When covering a recent Stockton City Council meeting (which can be pretty dry events) I saw something that I had never noticed before. At the press table at the back of the council chambers reporter Kevin Parrish (filling in for City Hall reporter Scott Smith who was off that day) was reflected in the gold-colored [...]
Today is March 14 (3/14) or National Pi Day (pi = 3.14…and so on). Here’s a link to an entry I wrote in Oct. 2011 about a “pie” day of a different kind and its consequences. Happy Pi Day!
Between opening acts and headliners at concerts it’s customary to play recorded music for the fans to listen to. Various artists are usually played mostly as background music as the roadies change around the stage. The Carrie Underwood/Hunter Hayes concert at the Stockton Arena was no different. Hayes opened with a rousing set, but when [...]
The Underwood/Hayes concert at the Stockton Arena was quite a spectacular-spectacular production. There were myriad lights and speakers, each with their own rigging. The stage had large moving parts, and it included a projection system with a huge screen that had to be at least 20 to 30 feet tall and ran the length of [...]
All the photographers covering the Carrie Underwood concert (there were 4 of us: the house photographer, 2 shooters from the Bay Area, and myself) were limited to where the soundboard was near the rear third of the arena floor. A few minutes before the County star took the stage, a man leaned over one of [...]
“A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all.” – Rita Mae Brown Sometimes a deadline is no big deal, it can be like a goal that helps you reach at the end of a work day. Other times it can feel like a wild beast nipping at your heels and [...]
At the Got Milk Breakfast Challenge kickoff rally at Tokay High School in Lodi pairs of students were picked for a Nickleodeon-type game. One student covered their face with shaving cream while the other threw miniature marshmallows in an effort to get them to stick to the foam. The winner would be the one with [...]
Stockton environmentalist Bill Jennings has this habit of wearing his glasses on his forehead, which is fine but I don’t know how he manages to keep them up there without them constantly sliding down. Sometimes they look as if they’re permanently affixed until he reaches up to bring them down. Jennings spoke at the protest [...]
At Gov. Brown’s press conference, there were a number of charts and graphs set up on easels, a common practice at these types of events. One of these boards had pictures of several different species of fish that live in the Delta. There were little pictures of Chinook salmon and steelhead trout among others, but [...]
Gov. Jerry Brown held a press conference at the California Resources Building in downtown Sacramento to announce his plans to build two large tunnels to ferry water from the Delta to Southern California and other areas. The conference (known in the news business as “pressers”) was set in a relatively small conference room on the [...]
