Patio Conversations also known as Boom Goes The Dynamite!

Good news. I'm getting to know my neighbor Chris better. Even better news. His friend Brit used to write for a magazine in LA and went to school for journalism so we can share war stories.

How do I know all this? Because today I ventured out onto my patio and found them hanging out over smokes and some wine. Needless to say, that lead to some chit chat. Turns out all aspects of the media have funny stories. Apparently high-end import car magazines like you to give their advertisers' products positive reviews. If you don't...they get edited. Talk about soul crushing. Anyway, Brit doesn't work in the media anymore. Now he's the manager of the music equipment sales department at Best Buy. It actually sounds fun. More on that at a later date including a damn funny anecdote about drunk guys on mini-motorcycles tearing up a Portland area Best Buy store.

Anyway, we got to talking about the wacky things that people do and how they end up on the news. For example, the yahoo's in Silverton who decided to stockpile all sorts of explosives and fireworks making material in their house and back shed. Real smart. Something like 300lbs worth of boom-boom powder and various other substances. As one police officer said, "I'm no bomb-tech, but that's a lot of explosives. I wouldn't want to live next door." Now I understand that police officers are often cautious by nature... But c'mon.. if your average Joe Schmo patrol officer makes that statement.. I'm thinking run for the hills.

We also talked about how news varies from place to place. What is and isn't newsworthy really varies. From Spokane to Portland to Los Angeles it really changes. What's a huge story in Spokane may not be such a big deal here in Portland. And as a friend who recently moved to LA said... We have garden variety murders every day.. But this model who was killed, chopped up, put in a suitcase and left in a dumpster, possibly by her former reality star husband.. Now that has the newsroom buzzing. I think that story would have newsrooms everywhere buzzing, but the point is it's a matter of scale.

Regardless, people everywhere still do crazy, dangerous, stupid and incredibly interesting things. And when they do.. We tell those stories. Just hopefully from a safe distance when explosives are involved.