My new office!

(1096 words)

The critical criteria for selecting a new office space were two: Would it allow opportunities for fun? And would it be a good place to fend off the marauding zombie hordes?

Because you just never know.

So my office search loosely paralleled the plot from the uproarious 2004 zombie Brit flick, “Shaun of the Dead.”

See, I’m not at all like the fancy writers, and by fancy writers I mean ones who earn their livings getting paid to write.

No, all I need is a quiet place I can make loud.

I don’t want interruptions or chat mates. I just need a small, still room for me, my laptop and my Bose wave radio. Then I just sit down, plug in and crank up (right now it’s alt-country/blues/rocker/folkie/geriatric hellraiser Ray Wylie Hubbard).

Loud music for me seems to vacuum away all the mind clutter that gets in the way of necessary thoughtfulness. I don’t know why that is so and I just hope my daughters don’t inherit the trait or else I’ll soon know the lyrics to all the songs by the band One Direction.

Because of past happy experience, I confined my search to places that served hootch.

Who knows? Maybe I’d write better if my office were above (or below) a place of worship.

But I know if someone religious-minded wandered by and heard me playing Ray Wylie Hubbard’s blasphemous “Conversation with the Devil” it might lead to a long, philosophical discourse that would sidetrack me from writing about important blog topics like how sad I feel when my socks don’t match.

And who the hell needs that?

So after about two days of exhaustive research, one of which I did while hungover, I found two places that fill those needs.

The first is Little Rock, maybe the world’s greatest bar. It has great live music, eccentric clientele, chummy bartenders and is owned by my old college roommate Quinn Fallon, who’s endeared himself to me by never once having charged me for a single libation.

But Little Rock — so named because Quinn believes every bar needs a “little rock” — had two logistical drawbacks.

One, it has no second floor. I didn’t ask, but I’m sure Quinn would have let me put a card table and a lawn chair up on the roof. I might have become a local tourist attraction.

But without walls, I might one day blunder right off the roof and OSHA would have its first case of a writer being hurt while in the act of writing.

Second, Little Rock is in Columbus, Ohio.

If I could pull it off, I’d gladly make the 3 1/2-hour drive to Columbus, spend an hour blogging, an hour drinking with Quinn and then heading home — really, being gone 9 hours a day is a typical existence.

But I’d miss daily watching “The Price is Right” and let’s be honest: I haven’t been able to confine my convivial drinking to one-hour-a-day since the 4th grade.

That left one obvious choice.

Hello Tin Lizzy!

My commute has been cut in half. I’m now just 1.2 miles from home.

My wife said I could walk.

“Hell,” I said, “I’m gonna zip line!”

Won’t that be cool? The historic Tin Lizzy is Youngstown’s landmark building.

Youngstown, remember, is the one-stoplight town just outside of Latrobe. Before moving up the mountain, Val and I lived just 1/4 mile from the Tin Lizzy from 1992 through 2007. It’s a great town and, in fact, is the birthplace and home of Arnold Palmer and summer residence of Fred Rogers.

Locals know Latrobe Country Club isn’t in Latrobe. Neither is Palmer. They’re both in Youngstown.

For seven wonderful years, my office was above a really great bar.

Now, it’s above three of them.

The basement is the Rathskeller (live music); the ground floor, a perfectly cool townie bar; the second floor is Flappers, a 1920s-themed martini bar. 

I’m now the entire third floor.

To enter I need to pass through four locked doors. It's like Maxwell Smart from the iconic “Get Smart” opening sequence.

It’s 79 steps to the third floor and I have it all to myself.

There are 11 rooms, but not 11 doors. It’s perfectly maze-like. I can get my daily exercise without ever having to leave the building.

There’s no shower, but the restroom gives the discerning urinator the choice of either bowl or wall-mounted receptacle.

I’m weighing an even/odd calendar routine.

Most of the rooms are like being in a bar’s attic. There’s old chairs, tables, paint leftovers, work space. One room has all the Christmas decorations so I can commune with Claus anytime I need a jolt of holiday spirit.

The actual office is one slim room overlooking Main Street. It’s a great view. 

The floors are badly warped so writing while seated on my wheeled chair is like writing on the pitching deck of a ship.

I was very pleased when my friend, Buck, offered me the space. He’s been running the building for, I think, 35 years. He’s gone way out of his way to make me feel welcome, as have his staff.

I got an unexpected call at 7:30 this morning. It was Sandy offering me coffee.

How sweet.

I screamed at her to not bother me again until she’d prepared a three egg-white, all-organic Western omelette with Bavarian goat cheese.

She hasn’t called back. She’s either insulted or is having a difficult time securing a Bavarian goat.

The most awkward aspect of moving has been answering so many questions about where I’m going to get drunk.

While I (mostly) exaggerate my drinking for blog purposes, people are concerned I’ll abandon The Pond.

It’s a tough call. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. All my buddies are at The Pond and I have loyalties there, but The Pond did evict me and I should convey some loyalty to the people who are welcoming me in.

I endure long stretches where my writing is roundly ignored, but I’m never lacking for interest in people who want me as a drinking buddy.

I feel like a highly touted college QB being fought over by competing NFL teams.

Not a draft pick.

A draft beer pick!

I guess there’s only one thing to do that won’t hurt anyone’s feelings among all the people who’ve been so nice to me.

Columbus, here I come!

It reeks of pretentiousness, but the reaction is convincing me what every bar really needs is a little Rodell.

Related . . .

Germanwings & The art of living suddenly

Excessive traffic lights drive man to drink

My history of drinking at or near work

Drunk on the job

“Office” Christmas party recap

I am being evicted from The Pond

Farewell Pond! I am outta here

Farewell, Pond office! I am outta here

(1,116 words)

These are the last words I’ll ever write from The Pond. The stakes are high, so this had better be historic.

Here goes:

Four score and seven years ago, Dave Carfang’s grandfather brought forth this bar.

Wait, that sentence contains some factual errors. Let’s skip over some stuff and go back to just seven years ago.

The birth of our darling new baby daughter meant our charming little home on Fred Rogers Way was getting too crowded. We needed bigger digs.

But because we are human and naturally resistant to disruptive change, we didn’t want to move far.

We found a lovely house in the woods just a mile up the mountain. The house was more spacious, but lacked an obvious work space where I could have the isolation I find necessary to write.

Back then I was doing mostly magazine writing and conjuring book proposals. And I was teaching creative non-fiction at a Pittsburgh university where I often told students blogging was a waste of time.

It doesn’t pay so why would anyone do it?

I was getting promising reaction to several book projects and was confident about my professional prospects.

Val suggested I look into getting a small apartment. 

I talked to one bar-owner friend and he said he had a place for $250. It seemed steep. Really, I didn’t need much.

So I shared my predicament with another bar-owner friend — and feel free to speculate how different my career would be if I didn’t have so many friends who owned bars.

“Two-hundred fifty dollars? I’ve got a place upstairs I’ll give you for free!”

That was Dave and, not wanting to take advantage of him, I shrewdly counter-offered $150-a-month and that’s how what would become the happiest epoch of my professional experience began to evolve.

Understand, it’s a mighty slim sample. I’ve only had three full-time jobs my entire adult life and one of them was at the Pizza Hut.

In fact, I haven’t had a job since 1992.

So whether or not this is a job is up for debate, but doing what I do from above The Pond has been the very best (look closely in the picture above and you’ll see me waving from my window).

I’ve been so happy here, and I think that shows in the blog, a nearly 1,500-post compendium whose history and character are indelibly linked with this great neighborhood tavern and the friends who come here to eat, drink and work.

In 2008, things were tanking. Freelance writing was becoming very unsatisfying and often was dependent on unfair circumstances.

I started to blog because, gee, I needed to do something when I came to my “office.”

I use quote marks because this has never felt like an office. To me, it always felt like a little boy’s treehouse or fort.

I decorated the walls and ceilings with keepsakes no wife would abide in her home. It was a great place to put up all the art the kids gave me.

Everywhere I looked was a reminder of something I loved with all my heart.

Now, my heart is feeling empty because the walls are barren.

I’ve spent the last week tearing the place apart, ripping down the pictures, the drawings and kiddie keepsakes that were presented with so much ceremonial distinction.

The eviction notice says I have to be out by tomorrow. So be it.

Moving the contents of even a shabby little office, deciding what to keep and what to pitch, is a stressful undertaking.

See, in some ways, my office had become like my presidential library. I kept many old clips and magazines from over the years in the vain belief they’d someday matter to someone.

Of course, now I believe the only things that will matter to anyone are “Use All The Crayons!” and this blog.

So well-crafted essays from prestigious publications I’d preserved for decades have diminished in value.

I pitched nearly all of them.

What hurt the most?

Tossing a four-slot toaster-sized stack of 1,000 National Enquirer articles into the township recycling compactor.

It felt like setting fire to 10 of the most interesting years of my life.

But I tried to look at it through the eyes of my children who upon my eventual demise will be burdened with sorting through all the crap.

Would they really be interested in reading the 1998 story I wrote under the headline, “Your pizza toppings reveal what kind of lover you are!”

I hope the stories they’ll want to most fondly remember are the ones I tell.

I sold the refrigerator, the filing cabinet, the shelves, the bookcase, the toaster oven and gave old Joe the rocker where we once gave parental comforts to the precious little ones who will always matter most.

Most of the rest will go into basement storage where it will remain untouched until we years from now pitch it all during the next stressful move.

I have a new place about which I’ll write next week. It may be temporary, but it will be spartan.

All I really need is my laptop, my Bose wave radio, a table, a printer and my squeaky old chair.

Hell, I might have to advance the name of the blog to “Two Days To Amish.”

I’ve been touched by the warmth and concern of so many friends who are reacting like me being evicted from my office means I’ll somehow be homeless.

They’ve offered spare rooms, garage space, advice and good wishes.

The eviction is part of the closing formalities. Bar ownership will transfer, or so I hear, sometime in August.

We’re all anxious. No one likes change.

I say let’s embrace it with cheer.

Maybe things for all involved will flourish.

Maybe the new owners will make necessary changes that will stabilize this beloved landmark. Maybe Dave will find he has a whimsical talent for painting landscapes and bowls of fruit.

Maybe the bar’s next chapter will be like the finale of “Mad Men,” where at their most trying hour every character found satisfying alternatives that in many cases surpassed the status quo.

Everyone but Betty who — spoiler alert! — dies of brain cancer.

So let’s not be mad, men.

Let us go forth and greet these changes with confidence that things will be better.

Thank you, one and all, for making all these many years of Happy Hours truly happy hours.

And let us together highly resolve that this bar, under which was once my office, shall have a new birth of soulful conviviality, and that the good times and memories of the Pond, by the Pond, for the Pond, shall not perish from this little corner of Latrobe.

How’s that for historic?

Related . . .

I’m being evicted from The Pond

The Pond is for sale! Anyone wanna buy a bar?

It’s a bobblehead world

Bar book signing Thursday!

The Pond’s new bartender debut … Me!

Regular bar patrons need personal seat licenses

“I love you, men!”

I pranked the trash man today

Someone keyed my car! Suspects abound

Thirsting for bar conversation

Zombies at The Pond

"Use All The Crayons!" YouTube promo (behind the scenes)!

(1,060 words)

First off, I think our my initial mistake was having Dave Carfang and I appear as ourselves in the “Use All The Crayons!” FAQ video we produced and posted last week.

We should have hired actors.

I’m thinking Morgan Freeman for me and Ellen DeGeneres for Dave.

Having the great Freeman, an Oscar-winning 76-year-old African-American, play me, a white 51-year-old blogger/author/worm farmer, would be controversial among people to whom race most matters and controversy sells books.

I could maybe have met Bill O’Reilly!

I can hear the questions: “Did you feel like you had to pander to the blacks?Couldn’t you maybe have just acted a little blacker yourself?”

And casting Ellen to play Dave would just have been funny so that would have been worth it.

As it was, in addition to acting, I designed and dusted the set, wrote the screen play, directed and co-starred. I almost earned catering credit, too, but Dave wasn’t in the mood for Frito’s. 

Oh, if only you could seen the conceptual version in my head!

It was going to be professional. Scintillating. Inspirational. At under 2 minutes and 30 seconds, it was going to be hipster snappy.

It’s none of those things. It’s verbose. Sloppy. Sluggish. At 6 minutes and 32 seconds, I’d say it’s kind of flabby.

It’s almost like I’m describing Dave and myself!

But it was economical. We did it in one take.

Of course, in fairness to guys like Spielberg, we weren’t exactly filming “Schindler’s List.”

As there is no additional footage over which aficionados can pour, you’ll have to consider this the director’s cut, the behind-the-scenes peek that explains what we were thinking.

And what were we thinking?

I think it was this: “This is something really weird for two adult males to be doing.”

So it’s a good thing I didn’t include a scene were we look soulfully into one another’s eyes and kiss.

But I was intent on having something on YouTube that might further my mission of snagging speaking engagements. I thought it would be helpful to have someone interview me and post the answers to questions any perspective event planners might have.

No detail was overlooked.

I made sure my big poster of the cover was in the background. That’s what they in Hollywood call “product placement.”

The video begins with me pretending to type something on my laptop, as if Dave simply appeared out of thin air. I must say, I think I look pretty convincing. But to be fair, I’ve been pretending I’ve been typing something on my laptop since 1992.

In the background, careful listeners will hear Bob Dylan singing my favorite line from “Where Are You Tonight?” the 1978 rocker from Dylan’s “Street Legal” album. Many people have heard me quote it when they say how great it must be to have been my own boss for 22 years.

If you don’t believe there’s a price for this sweet paradise

Just remind me to show you the scars!

I gave Dave two minutes to read over the script before we rolled. I knew he didn’t have much time. The Friday lunch crowd was starting to come in and he’s yet to making acting in my cheesy promotions his priority.

Nerves, unfamiliarity with his lines and having to read and simultaneously operate the camera are the reasons why the camera sometimes shakes so bad my head completely disappears from the picture.

You can hear the script rattling as he pauses to turn the pages.

It was so bad, YouTube noted the chaotic filming and asked if I’d like to apply a stabilizing technique to the clip.

Never. I was as always striving for authenticity and I’d no sooner stabilize the film than I would stabilize Dave.

Some of my favorite parts are when I forget my own answers to my own questions and offhandedly ask Dave for a prompt.

“So, what makes your book so special, Chris?”

I went blank and ad libbed, “Well, that’s a great question, my friend. But could you be more specific?”

“Sure! Do people often buy more than one copy?”

“Funny you should ask. In fact, I once sold 23 people 168 copies. One woman bought 150 for her youth group.”

That’s true, too. In fact, everything I say is true. It’s just that I say it in so many contrived ways it sounds like I’m really laying on the old bullshit.

My favorite part of the video occurs at the 4:18 mark when Dave asks, “A lot of people have read your blog, ‘Eight Days To Amish,’ and are curious about your office space here above The Pond. Mind if we snoop around a little bit?”

“Be my guest!”

This was the part I did my most detailed directing. I told Dave to take the camera and slowly walk around the apartment showing the layout and all the neat stuff I have on the walls and ceilings. I thought people would get a kick out of seeing what it’s like for me to work in what is in essence a giant scrapbook.

I even walked around with my hands up making a little finger box like I’ve seen the real directors do.

So Dave asks the question and starts to pan away toward the corner.

Then he freezes!

It’s like he’s been hypnotized by the Bose stereo cabinet (made it myself in 10th grade!) sits surrounded by 50 bright copies of the book (more product placement!).

It’s like watching a Derby horse that can’t leave the starting gate. Then he starts making little observational noises like, “Hmm,” and “Ahh!”

You can hear me faintly in the background shooing him away, “Move, damn it! Don’t just stand there! Go!”

Area casting directors take note: it becomes obvious he takes direction well, because he races through the rest of the tour so quickly you can hear him starting to lose his breath.

It concludes with me thanking Dave and inviting everyone to come visit us both at The Pond.

I mean everyone, but I’m talking specifically to you, Morgan Freeman and Ellen DeGeneres!

Until that happens, I’m thinking of other ways to entertain and enlighten our little audience.

You know what that means.

Yes, it’s almost time for the Chris and Dave Puppet Show!

Related . . . 

Giving away my book a blue chip idea

Golf Channel at The Pond, a snappy recap

Busted naked at work again

2009 office party recap

I pranked the trash man today

Zombies at The Pond

I am now The Pond’s official twitterist

Sunday encore! "The i's of my Apples!"

This one debuted about two years ago. I like it because I believe I exhausted every single iConic use of the now uBiquitous affectation.

Tomorrow I’ll be writing about the behind-the-scenes production travails of my latest YouTube video, this one filmed by and voice over co-starring my bartender, Pond owner Dave Carfang.

Have a great day!

Does anyone know what the “i” in iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc. means because iDon’t.

We have Apple to thank for making the language sound more selfish than anytime in spoken history.

It’s iThis and iThat. iMean -- Aye! Yi! Yi! Yi! Yi! Me thinks it’s too much.

iThought about writing this a couple of months ago, but kept putting it off. Then today, of course, when iStarted digging around to see what the now ubiquitous “i” means iFound iMissed the boat.

Paul Aertker beat me to it. He wrote this fun Yahoo story that appeared way back in September.

Aerkter writes: “Like everyone, I have run out of words to describe the awesomeness of Apple’s iProducts. iMean who doesn't love their iPod, iPad, iMovie, iMac, iPhone, iCal, iCloud, or even iPO?

iDo.

Standing in a sea of iShoppers, it hit me, really hit me. Everything was named, iSomething.

Why?

Before 2001, there was no iPod; there was no iAnything. In 1998, the iMac started the iEverything movement. Before that, Everything actually started with an 'e'.”

I’m generous in my attributions to Aerkter here because iWouldn’t want anyone to infer iStole his iDea, an act that would lead them to justifiably conclude iSuck.

In fact, iCulture has even shifted the very definition of “iSuck.”

According to UrbanDictionary.com, iSuck is more noun than verb and a catch-all pejorative for any Apple product. From the site:

“iSuck -- Any Apple product that starts with an ‘i.’ Mostly derived from conversations about the iPod: ‘Wow, I can buy an iSuck for $260 on woot.com!’ (said with a hint of sarcasm).”

George Orwell wrote of a day when an all-seeing Big Brother would watch everything everyone was doing, but iDoubt even he could conceive a day when we’d be seeing i’s instead of eyes.

There’s iThinkInc.com, an online marketing research firm, and iDrink, an on-line mixology site. And the delightful and profane iQuit’s worth a look.

The now-reeling Pittsburgh Penguins feature a team of young lovelies who clean the ice between action. They’re called the Ice Crew, but if I understand sports marketing -- and iDo -- then it’s a deliberate corruption of an innocuous term to provoke men into thinking about sex (iScrew) when they should be thinking about sloppy goaltending.

Works for me.

Some i’s pre-date Apple’s iMania and lack conventional iSpelling. There’s IAM, a French hip hop band whose name means in French ‘Invasion Arrivee de Mars,” (Invasion from Mars, Mars being a metaphor for Marseille).

Stock car race fans know IROC, the International Race of Champions, the oval-track competition that in 1985 became the inspiration for the popular Camaro IROC-Z.

Ido has been around since 1907. It’s a form of communication that aspires to become a universal second language for the linguistically diverse. The Ido Wikipedia entry says there are about 100 to 200 people on the planet who are fluent in Ido, which makes it iRrelevant.

Then there’s “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do,” from “Mama Mia.”

But iDigress.

I found a blog that seemed to have all the answers. It’s called “What does iPod Stand For?”

And you thought a blog named “Eight Days to Amish” takes narrow aim.

The site says:

“The iMac was the first Apple product to feature the leading “i” in its brand name. It was marketed as “The Ultimate Internet Appliance.”

And iApologize for all the iTalics. Hope they haven’t made you see-sick.

The “i”, it says, morphed into being more personal and self-centered, to me a sign of our increasing cultural iSolation.

Of course, that’s just me, one guy railing against the monoliths shackling the language.

iCan’t help it. To paraphrase an iConic thinker, “iYam what iYam.”

Besides the people have spoken. The i’s have it.

That’s enough for now.

I’m going to grab some breakfast to try and clear my mind.

All of a sudden I’m thinking IHOP.