Dear Food Network, Hire Me

As much as I enjoy watching Giada De Laurentiis… cook, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps there needs to be a show for the idiot in the kitchen, like me. After all, one of my first cooking endeavors had me trying to be creative by putting some vanilla into a pot of beans and weenies. There was brown sugar in there. I thought it would be a good idea. I didn’t know one iota of cooking basics and have yet to live that incident down over the last ten years. So, for the dumb ass in the kitchen I think there needs to be a show that doesn’t take itself too seriously and has a lot of fun while being informative. Think "Tool Time" with skillets and whisks instead of power tools.

I am a married with family and we very rarely cook. My oven and stovetop are pretty much storage. Even the microwave holds items. It’s kind of like the equivalent of having a Nordic Rack which is a Nordic Track or other piece of exercise equipment that is utilized as a place to hang laundry on after it comes out of the wash. But, I can make some dishes. I can make spaghetti and even jazz up the sauce from a jar without resorting to vanilla extract. I can make chili from a recipe I could only get from my father-in-law after I married his daughter. I do pretty good French toast and some other baked goods, but real meals escape me or at least the motivation to make them does. I guess that I am more kitchen lazy than kitchen incompetent….hey that’s a good idea for a title.

So, here’s my unsolicited pitch. You’ve seen talk show hosts like Dave Letterman have someone on to make something and he spends more time screwing around and drinking the cooking sherry, straight from the bottle, than actually preparing something so let’s go with that idea. I would be the host of a cooking or home show that dispenses more tips on “What Not To Do.” It’s like Martha Stewart with knuckles dragging across the hand knitted rug.

Each week I would have a theme and actual chefs would come on to cook a meal and show me how to do it. Meanwhile I would bet totally inept and would make jokes or break a lot of stuff, this would not be a struggle in the acting department for me. During the cooking segments we would have two dishes being prepared, one by the pro and one by the putz, me. At the end, we compare to see what it should look like and what it probably will look like. I want truth in advertising here.

Now, there are guy type shows on The Food Network but do we really need to see Guy Fieri going for the ole 96er eating speed record. Not to mention, I don’t use product. I’m just your average idiot who doesn’t know the difference between jam, jelly, or preserves. The draw and attraction to the show would be the honesty with which I would truly screw up dishes. In fact, I expect there to be a lot of broken dishes and food splashed around so that it looks like something exploded in the kitchen. Granted, a lot of this will be done for effect. Also, I like to be able to interject a sense of Pop Culture trivia, sort of like an Alton Brown delivery with very little important information. I would love to devote entire shows to recreating recipes used in movies and television shows.

But why would anyone watch such idiocy when they could be tuning in Paula Deen and learning how to make hoecakes. Because Paula would be a guest and I’m sure her and I would have a huge amount of fun going back and forth. My only hopes would be that the guest chefs would not take themselves too seriously on my show and it would give the audience a chance to see their favorites cut it up and have fun. I expect a food fight at least once a month….maybe when Giada shows up.

Of course, I know I can never realize this pipe dream. I wouldn’t last one three minute egg’s length of time on Iron Chef. They’d have to rename it cheap ass aluminum foil chef for me. I couldn’t go onto a cooking show competition and expect to wow and dazzle anyone but wouldn’t it be funnier if the guy hosting the show was so ridiculously incompetent that he would have three fire extinguishers on the set and a fire marshal on speed dial?

Come one TFN. Why not dumb it down for those of us who think that Semi Homemade with Sandra Lee should still have a Le Cordon Bleu degree as a prerequisite. Think about it, Home Improvement was more popular because of the antics that Tim Taylor would get himself into rather than the home life. Here I would be the Bob Vila of the kitchen. Did you ever notice that they never let Bob do any dangerous work? And how can you resist having a show on the air that could or could not end in the Emergency Room every week. There should be a warning in front of the show like on Jackass. In fact, there’s an automatic drinking game built into the show from the first episode.

• Take one drink every time the host uses too much of an ingredient.
• Take one drink every time the host uses the wrong ingredient.
• Take two drinks every time the host pronounces something wrong (no lie, I was in Applebee’s once and ordered the Tuscan Chicken and called it Tucson Chicken. I thought it was a South Western dish)
• Take two drinks every time the guest has to control the host’s attention.
• Take three drinks every time the host swears and gets bleeped.
• Take four drinks every time the censors miss it.
• Finish the bottle if the paramedics or EMS is called.

So, write your congressman or go bug Rachel Ray or something. Start a petition, update your facebook status to read “If you believe my friend Mongo deserves his own cooking show because I want to see him catch on fire, at least once, add this to your status for an hour.” Do the work for me because I’m too busy leveling up my café on Facebook. Get on the ball and get me on TV. Think of the carnage and wonderful dishes we can bring to your home.

Do That Voodoo That Your Hairdo Does So Well

I am truly blessed. At 33, I still have hair. Now that may seem like a hollow victory to you, but to me it's a boon. A lot of guys my age, including some coworkers and a few former classmates have joined the bald brigade. Now, I don't mean to make light of their deficient pates. That would be a follicle faux pas. Really, they don't look that bad with the way high and tight hairline, but, quite frankly, I couldn't pull off the look. I've never had my hair short enough to check out the contours of my crown, but I assume that it is not smooth. In fact, I would be better off driving a car on the roads of Southwestern Pennsylvania with a scolding cup of hot coffee perched in between my legs sans lid than to believe that my head would be a smoother surface. So, to that I thank both my parents and whatever genes they passed on to me that has allowed me to keep this head o' hair o' mine. Looking back at my life, I've discovered that my hair has changed dramatically over the years. While I fashion myself as the kind of person who finds something that works and sticks to it, much to the boredom of the girl who does my hair, I have gone through substantial styles before settling on the one I sport now.

I wish my brother George was here.

Aww, ain't he just the cutest thing? Wow, oddly enough, I remember these pictures being taken. You can see that I had quite the coif. For some unknown reasons my parents decided to keep me with long hair off and on until the age of four. From then it was your basic boy's cut, a little shaggy around the bangs, but for the most part short enough for a kid in the late 70's/early 80's. Of course that would all change once I reached adolescence. I went through a rather strange phase where long hair was what I wanted.

Call Homeland Security, quick!

Uh, oh. Yeah, I had a mullet. In fact, I was dead set on having hair like Richard Marx. If I live to be a 1000 years I will never understand what I was thinking back in those days. Why I thought that it would be cool to sport the mullet isn't as ponderous as why I would pick an 80's soft rocker to model mine after. I would have loved to been able to sport a MacGyver Mullet, but all the duct tape in the world would never help me as my hair was too thick and dark to achieve his grandeur. Meanwhile, I spent way too much time in the morning working on my hair. I would wash it and then blow dry it. I had a daily ritual of blowing it back for a few minutes, then I would pull the brush forward allowing the dryer to blow it up into place. Not satisfied with the fact that it would take me as long as Tom Hanks in Castaway to grow said hair, I began to wrap the little rubber bands from my braces, that we called bicycle tires, around the ends in order to create a pony tail. It was more like a Doberman's tail. It had maybe an inch in length and looked rather ridiculous. By the time I was in my senior year of high school I scaled back the growth and kept to off my neck as much as possible, but I had moved from Richard Marx to Fred Savage in terms of poofiness.

Yeah, don't ask about the vest and the skinny tie.

Since then, I've only had one other occasion to wear my hair down to there as I did a show in 2001 that required me to have a 1950's rich boy cut. I played Ray, a golf pro and aspiring writer in Neil Simon's Proposals. Not only did I have to bring the bouffant, I had to wear this stupid outfit that showed off my pasty white legs. It was reminiscent of a Boyz II Men outfit from the Alex Vanderpool Era of "MotownPhilly" and Cooleyhighharmony. I was not thrilled. But, in true fashion, once the show was done, so was the do. I have yet to find a reason to grow my hair to that length, but I have become accustomed to having a dirty chin.

When you're this cool,
the sun shines on you 24 hours a day.

Since 2003, I've been sporting a mustache and goatee, mainly at the behest of my wife. She thinks that because I have such a boyish face it would give me some maturity. I think it's mainly because it gives me one chin and hides the other. And while I made a promise to myself to never color my hair like a lot of kids have done since I was in high school, I can see that there is some salt amongst the pepper. At first I tried to just extract the intruders from both my head and face but it has proven too painful as where one would be removed, two more would show up in its place a few days later. At 33, I feel that I'm a little young to be getting gray hair. My father has just recently begun showing more gray than he had previously, mostly do to his recovery from renal cell cancer. Both he and my grandfather had retained their dark colored hair for most of their lives. My grandfather lived to be in his 70's. While my father is 67, he just started going gray in the last 6 years. This was something I had hoped to have inherited but I guess I should be thankful I still have hair to turn gray. I've always wondered if I would color my hair had it gone gray and I don't think I will. I have no shame in having the gray and while I'm approaching middle age more in feeling than in actual years, I still have the mind of youngster, albeit not the tolerance for teenagers that I once had. Hopefully, my daughter can save me the anguish and be a little more mature in her teen years.

In any case, over the years I've gone from trying to grow my hair really long to wanting to keep it rather short in order to reduce care and maintenance. I am truly a victim of the times when it comes to the pictures with my revolving hair styles. The fact that I'm sharing them with my 2.5 readers shows my courage under dryer. Then again, it could show how vain I am about my hair and the fact that I've kept it this long. There were times I was afraid that my forehead was employing eminent domain over the rest of my scalp, seizing up property that was reserved for my hair. Thankfully, my hair line has been as sedentary as the Korean DMZ.

I had mentioned before that I bore the hell out of the girl who does my hair. When I walk in every four weeks and sit down in the chair, she always asks the same question, "What do you want to do with it?" With that question I offer the same reply, "Same as usual." I'm as routine with my haircut as I am in the person who cuts it. When I was a kid, I went to the same guy who married my mother's stylist. He was an artist from Nebraska and quite frankly, he was a better artist than barber. While I would constantly ask him to cut my hair a certain way, I always ended up with the same style. His prowess for cutting my hair showed the same amount of skill that I did in shop class. We could be tasked with making anything from a lamp to a bookshelf and I'd end up making an ashtray every time.

Once I began paying for my own haircuts I went to who I wanted to, a woman. I'm no dummy. I hear all the snide remarks about going to a stylist or a salon but I would rather have a female touching my hair than a guy. I have friends that swear by barbers, saying that you go in, and you're out in five minutes and in between there are a plethora of magazines to read ranging from Playboy to Penthouse. While, I'm not usually a reader in the salon, I do tend to scan through the local paper on occasion. From college to graduation and beyond I have gone to only a handful of people to do my hair. There was that brief stint where I went to the salon chains that promote a $10 haircut, but for that $10, I could have had a rat chew a better pattern out of my skull. While barbers and Fantasic Super Cutups Scams are cheaper, I like the quality of the work. Now, a friend of mine used to go to only the big name mall salons that charge you $100 for a style and then require you to pay an additional $50 for product to keep it looking like it does when you leave the store. I can't see being that crazy about a hair cut and frankly, I could spend that $100 on better things and just grow my hair long. Either way, I'm still going home and washing it again to get all those bristly clippings off my person that drive me nuts. No, I'm quite happy going to the local shop, paying $20, and having my girl, Lea, take care of me. She's a hell of a lot better looking than Howard McNear, if anything. Once in awhile our schedules don't mesh and I'm forced to use someone else in the shop. At this point in my life I don't have a clear grasp on what style Lea gives me and trying to explain it is about as easy as ordering a drink from Starbucks. I guess I should have her explain it to me but quite frankly, it's over my head.

15 minutes of lame

In 1977, a little movie opened that changed the course of cinematic history. It also had serious ramifications in regards to my life. Even today I, still feel the effects of that film about good vs. evil set in another time and another place. Of course, I am talking about Star Wars. I was probably around the age of 4 when Star Wars was re-released, still without the moniker Episode IV: A New Hope, and it was the single most defining moment of my childhood. I must say it's hard to compare it against anything else at that time because I had seen only one other movie in the theater at such an early age, the Ralph Bakshi animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. There is a story that gets recalled every so often, that as a child, I had to explain that movie to my parents. Is it any wonder that Star Wars had such resonance with me? From the moment Princess Leia planted those medals on Luke Skywalker and Han Solo I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be Han Solo. That lasted until Han was frozen in carbonite in the sequel. Then I readjusted my career path and settled on wanting to be Chewbacca. Okay, I'm kidding. I can say that from that early age, I have been fascinated with film and film making. I knew that I wanted to be in Hollywood when I grew up.

The evolution of such a lofty goal can be attributed to the fact that as a child, and even today, my imagination has been overactive. Actually, that's an understatement. I should say it is hyperactive. On a scale of 1-10, it goes to 11. I was constantly afraid of my bedroom due to the fact that I couldn't see inside the closet or under my bed and therefore any number of monstrous creatures resided in those dark places. What I couldn't see was far worse than anything that I could. Take your concept of the bogeyman and increase it exponentially and you had what I thought the bogeyman was. That was the downside. The upside was that I was always good at playing with my friends because I could imagine an entire world for us to play in and all they had to do was ask what I saw and they believed it, too. My wife will tell you that anytime I explain anything, I go to Erie to get there. It's a fault in my thinking. The more elaborate and detailed the information is, the better the quality. Granted, I do tend to ramble on and if you've read any of my posts you'd say, "DUH!" This was the driving force in my wanting to be a filmmaker or at least an actor. There are photos of me dressed up in costumes, which usually consisted of afghans, kitchen towels, or blankets, all pretending to be anyone but myself. I constantly developed new characters and voices to try out on a tape recorder that I carried around.

I finally got my big break in sixth grade when I joined the chorus in our school. Some how I managed to pull off singing just well enough to be let in and our grade school put on two productions a year. The winter production which had a Christmas theme was called Santa's Gone Hip. In this off, off, off, off, off, off, Broadway musical masterpiece, Santa finds himself to be antiquated and decides to update his image to compete with the times...and hilarity ensues. I played the part of an elf dressed up in punk clothes. I looked more like a skunk in Jams as I sprayed white coloring in my hair to give an outrageous look. For the spring show we did a retrospect on the history of communication called, Heard It Through the Grapevine, in which I had my first speaking role. Due to over abundance of energy and tendency to speak in John Moschitta fashion, I was sent to our Speech Teacher to learn how to slow down and enunciate my lines. After all, I had the opening speech and wanted to do my best.

After grade school, the opportunities to perform were limited with the exception of straight choir or band. I had already been in concert band and knowing that whatever got me through the singing process in grade school was luck at best, I opted to forget choir and stayed with playing the drums in marching, concert, and jazz band. Still the ham I was, I stood out from the crowd with my clownish antics. Once I began high school I was given new hope, in a round about way. The drama offerings in our high school consisted of either a Senior Class Play or a yearly Spring Musical. Still not wanting to make anyone's ears bleed, I shied away from choir but did join up with the stage crew for both productions. By my junior year, I was shanghaied into auditioning for the musical as well. My friends pretty much pushed me into it. It was rather uncharacteristic of me as I usually walked to the beat of my own drumming. Peer pressure never really affected me, at least that what my friends told me to think. I didn't think I could sing or dance, but I could act. Unfortunately, the musicals required the first two traits more than the third. My only saving grace was that I was a boy. That was pretty much a ticket into the cast, no matter what. So, I debuted my triple threat of mediocrity on stage Connellsville Area High School's 1992 production of Li'l Abner. I did not have so much a speaking part as most of lines were spoken by the character of "All" or "Everyone." But, I did have the distinction of being one of the few with the most stage time as I was constantly being put into more and more scenes doing more and more things. During the Sadie Hawkins Day Race, I was a part of a trio of men trying to escape marriage by hiding amongst cornstalks in a synchronized choreography of sneaking around. I was also one of the slovenly husbands that were magically transformed into a beefcake by drinking "Yokumberry Tonic." I was, of course, the before representation.

During the summer, I managed to work my way into a community theater production of Damn Yankees. I played Ted Nugent. I'm kidding. I played a baseball player with a few lines. It was a church group that passed around lead parts among their inner circle. Three of us from the high school performed and all agreed that our high school productions blew them out of the water in terms of talent. For our senior year, I was given the opportunity to audition for the Senior Class Play and did get the role of Homer Zuckerman in our production of Charlotte's Web. My first real speaking role in high school was a chance for me to once again hide underneath a costume and make up, portraying an older gentleman. I sounded more like a combination of Ross Perot, Jimmy Stewart, and my Jan Show, the high school Physics teacher. I followed up the play with another speaking role in Barnum, our Spring Musical. We based our production on the BBC's Michael Crawford version rather than the Jim Dale Broadway production, playing more on the convention of breaking the fourth wall. Convinced I had a better grasp on the acting requirements for the role, I was a bit distraught with being relegated to a smaller character. Not having the voice that my peers had, I relied on my timing and ability to understand how to play off the audience. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to convince the director. If only I could have Milli Vanillied my way through it, it would have been spectacular. Not wanting to let my inability to sing well get me down, I relished in the opportunity to be a part of the circus that quite literally was the production. Again, having the distinction of being in nearly every scene as some sort of character, I learned how to spin plates, juggle, crack a bull whip, and even was a barker for a side show stand in the lobby prior to the show. That gave me the chance to totally improvise my character as we did not have any kind of script to work of for the role. The show was expanded to run for two weekends, something never done before in our school, which gave us a chance to be apart of a real theatrical run. Barnum closed on March 6th, 1993, my 18th birthday. It was probably one of the greatest accomplishments of my performing career. I'll never forget being on stage during the curtain calls with the confetti coming down underneath the multi colored lights which flooded the stage dressed as a three ring circus. It was not uncommon for the performances to get a standing ovation during the run, mostly due to the fact that our town took two things seriously, high school athletics and the musical. It was, however, the first time I truly felt deserving of one.

With college, I concentrated mainly on straight acting and had several roles in productions at the University of Pittsburgh. By the time I had graduated, I appeared in Room Service, Fuente Ovejuna, Psycho Beach Party (which I acted alongside Joe Manganiello), The School For Scandal, Lone Star, The Widow's Blind Date, Hopscotch, The Philadelphia, and Pericles. Not bad having Sheridan, Shakespeare, and Horovitz on your acting resume. I also managed to rack up one lonesome film credit. Technically, I was an unpaid extra, but still I poured a lot of method acting into playing "Crowd Member" in 1995's Jean-Claude Van Damme's classic film, Sudden Death. Since college, I have bounced around among the local community theater groups performing Summer Stock. But in 2003 I got my biggest break yet, I appeared in a commercial and was paid for it. On advice from a friend and fellow actor, Bob, who has appeared in at least one commercial for Austin's Cleaning Products, I went to an agency in Pittsburgh that provided actors for film and television productions. While I was there to sign up, I was asked to just do a quick audition for an Eat'N Park commercial. Being a regular customer, I must have impressed the casting director when I automatically rambled off an order from memory as part of my audition. I was contacted the next day and given instructions for showing up at the corporate site to film. I was beyond ecstatic. Finally, I was getting the opportunity to be a paid actor. I knew that I had no shot of being a real star unless I moved to Hollywood or New York. I wasn't interested in starving for my art for years until I had break, so I gave up the dream a long time ago. Still, there are tons of real acting jobs in Pittsburgh as more and more production companies come to the area to film.

Dinner For Two (2003)

The commercial was set to be shown on broadcast television in mid January of 2003. I managed to catch it during the Golden Globes and later on during the Pro Bowl. I couldn't believe it. There was my ugly mug on my television set and I didn't have to press play to get it there. Of course, I had to tell all my friends and co workers that I was on TV and even though it was all of maybe 4 seconds, it was like I was a star. My fame would soon be fleeting as I was given another job, later that year. I scored a shoot for Value City department stores. It was for a circular ad that would appear in the regional newspapers. Again, I touted to anyone who would listen that I was going to appear in their Sunday Paper and not in the Police Blotter. I made the treacherous drive to Columbus Ohio that summer for the photo shoot. I say treacherous because it was during the Sniper Attacks of 2003 along the highways of Ohio around Columbus. I managed to get to and from the shoot with no incidences and anxiously anticipated the arrival of the Sunday Paper in the coming weeks. When the day had finally come, I went to the store to buy the paper, proud to leaf through looking for my picture. It was a summer clothing line photo shoot and I was wearing a blue shirt and shorts in the ad. I flipped through the superfluous news filled pages looking for the ads sandwiched in the center. There it was, the Value City ad. I scanned the page and found my ad panel.......There I........wasn't. It was the right outfit but I wasn't wearing it. Normally, I won't be the first person to say that I am a pretty good actor. At 5'10", I am average height and can pull off a lot of characters. I think I do have some acting chops, but I don't think I could have pulled off portraying a 6'4" tall African American, which was what I saw when I looked at the spot where I was to have been shown.

For whatever reason I was replaced, I'll never know, but it was the last job I did with that particular agency. I found it increasingly hard to get time off for auditions and they neglected to use my work or cell phone as a primary contact number always leaving me messages on my home phone asking if I was interested in coming down the next day to audition. Since I needed a little more than 24 hours notice to arrange for a later shift at work, it became nearly impossible to schedule anything and I just let the dream die.

So, there you have it. My fifteen minutes were here and gone and now I've taken on the more demanding, yet highly rewarding role of father to my 8 month old daughter, Bailey. She's named after my two favorite characters in television (WKRP's Bailey Quarters) and film (It's a Wonderful Life's George Bailey). I still believe that if given the opportunity, I could be a great actor or filmmaker, but I like my life and I'm comfortable not being the center of attention. It was something I was so good at and craved the spotlight for most of my youth. For now, I may not be able to make a movie or act along side some of the greatest performers going, but I still have the chance to create a rich and immense world. I'm sure I'll have no trouble in convincing the one person who will relish in the opportunity to explore it. Perhaps she'll follow through on my dreams and make it big. I don't care if she never gets her name on anything other than the honor role. She's my biggest fan and my biggest hero and I'll never pass up the opportunity to take a photo with her. Just as long as it's me in the picture when I develop it and not somebody else dressed like me. That still burns my ass.