Alycia Lane gives first-person account of Boston Marathon tragedy

FORMER CBS 3 anchor Alycia Lane was at the Lenox Hotel in Boston on Monday, about a half block from the finish line, to cheer on a friend. She gave an account of what she experienced to the "Today" show Tuesday, and spoke with Brian Williams on NBC's prime-time special report Monday night.

"We could feel the ground shake below us, and everything on our table shook," she recalled to Williams. "Ten seconds later, a second blast hit, and we looked outside and saw a plume of smoke up in the air."

She also brought up an interesting point: Police told Lane and other bystanders to turn off their cellphones so no devices would be accidentally detonated remotely, out of fear that the bomber was still in the crowd.

Lane is an anchor for KNBC in Los Angeles.

* In an unfortunate coincidence, the Philadelphia Marathon Facebook page posted "Congratulations to all those who ran in the Boston Marathon! It's a great feeling to reach your goal - no matter how big or small" at 2:49 p.m., mere minutes before the first explosive went off in Boston on Monday. "This would not have been posted had we known that the Boston tragedy had occurred," said Mark McDonald, Mayor Nutter's press secretary. "What we did later was post on Facebook, and later tweet, messages of concern for those who suffered this awful tragedy."

Jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard is in town Tuesday and Wednesday to give a master class to students at the Girard Academic Music Program and the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts through the Mann's Education & Community Engagement program. "I'm at a point in my life where I realize that giving back is the most important thing," Blanchard said. "Now I realize the hands that were given to me by great musicians [including Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Hinton], so I'm giving that back."

Blanchard lamented not being able to get out and about in Philly because of his busy schedule. He's finishing up an opera with the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Soon, he'll start writing the score for the film adaptation of Langston Hughes' "Black Nativity," featuring Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett and Philly-born dancer/choreographer Abdur-Rahim Jackson.

Howard Stern's Captain Janks, a/k/a North Wales' own Tom Cipriano, attended a show Monday at World Cafe Live headlined by former Monkee Michael Nesmith (he of the woolly cap). It was Nesmith's first solo tour in 30 years. Janks was kind enough to send me a review. "Great show. The music he played (along with an incredible backup band) was a career-spanning look at his post-Monkees solo career," Janks told me, highlighting songs like "Joanne," "Silver Moon," "Rio," "Cruisin'," "Different Drum" (a hit that he originally wrote for Linda Ronstadt) and "Thanx For The Ride" (played with a taped pedal-steel guitar solo by the late Red Rhodes, Nesmith's friend and former bandmate for several years). Janks, of course, is better known as Stern resident prank caller than for his Monkee-ing around.

Listen up, fans of '80s hardcore band Black Flag. Former Philadelphian Stewart Dean Ebersole will hold a book-signing party at South Street's Tattooed Mom on Sunday to celebrate the release of his photo book, Barred for Life (PM Press), chronicling people who are all inked with the iconic Black Flag bars - a set of four unaligned black bars designed by Raymond Pettibon. Out of the 380 people from around the world photographed for the book, Ebersole, who now works as a marine geologist, estimates that about 35 are from Philly, where he started the project.

"It's a really easy identifier," Ebersole told me about why so many people choose to get a permanent reminder of the band once fronted by Henry Rollins. "It's like a corporation using visuals to set themselves apart, like Nike or Apple."

The Tattooed Mom party, starting at 7 p.m., will be sponsored by Narragansett beer, with tunes courtesy of DJ Brown Jeff, who is, of course, tattooed with the Black Flag bars.

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