Invasion of Privacy: WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE GUYS?!?!?!
Happy April Fool’s Day fools! We got the short end of the stick this week and had to write Invasion of Privacy, so we decided to play God by putting two random strangers in a Zoom room and asking them a bunch of questions about The Lamron. These two lucky strangers ended up being our (Frances and Carly’s) respective dads.
“My name is James Arthur Christopher Sharples—yeah, I get more names than normal—and my relationship to The Lamron is that my oldest child, Frankie, is the editor-in-chief, even though [they have] trouble speaking at times,” Sharples said.
“Carly is… what’s your role there?” said Joe Burgio, father of co-news editor Carly Burgio, upon starting the interview.
We were surprised to learn that these two STRANGERS had ever even heard of The Lamron, but Sharples quickly proved us wrong—“I’ve read it a few times. When it’s formatted correctly, it’s actually quite enjoyable to read.” Ouch!
Sharples’s critiques, evidently, have been thoroughly considered. He continued: “[If I had ten million dollars,] I’d probably buy The Lamron a better photo…editing tool, so that there wouldn’t be more editing issues.”
Burgio was much less sassy and far more sneaky with the utilization of his hypothetical ten million dollars: “I’d retire…and let my wife also retire. Although, you know, maybe I’d not let her in on the secret right away—just keep going, leaving the house in the morning pretending like I’m going to work and coming home in the evening.”
Next, we decided to bring to the mens’ attention a concept that The Lamron’s staff has been heatedly debating for weeks—purchasing an office pet.
Sharples listed the pros and cons of getting a goldfish with surprising ease, considering he was only given 10 seconds to do it: “Companionship; it’ll die soon, so you can replace it; you can eat it if you want to. The cons are: somebody’s gotta feed it, and it’s gonna crap,” he said.
For Burgio, we changed things up—instead of a goldfish, we demanded that he list the pros and cons of keeping a pet shark. Despite the shocking idea, Burgio was oddly prepared to sell us on the benefit of caring for a shark: “You can take it for rides; it requires a much larger tank, so you can even swim in the tank with the shark. And you can feed [it] the goldfish that you got,” he said.
However, it couldn’t all be jokes and games with these two dads—we had to get down to the brass tacks to get some tips on how to improve The Lamron, which is the primary goal of The Lamron, because if we don’t make The Lamron good, the evil troll that lives under The Lamron office will terrorize us! We’ll lose all our houses and future editor-in-chief Kaitlin Anzalone will become the sacrificial lamb!
When asked what feature he would add to The Lamron, Sharples said, “I would do a comical horoscope for those people who are crazy enough to believe in horoscopes. I think it would be hilarious to [have] somebody who doesn’t believe in horoscopes to, you know, sort of make fun…say, you know, ‘What kind of ludicrous stuff is this? Libra, whatever!’”
Evidently, Sharples does not know that his child writes a very serious weekly horoscope section in the actual Lamron.
To make matters BETTER, we asked Sharples about his childhood, but only with questions that would have pertained to Burgio’s childhood, beginning with Burgio’s summers spent in Allegheny State Park as a child.
“I was actually abandoned there by my family, and so I lived, actually, in the park—” (something that Sharples never did) “—a family of raccoons adopted me, and I grew up as one of their own. As a matter of fact, I only wear glasses to remind me of what it’s like to be around raccoons. So, for me, growing up in Allegheny, it was wonderful—a lot of grubs, a lot of digging through trash when people left it.” Surely, these raccoons would have enjoyed nesting in the MacVittie Union garbage cans with all those copies of The Lamron!
Similarly, Burgio was asked about the banjo and Harry Potter—two of Sharples’ greatest passions.
In regard to the banjo, Burgio said, “Heck with this guitar thing, I’m going for that banjo!” as Burgio legitimately performs in an 80’s rock cover band in the real world. In regard to Harry Potter, Burgio was asked what house he is in, to which he responded, “My house.”
Though initially we couldn’t be too sure of the similarities their fathers would have, we discovered that both of our fathers served in the military. When asked about how their military experience influenced their parenting styles, the men gave an alarming response:
“Well, killing people,” Sharples said, as Burgio wildly agreed.
Good thing neither of these guys ever worked for The Lamron! That said, while they would not make the right fit for The Lamron staff, these two lads sure are the greatest dads.