Cory_McCloskey's Blog

Hey, folks!

Had a great time this morning with the kids at Navarette Elementary in Chandler!  I love the questions i get...

    How much do you make?
    Is your job fun?
    How old are you?
    Do you have any pets?
   
   
It's so fun to watch their faces as Skyfox touches down...  I wish a helicopter had landed at MY elementary school in 1965! 

Do you have any remarkable elementary school memories?  Presidential visit?  Fire drill that turned out to be real? 

Impress us!
   

Ok, all...

Confession time.  Finally did it.  Put up our first artificial Christmas tree. 

Like many of you, I grew up in a climate that allowed a tree that had probably been cut down a month before to survive another month in the living room before dropping its needles in a piney heap on the tree skirt.  And the wonderful scent...  Nothing like it.

Arizona, however, has not that climate.  Here, Christmas trees have a shelf life that's measured in minutes, not weeks.  Last year I actually returned a Christmas tree to the store from which it had come because its needles were tinkling to the floor just two weeks after purchase.  Now, I'm not saying that the return was a hassle, but the store, the name of which rhymes with "schmarget," was not enthusiastic about my refund.  It was eventually accomplished, but not at full price because I didn't have my receipt.  Silly me.  No receipt for my Christmas tree.  Usually I keep those things around until Valentine's Day, just to be safe.

Anyway, we found a $450, 9-foot, pre-lit tree that looked like it had been made by Santa's own elves for about $90 just after last Christmas.  Jackpot!

Put it up over the weekend, and you could almost hear the angels singing as the lights (every ONE of them) flashed on!  I'm a believer!

Now the only glitch is to persuade three daughters that it'll be ok.  They're already reminiscing about that sweet forest scent.

I think a few pine air fresheners tucked into the boughs just may do the trick...  Any suggestions?

Hey, all...

Thought I'd give you all a look at your weatherman's hometown.

This is the view downstream from the middle of the Susquehanna River in Central Pennsylvania. Berry's Mountain is on the left, and my little town, Millersburg, is nestled in below it behind the trees.

 

It's like a hundred other little towns you'll find hard against this river, its shore lined with boats, a steep hill leading up to the square from the water's edge. Here's how the town appeared from the top of Berry's Mountain in 1894...

 

The line that you can see snaking across the river to the western shore is the "ferry wall," a low dam of river stones that holds back enough of the shallow stream to form a 3-foot pool across which ferryboats have been traveling since the 1820s. (You may be able to make out the ferryboat's smokestack near the shore) The first ferries were poled across by hand. Steam-driven vessels arrived later in the 1800s, and today's ferries are gasoline-powered stern-wheelers. They're still operating, and I hope always will be. My friends and I spent many hours on the ferry. For 50 cents you could ride across to the landing on the western shore where there was a campground with a little store. Sometimes we'd wade across the river (remember, just three feet deep!) and catch a ride back. Today, the ferry generally runs sunrise to sundown every Spring, Summer and Fall day. No schedule. It sails whenever a car pulls up!  Here's how it looks these days...

 

My dad was a history teacher at my high school (Millersburg Area High School) and was the winningest (love that word) golf coach in Pennsylvania high school history. He died about ten years ago, but was a very funny guy. Man, did we laugh! Aside from his excellent golf game, he was well-known as the voice of the MHS Indians, handling the public address announcements at football games for many years. His students loved him...

 

My mom is a beautiful woman who taught disabled children for several years in the Lykens Valley (the valley between Berry's Mountain and Mahantango Mountain where several small towns lie). She was also the most well-organized college aid expert I've ever known, somehow helping four children through college on my dad's 25K salary!

 

I have two sisters, Paige and Jill, and a brother, Joel. I'm the oldest, and like it.

 

Both sisters have followed my parents' path: Paige teaches high school Spanish and Jill teaches kindergarten. Both are terrific! They and their families live just west of Lancaster, PA.

 

Joel is a chemical engineer who's working to perfect the design of the lithium battery. (He got his grandfather's engineering genes...) He and his wife live in Philadelphia.

 

So that's a glimpse of Millersburg, PA! The town will celebrate its bicentennial this August; stop in and have a slice of shoo-fly pie!

Hey, all!

I'll try to keep you updated on the schools Don Hooper and I will be visiting in SkyFox...

Wed., March 7,  Andalucia Elementary in the Maryvale neighborhood (47th Ave. and Campbell)

All right.  Time to stir the pot.

Wasn't it comforting to hear Al Gore's Oscar-night comments?

Don't you love being told that you and your kind ("your kind" being those criminals who drive gasoline-powered automobiles) continue to harm the planet just by trying to get to work to make a living to support your family?  Isn't it swell to be lectured about the CO2 emissions from your Suburban by a man who often travels in a private jet that dumps more CO2 during his trip from Nashville to LA than your SUV expels in an entire YEAR?

Isn't it fun to watch the glittering "Go Green" crowd worship this guy?

As I recently heard someone ask, "Since we've been keeping accurate temperature records for only about 110 years, who are the global warming pundits to tell us that about 15 years ago, the Earth's temperature was PERFECT, but now we're RUINING things?  Indeed!  How can we know what temperature is "just right" for the earth?  Has the earth NEVER before experienced an upswing in temperatures?  Seems unlikely, doesn't it?  But the fear of it and the campaign to spread that fear sure sells books and keeps the government in the grant-renewal business at our nation's universities.

When I was in junior high in the early 70s, alarmists like Al Gore were trying to frighten us with their dire predictions of an impending Ice Age!  I'm not KIDDING!  Just 35 years ago, the next big climate change was feared to be a horrible cool-down that would force humans out of Canada and the northern U.S. and crowd the South with refugees!  And the Ice Age crowd was just as hysterical as Gore and his gang.

No one is advocating the wanton destruction of our environment.  However, human beings are here to stay until God says our time is up.  We're going to live and consume and change the parts of the earth that we touch until then.  We're blessed with all of the world's intelligence and are superior to all other creatures, no matter what PETA says (might as well jab them while I'm at it...).  There is no holding back our creativity.

So to those extremists who would like to restrain the world's forward motion, the citizens who get up every day and make this country run offer to them the paraphrased words of Ayn Rand's protagonist John Galt in Atlas Shrugged:

"Get out of my way."

All right, friends...

My goal is to post a new blog every day.  That's right.  Every day.

So...  Topics.  I need topics!  "Every day" is a big machine to feed, so if you care to hear my opinion on anything, lemme know what it is.

 We'll make this blog the topic list, so drop your blog suggestions below...

 Thanks!


 

Mmmmmph... Whuh? No. Unh-unh. What's that NOISE? Why won't it STOP?

When was the last time you awoke at three in the morning? Hmmm... House on fire? New baby? First day of deer camp? Loose, hacking cough? It wasn't just because you love that time of day, was it? Unusual circumstances required it.

It's one of the most frequently-asked questions I hear: so what time to you get up in the morning?

Three. 3. Oh-three-hundred. Middle of the night. The butt-crack of dawn.

Now, I'm not complaining. I'm just exPLAINing. I don't want to sound like a crybaby; I knew the hours when I was offered the job. But there's no denying that 3 am ain't natchral. It ain't normal. Our bodies aren't designed to beat the sun in the "up" race. So those of us who must do it devise strategies for rousting ourselves at that unholy hour.

Here's some unsolicited advice... If you decide to begin this kind of early-morning routine, this is key: TWO ALARM CLOCKS. One by the bed. Another far, far, far from the bed. So far that you'll be awake by the time you stagger over to silence it. Set the distant clock a few minutes later than the bedside model so you at least treat yourself to a bit more shuteye.

My nightstand alarm clock looks like it's been dropped from the top of the Westward BLEEP. Its top is mashed in from my desperate, bleary groping for the kill switch as the buzzing scorches my eardrums. I rarely remember shutting off this one.

Alarm number two is set by the sink near the shower. I have a pretty good handle on my world by the time I've lurched across the room to turn this one off.

So the hard part's done once I'm awake. But boy... It's an insult every morning. During my first week at Fox10, three people pulled me aside to tell me the same thing: you'll never get used to it. I guess they were right, because I never wake up at three on my days off. It doesn't take much to get back in the swing of normal hours, but really, once you're up, off you go. I just hit the shower and blowdry that TV hair and I'm on the road.

Me and two burglars and a bread truck. That's my commute. Oh, and about 2,000 18-wheelers.

So wave if you see me on the 10 at about 4:15! I'll be the smiley guy with the immovable hair...

The Innocents Abroad… Mark Twain

The Pillars Of The Earth… Ken Follett

Mere Christianity… C.S. Lewis

The Odyssey… Homer

Cold Mountain… Charles Frazier

The Civil War: A Narrative… Shelby Foote

1984… George Orwell

Atlas Shrugged… Ayn Rand

The Catcher In The Rye… J.D. Salinger

The Killer Angels… Michael Shaara

Undaunted Courage… Stephen Ambrose

A Farewell To Arms… Ernest Hemingway

That's what I often say to folks who tell me they enjoy what I do on the air. And I mean it...

There are lots of choices in the morning, and I'm always grateful that I'm invited into so many kitchens and family rooms across Arizona. And I never get tired of meeting viewers, so please don't hesitate to say hi if you see me somewhere!

People almost always tell me, too, that we look like we're really having fun together on the air. Truer words were never spoken. Ron and Rick and Alexis and Andrea and I are constantly laughing about something, and the commercial breaks are just as good. In fact, we ought to run a webcam from the studio during the commercials - that's where half of our best stuff is shouted out!

So I plan to have a lot of fun with this blog. I have a lot of goofy pics and maybe some of my music to post when the site REALLY gets going, and I hope you enjoy all of it.

By the way... the movie you asked about was "Forget About It." My scene was shot in Mesa with these three guys: http://forgetaboutitmovie.com/story.htm It was a blast! Burt Reynolds, Robert Loggia and Charles Durning. All funny guys who were real-life old friends enjoying each other's company. I played a car salesman delivering a new Escalade to Robert Loggia...

Oscar buzz? Hmmm... If the movie's ever RELEASED, we'll see.

So thanks for checking in! See you around the website!