Tom DAntoni - Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent: And Other Sensational Stories from a Tabloid Writer

My career as a supermarket tabloid writer ended when I was a guest onOprah. This life-changing event (for me) took place in 1988 and a few of her formats, a few of her makeovers ago.

Oprahs producer called me. She was a drinking buddy from WJZ-TV, the station in Baltimore where she, Oprah, and I had worked. When she asked me to be a guest, I realized that after my appearance I would never be able to sit down and write Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent again. Tabloids in general, The Sun in particular, would be closed to me forever.

By then, it was a relief.

The music came up; Oprah looked into the camera and said, How many times have you looked through the stories in the tabloids and for a few seconds thought to yourself, That could not possibly be true.

My next guest says chances are, no it couldnt be. He says he wrote for a national tabloid as a freelancer, says everything he wrote was fiction, found it most interesting when a picture of the people he made up would appear with the article.

Please meet Mr. Duntoni.

She got my name wrong, even though we both worked at the same TV station in Baltimore for five years. But then, shes Oprah, and such stumbles are often overlooked in multimillionaires.

She introduced the other two people on the segment with me, Enid Sefcovic, an ex-wife of mine who also worked for The Sun, and Leslie Savan, who was writing a column on advertising for The Village Voice at the time and once served a sentence on the staff of The National Enquirer.

She continued, So did you all just make it up? Did your editors say to you, Make it up?

Yeah, I said, its just made up.

Laughs from the audience at my candor.

Its fiction. Its like wrestling. As a matter of fact, its just like wrestling.

Some people aspire to greatness. A combination of bad parenting and coming of age in Baltimore, Maryland, at the same time as John Waters pushed me in a different direction.

Only children are often left to their own devices, to their own fantasies, and often they live mostly in their heads. Add to that my parents divorce when I was five years old, a drastically overprotective parent, and the isolation of being one of the few non-Jews in a Jewish neighborhood.

Then add the Baltimore factor. I know that other cities are toilets, but Baltimore was a special kind. And I say that in the good way.

I dont really know exactly what it was about Baltimore that spawned people like John Waters and his particular brand of inspiration. I think the chromium that leaked into the Baltimore harbor for about eighty years might have something to do with it. My theory is that the lowered IQs and other forms of brain damage that resulted in the general population stemmed from the constant exposure to chemicals like that, plus massive doses of drugs (LSD for me) helping to create warped perception and skewed reality.

Dont get me wrong, I have a spot inside me that holds feelings for Baltimore. That place might not be my heart, but its in there someplace. Maybe my urologist found it the last time I visited him. I still have Orioles stuff all over the house, and I walk around Portland wearing my Orioles sweatshirt, cursing at Yankees fans.

But I have to say, people seem dumber in Baltimore. Most outsiders agree. I always gave that theory lip service, but when I revisited Baltimore three years after having moved to Portland, Oregon, I came to the stunning realization that I was right. People really do act dumber, meaner, more miserable and perverse in Baltimore than they do other places in America.

Cleveland is just as dirty and dangerous, but think about the difference between John Waters and Harvey Pekar.

Thus, it was in Baltimore and nowhere else that Divine, a three-hundred-pound transvestite, ate dog shit off a sidewalk in Pink Flamingos