Oscar flub happened to me in '06

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People still buzzing about the incomprehensible Oscar best picture flub.

“La La Land” director Damien Chazelle must still be feeling emotional whiplash, which must be oddly familiar because his breakthrough hit was an outstanding 2014 emotional hit named “Whiplash.”

People speculate it must have been devastating to have been told you were going to win a prestigious award and have it been cruelly snatched away.

Oh, it is.

Happened to me in 2006.

It was way back when I was still quasi-legit as a professional writer. I was doing features for a truly legit outlet, Pittsburgh Magazine, which was paying me a truly legit wage.

It was two years before I began blogging when the truly quasi began to overwhelm the legit.

I was doing the magazine’s “BackTalk” column, slice-of-life features about interesting locals. Pittsburgh is full of raucous characters and the column was well-received, enough so it was nominated for a prestigious Western Pennsylvania Press Club “Golden Quill” award.

I remember the awards ceremony being a swanky affair at what was then the Pittsburgh Hilton. I was having a pre-dinner drink with a board member who congratulated me on my win.

“You mean on my nomination,” I corrected.

“No. You won. I saw the list. Congratulations.”

I was startled. It wasn’t the way I wanted to find out. Now, instead of an authentic reaction I’d have to fake emotion in a room full of real journalists who in the not-too-distant future would be accused of promoting in fake news.

I began to game plan my acceptance speech and the degree of strut cockiness I’d use on my way across the stage.

I had it all worked out by the time my category was announced.

And the winner is …

Not me!

I hadn’t begun rising from my chair, but my knees were in the process of straightening. 

I glared across the room at my guy. He was looking right back at me. He was shrugging, his expression one of bewilderment.

He later swore my name was written beside “Winner …”

Well, let me tell you, I wound up getting pretty drunk that night which, by the way, is exactly what would have happened had I won so it was all a bit of a wash.

None of that, however, is what makes this story interesting.

What does is the identity of the actual winner.

It was Teresa Heinz!

It’s true.

If I’m “Eight Days To Amish,” Teresa Heinz is about 10 million light years from them.

The matriarch of the $1.6 billion Heinz family, she’s the Mozambique-born widow of Sen. John Heinz III and current wife of 2004 presidential nominee and recent Secretary of State Sen. John Kerry. She’s a philanthropist/environmentalist/educator/business and stateswoman whom I admired for referring to creepy Sen. Rick Santorum and perennial GOP presidential candidate as “Forest Gump with attitude.”

I could see losing a Nobel Peace Prize to her.

But a Golden Quill?

Apparently, she’d written a column for her foundation’s magazine, “H,” that moved the committee, which — and I’m not accusing — may have seen some profit in kissing her golden ass by declaring her the winner over me, a man whose ass remains pristinely free of kisses.

Of course, she wasn’t there to accept the award, probably off bottle feeding endangered baby rhinos on some central African savannah.

I wondered in which of her five palatial residences she’d be displaying her Golden Quill.

I was more baffled than bitter. 

It all seemed so surreal.

I thought about graciously reaching out to congratulate her, proving I’m capable of some deft butt smooching when I see a potential payoff.

I thought maybe she’d be impressed with my manners and hire me full-time for her multi-million dollar foundation.

It was illogical thinking, sure. Pure fantasy, a frolic in cerebral la la land.

But who knows? It might have turned into some scratch.

I’d have settled for a chance to moonlight.

Related …

Getting real angry about fake news

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Oscars bore; movies suck

Roger Ebert move about life itself

Alien movies and the new Ray Kroc flick

I’m now a (sort of) Emmy-nominated voiceover actor

Darieth, don't go! When a local news lovely leaves

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Recriminations flew. People wondered who was to blame and if something couldn’t have been done to prevent the split.

And we all wondered who was going to get the kids.

The kids in this case being me, the guys in the bar and the hundreds of thousands of other viewers who have become attached to Darieth Chisolm, nightly news anchor for WPXI-TV here in Pittsburgh.

The station announced last week that she’d be departing after 20 years. 

I’ve seen the guys in the bar show less intense emotion regarding the dissolution of once-vital marriages.

Their own!

We really love Darieth.

Why is she forsaking us?

Conspiracy theories abound. I’m omitting names of the accused because this isn’t a court of law and because the accusers had absolutely no idea what they were talking about and because they were mostly Happy Hour tipsy.

“I saw it coming,” said one of the Joes. “One of her co-anchors made some crack about her hair. You should have seen the look she gave him. I knew then it was over.”

Another guy said she was unhappy that the weather guys are devouring the newscast. This is credible. Local weather is now about 40 percent of the entire 22 minute newscasts. It’s incredibly detailed.

Apparently Bob Dylan was wrong. We do now need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

For her part, Darieth is saying she has other interests and wants to spend time with her family.

I believe her. She’s never lied to me before.

When she said the Squirrel Hill Tunnels outbound would be closed on for the weekend, by God, they were closed!

I remain fascinated by the grasp the local news personalities have on our lives. The on-air talent, especially the females, have to be visually appealing and appear composed when saying things like, “ . . . and now it’s time for Jeff and the sports!”

Chisolm, dubbed one of the city’s most beautiful people by Pittsburgh Magazine, was described by one media reporter as “classy” and “poised,” two adjectives I did not hear mentioned by my admiring bar friends.

No, they described this accomplished professional woman in the same terms that local forecasters use when predicting the onset of an intense high pressure system. They said she was hot and steamy.

I wonder if the woman seeking to fill Chisolm’s anchor chair would ever think to include those meteorological-sounding adjectives on their resumes. Or does a really sexy glamour shot suffice?

It must be tricky for the men -- and I’m supposing they’re mostly men -- who do the hiring in broadcast news.

They can’t really say animal sex appeal is a key factor in their decision when it must be foremost.

Because they understand that men like my friends and I will stare at the television to watch a beautiful, busty woman tell us there’s a water main break in Bridgeville more willingly than we’ll watch a homely gal or any man inform us Jesus Christ is back.

But hiring, say, a stripper would be considered tasteless and might alienate the large percentage of home viewers who look to the local newscast as the surrogate family who are in many cases preferable to their actual families.

Their actual families may be dull, impaired by prescription drugs and surly at supper. Sure, our chipper on-air families are just as likely to be all those things, too, but they are gifted with an essential ability to conceal it when the lights come on.

That’s why local news people are so fascinating. Nationals, too.

We all wonder just what these people are really like.

Is Matt Lauer as big a jerk as we suspect? (probably). Does Megyn Kelly have a soft side? (doubtful). And is luscious Robin Meade, she who cheerfully toils in morning Headline News cable anonymity, really as dynamic and vivacious as appears? (Yes! Yes! Yes!).

Robin, we love you!

You, too, Darieth!

We wish you all the best and want you to know you’re always be welcome in all our homes and taverns where ever superficial men like me gather.

Just be sure to build in a little extra time for any east-bound visit.

I hear the Squirrel Hill Tunnel outbounds are closed.

Related . . .

Arrivederci, Ann Curry

Taiwanese animators coloring future news

Papa was a rolling stone

This should be one of the happiest days of the year for me because it’s maybe the one day where the girls don’t instinctively treat me the way Moe treats Curly.

But Father’s Day, for me, has become more complicated over the past two years. It’s a day where I’m supposed to revel in being a dad, but I’m often melancholy because I’m no longer a son.

My father died in 2004. You can read about him here in a story Pittsburgh Magazine headlined, “The Life and Death of Joe Pittsburgh.”

He was so fun, so joyful and warm.

Then I belatedly learned he was so much more than that.

I learned he was a liar, a deadbeat dad and for a few months back about 60 years ago a bit of a bigamist.

Now, I hold none of that against him. To me, Pops was tops.

It all started with the above-mentioned story and a grainy e-mailed picture of my Dad, at the time a skinny young man, looking dashing and handsome in swim trunks standing out in the middle of some unnamed stream. It’s one of the few pictures of him I’ve ever spied where he wasn’t holding either a golf club or a beer. 

A friendly woman from Florida e-mailed the picture and said she was doing some ancestry research about a Paul Rodell.

You don’t have to be expert in detective procedures to see where this was headed. Dad had fathered a love child years before he met Mom.

The woman -- my new half-sister -- said my father had gotten her mother pregnant when he was about 19 and she was about 17. These dates and ages are all ballpark, too.

They split up shortly after a shotgun wedding and the mother gave the baby to her parents to raise. At some point the mother returned home to raise the baby herself. And she married a wonderful man that my half-sister came to know as Dad.

“Whenever I asked her about my real father, she’d point to the man who raised me and say, ‘That’s your real father. You don’t need to know anything about anyone else.’”

But, of course, she had an innate curiosity and thanks to the wonders of the internet soon read about a man named Paul Rodell from East Liverpool, Ohio, who raised a son who believed the father’s only sin was he couldn’t help himself from routinely cheating at golf.

So I called my brother to share the news.

He already knew. After my father’s death, my brother had to fill out the death certificates that record for posterity the actuarial details of my father’s life. He was shocked to learn he was not Paul Rodell’s first born child.

There was more. He’d married another woman shortly after the birth of his daughter. If the records are correct he was for a while married to two different women at the same time.

“I never told you because I didn’t think you could handle the shock so soon after the funeral,” he said.

I always thought it was odd that Dad hadn’t married my Mom until he was 32. That was a long time to be a bachelor back in the 1950s. 

My half-sister and I are friendly and communicate via e-mail on occasion and through Facebook. I’d write about Dad more and in often glowing ways, but I know she sometimes reads my blog and I wouldn’t want to risk upsetting her by saying nice things about the man who abandoned her.

In fact, I’m in touch more with her than I am with my brother, with whom I haven’t spoken in a year since we had a bitter fight over the way I was caring for Mom when she was deeply distressed. He stopped returning my calls. He’s been up to visit once in four years.

Maybe he got tired of having a brother. Fifty years is a long time to be as close as we were.

The previous year he went through his second divorce in two years and remains under emotional strain so I forgive him in absentia for behaving like a huge ass.

It would kill Dad to know his sons aren’t speaking.

That’s why it nags at me that it didn’t kill him that he walked away from a precious little girl.

I do forgive him and wish for the love of God he hadn’t lugged that secret around with him all his life. 

Of course, it may very well have eating him up from inside. He was a very loving man who understood the difference between right and wrong.

A few years before he died he hounded me about getting him an internet list of all the people named Rodell in America. He was desperate to learn more about the family tree, or so he said.

Maybe he thought he could find this girl and apologize. But maybe he thought the second family, the one he nurtured, wouldn’t forgive him for the lie he lived.

That was only his second biggest mistake.

So there you go. I hope you have a happy Father’s Day and cling to the ones you love. 

And thank you for taking part of the day to read about some of the people I love and how they fit into what seems to me a fairly typical American family tree.

All forked up.

An alphabetically ordered world

I was hashing out the first week of school recently with a high school English teacher friend of mine. He said the year’s off to a great start.

The kids seem interested, well-behaved, etc.

Who’s in your home room, I asked.

“A good bunch. They’re engaged, respectful --”

That’s not what I’m talking about. What letter kids do you have?

“I have the As. I always get the As. My room is the first one in the hall and that’s where they put all the As.”

See, that bugs Rs like me. While the As could just coast right into their room, I had to walk much farther down the hall.

The extra distance naturally gave me less study time, fewer opportunities to catch up on homework and left me starting each day sweaty and fatigued from the extra exertions.

I blame the As for conversely adding to the reasons why I’ve never gotten very far since high school.

So I’ve never liked As, much less earned any.

I asked my friend if any of the Gs, Ms, Ts or other students called his room the A-hole.

He said no, but I think he’s going to defensively recall our conversation the next time some unruly kid glares at him and mouths, “A-hole!”

I wish more of the world went by alphabetical order. It would ensure we’d meet a better cross section of people.

For instance, I drink in a bar with some Bs, some Ss, some Ms, a pair of Ps, some Ks, a U or two and surnames covering just about every letter in the alphabet except perhaps Q and Z.

And the owner doesn’t discriminate. It’s not like if a neighborhood Quatrini or Zelmore walked in and the owner, a fair-minded C, would say, “We don’t serve your kind in here.”

But while our last names may be varied, we are alike in nearly every other regard. We’re all white, middle-aged, paunchy and have bad haircuts.

There ought to be bars that are ordered just like our old homerooms. It would be a boon to diversity.

That way I’d drink with a Spanish Rodriguez, a Jewish Rabinovitz, an Irish Rafferty, an African-American Robinson and maybe a Korean Rhee.

It would bring me into friendly contact with a whole rainbow of humanity, at least those whose last names begin with R and enjoy getting all pie-eyed every night from 5 to 7 p.m.

The start of school and homeroom order always has me thinking of Theodore Zyzak.

He for more than 40 years was the last name in the 1,853-page Pittsburgh phone book. He may have been the last name in all America. You have to figure if they started calling roll of everyone in America it would take until at least 2019 until he’d get to raise his hand and say, “Here!”

He always fascinated me because I knew in high school some mean boys -- I swear it wasn’t me -- who’d crank call him and ask was it was like to always be last.

Years later, I asked him that very same question in a professional setting for a Pittsburgh Magazine story I did about him and what it was like being first in last.

“Ah, it was awful,” he said. “I never got to enjoy those idle moments after they call your name. No, they’d call my name and it would be, ‘Okay, open your books to page . . .”

The worst, he said, were the inoculations. He’d have to sit there through escalating anxieties as kids were alphabetically summoned and would howl in pain or faint dead away.

He said the only time he ever got called first was when some sergeant felt creative and reversed the alphabet and ordered Zyzak into hazardous duty in Okinawa and later in Korea.

A proud Pole, he said he never considered changing his name to something like “Byzak” or taking the coward’s dodge and having his phone number unlisted.

It’s been years since we talked. I wonder how he’s doing.

For all I know, this noble elderly gent may have recently passed on and is awaiting heavenly summons.

I just hope this time the poor guy doesn’t have to wait an eternity to hear them call his name.

This blog a Pittsburgh 'best of.' No kidding.

Pittsburgh Magazine's new website flatters www.EightDaysToAmish.com by naming it one of the five best blogs of The ‘Burgh (*).

As honors go, I’m ranking it just behind the “World’s Greatest Dad” beer mug proclamation my daughters bestowed last Father’s Day.

See, both were given by demanding authorities.

In the same year that I got the best dad beer mug from my girls, 9 and 3, they’d also called me at various times, the “World’s Meanest Dad,” “World’s Dorkiest Dad” and “World’s Stinkiest Dad” (and that last one really hurt).

Either they couldn’t find beer mugs heralding those designations or I truly am the “World’s Greatest Dad.” Why would a $5 beer mug lie?

As for being one of the best blogs in The ‘Burgh, well, I couldn’t be more pleased. It’s a significant promotion for an aimless blog with no evident mission, no budget and certainly no income. Even more remarkable is that it’s produced by a man so devoid of ambition he’s held only three salaried jobs in his entire adult life and one of them was at the Pizza Hut.

To be named best of anything in Pittsburgh is, to me, a significant achievement. I think it’s the best city in the world and can cite survey after esteemed survey to back the boast.

What’s even more surprising is that my blog has absolutely nothing to do with Pittsburgh.

This is key and why I justify saying it’s one of the five (*) best blogs when the magazine lists 14 others.

Here’s the list from www.pittsburghmagazine.com:

Pittsburgh Bloggers - News of the area's blogging community, including a directory of blogs.
Bike Pittsburgh
Burgh Baby
Burghilicious
Carbolic Smoke Ball
Carnegie Library
Chris Rodell
I Heart Pittsburgh
Mondesi's House - Pittsburgh Sports
Only in Pittsburgh
Pennsylvania Haunts & History
Pittsblog
Pittsburgh Arts: Digging Pitt
Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy
That's Church

My breakdown immediately dismisses any blog that includes some variation of Pittsburgh in its title. It strikes me as just a tad too butt-kissy. Like if I capriciously changed the name of mine to “Eight Days To Pittsburgh” (a bit south of Guadalajara) just to score hometown points.

So removing blogs with “Pittsburgh” named derivatives bumps me clear up to number three. The listing appears alphabetical, but that could be coincidence.

But insinuating mine is among the top three seems more pretentious by two notches than saying I’m number five and I don’t want to appear greedy.

Experts say a successful blog ought to identify its target readership in the title. My www.EightDaysToAmish.com defies that convention as it seems to court the percentage of Amish men and women who access the internet to find stories about things like getting high in hammocks.

My chosen blog title is so confounding the Pittsburgh Magazine editors decided against even using it. They list only my actual name. I like it. Seems to add panache among the other worthy honorees.

Point of etiquette: I sent congratulatory e-mails to most of the others listed and proposed a link swap but didn’t hear back from a single one of them.

See, Pittsburghers can be a tough crowd.

Maybe they collectively feared I’d engage them in windy sermons about why they, too, should be eight days to Amish.

I ought to try that one day. I can be pretty persuasive and the world might be better off with a few more e-Amish.

Who knows? Maybe with a snappier name, I might be “best of” in western Pennsylvania places like Uniontown, Cranberry and -- who knows? -- maybe even Altoona.

So to the editors of Pittsburgh Magazine, I say thank you. Thank you for including my blog on your “best of” blog roll and for listing things in a way that allows me to shamelessly declare mine is a top five.

And, by the way, thanks to my parents for not naming me something like Zeke.

Just one question: When can I expect to get my beer mug?