So, what’s shaking in LA?

OK, I have to admit, I'm envying you a little bit now, especially considering all the terrible things you've covered/had happen to you.

 

It was fun. I don't miss deadlines or the actual process of writing, except a little bit of freelance now and then. And yeah, the felony charges I could do without.

I never got to do baseball play-by-play, which was the whole idea in the first place. So I guess Fate made up for it in other ways. I should have known something was going to go wrong when I was doing senior work experience at the Contra Costa Times in 1976 and got assigned to help with the Martinez bus crash that killed so many kids in the Yuba City band.

The master of disaster? I'll gladly hand that title to Jim Cantore.

EDIT: Sorry for the threadjack. Back to earthquake updates.

 

There are lots of people who probably would like to get a felony at work. Not sure if yours was work-related or not, but kudos for surviving it.

 

When I was in Jacksonville one of our reporters called in a prep game
After he confirmed his story was in, he said: “Great. Now I need somebody to bail me out.”
He was stopped by a cop speeding on his way to a phone and got a little upset, so they took him to the station
Filed his story first
A true pro

 

Did they like his lede?

 

I went through one minor quake (4.6 or so) during my brief time in the I.E. I was staying in a hotel right off the 10 (I think) before getting my own place, and if felt like a semi was engine braking, but after it didn’t stop in a few seconds, I was like, Holy shit, that was an earthquake. Even though it didn’t kill or even seriously injure anyone, TV freaked the fuck out

 

It was a shithole not a stone’s throw from the freeway. But still better than the old Sun office downtown, which had cat-sized rats and at least one bat.

 

A rat with a tail the size of a Big Chief pencil smacked my chair while I was laying out pages one night and disappeared into a hole in my cubicle wall.

 

JFC, you folks ever hear of rat traps? Or could you get the union to buy some traps, a few cats, or a friendly mountain lion?

 

That building, and the homeless guys pissing in the alley, were abandoned 13 years ago. It was in a sketchy part of downtown San Berdoo, so a guy always walked a woman to their car at night. Always.