No One Title Fits This....

So Jericho came to the end of its -second and alleged final- season on CBS last night. My boycott against CBS (see my March 23 post) will continue.

Knowing full well this could be the final episode ever of Jericho, I watched it with nervous excitement having my own ideas of what would happen, seeing the plot unfold, and watching it with a wide range of emotions.

The whole show has had a lot of symbolism and hidden messages in it, from political to historical. It has kept me riveted.

I never expected when Jericho started to be as disappointed with the closure of a television show as I am now because last night's episode exhibited some of the finest television writing I have ever seen. From the ripping off of the Allied States of America patches from the soliders' uniforms showing their protest of the puppet government put in place by a powermongering corporation, to the show of respect for another man's loss of family... and I never thought I'd find myself saying something like this, but ... to the shooting down of two former United States Air Force jets by the Texas Air National Guard.

Throughout the whole episode, I was yelling at the TV. A 33-year-old man was getting misty eyed watching how well the humanity and the patriotism bled through the screen. I was screaming in frustration or hollering in excitement.

That, my friends, is television at it's best.

However, one of the most profound moments in the show came during an exchange between the two heroes, when the one, Jake Green, was asking the other, Hawkins, what was going to come of their actions.

Hawkins replies: "Whatever happens in the next few hours could determine the course of things for years to come. Maybe our history for the next hundred years. That is the responsbility we got here. And if that comes at a terrible cost, then so be it. Because that's the only way that things get better and it's the only way that people stay free."

Imagine these scenes:

• The morning of July 4, 1776, Philadelphia, PA, at the Pennsylvania Statehouse as delegates of the Second Continental Congress assemble to go over the final draft of a document called "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America"....
• April 12, 1861, in the Charleston, SC harbor, as Confederate batteries are about to open up on Fort Sumter...
• December 7, 1941, in the White House as President Roosevelt receives word of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor...
• August 6, 1945, as crewmembers board the Enola Gay at Tinian Airbase in the Pacific...
• April 16, 1962, as President John F. Kennedy reviews surveillance photos showing Soviet missile batteries on the island nation of Cuba...
• November 22, 1963, as Lyndon Baines Johnson is sworn in as president aboard Air Force One following the assassinaton of President John F. Kennedy...
• August 2, 1990, as President George H. Bush receives word the the Iraqi army has invaded Kuwait...
• November 8, 2000, in the Florida election commission headquarters....
• September 11, 2001, in the Pentagon, aboard Air Force One, or in the FAA headquarters as civilian airliners are used as weapons of terrorism against the United States....

Think about what happened in a few hour time period on each of those days.

Government leaders, military personnel, and ordinary citizens all made decisions and put actions into place that have since affected American history and world history and will continue to for years to come.

In many of those cases, the cost of those decisions was in a particular hardship, political strife, turmoil, or signficiant loss of American lives. These are things that we must be faced to go through from time to time in order to sustain our freedom.

We've lost 4,000 servicemembers in the Iraqi theater in the past five years. We lost more than 58,000 in a more than 10-year period in Vietnam and the jungles of Southeast Asia. Nearly 292,000 American servicemembers died serving their country during our less than four-year involvement in the theaters of World War II.

We've seen that there can be a terrible cost for our actions and for how we respond to different situations - and that cost, whether in the past, present, or future, can or will be hard to deal with and cause tremendous heartache and doubt. But that's how things get better and people stay free.

A Fantastic End To A Really Lousy Week

(Editor's Note: This post is a few days ovedue, but this is the first chance I've had to sit down at the computer for any length of time since then)

Several months ago, my wife and found out that on March 21, one of our favorite bands -- Casting Crowns -- would be at our local entertainment venue, the Bi-Lo Center. Yet, we also knew that we had other things that the $70 cost of the tickets could better go toward. So everytime for the past couple months we heard mention of the concert we just kind of sighed and turned the station. "Nope, don't want to hear about it. We're not going, no sense in hearing about it."

Fast forward to the day of the concert....

My wife and are at the local Crossway store right down the road from our place, looking for a birthday gift for her sister. We made our way back to the CD section where I start listening to some new CDs that had recently come out. She walks up to me and starts talking. Then suddenly we hear, "Sorry man, I haven't been able to find anyone to take those Casting Crowns tickets off your hands." Huh? We both look up quizzically.

So we go over and talk to the sales associate that we had just overhead. Turns out some friends of his are about to head in to the Bi-Lo Center with two unused (the couple who were going to use them had to bail because of lack of a babysitter) tickets. "How much do they want," I ask. "They're free. They just want someone to use them," he responds. "SWEET!", I think.

This is at 6:55 we find this out. The show starts at 7. So we tear down to the Bi-Lo Center, park near the top of the parking deck, make our way over to will-call, get our tickets, and find our seats. We miss the first act in the process... and sit down about three songs into the second act.

We were jazzed. This was just the best thing to cap off a really lousy week of sneezing, coughing, stuffy head, headaches, and sore throats for both of us, along with a missed day of work for me because I had been feeling so horrible. God knew that we needed some lifting up.

The concert ended up one of the best I've ever seen from an entertainment standpoint. Keep in mind, this is coming from someone whose seen probably more than 30 concerts over the last two decades -- starting off with a rain-soaked NKOTB-Tiffany concert to Van Halen to Travis Tritt to Metallica to MercyMe.

The best show I've ever seen from an entertainment standpoint and a worship standpoint was a Rebecca St. James - Barlow Girl show at the new Gaffney High School three years ago in their gym. It was phenomenal.

I think that in itself says alot about what I'm listening to these days and my outlook and spirituality now versus years ago. Years ago, I would go hang with my college friends at a Metallica concert just to have our eardrums blasted out. As much as I might leave the dial on a Metallica song just to turn it up in the car now, I think I'd turn down one of their concerts. Some of my good ol' 80s music -- REO, Night Ranger, Journey -- yeah, I'd go to the concert. For the pure entertainment value.

Now I'm listening to contemporary christian music as my primary music souce (and have five stations to choose from on the local dial).

Getting back to the Casting Crowns show, what really makes a show like theirs stand out is that they do things that I haven't seen any other artists do. They had the words to their songs up on the screen. They had a local artist doing hand paintings of images and words to go along with the music. They would take time between songs to talk about the scripture relating to the song, what inspired them to write it, how God talked to them at the time and what he is saying to us through their music. They prayed after every couple of songs, encouraged the audience to sing along with them, and truly connected with the audience on a very spiritual level. It was a very, very powerful worship experience, as well as a very entertaining one.

One of the things that really impressed me is the fact that they allow local high school strings program participants to play with them on stage at each venue at which they perform. These kids are so talented. I can't imagine how and what they felt being able to help bring the messages of those songs to the people at the concert. At one point the camerman had focused in on one of the violinists, during a song in which they were not playing, and she was singing the words along. That was awesome.

The feeling of joy in that arena was palpable during the entire show. Everyone was singing. Cellphones were up in the air (so bizarre is that fact when I look back at the Van Halen or Def Leppard concerts of high school and college when lighters in the air was the thing to do). My wife and I both left the show amazed by the performance and the message that Casting Crowns had brought.

It turned out to be an amazing night that we basically lucked into (I know that God knew that we needed it) and one that we are very thankful for. I tried to give the guy who left the tickets for us at will call some money for the tickets, but he wouldn't take any.

I'm Boycotting CBS

A few years ago my friend Otis held a McBoycott of McDonald's.

Now it's my turn to hold a boycott-- and I hope everyone out there will go along with this: I'm boycotting CBS from here on out.

Some mindless corporate execs whose eyes were only on the almighty Neilsen ratings have decided to permanently axe Jericho from the CBS lineup. This is the second time Jericho has been cancelled. Now I'm really mad.

Relevant Links:
Jericho, the Nielsen dinosaur and Gen Y campaigns
The Save Jericho Petition
Internet Movie Database's Jericho Page

Jericho has helped fill a void for me that developed over the last few years with the deluge of reality television garbage. Unfortunately, my two favorite comedies are on CBS -- How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory. I'm really going to hate giving those up, but if I have to, I have to.

The only redeeming factor is that the hundreds of thousands of Jericho fans like myself are not going to give up the fight for Jericho to stick around. I guess we'll have to lobby some other networks. Sci-Fi has been airing Jericho reruns on Fridays lately. *crosses fingers* Hopefully they'll pick up a new season of it.

That would actually be a great thing if Sci-Fi picks it up because come fall 2008 a Jericho-Stargate Atlantis - Flash Gordon lineup would be awesome and would help save the ailing Sci-Fi Friday nights. Right now Sci-Fi's only new shows on Friday will be starting on April 4 with the final season of Battlestar Galactica. (And don't get me started on that right now because if I did, this blog could take another four pages to wrap up)

I'm going to miss Eric, Emily, Heather, Mimi, Stanley, and especially Jake and Hawkins. The actors behind those characters have done such a superb job with this show, telling the stories the writers have created. I guess if I have to be fine with just buying the two Jericho seasons on DVD and having those to watch over and over again, I will be. But if there were another five or six seasons to come in the future that I could add to that collection, that would be fantastic.

For now, my CBS boycott starts tonight. No more Cold Case.

She Was Just Doing Her Job When...

Being a reporter is often a thankless job. You spend time covering stories you don't want to cover or talking to people you don't want to talk to. But then you get those stories that get your adrenaline pumping or ones that just touch your heart. There is alot of enjoyment in being a reporter, but at the same time it can be very stressing. I worked as a newspaper reporter for three and a half years, spent another year and a half in a television newsroom, and can tell you that putting themselves in harm's way is something reporters don't really realize or take into consideration that they're doing sometimes when they go out to cover a story.

Poential dangers to the reporter can come in a variety of forms that they're not really thinking about as they are doing their job. You're standing alongside a busy highway talking to state troopers about an accident, or taking photos as cars whiz by. You're climbing up the side of a relatively steep slope to get the angle you want for a photo. You're taking pictures of people who really don't want their photos in the paper; or you're trying to get comments from people who don't want to talk to you. You're standing beind a SWAT van while a team of sheriff's officers gear up to respond to a potentially volatile situation where someone has locked themselves in a store with a gun to their own head.

Every now and then the reporter and that danger suddenly interact and they become part of the news themselves. This is a case of a reporter becoming part of the news on accident, and in a very violent way.

A reporter from our local CBS affiliate was attacked by a group of people today while covering a murder investigation. The reporter was standing on public property when this group came over and started flinging racial slurs and throwing punches at her.

I couldn't believe it when I heard the teaser for the story during a commerical break in tonight's episode of Jericho. I was at a loss for words when I saw the video on air a few minutes later.

WSPA story (with video) WYFF story (with video)

I'm just glad there were multiple cameras there to document this. Hopefully this will serve as evidence in the assault and battery cases against the people who started this fight.

Of course, this whole situation makes me reflect on a few siutations I found myself in as a reporter back in the day.

There was more than one occasion when I had someone tell me in much cruder language to 'get that @/!*# camera out of my face' or 'I don't want to talk about this' and I almost said something back that I could have put myself in physical danger for saying.

I remember a few instances clearly where someone asked me to stop taking pictures of them or something going on that they were involved in when I was standing on the grounds of this public facility or that public facility, or even when I was standing in the road.

Public property. As long as you're standing on it, you're supposed to be in the clear. Obviously for anyone to think they're untouchable is naive.

But for someone to be attacked, physically and/or verbally, and treated the way this television reporter was treated was totally shocking, disturbing, and uncalled for. I don't mean to be spiteful or hateful, but I hope the people involved in this have to face some serious consequences for their actions.