The bad news: The Hesperia Star did not win any of the Best of Freedom Awards this year. So no repeat.
The good news: El Mojave, the Hesperia Star’s smaller Latina sister, did win, for a story we can only call Un piano, rosas y un gran amor, since that’s its name.
¡Felicitaciones!
Well, my big bonus from the Daily Press is almost gone at last, blown on such fripperies as six tires for two cars, a new vacuum cleaner, a new television set to replace one that no longer recognized commands from any remote control and had a whimsical mind of its own about volume levels, a new keyboard that is actually built for man-sized hands (and is heavy enough to take a 110 words per minute beating without sliding all over the table) (and glows) and, if I can find the father of a former Hesperia Star office manager, a much-needed detailing for my car.
I also bought some toys. And by toys, I mean books. But I also picked up a lot of music I’ve been wanting for a while. To make it last, I’ve been burning one CD a week and putting them on the old iPod. I currently have the Arctic Monkeys’ “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not,” Sons & Daughters’ “Repulsion Box” and now Death Cab for Cutie’s “Plans” on the iPod, with Rilo Kiley, the Postal Service and the Desperate Housewives soundtrack (for the new Liz Phair track) waiting in the dugout.
Combined with the recent bumper crop of freebie music from iTunes, it’s been a heady time for me and my trusty monochrome iPod. The Arctic Monkeys rock just as hard as their hype says they do (I already listened to “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor” enough last year to get the single into the top 100 of songs I listened to last year), Sons & Daughters’ rocking guitars are a great match for nearly impenetrable Scottish accents and the beautiful, romantic melancholy (which sounds Goth, but isn’t) of Death Cab for Cutie is just astonishingly good. (And yes, both bands had singles that made it into my top 100 of last year. I’ve been waiting a while to pick up their full albums.)
I’m not sure why I’m addicted to the relentless chase after new music, instead of retreating into the womb of music that I listened to in college, as most of my peers have seemed happy to do. I blame KCRW.
Well, I suppose this is good news: Jenn and I have recently cut out almost all sugary drinks out of our lives, moving our respective caffeine consumption from Cherry Coke to Diet Cherry Coke, Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, Diet Sprite and Coke Zero. I’m not loving the diet sodas — some days less than others — but I’m OK with it.
Now a Harvard study says that just doing this is enough to lead to measurable sustained weight loss. NPR had a story on it yesterday, meaning I heard about it on the most e-mailed stories podcast this morning:
Researchers say a simple way for teens to lose weight is to stop having sugary drinks. Doctors at Children’s Hospital in Boston found that teenagers who replaced soda and juices with calorie-free beverages lost about a pound a month over a six-month trial.
A pound a month isn’t anything to get super-excited about, but every little bit helps, I suppose. (The photo on my column today in the Hesperia Star looks suspiciously Brandoesque to my eyes.)
It’s always impossible to know what sort of story will get the most reaction from readers.
In my first month at the Hesperia Star, I wrote a story about a gay church in conservative Hesperia. To this day, not a peep from the readers.
Later, I did a story about a man whose roosters were seized on suspicion that he was raising them for cockfighting. The pro-cockfighting folks from around the country filled my e-mail and voicemail inboxes with outraged responses.
And now, a story about how the Hesperia Unified School District is using early intervention to catch students before they get categorized as learning disabled due to their academic performance and thus having one of the lowest percentages of special education students in the state has had my e-mail inbox swelling to the bursting point again.
This time, though, it’s with positive e-mails, with educators from as far away as Scotland wanting to know more. They saw a link to the story in a weekly news round-up e-mail from the Council for Exceptional Children.
You never can tell.
Well, we were paying for broadcast stations only on cable (getting the signals up here in the High Desert without cable is an extremely iffy proposition), but we’d been getting TBS and FX for free. (Along with MTV2, but TiVo can’t find it automatically, and has to be manually sent to it whenever we want to watch it.)
This weekend, Charter Communications finally figured out that FX had slipped through its net, and yanked it from the line-up. Good-bye, The Shield, Rescue Me and Thief.
It’s not really worth paying the whatever more a month for more channels — I don’t need to pay to not watch women’s shuffleboard on ESPN-5 or whatever — but it’s still a little annoying.
More to put on the Netflix queue, I suppose.
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