I call this one “My back porch with snow on it”

On Wednesday, the eve of Thanksgiving and the day of really big and annoying snow, the newish tradition of photo-bombing Facebook was underway. Photos of snow covering porch rails. Photos of snow covering tree branches, fence posts, cars and small children. Folks posting photos as if this was the Fourth of July and the snow was nothing short of a miracle. I always want to respond with a snow photo of my own – something very, very inappropriate – but I haven’t yet marshaled the courage to do so. This is my year, though, I can feel it.

Hope you enjoyed your stuffing

I really don’t care how your stuffing was. I just wanted to use the line because it sounds nasty.

Place Jaws theme here

Speaking of lines, one of the best I’ve used in a news story lately was from the Black Friday shopping hullabaloo. Went a little something like this: “There were so many of the giant televisions being pushed through the aisles, they looked like shark fins darting across a frenzied ocean.” Nice, huh? Got a good beat you can dance to? Yeah, well, the line actually belonged to Carl Natale, the Sun Journal web sorcerer, who uttered the very descriptive simile while we were rumbling our way through the hordes inside Walmart. He uttered it and I swiped it so flagrantly, I really should have been busted for shoplifting.

Also

I believe that was my first ever use of “hullabaloo.” Felt pretty good.

How much for the three pack of off-brand lighters?

In Ferguson, where orchestrated chaos reigned early in the week, rioters smashed their way into stores where they made off with big screen TVs, smart phones, toys for the kids and pretty much everything else you had on your shopping list this year. They also looted a Dollar Tree. A Dollar Tree! Oh to be a fly on the wall when those people try to fence that stuff.

Storm stud

Thanks to the Internet age, I occasionally slip out of the weather story assignments if the storm in question starts early in the day. When that happens, daytime beat reporters are tasked with covering all the riveting action (cars sliding into ditches, mainly, and inappropriate behavior with snowmen. Snowpeople?) and I get to slide. So to speak. But when the storm plows in later in the day, that weather story is mine, all mine. Clearly I prefer snowstorms with early starts because A. writing weather stories is like pushing a giant snowball up a hill only to have it roll back down again and B. interviewing children with sleds is miserable. Kids have germs! So far this year, I’m 0-2. I think we should have some kind of poll wherein people guess how many snow stories I’ll write before blessed spring finally returns. The winner gets to write all Sun Journal weather stories for the remainder of my natural life. Please? Can we?

It spells relief

To the very nice lady I met at Walmart on Black Friday and to whom I promised to write about in this space: Rolaids. Eh? *wink, wink* She’ll know what that means.

mlaflamme@sunjournal.com

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