Wolfpack v. Tarheels
ok. Ok. OOOOHHHHH KKKKAAAAYYYY!!!!!!
I've gotten a thousand e-mails from you telling me that I'm an idiot for having suggested that the nickname of North Carolina State is the Tarheels.
That is as dumb as calling the University of Texas teams the Aggies.
I get it.
Here's how it happened. Not an excuse, but instructive as to what happens when you (or, more precisely, I) am hurried.
I generally write Mullings the night before publication. Except for August that means I write on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday nights for a M-W-F column.
I am very dedicated to this. So much so that I will re-arrange travel to make certain I am someplace where I can "file" - that is, upload the column to the web page and to the e-mail server by sometime between 10 and 11 pm.
Yesterday I was in Tennessee with Fred Thompson - I will mention again, and always, that I am a paid consultant to Friends of Fred Thompson. I had left DC at about 8 AM, took two regional jets and landed in Nashville at about 11:30 am. I was to meet up with the travelling party at about 2 PM, so I used the downtime to find a Starbucks (T-Mobile allows me to get onto the Internet from the road) and draft the column, which was written pretty much the way you saw it.
My schedule called for me to catch a 5:40 pm flight from Nashville to Des Moines. As there are precious few BNA - DSM non-stops, I was going to change planes in Cincinnati where I had about an hour-fifteen to clean up the copy, format it for the web and for the e-mail, and do the Secret Decoder Ring Page.
At Cincinnati airport there are three terminals. Terminal C is the commuter terminal and is (a) reachable only by shuttle bus and (b) has no Crown Room (again a T-Mobile hotspot).
I wandered around the C concourse trying to find a place where I could light and pay the extra fee (no T-Mobile in the C concourse, it's some other outfit that made a deal with the airport) and get MULLINGS out.
It was crowded, I was getting cranky, so I decided to get on a shuttle for the B concourse and the Delta Crown room, which I did.
It was now about 8:05; I had a 9:15 flight.
The principal differences between boarding a real airplane and a regional jet is this: You can't carry much on board so you have to hand your rollaboard to a ground person who puts a pink tag on it and puts it into the cargo hold. This saves an enormous amount of time in boarding because people aren't screwing around trying to get the entire contents of their two-bedroom apartment into the overhead directly above their seat.
Also, there are simply fewer people to load - instead of 120 or so, there are maybe 40 or 50 (depending upon the side of the regional jet which those of us who are million milers on not one, but TWO, airlines call an RJ - pronounced ARE-jay) so it goes pretty quickly.
All this to tell you that RJs are not called for boarding 30 minutes before flight time, but more like 10 or 15.
So, I didn't need to be back at the C concourse much before 9:05 meaning I didn't need to catch the shuttle before nine.
Fine. Except for this: They made an announcement in the Crown Room that the bar was closing at 8:30 and the club closed at 8:45.
Yikes!
So, type, type, type, download a Catchy Caption of the Day (which was pretty good for all that) crop the Mullfoto, format the copy checked the spelling of Alban Barkley's first name - I was right - and literally as they were standing over me, hit the upload key and sent the column off.
I am certain - absolutely certain - that if I'd had another 10 or 15 minutes I would have re-read the copy and caught the fact that I had re-named North Carolina State.
I didn't, but I thought you might be interested in how this works - or at least how it worked last night.
Rich
I've gotten a thousand e-mails from you telling me that I'm an idiot for having suggested that the nickname of North Carolina State is the Tarheels.
That is as dumb as calling the University of Texas teams the Aggies.
I get it.
Here's how it happened. Not an excuse, but instructive as to what happens when you (or, more precisely, I) am hurried.
I generally write Mullings the night before publication. Except for August that means I write on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday nights for a M-W-F column.
I am very dedicated to this. So much so that I will re-arrange travel to make certain I am someplace where I can "file" - that is, upload the column to the web page and to the e-mail server by sometime between 10 and 11 pm.
Yesterday I was in Tennessee with Fred Thompson - I will mention again, and always, that I am a paid consultant to Friends of Fred Thompson. I had left DC at about 8 AM, took two regional jets and landed in Nashville at about 11:30 am. I was to meet up with the travelling party at about 2 PM, so I used the downtime to find a Starbucks (T-Mobile allows me to get onto the Internet from the road) and draft the column, which was written pretty much the way you saw it.
My schedule called for me to catch a 5:40 pm flight from Nashville to Des Moines. As there are precious few BNA - DSM non-stops, I was going to change planes in Cincinnati where I had about an hour-fifteen to clean up the copy, format it for the web and for the e-mail, and do the Secret Decoder Ring Page.
At Cincinnati airport there are three terminals. Terminal C is the commuter terminal and is (a) reachable only by shuttle bus and (b) has no Crown Room (again a T-Mobile hotspot).
I wandered around the C concourse trying to find a place where I could light and pay the extra fee (no T-Mobile in the C concourse, it's some other outfit that made a deal with the airport) and get MULLINGS out.
It was crowded, I was getting cranky, so I decided to get on a shuttle for the B concourse and the Delta Crown room, which I did.
It was now about 8:05; I had a 9:15 flight.
The principal differences between boarding a real airplane and a regional jet is this: You can't carry much on board so you have to hand your rollaboard to a ground person who puts a pink tag on it and puts it into the cargo hold. This saves an enormous amount of time in boarding because people aren't screwing around trying to get the entire contents of their two-bedroom apartment into the overhead directly above their seat.
Also, there are simply fewer people to load - instead of 120 or so, there are maybe 40 or 50 (depending upon the side of the regional jet which those of us who are million milers on not one, but TWO, airlines call an RJ - pronounced ARE-jay) so it goes pretty quickly.
All this to tell you that RJs are not called for boarding 30 minutes before flight time, but more like 10 or 15.
So, I didn't need to be back at the C concourse much before 9:05 meaning I didn't need to catch the shuttle before nine.
Fine. Except for this: They made an announcement in the Crown Room that the bar was closing at 8:30 and the club closed at 8:45.
Yikes!
So, type, type, type, download a Catchy Caption of the Day (which was pretty good for all that) crop the Mullfoto, format the copy checked the spelling of Alban Barkley's first name - I was right - and literally as they were standing over me, hit the upload key and sent the column off.
I am certain - absolutely certain - that if I'd had another 10 or 15 minutes I would have re-read the copy and caught the fact that I had re-named North Carolina State.
I didn't, but I thought you might be interested in how this works - or at least how it worked last night.
Rich
8 Comments:
"--or at least how it worked last night."
Or didn't!
Sorry, but on the scale of journalistic blunders, this is small potatoes and you can take off the hairshirt for the week-end.
Sportsfans obviously require a higher level of accuracy!
/snark off
Retread
You could have called them "Wolfheels". ("Tarpack" sounds like something you'd buy from Phillip Morris!)
The A terminal has a much less crowded Crown Room - but the shuttle bus seems not to run as often, so your five minute rule may not work!
too much splanation. send FUD
Rich,
As long as you don't confuse the "TarDevils" and the "BlueHeels" you are fine.
Good luck on your work with Fred.
Tim Anderson
Rich,
I'm the one who took a picture with you at the Iowa State Fair while Fred was giving his stump speech. Word of advice: Don't let Fred commit a similar screw up with the Iowa STATE Cyclones (BOOO!) and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes (YEA!!!). Nothing good can come of that.
By the way, I thought Fred's shoes looked nice. You must have been responsible for the wardrobe. It was great to meet you.
Chad.
I was only trying to be helpful. I really don't care what you call them. We (Clemson) will beat them both.
Here's the issue: Having gone to Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio 45750 which, at one time, owned the world's record for consecutive losses in football by a Division III school, I am not all that plugged in to those of you who - like The Lad - went to big football schools like Texas.
On the other hand, we had the best small college crew in the nation my freshman year when (a) I weighed 118 and (b) was the coxswain.
Go Blue!
Rich
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