Well, I guess I should finish this blogography concept.
I left Greenville in 2000 as I graduated. Well, not really. I quit my job at the Country Club and got one at the local Greenville Perkins, working weekends as I attended classes during the week at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. While that only last a quarter, I worked as a telemarketing verifier at DialAmerica for a year and a half, going home on the weekends, attempting to maintain contact with all of my friends back home I didn’t want to leave. So I semi-commuted for a couple years. Jamestown/Greenville on the weekends. Pittsburgh, staying at my mom’s during the week as I did school and work. I was aparently insane. Between the miles I put on my car, The price of gas was just on the verge of exploding, and some caffeine driven rides home. But I was able to hang with my friends, family and future wife, and maintain decent grades. My only regret being unable to take full advantage of my time to do projects and learn. But what do you do?
This went on until one summer when, after my wife had starting doing the Pittsburgh job/home on the weekends thing with me, we were both involved in a car accident. We both walked away, myself sleeping when we got hit, but Missy has had shoulder problems ever since. And received a paltry amount for our anguish. So this changed everything. We quit our telemarketing jobs that had plagued us anyways. We moved into my mother’s down in Beaver, attempting to get back into the swing of things. I continued my school, found a job, and she finally found a job with Woomer & Friday, which gave us an in to our own apartment, finally!
I graduated AIP with an Associates, then a Bachelor’s in Multimedia & Web Design. We got married the summer after that up in New York on a rainy day, and to a medieval theme. I attempted to work with a couple contacts from AIP, but all lead to dead ends. The contacts where either unscrupulous, or just disappeared out of the blue. Finally, a friend contacted me about logging with this MTS company. I worked hard at it, and replaced good ol’ Justin Kownacki when he exited to pursue his web series, and other endeavors.
In the meantime, I had started AIP Juggalos back around 2001. This was a fan site for the Insane Clown Posse, based from Art Institute students. After realizing I wanted to involve some old friends not involved with the school, WesternPAJuggalos.com was born. Over the years, we’ve held a number of “mini-gatherings” helped plug some local music, even ran a radio server for a bit, which eventually evolved into the Wresting Mayhem Show of today. And I still run this thing.
In 2005, I resurrected an old “backyard bash” back at my dad’s in Jamestown, eventually dubbed “Sorgstock”. This featured some new and old friends doing music in Pittsburgh and Ohio, Twisted Thoughts and No Clue. And out of nowhere, I called up a friend, who was prone to get drunk and freestyle at parties, and decided I could attempt to write lyrics (with no prior practice, aside from band, musicals, and chorus in high school) and a rap duo named CRAP was born. Today, both the Sorgstock and CRAP are still running strong, just pulling off our 8th event in nine years, and booking shows all summer for the group.
And as this music thing keeps growing, I remember how much Dr. Espling helped me over this time to get CRAP to be a real thing. So I decided to give some friends with similar dreams a hand as well. These days, I think I’ve had more time going to Chachi’s NES group, and Will’s emcee lb project than my own. But they showed they can do this for real, thanks to the last Sorgstock, and we finally have something of a faction that can stick together and do shows, and do something strong with our brand of music in this town.
The Wrestling Mayhem Show is about a year and a half old, as a podcast. We’ve interviewed at least 10 wrestlers from the local indie fed, to a guy from TNA, and seem to have a pretty rapport with these guys. It started when I met Will at a friend’s party and we started talking wrestling and I offered him to come on the little shoutcast radio server I ran out of my house. It became a podcast, then he brought over friends that became ingrained in the show, Steam Machine for a time, Chad the Shad, and Doc Remedy. Now I consider all to be good friends and great to work with.
It seemed that somewhere around 2005, at some point, I looked into a mirror and told myself, “Stop thinking you can’t do what you want to do.” If you toldme 2 years ago I’d be doing a weekly, internationally known podcast, interviewing wrestlers and rappers, hanging out with wrestlers and rappers, doing music myself, and just all the connections and friends I’ve made. Just the names I have in my phone’s directory is amazing. Everything I’m working with feels like it’s on the edge of bursting into something big, that I can stake a living on. And I couldn’t have done it without the will, and the friends to back me up.
Well, I hope that suffices as a “blogography”. I guess it’s kind of my take on the concept. Enjoy.