things I’m thankful for
the rain
a) I love when it rains.
b) This morning, as I was trying to figure out how I could manage to get to the bus stop without getting soaked, I remembered that I have a sweet Cape Times umbrella. So I put that bad boy to use all day long.
c) Speaking of, the precip also reminded me of The Song of summer '07, Rihanna's "Umbrella."
Also speaking of...
Rihanna Smooth Jazz Tribute
I just discovered this soon-to-be-released album while tooling around on Amazon.com, and expect — nay, demand — that all of these tracks'll soon be played in heavy rotation on KYOT (if they aren't already).
the Orbit bus
A few weeks ago, Judith said something offhand about catching the Orbit bus to campus and I remember reacting rather incredulously, saying something along the lines of, "What? You take the Orbit to campus?"
See, I had a bad experience trying to take the Orbit either last fall or early this semester. But apparently, I got on the bus going the wrong way — hence the long-ass, incredibly circuitous ride home.
But armed with the info from Judith on the correct side of the street to catch the bus, it occurred to me this morning to take the Orbit, which runs every 15 minutes, instead of walking even farther to take a bus that comes only every half-hour.
no State Press until next week
Vacations are good for one's sanity. Enough said.
fun with weather maps
Most Wednesdays, I drop in on my meteorology lab only long enough to get the assignment and a rough idea of how to do it. Then I bolt back to the newsroom and leave the lab work to be done on Friday afternoon since it's not due until Friday at 5 p.m.
But with no paper to put together this afternoon, I actually stuck around in lab and did the work in class... and while working on decoding weather-map symbols and such, I got to chat for a while with Damien, a State Press photog who's in the class as well.
Gotta love the unintended things in life
Unintentionally hip: my pink shirt
Today, I wore my pink soccer-ref shirt that I picked up, among many other things, on our pre-Christmas in July shopping spree at the Goodwill on Crenshaw.
I think I've only worn the shirt once before this semester, on a Friday-night outing, so this appears to be the pink shirt's campus debut... and it has become the talk of the town.
Pretty much everyone at The State Press and in my night class has either complimented the shirt or make some snarky joke about it. And waiting for the Downtown Phoenix campus shuttle outside the Brickyard in Tempe, this random guy comes up to me and chats to me about my shirt:
guy: Hey where'd you get your shirt?
me: From Goodwill in LA.
guy: I love it. You should give it to me. Right now. I'll beat you up.
He was pretty scrawny, so I assumed he was kidding about the beating-me-up part and didn't give him my shirt, fyi.
Unintentionally funny: the honors college
Barrett, the Honors College, (Yes, that's their official name. So pretentious, right?) celebrated its 20th anniversary on Friday, and we profiled the event in Monday's State Press. Unfortunately, the best photo we had from the event was just a shot of the Barrett birthday cake. But much to my delight, when I saw the photo on a draft printout of page one, I noticed that the honors college chose not to celebrate a history of academic excellence but rather, 20 years of misspelling "excellance."
Check it out:
Unintentionally classical: Carlos Santana
(or unintentionally lame: KSLX)
Driving to The State Press on Sunday, I was listening to Classic Rock 100.7 KSLX. I was thinking about how newer and newer songs have been creeping into a genre that had been all about the 1960s and '70s as I listened to some Phil Collins track that probably hailed from the early '80s. Then, much to my surprise, the next song to come on the ostensibly classic-rock station was "Smooth" by Carlos Santana featuring Rob Thomas — which was totally one of my junior-high jams back in 1999.
I mean, I guess you could argue that Santana's been around long enough that he's now capable of making instant classics, but I still believe that classic-rock stations really have no business playing much of anything recorded in my lifetime.
George W. Bush throws up a pitchfork;Brian gets a little more Internet-famous
In case you haven't heard, President Bush hosted the Sun Devils' national champion track and field and softball teams at the White House on Wednesday and threw up the ASU pitchfork in a photo op during the visit.
That's right; the President of the United States is showin' off a pitchfork on Day 2,854 of his presidency. (I say we should shoot for an Obama pitchfork photo-op by Day 200.)
But wait; it gets better.
Dashiell Bennett, associate editor of the sports blog Deadspin, commented on Bush's Sun Devil spirit (and the fact that the pitchfork closely resembles the shocker) on the blog this morning. And in so doing, he dug up a photo of yours truly showing his Sun Devil pride with a huge Sonic cup on rollerblades at the drive-in on Broadway Road.
So I'm pretty excited that I've got a new Internet claim to fame. Perhaps my newfound identity as "that guy throwing up a pitchfork with the Sonic cup" will soon eclipse my title of "that guy who made the 'ridicuously Methodist' facebook group" — at least in the U.S.
Internationally, I'd imagine I'll still be best known for my German modeling work:
I got to see Ben Folds play at Gammage!
Ben Folds played the ASU Homecoming Concert tonight at Gammage Auditorium, and since Luke is pretty banged up and couldn't go to the show, I got to take his spot.
Now, I've gotta say, the show was really good, but it stopped short of life-changing, which is kinda what I as hoping for based on how much I love Ben Folds' music. Some would attribute that lack of life-changing-ness to the admittedly lackluster atmosphere of the crowd, but I blame the relative lack of bitches. See, Ben neglected to perform "Bitches Ain't Shit" and didn't even play "Rock This Bitch." Still, he did play the fake version of "Bitch Went Nuts," which was aptly titled "Bitch Went Nutz."
The story behind these fake songs, which made up a major portion of the "new shit" half of the concert, is that Ben and the band threw together a bunch of tracks with similar titles to those on his new album, "Way to Normal," and leaked them on the Internet ahead of the album's release date to give the kiddies on teh interwebs something other than the real songs to file-share. Turns out, the half-assed songs are pretty good. In fact, I like some of the fake versions better than their real counterparts. For instance, "Bitch Went Nuts" is quality, but "Bitch Went Nutz" just won't get unstuck from my head.
Bitches aside, though, it was really freakin' sweet to be able to see Ben Folds live. I had heard a Ben Folds Five song or two in high school, but I really started listening to Ben Folds stuff my freshman year of college, and as such, Ben Folds is an indispensible part of the hypothetical soundtrack to my college years. So needless to say, it was awesome to get to see the man in concert before those years officially end.
‘For a day, at least, newspapers were cool again.’
That's what Richard Pérez-Peña wrote for The New York Times, one of many American newspapers that ran extra copies of Wednesday's edition and had to print even more as the paper sold out at newsstands.
Since the Newseum's Today's Front Pages, which reported heavy traffic Wednesday, doesn't accept submissions from college newspapers, here's what Wednesday's State Press front page looked like:
What a supremely memorable day
I started out Election Day still awake from the night before, aiming to vote early and quickly at 6 a.m. Unfortunately, since I wasn't the only one with that idea and a poll official for my precinct overslept, I instead embarked on a two-hour voting odyssey.
After I had voted, I went and picked up a copy of Tuesday's State Press, which sported the paper's look from 1958 since we were marking the 50th anniversary of a '58 vote that changed the name of what was then Arizona State College to ASU. I think the front looks so incredibly cool, and apparently it was much talked about on campus today as well.
Interestingly, the Arizona Daily Wildcat also marked the anniversary with a story that took a dramatically different tack than ours.
But of course, the election provided most of the day's memorable experiences — overseeing a newsroom's election coverage, taking some shifts manning a breaking-news Twitter feed and watching the election of the nation's first black president.
The moment itself was so much earlier than I expected. Just before 9 p.m., we had the sound up on the middle of our three newsroom TVs, which was tuned to the live election broadcast from Cronkite NewsWatch. Gov. Janet Napolitano was talking to a NewsWatch reporter from the Democratic watch party in Phoenix when, all of a sudden, the crowd behind her erupted into cheers. A split second later, I saw on the TV to the right that CNN had called the race for Obama. After another second or two, on the TV on the right, ABC put up a full-frame picture of Obama and labeled him "president-elect." A quick check of other channels revealed that the projection had been made at roughly the same time on all major television network.
I was not only surprised that the projection came so early but also that it came so simultaneously.
Also exciting and surprising was getting word that our reporters and columnists made it out to the lawn at the Arizona Biltmore and would see John McCain's concession speech in person. (The campaign had planned to let only a limited number of media folks into the area, and in fact our photographer was barred from moving outside where McCain gave his speech.)
Speaking of The State Press' election coverage, we missed deadlines and spent too long putting Wednesday's paper together, but despite the lateness, I'm incredibly proud of the product we're putting out. The photos and design are appealing, and the stories from our reporters who were out in the field tonight are really compelling.
So if you'll be on an ASU campus Wednesday, pick up The State Press in print, and also check out our coverage on asuwebdevil.com, which is looking great this morning:
Halloween is so much more fun for grown-ups
This year for Halloween, I was ASU senior quarterback Rudy Carpenter at his worst, complete with a boot on my "sprained" left ankle and mud and grass stains on my arms and legs. I also added in some essentials like his pushed-up hairdo and wrist tattoos.
And toward the end of the night, before I ditched my costume I staged a re-enactment of a ridiculously good (and ridiculously depressing) photo that Arizona Republic photographer Rob Schumacher caught during last week's loss to Oregon:
You know, I've often derided Carpenter's seemingly baseless optimism even if the face of a five-game losing streak — comments like, "We have a chance to still accomplish all the things we want to." But maybe Rudy's right and all our wildest dreams can come true. Let's hope that's as much the case in Corvallis tomorrow as it was in Chandler tonight:
