. And there are tables and tables of flowers ready to go out the door, too.

The organization of the deliveries—sending which arrangement out in what van— is done by Carol and her mother. Carol is a bit of an alpha male who comes by it honestly since her mother is one too. So occasionally it’s like Mrs. Crawley vs. the Dowager Countess of Grantham on Downton Abbey as Carol and her mother work together to get the deliveries organized. However, in the end, they're both smiling and the flowers (and accompanying paperwork) are on their way out the door.

Carolyn and I made our first delivery of the day was at 8:37 at Easterly Parkway School. My sister practically had to trade paint (that’s NASCAR lingo) in the parking area with moms in Volvos dropping junior off at school. Holy crap, don’t kids walk to school any longer? Or did that habit end with smoking in the teacher’s lounge?

When we went to Lemont Elementary School, our second stop, the school secretary looked longingly my bouquet and said “Are you sure there aren’t flowers on the truck for Heidi Davidson?” I told her that I would gladly divert some of our delivery to Koch Funeral Home if she would like to cover the ditto machine with the late Effie Seitenbacher’s family spray. We both had a chuckle and I decided (under the influence of ditto fluid, I think) that she was the kind of woman I would send flowers to if I were the kind of guy to send flowers to women, and she were more attractive, had a better figure, higher SAT scores, and of course, most importantly, wasn’t wearing a Valentine’s Day holiday sweater and really bad shoes.

Later in the morning we stopped at a Sheetz convenience store. The chain’s schtick is that they spell plural nouns with a Z whenever they can. I thought I was pretty funny when I said to the person behind the cash register, “Flowers with a Z for Janice”. The clerk obviously did not know a bon mot when he heard one and so I got a curt “She’s not here” in addition to the look that State College postal clerks give to clueless non-English speaking Asian graduate students trying to mail boxes to places no one can spell. He was not about to think outside the bagelz, so I had to say, “Well, can you give them to her when she gets here?” As soon as he grunted “Yeah”, I was out of there before I was tempted by the large display of meat snackz and other blood pressure elevating industrial food delightz. As Carolyn and I pulled out of the lot, there was a pack of Sheetz employees huddled around the propane tanks smoking. If there is anything l like better than a pod of convenience store clerks smoking by the door to the store, it’s a pod of convenience store clerks smoking next to the propane tank display by the door to the store.

A short time later we were at some social service agency I’d never heard of. I couldn’t really figure out what its mission was other than to hire women, encourage them to dress badly, get horrible haircuts and all manner of facial piercings. “I have flowers for so- and so” I chirped. “They’re not for me so don’t you worry” griped the unattractive pear-shaped woman, a symphony in brown polyester. Instead of worrying about who was getting the flowers, I worried about how a guy could make out with a woman with spikey things sticking out of her face without poking his eye out.

“Her man is so predictable” confided another receptionist as she accepted a flower arrangement for a coworker. I almost sighed and said “I know” and while giving her a look that she might not understand.

I got to go to my old school, too. They’ve replaced the standard principal's office with something that looks like a cube farm, but festive holiday duds are still the norm with the women who run State High.

One of my favorite deliveries was where I said to the cute receptionist, ”I have flowers for Jen. And I have to apologize. There are only eleven roses. I broke one getting it out of the van.” The receptionist confided in me, "Oh don’t worry, she’ll never know. And besides she’s weird. Getting eleven will make her like ‘em even more. Would you like a red velvet cookie?” It was the only tip of the day that Carolyn and I got.

After a finishing with the offices, we started delivering to residential State College. We did some Soviet style apartment blocks in downtown and single family houses in the part of Ferguson Township that looks just like New Jersey. Places that were fields when Carolyn and I were kids are now just another slice of the United States of Generica.

There wasn’t as much loud music in apartment buildings as there used to be. I suppose the invention of ear buds put the kibosh to that. But the young women (and they were all young women) receiving flowers uniformly live in squalor. Had they ever picked anything up off the floor, washed any dishes, or put any effort at all into their surroundings? No. None. Zip. Nada.

After about the fourth time delivering something to White Trash Central, I wondered why guys didn’t send Merry Maids instead if flowers. Oh right, love-starved (i.e. horny) straight guys don't care what a girl's apartment looks like. Duh!

Seventy one arrangements after we started, we were at the the last stop of the day, a particularly grim student rental. It’s one of the skankier places in downtown State College—I walk by it on my way to Starbucks in the mornings. It’s an old, two-story house, and made out of that fake brick fiberboard that’s one step above tar paper--now beautified with plastic siding, of course. I walked onto the enclosed porch and it was a still life of empty beer cans and dead collapsible umbrellas, as if it were Mary Poppins’ last stop on her way to the Betty Ford Clinic. I knocked on the door and in a nanosecond it was opened by a co-ed wearing black leggings and a tight THON tee shirt. Were I the type to get all hot and bothered by a co-ed in a black leggings and a tight THON tee shirt I would have, well, gotten all hot and bothered. But as it was, I remained cold and unmoved, and instead of checking her out, I checked out the front room of the house, which as far as I could tell was decorated by the same person who did the front porch. “I have flowers for Brenda,” I said. Without stepping away from the door in the slightest , the coed turned her head, and in her best hog callin’ in the Ozarks voice yelled to the back of her apartment, “BRENDA!!!”. What a gift to my hearing that was!

I was cold, I was tired, and I’d spilled water from 71 vases of flowers on my trousers. Carolyn was ready to head out to dinner with high school chums. We were both glad the day was all over, including the shouting.

The Pennsylvania Farm Show

I’ve done lots of interesting things in my life. I’ve put a Whoopee cushion under my unsuspecting mother in one of State College’s nicest restaurants; I’ve fallen into a canal in Venice (yes, that Venice); and I’ve been run over by a tow truck.  But until the other day I’d never been to the Pennsylvania Farm Show. Oh I’ve driven by the Farm Show Complex (it’s not just a building, it’d definitely a complex) on my way to meetings lots of times, and have even been inside for a car show, but that’s as close as I’ve come. Until now. 

Before I get too far, I should explain that Pennsylvania, unlike its neighbors, doesn’t have a state fair. New Jersey has a state fair, so do New York and Ohio and West (by God) Virginia and Maryland. Even Delaware, the second smallest state, has a state fair. Pennsylvania, for reasons unknown to me, has a farm show, and it takes place in Harrisburg in early January. 

As a student in the RULE (Pennsylvania Rural Urban Leadership) program I had the chance to go to the Farm Show to work in a food booth run by the Pennsylvania Livestock Association. So faster than I’d get thrown from a bucking bronco in a gay rodeo even if I were wearing my manly and now even vintage Tony Lama cowboy boots, I said yes. I thought it would be a great way to see the Farm Show and relive my junior high years when, along with other members of the social leper caste, I served Hawaiian Punch at junior high dances while the cool kids made out in the all-purpose room’s bleachers under the watchful eyes of chaperones who were probably packing flasks of whiskey sours. 

In case you were wondering, the mission of the Pennsylvania Livestock Association is to develop and conserve the full agricultural and soil resources of Pennsylvania by promoting the production and maximum usage of cattle, sheep, swine, and horse industries within the Commonwealth. Nothing exotic, mind you. No Andean triple play (llama, alpaca, vicuna); no bison, deer, or even heritage jackalope.  Venison tartare was not going to be on the menu.

Since I'd never been there before, I made sure to get to the Farm Show in time to do a little exploring before my turn slinging burgers.

One of the highlight of the Farm Show, at least for the producers of 6:00 p.m. news broadcasts in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is the butter sculpture.  Year after year fair organizers engage a sculptor to coax hundreds of pounds of Land O’ Lakes into some magical creation.  This year the butter was formed into a vision of a recumbent Paula Deen as an odialisque in the harem of Omar Khayyam. No, actually it wasn’t that, it was something along the lines of a tableaux vivant of a farmer with various agricultural products, rendered in a variety of different scales, just like the train set I had when I was a kid, where the engine dwarfed the Lionel City station and the little buildings of Plasticville. The sculpture was pretty cool, but I was a tad disappointed to learn that it isn’t solid butter, it’s an inch and a half of butter over some sort of frame. In art history speak, it’s not cast by the lost wax method, or even hammered as in repoussé and chasing, but created by a method known as “frosting”. 

The sculptor, Jim Victor, seems to straddle that stalk of celery that separates the visionary artist from nut job (so to speak).  He has a killer web site with great photos of more than a few choice food sculptures that make up his portfolio. While there is something charming about an NFL player rendered in food items you can buy at Subway, or Andy Warhol’s Marilyn in marshmallows,  my favorite was Salute to the Lunch Lady, sculpted in butter for the 2012 New York State Fair. Surely if anyone deserves a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant it’s a guy who can create a bust of Fidel Castro from vegetables. 

After the butter sculpture, there was a mushroom sculpture and a spud sculpture.  They get little play from the newscasters, but this year, at least, were more successful as works of art. 

Once you tire of ogling vegetables (and believe you me, there were some beauties in the varnished gourds category) there are commercial booths to take in, just like at a state or county fair. 

This woman was selling some sort of ratcheting pruner. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was the model for the Lunch Lady in the New York State Fair’s butter sculpture. She was working through those logs like a hot knife through, well, butter, but still had time to pose for a photo. I wanted to ask if she saw Lorena Bobbitt as a role model, but there were some actual customers there monopolizing her time. 

If you already have enough ratcheting pruners you can buy boots and license plate surrounds and pots and pans sold by guys wearing headsets like Madonna on one of her concert tours. If the pot-shilling booth babes would wear rocket nosecone bras as Madonna did when she was young enough to wear Revere Ware, I might actually buy their patented non-stick magic sauté and sometimes burn whatever you’re cooking pans. Then again, I might not. But I’d at least listen to the spiel and enjoy the Maidenforms in stainless with copper bottoms.

Since the Farm Show is really an indoor state fair, there are cows, sheep, goats, swine, horses, and rabbits, too. An entire room larger than a high school gym was devoted to poultry. There are chickens, chickens, and more chickens. Some even look like one of my favorite cartoon characters, Foghorn Leghorn. I say, I say, that's a joke, son.

I had barely scratched the surface of the poultry room when it was time to hit the Celebrity Grape Stomping.  Apparently someone thought this was a good way to promote the Pennsylvania wine industry—by having celebs crush grapes like Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance in the famous episode of

I Love Lucy.  Except for one State Senator who could have won the Celebrity Gum Chewing Contest, I hadn’t heard of any of the stompers, though my friend Patti pointed out Matt Barcaro, the eye candy on the Channel 8 News.  He didn’t have much competition in the looks department from his fellow grape stompers, but unfortunately there was no swimsuit portion of the pageant. He did, however, look as if he were ready for the new, improved version of Bert Parks to ask him if he were in favor of world peace. I didn’t get to see the talent segment, I mean his stomping technique. Just before the competitors started stomping, it was time for my shift at the food court. 

The food court was really something--all the food booths are located in a food court bigger than any you'll find at an average sized shopping mall. My friends and I worked the 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. time slot, so when we started it was about as busy as it could get—dining fashionably late is not part of the Farm Show experience. There were a bunch of livestock based sandwiches, including roast beef, pulled pork, Italian sausage and beef sausage, hot dogs, and, if you didn’t feel like having your meet encased in a bun, lamb stew. Oh and there was a steak salad, but who goes to the Farm Show for salad? Sandwiches were $4, the steak salad was $5, hot dogs, $2.50 (same as in town, as the punch line of the old jokes goes) and pink lemonade $1.50.  It was somewhat low tech--there were no cash registers, just cash drawers, so you had to do the math in your head as you engaged in witty repartee with the customers (at least I thought it was witty repartee) as you called the orders back to the food runners. To say it was busy is an understatement. According to the Livestock Association, by the end of the Farm Show it had sold more than 7,600 hot dogs, 1,300 pounds of Italian Sausage and over 6,500 pink lemonades. I think my coworkers and I felt as if 90% of the orders were during our three hour shift.

According to the Farm Show program, I missed lots of good stuff, from the Farm Safety Quiz Bowl to the Celebrity Cow Milking and Draft Horse Pleasure Show. So I’ll go back next year, hopefully in time for the Celebrity Putting a Whoopee Cushion Under Your Unsuspecting Mother Competition. That would really be my idea of fun.  

Holidays for Dummies

Christmas was earlier this week and like so many of you, I had the opportunity to spend some time in the bosom of my family. We exchanged gifts, had dinner, and did the over the phone speed dating thing with those who didn’t make it back to Centre County for the holiday:

Hi (insert relative's name here), how are you?

Did you have a nice Christmas? 

Wow, Santa brought you a (insert name of big ticket item you just overheard, e.g. drill press, Hurst shifter, pallet of ammo) and Smart Wool socks?

OK, I’m handing the phone to Carolyn now.

As Bryants, it's important to pass the phone off before any actual feelings kick in.

Next year we'll be doing the ritual by text message so there is less of a chance of actual emotional connection. There's no need to get all touchy-feely just because it's a holiday.

I’m only a little sad that my sister didn’t alert me to Christmas morning's annual display of machismo—as in chopping, splitting, and stacking firewood. She and our brother (and the brother’s GF) dispatched entire pickup truck load of firewood without my help. I’m not sure if they thought I would I would bring down the testosterone level or increase the klutz level, but the answer, of course, is both.

However, had I been splitting and stacking firewood with my two grown nephews, we would have no doubt re-kindled (pun intended) the conversation we always have when we split and stack firewood, which we've done more than a few times. Sooner or later (actually, there's no later about it, it's always sooner) someone brings up Andrew Jackson and the relationship of his nickname "Old Hickory" to his sexual prowess. Cialis didn't invent the four hour erection, if you follow my drift. Wait, you didn't learn that in school? Yes, in our telling he was practically the Ron Jeremy of The War of 1812, giving new meaning to the "Era of Good Feelings".  American history doesn't have to be boring!

Back to the holiday celebrations. During dinner we took a break from talking about NASCAR, guns, flatulence, and the history of executions in Centre County (you think I'm making this up, don't you?) when my siblings and I discovered that we shared a common interest: discount emporium Ollie's. The home of "good stuff cheap". 

"Good stuff cheap”. This, of course, translates into colloquial English as “stuff that I can’t believe that they even manufactured much less expected some schmuck to buy and it fell off a truck, too. Cheap-ish.”  Actually, I’m quite thankful that we still have places like Ollie's. It demonstrates that in an age when Walmart knows everything there is to know about the American consumer, other than how to get people to stop dressing like the People of Walmart, it’s a treat to go to a store where crazy is the name of the game.

My brother Jim regaled us with the story of going to a “private sale” at Ollie’s. He gets invited to these A-list events since he’s a member of “Ollie’s Army” along with the spousal units of high ranking Penn State officials and people who are neither fashion forward nor photogenic enough to make it into "People of Walmart."  My pre-Christmas foray to Ollie's wasn't exactly filled with face time with bold faced names the way his was, but it was still a good time.

Ollie’s is a great place to go for inflatable Christmas decorations. Who would have thought that the world needed an Inflatable Lounging Snowman with a come hither look. I don't know about you, but I don't like it when a snowman undresses me with his eyes.

What do snowmen do all day that they need to spend time lounging?

In addition to inflatables, there is a selection of books, including a Christian section. 

You have to go to Volume Two of "Sexy Christians" for the discussion of cruising people in the Communion line. 

Previously I've only had religious experiences with layouts in certain men's magazines.

And then there’s the rug section, also known as your cultural sensitivity headquarters. I think the guy in the sign would get better performance out of that flying carpet if he were wearing those shoes that curl up at the ends. 

As you await my next blog post, I have thoughtfully prepared a reading list of items that you can find at Ollie's.

 These are just the warm-up act.

Chapter 1: Why? Chapter 2: Why Not? Chapter 3: France and Jerry "Le Nutty Professeur" Lewis.

Does it really get any better than Nostradamus for Dummies?

Why yes, it does.

Chapter Headings include: Marry A Girl, Marry Her Family--Especially in West Virginia;  It's Not Me, It's You. It's You Alright. Definitely You; and I'm Not Going to Say It Except This Once, But I Told You So.

Gosh, being single never felt so good.

Oh, and how could I forget?

Happy New Year!