A man called inclement weather: Introduction

Most people have bosses with names like "Todd" or "Bill" or "Think of common female name to show I'm not sexist and can imagine a woman in a leadership role."

These are good names. They are normal names. They indicate a dependable upbringing and in turn a likely well-adjusted individual.

If your boss's name is Bowser, you are a video game character and none of this applies to you.

And if your boss's name is Storm, you should follow these steps to determine if your chosen job is the appropriate one for you:

1. Examine yourself for mutant powers.
Likely outcome: You are unable to shoot elemental projectiles or shape-shift in some way.
What that means: You are not an X-Man and your boss is probably not a white haired lady who looks like Halle Berry.

2. Note whether your salary or hourly wage sounds impressive when you say it out loud.
Likely outcome: Announcing your income out loud elicits laughter from third parties or an involuntary, exaggerated clown frown on your face.
What that means: You are not making enough money and you have embarrassed yourself in public.

If your results match the likely outcomes above, consider the following: Your boss has a really stupid name. You have associated yourself with him.

I tell you this because I worked for a man named Storm. He was a strange character with delusions of grandeur and a shady past I've only just recently discovered.

He provided me with a job I would describe as simultaneously the worst job I've ever had and the most hilarious job I've ever had.

So join me - won't you? - on a journey of immensely bizarre proportions. Or, if you lack a time machine, please read my description of a journey of immensely bizarre proportions.

NEXT TIME ON A MAN CALLED INCLEMENT WEATHER: Signs of Stormy Weather! (I meet Storm)

Texas and Connecticut in the house

I was poking around my site numbers tonight and I saw the predictable locations: Silver Spring... DC... Silver Spring... DC... oh look, someone from Laurel. Shocking stuff really. I don't know specifically who these readers are, but I can make some educated guesses and the Florida visit (Hi, Nicole!) is fairly self-evident.

There were a couple that had me completely stumped though: Wallingford, Connecticut and Frisco, Texas. Who are you? Frisco sounded vaguely familiar, but I may have been thinking of Brisco County Jr. or quite possibly even The Count of Monte Cristo. Wallingford I've never heard of before in my life, but I'm sure it's a fascinating place full of... walls. It also makes me think of fording the river in Oregon Trail so I assume you know something of losing oxen where you come from.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say: Hey! There's no reason to be ashamed of visiting my totally awesome blog. It contains at least trace amounts of fun and many words that I claim are hilarious.

If you are long lost acquaintances from my distant Facebooking past, oh dears Wallingford and Frisco, you should definitely let me know so we can rekindle our no-doubt-once-vibrant friendship.

Perhaps you both prefer to remain unspecified readers. I apologize if I've just overstepped some privacy boundary. If you'd like to keep this all hush-hush, you could always call me on my cellphone and whisper your identities to me. No one else would know. I promise.

Of course, if you were random visitors passing through on your way to other corners of the Internet, you most likely will not see this and that is sad. I'm considering making road trips to your respective towns and plastering your public meeting spaces and telephone poles with printouts of my entries and big bold words up top that read, "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BLOG?"

Most extreme escalator challenge

I have a strange feeling many words have been written about this subject already, but I must succinctly add to the cacophony of dumbstruck voices.

When I see a man with six pack abs wearing a blue unitard boarding an escalator, my assumption is generally that he will make it to the top. He has the muscles to get him there and the tight clothing he needs to prevent snags.

This is why watching American Gladiators is so disappointing. When your competitors are too exhausted to run up a gently sloping travelator, it's time to come up with a new final act. There's no doubt that it's hilarious watching the pained expression on a grown man's face as he is gently laid to rest on a rubber mat after an agonizingly slow descent from a three-foot climb, but at the same time, it's sort of tough to swallow an ending where two physically fit contestants are defeated by the moving walkway we so often see children run across in the opposite direction at an airport.

The producers need to do something to give this at least the appearance of difficulty. I understand the contenders are tired after a grueling battery of tests against gladiators with giant tumors for limbs, but it just isn't satisfying. While I must admit that "travelator" sounds sort of like a vacation-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger and therefore kind of lends the event some action cred, I think in this case it's alright to force some company on well enough and make some changes. Let's at least douse the ropes in gasoline so when one of the competitors makes that shameful slide back down to the bottom, there's a chance the friction might cause the whole thing to light up.

Also, while I applaud the effort to more severely punish the competitors for not making it across the obstacles this season, a six-foot deep ball pit is somehow less terrifying than a wall of fire. These are two concepts that really don't gel all that well. For consistency's sake, you've got to go with one or the other.

I guess what we all need to take away from this is that if toddlers routinely use an element of your obstacle course, it probably won't look all that intimidating on television.

And now a brief sports observation

If you are a camera operator and LeBron James is driving the lane, you should immediately tilt down directly at the floor because gravity will almost certainly viciously blindside him at some point on his way to the basket.

I'd like to call on the NBA to swaddle LeBron in bubble wrap and a protective layer of Jell-O before every game because it just isn't fair that he has to deal with g-forces well in excess of those normally experienced by jet pilots while his competitors are babied with a gravitational pull that is more closely associated with reality.

It is remarkable and heroic that LeBron does not burst into flames as he hurdles toward the hardwood at supersonic speeds, completing his descent by exploding through the floorboards. A lesser player would scream in anguish as his jersey literally disintegrates due to the friction and would not find the inner strength to rise to his feet and take two completely unguarded shots like a man.

They shoot Dukies, don't they?

I’ve always considered the state of Maryland to be my home. I was born there. I got my driver’s license there. I developed my professional sports allegiances there.

When I entered my teenage years, the Maryland Terrapins began their rise to prominence. I followed the team’s progress religiously. Juan Dixon and Steve Blake were common household names across the state and I watched with intense interest when they finally broke through and made the Final Four in 2001.

And boy was I relieved when the Duke Blue Devils knocked them off. I wore my Duke jersey with unrivaled pride and a sense of intense superiority around my high school that week. The other students gnashed their teeth, but the only comeback they had was the one I’d heard over and over since sixth grade and the one I continue to hear to this day: “You live in Maryland. What the hell is wrong with you?”

No team in this area is more reviled than Duke. The Dallas Cowboys are universally hated by fans of the metro area’s most important franchise, but I don’t think even that measures up. Some in the area root for the Cowboys just to be contrarian and they make their presence felt on local sports talk radio.

But no one around here would ever admit Coach K is one of the greats without simultaneously insinuating that he somehow convinced all those McDonald’s All-Americans to attend Duke with cash he stole from an orphanage. Not unless one had a previous affiliation of course.

And that’s really the only good reason to root for Duke if, as in my case, you didn’t even attend the school. Its student body is made up primarily of rich white kids with SAT scores showing off one of two things: their intelligence or the amount of money their parents paid for tutors and private lessons.

So I can understand. It’s not the kind of place public school kids in suburban Maryland readily relate to. If I weren’t saddled with a sister who graduated from Duke the year Elton Brand and four other players got drafted in the first round, I’d be inclined to tear my hair out every time Dickie V assaulted his vocal chords with another bout of compliments for Blue Devil “diaper dandies” too.

Maryland basketball enthusiasm seems to wax and wane now based entirely on the current length of the team’s winning streak, but hatred for Duke seems to be operating at peak efficiency. It's every bit as vibrant as it was the day Jason Williams spurred a ten-point comeback in the final minute of a game at Cole Field House. My buddies from home all prayed to every deity from every major religion in the hopes that one of them would descend on the court and swat away Duke’s game-winning shot against Belmont. They still suggest that I not walk around College Park in my Duke attire because even though I’m a Blue Devil by birth, they begrudgingly acknowledge my friendship and they’d rather not see me get beaten up by an angry, torch-wielding mob. And they still enter a state of depression every time Duke gets the best of them.

When I bragged to them about American University, the school I’m actually graduating from, knocking off the Terps back in December, most of them shrugged and got on with their lives. I may go to a school with a student body made up of predominantly rich white kids, but at least it’s not a school with a legendary basketball program.

Losing to a school like that would be too much to bear.