Thrill to the adventures of: REPORTER BOY!

Got my first News and Record check yesterday. Only one week’s pay since I came on in the middle of a pay cycle, but it felt like a million dollars.
A few years ago I turned to my friend Amanda, a reporter on Cape Cod, and finally said it aloud:
“Don’t you feel, in some way, like [...]

Just because I like this picture.

The Rock and Jim Trella at the World Stunt Awards.

"I Can’t Believe" it took this long to get a letter

Well, it finally happened.
The Carolinian’s Life section has been running a weekly feature called “I Can’t Believe I…” in which UNCG students tell their strange and unbelievable stories. They’re generally outlandish, occasionally dangerous accounts of the weird and stupid things college students do over the course of their four years.
This week we decided to run [...]

"Picture Book…when you were just a baby, those days when you were ugly, a long time ago…."

Jesus Christ. Is it possible I was ever that young? Somehow my baby pictures seem more real.
I’m the dashing young fellow second from the right. I’m with my student journalism group in Bristol, Connecticut.
This was my sophomore year, I think, and I believe we’re headed to a Society of Professional Journalists awards ceremony, where [...]

Punching the keys

Have spent the last two days working on my first pieces for the News and Record. The one that’s been giving me the most trouble is a profile of John Hitchcock, the guy who owns Parts Unknown – a comic shop a few blocks from our place. He puts on comic conventions in Greensboro that [...]

Romancing the French

James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller — and now my buddy, John Russell.
It seems the French are always ahead of the literary curve – and right now they seem to be swooning over John’s piece in the French gay magazine Preferences.
I kind of wish I read French, just so I could figure out what [...]

Porn debate over at Slate

Ed Cone points out an interesting piece over at Slate – a debate over two new books, “Pornified” and “Female Chauvinist Pigs” that argue that pornography is ruining the culture, human relationships and peoples’ lives.
I am, of course, having a hard time believing that it’s the pornography that’s making these sad sacks interviewed [...]

FBI agents on Porn Squad: "I already gave at home…"

Via The Washington Post
The FBI is joining the Bush administration’s War on Porn. And it’s looking for a few good agents.
Early last month, the bureau’s Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing [...]

WORDS AND PICTURES

IT’S A BIRD! IT’S A PLANE! IT HAS GREAT LICENSED MERCHANDISE!Joe KillianThe Carolinian9/20/05
When I was a kid I had Superman pajamas.
Before going to sleep I insisted that my dad pick me up on his shoulders and fly me all the way around the house, landing on my bed, where I would fall asleep on my [...]

OUT OF MY HEAD

EXPOSING THE JUGULARJoe KillianThe Carolinian9/20/05
“I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport.
I don’t care if they’re being inconvenienced. I don’t care if it seems as though their rights are being violated.”
So began UNC student Jillian Bandes’ column for the Daily Tarheel last week – [...]

If you know your history…

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Mark Matthews, the oldest Buffalo Soldier, has died at the age of 111.
He’ll be buried Monday at Arlington National Cemetery.
Matthews joined the legendary unit of black cavalry troops in 1910 at the age of 16. He soon found himself serving under Gen. John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing in the Army’s pursuit of [...]

Sex connoisseur

My friend John Russell, who escaped Greensboro for New York about a year ago, has been writing for the Villlage Voice, working in a sex shop, reviewing porn and writing for various websites and erotic magazines in Europe. Oh, and fucking his brains out, naturally.
I finally got around to looking at some of [...]

GAME ON

All right. It’s apparently official. I now work for the News and Record.
Here’s the deal:
I’m writing part time in their Life section – $15 an hour, 25 hours a week while I’m taking classes. I’m going to be writing some features right away, contributing to their revolving “VEXED IN THE CITY” column about people in [...]

License revoked

Looks like a columnist at The Daily Tarheel was canned after starting a column on racial profiling with the following sentence:
“I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport.”
(Full column here)
But, says Opinion Editor Chris Coletta, it wasn’t because of the controversy and percieved racism [...]

The Tattoo Blog

Well, it finally happened.
The Tattoo – the teen journalism group based in Connecticut – has its own blog.
The Tattoo is a group of (mostly) high school kids who produce a really terrific page of news, opinion pieces and features from a teen perspective for a weekly page in the Bristol Press.
Or, at least, [...]

Pro-Life protestors = Cold, hard cash

From Planned Parenthood in Philadelphia, city of Brotherly Love…
Every time protesters gather outside of our Locust Street health center, our patients face verbal attacks from them. They see graphic signs meant to confuse and intimidate. They are sometimes blocked from entering the building and occasionally they are videotaped. They are offered anti-choice propaganda [...]

WORDS AND PICTURES

My First Comic: A Love StoryJoe KillianThe Carolinian9/13/05
I was always a bookworm. Hardy Boys serials, Sherlock Holmes stories, Edgar Allan Poe. But somehow, this was different. I was twelve years old and, standing in the aisle of a Kerr Drug while my mother looked for shampoo, I was at the perilous edge of a terrible [...]

OUT OF MY HEAD

Hurricane Katrina: Pride, Shame and television newsJoe KillianThe Carolinian9/13/05
Ask anyone and they’ll tell you – I hate television news.
I hate the cute little chats at the anchor desk. I hate the dominance of feel-good feature stories and the faux-investigative pieces on what your grocery store is REALLY selling you. More than anything I hate the [...]