All the professionals who took me under their wing, thank you so much! I have learned so much from you and you all are great examples of the profession!

I can’t believe it is over but all the same, I’m excited to go back to OU and put what I learned into practice at The Oklahoma Daily.

After first talking to Deputy U.S. Marshal Mike Parks, head of the Metro Fugitive Task Force the week before, the reporter I was following, Jay Marks, a videographer and myself went to Moore to shadow Parks, two other Marshals and two other law enforcement officials who were volunteering for Project Falcon. The warrant they had that day was for a man who had drugs less than 1,000 feet from a school.

The first stop was his apartment. While Jay and I were watching from the sidewalk, Parks and the others were led to the suspect’s best friends apartment and from there to the suspect’s girlfriend’s apartment. While at the girlfriend’s apartment complex, neighbors began to come outside as they saw US Marshals and a video camera wandering around.

After showing the others a picture of the suspect, a woman said she just saw him on a purple bike ride to the other side of the complex. Quickly, we got to the other side and the onlookers followed us.

When they knocked on the door with a purple bike in front of it, a 20-something year-old guy opened the door and it reeked from the smell of pot. He wasn’t our guy, though he looked similar. Though he continually denied he was high, he knew he was in trouble when an officer came out of the apartment with weed in his hand. Parks and the others then asked him if he knew the suspect and the guy said he knew him but stopped hanging out with him because he “saw the road he was going down and it was a bad one.” After a long talk, the guy made a deal with the Marshals that he would help them find their suspect.

While all of this was happening, neighbors pulled out their lawn chairs and watched. I’d say about 20 people were sitting outside their apartments watching.

With another lead at hand, the Marshals got ready to take off and we thought this was a good way to end our tag-along. After thanking Parks, I overheard the Marshals’ new source as he said one thing to his friend, “I can’t see straight.” That had to be the quote of the day.

I have to admit, after watching this video, I wanted to build something with legos or find a job so I can be called a Lego Master Builder. I’m such a dork, I’m so going to see this lego model of OKC in November.

Oh, and seven days until Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince! Exciting!!

He may have been a little eccentric but you can’t deny he was a hit maker. The best music of the 80’s came out of this man, and we all know how I feel about the 80’s. Plus, he was completely adorable when he was in the Jackson 5, as you can see below.

Today was a sad day in Hollywood. RIP Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.

I absolutely loved the Killers’ Hot Fuss album, I would blast it in my car, scream and dance along. I was stoked whenever I heard about their sophomore album, Sam’s Town, and bought it immediately. Unfortunately, I only liked one track, “When You Were Young.” But I had faith, I did the same for their third album, only to be again disappointed by them.

I went back later to give each another listen, hoping that maybe my tastes would become more susceptible to it like I had with Maroon 5 earlier. That was not the case. Instead I realized why.

I believe the reason I loved their first CD so much was because of its rock-ability with the undertones of 80’s bubbling underneath. Slowly but surely, the 80’s crept up more in the second album until the third album sounded like an album from the 80’s.

Now, grant it, I appreciate the 80’s but I see its music as a transition into music of today. I can safely say it is because of the 80’s that fads like boy bands and teeny pop stars came on the scene in the 90’s. To me, Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round,” The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” are all examples of what the 80’s has to offer me: a good laugh.

The examples are below.

The Police videos disabled the embed but here are the links:
Every Breath You Take
Don’t Stand So Close to Me

I know they won’t go back and I don’t expect the Killers to go back to their earlier sound, but I will still say I miss them.

19 days until Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince!

Where am I going to be July 14? Waiting in line to watch the sixth installment of the Harry Potter movies! After pushing the movie’s theatrical release date back to almost a year, I am definitely needing my Harry Potter fix, especially since everyone has gone into a Twilight frenzy (something I completely do not understand. Oh, I can’t go outside…why? Because I sparkle!). While pirates may have beat out the ninjas, I refuse to accept that the Twilight vampires will dominate over the Harry Potter wizards.

Hurry! Tickets are on sale now and if you want to go to someplace like the Warren, you have got to get your tickets now!

At first, everything was going as normal. A man was at the front, talking about the history of the Oklahoma City political scene. After our food was distributed, the intern (not from OPUBCO) sitting in front of me started choking. At first, the table was unsure if he was sick or if he were choking. When we realized it was the latter, the table was divided between how we should help. My first instinct was to grab someone to help him. Luckily, the person sitting next to him knew the heimlich maneuver.

It was at that moment that I realized, I should probably learn the heimlich maneuver for future reference.  By the way, the culprit of his choking fit was a piece of broccoli.

Alright, that sounded a little melodramatic, didn’t it? In all honestly though, let’s think about it, without the Internet we wouldn’t have e-mails, we wouldn’t have facebook, we wouldn’t have twitter, we wouldn’t be able to chat with friends, we wouldn’t know what was going on halfway across the world in less than 30 seconds, we wouldn’t be able to catch that episode from our TV show obsession that we missed last night, we wouldn’t be able to communicate to the outside world, we would cease to exist. Alright, there I go again. But honestly, right now, I just feel overwhelmed by the rapid technology racing past me.

Let’s take a look here though. With the way things are rapidly changing because of Internet, new social connections and norms are beginning to appear. I have a few facebook friends that I have never met in real life and some people I talk to on facebook that I hardly ever talk to in person even though we may share a class together and when I sit back and ponder on it, I can’t help but think how ridiculous that all sounds. Are we slowly trading actual human interaction for virtual interaction so we can sit in our pajamas and talk to someone?

I was reading a blog of one of my favorite and one of the most talented violinsts at this time, Hillary Hahn, and she brought up a few good points. For instance she said, “If you are Tweeting, then you might as well check your emails, and then you might as well just turn on the camera and make a recording for YouTube, and then you might as well have a little chat online while you’re at it, or play a game of Tetris or Scrabble, or write down ideas for that presentation you have to give next week. In that case, really, the question is, why are you here? Are you enjoying the beauty of the live concert experience, in which moments are fleeting and you have to get caught up in the flow because it will never be the same again?” (http://www.violinist.com/blog/HilaryHahn/20096/10222/) I have to wonder that too, with technology growing at such a rapid rate, will things like going to a live concert to take in the experience be forever extinct?

Will we resort to an existance where we are strapped to a computer, limited because we cannot bare to be away from the virtual world? Is the human race doomed to become the slobs that Pixar portrayed us as in Wall-E? Or is our future going to something as creepy as the video below portrays?

Now grant it, I love technology. It has made research so much easier, it has made writing so much easier and it has made keeping in contact with friends so much easier, connecting everyone. I’ll admit it, I’m dependent on the Internet but if I am expected to start dating someone via World of Warcraft or Second Life, that’s where I put my foot down. Remember, even if we feel connected to someone on the Internet, in actuality, you are sitting alone in a room.

Apparently, I am not a very talkative person. If you know me, then you are probably laughing at how ridiculous that statement sounds at this point, but I guess I’m not talkative unless I get to know a person or if I’m sitting next to someone for long periods of time. In the newsroom, staff writer Jesse Olivarez has decided to associate me with the President Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States. Now, I’m a pretty big history buff (my friends can attest to that), believe that knowing your history is one of the keys to living a better future and I know a lot of, what others would think is, useless trivia from the past but even I had never heard of the story that Jesse sent me, a story about good ol’ Calvin Coolidge.

‘Silent Cal,’ as he was called, was known for speaking very little. Once at a dinner party, a talkative socialite told him that she would bet money that she could get him to speak three words before the dinner was over.

To which he replied, ‘You lose.’

And she did.”

Now, Jesse is on a mission, to get me to verbalize a fully constructed sentence to him before the end of the internship. So far, he has had no success. Good luck, Jesse. This is going to be interesting.

If you are wondering why I ask that question, it is because I saw the old Jimmy Stewart movie Rear Window this past week and I started looking out my window in a different way. Yes, I am quirky in that respect, but really is it so far-fetched that maybe I will be looking out my window one day and see a murder or some other sort of heinous activity take place? If there is anything that the journalism field has taught me thus far is that the answer is no, not at all.

Sometimes I wished my window faced the southern direction, that way instead of looking out my window and seeing a highway and a McDonald’s at five past noon, I would be seeing the two mile walking path that the Oklahoma Publishing Company (OPUBCO) so beautifully had in place, making me wish I were taking a stroll instead of clogging my arteries.

In case you are wondering, I am not just staring out my window. No, I’m glancing out every once and a while hoping, I feel almost ashamed to say it, something like a ten car pile up or McDonald’s starts an event like giving out free french fries would happen. (Come on McDonald’s, if Sonic can give out free root beer floats, why can’t you give out free french fries…?)

Now that you know what is out my window, I guess my question to you is, what do you see out your window?