A 20-year-old Omaha kid died in a three-vehicle accident this morning while driving his motorcycle to work. This sucks, but I am not surprised because I drive to work at about the same time and in the same area, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to see the road because of the blinding rays of the rising sun. I saw an accident a little over a week ago near this spot, on an incredibly bright morning, at 52th and Dodge. A car couldn’t take the heat and took a stoplight down in a head-on collision. I usually can only make out of the bottom of the road as I follow a trace of the car in front of me. I have to flip my sun guard all the way down, so I have to drop my head in hope to see a green light. The sun might be especially worse for me because I decided not to get the polarized lenses in my new glasses, so light reflects and scatters on my specs.
Three cool things I want to recap:
I’ve joined a Monday night bowling league with the likes of Woodward, Berkshire and Smith. Pretty fun stuff. We roll at Maplewood Lanes as part of 89.7 The River’s gig. We fly like paper, get high like planes. Our team name is The Seven Chinese Brothers. High handicaps.
I changed my first flat tire last Sunday, and without even calling my dad for help. Woodward and I were about to grab some lunch at King Kong, when two Samaritans informed us that we had a flat. I said dogggonit, and vaguely remembered hearing air leaky noises a few days earlier. Guess I had ran over a nail. The spare is faring well thus far, so I just might replace it later than sooner.
Last note: I got my first story assignment Monday morn at 12 a.m. I will be heading down to Glenwood, IA after work today to interview a cross-country phenom dude. I have 500 words due tomorrow afternoon, which should appear in the sports section of OWH’s Iowa paper.
Hello, hello on another rainy September morning. Fall sure got here fast. My college buddy Ross told me I need to start blogging again. I have been skeptical because I know the enormous emotional toll blogging takes. If you wanna connect with readers you gotta be willing to lay it all out on the table. It has been a couple months, though, and I have plenty of untapped emo to uncork, so let's pop, pop, pop it!
Last night I officially moved into my parents' basement, a scenario I saw coming months ago. Can't complain, really. I get along great with the 'rents. They give me free rent and lots of love and food, and now one of the biggest rooms in the house. My old room was one of the smallest and was about 10 feet away from Mom and Dad. It wasn't much of a place to make noise and/or keep company. Now I'm free to rock the whole downstairs.
Today begins week four at my job at the Omaha World-Herald. As Newsboy Joel, my main responsibilities include talking to old people on the phone who are confused about something they read in the paper, passing out morning and afternoon papers to the awesome newsroom staff members, driving around in a company car to fetch paperwork once or twice a week, and handling occasional messenger odd jobs. I work this role 32 hours a week, and picked up another six on Thursday and Friday nights in Sports. There, I answer phones and take down scores and highlights of high school and college sports in the area. I'm still a super green score reporter, but a few of my notes have made it in the paper. All in all, I got a cool gig going.
Now that I have a little money in my pocket I guess I've acquired a bit of a gambling problem. I've been to the casinos three times in the last month and am currently down $120. It's been heads-up Hold 'Em against the house, Roulette, and Black Jack. Last time I went down I found the poker room where you play against the public and witnessed an extra harsh bad beat. The action around the table had folded to this old Thai lady with a frazzled mullet, had to have been Scotty Nguyen's older sister. She deliberated while stacking chips and, from what I could tell, placed about $80 in the middle of the table. The only taker was a guy in his mid-50s, we'll call him Bad Luck Joe, who sat half way across the table and went all in, a raise of about $150. Witchy Nguyen called him and flipped over 5-3 suited. Bad Luck Joe showed pocket 8s. Nguyen summoned voodoo witchcraft powers from her hair and hit a 3 on the flop. Joe prayed, "Please Lord!" as the dealer turned over a 5 on the river. Ouch!
Finally, the blog title comes from Kanye West's new song that dropped at the VMAs last night. If his new album is anything like this track it's gonna be dope, even though the last album was tired as hell with only two good songs (Stronger and Flashing Lights.) The reason I was drawn to Love Lockdown was because I couldn't figure out what song it reminded me of. Then I realized the bridge is a lot like some of the pitches in Daft Punk's Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger, which means Kanye will have jacked two singles off of the same Daft Punk song. That Kanye guy is one lameass. You should have seen him at the BET awards. He and T-Pain won something and when the fans went nutz for T-Pain Kanye got all insecure and shouted, "I'm one of the kings of this game right now, so my opinion counts!" Anyways, Love Lockdown will be big, no doubt, much like JT's My Love.