Raw, but c*nsored blabbing and blogging of a young journalista
and local news producer in Southern New England.
email topstorylive % at # gmail + dot = com

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Super Police, reporting for duty

I originally commented on this on LiveJournal but I got very dorky myself, so I did not want to clog Troy's space up with my rabbiting on:

Palabra Jot - Palabra Jot - Quite possibly the most dorky thing Troy's ever done in his life.

Click it to see first the super that he aired in his morning show when the Westminster Kennel Club dog won.

Then read the comment I had originally:

...okay, apparently I'm NOT done being dorky for the day...

I could spend twenty minutes discussing exactly HOW I didn't get this super and how I might have been *helped* to get this super, but suffice it to say that, as you aired it, Troy, that was ...pretty bad! It makes me want to bury my head in the sand, or, failing that, my pile of dirty clothes on the floor.

I say this in the most affectionate way possible!

RUFUS WINS-RIGHT: ...okay... better for the joke...
RUFUS 'WINS-RIGHT': calls attention to what you're trying to make it sound like...
RUFUS WINS, RIGHT?: ...what question are you asking here?

Maybe you were a headline writer for the New York Post in a past life and this stems from that.

Geez!

Now I'm trying to remember some goofy thing I put in a morning show and nothing is coming to mind. Weekend evening shows and others are tending not to let time, pacing or brainpower in for that sort of thing.

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 2/22/2006 02:17:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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Days are numbered

So I have turned the lights back on. I figured, I tried to turn people away from viewing the site, got 85 visitors one week at a low point, and went back up from that again this week, so might as well go the next step before closing up shop here.

Because that is indeed my next step: closing down TopStoryLive -- turning it into "vintage" TopStoryLive, with only the entries left -- and opening up a new blog with intent of making it far less work-oriented.

My latest thinking for the next blog is: Bill's search for Mister Right.

Yeah, I know, I'm already falling asleep about it.

I didn't like the idea of "mrright.blogspot.com" or "misterright.blogspot.com" so I was playing around with ideas of love-representation. Herbie the Love Bug sprang to mind. I thought, what if I do something like Where's Herbie?, as I search for my own love-bug. I know, it's disgustingly cute. It also smacks of Where's Waldo?

Then, to make sure someone else hadn't already done it, I googled "where's herbie blog." And then I found this:

Zornitza Stefanova: Traffic Jams:

In my car this morning, I thought of a question derived from the book, which is "Where's Herbie?". To most people this question means nothing. But it is supposed to be standard jargon among those involved in production planning. In a chapter in the book, the protagonist takes a group of grade school students hiking. The slowest boy in the line is Herbie, and he screws up everyone else's progress. Hence, if you figure out where Herbie is, you can fix delays in your production line or on the freeway, for that matter.

So I'm thinking it's not going to be "wheresherbie.blogspot.com" even though I'm sure there's that one swing-arm or robot in the mechanical workings of my life that's screwing everything up.

I don't know, McGuffin? The search continues.

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 2/19/2006 10:47:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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drink

It's really creepy how the Cocktail test at Go-Quiz.com Quizzes, Questionaires and Personality Tests for Blogs and Online Journals got me spot on:

How to make a Producer Bill

Ingredients: 3 parts anger 5 parts crazyiness 5 parts energy

Method: Combine in a tall glass half filled with crushed ice. Top it off with a sprinkle of sadness and enjoy!

Username:

Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 2/13/2006 01:42:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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Bill's iTunes is listening to... "Only You" by Yaz on Napoleon Dynamite.

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 2/11/2006 11:01:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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Feminine mystique

I have a theory about the Feminine Mystique. It has returned -- in a different format.

I know I'm a guy, but hear me out!

Consider this scene from the pilot of Desperate Housewives:

FORMER CO-WORKER: So… how’s domestic life? Don’t you just love being a mom?

NARRATOR/MARY ALICE YOUNG: And there it was - the question that Lynette always dreaded.

LYNETTE: (hesitant) Well, to be honest...

NARRATOR: To those who asked it, only one answer was acceptable. So, Lynette responded as she always did - she lied.

LYNETTE: It’s the best job I’ve ever had. (smiling widely)

(script excerpt courtesy Hypnoweb)

Perhaps you might say Felicity Huffman was born to play this role. In interviews -- most notably the one she did last month with 60 Minutes which I loved -- she has asserted that concept that she is trying to be a good mother, but it is really hard.

And, I would say, when your child is being difficult, being a mother doesn't seem the greatest thing in the world to do.

Whereas practically everybody else in the world (note, this is an exaggeration) is all about "it's the most rewarding thing i've ever done" and so on.

The crux of The Feminine Mystique is there is more to life than being a homemaker (read Betty Friedan's obit from CNN/AP).

I don't know, I've never had a child, I probably would like to try being a father someday. But you don't have to .... I don't know ... gloss over the difficulty when speaking about raising a child.

Maybe I'm just thinking of all the celebrities who appear on talk shows and say it's wonderful to be a mother. .....I mean, you don't want to say, NO, IT'S AWFUL, I HATE MY CHILDREN, but come on! .......

.... I think it was somewhere in one of the Ramona Quimby books where there was a discussion of how you may hate your mother, father, brother, sister, etc. at certain moments, but love them at others. .....

More Felicity dish at Blogging Baby.

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 2/10/2006 03:04:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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Sorry I couldn't make it. Had a prior engagement.

--

Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 2/04/2006 06:10:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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The computer car that smiled

When the Macintosh first came out it was an example of the slogan that Apple would use several years later: Think different. The Mac was the first computer that smiled, somebody once said.

This Studio Stills Photo reminds me of that: the car that smiles.

And what's more, this trumps all those Chevron commercials where the cars were talking conspiratorially to the camera like Aardman Animation's "Creature Comforts."

When I was in Toronto last week I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe* and during the trailers I saw something that started out seeming like it was just a car commercial. It's not uncommon sometimes to see just flat-out commercials for products like cars or things before the movie these days.

But then the cars started talking.

So, since I still haven't seen Lilo and Stitch, Finding Nemo, or The Incredibles, maybe I'll actually see Cars.

*: While watching I realized I must have stopped reading the book halfway through and never begun again. Sometime after the freezing of certain characters into stone I got lost and then I thought we were being led up into a quick cutoff of the story like The Lord Of The Rings, (at least as I remember it) thinking Peter would become The Dawn Treader. But face it, I don't know what I'm talking about.

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 2/03/2006 02:49:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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