can we cast our shadows alone in the dark?
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Wednesday, August 27, 2003 No, I am not dead. Just busy, that's all. 10-year-old nails landing among the nation's elite Somebody messed up bad for that story. I'm not really sure whose fault it is. See, the story was not meant for Emily Brown. Yes she accomplished some incredible tasks for gymnastics (4th overall in the entire nation, and I got to talk to her -- pretty cool, right?), but the story was actually supposed to be about a certain boy named James Bruce. He pulled in a couple golds, and I was supposed to talk to him. I got the story on a Monday. I called his parents on Tuesday. I went down on Wednesday. I was to write the story Thursday, to have it done by Friday morning. No dice. When I called on Tuesday, no one picked up for the longest time. I tried for hours on end (not straight, of course. There was time in between), and I kept trying because Frank Pastor (Sports Writer, St. Pete Times Hernando edition) said they would be home during such and such time. I finally got through to what sounded like a teenage girl. I was trying to get to a mother or a father or just anyone who was around to set up an appointment to talk. I had apparently just missed her dad by a few minutes, so I left a message that I would be there on Wednesday at a certain time. I thought this would work because little Bruce practiced the same hours every day. I show up. "Hi, are Bruce's parents here?" Blank stare. "Is that a no?" Nod. So there was a breakdown in communication. Fantastic. Now the issue is whether it was my fault or their fault. It could have been mine for the simple fact that I left a message with a teenage-sounding girl who may or may not have relayed it to her parents or whoever they were in relation to her. I should have talked to an actual human, not left text. Or it could have been their fault because they didn't show up to an appointment. Not cool. Either way, I didn't get the story Frank was expecting me to write. However, I did happen to catch Beth Strazzullo (the owner) and she started talking my ear off (like she usually does), which is cool. She's a quote machine, it's great. She tells me that one girl got 4th in the entire nation. If I could have found the number of participants for the gymnastics portion of the Junior Olympics, I would have peeped that in the story, but alas, I could not. I'm sure it was several thousand. The girl and her mom come over, we talked for a while, interviewed her coach and her peers, bam bam bam, got a story. So that's how it came about. I had to call Frank to clear the air about the issue. He was cool about it, and sent a photographer down to Hudson to get a few pictures of her for the story, and that was that. It's a crazy business. In other news... I really like the Steve Burns album, Songs for Dustmites. Steve Burns is the guy from Blue's Clues. No he's not dead, and no he didn't commit suicide. Sure, he's a little quirky for talking to ambigously female blue dogs and having an enormous thinking chair (which he actually took home -- I kid you not), but the guy is an excellent musician. Of course, he had a little help from a little band from little Oklahoma. The Flaming Lips? Anybody heard of them? They've been signed by Warner, you know. Yeah, the album is great, but then again... Any time you can get a member of The Flaming Lips to produce your album, of course it's going to be good. The originality is enough to win them an important award, but these days, no award shows matter. It's all fueled by corporate America, and the real winners never win. Take the MTV Video Music Awards for example. I have never watched the show, but I heard that Johnny Cash was in the running for 5 or 6 awards this year for his rendition of "Hurt". On a side note: Cash's cover eats the Nine Inch Nails' original. As much as I like NIN, Cash was meant for that song. He was built for it, and the video is just the icing on the cake of an excellent product. If Cash doesn't win an award for a masterpiece of a music video, there is something very wrong and incredibly corrupt with this whole IDEA of an awards show. Seriously. From an artistic standpoint, would someone ACTUALLY pick a 50 Cent or Eminem video OVER THE MAN? I have already vowed to never watch MTV again, for its lack of quality programming, but c'mon -- those idiots have to get SOMETHING right once in a while. Right? pucker up and kiss the asphalt now... overthought at 11:14:10 PM by a hole in the world |
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