Newscoma

Hey, I pulled a Lynnster and fell asleep in my recliner last night. When I woke up, the dogs were staring at me with an odd combination of confusion and aggressively let me know that had to go outside and pee. This is, of course, a way of life. The blind dog, Kirby, kept running into the footrest so I just went on and got up.

Mondays. Gotta love ‘em.

As Squeegee Monkey practices Tai Chi, this morning, I’ve been sitting quietly at the side watching him do his thing, smoking cigarettes and drinking large vats of coffee. He’s a healthy guy and I wonder if I should buy him a wooden katanna. With this said, with two high-maintenance children dashing about the house and a variety of rugrats always over visiting, I’m afraid he will start bopping them on the head if he were to ever lose it. Seeing Squeegee Monkey go all Littly Bunny Foo Foo might not be of the good. Not that he would, I might, he’s a better soul than me.
All of this talk over the weekend of George Tenet has had me thinking. If you go to some sites, they are playing him as the victim. You go to others, like this one at CNN, he’s being slammed.

And I’m still amazed that Albert Gonzalez allowed himself to look so goofy in recent hearings regarding the prosecuters firings. It just seems to me covering the truth up was more important than offering the truth and dealing with the consequences. If you say “I don’t recall” 60 odd times, than say that you still make the decision but you don’t recall what the decision is, I have to just back up and wonder what the heck is going on. And those firings have nothing to do with National Security issues. It appears those firing have to do with covering up government corruption but, in the end, who knows. Just saying.

All of the recent bumblings with the leadership of this country will go unheeded, I’m afraid. It’s more titillating to sit waiting impatiently to find out who’s names are on the “Washington Madam’s” list. And that’s not a GOP thing, it’s a a sex scandal item. “Who was paying for the Monkey Fu?” You know, 24 hours a day of playing the peeping tom for our nation’s viewers. Facts, who needs ‘em, but who had to pay $300 dollars to have a night with lady of the evening, that’s what’s being offered up at news du jour.

Priorities of news have changed. They have.

With news now in a 36 hours news cycle, what should be scandalous is about the news keeping its eyes on what’s best for the American people. We’ve had three (?) shooting within the last fourteen days, and one of the IT guys at the newspaper said last Friday that it amazes him how desensitized we are to violence these days. He also said, we’ve come to expect corruption from the government from John Ford to the White House, so we put it on the backburner.

I took pause and thought about it all weekend. We do expect our leaders in this nation to do the wrong thing before they do the right things, or at least some folks have come to not be bothered about it because they think that’s just the way it is. We should be talking about the potential veto of the new Iraq bill. We should see that our nation’s government needs to come up with clear plans instead of non-binding legislation that really won’t change anything.

Power corrupts. I’m not saying there isn’t some good people who have chosen to serve in elected public office but I also believe that we, as an audience of news, expect very little these days. And not everybody is researching or trying to find what are facts instead of conjecture. I think we want to believe that everything is going to be okay. And so we don’t pay as much attention.

And those of us who are trying to keep an eye on it get labeled as a moonbat or a rightwinger when I do believe there is a place in the middle ground for all of us.

And the facts don’t change. I guess it’s our perceptions that do. And it’s got confusing between facts vs. the labeling.

Gosh, I’ve gone from talking about my blind dog and ranting about hookers and news.

Yeah, it’s Monday all day.

Why am I enthralled with Survivorman?

Damn running three hour blocks of shows that peak my interest and then I feel like I have to follow through with on satellite television. (That, campers, was a rant.)

I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I mean, the host Les Stroud, ate a grasshopper shishkabob.

Why do I do this to myself?

And, most likely, I’ll do it again.

I’m worried about Squirrel Queen. The woman has worked herself non-stop this weekend. Several hours yesterday and then another event tonight. She was going to take off Friday but the Titans Caravan came into town so she couldn’t and a coach requested photos that had to be processed and sent to him. In the end, with events happening next weekend, she’s not looking at a day off for a couple of weeks.  She’ll come in a bit later, but things have been crazy lately and in high-tension mode so she’s had her hiney to the wall. And she’s been helping me in her spare time with this project (accompanying me last Friday to a meeting in Nashville was a life-saver.)

She hasn’t taken much time than grabbing a beer occasionally when she gets off from work or a quick meal.  You can tell she’s groovy as hell.

This day was spent with her writing stories and working on photos that she will send to the daily that they may or may not use. I helped as much as I could. I was type-setting some items and putting a couple of generic editorials in the hole in case I get where I can’t get to it more timely with my new additional responsibilities.

This, my friends, is the life of a small town newspaper that has one sports reporter who is also the sports editor. With a college, four high schools and five junior highs plus the various sporting events held in the community, it can be overwhelming.

On top of this, with things coming up and me working on another project that includes the daily, she’s looking at a larger workload. I met with the staff and asked for patience last week and everyone was quite wonderful for the most part. This isn’t uncommon for small media outlets, but it’s a big schedule, you take what time you can and then you hope everyone is patient. Because news doesn’t wait. And our staff is small. We don’t need criticism within our forces, we need action with warmth and understanding and I’ve tried to help guide that comfortably but I get frustrated as well sometimes. On top of this, we are moving to a new computer system on Tuesday and a new software program in a couple of weeks.

Change, for the most part, and transition is hard on the toughest folks. It will be challenging these next few weeks.

This time of year is a killer and will most likely last until the end of May. As my bosses are leaving for a trip later this week, I have to be at their offices tomorrow morning to hammer up some last minute details before they leave.
Dang scheduling.

A community festival is beginning this evening (last night actually) called the Tennessee Iris Festival. For a solid week, it’s several events daily that we have to keep up with for the newspaper. I was lucky that I had yesterday to sit and veg out and then visit with friends last night but that will end as the next four weeks are going to be filled. The next four Friday nights I will be working. Checking my agenda today, I realized that everyone needs two of each other. I’ve already been called to come to several events as have the rest of the staff which is an additional work-load for all of the editorial and design staff. The office staff will also be busy as they have to work ahead and everyone will have to join hands to get things together. As this is not an election season, advertising has to shift. We have to determine the differences in ad revenues from two years ago in comparison with election monies that come in during an election year. If those things aren’t communicated in-house, then tension arises. People, everyone, has to make adjustments editorially and within the confines that we are, in fact, a business. Having run my own media business before, this I can assure you is a reality.

The yearly budgets have to be scrutinized to deal with those adjustments. Most rural newspapers have to take this into consideration. This, of course, makes the editorial staff nuts. We aren’t an AP newspaper, so everything is either written or submitted for publication.  This is the time of year that advertising and editorial starts growling at each other because both sides have arguments that are of value. When one side, or the other (both sides do this) start thinking their side is the only right side, problems do occur.

Let’s break it down to an analogy I use with the staff sometimes.  If you’re selling lawn mowers, then those lawn mowers have to be manufactured. The salespeople are selling the product. The manufacturers (writers) are making the product. If you sell too many lawn mowers, then the workload goes up. If you make too many lawn mowers that aren’t moving, then you have that issue as well. And when folks are spending more time at work than they are with their families, you have to weigh that in as well. It’s a fine balance.

It can make you crazy.

I like this time of year however. There’s a lot going on, fresh vegetables are coming in, there is an excitement in the air where children are looking forward to getting out of school and the weather is lovely.

But it can be grueling, but I try to remember that I could be standing over a grill asking you if you want fries with that, you know what I mean.

A little window into the world of a small-town newspaper for you. Thought you might find it interesting.

Or not

Now going to celebrate Big Daddy’s 66th birthday.

I’ve been watching the videos streaming on-line at Bill Moyers new digs. It’s some really good stuff. As I enjoy Moyers, (used to watch him when I was a kid) it was a tasty treat with some very good food for thought. I watched two of the videos. One was with Jon Stewart and the other one focused on the Gonzalez/prosecutors firings with Josh Marshall.

John watched the Stewart interview as well and has some commentary on it over at his house.

As I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off last week when Stewart interviewed John McCain and I couldn’t see it until this weekend, to hear the background of where The Daily Show host’s mindset was was incredibly interesting. And Stewart said some things I really liked.

And it occurred to me that 24/7 newschannels have taken back some of the essence of good investigative reporting when stories about Brittney Spears shaving her head or the identity of Anna Nicole Smith’s child’s father (Prince von Anhalt appeared on every news show around. Huh.) are breaking news. Yeah, it’s breaking celebrity news, I guess, but where are the stories in the top news stories at the top of the hour on what’s going on in Iraq or how your money as a tax payer is being spent as we head into the pork barrel talk of the congressional cycle.

And, Edward R. Murrow went through this too. I guess everything is cyclical. And he died six months before I was born.

I grew up idolizing investigative reporters like I saw in movies like “All the President’s Men” although I think I would have dug being Carl Kolchak and “Night Stalker” a bit more and if you read my blog you get that reference.

Fast-food news for the masses with about the same brain nutrition of an extra value meal at McDonald’s.

Let me explain, when I worked as a news director at a radio station, an old newspaper guy told me one day when we were covering a heated consolidation story that would have effectively closed down four high schools in this area (ultimately two were closed), he said in one of those verbal gigs that news people do to each other “Yeah, you’ll get the scoop and the news out there, and then I’ll explain to them the details.”

Basically he was telling me he’d get it right. Not to say I wasn’t getting it right but I had a minute to explain something that tore this county apart. And he had newspaper real-estate to explain the “essence” of what was going on that was impacting the lives of our county’s citizens.

I love the newspaper. I actually enjoyed the days of just being “scoop” reporter where these days we are transitioning into understanding the ever-changing aspects of new media. It may not make a difference in six months, but in six years, things will evolve.

So watching Bill Moyers reminded me of the combination of both good old fashioned news media, where conversations were had (granted between like-minded people) and the shrill fests in filling the air that occur nightly on Dobbs, Hannity and Colmes, Bill O’Reilly and Olbermann. (I like Olbermann, don’t get me wrong, but it’s still programmed creamed filling an hour of a 24 hour news cycle.) But Moyers has combined it with the newstools of the digital media age.

And let’s also remember, Moyers is 72 years-old.

And I must say it’s just interesting to watch this phase of history in news media.

Several years ago, Squirrel Queen came into possession of a documentary called “Dancing Outlaw.” Shown on PBS, it spotlighted a young man named Jesco who lives (and still does from what I’ve read) in Boone County, West Virginia.

I think his wife can sum up the world of Jesco better than I can

“Jesse can be three people: He is Jesse, he is Jesco, and he is Elvis. Jesse is the most beautiful man that I could’ve ever loved. But Jesco, he, – he’s somebody else. He’s the devil in hisself. Uh, nothing satisfies him – he can’t be happy. Nothing you do for him makes him happy.”

The documentary shows the world of Jesco and his family. We are talking adverse poverty and some mental illness. But there are moments in it that are so surreal that, in all honesty, I just couldn’t look away. Stuff like this just can’t be made up. As Elvis, he would sing from an antiquated women’s electric razor hanging from a piece of yarn from the ceiling. His wife, who’s name is Norma Jean incidentally, would be called Priscilla. There was a mudding party outside of the family’s trailer set back in an honest-to-God holler. The constant battle in him over Jessie and Jesco, and sorta who’s in charge was absolutely amazing.

And on top of it all, Jesco was a mountain dancer (the second-greatest mountain dancer ever, with his father being the first. Yeah, there are huge daddy issues going on with Jesco.)

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so bizarre.

It’s engrossing. It’s something that I think David Lynch would be proud of but it didn’t come from the recesses of a clever scriptwriter’s mind.

It was real. And the controversy as this low-budget documentary started to garner cult attention there was debate about it being exploitative of Jesco White and his family. I’m not in that crowd. I think the filmmakers just hit what was going on.

Last night, sitting with friends outside with a fire pit burning green fire, the topic of Jesco came up with our friend, Stephanie. We began talking about the documentary and how it was like driving by a car wreck. You just couldn’t look away.

I haven’t had a VHS player in years and the tape of the documentary probably didn’t make it through a variety of moves. However, I’m going to buy it again. Seeing Jesco with Jesus and two firecrackers (I have no idea) tattoed on his chest is something I need to see again.

And hearing snippets of lines like this:

And I took the butcher knife and put it up to her neck. I said if you want to live to see tomorrow, you better start fryin’ them eggs a little bit better then what you a fryin’ em – I’m tired of eatin’ sloppy, slimy eggs!

Yes. he can be pretty scary. And the conversation about Jesco and Norma Jean’s sex life boggles the mind.

A website on Jesco was updated for awhile on what he’s been up to. He had his fifteen minutes of fame even going to Hollywood for awhile. He no longer lives with Norma Jean/Priscilla. He’s fought huge battles with depression.

I recommend seeing “Dancing Outlaw.” It’s one of those rare things you will see that focuses on so many issues and, I’m almost embarrassed to say it, you will laugh and your mouth will drop watching this. You will feel completely uncomfortable.It’s amazing.

Reality Television before it ever existed.

And I end with another quote from Jesco:

“Anyone will say anything, under the influence of madness.”

I’m going to a bash at one of the loveliest places in the area.

Squirrel Queen has been getting her sports thing on all day and so getting out of the house with some fun folks might be of the good especially since this has been a very weird week. I’ve been trying to find Badger but that’s like finding a needle in a haystack because Badger is all over the place. She might be drawing her cartoons at anywhere from a McDonalds to a mausoleum. It’s hard to keep up with her, and when she gets her Crumb on, it’s just hard to find her. Being that the Badger is one of my best buddies, I figure I’ll just send the Coma Signal up into the sky and she will appear. Or she just might appear because she wants to.

Yeah, my superpowers sorta suck.

I’m showered so I smell alright. Smelling good is important because people tend to like you smelling all girly and groovy/sexy. And I smell fabulous. I pondered taking Mabel the uber wonder hound, but that’s not of the good at this point because she’s snoring on the couch.

Now, here’s what groovy about the place I’m going. There is a cemetery in the back forty behind the farm. Being that I really think cemeteries are neat, I like to stare it at when I’m out there, hoping I can see some sort of sign. I might even have a story for Mack on local urban legends if the mood is right.

Or we might see Bigfoot. One never knows.

Or I might just tell  you I saw Bigfoot. But that would be cheating.

Tennessee Vol and hometown boy Justin Harrell was just named 16th in the NFL draft to Green Bay. Squirrel Queen said he was taken at a prime spot that was at his draft peak.

This, my friends, is of the good.

The Packers, as Chad Clifton (who is also on the team, and from here) just became the most beloved football franchise in our little burg in Northwest Tennessee.

Patrick Willis of Ole Miss who is from Bruceton went 11th.

UPDATE: I forgot to edit this earlier, but Harrell went 16th. My bad. And I was watching the dang thing. So, yeah, edited.

Not a bad day at all.

I must be compulsively blogging today. The house is mine. Not a soul is here.

And I like my alone time.

My friend, rack9, is from Tennessee and she’s really a wonderful person. She’s in Germany right now waiting for her husband to be deployed.

She writes this:

We both are starting to feel a bit of stress over this.  It’s difficult not to show it, but I feel it’s important to put my feelings aside for now.  It’s bad enough that he’s stressing over this, he doesn’t need me doing the same.  I think he knows that I’m not too happy about it, but for now, I’m serving as his support.  I’m just trying to stay sane while he deals with it all.  It’s hard though, knowing that your loved one is having a hard time, and not being able to do much.  I can’t tell him it’s all going to be fine or anything like that, because we both know that I can’t promise that.  And that sucks.  It’s in my nature to be protective, and this is something that I can’t be protective about.

I guess it’s just something new for me to learn…not being in charge.

Go read her now. I command it. Seriously, she is writing some interesting stuff.

I was a DJ back about 22 years ago at a country music station. Most of the schlock I heard was truly horrible (if I ever hear Sylvia’s “Nobody” again, I will truly just throw the hell right up.) I actually spun records, campers.

But, there was some stuff I found there. It’s where Squirrel Queen and I met and became fast friends. I was introduced to Steve Goodman, whom is still the most awesomest songwriter ever. I learned that if you played Desperado that you would garner a minimum of about ten calls into the station with people telling you why they loved that song (sorry, I didn’t). George Jones, who I always thought was boring, really wasn’t that boring at all (One Woman Man rocks as does White Lightening). It was where I fell in love with Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. Man, I love me some Willie because he has such a great sense of humor as well as that he just kicks ass.

And then, I heard Don Williams. The man has the stage presence of a can of spam. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. The man could really sing. His deep baratone was one of the grooviest things I’d ever heard. Warm and inviting, he reminded me of my grandfather for some reason although they look nothing alike. And there was something about this song, which touched deep. It was a man singing about the dreams of his youth, talking about Thomas Wolfe and Tennessee Williams in a country song, no less.

And it taught me that the country music I mocked had value. And now, although I’d just as soon listen to Coltrane or a bit of Mozart, I still remember this song. It reminds me of my time in radio when there were dreams busting in my head to the point I couldn’t sit still and I still believed in happy endings. When my parents were still heroes, when my sister was still a pain (and I was jealous of her a bit.) It reminds me of something I can’t explain in words.

It reminded me of hope a bit and that those very thoughts whirling through my head where shared with others.

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For Aunt B

John Carney, I’m seriously going to come to your house and stare you in the eye for making me get all philosophical and weepy this morning.

Newspapers (any business really) are odd places, and being that John and I walk around with dirty fingers covered in ink and I have that connection to him, this post just broke my heart. The visual it sets is so heart-wrenching that I found my eyes welling up because in just a few short words, he said a whole lot.

Vincent was buried in the little cemetery right next to Mt. Lebanon UMC, in a quiet rural area. The sight of little Vincent’s father carrying his tiny gray casket to the grave site, by himself, with both hands, was heartbreaking.

And it makes me want to talk about the family we have at work. And it also makes me wish I really knew Kay Rose. And it makes me want to go have supper (we are Southern) with John and talk about how we are blessed. Rose sounds like a smart, very decent, compassionate person. Carney’s heart is huge. I see it every time I go over to his cyber home.

Now, when you spend countless hours a week with the same people, you become fond of them. Sometimes you want to whack them across the head with a two-by-four but other times, you love them so intensely it is frightening. You want to see them succeed. You want them to be happy. If you don’t, well, I feel sorry for you for denying yourself a gift.

Badger, Squirrel Queen freezertroll I were talking yesterday about a lot of things, drinking entirely too much beer and wondering what we wanted in the next year, the next five years and our path. We looked at freezertroll’s pictures of a recent trip with his family to San Diego. We bonded over getting to know more about each other. It was a fine time. We butt heads over stuff occasionally, but I must say, that it made me feel really good to just share. We shared a lot of things, but the most prevalent was finding our creative center and how we are trying to mobilize that.

We talked like we were family. And I realized that it was a family by chance to a large degree. Hired into a place where we probably would have never have met each other if there hadn’t been a thread of working for the man. We found a cohesive like-mindedness. Of generally liking each other. That thread bonds us together. And last night, for the most part, we mind-melded.

And so when I read John’s post about the little boy who had died unexpectedly, the grandchild of one of the pagination technicians at the paper where he spends his days, I thought of this. A member of his day-time family was grieving. And John was grieving with her.

John, send your tech our good thoughts and prayers from the northwest side of the state. A candle by us all is lit for your newspaper family.

Homer and Squeegee Monkey’s dog, Jura, woke me up at 4 a.m. this morning. Homer ruined my bitching about it by saying Mabel had woke her up.

Well, crap. Thwarted on my ability to have a good righteous bitching.

So we will do the dump of the link, shall we.

• Yowza. Tenet is raising a stink.
• Well, that’s sort of embarrassing.
• ACK makes a good point here about John Ford’s brazenness. This case is about a lot of things and can be summed up by people more familiar with it than I am. I’m also going to link to the Memphis Liberal Blogosphere because they’ve been watching this longer than I have.
• To answer Les Jones question, I’m going with Bullitt. The French Connection comes in as a close second. Yes, I’m showing my age.
• I used to watch Ann Holt when I lived in Nashville. This woman never ages.
• Let’s revisit Equal Pay Day. Seriously. I’ve always said that women have to take care of each other. Sadly, we don’t always do that, but knowing information like this should join us together more fully.
• The Superficial is funny about this, but in all honesty, Jesse James almost getting run over by a crazed fan is really scary.
• Tony LaRussa gets all riled up. When Lou Pinella is the sane calm guy, you know the world has fallen off its axis.

Have fun, be kind to each other and don’t buzzkill people. It seriously pisses them off.

Update:Because of the alcohol haze I live in, Tenent (beer and over the counter drugs) is actually Tenet. Thanks Cat Dude.

Good God, my last post was so long and rambling.

Jeez.

Go here. You’ll see a picture of a cat on a leash. That should help.