This is actually old news, but what the heck, until The Office tosses the fans something, some kind of bone, over the summer break, it’ll have to do. Brian Baumgartner was in Scranton over the Memorial Day weekend. He was the guest of honor at a fundraiser for the Albright Memorial Library. You can read all about the planned festivities here. (more…)

Well, my fearless prediction for “The Whistleblower” was incorrect; All through Season Six, The Office had a running gag going about the “Scranton Strangler.” I had a hunch that the elusive evil-doer was going to be undone in the season finale, and I even had the perpetrator identified! I was sure the culprit was Hidetoshi Hasagawa, the mysterious Japanese doctor with the “steady hands,” who got hired to work in the warehouse.  And I even had the plot twist figured out: As the northeastern Pennsylvania news crews swarmed on Dunder-Mifflin, to get the story on the exploding printers, the police would be surrounding the Scranton Business Park to take Hide into custody. I thought the set-up was perfect. The spectacular SWAT-team takedown in the warehouse would totally distract the news jackals, who would promptly forget about covering the suddenly tame story of defective technology. The arresting development of the “Scranton Strangler” caper would be a screaming front page headline in the Times-Tribune, knocking the printer fire story into a little blip at the bottom of the business section… Solving Sabre’s embarrassing predicament, as the press hounds sprinted after the sexier story. Win-win-win! Uh… except none of that happened. The Office writers just up and left the “Scranton Strangler” storyline dangling, like the proverbial participle. (which is a writing error that I am probably guilty of, but since I don’t even know what it is, I remain blissfully unaware.) Oh well, blissfully unaware, and on to “The Whistleblower.” (more…)

The latest Office episode, “The Chump” has provided the Scranton Chamber Of Commerce with a memorable slogan that just might catch on: “The Paris of northeastern Pennysylvania.” I can see how this will grow in popularity, finally reaching a point where the city of Paris begins to refer to itself as… the “Scranton of north central France.” Now that’s catchy. This will probably lead to an increase in tourism in both cities, as tourists flock to scintillating Steamtown and the extra-awesome Anthracite Coal Museum in Scranton, and then they just might be inspired to visit “sister city” Paris. There’s a pretty big tower there, and some other old stuff, too. (yawn) But au revoir to all that for now. We’re here to talk about Scranton. (more…)

We’ll start off with the most obvious local reference here: Police on the show were baffled because they found a body with no head, hands or feet. How could they identify this body? Luckily, there was an intramedullary rod surgically implanted in one of the victim’s arms, and this steel rod had an ID # from an orthopedist at a hospital from… ta da!… Scranton, Pa! Finally, the break they needed that would lead to the killer! Oh, uh… excuse me, that was from last week’s “Law And Order; Criminal Intent.” Totally different “Body Language” all together there… OK, back to “The Office.” (more…)

For Secretary’s Day, Michael Scott takes Erin to a fancy restaurant in Scranton called Hayworth’s. Well, there is no Hayworth’s in Scranton, which by now is not surprising. If they had used a real Scranton restaurant, that would have made writing this “Scrantonicity” easy. The column practically would have written itself. But that’s OK; when the going gets tough, a dedicated Officionado draws inspiration from our fearless leader Michael Scott. I think of his words of wisdom at the end of “Booze Cruise,” when Michael is comforting Jim: “Never ever ever give up.” So, even though I have almost nothing to work with, I will never ever ever give up. I will take the wheel, and steer the good ship “Scrantonicity” into shore. Even if it is a fake wheel! (more…)

When the gang from Dunder-Mifflin decided to hit a “Happy Hour,” they didn’t just go to a dinky, hole-in-the-wall pub like nearby Poor Richard’s; they also didn’t bother with trendy Farley’s in downtown Scranton. No, they went to a mythical, over-the-top extravaganza of an entertainment center: Sid & Dexter’s Sports Bar. This Taj Mahal of taverns is clearly modeled after Dave & Buster’s Sports Bar, a chain that is practically everywhere in the United States, except for where I live in the Pacific Northwest… uh, and it’s also not to be found in Scranton Pennsylvania. Or anywhere near there. But that’s understandable. There are plenty of Dave & Buster’s Sports Bars in southern California, and that’s where The Office writers live. So that’s where the gang from Dunder-Mifflin will go. (more…)

Searching for ANY Scranton references in “New Leads” has proved to be as challenging as searching for any “new leads” at the Scranton dump. I was about to give up, and not write anything this week. Then, I thought to myself: Hey… there are regular readers of Scrantonicity; I don’t want to disappoint either of them. So, I may not have found any new Scranton leads, but instead let’s think of this column as a big, ol’ stinky beanbag chair that I’ve tied to the top of the LITO-mobile. (more…)

This Scrantonicity was going to be the prettiest Scrantonicity… of all the Scrantonicities. I had “insider information” for quite awhile that the show was going to send a camera crew to film the local St. Patrick’s Day parade, including a Dunder-Mifflin float. Talk about a slam-dunk! The parade is one of the country’s largest, and the route goes right through downtown Scranton. I would have been able to tell an uplifting story, or a lurid tale about every identifiable background shot. Well, that didn’t happen. NBC changed the schedule around, moving this episode up to air before the parade, making it all a moot point. That’s a lot of lurid tales left untold. For now.

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I was born in Scranton at the Community Medical Center. Years later, my mother got a job there, working as the nightshift switchboard operator. So… I was, uh… hoping that Pam and Jim would choose that fine establishment as the place to bring Cecelia into the world. But they opted instead for the Moses Taylor Hospital, which is on Quincy Avenue, closer to the heart of downtown Scranton. The Community Medical Center would have been the better choice, as it is an easier drive from the mythical Dunder-Mifflin office. But I realize that’s just me talking, and it sounds a lot like the logic of the mythical Dwight Schrute. (more…)

Well, with Sabre barging in from that colorful, lawless swamp known as Florida, there hasn’t been a whole lot of “Scrantonicity” to celebrate lately. Furthermore, it’s a darn good thing that Kevin Greene already wrote his hilarious LITO piece “New York City-icity.” Because now Dunder-Mifflin does not even have a headquarters in the Big Apple, so we’ll no longer have to pretend that we don’t see the southern California palm trees behind the low-rise office buildings forming the, uh… “Manhattan skyline.” What we do have to look forward to is irate LITO readers from Florida, upset that Sabre’s home offices look “phony.” Some Floridian will probably write an angry article for LITO titled “Tallahassee-icity.” (more…)