I was watching a documentary in ESPN’s excellent 30 for 30 series about the University of Miami’s football program in the 80′s and early ’90s, and like many documentaries, there were a few shots of newspapers of the day, with the stories related to the program highlighted.

In one instance, however, I was much more intrigued by a story that ran alongside the one that I was supposed to be looking at. The documentary was concerned with a story about Luther Campbell, who was a big booster of the University of Miami teams, getting arrested for obscenity after performing with his rap group 2 Live Crew.

But running right next to that story in the newspaper (unidentified, but I presume it was the Miami Herald) was a story headlined “Pilot Nearly Sucked From Jet”, with the following text from the New York Times News Service:

The pilot of a passenger plane was partly sucked out of the cabin window onto the nose cone of the jet today after its windshield blew out at 23,000 feet. But he was saved by crew members who clung to his ankles for 15 minutes until the co-pilot landed the plane safely in southern England

Several of the aircraft’s 81 passengers said they watched in horror as crew members frantically wrestled to pull Capt. Timothy Lancaster back into the cockpit. The plane went into a dive, but with half of Mr. Lancaster’s body hanging outside the co-pilot flew the aircraft to Southampton Airport, 70 miles southwest of London.

Wait, WHAT?! I have a few clear memories of incidents from the news around this time frame, but I had zero recollection of something like this. Which is probably good because I would have been pretty reluctant to get on a plane after hearing about it.

I was so distracted by the story that I paused the TiVo so I could Google the headline. Turns out the New York Times actually has this story in their archive, albeit under a less eye-catching headline, and it’s just about as insane as you could imagine.

The pilot basically was hanging out the front windshield of the plane unconscious for fifteen minutes while the crew desperately hung onto him by his ankles. The man somehow wound up only needing to be treated for “shock, a fractured elbow, wrist and thumb, and frostbite on one hand.” After hanging out the broken windshield of an airplane in flight for 15 minutes.

A little more Googling turned up a 2005 first-person recollection the Sydney Morning Herald published from one of the flight attendants who saved the captain’s life, with the spectacular headline This Is Your Captain Screaming. That link is well, well worth a read – The abject terror the poor guy captures makes you understand why he had difficulty flying again.

The ironic part is that the pilot, who was unconscious throughout the ordeal, was back at work within six months and was still flying as of 2005.  I suspect someone will track him down next year for the 20th anniversary of this bizarre incident, and I’ll be interested to hear what he’s up to now.

The first, both pretty and telling, comes courtesy of the New York Times’ photography blog’s feature on Dubai. Lauren Greenfield, who had mostly been documenting the way the recession hit here in the States, went over to Dubai and snapped this telling shot:

The juxtaposition of the impotent palm tree next to an empty McMansion, both of which are on a man-made island built in the shape of a palm tree, is just too fantastic.

The second is just a random one from a story on the LA Times’ local breaking news blog about a Shetland pony that was found wandering around the streets of Norwalk. Just an outstanding shot by the Times’ Don Bartletti of an animal control officer trying to calm the pony, gorgeously backlit by the sun.

Sometimes it’s just the random stuff that happens around town that turns into a really amazing photo.

The Washington Post has came up with a couple of doozies – the first being one of my personal favorite corrections of all time, which has already made its way around the internets a couple times for its sheer ridiculousness.

The second contains one of my favorite kicker quotes in a while:

“I’ve been on the job for more than two years here, and this is the first time I’ve seen a chicken stuffed with cocaine.”

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there are probably guys who have been there significantly longer who also have never seen a chicken stuffed with cocaine.

There have been quite a few odd ones, but nothing tops the L.A. County Board of Supervisors naming Buzz Aldrin the county’s Honorary Consul General to the Moon.

An octopus managed to flood some of the small aquarium at the Santa Monica Pier today by opening up a valve inside the tank. Joel pointed out when I sent him the story that perhaps inside an octopus tank is not a great place for a valve that can be turned by, say, an octopus.

Anyway, the comments on the story are highly amusing, particularly the guy who suspects the octopus was trying to “move into an adjacent, rent-controlled tank.”

I was completely mesmerized by the insane events in New York today, with the plane that ditched in the Hudson after BOTH ENGINES got knocked out by bird strikes and somehow managed to get every last person out alive.

I’ve been reading and reading and reading coverage, and I think I found one guy whose reaction is probably about what mine would have been in this situation (although I’d like to think I’m more aware of my surroundings than this guy admits he is) [emphasis mine]:

Beck, the marketing executive, said he had flown all over the world on business but never bothered to read the seat-pocket emergency cards. “I wasn’t sure what to do” as the plane fell from the air, he said later. “I tried a few different positions. I ended up putting my arms on the chair in front of me and covering my head and face. All I could think about was that movie ‘Airplane’ where they say, ‘Assume crash positions,’ and everybody lays on the ground.”

I would have been thinking of the exact same thing. Either that or “FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”

As someone working in scripted TV production…holy shit, this is bad news: NBC is replacing its entire 10pm hour with a nightly prime-time hour of Jay Leno.

If you look purely at the numbers, it absolutely makes sense for fourth-place NBC, whose ratings have completely tanked this year due to the fact that they put on some atrocious, atrocious television shows this fall, and who just completely gutted the ranks of their execs:

Though Mr. Leno will command an enormous salary, probably more than $30 million a year, the cost of his show will be a fraction of what a network pays for dramas at 10 p.m. Those average about $3 million an episode. That adds up to $15 million a week to fill the 10 p.m. hour. Mr. Leno’s show is expected to cost less than $2 million a week.

So let’s run some math here. Leno does about 46 weeks worth of shows, and at $2 mil a week that’s about $92 mil a year. Scripted shows do 22 episodes each, at 5 per week and $3 mil apiece that’s $330 mil a year. This change stands to save NBC Universal $238 million annually.

Let me repeat that: Paying Jay Leno $30 million a year will save NBC Universal almost a quarter billion dollars a year.

And for those of us on the scripted side of things, where network work has already been getting squeezed out by cheaper reality shows, this is a HUGE blow. Work has already been slowing because of the recession and the impending SAG strike.

For NBC to summarily declare they’re going to give up 5 hours a week is a brutal addition to the litany of problems facing everyone who works in scripted television. There are already too many people and not enough work to go around, and this is just going to make it infinitely worse.

I’m hopeful that cable’s going to continue to pick up the slack, but cable shows are, unfortunately, usually quite a bit less stable employment than network. Cable shows do 13-15 episodes in a normal season, or about 5-7 months worth of work. Networks shoot 22-24, or about 9-10 months worth of work.

Being on a good show on a network is almost like having a real job: If you’re in the office, you work almost year-round. If you’re in cable, you tend to bounce more from show to show, and it’s harder to form a team because everyone’s getting rotated into different schedules.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens. The common thread I’m finding in most commentary is that it’s a plan born of desperation on the part of NBC, but it brings to mind one of my favorite quotes from my favorite movie of all time, The Great Escape:

Now why didn’t anyone think of that before? It’s so stupid, it’s positively brilliant!

Laz brought the extent of this situation to my attention, and the mind-boggling stupidity of it really floored me.

Sean Avery is a hockey player, something of a ladies’ man, and kind of a charming jackass, if that’s not a complete contradiction in terms. He said the following to some reporters before a game against Calgary:

I am really happy to be back in Calgary, I love Canada. I just want to comment on how it’s become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds. I don’t know what that’s about. Enjoy the game tonight.

The “sloppy seconds” bit was a knock on either of a couple of actresses that Avery has dated (most suspicion is falling on Elisha Cuthbert of 24 fame, who’s currently dating a member of the Calgary Flames).

Now just reading that, you’d think the guy was being a bit of a smartass, trying to rile up his opponents. The NHL has reacted as if this were Victorian England and Avery had just impugned the chastity of the wives of the entire front office.

Avery actually got suspended for this comment. And what’s even worse, certain news outlets are bleeping or blanking out the phrase “sloppy seconds,” to my mind for no other purpose than to make his comment look way more offensive than it actually was.

When I heard about the suspension, I hadn’t seen his actual comments, so I thought he’d called her a cunt. Which is a significantly more offensive term to most women than “sloppy seconds.”

He’s not going to be winning himself any prizes other than Douche of the Week for publicly referring to his ex as “sloppy seconds.” I certainly wouldn’t like to be referred to as such, since I find the term obnoxious.

But to call it so offensive as to warrant a suspension is such a ridiculous stretch that I seriously can’t believe the NHL even considered it, let alone actually suspended the dumb guy.

I know there are a few other ovaried persons out there reading this, so I’ll throw it open to the comments: Do you find “sloppy seconds” to be offensive, obnoxious, both, or somewhere in between?

The L.A. Times ran a brilliant editorial today, picking off one by one the arguments for Proposition 8, which seeks to amend the California state constitution to ban gay marriage.

However, they should probably consider turning off their context-based advertising on their editorials. Because with contextual advertising, you end up with screenshots like this (click to enlarge):

I’m not exactly crushed that the Yes on 8 dipshits aren’t getting their money’s worth here, but it does make the Times look a bit silly.

October 3, 1995

I was in the student lounge of my high school in D.C., where they’d dragged a bunch of TVs so we could all watch the O.J. verdict. They knew people would cut class to go find TVs elsewhere and watch it anyway, so the administrators just threw up their hands and let us watch.

The reaction to the “not guilty” verdict was mixed at my private, relatively white high school – I recall my own reaction being, “Well, they took that little time to deliberate after such a long trial, that’s pretty much the only verdict they could have come up with.” I was a very cynical 14 year old with a lawyer for a father.

There wasn’t any celebration as far as I remember, but there also wasn’t as much anger as I saw later on the news from a lot of people. The overriding reaction I recall from my schoolmates was a reinforcement of the idea that if you have enough money and good enough lawyers, you can always buy reasonable doubt. For once, it wasn’t about race. It was about money.

Some people (namely, those whose families had a LOT of money) were a little too reassured by that.

October 3, 2008

I’ve been neck-deep in work all week, so I’ve barely been able to keep up with the most basic aspects of the news. I remembered seeing something this morning about the case going to the jury, but then I got sucked into yet another giant fiasco involving internet not working in one critical area, and half my day was gone.

Then, about 10pm, I heard a crackle on the walkie, “Hey, they’re about to announce the verdict.” Confusion ensued, since there were a number of people who hadn’t even realized the trial was going on. And then, apparently from a guy with a wireless connection and a Slingbox: Guilty on all counts.

Before it was even up on any website. Most sites were still just getting breaking-news briefs that a verdict had even been reached up before it was announced. So the walkies scooped the internet. A truly bizarre chain of events.

Not as bizarre as the chain that landed O.J. back in the defendant’s chair, and now probably in jail for the rest of his life. But still, pretty damn odd.