October, 2002

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(1) Some of Mick's initial efforts as scribe did actually occur on the public hopper as he relates via Nate in Interlude 4

(2) - There's nothing quite as lonely as being the only one on your side of the bars

(3) - Norm didn't like his work because it was boring, unrewarding, his secretary was mousy, and he had to play the heavy with a couple of ruffian painters. O'Connell dislikes his job exclusively because his office is located two and half hours from his home and animals. O'Connell's assistants at the prison, pictured here on an office night out, are far from mousy.  

(4) - We would beg to differ and say that Carla is actually far more quick witted than Norm who has all day to fashion a response to what he knows will be the same question day after day.  "Hows it Going Norm" is what he'll face when he darkens the doors of the Hawk and Dove, and he usually comes up with something along the lines of "It's a dog eat dog world boys and Peterson's wearing Milkbone underwear." This is not quick wit this is rehearsal. 

(5) - Actually, O'Connell and Dan Haggerty who played Grizzly Adams did cross paths for a spell but there was no dancing involved with the only competition involving the down dressing of a sawed off carpenter and a JD bottle.

(6) - If, at the Atwater tennis academy, more experienced players are taught to poach the middle and watch ball after ball pass them down the line for winners, then this may explain some things about the rest of his game.

(7) - It is O'Connell's contention that his tennis partners are mostly a collection of pantywaists and milquetoasts that would rather be home in bed by ten thirty than pursue the answers to life's questions that all Goliards worthy of the name know can only be hashed out late in the evening down at the corner pub.

(8) - Apparently much to the aesthetic dismay of a stunned Atwater who had not been briefed that males ever micturated anywhere but in the porcelain bowls assigned for the purpose.

(9) - What follows is so far fetched that it is clearly a long held fantasy from Atwater's personal closet, written, we suspect, out of a frustration for opportunity lost and bitterness for the Reagan wasted youth that was his own childhood. We'll let it run and attempt to fill more appropriate details on the other side.

(10) - Not bad goliardly writing although clearly composed by someone who has wondered more than once what life could have been like had he had the courage to rip off the Izod, lay down the tennis racquet and golf clubs, leave the country club behind and get on down the highway to the dark side. 

Veteren staffers agree however that Mick's lost years, while undoubtedly involving a fair measure of general debauchery, jail time, ill advised intimate associations, vagabonding, crap shooting, spear fishing, tuxedo wearing, hitch hiking, dead ending, clam digging, rough necking, grab assing, surf and turfing, bus following, and time wasting, would be more aptly characterized with tales of alcohol induced indenture, gambling debts, the fury of women scorned, the exaltation of those freed of his clutches, and stint after stint of general bad decision making rather than the homosexual angle which may be the one thing that didn't rear it's head during that period. Not that there's anything wrong with it...

A Senior Editor - "There are so many legitimate angles of ridicule and blatantly lampoonable actions attributed to O'Connell that the truth (provided anyone could determine what it actually was) would undoubtedly be funnier than any trumped up charge of homosexual prostitution. Most of us who've had to suffer his intermittent company over the years wouldn't even know where to start. I mean, look at the guy, he's a walking boob for God's sake; an over indulging, chew spitting, beer swilling, librarian run amuck. He's been a financial nitwit, a relationshipal moron, and a lumbering stooge who has been criss-crossing the country in search of some lost goliardly ideal for two decades, leaving a swath of aghast onlookers and crumpled beer cans in his wake. Ever since he found out about those goliards, he's pretty much made one disastrous, bankrupting decision after another and all the while searching for something that no longer exists anywhere close to its romanticized form if it ever did. He owes any sanity, health, and wealth he still possesses to his lovely wife, and even she, a woman of saintly patience and angelic character, is beginning to tire of his antics. The best way to lampoon the guy would probably be to usher folks into his office where he sits surrounded by hundreds of sweat stained ball caps, stacks of unpaid bills, tip sheets, bootlegged music, and overflowing spit cups, and simply point to him and say, "Look!".