AUTOMATIC WRITING

Come on over.

2007-04-06T23:15:00.000-05:00

Have moved to some new blog digs.

Come see them by clicking here.

"I've got your Senior Citizen discount right here..."

2007-04-06T12:28:00.000-05:00

Joining Iggy Pop in the VIP lounge at the the "Old Guys who are cooler than you" club:

William Shatner, now in his seventies.

In this clip from The Tonight Show Shatner does a cover of Pulp's "Common People" with Ben Folds on keyboard and Joe Jackson (!) on backing vocals.

This version of the song is from Shatner's excellent album Has Been - produced by Folds with guest appearances by Henry Rollins (the hilarious "I Can't Get Behind That") and Aimee Mann (who does backup vocals on the honestly heartbreaking "That's Me Trying," which was written by Folds and High Fidelity author Nick Hornby).

The album is, no kidding, great. And not in a campy, "Wow, that video of Shatner doing 'Rocket Man' was GREAT" sort of way. It's just a great effing album.

See that cat...?

2007-04-05T21:10:00.000-05:00

You've got to hope you're having this much fun when you're Iggy Pop's age.

This guy is 59. Fifty-effing-nine-years old. That's right - Iggy Pop is older than your father and he still rocks harder than you can ever hope you will.

Course he's in better shape now than most of us have ever been -- and after spending half his life doing smack and falling drunk down flights of stairs littered with used needles and dead hookers. You can't kill this guy.

Pop and the reformed Stooges have released a fine reunion record (The Weirdness) and are reportedly putting on a hell of a show -- some say better shows than they gave when they were stoned teenagers building a legend.

I can believe it.

Also: Pop served as inspiration for the best scene in the excellent Velvet Goldmine, in which the Iggy analog character (Curt Wild) amazes the Bowie analog character (Brian Slade) with a wild (and eventually naked) version of TV Eye.

If you missed Trainspotting and therefore didn't give Ewan McGregor his due, you've gotta see him transform into Iggy Pop...

If you haven't seen Velvet Goldmine, go rent it immediately. Even if it wasn't well written and beautifully shot with some great Glam and garage rock covers by modern bands (including members of Radiohead, Teenage Fanclub, Placebo, Shudder to Think, Sonic Youth, Mudhoney and the Stooges themselves) -- it's still got Christian Bale, Eddie Izzard, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Ewan McGregor. You can watch a cast like that in anything.

Bowie reportedly did not like his depiction in the film and wouldn't license any of his songs for it. But he did like Placebo's badass version of T. Rex's "20th Century Boy" (featured in the film) so much he did a version of it with them at a British awards show:

This is so good it almost hurts.

Greensboro Public Library: Good comics, weird place

2007-04-04T20:35:00.000-05:00

The Greensboro Public library scores some serious points for having a good, eclectic Graphic Novel section that's light (but not too light) on superheroes and long on adult graphic fiction.

But they lose at least half those points for putting them all on one bookshelf in the "Young Adult" section.

Particularly since I saw not one book in that shelf that I thought would appeal primarily to young adults.

Brian Michael Bendis' gritty, noir crime story Goldfish?

Will Eisner's masterful graphic retelling of Herman Melville's Moby Dick?

Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon's revisionist, allegorical adventure The Escapist?

Frank Miller's twisted and incredibly violent The Dark Knight Returns?

Scott McCloud's academic medium study Reinventing Comics?

Chris Ware's often nihilistic Acme Novelty Library stories?

I was glad to find all of these - but the closest thing I found to anything that would appeal primarily to kids or "young adults" was The Essential Mighty Thor v.1-- and then I realized that, in all likelihood, kids today aren't particularly interested in black-and-white reprints of 1960s pseudo-psychedelic superhero stories based in Norse mythology.

Better that they have them in a weird place than not have them at all, though. And who knows? Maybe some young adults will pick up some of this stuff and get hooked. Better for them than Witchblade, certainly...

I'd better figure this out before my grouchy, shrewish wife comes home or my wacky neighbor drops in...

2007-04-03T23:22:00.000-05:00

So I'm having a sort of sitcom problem.

My new neighbors keep their bedroom window open at night, with the blinds up, often with the lights on.

Tonight when I came home at around midnight the young woman next door was walking around the bedroom completely naked.

She didn't see me walking past the window and I ran inside before she saw me because, for some reason, I thought that if she did it would be my fault for walking by and not her fault for walking around naked in the middle of the night with the blinds up.

Then I realized that I can see this window from all but one of the rooms in my house.

So I have to avoid those windows, draw all the blinds and close the curtains in order to avoid being a peeping tom.

And now, because I know there's this (not unattractive) young woman walking around completely naked just over there I can't enjoy being in the rooms in my house where I can't see it. All I can do is worry about it. She probably has no idea she's in this situation. Her window faces nothing but my place, and I'm hardly ever here. Also, this apartment was empty for a long time before I took it.

I know what some of you are thinking: So...what's the problem, exactly?

Here's the thing:

Of course I'm enough of a pervert to be mildly excited about it. But I also feel guilty about being mildly excited about it.

I'd like to take a moment to thank Catholicism for this particular psychological dilemma.

So here I am, pacing around the house trying to pretend there's not a naked young woman prancing about next door with her window open. A few minutes ago I went outside to loudly take out the garbage and knock things over in the hopes that she would hear the noise, realize she was exposing herself and close the blinds. No such luck.

Is there any polite way to tell her, maybe in the morning when it will seem less creepy, that I can clearly see EVERYTHING if she doesn't close her blinds or curtains?

Or is that sort of thing going to seem creepy no matter when I tell her?

Yeah. This is a lose-lose situation.

They're just pulling names out of a hat over there, aren't they?

2007-04-03T15:44:00.000-05:00

Commencement speakers at a number of area colleges have been announced.

Looks like UNCG's getting the short end of the stick this year.

Maya Angelous, David Brooks...and...you know...that guy.

CJR: Best journalists often crazy drunks. Also: the sky is blue and water is wet

2007-04-03T15:03:00.000-05:00

N&R editor John Robinson points to a CJR article that suggests most of history's best journalists have been drunks, drug addicts and head-cases.

From the article:

Published in the winter 2007 volume of Journalism History, "Depression, Drink and Dissipation" finds that almost half of the best people to ever push a noun against a verb in newsprint were debilitated by depression, serious anxiety, or bipolar disorder; over a third were titanic drunks, pill-poppers, or opium-addicts; nearly a third were serial philanderers, and a sizable bunch were misogynists, man-eaters, or violent bullies.

(Above: Jimmy Breslin - reformed drunk, journalism legend, personal hero.)

Also:

Underwood is vague about the exact nature of that relationship. But the sheer breadth of his evidence supports what pop culture portrays and many of us know: journalists are a hard-living lot. Some of the country's best-known drinking quotes come from the likes of Ben Franklin ("Wine is constant proof that God loves us"), H.L. Mencken ("I've made it a rule to never drink by daylight and never refuse a drink after dark"), and Ambrose Bierce, who rebuffed the pious abstainer as "a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure." Many journalists publicize their sad, soused careers in memoirs and thinly veiled fictions. Ernest Hemingway, arguably the most afflicted war correspondent there ever was, wrote himself into his novel The Sun Also Rises as the shell-shocked lush, Jake Barnes. More recently, Pete Hamill's memoir, A Drinking Life, recalls that when an editor asked columnist Murray Kempton, "How much more?" the Pulitzer Prize winner "lifted his almost-completed bottle of Dewar's and said, 'Oh, about an inch.'"

(Above: H.L. Mencken - Journalist, social critic, slayer of livers.)

On why we're crazy:

Psychologists have shown that neurotics can make good journalists when they project their inner doubts and dissatisfactions onto the world. This is the energy behind investigative reporting and the source of journalism's vaunted distrust of power, the argument goes.

(Above: Ernest Hemingway - reporter, columnist, literary lion and tragic, drunken headcase.)

"See my tailor, he's named Simon -- I know it's going to fit."

2007-04-02T22:08:00.000-05:00

You know what's really, really sad?

I'm genuinely excited that a Brooks Brothers has opened at the Shops at Friendly Center.

So much so that, the other night, before the opening day, I stood outside of it watching them put up the trimming when I came out of Harris Teeter. I felt like New Yorkers watching them put up the tree in Rockefeller Center.

Only, you know, pathetic.

news flash

2007-04-02T21:19:00.000-05:00

Hillary Duff to People Magazine: "I feel pressure to be thin."

People Magazine to Hillary Duff: "Oh, it's working then? No need to thank us."

Every woman everywhere to Hillary Duff: "Welcome to the effing club. We have hats now."

The Sound of Feedback: Age of Consent edition

2007-04-02T09:31:00.000-05:00

Oh, man.

I just had a half-hour conversation with a guy who read the piece on the pastor and the 17-year-old boy.

And was livid because he doesn't think the pastor has done anything wrong.

"How can you write that this man is being arrested and charged when 16 is the legal age of consent in North Carolina?" he asks me in a voice somewhere between The Simpsons' Comic Shop Guy and Family Guy's creepy old molester guy.

"Um...I'm sorry..." I stammer, half asleep as it's not quite 9 a.m. "What is this in reference to...?"

"This pastor...how has he broken any laws?"

"Um...I believe he's been charged with..."

"I know what he's been charged with, but they can't find him guilty because the boy is 17-years-old."

"Um...well, sir, I don't have the statutes in front of me and I don't know them off the top of my head, but..."

"They're just going to charge him with this even though they know they're going to have to drop the charges, but you people will have dragged him through the media by then, so..."

And so, before my alarm clock had gone off, I found myself in the strange position of having to explain why I would help to write a news story about the Kernersville Police and SBI busting a pastor who was trying to work a kid who came to him in a spiritual crisis into a sexual bondage home movie. Because the guy had done nothing wrong.

"Well, sir...you could probably clear up your questions by calling the Forsyth County magistrate's office. They have the warrants and they issue..."

"No, the magistrate isn't going to know anything. They don't know anything about the law."

"Well...sir...they are technically an actual court. They issue warrants. They make determinations..."

"No, no. They just do what the police want and then you drag people through television and the newspaper, even if they haven't done anything wrong."

"Sir, as I said, I'm not a lawyer and I don't have the statute..." (searching for my glasses or contact lenses, nearly falling out of bed)

"Well I'm on Ageofconsent.com right now, and it says here..."

"You're on what...?"

"Ageofconsent.com. It's a website that gives you all the laws on the age of consent in different states and countries."

"Do you...have this bookmarked?

"What?"

"Nevermind. I'm sorry. I..."

"It says right here that 16 is the age of consent..."

"For men and women."

"Yes."

"This was two men. What does it say about that...?

"Um...it says....oh, it says it's illegal."

"Well, then it's right about that at least. But if I wanted a rock-solid answer on the age-of-consent thing I wouldn't go to the Internet. I would definitely talk to a police officer or the magistrate of the county in question."

"Well, I'm not going to consider that rock solid because they're biased."

"Toward...the law?"

"Toward busting people and letting you drag them through the mud..."

"Okay, sir. Listen...I'm getting another call..."

UPDATE:

For those who were wondering, and now that I have my eyes open and some caffeine in the blood, here's the short answer:

The primary charges against the pastor are sexual exploitation of a minor, felony dissemination of obscene material and promoting prostitution of a minor.

These charges stem from documents, e-mails and recorded phone conversations that lead Kernersville police and the SBI to conclude that he attempted to "induce a minor to engage in sexual activity, sexual bondage, anal sex, oral sex for the purpose of producing material containing a visual representation depicting this activity, the defendant knowing the content of the performance."

Or, for the layman, he was trying to make an S&M porn video with a 17-year-old boy.

Also, he's accused of "sending a picture of uncovered male genitals to the minor by use of cell phone picture texting."

Not so fast, Mr. Sweet Dreams...

2007-04-01T11:35:00.000-05:00

This week's reporting was the kind that sort of slowly kills your faith in humanity.

Two young men - one the son of a famous coach, now at N.C. State - stand accused of shooting another young man in his dorm room at UNCG. Police say it was a drug robbery, and tied the accused to a home invasion earlier in the month. Searching one young man's home and his girlfriend's car they find drugs, stolen property, ski masks and guns (including a semi-automatic assault rifle).

Just as that seems to have sorted out and everyone waiting for court dates another story breaks -- this one of a Baptist pastor sexually abusing teen boys. The boy who finally informed on him? A 17-year-old who came to him for spiritual guidance after the cancer death of a teenage friend. The pastor, in recovered letters and telephone calls, tried to talk the boy into filming a video with him in which he would tie the boy naked and spread-eagle to a bed, paint his nails and make up his face in "Goth make-up," perform sex acts on him and torture his nipples. It's not yet clear how many victims there are in this man's case, but he's been a pastor for 17 years.

Have spent much of the weekend catching up on sleep I missed throughout the week. Have had some strange dreams.

Last night I dreamed I was a rock star -- which was thrilling at first. Then I realized, as I stepped out on stage with my band, that my fan base was made up entirely of teenage girls who wanted me to sign their training-bra clad bosoms. I was the rock equivalent of a New Kid on the Block.

Then, just before I woke this morning, I dreamed my family and I hatched a perfect scheme to rob three large banks simultaneously. It worked and we were rich beyond our wildest dreams. But then, with huge stacks of cash littering my living room floor, I began to get paranoid that the police would somehow know this money by its serial number. We'd have to launder it somehow. But how? As my family all talked about how they'd spend it -- going to law school, traveling the world, buying all sorts of large, ridiculous things, I sat there thinking we were doomed and I was the only one who knew it.

Am still trying to shake the horror of those nightmares that began as dreams. The prescription? Apartment cleaning and a movie later -- if I can find anything I want to see.

Waiting for Sidney

2007-03-28T10:15:00.000-05:00

A more complete post on reporting the Sidney R. Lowe II story later (I promise). It's an interesting story -- I was the first reporter at the magistrate's office, waiting for the son of N.C. State's basketball coach and local lawyer Locke Clifford. By the time they arrived there was one crew from Channel 12 in tow. Shortly after we broke the story online there were more, until everyone in town was cramped into a doorway in the hall of the office, waiting for hours, sweating through their clothes and watching as more than a dozen bondsmen worked to keep Lowe II from spending the night in jail.

For now -- this is a slightly edited version (extraneous stuff omitted) of the night note I sent my editors at after 2 a.m. this morning, when I was alone in the office putting up new stuff online and cursing my inability to get the pictures to load (I'm told it was because of the hour, and what the stories online do at that hour):

I’ve just come back from the magistrate’s office, where Locke Clifford drove Coach Lowe and his son off in his Prius, causing all of the news people who had been gathered in the cramped, smelly basement hall of the magistrate’s office for a perp walk to curse under their breaths and ask themselves (for maybe the tenth time that night) why they hadn’t taken their parents’ advice and become business majors.

Anyhow – there’s not much new to report. The $450,000 bond was posted by what I'm told were 13 bail bondsmen. Clifford, annoyed that more and more press had arrived all evening, particularly after we broke the story online, became more and more quiet.

Lowe and son came into the small lobby of the magistrate’s office, where cameras were forbidden but I, with my mere notebook, was allowed to watch and listen as the baker’s dozen bondsmen asked Lowe II questions, took pictures of him with their old-school Polaroids and flashy new digital cameras and had him sign paperwork.

Coach Lowe seemed strong, determined but sad – with the sort of disappointment you’d expect in the face of a father whose son had been picked up for shoplifting or, you know, allegedly robbed six people with a semi-automatic assault rifle, had his small time drug business busted and gotten mixed up in an attempted murder all in one thirty-day period.

Lowe II, for his part, looked exhausted, red eyed and shame-filled, slouching in his black Lacoste polo shirt and oversized blue jeans, looking mechanically, unblinking into the camera of one magistrate and then another as their flashes popped around him. His father flinched a bit each time their small cameras went off – anticipating, perhaps, the larger cameras waiting for them just around the corner, hunched in the doorway to capture this strange and horrible family moment for the next day’s paper, the morning newscast. His son seemed as though he didn’t see them at all.

In the end Clifford came out into the hallway and gave the following statement to the bank of cameras and microphones as I stood just behind him, trying to stay out of the shot and occasionally taking an inadvertent elbow to my stomach as he emoted:

“This is a young man who has never caused his parents five minutes of trouble in the last 21 years. His family is behind him 110%. Coach Lowe talks about the basketball team being his family, but this is his real family.”

All right...now I get it.

2007-03-26T15:29:00.000-05:00

I have, for years, been asking what people see in Lindsay Lohan.

Not "Why do you think she's a good actress?"

Or "Do you think she's mentally disturbed or just a troubled young woman with too much money and attention?"

I'm talking about the more on-the-nose question.

"Why do people want to sleep with her?"

But, apparently, rehab is agreeing with her.

There's a photo shoot in GQ this month that makes me understand. (Link is work-safe...just barely.)

Day of the Daughtry

2007-03-24T13:47:00.000-05:00

The free Daughtry concert last night in downtown Greensboro was nothing short of surreal -- and that's owing nothing to the music, which I didn't hate but seemed to me (aside from the numerous workman-like covers from the likes of Elton John and Pearl Jam) a bit like aural wall-paper.

Just seeing more than 20,000 people in downtown Greensboro was a little stunning. It was as though the Thanksgiving Day parade had come to Elm Street. On a warm day. With a lot of rednecks.

The audience was, frankly, not what I was expecting. This is mostly my fault. I didn't watch American Idol. I haven't heard the Daughtry record or even the singles. The entirety of my familiarity with the man and his music comes from having covered his homecoming after his American Idol dismissal. Based on that experience I did sort of expect the audience to be (as it had been then) mostly high school girls and middle aged women. Their husbands, boyfriends and children would probably also come -- and because it was free other types would show too, just to see what all the fuss was about. But, I was pretty sure, the core of it would be women going through puberty and women going through menopause.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

The young ladies and their mothers were out in force, of course, but Friday afternoon -- hours before the show, before the sun had even considered going down -- downtown was awash in all of the bacteria necessary for life itself.

Girls in high top Chuck Taylors, fishnet stockings, short skirts and no panties.

Weird mullet guys and their weird mullet chicks.

Pissed off high school guys with peach-fuzz mustaches and "Master of Puppets" t-shirts.

Morbidly obese men holding their pants up with clip-on suspenders and getting so drunk they had to sit on the curb while police officers tried to get them to stop crying.

Menacing looking redneck guys showing off their confederate flag tattoos.

Bikers, bikers, bikers.

Doods who Luv Nickelback 4 Evar.

Pot bellied guys in women's jeans and gelled hair with women in spandex pants and halter tops.

And, because of a contest earlier in the day, a lot of shaved-headed little boys dressed up like Chris Daughtry (facial hair drawn on with marker, large sunglasses resting on their heads).

There was a bit of a State Fair atmosphere -- and not just because of the hot dogs, cotton candy, funnel cakes and fair rides.

N&R photographers Joe Rodriguez and Molly Bartels got what are really some amazing shots of the scene throughout the night. Can't post them here, but they're worth taking a look at. My favorite has got to be the aerial overview of the crowd at night. Really captures the enormity of it.

Took some of my own pictures which don't really compare in any way but some of which are funny. Will put them up later with a longer, more interesting post. For now you can read the N&R stories and do look at those pictures.

Getting the jitters

2007-03-22T21:17:00.000-05:00

Am beginning to get a little nervous about the free Daughtry concert in downtown Greensboro tomorrow.

There has been talk that there will be 10,000 or more people. That is, as Jeri Rowe noted in his column, more than the number who came to see seminal alternative rock band The Violent Femmes at last year's Get Downtown.

They're going to begin closing the streets in the afternoon. The security preparations -- which I'm writing about tomorrow for the News & Record -- will be elaborate. I'm anticipating a vibe even scarier than that of his homecoming celebration after his loss on American Idol which, believe me, was crazy enough. Now he has a #7 record.

Here's what's making me nervous: I think it could be well over 10,000 people. And the reason I think this is there's literally no place I've been today that I haven't heard people talking about Daughtry. In the grocery store. At the dry cleaner's. At the deli. In the office. In the little (subcontinent) Indian convenience store I go to and hear nothing but Indian music.

This is going to be scary.

"New suit...?"

2007-03-22T15:46:00.000-05:00

Shaved off my facial hair last weekend.

I work in a newsroom full of professional observers. Almost all of them, when they noticed anything (some just today) have stood there for a moment, scratched their heads and said:

"Something's different, right? New suit?"

Lanita Withers, our education reporter, got it right away. She told me I now look like one of those kid's toys - the blank face on which you can drag metal-shaving hair and mustaches.

Have been told it takes a few years off my face. So it's a good thing I'm not in a profession where I'm constantly putting up with people assuming I'm an idiot because I'm in my early twenties.

Oh, wait...

Also, I'm told the Chris Daughtry resemblance is stronger now.

But mostly by people who want to see my head explode.

Get on the bus

2007-03-20T11:32:00.000-05:00

N&R religion reporter Nancy McLaughlin and I talked to Allen Johnson's journalism class at UNCG last night. Ed Cone had talked the week before, so when they told me they wanted to talk about blogging and journalism it was a little intimidating.

Ed's a much better blogger than I am - more experience, perspective, patience and skill. Nancy's a much better journalist than I am - more experience, perspective, patience and skill.

But it was all right.

The most interesting thing to me: most of the mostly-black students said they didn't blog or read blogs. This lead to a conversation about the perceived lack of diversity in the blogosphere, who is interested in blogging and why that is.

The way I see it white males are almost always the most likely to be technological early adopters. They have more money so they've had the toys longer - good computers, high speed Internet connections, digital cameras and audio equipment. This is true of a lot of technology from iPods and flat screen televisions to hybrid cars. The stats show us the early adopters are overwhelmingly white because, in the beginning, these are luxury items. But like televisions, VCRs and Walkmans which were once thought to be strange and extravagant toys these things trickle down to the less affluent and reach a broader ethnic and socio-economic audience.

Also, and I'm painting with broad anecdotal strokes here, I think white people - especially in the South - are more likely to feel they can affect change and should get involved in something like the blogosphere. You do see a sort of general malaise about technology and society in the Greensboro black community. Largely white local anti-Bush protesters use online tools like blogs, e-mail and social networking sites well, their black counterparts protesting racism at the city level use them almost not at all. Is it a coincidence that Councilwoman Carmany blogs and Councilwoman Bellamy-Small insists that reporters fax her questions? This isn't because black people are stupid, lazy or apathetic. Part of it is the audience. I don't think any of us think Carmany and Bellamy-Small's constituencies have equal levels of Internet use and interest. But they certainly should.

One of the students asked us if we didn't think we'd be reaching a wider audience if we put what's on the N&R's blogs in the newspaper. I was sort of stymied by that question. Does the N&R reach more people through the print product or the online edition? The numbers I've seen for both seem to suggest we get more hits (at least for bigger stories or stories of great local interest) than some papers have daily readers. Does that mean that the traffic to the blogs is or could be greater than the number of people who read the print product? I don't think it is, yet -- but I could see it getting there.

There are all sorts of problems and complications with putting what we do on blogs into the daily newspaper - some of them business problems, some of them ethical, some of them having to do with the restrictions of the print product. But here's the thing: I think we should definitely loosen up and do more adventurous things in the print product. I like the print product and would like to see it be better and interest more people my age, of my interests. But I don't think we're going to reach more people with the print product by cutting and pasting things from the online product into the paper. That's a losing proposition. They have to work together and we have to use the lessons of the online experience in the paper. Those who won't go online to experience the online product and its advantages are simply going to have to get on the bus, because that's where it's going. It's true that we have plenty of readers who do not, as many an elderly reader has told me when I suggest they look for a story online or hear some audio on the website, "mess around with the Internet."

And that's fine. Because they're going to die sooner than later. I am, quite frankly, a little tired of trying to figure out how to cater to those readers and avoid offending their delicate sensibilities at the expense of presenting something that might get my generation excited about journalism again, that might be new and exciting, that might be different but not lesser. There's nothing more frustrating for young reporters, photographers, designers and interactive media people at newspapers than having good ideas squelched or compromised in an attempt to pacify people who refuse to catch up to where the culture is now, nevermind take a look at where it's going. That's the sort of thing that's driving younger readers away when keeping and attracting them is the only way to stay alive. The idea that we're seriously worrying about whether we can run a protest picture with a sign using the word "sucks" is ridiculous. And anyone paying attention knows that.

I'm lucky because I work at a newspaper that, though still frustratingly beholden to the sort of reader who would be so offended they couldn't get over themselves if they saw the word "sucks", usually makes the right decision when its back is to that wall.

"Yes, we are old-fashioned, as are many of our readers," N&R editor John Robinson said in his blog entry about the decision.

But he approved the picture anyway.

I love newspapers. I love unfolding them, clipping things out of them, stumbling on things by accident in their pages and getting my hands all inky. I like newspaper design and the way the print product can let you in on the personality of a newspaper. But I'm not going to cry in my beer about the action moving online and worry myself sick about those who aren't going to follow -- I'm going to move there and figure out how we do journalism where it needs to be done, where it will reach the most people and provide the most and best opportunities to tell good stories.

Some people will come early. Others will come late. But everyone's going to have to get on the bus

Dick finally getting respect. No, no -- Philip K. Dick.

2007-03-19T19:58:00.000-05:00

Philip K. Dick is the latest author chosen for a handsome omnibus edition from The Library of America.

The company, which produces handsome volumes of the collected works of major American authors, has produced collections by Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Herman Melville, Thomas Jefferson and Edgar Allan Poe.

Dick wrote some of the most complex, horrific and prescient science fiction ever produced. Ahead of his time and never as wildly popular or critically acclaimed before his death as after his books and stories have been the basis for some of the best and most mind-bending sci-fi movies in film history. Among them: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Screamers, Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly and the upcoming Next. Two films based on his life are now being produced.

The book, slated for a June 2007 publication, will include the Dick masterpieces The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik. I've read all but the first and highly recommend them. I've already pre-ordered the Library of America edition.

The first time I've ever wanted Court TV

2007-03-19T16:39:00.000-05:00

LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- John Waters realizes that his newest role -- presiding as the Groom Reaper over Court TV's first original scripted series, " 'Til Death Do Us Part" -- might make for some uncomfortable family situations.

The show, which marks Waters' first starring role on a TV series, finds the director of such twisted, offbeat films as "Pink Flamingos" and "A Dirty Shame" as well as the more mainstream "Hairspray" guiding viewers through dramatizations of true stories of doomed marriages that end with one spouse murdering the other.

Waters admits his alter ego as the Groom Reaper might make it a bit awkward when attending the weddings of family or friends -- like his niece/goddaughter's upcoming nuptials.

"I'm going to try not to lurk in the back row but sit up front and be cheery and wear light-colored clothing," he jokes. "It's terrible for her that this show is coming out (just before her big day)."

---

Full story here.

Her production company is actually called "Whacko." You couldn't write that...

2007-03-19T10:59:00.000-05:00

LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- Fox says Carol Burnett can't take a joke.

The actress says Fox and its "Family Guy" show paid her back for refusing access to her music and other copyrighted materials by lampooning her in an episode of the animated TV comedy, and now she wants them to pay for the indignity.

In a suit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Burnett and her Whacko production company seek more than $2 million for alleged copyright infringement and other claims.

In July 2005, "Family Guy" producers were refused permission to use Burnett's well-known theme music from her long-running former CBS TV show in an episode of the animated series titled "Peterotica," according to the suit. That's when they decided to cook up some paybacks, it claims.

"After permission to use Ms. Burnett's theme music was denied, plaintiffs are informed and believe that Fox caused the 'Peterotica' episode to be rewritten to disparage Ms. Burnett, using Ms. Burnett's signature ear tug," the suit states.

"As aired on April 23, 2006, the opening scene of the 'Peterotica' episode of 'Family Guy' shows Peter entering a porn shop with several other characters, including a character named Quagmire. As they enter the porn shop, Peter comments that he expected the porn shop to be dirty.

"Quagmire responds that the porn shop is clean because 'Carol Burnett works part-time as a janitor,"' the suit continues. "The camera then shifts to show Ms. Burnett's 'Charwoman' character complete with trademarked blue bonnet, bucket and mop, mopping the floor of the porn shop in front of a row of blow-up dolls while a slightly altered version of 'Carol's Theme' is playing. One of the other characters then says, 'You know when she tugged her ear at the end of that show, she was really saying goodnight to her mom.' Quagmire then makes a vulgar reference to Ms. Burnett and her father, responding, 'I wonder what she tugged to say goodnight to her dad.' "

"Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane was not named as a defendant in the suit. Fox, which produces the show and airs it over its broadcast network, issued a statement indicating "surprise" over the legal action.

" 'Family Guy,' like the 'Carol Burnett Show,' is famous for its pop culture parodies and satirical jabs at celebrities," Fox said. "We are surprised that Ms. Burnett, who has made a career of spoofing others on television, would go so far as to sue 'Family Guy' for a simple bit of comedy."

The Week in Pictures 3/5/07 - 3/9/07

2007-03-16T20:44:00.000-05:00

This week was dominated for me by the John Edwards rally at Bennett College. It was my first chance to put to use some of the skills I'd learned in the N&R's digital bootcamp. I recorded, mixed, edited and posted the entire speech and some student responses to it on the N&R's website. Felt good to be able to do it all myself rather than having to hand it off to someone else who really doesn't have the time to hold my hand through something this simple.

N&R readers were able to read our story and then, with a click of their mouse, listen to the entire speech if they wanted. It's the sort of thing newspapers should be doing more often. We have the technology. We can learn the skills. There's no reason bloggers should be able to do anything (within certain ethical constraints) that professional journalists can't.

Now that I've gotten my feet wet I'm planning a larger project I think is going to be very interesting and am looking for ways to incorporate this sort of thing into upcoming stories.

Later this same day I went to report on Toni Morrison at War Memorial Auditorium -- but they wouldn't let me take pictures anywhere near the event. Didn't seem to stop a lot of other people, but I have a new camera and don't want it confiscated or crushed.

(Above: That's newly elected UNCG student body president Donald Hughes on the left, in the white button-down shirt.)

(Above: For some reason John Edwards looks strangely like Adam West in this shot...)

(Above: This was the beginning of a media scrum that was very strange. As you can see I was standing right next to Edwards and I could barely hear what he was saying over the sounds of the crowd and Outkast's "Hey Ya" blaring over the sound system. When the music died down I expected to be able to make out what he was saying, but it turns out that when he's not speaking to large crowds he's a bit of a low-talker. Had to move in close to be sure he wasn't just mouthing the words.)

(That's intrepid N&R reporter Nate DeGraff on the left there, in the striped tie. He wrote the story.)

Suiting Up

2007-03-16T17:03:00.000-05:00

My buddy Chris Lowrance's comic Framed is out in the latest Yes Weekly -- and this one focuses on his getting his first suit.

I went with Chris for this little right of passage -- and it ended up being harder than I had anticipated. Being as small as Chris is even worse than being huge. They have whole stores dedicated to men the size of Oak trees with waists like small swimming pools. But if you're smaller than the average guy in stature, frame or girth you're sort of screwed. We ended up doing all right, though we had to deal with...you know...suit salesmen. He got an all-purpose suit and a comic out of it.

It's interesting to have known Chris for a few years now and watched his attitudes about clothes shift slightly. I didn't always dress the way I do now, but I don't think I ever had a bias against the suit the way he does (and certainly never took it to the extremes he did -- and is kind enough to share with us in the form of his high school prom photo). But it's like I once heard David Johansen say: it's all drag. Everyone is trying to say something with their clothes. Everyone cares about their clothes -- especially people who tell you that they don't. Chris' aversion to suits says as much about him as my predilection for them says about me.

The idea that a suit is elitist and conformist is, really, ridiculous -- something that was sold to us relatively recently and, with hipsters paying hundreds of dollars for jeans and wrinkled shirts, already seems like a bad joke. If you're under 30 and you're wearing a suit -- or even a shirt with a collar, any item of clothing you've actually ironed -- you DO look different. But Chris makes an important point in the comic -- you can't let you clothes wear you, whatever you're wearing. You have to make it yours. If you're horrified that putting a suit on is going to make you into something you hate you don't need a change of clothes - you need a therapist.

Holy Zombie Reagan...

2007-03-15T21:20:00.000-05:00

Now this is just incredibly effed-up.

Below is the first "new-look" issue of Time. Their choice for the first cover of the re-design? A Photoshopped picture of a weeping Ronald Reagan that they don't clearly credit as being Photoshopped.

From RADAR:

Is Time hoping a little controversy will draw attention to its redesign? The first new-look issue, on newsstands tomorrow, features what appears to be a photo of Ronald Reagan with a fat tear sliding down his cheek, illustrating the cover story, "How the Right Went Wrong." A somewhat cryptic credit in small type on the (revamped!) table of contents describes the image this way: "Photograph by David Hume Kennerly. Tear by Tim O'Brien." Nowhere does it specifically state that the cover is a photo illustration—in other words, that it's Photoshopped.

Crediting someone for the photo and someone else for the tear just isn't good enough.

I get it. A lot of people will get it. A lot of other people won't -- or won't even look at the inside credit to see the distinction. Which would be their problem except that it's not obviously a photo illustration. You don't have to be a moron to look at this picture and think it's actually a photo of Reagan crying. Last month's Time cover with Cheney and storm clouds? You could tell that was a photo illustration. This one? Not so much.

I know some of you reading this are design people. Others are journalists. This is an issue for both groups. Just how out of line is this?

Also, the re-design seems to suck.

A White Piece of Paper

2007-03-15T20:04:00.000-05:00

So I bought the two West Wing script-books. Got them used for a song.

The West Wing is one of my favorite shows and, at least in the first four seasons, the writing was some of the best in the history of television. Aaron Sorkin is a strange, screwy man and one of the few people for whom I don't think the word "genius" is misused.

But whenever I watch the show -- it's one of those shows you can watch over and over, no matter how many times you've seen it -- I always wonder...how did he write this?

Not where did it come from. That's a different question.

How did he write it?

How did he get the words down on paper in such a way that these people now stand there in front of cameras, saying these things. Did he actually write it this way, or is this something that was improvised on the set? Did it get cobbled together in pieces? Some of it must be stuff that just sort of worked -- the chemistry, the way the characters relate to each other, the way it all sort of clicks together and works. You can't plan that. You can't write that down in advance. This has to be a process that starts with a script that's serviceable and turns into something else.

But it's not.

It's all there.

The actors are brilliant and I'd watch any of them in anything. The sets are gorgeous. The direction is masterful. But the words...they're all there on the page, every single one of them, no changes at all. What you hear coming out of their mouths, how they move, the perfect little rhythms, the inflections, the way it flows, even the stop-start-stop-agains...they're all there. He planned it this way. The man wrote it just like this, just this perfectly.

That's incredibly intimidating.

Luckily, it's not just incredibly intimidating for me.

The first book has a forward in which he describes pitching the West Wing. He had written A Few Good Men, Malice and The American President and was doing for-hire work after going through rehab for cocaine addiction. He was polishing dialog in other peoples' scripts and working in writer's rooms but was carefully avoiding starting anything original. Why? Because, he says, it's incredibly intimidating. He loves writing, but he hates starting. That white piece of paper stares at you and mocks you. It is not afraid of you. It does not believe in your ability. It knows that you are small and cheap and without talent and that it can crush you. It's crushing you now and it hasn't even begun trying.

God, do I know how that feels.

But the right idea came along and he locked himself in a room and he sat down to it and he banged at it until it sounded like something. Then he went back to it and realized it was shit and started over. And then he went over it again and cleaned it up. Then he realized he had just little bits he could salvage and would have to go at it again. And he did that. And it's beautiful.

Now, with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, he has something that isn't quite working. It seems, more than any of his other projects (though they all have a bit of it), to be a show that's about writing, about entertaining, about what that means to us, how it happens and why. Maybe it's too much inside baseball, maybe not enough people can relate to it, there's certainly some mis-casting...but I still watch it and love it, even when it's not firing on all cylinders. It's one of the most meta-fictional shows on television -- about TV, about its creator, about the process, about itself, even. I'm fascinated even when I'm not amazed.

Looking at these shooting scripts bound up like this is inspiring. This was a stack of white paper, at one point. A blank screen. He had to work himself up to starting in the face of that, to keep going when it seemed he was nowhere, and we have this because of it.

There are writers who make us all feel like fools. Read George Orwell's essays. Read P.J. O'Rourke's travel writing. Read Ian Fleming's short stories "A Quantum of Solace" and "The Living Daylights" or Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad." You're going to feel like a piker. You're going to feel like a fraud. You're going to wish you'd gotten an MBA instead.

But it's somehow comforting to know that Aaron Sorkin, a guy who could get in the ring with any of those heavyweights -- and did it on television, no less -- feels that crippling impotence when he sits down in front of a blank page too.

The other night I heard Toni Morrison speak. Someone in the audience asked her when she knew she wanted to be a writer. She said she'd been in editing for 20 years before she wrote her first novel in her early 40s and it was then that she knew she wanted to do it for the rest of her life. Eight major novels, several books of essays, a National Book Critics Award, a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize later she's telling people that they shouldn't stop writing if they're in their 30s or 40s and haven't written their novel yet. She's telling them not to back down from that white piece of paper because she conquered it at an age when most people would have assumed it would have happened if it was going to.

I take great comfort in this at 24 when the writing is not going well.

Say you want a revolution...

2007-03-14T19:33:00.000-05:00

This is, apparently, how they protest President Bush in Brazil:

We have so much to learn.

One of these things is not like the other one...

2007-03-14T12:10:00.000-05:00

An amusing moment from yesterday's John Edwards rally at Bennett College:

I'm sitting in the bleachers after talking to some of the students in the crowd, waiting for Edwards to come back. I'm listening to the music piped in through the sound system - mostly old R&B stuff, with the occasional politically-tinged track mixed in (CCR's "Fortunate Son," John Mayer's "Waiting for the World to Change").

That's when I see what looks like a young guy in a black pinstripe suit standing around, occasionally helping with some event duties -- asking people if they want to go up on stage, etc. But there's something...different about this guy. Most of the other young aides and volunteers look like they've just been released early for good behavior from their frat house - the same blue blazer with gold buttons, the same "wouldn't it be cool to be in the Secret Service" look as they survey the crowd, waiting on the candidate with the rest of us. A few are wearing those awful fake pocket square things that, if anyone actually needed a handkerchief, would be both useless and embarrassing. When one of them sees me writing in a notebook he pulls out a silver business card holder (monogrammed, naturally) and hands me his card without any sort of solicitation.

But this guy in the pinstripes...he seems a little cooler, a little more relaxed. He looks a little young to be a professional operative, but infinitely more relaxed, experienced and less asinine than a lot of these other guys. He's not trying so hard we're worried he's going to hurt himself, anyway.

But then I notice...yes, he has a silver stud just below his lower lip, obscured by a soul patch. When he turns his head I notice the collar of his shirt is just barely covering the tattoo on the back of his neck. Is it possible Edwards has an operative with visible facial piercings and tattoos anywhere but in a phone bank or in a mobile war room? Is this one of the campaign's bloggers?

He notices me noticing him and gets this look on his face...does he know me? And if so...where from?

Then he introduces himself. It's local blogger Jay Ovittore.

And, though he looks about ten years younger, he's 33-years-old.

It's always strange for me to meet bloggers with whom I've spoken online, but who I've never actually seen in person. We used to have family, friends and acquaintances. Now, as we live more and more of our lives on the Internet, there are still more categories -- people you know only from the Internet, people who know you though your paths have never crossed.

Speak into the microphone

2007-03-13T23:34:00.000-05:00

It's 12: 30 a.m. and I'm just getting home, just taking off my shoes, just eating something other than the coffee I had to wake me up and the water I've been drinking throughout the day to wash down Aleve.

Was on tap to help with the John Edwards' visit to Bennett College today. If you follow the link you can see the fruits of my labor on the right -- the entire John Edward speech recorded, edited (just to bring down ambient noise and make the sound level and even), broken into four parts and posted by me. Also, some audio from students who heard the speech.

For some reason there isn't any place for a by-line on this type of thing and I felt like it would be sort of strange to insert one in at the end, as though I was saying, in a place for which it's not really intended: "HEY! LOOK AT ME AND WHAT I DID!"

So instead I'm saying it here.

"HEY! LOOK AT ME AND WHAT I DID!"

I wouldn't be thumping my chest and crowing so loud except that before last week, when I did the N&R's digital bootcamp, I couldn't have done any of this. The program is supposed to teach you some basics everyone in a new media newsroom should know - how to record and edit audio, how to create a slide show, how to post stories online, how to do digital video. Now that I have these skills (and am working to develop them) I want to use them every chance I get. Having this great an opportunity to get into it so soon after figuring out how to do it -- that's a stroke of luck.

The Edwards event was something of a challenge - hard to take good audio in a gymnasium full of clapping, screaming, singing people with a sound system blaring. But it came off okay. Some of the audio I took in the room didn't work, so I just followed people out afterward and caught them on the sidewalks. Got a nice cross-section of people from different colleges. I was happy with it and ready to get to work.

Then I got back to the office and was told that I'd been tapped to cover Toni Morrison at the War Memorial Auditorium. And that I had to leave in about fifteen minutes. When I got back I'd have about fifteen minutes to dash off a story and then back into the audio until just before midnight.

Feel like I definitely earned my paycheck today -- and it feels good. I'd never give up writing for multimedia but I'm attracted to doing both in a way that a lot of reporters I know are not. I can see where it might be frustrating to spend most of your career developing your writing only to be told that you now have to learn a bunch of skills that are, by and large, unrelated. But you know what? We have to learn them. We have to adapt and compete just to stay relevant. I'll always want to pick up the newspaper to read the story of a presidential candidate's visit to my hometown...but the paper that also lets me listen to the entire speech on its website...that's a page I'm bookmarking, that's a paper that will keep me coming back. It's not about our jobs disappearing - it's about our jobs changing into something strange and wonderful for which we can be prepared and at which we can excel if we realize how much fun the whole thing's going to be and how much better we're going to be for it.

And now...sleep.

The Departed

2007-03-12T20:19:00.000-05:00

Finally got around to seeing "The Departed."

Talk about a flick that deserves the hype.

I thought "Gangs of New York" was interesting. I enjoyed most of "The Aviator."

But I'm glad to see Scorsese come back to crime flicks because, honestly, it's important that they're done well. Like a lot of deceptively simple things, they're very easy to do badly and, in the right hands, they can be transcendent.

Like the best crime/mystery/detective fiction it's the quiet, emotional moments that hit you so hard in the gut that the graphic violence is comparatively easy to swallow. Being killed in an Irish mob hit is nothing next to the stark existential horror of wondering who you are and if you belong, if the one you love loves you and if you deserve to be loved, giving up on your dreams and having to re-imagine your life.

It's great to see Scorsese at the reigns of something like this in the years since Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, two films that re-energized and redefined the genre by drawing and building on a base of which Martin Scorsese was a major architect. I'm one of the only people I know who liked Casino, but this is a different animal - more dangerous and disturbing for its lack of glitz and its eschewing of the almost mandatory "good times roll/things fall apart" sequencing of crime and especially mob flicks. This movie is things and people falling apart almost from its beginning and it's a beautiful mess.

TKO

2007-03-08T21:17:00.000-05:00

I bought a heavy bag and put it up in the new place.

Now every night when I come home I hit the damned thing until I ache.

But it never makes me feel any better. It just makes me tired.

Some years ago, when I was in love with boxing, I used to spar with a friend of mine. He was bigger and better and used to pretty consistently hit me so hard my ears would ring for an hour afterward. But it was a good time.

Then one day, after a class we had together, he went home and hung himself.

Something went out of the boxing for me then I don't think I've ever gotten back.

That was a strange year. I wrote a novella that was sort of about it all once, but I destroyed it because it just wasn't working and I felt like one of us had to go. Sometimes I wish I'd saved a copy. But more often I'm glad it's gone.

Technogasm

2007-03-08T14:15:00.000-05:00

I've been doing the News & Record's Digital Bootcamp for two days - a multimedia crash-course in which I'm learning some more web tools, learning to do things with our website, record, edit and post audio, pictures and hopefully video.

I expected it to be good, but probably a little frustrating. I'm not a patient man and even my gadget/technology lust doesn't trump my frustration with not being good at things right away. But I've got to tell you -- once you begin learning and practicing some of this stuff, it isn't that difficult.

And the ease of use is making my mind explode with possibilities. I've got a little pad here next to me on which I'm scribbling ideas for good multimedia projects. Right now my desk is a mess of wires, earphones, adapters and notebooks - the iRiver H10 on which I'm recording audio and storing the unedited product along with pictures, my iPod, which is holding finished products, my new Sony Cybershot on which I have nearly a GB's worth of pictures and video I've been shooting around town to get the hang of things. Also, this Lipton Green Tea with Citrus they now have in the vending machines here. If you're not already hooked on this stuff, don't start.

Working in the day instead of night and figuring out how I can tell stories in new and interesting ways...it's giving me the most wonderful headache.

Real writers

2007-03-07T11:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had someone tell me (the third person in a month, actually) that they thought about doing what I do for a living, but decided they wanted to be a "real writer."

By which, of course, they mean they want to write novels or poetry or short stories and don't want to debase their talents as wordsmiths with anything so low and common as journalism.

I don't think these people mean to sound like pricks. I don't think they even realize how they sound. Or maybe they do, but they think people like me never write for pleasure anyway - that we're simply trading on our gifts to be able to...you know, pay our own bills, sleep indoors and eat. Which is not really an artistic enterprise. So why would that insult us?

Or, another impression I often get, they think people who go into journalism or any other pursuit related to writing for money don't really care about words the way they do -- we just figured out a hustle that happened to involve writing.

The number of unpublished words I've written in the last few years - fiction, essays, poetry -- the stuff I've never let anyone read -- is staggering. I stay up late writing for pleasure when I can't sleep, I do it in the mornings when my time is my own, in the bathtub because no one will bother you. Any time that I can really be alone, which is the only way that I can do it, I'm usually writing. But I don't consider journalism -- even the stuff that isn't really that exciting -- to be lesser, to be beneath real writers.

Newsrooms the world over are full of people who care about what they do -- the reporting, the process, the nuts and bolts -- but who also care about the words. I don't think any of us are going to apologize also making a living (and a difference) with them.

Annnnd.....ACTION

2007-03-06T19:31:00.000-05:00

Still figuring out this new camera. Can do video with it, though the quality is not great.

Shot this clip of the Rev. Cardes Brown defending T. Dianne Bellamy-Small tonight at the Greensboro City Council meeting.

Thank God they cleared that up

2007-03-06T16:20:00.000-05:00

The final pieces

2007-03-06T16:02:00.000-05:00

My new couch was delivered today.

After the delivery guys left (I gave them handshakes, bottles of water and much thanks) I sank down onto it, put my feet up on the coffee table and closed my eyes. The soft leather absorbed the warmth of my skin as I very nearly fell asleep right then and there.

This is a dangerously nice couch.

Here's the picture from the website -- haven't gotten around to taking one of my own living room yet as my camera battery was charging.

Didn't buy the weird rug, large rubber tree or red leather ottomans -- just the sectional sofa/ lounge, which I've wedged into a corner. I could put my entire family on this thing and have room left over.

It feels a little larger in the room than I though it would -- but at least it doesn't seem so empty now.

So - after a month of living in the place I can finally have people and, you know, let them sit down.

Pressing the flesh

2007-03-05T15:39:00.000-05:00

Creepy automatic photo retouching software.

You can download a trial at the site or just look at some of the examples - a few of which look like Michael Jackson before and after shots. Thought this would be of particular interest to Kitty Campbell, who I've often heard talk about the creepy retouching that's rampant in magazines, on television and album covers these days, particularly for women.

I remember Gretchen telling me that Mariah Carey's latest album art and publicity shots look almost nothing like the woman in the flesh, which has prompted some snickering from celebrity gossip sites who like pointing out the differences in concert shots.

Here's why this software would be useless to me personally: I'm sort of in the same boat with Clint Eastwood. I'm not in any way conventionally gorgeous and sort of count on the character of my face, my head, my eyes, the lines and little nicks and scars to make me interesting looking. Take those little character points away, shave years off of my face or erase the lines, folds and irregularities and I'm hardly worth looking at. This is, really, the only way in which I'm even remotely in the same boat as Clint Eastwood who, besides being a great actor and brilliant director is, for all his years etched on his iconic face, much more interesting looking.

I mean look at this:

It would be a sin to retouch that face.

I think the pressure for women to begin altering their appearance and eliminating the signs of age is much stronger than for men. On men the physical signs of age - even unflattering ones - are distinguished. They tell a story, they emote, they add depth. In women we only, as a society, notice the absence of youth.

Sometimes a debilitating fear of castration is just a debilitating fear of castration

2007-03-05T12:50:00.000-05:00

This is a condom applicator designed to help stem the tide of AIDS in South Africa. It's now marketed and sold under the "PRONTO" condom brand.

It's not that I don't think this is a good idea - anybody who's ever put a condom on the wrong way in the dark or in a rush with trembling hands or had one break because you didn't have it on just right before you began understands that this is a good thing in any society.

I just think we could find a way to make it look less like a cigar cutter.

confessional

2007-03-04T10:44:00.000-05:00

Have possibly the worst headache I've ever had this morning -- and I woke up before people were even out of church. Couldn't go back to sleep.

File this one under "You're a moron and you deserve it."

"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned: I am a horrible cliché."

"Your penance, my son: One Prairie Oyster, one cold shower, writing for the rest of the day."

"Done, done and done, Father."

"Also, destroy your cell phone."

A polite request

2007-03-02T23:09:00.000-05:00

Okay. We're both bald.

But I don't look like this guy.

Also -- I'm not cool, dreamy or musically talented.

So let's stop with the giggling, the joke e-mails and the little pictures of him with my facial hair drawn on, shall we?

Step one of twelve

2007-03-02T17:36:00.000-05:00

I spend too much money on technology. I spend too much money on books and magazines.

This little beauty would let me do both at once:

But much as I'd like to, I'm not buying it.

Little thing called self control I've been hearing about lately. Thought I'd see how it fits.

It does, however, give me hope that other prestigious American magazines with long and wonderful histories - Esquire, Rolling Stone, Time - will soon be offering something like this.

They've been doing it with comic books for years.

A little piece of the future from modern day London

2007-03-02T16:54:00.001-05:00

The kind of thing you leave to other people

2007-03-02T00:21:00.000-05:00

Did you ever wonder who's going to write your obituary?

It may sound morbid, but it's an important point.

Or it used to be.

There are still plenty of people who read obituaries. Even plenty of people who read obituaries first, before anything else in the paper. Before the sports section, even.

But those are just the people who read newspapers, an ever dwindling crowd.

I have a friend in Connecticut who loves obituaries. The funny ones, the touching ones, the ones that really show the way the writer considered the whole life, the weight of this task, maybe one of the most difficult and most important a writer can face. It's not just the touching ones - it's the funny ones, the ones you think about the next day, the ones that brought you face to face with someone, made you remember that character.

You want to have a good obituary, even if you didn't have a good life. If you had a good life it may be even more important. You kind of want to stick the landing.

Ernest Hemingway got to read his obituary a number of times before he actually shoved a shotgun into his mouth and did the dirty deed. They thought he'd died a number of times - including two plane crashes within days of each other. He got to read his obituary a number of times before he'd even gotten to the final act. Before the low lows of "The Dangerous Summer." Just after he gave us "The Old Man and The Sea" and silenced all the critics who said he'd lost it. After he'd won the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes but before he'd begun "A Moveable Feast."

He said he loved reading them. Thought it was hilarious. I wonder, though. Do you really want to see the sum total of your life in so few column inches? Do you really want to live to see that, even with highs that high?

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone who knew you wrote an obituary? Not a proper obit, not a summation of your life, but just a little something summing up who you were to them, what you meant, what they thought was important. It would take up pages, probably, if you did it right, but it wold be something to see. Would they fit together like some sort of strange and beautiful puzzle? Would they clash, creating a warped and confusing dissonance? Would it be jarring or oddly comforting for people to realize just how many people you were? To see all the little victories of your life lined up like fresh eggs, white and gleaming and incredibly fragile? All your failures too, the chipped tooth as she smiles at you across that crowded room. Would they laugh out loud alone at their kitchen tables, or just sit there stunned, in silent awe?

But like the lady said - what does it matter what you say about people?

When I was in middle school this kid named Ashley died. He was sort of awkward, not very popular, but good at sports so he was given a pass. One day, in the middle of a soccer game some sort of congenital heart defect he never knew he had caused him to collapse, turn blue and die almost before anyone realized there was something truly wrong.

When he was gone the kids who would have had nothing to do with him day to day cried their eyes out. They wrote long tributes to him. The principal presided over a ceremony on the front lawn of the school where they planted a tree in his name with a little plaque and everything. Some years later I went back to that spot. The tree had been bent and neglected and was now an ugly little thing that looked as though it wouldn't make it. The plaque was gone. I couldn't remember the kid's last name anymore. I can't remember it now. I wonder if any of us can. I wonder how long it's going to be before the first name goes too.

Anyway, I think that's why it would be nice to have a good obituary. Not for you. What does it matter to you? For everyone else. They should get the full picture.

Writers are lucky in this respect. We usually know at least a few other writers. Some good ones, fi we're really lucky. It's not the kind of thing you want to leave to just anyone. I read a story recently about a man who wrote his own obituary over and over again...but I think that sort of defeats the purpose. You're the last person in a position to say who you were. That should be left to other people. That's the only way it makes any sense. Trying to look at your own life, trying to make it make any sense, is so often like trying to see yourself in a mirror with your face pressed to the glass.

Never a good idea.

In case you need a reason to hate Missouri. Or, you know, people.

2007-02-28T21:30:00.000-05:00

This just in:

If you're raped in Missouri you have to pay for the rape kit used to collect the evidence.

The state legislature has, apparently, deigned to look into changing this "under certain circumstances."

God, I hate people.

All of them.

Yes, you too.

2007-02-28T21:06:00.000-05:00

Ever have one of those weeks when you just can't catch a break?

Realize that life goes fast/It's hard to make the good things last

2007-02-28T18:24:00.000-05:00

The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne on NPR's This I Believe.

Best of all possible worlds

2007-02-28T17:02:00.000-05:00

Twice after 9/11 I seriously considered joining the armed forces. I was talked out of it by my father, a career Marine who fought in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Like a lot of people lucky enough to be in school I felt sort of sick to my stomach going to college classes, writing for my college paper, bitching about finals while young men and women my age were fighting and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq. My family has a long military tradition and I felt that, like World War II or Vietnam, this war -- this ongoing, shifting, ill-defined, new brand of war and warfare -- was going to be a touchstone and defining point for my generation.

Where were you when the towers came down?

Where were you when war was declared?

Where were you when they captured Saddam Heussein?

Where were you when it ended?

If I wasn't going to fight the war I thought I might cover it -- and I was given the opportunity just before I took this job. It would have meant passing up the gig I now have and putting off my start as a full time daily news reporter. Still, I considered it and, if I could have afforded the associated expense and losing the full time spot (I tried to figure a way around both) I probably would have gone.

Sometimes I think about how my life would have turned out if I'd shrugged off my father's advice -- one of the only times we'd ever talked about the direction of my life, what he'd learned in his and whether the two had any connection.

In a world that might have been I am already dead -- killed in a roadside bombing, another name in a small list at the end of a brief news item. I never wrote my novel. I never married that girl or had those children. My mother buried me and was presented with a folded flag. The grief transformed her, further hardening her against the sort of war that took her husband from her for so many years and robbed her children of their father when they most needed him. She gave more to her country than she could spare and closed off pieces of herself that never opened again. My father tried to be strong for her but cried for me when he was sure no one would see, wondering why he lived and I died. Those I leave behind wonder for me, was it worth it? They lay awake imagining how I would have answered.

In another world I survive it all to come home with strange new experiences and perspectives on war that partisans and pundits on both sides cannot imagine. I'm missing three fingers on my left hand and part of that arm but there are people on either side who will still call me a traitor to my country if they feel I've let them down with what I say and how I see things now. Maybe I never talk about what I saw and did there. Maybe I can't even bring myself to write it down.

Here and now, in this world, I read over breakfast about another dead soldier younger than I am today.

When I was a kid I rarely met a Marine closer to my age than my father's. And then, a few years ago, I interviewed a group of them coming back from Iraq. There they were, all 18 - 20 years old, none of them old enough to order a beer and all of them with scars that would never heal. Some were soft and pink along their jawlines or in soft white ringlets on their chests. Some were nearly imperceptible, living only in the cold silence with which they met my questions, the answers they held back and the worry in the faces of their mothers and sisters that told me that they barely recognized their boys.

There are more of them coming home now, and they're the lucky ones.

Halfway through the week and here we are - another strange, sad day in this best of all possible worlds.

News Flash: Self-centered college students carrying handbasket in which society is going to hell

2007-02-27T13:21:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

"We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back," said the study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."

--

Full story here.

I want to laugh.

I want to cry.

I want to drink.

I'm going to have a shower.

A clear message

2007-02-26T16:52:00.000-05:00

GUATEMALA CITY - Emergency crews on Saturday found a third body in a 330-foot-deep sinkhole that had swallowed a dozen homes and forced the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people in a crowded Guatemala City neighborhood.

The body of Domingo Soyos, 53, was carried out of the enormous fissure and identified by family members, medical crews said.

Soyos was the father of teenagers Irma and David Soyos, whose bodies were found floating in a river of sewage soon after the sinkhole opened on Friday.

Residents said there were other people unaccounted for, but emergency crews could not confirm that.

Officials blamed recent rains and an underground sewage flow from a ruptured main for the tragedy. The pit emitted foul odors, loud noises and tremors, shaking the surrounding ground. A rush of water could be heard from its depths, and authorities feared it could widen or other sinkholes could open up.

---

Full story here.

This is the horror of nature - or, rather, the horror of man trying to exist in the natural world.

We think we're so clever, we think we're so right...but the truth is only known by giant holes that open in the Earth to devour our homes and swallow our puny little bodies whole. The Earth laughs at our attempts to set up our precious little sewage systems and, with one hard rain and the terrifying stomach-turning yawp of nature opening its great steely jaws, it gives us our just desserts.

"Build your little cities on the moon if you're so clever!" the Earth laughs, wiping its mouth and spitting out our bones into great mountain-like heaps.

And what do we do? We thank our God for his mercy in not taking all of us and we resolve to build an even larger, better city in the same spot. Because the human spirit cannot be broken, no matter how many of us are sucked down into hell by the Earth itself while we're trying to eat our breakfasts on a Friday morning.

"And our love become a funeral pyre..."

2007-02-26T02:27:00.000-05:00

Can't sleep tonight.

Can't write either.

Finished the book I was reading.

So here I am watching VH1 Storytellers: The Doors.

This show is, mostly, a terrible idea. The idea is that some of your favorite musicians will perform some of their greatest hits live and tell you what they're about, how they were written, more or less completely ruin them for you.

I don't want to know what Elton John's "Daniel" is about. Because the moment he (orin this case Bernie Taupin) tells me I lose the meaning it's taken on for me from the moment I first heard it. And if there's some really horrible, horribly small little story behind a song ("I wanted to write a song with my sister's name in it, and I realized it rhymed with...") it completely sinks it for me.

I know it shouldn't matter. But somehow it does. Let me dream it.

There are cases when the artist somehow gets around this - like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers just telling amusing little stories about how the songs were recorded or how bad they were in their first drafts ("You Wreck Me, Baby" was originally "You Rock Me, Baby"). Tom Petty is just too cool not to play it that close to the vest.

The Doors, though...oh, man. They give it all away and fool themselves into thinking we're dying for it.

Don't get me wrong. I like The Doors. I could listen to that first album all day long. I forgive their worst stuff. They recorded one of the best live albums in rock history (The double album, "Absolutely Live"). But man, if there was ever a band you didn't want to see as a gathering of goofy old men awkwardly telling stories about "doobies" and ruining the mystique of a catalog that's really all about mystique. The Doors' entire catalog depends on you catching the vibe, enjoying the groove and not lingering too long or looking too closely. Like a lot of really cool rock music, it doesn't really hold up to much examination and often commits the rock and roll sin of taking itself way too seriously.

It's hard to ignore this when they pause to tell you the secret origin of every number.

One of them says: "Do you want to know what Five to One is about?"

"NO!" I scream at the screen.

"I asked Jim once, and he told me," he says.

"WELL, DON'T TELL US!" I scream. "IT'S NOT EXACTLY DYLAN AS IT IS! DON'T RUIN THE MYSTERY!"

But, of course, he does.

He also tells us "Love Me Two Times" was written with young soldiers on their way to Vietnam in mind. That "The End" began as a silly love song. That "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)" -- which was written in 1927 -- was a German opera song from "just before WWII." (Might have been more interesting to give us the little tidbit that Jim Morrison changed the original prostitute cry "Show us the way to the next pretty boy" to "Show me the way to the next little girl.")

If you haven't seen this televised artistic abortion you're probably wondering how they got around Morrison being long dead.

The obvious answer: by bringing in a bunch of people I hate.

Scott Stapp.

Scott Weiland.

That guy from the band Train.

Ian Astbury from The Cult is probably the best of them. This tells you all you need to know.

At their best they're doing bad karaoke Jim Morrison impressions. At their worst they're just posing out, looking like jackasses in leather pants and failing the songs.

Ray Manzarek, the keyboard player and most charismatic surviving band member (who also produced great records by Echo and the Bunnymen and X) handles himself best, telling some Morrison stories during a Q&A session and essentially acting as band leader. But he's also given to the sort of cheesy lead-ins and old-white-guy-rocking-out moments you'd expect from your dad, in sandals with his socks pulled up to his knees, spinning his favorite 60s tunes at a family cookout.

Some people mellow with age but retain their cool. David Bowie. Neil Young. Van Morrison. Most of The Stones. Ray Davies. Buddy Guy.

And some, as evidenced by this show, make you whisper to yourself that great Pete Townsend line: "Hope I die before I get old..."

The Golden Age of the Stewardess, the problem of design

2007-02-25T12:05:00.000-05:00

You've got to check out these great old glamor photos of sixties stewardesses.

Yeah, I know, they're all sexed up and objectified and it's terrible.

But come on...this is great.

It's the uniforms and the hair, sure -- but look at this whole world. The chairs, the planes themselves, the Vespas, the colors.

This was a time when people really cared about design -- and everything seems to have been designed within an inch of its life. We've gotten away from this to an alarming degree and it's our loss.

The real difference between a Wal-Mart and a Target isn't politics or price. It's design. Almost everything about Wal-Mart from its store layout and presentation to its products is just horribly ugly. Not even plain and utilitarian. Ugly. Every Target I've ever been in, on the other hand, is bright and clean, well laid out with products that are attractive AND low priced. Being there just makes you feel good and the effort to make that happen is always worth it.

I've never enjoyed flying. Not afraid the plane's going to crash, just don't enjoy the whole production. The lines, the security, the cramped quarters in coach -- that's all part of it. But I think I could deal with all that if I knew planes and stewardesses like these were waiting for me.

2007-02-22T16:29:00.000-05:00

Man, do I miss having a column.

That is all.

Advantage: Takei

2007-02-20T16:52:00.000-05:00

John Mayer makes good

2007-02-19T21:52:00.000-05:00

Have been listening to the latest John Mayer album and have to say - I really like it.

It finally fulfills the promise blues legend Buddy Guy told me he saw in Mayer when I interviewed him last year. We knew he could, as Guy said, "play his ass off." We knew he could write. But his first two albums were, for me, like watching Chuck Berry doing "My Ding-a-Ling." You know, that sour stomach feeling you get when you witness someone you think is very talented doing something beneath them and not terribly interesting.

But the new album is like a very satisfying blend of Guy, Marvin Gaye, the best (and least coked up) Clapton and, in places, Prince. Swinging for the fences, he even covers "Bold as Love."

The single, "Waiting for the World to Change" and "I'm Going to Find Another You" are worth downloading from iTunes, at least. Or wherever. If you like them, you should dig further into the album. If not, you shouldn't bother. But unless you hate blues, true R&B and soul (and if you do...what do you listen to? Electronica?) I think you will.

It really pleases me Mayer is now making music I can dig because I've enjoyed his column in Esquire and interviews with him for some time now (his is the best of the three Q&A's in this week's Rolling Stone cover story on "The New Rock Gods" -- though Jesus, what a terrible headline). I always have a hard time when I like someone as a person but don't enjoy their art, music, writing, etc. I don't know why I think one should follow the other, but it always screws with my head when it doesn't.

Some non-musical reasons to like John Mayer:

And one musical one:

The sound of Feedback

2007-02-19T15:49:00.001-05:00

Eight messages when I came in this morning. Two on Guilford College, six on Howard Coble.

This one, from a Greensboro reader, is indicative of the general sentiment of callers on the Coble piece:

"I want you to let Howard Coble know I think he's a turncoat to America and to our president and to our boys. Thank you."

I like the idea that the reader thinks I'm going to call up Coble and say: "Hey...remember me? Reporter who met you when you got off the plane from Washington last week? Wrote a small piece about people being upset that you oppose the troop surge? Yeah. That was me. Well, this guy who called me wanted me to let you know..."

But at least he said thank you.

Friday night with the Treasonous Slime

2007-02-16T22:24:00.000-05:00

Went to PTI late tonight to catch Rep. Howard Coble (R) coming off the plane from Washington. Brought along my nifty new camera and took some shots -- one of which is running in the paper tomorrow.

Coble's been having a busy week. On Wednesday he spoke in opposition to President Bush's troop surge. Much of the rest of the week, he said, he's been getting nasty letters, e-mails and faxed death threats like this one, which he shared with us:

Despite the blowback Coble was in good spirits, fishing the wad of paper from the pocket of his rumpled tweed jacket and asking reporters, in the manner of a proud weekend fisherman, "Want to see something?"

After showing us the above fax he deadpanned:

"I think you can put that gentleman down as undecided in the next election."

When you've been in the bidness as long as this cat has, you grow a mighty thick skin.

Don't mess with Mr. In Between

2007-02-16T15:54:00.000-05:00

One of the only up-sides of my new apartment: if something goes wrong and you call the management company that owns the place, they're on it pretty damned quick.

When I moved in my hot water heater was, for some reason, not working. They fixed it the next day.

Then I realized there was some sort of electrical problem in the kitchen that was keeping me from using all but one of the outlets. They had a guy there that afternoon.

Today my aunt dropped by and, before I had time to think of offering her the parking pass I have for visitors to park in our parking lot, a guy was trying to tow her away. He wouldn't unhook her car, even after I talked to him, unless she coughed up $100. His boss, who he called, said it didn't matter whether she was visiting someone who lived there or how long she'd been there.

I called the management group, the woman who answered flew into a rage, called the towing company they contract to keep the place free of hundreds of college students who would otherwise park there because it's within stone's throw of the university, and she was unhooked and refunded her $100.

You have to accentuate the positive in a situation like this.

Being able to fix things with a single call: positive.

Al Franken, candidate

2007-02-15T10:33:00.001-05:00

Maltese Falcon stolen. For real.

2007-02-13T17:36:00.000-05:00

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

It's been nearly 80 years since Sam Spade wandered the streets of San Francisco in search of the Maltese Falcon. Now, the statue is missing again.

John Konstin, the owner of San Francisco's John's Grill on Ellis Street, said someone broke into a locked cabinet on the second floor of his establishment and took a signed reproduction of the Maltese Falcon -- one used for publicity stills for the movie -- along with several vintage and signed books by and about Maltese Falcon author Dashiell Hammett.

Konstin said the theft was noticed Saturday afternoon. He guesses the theft took place sometime late Friday night or in the early morning hours of Saturday.

The black statue was signed by actor Elisha Cook Jr., a San Franciscan who played the role of Wilmer the Gunsel in the movie. He presented it to the restaurant after Konstin and San Francisco private investigator Jack Immendorf failed in their attempt to buy the original bird that was used in the movie.

Police have been summoned to the scene of the broken cabinet on the second floor of the restaurant, and Konstin has offered a $25,000 reward for return of the statue and books.

"You have 1,234 messages..."

2007-02-09T20:21:00.000-05:00

I usually forward the calls from my office phone to my mobile phone when I'm not at my desk - even when I go home. Sure, this means I get work calls when I'm technically off the clock. But that's better, to my mind, than missing them because I work a shift that keeps me from calling people or taking their calls during prime reporting hours. They're encouraging us to "be extraordinary" in the office lately - and you cannot be extraordinary if you're clocking in and out like a factory worker.

Haven't forwarded my calls for the last few days as I've been trying to get the new apartment together. I haven't even had the keys a week yet and it doesn't feel even a little bit like home. The place is going to be miserable until I get everything out of boxes and in order, some furniture together in the rooms and my life as back on track as I can.

This means I missed a lot of calls this week and have spent the first half hour of my shift the last few days returning them.

One of those calls was from a guy from New York. He's writing about the Guilford College incident for the New York Times magazine. Wants to pick my brain, get some details.

And all I can think is: "Why isn't it me writing a piece on this for the New York Times magazine?"

I'm at my desk right now trying to re-structure a weekend story about Guilford because my first draft, which was admittedly headed in a way-too-long direction, was something my editor said would work better on a blog or in a "high brow magazine" but simply wouldn't fly in the newspaper. And, because of the restrictions of the medium (some self-imposed, some having to do with the format and the reader), he's right.

But this guy from New York - he's writing the piece I want to write.

Of course, there's no way of getting this guy on the phone to tell me the name of his editor at this high brow magazine so I can call him up and offer to do the piece myself. My luck with pitching things to magazines (even when they've occasionally approached me rather than the other way around) hasn't been good -- and even if I got the offer, I'm pretty sure my editors wouldn't let me freelance a piece something I'm writing for the paper even now.

The call from the magazine writer was strange in that respect, certainly (I was whispering to myself as I listened to him, "Man...I want your job. Why don't we trade?") -- but it also got me thinking about how you decide to call another reporter for something like this.

I might talk stories with another reporter over beers or something - but I'd never do it for work. Yet since this story broke I've gotten calls from TV, radio and print reporters (only one blogger, so far), all wanting me to recount my reporting for them, provide them with notes, give them my "off the record take" and provide them direction. Maybe I'm just a competitive bastard, but I wouldn't even call reporters I like for guidance on a story we're both working - never mind a stranger. I'm friendly with Jordan Green from Yes! Weekly, who had the Guilford thing before anyone as far as I can tell. We know each other, at least. But I'd have cut every one of my fingers off at the knuckle before I dialed him for help on the story . It's just not what we do...is it?

I'm polite to all of them anyway, on the off chance I'm wrong about this and one day it's me on the wrong end of that phone call. Maybe, when you're writing for a magazine, you feel differently.

12 1/2 Rules

2007-02-07T10:57:00.000-05:00

News & Record editor John Robinson linked to these "12 1/2 Rules for Journalists" and I think most of them are damned good. As JR points out - most of us will break nearly all of them at some point, but we should keep these in mind as we do the job.

Here they are:

12. DO WHAT YOU LOVE: Be passionate about what you choose to do. Remember: If there’s no love in the kitchen, there is no taste on the table. Never reject the impulses of your youth. Be responsible for your life, don’t blame others for what you become or don’t become.

11. WAKE UP ANGRY, AMBITIOUS: Get the fire in your belly to do something, set things right. Respond to injustice, inhumanity, corruption. Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable. Don’t think it is somebody else’s job. Be the change you want to see.

10. DON’T BE THE LOYAL MEMBER OF ANY PARTY, GROUP, CLUB, NGO: Credibility is everything. Retain your independence, be skeptical not cynical. Don’t mortgage your integrity. It’s like virginity—once you lose it, you have lost it forever.

9. BE CATHOLIC OF WRITERS AND WRITING: Read newspapers, magazines, books across the board. Admire writers/writing irrespective of ideology. In the age of the internet, you have no excuses for your ignorance.

8. FIND YOURSELF A ROLE-MODEL/MENTOR: Have a hero or heroine who has been there, done that. Keep in touch with people who will help you achieve your aims. Meet at least one new person every day.

7. BE A THRIVER, NOT A SURVIVOR: Don’t coast along, don’t be afraid to try out something new. Aim high, dream, have an ambition, set yourself a goal. Take a risk, think big, think differently, don’t be predictable.

6. NEVER WORK WITH SUCCESS/ REWARD IN MIND: Work for fun and the satisfaction, the rewards will come on their own. Don’t fall for cheap praise and don’t be stalled by even cheaper criticism.

5. WRITE, DRAW, SHOOT, CREATE EVERY DAY: Eventually your habits become you. Practics makes you perfect. Develop the three Ds—discipline, dedication, determination—and reward and recognition will naturally follow.

4. KEEP LEARNING EVERY DAY: You cannot learn eerything in the classroom or the newsroom. It’s a constantly changing business, keep learning. Again, in the age of the internet, you have no excuse not to do so.

3. FEAR NOBODY, QUESTION EVERYTHING: You are in the business to get the answers. Don’t be in awe of big names, power, reputations, status. This business is all about meeting total strangers and asking them questions you wouldn’t ask your parents.

2. NEVER BE EMBARRASSED TO ASK STUPID QUESTIONS: There are no stupid questions, only dumb answers. Talk less, listen more. Be humble of your ignorance.

1. CHASE YOUR DREAM: Stop living for others, avoid temptation, life is not all about money. Let your reputation never be under question. It’s true—it’s possible to earn decently and live honorably as a journalist.

***

And this half-rule

If POSSIBLE MARRY OUTSIDE THE PROFESSION: There’s nothing more boring and dreadful than waking up with somebody who goes through the same pangs and pangas as you.

-----

JR and I both wonder about that 1/2 rule, though. Some of the happiest reporters and editors I know are married to journalists or former journalists - JR included. A lot of the news people I know who marry outside the profession are always dragging about miserable because they keep putting their significant others through the long hours, strange moods and weird demands of the profession, which they can't really understand and wouldn't have signed on for had they had any idea at the beginning.

One of my favorite movies, The Paper, encapsulates nearly all of these rules - and is laugh till you hurt funny to boot. I was introduced to it years ago by the married team of reporters who introduced me (and a lot of other teens, a number of whom are now professional journalists) to the profession.

Molly Ivins Can't Die...Can She?

2007-01-31T22:48:00.000-05:00

Molly Ivins, the acerbic Texas writer who shed her family's conservative roots to become one of the nation's best-known, treasured (sometimes vilified) liberal commentators, died Wednesday after battling cancer. She was 62.

Writing on Salon.com in 1990, critic David Rubien compared Ivins to Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Will Rogers, H.L. Mencken and Red Smith, writers (coincidentally men) who used satire to deflate pomp and prick conventional wisdom.

---

Full piece here.

Years ago I read Ivins' book Nothin' But Good Times Ahead and fell in love - the way I had with Jimmy Breslin, Hunter Thompson, Bill Bryson and P.J. O'Rourke. I bought Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She? when I was writing a weekly column for my college paper and never did it as well as she did.

She shows through as an influence in some of my stuff - but probably not enough of it.

Coming soon: first virtual state dinner

2007-01-28T16:56:00.000-05:00

It seems the nation of Sweden is opening an embassy inside Second Life.

No, really.

Taking a closer look at Guilford College

2007-01-28T09:31:00.000-05:00

I covered the alleged beating of three Palestinian students at Guilford College students all week.

Robert Bell's weekend piece is the best possible wrap-up for the week's coverage - thoughtful, expansive, asks good questions, looks for answers, delves into the larger issues here.

Great stuff.

Students charged with ethnic intimidation in Guilford College assault

2007-01-23T09:39:00.000-05:00

GREENSBORO — Three Guilford College students were arrested Monday in connection with a group assault on campus, according to court documents.

The documents, which were reviewed late Monday, said those arrested are accused of beating three Palestinian students with fists, feet and brass knuckles while calling them "terrorists" and using racial slurs. The documents also indicated that the attack involved "at least 15 members of the football team."

The court documents said two of the Palestinian students were severely injuried during the assault at Bryan Hall, a dormitory on the Guilford campus.

Court documents said the attack occurred late Friday, while a statement on the Guilford College Web site indicated it happened early Saturday morning.

---

Story here.

Blogging her arrest

2007-01-17T22:55:00.000-05:00

Isabell Moore, one of the protesters arrested in downtown Greensboro last week, has blogged her version of the whole thing.

It's interesting to hear about the build up to the protest - what was behind the decision to get arrested, how calmly it was made.

It's also interesting to hear that she heard a GPD officer say something about a fire truck coming to the intersection well ahead of when the truck would have been visible or audible to anyone without a scanner. No comment on the blog about whether any of the protesters had any ambivalence about standing in the intersection with that being the case.

Definitely a post worth reading. She should upgrade from that MySpace blog and start doing it more often.

Random thoughts on newspaper work

2007-01-17T17:42:00.000-05:00

A couple of observations about newspapers (these are, of course, generalizations):

1) Women over 60 are good for story ideas. They've always got a story for you. Even if half of them don't pan out there are going to be a few in there that are good. And they're laying them on you constantly. I rarely meet a woman of this age even in polite company who, when she realizes I'm a reporter, doesn't begin hitting me with story ideas. Often good ones, too.

2) Old men hardly ever call you with story ideas. They usually want to yell at you. Sometimes for things that have nothing to do with anything you've written. Also, you don't appreciate them. If you meet a guy this age in polite company and he pitches you a story idea, it's almost always self serving. No idea why this is. Have gotten some great stories from older men, but I usually had to dig it out of them.

3) Journalism is, as a mentor told me years ago, like an island of misfit toys. Working the night shift at the N&R I hardly ever get to hang out with the people I work with outside of work, but just hanging out with them in the office is usually hilarious. There are only a handful of people in every newsroom who were always dying to get into journalism - and listening to how everyone else got there is always a trip. Like most people, I stumbled into it - I just happened to do it in high school, so it looked like a plan.

4) As much as I like my office (and I do) I'm happiest when I'm out of it interviewing people, doing research, even going to meetings. It occurs to me that this is a little perk a lot of people in other professions don't get to experience. In fact, an old friend of mine who works at an Alt-Weekly as a sort of writer/editor but rarely leaves the office told me he sometimes has to just leave and go for a little walk in downtown New Haven just to stay sane. I have a cubicle, but my job is not (thank God) very much like "Office Space."

I think I got this from my mother who was, for years, a hair dresser and a bartender. She was in the same place all day but each person who came in was a new little lifeline to the outside world. They had new stories and she could be a new person for each of them, depending on the person and and her mood.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...

2007-01-16T21:58:00.000-05:00

Oh, man.

Some time ago I wrote about the societal shame of being a straight guy who loves Project Runway.

Now the Bravo network has given Runway's Tim Gunn his own show, Tim Gunn's Guide to Style.

For the uninitiated: Gunn, the Chair of Fashion at Parsons The New School For Design in NYC, is one of the hosts of Project Runway. He sort of shepherds the designers in the contest along, giving them advice where he can and urging them to "make it work."

He's the best part of the show.

The new show is apparently going to be like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy except...you know...less gay. Gunn is gay, but not white leather belt and girls' jeans gay. Older, wiser, not ridiculous gay. Also, he knows and cares about style beyond what's hot this season. Which, I think, was one of the major failings of Queer Eye. While I think gay men generally have a lot to teach straight men I'd often look at some of these guys after they'd made them over and think...well, he looks better. But he also looks like a gay guy. We can get these guys looking and living better without making them surrender their masculinity, can't we? And, of course, there was all of the for-television gay campiness to contend with. This last bit kept most of the gay guys I know from actually enjoying the show.

"It's like a minstrel show," a gay guy once told me after I told him I actually liked it. "You wouldn't like it if you spent most of your life trying to convince people you weren't one of those guys."

I thought that was a bit much, but I took his point.

Tim Gunn doesn't seem to have this problem. Whether the designers on Runway are straight, gay, male or female he seems able to work with and improve their designs, helping them realize their own visions rather than grafting his onto them. That's the kind of guy I'd want to help me get my act together.

Throwing down the (barbecue) gauntlet

2007-01-16T11:20:00.000-05:00

My friend and Go Triad's Cheap Eats columnist Luke McIntyre declares you need look no further for the best barbecue.

This, no matter what restaurant he's talking about, is bound to stir some controversy. North Carolinians take their barbecue VERY seriously.

But one of the nice things about writing about food or drink (and the anger that can stir in readers who disagree) is you're usually pointed to a lot of great new places to eat and drink.

The blog problem

2007-01-13T20:02:00.000-05:00

Thanks for the kind words about the protest post.

Got some nasty letters about the article itself. I'm a little surprised I've only gotten two negative comments about the blog post.

But it has made me think...

A number of people have said they'd like to see this kind of thing in the N&R itself. I don't disagree...but how would that work, exactly? There are issues of tone and more imporantly, length. Just because it isn't done now doesn't mean it couldn't be done, but can you really imagine any of these in the actual newspaper:

- A week with the Minuteman Project and Looking into the Minutemen, racism

- A wolf amidst the sheep (an evening with the Southern Baptist Convention)

- Guns, Knives, Tasers, Truncheons! But please...no cameras!

This type of writing doesn't even really even appear on the N&R blogs. It's essentially first-person magazine writing done very quickly. Regularly producing something like this would be a dream job...but it would almost certainly make my current job impossible. Even having an N&R blog where I did this kind of thing could make my job sticky.

But daily newspapers may get there sooner than later.

The most fun you can have without being Tasered

2007-01-13T12:33:00.000-05:00

Nine protesters were arrested Thursday during a demonstration downtown against President Bush's decision to increase troop levels in Iraq. One was taken to the ground with a Taser.

I wrote the story.

That afternoon I didn't particularly want to write the story. I had a number of other things I needed to work on – including a feature story I've been trying (and failing) to finish for weeks and which has very nearly driven me mad.

But that's the thing about being a reporter. Sometimes your best-laid plans go up in smoke. Everything has to stay piled untouched on your desk when someone sets a high school on fire, someone is shot, there's a horrible car crash or a protest is mounted a few blocks from your office. This is the news.

To be perfectly honest, the protests are always sort of difficult for me.

The war in Iraq is ugly, complicated and depressing. I have friends and family who have fought or are fighting there. I've interviewed 19-year-old young men who've come back disabled for life, wondering if what they gave made any difference as things seem to get worse and worse. I know young mothers whose husbands are headed back into this thing with no idea when they'll see their families again, or if their children will know what a "father" means as they spend their first years without one. My own little sister was one of these kids in the first Gulf War and my whole family lived on Alka Seltzer and CNN while my father fought there in this one before retiring from the Marine Corps. His being deployed to wars (and what they did to him) probably harmed my relationship with him more than either of us realized at the time, an emotional hole from which we're only now digging ourselves. In his retirement he now listens to the local news read names of his friends as they come back in coffins. And chances are good he'll be reactivated.

All this is to say: it's not that I'm not paying attention.

Still, I have never been able to boil all the complexities and ugliness of this war down to "Simple Math: BLOOD = OIL," or any of the other slogans I've seen on signs at the protests I've covered in Greensboro. The reductionist nature of much of the rhetoric (on both sides) is really disturbing to me. I'm disturbed by the way many protesters seem to abandon (or deeply submerge) their intellect when in packs. Some unaccountably become extremely aggressive with police officers who are not, as they imagine, all part of the power structure of some great Rube Goldberg war machine helmed by George W. Bush. I'm disturbed by how poorly articulated a lot of the argument is and the way that it all sort of plays to the crowd (who are already converts), creating a comic, derivative "US vs. THEM" sort of theatre that's a lot more flash than substance and seems to provoke very little thought and inspire very little dialogue.

Call me a sell-out. Call me an NPR liberal. Call me anti-revolutionary. I've heard it all before. This is just the way I've felt about a lot of protest since I was in high school. When I was part of a protest I always thought a lot about why, what it was saying about me, what other people were taking from it, how we were conducting ourselves and why. Was this the best way to express my message? Was this most effective? If not, I opted out. I had friends who told me I was over-thinking it – that it’s about how it makes you feel.. You really FEEL like you're making a difference and raising your voice. The impact of one protest was worth ten columns I might write, they would tell me. Somehow that math never made much sense to me.

I was thinking about all this yesterday as I headed out to the protest in the chill of the afternoon. It's for assignments like these that I keep a sweater and pair of sneakers in my car. I was there as the first few protestors began to arrive with home-made signs and drums. A former professor of mine, Elizabeth Strater, was on the scene and handed me a flyer. She said something about feeling embarrassed to still be in her professor's clothes and seemed pleased, in a way, that I was covering the event. She knew me and didn't think I was going to go out of my way to make the protesters look foolish.

But running into her made me reflect on something. I've noticed that while the same sort of person used to show up to all of these protests (young kids in punk rock t-shirts, older activists who were protesting when four young men from Greensboro started the sit-in movement at a lunch counter about a block up from this demonstration), the scene has changed a bit. As the war has dragged on there are more black, Asian, Indian and Latino faces in what were once almost all-white crowds. A gaggle of conservatively dressed church ladies stood on one corner near a protester who had taken her top off and was wearing just a bra, the words "BOOBS NOT BOMBS" written on her chest. A few middle-aged businessmen came straight from their downtown cubicle jungles in suits and ties to take up picket signs. A couple of soccer moms had signs in one hand and kids on the other arm, resting on their hips.

It can seem from the outside (and has been said in various places) that these people are all the same. But once you mix in and meet them you realize that while that seems like a cute and cutting little observation it's not entirely accurate. Some of these people are, indeed, trust fund kids from local colleges for whom social protest is a sort of counter-culture social scene. Some of the guys in the crowd are, as someone noted to me at the demonstration, there primarily to look for hippy chicks with interesting tattoos and few sexual boundaries. Some imagine they are real revolutionaries and make a big show of covering their faces and whispering conspiratorially amongst each other. But mixed in among these archetypes are some real surprises – and there seem to be more of them every demonstration. As the approval levels of both the president and the war sink lower some very average looking people are taking their place among the freaks and hippies in protest.

As the crowd began to swell I ran into Liz Seymour, a 57-year-old local writer who has contributed to the New York Times. I wrote a feature piece last year about Seymour's house, which is run as a collective in which all of the residents pool their money, food, time and energy. Seymour was an achingly average suburban wife and mother for years and she's written humorously and interestingly about making the shift to collective living, embracing art and activism and living outside of the mainstream. I think I'm personally a little solitary and materialistic to live like that, but everyone I met while doing the story was almost disarmingly nice. Still, you'd be amazed how many really hostile letters her story inspired from readers who couldn't understand how or why she lived that way and thought it was just scandalous that I wrote about it at all.

"I think it's going to heat up later," Seymour said to me with a smile.

"The protest or the weather?" I said, buttoning my jacket.

"The protest," she said.

At the time I thought she was being nice – trying to buoy my spirits as I collected the same quotes I collect at all of these things, wondering if anyone was going to say anything different. Little did I know that she and her daughter Isabell Moore, 27, had decided they would be among the protesters arrested at the demonstration. Seymour had never been arrested, but she told me she'd come to the realization that the longer the war went on and the further it escalated the less people seemed to be paying attention, their sense of outrage burned out by their frustration. Getting arrested by standing in the middle of a city street may seem sort of pointless to some people – myself included. But Seymour had it right that the image of a conservatively dressed 57-year-old woman and her daughter being handcuffed by police officers as they protested was more jolting than a kid in a leather jacket and green hair being tucked into a squad car. It was an image that all of the local TV news stations carried that night and I'm sure some people did get the message she was trying to send. This woman is someone's mother. It could be your mother. She is in cuffs because she opposes this war.

When the crowd had swelled to its largest – I'd say about 100 people – it was easy to see why they'd chosen to go with the intersection of Elm and Market Streets. At rush hour it was quite a scene. Many commuters were in their cars with the windows rolled up and the music loud, trying to ignore what was going on around them. But just as many were honking their horns and giving the "thumbs up" sign, pumping their fists, smiling out of their car windows and occasionally rolling them down to shout approval. Demonstrators stood on all four sides of the intersection and a few young women walked up and down the middle of the street when the lights were red, handing flyers and stickers to people who rolled down their windows to take them. Drummers had arrived and were pounding loudly, joined by a sharply dressed local singer who melodically chanted slogans over a megaphone. It was hard not to enjoy the almost celebratory atmosphere and I even saw a couple of cops, solemn behind their mirrored shades, tapping their feet and slowly moving their hips to the beat. All in all, a successful protest, I thought – nobody hurt, no big flap, the protesters getting their message out during rush hour.

But then the mood started to shift almost imperceptibly.

Officers were making sure no protestors were crossing against the light at the crosswalk, but a few kept trying to do it anyway, walking out into the middle of traffic, which was starting and stopping as they did this. Next to me a tall white kid with his hair in dreads shouted to a handful of others behind him:

"EVERYBODY CROSS AT ONCE WHEN THE LIGHT CHANGES! EVERYBODY CROSS THE STREET EVERY TIME YOU CAN! DO IT IN A CROWD! DO NOT MAKE THIS EASY FOR THE COPS!"

Don't make what easy? I thought. These guys are just here keeping you on the sidewalk and keeping traffic moving. None of them are messing with you. And it's cold out. Cut them some slack.

From the other side of me a kid moved to cross against the light again and a cop held out his hand, stopping him.

"FUCK YOU!" the kid said.

"All right, just stay on the sidewalk," the cop said. You could almost hear his eyes rolling.

A few minutes later a couple of guys in leather and Army surplus jackets walked up to me.

"Who are you?" one of them said, tapping my notebook. "Who are you taking notes for?"

"I'm a reporter," I said.

"Are you cop?" one of them said.

"No, I'm a reporter," I repeated.

"Are you a Greensboro police officer?" another said.

"No, I'm a reporter for the News & Record," I said. "My name is Joe Killian."

I thought I was going to have to whip out my badge to prove it when one of them stepped forward.

"We don't talk to you," he said. "We know you. We're NCARA. We've talked to you before. We know who you are."

"All right..." I said, a little confused.

I knew who NCARA were. I wasn't surprised they didn't want to talk to me. But I didn't want to talk to them either. This would actually happen to me twice more before I went back to the office – once another group just walking up to me, again when I tried to get some information from someone and they clammed up when they heard "News & Record." Both times the people identified themselves as NCARA. The same thing later happened to Nelson, who seemed confused but patiently spelled his name for his inquisitor as she took notes.

Later I saw one of these same guys walking into a bank of stationary TV and newspaper cameras repeatedly and then covering his face and retreating. And then walking back into them. He shouted about not wanting to be photographed as he walked into live news shots that had nothing to do with him. Repeatedly.

This is the sort of guy who makes people think all protesters are nuts, I thought. A dozen Liz Seymours and two dozen Elizabeth Straters would be needed to undo the impression made by a handful of guys doing this kind of thing.

I crossed the street with a large group over to where N&R photographer Nelson Kepley was chatting with GPD officer K.B. Johnson. I was about to tell Nelson that I thought things would start to break up soon when suddenly a group of about a dozen protesters charged into the middle of the street and began dancing, holding up banners and erecting a tripod sign. The light was still red, but the cops moved in to move them. None seemed interested in moving.

Johnson came back to his bicycle, which he'd left next to me, and pulled out a Taser.

Oh, damn it…I thought. This is about to get serious.

There was something of a rugby scrum in front of me, but I saw Johnson Taser 19-year-old Kristopher Michael Hibert. He dropped like a sack of potatoes and a couple of officers rushed in to restrain him. Seeing that the crosswalk once again displayed a "walk" sign I tried to cross to the other side of the street for a better view and to talk to some of the people who had been in the street but retreated to the sidewalk. A cop put his hand in the center of my chest and shoved me back onto the sidewalk.

"It says 'WALK!'" I said, pointing to the crosswalk sign..

"You stay on the sidewalk!" he shouted.

"It's a crosswalk!" I said.

"You stay where you are!"

"I'm a reporter – I'm with the press! I'm just trying to…"

When I said "reporter" something happened in his face. It was a rough situation, a lot of craziness was happening and he was clearly under a lot of stress. This demonstration could have gone very ugly very quickly and it's moments like these everyone's just trying not to step in it. He made a sort of a "Hey – it's a bad day" face that was an acknowledgement but not an apology. I didn't expect one. I crossed to the other side.

A lot of play has since been given to the fact that a fire truck came through the intersection after the protesters were removed. The GPD press release stated that the fire engine was caught in traffic when the protesters blocked the street. This just wasn't so. With their radios I'm sure the cops were aware that en engine was in the offing – but I think they would have cleared the street just as quickly had there not been. It needed to be cleared. On the ground the siren was not audible until the protesters had been cleared and I watched the engine's approach and saw it go through the intersection. It was not impeded. It certainly might have been, had the cops not been there to clear the streets. Or maybe everyone would have scattered had they heard the siren. There's no way of knowing – but the engine coming through at all was enough of a signal to a number of people I talked to that traffic shouldn't have been blocked in the first place. I quoted one of them as saying so. I thought it was an important enough point to include in the story because it so clearly demonstrated how bad an idea blocking the street might have been and a lot of people there got that message. But it said that without the melodrama of pretending that the engine, an EMS vehicle and a bus load of nuns were waylaid because of the protest.

As I crossed to the other side of the street I saw the protestors who were being lined up as they were bound with plastic zip-tie style hand restraints. Liz Seymour and her daughter and a number of others were there, flanked by officers. As I took notes several of the protesters wanted to know who I was but seemed comforted rather than upset that I was from the local newspaper.

Brian Clarey from Yes! Weekly was there, too. He gave me a sort of "Guess I know what you're doing the rest of the night" look.

"It's going to be a long one tonight," I said.

"Not for me," he said. "But I'll read about it in the morning."

There are definitely advantages to working for a weekly.

At this point people were still being restrained - and a lot of the kids who seemed to be spoiling for a fight were jumping up and down in place and cursing at the police officers.

"FUCK GEORGE BUSH AND FUCK THE POLICE!" one of them screamed so close to me that I had to cover my left ear.

"THIS IS AMERICA!" screamed another. "PEOPLE ARE BEING BEATEN AND GASSED IN AMERICA! THIS IS YOUR FREE COUNTRY! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS IN AMERICA!"

Beaten and gassed?

"YOU'RE JUST A BUNCH OF LITTLE FASCISTS AREN'T YOU?!" another screamed.

"THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT," one of them screamed into the face of an officer trying to push the crowd onto the sidewalk. "YOU WANT TO BEAT US AND ARREST US! THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED THE WHOLE TIME!"

"I want you to stay on the sidewalk," the officer said deadpan.

I found Officer Johnson again and asked him why he had Tasered the young man and what goes through his mind when he's trying to make that decision. He said he had tried to remove him, he wouldn't move and he had warned him before making the decision.

"He was resisting and I told him I would Taser him if he did not move," Johnson told me. "He was resisting, and when you have a crowd situation like that, you have to start with someone."

As Seymour and her daughter stood waiting for their squad car I got the chance to talk to them, to ask if this had been the plan or it had happened spontaneously. It had been intentional, they said. Seymour 's daughter Isabell had some great things to say, but they just wouldn't fit in the story I was writing.

I ended up going with this quote from Seymour, which seemed to sum up the decision of the protesters to take this step:

"I've never been arrested before. But I decided after a lot of soul searching that we needed to do something to show that this affects all of us. We've gotten so used to this war being a crisis situation that nothing feels like a crisis anymore."

The next day I would get a number of e-mails from people accusing me of both making heroes of the protesters and not telling the truth about the fascist crackdown on civil liberties to which I’d been witness. The comments on the web version of my story would nasty.

“How can you even call yourself a journalist?” one of the e-mails asked.

It’s a good question.

Sometimes I think stories like this would be good fodder for an N&R blog. “Notes from the Night Side.” Something like that. I sometimes think the things I can't write in the paper, because of length, style and content restrictions, are more interesting than what ends up in the daily story.

And then I remember that untouched pile on my desk...

"And when they grab you their metal claws you won't be able to get away. Because robots are strong. And they are made of metal."

2007-01-10T14:50:00.000-05:00

Hitachi has developed a technology that can tell what you're thinking by analyzing the subtle changes in bloodflow to your brain.

As was recently pointed out to me:

We now have robots that can outthink us.

We have robots that can power themselves through eating living things.

Also, they think we taste like bacon.

We have robots that are virtually indestructable.

And now we have machines that can tell what we're thinking.

I cannot be the only one who sees where this is going.

In fact, I know I'm not.

We are one robo-scientist on a weekend bender away from having to fight robot hordes in the streets.

And still there are no sexy robo secretaries.

Sigh.

You have to admit...you wanted to be at the birthday party

2007-01-10T14:35:00.000-05:00

Interesting piece over at Slate about Jimmy Buffett at 60.

I've always personally thought that it's worth wading through all of mediocre and really pretty awful stuff Buffett's done over the years for the handful of really great songs. Feel the same way about James Taylor.

I always feel sort of bad about saying you can get everything you need from any particular musician on a one-disc collector's set, but Buffett and Taylor are two people who, though important to their generation and producers of some real gems, just didn't consistently make good albums.

Still, I think the writer's snark is a bit much in the Slate piece. If you have no affection for your subject it's easy to write with complete contempt...but there should be some acknowledgement that Buffett wrote enough songs like "He Went to Paris" to compensate for "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw."

Dead on about his hardcore fans, though. Hardcore fans in just about any cult of personality from Buffett and Springsteen to writers like Hemingway and Hunter Thompson can be a bit much.

What's up with the Scouts?

2007-01-02T17:46:00.000-05:00

This is an AP picture of Boy Scouts (some look like Eagle Scouts) saluting President Gerald Ford's coffin.

It seems the Ford family, long involved in Scouting, wanted 200 plus Eagle Scouts in full uniform, medals and all, to line the road to the Presidential Museum today as the casket passed and all Boy Scouts everywhere were encouraged to wear their uniforms.

Does it disturb anyone else that 3/4 of the Scouts in this picture appear to be overweight, nearly all of them are wearing sneakers, jeans, baggy (and in some cases cargo) pants slouching beneath their waists? At a presidential funeral? Did they hike to the funeral? Were they camping five minutes before this picture was taken? And even if they were...

I'm not a health Nazi by any stretch of the imagination, but as I remember it physical fitness is a pretty big part of being a scout. While these days I could certainly use more time jogging and less time eating things that turn my arteries into dark, hard little stones that will almost certainly end me, I was in good shape when I was a scout. How could I not be? I was always hiking, running, swimming, climbing, camping and rowing canoes.

And then there are the uniforms. When I was a Scout my father, a career Marine, was our Scoutmaster. He would never have let me leave the house in baggy cargo pants and my Scout uniform. Particularly for some sort of ceremony. In fact, I remember other kids' dads holding them to the same standard and getting whole lectures on how important a Scout's appearance was. These supplemented the lectures about pride and cleanliness that I got at home. Sadly, my clothes are one of the only areas of my life where this seems to have made an impression.

To get some idea of my confusion compare the above picture to these Scouts of various ages from other eras:

Yes, that last one was Ford himself - the first Eagle Scout to become President.

The first thing that jumps out at me is that the Scout uniform has become much, much less cool over the last few decades. Can you imagine how bad-ass kids who got to wear the uniforms from the 1930s-1970s felt? Things just seem to have fallen apart along the way somewhere.

But the second thing is that today's Boy Scouts are more indicative of today's average boys - more sedentary, less concerned with fitness or neatness, less proud of their appearance, more likely to be playing Halo or World Of Warcraft than learning to tie knots, build fires, pitch tents, hunt for food and perform life-saving rescues.

So they're average kids. So what? Well...they're average kids who are constantly affirming their vow to be above average, to hold themselves to a higher standard. Part of that is an explicit mandate to be fit, healthy and present yourself in a proud and honorable way. The line is that you're supposed to provide a good example.

I'm not sure I'd point these Scouts out to my son, exept as an example of what not to do.

I hesitate to go for the easy joke here, but maybe if they didn't kick the gay kids out of the group they could help in at least a few of these areas. You meet very few out of shape, slovenly young gay guys...

UPDATE:

From the BSA itself: "The official dress uniform is commonly refered to as the 'Class A' uniform. Most scout troops also have an activity uniform, refered to as 'Class B' which is often a t-shirt customized just for the troop. Activity uniforms are worn for work projects, sporting activities, and other events in which the dress uniform might get damaged."

This language almost perfectly mirrors the U.S. Military's line, right down to the use of the term "Class A Uniform." There are certain uniforms that are appropriate for certain occasions. There is a distinction between what you'd wear when you're active and your "official dress uniform."

In the military I used to think that the Marines had the best in-the-field uniforms. Then they went to that "digital camo" stuff. Terrible. The dress blues still rock, though. The army has the second Class A's. The Navy, poor bastards, get screwed almost all the way around.

Can't seem to find any ruling on the shoes, but they do seem to agree with me on where you're supposed to wear the pants - and it's not down around your hips.

Also, you can get what I think are some really cool official Boy Scout pants online for $40. They tear away to become shorts if you need them to and have all sorts of great features, including a web belt with the official emblem, moisture-wicking nylon, gadget loops and zip-ankles for over the boot removal. I want to buy the things just because they seem so cool.

A less cool pair which look slightly more formal go for between $40 -60 depending on what they're made of and the size you need. Both kinds are readily available from a number of online outlets.

The uniforms I looked at don't seem nearly as cool as the old school ones, but there are some cool options you can play with. The strange thing is I'm not sure these are necessarily any more functional than the old school ones. They don't look it any way. They're just less stylish. And largely made of polyester or some sort of poly blend.

Gotta say - they've got some cool belt buckles.

The hats, though, are totally lame.

You know, with all of this accessorizing I'm not sure who they're kidding kicking the gay kids out. This is some of the gayest stuff I've seen outside of fetish shops...

Praying for Peace

2007-01-02T17:06:00.000-05:00

GREENSBORO — Bars teemed with New Year's Eve crowds, hired limos brought partygoers to nightclubs where champagne corks were popped and everyone waited for midnight.

But not far away, on West Friendly Avenue, Quakers from the First Friends Meeting welcomed the new year in a different way — with their annual 24 hours of prayer for peace. The meeting invited people of all faiths to join them from

11 a.m. Sunday until noon today for prayer and meditation.

"It's a more peaceful beginning of the new year than most people probably experience," said Val Vickers, chairwoman of the meeting's Peace Working Group. "But we think it's a good time of the year for people to come together and envision the future that could be, a future without war."

It was a message that resonated with a number of non-Quakers who came throughout the day to pray for peace.

----

Full story here.

"Have something to say? I don't care"

2007-01-02T15:54:00.000-05:00

This column, via Ed Cone, made water squirt out of my nose.

It would be a great piece for The Onion and yet I really sympathize with some of it.

It's becoming a very strange world...

Because every movie needs to be a TV show, every TV show a movie

2007-01-02T15:08:00.000-05:00

"ABC has given the green light to "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," a one-hour pilot based on the hit feature.

The film's writer, Simon Kinberg, penned the pilot script, about John and Jane Smith, a married couple who both work as assassins.

The film's director, Doug Liman, is on board to helm the pilot and executive produce with Kinberg and Dave Bartis.

"Smith" hails from Regency TV -- a co-venture of Fox TV Studios and the film's producer, New Regency -- and Liman and Bartis' Dutch Oven. The project originally was picked up by the network in January 2006 with a put pilot commitment (HR 1/31). "

---

Full story here.

The story goes on to say that the pilot was written by the guy who wrote the movie, will essentially rehash the film's plotline of an assasin couple who, after all of the ups and downs of the movie in which they learn to love each other again because rather than instead of who they really are, are back at each others' throats.

More bad news: this is the same guy who wrote "X-Men: The Last Stand" and "XXX: State of the Union."

Yes, the XXX movie so bad they couldn't get Vin Diesel to do it and had to call in Ice Cube.

Let's hope someone puts a bullet in this one's head quickly.

Bartenders pitch in toward DWI reduction

2007-01-01T17:10:00.000-05:00

GREENSBORO — Of course, Plum Krazy’s Sports Bar & Grill is having a New Year’s Eve bash. But owner Frank Fiore said he’s doing everything he can to make sure everyone wakes up safe the next morning.

"If they’re drunk, we’ll take their keys, we’ll call them a cab and we’ll pay for it," Fiore said. "But nobody is going to drive home drunk."

Fiore is one of a number of area bar owners who are doing whatever it takes (or costs) to keep drunken drivers off the road. Most bar owners said they think it is the right thing to do — but there is another motivation.

"Bar owners know now that they can be held civilly and criminally liable," said Sgt. A.W. Wadell of the N.C. Highway Patrol. "They’ve gotten smart, and they’re pitching in with us to keep impaired drivers off the road."

Stronger DWI laws took effect Dec. 1 , including provisions that make it easier to track who buys kegs. The state’s Alcohol Law Enforcement division said it’s about holding those who serve drunken drivers — either in bars or at private parties — responsible for what happens on the highways.

"It can frankly be a difficult case to make when you are looking for who served a drunken driver," said Michael Yates, ALE’s Greensboro district supervisor. "But bars and bar owners know that we will investigate, and they will be charged if there is evidence."

---

Full story here.

Gibson on Gibson, the fleeting nature of futurism

2006-12-27T18:20:00.000-05:00

From a post about Second Life on William Gibson's blog:

"The thing that's going to be quaint about "cyberspace" (that already is, really) is the inherent assumption that it's a realm unto itself; that it's in any way elsewhere or other.

Glancing sideways is becoming more generally recognized as about the best way of doing what we used to call futurism."

I think this is why I was sort of lukewarm on some of Gibson's cyberpunk fiction, which is almost universally acclaimed as brilliant. He's right. "Cyberspace" as imagined by Gibson, the 90s TV series "VR5" and movie "Hackers," even Max Headroom does now almost seem quaint.

We're not far enough away from it to see it as skull-splittingly on point or just slightly off in a way that is weird and wonderful like Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. We're just far enough away from it to see these ideas about Cyberspace, the Internet and how it would work, this sort of futurism as weird and sort of harmless but not particularly exciting. It probably did seem terribly exciting in the 1980s -- but Gibson's dead on about futurism having a shorter shelf life these days.

When you live in a world that uses up the future this fast, can you possible produce near-future sci-fi fast enough?

I think about Warren Ellis' political sci-fi comic series Transmetropolitan sometimes, and the way in which it presaged a journalistic environment that is increasingly a reality - the print product becoming less and less important, reporters producing content primarily for the Internet using sound, pictures and video they gather themselves. People subscribing to "feeds" in order to get the news and entertainment they want. The more fantastic bits of the series' world have yet to develop (people downloading themselves into microscopic computer viruses, smokers taking "trait" pills that keep them safe from cancer) but the world itself seems to be coming true all around us. I rarely do anything in my capacity as a journalist now without thinking about the Internet, multimedia, what I'd do with it if it was a blog post rather than a news story, what bloggers who don't have my constraints might do with it, etc. We're terrifyingly close to realizing the strangest dreams of science fiction writers every five or ten years.

Today's question

2006-12-27T10:29:00.000-05:00

Why did we never see James Brown and Gerald Ford in the same place, at the same time?

Framed: The Year That Wasn't

2006-12-26T21:49:00.000-05:00

My buddy Chris Lowrance has produced a year-end outtakes compilation of his comic Framed, which runs monthly in Yes Weekly.

If you haven't read Chris' comic, go here and do it immediately. It's free and it's funny.

Framed is a lot of fun for me personally because I get to see Chris brainstorming ideas, freaking out about deadlines, burying himself in research and nearly killing himself to get the thing out every month. That part's probably not much fun for Chris, but it's cool to see and hear all the things that DON'T make it into the comic. Which is why this 2006 wrap up edition is a great idea. It's like a great director's commentary - and it lets you in on some of the behind-the-scenes stuff only Chris' friends got to see or hear about as he produced a year's worth of Framed.

Also, he snuck me into a panel as a comic character again this week without warning me. This time my eyes didn't bug out of my head (as they did in one of my favorite installments, about Chris' 21st birthday), but I did get a punchline.

Winter reading

2006-12-26T20:08:00.000-05:00

I'm reading THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson right now and I have to tell you -- it's terrific. It's a mystery/adventure story set in the amid-1800s wherein a man has created computer technology a century before the computer age and changes the face of history.

I was disappointed, some months ago, when I read Gibson's NEUROMANCER and wasn't particularly impressed. I've never been a huge sci-fi fan and, from what I've seen, what was (probably unfairly) termed "cyberpunk" literature has not aged well. It's certainly aged better than cyberpunk film -- but I think any time you write or film your vision of a very near future you run the risk of society and technology catching up too quickly and in ways that are not flattering. When society becomes much more strange and technologically advanced (or at least technologically efficient) than your story it stops seeming strange and dangerous and runs the risk of becoming adorable.

Somehow much of Robert Heinlein and Philip K. Dick's fiction has held up well while I found the two Gibson novels I read already sounded a bit dated or tied to ideas about the Internet, how it would change society and "cyber space" that had already begun to seem a little cartoony a decade ago.

Worse than that though, I think, is that Gibson's style doesn't do much for me. It is, at once, controlled and all over the place. You get a very well assembled and sorted deluge. Complex futurist ideas are dumped on you every few sentences and, with all the speculation in the speculative fiction, I had a hard time getting attached to any of the characters.

But THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE is a whole other animal. I'm not sure if Sterling's style cut what hit me wrong about Gibson's or what...but it reads beautifully.

In a way I think what's been termed (again, I think probably unfairly) Steampunk is much more up my alley. By creating worlds in which anachronistic technology opens new and interesting doors you both avoid the trap of your work seeming dated and surpassed by reality and allow for a grounding in a reality that is surreal but seems tied to something we have some sense of - history, through a funhouse mirror.

Novels (and movies, and comics, and television shows) of this type may also appeal to me because the blend two of my favorite things - a romanticized past and a daringly imagined future. Futuristic gadgetry plus anachronism. A man in a bowler cap and suspenders, lifting off in an autogyro with a GPS system and front-mounted laser cannons. I mean...beat that for fascinating.

Home for the Holidays

2006-12-26T19:17:00.000-05:00

Am back from my parents' place, back in Greensboro, exhausted from the holidays but also feeling renewed for having had a few days off and seen the family.

While I was gone a teenage girl was stabbed to death and a guy shot someone in the head at the Gap Kids store in the Four Seasons Mall. On Christmas Eve.

It was, all at once, the best and worst time for me to have had a few days off as the night cop reporter.

On a lighter note, my parents gave me a 27'' Flatscreen television for Christmas - the sort Gretchen and I have been talking about buying for about a year and she's been drooling over for longer. It has an S-Video input that will allow us to plug our laptops into the television and watch TV shows and movies we have in digital format, play our music through the TV or just use it as a giant monitor.

The thing is, as compared to our old TV (actually, the two old TVs we had before moving in together) huge and intimidatingly nice. I'm going to set it up tonight if I don't break my back getting it up the stairs.

All my Christmas gifts went over well - especially the printer/copier/scanner I bought for my sister knowing my parents were getting her an off-to-college laptop. It's going to save her a lot of time at Kinkos and in computer labs, paying for prints and realizing only later that she has to go back and get back in line because she forgot something.

The Kodak Easyshare camera I got Gretchen also went over well. She's been snapping pictures of her little sister with it and it looks like the 7.1 megapixels are really, really doing their job.

It's nice when you can both satisfy your gadget lust by buying great tech and feel great because you're giving it to someon else - and, in this case, someone else who will probably appreciate it much more than you do.

Escape from Planet Zune

2006-12-20T22:27:00.000-05:00

My aunt called me tonight.

"Well, I bought the worst MP3 player in the world and it's all your fault," she said.

"What?"

"I called you earlier, but I couldn't get you. I was shopping for MP3 players and wanted your advice."

"Oh really? Wow - I'm sorry I missed your call. What did you end up getting?"

"Well, what's the worst thing I could have gotten?"

"Oh. Oh no...did you buy a Zune?"

"Of course I did."

This is, for those of you who pay no attention to gadgets, a very bad idea.

This thing is...just awful.

It limits the number of formats you can play even more than the iPod. It doesn't work with the media software of its own parent company.

It doesn't play the very "Plays For Sure" format that Microsoft created specifically for MP3 users, the type you can get through music subscription services (which was a major criticism of the iPod it's trying to trounce).

Which means no Napster. No Virgin Digital. No Yahoo Unlimited. No Napster 2.0, Movielink or Cinemanow -- all services Microsoft propped up with a format that's now useless to people who just bought the first Microsoft MP3 player.

It violates Creative Commons licenses by applying DRM to even files you yourself make and want to share with others through its wi-fi feature (which isn't really wi-fi in that it only works with other Zunes and won't even allow you to wirelessly send or recieve music from your own computer).

It doesn't support podcasts.

It abandons proven and customer friendly per-track purchasing, making you buy $5 blocks and setting the stage for price hikes for more popular tracks while the iTunes store holds the price at 99 cents and other services offer tracks for even less.

It provides kick-backs to record companies whose CEOs call the owners of MP3 players thieves and have declared war on their customers rather than working with them to provide what they need.

So, needless to say, my aunt's bringing this thing back to the store in the morning.

And thank God.

From now on I'm making sure my ringer isn't off. Terrible things happen...

Upate: My aunt actually ended up test-driving the Zune and found it did what she wanted it to do. No complaints yet, so she's keeping it.

Fair enough.

Gone to the big Pic-A-Nic basket in the sky

2006-12-20T17:37:00.000-05:00

Joe Barbera, one half of the animation powerhouse Hanna-Barbera, died this week.

In tribute, GIANT magazine has posted some of the greatest Hanna-Barbera cartoon intros, and one parody cartoon making fun of the corner-cutting of HB's sixties animation.

Good stuff.

Early Christmas presents. 101 of them.

2006-12-19T17:59:00.000-05:00

Want to watch all your favorite holiday specials online for free? Cartoon, stop-motion animation, sitcom and some you never even knew existed?

I thought you might.

Do it here.

Fake Knowledge for free!

2006-12-19T16:15:00.000-05:00

"The Areas of My Expertise," the brilliant, funny almanac of made-up history, fun facts and lore by John Hodgman (famous as the PC guy in those Mac vs. PC commercials) is now FREE as an audiobook download from iTunes.

Go download this now. While you still can. For free. It will cost you nothing and you'll laugh until you're sore.

Comments on comments

2006-12-18T16:43:00.000-05:00

Here's what makes me a bad blogger - and possibly a bad reporter in the new century.

When the News & Record recently announced we would be allowing reader comments on stories, my guts began to ache. Some bits of the co-mingling of blogging and journalism have been good for both. Some of it's been bad for both. A lot of it has simply been uncomfortable.

For me - and for a lot of other reporters I know who don't blog or wouldn't blog about this with a gun to their heads - reader comments are going to hurt at first.

They're going to hurt because you really wouldn't believe how many letters and phone calls are usually generated by simply having our e-mail addresses and phone numbers at the bottom of each story. And, if you could guess at how many, you couldn't imagine how many of them are completely irrational. I've been called names, threatened, screamed at (often in voicemails, where I can't even calm people down while they're working themselves into a froth) and told I don't know how to do my job because I don't take reader suggestions that are so outside of what I can and should do as a journalist I'd be fired and tending bar or waiting tables if I attempted them. Not everyone who calls is a nut. Not everyone who writes a letter is irrational. But many of them are - and they're always the loudest and most profane.

Listening to these people and being polite to them no matter how irrational or offensive they are is just part of your job if you're a reporter. You learn to get good at it. If you walk through the N&R newsroom in the afternoon you'll see nearly all of the reporters on their phones, nodding their heads calmly, adding the occasional "Yes, ma'am" or "No, sir" or beginning an explanation only to be cut off, then calmly begin it again. You can (and I have) politely thank someone who's just called you an un-American son of a bitch for calling and invite them to talk to your editor if they feel they have more to say. Editors love that.

Blogging takes that dynamic - as old as newspapers themselves - and turns it up to 11.

To get a sense of what it's like to be a reporter in the age of blogs (and now, with blogging tools and the culture of the blogosphere grafted onto your very stories) you have to imagine that you're at your job, using the skills you've learned and honed to do your job to the best of your ability. Every time you complete a task - and often before you've even begun - three or four people with no training in your field, who have little or no familiarity with the specifics of your work, who you work with, the method by which you do your work or the facts involved in it, some of whom hate you and your company for reasons that have nothing to do with you personally or your work and many of whom simply get off on arguing with you, pop up to offer you criticisms. Often loud, insulting criticisms. Occasionally someone will pop up and offer you a pat on the back - but they are few and they speak softly, often being all but drowned out by those screaming. It's part of your job to listen to these peoples' criticisms and you're even encouraged to respond and attempt to have a dialogue. This happens to you every time you go to work.

Do you think this would make you more or less efficient in your job? Do you think it would effect your morale positively or negatively? Do you think it would make you better at your job, or just more concerned that you're going to be heavily criticized for everything you do and therefore less likely to be innovative, to take chances, to dare to do things that may be controversial? Would it make you take those who are commenting on your work more or less seriously?

Most people can't and wouldn't want to imagine this sort of work environment. And most people will never really deal with anything like it. But that's essentially what allowing anyone to anonymously comment on newspaper stories is like for the average reporter. Luckily, most people who are drawn to reporting (and stay in it more than a few months) are not generally the sort of people who collapse sobbing in the face of criticism. I won't either. But I think the only way to prevent it impacting your work negatively, even just in your head through sheer volume and the mean-spiritedness of much of the blogosphere, is to completely ignore it, never read it at all. Which, I think, sort of defeats the purpose of having such a comment system at all.

And here's the damnable thing: I think enabling comments on every story is probably the right thing to do. I think it will probably lead to factional bickering, reductionism and harassment rather than genuine and productive dialogue as it has in just about every corner of the Greensboro blogosphere in which serious discussion is attempted. I think trolls of all sorts will plant their feet and bash at each other with the same tired arguments on the same tired topics for their own compulsive reasons. It's what happens already in the Letters to the Editor comment section, where even a posting about something light or funny can quickly turn into political or religious bickering because that's what people populating the forum want. I think it's going to make everyone's job harder rather than easier if they pay any attention to it. But I think that's inevitable and the price you pay for the good things it represents - transparency, the attempt at dialogue, the attempt at creating a town square, a forum for discussion of news among the people in the community who are making, reporting and consuming the news. That idea - and the outside chance that it will one day work the way you want it to, is worth the trouble.

And, cynically -- it's all going to happen somewhere. The bickering. The insults. The dumb comments. The funny ones. The local blogosphere relies heavily on the N&R for its links and actual content. Why not just have it happen at our place?

The Internet is an incredible democratizing medium. But I've recently come to realize, as Mr. Sun said at his Converge South session (I'm paraphrasing), there's something about the anonymity and immediacy of the Internet that can (and regularly does) make people nasty. It requires so little effort and provides such a rush that it attracts some really unpleasant characters. It also gives people the false sense that, because they can type words on a keyboard and see them appear here on the Internets, there's nothing special about what journalists do, that they themselves could probably do it better, that if we aren't doing what they'd do (and can do on their blogs) we're pikers, layabouts and soft headed incompetents - and probably politically or socially bent toward bad journalism in the first place. Which they can and will prove by finding something, anything about your personal life and personal identity with which to denigrate your professional life.

Of course, they're not all cranks. Some of them have valid points. Sometimes they point out errors that need to be corrected or brought to our attention. Sometimes they lead you to other stories you might never have found had they not accidentally inspired you to go looking. Those are the few comments we're going to have to live for while sifting through the rest.

This is all sort of academic at this point, as our editor tells me there aren't many people using the comments yet. But, he says, he thinks it might simply be a matter of people becoming aware that they're there and getting used to using them.

This year they enabled comments at my old college paper, The Carolinian. I'm told it's gotten nasty a few times, but nothing serious. People are using them and nothing's blown up just yet.

Over at the Daily Tarheel, where they've been using them for a while, a former editor tells me it regularly gets ugly and the discussion is rarely constructive.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens with the N&R's comments - and I'd love to be proven wrong.

Because it's one of the greatest shows in history.

2006-12-12T21:15:00.000-05:00

Hey...I loaned my copy of 'The West Wing: The Complete First Season" to someone some months ago. Now I can't remember for the life of me who it was.

But it was almost certainly someone who reads this blog.

I once left the same DVD set at my parents' place for like three months. But then I got it back over the summer. Now I can't find it again. If you haven't finished watching it, you can certainly keep it longer. I just want to locate it and be sure where it is. So you can leave me a message here, e-mail me or give me a call to let me know which of you it is...because I'm a moron and I can't remember.

Thanks.

Fast Forward column: Motorcycle crazies

2006-12-11T21:35:00.000-05:00

Joe Killian
News & Record
12/11/06

As the chill of winter sets in across the Triad, most drivers are checking their antifreeze levels and breaking out the ice scraper. But Fast Forward recently talked to some drivers for whom winter presents a unique set of problems -- motorcyclists.

Many cyclists take their bikes out of the garage only in the summer, yet plenty also use them as their primary transportation.

"One of the great parts of living in North Carolina is it stays warm enough to ride your bike almost all year long," said Jimmy Overland, 34, of Greensboro. "But even down here you have to take certain precautions when it gets cold to make sure you're safe."

Overland, who has been riding motorcycles since he was a teenager, a few years ago switched to his motorcycle full time. These days he favors a Kawasaki Ninja 250R -- a small, sporty Japanese bike. He says even with the occasional hassle of driving in the rain or cold, the change has been worth it.

"I did the calculations and I realized that, with the savings on gas and insurance, my last bike actually paid for itself in a year," Overland said. "Also, I've just never driven a car that's as much fun as a motorcycle, period."

Full column here.

---

Usually I don't get a lot of letters or calls about the Fast Forward column, which is a revolving transportation column. I keep trying to think of something different, something out of the ordinary, for the columns to keep them from being unbearably boring.

Last week I hung out with some guys who use motorcycles as their primary mode of transportation - all year long. I don't envy them the winter riding, but it did make me want a motorcycle. Of course, on hearing me say this everyone wants to quote me statistics about how dangerous they are. But, as someone pointed out this weekend, no one would say anything to me if I said to them "I want to buy a Vespa."

Vespas travel as fast as I'd probably push a motorcycle and I haven't seen any evidence that they're safer - there are just fewer of them on the road.

Got two calls about the column that ran today. Both from Harley guys telling me I should have talked to some Harley riders and that Kawasaki Ninjas suck.

These guys are really serious about their bikes. Even when it doesn't matter.

Black Friday column

2006-12-10T12:30:00.000-05:00

Forgot to post this when it ran on Friday. This is one of those examples of a topic that should have made a good column, should have been hilarious, but for a number of reasons (including things I had to leave out of it) it ended up being just all right. Strangely, I had a number of calls from people telling me how much they liked it.

Go figure.

----

Mobs, Miracle on my first Black Friday
Joe Killian
News & Record
12/8/06

This year my family decided to split up for Thanksgiving, each of us going to visit far-flung relatives. I had to work, so I decided for the first time ever to take part in a different sort of holiday tradition: Black Friday.

For the uninitiated, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving — when stores all over the country deep-discount big-ticket items and break out the "buy one, get one free" stickers. It's so named because it could, all by itself, bring a business from the red to the black. As mania set in and people began shoving and swinging in long lines at department stores, the day became just as synonymous with black eyes.

As much as I love gifts and gadgets, I've never been the type to get up at 4 a.m. and stand in line for hours to get my hands on them. This would be an excellent reason to give it a try — participating in the madness with the cool detachment of a journalist so that I could later mock the very people with whom I'd stood in line. I wouldn't be like them. I would be... experimenting.

Full column here.

Normal business hours

2006-12-06T22:15:00.000-05:00

The number of N.C. institutions and law enforcement agencies from which you can get absolutely no information on anything after 5 p.m. - even if some serious thing happens after regular business hours - is maddening.

The number of people who will tell you that they don't know anything and therefore no one in their organization or agency can possibly know anything is maddening.

The number of people who, even after you've managed to get them either on the phone or in person will tell you you'll have to talk to them the next morning, is maddening.

It makes reporters nuts...but it should drive the average citizen just as crazy.

Why do I never get to write a story like this...?

2006-11-30T16:51:00.000-05:00

From the Orlando Sentinel:

LAKELAND -- A man who was attacked by an alligator this morning was naked and smoking crack at the time, Polk County deputies who rescued him said today.

Considering Britney

2006-11-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

CNN is talking about Britney Spears hanging out with Paris Hilton.

CNN.

It would be easy to scapegoat television news here and pretend that we'd rather be watching (or that we really should want to be watching) news about Iraq, in-depth process stories about the shake-up in Washington, even the alarming new projection that AIDS may become the third most frequent cause of death within our lifetimes.

But here's the thing...we want to know about Britney Spears, who she's hanging out with and what she's going to do next. And not in a creepy, tabloid, paparazzi way. Not in a generally-too-obsessed-with-the-concept-of-celebrity sort of way. We care about Britney Spears because she is, though we are loathe to admit it, a cultural/sexual icon almost certainly on a level with Madonna (though many, many gay men will never admit this).

I'll never be able to explain why this is true better than Chuck Klosterman did in his Esquire cover story on Spears (for an excerpt from the uncut version of this piece go here and click "excerpt." Or, you know, buy the book. It's good stuff).

You know, the one where these became perhaps (with the David LaChapelle Rolling Stone cover) the most important photos Britney would ever take:

These were the photos that, as Klosterman explained, heralded Britney Spears v. 2.0 - the attempt to come out of her bubblegum pop entry into the American consciousness (and the American wet dream) and hit the ground running. This is the period wherein she admitted she had lost her virginity (at 18, she said, with Justin Timberlake, and for all we know that's true but matters very little), made the "Slave 4 U" video that would begin a period of more and more sexually explicit music (marking the shift from the chaste "E-Mail My Heart" on her first album to the masturbation ballad "The Touch of My Hand" on her last).

But it was at this point, I think, that she was already lost. She just didn't know it yet.

As Klosterman touches on in his piece, the thing that made Britney Spears a cultural icon (and much more interesting if not more important than Madonna as a sexual icon) is that she is the American woman who has most perfectly (and most frustratingly) embodied our simultaneous and conflicting desires to believe that women (especially young, desireable women) are both virginal, unspoiled and even themselves ignorant of their own budding sexuality and wanton, uncontrollably sexual creatures who simply have to have it. She was Lolita ...or at least she made us believe that she was. And we did believe it, somehow. Even the most cynical among us bought some part of it.

There's no sex symbol in American history who was able to do that so perfectly - and those who tried are barely worth mentioning in the same sentence as Spears. Marilyn Monroe and Madonna may have had earlier and arguably larger impacts in the same area - but that was as much a function of the times as what they offered to or said about the culture.

And anyway, the standard and approach were different.

Our grandfathers did not take Marilyn's pin-ups into war with them because they believed they couldn't have her. And men of my generation did not grow up dreaming of and comparing women to Madonna because we thought she wouldn't want us. Certainly, some part of us knew that these women were world famous sex symbols, that we'd never meet them and if we did we'd never measure up to the rock, movie and sports stars they were going to bed with every night. But what made them fascinating was that you believed they wanted it more than women were ever allowed to admit they wanted it, wanted it so much they could barely contain themselves, wanted it so much they couldn't help oozing their sexuality even while singing the freaking "Happy Birthday" song. They gave off sparks and we believed with some small, irrational part of our minds, hearts and souls what we tell ourselves about modern porn stars when we're ignoring the cold and cruel reality... that if by some strange twist of fate we ever did get alone with them we probably COULD have them. Because that's how much they want it.

But Spears...Spears made us believe she didn't want it. Or at least that we couldn't have it. We could look. We could pant and drool. We could watch her shake it. But we couldn't have it. Even her boyfriend couldn't have it (she said). And he was a millionaire pop star who had women throwing themselves at him. She simply wasn't giving it up.

Which, in retrospect, was the smartest thing she could have done.

Marilyn and even Madonna were specific kinds of sexual icons in their respective eras.

Marilyn was an exaggeration of the feminine ideal to the point that, in the context of her time, she was almost indecent. Women didn't dress that way, they didn't do those things. Or they didn't let you know they did. And so you had to fantasize that they would until she walked out of your dreams and onto the silver screen (and the pages of magazines) just for you. Still decent enough for you to watch without blushing...but just barely. Not the kind of girl you take home, but certainly the kind of girl you dream about while pretending you enjoy her (at best) mediocre acting.

A lot of heavy lifting was already out of the way when Madonna came along. She was a post-feminist sex symbol, the celebrity pop star equivalent of sex and porn positive feminists who insisted that being sexual was a birthright and refused to couch it in anything to make it more digestable. She was confrontational, getting off on being over the top, shocking and titillating you...and you got off on her enjoying it. She was, really, the perfect sex symbol for the late 80s and early 90s, which were all about self-consciously pushing boundaries. But, even more than Marilyn, Madonna's image depended on the idea that you believed, somewhere deep inside you, that you could have her. Heck, your girlfriend could have her. You could both have her at the same time - and she'd love that because someone, somewhere would be upset by it.

But for all her insistance that she loved and was inspired by Madonna, Spears knew she had to play another sort of game altogether. She came onto the scene in the late 90s, when even a bare-faced (and breasted) sexual shock rock acts like L7 and Hole were signed to huge labels, touring the world and being accepted into the mainstream. Madonna had been doing (and subtlely changing) her schtick for more than a decade. Britney Spears, who wasn't even the singer, performer or songwriter that Madonna was, wasn't going to get anywhere making men (and women) believe they could have her. She had to come in low, under the radar, appeal to young girls and bubble gum pop fans before suddenly dressing a Catholic school girl outfit and turning the thing on its head, all the while insisting that wasn't what she meant to do at all.

In Klosterman's piece he talks about the way in which Spears, even when asked flat out about her sexual appeal, pretends to have no idea what the interviewer is talking about.

A Catholic school girl outfit? How could that be misconstrued as sexual? I mean, unless you're a pervert...

Slave 4 U? That's about being a slave to the music. What are you talking about? It's not sexual...

It went beyond being coy. It was mind bending. It was frustrating. Even Klosterman, who is known for penetrating analysis (no pun intended) couldn't figure out if she was being handled so carefully (and so carefully handing herself) that all of her answers had to sound comically out of touch or if she was really, truly, the least self aware person on the planet.

But here's the thing: that mystique, that riddle inside a puzzle wrapped in an enigma, is gone. She married a backup dancer whose fondest wish was to be a white rapper. She stole him from another woman he'd knocked up so that he could knock her up. Twice. Then she let herself go physically and socially in a way that goes way beyond releasing a little steam after years of being perfect and videotaped herself burping, walking through convenience stores and public bathrooms barefoot and generally being repulsive. For a reality TV show. While her contemporaries were rising to greater stardom and being taken more seriously (Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Beyonce, one would have to argue even Jessica Simpson) she was busy, either consciously or unconsciously, completely destroying the Britney Spears she spent her adolesence and early adulthood creating so publicly.

So whatever rises from the ashes is going to have to be something new. She's going to have to steal a page from her idol Madonna and do something else, something we'll buy, something that will interest us again. Because she doesn't sing nearly as well as Christina Aguilera, she doesn't dance as well as Shakira, Justin Timberlake or even Beyonce, she's less physically attractive (particularly now, after two children, as she's showing off her shaved labia and C-section scar in nightclubs with no panties on) than any number of female pop stars now on the scene. Even her best pop music is only as good as the best pop music of her contemporaries, no better (and in many instances much worse). Without the good girl/bad girl mystique drawing us in I think we have to wonder which chips she has left to play in what's supposed to be a comeback.

It's worth noting that Gretchen disagrees with me on this one and thinks (quite rightly, I think we'll all agree) that I'm probably overthinking this. Gretchen, who like many women her age has a sort of love/hate/fascination relationship with Spears, thinks America has been pulling for her to get it together, drop her deadbeat husband and put out a great pop record for years. And she think there may yet be one in her.

I hate to admit it, but I'm interested to see if she's right.

"The past is gone/but something might be found/to take its place..."

2006-11-25T12:38:00.000-05:00

I'm writing today and listening to the Gin Blossoms' breakthrough album, New Miserable Experience.

Man, I always forget how much I really like this album.

I know I'm turning into that guy who's always going on about how much he loves the music that was playing when he first started getting laid...but it's just so hard to imagine this album being a hit today. It's really catchy, jangly guitar pop that is, if you're listening to the lyrics at all, almost wholely depressing. It's like Weezer's Pinkerton in that way but somehow more and less strange.

If you don't remember the album or the band you might remember the singles and catchiest tunes. "Allison Road" (a pretty song about sleeping with a groupie and then feeling awful about it...how 90s), "29" (a pretty song about standing on the verge of 30 and wondering where the hell your life is going...how 90s), "Until I Fall Away" (a pretty song about both the fear of and longing for commitment), "Hold Me Down" (about being a jovial alcoholic and drug addict whom everyone loves and knowing it's going to kill you soon), "Found Out About You" (about realizing the girl you're in love with is sleeping with everyone) and especially "Hey Jealousy" (a pretty song about the hope of re-igniting a failed relationship that begins with the protagonist asking to stay at the one-who-got-away's house because he's too drunk to drive).

The band disintegrated after guitarist/primary songwriter/alcoholic depressive Doug Hopkins was fired from the band and shot himself while the album was still selling like hotcakes.

They made one more album that had, in my estimation, two good songs ("Till I Hear It From You/Follow You Down") that weren't really even as good as the stuff on the previous album and have sporadically reunited to record or tour since, but the new stuff doesn't do it for me.

Poor Doug Hopkins had something.

Sips redux

2006-11-24T18:16:00.000-05:00

The new James Bond movie and a Bourbon company's holiday cocktail suggestion have led me to add two new entries (both with recipes) to the all but abandoned Sips Blog.

Haven't been doing the Sips column for Go Triad since I left the Life section for cops, and so had made no new entries at the blog in months.

Though the focus has been heavily on Winston-Salem, Jon Kirby's "Last Call" column in Go Triad has been really good. He's avoided focusing directly on the drinks and I'm not sure if this is an editorial decision (they were never really comfortable with having a bald faced drink column in the print version) or if the column simply works better this way. But has broken out of the format box that I hated but was compelled to write in when I did the Sips column - and that's a good thing. These days I would pick up Go Triad just for Kirby's column and Luke McIntyre's Cheap Eats. They're each columns that are both informative (I find myself taking junk food notes from Luke almost every week) and convey the writers' personality enough to draw you in, make you want to see what they'll write next. Luke's always been good that way and though I've met Kirby only once I was told by someone who wrote with him in college that that was always one of his strengths as well.

Both these guys sort of make me miss writing a weekly column, which I think was one of my great strengths. But I've decided I enjoy writing about booze and bars enough that I'm going to continue updating the Sips Blog column or no. Drop in every now and then and comment - it has the potential for a lot of good conversation.

Black moods, black eyes, black Friday

2006-11-24T18:03:00.000-05:00

Braved the Black Friday crowds all night and into the morning. My first time ever. I was in the thick of it from 1 a.m. at the Four Seasons Mall to standing in the cold outside Circuit City and Staples starting at 4 a.m.

Exhausting, frustrating, comic and strange - but, estimating conservatively, I saved $300 on gifts and gadgets.

Am going to get an N&R column out of this, so will tell the whole story there.

It's a doozy.

I am Thankful for the Hot Light

2006-11-23T18:42:00.000-05:00

Here's a strange thing:

If you aren't at your family's dinner table carving into a turkey, it's nearly impossible to find so much a sandwich anywhere in the city on Thanksgiving.

My family split into a few different Thanksgiving parties this year, none of them close to where I am. As I was one of the last people hired in my office I pulled the holiday this year - and it's just as well as I don't have any kids or a lot of family nearby. I'm getting holiday pay, so you won't hear me complaining.

Or you wouldn't, if even a McDonald's was open.

Gretchen and I made a turkey, mashed potatoes and some pecan pie before she left for Charlotte to be with her family. We had an early dinner together yesterday, before the holiday. But last night I came and had some more turkey and today I couldn't be less interested in poultry (which is not something you'll often hear me say).

Driving around Greensboro on a dinner break I found exactly one restaurant open - a Chinese buffet that was so unappealing and downright unsanitary that I had to leave with an empty stomach.

But you know what was open?

Krispy Kreme.

And people were lined up.

God bless those doughnut making fools.

Bondage

2006-11-21T15:53:00.000-05:00

Here are the opening titles to all of the James Bond films. And here are all of the trailers. And here are all of the theme songs.

Saw Casino Royale last weekend. Enjoyed the film and title sequence, though the title song by Chris Cornell didn't really do it for me.

Though I would have preferred Clive Owen I think Craig handled Bond wall and it was certainly the movie the franchise needed to pull itself out of what was becoming the sort of over-the-top embarassing slump to which Roger Moore's Bond fell prey decades ago. It is a shame that the current Bond film is, not even a week into its release, already being thumped by the computer animated penguin movie.

This summer I interviewed comics writer Warren Ellis, and we talked a bit about the Bond books and films over much whiskey. Ellis told me at the time that he didn't believe they would be doing a darker, grittier Bond, as had been hyped. And, in a sense, he was right. I don't think there was anything in this film that we wouldn't have seen in Golden Eye or License to Kill -- it's just that this one managed to subtract some of the ridiculous gizmo-gasm moments that cropped up in Tomorrow Never Dies and especially Die Another Day, which was almost a Bond parody (and which boasts one of the worst Bond songs of all time, courtesy of Madonna). The movie was not, as was reported, the Bond equivalent of Batman Begins.

Still - I'm looking forward to the next one.

Bart vs. The White Stripes

2006-11-20T22:37:00.000-05:00

Great China story

2006-11-20T16:28:00.000-05:00

From the NYT:

DOLKA, China — At the two glacial lakes that give birth to the Yellow River, a Tibetan nomad named Tsende stands at the river’s edge and rolls up his pants. He says a dragon lives in the lakes, a god of rain. Two decades of drought convinced him the dragon is angry.

Tsende steps barefoot into the river, a human speck at an altitude of almost 15,000 feet, swallowed in the emptiness of the Qinghai Province grasslands. He is carrying five silver rings. A nomad on the other side has 20 sheep. They have arranged a trade.

He will travel across grasses that once touched his knees but now barely reach his ankles. Hundreds of nomads, prodded by the government, have sold their herds and fled the land around the lakes. Others like Tsende have rammed a Buddhist prayer pole into a hillside and prayed to the dragon. Told that some scientists offer another explanation for the weather — climate change— Tsende is unimpressed.

“The result is the same,” he said with a shrug.

----

The story is by Jim Yardley. Yardley, who won a Pulitzer last year, is the son of Rosemary Roberts, the former NYT writer and N&R columnist who taught the first journalism class I ever took in college. Rosemary's family has for years been tight with a bunch of huge, intimidating journalism names, including Scotty Reston. She has two sons who write for the Times...can you image being the one who DOESN'T yet have a Pulitzer?

When I took Rosemary's class I'd already written for a small daily in Connecticut and learned most of what was being taught from a pair of reporters I'd known for years. But I still listened to everything she had to say very carefully and when she drops in on the office now and then I still hang on her every word. Like Stan Swofford, who retired from the N&R earlier this year, she's full of great stories and you have the sense, when you're talking to her, that you might do this for another 40 years and not learn half of what she knows.

The fact that her son can write his ass of does not surprise me in the least.

Embracing non-believers

2006-11-18T17:24:00.000-05:00

GREENSBORO — The young man rose from the pews.

"I'm atheist," he said, "because I believe in only what I see."

Those around him didn't try to shout him down or use the rest of the day's sermon to convert him. Actually, as many as 15 percent of the surrounding congregation are like-minded.

This is Sunday morning service at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro, where even if the day's message wasn't "Embracing Atheism," the people here have that unique level of acceptance. They unite around such concepts as respect and a sense of community — not the things that divide them, such as belief and non belief.

The Rev. Alex Richardson knows what you're thinking: heretics.

"Some people say, 'Those are the people who don't believe in God,'" he said later in his office. "It's not accurate.

"I decided way back as a teenager that my God was no different from the God of the Buddhist, was no different than the God of the native African who was practicing whatever religion they might be practicing, or the Native American — one divine energy, which made me the Unitarian."

---

Full piece here.

Nancy McLaughlin has one of the best, most interesting but also most difficult beats at my paper. And she deserves it.

In college I had a friend who was working toward becoming a Unitarian minister - and though I loved her, one of my great frustrations was that spirituality came so easily to her that she had a hard time understanding how and why others struggled with it. But, true to Unitarian form, she understood that about herself and was always trying to work on it.