Charles Apple

Virginian-Pilot design director Paul Nelson announced last week:

I’m sorry to announce that Lori Kelley will be leaving The Pilot to become art director of Express in Washington, D.C.

What’s Express? It’s a free, widely circulated tabloid-sized paper printed each weekday and targeting commuters. It’s owned by The Washington Post.

Lori came to The Pilot in 2004 from the Myrtle Beach Sun. Since then she has designed almost every page we produce, worked on the copy desk and as news editor, helped get the redesign completed and launched and became assistant director of presentation. Along the way, she also picked up a bevy of design awards.

We’ll miss her buoyant style and can-do attitude, and we wish her well in the nation’s capital.

Somebody, cue the music:

The Toledo Free Press Star – a weekly publication in Toledo, Ohio — today published an edition that strikes close to my geekazoid fanboy heart.

Here’s the cover (Click any of these pages for a larger view):

James Molnar tells us:

My editor, Michael S. Miller, energetically decided to cover the 30th Anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back. I thought you would enjoy.

Oh, you know me so well, James. I think the cover subhead — “The greatest sequel of all time” — might be a bit of hyperbole. But because I find the whole edition so juicylicious, I won’t complain.

James continues:

For the cover, we went with poster art we hope everyone will recognize. We had some great shots of Boba Fett but thought it wouldn’t be as recognizable for the casual fan.

As lead designer, I did the layout work and created the special logo.

Here’s the index page, which reveals a number of Star Wars-themed touches. The headline, in particular, is a scream:

The heart of the Empire Strikes Back retrospective is a four-page sequence in the middle of today’s edition. James explains:

Michael decided to expand the spread to four pages. He has been in contact with Lucasfilm and was granted permission to use photos from the movie, along with behind-the-scenes photos.

We ran an essay by novelist and Butler University professor Dan Barden and a story by our comic and entertainment writer Jim Beard. The rest was Michael’s handiwork. He’s the true fan.

Find Beard’s story here, along with the factoids text — below, in the grey box on the right of the doubletruck. Find Barden’s “Dagobah, Nebraska” essay here.

James writes:

On page four of the spread, our pop culture guru Jeff McGinnis interviewed Boba Fett actor Jeremy Bulloch. We reached out to other actors from the movie and got an interview with Bulloch.

That Boba Fetish headline is another stroke of genius.

The interview is pretty good. But the ending is priceless:

“More people talk about Star Wars than probably any other group of films,” he said. “And they talk about that particular scene, going into the Sarlacc pit. And they say, ‘You get out, don’t you, Mr. Bulloch?’ And I say, ‘Oh, of course! I’d stay down there for six months, to get money out of other bounty hunters in the Sarlacc pit, and I’d opened a Hooters bar’.”

Find the interview here.

And here is page 22, on which James used his customized logo again on the paper’s masthead:

Find the digital version of this week’s edition here.

The Star is a weekly product published by the Free Press — which, itself, is a weekly. Read about the launch of the Star here.

Go here to read about a really cool Simpsons Movie tie-in by the Free Press.

Julio Lara of the San Mateo (Calif.) Daily Journal writes today:

Not sure why I thought of you, but when I was going to pick up my lunch I stopped to look at the news racks as I always do and the cover for the SF Weekly caught my eye. I’m sure you’ll see why.

This guy, the Epic Beard Man, was huge here in the Bay Area not too long ago for a YouTube video. The cover image is simple but it’s an eye catcher alright.

Here’s the cover:

The Epic Beard Man is actually Thomas Bruso, a sixty-something resident of a senior home in Oakland, Calif.

Here’s what happened: Bruso got into a loud, racially-tinged (actually, racially-saturated) argument with Michael Lovette – who happens to be a younger black man — on a city bus. Insults were traded. And then fists flew. Bruso was kicked off the bus. Lovette was left with a bloody nose.

Someone apparently captured the whole thing on a cellphone camera. The SF Weekly’s Lauren Smiley reports:

The next day, Washington uploaded “AC Transit Bus Fight I Am a Motherfucker” to YouTube. The 3 minutes and 21 seconds of explosive footage got more than a million views in 24 hours.

Yeah, it’s up to nearly 4.4 million now. Against my better judgment, here’s the video. If you’re in an office setting, turn down the volume now:

Smiley continues:

Web junkies dubbed Bruso “Epic Beard Man,” and posted fan art re-creating him as a muscular cartoon character, a pimp in a Stacy Adams ad, or getting his shoes shined by Lovette. Others created videos of the fight as Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter parodies; another composed and uploaded an “I Am a Motherfucker” tribute song. Hundreds of people posted response videos breaking down the fight. Comedians used it as skit material, while high schoolers cracked up at the senior citizen’s unlikely fighting prowess.

Epic Beard Man was a phenomenon. Of course, his new “fans” knew little about the man himself. Instead, viewers saw what they wanted to see. Some saw an elderly hero. Some saw a racist. And others — well, they saw dollar signs.

Bruso spends much of the story making a case that he’s not the racist he appears to be in the video. Find the story here.

I must admit: It’s an interestingly polarizing cover for an interestingly polarizing story, though.

Thanks for the tip, Julio.