Recently in Celebs Category

Nope, that's not the latest lopsided High School Basketball score or misguided NBC game show. That's the number of people that worked here 10 years ago vs the number working here today. Actually I should subtract 2 since one person was let go and another is retiring in a couple weeks. We have 80 less people working here today versus 10 years ago and counting.

Maybe I should back up a sec. I was back in the break room looking at the yearly collage of old New Year's pages when something struck me: the photos were much bigger than normal and there were much less of them. I started counting the 2000 page vs the 2010 page and sure enough, 174 employees in 2000, 96 now-ish.

That didn't seem possible back then. Sure there were rumblings back then "oh, newspapers are in decline, there won't be any in 20 years, it'll all be online or some other form we don't know about...". OK so some of that was completely warranted but did I think back then in 10 years we wouldn't be printing here, we'd have nearly half the staff and we'd be in bed with TCO? No fucking way. It boggles the mind.

Also boggling are the amount of long-timers still around. Some have retired or expired since 2000, some outright quit and/or were fired. I guess I have to count myself in that number since I've been here for 12 years now(even tho the caption on the New Year's page says 13, it's 12 in 2 weeks. Seems longer). Also interesting to me is how they skew older. The advertising and production side by far have the longest-tenured people left here. News tends to skew younger with the exception of sports cause hey, getting to sit around and report on ballgames(occasionally live) and talk sports all day seems like a pretty sweet job. If I did that I'd probably stay in it as long as I could too. Actually I kinda do with MMA recaps which I will get back to doing soon but I digress.

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I guess you never know what could happen. Industries die, small island nations have disasters that destroy entire cities, crackpot right-wingers say stupid, stupid, STUPID shit about said disaster(looking at YOU, Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh you disgusting pig). The South has 3 solid weeks of freezing weather. These are all things you would put in the "very unlikely to happen" files and yet....

Except for the Robertson and Limbaugh thing. Totally expected from 2 of the biggest pieces of shit on the planet. Die in a fire. Please.

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Speaking of people that should DIAF, Jay Leno and Jeff Zucker(President, NBC) have not only destroyed NBC's ratings but are now about to take Conan O'Brien off of The Tonight Show because of said ratings collapse. Conan has been a gentleman in these proceedings as far as I can tell, and has far more to lose. He moved his entire family, band, staff, writers to California and they are all now looking at the prospect of not having a job. This is an asshole move by NBC no matter how you look at it. I wish Conan the best, and I'm proud to be on Team Coco.

Kinda surprised to be writing this, guess it hit me a little harder than I thought it would. Yesterday around 6:30pm Michael Jackson died of a coronary. I'm trying to resolve my feelings about that.

I know the guy was a bit creepy but look at it from his point of view for a sec. He was stuck at 12 years old. All the things he's accused of, wouldn't have even brought a blink of an eyelash if he was still 12 having some friends over for a sleepover. If I was home alone without parents around during a sleepover, hell yeah I'd go after the liquor cabinet. I'd share with my friends. And when you're that age it's not unusual to sleep in the same bed. The sexual allegations, nobody will know for sure. I think nothing happened but I could be naive.

As I posted in a reply on Facebook early this morning, I choose to remember the man for his music. I was 6 years old when he hit big with Thriller. I remember having a huge fight with my stepsister and stepmother about being able to watch the "Thriller" video cause it was "too scary". I did finally sneak a peek and wasn't scared at all, but fascinated by it.

I remember watching the "Black or White" video when it aired after The Simpsons and marveled at how cool that was....and wondered WTF he was thinking with the extended car bashing/masturbation session tacked onto it. And then the "Remember The Time" video with Eddie Murphy, even if I didn't think the song was that great, the video was pretty cool.

And of course there was Moonwalker. Bad movie but the extended scene with Smooth Criminal was worth it. To this day one of my favorite songs, and one of the best covers of the past 10 years(look up Alien Ant Farm if you haven't seen the video. Some awesome, awesome stuff).

In my circles in the 90's and high school it was never cool to admit to liking him, but everybody was a fan even if they couldn't admit it. Even today, the day after his death, people are bashing him for what he might have done but even more are celebrating the music and what could have been. All I can say is: Rest in Peace, MJ.