Not So Secret Anymore

Not to harp on the subject, but last week’s cover story had a few amusing reactions worth sharing.

There was the high school friend I haven’t spoken in years who texted me “of course you got detained, that beard screams terrorist!” There were the colleagues that I haven’t spoken to in months who reached out to share in the laugh. Then there was the guy who stapled a copy of the cover in a letter he wrote to ask how we pick our models, in which he included a few head shots and an offer of his modeling services.

That was a first. Our production department always has to hunt down models. They don’t ever come to us.

Meanwhile, seeing my face on the cover every time I walked into a store where we have a rack got old fast. Even co-workers and family members said it got a little freaky that my face was plastered everywhere they went. Now I know how those billboard ad models feel.

Of course, no story about the Secret Service would be complete without an influx of letters from more conspiracy theorists. The majority of the letters were from regular folks simply sharing stories similar to mine. But a few others were really out there. The most bizarre one was faxed to us, although in all fairness, after deciphering the main points as best as I could, it appears to have been faxed to every media outlet in the Western Hemisphere.

While I must leave out names for the sake of not getting sued, it claims that several U.S. Senators as well as current and past White House officials are actually Canadian ex-felons and one is allegedly a man in drag, according to the mostly hand-written 11-page list of rambling accusations. And all of them also happen to be from the same city: Calgary, Alberta. Needless to say, don’t expect that story to make it to print anytime soon.

That’s all for now. Happy Halloween and don’t forget to vote.

A Few Firsts

Welcome to the reincarnation of my blog. The original one bit the dust upon the re-launching of our website this week, but I had fell off on the consistency while gearing up for the change-over anyway. I let the old content dissolve into the cyber-space Never Neverland since I prefer to focus my energy on moving forward. So here's to a new venue and well, my first time using Blogger.

As for other firsts this week, perhaps you noticed my mug on the cover. Yep, that's really me with the hat. I think that's a first for all of us here. The author of a story has never posed for the cover picture for their own story before, at least not in the six-year-plus run of this paper.Not that this should be surprising for anyone, it's not really common practice at any publication.

But aside from my reluctantly warming to the idea, the story itself contains a few unprecedented snippets. It was the first time, at least in modern history so far as we were able to tell, that a presidential debate was held on Long Island. It was our first time covering the debates from the inside.

And yes, it was my first time being questioned by federal authorities, instead of the other way around. I'll be crossing my fingers that it's the last.

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