The other weekend, I hung out in Virginia City with some ghost hunters led by the team from the SciFi Channel's "Ghost Adventures." I wouldn't say I'm ready to join up, but some of them make a pretty convincing case for the paranormal with virtually no evidence. And they just want to believe so badly, it's contagious. I don't meet very many wide-eyed optimists in this job, so it's cool anytime I do.
Here's the story. By the way, I take no responsibility for the photos. This poor freelancer did a great job chasing around VC at twilight trying to get spooky shots for me, then some genius on the picture desk figured it would be a good idea to crank up the brightness and contrast until it looks like high noon on Mars. Dude, I know Photoshop is awesome, but you don't have to use all the buttons at once, OK?
For a slightly less blinding version of the photo gallery, try this.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Social Distortion review
Here's my review of Sunday's Social Distortion show. In other news, Mike Ness is older than he has any right to be...
Strange times in this business...
Some background: As most of you probably know, I used to work for the Register-Pajaronian in Watsonville, near Santa Cruz, Calif. It was a small paper, badly run at the highest levels but strong in a few areas such as photography and idiosyncratic column writing. We also had one reporter who, in spite of being a classic East Coast elite type, spoke better Spanish than many native speakers and did some of the best journalism that area has seen since a Pulitzer win in the '50s.
During the two years I was there, our greatest fear was that the much larger, better-funded Santa Cruz Sentinel would suddenly realize that our mostly under-30 operation was cutting into their profit margin and come snuff us out, which they could have done in the space of about a week if they had set their minds to it.
Instead, they mounted a tentative assault in the form of a satellite office even lamer and less experienced than our team and we survived. Shortly after I left, the Sentinel was the subject of a series of moderately hostile takeovers and wound up in the hands of the MediaNews Group, a huge chain that fired many of the paper's employees and broke down their historical presses so the paper could be printed more cheaply in San Jose.
As much as those guys deserved it, I remember my dad pointing out the Sentinel building when I was in elementary school and making a joke about all the old reporters taking pay cuts so they could leave their troubles behind them and just come work for the Sentinel on the beach. At the time, it cracked me up. These days, not so much. Thanks for shattering my dreams, mass media.
Then today, I came across this news item:
Press rolls off truck on Hwy 17
Posted: Wednesday, Oct 17th, 2007
BY: R-P STAFF
A large flatbed big-rig overturned on Highway 17 south of the summit early Tuesday morning, leading to the closure of three lanes.
Grant Boles of the California Highway Patrol said the big-rig was hauling hunks of metal from a dismantled printing press from the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper when a strap broke, causing the load to shift. The rig spilled its load and turned over in the northbound lanes just past 9:30 a.m.
Only minor injuries were reported.
Boles said a massive cleanup was then set into motion, leading to the closure of both northbound lanes until 2:15 p.m. One southbound lane was shut for about 90 minutes during the ordeal.
"It was a real mess," Boles said.
Caltrans assisted in traffic control and road cleanup.
***
I used to work with Grant and Caltrans several times a week and I can only imagine the laugh the guys got out of this one. A bitter laugh, since most of the folks I worked with out there have since moved away or retreated to grad school because the actual industry scares them so badly right now.
Then I heard an e-rumor that, due to unforeseen personnel shifts (pronounced: firings), some of those very displaced folks may be coming this way, and sooner than anyone could have guessed.
Hey guys, remember that time I bailed out of a failing business venture just in time and you all were left holding the bag? Yeah, that was a hoot. No hard feelings, right?
During the two years I was there, our greatest fear was that the much larger, better-funded Santa Cruz Sentinel would suddenly realize that our mostly under-30 operation was cutting into their profit margin and come snuff us out, which they could have done in the space of about a week if they had set their minds to it.
Instead, they mounted a tentative assault in the form of a satellite office even lamer and less experienced than our team and we survived. Shortly after I left, the Sentinel was the subject of a series of moderately hostile takeovers and wound up in the hands of the MediaNews Group, a huge chain that fired many of the paper's employees and broke down their historical presses so the paper could be printed more cheaply in San Jose.
As much as those guys deserved it, I remember my dad pointing out the Sentinel building when I was in elementary school and making a joke about all the old reporters taking pay cuts so they could leave their troubles behind them and just come work for the Sentinel on the beach. At the time, it cracked me up. These days, not so much. Thanks for shattering my dreams, mass media.
Then today, I came across this news item:
Press rolls off truck on Hwy 17
Posted: Wednesday, Oct 17th, 2007
BY: R-P STAFF
A large flatbed big-rig overturned on Highway 17 south of the summit early Tuesday morning, leading to the closure of three lanes.
Grant Boles of the California Highway Patrol said the big-rig was hauling hunks of metal from a dismantled printing press from the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper when a strap broke, causing the load to shift. The rig spilled its load and turned over in the northbound lanes just past 9:30 a.m.
Only minor injuries were reported.
Boles said a massive cleanup was then set into motion, leading to the closure of both northbound lanes until 2:15 p.m. One southbound lane was shut for about 90 minutes during the ordeal.
"It was a real mess," Boles said.
Caltrans assisted in traffic control and road cleanup.
***
I used to work with Grant and Caltrans several times a week and I can only imagine the laugh the guys got out of this one. A bitter laugh, since most of the folks I worked with out there have since moved away or retreated to grad school because the actual industry scares them so badly right now.
Then I heard an e-rumor that, due to unforeseen personnel shifts (pronounced: firings), some of those very displaced folks may be coming this way, and sooner than anyone could have guessed.
Hey guys, remember that time I bailed out of a failing business venture just in time and you all were left holding the bag? Yeah, that was a hoot. No hard feelings, right?
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
The balancing act
Once in college, a group of us was walking to a just-barely-off-campus party the likes of which the University of Nevada rarely saw. Contrary to what most people think, the Nevada of the new millennium is not really a party school on the order of Chico State or UC Santa Barbara. Sure, addiction is rampant in the state, but most folks sort of take it in stride, meaning simple possession of a controlled substance is not much of a cause for celebration. "OK, we're drunk again. So what? Dude, that's no reason to start inviting girls over all willy nilly. They'll want me to turn off 'Halo.'"
This time, though, the party threat was real. It was the sort of affair where you could, as they say, feel it calling in the air tonight about a mile before you could actually see anything. Approaching on foot, the effect was maximized. At first you could just feel a vague throbbing somewhere up the street. Then you noticed cars parked haphazardly and packaging from 12-packs scattered along the sidewalk. Then you were suddenly picking your way through a field of humanoids, some stumbling aimlessly, others sitting on the ground jabbering to themselves, still others prostrate and barely breathing. The pungent fallout of a night already forgotten was everywhere. The overall impression was that of being the first team into Chernobyl.
And then we crested a rise and saw it. Three Greek houses along one side of the street were concealed behind a single long fence installed for the occasion. I guess the idea was to keep secret what was happening inside, but it was pretty hard to miss dozens of people standing in the middle of the street and the smell of pot, hormones and kegs leaking into hardpacked dirt roiling from inside the perimeter. The meatheads watching the gate were far past caring who got in and stamped each of my hands several times in a sudden rush of camaraderie.
The event was shockingly well-funded. Where usually a Will Ferrell movie and some wine coolers were enough to lure at least the easy girls into the frats (and who needed any other kind?), this time the brothers were running multiple DJ booths and several thousand dollars worth of decoration and security. I had to hand it to them -- if I were a 19-year-old blonde from Susanville, I'd probably be impressed.
What they were missing, though, was beer. That most crucial of resources had apparently evaporated within the first few minutes, so we went looking for more at a nearby gas station.
Nearby, we passed another fraternity, which was not involved in the party. The house was set up on a hill with a long stone staircase leading down to the street. At the foot, the hillside stopped in a four-foot-high ledge where a guy could sit and collect himself after a long night on the town.
Tonight, a group of brothers lounged around the ledge, shouting at passing girls and spitting chewing tobacco onto the sidewalk. One guy had deliberately stretched his legs into the path of pedestrians and another was rocking back and forth in a small orange classroom chair poised on the lip of the ledge. I'd never been big on the school's Greek mythologies, but I was already forming some opinions about why this crew hadn't been asked to join the orgy.
Then something terrible but completely predictable happened: My buddy Pat decided the guys looked like they could use a friend. He was famous for trying to find common ground with everyone from blackjack dealers to drug dealers by saying things like, "Wow, your shirt sure is tight. At least it's a nice night, though, right?" He never meant to offend, it just never occurred to him that the guy wasn't aware that his shirt was, in fact, too tight, and that he was therefore willing to talk about it with a stranger. So as we walked past the ledge, Pat noticed the guy in the chair and said, "Whoa. That's a pretty precarious position."
The guy peered at him for several seconds through a veil of Budweiser and chew. Then he narrowed his eyes and said, "That's a pretty big word. For YOU."
His buddies laughed and the rocker started oscillating faster and faster, the tiny feet of the chair creeping to within a millimeter of the ledge. He clearly wanted to argue, but I was confident he was going to have a hard time making his point after he tumbled overboard, especially if someone accidentally tripped and booted him in the temple in the ensuing confusion. I knew it would be trouble for all of us if he suddenly showed up injured after a confrontation on a busy street, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to warn him. His pals started to stand up just as his weight shifted forward one last time and the chair angled sharply forward.
And then the cops came. A fleet of cruisers roared down the road, causing all of us to take a guilty step back and the rocker to pull up short just as the front legs of the chair tipped into space. He lurched drunkenly back at the last second and saved himself, blissfully unaware that he had avoided a concussion and subsequent stomping. As the police fired up their light bars and rushed en masse into the party, the frat boys suddenly decided to turn in and began jogging up the hill. We looked at each other and wordlessly turned and kept walking.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the rocker had fallen. Would he have reeled to his feet just in time to see the police speed past? Stayed down long enough to attract police attention and land the lot of us in jail for the weekend? Or would he have described an unlucky trajectory, fracturing his skull on the curb and going into seizures just as the cops arrived, suddenly putting the entire exchange into context for the rest of us?
These days, it's easy for me to picture this country as a 20-year-old frat boy perched in a cheap plastic chair, laughing hysterically, ignorant to the fact that he's about to go spilling into the street. Probably, he'll catch it in time and everything will be OK. Even if he does fall, he'll probably be mostly unhurt and his buddies will pick him up, dust him off and have him back on his feet by morning. But with so very many legs hanging in the air at once, from a voraciously single-minded executive to sputtering foreign relations; from a massive but hollow economy to steadily expanding waistlines, I sometimes wonder how in the world the boy in the chair is going to catch them all in time.
This time, though, the party threat was real. It was the sort of affair where you could, as they say, feel it calling in the air tonight about a mile before you could actually see anything. Approaching on foot, the effect was maximized. At first you could just feel a vague throbbing somewhere up the street. Then you noticed cars parked haphazardly and packaging from 12-packs scattered along the sidewalk. Then you were suddenly picking your way through a field of humanoids, some stumbling aimlessly, others sitting on the ground jabbering to themselves, still others prostrate and barely breathing. The pungent fallout of a night already forgotten was everywhere. The overall impression was that of being the first team into Chernobyl.
And then we crested a rise and saw it. Three Greek houses along one side of the street were concealed behind a single long fence installed for the occasion. I guess the idea was to keep secret what was happening inside, but it was pretty hard to miss dozens of people standing in the middle of the street and the smell of pot, hormones and kegs leaking into hardpacked dirt roiling from inside the perimeter. The meatheads watching the gate were far past caring who got in and stamped each of my hands several times in a sudden rush of camaraderie.
The event was shockingly well-funded. Where usually a Will Ferrell movie and some wine coolers were enough to lure at least the easy girls into the frats (and who needed any other kind?), this time the brothers were running multiple DJ booths and several thousand dollars worth of decoration and security. I had to hand it to them -- if I were a 19-year-old blonde from Susanville, I'd probably be impressed.
What they were missing, though, was beer. That most crucial of resources had apparently evaporated within the first few minutes, so we went looking for more at a nearby gas station.
Nearby, we passed another fraternity, which was not involved in the party. The house was set up on a hill with a long stone staircase leading down to the street. At the foot, the hillside stopped in a four-foot-high ledge where a guy could sit and collect himself after a long night on the town.
Tonight, a group of brothers lounged around the ledge, shouting at passing girls and spitting chewing tobacco onto the sidewalk. One guy had deliberately stretched his legs into the path of pedestrians and another was rocking back and forth in a small orange classroom chair poised on the lip of the ledge. I'd never been big on the school's Greek mythologies, but I was already forming some opinions about why this crew hadn't been asked to join the orgy.
Then something terrible but completely predictable happened: My buddy Pat decided the guys looked like they could use a friend. He was famous for trying to find common ground with everyone from blackjack dealers to drug dealers by saying things like, "Wow, your shirt sure is tight. At least it's a nice night, though, right?" He never meant to offend, it just never occurred to him that the guy wasn't aware that his shirt was, in fact, too tight, and that he was therefore willing to talk about it with a stranger. So as we walked past the ledge, Pat noticed the guy in the chair and said, "Whoa. That's a pretty precarious position."
The guy peered at him for several seconds through a veil of Budweiser and chew. Then he narrowed his eyes and said, "That's a pretty big word. For YOU."
His buddies laughed and the rocker started oscillating faster and faster, the tiny feet of the chair creeping to within a millimeter of the ledge. He clearly wanted to argue, but I was confident he was going to have a hard time making his point after he tumbled overboard, especially if someone accidentally tripped and booted him in the temple in the ensuing confusion. I knew it would be trouble for all of us if he suddenly showed up injured after a confrontation on a busy street, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to warn him. His pals started to stand up just as his weight shifted forward one last time and the chair angled sharply forward.
And then the cops came. A fleet of cruisers roared down the road, causing all of us to take a guilty step back and the rocker to pull up short just as the front legs of the chair tipped into space. He lurched drunkenly back at the last second and saved himself, blissfully unaware that he had avoided a concussion and subsequent stomping. As the police fired up their light bars and rushed en masse into the party, the frat boys suddenly decided to turn in and began jogging up the hill. We looked at each other and wordlessly turned and kept walking.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the rocker had fallen. Would he have reeled to his feet just in time to see the police speed past? Stayed down long enough to attract police attention and land the lot of us in jail for the weekend? Or would he have described an unlucky trajectory, fracturing his skull on the curb and going into seizures just as the cops arrived, suddenly putting the entire exchange into context for the rest of us?
These days, it's easy for me to picture this country as a 20-year-old frat boy perched in a cheap plastic chair, laughing hysterically, ignorant to the fact that he's about to go spilling into the street. Probably, he'll catch it in time and everything will be OK. Even if he does fall, he'll probably be mostly unhurt and his buddies will pick him up, dust him off and have him back on his feet by morning. But with so very many legs hanging in the air at once, from a voraciously single-minded executive to sputtering foreign relations; from a massive but hollow economy to steadily expanding waistlines, I sometimes wonder how in the world the boy in the chair is going to catch them all in time.
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