Shared Moments

After the crazy bombing events last week and the manhunt that followed I started thinking about how much I love moments of solidarity when everyone is following the same story.  When I was at the Y on Friday morning every TV screen on every bike and treadmill was tuned in to the coverage in Boston.  No ESPN or "Everybody Loves Raymond" reruns or talk shows in sight.  We can all think of the moments our generation will remember.  Mine include many shared American experiences such as the outlandish and rather amusing OJ Simpson flight in the white bronco (I was at my friend Haley's house to watch that footage) the unreal horror of 9/11 and the inevitable arrival of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast which happened during my first weeks of college and my first weeks of law school.  I will always associate those events with those crazy and exciting times in my life.  Experiencing those events really brought the groups of new classmates I was part of together at a time when life long connections were starting to form.  And of course there was Election night 2000 when I stayed up until 2 a.m. on a school night waiting for the results that would take months to be final. 

It used to be required to turn on the TV to find out when there was a crisis or, in the case of OJ Simpson, an interesting celebrity news story.  Now news spreads fast and everyone knows the headlines before that intense music and red "Special Report" screen interrupt a TV show.  For example, when I woke up on Friday morning my phone had multiple CNN updates from the night giving up to the moment details of the shooting of the officer and the manhunt for that mysterious teenager turned terrorist.  Although my generation is criticized for being obsessed with our phones and addicted to the Internet I don't think I would like to go back to the past in this context.  I love news!  Good or bad or unbelievable as the big story might be, I like knowing all the details.  I think my love of news came from spending most of my childhood without cable TV which meant that we watched whatever was on the major networks which was often news or Dateline and its similar programs. 

Speaking of news and on a much lighter note, this video of a news anchor's first time on camera has 150,000 views on YouTube and the channel is a Bismarck channel! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0rP6IM4wjU

I wish I had seen this live! If you don't have the patience to watch it the details are that he didn't know when the camera would start filming and he says something homophobic and then mumbles "F-ing $h__" on live TV. I feel like a twelve year old giggling over this. I have made mistakes on the job too but wow this would be tough to overcome. And according to the newspaper he was fired today.  I can't help but feel bad for him even though it was seriously a "DUH" moment.  It makes me wonder what they talk about around that station on a regular basis! 

One last thing...over the weekend I went to my brother's fiance's bachelorette party.  Although it was nothing too raunchy or out of control, bachelorette party details are something that doesn't need to be discussed in detail on the Internet.  It was alot of fun.  Well, once the awkward part that involves the visualizations of your brother in the context of being a husband were over...haha...OK enough said...

 

Yeaaaahhh Melanie's last night as a free woman!!!!