Not Necessarily The News

When the missus and I moved to Eugene, we had to get used to some things. For example, Eugeneans suffer from yield confusion. To clarify, a Eugenean is a resident of Eugene and as far as I know it has nothing, or at least very little, to do with eugenics. Somewhere in the drivers' education curriculum someone has confused yield with merge and consequently no Eugenean understands the difference. This has been a source of constant frustration for me and may warrant another post later on. But I need to talk about a more important issue. The news.

I love watching the news. For national news I turn to the CBS Evening News with Bob Schiefer. Bob is a great anchor. He has all the qualities that one must possess in order to present the news to the Nation. He has the voice, the looks, the style, even the intangibles. I would argue that no one has mastered the craft of witty banter quite as well as Mr. Schiefer. Granted, Dan Rather was quick with some pretty wild similes, but that dude was a one trick pony. No, for my money nothing beats Bob Schiefer. A truly great American.

When the national news is over it is time for local news. We aren't too far away from Portland, but all of the local news here is produced and broadcast right in Eugene. Some would argue that having news stations in Eugene helps people to get the information that is important to them. Those people are wrong. The news is so bad here that even if there was an important story (and there hasn't been in over a year), the news would screw it up somehow and no one would ever hear it.

Do you ever watch those bloopers shows on TV? Don't pretend like you're better than me, I know you watch them. Anyway, at least 20% of the news bloopers are from Eugene news. When I was in sixth grade I had to create a news report with some classmates. We used my uncle's video camera and filmed in my living room. The lighting sucked, the microphones didn't work, and the delivery of the news was less than stellar. It was right on par with Eugene news.

Here are just some of my favorite moments from Eugene news:

One time on the evening news the weatherman started choking during the weather. The director quickly changed cameras but you could still hear old Joe choking in the background. It turned out the rascal had sneaked some nuts in with him. I can just picture him with his suit pockets full of nuts. I bet the director had warned him about it too. "Joseph, you better not be sneaking nuts. I'll be damned if we're going to have another nut-fiasco on our hands." But that man likes nuts. You can't tell a bear to not eat the honey and you can't tell Joseph to not snack on nuts while he is waiting to do the weather. He was probably just as bored as the rest of us watching the news and just wanted to stay awake. I think that is probably my most cherished memory of Eugene so far.

Not too long ago the lead story on the news was about a missing dog. A missing dog? Who decided that was the most important story of the day? For a minute I thought that maybe it was the news anchor's dog or something. A missing dog? Who gives a crap? Maybe the person who lost the dog cares, but no one else does. Besides, shouldn't the person who lost the dog be out looking for the dog and not calling the news to do a story about it? I cannot believe that a missing dog was the most important news of the day. Didn't anyone drown in the river? What about a house fire? No meth labs were discovered? I guess hippies just really love their dogs.

One last fun story. I told you about the weatherman with the nut problem, but there is another weatherman who suffers from an even more serious ailment: he doesn't understand weather. There are innumerable examples from this joker, but the best was just the other day. It has been cold the past few weeks and he was going over the current conditions in Oregon. He got most of the numbers right and then he got to Bend. The temperature was zero, but he said, "Currently in Bend there is no temperature." Now, I don't need to tell you that temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the particles in a sample of matter, expressed in terms of units or degrees designated on a standard scale. That is science. So there is no way that there could ever be no temperature. The weatherman paused for a second probably to think about how he is able to take complex scientific concepts and explain them in a way that the average person can grasp them. It was pretty rad.

Anyway, I'd love to hear about your favorite news personality or story.