New blog

I now have a blog at the newspaper where I work. It will focus on the beat I cover there, which is jobs and workplace issues. It's called, creatively, At Work.
I take no responsibility for the name.

Halloween

On Friday, my neighbor across the street threw a raucous Halloween party. He outdid himself with the decorations; his place looked like a haunted house. Among the costumed attendees were the Village People construction worker, a butterfly, Matt Foley and Wonder Woman. But my favorites were Dog the Bounty Hunter and Pete Rose. The host was a grotesque zombie whose skull was showing through his melting face. Here's my costume. I was a Chinese laborer.



Here's the party host, a decaying corpse:



Here's Dog and his non-bounty-hunting wife:



And here's Pete Rose at his finest:

Neighborhood crime spree

From the Register Star:
Man robbed at gunpoint at ATM
Oct 20, 2007 @ 09:47 PM
ROCKFORD -- A man was robbed at gunpoint Saturday at an ATM near Whitman and Church streets.
The man was getting $20 after 8 p.m. when he was approached by another man with a gun. The man ordered the victim to withdraw another $100 from the machine, then fled with the money.

I know this ATM. It is about five blocks from my house. When am I gonna get that FOID card back?

I wear my sunglasses at night

My eyeglass frames broke two days ago after one of the nose pads was bent dozens of times. And because I turned my old pair of glasses into sunglasses, I have nothing to fall back on while I wait for replacement frames. So I have to either wear sunglasses all the time or walk around half blind, squinting at everything. I'm not sure which is worse, especially at night.
Oh yeah, the vision place said it will take 5-7 business days to get the frames. So I'm going to look like a tool for a while. And my editor told me that they need to take a new photo of me for a blog at work. So maybe the sunglass look will be preserved for the ages...

Unwanted polictical endorsement?

I'm stealing this photo of a bumper sticker from a friend's blog. I just think it's funny. Funny because its true. Actually, I think Dick Cheney is Lord Voldemort. Think I'm kidding? Compare this photo to this one.

I'm all out of Palm, I'm so lost without you

My Palm TX is in the shop. This doesn't seem like something worthy of a post, but I am now so dependent on that little 128 MB of memory to carry my through my day that I miss it. It tells me where to go, when to be there, what the weather will be like, who's trying to contact me, how to reach them, everything.
But the screen was on the fritz, so I mailed it in for a repair. Now it's gone and I'm like a lost dog wandering the streets. Last night I went to a friend's wedding reception, but because I have no PDA to guide me, I just had to remember where it was supposed to be (yeah, I coulda checked the invite). It was at Rockford Country Club, I recalled. When I arrived the place was chock full of tuxedos and evening gowns for the annual Red Ball. Whoops. The reception was actually at Forest Hills Country Club. So I was a little late.
None of this would've happened if my trusty digital friend would've been there to help me.

Eating champion

UPDATE: The owner of the bar and grill where this BLT is served got a big boost of business after this video. They sold 220 of them from 11 a.m. Friday (when the video was posted) until Sunday evening.

Here's my latest attempt at videography at the Register Star. It's my crowning achievement, since I both starred in and edited this video. Check out my attempt to eat a massive BLT:



If you can't view it, go here and click on "Nate Legue attempts to eat giant BLT."
P.S. Note similarity between my hat and the Bogey's (below).

Movie buff?

Remember how I said I don't watch movies anymore? Well, after my movie post, I started again. I'm repeating the film noir stage I had when I was 13 years old. I guess I'm re-living my youth. I started out with Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which isn't really noir, but it's a great Humphrey Bogart flick. Now I'm working my way through the Cagney filmography. First, White Heat (of course). Last night, The Roaring Twenties.
I think I love noir because it's straightforward. All the action is displayed in facial expressions. Unlike the pomo flicks I watch, the narrative arc is not disorienting. There's grimy characters and they do rotten things, but there's always a glimmer of humanity in them. Kind of like a lot of us.

Robbery epilogue

By the way, the mugging victim who came to visit me earlier this week stopped by the following day to thank me. He was sober and bandaged up and he seemed like a nice fellow. He said he found his watch, but his wallet and ID were gone.

I meant it.

I downloaded an application for a FOID card yesterday. And filled it out. All I need is a little photo of myself and 5 bucks and I can legally own a gun in this state.
I'm still ambivalent about actually purchasing one, but I'm keeping my options open.

More neighborhood fun

I'm going to get a shotgun. Seriously, I am.
Tonight, I'm finishing a cigarette (yeah, the quitting didn't last long) and I see a derelict guy walking down my sidewalk. This isn't unusual and I'm ready for bed, so I go inside. The doorbell rings 45 seconds later. I almost grab the three-foot-long broom handle I keep for after-dark visitors, but I see the guy through my front door so I go answer it. It's the derelict fellow and he's bloody and says, "Call 911, I've been robbed." He's got rivulets drying on his forehead and his ear is encrusted with dark crimson. I call the cops.
Turns out he was walking down the street just a few houses from my own when he got rolled. He didn't know what they hit him with, but he saw the car. He said they stole his wallet, which had no money, and his watch. He sat on my porch while we waited for the police and held his head in his hands. I gave him a cigarette.
A cruiser, a fire truck and an ambulance showed up within 5 minutes and they took him to get stitches for his ear. By now all the neighbors are out in their yards to see the commotion. After things die down, another guy rolls up and gets out of a car. His shirt is torn and covered in dried blood. He says two black guys in a Lumina pulled the same job on him, but he wouldn't cough up his wallet. He doesn't want to talk to the cop because he's been drinking, but I introduce the two of them anyway. The officer takes him for a ride to see the spot where he got rolled.
All of this happened on my block, probably a hundred yards from my backyard. I love this neighborhood.