Author: Stephen J Frankenberry

Now we all know that videos of people falling down and doing generally stupid stuff are often the viraly popular one but occasionally people are capable of some very cool things too…

So last week I made my yearly pilgrimage to NYC to catch my woeful Pittsburgh Pirates in Queens for one, sometimes two efforts of baseball indignity. This season it was two games to add to my string of losses while watching them live and further compound my misery. There was a 1-0 nothing, 10 inning loss in the first of four game set with the Mets where Chan-Ho Park came in a scoreless game and further exampled why Major League teams really need to stop paying this guy to wear a uniform. The second game though was a lot tougher to take. After briefly enjoying a five run lead in the fourth Pirates pitcher Paul maholm decided to throw batting practice while the defense decided to forget everything they learned in Little League. It wasn’t this that was so tough though.

Now I realize that I’m 46 years old and there are plenty of things far more important in this brief life than baseball, a lot of them involving trying to survive and remembering to feed the cats. But my love affair with my Pittsburgh Pirates Ballclub is something I can’t escape and has been ongoing now, winning or not, for 41 years or so. I guess I’m a true example of the loyal fan as the “winning or not” has been mostly “not” for most of those 41 years, but I still strap on my mental cleats and cup every exhibition season and look forward to another six months of knowing the names, numbers and watching the games, with tears or not. Baseball for some, is a passion that remembers the best times of youth and the dreams that can be associated with it as you pretended your favorite players in the backyard and played with all your heart on ballfields lost in time. However much baseball has sullied it’s own reputation with drugs and greed and hubris it is still, and always, baseball…a perfect game.

So it was this second game I made my way to, with Cumulus pal Jeremiah, at Citi Field, the third game in the 3 game series, that was extra tough because I missed catching a home run ball in the 9th inning by inches, twice, and missed the opportunity to relive a little those dreams. The disappointment I felt at the time and still do can seem kind of silly for it just being a game but in my six seasons of catching my boys live I have yet to see a victory (about 9 games or so I think) so it felt like I missed a gift the Pirate baseball gods offered up to me as a sort of recompense for my fandom travails. Those Bucco gods had Andrew McCutchen, Pirates center fielder, hit the homer right to me but I didn’t have my glove on, until too late, as I saw it coming our way. (This is the link to the highlight of that homerun).

http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=12114299&topic_id=8877442&c_id=pit

Again the silliness of a grown man’s disappointment of missing a ball in a game is evident to the casual, but to me it hurt and still does and all can say is, alas. But I still love my Bucs, winners or not, and I will be there at some point next season wearing my bright gold pullover and also my glove, at all times, hoping those baseball gods give me a second shot.

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Threw a dart at a time dartboard at my page tonight. A scroll down and a throw … from 2010 then it is, not quite bullseye but around a time where I wasn’t so single, where I thought of things that were couples …

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I came across a survey earlier this week about mom’s and how they prepare school lunches for their small people. Quite frankly I was surprised and even dismayed. You would think that Mom’s, being Mom’s an all, would be forthright and honest when it comes to a survey. It’s a survey, a poll of a sampling. Isn’t it supposed to be a true barometer of what the larger population thinks? They’re scientific and precise right? There can’t be any variables to take into account can there? I mean Pew surveys and others such like them are always supplying us with the real pulse of the people correct? Without them how would we, say, know how many people are actually texting while driving and applying makeup or eating home cooked meals not takeout, or voting for dick and not jane? We wouldn’t.

No, we rely on them to tell us where we stand on every issue under the sun from social to political to economic and, most importantly, as to whether we wear boxers or briefs or whether time is relative or something we just dismiss as a mere annoyance hoping our jeans don’t wear. We have to know if we are running with the pack or blacksheeping ourselves right out of the fold don’t we?

So the dismay I felt at reading this poll I mentioned earlier came from the true dishonesty of it.

Mom Central Consulting surveyed 13-hundred mothers to find out how they shop for their kids’ lunches.

Findings:
–90 percent of them worry about what to put in the lunchbox
–86 percent plan out their children’s meals in advance to ensure they eat a variety of healthy foods
–74 percent select items based on their nutritional value
–72 percent buy items with higher nutritional value even if it means spending more money
–79 percent opt for whole grain or enriched bread instead of white bread
–82 percent regularly pack fruit in their children’s lunchboxes
–76 percent opt for portion-controlled snack packs

Where was the 35% of them that checked the expiration date on the meat for that sandwich on stale bread and decided it was close enough?
Or, the 22% who went rummaging, last minute, through their purse for $3 for the school lunch, sometimes even secretly finding the money in the stash of ‘grandma’ dollars in their kid’s sock drawer?
Or, the 75% who hastily grabbed whatever looked edible and threw it in a lunch box with a Mountain Dew and some cookies just before the bus arrived?
Or what about the 12% that thought the kids ate enough at dinner the night before to make it through tomorrow’s lunch break?

The only one that seemed honest was the first on the list about mom’s worrying about what to put in the lunchbox. Well of course! My own lunch box has whatever wasn’t talking to me or crumbling into disappearance but I worry about it.

No, I think in light of Mom’s trying to paint themselves in a better light, we have to take surveys with a grain. A Gibraltar size one. So the next time you see, for instance, a survey that says Sarah Palin is really in tune with the heartbeat of the American people and you actually take it to be truth hit yourself with a brick and then, well just hit yourself with a brick. Then keep in mind that we are hardly ever told the true context of the survey and the responders: who exactly (were they escaped mental patients?), what (are they financially sound or just like the rest of us?), where (online, in the mail, at a mall, at a prison?), why (is it a corporate behemoth trying to justify bleeding us dry?) when (in the middle of a shootout after they had finally been caught?).

They are indeed only samplings and don’t necessarily speak for the larger public. Hell right now, however much I’d like to be in line with some of those wishfull thinking answer percentiles from the Mom lunchbox survey, I’m trying to find something for Jagger’s lunch tomorrow that isn’t moving. I didn’t get to the store today and my foot itches. How many of those survey answers took that variable into account?

Note: just kidding on the searching for something that isn’t moving. He has a healthy sandwich and sides in his lunch box for tomorrow and I threw in a Redbull and a 5 hour energy drink just in case he gets drowsy late in the afternoon.

Note 2: just kidding again. I didn’t get to the store for any Redbull or 5 hour energy’s.

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Note 3: my foot really does itch by the way

Next time that you’re stuck on the tarmac after overpaying for your ticket and then paying extra for your bags, pillow, blanket, peanuts, safety equipment and possibly even for wearing a jacket you might just wish these folks had taken the same flight. (after the plane finally got into the terminal all passengers were told they would be billed for the extra, impromptu or not, musical amenity).

…hello?…um…helloooh?

Funny but a touch on the itchy side don’t ya’ think?

My latest entry for the attic here is dedicated to my mom and mom’s in general (minus the mommie dearests of course, no offense ladies) and how, no matter how long it may take, you are always proven right. When very young, for instance, it didn’t take long at all to have your warnings of “hot!” realized. The same can be said of, say, “she’ll scratch you” or “continually banging your head on that wall to get what you want will just hurt.” Some warnings took a little longer to prove mom correct like the consequences of not brushing your teeth every day (hello Dr. Drill) or how crying wolf could and would eventually bite you in the ass.

But there were the ones that seemed to us almost comical because, in the infinite mistaken wisdom of youth, we all thought mom to just be old and silly and maybe just repeating grandma truisms. My favorite was always the “wear clean underwear” missive. Being a smart ass I always thought “well, if I do get in an accident, they’re just going to cut the underwear off me anyway, so what does it matter? What kind of embarrassment could there possibly be as I cling to life?” Thankfully after all these years I’ve never had any awful accidents (except for that perm in the late 70’s) that might raise the “wear clean underwear” issue. I’ve never had to have mom by my hospital bed crying hysterically, not over my possibly not surviving the night but instead my poor choice of unwashed fruit of the looms that won’t allow her to ever show her face again at the weekly English Club.

No, “wear clean underwear” always just hung in limbo and every time I didn’t I would return home with a sense of victory, though, thanks to you mom, that victory was always hollow as if I had dodged yet another bullet. (For those of you reading this saying “My god man! How often do you wear soiled underwear?!” Never, but I have left the house often wearing underwear that should have been cleaned a little more vigorously or was just practically ready to disintegrate). It wasn’t until a couple of weekends ago though, at the age of 46, that mom was vindicated, as moms usually are, when I went to the emergency room because of a distinct pain in my leg that had me, courtesy of surfing WebMD, scared somethingless of blood clots. Turns out it was varicose veins and me just getting old I guess, but when the nurse asked me to remove my pants and put on the very unsnug hospital gown she offered I remembered that I had left the house wearing a pair of Batman underwear. Kinda cool actually in a kid-like way with the Batman logo prominently protecting the front, but Batman underwear nonetheless. And, again, at the age of 46.

“Um…Frankenberry…you did say Batman underw…” Yes, and I’ll cut you off right there bemused and possibly frightened before you ask me more of the obvious. They were a joke gift as part of a birthday bushel of stuff from my Maria and the J.G. The two of them, not really knowing what to get me for said day (I’m the worst to buy for as I never really want anything) decided to just get me a bunch of small things which included, among other things, a Ronnie James Dio T-shirt, a Beatles coffee mug and…Batman underwear. I wore them this particular day for two reasons. 1: because I didn’t think Maria’s Jagger ever thought I would do so and 2: because a good friend was working his last day at Cumulus and I thought it would be funny to say I wore them to be strong so as not to pee myself from the heightened emotion. Didn’t seem so funny though as I stripped for that backless hospital nightie. They weren’t soiled and they weren’t falling off of me out of years and years and years of ‘guy can’t toss his old friend’ use but they were Batman pajamas. Did I mention at the age of 46? Mom? After all these years, you are again absolutely right. Proper underwear will be in order in the future. Love you too.

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Tomorrow a good friend and co-worker here in the building is taking off for greener (hopefully for him) and really damn hot pastures. WRRV’s Shmonty is heading out with his better half, Kari, to Arizona as she admirably reaches higher for her doctorate (serious envy on my part) and he accompanies her realizing the most important thing in life. To just say he will be missed around Radioville here is almost trivial as real friends and daily sanity saving constants are always missed in a much more profound way.

Being around radio for a couple of years or so I’ve worked with many really talented people, many prima donna’s, and many hacks (usually the last two combined) but I have never come across as quick and natural a wit as that of Eric Ashmont (oh…that’s where Shmonty originates…quick you are). I’ve also met some very funny people along the way but far too many of them in a condescendingly funny way and that’s, well, not funny. I’ve met a great many who try too hard to be funny and that’s, well, usually painful. I’ve come across a lot who always have to be the funniest person in the room and that’s, well, a knee jerk to a blunt object. I’ve also run into those who have to work at funny and do and that’s, well, to be admired. Shmonty though is a rare exception. He is easily and genuinely funny in that beautiful, screwy, irreverent and intelligent way that can make some folks laugh just a little warily and uncomfortably, which of course is funny in and of itself. He, too, is also very human and that combination is even rarer.

That is a daily dose of a person that cannot be replaced but can be treasured instead for having had the pleasure and laughter of it at all. Good luck to you my friend, to both of you. And to Kari a second dose of luck as he is, after all, Shmonty. Stay together and make lots of funny intelligent babies because, in the world we live in now, that is also rare.

Cheers,
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(No, I’m not the guy in the football jersey. I’m the creepy looking one peering over Shmonty’s shoulder in the background with my Maria looking oh so cute as always)

As I write this I’ve just finished enjoying a week’s vacation that included, among other things, a few mornings of not having to answer the 4am puppy alarm clock…ah the absolute glory of sleeping in (refer to the first paragraph of my last entry and to just being old in general). During the week…

– We enjoyed two water parks, Maria, the J.G. and I, Splashdown Beach and Mountain Creek, both great places to feel young again and get out some liberating wet screams and yelps of joy.
– I surprised my Maria by reorganizing the furniture in the living room, something she has been wanting to do for quite some time now but always seemed to stay on hold to her dismay and surely my fault. Now, Maria is notoriously awful at surprises both for and to…“What’d you get me for my birthday?!”…“It’s September honey, your birthday’s in November”… “Oh, you’re no fun!”… “Do you want to know what I got you for Christmas?!”…“It’s August honey”… “Oh, you’re no fun!” So, in the middle of my dragging and huffing and lifting and puffing and oh so carefully removing and replacing far too expensive Wizard of Oz nicks and Betty Boop nacks she, of course, tried to ruin the surprise without even knowing it by texting me about when we were going to finally move the living room around. My noncommittal lazy replies had her quite steamed by the time she got home from her hair appointment. Then she saw the “new” living room. Chalk one up for me. I love surprises.
– I finally caught up the last number of episodes of “Lost” that had been in the DVR forever it seems. Maria had been on me for quite some time to finally watch them as she already had, patience is akin to the surprise thing with Maria. I’m man enough to admit that quite a few tears were shed at the final episode, “Oh Jack,” by myself for the first time and Maria in a repeat. The tears were also able to keep Jagger’s unending questions about what was going at bay. The sobs drowned them out until he got bored.
– I did laundry. Stop the envy, it’s unbecoming. Laundry was extra special this time around too because I have some new pairs of boxer briefs that I got for my birthday (birthdays and Christmas never change, just the ones who buy you the underwear) and I didn’t have to adapt the fold out of the dryer to take into account the handles, or tears, that are in both sides of the elastic above the main part of all my boxer briefs. It was quite exciting.
– Parts of the MLB All-Star game were watched but not without Maria and J.G. getting annoyed with my bitching about the game deciding home field advantage in the World Series, a moronic Bud Selig idea that still hasn’t yet met it’s death. With that still being the case though, at least the NL finally got it’s first win since Columbus surveyed some trees and mountains in the ocean’s distance. I also didn’t watch the home run hitting contest, an absolute borefest every year. I know, I’m a grouch.
– I somehow remembered to pay bills including that pesky mortgage, which for some reason keeps bothering me every month with paper in the mail.
– We caught “Toy Story 3” which had Jagger hiding his face from the embarrassment of his mother and me quietly weeping (or not quietly according to him) at the end of the film. I think he punched me in the arm.
– I helped my sister and her guy Buck move stuff in her house as she prepares to have the floors redone by the fine folks at Floors Like Glass who did floors here in the attic. The stuff included a pellet stove. A REALLY heavy pellet stove. I can sing Michael Jackson songs now, even the early ones.
– We did a few things around the house that really pecked away at the to-do list. It’s only a congressional report long now.
– I ate a couple of times at my newest favorite place, 5 Guys Burger and Fries. Never knew about the place. I do now. Tasty.
– We enjoyed ourselves, always a good barometer of a successful vacation week.

With the aforementioned All-Star Break happening during the week I didn’t get a chance to watch much of my Buccos on MLB’s TV computer package but, well, they are the Buccos and I had a good week. No reason to have added misery to the mix. So now it’s back at the Radio Ranch after a week at the FrankenGreco Ranch. Other than the usual adapting when getting back to work after a vacation all is well. For all those who didn’t miss Frankenberry while he was gone for a week? I’m back from the attic. My sincerest apologies.

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