Day 319 - Special Report!

A few weeks ago, I received a peculiar comment on one of my blog entries. The comment was the following:

Hi there: Cute blog. My name is Alan Zibel.I'm a reporter with the Associated Press. Wondering if you'd be willing to be interviewed for a how-to story about baby-proofing. (saw your July 13 post)...If you're interested, e-mail me. Thanks, Alan

But it wasn't as peculiar as this comment from a month ago:

My monkey loves your blog. My monkey thinks Andrew is his baby. Can we borrow your monkey baby for my monkey? Congo bongo! I likey bananas. Whoop whoop!

At first I thought this Associated Press comment might've been a weird joke from my sister or "not bernard." With the help of Google, I did a search on Alan Zibel and sure enough he was a reporter with the Associated Press. We traded a few e-mails, and in a few days I did a phone interview with him.

While I was speaking to him, Alan asked whether or not Lisa would mind being interviewed. And on top of that, he also wanted to send an AP photographer over to take pictures and conduct an audio interview to accompany an internet slide show.

With all of these requests, I slowly began to understand what it is like to be under the paparazzi's eye like a Britney or Paris. I resigned myself to the fact that "Scott Ichikawa" would soon be pasted all over the press and Perez Hilton. Imagine all of this fame without even a Facebook account.

And today is premiere day! That's right. Today is the day that the article is being posted all around the world. I prepared for the onslaught of phone calls and telegrams by hiring a few personal assistants from the local Home Depot down the street. Strangely, my phone never rang and the only thing my personal assistants did for me today was they made me tamales for dinner.

You can either do a Google search of "scott ichikawa ap" to read the article, or you can click on this link: ICHIKAWA BABYPROOFING ARTICLE.

Yup that's right. I made the headlines of the Anne Arundel County Network of Care for Children and Family Services. Here are some other places that the article appeared:

wtopnews.com 103.5 (Washington D.C.)
The News Courier (Athens, Alabama)
The Gainsville Sun (Gainsville, Florida)
wral.com (Raleigh, North Carolina)

I guess I better avoid visiting these cities lest I get attacked by cameras and my adoring fan base (i.e. bruise-free babies).

So there you have it -- our little adventure in creating a journalistic masterpiece. Although the article wasn't exactly what we thought it was going to be, it was still a fun experience. I just don't know what happened to our interactive slide show. Actually, I wasn't too sure how they were going to do an audio slide show of us because Lisa and I were pretty goofy during the interview. I kept on suggesting that the best way to keep your babies safe at home is to install a moat and have attack dogs in front of power outlets.

Then again...maybe I just answered my own question.

Tomorrow's Picture Friday will be a special edition because I'll post some pictures taken by the AP photographer. He was nice enough to give us a CD of the pictures he took of the kids!