The TV News industry website TV Spy circulated a video clip this week because it showed longtime Minneapolis anchor Frank Vascellaro having an emotional reaction to a story. I’m posting the video clip here because I thought the story was exceptionally well told. The videography was powerful but not intrusive. And reporter Lindsey Seavert knows how to tell a story without telling viewers how they should feel.

When I was growing up in Calgary, it was a given that on Shrove Tuesday we were having pancakes for dinner. When I moved to New York, however, “Pancake Tuesday” turned out to be another Canadian thing Americans had never heard about. I quickly discovered that most people who do celebrate today swap in plastic beads and heavy drinking for a stack of pancakes.

Almost 10 years later, an NYPD videotape from September 11th has been made public. The tape was shot from a police helicopter that was circling the World Trade Center when the south tower fell.

I’m trying to keep the Charlie Sheen news to a minimum. But this is only loosely related. His 2 1/2 Men colleague Jon Cryer made a fun cameo with Ellen DeGeneres, as someone who needs a job.

If only kids stayed at an age where ripping up a grocery list provided enough entertainment for a giggle fit. Mine have, inevitably, developed more sophisticated tastes as they get older but the father of the baby in this video can still get his little daughter to crack up on command. Those were the days…

Wow. Our Starbucks name challenge produced some good photos today. It also enlightened me to how widespread the phenomenon is. We got an email from Erika first thing this morning who says she’d just posted her Starbucks cup of the day on Facebook when a friend sent along the details of our cup challenge. The kicker, Erica writes, was the barista’s ability to decipher her code name

As any frequent visitor to Starbucks knows, when you order a fancy drink they typically ask you to give your name so they can summon you to the barista’s counter when your order is ready. Here’s something else frequent Starbucks visitors know: the name you give is rarely the name you receive back.

My friend and fellow news anchor Chris Gailus has a great sense of humor. Even when it involves laughing at himself. On Wednesday night he learned that an exploding bulb in a TV studio light sounds a lot like a gunshot.

What’s in a name? If you’re the long-time leader of Libya, at least 10 distinct ways to spell it. Every time Moammar Gadhafi starts to make the front pages, newspapers around the world engage in what seems to be a game to see how many spellings they can come up with.