April 18, 2002

nothing ubiques like ubiquity

I’m slowly becoming ubiquitous in this beautiful city, this charming town. I’m Vice King Geek, I write for the Statesman and the RipSaw (well, once), I wear pope hats and powder blue suitcoats, I maintain a dishonorable website…

And I just got off the phone with Mark Stodghill of the Duluth News Tribune. Spring Bling II got canceled, and apparently Mark picked up my name from UMDStudents.com thinking I’d be a good student quote for the story. As luck would have it, I’ve been working on a Spring Bling story of my own, so I gave him an earful of leads and other sources to contact. Mark was very polite. Poor guy. He was probably hoping to finish the story before lunch.

It’s really funny when journalists interview other journalists. A lot of linguistic clumsy dancing occurs. I’m interested in how I’m portrayed, and how much Mark rakes into the story. There are so many things going on with this issue: The conflict between Duluth and its college population, law enforcement throwing its weight around, the flawed repercussions of an idiot drowning in a creek…

…and stuck somewhere in the middle is a jerk that flings words like poo and has a recording gig with a slipshod blues band tonight.