Okay. Not really. I was just really busy with work. But my business has afforded me some very cool opportunities. Tonight for instance.
Tonight, I will be rolling the streets of the fair city with a Scottish accented protector at my side.
Tonight, I will witness unspeakable acts of evil, followed by swift, righteous justice.
Tonight, I will do what I have always wanted to do.
Tonight, I get to ride around with an accident reconstruction specialist who doubles as a beat cop in my city. He's Scottish. Like John Hannah/Craig Furgeson Scottish, not Scrooge MacDuck Scottish. He has a lot of visible tattoos.
This is gonna be so cool! It'll be like Homicide: Life on the Streets! No! It'll be like Hamish MacBeth! No! It'll be like CSI if it starred Ewan MacGregor! Or maybe Ghost Rider! Heck, it'll probably be like Mayberry only with more drunken college kids driving on the icy roads, but don't you take my dreams away from me!
See, I'm a reporter. I'm trying to get my feet wet in crime reporting in a very small city so that I can eventually move on to a bigger city and a bigger paper.
Most people think crime reporting is glamorous work that culminates in the reporter solving a murder where them dumb flatfoots couldn't find nuthin. Well, I don't know about you yanks, but in Canada, we leave that up to the Mounties who are hella smart. They're like super cops. Who wear jodphurs and redcoats. What? Did I digress again? Oops. My bad.
Thus far, crime reporting has been a slow, boring row to hoe culminating not in fabulous headlines, but in endless courtroom sitting (the young offender courts are the worst), hanging out at the cop shop and waiting for an officer to give you the time of day, and drinking very bad coffee while trying to come up with a story idea for next week so you don't have to cover the Rotary book sale.
So I'm pumped to be going out on a Friday night with a cop. Because the ride-along is from 7 p.m. until 3 a.m. and he's promised me that there will be lots of action since it's a payday Friday night after the first snow of the year. He said it'll mostly consist of pulling over drunk drivers, giving people tickets and breaking up bar fights. Yay! Bar fights! I know I'll be sitting in the car for most of the evening, but my imagination is working overtime. Maybe I'll get to jump on some bruiser's back, distracting him as my Scottish cop partner gives him a mean left hook.
He's apologized in advance for the cursing and meanness that he'll have to put forth. I think he sees me as a cute, harmless girl. I don't have the heart to tell him that I've heard and said much worse than anything he can come up with in the various newsrooms I've worked in over the years.
Okay. Only one hour to go and I'm totally pumped!
When I was in grade nine and considering what I wanted to do with my life, I was very non-commital. Hell, I was 15. What did I know? At that age, the most that I wanted out of life was to be left to my weird, rebel ways and write "Mrs. Paul Westerburg" on my finder binder. But our school counselor was a jittery woman who took her job very seriously and I didn't know how to politely say "Hey lady, bug off! I'm 15 and I just got the latest NOFX album. I don't know what I want to do with my life. Heck, I don't know what I want to do tomorrow, so just suck it, huh?"
So to placate her I took some apptitude tests. Turned out that my aptitudes were memory work, problem solving and writing. I apparently retain 90 per cent of what I read. Based on the results, they spit out a bunch of careers you'd supposedly be good at. Writer came up in varying degrees (including Reporter) as did police officer.
Well, I went to high school, read some Rolling Stone, idolized Hunter S. Thompson and because my parents were big hippies who encouraged me to damn the man, not work for him, I decided that the world of gonzo journalism was the one for me.
But at the back of my mind, okay, the front of my mind, especially since I've been watching Homicide: Life on the Streets ever since grade eight, is the niggling little doubt that I could have been a cop.
Em says that at heart, all journos want to be cops. We think that if we combined the two, we'd have a great TV show. Journo-cops: By day, they write the news, by night, they make it. Hoo yeah. That would go over well. Cop Rock anyone?
Time to go home and find some crime fighting clothes.
Imagine a whirling bat signal right here followed by campy, action music. Biff! Poww! Whammo! Yeah baby! I'm an ass kicker, and tonight, I ain't takin' no names!
I'm loving: Diet Vanilla Coke. DIET Vanilla Coke. DIET! They make DIET Vanilla Coke now! I'm so excited! Or maybe I'm hyper. You know. From the DIET VANILLA COKE!!!
I'm eating: Nothing. I'm nervous.
I'm listening to: The Donnas new album Spend the Night. It rocks. I would tolerate nothing less.
I'm reading: Carl Hiassen's Sick Puppy, The new Spin magazine which I'm actually finding quite humerous in a giggly "they said ass!" juvenile, at-least-it's-not-all-pompous-and-holier-than-thou-bad-like-Rolling-Stone way.
I'm watching: The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Damn It! Janet! Did anyone else see Anthony Stewart Head on the VH1 Rocky Horror Anniversary Karaoke? It was last year some time. Wow. I wish I could've seen him perform as Frank live. Also, can you believe that there's no Rocky Horror showing here on Halloween? Bah. I bought my own.
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