Waiting for Sidney

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 [...]

All right…now I get it.

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 [...]

Day of the Daughtry

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 [...]

Getting the jitters

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 [...]

"New suit…?"

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 [...]

Get on the bus

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 [...]

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

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 [...]

The first time I’ve ever wanted Court TV

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 [...]

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

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 Week in Pictures 3/5/07 – 3/9/07

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 [...]

Suiting Up

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. [...]

Holy Zombie Reagan…

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, [...]

A White Piece of Paper

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 [...]

Say you want a revolution…

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…

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 [...]

Speak into the microphone

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 [...]

The Departed

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 [...]

TKO

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 [...]

Technogasm

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 [...]

Real writers

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 [...]