They don't make Outta Leftfield like they used to.
This blog began out of a sense that a great injustice was being perpetrated on the reading public. There was an editor whose own writing skills were abominable; there was a humor columnist whose comedy consisted mainly of tired cliche and Three Stooges references. Like the Joker wondering how a man dressed as a bat can get all of his press, I wondered how a man with such an obvious, horrifying lack of talent could possibly be published.
Thus Inta Rightfield was born. And I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it. Since March of 2010 I have made 168 posts, most of them dealing with the Patron Saint of Poor Local Journalism, Mike "Borsch" Morsch. From his terrible article about baseball cards to his constant harping on local concerts, Borsch has provided me and my twos and threes of readers with near-endless unintentional enjoyment. My ultimate goal: to crush him - to deflate his obviously rampaging ego - with the knowledge of how truly mediocre his own talents are.
For over a year, Borsch has made it easy. It's hard not to take pleasure in critiquing a man so obviously pompous, opinionated and incompetent. Check on these paragraphs, for example:
It was around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday when The O’Jays broke into one of the group’s biggest hits, “Love Train.” Given the lateness of the concert, a half hour later and that song could have easily turned into “Midnight Train to Georgia” for those of us who were still awake at that hour.
Go ahead and read through that again. Just savor how absolutely horrible that second sentence is. Honestly, could he have phrased that any more clumsily and confusingly?
But that took nothing away from a show that served up a good portion of “Philly soul” as we knew it in the 1970s, with a dose of Motown worked in for good measure Wednesday at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.
Writing that bad takes real effort. But now the well seems to be running dry.
Case in point: his October 11th blog piece called "It's nice to be nice to the nice," which extolled the virtues of Penn State fans at a recent football game. Like most of his recent efforts, it didn't make much of an attempt to be clever or funny. It was just the boring story of Borsch going to a game and thinking the fans were friendly. He didn't even take the opportunity for an obvious "Happy Valley/Happy Dance" comparison.
And then there's his latest official column, entitled "Wrestlers join business in effort to put headlock on dreaded disease." First of all, why would he choose "headlock"? If he's the wrestling fan he claims to be, he should know that this dreaded disease could break out of such a hold with three quick elbows to the midsection. Second, in MS Word, the column takes up 17.5 inches of space. Only 6.5 inches (37%) relate to the actual subject. The remaining 63% of the article is a story about a young Borsch reporting on a wrestling match.
So the Borsch state of the union is: sluggish production. Few attempts at comedy. Jejune topics. A curious avoidance of his popular writing crutches ("men are dumb" topics, hot dog references, Hall and Oates, etc).
My conclusion? I've gotten to him. I've tagged his annoying writing tics so accurately that he's trying to get by without them. Unfortunately for him, without his Three Stooges and his spilling things and his "yuks," he's got nothing. So when he does manage to crank something out, it's a thinly-disguised advertisement for local football or a pathetic washed-up celeb puff piece.
So, for the time being, I'm going to declare this little project a success and sign off. But rest assured - should the forces of Borsch rise again to cast a shadow over the heart of the Delaware Valley... call me.
I'll be there.
For those interested, a summary of the main Inta Rightfield labels is below:
112 - Outta Leftfield
37 - Unnecessary Baseball References
36 - Twitter Posts
26 - Not Really a Column
19 - Men are Dumb
13 - Attending a Concert
13 - Poor Journalism
13 - Beer
12 - Gracious Celebs
11 - Poop
10 - Elaborate Made-Up Titles
8 - The Three Stooges
8 - Dumb Politics
8 - Yuks
7 - Hot Dogs
6 - Spilling Things
5 - Mustard
3 - Hall and Oates
3 - Rampant Plagiarism
2 - Bad Breath
2 - Seven Kinds of Something
1 - Made-Up Holidays (I must have missed some of these)
