TNT (the AC/DC song, not the television channel)

About a week ago, I interviewed our new Convention and Visitors Bureau director who said she wanted people to stop asking where Statesboro was when people mentioned the town.

On Monday and Tuesday, she got her wish, though probably not the way she wanted people to find out.

You see, around 9:15 Monday morning, a man and his wife took his former attorney hostage in his office in downtown Statesboro. As word of the hostage situation spread, more and more media outlets began to converge on our little town to cover the crisis. In fact, two of my coworkers were on the national news, one on CNN and the other on FOX News, despite the fact I was the first reporter on the scene.

At about 9:30 on Monday, Chief Bossman walked into my cubicle and said there were police officers outside with guns and bullet proof vests on and I should go see what was going on.

The reporter in me was exicted. Guns and bullet proof vests are the things Pulitzers (or at least Peabody Awards) are made of. The rational, sane part of me looked at Chief Bossman and said "All I've got is a pen and a note pad. Don't you think I need a little more if the police have bullet proof vests on?"

He told me to be careful and sent me on my way.

As luck would have it, the police were stationed about a block from my office, so I walked up the street to the scene and saw two officers standing at either end of a building, both with guns drawn and looking intense.

I made eye contact with the officer near the back of the building and made a motion to ask if it was alright if I came up to talk to him. He motioned for me to walk towards the back of the building and then cross the street to talk to him.

When I got there, I asked what was happening. He told me there was a hostage situation inside one of the offices across the street from the courthouse. I stood with the officer (for the life of me, I can't remember his name) and listened in on his police radio as the instructed the hostage takers to answer the phone to talk to the negotiator.

After about 15 minutes, the officer said I could probably get a better view if I went up to the front of the building (but on the other side of the street.) I did that and stood over there, looking cautiously at the front of the building where I saw a car parked in front of the office as a baracade.

Then, the officer at the front of the building told me I may want to move as there was a chance I could be caught in the crossfire if the hostage takers came out firing. That was enough of a warning for me to back away quickly and find a safer place to stand.

At around 11 a.m., the call went out to send all media to City Hall where I'd spend the next 12 hours milling around, waiting for press conferences and basically hoping something would happen. I met the Savannah media people and basically waited around for something that wasn't going to happen that day.

At around 5 p.m., I went back to the office and wrote a couple stories about the days events and listened to one of our reporters being interviewed on CNN. (A surreal experience. Making it even better is they misidentified him on the screen, calling him "Jack" instead of "Jake.")

As the standoff dragged on, the gallows humor of journalists began to take hold of the throng of media assembled. We began speculating what kind of headline we would use if the attorney, named Michael Hostilo, didn't make it out. (I think media people have such a twisted sense of humor because they need a defense mechinism against the crap they see so often.)

Quick note: If you're easily offended, skip the next paragrah. You've been warned.

After tossing out a few suggestions, one of the local television reporters suggested "Hostilo-Vista" (I know, we're all going to Hell. But it's funny (the joke, not the going to Hell part.))

Finally, after a 10 p.m. news conference (carried live by at least Fox News and maybe others) I went back to the office, updated a few stories and went home for the night, hoping nothing would happen before I got back there around 7:30.

Unfortunatley for me, something did happen. At 6 a.m., the two suspects and the hostage had come out, apparently surrendering. Something happend (no one knows officially) and gunshots were exchanged. No one was hurt, but the hostage-takers retreated back into the office.

When I got there at 7:30 and found out what happened, I was disappointed I wasn't there for it, even if I wasn't be able to see anything.

Finally, at 10 a.m., police announced the hostage-takers surrendered and the hostage was unharmed. Statesboro's 15 minutes of fame was over. The media trucks all left and by Wednesday morning, you wouldn't have known anything out of the ordinary had ever happened.

Have a great weekend all.

Any song by "Three Dog Night"

Hello and welcome to the first-ever Nexus of the Universe book review. Unlike people who actually majored in English and have a firm understanding of pacing, plot development, character development and other literary terms that I try to use to sound smarter than I really am, I don't actually know enough about those things to comment on them.

No, instead I'm going with the former Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart method of determing if a book is good. I know it when I read it.

With that said, here's my review of Buzz Bissinger's "Three Nights In August"

Guys like me with no talent in either baseball or sportswriting will never get to the feeling of what it's like to be on a Major League baseball team. From the day-to-day grind of the 162 game season, broken up in numerous three-game series in one city before flying off to the next three-game series.

Fortunately for people like me, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa was a fan of Bissinger's previous work and gave him virtually unfettered access to his team during the 2003 season and what he produces is a fantastic look into not only the life of a professional manager, but also to the insights of a man who has won more baseball games than all but two other people in the history of the sport.

Bissinger is perhaps best known for his book Friday Night Lights which looked at the frenzy that surrounded the 1988 Permian High School football team deep in the heart of Texas. He uses the same writing technique in both books, using events that transpire during the course of the series, (or, in the case of Friday Night Lights, over the course of the season) to go off on tangets about the players or other people involved.

We learn about the almost total devotion LaRussa gives to the game, often at the expense of his family who lives on the West Coast without their father and husband for most of the season, seeing him only on off-days and when the Cardinals make their West Coast swing.

More than just a decision-maker during the game, Bissinger paints a picture of a man who spends more time trying to find the right buttons to push to maximize the talent and effort of his players, from the bench player who thinks he should be starting everyday to the kid with all the talent in the world who seems content to make his millions rather than fulfilling his potential.

And while fans may suggest dropping a player in the lineup if he's slumping or moving a guy up in the lineup who may be going through a hot streak, LaRussa explains that certain hitters are just more comfortable hitting in different places. Moving a guy from sixth or seventh into the fourth or fifth spot may not seem like a big deal, but different hitters change their approach based on what they think is expected of them.

Making the book more enjoyable for me was the fact that the three-game series Bissinger uses to go off on his tangets was against the Cubs. Given that the book is about the 2003 season (the year the Cubs came within five outs of the World Series . . . curse you Steve Bartman), it was a chance to relive some of the good old days, even reading about players who were gone after the season that I'd forgotten about.

To be sure, the book is written for someone with a deep understanding of the game and not the casual fan. However, Bissinger writes in such a way that casual fans will finish having a greater understanding of the pressures and decisions a manager and his staff have to deal with.

I don't have any cool rating system to evaluate the ins and outs of the book. I use a much simpler equation in grading a book.

Did I like the book? In this case, the answer is a resounding yes.

(Also, I'd recommend Friday Night Lights to anyone interested high school athletics, regardless of the sport. I got the feeling reading it that the events he described in that book could very well have been written about my high school football team.)

Weekend plans: While many here in the United States have a long weekend to celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, I don't. In the interest of keeping my job, I'll refrain from any Kanye West jokes.

Blogging Update: Somehow, I managed to miss the one-year anniversary of the founding of the Nexus of the Universe. I'd like to thank all you for making this one of the places you waste time during your busy work day. I hope to contine to be a destination for people who should be working but would rather read what some guy in South Georgia has to say about who from the Law & Order franchise he wants prosocuting his case if he's murdered in New York City.

Have a great weekend and I'll be back soon with another post.

The next five minutes

Growing up in a house with two brothers, there were certain things that took on added importance that families with one or two children may not think about. There was always trying to get the biggest piece of chicken (this especially became important when we all started playing sports and our already rapid metabolism shifted into a gear I'll never see again without the help of crack cocaine) or getting to the breakfast table first so you could get the section of the paper you wanted. (I always wanted the sports while DC Brother preferred the comics. Unfortunately, there were times when the sports were on the back of the comics and thus, bickering ensued. The Parental Units did not like those mornings.)

Those things paled in comparison to the mother of all important things as a child . . . retaining your seat when you got up to go to the kitchen or bathroom.

As you can imagine in a middle class family of five, seating was at a premium when it came to watching television. There were a couple of really comfortable seats, a few adequate seats, and then seats you took because there was nothing left. In fact, when Christmas rolled around, there were only four seats so we could make room for the Chirstmas Tree.

(That, in a nutshell, is how Official Brother came to be known as "Floor Boy" during Christmas. He was in charge of passing out presents on Christmas morning, which at eight or nine is the coolest thing in the world. When he had to do it this past Christmas at 21, not so cool anymore.)

So whenever one of us would leave the comfortable seats, another of us would inevitably move in to take the better seat. Everyone would move up one slot and the person who had to visit the little boy's room would end up out of luck.

It was a fine system and everyone understood the consequences of going to get a drink during the commercial of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

But over time, my parents decided this wasn't a fair system afterall. I think it was when they got fed up with losing their seat to answer the phone or somethng like that. The instituted a rule that has continued on to this day and I, in fact, almost expect it when I'm a guest at someone else's home.

The decided that once you established your seat and then got up, you had five minutes in which you could come back and reclaim your chair. If you need to go to the bathroom and get a drink, it was no longer a problem. You didn't have to lose your seat just because you answered the phone only to have it be a wrong number.

Over time, a series of subsections were added to the so-called "Five Minute Rule." You could gain an additional five minutes by simply parking your rump in the chair for a second. Should a dispute arise, an impartial observer (namely, someone not involved in the dispute) would determine if five miuntes had actually passed. There was also no minimum time needed to sit in the seat to invoke the "Five Minute Rule." You could finish dinner, make a break for the living room before starting the dishes and lay claim to your seat. Then, within the next five minutes, simply take a break from cleaning up, go renew your five minutes, and then resume cleaning up, thus ensuring you had a good seat after dinner.

In the begininng, you had to invoke the Five Minute Rule when you got up, signaling to everyone your intention to return in five minutes. If you got up and didn't say "five minute rule" as you got up, you lost your rights to the chair.

As you can imagine, this led to disagreements as to if they actually said it, especially if you weren't in the room at the time, so over time it became implied. If you left and came back within five minutes and someone was in your seat, all you had to do was invoke the rule and they were obligated to give you your seat back.

It also introduced speed showering into our household. Though done more as a matter to see if it could be done rather than an actual desire to retain the rights to the seat. (For the record, it can be done, but it's not something you want to do if you want to ensure you're actually clean.)

So now, when I go visit friends, I always have to remember that they're most likely not as odd as we are and they'll actually let you keep your seat when you go get a coke.

Feel free to take the rule and apply it to your household if you need to. You can even pass the idea off as your own if you want to. Think of it as my little way of trying to spread peace throughout the world.

And because I've been gone for a while, here are several updates to make up for my absence:

Christmas update: Christmas was busy as we left on Dec. 23 to visit the Official Inlaws of the Nexus of the Universe outside of Charleston, South Carolina. We got there around 8:45 p.m. after a three hour trip and then proceeded, at the request of Yes Dear, to tour Christmas lights (apparently one of her favorite things to do around Christmas.) We then went to bed and celebrated "Christmas" on the 24th. I got a shirt (which I'm actually wearing today, not that you can see me), some pants and a Cubs' pullover that's really nice. Among the gifts Yes Dear recieved was a Kitchenaid Mixer (apparently it's a good mixer. I think Rachel Ray uses it on her show.)

We left that afternoon to make it home in time for our church's Christmas Eve service and then to my parents for the annual viewing of "A Muppet Christmas Carol." Following that, we brought the presents out and put them under the tree. Yes Dear and I then went home, only to wake up at 7 a.m. to go back to my parents for Christmas morning. Among the gifts we got were an iPod (for her) and a subscription to MLB Extra Innings (for me, though Yes Dear is excited about it as well.) I also got a book from DC Brother (which I finished already, no small feat for me since I'm not exactly a "reader.)

New Year's Update: The day after Christmas, Yes Dear and I got an invitation to a New Year's Eve party two hours away. Usually we wouldn't travel that far, but the party was with friends from college we hadn't seen in almost two years, so we went. It also gave us a chance to see the homes of those friends (since we're home shopping at this point.) It was good to see old friends and we all had a good time. Hopefully we won't go two years without seeing them again, especially if they only live two hours away.

Yes Dear School Update: I think I mentioned that Yes Dear was going to have to take one credit hour this semester (which started today) because she and her advisor were unaware they changed the date to clear for graduation. Fortunately, the person who she appealed this decision to happens to be the mother of one of my good friends from high school. Yes Dear got a call today to say she didn't have to take the class (which would have been over $500 since they still have her as an out-of-state student, despite living in Ga. for the past seven years.) To make things even better, her graduation date will still be listed as May, which means she won't start paying back her student loans until October.

DC Brother Update: At the behest of DC Brother, I'm mentioning his non-girlfiend. He's not excactly dating this person, but he's also not exactly not dating this person, I think. Or there's a chance they could be the DC snipers from a few years ago. I'm not exactly sure what their deal is. Anyway, for a more in depth look at the Non-Girlfriend, read this by Official Brother.

Jury Duty Update: I was only in peril of being selected in one jury, and even in that case, I was the last guy on the panel, so each lawyer would have had to use all his strikes (basically eliminating a juror from serving) on both the regular jury and the alternates for me to be selected. As an added bonus, I got to read a good portion of Three Nights in August (a must read for someone who wants to get inside the mind of a baseball manager.)

I hope to update again by Friday. Take care everyone.

The Waiting (is the hardest part)

Hey guys and gals,

I haven't forgotten about this blog, I promise. There will be an update soon. (I wish I had a good excuse as to why I haven't gotten around to blogging, but unfortunatley, I don't.)

The short update: I had a good Christmas, New Years and didn't get picked for jury duty. The long update will be with the next post.