Amanda's Musings: Dear Extenz...

(image originally uploaded hopeandmegan)

Dear Extenz Customer Service Representative,

Despite my love, respect and deep admiration for the comedic genius known as Chevy Chase, a girl can watch “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” only so many nights in a row.

So it was then, in the wee hours of the morning a few months back that I flipped on the boob tube, saw your company’s infomercial about “male enhancement” and gave you a holler.

Usually, I would just scroll through my collection of trashy reality television episodes or reruns of something like “The Adventures of Pete and Pete” but alas, my DVR was depleted. That night, not even Cousin Eddie could hold my meager attention. Unfortunately for both you and me, the uber-happy middle-aged couple featured on your program did.

As a reporter by vocation and a nebby-ass by nature, my curiosity was immediately piqued when the way-too-exuberant Ken doll spokesactor said something about how Extenz really came through for him with its promises of “male enhancement.” His equally enthused girl-piece nodded in eager agreement, and that’s about the time I picked up my cell and dialed.

I guess I’m writing to apologize. For the record, I wasn’t crank calling you. There was simply no succinct definition of what the product was gonna do. And ashamedly, you weren’t the only customer service representative who has received a past-midnight phone call from me.

See, I’ve never been a good sleeper. I wouldn’t call it “insomnia” as much as “lack of talent.” And trust: It sucks being bad at something that billions of people do completely normally each and every day.

When I recently expressed my concern to my dad over whether those phone calls could be considered a sort of neurotic obsession, he let me in on a secret: I’ve always sucked at sleeping. He said as a kid I would insist that someone sit in the room with me until I fell into a slumber – even holding my arm up at a 45-degree angle to ensure that Mr. Sandman wouldn’t be able to enrapture me so easily.

“Yeah, you would just fight sleep, Mand,” he told me. “It wasn’t like you were scared of a monster in the closet or something. You just hated going to sleep.”

Flash forward 25 years and it’s much the same. And with nothing on television and no one to talk to, my bedroom can be a pretty lonely place at that hour.

You were very informative. You basically confirmed what I thought, and told me a few things about the pills I wasn’t aware of. I know you were upset when I told you that I didn’t want to sign up for the free trial – you know, since I have neither a penis nor a boyfriend at the moment.

But I didn’t think our brief verbal encounter was all for naught. You made me laugh – without really meaning to – and that was just as helpful at that moment as your explanation of how the drugs work.

I never expected anyone to say to me, “Well, we are referencing the penis, ma’am.” But you did, and I laughed. And somehow, someway, I was able to get a few winks shortly thereafter.

Warmest Regards,

Amanda “please don’t file harassment charges” Gillooly

Light show on the Donora-Webster Bridge

A trolley ride would be nice in these hard times

It wasn’t the car that put the trolley lines out of business in Pittsburgh’s hinterlands.

They actually started to fade after gasoline-powered buses hit the streets May 1, 1933, in the Charleroi area some 37 trolley-car miles south the big city, local historian Mitch Steen reported in 1971 in an article for The Valley Independent.

Old 1721 made it final run to Charleroi, Pa., on June 29, 1953, having met up with huge crowds along the line. Tony Malnerick of Finleyville at the controls while a Lock Four Fire Co. pumper truck escorted the trolley car into the borough as fans and foes of the noisy transportation service said their final goodbyes.

Pennsylvania’s transportation department soon began to rip out the Pittsburgh Railways and cover the line with concrete, a process that continued for at least a decade, to accommodate increased car and bus traffic.

I remember the rough rides in the backseat of a car over the rails that lingered, but never had the pleasure of riding a trolley around the valley towns. In an era of gas prices that helped to cripple the U.S. economy last year, it would be nice to have a reliable interconnected public transportation system like the trolleys still moving as an alternative to doing business.


(Photos courtesy of Charleroi Area Historical Society.)

Yoda misses the groove

Yoda's Playlist, originally uploaded by Orange_Beard.

“Humor is just another defense of the universe.” – Mel Brooks

By Amanda Gillooly

I finally got over myself the other day. I get in some pretty weird funks, and it doesn’t take much to set me off into a downward spiral of depression and self-loathing. And while I know Yoda advises that fear and anger lead to the Dark Side, I respectfully disagree.

You can harness fear, and you can harness anger and make those emotions work for you. My fatal flaw is a horrible sense of self-pity. Sorry, Yoda, but I think that’s what leads people to the Dark Side.

Bemoaning yourself is like quicksand – the more you think of all the travesties in your life you just keep sinking deeper into a pretty useless place. Because, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say.

It wasn’t half so bad for me, either. But when I’m in a Gillooly-style funk, I pile up all the unpleasantness in my life and sweep it into one of the corners of my mind. And when they’re all piled up, things look a lot worse than they are.

For me, no number of inspirational speeches can help bring me out of my melancholy. I pout, sulk, sigh, and convince myself that a correction I had to write makes me unworthy of being a writer. That leads me to question my ability as an aunt/friend/sex goddess. If left alone for too long, I can convince myself of pretty much anything.

That is until the laughter arrives. In the midst of a grade-A funk last week I snapped out of it when I watched an octogenarian gentleman wearing a “Sopranos’-style jogging suit paired with a black leather fanny pack. Sitting there, miserable and searching for more reasons to hate myself, I looked down and saw that, as an added bonus, his bright white shoes were adorned with Velcro.

I laughed. Out loud. And I realized again that life is too damn funny to be a cranky ass all the time. For so many years, I've wondered why I’ve always been privy to these Velcro relics, and seem to always find myself in the midst of situations that none of my friends ever understand.

So thank you, Mr. Velcro Fanny Pack Man. I owe you a shoe shine, buddy. Because I think that might be life’s way of shaking me back into my senses by helping me remember that there are few things that can’t be laughed at.

And laughter seems to melt away all that funktasticness.

One of my college girlfriends, Apple, clued me in on this a few years back. When undergoing her first annual pap exam, she was told she first had to give blood. To her horror, the doctor who would be examining her was maybe one of the hottest dudes on the planet. And having never been naked, unmentionables to the wind, they asked her to sit up and walk to another room for the draw.

Already dizzy and nervous, Apple took a few steps, passed out and urinated all over the floor.

And it took Velcro to have that hit home.

"One Love" shared around the globe

Playing For Change | Song Around The World "One Love" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Fake tree wins newspaper contest

McGuffey High School didn’t quite follow the primary rule for a contest that challenged students to turn a standard newspaper vending machine into public art.

Yet the school in Washington County, Pa., walked away with first prize among the 14 that entered the contest sponsored by the Observer-Reporter.

The rules, among other things, required a design that would survive the outdoors in a climate known for gray skies and rain. McGuffey students surrounded their metal box with a sculpture of a fragile-looking tree with a newspaper kite stuck in paper leaves covered in clear plastic.

While students coated the thing with outdoor sealant, the newspaper is looking for location to park it indoors over doubts that it’ll survive hurricane-force winds like those the region sustained last month.

It did survive the trip from the school to mall in the bed of a pickup truck traveling 40 mph, losing just three leaves," McGuffey art teacher Pam Bubash said.

Bubash told her kids to "think outside the box" and enter something different because the rest of the schools would likely just paint things on theirs. And she was right.

She suggested her students design a concept for their box around William Holmes McGuffey, a Claysville, Pa., native and author of the McGuffey Readers, one of America's first series of textbooks that became widely popular in the 1800s. But they opted, instead, for tree because newspapers are printed on paper made from trees. They used old newspapers for construction to also make a statement about the importance of recycling.

Local artists and newspaper representatives judged the contest, taking into consideration the amount of money each entrant earned in donations when their designs debuted over a recent weekend at Washington Crown Center mall.

“The schools loved it,” said Jasmine Blussick, who organizes corporate events at the Washington newspaper. “The parents loved it. The kids thought it was the best thing.”

Some employees of the small-town paper aren’t sure what to make of the entry that features a rat nibbling one of its daily editions. But chances are that school will still be invited to enter the contest again next year.

McGuffey’s art department will receive a $500 prize for winning what has to be the slicking promotion the newspaper has come up with in years.