[GENERAL] How can I expand serialized BLOBs into pseudo columns

[Eric Brown]

I have a table (quite a few of them actually) where python objects are 
serialized into a column. So a table might look like:
CREATE TABLE mytable (id int, obj bytea);
When I'm trying to diagnose/debug things, I'd like to be able to expand 
the 'obj' column into multiple columns in a view. I created a type and 
wrote a plpgsql function that expands the object. i.e.:
CREATE TYPE myitem AS (val1 text, val2 text);
CREATE FUNCTION expandobj(bytea) returns myitem as '...' LANGUAGE 
plpgsql;

Then I tried:
SELECT expandobj(obj), * from mytable;
I get:
ERROR: cannot display a value of type record
I think/hope I'm missing something pretty stupid, but I can't figure 
out what it might be. Any help would be appreciated. There might even 
be a quite better way.

Eric.
Here's a script to reproduce the problem:
CREATE TABLE mytable (id int, obj text);
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES (1, 'x,y');
CREATE TYPE myitem AS (val1 text, val2 text);
CREATE or REPLACE FUNCTION expandobj(text) returns myitem as '
DECLARE
 items text[];
 item myitem%rowtype;
BEGIN
 items := string_to_array($1, '','');
 item.val1 := items[1];
 item.val2 := items[2];
 return item;
END
' LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';
SELECT * from expandobj('a,b'); -- this works
SELECT expandobj(obj), * from mytable; -- this does not
-- I'd like to see four columns: val1, val2, id, obj
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