Cheech Island

I'm a little off with my writing tonight so I'm going to skip my analysis and go straight to the points.

• You got me writers, I freaked out that the local ABC had moved Lost for a after school special.
• Cheech is Hurley's dad? Did not see that one coming.
• Best Sawyer moment of the year 1 and 2: teaching Jin the three things every guy needs to know and calling Roger Skeletor!
• what the hell is with Sally and Micheal, are they part of the cast? Or are they just filler characters while everyone is split up on the island.
• Eko is dead, but he is still helping.
• Vincent is alive! What's with him and finding dead things. I know he's a retriever, but this is getting ridiculous
  
• FINALLY! Someone tells Russo her daughter is alive.
  
• I know reporters like the one in Hurley's flashback, wasn't too upset she died, but come on let the photographer live man! He didn't do anything. Also she must have been working at The Network because she was doing a look live.
• I guess the writers of Lost watched Little Miss Sunshine during the break.
• Finally, looks like we get to find out more about Patches O'Houlihan next week... I'm very excited.
  

Random Hits

I can't pick one issue today so today I'll give you a potpourri of topics.

The First Wendy's
Dave Thomas is rolling over in his grave as the first Wendy's restaurant is going to close. The store is located in downtown Columbus and I have eaten there. I will admit the parking is awful and may not be the greatest location, but it's the first one. I also understand that ever since COSI moved business for the first story pretty much dried out. Why not make it a landmark and museum instead of just closing it down. This is what Bob Evan's has done, I know Bob Evan's is on Mr Evan's country farm, but come on, this place gave us the Frostie, a girl with red hair and a blue and white striped dress and the square hamburger which you can make into a triple.

A little Chippy
At the beginning of the month I chipped my tooth pretty good. I will admit this I am a finger nail bitter and while doing this nasty habit i noticed something was wrong and then I cut my lip. I had taken out a large chip on my front tooth. It was not as bad as the one to the left but still bad. The earliest appointment I could find was this past Thursday. I go in he looks at it and was going to file it down a little till they can get me in to fill it. He begins to scrap and my leg shoots straight into the air and I felt a sharp pain shoot from my tooth to my entire body. "I thought you said it wasn't sensitive?" Asked the dentist. "Umm it didn't hurt till you poked it." Somehow the pain was a good thing because he decided just to do the fill now. He gave me a shot, did some work and BAM! My tooth is done. You can hardly tell it was broken.

Weight Lose
As I have mentioned in the past The Wife and I are trying to loose weight. I'm tired of being "big" and I know I'm going to suffer this summer if I can not drop some of this weight. As of this past Wednesday I have lost 12 pounds since the third week in January. I may have put on a pound since then, but I might get out tomorrow for a little walk, if the rain holds off. 12 down 28 to go.

Reading
A new goal for me this year is that I want to read 10 books this year. I know what you might be saying. Only ten, why such a low number? I'll be honest yet again, I am a slow reader. It's not that I don't comprehend what I am reading, but it's more like I read slower and that allows me to comprehend it better. When I pick up my reading tempo I loose a little bit and have to go back and re-read. So far I have finished The Old Ball Game, which is about the two leaders of the the early 1900s New York Giants, if you like baseball give this one a try, a little different read, but still good. Now I am reading Eight Men Out, the story of the fixing of the1919 World Series. I normally don't try to read similar books back to back, but while reading The Old Ball Game it mentioned that Christy Mathewson was one of the people who helped figure out which players were part of the fix. Here are the other books on the list for this year Trojan Odyssey, Brian Piccolo: A Short Season, and Treasure of KHAN!!!!!!!!!. If anyone has a good read let me know. I'm thinking something Civil War related or a classic novel. I've tried Don Quixote three times and can get through it, I liked what I read, but wow that's a long book.

Radio Fan Frenzy

If you have not been to the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill Triangle thingie let me warm you about the radio here. If you love country then you have the greatest variety with the seven plus stations. I at one point created a theory that stated: "Any where you go you will find three on your radio dial Country, Christian (Either music or some guy yelling about how you are going to hell) or Classic Rock." Raleigh has proven me wrong. They don't have the definitive classic rock station, but they have four of those semi classic rock stations that will throw in some Disturbed and Crossfade to appeal to younger listeners. Then you have about4 crappy pop stations that play the same 9 songs. I know what you are saying "Every where you have those." Not like this, I've talked to people who love pop music and call the stations here horrible. On the FM side the only thing I can stomach for more than two songs is the Jazz station, which is actually pretty good, but I have to be in a certain mood for jazz.

What leads me to post tonight is when I need a break from the MP3 player I am forced to turn over to the AM side and listen to sports talk. You have two choices, which is one more than Columbus, 850 The Buzz and 620 The Bull. The local guys make me yearn for college DJs or Chris Spielman, I never thought I'd wish for someone with the talent(less) skills of Spielman, Ugh. The regional guys are not bad, I 'm starting to like Primetime With Packman. Finally you have the national Guys, I love listening to The V Show with Bobby Valvano when I go to work at 2:ooAM on the weekends. Then you have Jim Rome, Rome is Rome, he is not bad at times, but then he lets the "clones" rant about anything and then they take swipes at each other. I usually go back to the MP3 player for that.

I know this is the third paragraph, but here is my point to this post. The local callers to either the local guys or the l guys are freaking insane! It's all ACC basketball all the time. I know I live in the heart of it with UNC, Duke and NC State, but damn! Caller after call ranting about how they hate Duke, then the next guy attacks the previous call and says he hates UNC, then someone will attack both and yell go wolf pack! For the Ohio crowd here is the best analogy I can create. Imagine Spielman on Sports and you have within the listening range; Ohio State in Columbus, Michigan in Westerville (I know, I know, Michigan is a state and most OSU fans will fall over into the fetal position with that thought, but follow me here) and someone like Wisconsin in Dublin. Two solid teams in multiple sports and then a second one who may not be great, but has a solid fan base.

So you have all this team loyalty in an area and it just explodes onto the radio. Then they let the callers ramble on forever, normally callers will get a quick comment in and then maybe a rebuttal to what the host says, but here I've heard calls last for 5-10 minutes and not really say anything interesting or just how they hate another team. I'm wishing college basketball was over, but I know the madness will not end. Then I'll have to listen to talk about college baseball and NASCAR till it's time for football. Which should be interesting with three of the crappiest teams in the country, what will call in guy have to say then. "Well UNC only lost by 15 to Wake Forest so that means we are better than NC State who lost by 17 and Duke who lost by 40.

Lost Me With This One

Just finished reading King Tom and he liked tonight's episode of lost. Personally I was not a fan. I've tried to stay away from the message boards and such so the only thing I knew about up coming episodes is from the preview. The preview promised me answers yet the only thing I got was an answer to Jack's tattoo.

I've had conversations with some Lost fans and I mostly hear that they are tired of "the others" and want the story to go back to the passengers. I've been mixed on this, I keep expecting something big to happen with the others and make it all worth while. Instead we get further and further away from answers to questions that are circulating around the show. Why are polar bears on a tropical island, why is there a 4 toed statue, how can the sky turn purple, where is Walt and Michael, why can Locke walk, what the hell is the black mist monster.

Hopefully next week will be better, but it's looking like Charlie and Hurley are going to be playing their continued Laurel and Hardy act. Now onto the quick points.

• I like the last week replay and finally understood what King Tom meant about Eko only dying yesterday reference.
• Is anyone going to figure out that Alex is Russo's daughter. I mean come on she looks nothing like Henry, but a hell of a lot like a crazy French woman, she even has her aim!
• Is Sawyer smarter than Jack because he figured out how to get a biscuit or is Jack smarter because he had food brought to him.
• Why do I feel like "The Sheriff" is either going to die or create a whole new series of questions that will confuse me even more.

Not a whole lot of thinking for me tonight. I hope this is just like last season and things will pick up again.

New Era for J-Dog

I think for the most part I am fairly knowledgeable of new technology. I am the first to buy, no because I can't afford it, but I know it's out there. There is one area though that I never really cared for and for the most part saw no need, that would be texting.

Monday night I got my relocation expense checks and JDOG-17 has an employee discount with Verizon. We have hated our plan with Sprint for as long as we had it. It's not quite up yet, but we found Cell Trade USA and are trying to pawn it off on someone else. Back to the point, we head to the Verizon island in our local mall and start the process of a new plan. It's a good deal, but the best part was we both got free Razr phones. To be honest, I could care less about what type of cell phone I have. I was actually looking at the lower end camera phones not expecting free mid-range phones.

My old phone was over three years old and was created with texting in mind, but it was very difficult to use. You had to access the web (pay a fee per page), click on mail, wait for the page to load, click on send message, wait for that page to load, finally type a message, scroll down and send, wait for it to send and finally you are done. On average it would take about two minutes per text. We get the plan and find out that the billing cycle ends 36 hours after we start our plan and we had 1400 minutes (total) and 250 texts (each) to use. I decide to send my new number via text to everyone's cell phone. I never stopped texting. It was so much easier, I'm still learning the keys so I'm still slow. Over all, I sent out 90 texts in one day. I don't think Ill ever do that much in one day, but it's a new way I can stay in touch with everyone.

What Did I Do?

Today I had to do a story about Hillsboro St in Raleigh and how the city wants to revamp the street to make it more attractive. Over all I was all for it, except the original plan was to have 11 turnabouts in I believe a two mile span. If you do not know what those are they are interceptions with out corners. You have to drive around in a circle until you need to leave the circle. Truthfully I hate turnabouts, it always seem that someone has no idea when to merge or when to leave and I always feel I'm going to be hit. I digress about my story of the day.

The real reason I blogging is after my live shot, my reporter and I pack up the truck and were getting ready to go pull out of the parking lot when a lady walks up and wants me to stop. The reporter rolls down his window and the lady lets us have it. She starts yelling about parking and making it easier for the college students at NC State to get to class, how city council "has its head up its ass," "It's not about the capital" and finally a rant about community. She even talked about panhandlers, pimps, and prostitutes. Truthfully I almost laughed when she said pimps. It was just funny.

My question is why get worked up, get your dog on his lease leave your house and find the news crew and yell at us? We can't do anything about the street issue. I know a lot of stations make comments like "We get things done for you," but that is usual the investigative team not the normal news team that has to show both sides of the story. If you are so worked up do go after the news crew, call a council person, the lady who wants these turnabouts anyone, but don't yell at us. We just tell the news.

It's Not Fat, Just Big Boned Tuesday

Today is Fat Tuesday and for certain people that means time to flash your breast for some plastic beads or as it's called Mardi Gras. This is just not a day for drinking like St Patrick's Day, 4th of July, Memorial Day and Thursday. For the Catholics' tomorrow starts Lent, the 40 days before Easter. The reason I am writing this post is that while I lived in Toledo I learned of an evil yet great piece of food known as the paczki (poon-shke). It's basically an evil donut. If you want read the Wikipedia page, but the boiled down story is that for Lent you needed to get rid of all things tasty and the Polish people didn't want the tasty goodness to go to waste so they put it all in their donuts. It's double the sugar, fat, lard, crack, cream and anything else. I believe they have the fat and calorie content as one and a half Big Macs, not .5 I mean 1.5. That's the fat and calorie intake for a month.

Knowing that these things are bad for you, you know they are AWESOME! The first time I had paczki I was at my first station and someone thought it would be a great idea to have a paczki eating contest with our weather guy and a local radio host. We some how got ten dozen paczki so they were just laying around. I ate one, about an hour later, I ate a second one. It was time for me to leave work and I started feeling a little woozy. I can my mom and tell her that I'm getting dizzy, but I'm not suffering from sinus problems. I then tell her what I ate and what was in them. "JEREMY, YOU HAD TOO MUCH SUGAR, DON'T GO TO SLEEP, YOU COULD GO INTO A SUGAR COMA." That may not be the exact phrasing, but the sugar was making me see things. She had me go walk and drink I think a gallon of water. It was a near ugly ending to a pastry goodness day. So if you can go out and find a paczki and feel the 8 pounds you are adding on. Love live the paczki!

Litter Litter Everywhere

After being in Wake County North Carolina, I have noticed a few things. One of the bad ones happens to be the road ways, they are full of litter. Not just a little bit of trash I mean it ranges from computer printer boxes, cups, tires, ladders, garbage bags, you name it it's there. Someone today told me they once saw a couch on the interstate. A FREAKING COUCH! I can't figure out why someone feels the urge to chuck a fast food bag out thier window going 40-90 miles an hour. Can't you just wait till you get home and put it in the trash can? People of Wake County North Carolina please stop throwing crap out your car windows, you making this man cry.

More Reasons Why I'm Glad I Moved

This picture is what Columbus looked like last week. I get cold just looking at it. 8 inches of snow and then add an ice storm and what do you have? Crappy Ohio winters. If I still worked for the network I'd be outside freezing, hating life and forced to hear reporters say, "Don't go outside, it's too cold and the roads are bad." Yet we would be out there. I hate that mentality from producers "Hey it's too cold for people to be outside, go out there and show people. I'll be in a warm control room glad I am not out there, I also need a hit every ten minutes so you can't get warm." I know it's part of the job, but I'm a photographer and that what we do best, shoot and complain.

Now the picture to the right is what it looked like at Fried Chicken Drive today. For those of you in Ohio that blue stuff is a thing called the sky. I know, it's not gray, freaky isn't it! Comedian Lewis Black has a rant about Boston Weather, but it applies to Ohio:

Normally, in February, in Boston and in most of the country, the weather is gray, rainy, gray, sleet, gray, rain, gray, sleet, snow, gray; every day it just gets grayer and grayer and grayer! You wake up one day, and you go, 'I'm not comin' into work today!' Your boss goes, 'Why not? You sick?' 'No! It's too gray!' - Then you wake up and it's the grayest day you've ever seen! And the next day, it's even grayer! And that's usually Valentine's Day, and that's the day you look at your wrists and go, 'Hey, maybe I should slit 'em to see color!'

So when we moved here and 5 out of 10 days we see a blue sky with sunshine it makes it worth it. Not only that, today it was so warm that I went to the driving range and I got warm enough to take off my long sleeve shirt. This Thursday (my Saturday) it's suppose to be 63! If that would happen in Ohio, it would mean the glaciers have melted and Stuebenville would be beach front property. I know I'm going to have to deal with very hot summers and hurricanes, but 60 degrees in February... I'll take it.

Offically a Tarheel

I am not abdicating UNC Chapel Hill, but I have passed my driver's license test. I am now official a resident of North Carolina. If you have never been to the DMV let me tell you that you need to avoid that place. Up until now I have had a pretty decent experience with Ohio's DMV. I grew up in a small town, so it wasn't that crowded. In Toledo I found an office that was pretty empty and in Columbus if you went into the "sketchy" part of town, the lines moved fast. Here in NC though, it was rough, I guess Wake county only has two offices for driver's licenses. So 400,000 people per office.

After waiting for 2 hours and having to deal with them being short staffed and DMV lunch breaks I finally go take my test. ACES BABY ACES. I missed two questions but they were tricky, I have never taken a test that seemed like it wanted you to fail it. One lady in front of me has failed it three times now.

After The Wife had to bring me our wedding license because nothing I own has my middle name on it. For some strange reason North Carolina freaks out over middle names. "You have to have it. It decreases fraud. You have to have it." I thought the opposite, if don't know it how can you verify that you are me?

Finally I get my license and now the fun begins, I need new tags. As you can see above I can get personal tags. They are much cheaper here and why not. Lets take a look at some of my favorite that are still out there.



I was thinking news whore, but it was too many letters and didn't convert well when abbreviated.





Come on, we have all wanted to kill a hobo, I'm just wanted to put it on a plate.





My personal favorite. It's true on so many levels.






Well not for me, but I think it would be pretty sweet.




It's sad, I could do this all day.

Lost on an Island

It's been a while since I have posted about Lost. To be honest my last post was on November 1st, I still lived in Ohio and Dinosaurs roamed the world, well maybe not the last one but it's been a while. Still in that time frame there has been a total of three new episodes. Yes in three months three episodes. I missed the last one in November involving Kate, I bought it from iTunes, but my computer is old and iTunes hates anything not named iPod so my video MP3 play will not play that episode (Flips off MAC, sorry Levy). Then there was a new one last week and then this weeks episode.

Due to Valentine's Day I DRVed the episode, or at least tried to. The Wife and I watched a movie and I noticed at 10:05 that it had not started and screamed like a little girl and fumbled the remote till I found ABC. I flipped over and hit record, so I missed a little bit. From what I gathered, everyone on the island except Hurley, Claire, Charlie and Desmond have died, how I do not know.

I loved this episode and has King Tom put it. "I thought tonight’s episode was great. I don’t want to see them do these all-off-island episodes..." The flashback or as I'm going to call it flash sideways was a fantastic. Was Desmond hallucinating or did this actually happen? Plus it goes into fate and made me think how much do we actually control in our lives, is everything preordained or can we actually change our surroundings. Now to the quick thoughts and comments.

• When did Charlie and Claire get back together? Seriously, I thought she would still be made about the abduction, baptism thing. Did I miss something in "I Do" or was that a fly over that I'm not suppose to notice.
  
• I still miss Eko.
• I loved all the little connections to the island within Desmond's flashback, the clock reading 1:08, the microwave(Who's microwave makes that noise?),package 815, the song, Charlie and I probably forgot and missed something else.
• The little old lady was freaking me out. I never could figure her out. Was she part of the reality or just Desmond's mind. Maybe she was God. I don't know, I almost want her back in more episodes.
• Man is Penny's dad a dick or what! "You are no better than this drink of Whiskey."
  
• Sooooooo, they are going to kill of the hobbit? I'll be honest, I kind of like Charlie. I feel they made the character a little one dimensional at times, but look at some of his highlights in the series. Hallucination episode was great, Almost died by hanging, he attacked Sun, shot Ethan, and finally he gave us the term "Jesus stick." If the writers could get back to the old days with Charlie he might actually be great again. Till then he and Hurley will be sidekicks for the show.
• From the previews for next we will be "have answers," but I think we have heard this before. As we say in the news business I'll believe it when I see it.
  

100th post spectacular!

It has taken me 9 months and 6 days but I am now writing me 100th post. Start the ticker tape parade, cue the monkey marching band and lets celebrate. I know of only one way to do this, I'll give you a summary of my previous 99 post in an easy to digest kind of way also know as Top 5.

Top 5 Most Post Subject

1. The Wife, She is mentioned in almost every post.
2. Football (11), I gave a weekly recap of every game I had to shoot and also included a couple of BG games and Ohio State debacle recap
3. Vesuvius (6), Twice a was a guest writer for the Vesuvius Times and The Wife and I spent a four day vacation at this lovely little lake outside my home town of Ironton.
4. Wilson (5), Seriously I am not gay for him. He just is brought up a lot.
5. Work (5), How was this not brought up more often than five times.
6. Lost (5), The greatest and most frustrating show in the history of American television. Damn you Island and your cast aways... wait am I thinking of Gilligan or Hurley.
   

Top 5 Most Commented Posts

1. Movie Watching (6), Wow I though there some of you were going to come after me with pitch forks and fire after my comments on Christmas Vacation and Little Miss Sunshine
2. True Meaning of Christmas (6), I thought I might get some religious people attacking me, but it was more about Mortal Kombat
3. Bachelor Party (4), I guess people like stories about me being whipped by strippers
4. I'm Not Dead Yet (4), Gumption yo, Gumption
5. Person of the Year (4), We are all winners

Top 5 Personal Favorites

1. True Meaning of Christmas, Just complete silliness derived from lack of sleep and an over active imagination
2. Thursday: What Happened, Classic Wilson and I, Drinking and pictures being taken
3. I've Fallen, It was quick, but it conveyed what happened and it was slightly entertaining. The only thing I wish I would have done was take a picture of my toe.
4. Booger Mountain, That picture still makes me laugh
5. What I think Happens in This Store, I love talking with a lateral lisp.
   

Wanderlust

The Wife and I are getting ready to find a tax specialist to do our taxes. Normally we would do them ourselves, but with the move and her change in jobs we need someone who knows the tax code and and help us out.

While sifting around receipts I realized something. I have lived in four different places in 2006. Actually I have lived in four different cities during last year.

1. An Apartment in Columbus (5 months)
   
2. The Condo in Westerville (5 months)
   
3. The temporary apartment in Raleigh (1 month)
4. Fried Chicken Drive in Wake Forest (1 month)

That's a lot of moving.

Working in TV has made me into a sort of new age Gypsy (Poor choice of words, now Wilson will want to catch me do horrible things to me like his moths), I've moved 8 times in eight years. The longest stay in one place was three years in Toledo and then my first apartment in Columbus I was there for a year and a half. Everything else has been a year or less. I know we are wanting a house, but we both realizes that dream is in the distance, so hopefully we will not be moving in 2007. I almost want to see if we can stay on Fried Chicken Drive till the end of 2008. I am sick of moving.

Bathroom Reading

A while back I took this picture in a local gas station bathroom. With my job involving me driving a lot, I see a lot of graffiti. Most is call Susie/Bob for a good time, random "gang" stuff, I heart Lafonda. Every once in a while you will see the above, but what I enjoyed is that someone scratched out Bush and put Clinton. This country is divided down political lines right now and this little message says it all, in my opinion both are knuckleheads either one will go down in history as a great President. I don't think we have a non bottom feeding President since Kennedy and truthfully I'm not a Kennedy fan, but here is my thing. I wanted to cross out Clinton and put something like Van Buren, Taft, or Millard Fillmore.

Then I realized something, I don't really agree with graffiti, I also don't have a sharpie on me and finally will anyone get my joke. Over half will think Millard Fillmore is some guy in Fuquay Varina. "Hey ain't Millard that guy with the lazy eye in Fuquay?" I don't think most American's can name half of our 43 presidents. So my joke would have been wasted unless the random high school history teacher happens by. So hopefully in between surfing of porn, people will stop by and get the joke, or I get the random kid looking for research on a Van Buren and if so Van Buren had some awesome mutton chops and was the First Vice President to be elected President, the only other was George H. W. Bush (this Bush not the current one). Remember knowing is half the battle. GO G.I. JOE!