Well, I was on my way out the door to interview the Sultana High School cheerleading team — 1st in the state, two years in a row — when I got a call from Barb Stanton at Talk 960.
She was asking for more information about my article about the Hesperia Unified School District’s response to the Apple Valley child abduction attempts.
It was out of the blue, as sometimes happens in the news. The conversation went something like this:
Barb: Hey, Beau, it’s Barb Stanton!
Beau: Hey, Barb!
Barb: I’m on the air right now — well, we’re on a commercial break — and I wanted to know if you wanted to come on the air and talk about your article in the paper.
Beau: Which article is that?
Barb: The one about these horrible abductions in Apple Valley.
Beau: Oh, right. Yeah, but I’m running out the door to go to this interview …
Barb: It’ll only take a minute.
Beau: All right, Barb. We can do it fast.
Barb: Great.
So, with a minute’s worth of warning, I was back on the radio for the first time in 15 or 16 years. Hopefully I did OK. It helped that I’d just inputted the HUSD police log and was able to talk about relative school safety compared to my high school, South Lakes High School in Reston, VA, and about how kids in the HUSD get citations that add up to real money and that, yes, parents can and will get arrested if they fail to pay these fines.
It went OK, I think. We have a good relationship with Barb over here at the Hesperia Star, but I don’t know that I’m going to let her talk me into being interviewed on the radio as an actual guest. Even I don’t think that I’m that interesting.
Liz Phair’s next single, “Count on My Love” (a rather timid single off her album, to my mind), will be promoted with a new interview on the Ralph Hot site later this month.
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.)
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