Which of your phrase-turns are you most proud of?

I literally laughed out loud and figuratively shot acid through my nose at that one.

 

Yeah, nothing quite like a good "Talk about..." lede.

Helluva way to start a question in a press conference, too.

 

how about this? next time any of us are covering a basketball game and the lights go out and one team shoots 97% from the field, how about each one of us pledge not write a lede about shooting the lights out figuratively, literally or otherwise.

 

How about.... figurally?

 

Today I wrote that red means stop only at stoplights and some bull shit about octagon signs that say so. Stopping in a red zone, however is not the goal.

It was one of the top five worst things I've ever written, but I'll say it: I couldn't think of another lede and after an hour, I was tired of thinking about it.

 

OK, I'm not submitting this as my best turn of phrase ever -- not even in the top 50 or so, but still. On a story about London's upcoming Fashion Week, the organizers were called upon to get rid of the ultra-thin, emaciated models and use some who look more like, you know, humans. Some group in Spain recently booted the super-thin chicks from doing the catwalk at a fashion show. So, disregarding the bad break, my head was:
It turns out you can be too
thin (but too rich is still OK)
The guy doing slot didn't get it, didn't like it. As in never heard the cliche' "You can never be too rich or too thin." He wants it changed. I was pissed, but, fuck it, finally changed it to this:
London Fashion Week urged
to ban extremely thin models
Now, which one is gonna make you give even more than a cursory look at that story? I'm not saying the first one is the greatest, but it's a hell of a lot better than the dry, dull second one. And isn't the point of a headline to entice someone to actually READ the fucking story?
Well, fuck it. I give up. No more trying to be clever, no more giving a flying fuck. Straight news, all day all the time. The news side has won. I'm beaten. Fuck.

 

And I'm getting a beer.

 

As an aside, Derrick Frost is so shitty, he couldn't make the Browns. ....

All I can say, is never write a sentence you've read before. It's hard sometimes. But, originality is the spice of what we do.

 

It was the great Dr. Johnson you ignorant fool.