Our paper printed a list of announcements and events around campus every week, and one week there was a presentation titled “Jerusalem: 3,000 years of holiness.” Whoever had typed the events that week instead used the headline “Journalism: 3,000 years of holiness.” Our professor was not happy, but we at the paper were delighted by it, and later had “Journalism: 3,000 years of holiness” t-shirts printed.

Rob – aka Turtle

I guess I’m fortunate, or maybe shameless, but I’ve never been badly embarrassed at work, or at least at my day job. See, a long long time ago, I was working at the huge San Francisco Renaissance Faire (while living in Los Angeles). I and two co-workers were given a reward/perk: we were told to leave Faire early on Sunday, go to the Castro Street Faire in costume, and hand out fliers. This was a perk because we would be paid extra to go do this, we got to keep the canvas bags we used to carry the fliers (I still use mine once in a while), and it gave us a two hour head start on the drive back to LA. In the normal course of events, I got separated from the other two guys. Just could not see them. It was then that I realized I was completely lost, I was in a city where I knew zero people’s phone numbers, I had six dollars in my pocket, I was in the midst of 100,000 screaming heavily out of the closet gay people, I was wearing tights and slops and other things Elizabethan, and I was far far far from the most flamboyantly dressed person there. I had a few seconds of sheer unadulterated terror, then decided that whatever happened, I was being paid to hand out fliers, so I swallowed the fear and kept on keeping on. I found my friends a block or so further on, and I’ve never been embarrassed by anything ever since.

I covered a high school football game in a town about an hour away from my paper. I didn’t bring the computer as this was in the days when sending a story via computer was not he easiest thing to do and figured getting back to the office and banging one out quickly was a better option. The problem on this evening was two-fold: First, it was a rainy evening, making driving the two-lane roads back to my paper more difficult. The second was the game went into overtime … three overtimes actually.

By the time the game ended and I got my few quotes (how else to prove you were actually at the game?) I got in my car and drove as fast as I could back. By the time I reached the paper, I had something like 20 minutes to bang out the story. I had a reputation for working well on deadline with very few mistakes, and the editor had plenty of other stories to proof, so he let mine go without looking at it.

One of the key moments in the game came when one of the team’s running backs broke into the clear and tried to make a cut. But, because of the rainy weather and this was a high school stadium, the field was sloppy and he slipped. Well, ever notice how the “f” and “d” keys are next to each other on the keyboard? This is important as the sentence, “White appeared to have a path to the end zone only to slip on the wet turf” turned into, “White appeared to have a path to the end zone only to slip on the wet turd.” Fortunately we caught it in time for the second edition, but I imagine some people reading the story thought the field must have been REALLY sloppy.

The other was a photo cutline in a competitor’s paper hyping a Sesame Street on Ice production coming to town. It showed various Sesame Street characters in the photo and identified them by name. When it reached The Count, it left out the “o” in Count. I think people looking for THAT character were a tad disappointed if they went to the show.

A bargain is something you can\’t use at a price you can\’t resist. -Franklin Jones ) Happy Holidays!…

I didn’t quite catch the name, but it sounded like yours.

If it was you (and notice I’m saying if), then I have to ask: Do you realize you made a doofus of yourself on ESPN?

Thanks for the Bill Baab memory.

Stu