My 15 minutes

Welcome to this week's Reno News & Review.

Pretty much the usual week here at the world headquarters of the Reno News & Review. My face is still half-paralyzed from the Bell's Palsy (a weird little irritation caused basically by a virus causing a pinched nerve on the left side of my face).

First, there was that guy on Friday who threatened on Facebook to catch up to me on the street. That's the kind of stuff that'll get your day started on an adrenalized measure. I was half-tempted to send a screen grab to his superiors up at the community college, but you know, I'm hardly a tattletale.

There was the Gawker.com story, http://gawker.com/what-ive-learned-from-two-years-collecting-data-on-poli-1625472836.

It's pretty cool. The last time I was working for a national publication, Time magazine, the internet was barely exploding. More like a Ladyfinger than a Cherry Bomb.

But this Gawker thing. Hits on our Fatal Encounters website skyrocketed. People keep calling me for interviews. I don't even know half the people I'm talking to, but I've always had an open-door policy, so when Jim Bohannon or Majority Report or Jake Tapper wants to hear my lamebrain meanderings, well, it's a pretty deep receptacle.

The funniest thing is this: Fifty-two years old, nobody ever asked me to be on CNN before, and suddenly half my face is paralyzed. It's like a country song—except I guess that would be on Fox News.

At any rate, this issue is the fourth installment of Fatal Encounters. It's actually my favorite because I learned so much doing it. This process of moving from one topic area to another, like a newspaper version of The Wire, has accomplished everything I'd hoped it would. It's not that I'm that smart, I've spent many years proving that point, but it doesn't take too many smarts to see a train careening out of control down a track.