Category: Pennsylvania

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$5,240,385.17

Just got back from THON – the Penn State Dance Marathon charity and they hit a new record topping $5 million for the first time.

Julie Myers, who is quoted in the attached article, is a Tavern employee and the daughter of a Sonny Myers, friend of mine that worked with me at the Tavern in the 70s. Julie was one of five Tavern employees who danced in the event. Others were Lisa Scarborough, daughter of John “Doc” Scarborough, also a former Tavern waiter, friend, and onetime roommate of mine (1967-68 academic year); David Gray, Penn State soccer player, and son of Gary Gray whom I have mentioned on this blog several time; Jen Shaffer, a Facebook buddy of mine; and a fifth employee whom I don’t know.

I stopped in at THON at 2:30 AM last night to see the kids and I thought they were all doing remarkably well. For being the middle of the night they had quite a crowd there cheering the dancers on.

But that crowd paled when compared to the scene this afternoon. There had been some criticism about moving THON out of our cozy gym called Rec Hall. Over the last few years they had to stop letting people into Rec Hall on several occasions because it was filled to capacity (probably about 5000 or so). As a result, the event was moved to the Bryce Jordan Center with a capacity of about 16,000. There was a fear that the size of the Jordan Center would cause the event to lose it’s intimacy and everyone would seem lost in the arena. Those fears were unfounded as the BJC was pretty much packed and the event was hugely uplifting as usual.

Here’s a photo I took from the upper deck and you can see how the place was crammed with people.

The kids on the floor had been going for 44+ hours at this point. The kids in the stands are the spectators and various sponsoring sororities, fraternities, and other groups who have dancers on the floor. Typically the groups will have T-shirts made up to match their dancer(s) which is why the whole scene is so colorful. Here are two shots I took from opposite sides of the arena.


“JR and Natalie Band” were the last band to take the stage for the event. They went on at 2PM this afternoon. Here’s Nat acknowledging her biggest fan before she takes the stage.

In this one, taken from the back of the arena, if you look on the screens behind the band you can see one of the kids who decided to climb up on stage and dance with Natalie. He stayed up there most of the set and the crowd loved it. Mark, the lead guitarist, even had the kid strumming his guitar during one of the songs. The kid was having an absolute blast.

And here’s Ernest Hemingway with the rock star after her set was over.

Here’s a short video that I took from backstage with my photo camera showing the kids rocking to the band. I just wish I had some audio to go with it but it is an obsolete photo camera that’s considerably old technology – you know 4-5 years old.

One final thing that I want to show is another short video with my photo camera. This time the video starts out with the morale leaders on stage leading the dancers in the line dance that they do every hour. It then scans out over the actual dancers and the crowd and you can see how enthusiastic and pumped everyone is even though they are 46 hours into the marathon.

It’s quite an event and there’s really nothing even close to it when it comes to student fund raising. The kids can be immensely proud of themselves.

Many more stories if you are interested.

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THON 2007

Tomorrow features one of the big Penn State tradition – Dance Marathon Weekend – aka THON. THON is the largest student run charity event in the world and has been going on at Penn State for over thirty years. This weekend several hundred students will participate in a two day long dance marathon to raise money for the Four Diamonds Fund. Monies raised for the Four Diamonds Fund go to fight childhood cancer. The fund picks up the medical bills not covered by insurance for all children who are treated for cancer at Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center. No child treated for cancer at Hershey ever gets a bill.

The actual dance event is actually just the culmination of months of work that thousands of PSU students have put into the fund raising. Planning for next years THON will start immediately after the conclusion of this year’s event. The logistics of pulling this thing off are incredible. There may be a couple of hundred kids dancing but there are thousands who participate in one way or another. Each dancer will have a support crew that numbers in the dozens and will work in shifts to help the dancers make it through the weekend.

Hundreds of others have spent months spearheading the actual collection of monies through all sorts of sponsorships and auxiliary events such as charity auctions (want to buy a raffle ticket on a Joe Paterno autographed Penn State Chopper? – go here), or canning events up and down the East Coast. Last year THON raised over $4M for the Four Diamonds Fund.

Others work hard on generating nationwide publicity for the event and more importantly raising awareness of childhood cancer issues. If you turn on your favorite network morning news program tomorrow you will undoubtedly see a segment devoted to THON.

Everyone that I know who has participated in this event has told me it’s been a life changing moment for them (and no I am not exaggerating). The emotional connection that the students make with the kids that they are helping is impossible to put into words, particularly by someone like me who is quite inept with them.

To get a flavor for the event, watch this video of a past segment from a few years ago on CBS Window on America.

Here’s a short video shot from the bleachers at the Recreation Hall gymnasium in 2005. Rec Hall is a 6000 seat gym that is ordinarily home to the volleyball, wrestling, and gymnastics teams. The dancers are all down on the gym floor while the crowd packs the bleachers cheering them on. You can see how packed the gym is. The event has gotten so big that this year they are moving it to the 16,000 seat Bryce Jordan Center to help accommodate spectators who had to be turned away in past years.

One of the things that keeps the dancers going over the course of the weekend is the once an hour line dance that they do. Each year a new unique line dance is created. It’s set to a pop music track but the lyrics all summarize worldwide, national, and local events that have taken place over the previous year. I know people who danced in the marathon 10-15 years ago but they can repeat their dance and lyrics at the drop of a hat. Here’s a video that captures the line dance from 2006.

Here’s another promotional video set to the music from Gladiator. Two things stand out in this one. One you get to see lots of the young kids who have been helped by the charity. The event and the dance floor are open to all former and current patients at the children’s center at Hershey. For some of them, THON has become a yearly event that they look forward to like a vacation. Another thing that you get fleeting glimpses of in this video are various Penn State athletic teams. Each team traditionally puts together a short skit/dance of their own and team members get on stage to dance for the dancers. The idea is to break up the monotony that the dancers are going through with hourly activities. Something different happens at the top of every hour and the dancers are always looking forward to the next hour.

One of the more moving THON moments happens during mail call which is at 3:30 AM Sunday morning. The dancers are all identified months in advance. It’s an incredible honor to be able to actually dance in the event and it’s not something that you can just walk in and sign up for. Each dancer is comes from a sponsoring organization either on campus or around town and the competition for the honor of dancing is enormous. Because the dancers are all well identified there’s plenty of time for the dance marathon committee to contact friends and family of the dancers to solicit cards and letter in support of the dancers efforts. In the middle of their second night on their feet the kids are really dragging. At that point, “Mike the Mailman”, a local on campus legendary figure, brings in literally thousands of letters for the dancers (each dancer will get 100+ letters. For the last few years, Mike has been accompanied by “Mr McFeeley” the postman on Mr Rogers Neighborhood. Interspersed with the letters from each dancer’s friends and families are letters from many of the kids who have survived their cancer bouts with help from the Four Diamonds Fund. Most of the kids letters are specifically addressed to a dancer but some are pulled out and read on stage to all of participants. Many of them are incredibly touching and when they are read there isn’t a dry eye in the house.

For more info, check out THON’s Wikipedia entry.

Probably the best way to wrap up this post is to link to this year’s promotional video. And I’ll end it by signing off the way that all THON correspondance is typically concluded as a reminder that this is all being done “For The Kids”.

FTK

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I feel redemption

You may remember my ill fated campaign to name the local State College baseball team a couple of years ago. I nominated Sliders and my idea made the cutoff from 5000 suggestions that the team received. I was pumped and started encouraging my friends to vote for Sliders in the contest. I thought I had a pretty good chance of advancing to the final round when the list was to be shortened and a re-vote held.

Not everyone saw it that way however. A writer for the local paper (not a sports reporter by the way) published the following column where he ridiculed ALL the names on the ballot. He choose my nominee for the headline of his colunn “Race for local baseball team name slow going — a turtle!” (note: Sliders is a breed of turtles – the ones that you find in pet stores are typically Slider turtles).

When the time came for the finalists to be announced, I was devastated. Not only didn’t I make the finals but NONE of the semifinalists did. The ball club threw out all seven names and came up with five new ones. What the?

Eventually, the name Spikes won out. While I thought the name was ok, I was still a firm believer that Sliders was equally good.

Now comes my redemption. Slippery Rock PA has just announced the name of their new minor league baseball team. You guessed it – the Slippery Rock Sliders. Sliders was the winning selection picked from 92 unique entries.

Here’s their logo:

I have ordered a Slider hat from their official supplier and will be wearing it proudly around town.

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Thank You Shannon

Friday afternoon, I was down at Tony’s Big Easy for their annual customer appreciation holiday party, when the owner, Tony Sapia, called me aside. He had an envelope in his hand and told me the following story.

He said

I got a phone call the other day and this girl asked me “Do you know Uncle Larry?” My response was “Sure, everybody knows Uncle Larry”. Her answer was “Well I’m his niece”. My answer to her was “Sure” and she replied “No really. My name is Shannon and I’m his REAL niece.”.

With that Tony handed me an envelope with a gift certificate in it and said “Merry Christmas from Shannon”.

So thank you very much Shannon and Merry Christmas in return.

I hope to hear from others what they received in the Secret Santa exchange.

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Santa Crawl 2006

We had our third annual State College Santa Crawl last Friday. I was so busy trying to keep the group organized that I didn’t get my normal quantity of photos so I had to wait a few days to collect photos from others on the tour before making this post.

We started at out normal spot – Hooters. Hooters is located on the east end of the College Avenue, the main drag in State College. For those who haven’t been to town College Ave is actually the divider between the town on the south side of the street and the University which is on the north side of the street. Most of the downtown bars are located on or between College Ave and Beaver Ave which runs parallel to College. We traditionally start at Hooters and “crawl” our way westward ending the evening at Cafe 210.

This map should give you an idea.

The bars that we hit on our route and their block number on the map are as follows:

Hooters – block #12
The Lions Den – block #9
Gingerbread Man aka G-Man – block #24
Adam’s Apple at the Tavern – block #5
Shandygaff – block #5
Bill Pickle’s – block #3
Allen Street Grill – block #3
Cafe 210 – block #2

Here’s a photo taken at Hooters as we started

and here’s one of the group onstage at the Cafe at 2:00 am.

I was particularly proud of how many managed to make it to the end. I usually lose control of the group as we cross Pugh Street (that would be between the Shandygaff and Bill Pickle’s) as people decide to branch off to other bars not on the planned itinerary.

We probably had upwards of 35 people participate at one time or another and seven people actually made it all the way through.

To see more photos of our crawl, try this link.

To see photos from past crawls, try the links at this page.

To see photos from SantaCon events worldwide, try this link or this link.

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Not quite a zombie but close…

Since I still haven’t been resurrected by the PSU Alumni Association, I thought I’d get some life out of it. My original idea was to be a zombie but I couldn’t find any costume that I really liked. Then I stumbled across this one:

Here’s one of those freaky strange moments that happen every now and then (really odd that it should happen on Halloween). When I stopped into the Tavern, Pat told me that he had just come from listening to Natalie Berrena sing at the Allen Street Grill (on Tuesday’s she sings at the Grill in a duet separate from her bands – actually I should say bands since she’s singing in two of them). Pat described Natalie’s costume (see photo below) as “a cowgirl riding a horse”. I decided to head up to hear a couple of songs and on the way thought that I’d walk in and jokingly ask her to sing “Wild Horses” by the Stones. I didn’t even know if it was in their repertoire but thought it would be funny anyway. Sure enough, when I walk in, she’s singing it. Downright eerie….

Here’s Nat and her Tuesday night singing partner, Ted McCloskey.

For more of my Halloween photos, check out my Flickr account.

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One for the Other Thumb

You may remember this post titled “One for the Thumb” from a year ago (yes it’s hard to believe but the blog has been going for over a year now – I should have put up a first anniversary post but I missed it).

Last night was the 10th Annual Mondo Martini Madness event at Tony’s Big Easy in State College. Originally, I had not planned on entering (I was going to judge instead) but last week my competitive juices got flowing and I signed up again.

Rather than just whipping up any old drink, I’m always looking for some inspiration (it helps to have a story about the cocktail to tell the judges as I’m whipping it up). This year I wanted to find a way to dedicate my drink to the Penn State students who have been incredibly supportive of the football team over the last couple of years. Kirk Herbsteit called them “the best student section in the country” during the Ohio State game last year.

If you’ve watched any of the Penn State games recently you’ve no doubt seen the kids bouncing around to a techno song whenever there is a big defensive play. The song is often mistakenly referred to as “Zombie Nation” (the real name of the song is Kernkraft 400 and the artist’s is Zombie Nation, sort of,… the actual artist is a German DJ named Florian Senftner aka Spank! who books himself as Zombie Nation) – for more on Penn State’s love fest with the song read this Pgh Post Gazette article).

The Zombie theme became the start of my inspiration. There is a drink called a Zombie that was invented by Don the Beachcomber many years ago. The original recipe is a secret and there are many variations out there but one of the more popular uses Apricot Brandy along with three types of rum and various fruit juices.

When I saw Apricot Brandy in the recipe, it got me thinking. One of the things that Joe Paterno is known for is Peachy Paterno ice cream, one of the more popular flavors put out by the world reknown Penn State Creamery (little known factoid – Ben and Jerry ice cream got it’s start when the founders took a correspondence course from Penn State on ice cream making).

Bingo. I now had a unique name for my drink, i.e. “The Zombie Joe” and it would be peach flavored. However, I didn’t think that just a simple variation like changing the brandy from apricot to peach would be original enough to impress the judges so I went after a more radical approach.

The next step was to find out what peach liquors that Tony’s had on stock at his bar. He didn’t have peach brandy nor did he have creme de peche two typical peach liquors. What he did have was peach schnapps and peach vodka. Also, Southern Comfort is considered by many to be a peach flavored liquor (the reality is that peach is only one of many flavors in Southern Comforts secret recipe). Those liquors became the basis for my drink experimentation.

I had one other idea that I wanted to incorporate. Another unique thing that has stood out about our student section the last couple of years has been their commitment to having a “White Out” for big games. They will dress in white, wear white to whatever it takes to make the student section all white for the game. Well white fits in perfectly with my Zombie theme. Check these PSU students out in a shot from the Michigan game – they are some definite Zombie looking fans. That meant my Zombie drink had to be white and just to be sure the judges got the connection with the students, I renamed the drink “The Zombie Joe aka The White Out”.

After much experimentation with the three liquors and various whitening agents, Godiva White Liqour, White Coconut Rum, and Half and Half, I eventually settled on a drink that had equal parts of Peach Schnapps, Peach Vodka, Southern Comfort, and Half and Half. The drink is well shaken and served in a chilled martini glass. As the final piece de resistance I float two dark Necco wafers in the drink to look like Zombie eyes staring back at you as you drink it.

Once again, the judges liked my work and I walked away with my sixth title in the last seven years (I am undefeated only having my string broken when I sat out a year).

For more photos from the event, check out this link.

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Arts Fest Poster


The Arts Festival promotes itself with a collectible poster that is a work of art in its own right. For the past thirty years, the poster has been created by Lanny Sommese, a Penn State graphic design professor and an internationally known poster artist.

Here area some of Lanny’s past Arts Festival posters:

And some other examples of his award winning posters:


Coexistence: A Bridge To Understanding

Coexistence is an annual traveling exhibition started in Jerusalem dedicated to spreading the message of diversity and acceptance. Lanny is one of only three artist to have more than one poster in the exhibition. Here is his other one:

Click on the photos for the poems that go with the artwork.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet won first prize in the International Triennial of Stage Poster in Sofia Hungary in 1995.

No!

No! is part of the Library of Congress’s Witness and Response collection of materials related to the tragic events of 9/11.


HELP

HELP is Lanny’s contribution to the Hurricane Poster Relief Project, an effort dedicated to raising funds for Hurricane Katrina victims.

By now it should be evident that social consciousness plays a big role in Lanny’s art. Lanny teaches his students that their art should first and foremost have a message to convey. In this article about design heroes, one of Lanny’s former students says

The approach to graphic design was conceptual, always about communication, and always with an idea.

Why this sudden interest in poster art you might ask?

Because, in addition to being a famed artist, Lanny is also my partner in the Toftrees Men’s Golf League. While my knee probles have severely limited the amount of golf that I play (I’m down to a round and a half a week), I still make sure I get my 9 holes in on Wednesday nights. So far, Lanny and I have managed to have a decent season in spite of my injury. Halfway through the season, we currently sit in 7th place out of 24 teams.

Lanny has had an interesting life. He went to college on an athletic scholarship to play basketball at the University of Florida, last year’s national champions. I first met Lanny in the early 70s here at Penn State. At the time, Lanny had quite a reputation as a lady’s man and most certainly did not fit the image of a staid college professor. Quite the contrary. He was recently divorced and was often seen with a beautiful girl on his arm.

That’s all changed now. He’s quite settled down, happily married, albeit for the third time, and raising two cute young kids. Here’s a photo of Lanny (he’s in the red tie) and his wife Kristen (she’s the blond). Of course, the fact that she’s a former student of his and younger than his first daughter only adds to the Lanny legend. That age disparity also leads to his grandchildren actually having an aunt and uncle younger than them.

Lanny’s first wife, Donna Gibbons, actually appeared in one of my all time favorite movies “About Last Night” starring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore (pre boob job when she was a cute youngster). “About Last Night” really captured the Chicago singles bar scene in the early 80s. Several scenes in the movie took place in Mothers on Division Street just across from my favorite Chicago haunt, the Lodge. If you remember the movie, Donna Gibbons played Alex, the older women who seduces Rob Lowe.

This seems like a good place to end this post before I start telling Lodge stories. I will make sure to update everyone on Lanny and my’s performance coming down the stretch in our league.

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Arts Fest

This is THE big weekend of the summer in State College. 40 years ago, the borough of State College and Penn State joined forces to create The Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, an event that would showcase the visual and performing arts. The event quickly became embraced by all. Arts
Fest, as it became known colloquially, soon spread well beyond the town. It is now one of the largest Arts Festivals on the East Coast and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to the area each July.

The first event consisted of primarily local artists that hung their art on a snow fence that was strung along a stone wall on College Avenue, the main drag in town, in front of Old Main, PSU’s main administrative building.

From those humble beginnings, the event has taken over the town for pretty much the whole second week of July every summer. While the first event just took place on the block long wall mall, the event has now spread across both the campus and the downtown area. Several downtown streets are shut down to handle exhibits, performance stages, and food stands. Pretty much every venue in town that can handle an audience (Beaver Stadium excepted – JoePa doesn’t allow anyone on HIS field) is utilized at some point for the event.

To give you a feel for the extent of the festivel, here’s a schedule of today’s performing artist events. Other days schedules can be viewed by the links at the top of the page. And here’s a list of the over 300 exhibiting artists by media type (the event is now juried so you don’t get near the crap that showed up in the early days of the festival).

The variety of stuff that you can see here is just amazing. Some examples:

Comedy Juggling –

Michael Rosman, a former Ringling Bros clown who is now out on his own. He does a lot of corporate and cruise ship entertaining and has also appeared on Letterman. He actually makes a smoothie by juggling fruit into a blender on top of his head. Check out his video for a glimpse of what he does.

Puppetry –


The National Marionette Theater will be performing their award winning production of Peter Pan (shown here on the right). Their shows are nationally reknown for the detail and complexity of their puppets and the flair of their performances.

A Trash Can Band –

Lidz – is a is a five-man trash can band from Altoona. They make music using trash cans, buckets, paint cans, and other things you can buy at the hardware store. Parents with empressionable young children might want to pass on this show if they ever want to sleep in on another Saturday or Sunday morning.

Musical Variety –

Country – Poverty Neck Hillbillies
Brazilian – Minas
Acapella – The Bobs
Zydeco – Zydeco-a-go-go
Gospel – D’vine
Folk – Patty Larkin

plus many more.

One of the neat things about Arts Fest is that it has become a defacto reunion weekend. The university has tried to artificially create Reunions Weekends with very little success. But the Arts Fest has become the weekend of choice for old friends to reconvene in State College (I can’t remember an Arts Fest weekend that I ever missed even after leaving town – heck I even missed a Phi Psi weekend once – something about getting married got in the way – but I never missed an Arts Fest). Old local bands take advantage of that by getting back together for once a year appearances back in State College. The members obviously love getting together for a set or two and their old fans back in town love seeing them.

I’ve got a few other Arts Fest stories to tell but this post could go on forever. I cut it off here and break my other stories off into other posts.