There are things in life that make no sense… and others that make crystal clear Sencio.If you eat magic mushrooms then go on Space Mountain at Disney World you will vomit - and that vomit will inevitably hit you in the face at 80 miles an hour.
It stings like hell and pisses off the people behind you - makes sense.
Seriously, don’t do drugs then go on a high-powered rollercoaster.
My fiancée Karen is angry because The HGTV show “Cash in the Attic” has been moved to the High Def channel – which we do not get. To me “Home & Garden Television” is unwatchable – no sex, no violence. She watches it so I have to watch it. However Cash In The Attic is hosted by the “immortal” John Sencio. He saves this show – add some girls in bikinis with machine guns and you have a hit.
I’ve met 3 famous people in my life:
Boxing champion Marvellous Marvin Hagler at Logan Airport.
Aerosmith Guitarist Joe Perry on Newbury Street .
And TV personality John Sencio.
But here’s the thing, I actually knew John Sencio.
I worked with John Sencio 17 years ago, at a supermarket in Ashland Massachusetts. I was in high school and he was home from college. Sencio was the coolest guy in the afternoon shift of the produce department. I’d say John Sencio was the coolest guy in ALL of the supermarket
but Paul Malone in the meat department drove an orange Transam – yes an orange Transam.Okay, so John didn’t drive a killer car but he was a memorable guy – I’ll get to the details later.
Sencio keeps popping back into my brain year after year via the damn TV. After Karen’s tirade I decided to go online and do some searching on the Sencio. I'm surprised to find a cult of John Sencio devotees – unlike the physics of vomit and rollercoaster’s (which makes sense) this “John Sencio Movement” makes no Sencio… at least to me… at least at first glance… but I wear sunglasses all day… and I keep knocking the lenses out with my nunchuks.
I am not a suspicious person by nature... except for the week I overdosed on Rip Fuel when I was preparing for a tournament. "Conspiracies" are not my thing but a crazy amount of people are talking about what should be a mere blip on the cultural radar.
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING...
There is a site called My Blog is Poop. If you go to this site and run a search of John Sencio there are a ton of articles about him (I got the line “Immortal John Sencio” from this site). The writer is obsessed with John Sencio. The articles are an amusing mix of worship and goofing on him... but what struck me is that these people spent so much time discussing him.I guess I’m not the only one stricken with a deadly case of boredom at work.
There is a site called JohnSencioJam.com.
It’s pictures of John Sencio and monkeys. I like monkeys.
There is a site called The John Sencio Files. My guess is that some dudes who grew up with Sencio are roasting him. They talk about Sencio playing the guitar while on the crapper but also say he could be President.
It reminds me of the John Sencio I knew. It’s funny but insanely long.At the Paper Bag Review some dude named “side arms” does a review of 17 former MTV personalities and grades them. Sencio was one of 3 to receive an “A”. Of course the person handing out the grades is named “side arms”. I know Sencio was young when he started on TV but in the photo on that page he looks like he was in the 8th grade.
There is a site called ACTORS LIFE where they do a major interview with Sencio. On one hand it’s cool because John still sounds like that funny guy who would quote people I had never heard of while he washed
the floor of the vegetable locker. On the other hand this site talks to him as if he’s Al Pacino analyzing the final scene of Scar Face. Huh?These are all real websites. I don't get it. Of course I'm also completely confused by Bud Extra (beer with caffeine).
What are individuals saying?
Under “People I’d Like to Meet” Peter on myspace says My Real Dad and John Sencio.
Under “Heroes” Lindsay on MySpace says Alexander Hamilton and John Sencio.
Are these people serious? I’m not knocking them – I’m just asking.
I don’t understand why people claim to have been anally probed by aliens - but they do.
A couple of people that make some sense:
Jamie on myspace says his minor in college was: Falling Asleep on The Couch Watching John Sencio on Spring Break.
Sandra on myspace says: When i was in elementary school I would wake up and watch John Sencio host the countdown.
Someone named Jonathan Allen has a strange page where half way down he says: “Access Hollywood should replace Billy Bush with John Sencio”.
"Entertainment News Shows" are crack and Billy Bush is a just humble dealer.
A thought on hate mail.
Hate mail is funnier than fan mail. The angry things people say about Clinton & Bush, Rosie & Oprah, and Gibson & Cruise are always good for a laugh. The one piece of John Sencio hate mail I could find is no exception –bitter, jealous, and extremely funny.But isn’t hate mail only for REALLY famous people?
John Sencio is not a movie star, president, or the first black-female-billionaire (as far as I can tell). I keep thinking of what Austin Powers said “WHO THROWS A SHOE”?
Could someone really be that jealous of John Sencio?
I just don’t buy it.
I did find the website SENCIO but as far as I can tell this doesn’t have any direct connection to John Sencio … or does it?
SO WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?
If he had a definitive album like Back In Black by ACDC then I would get it.
If he had starred in Enter The Dragon with Bruce Lee I would get it.
If he had written The Dark Half I would get it.
But he didn't.
I'm not saying he couldn't and I'm not saying he wont - I'm just saying he hasn't yet.
Disclaimer: In case Sencio does do any of the above… especially if he does it next week, I’m writing this before he does it.
Looking like a combination of Kristy McNichol and Russell Crow, in and of itself, is not an accomplishment. Well maybe it is.
Do you see what I’m getting at?
It’s like close Encounters Of The Third Kind – some “other-worldly-intelligence” has planted unconscious psychic messages about John Sencio through our TV’s into the minds of random strangers and now we are flocking to him… and we don’t know why. The dude must have a gravitational pull or something. John Sencio may be a nice guy, or a funny guy, or an interesting guy… but a guy that has “followers”?
POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS
Karen's Theory :
Karen says to me “anyone who is relatively funny as well as relatively good looking is relatively successful.”
In my detached way I respond “that’s an interesting observation honey”. Then I proceed to print out a picture of him from the web, lay it on the cement floor outside our apartment door, piss on it, and light it on fire.
I quickly learn urine isn’t really flammable.
As I watch the picture struggle to burn I remember how cool John Sencio was to me. One time my manager at the grocery store grabbed me by the throat because I refused to turn my store-issued baseball hat around (true, he’d been asking my to turn the baseball hat around for months but it’s still not cool to choke a 15 year old). Sencio pushed him off me.
One idiot protecting a second idiot from a third idiot.
I shall never desecrate his image again.
Considering nothing works in our apartment I’m shocked when the fire alarm goes off in the hallway. My Persian landlord who lives downstairs next to the washing machines runs up 2 floors and starts screaming at me in Farsi. I hate that language.
10 minutes later Karen emphasizes her use of the word “RELATIVELY”. “I didn’t say he was Jim Carrey & Brad Pitt rolled into one…as**hole”.
Oleg's Theory :
My buddy Oleg is a huge video-gamer, he’s also Dutch and lives in the apartment above our landlord. Oleg points out that there are fighting games where the characters are defined by “levels” of their various skills: speed, agility, strength, smarts, endurance, weapons, etc. Some characters are a level 10 in strength but their smarts will only be a level 3 – borderline inbred hillbilly.
None of the characters are 10’s in every category, it would be unfair.
Oleg believes it’s better go with the characters that are 7’s and 8’s in every category – no major strengths BUT no major weakness.
Oleg thinks John Sencio is all 7’s and 8’s – maybe no 10's but above average in all the skills that TV people allegedly have.
This is well thought out for a 30 year-old Dutch dude who plays video games all day and loves the bong. The problem with this thinking is that it operates on the assumption that people on TV have any discernible skills at all.
This leads me to the final theory – mine.
My Theory :
So far, the mid 1990’s was the best time for MTV - Nirvana, Pearl Jam, U2, Sound Garden, Alice in Chains, STP.
Music binds people together.
It’s hard to imagine how great the music was considering the channel seems to be filled with soap operas about crazy rich drama-mama pre-teen girls who wear latex to church and eat ecstasy for breakfast. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for this but “Disney’s High School Musical” does not rock nearly as hard Curt Cobain.
John Sencio presided over this epic grunge era on MTV.
This was also the time that Al Gore invented the internet.
Follow me here.
That massive group of people from, say, age 10 to 30 who watched John Sencio THEN is 10 years older NOW and craving nostalgia.
Think about it.
When these people see John Sencio on TV today it reminds them of what they think was a better time. So they quietly pay tribute to him. Enough tribute’s turn into shrines and eventually enough shrines make a movement. It may be a bowel movement as opposed to a full blown religion… but a movement none the less.
That’s my theory: somewhat interesting dude happens to get eulogized by converging circumstance.
Nothing else explains the John Sencio Phenomenon.
SEVEN THINGS I REMEMBER ABOUT JOHN SENCIO
1- In a time of strange haircuts he had one of the stranger ones: I call it an an Elvis Mullet. Yes, it looked like Elvis up top and long in the back. Completely hilarious.
2- Two incredibly hot foriegn chicks would come into the supermarket to visit him while he was working. I can't remember where they were from but their English sucked - maybe Detroit. This was impressive in light of the douche bag uniform we had to wear at work.
3- He taught karate at the mall across the street. I always thought there was something cool about this. You could learn how to kick someone in the mouth then buy a Slurpee and a Slim Jim after class. Confession: I ended up taking karate there.
4- Have you ever gotten those painful pimples that didn’t have the white stuff in them? It looked to me like Sencio used to get those types of zits on his forehead. He told me they were actually the wounds from sharp toenails of his opponents in karate class. I was never sure if he was being serious when he said that.
5- He was funny.
6- He always had a book with him. I remember asking him if he read all these books. He said “none of them”. Once again, not sure if he was serious.
7- He came to work during lent and he had those black ashes on his forehead and the manager told him to wash it off. Sencio said no. The manager didn’t argue. Later I was told that it was Lent but not Ash Wednesday (the one day of the year people put ashes on their face). I remember thinking he did it to cover up one of those zits. As I write this one out I admit it sounds screwed up. I might be confusing an episode of the Brady Bunch with a dream I had.
If you’re asking yourself “this guy works with Sencio and that’s all he can remember”, well, given what I’ve done to myself over the past 2 decades I’m surprised I can remember anything at all.
After Sencio left the supermarket the next time I saw him was on MTV.This was pretty shocking.You’d think the shock would wear off but every time I catch him on the various shows he hosts today I marvel at the fact that I used to wrap lettuce with that guy.
And “wrap lettuce” isn’t some cool insider term for getting high and chasing babes – we literally wrapped f**king lettuce in the supermarket together… and now people watch him on TV.
What a world.
I’ve considered Emailing his website and discussing my theories but Karen tells me there is something obsessive nerd, restraining order, Brokeback Mountain about that.
Yeah, I may be suffering from “why is he on TV and I’m not” syndrome.
Look, it has to be better being on TV than selling TV’s. On the other hand maybe I simply need to accept the fact that Sencio has a “following”. Hell, maybe the girl who spins the lottery balls on TV in suburban Oklahoma has a “following”?
Karen tells me it would be a sign of maturity if I could just say: “he was a genuinely nice guy”. But I’m not that mature so I’ll just concede that he had what Kilgore in Apocalypse Now had – that glow.
John Sencio did have that “glow” around him.
If you are a fan of John Sencio you should know that I am also. I'm not trying to insult anyone. I get a kick out of watching Sencio on TV, he's good. I 'm just confused by the temple his followers have built out there in the desert. Then again people do drink beer with caffeine.
I’m done.
I’m not a “blogger”, I will not be back.
I just needed to get all this off my chest.
If you think I need to "up the dose of my meds" for wasting my Saturday afternoon writing about John Sencio, you may be right.
Of course you just spent time reading it.
So in the wise words of Nelson Muntz “Ha Ha”.
On the other hand, if you think there is something deep and meaningful in it, I’d like to say “May the Sencio be with you”… and I’ll see you in group therapy.
Peace out - M. Sullivan Worcester Massachusetts 2007
