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It practically gallops!

The End Zone

The newest Body Farm novel has been a topic of conversation almost everywhere I’ve been over the past week. At last night’s Einstein Simplified show, a guy named Moose told me that his father had been at the Oak Ridge book signing. Moose was amused that I had signed page 359 of his dad’s copy of “The Bone Thief.” One of the errors caught by my proofreading got mentioned by Jon Jefferson in a great interview with Chapter 16:

Chapter 16: Do you ever have trouble keeping the two separate when you’re writing?

Jefferson: In this latest book, The Bone Thief, there was one place in the manuscript, when I was writing along, that I actually wrote Dr. Bass instead of Dr. Brockton. And it wasn’t until before it went to press that anybody caught that. So mostly it’s not hard to keep the fictional Dr. Brockton separate from the real Dr. Bass, but occasionally it gets a little blurry in the wee small hours when I have been writing a long time.

My friend Brian Egan and his wife Jen were visiting from the D.C. area yesterday. We met at Patrick Sullivan’s before the improv show. Jen was excited to hear about the books and plans to give them as gifts to a family member. Somebody, maybe it was Brian, shouted out “body farm” as a suggestion for one of our improv games.

While chatting about the Body Farm with some folks on Monday, I was reminded of something I heard Dr. Bill Bass say on Thursday. I did a little impromptu emceeing at the Oak Ridge event, by helping with the Q&A session. I asked the assembled crowd to indicate if they wanted to be buried, cremated or skeletonized at the Farm. One man approached Dr. Bass later to say that his mother had donated her remains to the facility upon her death last year. Dr. Bass said that the man could call the anthropology department and make an appointment to visit his mother’s bones, once they had been cleaned and stored in Neyland Stadium. It was another fascinating fact that was new to me.

March 31, 2010 | Filed Under Body Farm | Comments Off 

With a Belt

One of the things I will miss about Blogger.com is the reading list on my dashboard. My type of blog is being kicked to the curb by the Blogger software developers. Originally their deadline was last Friday. They have extended it until May 1 but I have decided to flip the switch to my new WordPress blog on April 1.

Today I am trying to figure out how to best use the sidebars and widgets on my new site. Some of the items, like the appeal for camera donations, will go away. The Twitter feed may look different, depending on what widget I use. I have been experimenting with WordPress since March 1. When you finally see the updated blog, it will have a month’s worth of archived posts.

The Blogger reading list is where I saw a link to Dave & Thomas today. The Knoxville blog duo has gotten on the Wesley Willis bandwagon, which I’ve been on since the mid 1990s. The collection of Wesley Willis music videos on YouTube got me thinking. Who do I know that would want to, just for fun, make a music video for the song that the late, great Wesley wrote about me?

March 30, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment 

Prodigal Stun

What once was lost has now been found! Four months after I lost my digital camera, it has found its way back to me.

On the day after Thanksgiving, my kids and I purchased a new washer and dryer as a Christmas gift for my wife. They posed for pictures with the floor models of the appliances. Our plan was to give my wife the photos on Christmas day, since the machines wouldn’t be delivered until the next day. That never happened because I lost the camera somewhere at the mall, probably in the parking lot.

This past week, I received the following message from a college student named Alayna. She used Facebook to look me up.

Over the Christmas holidays I found an Olympus camera in the West Town Mall parking lot. Once going through the pictures to try to find out whose it might be, I found there were many pictures of you and Alan Williams from channel 8 on it. If it is yours or you think you might know whose it is, please reply.

The photo of Alan Williams that Alayna saw was from the Signature Chefs Auction on November 8. She didn’t mention the picture of Kristin Farley that was next on the memory card.

Obviously, I wrote back to Alayna and added her as a friend. Her busy schedule made it hard to arrange a meeting. However her parents lived reasonably close to the location of a remote broadcast I had on Friday afternoon. They arrived with the camera and told me the rest of the story. Surprisingly, I have “Fish Bait” to thank.

Like mine, their family went to the mall on Black Friday. Alayna saw my camera in the parking lot and picked it up. It must have wanted to be lost, because it promptly disappeared somewhere in her car. She was cleaning the vehicle recently and found the camera again. Fortunately, it still had enough battery life left for Alayna and her father to look at the photos and do some research.

As far as the detective work, I have to give the credit for actually figuring out that it was yours to him. I had looked through the pictures a few times to see if maybe I could figure it out from that. I recognized Allan Williams but with my busy schedule didn’t have time to really figure out how to get in contact with him. Then last weekend, I was at home and up late working on a school project. My dad got hungry and we started talking about the camera. He started going through it again and found the picture of the film you were in, noticed you in it, Googled the film and found your picture. Then I just Facebooked you to see if it was you and as they say, the rest is history. Ha-ha! I wonder if it wasn’t for the movie, if we would have ever figured it out. Glad you got it back. :)

Alayna’s dad said it was these two pictures from the “Fish Bait” premiere that gave him the clues he needed. Now I have to figure out how to return the $27 in donations that I received for a replacement camera.

March 29, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment 

Shell Games

The torrential rain today meant that my wife and I had to suggest an indoor activity for our house-guests. My wife’s sister and four of her kids are here on their spring break. We drove to tourist-friendly Sevier County and were slightly delayed by the last participant in the Knoxville Marathon. One of the cops who stopped traffic confirmed to me that I was watching the final runner cross Henley Street.

Three and a half years ago, my wife and I enjoyed a visit to RainForest Adventures. We thought her young nephews would want to go there too. They liked it, almost as much as I did. Because I’m a fan of tortoises, I tried looking eye-to-eye at one through the glass. Another glanced up at me from the middle of a huddle.

Another visitor bought pellets to feed some Australian pygmy goats. I saw two flightless birds out in the rain but didn’t notice their egg until I got home and viewed the photos.

March 28, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

Song Choice

Adam Golka almost made us late for The Breakfast Club. The piano virtuoso was practically forced to play an encore by Maestro Lucas Richman. My wife and I attended last night’s performance by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. The second half of the concert was Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Guest artist Golka tore the roof off the place with his performance. He received an immediate standing ovation and while the applause was still loud and strong, Richman literally pushed the 22-year-old back to the piano bench. I’ve been to the symphony dozens of times and had not seen this happen before. Golka launched into an opus by Schubert as the orchestra members watched silently.

Between pieces in the first half of the show, the Maestro greeted the audience and thanked the sponsors as usual. He also got in a plug for his participation in Star 102.1’s Dancing with the Knoxville Stars. I found it funny when he urged the symphony audience to go to the radio station’s website, where they can find the link to donate in his name. I assumed that most of the crowd had no idea what he was talking about but I may have been wrong.

At intermission, web-connected cell phones were glowing and the Tennessee Theatre was buzzing with news of the Tennessee Vols. Their Sweet Sixteen game against Ohio State was nearing its conclusion. I heard one man say that he had smuggled in a radio with an earphone to listen to the game. Local PR executive Alan Carmichael let me look over his shoulder as he checked Twitter on his smartphone. That’s how I learned that the Vols won just before intermission ended. The news spread to the audience as the musicians were tuning up for the Rachmaninoff concerto and a cheer erupted. I sent Carmichael and his wife, Cynthia Moxley, a message suggesting that the orchestra should launch into “Rocky Top.”

Golka’s encore meant that my wife and I didn’t get to the Valarium until after 10:30. I thought we had missed the start of The Breakfast Club show but their opening act was still on its last song when we arrived. The popular ’80s cover band hit the stage a short while later. My wife and I figured that they probably save all the best songs for last. Except for “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” I didn’t hear any of my favorites during the first set, although the other fans seemed more than ready to Wang Chung last night.

March 27, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

Bony Baloney

The invitation from Susan and Mary Jo of the Bone Zones crew was enticing. They would set up some seats for me to fill with listeners who wanted to meet Jon Jefferson and Dr. Bill Bass at their book-signing event in Oak Ridge last night. I could use the opportunity to get copies of “The Bone Thief” autographed both for myself and for the Star 102.1 Radiothon to benefit East Tennessee Children’s Hospital.

A long line of fans wrapped around the bookshelves at Books-A-Million. I offered to help by taking pictures of the event with Susan Seals’ camera. I snapped a few of my own photos too. It was decided that Jefferson and Bass would sign books first and then take questions from the readers afterward.

A woman at the front of the line thought it would be fun if I signed the page on which I was acknowledged as a proofreader. Apparently Susan and Mary Jo had the same idea. They wanted me to sit at the table with the authors and sign page 359 for anybody else who cared to have it. I recalled that on the river cruise in December they had Dr. Al Hazari sign the page of “Death’s Acre” where he was mentioned.

I felt a little awkward at first but the kind reactions of the readers put me at ease. The requests varied as some customers asked to have their books personalized and others did not. Many copies were bought as gifts. I remember writing “surprise” on one. My favorite was the one purchased nine months in advance as a Christmas gift. Jefferson and Bass wrote “merry Christmas” on the title page. I wrote “and a happy new year” on page 359.

March 26, 2010 | Filed Under Body Farm | 1 Comment 

Anchors Aweigh

“Wow, that photo is like your dreams come to life! Nice,” said the message from my friend Bean, who had just seen a picture I posted to Twitter. Three morning news anchors from three different television stations had come in to be interviewed about their participation in Star 102.1’s Dancing with the Knoxville Stars.

I danced in last year’s version of the event and my wife made a donation to East Tennessee Children’s Hospital on my behalf. Each dollar raised by the dancers counts as one vote toward their total. My wife and I will donate again this year and I thought we might divide our dollars evenly between the fundraising pages for Tearsa Smith, Abby Ham and Allison Kropff. On Monday night my wife came home from a Knoxville Choral Society rehearsal with a different idea. She would donate to Lucas Richman’s account.

I should have thought of that sooner. After all, the Maestro is dancing with Emily Loyless, the new co-owner of Academy Ballroom, who was my partner last year. Also, I’m the one who invited Lucas to participate via Stephanie Burdette, the Knoxville Symphony’s director of communications. On top of all that, Richman’s total is lagging behind the TV women, who have been tirelessly promoting the event on their newscasts.

March 25, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

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