IT FREAKIN' SNOWED AGAIN TODAY!

This is just getting ridiculous, it's the middle of Frackin' April. It didn't snow a lot, but still, enough is enough, bring on spring already. Here's a couple of pictures from 2 weeks ago when it snowed.





Now here's a picture I took last Saturday when we thought that Spring had finally sprung.

See how nice it is. It was a great day. We hung out at riverfront park and there were tons of people there.

Now look at this weeks craptastic forecast.

THAT'S A BUNCH OF BULLCRAP! I want nice weather already. Stupid climate change. Well it could always be worse. We could be living in Toledo Ohio.

Even though spring has been cold and Snowy we've still been keeping busy finding things to do and ways to have fun. For Easter we took Elliott to the valley for her first ever Easter Egg hunt.


She Made out like a bandit, she got 13 eggs.


Also we took Elliott to see one of her heroes. Dora the Explorer and her monkey Boots made an appearance at the car show at the fairgrounds, so we decided to take Ella down there to see her.

Elliott was very excited, so much so that getting her to leave was nearly impossible. I seem to remember some screeching and flopping down on the floor. I should have put her in the stroller. Ah, hindsight.

Well that's it for now, everyone please think warm weather thoughts for us.

Later,

CS

Here's Another One

Yep they still have me doing this entertainment thing. Here's my interview with Tony Shalhoub about 'Monk'. I don't think I was quite as nervous as the Jay Leno interview, but I still can't break the habit of saying "uh" and "um". I stumbled a little when I was thanking him because my mind kept wanting to thank "Adrian Monk" so I had to regain my grasp on reality and come to terms that I was really talking to Tony Shalhoub.



This was pretty fun for me I'm a huge fan of Monk. Tony Shaloub's performance of the title character is absolutely perfect, both tragic and Hilarious. You as a viewer really feel for Monk and the people around him, and still you can't help but laugh at how he reacts to the situations that he finds himself in and his surroundings, like when he has to solve a murder in a junk yard or when he shook hands with a leper. The ensemble cast works perfect together, all of the supporting characters are beautifully performed by terrific actors.

I have to admit I was a late comer to the series. I didn't start watching until halfway through the third season when Traylor Howard joined the show playing Mr. Monk's new assistant (I've kind of had a crush on her since '96 when she was on Boston Common). Even though I was a Johny come lately to the wonder that is Monk, I was hooked from the first episode that I watched. Recently the show has been picked up for a seventh season and I'm happy that I get to keep watching the continued adventures of my favorite detective.

Later,
CS

The Big Story

Who would have thought that the biggest story that I've worked on this year would have started out by us killing the story because we discovered it wasn't true.

Last week I was shown this video at work that was on YouTube where a Rick Astley impersonator interrupted a women's basketball game at Eastern Washington. I noticed that the guy that made the video was from EWU, so I e-mailed him via his myspace page and asked him if he'd do an interview about the Prank. He said sure and we set it up for Thursday afternoon.

I got a call from my reporter Anthony and he said he thought the senior film student might not be telling us the entire truth about the video. The student told him that the prank happened during a timeout in the middle of the game and it interrupted game play. Anthony talked to campus security and they couldn't remember the event ever taking place.

I tracked down the down the women's basketball coach and called her at home. She told me that nothing like I described ever happened at that game between them and Montana State. While Anthony was out working on another story for a different show, the student dropped off a high res copy of the video. I watched it closer than I had before and could tell that there was some creative editing done there.

Anthony and I went to our news director and we told him our concerns. He said kill the story, and we did.

Then Monday morning the New York Times came out and this happened.



So now the story we killed becomes the story of how a young filmmaker pranked the New York Times.

The story has gone national and had all the blogs and some news sites buzzing today. The New York Times even printed a retraction today.

This business is weird.

Later,
CS

Video

Here's the video for that interview I did with Jay Leno. I think I sound like a tool. Like a nervous tool.




Later,
CS

Yep. Still the entertainment reporter

And still ugly.

Jay Leno looks good though, doncha think?

I was pretty nervous to meet him I mean he's Jay Freakin' Leno, but he was really nice and cool as you can see. It was just surreal. Here I am interviewing Jay Leno, a man who has interviewed everybody. I think I blanked out for part of the interview thinking about it.

Thanks Jay it was great meeting you.

Later,

CS

Ugliest Reporter EVER!

Soooo.....I'm now in charge of entertainment reporting. I get my own little web page on the company's site and I get to report on local and national entertainment. I've always maintained that I have a face for radio (hell I was a deejay for a classic rock station in my younger days) so I don't get the rational behind throwing my mug out there.

So much for staying behind the scenes,

Later,

CS

SNOW-POKALYPSE!

The Snow started falling last Saturday and didn't stop until around 4 p.m. on Sunday, then it started right back up again on Sunday night. It was SNOW-POKALYPSE!

I got called to come into work at 10 a.m. on Sunday because it was all hands on deck. I told Jonny 5 when he called that there was no way I was even going to be able to get my car out of my driveway to come to work without getting it stuck on my street. He said "Oh the roads aren't that bad you'll be able to make it. Just come down Monroe it'll be fine". After I hung up there were a lot of words uttered that shouldn't have been said around Elliott. Not because I had to go to work, I'm always fine with that, but because I knew I was either going to get stuck or wreck my car on the way there. Morgan wasn't happy either, "Call him back and tell him that someone needs to come and pick you up". I just grumbled (that's what I do...it's kinda my thing) and went outside to shovel the side walk and drive way. I shoveled about 5 feet of sidewalk when my phone rang, "How about if we send someone to get you in one of the stations 4x4 vehicles". This was great news because I knew the car wasn't going anywhere. You see we live on what's called Spokane's "South Hill" it's about 2500 feet up the hill where we live and the hill is pretty steep no matter where you try to drive up or down. Plus there was the matter of not being able to even drive the car on the side street in front of the house because of all the snow.

Morgan and Elliott came outside while I was shovelling.

Morgan and I traded off the shoveling duties. No I didn't make her or anything, she likes to do it. We got all the way to the driveway when the landlord showed up with the snow-blower. We let him take over.


It was 11:30 before I got picked up. Jonny 5 came in a station vehicle himself to get me because everybody was out shooting. We got 3 blocks from my house when he said, "Yeah you never would have made it into work if you had driven your car". I could have told him that, in fact come to think of it I did tell him that. As we were driving to the station, at about 10 mph, we saw car after car stuck in the snow trying to get out of their driveways and on unplowed side streets. I did a phoner over the air with the station about how the conditions were on the drive in. We stayed on the air nonstop with coverage until 7 p.m.

When I got to the station my desk was being used as a set for one of the reporters so I had to sit at one of the producer's desks. The news desk was already manned when I came in so I was just information gathering for the first little bit that I was there. Finding out about power outages, answering phones (they were ringing off the hook, something that would continue all week.), find out what events were canceled in town and what ones were still going on.

We started to hear unconfirmed reports that a jet had slid off the runway at the airport. So we sent a crew out there. Turns out it was a Southwest Airlines Jet (one of the big ones) and it did a 180 immediately after it touched down on the runway. I would have crapped my pants and had a massive heart attack if I was on that plane. Fortunately the plane was fine and no one was injured. I got a call from a woman who said that her father was on the plane, so I got his cell phone number from her and called him. His son who was sitting next to him went on the air, doing a phoner, describing what happened.


We already had a camera and reporter at the airport shooting the plane on the runway, but we wanted someone in the terminal to talk to the passengers as they got bussed of the jet. I went lenslinging down there with a reporter. We shot an interview with two women that were on the the plane and terrified. I ran the tape over to the live truck that was shooting the jet, feed it back and my reporter fronted the story live with the plane as the backdrop. He stayed with the live truck and the other reporter and photog and I went back to the station.
I don't usually don't shave on Sundays so that's why I'm looking a little scruffy.

When I got back the chief photog said, "Yeah, here's the deal. We don't have enough photogs, so you're going to have to shoot a live shot". I was back out the door with another reporter, going to the plow yard for the 5 and 6 pm news. What's different about Toledo and here is that the photogs run the live microwave trucks here. In Toledo it was a whole union thing, and an engineer had to run the live rig, it was a big pain in the ass. I don't do a lot of live shots here, I can count on one hand how many times I've shot something here and got it on live, and as you can imagine the trucks kind of are complex, not like just operating a DVD player or anything. Fortunately the 5 and 6 hit went off with out a hitch. I even got on a third time before we went off at 7pm. We got sent to a carport at an apartment complex that fell down and crushed a bunch of cars.
I was able to drive there shoot it and drive to a place where I could get a live shot and do another hit.

I ended up staying til midnight working the desk and got a ride home from a photog.

Monday I tried to drive to work and promptly got stuck in the street in the snow. School was cancelled so the little toe headed kid across the street who's about 5 or 6 was watching as I tried to get the car out. He decided to put his two cents in, "You should'a bought a twuck". I took a breath a answered back to him, "Yeah, well you shouldn't talk to strangers." he didn't say anything else after that. Fortunately a good samaritan towed me out and I bought some chains the next day. I had to use the chains until they plowed my street Thursday night.

The snow was so deep that day it came up to Elliot's waist. and she wasn't even all the way in the snow.


Morgan took a picture of this Icicle in the back yard. She really liked it, the thing was huge. The neighbor kid (different kid) knocked it down on Friday. She had words with him about it. She said he "killed her joy".

In all we had 23 inches of snow fall this week. It was supposed to snow today, but we only got a little. I'm glad, I'm over the snow. I thought we got a lot in Toledo. This is how high the snow is piled up next to my drive way.

I had to get after the same neighbor kid that broke Morgan's favorite icicle for climbing on the snow pile and knocking all the snow back in the driveway. I'm planning on yelling at little kids to get out of my yard while shaking a cane when I'm old.

Back to the Superbowl

Later,

CS