Author Archives: Ty

Eh?, It's in the vault, Me Myself and Ty, Sports

I’m not good at pool, Eh?

We had just been herded inside from the patio and out of the crisp Toronto air. We crowded into the bar and lounge area, all of us forced to carry our conversations, spoken in half a dozen different languages, inside where a billiard table stood, taking up valuable standing and drinking room.

I was in a frenzy at this point, spinning in two different directions like a planet on two axes. Beers were only $4. They were delicious, but therein lied the problem: too many of them were sitting around unattended. There is a rule about alcohol within my circle of friends – it should never be wasted. I don’t think I’ll ever consider myself to be too old to finish off empties and actually approach the job with a point of pride – I feel like I’m the best at it.

After I had palmed two Canadian pints I hadn’t myself paid for, Kelly asked who was going to play pool with her. Deep down I knew it was me who would play her, as if the dice had already been cast and my number had come up. It was quite evident to me that no one else wanted to play, but she would be insatiable. Sometimes those things are just apparent.

Plus I knew it was time to lose again. Continue reading →

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It's in the vault, Journalism, Me Myself and Ty

It’s in the vault: The Dec. 23 Incident

As far as “It’s in the vault” stories go, I feel like this was an instant classic. Enjoy.

BOOM.

I’m outside Gary’s apartment and it’s cold. There’s vomit on the ground beneath the light pole and I’m stumbling toward the door.

In the moment, I can’t help but think I’m in a dream. I channel Inception and realize I can’t remember how I got to where I am now, but I’m too cold for it to be a dream. It feels too real. Continue reading →

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Me Myself and Ty, Music

Music Monday: Childish Gambino

My coolness barometer, aka Allison, forced me to listen to this album by insisting on driving places a few times (apparently she was sick of listening to my Goo Goo Dolls CD which was stuck in my car).

Eventually she wore me down to where there were songs I liked, and I asked her to burn me a copy. Listening through the album, I discovered the final track had an incredible final portion that was essentially raw spoken word poetry. It begins about three minutes in, as I remember.

The language he uses is so elementary, but so detailed. Anyone who has ever ridden a bus at night knows exactly what he’s talking about.

The words aren’t particularly enlightening, but what they invoke are images just as raw as the emotions that 13-year-old felt 15 years ago. I especially like the line about summer camp’s end meaning the end of summer, no matter what the calendar says.

This album is full of awesome songs, so you should definitely check out some other tracks, especially Bonfire.

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Journalism, Me Myself and Ty, Politics

Re(affirmation)

I have a crazy concept of deja vu that I learned from someone. I can’t remember who.

Anyway, the concept is that the phenomenon (feeling like you have experienced the moment you just experienced before) is simply evidence that you are on the right path.
For example: You think you dreamed that conversation last night? You did. That’s the path fate has chosen for you, and you’re following it perfectly.

Silly, maybe, but it’s a pleasant way to deal with that unexplained feeling. (Even though Farrell told me this weekend that it’s simply an example of your mind’s perception of what’s happening outpacing your mind’s ability to process what’s really happening…boring).

So the idea is that fate has these subtle reminders that you’re making the right choices along the way and everything is going according to THE plan.

I had one of those moments this weekend, when I visited Farrell and Jessica Saturday night.

I had aimed to get to their place after dinner, since their Indian friend, Vasant, was over preparing authentic Indian cuisine and I didn’t want to impose, but I arrived just in time to watch them cook.

They made food that pushed the limits of my recently expanded spicyness capacity and invited me to partake.

I provided nothing for the meal except for some cinnamon whiskey I brought, so I decided to contribute chiefly in the form of conversation.

Those who know me best know that, writing and driving backwards are my best contributions to society anyway, so it’s not a big surprise, but I started talking politics and blah blah blah.

Anyway, at some point during dinner, Vasant said the following:

“You should be like a columnist or something.”

He had just met me and had no idea he was sitting beside a newspaper I brought for Farressica that had my byline on it twice, and while I’m nowhere close to being a columnist, his suggestion that I be involved with a newspaper was as poignant as deja vu in asserting that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing the job I was meant to do.

It’s nice to know you’re on the right path.

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Music

muSic Saturday – The Lost Level

Draft created in August. Now available for your perusal!

 

Apologies to readers who followed my Music Monday posts with zeal when I was naming my holy trinity of dark-haired lyricists, but never completed the trio.

After naming Vanessa Carlton and Kate Nash as the first two inductees, a combination of occupationitis and proper timing prevented me from finishing the awards.

Proper timing happened last week.

Opening for the Goo Goo Dolls at a concert at the Raleigh Amphitheatre was some band named Parachute…but sandwiched between that band and the Goo was a starlet who I haven’t been able to listen to without thinking about Emerald Isle and Dairy Queen since 2004.

That was the summer I burned Michelle Branch’s CD for Stacy and we listened to it to and from the beach what seemed like every weekend…along with Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, but Blink 182 doesn’t qualify as a dark-haired lyricist.

Those songs transcend time for me…and apparently she just dropped a new album “Loud Music,” so when I walked into the amphitheatre and Michelle was singing from Hotel Paper it almost outshone Iris.

For the other members of the trio? See Kate Nash and Vanessa Carlton.

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Don't Call it a Farewell, DRIVEN, Journalism, Uncategorized

It’s in the Vault: Tall tale

My long-term absence will be explained in a future post.

When I got started in journalism, it wasn’t because I wanted to be a journalist.

It was because I wasn’t good enough to play sports at school anymore, so I sought a way to stay connected to them any way I could. Daniel Ellis invited me to attend a sports section meeting with him, and from then, I was sold.

Which is surprising, since I started out in the undesirable beats – for instance, covering our volleyball team which was riding a conference losing streak of more than 30 games.

Of course, I love volleyball, so it wasn’t really a stretch to stay interested, but there was also the spandex and the tall females I got to talk to on a weekly basis…

Maybe it wasn’t surprising, but regardless, I wouldn’t allow myself to date any of them.

I say that now and pretend like I was being an objective journalist with integrity, but it’s only because I was too afraid of them rejecting me to even ask. Continue reading →

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Journalism, Me Myself and Ty

Earning my wings

Now that I’ve done my whining, I can blog about how awesome my job has been.

I felt like I was getting ready to jump.

Goldsboro revolves around Seymour Johnson* Air Force Base and likely wouldn’t exist without it. The proximity to the base also means that reporters at the News-Argus cover Air Force happenings as often as they cover the city, and that there are incentive flights where members of the media go up with airplanes.

Kenneth, the military reporter who was juggling city government, too before I showed up, was embedded on a tanker for 18 hours back and forth to Afghanistan, and every other member of the newsroom had been up, so when the Air Force

Thunderbirds came to town for the Wings Over Wayne Air Show, I went up in a KC-135 Stratotanker to fuel the jets.

We made it to Arkansas and back in four hours, and when we landed I interviewed a Thunderbird pilot who got his start at Seymour Johnson, but essentially I got paid for seven ours of flying and watching planes land.

*Being from Goldsboro and having the last name Johnson, I can honestly admit I never saw the hilarity of the base’s name until college.

I swear to God he was looking right at me.


The 916th ARW boom. That's where the fuel comes out.

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Journalism, Me Myself and Ty

Homeboy

As per Jessie‘s advice, it’s time to pop the cap off of this new job and take it for a spin in the blogosphere before the dichotomy of my situation leaves me as two-faced as a Batman villain.

It’s been a month now since I began work at the Goldsboro News-Argus, and I love the job.

I’ve interviewed the governor, flown in an Air Force tanker and written several other stories that I will never speak of again. (Two words: Puppy Puppets).

But working at the News-Argus has one caveat. It lies in the paper’s name.

When the Goldsboro News merged with the Goldsboro Argus in the 1920s, they hyphenated the name to News-Argus (Argus comes from this, and the paper’s motto/mantra makes the newspaper seem pretty badass:

“This Argus o’er the people’s rights doth an eternal vigil keep.
No soothing strains o’Maia’s son can lull its hundred eyes to sleep.”

But I have no beef with Argus. Or News. Or the hypen. It’s Goldsboro that bothers me.

And that’s because the Goldsboro News-Argus was my hometown paper. I clipped articles from the Argus in 5th grade for current events. I looked for my name in the sports digest throughout high school. Now I sit over the left shoulder of the journalist who reported I won second place in Business Law in 10th grade and right in front of the door where the sports editor who covered my senior tennis run to the conference championship sits.

I have no problem with the paper, and, to be honest, my local roots likely helped me to earn the job over the other 75 applicants. When the editor sends me to Mount Olive, I know three different ways to get there and I lived four blocks from Goldsboro’s City Hall for the first four years of my life, so I guess I have to be grateful for being a Goldsboro native.

But, then there’s the issue of being BACK in Goldsboro. I now hate this song, which reminds me that if I die in Wayne County, I would have lived and died in a small town. (Note: If I die, scatter my ashes into the Caribbean. Or flush them down a toilet in Raleigh…just don’t let me end up in this place eternally).

And living in Goldsboro means having to find a place to live in Goldsboro, meaning I’m hitting the snooze button before work in the same bedroom where I once hit the snooze button before school.

I’m still paying rent in Raleigh through July, but my parents are giving me rent-free housing in Rosewood, and I’m decaying from the inside-out. My parents have actually been way cooler about the situation than I thought they would and haven’t suffocated me, but to go to Raleigh, run a paper, graduate and get a full-time job only to end up back where it all started just eats away at me. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t use any family connections or favors to get the job, I still feel like a comebacker.

And it wouldn’t be so bad if I just had someone to drink with!

I haven’t hung out with anyone I graduated with (aside from Jeff) since Fall 2006, so it’s almost like I’m a lonely stranger in my own hometown. I was so desperate, I went to church to find drinking buddies a few weeks ago. (I also just realized that the part of that that I find so strange isn’t that I went to church for drinking, but that I went to church).

So I’ve shuttled between Raleigh and Goldsboro at least twice a week and have done a lot of solo drinking behind closed doors to stay sane, but I’m still struggling.

I managed to find a full-time job in a dying industry during the worst recession since the Great Depression less than four months after graduation, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve taken a step back.

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Journalism, Me Myself and Ty

Journalism job security!

Fear not journalists! We have at least four years of prime journalistic’n before we can stop the presses for real.

Last weekend I sat down with a calculator and studied the budgets of every newspaper in existence. I modeled their advertising business plans along a five-year trek and it seems a $6/month paywall subscription for each website would provide enough revenue to keep us in business until 2015!

Actually, I did sit down and discover we’ll be okay last weekend, but all I did was watch Back to the Future II. Go to 5:38.

We’re gonna be okay!

EDITOR’S NOTE: I just realized that there is no reference to the Internet at all in Back to the Future. How prophetic could it be without noting that? Also, are we anywhere near the development of a Mr. Fusion that can generate 1.21 gigawatts of power through the processing of garbage? Hell, there are no hoverboards, powered or not…or self-drying jackets endorsed by Stephen Hawking…and, come to think of it, USA TODAY hasn’t even changed their logo to that futuristic design yet…

False alarm journalists. Turns out the deadline could come anytime.

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