RE: “Grady”
I should try to explain “Grady” for those of you who accessed this blog from a “Grady’s World” link.
“Grady” is the nickname I was given many years ago during my earliest days at the mighty Mezz.
It was given to me by Steve Bradley, the long-gone guy who was Sports-Editor at that time.
It was early ‘96, a little over two years after my stroke, which was in late 1993. It was my first job since the stroke.
Back then the newspaper was still pasted up — not ‘pyooterized. My job was in paste-up: pasting copy-galleys to large cardboard page-dummies, which were later shot by a gigantic camera to make large page-size negatives for burning printing-plates.
The scoreboard-page was known as the “agate-page,” because the copy-font was agate.
Usually the agate-page was laid out first each day.
The agate-page was eight columns of tiny type; regular pages were six.
The agate-page was normally laid out by Kenny Rush; a long-time paste-up employee, so he could lay it out himself.
The agate-page had to be laid out just so.
National scoreboxes (e.g. Major League Baseball, profession football, professional basketball) were top-left, and ran the entire scorebox.
If there were both football and basketball, football ran first.
Local agate — local high-school football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, whatever — ran top-right, and we tried to run all of it.
Anything else — golf, professional soccer, ice-hockey, tennis, etc. — was filler; i.e. cutable.
So if Kenny was laying it out, he could do the whole agate-page and slam-dunk have it approved by Bradley.
I didn’t know the priorities at first, and Bradley didn’t consider stroke-addlement anything other than a negatory attitude.
So when he saw I was doing the agate-page, he’d get angrily frustrated, and make a faint stab at showing me the priorities: “This is what I wancha to do: Dink-Dink-Dink!”
....Which is what I did, but then he’d come over and tear up what I had done — and bellow that I hadn’t done as asked.
Finally I got mad: “So what do you actually want?” I asked. “Ya tell me how to do it, I do that, and then ya tear up what ya asked for, saying I didn’t do as asked.”
Others at the mighty Mezz loved it. Finally someone was challenging the jerk.
So Bradley gave me the name “Grady;” mainly as a put-down.
“Grady” is the TV-character I supposedly look a little like.
Eventually I got so I could lay out the dreaded agate-page just like Kenny, and Bradley would slam-dunk approve what I did and send it to camera.
No input from Bradley at all; which seems to be what he wanted.
But then the dreaded agate-page was handed over to Hockey-Dude, and he got the insanity.
Mere mention of the name of Steve Bradley to Hockey-Dude would start kicking his trashcan.
So obviously it wasn’t just me.
The “Grady” name stuck, even after Bradley went elsewhere.
And he departed about two years after I started — and I worked there almost 10 years.
It wasn’t “Bobbalew,” but I didn’t care that much.
I kept getting introduced as “Grady.”
“This is Grady. Don’t let him scare you. He’s rather gruff, but harmless.”
People loved it I made then laugh.
“What is it that you do, Grady?”
“I don’t know; anything and everything.”
“We keep him on the payroll, because his fingers are in our entire operation, and he makes us laugh.”
In later years, the infamous Marcy, who like me has a blog, and is ex of the Mezz, and the Webmaster at the Mezz (Matt Ried: “REED”), tried to change my nickname to something more appropriate.
But that crashed mightily in flames (I forget what it was).
It stayed “Grady” until I retired.
In fact, when I retired they printed a “Grady-book.”
Only one person at the mighty Mezz addressed me as “Bobbalew.”
“Grady” is the nickname I was given many years ago during my earliest days at the mighty Mezz.
It was given to me by Steve Bradley, the long-gone guy who was Sports-Editor at that time.
It was early ‘96, a little over two years after my stroke, which was in late 1993. It was my first job since the stroke.
Back then the newspaper was still pasted up — not ‘pyooterized. My job was in paste-up: pasting copy-galleys to large cardboard page-dummies, which were later shot by a gigantic camera to make large page-size negatives for burning printing-plates.
The scoreboard-page was known as the “agate-page,” because the copy-font was agate.
Usually the agate-page was laid out first each day.
The agate-page was eight columns of tiny type; regular pages were six.
The agate-page was normally laid out by Kenny Rush; a long-time paste-up employee, so he could lay it out himself.
The agate-page had to be laid out just so.
National scoreboxes (e.g. Major League Baseball, profession football, professional basketball) were top-left, and ran the entire scorebox.
If there were both football and basketball, football ran first.
Local agate — local high-school football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, whatever — ran top-right, and we tried to run all of it.
Anything else — golf, professional soccer, ice-hockey, tennis, etc. — was filler; i.e. cutable.
So if Kenny was laying it out, he could do the whole agate-page and slam-dunk have it approved by Bradley.
I didn’t know the priorities at first, and Bradley didn’t consider stroke-addlement anything other than a negatory attitude.
So when he saw I was doing the agate-page, he’d get angrily frustrated, and make a faint stab at showing me the priorities: “This is what I wancha to do: Dink-Dink-Dink!”
....Which is what I did, but then he’d come over and tear up what I had done — and bellow that I hadn’t done as asked.
Finally I got mad: “So what do you actually want?” I asked. “Ya tell me how to do it, I do that, and then ya tear up what ya asked for, saying I didn’t do as asked.”
Others at the mighty Mezz loved it. Finally someone was challenging the jerk.
So Bradley gave me the name “Grady;” mainly as a put-down.
“Grady” is the TV-character I supposedly look a little like.
Eventually I got so I could lay out the dreaded agate-page just like Kenny, and Bradley would slam-dunk approve what I did and send it to camera.
No input from Bradley at all; which seems to be what he wanted.
But then the dreaded agate-page was handed over to Hockey-Dude, and he got the insanity.
Mere mention of the name of Steve Bradley to Hockey-Dude would start kicking his trashcan.
So obviously it wasn’t just me.
The “Grady” name stuck, even after Bradley went elsewhere.
And he departed about two years after I started — and I worked there almost 10 years.
It wasn’t “Bobbalew,” but I didn’t care that much.
I kept getting introduced as “Grady.”
“This is Grady. Don’t let him scare you. He’s rather gruff, but harmless.”
People loved it I made then laugh.
“What is it that you do, Grady?”
“I don’t know; anything and everything.”
“We keep him on the payroll, because his fingers are in our entire operation, and he makes us laugh.”
In later years, the infamous Marcy, who like me has a blog, and is ex of the Mezz, and the Webmaster at the Mezz (Matt Ried: “REED”), tried to change my nickname to something more appropriate.
But that crashed mightily in flames (I forget what it was).
It stayed “Grady” until I retired.
In fact, when I retired they printed a “Grady-book.”
Only one person at the mighty Mezz addressed me as “Bobbalew.”
posted by BobbaLew at 8:38 AM
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