Today it's Matt Lauer; When will a man ever accuse a female boss of sexual harassment? When pigs fly?

(625 words)

Our daughter, 17, asked me a current events question I’ve yet to hear posed by any of the deep thinkers paid big bucks to comment on the news of the day.

“How come there haven’t been any female bosses accused of sexual harassment?”

Because I was wearing my father face, I didn’t crack a reflexive joke, roll my eyes or snort. And I didn’t say the first truth that popped into to my mind, which was, “Because men will happily screw any woman for any reason.”

My verbal response was far more nuanced. I said, “Because most men will happily screw most any woman for most any reason.”

I thought it wise to give my answer a little wiggle room, but I was essentially advising her to watch out ‘cause men are pigs.

Today, wow, it’s Matt Lauer.

Will we ever see a story of a man who felt forced to have sex with a female boss?

Perhaps. I’ll bet there are dozens of enterprising reporters right now pursuing these man-bites-dog stories — and please don’t read anything bitchy into my handy news definition cliche.

It’s gotten so bad I fear if a woman or women don't soon accuse me of sexual harassment people will begin to think I’ve either squandered my life being disinterested in sex or am, worse, a gentleman.

Will any man sleep with any woman for any reason?

It’s beginning to seem that way. I’ve known scores of men who will literally sleep with any woman who’ll nod yes. Heck, it’s not uncommon to hear rural arrests of men apprehended seeking carnal comforts from gentle farm animals.

And at what point your gaze begins drifting away from match.com and begins casting a discerning eye out toward the nearby pasture I cannot fathom.

It is curious we’ve yet to hear even one story of a prominent female boss threatening a subordinate male with occupational retribution for not putting ol’ Percy in the playpen.

Statistically, there are more male supervisors overseeing more females, but that can’t be the explanation.

Are there scores of men sleeping with their female bosses out of self-preservation or because they get to brag to their male counter-parts, hey, I’m going heels-to-Jesus with the boss!

(Bonus points to readers who knew both sex euphemisms were cribbed from Woody Harrelson’s “Tallahassee” character in “Zombieland.”)

Like any thoughtful male, I did some soul searching over whether I was ever guilty of mistreating a subordinate female when I was in a position of power.

The soul searching lasted about 0.005 seconds when it dawned on me I’ve never once in my life been in a position of power over even one female. I haven’t had a job since 1992 and was an underling prior to that.

Occupational fecklessness, you see, is not without its hidden merits.

But it did occur to me that, lo and behold, I was twice brought to heel by better positioned females.

A Pizza Hut shift supervisor once told me if I didn’t stay to close with her on a busy Friday night she’d stick me on weekends the rest of the summer. The carrot sweetener was she’d get a 12-pack for us to split later in the parking lot.

It was a consensual no-brainer and to this day I’m probably the only middle-aged man who starts feeling frisky whenever he drives by a Pizza Hut.

The other incident happened when I was a lowly Latrobe bureau correspondent for The Tribune-Review. Complicit in the scandal was the pretty young Lifestyles editor.

I’ll spare you the unseemly details, but suffice it to say its revelation shocked the newsroom.

I eventually took the only noble resolution.

I married the girl.

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Trump-lovin' Tin Lizzy in news again

(795 words)

The avalanche of world-wide media declaring the Tin Lizzy is a bastion of rabid Trump supporters is clearly fake news.

How can it be a bastion of Trump supporters?

I’m still here!

Sure, on many Friday nights I’m outnumbered about 250-to-1 — but don’t believe the polls. And winning the popular vote is so overrated. Bigly.

Since just before the election, the Tin Lizzy and the nearby Trump House have been featured in news around the globe. That’s no exaggeration. Just last week, there was a film crew here from Germany.

To much of the world, Youngstown, Pa. (pop. 320), is Ground Zero for Trump supporters.

And Sunday, a front page story ran in my old newspaper, The Tribune-Review, under the headline: “Trump voters take inventory after his first month in office.”

The article quotes many of my Trump-loving friends and included two pictures that drew scornful remarks in the lively reader comments section including this: “These photos above are exactly what I've always imagined for a Trump supporting environment. So many racist hickabillies & elderly people.”

I take exception to the prejudicial jibes for personal reasons.

I’m in the picture!

That’s me on the right. 

Now, regular readers know I’m not a racist hickabilly. And I’m not all that elderly as long as you’re comparing me to someone like Santa Claus. 

I love the arts, baseball, my family, apple pie, philosophical conversation and politicians more apt to build bridges than walls. I love that my town produced both Fred Rogers and Arnold Palmer, the latter a Tin Lizzy regular.

And I love the Tin Lizzy. 

To my left is Buck Pawlosky, the man who’s owned the historic Tin Lizzy since 1982. He’s one of the world’s greatest guys — and I’m not just saying that because he could on a whim send me home in tears by announcing he’s turning my 3rd floor office into the neighborhood Hookah Hut.

And even if he wasn’t a great guy, he oversees three great bars and a kitchen that never disappoints.

Spending one night in the Tin Lizzy is like spending one day on Pittsburgh’s South Side. 

There’s the basement Rathskeller, the Main Street bar and Flappers. On a really good night I’ll hit all three.

Each bar is unique, each has something special to offer.

So the Tin Lizzy bars are like the people who drink here.

Sure, there’s a racist hickabilly here and there, but I’m not going to let their knuckle-headed ignorance spoil my tavern time.

As I’ve always said, if I confined my conversation to purely enlightened and sophisticated folk mine would be a very lonely existence and I’d have to stop talking even to myself.

Many of the people who are opposed to building physical walls along the Mexican border are more than happy to construct truly ugly mental ones between themselves and the neighbors they see every day.

Some of my friends were surprised I didn’t talk to reporter Kevin Zwick. Honest, I didn’t even see him or the photographer snapping pictures.

Had Zwick asked me for insights, I would have wisely told him all the ways I used to finesse the Tribune-Review expense account when I had his job and was given an assignment involving talking to bar patrons. 

But if he’d have asked me what it was like to be a liberal in the land of Trump, I’d have said I’d prefer it to being stuck on a bus with a bunch of New England Patriot fans. 

I foresee Trump either getting bored or overwhelmed when his evident neediness to be adored goes unfulfilled. Or maybe congressional Republicans will assert themselves when they sense future endangerment.

Or not. I’m no fortune teller. 

Until then, I’ll be happy here at the Tin Lizzy, now emboldened by an artful comparison a Facebook friend posted after seeing the story.

“I imagine you’re like Marlow, the protagonist in Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness,’” John K. wrote. “He’s an intellectual, philosophical and world-weary guy who goes deep into Africa and encounters Col. Kurtz, a European who has set up his own Kingdom of sorts among the natives. As Kurtz recalls the terrible things he's seen and done while living among the indigenous people he utters,'The horror, the horror.'” 

“Your forays deep into the heart of Youngstown calls to mind Marlow's own journey.”

“Apcalypse Now,” is based on “Heart of Darkness.”

I’ll take it.

So come visit. I’ll introduce you to Buck and some of our friends. We’ll have a great time, I promise.

Some mornings, I’m the first one here at 6:30 a.m. It feels like a privilege to be entrusted with the keys to a place so fun and interesting.

And I love the smell of taverns in the morning.

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An old paperboy delivers his newspaper lament

(645 words)

A younger friend recently asked where my wife and I met. I told him we were working at the local newspaper. And for the first time it dawned on me the story of our romantic coupling will one day soon require further explanation.

Something I’ve cherished nearly my whole life is going away.

And I don’t mean Val (last I checked, at least).

No, today I’m lamenting the apparent and inevitable demise of newspapers.

Many people, especially corporate beancounters, think the solution to declining readership is to make newspapers less like newspapers. They instead cater to people who prefer to get their news digitally.

But what’s even more disappointing is how newspapers are becoming openly hostile to those who enjoy getting home delivery.

It’s not unusual to see front page pictures with cutlines teasing readers to jump to the story — not on an inside page — but to the on-line version with all its tedious distractions.

So they want you to stop reading the paper you paid for and go to site most of them give away for free, the one where none of the industry geniuses have figured out how to earn so much as a dime.

Think I’m kidding?

Just last week the venerable Philadelphia Inquirer (third oldest U.S. newspaper, recipient of 20 Pulitzer Prizes) and its two sister publications were donated — donated! — to the non-profit Institute for Journalism in New Media, part of the Philadelphia Foundation.

So one non-profit is being absorbed by another and at this rate it’s apparent all I have to do to eventually own one of America’s great newspapers is just bide my time.

Did you know my first job was delivering newspapers for the now-defunct Pittsburgh Press?

I had one of the largest routes in the South Hills, 100 daily and 150 Sunday. I was in the 9th grade and making $100 a week; at Christmas I’d earn $500.

I remember thinking, man, if I can get paid this much to deliver the news, how much must they pay the geniuses who write it?”

In my career, I’ve only earned steady newspaper paychecks for five slim years, but I’ve always considered myself a bona fide newsman. I love newspapers and admire the people who put them together.

And I revel in reading a good paper. I savor them. I dart around between sections. I serendipitously discover stories I’d never find on-line.

So it hurts to see them going away or see them pricing themselves to a level that makes me hesitant to purchase. The daily Post-Gazette is now $1.50 a day. I feel like a chump buying it when I know I can get it free on-line.

The pain is particularly acute for me because my Mom feels the same as I do. She must have her daily paper. The problem is she is senile and is merely attached to the idea of getting a newspaper, even though she doesn’t comprehend a word.

“I have to have it to start my day,” she says.

It is her ink-stained security blanket.

And now the (somewhat) more reasonably priced paper, The Tribune-Review (75-cents), has ceased delivery to the 200-unit South Hills apartment where she lives. It’s true. You can no longer get the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review delivered in some places within Pittsburgh.

They say she should read it on-line, this to a woman who often gazes at the TV remote the way the ancients used to gaze at a solar eclipse.

Now I’m looking into ways to pay an exorbitant price to daily deliver a newspaper to a woman no longer mentally agile enough to read it, but feels inexplicably lost when it’s not there.

And newspaper can’t make money with devoted customers like that?

If only I could deliver industry-saving solutions to something that means so much to so many.

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Hats in heaven; another goodbye to another good friend

(572 words)

I never thought of wearing a hat in heaven until I saw my buddy Ed wearing his Sunday in his coffin.

It said “Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.” So people in heaven will know instantly, not only was he good on Earth, he was also very cool.

And even in death, he was.

He was Ed Guidas, 53, an owner of Mr. Toad’s pub in Greensburg.

He started out there as a bartender back in the late 1980s. That was back when I worked at the local newspaper, The Tribune-Review. The paper had a lot more employees then and we all seemed to have good reasons to drink every night.

So at about 11 p.m. after we’d put the paper to bed, the whole newsroom would pour into Toad’s to booze and bitch.

I think we all enjoyed Ed because he was as informed as we were, but didn’t share our warping cynicism. He was an appealing combination of tough, but sweet.

I’ve always said Ed could have presided at our wedding.

Because it was at Toad’s with Ed bartending that Val and I began to click. In fact, without Ed I doubt we’d have ever fallen in love and had kids.

There’s no way a girl like Val would have fallen for a guy like me if she’d been sober.

The local newspaper crowd began to change sometime after I left, but Toad’s never did. It remains a great bar.

I stopped in there after a book signing and gave Ed a copy of “Use All The Crayons!” I was hoping he’d like it.

He did, of course.

I think what many people fail to realize is how much people like Ed helped me write that book.

Not by offering suggestions or helping me craft ideas, certainly.

But just by living. Just by being someone whose laugh was so warm and wonderful you’d drive out of your way to share an offbeat observation in the hopes they’d find it funny.

It’s like that with so many of my friends.

Yours, too, I’m sure.

There’s just something about the laughter of a good friend that takes all your troubles away.

I hadn’t seen Ed in a couple years when I was at my old Pond office this summer and got a text from the owner saying Ed and his girlfriend were there and wanted to know if I was around. He’d been driving past and remembered I hung out there. 

I was and by chance Val was with me. She hadn’t seen him in years.

Well, we just had the greatest time (I wrote about a humorous aspect of it in the first link below).

I vowed that night to stop by Toad’s more often and, yes, that’s the kind of vow I honor.

I saw Ed twice in the months before his heart exploded on Saturday.

And, boy, am I glad I did.

Not because I told him how much he meant to me, Val and our friends. Not because we shared a soulful hug like you do with someone you fear you might never see again, which would have been too socially awkward.

But just because it let us do the things that make life worth living.

It’s not complicated.

It’s just fun.

So while you’re wearing your hat in heaven, my friend, I’m tipping mine to you and your memory down here on Earth.

You will be missed.

Related . . .

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Will getting a harp help me get into heaven?

Sandy, our meteorological stimulus package

(808 words)

The pictures of the devastation fail most at conveying the swooning stink. That’s what I remember about being at ground zero of one of the worst hurricanes to ever hit mainland America.

It was September 21, 1989, that the eye of Hurricane Hugo passed over Charleston, S.C. I was there five days later.

It was during that slight sliver of my career when I was a truly bona fide journalist. I was writing general assignment stories for the Tribune-Review in Greensburg, Pa. Perfectly legit.

I know, what the hell was I thinking?

Hugo killed 27 in South Carolina, left more than 100,000 homeless and at $10 billion in damage became the costliest hurricane in American history. It still ranks 11th.

It was a national tragedy and dominated the headlines the way Sandy is doing today. People everywhere were heartbroken. And people wanted to help.

A hearty group of local firefighters led by Chief Eddie Hutchinson, a profane and rollicking force of nature himself, flew into the devastation armed with chainsaws and strong spines. They were there to remove debris, clear streets and reassure residents that America cared.

I was there to write about their activities and see if there was even a single restaurant in the storm zone worthy of an expense account splurge.

Sadly, I failed in part two of my mission.

But I did a bang-up job in my primary objective. 

And that’s what I remember about being on Sullivan’s Island, a barrier island in Charleston Harbor that back then resembled Jersey’s worst devastation.

It was on Sullivan’s Island where I learned a great literary trick that I still to this day use to great effect.

I would say something was indescribable and then show off by describing it in precise detail. What I wrote then could just as easily apply to Jersey City.

“The magnitude of the residential destruction defies description. There are just miles and miles of piles and piles.”

Like a lyric, the line has a playful Seussian quality to it.

I thought of Sullivan’s Island when I heard an over-excited reporter say “Sandy may have rendered parts of New Jersey’s shore uninhabitable.”

Right. Like people are going to stop wanting to wake up to look out on the ocean.

I hear experts say Hurricane Sandy is going to cost $50 billion dollars and I shake my head. My experience gives me a contrary view.

I consider Sandy a meteorological stimulus package.

I confirmed this with a successful businessman friend. He sells things like copiers to places like hospitals and universities.

“It’s like when I hear some big business say they made $100 million in 2010 and then made $80 million in 2011,” he said. “They say they lost $20 million. Well, no, they didn’t. They made less, but they made a lot.”

If someone needed a copier before Sandy hit, they’re still going to need a copier today. In fact, they might now need two.

Most of the people who lost everything are insured to the teeth -- and I’m not talking dental plans. They will be justly compensated, it is hoped, for their property losses. Those who are under-insured, by God, let’s help them. 

But I don’t think the men and women who are right now pumping the water out of New York’s subways are feeling insecure about their futures.

I think they’re feeling needed.They are working round-the-clock and are viewing the pre-Christmas overtime as a windfall.

Same goes for the people who run utility cable or provide building materials.

I’m reminded of a railroad executive who once told me why the railroads prefer to ship freight instead of people: “Freight doesn’t complain if you mistreat freight and if you damage freight you’re only going to get more freight.”

We’re, thank God, mostly talking about stuff.

My most touching recollection of my time on Sullivan’s Island was helping a family dig through the one-story devastation of what used to be their three-story home to find an heirloom box of their late grandmother’s keepsakes. They were frantic.

They found it. 

I remember them saying they were going to salvage sections of the hard wood floor and use it as a dining room table top for the home they were already planning to rebuild.

We are a resilient bunch of bastards.

Today Sullivan’s Island is once again a magnificent playground. The histories I saw make no mention that it was nearly wiped off the map 22 years ago.

I like to think New Jersey will recover just as magnificently. The houses will be rebuilt, lives restored, futures refreshed. Wiped out wardrobe shops will be replaced with shiny new ones with lavish features that today defy description.

There will be just rows and rows of clothes and clothes.

Man, I still got it.

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Weddings, friendship & a pooka named Paul

(862 words)

We spent a good deal of the Saturday wedding reception lamenting there’s only one Peirce sister left to wed. Three down, Kelly to go.

The sisters are uniformly vivacious, beautiful and fun, just like their mom, Patti. 

The weddings have been such joyful extravaganzas we were all sorry Patti didn’t have a dozen daughters.

Patti is married to Paul and Paul is my pooka.

More on that in just a bit.

I’ve lost track but Paul and Patti are on the verge of celebrating something like their 68th wedding anniversary.

Because theirs was a mid-70’s shotgun wedding, they celebrated both an actual anniversary and one they told their parents to avoid scandalous questions involving birthdays and basic math.

I remember one time Paul and I were sitting in a bar -- our natural habitat -- and hearing a guy instruct a college-age friend on the importance of proper birth control.

“Getting a girl pregnant in college,” he thundered, “can ruin your life!”

I’ll never forget Paul setting down his beer, turning to the pair and offering this emphatic counterpoint: “I got a girl pregnant in college  . . . and it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me!”

I met Paul in 1989 after bosses at the Greensburg Tribune-Review transferred me to work with him in the two-person Latrobe bureau office. Prior to that Paul’d worked with a string of co-workers whose extracurricular interests did not merge with his.

Or as Patti put it: “Before you got there, he used to always come home unhappy. Now he’s always happy, but he’s never home.”

It was the start of a nationwide carouse that’s lasted nearly 25 years.

What’s been most fun for me is to watch how peoples’ opinions of Paul have changed over the years even as Paul hasn’t changed one bit.

By remaining the way he’s always been, he’s become absolutely beloved.

I began noticing this a few years ago whenever friends started coming up to me whenever I was momentarily Paul-less.

“Hey, have you seen Paul?” they’d ask.

Of course, I had.

They’d want to know how he was doing. I’d tell them without exaggeration he was doing great. He’s one of the happiest men I’ve ever known.

“Would you please tell him I asked about him and that I said hello? Tell him I hope to see him soon.”

It was like Paul was Santa and I was the elf in charge of the naughty and nice lists.

Those conversations confirmed what I already knew: Paul’d become my pooka.

I didn’t even know I had a pooka until a couple of years ago after we took the kids to the Jimmy Stewart Museum in Indiana, Pa. From the DVD bins, I snagged the 1950 movie “Harvey.” Hadn’t seen it in years.

In it Stewart plays Elwood P. Dowd, an affable dimwit who believes he’s accompanied everywhere by a 6-foot-3 invisible white rabbit who shares his fondness for drink and laughter.

For the purposes of this story, I’m the affable dimwit, the most obvious casting since 1939 when producers of “The Wizards of Oz” cast a dog named Toto to play a dog named Toto.

Here’s what Dowd says about having Harvey:

“Harvey and I sit in the bars... have a drink or two... play the juke box. And soon the faces of all the other people they turn toward mine and they smile. And they're saying, ‘We don't know your name, mister, but you're a very nice fella.’ Harvey and I warm ourselves in all these golden moments. We've entered as strangers, soon we have friends. And they come over ... and they sit with us ... and they drink with us ... and they talk to us. They tell about the big terrible things they've done and the big wonderful things they’ll do. Their hopes, and their regrets, and their loves, and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar. And then I introduce them to Harvey ... and he's bigger and grander than anything they offer me. And when they leave, they leave impressed.”

That exact situation’s happened thousands of times with Paul and I, and Paul is bigger and grander than any 6-foot-3 invisible rabbit. It helps we’re both attentive listeners.

I admit to growing misty at Meghan and Ryan’s wedding watching Paul walk his youngest daughter down the aisle and later hearing all the warm tributes to this most happy bride’s parents.

It’s been a real privilege for Val and I to be part of their lives and to watch Paul and Patti raise Tiffany, Lindsey, Kelly, and Meghan from precocious and engaging children into joyful and successful adults, two of them now parents themselves.

Spoiler alert:

“Harvey” concludes with Dowd selflessly giving the warden of the mental hospital from which he’s just been liberated permission to take Harvey with him.

But Harvey has other ideas.

He chooses to stay with Dowd.

I guess that’s the way it is with all the great pookas. They’re too important to too many to keep all to yourself.

You just have to thankful any time the big pooka chooses you.

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