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Farewell to a Beat Writer

It’s not uncommon for a newspaper reporter to change beats. Covering the same exact thing, day after day, has benefits but can also be tiring. Having spent eight years at The Washington Post, I’ve seen three journalists cover the Washington Capitals beat. Rachel Alexander/Nichols did a fine job, and has moved on to much better things at ESPN. Jason La Canfora then did a good job before being promoted to cover the Redskins. Then came Tarik el Bashir, who had a much greater sense for hockey than most Post journalists (particularly the columnists). Sure, that’s not saying much considering the criticism of The Post’s hockey coverage, but Tarik has definitely improved it over the past five years.

My first encounter with Tarik was during the lockout season several years back. I ran into former Capitals captain Jeff Halpern at the now-closed Hockey Stop in Rockville. Halpern said he was going back to Europe to play for a team. I e-mailed Bill Grant, my former boss and washingtonpost.com sports editor, who e-mailed Tarik who called Jeff and then wrote an article about it. I didn’t actually meet Tarik then but when I finally met him years later in the Capitals press room, he actually remembered that little story. He also thought it was hilarious that we named our blog “Capitals Outsider” which was a play on words for his Washington Post blog, “Capitals Insider.”

Over the next couple season I got to watch Tarik work. He had the most demanding job of any journalist in the Capitals press room. He had a great sense of humor, and it was great watching him interact with the players and coaches since he knew them better than the other journalists.

So when he stepped down from his beat to focus on NASCAR, Georgetown basketball and his family, I wasn’t surprised, but I knew I had to write a tell-all tale about the dirty secrets behind his work. So I wrote “A Tribute to Tarik el-Bashir” for Capitals Outsider.

Tarik’s response: “Oh my god. Never thought I would see that. Thanks man.”

And Ted Leonsis’s response: “That is very nice of you although although early on he didn’t like the bloggers for the Caps at all:-). Ted”

Well, THAT I didn’t know. You lose, Tarik! Bloggers forever!

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Will People Ever Learn?

Here is a copy of the letter I wrote and distributed to my neighbors.

July 27, 2010

Dear neighbor,

On Tuesday, July 27, around 8:30 p.m., a couple from 11210 left an unattended fire burning in the grill by the tennis court. It was a coal fire, there was no food, and there was no one around when I called out. It was unattended for about 5 to 10 minutes.

I grabbed the fire extinguisher, but opted not to use it as I saw some ice on the ground, and put it out with the ice. I sat there on the park bench for a few more minutes, talking to another neighbor about fire safety, when a child came out from 11210. I asked him whose fire it was, and he pointed inside. I believe it was his mother who came out after that, cursing at me for invading her space.

Yelling ensued, and I went inside and called the police. The woman and a man started the fire again and this time stayed outside, yelling at me through the window. When the police came and went to talk with them, I was only told that the situation was under control.

After losing just about everything I owned in the Dec. 2007 fire at Cherry Glen, I may be a bit antsy when it comes to people leaving unattended fires on the grounds, as I should be. Not only that, it is against condo rules to do such a thing, and it should not be tolerated.

Seeing what we have already been through, I urge anyone to immediately report unattended fires to the police instantly. Cherry Glen has responded in the past by putting up flyers about this, but considering this incident, I strongly feel that flyers dont help. So Im asking you, neighbor to neighbor, to help put an end to this dangerous, selfish behavior that can once again take our homes away.

Thank you,

Ben Sumner

Building 12

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Top 25 Celebrities Who Are Robbing the Cradle

There’s something fascinating about a person who dates or marries someone who is young enough to be their child. You know, the gross type of fascinating. That’s when we do the math and determine how old our future spouse would be, only to think… EWWW! Let’s look at the current celebrity couples with the largest age differences.

1 Ginger Baker and Kudzai Machokoto

42 years

The legendary drummer tied the knot with a Zimbabwean nurse this year.

2 Robert Duvall and Luciana Pedraza

41 years

 

3 Clint Eastwood and Dina Ruiz

36 years

Dirty Harry wed a newscaster.

4 Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn

35 years

I might one day become famous for not having the restraint to keep from punching Woody Allen in the face because he’s an annoying putz who married his (step)daughter.

5 Davy Jones and Jessica Pacheco

31 years

The Monkee married a Telumundo reporter after proposing outside a Krispy Kreme.

6 Eric Clapton and Melia McEnery

31 years

 

7 Edward James Olmos and Lymari Nadal

31 years

Detective Gaff from Blade Runner and Frank Lucas’s wife in the movie American Gangster. That’s who these two are.

8 Pete Townshend and Rachel Fuller

28 years

 

9 Kenny Rogers and Wanda Miller

28 years

 

10 Steve Martin and Anne Stringfield

26 years

Sorry, showing this photo was highly unnecessary.

11 Rush Limbaugh and Kathryn Rogers

26 years

Aren’t you glad it isn’t a photo of Rush at the beach?

12 Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster

26 years

Maybe I should also do an article on biggest height difference.

13 Celine Dion and René Angélil

26 years

I’ve gotta hand it to Celine. She actually seemed to marry this guy for love.

14 Larry King and Shawn Southwick

26 years

These two almost fell off the ‘current’ list but they called off their divorce recently, and Southwick’s suicide attempt failed.

15 Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones

25 years

This is one I’m insanely jealous about.

16 Bruce Willis and Emma Heming

24 years

Ha, take that, Demi! Willis, Moore’s ex, has a much bigger bigger age difference than she has with Ashton Kutcher (15 years).

17 Donald Trump and Melania Knauss

24 years

More reason to hate this guy.

18 Chuck Norris and Gena O’Kelley

24 years

 

19 Malcolm McDowell and Kelley Kuhr

24 years

He’ll always be Alex DeLarge to me.

20 Sylvester Stallone and Jennifer Flavin

23 years

 

21 Frank Gifford and Kathie Lee Gifford

23 years

To think, he cheated on her.

22 Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart

23 years

And when Star Wars came out, we thought the age difference between Han Solo and Princess Leia was too much.

23 Aaron Johnson and Sam Taylor Wood

23 years

To me, this one is the most disturbing because Johnson, who was in the film Kick-Ass, isn’t even old enough to drink in the United States. Taylor-Wood is his director on Nowhere Boy, and recently gave birth to a daughter.

24 Wayne Newton and Kathleen McCrane

22 years

 

25 Kevin Costner and Christine Baumgartner

22 years

 

More notables…
Carol Burnett and Brian Miller, 23 years
Peter Gabriel and Meabh Flynn, 22 years
Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, 21 years
Nicolas Cage and Alice Kim, 20 years
Marilyn Manson and Evan Rachel Wood, 19 years
Howard Stern and Beth Ostrosky, 18 years
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, 17 years
Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, 15 years
Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, 15 years

Broken up…
Tony Curtis and Jill Vanden Berg, 45 years
James Woods and Ashley Madison, 39 years
Billy Joel and Katie Lee Joel, 32 years

Hugh Hefner was 61 years older than Crystal Harris, 54 years older than Holly Madison, 37 years older than Kimberley Conrad, etc., but we expect that from him.

And then there’s this…
Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall III, 63 years

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No Power, Again

Sunday, a 15-minute storm hit the area, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people. Back in Feb., the snowstorm did the same (which was worse because we had snow to put up with on top of the power outage). In 2007, my home burnt down during a power outage due to someone’s misplaced candle in another unit. We also had a long outage in 2003 with Hurricane Isabel. There have been several more minor outages since.

Anyway, it’s once again time to throw out all the food in the refrigerator. Also, I can’t go to work, because the office has no power, and I can’t use the pool, because the cleaning pump isn’t working. It’s difficult to drive int he area because so many stop lights are out.

What to do, then?

I’m going to stockpile all the necessities for something major to happen, because eventually it will. So if you need any Uzis and Twinkies, I’ll be hogging them all.

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Stop Motion Animation – ICK

I’ve been watching stop motion animation films since I was a kid, and it dawned on me recently that there isn’t a single stop-mo film that I actually like.

The work that goes into stop motion is incredible. It’s admirable that someone would do it. But it always turns out, in one word… creepy. The choppy movements are something out of a nightmare. Is it a coincidence that so many ‘dark’ and ‘scary’ scripts, such as Coraline, Nightmare Before Christmas, Tool’s Sober video, and others use stop motion? If anything, stop motion should only be used for relatively ‘scary’ films.

Anyway, there are many people who LOVE stop motion and I won’t fault them for it, but I just had to vent that many people also HATE IT.

My article, “Stop Motion Animation Sucks,” was submitted to Digg. I rolled my eyes. I knew that if it somehow got popular, I’d get destroyed in the comments, and it would be buried off the front page. I was correct.

The funny thing to me was that most of the comments simply disagreed, along with calling me a bad name. No one offered any clear reason that it is ‘cool,’ or ‘awesome,’ and said that my calling it ‘creepy’ was just my opinion. No duh. Even better, some people linked to ‘artistic’ stop motion videos and said something along the lines of, “If you think stop motion sucks then obviously you haven’t seen this.” Then I watched some of the weirdest, creepiest animation I’ve ever seen in their linked video. Even other users replied and said “What the f@$# did I just watch?” And yes, other users agreed with me that it sucks, but it’s always the haters who are more vocal.

So there you have it. Some people love stop motion, and others think it is virtually unwatchable. I speak for the later. But I’ll keep watching it, as I always have, in hopes that one day, someone actually gets a good script and doesn’t make the characters look like a walking turd.