#ArpaioASU: Unanswered questions
Video still from ASUtv/Ustream
So, um, WTF?
As The State Press tweeted shortly after Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's appearance at a Meet The Press-style interview was cut short by singing protesters, the abrupt ending left some unanswered questions... and not just the ones in the notes of the interviewers.
Here are some of the things that #ArpaioASU has left me wondering:
- The singing protest was apparently pre-planned, but I wonder if the protesters had planned to interrupt at a particular time or once a particular topic as brought up. (The singing protest did begin during a question on illegal immigration enforcement, which the song's lyrics center on.)
Who are the protesters who were inside the First Amendment Forum? Here's hoping that The State Press and other news organizations got comment and background from some of them.22:21 » TSP has included comment from singing protesters, an anti-Arpaio but anti-singing protester and a pro-Arpaio demonstrator in the latest version of their online story. Kudos.- Since the interview of Arpaio has stoked quite a bit of controversy these past weeks, was a similar interview of a prominent Arpaio opponent ever considered?
- Would the prospect of such an event have kept some protesters at home and kept those who showed up from hijacking the program as they did tonight?
- Would there even be an acceptable person who could fill that opposing role? Has the anti-Arpaio community rallied around a core of leaders, or are they too disparate to feel represented by a few people?
- What are those unasked and unanswered questions that professors Green, Elliott and Rodriguez had planned for the last 12 minutes of the interview?
- What was that hat Arpaio donned (seen above) once the singing began? From the ASUtv feed, it sort of looked like a Wilbur the Wildcat head to me. Why did Arpaio bring the hat, and why did he put it on when he did?
It’s raining!
(File photo)
A few minutes ago, I heard some pitter patter-type sounds on my roof. At first, I thought the Gremlins were back, but then I remembered that it was all cloudy outside and put two and two together.
Sure enough, I looked outside and it was raining!
Arizona friends will recall that I'm a big fan of rain — and not just because it's so infrequent in the desert, although that does heighten the appeal.
Well, here in the Coachella Valley, I've found that rainy days are even farther and fewer between than in the Valley of the Sun. While Arizona gets some nice monsoon storms at the end of each summer, the most the monsoon does to us make it cloudy over the top of Mount San Jacinto. Sadly, the storms never seemed to make it over the mountain into the valley this past summer, at least.
The only other time I've ever seen it rain here was one afternoon while I was at work, and it was barely drizzling then. (There was one time that I found some rain spots on my car and Stacy swears that it had legitimately rained up at her place, but I must've slept through that one.)
So as you can imagine, I was hella excited to see the rain today. In fact, I've already gone out and gotten somewhat soaked. It's not raining very hard, but I took a walk around the block to make sure I'd get my fill of precipitation.
Oh, Black Friday…
I wonder if Addicted to Deals in Quartzsite, Ariz., is open early this morning for Black Friday. For some reason, when I think about this morning's shopping bonanza, the store's name comes to mind.
Two years ago, some of us went a-doorbustin' in the 'Tuke, but today I'm not awake early to hit up Kohl's or Waffle House. Instead, I'll be getting all the 4 a.m. doorbuster deals at The Desert Sun newsroom.
regrettable FAIL. awesome response.
One highlight of this past weekend's Arizona trip was that I got to see good ol' A Mountain while I was hanging around Tempe... and I got to see the A in its proper form — painted gold.
Sadly, though, I just found out that this morning, A Mountain was defiled with some red paint:
Now, while this video delivered some sad news, it also reminded me of another important point: As much as I make fun of various things that I see on TV here in Nielsen market No. 142, I sometimes forget that there's plenty of goofy stuff that goes on the air in market No. 12 too. (If you don't get that comment, you clearly did not watch the video all the way through.)
However, for the record, what you see in the video above is a lapse in objectivity and professionalism... that I wholeheartedly approve of and endorse.
I <3 sleep, apparently
Back when I was copy editing starting at 6 a.m., I figured out that as long as I either napped in the afternoon or went to bed at a decently early hour, waking up in the morning wouldn't be a problem.
I figured the same would hold true now that I'm again starting work at 6 a.m., but there were a few X-factors I didn't quite anticipate.
Even though I get off of work at 3 p.m., I live so close to Mount San Jacinto that the sun slips behind the mountain in my neighborhood at 3:15 these days. By 5 p.m., it's pretty legitimately dark at my place.
Well, I'm never quite in the mood for a nap until close to 5, so lately, I've attempted to do some after-dark napping — with disastrous results.
Last Thursday night, I tried to take a nap at 7:30 p.m. Knowing that this was a dangerous prospect, I made sure all my clothes were ironed for the next day, but I set an alarm for a few minutes before 9 so that I could get up and watch Grey's Anatomy. Well, I quickly shut off that alarm and slept right on through to my 4:53 a.m. alarm.
Then, this Wednesday night, I got sleepy around 7:30 again and decided to try taking a one-hour nap on my couch as opposed to in my bed since it was already dark. I also turned on a light in the kitchen in hopes that it would help me wake up in time to see Glee.
Well, despite my use of an alarm, I woke up almost exactly seven hours later, at 2:30 a.m. Oops. Since I had had a full night's sleep, I considered staying awake but in the end decided to get two more hours of slightly more comfortable sleep in my bed.
Since I had to iron some clothes before I wore them to work on Thursday, I got up at 4:30, showered before the news and then had time after seeing the top stories to watch a whole episode of Degrassi while ironing. That was pretty sweet, as was not being all rushed in the morning.
But I was still somewhat dismayed over all this oversleeping. So Thursday afternoon, I vowed to take a nap right when I got home. Well, I actually got sleepy around 5. Seeing that it was pretty dark outside, I took all sorts of precautions: I slept on the couch and turned lights on all over the non-bedroom half of my apartment. And of course, I set an alarm... but I also made sure an early 4:30 one was set too.
Still, I was pretty serious about this one only being a short nap. I even held off on eating dinner until after nap time. Well, I slept through the "no más nap" alarm (and another week of Grey's) and woke up at 10:45 p.m.
I ate some string cheese and a chocolate Pop-Tart and then went back to bed until 4:30, at which point I awoke for another wonderfully leisurely morning. I even had time to cook an egg for breakfast during — you guessed it — some post-news Degrassi.
Now, waking up at 4:30 is something that I could potentially get used to, but not if I have to sleep through every other one of my non-working hours in order to do so.
As for tonight, it's almost that fateful hour of the never-ending nap, and I am feelin' tired. But I'm going to resist by staying up to watch some of the shows I missed during the past two nights' sleep fests — Modern Family, Cougar Town, Glee, The Office and Grey's Anatomy.
After this week's sleepapalooza, I know that if I go down now, there's no way I'm getting back up in time to celebrate Colin's birthday at 9 p.m.
Here we hail thee, alma mater, Arizona State
This afternoon, I got home from The Desert Sun and found this year's edition of The Cronkite Journal in my mailbox.
"It is that time of year," I thought to myself, remembering how the magazine is always printed up before the annual Cronkite Award Luncheon and left for each attendee on his or her chair at the ceremony.
The luncheon's tomorrow, and I just found out that 2009 honoree Brian Williams anchored tonight's NBC Nightly News broadcast from the roof of my J-school in downtown Phoenix:
It was really cool to see what's up at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in print and also to see an oh-so-familiar landscape on network television. And, of course, it all makes me proud to be a Sun Devil!
so many surprises this morning
So here's one for the Unsolved Mysteries file:
This morning, I was having a dream in which I discovered that my watch band had broken, and when I woke up... well, I (re)discovered that my watch band had broken.
This is sad news for two important reasons. No. 1 is that now I have to go watch shopping, which if history is any indicator, will probably be quite the long-drawn-out ordeal. Reason No. 2 is that this particular watch holds a bit of sentimental value since I got it at Game, downstairs at the Grand Central shopping center in Cape Town.
Plus, I'm beginning to think that unfortunate turn of events may be connected to another odd discovery this morning. Looking at myself in the mirror right before @showertime, I saw a light scar across the my-left / your-right side of my face that I can't connect to any weekend event.
Now, that's not to say that I didn't somehow scratch myself at Chuck E. Cheese's or Toucans while celebrating Mariecar's birthday. Both birthday events got pretty rowdy.
But still, I wonder if some crazy dream or, even worse, the Gremlins that live on my roof prompted me to scratch my face with my watch-wearing wrist so roughly that I broke the watch.
11/18 » Another possibility that occurred to me today was that the little scar might've been caused when I haphazardly put on my... well, I don't know what you'd call it exactly, but the purple headband-type thingy that I got and wore at Toucans during Mariecar's birthday drag show.
I had this brainstorm right after Colin asked me what the thingy was today when he saw it on my desk. I put it up to my face and saw that yes, the edge of the headband could have indeed traveled along the exact path of the scar while being placed on my head.
Shenanigans!the story of my Mondays
So as you may already know, I only go into work at 6 a.m. from Tuesday to Friday because I still work the Saturday overnight Web posting shift as well.
Yes, I work on Saturday nights. And so it's kinda lame to have to hear about other people's Saturday-night adventures that mostly happened while I was in the office. (I work until 1:30 a.m. on Sunday.) But over the past few weeks, I've become part of an informal little group that does even cooler things on one of my real days off, Mondays.
Allow me to introduce you to the goings on of the Monday Shenanigans Club, as we call ourselves. We're a bunch of Coachella Valley and/or Inland Empire folks who don't work on Mondays and use the first day of everyone else's work week to go and do crazy cool stuff around Southern California.
Oh hey, LA!
The name of our little group was coined on a trip we took to Burbank a few weeks ago to go see a taping of The Jay Leno Show. We got to see Rod Stewart, Serena Williams and a "Headlines" segment that included a reference to my favorite militant group of all time, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front:
Then, last week, we went to Hollywood to see not only the sights — like the Hollywood sign and, of course, the headquarters of the TV Guide Network — but also a screening of Heath Ledger's last film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
We stood in the rush line at the AFI film fest and got in to see the screening at Grauman's Chinese Theatre — the real one, not the Chinese 6 next door where a lot of the fest's films were being shown. The theater was freakin' beautiful, and the movie was really good. Then, afterward, as we were chillin' out where all the handprints and footprints and such are out in front, we got to meet Verne Troyer (aka Mini-Me) who was in the film and came to the screening:
Oh, and we also said "Oh hey!" to South LA and got epic ice cream sandwiches from Diddy Riese in Westwood before trekking back to the desert.
With Monday Shenanigans, it's a slightly different crew every week as people are available or unavailable. Those LA trips were both orchestrated by Ashley, a TDS copy editor, although she couldn't attend the latter. But Jodi, whose Monday shift Ashley was working, did go that day... as did Kyle, one of my friends from high school who also now lives in Southern California and has most Mondays off.
From creationism to capitalism in Cabazon
Anyway, today's adventure was one that kept us closer to home. As Aldrich says, we encountered both creationism and capitalism in Cabazon.
After driving by the Healing Field in Cathedral City, we made our way to the Cabazon Dinosaurs, the site of Brian's Big Adventure a few months ago.
Well, in case you haven't heard, for the past year and a half now, the landmark dinosaurs that appeared in Pee-wee's Big Adventure have been part of a creationism exhibit that tells you all about how humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time because the earth is only 6,000 years old.
But more important than all the creationism biz was the fact that we got to create a sand castle in one of the play areas they have there!
Also, our visit to the dinosaurs reminded us of Dinosaurs, the Saturday-morning show we all watched growing up that had the baby who always said "Not the mama!"
Oh, and we also got prizes one our way out for being good kids. I am not even kidding. (Click here to see more dino pics!)
After we left, though, we went to a decidedly more modern locale — the outlet mall. There we bought things like corn-cob holders, belts, wallets and pants... and really yummy hot pretzels.
It was yet another epic Monday Shenanigans Club win. And who knows what we'll do next?
