Author: jbenton

Today’s story: Home cooking, with a dash of Salt. The headline’s much better than the story, which brings up the rear of my Olympic contributions thus far.

America’s greatest Cajun journalist dies. Howard K. Smith was up there with Ron Guidry, Paul Prudhomme, Michael Doucet, Bobby Hebert, and Edwin Edwards in the modern Cajun pantheon.

Day Nine: Started the day out with photographer Chris at Bonneville Elementary School here in SLC, for the schools story linked below. Six Chinese figure skaters were there for an assembly. Chatted a bit with Zhao Hongbo, one of the bronze-medalist pair that finished behind everyone’s favorite Canadians. He’s clearly the guy in charge of the team: I tried asking questions of the other folks, but no matter who I asked, he’d do the answering.
Stayed much longer at Bonneville than I’d wanted, thanks to a hard-of-hearing cab dispatcher who sent our cab to Bountiful Elementary in Bountiful, Utah, half an hour and four towns away. Finally got back downtown in time to see the pairs gold medal press conference. Spent the day writing my schools story and doing more Mormon history research, including reading a really interesting master’s thesis on the hitherto unknown connections between Sam Houston and Joseph Smith.
Here at Media HQ, there are a bunch of volunteer massage therapists available to give free massages to us hunched-over journalist types. They also are available for the athletes, but it’s kind of silly — they’re available to us from noon to 10 p.m., but to the athletes from only 1 to 9 p.m. I know we writers are working hard, but I somehow suspect that jocks need massages more than we do. Anyway, after feeling a little bit guilty about the whole thing for the last week, I broke down and got a massage. Mmmmmmm. I could feel the evil spirits leaving my body. Closed the evening at the Denny’s near the hotel with Juliet, getting the standard awful service. It was the only place still open when we were done working, alas; the Apollo Burger, which has gotten good reviews from my colleagues and has a great name to boot, shut at 10.
Since I have to finish this Tuesday page 1 story today, there’ll be no story by me in tomorrow’s paper, which is an awful strange feeling. Not a bad feeling, mind you — just strange. But eagle-eyed readers will find a short biography of yours truly in the sports section, on page 2, I think. Please do not be alarmed by the photo, which should be burned in all its forms, digital or meatspace.

Brilliant description of the new Britney Spears movie: “So vanilla yet so transcendentally sleazy that its target audience seems to be pubescent girls and dirty old priests.”

Today’s stories: School embraces difficult task and Area Catholics serve in Utah. Apologies for the world’s least exciting headlines.

I can’t tell you how proud I am to be the fourth-best answer to a Google search for “jamie sale” naked. Sorry, horny surfers — can’t help you out.

I know Utah’s on a mission to show the world it’s this progressive, sophisticated place during the Olympics, not the hyper-conservative, backward stereotype some have of the state.
But, really, are the helping the cause if it’s front page news here that Mitt Romney, the head of the Olympics, might have used the F-word when yelling at a subordinate?

Adventures in Journalism: How did this guy convince his newspaper to get him to do this story? “Hey, boss, let me go to this sleazy massage parlor/brothel, get some stimulation, then right a first-person story using phrases like, ‘More than once and more frequently as the massage continued her hands grazed across the front of my boxer shorts, a move I began to believe was intentional’?”

Today’s story: Mormons help Hindus build. (This is why I’ve been talking to Hare Krishnas the last few days.)
I realize I’ve missed a couple of daily updates (and I just know you’re all waiting with baited breath to learn of my Wednesday lunch plan), so to catch up:
Day Seven: Worked a lot.
Day Eight: Told myself I wasn’t going to work a lot. Worked from 8 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. That went really well, obviously. Learned a lot of really, really interesting stuff about 19th century Mormon history, much of which should make its way into a page 1 story in the next few days. I’ve basically turned into a religion reporter since I’ve been here: it’s all about Mormons, Hare Krishnas, and Falun Gong (coming next week).

Maybe the Mormons are a bit hypersensitive to bad press, but it seems pretty logical when nuts are writing things like this. (Here’s his weak apology.)