College days

Bookending the Cold War at the Churchill Museum

“Where were you when the wall fell?” Well, twenty years ago I was heading with a bunch of folks from the student newspaper to the Investigative Reporters and Editors College Conference in Washington, D.C. — so around the time the wall was falling, I was actually driving around lost in our nation’s capital. (And for all the excitement around the world, it seemed dead as the proverbial doornail that night.) …

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Comics Confessions: My Summer of Batman

Welcome to Fanboy Anonymous. We’ve got someone new with us today. Introduce yourself, please… “My name is John, and I saw Tim Burton’s Batman movie theatrically 12 times. I know that sounds excessive, but it just sort of happened.” Happened how? “It was summer session in a college town — everyone had left. The trendiest nightspot was the campus commissary where each hour Hair-Net Harriet would loudly announce the alley …

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Grassroots, pizza, and the fear of clip-on ties

Just a few more hours until the election is in the history books — and it looks like people are still busy on both sides of the metaphorical aisle, at least in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. The GOP headquarters seemed busy when I drove past it after dark Saturday night — I couldn’t see inside from the road, but it was really lit up and there were cars out front, so …

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My interview with Joe Biden

In the brushes with candidates department… tomorrow’s vice-presidential debate brought to mind a lot of the different folks I got to interview when I was a student journalist. As a reporter — then editor — for the University of Tennessee Daily Beacon, I interviewed a pretty diverse list of people, from soap opera actor Michael Swan to comics creator Mike Grell, who I would later follow on Iron Man. There …

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My 1989 interview with Joe Biden

I got to interview when I was a student journalist. As a reporter — then editor — for the University of Tennessee Daily Beacon, I interviewed a pretty diverse list of people, from soap opera actor Michael Swan to comics creator Mike Grell, who I would later follow on Iron Man. There were also a number of politicians: Lamar Alexander, sometime presidential candidate and currently the senator from Tennessee, was …

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