Cheers! My bartending stint is over

(692 words)

Well, cancel the tour buses bound for Latrobe. Tell TMZ they’re too late. The great Chris Rodell Bartender experiment is over. My brief tenure has come to an abrupt end. They were six of the best nights of my life.

Well, six of the best sober nights of my life.

How did I find out? Did a co-worker spill the beans?

No — and Pond beans, by the way, are the best damn beans in town!

What happened was I walked in to pay Dave my rent and back behind the bar was a beautiful young girl in a pretty dress.

I took one look at her and understood I never had a chance — and not just because it’s been years since I could fit into a dress like that.

I know this girl. She’s been to my house. She used to babysit our daughters.

Now, there’s a chance she’s gonna be babysitting me!

And I thought I had a disorienting career trajectory.

She’s the daughter of Dave’s girlfriend and has for years tended bar at another joint to pay for her nursing tuition. A dispute with her crabby boss led her to ask Dave if she could work some nights here at The Pond.

She’s a great girl and I’m very happy she will be in there to inebriate me and my buddies. Her boyfriend is going to be working some nights, too. It’ll completely makeover the bar’s personality and give it a welcome injection of friendly new blood.

It’s been the most tumultuous summer I can remember at a place I go to seek sudsy serenity.

A good friend of ours suddenly quit after 12 years. Dave asked if I could step in to help. Even though it’d been 27 years since I’d lasted tended bar, I said yes right away because saying no to Dave in that situation would have been like Rudolph saying no to Santa.

What will I miss?

• Telling my wife and kids I was going out to spend the night at the bar and knowing they’d look at me with a sense of pride, rather than typical shame.

• Tips. I don’t care how much dough you make, a job where you walk out the door with your pocket stuffed full of cash always leads to a bounce in your step. 

• Telling people I had a job. Telling people you’re a bartender is so much more concrete and respectable than saying you’re a writer, a job description that immediately makes most decent people suspect you’re either a snob or a scam artist.

• Anticipating how much more interesting "Take Your Daughters to Work" day was going to be for my girls.

• Free food and drink during work hours!

What I won’t miss:

• Standing. Second to any movement, standing is the least natural human posture. For me, standing behind the bar for five or six hours was very taxing and another reminder why it’d never be a good idea for a guy like me to enlist in the armed services.

• Trying to remember customers’ names. I wish I could remember names the way I remember lines from funny movies. I can quote verbatim the entire dialogue from movies like “Slapshot,” and “The Naked Gun,” but can’t remember the names of a friendly couple ten minutes after they’ve ordered their pizza. It’s especially embarrassing working with Dave and everyone else seems to excel at remembering names.

• Watching my friends go out to another bar without me. On Friday nights, a bunch of us like to go down to DiSalvo’s Station, a fancy restaurant with a cigar bar, and have a good smoke. I was crestfallen the last two Fridays to hear my friends say they were going to go to have fun without me. Yeah, right. As if.

• Thinking about the bar more than I think about the blog. This is the sixth bar-dominated blog post in four weeks. That’s way too much. But I found many of the topics too compelling to ignore. I hope you agree and thank you for your indulgence on the topic.

So, tonight the natural order will be restored.

I’ll be in the bar, not behind it.

That’s The Pond, a place where everybody knows your name.

Everybody but me.

Related . . .

About those rumors I’m buying The Pond

“Sing me a song, you’re the bartender”

How I nearly quit my bartending job after Day 3

The Pond’s new bartender: me!

Regular bar patrons need personal seat licenses

Latrobe abuzz: Who'll appear in Palmer bio? (besides Palmer)

(692 words)

I wonder if Arnold Palmer’s as nervous about the three-night bio-extravaganza devoted to his life as I am about possibly appearing for maybe 20 seconds in the Golf Channel program.

I doubt it.

Some of you may will recall my August stories when I wrote the network was in Latrobe to film Palmer stories.

I mistakenly thought it would be cheesy filler for around Palmer’s September 10th birthday when he turned 84.

Wrong!

The producer told me they’d be jetting around the world for the next six months interviewing global dignitaries about their Palmer recollections.

But they were starting at The Pond.

So that was very cool.

Due to my associations with both Palmer and The Pond, I was to act as a sort of emcee. I’d make a few introductions and conduct on-camera interviews about what Palmer meant to Latrobe.

So it was a really great night. They filmed for about five hours, we all had a lot of laughs and we all got a little drunk for free on the Golf Channel’s generous tab.

It worked out even better for me.

They gave me a Golf Channel ball cap!

Palmer, incidentally, is a founder of Golf Channel and is apparently casual about obvious conflicts of interest. So it’s safe to assume those expecting some kind of hard-hitting exposé about Palmer never fixing his divots will have to look elsewhere.

But as the Sunday post-Masters debut approaches I find myself grappling with an odd sensation in my stomach. It is full of butterflies.

This would be disconcerting for anyone, but for me especially because my stomach is wondering why it is full of butterflies instead of beer.

My stomach’s very confused.

See, no one’s ever told me there’s a chance I’d ever be on national TV doing anything. It’s likely to be the most-watched program in the channel’s history.

And, guaranteed, everyone I know who golfs is going to be glued to the set. That’s a lot of people.

Golf and the social interactions to which it inevitably leads has been a big, joyful part of my life.

What if they use the dialogue where I reveal how being such close associates with Palmer has been one of the best parts of my career? Or about the times Palmer’s bestowed fatherly advice, or the warm bond we’ve forged over these past 10 years.

So an old friend might be watching and say, “Hey, hon, remember that Rodell kid  from the ‘80s I used to golf with and then go straight to the bar? He’s still in there.”

Editors at prestigious golf magazines with whom I once worked might be watching and say, “Well, he may have been BSing about his ability to write a coherent sentence on deadline, but I guess Rodell wasn’t lying when he said he knew Arnold Palmer.”

Arnold Palmer might be watching and say, “Who the hell is Chris Rodell?”

We’ve heard the producers shot over 3,000 hours of film. They were in The Pond filming for about five of those hours. Of that time, I was probably filmed for about 40 minutes.

So the odds of me being on for even a little bit are really pretty slim.

But — who knows? — maybe I dazzled. Maybe they’ll devote an entire episode to my insights.

Maybe I’ll get discovered. 

Maybe a publishing house will contact me with an offer of $100,000 to write the definitive Palmer biography.

Maybe some Hollywood producer will say, “By God, let’s get this dashing Rodell character to play Palmer in the biopic!”

Of course, I’m getting way ahead of myself.

I’ll be happy if even a few moments of my talk air.

And nothing will please me more than if the show features my good friends, Dick and Dave Carfang, and their great bar that’s been another Latrobe icon since 1954, almost before Palmer was old enough to legally drink.

See, I figure nothing that airs on the Golf Channel homage will change the fact that I’m already coming out ahead.

Because nothing they can say or do now will make me give them back their hat.

Related . . .

The Golf Channel doing Palmer interviews at The Pond

Golf Channel at The Pond: a recap

Arnold Palmer NOT attending my book signing

Arnold Palmer gave me boogies on Monday

Interviewing Arnold Palmer

Arnold and Elvis: cool things raining down on me

Sunday encore: A sexy ode to Heinz ketchup (2011)

So how do I pick which stories to showcase on Sundays? Usually, it’s when the stats page shows me that some old post has been organically drawing a audience all on its own. It often happens for no apparent reason. Like why would anyone on earth pick up on this story about the speed of ketchup from Oct. 2011? It makes no sense. But more than 50 people latched onto this story this week and started sharing it with friends.

I can’t explain it. All I can do is run it up the flagpole once again and hope others will salute.

Tune in tomorrow when I’ll be writing about my worst book signing ever. It was yesterday!

(585 words)

So I had this news clip on my desk for about the last three months. I’d pick it up and look at it again and again. It seemed too trivial to indulge with a full post, yet too fascinating to dispense with a tweet.

But I can’t shake its import. I must share.

Here goes: Heinz ketchup travels at .028 miles per hour.

I can only assume that’s in the passing lane in front of me with its blinker on.

If it goes any faster than that, it’s deemed unworthy of Heinz and told to take a hike -- or do whatever fast ketchup does when it’s asked to depart the ketchup plant.

This is what I call a brain barnacle. A power sprayer couldn’t now nudge the nugget off my noodle.

I’ll remember ketchup is slower than slugs (.03 mph) long after I’ve forgotten birthdays, anniversaries and any obligations to people foolish enough to have lent me loot.

We in Western Pennsylvania have a visceral kinship to heirloom Heinz. It’s in our blood which, given the dynamics of the condiment, may explain why Pittsburgh still seems 25 years behind hip places like Nashville and Austin.

I guess I bring this up now because my wife and I witnessed Dave the bar owner orchestrate what’s always seemed like sexual intercourse between two identical bottles of Heinz Ketchup.

It was lunch last week and Val and I were sitting at the bar watching “The Price Is Right” Showcase when Dave began distracting us by carefully mating two bottles together in what I guess was some sort of missionary position. Or maybe that description’s misleading.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it Heinz 69.

It was like watching one of those nature programs where they show a mare being artificially inseminated.

The top bottle was mounted upside down above the recipient. There’s even an implement conceived for the job. Identical saddles link the two to ensure a successful coupling.

It’s a little white plastic thingy. Dave told us its name, but it didn’t stick. I know it wasn’t something catchy like “The Ketchup Ketchdown!”

The bottom saddle has a little two-inch wiggle post that goes up into the opening of the upper bottle to allow Dave to give natural gravity a poking assist.

Can you see why I was thinking sex not Showcase?

Like any busy restaurant owner, it’s something Dave’s probably done a thousand times, but I was disappointed at how clinically he went about it.

There were no introductions. No coaxing. No romance.

It’s this kind of deep thinking that convinces me I should have become a Heinz Ketchup timer.

It’d give me a lot of time to encourage ketchup it’s in its best interest to just slow down and take it easy, words of wisdom I frequently share with people I see spanking ketchup bottoms with a ferocity that would get them tossed in jail if they ever tried it with their moronic children.

I’d like to be the guy there with a stop watch scolding ketchup that’s racing along at 1 mph, “Whoa, man! What do you think you are, salsa?”

Like so many of the political leaders I admire, Heinz Ketchup is tolerant of same sex relationships and intolerant of Type A personalities who’d use shifty means to race ahead of the rest of us.

It’s the only condiment I’d vote for it if only it would let me.

Alas, Heinz Ketchup will never run.

Related . . .

America’s Biggest Hamburger & America’s Biggest Ham

Sweetness! Free Wendy’s for life

Straw wars! Battling insidious waste at McDonald’s

My new roommate just moved in!

(926 words)

That the long-rumored change we’d for months discussed was finally taking place was evident in that there was now a new toothbrush hanging up in the little bathroom right beside mine.

My new roommate is here!

I haven’t had a real roommate in, gee, 25 years. My wife doesn’t count.

There’s a vast difference between a roommate and a spouse. 

Spouses argue about life decisions. Roommates argue about whose turn it is to buy the toilet paper.

A good roommate implies a certain level of carefreeness.

There’s nothing carefree about sharing living quarters with a husband or wife. There are rules. You’re building toward a future. You’re sharing the workloads, being responsible and often raising children.

That sounds burdensome to singles, sure, but on the plus side there’s a lot of obligation-free sex.

I’ve never once had sex with any of my old roommates and don’t anticipate having any with Dave.

But, hey, he’s only been here three nights and who knows what the future holds!

So how did it come to this?

That this is going to sound like the premise for some stupid sitcom is inevitable.

See, Dave owns the building. Downstairs is The Pond, the bar he and his family have run for 60 years.

Upstairs is one of the three little apartments I’ve rented for cheap for seven years. The apartment has two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. I use the one room for an office, the other for storage.

And Dave is beloved. His is a true pub, short for “public house.” Everyone who walks through the doors is welcomed by name and made to feel right at home.

He lives about 25 minutes from the bar. He has a girlfriend in town, but their relationship is at times tumultuous. 

Now, in a recent development he was ordered to surrender his driver’s license to the commonwealth for one year.

Feel free to judge him. I won’t. I find the nation’s DUI laws to be an excessive money-grab that do little to deter problem drunks and more and more seem unconstitutionally prejudicial against the people with whom I enjoy having a drink.

The line between the good and the guilty continues to narrow.

So here he is without a license and obliged to run a business which requires him to be on duty some mornings at 8 a.m. and not depart until 2 a.m. the next morning.

What was he to do?

The only sensible thing was for him to spend some necessary rack time in my “spare” room. Now, Dave, bless his heart, was worried him staying in my office might be detrimental to how I work.

One of the most confounding facts about my existence is how people think my kind of writing requires intensive concentration in distraction-free surroundings.

Haven’t they read my blog? It’s not like I’m up here composing brain surgery instruction manuals.

C’mon, I could write this stuff while watching cartoons. Heck, watching me write this stuff would be like watching cartoons.

There’s always loud music playing. I type some sentences and get up and juggle my little bean bags. I sit down and type some more sentences. I get up and chip some golf balls against the wall, etc.

I wrote one 800-word blog last week in between while I was standing up and trying to play “Yankee Doodle” on my armpit.

And Dave seems to keep forgetting the depth chart here at The Pond. He owns the building. I rent here.

He’s the primary bartender and decides in what order who gets served. I come in and sip for long as he decides I’m still worthy of his pour.

He is essential to this landmark tavern. Sure, I compose all the nifty tweets that appear on the bar’s electronic chalk board but it’s not like there’s a dearth of 140-character wit in the world. Would people prefer Conan’s tweets to mine? Let’s see . . .

Conan: “I just found out my autocorrect has been programmed by John Travolta.”

Me: “Man, the only animal who spends most of its time stationary on its butt, is also the only animal to spend billions each year on footwear.”

Not a chance. #SuckItConan

All my buddies have a vested interest in ensuring that Dave is rested and happy. Imagine the backlash if I said, no, sorry, what I do is too important to risk petty disruptions.

And what kind of friend would I be if I refused him or any of our other friends in need?

Plus, I wisely foresaw advantages to having my favorite bar owner as my roomie. For instance, I might one day open my little fridge and find a six pack of Duquesne Beer chilling in there.

I’d be obliged to take the rest of the day off!

In fact, the perks became apparent this morning.

Dave found some contraband Gibbles Potato Chips -- “Nibble with Gibbles!” -- and brought them upstairs for our private consumption.

Two big bags!

Gibbles has been out of production since 2012 so this is the bar equivalent of finding two Faberge eggs rolling around on the floor beneath the pizza oven.

Plus, I’m looking forward to doing all those things all roommates do. We can sit up for hours drinking beer, talking baseball and girls and what our lives would be like if either of us ever decides to get a real job.

So it’s so far so good. We get along great and we’re well into our fourth day as roommates.

Of course, there’s a chance bitter acrimony could still ensue.

We’re just about out of toilet paper.

Related . . .

I am now The Pond’s official Twitterist

Busted naked at work again

Celeb arrests prove DUI laws too restrictive

Office hijinks: I pranked the trash man today