I smell roses … and No. 24 back in Seattle

Maybe I’m speaking a little premature, but the planets are starting to align in my nimble, fragile little sports world. I dare not jinx those which I treasure, but here is a quick rundown of what I expect to happen in the near future:

 1: Oregon State will beat Oregon in the Civil War on Saturday, and thus clinch a spot in the Rose Bowl, “the grandaddy of them all.” Not since the 34-7 raping that Michigan bequeathed upon the Beavers in 1965 has OSU even made it back!

 

2: The Seattle Mariners will pull their giant heads out of their giant  asses and do something to actually put fans back in the stands, not to mention replenish a childhood dream of mine put on hold for nearly a decade: Bring back GRIFFEY!. My favorite player – nay, human being – deserves to come home and finish his career the way it began. If not for the city of Seattle or for Griffey, himself, do it for me. And if I only knew website design and had a few extra bucks, I would already have launched the website “bringbackgriffey.com”.

Here are some Griffey favorites:

“The Double”
(The opening of the video is black, but it turns on at 9 seconds. The audio is something that haunts my dreams forever…)

 

Nike’s “Hit it Here” commercial

New Sentinel, same problems

The newest issue of The Sentinel came out on Monday. Indeed, the staff gets better as a whole each issue (while it would be obviously hard to get worse from such humble beginnings…), I actually am quite impressed with the advancement of many individuals. While I thought I was truly the only one who could feasibly obsess the way I do, a few have come through the woodwork to seemingly care half as much as I do – and anyone who can obsess half as much as I can is undoubtedly making a statement to their dedication.

Nevertheless, I am impressed with some.

Meanwhile, we have won two major awards this year (the pacemaker we picked up was for LAST YEAR’S paper, and thus I attribute none of the acclaim to the current staff in place, including myself). While winning “Best-of-Show” in Kansas City was my goal from the beginning of this school year (the second “Best-of-Show” award for our special election section was but an exclamation point to what I already expected), we handily won on a seriously sub-par issue. And I hate to sound cocky in that I expect to create the best paper in the country, it is only because there lacks any real competition.

Just glancing though our larger-than-most paper may pique the jealousy from other two-year institutions – even some universities – but a deeper, thorough perusing will unveil a serious problem: We have not begun to showcase the serious potential we are blessed with. We are still a paper struggling with the same problems seen in those publications we beat in competition.

The Sentinel is like a beautiful woman with a pushup bra and low-cut shirt, but not enough makeup to cover her acne.

You see, we overwhelm people with full-page, color layouts devoid of ads and lots of big photos, that nobody notices the numerous misspellings in stories or the typos in captions. The glorious cutout of the soccer player on this issue’s cover is amazing, to say the least, but how is it that we told the reader to look at page “B11” for the continued story … WHEN THERE ISN’T EVEN A “B-SECTION” in this issue!?

It’s my fault.

I have spent so much time worrying about minor issues to please myself (whether columns line up along the bottom of a story, whether there’s a border around a photo or if we have a good photo to cutout for the cover), that I have put the overall quality of our paper on the back burner. I have been more worried about the small elements of design than the overall image; and while my lead role for this paper is “Managing Editor,” I have spent more time managing than I have editing. If I can work more at doing my job than making sure everybody else is doing theirs, we won’t just be the best two-year school newspaper in the country but the best newspaper, period.

Like Alison Atwell said: “Jake Donahue is an ass and freely admits it.” As cocky as I was in Kansas City (when asked who I was by members of the Daily Nebraskan, instead of just saying my name was Jake, I went one step further: “You wanna know who I am? I’ll tell you what, why don’t you just show up for the awards ceremony on Sunday, and when they start handing out “Best-of-Show” awards, I’ll be the guy on stage most of the event collecting plaques!!”), I should probably start working on that.

Maybe next time I’ll introduce myself as “The guy who MIGHT be collecting all the plaques on Sunday.” You see, that doesn’t necessarily mean I am guaranteeing victory, but merely insinuating it.

Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Bored with Zach, late night Coeur d’Alene

Pauley Shore or Bust

Ever seen My New Haircut? Or Bro Rape? You know, those damn YouTube videos that the world constantly relates to yours truly? As much as I try to deny the stark comparisons, this afternoon I finally succumbed to that damn stereotype.

An inside joke to most yet humorous to many, I relentlessly mock those same individuals whilst muttering, “Totally righteous, bra!” or sometimes just, “Totally, like, for sure.”

Never serious, as the ingrates who speak like Pauly Shore should most definitely be shot. But after years of hilariously mimicking those SoCal surfer stoners, those yuppie east coast preps and the famous frat boy posers … I suddenly became one in a mere two syllables.

While purchasing a delectable, plastic-concealed treat from the gas station this evening, I concluded the transaction in a manner that flawlessly flowed from mouth without a second thought:

“Thanks, bra.”

Not, “Dude.” Not, “Man.” Not even, “Bro.”

Just: “Bra.”

Mother of all God. I might as well start wearing my visors backward and upside down.

Idaho Magazine

A while back, the Life Editor on The Sentinel submitted a story that he had written for our paper to Idaho Magazine. Low and behold, they published it! They even paid him about $25, and used one of the pictures he had taken, also.

My life-long dream has been to get published in a magazine, from Highlights for Kids to Sports Illustrated to being named one of People’s Sexiest Men of the Year.

I really am not picky.

Now, I have always known Idaho Magazine existed. I even knew that they were always requesting submissions. However, I had never seen anybody get anything published (save for my buddy and old photo editor James Hannibal. But he is a freak of nature in all aspects: drinking, living and most importantly, taking phenomenal photos). So I never even considered Idaho Magazine. Meanwhile, I always thought the publication lacked a certain luster; it just wasn’t a huge read like Gentleman’s Quarterly or Maxim.

But after Eli’s success with Idaho’s perennial publication, I decided to give it a try. The only other time I had submitted anything to a magazine, Playgirl told me to start working out…

Nevertheless, I figured my best bet was a story I once wrote about a pal who hunted “Anything that Moves.” That also happened to be the headline. It was a nice feature about my buddy John who had moved from Hawaii, and – never mind, here is the e-mail:

Jake wrote:
Hey, I was just reading Idaho Magazine and thought this was a good fit. It's an article about a guy from Hawaii who moved to Coeur d'Alene, and now hunts "Anything that moves." He's got some funny quotes, so I just thought I'd submit and see what you thought. I also have some photos.

Idaho Magazine replied:
I think you're right, Jake, it's pretty funny. Also a bit of a worry,
especially with what's been going down on campuses in recent years. Makes me wonder what happened to this guy along the way. I could see running it, especially if we learned a little more about his personal history and got a better notion of why he's overwhelmed by the power trip of killing things. Psychologically, he's interesting, but of course the problem is we're starting work on the January issue now, which is a long way from hunting season. I'll file this, and if you're interested in looking a little deeper into what motivates him, shoot me a reminder in four or five months. Thanks for thinking of us.

Long story short, just look at these five words: “I COULD SEE RUNNING IT.”

Boom shakka lakka!

While my timing may have been off this time, at least they didn’t tell me “No!” My ego took a small hit when he told me to e-mail him in 4 or 5 months, as I figured he would be frothing at the mouth in anticipation of next year’s hunting season to unveil the first Idaho Magazine boasting a byline from Jake Donahue.

But I can wait.

Besides, there are plenty of other magazines. And if I can start shooting out previously written articles, I don’t even have to work on writing anything new. I love being lazy!

I’m rarely right, but I’m never wrong

Ingrained in my persona for as long as I remember, there has laid a deep affinity toward the written word. Perhaps this is due to the sharp contrasts with the spoken word: You cannot mumble while writing (a predicament I have dealt with all my life through the spoken aspect), and unlike speaking to a crowded auditorium, you rarely see the expressions from those who read your work while you're in the process of creating it. Needless to say, I have never been one to avoid criticism or comments concerning that which I pen, as my level of modesty is rivaled only by the boisterous Muhammad Ali - cocky, to say the least. Yet in my sophomore year of high school, I discovered I could collect a greater response to my writing than a simple chuckle: Journalism.

Though I started as a simple sports fan covering high school venues, I subsequently morphed into a collegiate drunk who typographically stammered through columns about shooting birds from a truck. While in high school, my sports column made fun of fat girls and cowboys, in college it was handicapped parking. Reverse evolution is what they call it, I believe: Getting progressively dumber as time elapses.

You see, I love evoking responses from those who would otherwise look away. Why would someone read the feature I wrote about an injured basketball player when, if they simply turn the page, they can peruse my defamatory article condemning recycling? Would the reader in turn, if they were so inclined to actually read the feature I wrote next, think I'm some ailing idiot begging for attention, or, after reading the thought-provoking, most-likely comedic and provocative recycling article even read the feature at all? And if they read the feature, would I seem smarter for covering two completely polar-opposite categories of the journalism spectrum, or merely an idiot?

I have ultimately reached a writer’s paradox.

Why is it that I can create a mixture of words, sentences – nay, paragraphs! – that beckon the most strict of college journalism judges to acclaim the serious feature as award-worthy, yet in the same newspaper issue alienate myself from most of humanity with a dim-witted piece on the similarities between Bigfoot and the Bible? More than likely it is to settle a debate in my own spacious mind. For every serious, well-written and gloriously articulated article I construct, subconsciously I must seemingly produce the opposite as well, a counter balance of sorts (see knee-boob column).

Why? I do not know. I would love to write like Ernest Hemmingway, but at the same time I would also love to achieve the same literary success of Tucker Max.

I’m more confused than you are.

However, of all that I’ve done and dreamed of doing, this is the first blog I’ve blogged, and hopefully the first of many.