Chicken Shotgun – The Weird Side of the Internet

Chicken Shotgun – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

One of the most challenging – and rewarding – things about writing news stories is writing the headline. Those carefully crafted collection of words can sink, or soar. And the cool thing is that even a pretty basic story can get a life beyond its weight if the story’s pieces align.

I think the original headline of this story, while adequately describing the full extent of the inciting incident, also give it a transcendent reality.

The headline? An Oregon man crashes car into an apartment while eating chicken and talking on the phone.

I’m trying to figure out what angle I would’ve wanted to view this from. Nobody was hurt, by the way. But where? Do I want to be in the living room, watching a car chase in an old 70s pulp movie as the window gets brighter and brighter and the car on the TV becomes less and less important to the one about to taste window glass?

No, not that angle. I want to be in the car, backseat, listening in on the conversation as Johnny Badass’s tongue rolls over the eleven herbs and spices coating a leg or a thigh and he’s so engrossed in that conversation he’s not noticing the front wheels get high, over the curb and that bank and the sprinkler that scrapes under the bottom of the gas tank.

What was that call? What was so important? Was he making money moves or playing top dog or was he reminding wifey to pick up an extra package of ice cream sandwiches but the good kind?

Back to our own astral plane, his name was Billy Holt. He was forty-one, and looked like he had some help driving like a jackass. And it was the bedroom, not the living room. And he may have been on the phone with a good lawyer, because he got diversion to treatment instead of jail.

And was it an iPhone or a Samsung?

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