Brian.Indrelunas.com

ALL HAIL TO THEE, OLD CHANDLER HIGH...
Two Indrelunases now Changrape Chandler High alums

Lately, I've encountered a lot of different things:

things that are different than they were,

things that were different than I thought they'd be,

and, perhaps most scarily, the idea that I myself might be different than I used to be and what that means.

But it's nice to know that some things really do never change, like the fact that "In 1918, Chandler High School graduated its first class of seniors. There were three." Also comforting is that CHS principal Terry Williams still uses the three-seniors-in-'18 factoid as the opening line to every speech he gives and every speech he ever will, forever and ever, amen.

I heard the classic, barely changing Williams speech tonight as my brother Michael graduated from Chandler High. He has the distinction of being a member of Chandler's 90th graduating class, as well as its second-largest to date... that and all the individual distinctions that predicate one's being all stoled and tasseled out with the fancy honors regalia.

Anyway, I'm proud of him for making it through four years of Chandler High ridiculousness. (I only had to put up with three, remember.) And I'm also kind of excited as well as somewhat weirded out by the fact that, for the first time ever, my brother and I will be going to the same school simultaneously come this fall.

One other constant that I was glad to see tonight is that Chandler High still gives out actual diplomas at graduation rather than sending them in the mail afterward.

And now that Michael's got one of those fancy Chandler thangs, he's got a ticket to four (or maybe more, if he follows my lead) years at ASU, the first semester of which he has to spend with me not too far away. By the time he's approaching another graduation years from now, he too might start to look back on how he's changed in college, but it sure isn't my role to kick-start that process. I think I'll just work on ensuring that he picks up The State Press every once in a while — because if your own brother doesn't read the paper you edit, something's probably amiss.

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0 comments | 5/29/2008 01:54

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0 comments | 5/19/2008 07:00

I Don’t Want to Wait… for all this crap to get uploaded

Well, I'm headed to Vegas today (and after that on to Washington, DC, and Justine's house in Maryland) so I cleared off my camera's memory card in preparation, transferring everything to my hard drive.

And I had meant to get all the good stuff uploaded as well before I took off, but Cox High Speed Internet isn't really living up to its name in the upload department, so for the time being I leave you with the thing on my memory card that made me laugh the hardest. It's a 3 a.m. rendition of Paula Cole's "I Don't Wanna Wait," aka the Dawson's Creek theme song:

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0 comments | 5/19/2008 04:26

You know you’re losing it when crazy starts to look normal

I'm beginning to think that I just might be going crazy since the odd hours and weird sleeping and eating schedules I've adopted over the past few weeks are starting to feel strangely normal.

Take, for instance, the past 24 hours.

Even though I went to bed Thursday night at around 3 a.m., I somehow woke up at about 7:30 Friday morning. Although I napped until 9, that still had me pretty early in the morning for these days.

The morning started off productively, with me finishing up some paperwork and getting it in the mail before 10 a.m. (and half-watching some of The Price Is Right in the process).

During the rest of the day, I did productive-type things in random spurts, ending up on campus to get a few things done in the late afternoon before picking up Katy and heading over to Beth's apartment to watch some Grey's Anatomy reruns and Thursday's new episode. Much Grey's and girl talk later, it was midnight already and I still hadn't even stopped by Bettina's graduation party in Phoenix.

So I grabbed a very late (but not unusually late given my other dining times these past few weeks) dinner from Sonic, got the address off of Facebook and drove to Bettina's. When I got there sometime after 1 a.m., I was immediately pegged as someone who was sufficiently (i.e., completely) sober to drive to Filiberto's — or, as ended up happening, Alberto's — for Mexican food.

And when I end up leaving Bettina's at 4:15 a.m. and I'm driving toward home, I notice that the sky's already beginning to brighten behind Camelback Mountain. So I decide I might as well stay up another few hours to see the sunrise and I've soon ended up in downtown Phoenix where I tried to get some sunrise+skyscrapers-type photos.

Then I drove home, and tada, it's 6:30ish, more than 23 hours from when I first got out of bed after an admittedly short night's sleep. And yet, my irregular day hadn't yet exhausted me, probably thanks to an equally erratic eating schedule.

Crazy, huh?

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0 comments | 5/16/2008 06:41

Sometimes TV news makes me want to cry

This morning, CNN spent a good five minutes talking about a decision from the California Supreme Court that no one had even read yet. In fact, the anchor's live-on-the-air reading of the first page of the ruling led him to assume the outcome was the opposite of the actual conclusion that the court took 12 pages to reach.

Here's how the "breaking" story was first botched at 10:06 Arizona time, transcribed by me through the magic of the TiVo rewind button:

OK, hold up. Let's count the red flags here:

1. An anchor just read from a court ruling live on the air as it's coming in. Bad idea. Really bad idea. Why? Court rulings are not news stories. They are not written in inverted-pyramid style. They do not have the most important information in the first paragraph or even on the first page. They need to be skimmed before they're reported on. You can't just start reading them over the air, unless you have a good half-hour of airtime to dedicate to the ruling because that's probably about how long it would take to read aloud the entire first section of a case, which in this case culminates with a conclusion on page 12.

2. The court "concluded" in the past tense rather than "concludes" in the present? Hmm. Might we be talking about a prior case and a prior decision? Ding ding ding! That's right! In fact, court rulings often start out by describing, in detail, the premise or historical basis of the case. Today's ruling starts out by describing the outcome of a previous case that dealt with the gay marriages that had been allowed in California but only considered whether they were legal, not whether they laws that outlawed them were constitutional, which brings us to our next read flag...

3. That "substantive question of the constitutional—" Generally, when something's referred to as a "substantive question" and a constitution is involved, that's a good clue that it might be newsworthy. You know, maybe. But thanks to an unfortunate page break, that's where Lemon's live storytime ends. "That's the end of the copy that I have here, and then there's a much longer version that I'd have to click on," he tells viewers before switching gears to talk over the phone with a legal analyst who also has not read the ruling yet.

Let's return to the transcript:

Again, reading from the first page, when some important details were waiting just at the top of the next page. Remember "the substantive question of the constitutional"? Well, the ruling continues:

validity of the California marriage statutes was not before this court in that proceeding, and that our decision was not intended to reflect any view on that
issue.

And there's the big clue that the whole first page of the ruling was describing a previous case that didn't address the question now at hand. Or, as the court put it:

The present proceeding, involving the consolidated appeal of
six cases that were litigated in the superior court and the Court of Appeal in the
wake of this court’s decision in Lockyer, squarely presents the substantive
constitutional question that was not addressed in Lockyer.

But without this little piece of information, Hostin just has to take a shot in the dark at making sense of what didn't actually happen:

And so on and so forth. Lemon and Hostin continue talking about the opposite of the actual ruling until 10:11, when CNN moves on to another story with this kicker from Lemon: "Certainly, now that the legality of the state's ban on same-sex marriage has been effectively upheld, there really is no recourse, at least in California."

At 10:15, viewers get a first tiny little clue that something's amiss:

Then, at 10:18, a somewhat confused Lemon delivers this monologue more to his computer screen than to the camera:

At 10:23, Lemon has papers in hand: "Just getting the ruling here from the California Supreme Court coming in to CNN. It is very complicated and a lot of pages and we're going to go through it."

Then, other than the ruling being correctly summed up in a teaser just before a commercial break and in the bottom-of-the-hour headlines, the story doesn't resurface until the top of the next hour when CNN gets Newsom on the phone and justice correspondent Kelli Arena on camera.

Now, having never worked in television myself, I know that I'm not exactly the best to judge. But I do realize that there's time pressure in every cable newsroom, that being first is important, and that doing live TV is incredibly hectic.

And yes, there are many breaking news events that are well-suited for anchors to take things as they come and pass them along live. In natural disasters, terrorist attacks, hostage situations, industrial accidents, and many other events, the situation is constantly changing and new information comes into the newsroom all the time in bits and pieces. A good anchor can take those bits and pieces and put them together into a changing, shifting big picture of what's known at the time.

A court ruling, on the other hand, is a lengthy document that is the product of much thought and writing on the part of the judges or justices who issued it, and it all gets released at once. There are no bits and pieces of the ruling itself that need to filter into a newsroom over time, only people's reactions and statements and the impact of the decision.

So a court ruling should not be treated like an ever-changing developing story. It should not be given to an anchor in bits and pieces. Rather, it should be properly read or skimmed by a reporter who's at least somewhat familiar with the case, who can then pass on the bottom line to the anchor.

If I were in charge at CNN (and if television newsrooms worked the way I envision them in my mind, which I'll admit probably isn't the case) here's how the story would have looked to viewers:

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0 comments | 5/15/2008 12:07

a nonexistent morning calls for an early night

Sure, I went to bed at 5ish a.m., but when I woke up this morning afternoon and saw that the clock read 3:45 (as in 3:45 p.m., aka 15:45) even I thought that was a bit excessive.

So when the po-po showed up at Ashley Harris' graduation party shortly after 23:00 and the party had to move to another house, what I might have last week seen as an adventure was instead this week regarded as a sign that it was time to call it a night. (Also leading me to that decision was the fact that no one I was talking to at the party was planning on making the move to the other house either.)

Yawn... This week-plus of parties is starting to catch up to me.

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0 comments | 5/13/2008 23:50

‘I don’t wanna wait…’

Tonight I got all trashy to see a friend get trashed on her 21st birthday... and you know it's a good night when there's a mechanical bull and a Dawson's Creek theme song involved. I'll have more to say (and show) tomorrow.

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0 comments | 5/13/2008 04:21

so tired

Well, this has indeed proven to be a busy week, but unlike last week they were full nights and sleep-filled days. Here's what went down:

Monday

Some very minimal State Pressing

Happy hour with State Pressers

Ashley's going away (to Utah!) party

Sleeping on Sam's couch

Tuesday

Sam's last radio show ever on The Blaze 1260 AM... including Spice Girls by request! Yeah!

A State Press meeting and some hanging around during news-desk interviews

An SSP site directors' teleconference

Joe's party

Wednesday

Sam's Graduation of the Future party... and the season premieres of The Rock of Gay Love and ANTN

Thursday

Sam's graduation in the present... aka the Cronkite School convocation, meeting Sam's family, going to Rosita's with them, and seeing Iron Man

Friday

Coffee with Devin

Being a dumbass and getting my car towed

Catchphrase and karaoke with the momma's friends

Saturday

Arranging things in Ross Hall for the new setup of the 11:30 service

Making a new PowerPoint template for the 11:30 service

Making the PowerPoint for this week's 11:30 service

Jenn's graduation party

Phoenix-party potential

Dan O'Connor's graduation party

More fun in Scottsdale... in an Escalade

Sunday

The much aforementioned 11:30 service

Lunch at Tempe Marketplace

Mother's Day dinner with Grandma and Pa in Chandler

A pirate-themed "Let's Get Drunk and Eat Taco Bell" graduation party at Tara's parents' house

so...

As you can see, I've had some fun this week. Expect to hear more about the bolded events from the past few days soon, but right now I've got to get to sleep because I've got another busy week ahead.

So far on the calendar, I've got two graduation parties, a birthday and a half-birthday, a Grey's Anatomy-watching / men-dissing session, as well as some slightly more serious stuff like looking at houses and condos, a Wesley board meeting, CPR training and a Flinn recognition dinner.

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0 comments | 5/11/2008 23:49

Party Week Update: Friday Edition

Friday night I steered clear of Mill Avenue and the ASU party scene and instead drove over to Mesa to hang out with my mom her posse of work peeps for a few rounds of Catchphrase and then an '80s karaoke game on PlayStation...

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0 comments | 5/10/2008 00:13

Party Week Update: Part Wednesday Thursday(Man, I can’t even keep track of the days anymore!)

Yesterday's fun in the sun involved going to the Cronkite School graduation ceremony to see all the people my age who actually made it through in four years walk across the stage at Gammage Auditorium and get those degrees.

I also listened to the keynote address and the, umm, PR-major-delivered student speech, and we saw the standard video greeting from Walter Cronkite himself "who's sorry he couldn't make it." Yeah, it's painfully obvious that Cronkite doesn't tape a new one of those every semester since the one shown yesterday was filmed on Channel 8's Horizon set, which was rebuilt quite some time ago. But hey, it's the (one-time) thought that counts, right?

Anyway, graduation was cool, and it's kinda scary to think that next time I'll be up there walking... well, not on the same stage since the Cronkite School will almost certainly have graduation at the Downtown Phoenix campus this December, but you get the idea.

And even cooler was getting to meet Sam's family and go to Rosita's with them before catching Iron Man with Sam and Claudia.

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0 comments | 5/9/2008 23:13

Stupidity 2008: World Tour

Right after I got back from SA, I had more than a few people say, "Brian, I'm so glad you're back," usually after I said something rather stupid... but uniquely stupid, I suppose.

Anyway, so far, 2008 has proven to be quite the year for me doing stupid things and making mistakes that I only plan to make once in my life, like staying out until 4 a.m. shakin' my groove thang when I had to be at work just six hours later.

And like getting my car towed. That was today's stupid event.

I had just gotten up into Tempe and parked in the free parking lot on Fifth and Ash that doesn't look like it'll be free much longer. They've paved the lot and put up signs telling you to pay... at so far nonexistent meters. But when I caught a friend at a break in his paper writing and made plans to have coffee with him at the other end of campus, I decided I might as well drive down there instead of walking in the 90-degree heat.

But here's where the lapse in my usually impressive parking intelligence comes in. Although there was parking at the coffee place, it would have required a five-point turn for me to get into it and would have put me uncomfortably close to another car.

Since I've already gotten a nice "There's not enough room to open the passenger door but I'm gonna do it anyway — and forcefully to boot" scratch on my driver-side door and some nice white-paint dust to go along with the "I don't know how to back out of a parking space" scratch that someone left on the side of my car's rear bumper in Tempe parking lots this month, I decided to go and park in the wide open spaces of the Brueggers that closed just when the MU fire made its services most necessary.

Sure, I saw the "Don't park here or we'll tow you" signs, but I figured they were from back in the olden days when they actually meant, "Don't park here without getting a bagel or we'll tow you."

As it turns out, I was wrong, and the owners of that property employ quite the speedy and expensive towing company. But about an hour of mandatory exercise (which, I've found, is the most effective kind) later, I was back in the driver's seat with one more thing checked off my list of mistakes to only make once.

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0 comments | 5/9/2008 18:21

Don’t forget…

• to check out all the photos from Sam's graduation party here

• to congratulate the winners of my new reality shows: Rocky (The Rock of Gay Love), Todd (ANTN season one) and Sam (ANTN season two)

• to observe all the newly declared holidays this month:

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0 comments | 5/8/2008 23:59

GRADUATION OF THE FUTUREFuture of reality TV charted at Sam’s grad party

Sam's graduation party last night was a blast... with a Sam-endorsed soundtrack to boot!

The flashing pool lights didn't have their usual partygoer magnetism, and so I was the only one to go in the pool. But my solo pool dancing just set the stage for what will more than likely prove to be the true legacy of Sam's party — the creation of two new highly acclaimed reality television shows.

Check out the first season of these two new shows, coming soon to a basic-cable network near you:

The Rock of Gay Love

MTV's hottest new dating show highlights the struggles of one gay man who spends 12 episodes agonizing over how to choose one of seven beautiful women... to not date or have sex with... because he's gay.

The Rock of Gay Love introduces seven hastily-named contestants to the reality TV scene, at least three of whom will have their own MTV dating shows next season or come back to stir things up in season two:

Raarrrr

Cornbread

Fuckin' Cleopatra Bitch

Light Stick Booty

Rocky Balboa (Spoiler alert: Rocky totally wins.)

Fugitive Booty Butt Pirate

Also, in a shameless example of synergy, A Shot at Love II's Tila Tequila makes a guest appearance during a sweeps-week beat-down special.

America's Next Top Naked

Hosted by Bryra Banks and also featuring celebrity judges Heather and Raarrr, this groundbreaking new reality show sets out to answer the question, "Who at this party is gonna be the next to get naked?"

With rumors of "bitches gettin' naked" early in the season proving to be untrue, the competition soon takes a strange-yet-fierce turn with at least two or three episodes devoted to Ass Quarters. And in a sweeps-week shocker, Bryra has a breakdown just before the winning contestant is revealed.

America's Next Top Naked has already been such a smash hit in its first season that plans are being made for a number of spinoffs: America's Next Top Who's Not Naked Right Now?, America's Next Top Who Wants to Drink This and Get Naked? and America's Next Top Baby Holder Ball Catcher.

And casting calls for the second season of ANTN, tentatively titled America's Next Next Top Naked are being held throughout the summer at Loyolapalooza.

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0 comments | 5/8/2008 12:40

SO LAST LAST NIGHT’I just met this guy last night…”…but we’re totally BFFs now.’

One of the guys I met at Ashley's party on Monday invited me to an end-o'-the-year party at his house the following night, and since I've pretty much blocked out this entire week for parties and such I decided to go.

At said party on Tuesday night, I ended up meeting a guy who just got back from Pretoria who I got to chat to about South Africa, I saw and talked to an SPMer who I had always seen around the dungeon but never formally met, and also there were funny stories and some sweet dance party moments:

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0 comments | 5/8/2008 12:26

SO LAST NIGHT…Missionaries meet mistresses at a going away to Utah party

Some of you may remember my Mormon kick from last May, when I had some LDS missionaries bring over a copy of the Book of Mormon on what turned out to be a rather hectic day around C5 West.

Well, over the past year I've periodically engaged with Mormon theology, reading and thinking about some sections of the BoM, checking out an LDS sacrament meeting, and otherwise pondering what it is that draws people to the LDS faith.

But last night, I put my Book of Mormon to use in a new way — as part of my outfit at a friend's going away (to Utah) party, where the dress code for guys was the LDS missionary garb... and for the ladies, anything skanky:

Yep, it was a Mormons-and-hookers party, and armed with all that I've learned about the LDS church I knew I could play my gender's assigned role somewhat convincingly.

So not only did I don a shirt and (short) tie, but I also went the extra mile(s) of making myself the requisite missionary nametag, bringing along my copy of the Book of Mormon, also bringing the course listings for classes at ASU's LDS Institute that I had lying around and putting together a very special lesson that I preached to potential converts using pictures from the church's own Gospel Art Picture Kit.

In fact, I'm pretty sure one of the guys who caught my teaching moment at the party actually thought I was Mormon.

Anyway, to see my pictures from the party, click here. And remember, if you're not yet my friend on Flickr, you're only seeing the half of it...

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0 comments | 5/7/2008 01:57

Cinco de hacer-nada

So I was not as productive, workwise, as I set out to be, but my cinco de mayo has been socially productive thus far, and it's about to get a whole lot more awesome. Expect pictures later.

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0 comments | 5/5/2008 20:31

Brian’s favorite TV quotes of the week

Callie: Um, does anyone ever think you two are a couple?

Meredith: No, because we screw boys like whores on tequila.

Cristina: And then we either try to marry them or drown ourselves.

–Grey's Anatomy

"Did I stutter?!" —Stanley on The Office

"Well, see, in the gang world we use something called fluffy fingers." —Darryl on The Office

"It's just hard, especially since Jesse's on facebook now, and I can see every little thing he does. Did you know he's interested in random play?" –Ellie in Degrassi episode 711 ("Owner of a Lonely Heart")

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0 comments | 5/3/2008 23:11

four out of four, baby!

I can now say I've been to all four ASU campuses since this afternoon I took a trip out to ASU Polytechnic in east Mesa.

I've spent most of the last four years on or near the Tempe campus, worked from an office at the Downtown campus when I was on the Cronkite News Service staff, and drove out to West campus once or twice to get books from their library instead of waiting for it to get driven over to Hayden Library... but although I had been nearby many a time, I had never gone to ASU Polytech.

And I figure that a) since I'm the editor of The State Press now and b) one of my priorities as editor is to make TSP a less Tempe-centric paper, I couldn't ignore Poly much longer. So now I at least have a basic idea of what the campus looks like.

baaaa

And in other East Valley news, on my way back from Polytech, I saw sheep grazing in a field just off the 202 at Arizona Avenue!

That was really excited because I thought I had read somewhere a few years back that whoever always brought sheep to graze in south Chandler was putting a stop to that practice due to lack of fields. But apparently there's still an unstripmalled field just across from the newish Wal-Mart on Arizona Avenue that's sheep-appropriate...

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0 comments | 5/3/2008 18:12

time to chill

Since my return to the United States, I've had a lot on my mind — reacclimation to all things American (dollars, driving on the right, 24-hour Mexican food places), SSP, State Press, reconnecting with Arizona peeps, General Conference, end-of-the-year-ish ASU events, etc.

Over the past two weeks, I haven't given enough thought to each of those things at some point or another as my schedule has been packed full with all of them at once.

But now that the SSP Los Angeles staff has been hired, The State Press editorial board has been hired, General Conference has ended, finals week has begun, and I've had Filiberto's at least three times, I'm taking some down time this weekend to just chill... and to start to actually process all that's gone on in the past two weeks.

So expect to hear more from me in the coming days and weeks now that I'm moving into a slightly less busy chunk of my summer.

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0 comments | 5/3/2008 15:21