Vacation round up #2: Brewfest

Last Friday Morgan's sister Katie took us to the 21st Annual Oregon Brewers Festival while grandma and grandpa Bird babysat for little Elliott. It takes place right along the riverfront and is huge. It must have really boomed in recent years because I remember walking by it back in 2000 when it was taking place at Pioneer Square and I really wasn't that impressed. But now it's crazy, there must have been at least 6000 people there.


Morgan and I partook in plenty of fine beverages laden with hoppy goodness. Then there were some that weren't so fine, like the one that tasted like chai tea. Whatever brew master that came up with that crap needs to give his license to be a man back, the girls really liked it so there ya go.

The Brewfest stopped serving at 9pm (so you don't have 6000 people drinking until 2am in the heart of downtown Portland) so we went to a bar down the way with Katie, her husband, and a couple of her friends. We went to this place called The Rock Bottom Brewery and all I have to say is, not my scene, not my scene, not my scene. The place is a chain restaurant and it's like Applebees had sex with T.G.I Fridays and this was their alcoholic bastard love child. I tend to like my bars looking like bars, a little on the divey side preferably, by no means a dump, just a place that actually looks like a bar, not a family style restaurant. We walked in and the place was packed and there was this band playing, we'll I guess you could say they were playing. They looked like a bunch of pretty boy models out of a Gap ad and they were completely butchering the Doors song Love Me Two Times. I'd later come to find out (about 10 minutes ago) that the chai beer at the beerfest was a concoction made by this brewery, had I known that at the time I might never have even walked through the door.

We got a booth but it barley fit the 6 of us and Morgan and I both had a friend coming to join us. So Morgan and I decided to leave and head over to one of our favorite Portland haunts, a pool hall called The Rialto. Our friends Virgina and Marshal joined us there for drinks.


It was great to see Marshal. I haven't seen him in years. We used to work together at the first television station that I worked at in Medford and we were roommates when he first moved to Portland back in 2001.

Marshal sometimes makes short films with Alden, another former co-worker from my Medford days. You can check them out on the NealHam website.

We all just hung out talking and catching up for a while and at the end of the night Morgan and I hopped a cab back to her folks' place. It's much easier to get a cab in Portland than it is in Spokane. So we had a really fun time, except for that God awful band and that God awful Chai tea beer.

Later,
CS

Vacation round up #1: Sam Klemke

Here it is Friday and I'm on my last official day of vacation, back to the old grind on Monday. We did so much stuff on vacation that I'm going to break it down over a few blog posts.

Last Friday Morgan's mom wanted to take Elliott to the Washington County Fair in Hillsboro so she could see the animals. I didn't really feel like going because I try to stay away from Carnies, I usually end up in some kind of a verbal tête à tête with them when they try and get me to play knock down the milk bottles or throw rings in their rigged games, but I went anyway. I'm glad I did, because as we were about to leave I glanced over my shoulder and saw some caricatures hanging in a booth, I knew who the artist was before I even saw him sitting there eating his lunch, Sam Klemke.


I've Known Sam for about 11 years but through every fault of my own I've lost touch over the years. Sam's a great guy he's a cartoonist, caricaturist, movie and comic buff, Renaissance man, Filmmaker and Bon Vivant. I met Sam in Medford at the Rogue Valley Mall of all places. We started talking and quickly struck up a friendship and mutual admiration. Sam and I can always geek out talking about comics, music, movies and life in general. I came back later and showed him a picture of my dad (who passed when I was 10) and he did a great drawing of me fishing with my dad who had little angel wings, I gave it to my grandmother and she loved it.

I walked up to Sam at the fair and he was completely shocked to see me. I introduced him to Morgan, her mom and Elliott.

He insisted on doing a caricature of Elliott. She wasn't too cooperative but he was able to do a great drawing.


I'm just glad Morgan or her mom didn't ask him "So how long have you been doing this?", inside joke. He also gave me a copy of his book, it's a collection of autobiographical comics that he's been drawing through out the years. It's called "Party of 1" and is available at his website, I've linked it in my "Chuck's Peeps" category. You can also check out a short movie that he made over on YouTube, also very autobiographical. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miD0HUUM-ek

So that was cool seeing Sam again. I'm so bad about keeping in touch with people. We're going to get to see him in a few weeks because he's going to be working at the Pig Out At The Park. So if you're in Spokane stop by and see Sam and get your caricature done, you won't be sorry.

Later,
CS

Vacation all I've ever wanted

Ahhh vacation. I haven't really had a vacation since I started working in Spokane a year and 4 months ago. But here I am lounging on a deck in Portland not having to worry about news, live shots or deadlines.


Ahhh life is Sweet. I'll blog some more later, for now I'm just going to relax and take it easy.

Oh and BTW "The Dark Knight" was phenomenal. Everybody in that movie kicked butt. I have to say that the late Heath Ledger is rightly deserving of all the kudos for potraying one of the most fascinating and most creepy movie villains ever. I'm not pandering or anything when I say this but they should just give him the Oscar now.

Later,
CS

What day is it

I just got home from work. It's 6:44 a.m. and I went in at 2:30 p.m. yesterday. No lunch. They ordered pizza but I didn't get any. I'm home now scared to go to sleep because when Elliot wakes up I'm scared that I will be dead to the world and won't hear her. Morgan had to go to work as soon as I got here. They wanted me to stay until 7:00 but I got out at 6:15 because I told them Morgan had to be at work at 7:00 a.m. I'm really tired and kind of loopy.

Yesterday the day started out with a huge home improvement and lumber building going up in flames around 1:00 p.m. so that's what I walked in on. Then these sweeping winds hit the area knocking down power lines and trees and fires started popping up all over. The biggest one was in Spokane Valley. We went on the air at 5:00 p.m. and went off at Midnight. I sat the news desk for the rest of the night.

They wanted me to be back at 2:30 p.m. but Morgan's not going to be home until 1:30 so I convinced them to let me come in later at 6:30 so I can get at least a little sleep.

I figured I'd blog a little to try and stay awake.

The other day Morgan made Ella a dress with one of her favorite characters from Yo Gabba Gabba on it. Her new little dress sports the Image of Foofa.

She loves it.

We both enjoy watching Yo Gabba Gabba together. Here's one of our favorite songs from the show.

Later,
CS

Back in Blog

Hello Everybody. Happy 4th of July!


I know it's been months. I'm a bad blogger. I guess ever since it freakin' snowed in April and May I just really haven't felt like blogging. Morgan got after me today to post something and I've been thinking about doing an update lately because Ella is just getting so big and so vocal. It's crazy, she'll now have full on conversations with me and everything. I can't always understand what she's saying but it's a full on conversation none the less. And she loves music and she's singing all the time, I'll try to post some video of that. She's always walking around singing the themes from Sesame Street and Dragon Tales. She also likes to sing along with the Weezer's Pork and Beans when she's watching the video or even if she just hears the song on the radio. It's funny to hear this little voice in the back seat start to sing out "Ima doooo things Iwanna doooo" it's really very cute.

Work is well, I'm still interviewing celebrities from time to time. I'm going to take a vacation at the end of this month. The whole family is going to head over to Portland and the Oregon coast. Morgan and I are going to take a trip down to Southern Oregon probably while Ella stays with Grandma and Grandpa.

Well here's what everyone wants to see anyway pictures of little Elliot. First up the yearly summer progressing picture of her in the blue stripped chair.

Year One



Year Two



This Year July 4th 2008



Today we all went down to river front park. Ella and I road on the carousel. She was very excited about riding a horse...in theory. When I put her on a horse she tensed up and got really panicky, "No Daddy, No Daddy, No ride the horse." So we just sat on one of the fancy benches instead. She really liked that. Maybe she'll get on a horse next time because of all the fun she had on the bench.


I snapped this one of Morgan and Ella looking cute by the Spokane Falls.


Here are some other pictures of things we've been up to this summer.


Ella got really fascinated with dandelions this summer.


Ella has become very expressive with her facial expressions. She can usually get me to crack up with just a look or the raise of an eyebrow.

Here she is looking contemplative.


And here she is looking a little confounded.


I always tell her she has to wear a helmet before she rides a bike. Unfortunately her definition of a helmet is open to interpretation.


In May we went to Portland for Morgan's sister Katie's wedding and Elliott was the flower girl. She did a really good job, no flower girl meltdowns or anything. And for two-years-old she took her flower tossing very seriously. She didn't know the significance of what she was doing but she appeared to be very methodical about how she dropped the petals.


Ella was a big hit with everyone at the wedding.


Especially with Grandpa Bird.


Okay well that's it I'm going to Jet, I'll try and keep in touch. But before I go I'll throw in some Media Geek goodness. I haven't' seen a single movie this summer in the theatre but the Dark Night opens in IMAX in week and a half and I will be there.

Also let me introduce you to one of my newest favorite bands, Boss Hoss. They're a German cowboy cover band. They cover just about every genre of music. Here's the video of their cover of Hey Ya by Outkast. Please to enjoy.



Later,
CS

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

She told me that she loves me!

It's the one thing that she's heard millions of times since her birth. Morgan and I say it to her dozens of times every day. She can spout out phrases like "I fell down" or "It's cold brrrr" or "That's silly" but she has never repeated the words back to us that we most want to hear.

Today my little Elliott Anne looked me right in the eye and said "I love you". Not once but at least a half of dozen times. I'm on top of the world and can't be any happier.

The feeling is mutual.

Later,

CS

Hello 2008

Well that's it 2007 is over. Not a bad little year, there were some highs...and some lows...but there were some more highs too. All in all I'd say it went pretty well and just helped lay the groundwork for good things to come.

Christmas was great. We did the 6 hour car trip to Portland the Saturday before. Ella was not happy with that. We had great weather for the trip though, we got out of Spokane just before heavy snow hit so that was good.

We stayed with Morgan's parents and Ella was delighted, we even got her to say "Hi Grandma" in the car right before we got to the house. I don't think she ever actually said it to Morgan's mom though. Aw well, ya can't win 'em all.

My phone died on me with all my phone numbers in it the day before Christmas so that kinda sucked. I put my sim card in my old phone when I got back and it seems to work okay. Except I did lose all the numbers that I had saved to the phone and not the sim card

On Christmas Eve Morgan's cousin and family came over for the traditional "Bird Christmas Eve Party". Morgan's cousin has five kids ages 11, 7, 5, 3 and 10 months.

I have decided that Elliott will now be an only child, I hope she's happy with that. Now I just have to convince Morgan, should be easy.

Ella was pretty intimidated by all the activity. She's usually pretty much on all the time, non-stop, go go, but she was pretty timid with all those older kids running around. She finally just asked to go to bed around 7:30 p.m. "Night night? Night night song? Teeth....teeth brush". Morgan's cousin was very impressed, "How did you ever her get her to ask to go to bed on her own". My daughters brilliant, and I think she's left handed which is weird because Morgan and I are both righties.

She did start to feel more comfortable towards bed time especially when the two girls that were older than her let her watch Dora The Explorer with them on their mom's iPod.



On Christmas Day Little Elliott Anne made out like a Bandit. We'd like to say thank you to cousin Brandy for the way to extravagant doll house. She's finally got a little girl she can spoil. Thanks Brand, she loves it. And also thanks to Aunt Diane for Ponies. There are other people to thank but those are the only two that I know for sure read my blog.

The drive back the next day was fine also. We had rain all the time we were in Portland (it did snow for a bit on Christmas day but it didn't stick) but when we got back to Spokane it was pretty much a winter wonderland. Unfortunately we haven't been able to enjoy it because all three of us have been sick as dogs since the day after we got back. We all have the Coughing and the Sneezing and running a little fever. Morgan and I have got the body aches and the chills too. I'm guessing Ella also has those, she just can't tell me.

It really sucks being sick. I have to catch a flight out tomorrow morning for Jonny 5's wedding in Vegas on Friday. Being sick in Vegas should be fun.

All well wish me luck and Happy New Year everybody.

Later

CS