October 11: Barbara Walters 'Audition' Memoir, Pack of Trident Gum, and LED Pocket Flashlight

Given to Steve from Lizzie.

LED flashlight makes this easy to read in
the closet...and out of sight from your friends

I think I would have a hard time co-habitating with an investigative journalist. Aside from the weird camera angles TV stations use to promote their reports (if you don't know what I'm talking about, the camera does some free styling, hovering type thing), I'm sure investigative reporters are nice folks. But can you imagine how annoying it would be to eat your oatmeal with them? For instance, take the scenario below:

-Spouse Ursula: "Enjoy your oatmeal, dear,"
-Investigative Reporter Trudy: "What did you put on top?"
-Ursula: "Some currants."
-Trudy: "One looks like a craisin."
-Ursula: "No, I took them all out of the currant bag in the fridge."
-Trudy: "That's not good enough, damn it. I'm going to get a microscope to see if 30x magnification will help identify it. Then I'm taking this currant impostor down to a food safety testing lab to see what its chemical composition is. Then I'm going to install a 24/7 monitoring camera to see if you really grabbed the currant bag or if you're trying to mess with my head. Then I'm going to contact the supermarkets in a 50-mile radius to see if this sort of contamination existed in other cities.

That's just plain exhausting for one currant/craisin. It's not bloody worth it.

I can write more news stories about you
than you can even conceive of

Steve
-Profession: Investigative Journalist

-Favorite 'Steve Miller' band song: The Joker

-You live in Texas. In order of importance, what three things should you mess with in that state?:
1) armadillos
2) border crossing where people get popped for weed
3) old oil money

-Given that your full name is Steve Miller, if you had to put together your own band, what other journalists would you have in it?:
James Elroy would be my lead singer. David Carr would play guitar. Juan Williams on keyboards. And Buck Henry from MSNBC would be on drums.

-As an investigative journalist, what would you uncover from a caper at a suburban dry cleaners involving a missing sock?: I'd find the missing channel changer, too. There would be no malice, just ineptitude.