Bureau of Cinematique Spectacular

I spent the last five days in glorious San Francisco, romping around the Bay Area with Yelena and my family, visiting the first H&M on the west coast and (of course) seeing a few flicks. For me and Yelena it was a case of quid pro quo: I was desperate to see "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and she was equally pumped to view the film adaptation of "Rent."

While I am intimately familiar with the former, I have never even seen the musical, nor am I even remotely familiar with the details of the story. I found that A.O. Scott's review in the New York Times nailed this movie exactly - the movie is very loose, and often starts to veer into zany cheesiness, but it never gets off the rails because of the sheer emotional weight of the story. The cast was excellent, although sometimes a bit old. Not exactly a feel-good movie, but not a total waste.


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EXTRA: Dept. of Grandstanding

Tuesday morning I recieved an email from the once-and-hopefully-someday-future boss Ken Sands, Online Editor of The Spokesman-Review. It read, in part:

Friends:

Please read this:

General Excellence, large sites: The New York Times.
General Excellence, medium sites: SpokesmanReview.com.
General Excellence, small sites: New West .

This is a big, BIG deal… (kind of like the Pulitzers for online journalism)

Needless to say, having the honor as an intern to work with a team that placed first in general excellence, my head was swollen. Still, it got better. Continued...

Next in my inbox was an email from Associate Director/Writer at University Media Relations (and Emerald Alumni, herself) Melody Ward Leslie that read:

Steven and Eva,

I'm forwarding this to you because Ken Sands, a former Emerald editor, has received the nation's top award for online journalism (he's the online publisher of the Spokesman Review and already extremely influential nationally for his vision in developing "civic journalism").

I think he was Emerald editor in 80-81 but I'm not sure. I believe he was managing editor in 79-80. Prior to that, he was sports editor and had various newsside positions including being a wizard of a night editor. He is from the Portland area originally.

FYI, the Spokesman-Review has always been a great place to do an internship (many ODE alumni have preceded you). For those interested in online journalism, Ken would be the ideal person to intern with.

Melody

Melody Ward Leslie
Associate Director/Writer
Development Communications

Needless to say, I could not stop grinning.

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