Wednesday, June 04, 2008

I'm trying to watch my stories here...

Kansas City is a strange town when it comes to the news. I hate to say it, but it really is a AAA town. It isn’t the major leagues out here. Sure, there are some decent reporters but there is always something that is just a little bit off about everything they do. Little things like never showing out of town scores or covering high school sports with just a little too much interest. News reports focusing on the fact that the American Idol happens to be from here. Those sorts of things.

Last night was another example of this. While I was out last evening running errands I got caught in the rain. That is not a major news event as such so I didn’t expect to have cameras following me. Now in this part of the country when it rains it freaking rains so not only was I listening to Yoda and using the force because I couldn’t see the road thanks to the fact that the sewer system is older than Yoda I would occasionally hit standing water that could technically be considered a small stream. Given that I drive the little Grand Am that could, the concept of my being washed away was not theoretical last night.

But I made it home (thanks to the fact that I know how to drive in bad weather) and turned on the television to find that all of the local stations were showing breaking news reports on two major stories. The first was the rain where the news was, well, it was raining outside. Yes, it was really heavy and some of the streets were flooded and there was a lot of lightning but all of that information could be conveyed by looking out the window. It wasn’t a breaking news story. Yet every few minutes I was watching radar images of what was outside my window.

The other story, and the slightly more interesting one, was that lightning had hit a fuel storage tank causing roughly a million gallons of gasoline to go up in flames. Now this is a story. Maybe not one that causes you to preempt Hell’s Kitchen (grumble, grumble, grumble) but it is a story. I just couldn’t comprehend the non-stop coverage of it. This is what I know. 1) There was a fire. 2) No one was injured. 3) From as much as anyone could tell, the smoke wasn’t dangerous. 4) Pretty much no one was being evacuated and it was in a very industrial part of time. 5) Pictures of massive fires look really cool on television.

Number five was the reason this was on the air all night. It was just the fact that the pictures were really cool with flames shooting up nearly 100 feet into the air. But still, how is this more exciting than Hell’s Kitchen. It’s the one show I schedule my life around but no, I have to watch the news.

Oh, and I do like the fact that it took 15 minutes into the newscast for the stations to go “Oh yeah, Obama sealed the nomination. That’s historic or something.”

Wednesday Night Music Club: I’m in a bit of a New Orleans mood tonight so here is one of my favorite bands from there, the subdudes. Yes, at one point the video turns into an interview but I am including it because a) I really like the song and b) it emphasizes the fact that they don’t have a drummer but rather a guy who just plays tambourine. Pretty cool.

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