snow leopard

Abby Ham realized the problem right away. She knew some blog readers will mistakenly assume I have a shoe fetish. However her choice of footwear on a cold, slushy day makes it worth the risk.



Abby and her husband stopped by while I was working at the radio station's booth at the Healthy Living Expo. One of the first things she said was that she had worn the wrong shoes for the weather. I told her about the last three times the shoes of local news anchors had appeared on my blog. She agreed that it would still be funny to add her pumps to my online collection.



Of all the supermarkets in Knoxville, it made sense that Earth Fare would be the one with a booth at the Healthy Living Expo. I tried several of their free samples, including coffee from the Vienna Coffee Company in Maryville and chocolate milk from Cruze Farm in Knoxville.

One of the last things you might expect to see at the Healthy Living Expo would be a group of zombies. However when the familiar notes of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" played over the speakers, the zombies literally crawled out from under the tables. One or two of them grabbed my legs as they crawled to the stage where they did an outstanding job of replicating the dance from the music video.

man of the hour

When the parish council started planning a farewell reception for Fr. Ragan Schriver, he said he hoped that it would be fun. It was more than fun, it was hysterical. This afternoon's event at All Saints Catholic Church, was inspired by the old Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts.



I was asked to serve as roastmaster. In addition to the guest of honor, the dais was populated with three other priests, a local news anchor and me. Fr. Tony Dickerson and Fr. Michael Woods talked about the craziness of life in the rectory with Fr. Ragan. Former pastor Fr. Chris Michelson gave a different perspective on the story of hot candle wax spilling onto Fr. Ragan's head at the Easter Vigil. John Becker of WBIR often plays tennis with Fr. Ragan. He told a funny story about the priest's car smelling like a locker room because of all the sweaty workout clothes tossed into the back seat.



Like at the 2007 Adult Social, I did some of my own material before, between and after the other roasters. In honor of the three points in each of Fr. Ragan's homilies, here are three of the stories I told about him. I deviated from my script slightly but two of the stories are completely true!

Fr. Ragan has been at All Saints for a long time and maybe it is time to move on. After 12 years and 600 plus Sunday masses, he has officially run out of "3 Things." I hate to bust you on this but the sermon about the baby in Walmart? Heard it! In fact I heard it again last week when I went to Mass at Holy Family. I did a little research and found out that the little baby… is now 13 years old!

Last year there was a big tennis event at Thompson-Boling Arena called Rock N Racquets. They had Andy Roddick & Serena Williams plus entertainment by rock singer Gavin Rosdale. Gavin is well known in the music business for the alternative rock band he used to be in and he's fairly well known in the People Magazine world for being married to singer Gwen Stefani (she sings Hollaback Girl and a bunch of other songs you might know). Well Fr. Ragan doesn't know any of those songs. He's backstage waiting to meet the tennis players and finds himself standing next to Gavin Rosdale. He's trying to make conversation and the only thing he can think of to say is "so… you're married to Gloria Estefan?"



Fr. Ragan is well known in the community. It seems like everywhere you go, at least one person has a Fr. Ragan story. I was recently at a function with several local TV reporters. Two of them said they had interviewed Fr. Ragan in the past. One is a married woman with two kids who talked about how impressed she was with the work they do at Catholic Charities and how impressed she was with his enthusiasm about getting to know his new neighborhood in Seymour. The other reporter is a bit younger and single. She said "Oh Fr. Ragan! I could go CATHOLIC for him!" She went on but I'll stop there. Suffice to say, the phrases "if only" and "not celibate" were involved.

After the five roasters, Fr. Ragan made some remarks and thought we were finished. At that point, we told him to cut a cake that turned out to be an iced cardboard box. Under the lid was an assortment of fruits and nuts. The two ladies who organized the party closed out the festivities by singing a tribute to the tune of "We Love You Conrad" from "Bye Bye Birdie." During the song, Fr. Michael displayed props like a cup of yogurt and a box of Fiber One cereal. At the end of the song, all the roasters sprinkled soaked Fr. Ragan with some dish-washing sponges on wire handles, much the same way he overdoes it with holy water during the Easter season.

giving out wings

If the Old Farmer's Almanac wanted a sure thing every year, they could call the Knoxville chapter of the Salvation Army and ask for the date of media bell-ringing day. I remember each of those days being cold and raw, which makes sense for the first Thursday in December. This was at least the fifth year I have participated.

For the second consecutive year, Jonathan Haskell sent me to Sam's Club, which couldn't be more convenient. This year was better than last because the red kettle was placed near the entrance instead of the exit. Everyone entering Sam's has to reach for their wallet to show their membership card. It was pretty easy for them to grab a few dollars at the same time. When a parent let their small child put the money in the kettle, I let the youngster ring the bell a few times.

Alan Williams and Lauren Davis of WVLT had done a great job in the two hours before I arrived. I had to use my pen several times to push down the cash and make room for more. The bell ringer after me was a real ringing Bell, as in Bob Bell of a Christian talk station.

acid redux

For several years, I have enjoyed trashing CBS' attempted coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I assume the only reason they bother doing a telecast is so they can sell ads to Macy's competitors. The parade participants don't perform for the CBS cameras like they do for NBC's.

I could only tolerate a few minutes of the CBS broadcast this year. I knew it would be bad when Maggie Rodriguez started off by referring to the new Spider-Man balloon as Superman. Really. Instead of watching the whole thing I did a Google search for "CBS Thanksgiving parade" followed by words like "awful" and "terrible." One of the searches brought me to the comments posted on CBSnews.com. Let me copy and paste a few for posterity in case Les Moonves deletes them.

by ayearwasted: CBS's supposed Macy's Parade coverage is merely celebrity snaps and gab. The token camera shots of the parade are so distant as to appear like an ant farm, and even those token images are blocked by a cheap computer overlay of fall leaves. Clearly CBS has no respect for the thousands of people who created the floats, no respect for those who practiced for years to march and perform, and no respect for we who do appreciate their extraordinary accomplishments. Shame, shame, shame!

by Alliterated: Disappointing coverage of the Macy's parade was highlighted by -not the parade- but a bunch of commercials and dance routines. Disgusting appearance by an alleged comedian, who denigrated his mother and father with references to his father looking like Hugh Hefner. Your rush to catch up with the crudeness of cable is alienating scores of boomers who still control the remotes, the majority of the buying power and so also the commercial dollars.

by tsummer99: We must say that this is the WORST coverage of a Thanksgiving Day parade we have ever seen. In fact, we don't think we are even watching a parade but in fact watching the hosts chat it up and commercials. COMMERCIALS EVERY FEW MINUTES IT SEEMS. We want to see a HOLIDAY PARADE. NOT A PARADE OF COMMERCIALS!!!! We have an exchange student here that we made get up just to watch this. She has since fallen back asleep because this coverage is so terrible. She was excited to see the marching bands, but has not seen a single one. Every time it looks like a band is coming up, the coverage cuts to commercials. A few balloons, a couple floats and some celebrities does not a parade make. We will never watch this parade again. Thanks for ruining a family holiday tradition CBS.

The fun for me this year came from reading and posting comments on Twitter during NBC's parade telecast. At a few commercial breaks, I flipped over to CBS in case I saw something silly.

As you would expect, the new balloons looked less wrinkled than the older ones. I thought it was an odd choice to put the new Mickey Mouse balloon on an inflatable boat anchor. My wife noticed that Poppin' Fresh had a blank blue circle on his toque instead of the Pillsbury logo.

Unfortunately for smart-alecks like me, there were no train-wreck moments in this year's line of march. Singers like Carly Simon and Cheyenne Jackson were barely memorable. Of the lot, I found Jimmy Fallon to be the most entertaining.

When I was a kid, my father took us into the city to see the parade in person each year. After we got home and had dinner, we would look at slides of the parade from previous years. Nowadays, I can read my blog posts from 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

friar consent

There was a high-level showbiz lunch meeting at Aubrey's today as Fr. Michael Woods and I started planning a "roast" of Fr. Ragan Schriver. The comedic tribute will take place at All Saints Catholic Church after the last Mass on December 6. Fr. Ragan has been appointed pastor of Holy Family Catholic Church after many years in residence at All Saints.

When I saw Kristin Farley at a charity event a couple of weeks ago, she asked if she and her daughter could attend. I said yes, because my jokes would be G-rated. That's not what she meant. She wanted to know if the event was open to everyone. Yes, as the hymn says, all are welcome.

Both Fr. Michael and I have several anecdotes about Fr. Ragan. I plan to contact Fr. Ragan's sister and his friend John Becker to see if they have any funny stories to share. Another likely source of material will be Fr. Ragan's mentor, Fr. Gary Braun. Let me know if you have any zingers about one of the most popular priests in the diocese.

end of his soap

The 2009 class of Knoxville's FBI Citizens Academy held its graduation ceremony on Thursday night. I found the 9 sessions to be an amazing experience. Next month I will attend my first meeting of the FBIKCAAA. Use your detective skills to figure out what the initials mean.

The agents made good use of PowerPoint and video during their presentations each week. On the final night, the video was startling to me. Many times we saw actual news footage of a crime to be discussed. On Thursday, Russell Biven's face filled the screen but he used a different name for the dramatization of a terrorist attack. Former WBIR reporter Robin Murdoch also used a fake name while pretending to cover the story. Our class assimilated information from the video and from imaginary agents in the field. We had to decide on a course of action for them to follow.

Some other videos were memorable too. I've already mentioned the Roy Lynn Oakley arrest tape we saw during our third meeting. Just over a week ago, we saw some incredible surveillance footage of Billy Long. The former Hamilton County sheriff was busted with the help of an outrageous personality named C. Eugene Overstreet. The preacher and funeral director convinced Long that they were hiding money and drugs in cremation urns and a child's casket. On one memorable day, Overstreet met with Long while wearing a suit jacket with a slit in the back. We assumed it was intended for a future client.

Next year, I think they should show the class this video I found on YouTube. It's "The Ballad of Billy Long."

(404) not found

When Emily Loyless texted to tell me that she was headed to Atlanta this weekend for a local version of "Dancing with the Stars," I eagerly clicked on the link hoping to recognize a news anchor or radio host among the participants. The contestants include a TV weatherman, a magazine editor and the head of a local convention and visitors bureau.

To my mild disappointment, there was no Ted Hall or Bert Weiss in the competition. The event did get me thinking, however. Which local celebrities should be invited by East Tennessee Children's Hospital to participate in the next edition of Star 102.1's Dancing with the Knoxville Stars? Leave your suggestions in the comment section by clicking here. I'll give you a big hint about who would get my vote:

shouted out with glee

Before getting dressed for the March of Dimes Signature Chefs Auction, I had a thought. What if I accidentally wore the exact same thing as I did at last year's event? I happened to be on the phone with my daughter at the time. She went to my blog entry from 2008 and described the red tie and striped shirt I had on. I knew to wear the blue tie and a solid shirt this year.

Once again, the delicious food made it a night to remember. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't possibly taste everything that was offered. My wife and I got there early enough to see the elaborate Cabot Cheese and fruit tray before anyone disturbed it.



I got to chat with talented young singer Logan Murrell and her parents before the ballroom doors opened. Logan did a great job performing during dinner. She sang four or five songs including "A Kiss to Build a Dream On" and "Over the Rainbow." Julie Murrell emailed me recently to say they had seen some of my previous blog mentions of her daughter. She gave me a copy of Logan's Christmas CD to review.



No offense to Logan or to energetic auctioneer Bear Stephenson, but the main attraction at the Signature Chefs Auction is the food. 19 chefs from different businesses set up shop at tables around the perimeter of the ballroom in the Knoxville Convention Center. I found it funny that The Inn at Christmas Place was serving goose (seared foie gras over roasted corn polenta with port veal broth) while The Crown & Goose was serving reindeer (seared porcini dusted venison on top of pumpkin mash with candied pecans with apple cider spice glaze). The venison dish was my favorite entrée of the night. Not all the food was hoity-toity. The pork BBQ from Chandler's Deli had a delicious seasoning that I liked but couldn't identify.



Dessert was no slouch either. There was a long line for ice cream from Marble Slab Creamery. They brought a portable slab and offered two flavors. Their Double Dark Chocolate with Fudge was as good as it sounds. Rosa's Catering Service provided an End of the Rainbow cake with different flavors of icing.



My favorite overall dish was also a dessert. The Bananas Foster from Club Le Conte was so good I went back for seconds.



As in past years, I was there as a volunteer. My contact at the March of Dimes asked me to solicit donations from three tables. My wife made a small contribution when she heard that it would be doubled if we used our MasterCard. I also worked as a spotter at the live auction again this year. I saw some local celebrities in the room. WVLT anchor Alan Williams was as gracious as always. The event emcee was WATE anchor Kristin Farley who was representing Fox 43, where she does the 10:00 p.m. news. Kristin asked my wife if she could ham it up for the camera.

one down, two to go

The laughter from the first audience to see "Fish Bait" gave me a big sigh of relief. As the screening time approached last night, I was nervous about how it would go over. A sizable crowd filled the upper room at Patrick Sullivan's to watch the no-budget comedic horror film that features the members of Einstein Simplified.

The first thing I saw after climbing the stairs at the saloon was a table where DVDs were available for sale. I hope my kids will pretend to be surprised this Christmas. I'll need one for myself too, as a souvenir of one of the best weekends of my life. Before the screening, director Jeff Joslin asked the cast members present to come forward. During the movie, I couldn't resist taking a picture of myself on screen. You know you would have done the same thing if it were you.



Erin Donovan of WBIR gave our little project a nice publicity hit on Live at Five at Four yesterday. I was especially thrilled by the kind reaction of Russell Biven and Beth Haynes who said, "c'mon Frank Murphy!" after the report.

Tonight my wife and I will head up to Flat Hollow Marina & Resort for another screening. Flat Hollow is where we shot the movie last October and did some reshoots in May. The marina staff is thinking that they may have enough people there to show the movie twice, once around 7:00 p.m. when the Vols game ends and again around 9:00 p.m. Gary Farwick and Benny Green said so when they took to the Lafollette airwaves yesterday to promote the movie.

By the way, thanks to Frank Scott for name-checking me in Part two.

deadly force

The smell of gunpowder was still in my nose hours after returning home from the firing range at the Phil E. Keith Training Center. The facility, which belongs to the Knoxville Police Department, was the scene for today's meeting of the FBI Citizens Academy.

After a safety lesson from the firearms training agent, I started my day on the range by shooting four different guns. We could visit the four stations in any order. I chose a roughly chronological order, starting with a 1928 model Thompson submachine gun followed by a 38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. In the years since an infamous Miami shootout, the Bureau switched to the next two guns I tried. I shot a 40 caliber Glock pistol and a Colt M4 Carbine assault rifle. I went back for a second round on the old revolver and showed significant improvement from my first attempt.



While I was with the group shooting real guns, the other half of the class was inside working with a computer simulation of various scenarios. Once we switched places, the first few people in my group were given simulations of domestic disputes. When it was my turn, the scenario was a school shooting. I saw two bloodied students on my right and two uniformed police officers on my left. The students were gesturing behind them to the right. Suddenly there was a spray of blood and all four of them dropped to the ground. I saw gunfire coming from behind a dumpster on the left so I started shooting toward it. Then a second shooter emerged from the woods in the distance but my fake gun stopped working. Apparently the CO₂ cartridge in it had emptied. The screen went black, which I assume meant that the second shooter had taken me out. When they played back my scenario, we saw that I killed the first shooter with my second shot.

After lunch, we learned about the Special Weapons and Tactics force. We saw examples of the weapons they use and then went outside to see the Oshkosh Humvee used by local FBI SWAT agents. Prior to this, I thought the only thing Oshkosh made was children's clothes. We each had a chance to climb inside and pose for photos. Hana Kim from WATE-TV asked me to pose with her. She was delayed in getting to the range because she had to anchor the weekend newscast this morning. We've had a chance to chat during breaks from class. I found out that Hana grew up in Northern Virginia and graduated from McLean High School and the University of Maryland.



The day finished with a lecture on explosives and a demonstration out on the range. First the special agent bomb tech blew up a blasting cap in a coffee can. He then blew up a blasting cap in a coffee can filled with shaving cream to show us how the cream absorbed some of the impact. Next he showed the effect of explosions on soft tissue by blowing up a blasting cap inside a chicken from Food City. I don't know why he made a point of telling us that. Maybe he wanted to make sure the bird hadn't been pumped full of sodium.

horsepower

Fox Chase Farm was festooned with pink on Saturday for the first Ride for the Cure Virginia. It was one of only a few such events in the country and was the most successful. Susan G. Komen For the Cure will receive over $100,000 in proceeds. My friend Maureen, who bought the farm ten years ago, asked me to make announcements before and during the Ride.



The festivities started with the singing of the National Anthem by Angela Knight. She wore all purple with a sash that read "Mrs. Haymarket." She makes appearances on behalf of the Mrs. Virginia organization when she's not performing as a lyric coloratura with the Washington National Opera or singing her own Christian music in concert.

Several breast cancer survivors walked around the outdoor performance arena while Michael Bicoy of the U.S. Army Chorus sang "You'll Never Walk Alone." The hard part of performing that song is making the audience momentarily forget about Jerry Lewis. Bicoy succeeded easily.



One of the riders was Greta Kreuz from WJLA-TV. She took over the emcee role during the catered dinner under a fancy white tent. I sat at a table with Olympian Joe Fargis, who is revered among the Middleburg horse set. The dessert cupcakes were decorated with pink ribbons.



Most of the donations came from the riders and their sponsors. More money was raised with a silent auction set up around the perimeter of the dinner tent. Three celebrities I know donated items to the silent auction. Thanks go to Jimmy Kimmel, Susan Olsen and Richard Cheese. Everyone seemed pleased that the winner of $4000 in the 50/50 raffle was the guy who hauls the manure off the farm each week.

A crew from the PBS show "Equitrekking" shot video and conducted interviews with some of the participants. They posted a three minute story on YouTube.

don'ts and dos

A coward hiding behind anonymity attempted to place a comment on my blog yesterday. He or she appears to be insanely jealous of a Knoxville news anchor who has been the subject of a post or two of mine in the past. I rejected the comment but it irked me so that I want to share parts of it as a lesson in how not to get your comment published.

[Local Anchor] was, is, and will always be an idiot. She got her job on [local channel] based on her looks. She struggled with any word longer than four letters, and she always looked proud of herself when she actually got through a story without her [local] accent bleeding through. [specific insults removed] She was born on third base and thinks she hit a triple. Is it possible to get someone easy on the eyes that can actually read? Good Riddence, [sic] moron.

I stand by my earlier praise of the news anchor that Anonymous tried to defame. She deserves her success because she is a good communicator. The only moron is the unknown commenter who is just wrong in their opinion.

In happier local TV developments, WATE has hired a new morning reporter. News director Jamie Foster boasted on his Twitter account about Jamie Lynn Drohan. She's on Twitter, of course, and has been posting updates about her move to Knoxville.

A news article on Westfield Patch says that the male Jamie contacted the female Jamie about the job opening via Twitter. He saw her demo on YouTube and offered her the job. I suspect the Patch article is wrong about at least one thing. It says Drohan will be a co-anchor of "Good Morning Tennessee." Foster's Twitter posts describe her as a reporter. It's a big difference, especially if your name is Tearsa Smith or Bo Williams.

grab a bite to tweet

There was something very familiar about today's Knox Tweet Lunch despite the fact that I was meeting new people and that it was my first time going to Wright's Cafeteria. The experience reminded me of the blogfests I attended a year and a half ago. For example, I met a lady named Wendy and a lady named Jennifer but didn't realize who they were until they identified themselves as @magicmulch and @BattLady respectively. The same thing happened when I met bloggers who use something other than their name in their blog title.

Some people I knew from real life were there too. My friend Krisha, known as @niftykrisha, said the get-together reminded her of blogger night at the Knoxville Symphony. I'm sitting next to her in a photo that Tearsa Smith posted. My waving hand looks blurred out like something on Jimmy Kimmel's Unnecessary Censorship bit.

The menu at Wright's definitely qualifies as Southern comfort food. They had country style steak, fried chicken livers, chicken 'n dumplings, fried salmon cakes and much more. I chose a piece of fried chicken, a side salad and a small dish of baked apple slices.

Saul Young of the News Sentinel took some candid shots with his gigantic camera. However it was Twitpics from cell phone cameras that really documented the event. Wendy asked to have her picture made with me. Then four other women wanted to be in the photo too. How can a guy say no to that?

protect and defend

Instead of watching fake FBI agents on "Bones" and "Fringe," I will be spending my Thursday nights through November 12th enrolled in the FBI Citizens Academy. Each of the Bureau's 56 field offices offer the class. I was nominated by Public Affairs Specialist Stacie Bohanan of the Knoxville Division. I must have passed the background check because they let me attend tonight's meeting, which was led by Special Agent in Charge Richard Lambert. Agent Lambert began his presentation by showing a video clip from his favorite TV show.



The first session focused on the history and mission of the FBI. We also tried to learn the names of our 29 classmates. I already knew Hana Kim of WATE-TV and was re-introduced to Capt. D.J. Corcoran, spokesman for the Knoxville Fire Department. D.J. came to my house several years ago when he was working as a cameraman on the DIY show "Ed the Plumber."

In future weeks we will learn about criminal law and polygraphy, international and domestic terrorism, identity theft and Internet crimes, civil rights violations and white collar crimes. One night we will take a field trip to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Another night we will meet at a hotel to study staged crime scenes and to see a slide show from Dr. Murray Marks of the world famous Body Farm. One Saturday in October we will learn about deadly force scenarios and go to the firing range to take target practice. The final session of the class deals with crisis management and disaster scenarios. Before then I need to figure out what they mean by a "command post hot wash."

boom boom pow

Most of the food being sold at the 2009 Boomsday Festival event was typical fair fare, such as corn dogs and funnel cakes. My wife and I spotted a logo that wasn't like the others. Mixed in among the signage was a banner for the tony Ruth's Chris Steak House. We each had a steakburger slider that was so good it didn't need condiments. The restaurant manager told us that the little burgers will debut on their happy hour menu tomorrow. Down the street, one of the guys handing out free Duke's Mayonnaise looked like Chris Daughtry to me.



My wife and I had the good fortune to watch the fireworks from the old Baptist Hospital, near where John Becker and Robin Wilhoit anchored WBIR's coverage. This year the smoke from the explosions drifted away from us, meaning we had a clear view of the spectacular "waterfall" effect off the Henley Street Bridge and the rockets that came up from the lake to the tune of "Smoke on the Water."



After wishing we had done so last year and the year before, we remembered to bring portable radios this year. While big speakers saturate Neyland Drive with sound, the music cannot be heard on the south side of the Tennessee River unless you bring your own receiver.



I was impressed with the Star 102.1 soundtrack this year. There was a three-song tribute to Michael Jackson and a good mix of today's hits and yesterday's favorites. (That's an inside joke for my radio friends.) My wife wanted to know the title and artist of the Christian rock song played near the end off the show. Out of curiosity, I clicked over to Yes.com to see if their bot had identified the tune. It was "I Can Only Imagine" by MercyMe. The site registered many, but not all, of the songs played.



My daughter and two of her friends traveled to East Tennessee to experience their first Boomsday this year. Although I've lived in Knoxville since 2002, this was only my fifth Boomsday. Thanks to my blog, I'm just a click away from the photos of my first Boomsday in 2005. I looked very different back then.

hey y'all

Elaine Streno, executive director of Second Harvest Food Bank, was impressed by the drawing power of Paula Deen. The Food Network star was in Knoxville today as Smithfield Foods made a meaty donation to feed the hungry. There was a strong turnout from donors and media members who wanted to meet the so-called "doyenne of Southern cooking."



Tearsa Smith from WATE and Beth Haynes from WBIR were on hand to interview Paula. I was fortunate enough to also get a chance to speak with her. I thought about having Paula autograph a stick of butter but decided on something more permanent. I printed a few pictures from my September 2005 blog entry about "Tricked Out Tailgating" and got Paula to sign one for me, one for a co-worker and one for the silent auction at next year's Radiothon.



Paula kept the picture of me with Michael Anthony Groover. In the interview, she said she's missing him while he rides his motorcycle in Washington.

zip-a-dee-jay

The folks at Dollywood invited a few of us from the radio station to ride their new SkyZip ziplines. We brought along some lucky listeners too. The ziplines normally cost an additional $40 on top of the price of admission to the park.

The actual ride was pure joy. In fact, I've been on roller coasters that were less comfortable. The most difficult part of the experience was hiking uphill and that wasn't too bad at all. If I had a fear of heights, it might be a different story. I was comfortable walking off into thin air, knowing that the zipline would support me. The guides told us to lean back, like we were in a recliner.

The four zip lines form a rough square, so that we finished near where we started. Even though I wasn't wearing a microphone, I still made sure not to make any odd sounds like Beth Haynes did when she rode the ziplines.

There are photos of our group on the radio station's website. Here are a few of me, crossing the rope bridge and zipping away.

feast of the consumption

Even though Michele Silva has taken herself off the air and gone into sales, I was happy to continue my tradition of posing for a photo with her at Feast with the Beasts. She was sampling some foods with Beth Haynes, who was nice enough to have her picture made with me again (and again). My wife and I also enjoyed another visit with former WBIR reporter Jim Ragonese and his wife Jaime. We last saw them at an event I think of as "indoor Feast with the Beasts."



The most interesting thing that I saw at the annual fundraiser for the Knoxville Zoo was a woman in a leafy costume on stilts. My best guess is that she was dressed as kudzu. We watched her make several graceful moves. There's probably a ballet dancer or gymnast under that green makeup.



I could have used a zoo map to help me find some of the food booths that we heard about from other party goers. The ribs at Texas Roadhouse had completely fallen off the bone, as usual. Someone said to be sure to go to The Crown & Goose for raw oysters.



The "homemade" turkey and cranberry sandwiches at Kroger featured the Martha Stewart-like tip of the day. They used pretzel sticks as toothpicks to hold the sandwich together. By the way, somebody should tell the people who put together Kroger's current advertising campaign that a truly homemade TV commercial would look more like a YouTube video and less like Terry Gilliam's style of animation



My wife thought her piece of alligator from Bayou Bay Seafood House was too tough and too spicy however mine was just right. I normally don't like to eat reptiles because I am such a fan of them when they are alive. On the other hand, a cake shaped like a turtle would be perfect for me. The folks from Mango Cakes were auctioning off a sweet tortoise. They said it was a copy of a groom's cake they had made recently. Unfortunately it's pose reminded me of my beloved pet Mo after he had died but before I had him preserved.



One of the people we chatted with was a popular local Twitterer who goes by the name The Fool Monty. He and his wife warned that the gumbo at New Orleans on the River was very spicy, which made me want to try it all the more. They said the Cajun food was in a booth just past The Carousel. I was surprised that particular bar was represented at the event and wondered what they were serving. Turns out Monty meant a real carousel.

the way it was

Walter Cronkite defined the role of anchorman. The iconic newsman died tonight at 92. When I see clips of his career on TV or the Internet, I wish that my parents had watched him more often. They were partial to John Chancellor on NBC and the Huntley-Brinkley Report before that.

Cronkite will always be most associated with his coverage of President Kennedy's assassination and of Apollo 11. As the 40th anniversary of the historic lunar landing approaches, I've been thinking about that night. We were on vacation and the only channel we could get happened to be an ABC affiliate.

I got Walter Cronkite's autograph twice. One year, my father took us to the Robert F. Kennedy Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament at Forest Hills. I asked several famous people to sign a program. Somebody else, who got more signatures than I did, is selling a signed program for $3,500.

When I was in college at GMU, a friend and I waited in line at a record store in Georgetown to get Cronkite's signature on a vinyl album set he had released. I remember that he advised my friend to major in something other than journalism if she wanted to be a journalist. Many network correspondents have law degrees or other areas of expertise.

CBS will air a tribute to Cronkite on Sunday at 7:00 p.m. I'll be setting my DVR to record it, how about you?

a little rock step

Technically, Lori Tucker danced with me twice. She and her husband went to the group dance lesson at Academy Ballroom last night, as did my wife and I. Kim Hansard and her husband were there too. All the women in the class rotated through the line and danced with all the men in the class. As a result, I also danced with Kim and my wife danced with both ladies' husbands. Our son, the good sport, took the class as well. We did the most basic steps of the waltz, rumba, foxtrot, salsa, merengue and swing.



During the open dance party that followed the lesson, Lori and J.W. Becker did an encore of their cha cha from "Star 102.1's Dancing with the Knoxville Stars." Emily Loyless and I will reprise our rumba routine at the next Friday night dance party on June 26. Invite your Facebook friends to come. Or show your support via an online donation to Children's Hospital.

pink ribbons

The silent auction items are starting to arrive for the charity event my friend Maureen is co-chairing. She owns Fox Chase Farm in Middleburg, Virginia, which will host the Ride for the Cure Virginia to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

The media sponsor for the October event is WJLA-TV in nearby Washington, DC. Maureen is thrilled that Greta Kreuz and Suzanne Kennedy are planning to ride horses at the function.

Susan Olsen has promised to send an autographed copy of her upcoming book "Love to Love You Bradys: The Bizarre Story of The Brady Bunch Variety Hour." Maureen sent me photos of two autographed items that have already arrived. Melissa Etheridge sent a copy of her greatest hits CD. My pal Jimmy Kimmel sent a personalized basketball jersey.

and three in Crossville

A 16-second video on Facebook got me laughing last night. It combines local news and dancing in a different way than the recent "Star 102.1's Dancing with the Knoxville Stars."

Eric Foxx may be everyone's favorite person at WBIR. He's the floor manager for "Live at Five at Four." I see him there every time Einstein Simplified appears on the show. He's there every time I go to the Children's Hospital Telethon. He's also there every year at Boomsday when I stop by the pre-fireworks broadcast.

Brittany Bailey introduced herself to me on St. Patrick's Day. She and Alison Morrow had stopped by Patrick Sullivan's just as our improv show was ending. She promised to come back to catch a performance from the beginning some day.

The video I'm enjoying so much is on WBIR's Facebook page. It shows Brittany and Foxxy getting their "Let's Groove" on during a commercial break. It reminded me of some mostly deleted YouTube videos from a TV station in Philadelphia. They used to have a segment called "Mascot Monday," in which local costumed characters danced with Jennaphr Frederick. Let's try to convince WBIR to add such a feature to "Live at Five at Four."

footsie

For two days each year Seth Linkous is the producer of the Marc & Kim and Frank show. He gets us through the annual Star 102.1 Radiothon for East Tennessee Children's Hospital. His real job is in the Community Relations department at the hospital. When we had the opportunity to broadcast from the Children's Miracle Network Celebration at Walt Disney World, Seth put his producer hat on again.

Yesterday, during the second day of the Radiothon, Seth asked me if I had looked at the pictures on my camera yet. He didn't realize I had already posted some in that day's blog entry. Seth used my camera to take a picture of me with three of the news anchors from WBIR on Thursday.



This was not the first time Seth has used my camera. While in Florida, I asked him to get some photos of me with Children's Miracle Network celebrities. He also snapped a picture of Terry Morrow and me with the guest of honor at Abby Ham's goodbye party. Getting back to yesterday, Seth claims that he "accidentally" took a picture of Beth Haynes' shoe. I wonder if her stiletto will get as many clicks as Stacy McCloud's boots.

can you do a dollar?

The staff at East Tennessee Children's Hospital makes sure that Marc and Kim and I have an abundance of food and treats during the annual Star 102.1 Radiothon, which started yesterday and continues today from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. It's tough to exercise any self-control when local businesses show up with even more food that I love. If the good-looking treats from The Cupcakery had arrived before I had already eaten a piece of a staff member's birthday cake and a few Godiva chocolates, I would have grabbed one of the chocolatey ones. The bird's nest looked pretty nice too. So instead of eating a cupcake, I feasted my eyes by photographing them.



A highlight of yesterday's broadcast was the presentation of the proceeds from "Star 102.1's Dancing With the Knoxville Stars." To mark the occasion, professional dancers Emily Loyless and Jeremy Norris did what they do best to the tune of "Poker Face."



Lori Tucker, Mark Nagi and Terry Morrow handed over the big check. Later in the day, Beth Haynes, Russell Biven and John Becker came by to help ask for donations. You can phone in your pledge at (865) 656-KIDS or donate online via my fundraising page.

me gotta go

There was no "Underdog" moment for me in last night's Dogwood Arts Festival parade but I still enjoyed myself for the most part. The parade remained completely stopped for a long time while some performances were taking place for the lone working camera from WVLT. I later learned that a high school group did a scene from their production of "Guys and Dolls." You would think that the young thespians would then walk or ride down the rest of the parade route. They didn't. For those of us a block or two down the street, it was just awkward.

The parade feature two character balloons and two dogwood flower balloons. My wife thought they had too many petals to be true dogwoods, as did a blog reader last year. The colorful dragon dragon might explain why I was craving Chinese food on the way home. My wife and I got some take-out from the new China Lee on Middlebrook Pike. It was very good.



While the dragon made it past us okay, the Garfield balloon got a flat tire. It appears to be the same one I saw two years ago and is starting to show its age.



The annual parade is obviously a kid-friendly event. The crowd went "ooh" to the flaming-baton twirler on Gay Street and "aah" to the cute little cowgirl with an amusing costumed horse.



WVLT anchor Lauren Davis rode past in the Channel 8 mobile. She was also at the secret Miley Cyrus event earlier this month. I didn't get a good look at the driver of the convertible but I thought it might have been Bob Yarbrough, who was at the goodbye party for Stacy McCloud.

Barney Fife impersonator Sammy Sawyer was being followed by a high def video camera. It made me wonder if they were making a reality show or documentary about him. Wouldn't you watch it?



It's not a Knoxville parade without Marshal Andy. Earlier this week he wished me well in "Star 102.1's Dancing with the Knoxville Stars" competition. He said that he and his wife used to regularly win shag dancing contests in the Carolinas.

The Grand Marshal of the parade was Mary Costa from "Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty." Tired of waiting for the parade to come to me, I had walked up the street to see that while Mary's coach was stopped, some young dancers performed to "Once Upon a Dream" while mouse-eared volunteers (or as they called them in Burbank, VoluntEARS) held flags and "Sleeping Beauty" signage celebrating the 50th anniversary of the film



The Dogwood Arts Festival is 49 years old. Instead of their regular uniforms, the Powell High Panther Band wore 1950s attire like white t-shirts and jeans or poodle skirts. Three different high school bands each played "Louie Louie," a song technically from the '50s but made famous in 1963. Hearing it reminded me of the time I arranged for a marching band play that song accompanied by rock guitarist Slash in the KLOS parking lot.

My favorite float in this year's parade was from Laurel High School. It took me a moment to recognize the Sunsphere due to either the rat tail or graduation tassel hanging off the back.

strive to excel

There's a regular part of the real "Dancing with the Stars" that I used to think was bogus. The pro dancer says something to the effect of "I thought it would be a good idea to go a rodeo to see Ty in his element and figure out how we could incorporate his bull riding into the waltz."

During the course of my dance lessons from Emily Loyless, she came to see me perform with Einstein Simplified a couple of times. She knew that the other competitors in "Star 102.1's Dancing with the Knoxville Stars" would be better dancers than me. Emily realized that we could put some of my stage comedy into our rumba routine. We devised a story line based on my lack of rhythm and the difficult task she faced in teaching me. Emily's professional partner Jeremy Norris was also a tremendous help to me. He would demonstrate the parts I was trying to learn, especially a move where Emily is spinning and I had to catch her and drop her onto my knee.



Our performance opened with a spoof of one of my all-time favorite TV shows, "Mission: Impossible." The recorded voice said, "Good evening Emily. The man you are looking at is Frank Murphy from Star 102.1. He has no rhythm. He is only able to make fun of dancing while onstage with his improv group Einstein Simplified. Your mission Emily, should you choose to accept it, is to get Frank Murphy to take the rumba seriously. Should your or any of your AB Force be caught or killed, the Academy will disavow any knowledge of your action. This routine will self destruct in 90 seconds." We then danced to Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen's version of the "Theme from Mission: Impossible." As soon as video of our segment is available, I will post a link. The three judges gave us a 26, which included a 10 from Brian Corsetti, host of the upcoming DIY series "Garage Mahal." I guess that's my new favorite show. Be sure to watch it May 5th at 9:30 p.m!

Throughout the evening I imposed on various people to take a pictures of me with the other nine contestants. I also posed with Russell Biven, who wasn't dancing but was there to support his co-anchor Beth Haynes. In no particular order, here I am with Russell (whose first words to me were, "are you happy about the news?"), Beth, Carol Scott (who plans to continue dancing with Johnny Tang), Mark Nagi, Dee Dee Trotter, Terry Morrow, Mary Constantine (who withdrew due to vertigo), Kim Hansard, judges' favorite winner Gretchen Bartlett and top fundraiser Lori Tucker, whose total earned her the disco ball trophy. The event generated about $27,000 in donations to East Tennessee Children's Hospital.

reunited

Terry Morrow's phone call woke me from a deep sleep today. He wanted to make sure I knew that Abby Ham was returning to Knoxville. During my nap, my inbox had started to fill up with messages from people who had seen the bulletin on WBIR.com. Blogger Frank Strovel wanted to know if he was the first to email me. He was.

While I was practicing my dance routine at Academy Ballroom again, several more messages came in via email, Facebook and comments on this morning's non-Ham blog post. A comment from Heather pointed out that my name was mentioned in the comments on WBIR.com. Twice.

My hopes that I might be watching Abby on the noon news were quickly dashed by Terry's article. Instead she'll only be on in the morning, which is the newscast I can't watch because I'm already at work. In his interview with Abby, Terry asked why she would leave Cleveland for Knoxville. She said it puts her closer to her parents for when she's ready to start her own family. I jokingly told Terry that the real reason might be that she wants to participate in "Star 102.1's Dancing with the Knoxville Stars" next year. Why not?

dance like no one is watching

Carol Scott from "Hell's Kitchen" is determined to be the top fundraiser in "Dancing with the Knoxville Stars." Over the weekend, she sent me the following message on Facebook: "ooh, that Lori Tucker just passed me! Time to make more phone calls." Before long, Carol's total had zoomed past Lori's thanks to contributions from her relatives, including her Uncle Nutzy.

Each dollar I raise counts as one vote for my dancing. Sadly, I am lagging behind the TV women (and Terry Morrow). They have all received multiple donations in the three figures. While contributions of $100 and up are awesome (thank you, blog reader Tonya Estep!), we could catch up if each of my daily readers only donated $10. Of course not everyone can, but some can do $20.



As promised, I will continue to mention those who donate to Children's Hospital through my fundraising page. Thanks to Ice Bears fan Lori Ingram and her family, active All Saints parishioners Vicki and Bill Christensen as well as their daughter Shiona, former "Door Girl" Jennifer Bohlken, a nice person named Kristen, my partner Emily's parents and my own lovely daughter.

You can click here to contribute. So how am I doing on the dance floor? Here's a new video to watch while you reach for your credit card. Thanks to BJ Mora for putting it together.

cyrus circus

Friday's unannounced appearance by Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus gave me a chance to chat with other members of the media and to fraternize with a couple of my dancing competitors. Oh and I also talked with the stars of "Hannah Montana The Movie," who were in Knoxville briefly as part of Walt Disney Pictures Opening Weekend Surprise. Marc & Kim and I were asked to "interrupt" the noon showing of the film, give away t-shirts and then bring out Miley and Billy Ray. I tried to take a picture but found myself on the wrong side of them. There are more photos on the Star 102.1 website and at Knoxville.com.



The local media were there in full force. All three news stations sent their own crews, as did the News Sentinel. Terry Morrow and Lauren Spuhler represented the paper and its website. Terry felt it necessary to strike a pose when I took a picture of Lauren Davis from WVLT and Beth Haynes from WBIR. While we were all waiting for Miley to arrive, I talked with Terry and Beth about our upcoming dance performances. Lauren Davis wanted to hear about it too. In the course of the conversation about me facing my fear of dancing, I showed her a couple of "before" photos that were on my Walkman.



Kristyn Caddell from WATE joked that we always seem to see each other at the "fun" stories. She also covered the new Bishop's press conference and the Christmas penguin. I asked Kristyn to turn around for a picture because at the time, I could see Miley over her shoulder. But then Miley moved on to the next interview along the press line.



The behind the scenes passageways inside the Regal Pinnacle Stadium 18 would have allowed Miley and Billy Ray to walk unseen from the theatre to the interviews in an upstairs conference room. However Miley found her way to a balcony where she could wave to the fans who didn't get in to the noon show.



The next stop for the Cyruses was Salt Lake City where they repeated the surprise. The Salt Lake Tribune says Miley received some Marshmallow Peeps, which are her favorite.

quick quick slow

While trying to think about topics for the blog this week, I realized my mind is so occupied with dancing, that it is impossible to write about anything else. I got my second contribution for Children's Hospital (thanks to Mike and Tiffany Nicely) and I had my fourth lesson from Emily Loyless on Monday. She had me write down the steps in our routine, which filled three and a half pages in my little notepad. Then it repeats.



Mary Constantine of the News Sentinel was practicing at the Academy Ballroom when I arrived. She thought it appropriate that the salsa had been assigned to the food writer. Beth Haynes had her first samba lesson earlier in the day. She says we can expect to see some of it on "Live at Five at Four" on Tuesday.

Is it weird that my feet hurt while watching "Dancing with the Stars" on ABC? Not during the talking, only during the dancing. I used to watch and think "there's stuff I can't do." Now I think "there's stuff I can't do but at least I know what it is." For example, near the start of Monday's show, I noticed that lucky Chuck Wicks didn't raise his arm high enough. Julianne Hough had to duck to turn under it. I empathize.

no more McCloudy days

Channel 8 wasted no time in removing Stacy McCloud's bio from the staff page of their website. Her blog posts are still online as of now. Wednesday was Stacy's last day at the station. They made a brief mention of it at the end of the noon newscast and ran a retrospective video at the end of the six o'clock show.

Stacy gathered with several of her co-workers and friends for a goodbye party at Soccer Taco. I stopped by on my way home from an RCIA meeting. We talked a little about her Celiac disease and a little about "American Idol." Now that she will be working for a Fox affiliate, Stacy will be closely following the show.

I snapped a photo of Stacy with her "work husband" Bob Yarbrough and his real-life wife, Kiley. Bob is a former radio guy and still has an interest in the medium.



As I said my goodbyes, I promised to ask "Access Hollywood" co-anchor Billy Bush (another radio guy) if I could share his contact information with Stacy. She's interested in seeking his advice on interviewing celebrities. I'm sure she'll do just fine.

lack of rhythm is gonna get me

Friends and family members outside the listening area have been asking for details about my participation in Star 102.1's Dancing with the Knoxville Stars. Fortunately, I can use my blog to keep them in the loop. The event, which is a benefit for East Tennessee Children's Hospital, is scheduled for Thursday April 23. About nine or ten local media types volunteered to learn a ballroom dancing routine, myself included. While I'm waiting to see the finalized cast list, I'm pretty sure that WATE's Lori Tucker and WBIR's Beth Haynes will both be involved.

Some of the contestants have been paired with instructors from Dance Dimensions. Tonight, I met my dance partner Emily Loyless and had my first lesson at Academy Ballroom. I am not good. Emily has a lot of work ahead of her to get me ready. She will give me ten lessons within 24 days. I was trying on dancing shoes when Emily introduced herself. In an effort to get me to feel the beat, she had me put my hand on the subwoofer.



As Emily and I attempted the most basic steps of the rumba, Carol Scott was gracefully gliding around the floor with her partner, Johnny Tang. Not only might Carol win "Hell's Kitchen," she might win our Knoxville dancing contest too. By the way, Carol is hosting a public "HK" viewing party this Thursday night at Gettysvue Country Club.



No still photo can really do justice to the art of the dance. That's why they invented moving pictures, right?

sudser dud

Can anyone explain soap operas to me? I have never watched one for more than a few minutes. Last week, I made a point of tuning in to "All My Children" to see Jeff "Fish Bait" Joslin's appearance as an assistant district attorney. He was on within the first couple of scenes and I shut off the TV after he was done.

Today I was watching one of Stacy McCloud's last appearances on the noon news. By the way, she was very kind to mention me in her blog yesterday. After the news ended, I wasn't quick enough with the remote and I saw the beginning of "The Young and the Restless." It started in a morgue, piquing my interest. Then they lost me when the lid of a cheap-looking casket opened and the old woman inside sat up and talked about her exhumation. So, is she a zombie? I thought the soaps were more realistic than supernatural. Or is it just a literary device? How did she die in the first place? Why do I care?

nash bridges

Could it be only a year ago that I was congratulating Stacy McCloud on her promotion to "prime anchor" at WVLT? Fortunately for me, she stayed on the noon newscast that I watch daily.



Next week when the lovely Stacy celebrates her birthday, she will be about to start a new job once again. Sadly for Knoxville, Stacy is moving to Nashville to be the entertainment reporter for Fox 17. Those lucky stiffs. The move puts Stacy in the same newsroom as Craig Edwards, a former WVLT-er. Her last day on the air here is April 1. No fooling.



Stacy's leap from market #59 to market #29 means that I'll soon be attending another anchorwoman farewell party. It also means that I am running out of opportunities to mention her leopard-print boots, which will certainly look good on the red carpet in Nashville.

promises fulfilled

Bishop-elect Richard Stika was in East Tennessee most of this week. He was introduced at a press conference on Monday. Lori Tucker interviewed him on Tuesday morning for a piece that aired on WATE Thursday night

While he was in town, Stika traveled around the diocese to get acquainted. He went to Catholic Charities to meet their less fortunate clients, including two elderly men who asked him, "Why did the Pope cross the road?" I'm not exactly sure what their punchline was, but it might have been "because he crosses everything."

Bishop-elect Stika returned to St. Louis today. He'll pack up his belongings and his dog Rosie and get back in time for his installation as Bishop on March 19 at the Knoxville Convention Center. I found out the other day that the ordination Mass will start at 2:30 p.m. and last for at least three hours. Plans are being made to webcast the ceremony. I think I would rather be there in person, especially since there will be a reception afterward. The Bishop-elect hopes that all the local Catholic school children will attend too.

If his visit to Tennessee had lasted a day longer, the Bishop-elect could have come to hear the "Journey of Promises" cantata at All Saints Church tonight. Someone from the chancery did check to see if there might have been a rehearsal that he could have attended last night but there wasn't. However they have been practicing for months.

The performance went well and got mentioned on WBIR's late newscast. My friend Kathy had emailed all the TV stations to request that they consider sending a camera, since they would likely have crews right next door to cover the Webb at Catholic basketball game. The publicity will help fill the seat's for Sunday's performance. Admission is free but they do take up a collection for Catholic Charities.

The All Saints choir was joined by members of the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra and a few adult parishioners who can play instruments. I read one of the three spoken word parts. Look closely and you can see Fr. Ragan Schriver and me at the podium in the background of the photo below. We'll play it again on Sunday at 3:00 p.m. I hope to see you there.

final answer

There was a time when the Regal Downtown West Cinema had lines wrapped around the building for movies like "Jurassic Park." Our friend Jennifer told us about those days when my son wondered why Regal Cinemas would have two properties as close as Downtown West and West Town Mall. Downtown West survived by screening smaller, independent films that are rarely seen in other markets our size. Its very existence serves as a reminder that the country's largest movie theater chain is headquartered not in Hollywood, but in Knoxville. Coincidentally, Regal CEO Mike Campbell was interviewed tonight by Lori Tucker on WATE. And Byron Chesney shared a link to a new interview with Campbell on the BusinessTN site.

My wife and son and I met our friend at Downtown West tonight to see "Slumdog Millionaire." I realize that most people can't drop everything and rush out to a movie on a Thursday night but I would have liked to have seen a bigger crowd there tonight. "Slumdog" deserves to have lines wrapped around the block.

Jamal, the lead character, works in a call center for a cell phone company, but not as a customer service representative. He's the chaiwalla, the guy who brings tea to the operators. The authorities suspect him of cheating on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Flashbacks to his childhood illustrate how he learned the answer to each of the game's questions. They also tell the heart wrenching story of Jamal's life in poverty. He is covered in filth, both literally and figuratively. It is both a feelgood movie and a shocking look at slums, orphanages and crime. On top of all that, Jamal is searching for his childhood love, the beautiful Latika. As someone who always stays for the closing credits, I was rewarded with an unexpected yet very entertaining Bollywood-like dance number. I hope the movie is rewarded with some trophies at the various award shows in the weeks ahead.

returning the favor

Several other bloggers have mentioned me on their sites recently. That Chick Over There was especially kind in her remarks. She says I remind her of her husband. That Chick and MDA are the most recent to say that they are coming to blogger night at the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. Earlier RSVPers included Rich Hailey, Barry Wallace, Rob Huddleston, Doug McCaughan and Byron Chesney.

More recently, Byron wrote that he was impressed with the amount of traffic that flows from my site to his entertaining Knoxville Trivia Blog. It makes sense to me. He writes about local news anchors more than I do.

Speaking of anchors, Stacy McCloud got a kick out of my post about her clown interview yesterday. But mostly out of the photo.

Cassie Kiestler was happy that I found something interesting about digital TVs in her blog. She was just as happy when I was amused by a clever comment she left on one of my posts. I hope she doesn't feel obligated to write about me mentioning her again.

Leeann Samples and her husband Don came to see Einstein Simplified at First Night Knoxville. They didn't tell me they were bloggers. My Google Alert did.

A former Knoxville deejay nicknamed The Greek writes a blog called Knoxville Radio History 101. He took my picture last week while he was in the building to be on a WKTI show called "The Voice."

In a sort of the same but different vein, my friend Rodney Lee Conover informed me that I'm briefly visible on his YouTube channel. The clip is actually one of the DVD extras for his movie "BachelorMan." The disc just came out in November and the film will turn up on HDNet Movies. I visited the set one day back in 2001. Look carefully and you can see me seated behind the director John Putch, who happens to be the son of Jean Stapleton.

sabre dance

Sometimes it's just so easy to find a daily blog topic, especially when it involves someone who already turns up in my search results all the time. Stacy McCloud interviewed a couple of performers from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus today. They are bringing back the same show we got last March and calling it an "encore." They got Stacy involved in the act but it never occurred to them to play the right music or call her "Stacy McClown."

what brought you here

There's no question that 2008 was a pretty good year for my blog. I won the "Best Local Blogger" award in the Knoxville News Sentinel readers' poll and had a couple of days with big readership spikes. So, which posts were the most read this year? Not surprisingly, a 2006 post about Abby Ham was the number two ranked entry. If I filter out the old stuff that still turns up in people's Google searches, here are my most viewed posts from 2008:

1) Jimmy Kimmel mentioned me when I sent him a funny obituary from the News Sentinel

2) Stacy McCloud's boots will turn up in my search results for years to come

3) This December entry about Julianne Hough's concert in Knoxville made a strong late-year showing

4) Gentlemen's Top Cuts has gone out of business but it got a lot of attention when it first opened

5) Oh and Paris Hilton showed up in Pigeon Forge

6) Fans of Randy Rhoads linked to my post on their message boards

7) Game on! The Osmonds are competing with the Houghs to be the most popular Mormon showbiz family among my readers

8) Fans of American Idol's Ace Young lit up their message boards too

9) Of all my posts about Dr. Bill Bass and the Body Farm this year, this one got the most views

10) Stacy McCloud got promoted to evening anchor but didn't give up the noon news

11) A lot of clicks from Derek & Julianne Hough fans came via the ABC.com message boards, take that Osmonds!

12) People looking for this post could have been Natasha Henstridge fans, "Lost" fans, WATE news fans or maybe even George Michael fans

13) We're back where we started with a follow-up to the most-viewed post about Jimmy Kimmel mentioning Knoxville

14) I think readers of this post about local news were mostly interested in diamond rings or the lack thereof

15) Mmm... cupcakes

16) Melinda Doolittle may not have as many fans as Ace Young but they found this post

17) Who do you think the readers of this entry were searching for, Chef Walter or Stacy McCloud?

18) Like everyone, I was surprised and saddened by Tim Russert's passing

19) It looks like the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra will have a successful blogger night in January

20) My recent story of a young girl's Christmas wish for a styrofoam penguin got mentioned on the local news

21) Pope Benedict XVI might have ranked higher if he visited Knoxville

22) DSRL!

23) The last Haunted Cave might have inspired people to read about Cherokee Caverns

24) Sam's Club gets me hooked on raspberry chipotle sauce and then cuts me off

25) Wasn't it great when the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Rickrolled us?

Happy New Year! See you tonight?

prayer palace

The beautiful new church building at St. John Neumann parish opened on Christmas Eve. WBIR got it right in their report however the anchors on WVLT mistakenly called the building a cathedral. I dashed off an email to a couple of people there but unfortunately the same script was used in the 7:00 p.m. newscast that night. A cathedral is the building that houses the bishop's chair, which is called a cathedra.



After seeing the new building with my own eyes today, I wondered if our next bishop could decide to pick up his cathedra and move it to Farragut. Although it's probably just as likely that they would continue to spruce up Sacred Heart Cathedral, which is right next door to the diocesan offices. The religious artwork in the new place looks much better in context than it did in the photos I saw online in August. The more contemporary looking figures inside the ceiling dome are complimented by classic-looking paintings of saints and Stations of the Cross that look like mosaics. They must be relieved to have made the deadline on the cornerstone. I had read that the church was supposed to open last January.



The former chancellor of the Diocese of Knoxville was elevated to bishop this past Spring. Bishop Vann Johnston now shepherds the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau. The Knoxville native was home for the holidays and celebrated the 10:30 Mass today at St. John Neumann. The bishop told me that the pastor, Fr. John Dowling, was inspired by the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis. Coincidentally, that is where my family and I went to Mass a week ago. I told Bishop Johnston that my wife and I had briefly been in his new diocese when we went to Branson this summer.



Fr. Dowling made some announcements before Mass began. They are moving the Saturday vigil Mass from 6:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. He said it would take too long to explain why. After Mass I heard some parishioners speculating that the church could book more Saturday evening weddings after the change. My wife had heard months ago that some families were registering in the parish so their daughters could get married in the new building.



The other big announcement was that the parish would no longer serve communion in both species. Apparently they feel that parishioners sipping from the cup takes too long. Because of the acoustics, they have decided to start singing slower and preaching slower, which will make the Masses run longer. The cavernous space and the hard surfaces create lots of echo.

I've been to several other churches where the problem of slow communion lines was solved by adding more cups, not by removing them. To me, the lack of communion in both species and a few other things made it feel like they were trying to turn back the clock. They rang a bell at the start of Mass and during the consecration. Some parts of the Mass were sung in Latin. When I hear the "Holy Holy Holy" and the "Lamb of God" I know it's time to lower the kneeler. At this Mass they sang "Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus" and "Agnus Dei." I lowered the brand new kneeler only to find that it had a child's muddy boot prints on it, probably from Christmas Eve when the weather outside was frightful wet. After Mass, I brushed it off as best I could with my hand.



The pew where I sat was in one of the transepts, near the ambo. The last person to receive communion in our section was a man carrying a fidgety toddler. A moment or two after the man received the host, I thought I saw the child drop something. I wasn't positive because neither the parent nor the deacon serving communion reacted. The man carried the boy back to their seats and the deacon went off to help distribute communion in the main section of the church. I had an inkling of a suspicion about what had fallen to the floor so I got up from my kneeler to investigate. It was only a few steps over to the spot where the communicants had stood. I didn't see anything until I knelt down to look more closely at the beige marble floor and tilted my head at an angle to see it in a different light. Half a host lay on the floor, barely visible because it was almost the exact same color as the marble. I picked it up and reverently put it in the palm of my hand. I thought about my options for a second and realized that the best thing for me to do in this circumstance was to consume the partial host myself. It would have been terribly disruptive for me to bring the host to the deacon or the bishop and say "look what I found."



I don't know if the deacon had broken the host in half because he was running out of them or if the man had broken the host in half himself, which he shouldn't have done. Either way, the child should not have had the opportunity to take the host from his father or to knock it out of his father's hand. In a situation like that, the man should have received the host directly on his tongue instead of in his hands. I wondered if he was a non-Catholic and didn't know the rules. Catholics believe that Jesus is truly present in the host. We take his words at the Last Supper literally. A fancy church building like St. John Neumann's will attract tourists of all faiths. The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis has the following paragraph on the back cover of their weekly bulletin:

All visitors who are not of the Catholic faith are welcome to join us in prayer but not to receive Holy Communion. Reception of Holy Communion is a sign of unity of faith and full membership in the Catholic community. Together let us pray for the eventual unity of all believers.

After feeling discouraged about the muddy shoe prints and the behavior of the child at communion, I'm glad that as I left the church after Mass, I turned back to read the inscriptions above the three doors. One of them reminds us of Jesus' words in the gospel of Mark: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them."

south pole meets north pole

Well, Layci did get her penguin. Thanks to a snowball effect started by my blog post on Friday, the young girl got her Christmas wish today. I wrote about how a mysterious benefactor bought a Styrofoam penguin as a surprise for the girl who had admired it but couldn't afford it. The catch was that only the girl's first name was known. The staff at Carole's Interior and Gifts tried finding Layci, without success. I happened to wander into the store last Thursday and heard the story from Carole Brailey.

As I was writing the blog post on Thursday evening, I realized that the story was too good to not also tell on the radio Friday morning. One caller got upset that I was making such a fuss over a little girl in an affluent neighborhood getting a frivolous gift when there are so many needy people elsewhere in the region. She was in financial trouble herself but turned down offers of help from other listeners. This situation played out during the 9:00 a.m. hour, while WATE's Bo Williams was on the air with us.

The News Sentinel's Michael Silence posted a link to my blog post on Friday morning. The Shopper News ran their own version of the story on Monday morning. WATE picked up on the search for Layci in their newscasts Monday night. Reporter Kristyn Caddell told me that she got the story from my blog after discussing it in the newsroom with Bo and others.

Friends of the family heard the coverage and got word to Layci's sister, who is a college student. The girls' parents, Karen and John, brought Layci back to the store today to pick up her gift from Santa. The man in the red suit told me that in previous years he has been onstage as part of the Sevier Heights Baptist Church's Living Christmas Tree. Layci's Dad said that she had done her part to "pay it forward" in the past. She recently participated in a program to collect and distribute shoes for the homeless.

Kristyn was there with a cameraman from WATE to capture the moment for tonight's 6:00 p.m. news. She was kind enough to mention me in her story and to pose for a photo with Layci. In times like these, Kristyn said she was glad to report a story with a happy ending. Merry Christmas Eve!

tennis-ee

There was a picture of my wife in this morning's News Sentinel. Actually it's her and about a hundred others in the seats at Thompson-Boling Arena on Sunday. A friend of ours had an extra ticket to the Rock n' Racquets exhibition starring Serena Williams and Andy Roddick.



My wife had a great time at the event. She said that Roddick was really funny, especially when he did impressions of other tennis stars like John McEnroe, Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova. He even stuffed towels in his shirt and shorts to impersonate Serena. My wife said she recognized a couple of the songs by Gavin Rossdale, probably from the days we saw him perform with Bush at various KROQ concerts.

While she was there she spotted WBIR's John Becker in the audience. She also saw Fr. Ragan Schriver, who had a court side seat (see photo) near Dane Bradshaw. Just the other day I was talking with someone about how the former Vol player rode a zipline from atop the Sunsphere in 2007.

perpetual light skype upon them

In this Internet era, everyone could benefit from having a Google Alert for their own name. I've had one in my name for a while and I've recently suggested that my wife and kids set up some for themselves. This past January, Stacy McCloud got a laugh when a Google Alert showed her name in my blog post titled "local news anchor on pot."

When I first set up my own Google Alert, I would get a lot of links to pages about the late politician and judge Frank Murphy and to news stories mentioning the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. The famous Michigander turned up recently in a story on George Mason University's History News Network. Sometimes I got news of former NFL player Frank Murphy. Lately there have been even more Frank Murphys turning up on the Alert.

There's a Frank Murphy who is a "streetwise scrum half," whatever that means. In Florida, there's a Frank Murphy who is the president of Catholic Charities, Diocese of St. Petersburg. A Dr. Frank Murphy is vice-president of the South Carolina Animal Care and Control Association. However it was yet another Frank Murphy who gave me reason to write this post.

He's a funeral director in Salem, Massachusetts who has started using the Internet to help grieving families. He sets up video streaming to allow far-off relatives to view funeral services online.

The process requires only a single camera, a laptop and an Internet connection. There is a 40-second delay, but viewers are essentially watching the proceedings in "real time" through a link to a secure page or by logging in to a password-protected portion on the Murphy Funeral Home Web site.

The biggest challenge was practical, not philosophical. The church lacks an Internet connection, and Murphy is not ready to take the service wireless — at least not yet. Fortunately, a benevolent neighbor of the church allowed a cable to be run from his router, enabling the broadcast to happen.

As an aside, I thought it funny that the website for the local newspaper in Massachusetts is called WickedLocal.com.

never gonna give you up

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade will always be a major part of my holiday. We could vary the dinner menu and I could miss a football game (as long as the Redskins aren't playing) but I cannot miss the parade and have it still feel like Thanksgiving.

Why does CBS bother to cover the parade each year? Better yet, why do I bother to watch? The broadcast is not in high definition, the camera angles are terrible, none of the bands or singers perform and the anchors often give erroneous information. For example, they said that Horton the Elephant was from Whoville, when everybody knows that all the Whos live in the speck of dust on the clover Horton carries.

Actually I do know why I tune in. I always hope to see additional coverage of the giant helium-filled balloons. This year CBS replaced Hannah Storm with Maggie Rodriguez who, like Hannah, referred to the balloons as "floats." She referred to the floats as "floats" as well. When a balloon did pass by, Maggie and co-anchor Dave Price would turn their backs to the camera to get a look. Can't say that I blame them for that.



Maggie and Dave seemed to spend more time interviewing random guests than describing the parade. Some of the celebrities who dropped by were Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Broadway star Roger Bart and singer Clay Aiken. A soap opera actress named Julie Pinson brought photos of the European vacation she and Maggie took together about eight years ago. Maggie revealed that she and Julie have blackmail-able photos of each other that were snapped on a beach in the south of France. I think we know what she means.

To truly enjoy the parade, you needed to watch the good-looking HD coverage on NBC and not pay attention to the corny scripted lines that Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer were reading. They deviated from the script twice today that I noticed. Meredith got the stuffing scared out of her when the Keith Haring Heart balloon got too close and brushed their broadcast booth. We only heard her distress because the camera was already focused on the next entry. Later, there was some confusion over what paragraph to read when Andy Williams was about to perform. How come my man Andy didn't get a float or even a car to ride? I doubt they made an almost-81-year-old walk the parade route. If Andy did have a float that broke down, it might explain the mistake in the NBC booth.



Without question, the greatest moment of the parade was when the "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" float Rickrolled us viewers. NBC tried to spoil it twice by listing Rick Astley's name in the opening credits and by having Matt Lauer say, "watch carefully, we hear there is a special musical surprise." I had just called my wife into the room to hear the Friends' version of the theme from "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" when Astley interrupted with his '80s classic.



For the uninformed few among us, Rickrolling is an Internet sensation where you expect one thing but get Rick Astley. My friend Bean did a great job of explaining it on March 31 and then executing it on April 1 of this year.

I feel for the guy in the photo below. The good news is that he gets to be in the best parade in the country. The bad news is that he had to wear the most ridiculous costume and ride on the Jimmy Dean sausage float with some country singer. What's he supposed to be, a pat of butter?



Let's "dot dot dot" our way through the rest of my notes... my daughter heard that the Rockettes must all have the same length inseam... James Taylor's electric guitar looked like a really thin acoustic guitar... the NYPD band got ripped off when the network ran a recorded drum track instead of the band's audio... Shontelle almost fell off the Rhino Mountain float twice... the Clique Girlz send the exact opposite message I would want my children to get from a group targeting kids... there's an "Internet phenom" named Charice?... when these same balloons appear in the Macy's Holiday Parade at Universal Orlando Resort, do they get deflated and re-inflated every day?... did Varsity Fanclub take the place of the Cheetah Girls in the line of march?... my wife is happy because the best sounding band in the parade, the JMU Marching Royal Dukes, is from her alma mater... Al Roker apparently pulled some strings to get his kid aboard the Santa float... did I mention that the fools at CBS wasted the first ten minutes of their broadcast talking about nothing?

that's just what they'll do

T the R.O.P. has been coming to watch the weekly Einstein Simplified shows lately. He's the same guy who went to Milwaukee with me last year to see the Mets. Since T has been supporting my improv habit, I was more than happy to return the favor by supporting him at the 14th annual Mr. Knoxville Contest, which was held last night to benefit Goodwill Industries. T was the defending champion and earned the crown for a second straight year by collecting the most donations. They're calling it a "T-peat." The event is a parody of a beauty pageant with an emphasis on comedy. T spoofed Michael Phelps, "Wayne's World" and various boy bands in his three appearances on stage. Some of the other guys did skits based on "Zoolander," "Teen Wolf" and Kenny Chesney.



One of my favorite news anchors, Stacy McCloud was there to co-host the event. Another WVLT personality was in the audience. Heather Haley graciously agreed to be in a photo with Stacy and me. When I wanted to get a shot of her fancy leopard-print boots, Stacy said I needed to be in the picture too. Thanks to Heather for taking the photo.

bids and squids

The March of Dimes Signature Chefs Auction has become one of my favorite events to attend. My wife and I got to experience it on Sunday night. As I wrote last year, it's up there with Feast With the Beasts as a great night of food and fun.

While all the other guests headed to the various serving stations around the room for roast beef, lamb and seared tuna, I went straight to the Sugarbuzz Bakers table and grabbed a slice of their Chocolate Toffee Cake. Why not have dessert first? The Caramel Apple Cake looked good but I waited too long to get some. There were only crumbs left when I returned to the Sugarbuzz table later in the evening.



The cakes from Sugarbuzz got third place overall from the judges. The Crown & Goose came in second with a duck cake (think crab cake) with pickled fall root vegetables. Sapphire rightfully took first place with an outstanding Ika salad -- ginger marinated squid with Asian vegetables and a sweet eel sauce -- and Caribbean tuna nigiri -- sashimi tuna served with pineapple calypso sauce and topped with toasted coconut.

Although they didn't make the top three, my wife and I agreed that the chicken Marsala and lobster ravioli from Carrabba's Italian Grill were excellent. We eat a lot of chicken and know a delicious chicken breast when we taste one.

Chef Walter was one of the judges. I was very impressed by his successful weight loss. He's been following a dietary program through the UT Medical Center. We caught up with him as he was leaving with some takeout containers for his wife, Miss Anne.



My wife and I also had nice conversations with Maestro Lucas Richman and Russell Biven. We especially enjoyed talking with former WBIR reporter Jim Ragonese and his wife Jaime. She said that I really need to read a book about cadavers called "Stiff." I recalled that the same author had written a book with a one-word title about sex and that it wasn't called "Stiff."

In addition to the live auction for big-ticket items like an emerald and diamonds ring from Lamon Jewelers, there was a silent auction in the lobby before dinner was served. My wife bid on a basket full of Thanksgiving items but was outbid. I was temped to place a bid for a custom website package until I saw that they offer "professioanl graphic design."

ooey gooey

The enticement of sweet treats was all it took for me to accept an invitation to judge a chili and dessert cook-off at Pleasant Ridge Elementary School’s PTO meeting on Thursday night. I almost didn't get there because the directions I was given didn't account for the long-term lane closure on Pleasant Ridge Road.



The other media judges were Michele Silva, Alison West and Brad Allen. It was the second time I had seen Alison in two weeks. We both showed up to judge a chili cook-off for the employees of AAA on October 16. As it worked out, Brad judged the chili along with two representatives from Food City. Michelle, Allison and I picked the dessert winner. The ladies preferred a Butterfinger Delight made with angel food cake. I liked the spice cake treats even though they were covered with a white chocolate bark. Its taste blended well with the cake inside, unlike the Halloween Oreo Balls I showed you yesterday.



The other judges and I had no problem agreeing on the Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake. It was almost as moist as actual pumpkin pie. I was pleasantly surprised to see it on the dessert table. My wife had recently told me about the recipe, which Paula Deen once featured in a cookbook. At the end of the instructions there are variations for pineapple, banana and peanut butter versions of the cake. My wife made the Peanut Butter Gooey Cake and brought it on our trip to share with our son and other family members just last weekend. She improvised by putting chocolate chips on top instead of chopped peanuts, as suggested on one site.

they said you was high classed

Karen Lively at the Young-Williams Animal Center knew she could convince me to pose with the puppies by sending along photos of some favorite news anchors doing just that. Tearsa Smith and Stacy McCloud are among the many local media types who have helped draw attention to dogs and cats needing a good home.



On Saturday the center is holding its Furry Fall Festival with free goody bags for the first 50 visitors, some educational programs and ideally lots of pets getting adopted. This morning, I posed with several dogs, a couple of cats and a rabbit named Willow, all of which are available for adoption. The animals I met seemed fairly rambunctious. They were more interested in playing than posing for the camera. Check out the pictures of Charlie, Hufflepuff, Shadow and Willy Nilly. Karen also sent me some outtakes from today's photo session. As you can see below, both Fifel and Reuben found me to be delicious. I actually like these shots better than the photos chosen for the Young-Williams website.

color, cut, clarity

Apparently the clues were out there if only I had the slightest idea to look for them. Instead I flipped past a locally produced show on WBIR tonight and did a double-take. Did my eyes deceive me or was "Heartland Tonight" on my screen in glorious high definition? The episode followed a barge up the Tennessee River to Knoxville. It almost didn't matter what the show was about, I couldn't stop watching.

I was under the impression that our local stations only aired HD programs that "passed through" from the networks. I didn't know any of them had bought the equipment to broadcast their own shows in HD. When I saw John Becker at Boomsday, I asked him when WBIR would go HD. I was thinking of their annual telecast of the fireworks as well as their news programming. John's quick retort was "do you have two million dollars?" Switching the local news to HD will require all new cameras, sets, lighting, etc. The prerecorded shows I saw tonight were shot on location with smaller, more affordable HD cameras.

What's that? Did I say show or shows? Yes, "Heartland Tonight" was followed by another local HD show. WBIR pre-empted a rerun of "Chuck" to air "Tennessee Shines," a bluegrass music program recorded at the Bijou Theatre. The same performances aired live on WDVX radio last month. The great-looking TV show is a feather in the cap of Doublejay Creative, a relatively new company founded by married couple Adrian and Larsen Jay. Another new project of theirs gives flowers to hospital patients.

While searching out links for this blog entry, I discovered the HD clues that were out there in cyberspace. The second paragraph of a press release from the Knoxville Tourism & Sports Corporation mentions that "Tennessee Shines" would be in high def. Better still, the program listings on WBIR.com also announced the big news. I guess I expected a lot more hype for a major development in Knoxville television history.

it swings, it jives

The "canned food curse" almost struck again. For the past several years, Webb School of Knoxville collected more donations for the Second Harvest Food Bank but lost the annual football game to archrival Knoxville Catholic High School. At halftime of tonight's game, Lori Tucker and I announced that Catholic had finally won the High School Football Challenge. Moments earlier, Webb kicked a field goal as time ran out in the first half to take a 9-7 lead. They went up 16-7 in the third quarter. Several people in the stands worried aloud about Catholic's chances. However the Fighting Irish came back to win 20-16.

Lori and I were chatting about our respective kids as we waited for halftime. We each have a college freshman this year. While we were standing there, blogger Missybw of The House of Flying Monkeys came up and introduced herself to us. It was nice to finally meet her after all the nice comments she has posted on my site.

As riveting as our check presentation must have been, the true highlight of halftime was a performance by majorette Sarah Harris. Normally I don't care for baton twirling but Sarah won me over with her musical choice and excellent skills. She performed to "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" as covered by Michael Bublé. I know purists will find it ridiculous that "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is my favorite Queen song, yet it is.

sorry Charlie

Doug McCaughan used to have a picture on his site of a t-shirt that said "Don't Make Me Blog You." That was exactly my thought today when I was buying a can of tuna fish at Food City.

The shopping trip had started out well. I saw the Tennessee Traveler vehicle parked out front of the supermarket and knew that Alan Williams must be inside. He was just getting in the checkout line and paused to say hi. He said it had been a while since he had seen me. I mentioned that I had recently seen him on stage at the Tennessee Theatre when WVLT did their local upfront presentation. On the way home, I thought about the time I invited Alan, Gene Patterson and Ted Hall to judge a turkey cooking contest. I was with a now-defunct oldies station at the time. Each anchorman judged a different day of the three-day competition leading up to Thanksgiving.

I had driven over to Bearden to patronize one of the few Food City stores that still carries my favorite fat-free salad dressing. During my weight loss, I also switched brands of chicken and tuna. I only buy cans of StarKist that are marked not just "Low Sodium" but "Very Low Sodium." Tuna was a good choice for me on days I felt especially hungry. My serving size for chicken is five ounces. For turkey and most types of fresh fish, it's four ounces. For beef, it's only three ounces. However, I am allowed to eat a whole six-ounce can of low sodium tuna. That's why I got so mad at StarKist today when I took a can off the shelf and realized it had been downsized to four-and-a-half ounces. Boo StarKist! Now I have to look for a store that carries the very low sodium variety of Bumble Bee or Chicken of the Sea in six-ounce cans.

lucky number eight

WVLT held a local version of a network upfront presentation this afternoon at the Tennessee Theatre. I called Dino Cartwright and got myself invited. Alan Williams served as emcee for the event, which was targeted to advertisers.

Actor David Keith was there to plug his upcoming appearance on "CSI: Miami." I spoke to him briefly, choosing to tell him that when we met about ten years ago at KLOS, it was the first time I had ever heard anyone talk about Vols football. David responded by saying that he had been in Mark Thompson's first film. It was definitely a better choice than bringing up the time we met again three years ago.

In addition to Keith, I saw and spoke with Chef Walter, Gary Loe, Rick Russo and Bob Kesling. Russo and Kesling took the stage to talk about the Vols for a little while. Most of the time was devoted to watching previews of the new shows coming to CBS this fall:

• The pilot episode of "Worst Week" looks funny. But can they maintain that frenetic pace in episode two or three or four etc?
• I'll take a look at Jay Mohr's show, "Gary Unmarried," because I like his guest appearances on KROQ. Will the sitcom writing be up to the level of his standup? He looks like he's taken up weightlifting or something.
  
• Of the dramas, "The Mentalist" intrigues me enough to record a few episodes. It airs on Tuesday nights, while I'm out improvising.
  
• They said that "Eleventh Hour" got the best grades from test audiences. The short preview I saw didn't convince me to commit to it. I'll probably watch the first episode, just to be nice.

uproar at four

People in Knoxville are passionate about their local TV news. I came to this obvious conclusion when I saw that the most commented upon story on the News Sentinel website today was "WBIR cancels 'Style.'" I also had a pretty good idea based on the number of people who click on my blog after searching for names like Abby Ham and Stacy McCloud. In addition to the news article, Terry Morrow wrote a blog entry analyzing the reasons behind the cancellation of "Style."

The reader comments turned into a venting session about WBIR, WATE and WVLT. Some guys are more interested in whether or not Stacy is wearing a wedding ring. Others have not gotten over the loss of former Knoxville anchors like Jessa Goddard or Kristen Hoke. A lot of readers seem obsessed with the Glitterville guy.

There are a few hidden nuggets of value buried amidst the snarkiness. Why not make "Style" a half hour show at 12:30 p.m. instead of running "The Beverly Hillbillies" reruns? Maybe there is a certain amount of repetition among beloved Ken Schwall's stories. And perhaps too much time is devoted to the weather segments on days when there is no severe weather.

I'll have to strongly disagree with the commenter who thinks that Michele Silva was rude. I've been a guest on "Style" and I've seen Michele at many events. She's one of the nicest people in town.

fluid ounces

The new Weigel's on Middlebrook Pike was open on Sunday but it wasn't "grand open" yet. My wife and I went there after church intending to buy a gallon of our preferred brand of milk. As I put the jug on the counter, I saw a notice that it would go on sale the next day when the grand opening celebration began. Why pay $3.99 when it would cost $2.99 in 24 hours? I put the milk back in the case. My son could pick up a discounted gallon on his way home from swim team practice on Monday. If we time it right, we should be able to get three gallons before the sale price expires this coming Sunday.



The grand opening flyer also promised discounted gasoline on Wednesday. My wife and I both topped off our tanks today for only $3.69 a gallon. While I was there I picked up another jug of milk too, even though we won't need it until tomorrow. A news photographer from WATE 6 approached several drivers as we filled up. He asked if I would answer a question on camera. To the surprise of absolutely no one, I agreed. My sound bite turned up on the 5:00 p.m. news. As he described the grand opening promotion, Gene Patterson said "Lots of people there taking advantage including a local radio personality from Star 102.1." Thanks Gene!

pondering pachyderms

Something must be up with the elephants. My wife and son enjoyed seeing Tonka and the other elephants at the Knoxville Zoo on Saturday. My friend Bean sent me a photo of Batman on an elephant and Byron just sent me a link to see Abby Ham shoveling elephant manure at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Don't worry Ham fans, she still has her regular job on the Channel 3 News.

Abby's dung-filled day reminded me of something we did one spring at WAVA. When the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus came to town, I had the opportunity to ride an elephant through the streets of D.C. Before they left, the circus would offer free bags of elephant manure to anybody who wanted some for their garden. We got several bags of the stuff and spread them in the parking lot on top of an envelope, which we had sealed in a plastic bag. We invited listeners to come and dig through the manure in search of a buried prize. When one of the listeners finally found it, he ripped open the envelope and saw nothing but the words "April Fool!"

helping hand

In response to the floods in the Midwest, WATE will raise some money for the American Red Cross later today. The phone lines will open during the 5:00 p.m. newscast and stay open until 8:00 p.m. At 5:30, they will preempt "Inside Edition" to air a mini-telethon, hosted by Tearsa Smith and yours truly.

On Friday, Tearsa and I cut a promo that ran all weekend. As we were getting started, I didn't know how to place my hands, so I copied something I've seen dozens of sportscasters do. I put my hands together with only the fingertips touching. They formed a triangle pointed it toward the floor. Apparently there's a behind-the-scenes TV news term for it that cracked me up and almost delayed the taping. Right as the tape was about to roll, Tearsa said, "no v----- hands!" She explained later that American Sign Language uses almost the exact same symbol for the lady business. Previously I would have thought that phrase referred to the "victory formation" signal used by some NFL coaches.

one down, nineteen to go

At the urging of my friend Tim, I tried listening to some NPR this week. Today I heard a show that was so good, I'm kicking myself for not knowing about it sooner. Fortunately all twenty past episodes of Radiolab are available online. They produce five episodes per season.

The episode that got me hooked was about the famous 1938 broadcast of "War of the Worlds." I downloaded the mp3 so I can hear the parts I missed while out of the car. People who posted comments on the show's blog loved it as much as I did.

Every Halloween some radio stations would rerun the old Mercury Theatre show. I used to hear it as a kid in New York on WOR. In L.A. it was on KNX. While I was at KLOS, I produced and directed a version of "War of the Worlds" at the Museum of Television & Radio, as it was known back then. We paid some old guy for the rights and used the same script.

In our production, Paul Sorvino played the Orson Welles part. I cast Paul Moyer and Colleen Williams from KNBC and Leonard Maltin from "Entertainment Tonight" in the roles of the newscasters who "interrupt" the program. They were all great but it was William Shatner who stole the show. He played Carl Phillips, the reporter who (spoiler alert) gets burned up by the Martians. Shatner got a well-deserved standing ovation during our first commercial break.

let perpetual light shine upon them

Tim Russert always reminded me of my father a little bit. There was a slight resemblance in the shape of their faces. Of course there are more differences than similarities but as I watched the sad news about Russert's untimely death today, I could only think of what they had in common. They were both journalists. They both worked for a governor of New York State. They were both proud of their Irish heritage. They both were loyal fans of their favorite NFL teams. They both loved politics. They were both Catholic and both Jesuit-educated. They both collapsed on the job and they both died in Washington, DC at too young an age. My deep sympathy and condolences go to Tim's family and friends.

move 'em on, head 'em up

When there are changes to my blogroll or the sidebar, I try to make them on the first of the month. It's because I started my blog on the first of a month and somehow it makes sense in my mind.

I found Cupcakes Take the Cake when they posted entries about some local bakeries. They did it again today with a great story about a cupcake just like the one I tried last week except that it was mistaken for a bomb at the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge.

Slashfood is a site I've been visiting regularly for some time. Yesterday they showed us how to make cake-sicles, although they look more like cookie-sicles.

Amelia's Space often has a peek behind the scenes at WVLT. Today she posted about their coverage of the closure of I-40 through downtown. One day last month she took us to the farewell party for Jessa Goddard and Kim Bedford.

At last month's Blogfest gathering, I enjoyed visiting with Doug of Reality Me and his wife Cathy of Domestic Psychology. Her funny post about trying to find the bathroom that night made me want to check back periodically.

After the recent Papal visit, a friend reminded me to check Whispers in the Loggia for their intense coverage. When the Pope gets close to naming a new bishop for Knoxville, we will probably read about it first on their site.

Can anybody recommend a blog about improv? It would be great to find one that I like and to add it to the blogroll on June 1. That date has some improv significance to me.

disturb the sound of silence

After two days of watching CNN, I can't take it any longer. Pardon me while I borrow a formula from my friend Bean's blog, Strongly Worded Letter. Former radio deejay Tony Harris has the good looks to make it as a TV news anchor. He probably Googles himself regularly, therefore it shouldn't take him but a day or two to find this:

Dear Mr. Harris,

May I humbly suggest that you compare a tape of your coverage of today's Papal Mass with the coverage on EWTN, the Catholic network. Granted they have the advantage of already knowing the format of a standard Catholic service, however you will have to notice that you and your team were talking at the times they knew to be quiet and vice versa. More than once you chose to listen in to the proceedings at the wrong time. For example, your viewers heard a minute of silence after the homily and the Prayers of the Faithful read in multiple foreign languages. EWTN used those opportunities to explain what was happening. You completely obliterated the second reading, which was in English, and went to commercial during the Responsorial Psalm.

Furthermore, may I suggest that you spend some time listening to a good play-by-play announcer in your favorite sport. I can think of several baseball and football announcers who know how to be quiet and let the game happen. They may be in the middle of an anecdote about a player when then simply pause the story, let the game unfold and then pick up the story later. Unlike you, they do not spend 20 precious seconds explaining to the audience that they are about to stop talking to let us hear whatever it is that they are talking over.

Thank you for your attention,
Frank Murphy
Knoxville, TN

Now that we have that out of the way, let's move on to the photos my sister took at Nationals Park today. The Popemobile passed close by as she and my mother were walking to their seats. Once they got there, they had a pretty good view of the altar and of the Pope as he headed back to the dugout after Mass.

happy geburtstag

The ceremony to welcome Pope Benedict XVI to the White House was broadcast live on several TV networks this morning. I recorded two channels, hoping for the one in 13,500 chance that I might spot my daughter in the crowd. As you can see from the pictures taken by her boyfriend, they weren't too far back. She did say it was easier to see the Pope and the President when they were up on the balcony. She was pleasantly surprised to find that she happened be standing near our friend Fr. Ragan Schriver, the director of Catholic Charities of East Tennessee.



I chose to record EWTN for their complete coverage and CNN-HD for their high-definition picture. CNN was a disappointment. I wanted to see the White House in widescreen. Instead, they showed the ceremony in SD. On either side of the 4:3 image, they put pillars with the CNN-HD logo as if to rub it in. To make matters worse, anchor Tony Harris would not shut up. He must like hearing himself talk. Prior to the ceremony, he would restate his own question multiple times before letting his guest answer. Then he talked all the way through the Vatican anthem and part way through the Star Spangled Banner before realizing it and commenting on the fact that he was going to finally stop talking. It's no wonder that other bloggers have described him as "terrible" and "clueless."

As the newest U.S. Bishop, Knoxville native James Vann Johnston was chosen to read a question to the Pope at tonight's meeting at the National Shrine. EWTN carried the speech live. Bishop Johnston got his camera time at 7:15 p.m. The question was written by the USCCB and preselected by the pope as one he would like to answer. A local Missouri station only barely mentioned that their new bishop would be present. They also misspelled the word "speeches" and inserted a picture of Captain Kirk in the middle of the article.



Tomorrow I will record EWTN's coverage of the Papal Mass at Nationals Park. My mother and sister will be among the 46,000 in attendance. I don't expect to see them on camera. The Washington media have set up special pages on their websites for the Papal visit. Check out WRC, WUSA and WJLA as well as the Washington Post.

forecast is mostly McCloudy

Stacy McCloud got a nice birthday present today and I'm not talking about the gluten-free dessert Roman's Pizza gave her. Terry Morrow reports that Stacy was promoted to "prime anchor" on WVLT at 4:00, 5:30 and 6:00 p.m. The good news for me is that she will drop the morning shift, which I can never watch, and keep the noon newscast, which I try to watch every day.

I had heard this morning that some changes were afoot at WVLT. Not sure who was staying and who was going, I checked the staff page on their website and saw that Jessa Goddard's picture had already been removed. A former employee of the television station told me that Kim Bedford had left the company too. My source also said to watch for more "one-man band" reporters who have to do their own photography and editing. At least they'll always know which is their good side.

under the medium top

The Boom A Ring edition of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is a fun night out although much smaller than the circus I remember from childhood. My parents took my sisters and me to the circus at Madison Square Garden every year. My wife and I took our kids to the circus at the DC Armory and the Long Beach Arena. Instead of a dozen or so elephants, the show visiting Knoxville this week has two. Two is a lot better than none, which partly explains why I hated Cirque du Soleil.



Ringling's one-ring version tours smaller towns while the big shows go to the major markets. Audience reaction prompted them to add a tiger act to the show we got, making it automatically better than the last circus performance I saw. There was no scrimping in the tiger department, with six of the big cats in the ring.



They gave me seats near Doug Mason, who was taking notes and recording video, perhaps for his News Sentinel blog. I was also near WBIR's LaSaundra Brown and Russell Biven. Since today was Ben Senger's last day at Channel 10, I asked Russell if he had to start working the morning shift tomorrow. If so, he was already up too late. Fortunately he gets a few days off before his alarm clock rings unbelievably early on Monday.

call 656-kids

Hey, do me a favor. Phone in a pledge to the Children's Hospital Radiothon on Friday. As usual, several popular WBIR news anchors came by to support the annual two-day event today. Remember how Abby Ham showed up last year? Here's Beth Haynes, Russell Biven and Robin Wilhoit.



Better than calling, drive over to West Town Mall and say hi. Bill Williams, Moira Kaye and Michele Silva are coming tomorrow. Local news fan Byron Chesney should consider stopping by too if he wants to meet them.

One of Byron's recent posts had a comment from somebody who works with Stacy McCloud. By following the link in that person's profile, I ended up on a page full of pictures from the WVLT Christmas party when Stacy wore the purple dress that she auctioned off for charity. Byron might want to save a few of these glamour shots for his files.

please, please, please don't go away

The TV in our living room stayed tuned to WATE all evening for "Lost" and the new show that followed. "Eli Stone" was pretty good and worth watching again next week. One of the stars is Natasha Henstridge, who first became famous in the movie "Species." I remember when she visited KLOS to promote "Species II." As I recall, she was pregnant at the time. A few months before I started my blog, I saw Natasha at the 2005 "American Idol" finale party. I would have liked to have had my picture taken with her but the opportunity didn't present itself. Instead I took a picture of Natasha posing with a fellow partygoer because she looked a bit like my Aunt Kitty McArdle. Not Natasha, the other lady. I've been hanging on to the picture all this time in case I ever had reason to write about either Natasha or Aunt Kitty even though she wasn't really a relative but a close family friend.



The 11 o'clock news on WATE had another story about the unusual advertising campaign for "Lost." My grandmother will probably be interested to know that Knoxville has one of only a very few Oceanic Air billboards. Maybe the placement of that billboard means Sawyer is one of the "Oceanic Six." I'll have to ask Grandma if she started watching "Lost" again. She had thought about giving up the show when it became too much about the Others.

Speaking of WATE, I will miss their noon newscast. Terry Morrow reports that the station will drop the broadcast after tomorrow. I was one of the people who watched it almost every day. Other stations owned by the same company have been canceling newscasts and making staff cutbacks. I was glad to see in Terry's report that Lori Tucker is staying put.

There's still one more show on WATE for me tonight. I will record "Jimmy Kimmel Live," as I always do and watch it later. Tonight he celebrates five years on the air. Happy anniversary Jimmy!

newsies

As a fellow blogger, Stacy McCloud understands how much we appreciate getting comments. She has posted two here recently. This morning she got a laugh from my entry about her reflection on Chef Walter's saucepan. Here's a post-haircut photo of Stacy for your enjoyment.



If you don't keep up with the comments you may have missed a good radio story about Mark "Sparky" Thompson in response to yesterday's post. And earlier in the week I posted a comment myself to tell you that Abby Ham finally sent the picture from her goodbye party at The Breakfast Club concert in November.

local news anchor on pot

Chef Walter made a chicken and macaroni bake on the noon news today. As best as I can recall, the main ingredients were butter, cheese, heavy cream and more butter. At the end he threw in some chunks of chicken and some frozen peas and carrots. He topped it with bread crumbs and (of course) butter. When the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the stove, I saw something move where I didn't expect it. It was the reflection of a cameraman or maybe the floor director walking off to the right. Then I noticed Stacy McCloud on the left of the pot, watching from the wings.

our top story tonight

Stacy McCloud got a haircut. In her updated blog entry she describes it as a cross between Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Katie Holmes. I haven't seen it yet but I'm sure it looks nice. Maybe Byron Chesney will be able to post some photos in the morning.

Yesterday Byron posted a link to an article about the ratings increase at WKYC since Abby Ham joined the station. I had emailed Abby on New Year's Eve to wish her well and to bug her about the two photos I am hoping to get from her to post on the blog. Here's the reply she sent me today:

Frank,

So good to hear from you. Things are going great. We just moved into our new house so it has been a little crazy, but we are finally settling in.

I miss Knoxville so much. I have my days when I get really sad that I don’t live there anymore. It all happened so fast. It’s hard to believe that I am in a whole new place. I really like Cleveland, though, and the new station. I guess I always miss the places I leave behind.

I went to the Rock Hall before Christmas and was going to stop and take a picture in front of the stamp, but the wind was blowing so hard. I think I would have lost my new camera. I still have to download the pictures from The Breakfast Club night. I will get those to you very soon.

Hope all is well and you had a great holiday. Tell Marc and Kim and the gang (Tearsa included) hello for me.

Abby

top 10 from the home office

When the year is new there is comfort in repeating the old. My New Year's Day traditions are watching the Rose Parade and reading The List in the Washington Post. Unfortunately this year's in and out list didn't entertain me as much as last year's.

A lot of people make top ten lists to commemorate the year gone by. Byron Chesney posted an interesting list of his top ten stories about local TV news. It's not surprising that Abby Ham topped his list. Nor is it surprising that Abby topped Terry Morrow's list of the best on local TV in 2007.

I emailed Abby the other day to remind her about the pictures I want her to send. While we're thinking about her, I compiled a list of the top ten search terms that brought people to my blog in 2007. I understand all of them except for numbers 4 and 8.

1. Abby Ham
2. Jessica Simpson naked
3. Regis & Kelly
4. product placement
5. Frank Murphy
6. magazines for miles
7. puffy shirt
8. cigarette girl
9. calories
10. Stacy McCloud

Did you know that Stacy enjoys a banana with peanut butter every morning for breakfast? She mentioned it in a comment on Monday's entry as she contemplates whether or not to cut her hair.

movers and shakers

The News Sentinel published a "40 Under 40" list of business and community leaders yesterday. Congratulations are certainly in order for all forty of them but especially for the following four. I didn't expect to recognize any of the names on the list and was pleasantly surprised to know ten percent of them.

Tasha Blakney is someone I would often see at Todd Covert's parties. She's a lawyer like Todd. These are the same parties where I used to see Jon Jefferson, co-author of the Body Farm books.

Jacene England is an architect who works for Mike Michael Brady, Inc. When Einstein Simplified participated in Canstruction to benefit Second Harvest Food Bank, Jacene figured out how to stack some canned food to look like SpongeBob SquarePants or a big nose with glasses. She's also the person who invited me to join LinkedIn and once sent me her Junior Brown photos.

Larsen Jay was working for RIVR Media when he scouted my house for an episode of "Ed the Plumber" on DIY. He also produced "Warehouse Warriors" and had me appear as a judge on one episode. He now has his own company.

Robin Wilhoit anchors the news on WBIR. Everybody knows her. I've been on enough telethons and other Channel 10 shows that she knows me too.

weary world rejoices

In an effort to catch a five minute appearance by the Brian Setzer Orchestra, I recorded all four hours of the "Today" show yesterday. Ann Curry flubbed her line and said that Brian "Seltzer" would be on the show. She joked about it later by saying Setzer was bringing some seltzer to their morning. Although the set was decorated for Christmas, the band played "One More Night With You" from their "Wolfgang's Big Night Out" CD instead of a holiday tune. The BSO will return to "Today" on Christmas Day. Since the equipment was all set up, they must have recorded the Christmas segment before this morning's live performance. In fact, they might have shown part of it. As they came back from a local news break, I saw the Orchestra finishing up "Boogie Woogie Santa Claus." Ann Curry tried to explain that away by saying it was a rehearsal for the live segment that was still coming up.

Gifted tenor Carl Tanner was on the "Today" show a couple of years ago. A friend of mine knows Carl pretty well and has been doing what she can to help his career. She called me this afternoon to ask if I had any suggestions for getting Carl an appearance on WASH-FM, the all-Christmas station in his hometown. I think Carl could be a good guest on my friend Loo Katz's morning show. Meanwhile, I asked if I could get one of Carl's holiday CDs for myself and one for my friend Bean, who loves Christmas music even more than I do.

Mere weeks after launching his new blog, Bean has another new website called Christmas Music Everyday. Each day he will post a song from his extensive Christmas music collection. Bean's site promises to be even better than the enjoyable "Last Christmas" blog I heard about, uh, last Christmas.

will it float?

Maybe it was the amazing HD picture that helped me be less critical of NBC's coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade than in years past. This morning I decided that Meredith Vieira has a warmth and a sincerity in her voice that makes her better at reading the Macy's approved script than Katie Couric. In 2005, I was less than enthusiastic about the Katie and Matt Lauer combination. The cheese factor increased today once Al Roker joined Meredith and Matt at the table. Voiceover announcer Joel Godard's pronunciation of "Menudo" was oddly entertaining every time he attempted it.

In 2006, I focused on CBS's coverage. This year I am too frustrated to deal with them because Hannah Storm still doesn't know the difference between a parade float and a balloon. Hannah might have been a little embarrassed when Hannah Jr. used her whole palm to wipe her nose on live TV. Dave Price was definitely embarrassed when he said that Tom Osborne had coached Oklahoma and when he said "you're watching The Early Show... no you're not, you're watching the Thanksgiving Day parade!"

The Ooltewah High School Marching Band dressed in clown costumes and played a medley that included a little bit of music from "Big Top Pee-wee." They finished their performance and started playing "Rocky Top" as NBC moved on to the Ronald McDonald balloon. From the aerial view, Ronald's hair looked more like his brain. The Ooltewah band posted their itinerary online. The students had to wake up at 1:30 this morning, get on their bus by 2:30 and line up for rehearsal at 3:00 a.m.

One of the foot-juggling Huesca Brothers almost neutered his sibling on live TV. One brother was on his back, feet in the air. The other brother was supposed to plant his soles on his brother's. He missed.

Matt Lauer said that the girl on the Care Bears float was "one of rock's foremost vocalists, Kay Hanley." That impressive descriptor didn't help me at all. Besides, she looked too young. Matt might have mentioned that Kay was in the band Letters to Cleo and that she's 39.

You can vote for your favorite float or balloon at ivillage.com, assuming you know the difference.

dressed up with someplace to go

When someone goes to the trouble to give me free tickets to a nice event, I like to be able to use them. Tonight my wife Jere and I felt lucky to attend the Fantasy of Trees Gala Preview Party even though it meant I would have to be a little late for my Einstein Simplified performance. The Fantasy of Trees opens tomorrow and benefits East Tennessee Children's Hospital.

The menu at the gala featured "holiday fare with a Southern flair." The jumbo shrimp was served with a delicious sweet hickory chili sauce that had a good kick to it. The New Orleans bread pudding was a fine dessert but it was a side dish that stole the show. I recently heard about the trend to have a mashed potato bar at catered events. Tonight we enjoyed the fixin's at a sweet potato bar instead. The servers used an ice cream scoop to put some mashed sweet potatoes in a plastic cup. We could then choose from candied pecans, cream cheese glaze, dried cranberry and ginger relish, cinnamon streusel, whipped honey butter, maple syrup and skewered marshmallows that had been lightly toasted with a torch. The potatoes were fine but I was tempted to fill my cup with nothing but toppings.

We spotted several familiar faces from WBIR throughout the crowd. Todd Howell and his wife were walking in to the Convention Center at the same time as Jere and me. As we waited in line for a drink, I asked the pretty woman standing behind us if she was Emily Stroud. She was. A few minutes later we briefly saw Michele Silva and Steve Phillips. We talked with Beth Haynes about one of her relatives who had great success on the same weight loss program as us. John Becker had some helpful advice for my wife's allergy problem.

Our longest conversation was with Ben Senger and his wife Alisha. They were sure they had seen my wife someplace before. Jere cracked us up by saying that she had a very common face. I kept questioning the Sengers until we determined that they had attended Fr. Chris Michelson's farewell Mass at All Saints Church. Jere was the cantor at that Mass.

All night long, I was introducing my wife to the people I knew from WBIR. When it was time for us to leave, she introduced me to some people she knew. A lovely woman named Joni had seen Jere first. They had already started talking as I caught up. Jere introduced me to Joni Punch, who then started to introduce her husband. I somehow already knew she was going to say his name was Jerry. She did the whole, "Jerry, meet Jere" thing that happens every time two people with the same name meet. Then I asked if he was a doctor. Remember, we were at a Children's Hospital function so I could pass it off as a reasonable question. As I suspected he was Dr. Jerry Punch but I still couldn't figure out how I knew that name. I asked my wife if she had mentioned Jerry's name to me recently. She was quite sure she hadn't. It wasn't until I got home and Googled the name that I realized he is a sportscaster and medical expert for ESPN. I don't remember seeing him on ESPN but I do recall seeing him interviewed recently on the local news. Sorry about that, Doc.

goodbye to you

Terry Morrow wanted to know if I would cancel whatever plans I may have had for last night. He had finagled an invitation to Abby Ham's goodbye party and was bringing me as his guest. Abby and her friends were going to see The Breakfast Club, an '80s cover band. Before the concert we gathered at Patrick Sullivan's. A few WBIR folk were already there including the general manager and the news director.

Abby arrived straight from the airport. She had been on the air in Cleveland only two days so far. As usual, the Knoxville Trivia Blog was on top of it, posting links on Thursday to video clips of her debut that morning. Having seen the link, I knew that WKYC broadcasts the news in HD. Abby said she hasn't watched herself in high definition yet.

Our group filled the seats at the big table in the front window and spilled over to a smaller table nearby. At various times I found myself sitting next to Abby, her fiance, the news director and some people I didn't know. At one point the news director was reading the headlines on his PDA. I asked if he could check the Catholic High football score for me. He said that might be the one thing he couldn't get. What about texting Dan Farkas, I asked. He did and that's how I found out that Catholic won their first round playoff game.

A few of the faces around the table were recognizable from TV. In addition to Abby, I saw Robin Murdoch, Kay Watson (again) and Mike Witcher. The staff presented Abby with a nice digital camera as a going away gift. She promised to use it to have her picture made while standing next to the World's Largest Rubber Stamp. She's already seen the stamp because her new TV station is nearby.

Two of WBIR's producers, Erin and Lee Ann, walked down the street to Blue Cats with Terry and me. Abby and the rest would catch up later. A fairly long line had already formed for the Breakfast Club concert. When I first walked in, I thought a deejay was playing "Footloose" but it was actually the band. Their covers are dead on. We met up with Abby and her friends upstairs on the balcony overlooking the stage. Abby told me that she has seen the same band in Chattanooga recently. She and her friends went there to dance and carry on without being recognized. It didn't work. Somebody spotted Abby right away. Let's say that you and your co-workers wanted to go out for the evening to dance and maybe have a drink. You would just go. Now let's say that you and your co-workers all have recognizable faces from being on the TV. What would you do then?

Before I went home for the night, I had a chance to chat with Abby about her time in Knoxville. She agreed that the morning and noon newscasts in our town were particularly competitive because of the strong anchor teams on WATE and WVLT. Abby especially appreciated all the buzz generated by local bloggers. She feels it helped her career, even though she had to grow a thicker skin to deal with the negative comments posted by some readers. By the way, the fanboys reading this should know that Abby's fiance is a good guy and that they make a great couple. I wish them all the happiness in the world. Do you think they might invite me to the wedding? (No, I don't either.)

I tried to make my exit a couple of times. During one attempt, Abby wanted to get a picture with Terry and me. I will go ahead and post an empty space below where the photo will be once Abby emails it to me. Meanwhile, Terry and the others wanted me to stay until 12:45 a.m. That's when the band would return from intermission and when the lead singer was supposed to make a surprise announcement from the stage about Abby's departure. During the break, I saw two of my improv brothers from Einstein Simplified and a few of our regular audience members. Hey Lance and Marshall, if you want to send me the photos we posed for out in the courtyard, I'll post those too. Anyway, I never heard the big announcement so I left during the second or third song. As I walked back to my car, all I could think about was how surprised my friends were to see me out that late.

stampede of dollars

The local chapter of the March of Dimes asked me to be a spotter for the Signature Chefs Auction tonight. I pointed out bidders in the crowd to auctioneer Robbie Franklin. The food at the event reminded me of Feast with the Beasts except more civilized. Several top restaurants served their best fare in a ballroom at the Knoxville Convention Center. Unlike the event at the zoo, everyone in the crowd was dressed up and the delicacies were served on china plates.

As much as I wanted to sample every dish being offered, I don't think it would have been physically possible even with the small portion sizes. Nama took first prize for their delicious seared tuna roll. I also liked the braised veal cheek from Northshore Brasserie and the pumpkin cheesecake served with gingersnaps in a champagne glass from Hunter's Bakery & Cafe.

A number of local celebrities were in attendance. I had a chance to converse with many of them. John Becker was the emcee for the evening. He and I mostly talked about our mutual friend Fr. Ragan Schriver. John and I recently did some volunteer work on a project for Catholic Charities of East Tennessee. I told John that I believe that Fr. Ragan could be a superstar on the national charitable scene if he wanted to. After all, he already has TV experience as a contestant on "Warehouse Warriors."

Kay Watson was sitting at the WBIR table. When I said hi to Kay tonight, I told her that we had once met at Dollywood. She responded by saying, "oh yeah, you were sitting behind us." By doing so, she as much as acknowledged that she has seen the picture of the back of her head that I posted here last summer. I mentioned the photo and she confirmed that she had heard about it and then looked at it online. Fortunately for me, she saw the humor in it.

Chef Walter Lambert was still on a high from meeting Betty White, who was in town on Friday. After her live interview with Stacy McCloud, Betty was ushered onto Chef Walter's kitchen set to taste his bran muffins.

Maestro Lucas Richman listened patiently as I requested he schedule a program of classical music that we would recognize from cartoons. His lovely wife Debbie remembered meeting me on the Knoxville Symphony's recent Blogger Night.

Diana Morgan, the recently retired host of the Scholars' Bowl on East Tennessee Public Television, talked to me about the value of participating in academic competitions when it comes to filling out college applications.

Scott Branscom from "HGTVPro.com Weekly" was stunned by my appearance. Aside from the weight loss and makeover, the fact that I was wearing a suit and tie tonight made the difference from the last time he saw me all the more noticeable. Scott was one of the master carpenters on "Warehouse Warriors" when I was a guest judge on the show about four years ago. Coincidentally, the episode I did will be repeated this Thursday at 5:00 a.m. Set your TiVo.

wham bam, thank you Ham

Thanks to Doug McCaughan for the kind words he wrote about me yesterday. He wisely chose to invoke the name of Abby Ham in hopes of increasing his page views. Meanwhile, Abby fans should keep an eye on Terry Morrow's blog and on the Knoxville Trivia Blog, which has become your number one source for Ham info. For those of you following along, Abby did agree to pose with the World's Largest Rubber Stamp and to send me a photo for the blog. The last line of her email to me speaks to all of us: "I know I said this, but thank you for being so nice to me when I first arrived. I appreciate it more than you know!"

bon voyage

Abby Ham is leaving Knoxville. The announcement was made early this morning on TV. Terry Morrow has more details. Abby received a nice promotion from Gannett and will relocate to Cleveland to fill an opening at WKYC. An anonymous insider tipped us off to that possibility when they posted the rumor in a blog comment almost a month ago.



I wish Abby all the best. Of course I'll miss her. It doesn't surprise me that she is moving on to a larger market. I almost predicted as much when I first wrote about her a year and a half ago. When she got promoted to the morning shift at WBIR, it meant that I wouldn't be able to watch unless I recorded her 5:00 to 7:00 a.m newscast on my TiVo. That was too much to ask, even of me. I would look for Abby on the noon news, but never seemed to catch her. Instead I started watching the noon news on WVLT (or its 12:30 replay on WVLT-2 so that I don't miss Tearsa Smith on WATE) when they made Stacy McCloud the permanent co-anchor. Stacy curried even more favor with me when she posted a comment on Wednesday's blog entry.

Good luck in Cleveland, Abby! Send us a photo of yourself with the World's Largest Rubber Stamp.

lifelong honor?

The news that the historic KTLA studios are for sale surprised me slightly. Management expects that the station will lease back the space from the new owner. If that doesn't work out, they'll be happy to move into new facilities like several of their competitors have recently done. If the lot gets turned into condos, "Judge Judy" and "Hannah Montana" would need to find new homes too.

Many of the local reporters I saw on KABC, KCBS and KNBC during the '90s have now advanced to network shows. KTLA on the other hand, always had people who seemed more entrenched. For example, Stan Chambers has worked there practically since the station signed on 60 years ago.

In 2001, my friends Pam Baker and Don Barrett let me tag along with them to a ceremony at KTLA honoring Larry McCormick. The soundstage where they did the 10 o'clock news was named in his honor. Larry died three years later. The newsroom had already been named for Hal Fishman. Hal died earlier this summer, about a week after a gala event in his honor. What happens to the Larry McCormick Stage and the Hal Fishman Newsroom if KTLA vacates the premises?

unintentional cross promotion

The local noon news is usually part of my daily routine. Except for the days that I feel like watching "Nothing But Trailers" on HDNet. Anyway, most of the time I watch WATE because Tearsa Smith and Bo Williams do a consistently good job and because I can listen to the beginning of their newscast on 87.7 FM if I'm still on the way home.

On Friday, I was in the mood to flip around the dial. Coincidentally, Tearsa had that day off. I was pleasantly surprised to see Stacy McCloud on WVLT. I don't know if she was just filling in or if the change is permanent. If so, it's something I had hoped for last December.

I tuned in to WVLT on Monday to see if Stacy was on again. She was. Four screens were visible behind Stacy and her co-anchor Bob Yarbrough. On one of them I could clearly see Abby Ham. I quickly flipped over to WBIR and sure enough, there was Abby. It was nice to see her. It always seems like Ben Senger is anchoring solo on the days I tune in.

Today I looked even closer at the monitors on the WVLT set. They are especially easy to see on my plasma screen. One monitor was tuned to WVLT, which makes sense. The second I couldn't identify. It might have been tuned to one of the cable news networks. The third monitor plainly showed Ben Senger. Tearsa Smith was as clear as day on the fourth TV. If I really want to watch both Tearsa and Stacy, it would be easier to catch the convenient replay of the WVLT newscast on WVLT-2 at 12:30.

One of the most entertaining parts of the WVLT news is Chef Walter's cooking segment. I don't know why but I find it funny that they cut to an interminable shot of the floral centerpiece while the meal is "cooking." Then they switch from the flowers to a group shot of the news team enjoying the dish.