tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90298522024-03-07T18:33:10.432-08:00The Book of LenslingerPithy Epistles from the Thinking Man's PhotogLenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-28235886670864632922010-02-03T20:35:00.000-08:002010-02-04T13:58:01.229-08:00The Colonel takes Miami<a title="Ken at Truck by Lenslinger, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/86947467@N00/4329424300/"><img height="240" alt="Ken at Truck" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2553/4329424300_5a8a4157a7_m.jpg" width="144" align="left" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;">Friend of the blog Ken "Colonel" Corn is spending the week in Miami as the sports media community falls all over itself fawning over pampered millionaires at the Super Bowl. When the good Colonel isn't battling the elements, dodging nutbags or teaching his pet starfish how to dry out in the sun, he's agreed to keep of us abreast of all the festivities. Say Hello, Class... </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">DAY 1</span> <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">-- The Weather ...</span><br /></span><br />This is special correspondent Colonel Corn coming to you LIVE (well as live as you can get here at Viewfinder Blues) with the latest on Super Bowl XLIV from sunny Miami, Florida. Only it ain’t sunny here today. It has been a toad frog strangler (that means rain’in like hell in Southern) all darn day. It rained so much that the teams had to practice on an inside field at the Dolphin’s training facility instead at the University of Miami where they were scheduled to practice today.<br /><br />But who cares about what the teams did on this rainy Monday? The Blues readers want to know about TV stuff. Well, I got one word that will strike fear into every photog’s heart, HUMIDITY. Yea, it wreaked havoc on me today. The first time I fired up the tape machines in my satellite truck this morning, they refused to work. Both editors gave me an ERROR-1 HUMIDITY. I had to run the A/C for an hour with the decks open before they would cut tape.<br /><br />Next was the blasted camera. Because I ran the A/C so hard, when I took my camera out for a live shot, it rolled over and died. The lens is full of fog and the tape will not roll. I got it to do the live shot, but other than that, it’s just a fancy boat anchor. So I had to have the A/C cranked for the decks, but it screwed my camera. I can’t win. I should put my camera in the cab of the truck from now on to keep it acclimated.<br /><br />Speaking of the satellite truck, well, without getting too technical, let’s just say I had a few problems there as well. But, all my shots made air, even if one of them was the wrong aspect ratio. Isn’t everyone 16 x 9 now? I thought the sports guy looked like he lost a lot of weight.<br /><br />I know I am rambling on, but I have one more thing I have to share with you. The News business is a small world. To illustrate this, I have a little story to tell. After checking into the hotel, I set out on foot to find a bite to eat. I walked because a thirty foot big box truck is kinda hard to maneuver around most parking lots. I found this Cuban joint next to the hotel. When in Miami, eat Cuban. Inside I found a fella sitting by himself with a WWL hat on his head. I introduced myself as being from WWL’s sister station in Charlotte. I sat down and told him I was on loan to WWL for the Super Bowl.<br /><br />“I am too,” he said, “I actually work for channel 9 in Baton Rouge.”<br /><br />“Channel 9,” I said, “you must know the Turdpolisher!”<br /><br />His lower face cracked open in a big smile and I knew the answer.<br /><br />So here is a shout out from Bob May to Rick: Bob said to tell you, you are a short little f@#$%&r.<br /><br />LIVE from Miami, I’m Colonel Corn for Viewfinder Blues.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">DAY 2</span> <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">-- The Whack-Jobs</span> ...</span><br /><br />This is Special Correspondent Colonel Corn reporting from Miami (well, actually I’m in a town called Miami Gardens, but we wouldn’t let that like fact get in the way of making my intro sound good) where it is Media Day at Dolphin’s stadium. For those of you not familiar with Media Day, here is a brief explainer. Media types like me get to mingle with the players. Some players have their own booth as if they are on display at a convention or something. The “lesser known players” (yea, I heard a reporter actually call them that in a live shot) just walk around hoping for a cameraman to stick his glass in their face.<br /><br />So, did I get to meet Payton or Drew? No. I was out in the parking lot setting up the satellite truck. Truck operators don’t actually get to participate in the events they cover. Instead of hob-knobbing with famous NFL stars, I walked over to the Wal-Mart next door and found a killer deal on Hawaiian shirts. Slinger will be proud of the orange shirt with yellow flowers I picked up for eight bucks!<br /><br />I get back to the truck about the time my crew started screening tape. I expected to see video of a ton of players I would have loved to have met. But, no, they didn’t shoot players. They shot some guy from the Daily Show wetting his shirt and hair with a spray bottle. He was joking about the humidity here in Florida but what the hell does he have to do with the Super Bowl? They also shot video of a Telemundo reporter with a halo over her head. Her name was Angel, get it? She interviewed players then we interviewed her. What is wrong with that picture? Maybe I’m working for that cable network with the slogan: “Characters Welcome.”<br /><br />Also, I’ve got to tell you about the Media Party the NFL put on out at Miami Beach (also a city not part of the metropolitan area of Miami) late in the evening. The party was on the beach! They had a live band with dancers dressed up like cheerleaders. They provided free food and free booze. The NFL puts on a kicking party. The dancers/cheerleaders started a line dance and we all joined in. Later, I saw my co-workers walking away from the bar with a beer in each hand and two more tucked up under their arm pits. Yee Haw!<br /><br />Parking for this event was non-existent. So we had to park several blocks away and hoof it to the beach. This turned out to be a wonderful hike. I do have one question for all the women in Miami Beach. Do shoe stores only sell flip-flops or striper shoes? Every woman I saw either wore those cheap flip-flops you find in the surf shops or platform high heels so tall they made ballet slippers look more comfortable to wear. Nothing in between. Sunbathing on the beach by day, dancing at clubs by night. What a life. Here’s to you ladies of Miami Beach.<br /><br />This is Colonel Corn trying to catch my breath in whatever town that is not Miami for Viewfinder Blues.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">DAY 3</span> <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">-- The “Who-Dat” Nation ...</span><br /><strong></strong></span><br />This is very special correspondent (I’m very special because I’m working for free) Colonel Corn reporting from Fort Lauderdale Beach, Florida. The Fort is only a stone’s throw away from Dolphin’s stadium. In fact, the Colts management got the golden boys a hotel right on the beach. The Saints are in downtown Miami. I think I would rather wake up in the morning to a colorful sunrise over the ocean than to pillars of cold concrete and tinted glass. But, I have no room to talk. I out by the airport in a motel painted bright orange. My view is of a McDonald’s parking lot and a Denny’s. And, I’m sharing a room with an engineer from Arizona. Oh, how far television news has fallen.<br /><br />Today the “Who-Dat” nation arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport decked out in black and gold. The first fan off the plane (because you know he was riding in first class) was none other than CNN’s political guru James Carville. That’s right. He waltzed into baggage claim with his Marti Gras shirt on and a smile so wide the glare from his teeth was brighter than the usual glare from his head. Our camera was drawn to his grin like moths are drawn to light.<br /><br />The chanting fans quickly took back the spot light from Carville. All the photog and reporter had to do was stand there and let the story come to them. No shortage of camera hogs in Florida today. I saw one guy rip open his jacket in striptease fashion to expose his NFC Champions t-shirt to the lens. How disturbing.<br /><br />After the parade of “Who-Dats”, we pulled up stakes and headed for the beach. Archie Manning waited to re-live the good old days for any news crew that would listen. Once we had his face on tape, it was out to the beach for LIVEs.<br /><br />Once the six came and went, my crew jumped in their news unit and split. Off to shoot another story after shooting two already today. Somebody has to collect enough video tape to fill the five hour pre-game show on Sunday. Five hours? Hurricanes don’t even command that much air time.<br /><br />I was off the clock. Go back to the motel and watch CSI reruns? No way. I’m standing on the sand watching the huge container ships floating around out on the horizon and smelling the salty air. I didn’t leave the beach until midnight. What did I do for five hours in Fort Lauderdale? I’ll never tell.<br /><br />This is Colonel Corn reporting with sand between his toes in Fort Lauderdale Beach, Florida.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-9761470811257561092009-01-29T20:39:00.000-08:002010-02-03T10:27:32.081-08:00E-Mail Lenslinger...<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="font-size:180%;"><br /><br /><a href="mailto:lenslinger@triad.rr.com">lenslinger@triad.rr.com</a><br /><br /><br /></span></div>Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-50863347648644022072009-01-28T16:49:00.000-08:002009-09-10T17:09:31.010-07:00About the Author<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/86947467@N00/3048818719/" title="vest! 015 by Lenslinger, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3033/3048818719_e84c170a86_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="vest! 015"align="left" /></a> Upon stumbling into his first TV station in 1989, <a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Stewart Pittman</strong></a> began his journey to the Fifth Estate. A quick mastery of studio production skills at WNCT-TV left him sleepy and bored, so he wormed his way into a Creative Services gig and began shooting desperately bad local commercials. There he would have remained had it not been for an unlikely hostage incident - a prolonged stand-off that Pittman watched through the lens of his very first betacam. A junkie was born. </p> <p> Cranking out commercial dreck for finicky management didn't set well with a guy used to loitering at the edge of calamity. Stewart Pittman realized he had to get back into a news unit, pronto. No longer concerned with being on-air, he embraced his auteur aspirations and took a position as a photojournalist with WGHP-TV. There he took his journeyman skills to another level, working with anchors and reporters on every assignment imaginable while producing a steady strieam of his trademark solo work. As he mastered his own broadcast craft, the now-veteran photog sensed the implications of emerging media. Stewart thought he might have something to say about it. Enter <a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Lenslinger</a>. </p> <p>In mid-2004, Stewart launched a humble blog, <a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Viewfinder Blues</a>. Soon he was gaining a small but loyal readership. Since that time, Pittman has web-published picture-heavy diatribes, from critiques to essays, missives to memoir rants to reflections. Today he enjoys a reputation that he could never have fostered without cyber-izing his every other thought. A voracious reader of blogs and a tangential member of the thriving Greensboro blogosphere, Stewart can be currently be found noodling with his site, walking in the woods or putting off work on his first book. </p><br /><div style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br /></div><br />"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Through the lens of his TV camera</span><span>, Lenslinger bears witness to the funny, the tragic, the inane, the incomprehensible. On a good day, it must be like being a rock star. On bad days, it must be like being the tax collector. On days like this, I am glad that he's there. Not because he's acquiring the footage, but because he reminds me that there is still such a thing as journalistic ethics, and for that, I'm really grateful." -- <a href="http://chewok.blogspot.com/">Chewie World Order</a><br /><br /><span>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Stewart Pittman at Viewfinder Blues is an oddity</span>: a lensman who can write. And his latest report from the frontlines of journalism is a gem. It’s another great piece, written by a guy who (despite a certain surface cynicism) clearly loves what he’s doing." -- <a href="http://www.tamark.ca/students/index.php?s=lenslinger&submit=Find+it">Mark on Media</a><br /><br /><span>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">He writes like</span> no one else I've ever read." -- Natural Born Stringer of <a href="http://b-roll.net/">b-roll.net</a><a href="http://donatacom.com/archives/00000917.htm"></a><br /><br />"<span><span style="font-weight: bold;">There are hundreds of bloggers</span> in Greensboro, but this guy’s site is in a class by itself. Lenslinger’s been a camera jockey for television news since 1989 and currently shoots for FOX 8, but he’s a writer at heart and he uses this blog to feed that particular jones. He posts media critiques, reflections on entering middle age (with pictures) and inside tales from his very specialized gig." -- Brian Clarey of <a href="http://www.yesweekly.com/main.asp?SectionID=21&SubSectionID=48&amp;amp;ArticleID=219&TM=78268.67">Yes! Weekly</a><br /><br /><span>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Stewart is</span> a contemporary news photographer who understands what's taking place in the media world. Go read him." -- Terry Heaton of <a href="http://donatacom.com/archives/00000917.htm">Pomoblog</a><br /><br /><span>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">I see his work on the nightly news all the time</span>, but reading the stories behind the stories is far more interesting than the six o'clock news will ever be. If this man isn't signing me a copy of a newly published book in less than a year (I know for a fact he's writing one.) then the entire publishing industry is no more than a lost cause destined to rot until the stench is more than we can bear." -- <a href="http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/2005/2/18/in-the-news.html">Billy the Blogging Poet</a><br /><br /><span>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">The way this guy writes</span>, I'm surprised that he hasn't already made a jump to a more fulfilling career." -- Jamey Tucker of <a href="http://www.blogger.com/The%20way%20this%20guy%20writes,%20I%27m%20surprised%20that%20he%20hasn%27t%20already%20made%20a%20jump%20to%20a%20more%20fulfilling%20career.">Blogsquat</a><br /><br /><span>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Stew,</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">the way you just described this man's story</span> in your own words was more intresting and meaningful than any twenty second vosot could be. My friend you are much more than just a lenslinger, you are a journalist. Edward R. would be proud." -- <a href="http://colonelcornscamera.blogspot.com/">Ken Corn</a><br /><br /><span>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Come to B-roll, tender a request</span>, and you shall learn from one that has traversed the cosmos from beginning to end. From a cosmic being of such unimaginable complexity, that both his corporeal form and his consciousness sit astride twelve dimensions at once! From Lenslinger...who has bathed in the spectral ethers which swirl beyond time. Ask and learn, young tog." -- Low Lt. of <a href="http://b-roll.net/">b-roll.net</a><br /><br /><span>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">There are few bloggers out there</span> who capture some of the day-to-day challenges of journalism (and the effect it has on your soul), whether he’s writing about the humour of covering news...If you want to know about journalism, as it is practiced, read Stewart. Daily." -- <a href="http://www.tamark.ca/students/index.php?s=lenslinger&submit=Find+it">Mark on Media</a><br /><br /><span>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Viewfinder BLUES is a blog</span> by a cameraman who can write like a ******f****r . My blog is by a writer and editor who can't photograph his way out of a paper bag. I am not worthy." -- <a href="http://theredactor.blogspot.com/">Colin Brayton</a><br /><br /><span>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">You have a multi-layered</span><span>, sophisticated ambivalence toward your profession that cries out to be the subject of its own story, and you can be onscreen." -- Melinama at <a href="http://pratie.blogspot.com/">Pratie Place</a><br /><br /><span>"...<span style="font-weight: bold;">the King</span> of the Photog Blog." -- <a href="http://lightscamerajackson.blogspot.com/">Smitty</a><br /><br /><span>More love for Lenslinger at <a href="http://rosenblumtv.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/stewart-and-me/">RosenblumTV,</a> <a href="http://rfburns.blogspot.com/2007/06/shoutout-to-fellow-employee.html">R.F. Burns,</a><a href="http://xark.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/10/intersecting-ci.html"> Xark!,</a> <a href="http://masteringmultimedia.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/74/">Mastering Multimedia,</a> <a href="http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/2005/6/24/stewart-pittman-viewfinder-blues.html">Blogging Poet,</a> <a href="http://elpasotimes.typepad.com/mediabuzz/2007/10/print-vs-broadc.html">Media Buzz,</a> <a href="http://cyndygreen.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/lens-slings-his-hat-into-the-ring/">VideoJournalism,</a> <a href="http://liveapartmentfire.com/2008/09/25/lenslinger/">Live Apartment Fire,</a> <a href="http://www.lostremote.com/archives/004864.html">Lost Remote</a>, <a href="http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/2005/6/24/stewart-pittman-viewfinder-blues.html">Blogsboro.com</a>, <a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0106327/2005/05/30.html">Bob Stepno</a>, <a href="http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2005_06_27.html#009945">Buzz Machine</a>, <a href="http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/2005/06/25/wkrntv_gets_it_they_really_get_it.php">Corante</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-76347686904131962132008-09-27T18:49:00.000-07:002008-09-28T07:09:16.557-07:00David R. Busse: Behind the Shot<img style="width: 379px; height: 285px;" src="http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-snc1/v318/199/87/524124223/n524124223_1446602_6449.jpg" /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">AP Photo by Reed Saxon.</span><br /><br />July, 1982, covering a flood for several weeks on the Colorado River near Parker, AZ. We're riding with La Paz County (AZ) Sheriff's River Patrol. Reporter on left is Bill Van Amburg, now out of the biz; sound guy on right is Tom Morris, now freelancing in Seattle.<br /><br />It was July, 1982 and the United States Bureau of Reclamation, operator of most western US water projects, had miscalculated the snow pack in the Rocky Mountains, which meant more snow than expected melted and flowed into the Colorado River watershed. So much water flowed into Lake Powell that they had to open the gates a wee bit more at Glen Canyon Dam…then downstream at Hoover Dam, then Davis Dam, Parker Dam and so on.<br /><br />It was great news for boaters on the lakes behind those dams, but it played havoc on the rivers below them. The BofR had done such a good job over the years stabilizing flow of the Colorado River that people started to assume that the Colorado would never flood again. So recreationists, commercial interests and some developers began building like crazy along certain sections of the Colorado, and specifically, the area just south of Parker Dam and it’s Lake Havasu impoundment became known as the “Parker Strip”—a sort of redneck Riviera largely settled by Californians from as far away as Orange County.<br /><br />Development? Well, there never was a Ritz-Carlton planned for the area, and many of the settlers came here with big, loud boats and a “Gas-Grass-Ass/Nobody Rides For Free” attitude. Lets just say, by 1982, the Parker strip was a mish-mosh of riverfront homes, trailer parks, boat landings and bars…some of the latter including drive-up service for bikers on one side and boat-up service on the other. Again, none of it would be mistaken for a five star resort, but the development represented a sizeable investment--for somebody.<br /><br />People who made “The River” their way of life never seemed to have the word “flood” in their vocabulary.<br /><br />So, when this little, um, miscalculation happened, the Reclamation folks let everybody know that the gates would open just a pinch and the river might rise an inch or two.<br /><br />More like 12 inches…nothing, really, for those of us who grew up along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, but when folks have built right up to a water line expecting it to NEVER change, 12 more inches of water might as well be 12 feet.<br /><br />Which brings us to the subject of this photo.<br /><br />Our assignment desk in Los Angeles had some vague idea of where the Colorado River was, and a nice United States Department of Interior-Bureau of Reclamation news release telling them about this leetle water problem that we might want to warn viewers about. Whether we actually did or not, I can’t recall…but we came into our Inland Empire Bureau in Riverside one Monday morning to a literal barrage of phone calls from angry river rats complaining of water in their vacation homes and businesses, ruined vacations and a tourist economy in shambles. The River was in our bureau coverage area…about 250 miles out the back door of our office…but that’s one of the challenges of bureau work covering two of the largest counties in the United States.<br /><br />Our desk told us to check out this flood.<br /><br />We had no microwave capability there, and satellite uplink trucks were (for us) a few years away.<br /><br />So, we did what we always did when we smelled a good story out in the sticks and wanted to get it on the air the same day. We chartered airplanes, flew to the story, shot for three or four hours, flew home, and fed from the airport…sometimes breathlessly doing “this just in…” live shots next to the chartered King Air, Jet Commander, or whatever we happened to use that day.<br /><br />I say “that day” because our desk in LA kept sending us out there on “one day” turns, thinking they would lose interest in the story. So we were never overnighted at the scene—we always flew home that same afternoon.<br /><br />This pattern continued for three solid weeks.<br /><br />One day we were in a small plane cruising along at something like 12,000 feet when the controller called the pilot and asked if we had cameras on board. “Yes, we have an ABC TV crew heading to the Colorado River flood…” pilot Clair Merryweather told LA Center.<br /><br />“Tell then to get their cameras ready, and about 30 seconds from now, look out the window at your five-o-clock…”<br /><br />We grabbed cameras and craned our necks in time to see the NASA 747, with Space Shuttle “Atlantis” on her back about a quarter mile off our wing, slowly climbing out of California enroute Florida.<br /><br />That was fun. Most of our other memories of those trips were 115-degree heat, horse flies the size of canned hams, and interactions with increasingly irritated property owners becoming even more irritated as they drank more cold beer to slake both thirst and anger.<br /><br />Local cops on the river were, of course, happy to take us for “guided tours” of the flood area for the first week or so, and those times on the water became our salvation from the hellish heat. The boat rides became so common, that we almost used them as scheduled respite from the midday heat. After a couple days of this flood duty, I dispensed with any sort of dress code and decided that cut off jeans and tee shirts were the way to go. This made me look like a local and simplified the “afternoon swim” that also became part of our flood-coverage ritual.<br /><br />Keep in mind that another ritual of this coverage was my daily battle with the air sick bag on the flight home. Dawn flights into the desert are no problem, but mid-day flights across the Mojave are buffeted by thermals generated from the superheated air churning off the parched ground below, and the effect on a small twin-engine airplane or jet is profound. I had been taught at a young age to drink (or at least abscond with) all the liquor in the cabinet of any chartered aircraft, but most of the flights I didn’t even dare enquire of the brands of beer or quality of Scotch offered. It was enough to buckle up, keep firm eye on the horizon, maintain stiff upper lip and have supply of white sick bags at the ready. No, I never had to use one of those bags, but as they often say on the ferry trip to Catalina Island, the only thing worse than throwing up for a few minutes is feeling like you’re about to throw up for two hours.<br /><br />You’ll note the camera in this picture is my good old Ikegami HL79A, with my ever-present wide-angle lens and trusty pistol-grip. Sound man Tom Morris is using one of those old Sony BVU-110s, better known as a “One-Ton.” We had this setup in the for almost seven more years, when we switched to Betacam tape format. Shortly before I left the bureau in December, 1989, we switched to one-man Betacams.<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-57053512757028571042008-08-31T13:27:00.000-07:002008-08-31T13:30:02.421-07:00The Best of Viewfinder BLUES<a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/search?q=through+a+lens+darkly">Through a Lens, Darkly</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Some shots <span style="font-weight: bold;">never fade</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/01/photog-turns-40.html">A Photog Turns 40</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Roll your eyes as <span style="font-weight: bold;">I wax pathetic</span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/06/jasmine-at-tragic-factory.html"><br />Jasmine at the Tragic Factory</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Her real name was <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ariel</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/she-were-soldiers.html">She Were Soldiers</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Cookies and tea with <span style="font-weight: bold;">a Saint</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>.</span><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/04/hurricane-stew.html"><br />Hurricane Stew</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Whadaya know? Fancy-cams <span style="font-weight: bold;">don't</span> float!</span><br /><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2004/11/journey-of-hope.html">Journey of Hope</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">When a feel-good kicker goes <span style="font-weight: bold;">bad</span>.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/10/bovine-castaways.html">Bovine Castaways</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">God</span> </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span>thins</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>the herd.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/05/dr-tom-and-chili-peppers.html">Dr. Tom and the Chili Peppers</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">More </span>than a record review.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/09/tears-for-fears.html">Tears for Fears</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">War <span style="font-weight: bold;">IS</span> Hell for some families.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-i-dont-do-logowear.html">Why I Ditched the LogoWear</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">It's <span style="font-weight: bold;">itchy?</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">THE EARLY YEARS...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/birth-of-photog.html">Birth of a Photog</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Animal</span> Lives!</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/05/roy-park-school-of-broadcasting.html">The Roy Park School of Broadcasting</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Where</span> I earned my Doctorate.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/12/adventures-in-radio.html">Adventures in Radio</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Over cologned and <span style="font-weight: bold;">mostly sober</span><span>.<br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/applebees-incident.html">The AppleBee's Incident</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The stand-off that <span style="font-weight: bold;">started it all.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/12/baptized-by-glass.html">Baptized by Glass</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The First <span style="font-weight: bold;">White-Balance</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/06/ridin-shotgun-with-man.html"> </a><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/of-floaters-and-feelings.html">Of Floate</a><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/of-floaters-and-feelings.html">rs and Feelings</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">My <span style="font-weight: bold;">initial</span> victims.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/confessions-of-commercial-hack.html">Confessions of a Commercial Hack</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Life as a<span style="font-weight: bold;"> nimrod.<br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/09/early-tv-stupid-years.html">Early TV: The Stupid Years</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">In all its <span style="font-weight: bold;">ugliness.</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/making-marvan.html">Making the MarVan</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I <span style="font-weight: bold;">see it</span> in my dreams.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/06/seven-feet-of-hell.html">Seven Feet of Hell</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The <span style="font-weight: bold;">cheesiest</span> contest of alL.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/01/legend-of-vance_24.html">The Legend of Vance</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Speight Williams is a <span style="font-weight: bold;">pansy</span></span>.<br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/03/new-car-smell.html">New Car Smell</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">And <span style="font-weight: bold;">the flashback</span> it triggers</span>.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">COVERING AMERICAN IDOL...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/01/operation-idol.html">Operation: Idol</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Clay Aiken? <span style="font-weight: bold;">WHO'S</span> Clay Aiken?<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/06/fear-loathing-in-fantasia-land.html"><span>Fear & Loathing at Fantasia-Land</span></a><span style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Run for you lives!</span><br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/10/supplicants-to-fame.html">Supplicants to Fame</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Bring on the <span style="font-weight: bold;">Body Glitter</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/01/introducing-chris-daughtry.html">Introducing Chris Daughtry</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">This bald dude <span style="font-weight: bold;">can wail.<br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/10/caged-birds-singing.html">Caged Birds, Singing</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">AI audition <span style="font-weight: bold;">up close<br /><br /></span></span><span><span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/so-nice-that-bo-bice.html">So Nice, that Bo Bice</a> </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span>And <span style="font-weight: bold;">polite</span>, too!</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/final-24.html">The Final 24</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">American Idol <span style="font-weight: bold;">hopefuls</span> in L.A.<br /><br /></span><span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/10/last-day-at-cheese-factory.html">Last Day at the Cheese Factory</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I think Paula <span style="font-weight: bold;">likes me</span>.</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/11/life-after-idol.html">Life After Idol</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Hangin' with our pal <span style="font-weight: bold;">Bucky Covington<br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/03/remnants-of-hipness.html">Remnants of Hipness</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chris Daughtry </span>comes home.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">THE EDGE OF CALAMITY...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/01/fire-on-vine.html">Fire on Vine</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Captain Lynch <span style="font-weight: bold;">is lookin' for ya.</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/11/once-more-up-widows-porch.html">Once More Up the Widow's Porch</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">A Trip <span style="font-weight: bold;">I Know Well</span>.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/04/hillbilly-hoedown-morning-jam.html">Hillbilly HoeDown Morning Jam</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Starts light, ends <span style="font-weight: bold;">dark</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/04/unbearable-scrum.html">The Scrum and The Numb</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Doing Time at <span style="font-weight: bold;">Va. Tech.</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2004/11/up-river-with-ed.html">Up the River with Ed</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I can <span style="font-weight: bold;">still</span> smell it.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/09/looking-for-lost-boys-part-1.html">Looking for Lost Boys</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> And then <span style="font-weight: bold;">finding</span> them.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/05/one-word.html">The One Word</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> That can make me<span style="font-weight: bold;"> vanish.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/confessions-of-video-vulture.html">Confessions of a Video Vulture</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Yeah I got feelings...<span style="font-weight: bold;">somewhere.<br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/06/bruised-fruit-of-eternal-pursuit.html"><br />Bruised Fruit of the Pursuit</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span>Hey</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">that rhymes!</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">ON THE JOB...</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/11/ten-things-id-teach-new-reporters.html"><br />Ten Things I'd Teach TV Reporters</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">IF</span> I thought they'd listen.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/08/thrift-store-reconnaissance.html">Thrift Store Reconnaissance</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ewing</span> and I go deep.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/06/ridin-shotgun-with-man.html">Shotgun with the Man</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Whatcha<span style="font-weight: bold;">GonnaDo</span>WhenTheyComeForYou?<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/11/granny-crack-pipe-and-cousin-spit.html">Granny Crackpipe and Cousin Spit</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Back</span> and to the left.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/anatomy-of-live-shot.html">Anatomy of a Live Shot</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Breaking<span style="font-weight: bold;"> down</span> the Set-<span style="font-weight: bold;">up</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/04/things-isabel-taught-me.html">Things Isabel Taught Me</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> In a <span style="font-weight: bold;">Convenient</span> List.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/furniture-inferno.html">Furniture Inferno</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Is there ever a <span style="font-weight: bold;">good time</span> for spot news?<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/11/headset-perry.html">Headset Perry</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Peter Principle</span> in Action.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/09/lost-vosot-patrol.html">The Lost VoSot Patrol</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Never</span> leave a man behind.</span><br /><br /><a href="comment.g?blogID=7301175&postID=111840121045976005&isPopup=true">Lords of the Underpass</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">And the <span style="font-weight: bold;">women </span>who love them.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2004/11/bovine-castaways.html">A Day in the Strife </a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Life as<span style="font-weight: bold;"> I</span> know it.<br /></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">OFF</span> THE JOB...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/06/skate-ray-and-tall-dad.html">Skate-Ray and Tall Dad</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Go </span>on vacation, already.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/09/o-brother-where-art-thou.html">O Brother Where Art Thou?</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Big Ups to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Richard</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/01/faros-broken-arrow.html">Faro's Broken Arrow</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> The disaster that <span style="font-weight: bold;">almost</span> was.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/12/remembering-richard-pryor.html">Remembering Richard Pryor</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I was born <span style="font-weight: bold;">a poor black child.<br /><br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/04/my-life-with-motley-crue.html">My Life With Motley Crue</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Shout</span> at the devil.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/crazy-on-ship-of-fools.html">Crazy on a Ship of Tools</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Haze Gray <span style="font-weight: bold;">Underway</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/11/rebel-in-wind.html">Rebel in the Wind</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Killing</span> my very first car.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/04/rocks-in-his-pockets.html">Rocks in His Pocket</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> A <span style="font-weight: bold;">geezer</span> kicks it.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/flirtin-with-disaster.html">Flirtin' With Disaster</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">On the road in <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Rebel.</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/12/room-to-write.html">Room to Write</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">A peek at my<span style="font-weight: bold;"> inner sanctum.<br /><br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/pot-shack.html">The Pot Shack</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">You're in the <span style="font-weight: bold;">jungle</span>, baby.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">FARCE, ABSURDITY and OTHER INSTITUTIONS...</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/11/ten-things-id-teach-new-reporters.html"> </a><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/02/moon-rock-madness.html">MoonRock Madness</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dumber</span> than Fiction</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/11/snowblind-on-overpass.html">Snowblind on the Overpass</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Don't try this at home</span>.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2004/12/stupid-and-doomed.html">The Stupid and the Doomed</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">They're <span style="font-weight: bold;">often</span> interchangeable</span>.<br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/into-wild.html">Into the Wild</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Spot News <span style="font-weight: bold;">Urination</span> Epic. </span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/07/county-commission-theater.html">County Commission Theater</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Morons</span> in Motion.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/11/coolest-thing.html">The Coolest Thing </a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I can think of <span style="font-weight: bold;">right now</span>.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/reno-epiphany.html">The Reno Epiphany</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The day my <span style="font-weight: bold;">junkie</span> died.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/prison-yard-litmus-test.html">Prison Yard Litmus Test</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I <span style="font-weight: bold;">hate</span> wardens.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/running-down-dubya.html">Running Down Dubya</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Look-alike, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Schmook</span>-alike.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">FUZZY-HEADED THINK-PIECES...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/12/tomorrow-doesnt-exist.html">Tomorrow Doesn't Exist</a> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Or does it?<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/birth-of-personal-journalist.html">Birth of the Personal Journalist</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> The Gurus <span style="font-weight: bold;">loved</span> this one.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/03/and-winner-aint.html">And the Winner Ain't...</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The print guys with the lens cap on..</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/perils-of-eng.html">Perils of E.N.G.</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eulogy</span> for fallen comrades.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/04/social-fabric-of-firefighting.html">The Social Fabric of Firefighting</a> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Got smoke?</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/02/pixelators-twitch.html">Pixelator's Twitch</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> I didn't sleep <span style="font-weight: bold;">at all</span> last night.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/ribbon-cuttings-ride-alongs-and-rage.html"> Ribbon Cuttings, Ride-Alongs and Rage</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Three</span> of my favorite things.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/impending-schism.html">The Impending Schism</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Thoughts on <span style="font-weight: bold;">the Horizon</span>.</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/01/media-and-miners-plight.html"><br />The Media and the Miner's Plight</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Thoughts on <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sago.</span></span><br /><span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">CAPTURED ON SAFARI...</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/09/inside-ophelia.html">Inside Ophelia</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multi-Part</span> Saga of marquee'd rainmaker. </span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/11/payback-on-interstate.html">PayBack on the Interstate</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Some things</span> take awhile.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/10/dr-undeads-frightfest.html">Dr.UnDead's Fright Fest</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Behind the scenes of a <span style="font-weight: bold;">no-budget</span> slasher.<br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/vistas-of-demolition.html"><br />Vistas of Demolition</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Can I keep <span style="font-weight: bold;">the hardhat?</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/food-court-theatrics.html">Food Court Theatrics</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Excuse <span style="font-weight: bold;">me</span>, miss...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/art-of-grab.html">The Art of of the Grab</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crashing</span> a live shot.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/09/crew-call-at-camp-ophelia.html">Crew-Call at Camp Ophelia</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Me <span style="font-weight: bold;">and the boys</span> slum by the shore.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/fumes-at-eleven.html">Fumes at Eleven </a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Low, low, <span style="font-weight: bold;">low </span>on petrol.</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/04/walk-downs-round-ups-and-ride-alongs.html"><br />Walkdowns, Round Ups, Ride-Alongs</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Three roads <span style="font-weight: bold;">to exhaustion.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/04/fear-and-loathing-at-final-approach.html">Fear and Loathing at Final Approach</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Alert 2! <span style="font-weight: bold;">Alert 2!</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/11/amazing-pace.html">The Amazing Pace</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Minus </span>the million.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">THIS <span style="font-weight: bold;">WILL</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">BE</span> ON THE TEST...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/its-what-i-do.html">It's What I Do</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Drudgery in <span style="font-weight: bold;">3 easy steps.<br /><br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/mad-skills-of-master-photog.html">Mad Skills of a Master Photog</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Do <span style="font-weight: bold;">you</span> have what it takes?</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/01/careful-what-you-wish-for.html"><br />Careful What You Wish For</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">You<span style="font-weight: bold;"> just might </span>get it.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/08/top-ten-ways-to-improve-hurricane.html">Ways to Improve Hurricane Remotes</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Funny </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">before </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Katrina.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/01/stressing-edit.html">Stressing the Edit</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">It's why my hair's <span style="font-weight: bold;">so thin.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/10/chances-are-youre-photog.html">Chances Are You're a Photog...</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">A safe and <span style="font-weight: bold;">easy</span> test.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/10/truisms-of-newsgathering.html">Truisms of Newsgathering</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">This</span> I know.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/08/signs-your-press-conference-isnt-going.html">Signs Your Presser Isn't Going Well</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">You're all <span style="font-weight: bold;">alone.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/08/no-business-being-photog.html">No Business Being a Photog</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Doing <span style="font-weight: bold;">Foxworthy</span> proud.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/10/trust-your-gut.html">Trust Your Gut</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Look where it got <span style="font-weight: bold;">me.<br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/right-to-play-dumb.html">The Right to Play Dumb</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> And <span style="font-weight: bold;">when</span> to exercise it.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">BACK IN THE DAY...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/10/one-march-morning.html">One March Morning</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">A toy gun <span style="font-weight: bold;">changed my life.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/sometimes-they-die.html">Sometimes They Die</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Early morning <span style="font-weight: bold;">death spectacle.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/my-favorite-mistake.html">My Favorite Mistake</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> There's <span style="font-weight: bold;">alot more</span> where this came from.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/when-soundbites-echo.html">When Soundbites Echo</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Earworms</span> from the ghetto.</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/handcuffed-hippie.html"><br />The Handcuffed Hippie</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">A robber <span style="font-weight: bold;">goes down.</span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/have-mullet-will-travel.html"><br />Have Mullet, Will Travel</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Check out the <span style="font-weight: bold;">wrestler hair.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/my-time-on-dark-side.html">My Time on the Dark Side</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> How it <span style="font-weight: bold;">almost </span>robbed my soul.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/08/bad-boys-bad-boys.html">Bad Boys, Bad Boys</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Life<span style="font-weight: bold;"> in the age of COPS.</span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/03/logos-in-wind.html"><br />Logos in the Wind</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Whadaya mean I can't speed, <span style="font-weight: bold;">occifer?</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">THE ADVENTURES OF G. LEE...</span><br /><br /><a href="comment.g?blogID=7301175&postID=114309022200168617&isPopup=true">G. Lee Goes to Court</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">And <span style="font-weight: bold;">lives </span>to tell about it.</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/04/body-and-beauty-queen.html"><br />The Body and the Beauty Queen</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Take your<span style="font-weight: bold;"> prick.<br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/this-aint-baseball-part-1.html"><br /></a><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/03/perfecting-improbable.html">Perfecting the Improbable</a> Seen <span style="font-weight: bold;">from afar</span>.<br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/this-aint-baseball-part-1.html">This Ain't Baseball</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> G. Lee </span>works a nightshift.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">PENDING ADVENTURES...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/08/asleep-at-wheel.html">Asleep at the Wheel</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Dreaming of <span style="font-weight: bold;">C-Span glory</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/doppelgangers-in-motion.html">Doppelgangers in Motion</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Is that <span style="font-weight: bold;">me </span>comin' through the door?</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/mojo-denied.html">Mojo Denied</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> It was <span style="font-weight: bold;">right here</span> in my fannypack.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/12/photog-feng-shui.html">Photog Feng Shui</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> That </span>doesn't go<span style="font-weight: bold;"> there</span>.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/more-than-caddies-to-nearly-famous.html">More Than Caddies</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">My crew gets <span style="font-weight: bold;">props.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/rethinking-jesse-jackson.html">Rethinking Jesse Jackson</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Still</span> an asshole.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/12/bones-of-calamity.html">Bones of Calamity</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> School bus wreck <span style="font-weight: bold;">epistle.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/from-crisis-to-commodity.html">From Crisis to Commodity</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> In<span style="font-weight: bold;"> less </span>than twenty minutes.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/03/street-corner-specter.html">Street Corner Specter</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Spooky interlude</span> in the 'hood</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/08/pavlovs-cell-phone.html">Pavlov's Cell Phone</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Is that my <span style="font-weight: bold;">spleen</span> ringing?<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/05/fishing-for-sound.html">Fishing for Sound</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> And getting <span style="font-weight: bold;">pulled in.</span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/12/ill-log-in-car.html"><br />"I'll Log in the Car..."</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">You</span> drive like a fireman.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/06/dull-day-dissected.html">Dull Day Dissected</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> More exciting than it<span style="font-weight: bold;"> sounds.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/05/strung-out-on-access.html">Strung Out on the Access</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">But <span style="font-weight: bold;">burned out</span> by the rub.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/12/places-ive-been.html">The Places I've Been</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Eat your heart out, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Johnny Cash</span>.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/02/life-on-risers.html">Life on the Risers</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Wiggle this platform <span style="font-weight: bold;">at your own peril.</span></span>Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-26284807878870280052008-07-17T21:02:00.000-07:002008-07-17T21:07:08.136-07:00Taking the Tower“Listen up ya’ll”, the training sergeant growled at his men as he eyeballed me and my partner.<br /><br />“If you see THE MAY-DIA during the exercise - do NOT engage them! Repeat - the MAY-DIA are NOT ENGAGED!”<br /><br />The SWAT Team didn’t seem too concerned. They barely even looked up as they finished pulling on those awkward yellow chemical suits. Ignoring my lens, they checked their weapons and pulled on air tanks. Through my viewfinder I recorded two of them hunched over a checklist. “Shoot local camera crew” wasn’t on their agenda.<br /><br />“I think they like us”, I said to my colleague. Erik smiled vacantly as he listened to the cell phone pressed to his well-groomed head. He was trying to book airline tickets to Jersey and the reporter in him was certain he could find cheaper fare.<br /><br />Just then a heavy metal click sounded overhead as the training compound’s loudspeaker hummed to life.<br /><br />“YA‘LL GO TO HAY-ELL! I’M A KILL ’EM ALL - I SWAR! A hint of sarcasm bled through the heavy Southern accent . Whoever was keying the microphone up there seemed to be enjoying his new role as hostage taker.<br /><br />“I’M A KILL EVER ONE OF ‘EM! COME UP HERE AND I‘M A KILL YEW TOO!!”<br /><br />With that the five man Emergency Response Team formed a single file line and began shuffling toward the four story training tower at the rear of the county compound. But my eyes fell on the building beside it - a red squat structure with a no nonsense sign that read “RESTROOM”. Wow - I thought, an actual brick shithouse…<br /><br />But it was no time to gawk. It was time to punch in.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">------------------<br /></div><br />It’s become cliché to say 9/11 changed the world. But it did, and nowhere more cataclysmically than in law enforcement. Now even deputy dawgs in the middle of the sticks have to sweat terrorism. Using funds from the Department of Homeland Security, men and women who used to spend their time setting up speed traps are now learning to deal with chemical weapons. Occasionally they want publicity doing so, and that’s how I found myself huddling in a ground floor stair well and taking on paint ball fire.<br /><br />To be honest, I’d been warned. In our earlier interview, the training officer with the bushy moustache told my lens how the opposing agents would take pot shots at the SWAT team assigned to take the tower.<br /><br />“We got some other surprises for ‘em too”,” he grinned behind a wad of chewing tobacco.<br /><br />Now, as I loitered in the stairwell and waited for the team I swore I heard giggling from four flights up.<br /><br />WHAM!<br /><br />The heavy steel door before me almost ripped from its hinges as the SWAT team poured into the small room, pistols drawn, eyes darting behind steamed up goggles. Instinctively, I leveled my own weapon - a SONY XD CAM with freshly charged Dionic battery. They weren’t impressed. In fact, they barely issued a law enforcer's grunt as they swept past my lens and loud shirt.<br /><br />I turned to follow the team. The pudgy deputy beringing up ther rear wore a growing sweat stain on the back on his chem suit. With every step he pulled hard on the air tank's regulator, making him sound like Darth Vader - IF the Dark Lord was a two-pack-a-day smoker, that is.<br /><br />Bracing against the wall, I steadied up a canted shot of the already fatigued team trudging up the staircase. A wide shaft of sunlight swathed the stairwell from above, casting their forms in silhouette and lighting up a thousand dust motes so well I could count them through the viewfinder. This is what I’d come for.<br /><br />“Come on, you can do better that! How about Laguardia? You got nothing for me there?”<br /><br />Erik's New Jersey accent pouring out of my headphones confused me at first. Then I took a step up and peered out of the second story window. Down below, I saw the well-coiffed top of my partner’s head. With the air of a young banker, he paced around the entrance to the training tower, yammering on his ever-present cell phone and one still-activated lapel microphone.<br /><br />I considered hurling a 9 volt battery at him, but I was running low.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">------------------<br /></div><br />“AIK ECK EX EVEL!”<br /><br />The SWAT team leader barked orders to his men, but his gas mask muffled the words. The team seemed to understand tough, for their heads moved in different directions all at once - each member surveying a different quadrant of the heavy metal stairwell. I trailed behind, lens up and riding the iris as we all shuffled up the stairs. Trying to ignore the pain in my shoulder, I dropped the camera low and got a shot of the their chemical suit booties taking a grunt-filled step at a time.<br /><br />Is this any way for a grown man to make a living? - I thought for not the first time. This crap was a blast when I was twenty two, but at thirty-seven, I’m beginning to feel a little silly. I got friends ascending corporate ladders, and I’m here chasing these goons up a tower. Country boys playin’ Cops and Robbers, and me still playin’ Tee Vee. Wonder if that little hillbilly diner down the road has chicken pastry today?<br /><br /><br />The needles on my camera’s audio meter danced crazily and jarred me out of my daydream haze. The clang of the oxygen tanks punctuated the cadence of the men's mechanized breathing and my on-board microphone recorded it all. Watching the needles dance, I judged the nat sound’s quality.<br /><br />“What about Newark? Say I come back on Monday?” -- Erik’s voice crackled on the other channel, a distant conversation about a distant place. Shaking off the sound, I pulled out to a wide shot. As the men rounded the corner and out of sight, I stopped a moment in the stairwell, flipping switches on my camera and trying to think sequentially.<br /><br />That’s important when you’re gathering news images. Uncle Jesse may wear out his camcorder’s zoom button every Thanksgiving, but the TV News photog opts for rock steady shots that will fit into tightly-edited sequences. Wide. Medium. Tight. It’s like storyboarding comic book panels in your head, blocking action scenes as they happen, mentally editing the footage as you shoot it -- a tricky feat when you’re chasing a SWAT Team up a winding stairwell and your back hurts.<br /><br />Up on the second floor, the SWAT team fanned out, leaving the bright sunshine of the stairwell for the dusty shadows of the cavernous space. Through the viewfinder I spotted a mannequin on the floor, strapped to a stretcher that looked broken. A jumble of cardboard boxes took up one wall, but it was hard to see. With all the dust in the air, I started to worry about vulnerable electronics of my brand new camera. But there was nothing I could do now, so I checked the battery strength indicator in my viewfinder’s reassuring haze.<br /><br />In front of me, the SWAT team medic advanced cautiously on the department store dummy on the stretcher. Through my viewfinder , I tracked him as he squatted over the mannequin and checked for the unlikeliest of pulses. Once he determined the victim would never again model fine fall fashions at JC Penney’s, he moved on.<br /><br />“YA-LL BETTA GET OUT! - I’M A KILL EM ALL!!!<br /><br />The voice from the PA speaker before now rang down from two flights up. It sounded even closer. I even flinched a little at the sound, though I knew it was only an out of town deputy holding a room full of mannequins hostage. The SWAT team shared my feelings, and picked up their surveillance sweep of the dusty space. As the dust cleared, the room grew bigger and I noticed the training sergeant standing in the far corner, a no-nonsense toothpick jutting from his bushy moustache. A look that told me not to point my camera his way.<br /><br />Turning back to the SWAT team I readjusted my shot. A team member was poking through the wall of boxes while the others took a moment to check each other’s oxygen tank. I put one knee to the ground and my camera on the other. I was trying to decide which shot to go for next when I heard what sounded like a spoon bouncing on the cement floor.<br /><br />That’s when all the air, sound and color left the room.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">------------------<br /></div><br />Fla-BOOOOOM!<br /><br />Every muscle in my body flexed as the white hot blast consumed everything around me. In the sliver of a second that it took the concussion grenade to detonate, sound eclipsed sight, dust motes became projectiles and I just about dropped a very expensive camera. As the echos of the blast bounced from wall to ceiling to floor and back again, I remained very still, trying to wrap my brain around what had just happened.<br /><br />Flash Bang. A SWAT team's favorite tool of diversion. I'd seen (and felt) them used before in training but never so unexpectedly, and never inside such a small enclosure. The very volume of the explosion was painful. Though only a fraction of a wartime ordinance, the flash bang rendered everything instantly irrelevant when it erupted from the corner of the room. The force blew the helmet off the SWAT team member closest to it, the unmistakable sound of it's thin plastic shell skittering across the concrete floor providing a delicate filligree against the blasts painfully bass echo.<br /><br />When my vision DID return, I froze like a statue, absorbing the sound and wind and light as it slowly evaporated into shadowy daylight, my eyes darting around the room for signs of injury and finding none. The SWAT team were milling about and looking at the floor, already piecing together how they'd set off the booby trap. Everyone looked pretty casual but the rapid breathing sounds coming from behind their face masks told me even they weren't expecting a concussion grenade to be stashed amid all those cardboard boxes.<br /><br />Only then did I think to look at my camera. As I turned my head toward the viewfinder, the red 'Record' light stared back, a beacon in the dark that told me I'd be able to relive the proceeding moments ad infinitum.<br /><br />Through the ringing in my ears, I heard the sounds of Erik's voice coming through the headphones around my neck.<br /><br />"Hey Stew - you need to come outside and change pants?"<br /><br />My drawers were fine, but I stumbled down the stairwell anyway. Nothing else I captured on camera would top what I'd just recorded and I was anxious to watch the footage. Over lunch. In a hillbilly diner down the road. As I stumbled out of the training tower, still a bit punch drunk from absorbing the blast, I realized that, for better or worse, I still liked my job - deadlines, flash bangs and all.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-33670483820617751272007-08-25T09:37:00.000-07:002007-08-26T13:39:42.750-07:00The Adventures of G. Lee<a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/based-on-thousand-true-stories.html">A Thousand True Stories</a> Ogling the Contraband...<br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/04/body-and-beauty-queen.html">The Body and the Beauty Queen</a> She was gorgeous til she puked.<br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/g-lee-goes-to-court.html">G Lee Goes to Court</a> And runs down one wicked dentist.<br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/03/perfecting-improbable.html">Perfecting the Improbable</a> G. Lee loses his shit while arranging a hit.<br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/this-aint-baseball-part-1.html">This Ain't Baseball</a> (<a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/this-aint-baseball-part-1.html">1</a> <a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/this-aint-baseball-part-2.html">2</a> <a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/this-aint-baseball-part-3.html">3</a>) Drunks, news bunnies - what's not to love?<br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/06/pop-quiz-hotshot.html">Pop Quiz, Hot Shot</a> Hauling ass to a school bus ax.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-79494894010077891252007-06-30T15:44:00.000-07:002007-07-04T14:50:17.948-07:00The Very Best of Viewfinder BLUES<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/86947467@N00/74933835/" title="Photo Sharing"><img style="width: 360px; height: 272px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/6/74933835_ab7ddafc4a.jpg" alt="Viewfinder BLUES Home Office" /></a><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">THESE I REALLY LIKE...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/search?q=through+a+lens+darkly">Through a Lens, Darkly</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Some shots <span style="font-weight: bold;">never fade</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/01/photog-turns-40.html">A Photog Turns 40</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Roll your eyes as <span style="font-weight: bold;">I wax pathetic</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/06/jasmine-at-tragic-factory.html"><br />Jasmine at the Tragic Factory</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Her real name was <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ariel</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/she-were-soldiers.html">She Were Soldiers</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Cookies and tea with <span style="font-weight: bold;">a Saint</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>.</span><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/04/hurricane-stew.html"><br />Hurricane Stew</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Whadaya know? Fancy-cams <span style="font-weight: bold;">don't</span> float!</span><br /><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2004/11/journey-of-hope.html">Journey of Hope</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">When a feel-good kicker goes <span style="font-weight: bold;">bad</span>.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/10/bovine-castaways.html">Bovine Castaways</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">God</span> </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span>thins</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>the herd.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/05/dr-tom-and-chili-peppers.html">Dr. Tom and the Chili Peppers</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">More </span>than a record review.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/09/tears-for-fears.html">Tears for Fears</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">War <span style="font-weight: bold;">IS</span> Hell for some families.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-i-dont-do-logowear.html">Why I Ditched the LogoWear</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">It's <span style="font-weight: bold;">itchy?</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">THE EARLY YEARS...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/birth-of-photog.html">Birth of a Photog</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Animal</span> Lives!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/05/roy-park-school-of-broadcasting.html">The Roy Park School of Broadcasting</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Where</span> I earned my Doctorate.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/12/adventures-in-radio.html">Adventures in Radio</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Over cologned and <span style="font-weight: bold;">mostly sober</span><span>.<br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/applebees-incident.html">The AppleBee's Incident</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The stand-off that <span style="font-weight: bold;">started it all.</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/12/baptized-by-glass.html">Baptized by Glass</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The First <span style="font-weight: bold;">White-Balance</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/06/ridin-shotgun-with-man.html"> </a><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/of-floaters-and-feelings.html">Of Floate</a><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/of-floaters-and-feelings.html">rs and Feelings</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">My <span style="font-weight: bold;">initial</span> victims.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/confessions-of-commercial-hack.html">Confessions of a Commercial Hack</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Life as a<span style="font-weight: bold;"> nimrod.<br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/09/early-tv-stupid-years.html">Early TV: The Stupid Years</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">In all its <span style="font-weight: bold;">ugliness.</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/making-marvan.html">Making the MarVan</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I <span style="font-weight: bold;">see it</span> in my dreams.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/06/seven-feet-of-hell.html">Seven Feet of Hell</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The <span style="font-weight: bold;">cheesiest</span> contest of alL.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/01/legend-of-vance_24.html">The Legend of Vance</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Speight Williams is a <span style="font-weight: bold;">pansy</span></span>.<br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/03/new-car-smell.html">New Car Smell</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">And <span style="font-weight: bold;">the flashback</span> it triggers</span>.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">COVERING AMERICAN IDOL...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/01/operation-idol.html">Operation: Idol</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Clay Aiken? <span style="font-weight: bold;">WHO'S</span> Clay Aiken?<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/06/fear-loathing-in-fantasia-land.html"><span>Fear & Loathing at Fantasia-Land</span></a><span style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Run for you lives!</span><br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/10/supplicants-to-fame.html">Supplicants to Fame</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Bring on the <span style="font-weight: bold;">Body Glitter</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/01/introducing-chris-daughtry.html">Introducing Chris Daughtry</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">This bald dude <span style="font-weight: bold;">can wail.<br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/10/caged-birds-singing.html">Caged Birds, Singing</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">AI audition <span style="font-weight: bold;">up close<br /><br /></span></span><span><span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/so-nice-that-bo-bice.html">So Nice, that Bo Bice</a> </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span>And <span style="font-weight: bold;">polite</span>, too!</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/final-24.html">The Final 24</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">American Idol <span style="font-weight: bold;">hopefuls</span> in L.A.<br /><br /></span><span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/10/last-day-at-cheese-factory.html">Last Day at the Cheese Factory</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I think Paula <span style="font-weight: bold;">likes me</span>.</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/11/life-after-idol.html">Life After Idol</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Hangin' with our pal <span style="font-weight: bold;">Bucky Covington<br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/03/remnants-of-hipness.html">Remnants of Hipness</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chris Daughtry </span>comes home.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">THE EDGE OF CALAMITY...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/01/fire-on-vine.html">Fire on Vine</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Captain Lynch <span style="font-weight: bold;">is lookin' for ya.</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/11/once-more-up-widows-porch.html">Once More Up the Widow's Porch</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">A Trip <span style="font-weight: bold;">I Know Well</span>.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/04/hillbilly-hoedown-morning-jam.html">Hillbilly HoeDown Morning Jam</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Starts light, ends <span style="font-weight: bold;">dark</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/04/unbearable-scrum.html">The Scrum and The Numb</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Doing Time at <span style="font-weight: bold;">Va. Tech.</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2004/11/up-river-with-ed.html">Up the River with Ed</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I can <span style="font-weight: bold;">still</span> smell it.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/09/looking-for-lost-boys-part-1.html">Looking for Lost Boys</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> And then <span style="font-weight: bold;">finding</span> them.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/05/one-word.html">The One Word</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> That can make me<span style="font-weight: bold;"> vanish.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/confessions-of-video-vulture.html">Confessions of a Video Vulture</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Yeah I got feelings...<span style="font-weight: bold;">somewhere.<br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/06/bruised-fruit-of-eternal-pursuit.html"><br />Bruised Fruit of the Pursuit</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span>Hey</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">that rhymes!</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">ON THE JOB...</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/11/ten-things-id-teach-new-reporters.html"><br />Ten Things I'd Teach TV Reporters</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">IF</span> I thought they'd listen.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/08/thrift-store-reconnaissance.html">Thrift Store Reconnaissance</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ewing</span> and I go deep.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/06/ridin-shotgun-with-man.html">Shotgun with the Man</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Whatcha<span style="font-weight: bold;">GonnaDo</span>WhenTheyComeForYou?<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/11/granny-crack-pipe-and-cousin-spit.html">Granny Crackpipe and Cousin Spit</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Back</span> and to the left.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/anatomy-of-live-shot.html">Anatomy of a Live Shot</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Breaking<span style="font-weight: bold;"> down</span> the Set-<span style="font-weight: bold;">up</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/04/things-isabel-taught-me.html">Things Isabel Taught Me</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> In a <span style="font-weight: bold;">Convenient</span> List.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/furniture-inferno.html">Furniture Inferno</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Is there ever a <span style="font-weight: bold;">good time</span> for spot news?<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/11/headset-perry.html">Headset Perry</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Peter Principle</span> in Action.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/09/lost-vosot-patrol.html">The Lost VoSot Patrol</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Never</span> leave a man behind.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7301175&postID=111840121045976005&isPopup=true">Lords of the Underpass</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">And the <span style="font-weight: bold;">women </span>who love them.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2004/11/bovine-castaways.html">A Day in the Strife </a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Life as<span style="font-weight: bold;"> I</span> know it.<br /></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">OFF</span> THE JOB...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/06/skate-ray-and-tall-dad.html">Skate-Ray and Tall Dad</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Go </span>on vacation, already.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/09/o-brother-where-art-thou.html">O Brother Where Art Thou?</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Big Ups to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Richard</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/01/faros-broken-arrow.html">Faro's Broken Arrow</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> The disaster that <span style="font-weight: bold;">almost</span> was.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/12/remembering-richard-pryor.html">Remembering Richard Pryor</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I was born <span style="font-weight: bold;">a poor black child.<br /><br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/04/my-life-with-motley-crue.html">My Life With Motley Crue</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Shout</span> at the devil.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/crazy-on-ship-of-fools.html">Crazy on a Ship of Tools</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Haze Gray <span style="font-weight: bold;">Underway</span>.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/11/rebel-in-wind.html">Rebel in the Wind</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Killing</span> my very first car.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/04/rocks-in-his-pockets.html">Rocks in His Pocket</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> A <span style="font-weight: bold;">geezer</span> kicks it.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/flirtin-with-disaster.html">Flirtin' With Disaster</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">On the road in <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Rebel.</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/12/room-to-write.html">Room to Write</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">A peek at my<span style="font-weight: bold;"> inner sanctum.<br /><br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/pot-shack.html">The Pot Shack</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">You're in the <span style="font-weight: bold;">jungle</span>, baby.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">FARCE, ABSURDITY and OTHER INSTITUTIONS...</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/11/ten-things-id-teach-new-reporters.html"> </a><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/furniture-inferno.html"></a><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/02/moon-rock-madness.html">MoonRock Madness</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dumber</span> than Fiction</span><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2004/11/up-river-with-ed.html"></a><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/11/snowblind-on-overpass.html">Snowblind on the Overpass</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Don't try this at home</span>.</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/11/granny-crack-pipe-and-cousin-spit.html"></a><br /><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2004/12/stupid-and-doomed.html">The Stupid and the Doomed</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">They're <span style="font-weight: bold;">often</span> interchangeable</span>.<br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/into-wild.html">Into the Wild</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Spot News <span style="font-weight: bold;">Urination</span> Epic. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/07/county-commission-theater.html">County Commission Theater</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Morons</span> in Motion.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/11/coolest-thing.html">The Coolest Thing </a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I can think of <span style="font-weight: bold;">right now</span>.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/reno-epiphany.html">The Reno Epiphany</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The day my <span style="font-weight: bold;">junkie</span> died.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/prison-yard-litmus-test.html">Prison Yard Litmus Test</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">I <span style="font-weight: bold;">hate</span> wardens.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/running-down-dubya.html">Running Down Dubya</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Look-alike, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Schmook</span>-alike.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">FUZZY-HEADED THINK-PIECES...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/12/tomorrow-doesnt-exist.html">Tomorrow Doesn't Exist</a> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Or does it?<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/birth-of-personal-journalist.html">Birth of the Personal Journalist</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> The Gurus <span style="font-weight: bold;">loved</span> this one.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/03/and-winner-aint.html">And the Winner Ain't...</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The print guys with the lens cap on..</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/perils-of-eng.html">Perils of E.N.G.</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eulogy</span> for fallen comrades.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/04/social-fabric-of-firefighting.html">The Social Fabric of Firefighting</a> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Got smoke?</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/02/pixelators-twitch.html">Pixelator's Twitch</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> I didn't sleep <span style="font-weight: bold;">at all</span> last night.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/ribbon-cuttings-ride-alongs-and-rage.html"> Ribbon Cuttings, Ride-Alongs and Rage</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Three</span> of my favorite things.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/impending-schism.html">The Impending Schism</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Thoughts on <span style="font-weight: bold;">the Horizon</span>.</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/01/media-and-miners-plight.html"><br />The Media and the Miner's Plight</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Thoughts on <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sago.</span></span><br /><span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">CAPTURED ON SAFARI...</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2005/09/inside-ophelia.html">Inside Ophelia</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multi-Part</span> Saga of marquee'd rainmaker. </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/11/payback-on-interstate.html">PayBack on the Interstate</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Some things</span> take awhile.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/10/dr-undeads-frightfest.html">Dr.UnDead's Fright Fest</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Behind the scenes of a <span style="font-weight: bold;">no-budget</span> slasher.<br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/vistas-of-demolition.html"><br />Vistas of Demolition</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Can I keep <span style="font-weight: bold;">the hardhat?</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/food-court-theatrics.html">Food Court Theatrics</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Excuse <span style="font-weight: bold;">me</span>, miss...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004/12/art-of-grab.html">The Art of of the Grab</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crashing</span> a live shot.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/09/crew-call-at-camp-ophelia.html">Crew-Call at Camp Ophelia</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Me <span style="font-weight: bold;">and the boys</span> slum by the shore.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/fumes-at-eleven.html">Fumes at Eleven </a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Low, low, <span style="font-weight: bold;">low </span>on petrol.</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/04/walk-downs-round-ups-and-ride-alongs.html"><br />Walkdowns, Round Ups, Ride-Alongs</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Three roads <span style="font-weight: bold;">to exhaustion.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/04/fear-and-loathing-at-final-approach.html">Fear and Loathing at Final Approach</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Alert 2! <span style="font-weight: bold;">Alert 2!</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/11/amazing-pace.html">The Amazing Pace</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Minus </span>the million.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">THIS <span style="font-weight: bold;">WILL</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">BE</span> ON THE TEST...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/its-what-i-do.html">It's What I Do</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Drudgery in <span style="font-weight: bold;">3 easy steps.<br /><br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/mad-skills-of-master-photog.html">Mad Skills of a Master Photog</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Do <span style="font-weight: bold;">you</span> have what it takes?</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/01/careful-what-you-wish-for.html"><br />Careful What You Wish For</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">You<span style="font-weight: bold;"> just might </span>get it.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/08/top-ten-ways-to-improve-hurricane.html">Ways to Improve Hurricane Remotes</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Funny </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">before </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Katrina.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/01/stressing-edit.html">Stressing the Edit</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">It's why my hair's <span style="font-weight: bold;">so thin.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/10/chances-are-youre-photog.html">Chances Are You're a Photog...</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">A safe and <span style="font-weight: bold;">easy</span> test.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/10/truisms-of-newsgathering.html">Truisms of Newsgathering</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">This</span> I know.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/08/signs-your-press-conference-isnt-going.html">Signs Your Presser Isn't Going Well</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">You're all <span style="font-weight: bold;">alone.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/08/no-business-being-photog.html">No Business Being a Photog</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Doing <span style="font-weight: bold;">Foxworthy</span> proud.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/10/trust-your-gut.html">Trust Your Gut</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Look where it got <span style="font-weight: bold;">me.<br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/right-to-play-dumb.html">The Right to Play Dumb</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> And <span style="font-weight: bold;">when</span> to exercise it.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">.</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">BACK IN THE DAY...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/10/one-march-morning.html">One March Morning</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">A toy gun <span style="font-weight: bold;">changed my life.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/sometimes-they-die.html">Sometimes They Die</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Early morning <span style="font-weight: bold;">death spectacle.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/my-favorite-mistake.html">My Favorite Mistake</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> There's <span style="font-weight: bold;">alot more</span> where this came from.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/when-soundbites-echo.html">When Soundbites Echo</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Earworms</span> from the ghetto.</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/handcuffed-hippie.html"><br />The Handcuffed Hippie</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">A robber <span style="font-weight: bold;">goes down.</span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/have-mullet-will-travel.html"><br />Have Mullet, Will Travel</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Check out the <span style="font-weight: bold;">wrestler hair.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/my-time-on-dark-side.html">My Time on the Dark Side</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> How it <span style="font-weight: bold;">almost </span>robbed my soul.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/08/bad-boys-bad-boys.html">Bad Boys, Bad Boys</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Life<span style="font-weight: bold;"> in the age of COPS.</span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/03/logos-in-wind.html"><br />Logos in the Wind</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Whadaya mean I can't speed, <span style="font-weight: bold;">occifer?</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">THE ADVENTURES OF G. LEE...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7301175&postID=114309022200168617&isPopup=true">G. Lee Goes to Court</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">And <span style="font-weight: bold;">lives </span>to tell about it.</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/04/body-and-beauty-queen.html"><br />The Body and the Beauty Queen</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Take your<span style="font-weight: bold;"> prick.<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span><br /></span></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/this-aint-baseball-part-1.html"><br /></a><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/03/perfecting-improbable.html">Perfecting the Improbable</a> Seen <span style="font-weight: bold;">from afar</span>.<br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/07/this-aint-baseball-part-1.html">This Ain't Baseball</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> G. Lee </span>works a nightshift.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102);">PENDING ADVENTURES...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/08/asleep-at-wheel.html">Asleep at the Wheel</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Dreaming of <span style="font-weight: bold;">C-Span glory</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/doppelgangers-in-motion.html">Doppelgangers in Motion</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Is that <span style="font-weight: bold;">me </span>comin' through the door?</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/02/mojo-denied.html">Mojo Denied</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> It was <span style="font-weight: bold;">right here</span> in my fannypack.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/12/photog-feng-shui.html">Photog Feng Shui</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> That </span>doesn't go<span style="font-weight: bold;"> there</span>.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/more-than-caddies-to-nearly-famous.html">More Than Caddies</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">My crew gets <span style="font-weight: bold;">props.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/01/rethinking-jesse-jackson.html">Rethinking Jesse Jackson</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Still</span> an asshole.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/12/bones-of-calamity.html">Bones of Calamity</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> School bus wreck <span style="font-weight: bold;">epistle.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/02/from-crisis-to-commodity.html">From Crisis to Commodity</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> In<span style="font-weight: bold;"> less </span>than twenty minutes.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/03/street-corner-specter.html">Street Corner Specter</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Spooky interlude</span> in the 'hood</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/08/pavlovs-cell-phone.html">Pavlov's Cell Phone</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Is that my <span style="font-weight: bold;">spleen</span> ringing?<br /></span><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/03/fumes-at-eleven.html"></a><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/05/fishing-for-sound.html">Fishing for Sound</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> And getting <span style="font-weight: bold;">pulled in.</span></span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/12/ill-log-in-car.html"><br />"I'll Log in the Car..."</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">You</span> drive like a fireman.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/06/dull-day-dissected.html">Dull Day Dissected</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> More exciting than it<span style="font-weight: bold;"> sounds.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/05/strung-out-on-access.html">Strung Out on the Access</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">But <span style="font-weight: bold;">burned out</span> by the rub.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/12/places-ive-been.html">The Places I've Been</a> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Eat your heart out, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Johnny Cash</span>.</span><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/02/pixelators-twitch.html"></a><br /><a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2007/02/life-on-risers.html">Life on the Risers</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Wiggle this platform <span style="font-weight: bold;">at your own peril.</span></span>Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-91617233862301394212007-04-03T04:24:00.000-07:002007-04-03T04:30:24.823-07:00With Great Dread<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ken Corn</span>, on responding to spot news that hits home... </span><br /><br />You never know what to expect when you're a photographer working the night shift on a Saturday night in a city as large as Charlotte. I've pointed my lens at riots erupting in uptown after a New Year's Eve countdown. I've witnessed the aftermath of a shoot out between two rival gangs at a neighborhood block party. I've seen more twisted metal and broken glass piled high in city streets than your average tow truck driver. Yeah, you just never know what kind of images you will record when covering the news on a Saturday night.<br /><br />Reporter Frances Kuo and I had just wrapped up an eleven o'clock live shot at a DWI checkpoint when my cell phone started ringing. Our work shift usually ends after the eleven o'clock show. But more often than not, we have to visit another crime scene or two before we can turn in the live truck keys for the night. Knowing the ringing box on my hip probably meant there was a scene somewhere waiting for us, I hesitated to unclip it from my belt.<br /><br />I did not expect the words that flowed out of the electronic speaker pressed to my ear. <br /><br />"We have a cop shot, up off of Milton Rd."<br /><br />News photographer auto pilot kicked in when my brain registered the magnitude of the sentence I just heard. I handed the phone over to Frances so she could write down the details while I looked for the next exit off of the beltline. I could feel adrenalin seeping into my blood stream making my foot heavy on the gas petal. My mind started running scenarios of what we should do when we arrived on scene. We needed to find witnesses to interview. I needed to capture officers and other emergency workers rushing to the scene with my lens. Frances needed to find the public information officer to confirm the information our assignment editor had heard over the scanner. We needed to be on the scene right now instead of twenty minutes away.<br /><br />The feeling that we were missing the best visuals and the best sound to tell the story caused time to stretch into unbearable lengths. Sitting at a stop light became physically painful. I would drum the steering wheel and bounce my foot rapidly against the break petal to bleed off excess energy produced by the adrenalin. I felt like a thoroughbred pressing up against the starting gate waiting for it to swing open so I could leap out onto the track and run.<br /><br />While sitting at one red light close to the scene, two patrol cars came speeding up behind us with their lights flashing and sirens wailing. They swerved out left of the center line and passed our van in a blur. Before they disappeared on the other side of the intersection, three more cruisers sped into the same junction from the opposite direction. They passed each other like jet planes flying maneuvers during an air show. I wanted to jam the gear shift into park and grab the camera to capture this high speed ballet on tape. But I knew I could never get the camera out of the back quick enough to get the shot.<br /><br />"I'm missing all the best video," I said as Frances continued to talk on the phone and write down notes.<br /><br />Keeping my foot from smashing a hole through the floor of the live van became an increasingly harder task as we got closer to our destination. With every screaming police cruiser sailing by our lumbering beast, the impulse to hammer the gas grew. Just when I thought I couldn't hold back anymore I saw the roadblock ahead. Several white and blue Crown Victorias dammed up the intersection diverting traffic flow away from the road I wanted to take. Knowing it would be a waste of breath and time to ask if I could gain access to wide open space just beyond the dam, I scanned the area for an entrance to a parking lot. In this part of Charlotte, strip malls with endless parking lots line the streets. In most cases, I can get much closer to a scene by navigating the maze of blacktops between businesses. Tonight, I was able to slide passed a few drug stores and fast food joints before being stopped by a patch of undeveloped land. Time to let the thoroughbred out of the gate.<br /><br />As I jump out of the truck, I'm formulating a plan in my head as to how I'm going to do two jobs at the same time. The station wants us live as soon as possible but I also need to gather video of what is happening at the scene. Which should I do first? With a quick glance at my surroundings I see the roadblock with a half dozen officers directing traffic. I know these officers will be performing their assigned tasks for several hours and there will be plenty of opportunities to get video of them later after a live shot. I start raising the mast to tune in a live shot signal.<br /><br />While the mast slowly grows out of the top of the van, I hear a siren getting louder and louder. I let go of the switch that raises the mast and grab the camera. I run out into the street just in time to capture an ambulance thundering through the roadblock on its way toward the scene down the empty road. When the speeding truck disappears into the apartment complex where the shooting happened, I go back to setting up the live shot. This routine happened several more times as more and more police cars and emergency vehicles converge onto the scene. It takes me longer to set up the van for a live shot but knowing this is a story we will cover for the next several days I must capture images that show the immediacy of the scene right now. I'm in the middle of an intense juggling act.<br /><br />The blaring sirens keep coming as I work on getting the shot ready. Fortunately there is enough time between zooming cars and trucks to get set up. Frances had squeezed a few details out of the police department's public information officer and we are ready to break into programming to tell Charlotte that two police officers were shot responding to a disturbance call. While we are live on the air, several more police cruisers zip past the roadblock we are using as the back drop of our shot. I instinctively push the lens off of Frances to fill my viewfinder and televisions screens across the city with an image of a speeding police car. Frances describes the situation as I show the scene to the public.<br /><br />We perform this task several more times during the next couple of hours. After our last shot of the night the public information officer offers to give a brief statement about the situation. By this time all the other news organizations have arrived and are eager to get any reaction from the police department on record. We gather in a huddle around officer Fey as he shares with us the few facts he knows. Close to the end of the makeshift press conference, I throw out a question I'd been thinking of while officer Fey confirmed the facts we already knew. Police departments function like a large extended family. When one officer gets hurt in the line of duty, they all feel grief and pain just as if a blood relative were hurt. Basically, officer Fey was a member of a family who was suffering at the moment. So I asked him how he felt about the tragedy playing out just down the street.<br /><br />"It's heartbreaking," Fey said. "Hearing your dispatcher say those words, `we have two officers shot from the North Tryon Division,' makes your heart skip a beat."<br /><br />I had similar feelings when the same call came from our assignment editor earlier in the evening. A close personal friend of mine also wears the dark blue uniform and beehive shaped badge of the Charlotte Police department. He works the overnight shift every Saturday night. The shooting happened on the side of town he patrols. Now that the adrenalin rush of covering the story has subsided, my mind starts to let emotions surface.<br /><br />I remembered that my friend works in the Independence division next door to the North Tryon Division. This eases my mind for the time being, but later as I hear the rumors that one of officers has died, I start thinking of the officer's family. My friend who wears the same uniform lives on our street. We go to the same church. His kids come over to our house to play with my children. I see or talk to someone from his family nearly everyday. I don't want to think about what if...<br /><br />My shift is over and I have the next few days off from work. But the tragedy of a scene I witnessed Saturday night still plays over and over in my mind as if I'm still working on this story. I feel sorrow for the Police Department as well as for the loved ones of our fallen heroes. I feel anger when I see the video of the suspect on television. I wished crime and violence would cease to exist putting me and my friend out of a job.<br /><br />Thank you, officers Sean Clark and Jeff Shelton, for giving your lives to protect us so that we may live in peace.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1158633248662844902006-09-18T19:30:00.000-07:002006-09-19T19:07:46.193-07:00Billy's Inquisition<span style="font-weight: bold;">1: Do you like the look and the contents of your blog?</span><br /><br />I like the overall look but am jonesing for a WordPress makeover - one that would allow for more categorization and a sleeker look. As for the content, I'm torn. Some days I'm quite proud of what I've written. Other days, re-readng it makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Don't ask about today...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2: Does your family know about your blog?</span><br /><br />They do and it affects what I put on it. Not to get too greasy, but there are some adolescent anecdotes that are darn hard to share when you know your Mom reads your blog.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3: Can you tell your friends about your blog? Do you consider it a private thing?</span><br /><br />I don't tell them so much as I act disinterested whenever they bring it up. That way I maintain that cooler-than-thou blogger exterior when deep down inside I'm wetting myself at the thought of eyeballs on my stuff. That didn't come out right.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4: Do you just read the blogs of those who comment on your blog? or you try to discover new blogs?</span><br /><br />I scan a few dozen different blogs on a sometimes hourly basis. I'm also a non-paying member of the Greensboro 101 community and rely on that portal for my immediate world view. Beats watching cable news.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5: Did your blog positively affect your mind? Give an example.</span><br /><br />Most definitely. Being able to pour out my thoughts and receive instant feedback is a luxury wannabe writers of earlier generations never had. Thus, I count myself lucky. Being that I write primarily about my work, it is a healthier outlet than whining on the job. I do that too, however.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6: What does the number of visitors to your blog mean? Do you use a traffic counter?</span><br /><br />I do use a traffic counter and occasionally obsess over it. In the past year or so I've weaned myself from reading too much into it. Instead I dwell on the knowledge that a slow trickle of willing readers are perusing the ooze that comes out of my head. Try not to get any on ya!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">7: Did you imagine how other bloggers look like?</span><br /><br />Eh - not so much. I'm more interested in what someone has to say than what hairstyle they prefer. Then again, I'm in broadcasting so I'm quite familair with deceptions, facades and window dressings. That said, I found Fecund Stench to be far hunkier than earlier imagined.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">8: Do you think blogging has any real benefit?</span><br /><br />Not sure about the reader, but it has greatly helped my state of mind both as a creative release and a confidence building writing regiment. Everyone who thinks they have something to say should give it a whirl. Except that Billy fellow. He should quit immediately and take up Sudoku.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9: Do you think that the Blogsphere is a stand alone community separated from the real world?</span><br /><br />Only in some bloggers' minds. In reality it is a healthy addition to the global discourse. Those of us who think our blogs are great works of art really should get outside more.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10: Do some political blogs scare you? Do you avoid them?</span><br /><br />As a career journalist, I'm conditioned to stay neutral. That ain't hard as I generally abhor politics. However I do read lots of local blogs, many of which are shrill indictments of the other party's failures. Y-A-W-N. It's a shame some of our most talented communicators are hindered by their extremist ideology - left <span style="font-style: italic;">or</span> right.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">11: Do you think that criticizing your blog is useful?</span><br /><br />Sure. If I wanted constant assurance that everything I pen is brilliant, I'd join one of those smarmy writers' groups. Ick!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">12: Have you ever thought about what happen to your blog in case you died?</span><br /><br />I'm pretty sure I'd stop posting so regularly.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">13: Which blogger had the greatest impression on you?</span><br /><br />I dig all you local cats, but <a href="http://coolshots.blogspot.com/">beFrank</a> and <a href="http://www.littlelostrobot.com/index.htm">Little Lost Robot</a> were my early inspirations. Frank is wry and thoughtful. Robot makes liquid shoot out my nose. I aim somewhere in the middle.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">14: Which blogger you think is the most similar to you?</span><br /><br />I'd be araid to name any one individual but many of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Photogs Who Blog</span> seem to be following a few of my cues - a move that will certainly leave them as spent and disillusioned as I. Sorry fellas!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">15: Name a song you want to listen to.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPey6F527LM">Texas Flood</a> by Stevie Ray. To me that song is Scripture.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">16: Ask five bloggers to answer these question on their blogs.</span><br /><br />I couldn't possibly.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1151892902871266252006-07-02T19:11:00.000-07:002006-07-02T19:15:02.903-07:00This Ain't Baseball (part 1)“Tell that one about the drunk, G. Lee.” Oz said.<br /><br />Garrett leaned on the back his car and eyed the pretty new reporter from Channel 3. Her bright aqua outfit had taken on a strangely metallic hue in the fading sun, the swirling blue lights from the nearby cop cars glistening off its every dry-cleaned crease. Mostly she ignored him but he knew she was listening as she stared at her empty note-pad. He didn’t want to tell that story in front of her especially, but the cops in the distance weren’t in any hurry. Besides, Oz had thrown down the gauntlet and as usual Garrett couldn’t resist.<br /><br />“All-right,” he said as he shifted his weight from one bad knee to the other. “About ten years ago, me and Jani Avery were ridin’ with this state trooper looking’ for drunk drivers.”<br /><br />“Jani Avery from ’XLB’?” asked the pretty new reporter.<br /><br />“Yeah - she’s their main anchor now, but she used to do noon and weekends for us…”<br /><br />Back then, Jani was deep into her reign as the region’s TV sweetheart. With her dark eyes, blinding smile and intense delivery, she’d quickly ascended to the news-set throne, upending one badly-aging news queen in the process. But viewers were already forgetting the older woman’s name as ladies in housecoats admired her wardrobe and the men in their lives quietly watched the new news bunny’s mouth move. As for Garrett, he’d barely gotten to know her after their <a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2006/04/body-and-beauty-queen.html">awkward inaugural assignment</a>. She’d been warm to him throughout her rapid rise to the station‘s top, but as her face began popping up on billboards through out the tri-cities, she’d grown a bit distant. When she came to him for help with her DUI sweeps piece, ole ‘G. Lee’ was more than happy to share some air. He’d even sprayed on a bit of cologne the night they were scheduled to ride with the trooper - just in case they got jostled around there in the backseat…<br /><br />Three hours into their ride, his cologne had faded, along with his interest in the story or the evening. Beside him, Jani stared out the opposite window, made small talk with the trooper and answered her new cell phone, which seemed to ring every four and half minutes. She’d barely said a word to Garrett all night, and while he was used to that, he’d been hoping for just a few minutes of her undivided attention. No such luck, though - and their driver wasn’t helping. Squat, taught and jug-eared, the State Trooper seemed to make up for his lack of height by being an unbearable hard-ass. He’d even insisted on running Garrett’s license before he’d let him ride along. He smiled weakly as he handed over the wallet-warped card, his mind racing over the details of the dozen or so well-earned speeding tickets. When the dashboard camera didn’t erupt into sirens, Office Hard-Ass allowed him to squeeze himself and his camera into the backseat. From there, the diminutive trooper promptly ignored him as he stole his own glances at Jani through his regulation-sized rearview mirror.<br /><br />“So where you from, Miss Avery?”<br /><br />It had gone on like that for hours, the trooper chatting up the news anchor while the cameraman squirmed. Between his curious inquisition of his most radiant ride-along, the trooper pulled over car after car, issuing pink slips and lectures to annoyed motorists over even minor infractions. Despite their chauffeur’s unmitigated zeal however, they were coming up empty. The suits back at the shop were drooling over the idea of drunk drivers acting a fool on tape and grandmothers driving left of center just weren’t cutting the mustard. Garrett and Jani had all but given up when just after midnight, a dusty Buick roared past..<br /><br />“He’s definitely 10-55..” the gravely voice declared from the front seat.<br /><br />“Really?” Garrett said, exchanging the night’s first glance with Jani. “How can you tell?”<br /><br />“I been doing this a long time…” The trooper’s voice trailed off as he fell in behind the beat-up Riviera and flipped on his roof lights. Up ahead the driver’s silhouette didn’t flinch as the blue strobes bathed his hulking shoulders in unnatural light. Instead he flipped his right turn signal and wheeled his rumbling sedan into a dusty trailer park.<br /><br />The trooper said nothing more as he followed the car up a gravel driveway. When the driver put his car in park, the trooper did the same, calmly wedging his Smokey-Bear hat over his buzz-cut before leaving Garrett and Jani in the backseat. Flipping a switch on his camera, Garret opened his door and stepped out, steadying his shot on the squad car’s roof. Through his custom earpiece, Garrett could hear the trooper’s voice through the wireless microphone attached to his state-issued clip-on tie.<br /><br />“Sir, how much we have to drink tonight?”, the trooper’s voice crackled in Danny’s ear.<br /><br />“Yeah, I had a few drinks,” came the slurred reply, “ but I’m home, dude, I’m s-s-safe.”<br /><br />Danny heard the trooper chuckle for the first time all night. “Sir, this ain’t baseball, and you ain’t safe. I’m gonna need you to step out of the car.”<br /><br />As the man unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, Garret inched forward and craned his neck and lens upward to keep him in frame. With his faded work jeans, dirty black t-shirt and greasy mullet fully extended, the driver towered over the cop and the cameraman. When he saw G. Lee and his unblinking lens, he cocked his shoulders back and swelled up his chest.<br /><br />“Who you schp’osed to be?” he slurred as he turned toward the camera. Garrett barely had time to zoom out before the man’s chest took up the entire viewfinder. But as soon as it did, the man crumpled with a grunt and a thud to the gravel driveway below. Before Garrett could pull the eyepiece away from his face and see what happened the trooper was on the man that was almost twice his size. With a fluid movement borne of repetition, the trooper pulled the man’s hands behind him and encircled his wrists in handcuffs. The trademark sound of the bracelets clicking home made the viewfinder’s audio needles jump and Garret couldn’t help but smile in the blue glow of the eye cup’s tiny screen. Turning back to the trooper’s car, he saw Jani pounce out and do a little victory dance on the side of the road, one she ended abruptly when the trooper wheeled Mr. Mullet around to face her. When he did, the drunk man’s bloodshot eyes widened at the beautiful young woman with the familiar smile.<br /><br />“You’re J-Jani Avery.” he spat. “ I watch you on the noon news.”<br /><br />With that, the man tried to reach out his hand and seemed to realize for the first time he was indeed in cuffs. This sent other thoughts racing though his greasy head apparently, for he then tried to squirm away from the trooper and lunge at Garrett’s ever present lens. Somehow the trooper managed to hold on, and the best the man could do was swing his shoulders in drunken menace and curse like the cross-state trucker he soon proved to be. Deep inside his viewfinder, Garrett back-pedaled and fought t the urge to giggle. It had been a long night, but the redneck in his lens was more than making up for it with roadside show. As the small trooper pushed the man toward his waiting car, Garrett wondered for the first time about seating arrangements, blissfully unaware the evening was about to take a painful turn.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1149431413893784712006-06-04T07:29:00.000-07:002006-06-04T07:30:13.910-07:00The Pot Shack"What was the worst job you ever had?", asked a favorite website message board. I pondered over it, and for once the answer had nothing to do with TV News.It was aboard my first ship during my far from illustrious naval career. Fresh from tech school, I was eager to show my newly-learned radar reading prowess in the cushy confines of Combat Information Center. No such luck. A burly Chief with a bad tattoo soon informed me ALL junior enlisted had to serve three months 'mess crankin' - the U.S. Navy's indentured servant program designed to staff their many kitchens.<br /><br />It wasn't so bad at first - pushing a mop on the messdecks was something I'd done plenty of in boot camp. Ever the schemer, I soon weaseled my way into a cooking gig in the Chief's Mess. For about a week I had it made - cooking up burgers to order for senior enlisted, and eating every third jumbo shrimp that passed my way. The food was GREAT, a far cry from the dogfood they fed us on the messdecks. Soon I was trying to figure out how to smuggle this top-shelf chow out of the kitchen<br />to sell belowdecks.<br /><br />I never got a chance to perfect my plan, though. To make a long story only a little shorter, something I said to a humourless Master chief was misconstrued as a smart aleck remark (I know, I was as shocked as you are). Before I could swipe another jumbo shrimp for the road I was being escorted several decks below to a terrifying place I'd only heard about...<br /><br />The Pot Shack, a 12 by 12 foot closet with large industrial sinks lining every wall. Just off the junior enlisted mess decks, it was where our fellow slaves brought every dirty pot, pitcher and baking pan used in feeding the troops. But there was no automatic washing machine. No, that was my job.<br /><br />For two solid months I, along with a guy from Coco Beach, Florida whom everyone called 'Maggot', manned the two, wildly whipping oversized hot water sprayers that hung from the overhead. We'd pull ten hour shifts, scrubbing, spraying and cussing as ceiling-high stacks of food-encrusted cookware backed up outside. With steam rising from the dish-filled sinks, visibility was pretty nil inside the Pot Shack.<br /><br />Not that there was anything to see. From morning to night, we were soaking wet as we reached into three foot deep sinks of scalding water with two feet of protective gloves (you do the math). No matter how hard we busted those suds, we never, ever, ever got caught up. The two losers who relieved us every evening never failed to bitch about the leftover dirty dishes and they'd always pay us back in return the following mornings.<br /><br />There was also no love for the Pot Shack Warriors. As our fellow shipmates walked by, they always paused to mock and sneer - laughing at our slumped, soaking wet forms. If it weren't for the battered waterproof cassette player strapped to the bulkhead blaring late eighties metal, I may have lost my mind inside that scalding hot prison.<br /><br />Instead I hunkered down and did my time, banging my head to Maggot's musical selection while I scraped burnt cheese off of three foot wide baking pans and asking myself why in the heck I'd ever joined the Navy in the first place. However, Maggot was less troubled by our plight, seeming content to scrub the days away. He loved his tunes and played the then new "Appetite For Destruction" cassette about forty times a shift. Every time "Welcome to The Jungle" came to that certain part of the song, when Axl Rose asked, "Do you know where you are?!?...Maggot would lift his head and scream, "YOU'RE IN THE POT SHACK BABEEEE!!!" And then he would bang his head with glee as he scrubbed at a baking pan he's already washed a thousand times.<br /><br />These days I only think about The Pot Shack whenenever I hear that song, or when some well-groomed reporter, who's never done a minute of hard labor in his life, is complaining about his job.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1131233691787151102005-11-05T15:33:00.000-08:002005-11-05T15:34:51.810-08:00Viewfinder BLUES: One Year In<em><strong>WARNING!</strong> The following passage is one of those narcissistic anniversary postings so easily disparaged by the non-blogging public. If rambling critique and half-baked introspection isn’t your idea of a good read, check back tomorrow. Otherwise, the navel gazing begins in five seconds. 5..4..3..2..1...</em><br /><br /><strong>A False Start</strong><br /><br /><img src="http://photos2.flickr.com/3218764_c615e72fd2_m.jpg" align="left" />Back in June of 2004, I stumbled onto <a href="http://www.blogger.com">Blogger</a>, chose a template and named it <strong>Viewfinder BLUES</strong>. After dropping in a couple of short stories from my stash of drivel, I sat back and waited for the magic to happen. When it did not, I promptly forgot about it and went back to contributing to my <a href="http://b-roll.net/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=1;hardset=0;start_point=0;DaysPrune=0">favorite message board</a>, emphatically underwhelmed by what I’d even yet to hear referred to as ‘the blogosphere‘. But four moths later I revisited my dusty little shelf and quite by accident, hit the ’Next Blog’ icon in the right-hand top of the screen. Great Gutenberg! With the twitch of the fingertip I reeled through a universe I never really knew existed, an endless stream of homemade web-pages screeching thought and opinion on subjects as diverse as the internet itself. The speed of it all blurred my vision and as I rubbed my eyes to regain focus, I considered the implications: free and friendly software like this had already enabled the citizenry to join the conversation, if it hit critical mass it would change the face of communication, or at least be the most significant development in The Media’s history since the invention of the printing press. Or maybe not. Whatever the case, I was reinvigorated - manifestly destined to forge a place on the web for my own particular point of view. Since that <a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2004_10_24_lenslinger_archive.html">momentous day</a>, precisely twelve months have passed.<br /><br /><strong>Kindness of Strangers</strong><br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/32/50656561_2b06e40e71_m.jpg" align="right" />Much to most people’s surprise, I am not the least bit technically adept. My brain spews over-baked prose at a frightening clip, but don’t ask it to read an instruction manual. I’d rather summon a 700 word epistle on the joys of electricity than change a light bulb, rather re-categorize my library than reprogram my cell phone. Thus, my launch into the blogosphere was with my typical lack of schematic acumen. Luckily, I ascended into a most promising patch of local cyberspace. Through the magic of Google, I staggered into my first aggregator - a site understandably entitled <a href="http://www.greensboroistalking.com/">Greensboro is Talking</a>. There, a mysterious figure named The Shu graciously aided me in my quest, quietly answering my quizzical e-mails and turning me onto a true gentleman with the meekest of monikers, <a href="http://patrickeakes.blogspot.com/">Patrick Eakes</a>. Patrick pointed to the <a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107946/">bearded fellow</a> in the paper, and soon I fell in with the revolutionaries. No one was more surprised than I when I attended the first of many meet-ups, <a href="http://www.greensboro101.com/">coffee house rendezvous</a> with poets, geeks and madmen. These monthly summits soon congealed into a scene of sorts and before I knew it, a whole bunch of new friends were reading my work and sharing theirs. Recently, these insatiable communicators attracted far-off pioneers and local attention with a landmark symposium, <a href="http://2005.convergesouth.com/">ConvergeSouth</a> - an inaugural conference sure to be dissected, embellished and best of all, repeated. I can hardly wait.<br /><br /><strong>With the Help of Weaver<br /></strong><br /><img src="http://photos7.flickr.com/12254330_2f627b8bda_m.jpg" align="left" />Not only has push-button publishing introduced me to intriguing strangers, but its helped me get to know some familiar faces a whole lot better. Many of these were co-workers, people I passed in the halls who, suddenly privy to my late night thoughts, now stopped to talk. More than a few of them have reciprocated with excited dispatches of their own, proving that its far easier to start a blog than keep one going. I’ve enjoyed reading every word of it - even when they only number in the dozens. But this paragraph isn’t about output analysis, its about saying thanks. Aside from my lovely bride, who openly abides my electronic mistress, <a href="http://tvphotogblog.blogspot.com/">Chris Weaver</a> deserves my unending gratitude, for this fellow shooter/blogger/auteur has saved this flimsy craft from crashing into the horizon more times than I can count. Whether he’s uncovering errors in my source code or tweaking a difficult non-linear edit, <a href="http://tvphotogblog.blogspot.com/">the Mighty Weave</a> has hooked a brother up time and time again. Why exactly, I don’t know, but if you like this site do me a favor and go visit <a href="http://tvphotogblog.blogspot.com/">tvphotogblog</a> himself. Just don’t ride shotgun in his news unit without strapping in snugly. The man races through the breakdown lane of life, logging each breakneck mile with the same clever, affable vibe - whether he’s hurtling toward a gory plane crash a Nascar race or a Taco Bell drive-thru. He is Southern Photog: Defined, and a true Friend of the Show.<br /><br /><strong>Habits of the Obsessed </strong><br /><br /><img src="http://photos2.flickr.com/2181325_334b10b59d_m.jpg" align="right" />Enough of my accomplices, let’s examine the mechanics. At the outset of my experiment, I vowed to file a post <strong>EVERY DAY.</strong> This was easy in the beginning, when I was pulling pieces from my collection of b-roll rants. This material; idioms, allegories and anecdotes compiled from a year or two of <a href="http://b-roll.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=forum;f=1">message board binging</a> set the tone for what I wanted to blog about: the Perils of Electronic Newsgathering. But when that well went dry, my stale repository turned into a live blogcast and I was forced to log quality time with my keyboard, the very reason I started this site to begin with. Since then, I’ve averaged five posts a week, mostly composing screeds in the midnight hours or early morning light, sometimes on my laptop in the den, but mostly in my upstairs lair - the one filled with nautical knickknacks, dusty hardbacks and broadcast bric-a-brac. When I write, I often enjoy Guatemalan coffee, Kentucky Bourbon, the electric Blues and the squawking, large-billed bird that sits atop the old dead tree outside my window. I’m a great speller, a vociferous reader and a lousy typist. My wife calls me ‘Peck-Peck’, a most dubious nickname based on the clickety-clack sound emanating from my late night sessions. Having learned never to ignore The Voice, I tend to work in furious spurts, usually hitting ’Publish’ without the first revision. Sometimes I delve back into the text to tweak phrasing, but mostly I leave it alone once its online. This, I hope, helps to explain the many misspellings, deluded second references and twisted metaphors that populate my prose. Hey, you get what you pay for.<br /><br /><strong>A Dearth of Dead Presidents</strong><br /><br /><img src="http://photos5.flickr.com/10140503_8427d8d5e5_m.jpg" align="left" />Speaking of funding, I’ve studiously avoided spending money on my yearlong obsession. Minus the purchase of my now-battered digital camera and a monthly DSL bill, I’ve dropped no coin on <strong>Viewfinder BLUES</strong>, determined all along to do it all on the fly. Instead, a recent check of $5.24 hangs above my flat screen, profits reamed from the <a href="http://www.greensboro101.com/">AltMedia101</a> advertising scheme I have a small part in. Like a framed dollar bill at a Chinese Buffet, said check represents the beginning of my empire and I thus have no plans of ever cashing it. Sorry, Roch. As for content analysis, I ain’t done much but most of my postings do fall into a few basic categories. Most are <a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/anatomy-of-live-shot.html">picture safaris</a>, visual souvenirs fresh from the daily hunt with narratives fresh from my burbling brain-pan. These are the easiest to write, as they are impressions only hours old. Harder to conjure but equally rewarding are the recollected <a href="http://viewfinderblues.blogspot.com/2004/11/journey-of-hope.html">epics-in-waiting</a> I’ve managed to record, virtual transcripts of half-forgotten tales I’ve recounted over crime tape or cocktails. By far though, the biggest readership spikes have come from the occasional ’<a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/06/age-of-convergence-part-2.html">think piece’ </a>I’ve posted, partly due to the work’s timeliness but mostly due to my habit of pimping out the work I’m proudest of. Much of the rest is comprised of thoughts wrapped around <a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/10/friday-night-smite.html">a particular link</a>, easy enough fodder for a guy who surfs 40 to 50 different sites pretty religiously. In the future, I hope to master the daily quote, occasional cartoon and Top Ten list, as these things translate well to title-based linking. Speaking of numbers...<br /><br /><strong>Stats and Spikes</strong><br /><br /><img src="http://photos9.flickr.com/15851263_f53d5aef4d_m.jpg" align="right" />If you’re still reading this, you’re either really bored or still fairly intrigued. If it’s the latter, I’d advised you have that condition checked by a trained physician. For now though, merely adjust your safety goggles, as we are entering the <a href="http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=home">Site Meter Zone</a>. It’s an amazing tool, really - one that allows me to track my readership quite closely. At this sitting, there have been 43,278 visits to my site, barely a ripple in the cyber-sea, but respectable numbers considering a year ago the only people reading my mind were the hearty denizens of b-roll.net. Currently I average 125 hits a day, though I have logged mind boggling spikes of a few thousand daily readers, once after uber-blogger Jeff Jarvis linked to my essay, ’<a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/birth-of-personal-journalist.html">Birth of the Personal Journalist</a>’, on his well-traveled site ‘<a href="http://www.buzzmachine.com/">Buzz Machine</a>‘. I enjoyed another dizzying 24 hour tally when a Hungarian website featured ‘my ‘<a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/maximum-overdrive-video.html">Maximum Overdrive’</a> video one day, proving the delightful sight of cameramen scrambling for cover transcends all language barriers. Geographically speaking, most of my readers hail from the same continent, but a few clicks on the Site Meter tells me I have regular readers in Chile, Kuwait, Warsaw and inexplicably, New Zealand. For a guy can still remember floundering on a seventh grade world map quiz, this is pretty heady stuff. Of course my favorite aspect of traffic analysis is knowing what website my readers leave to get to mine. This tells me what links live and which ones die on the vine. I’m especially delighted to report an uptick in Google hits, visits resulting from someone typing in ’<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=lenslinger&btnG=Google+Search">Lenslinger</a>’ and hitting search. If I can increase these instances by a few million, I might finally be able to swing that speedboat.<br /><br /><strong>More To Come</strong><br /><br /><img src="http://photos5.flickr.com/9991780_698bc43032_m.jpg" align="left" />Until such time, I’ll keeping swinging a camera by day and babbling about it by night. It’s quite the paradox: As a blue-collar schlub who dreams of leaving the workaday woes for literary greatness, my primary muse is the job I love to hate. In other words, if I ever do escape this thankless gig, what the hell am I gonna write about…gardening? Not likely. Maybe one day I’ll conquer the world of fiction, but for now, I can't remember the last novel I read. I’m far too busy, scanning blogs, scribbling phrases and indulging my notebook fetish. I’ve thought for years now about getting published before I turned 40. At 38 and 9/12ths, I’d better get crackin’. For now, I plan to keep on plugging away, propping up a title I always thought would be the name of my memoir, not some amorphous blob cloaked in pixels and vinegar. Oh well, it beats my earlier attempts at meditating on page. For years I only half-listened to the crusty commentator in my head. Sharing my inner narrator with others in this living compendium has been one of the most rewarding acts of creativity I’ve ever managed to stick with. It may never line my pockets with silver, but it’s already paid off in more ways than I can mention. If nothing else, being a photographer known primarily for his writing is a pretty deep kick in and of itself. Thanks, as always, for reading...<blockquote></blockquote>Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1127671910868954362005-09-25T11:08:00.000-07:002005-09-25T11:11:50.883-07:00Inside Ophelia<img src="http://static.flickr.com/32/43166817_c5a28b9a60_m.jpg" align="left" />I cant really explain why I like chasing hurricanes, as it is a thoroughly miserable endeavour. But whenever one of these churning monsters takes aim at the Carolina coast, I jones to be there when it slams ashore. Perhaps I wouldn’t feel this way if I fixed copiers for a living, but after fifteen years of habitual storm coverage, I’ve developed quite the nasty hurricane habit. Like a junkie who knows he ain‘t living right, I could barely look at myself in the rearview mirror of my news unit Tuesday as I made one more mad dash into dirty weather. Bright sun in the Triad disappeared by Raleigh. By the time I reached the edge of Wilmington, a long line of evacuating traffic choked the oncoming lanes while angry raindrops turned my windshield into an abstract painting. It was then I realized just what I’d volunteered for again and I spent the last few miles to Carolina Beach squirming in my seat with adrenaline and regret.<br /><br />I blew into town around the same time Ophelia’s outermost rain-bands did. Snaking through the flashing yellow traffic signals, I scanned the storefronts for makeshift plywood and spray painted defiance. I found only the former, a sunglass shop with all her windows sheathed in expertly erected wooden planks. Swooping into a parking spot off the main drag, I threw the Explorer in PAR K, leaned on the door handle and tumbled into the drink.<br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/27/43904481_036dac4c6d_m.jpg" align="right" />Outside, shimmering curtains of rain showers undulated across the deserted intersection. I kept my head down, but still took on quite a bit of water in the two seconds it too me to pop the tailgate. Crawling into the overstuffed cargo stash, I grumbled under my breath and fumbled with Velcro straps. Only when my Sony was encased in tailored blue canvas did I venture back out, knowing all the electronic bravado I brought would all be for naught if water got inside my camera. As I poked my head out of the back of the truck, two shirtless surfers pedaled by in slow-motion, their tattooed necks twisting shaven heads toward the emerging newsman.<br /><br />“Hey guys,” I shouted over the roar of the storm, “Ya got a minute?”<br /><br />Bill and Ted were friendly enough types but had trouble putting more than three words together at a time. As they roped to express how stroked they were to ride out the storm, I searched for a way to blow them off quickly. Chewing my lip, I stared at the quickly dimming daylight behind Bill’s (or Ted’s) head. On my hip, an ancient cell phone rang.<br /><br />“You got time to call this yacht guy?”, Wes asked from the cockpit of his own news cruiser. “We‘re about a half hour out.”<br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/26/43904480_22a3d78d15_m.jpg" align="left" />“Sure” I said, not knowing who the‘ yacht guy’ was. Six minutes later I stepped aboard the vessel in question; it sunk a bit under my weight, making it more of a boat than a yacht. Inching along the narrow walkway outside the cabin, I held my camera in a death grip and thought about a <a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/04/hurricane-stewthe-video.html">storm named Gordon</a>. I was halfway around the starboard side when a older man in a lighthouse t-shirt and white beard slid open a door panel and beckoned me inside. Once belowdecks, I pinned a microphone on my host, a retired state trooper who’d spent the last ten years cruising the Caribbean. In a corner of his potted plant-filled cabin, his gray haired girlfriend giggled at his every on-screen retort. Less than ten minutes after boarding the boat, I gathered my tools and disembarked. I couldn’t help but giggle nervously as I gripped the railing of the bobbing boat. Nary a slip around the small harbor was empty, paint-peeled fishing vessels and gleaming pleasure crafts pitched and yawed along side each other, the sounds of rope rubbing on wood echoing underneath the slapping patter of the hard-falling rain.<br /><br />‘The places I find myself’ I thought as I stepped off the boat and onto a floating pier of lashed-together boards. In the distance, I saw Unit Four parked by the condo entrance, its hazard lights still flashing in the downpour. Holding my head down to avoid a face full of rain water, I ran around across the Yacht Club’s yard with my camera lens pointed behind me. I was almost to the other side when I heard them.<br /><br />“Woo-Hoo! TV Dude! Wanna Beer? C’mon on man, make us famous”<br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/26/43166818_92e2ad9f48_m.jpg" align="right" />I looked up and squinted through the deluge. Three stories up a small group of young locals loitered and grinned outside the condo’s covered porch. Cigarette smoke hung over their heads, mingling with the smell of a nearby grill’s sizzling contents. Low voices and raucous laughter rang out from behind the screen, punctuating the sound of the wind howling through the breezeway. Climbing the condo‘s steps, I smiled and waved, grateful to have found a bonafide hurricane party to put on the ten o clock news. When I stepped onto their landing, the inebriated foursome clapped and cheered, welcoming me to their gathering like a guest of honor. As they all began talking at once, I pinned a lapel microphone on the soberest one’s shirt and peppered him with questions. Through fumes borne of an Old Milwaukee can, he spoke of how the boats berthed below would float up over their slips should the water level rise enough. I made a mental note to check back later on the area as drops of rainwater slid off my eyebrows and straight into my upturned viewfinder, distorting the drunk man‘s image. I was wiping off the water with a rain-soaked sleeve when my cell phone rang for the fifteenth time that day.<br /><br />“Stewie, we’re at the Marriott. Chad needs your disc so he can log it. Didya get anything?” I could hear tinny audio playing at fast speed in the background, along with a considerable amount of trash talk.<br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/29/43166820_92f2f78ebe_m.jpg" align="left" />“Yeah...good stuff too”, I said, fumbling through my run-bag for the feel of my small digital camera. Across the screened-in porch, the guy I‘d been interviewing convulsed with tipsy giggles as his friends fought to high-five him. I ran my fingers under the soaking wet station ball-cap and pressed the old phone to my ear. “Lemme say goodbye to my new best friends and I’ll be right there -”<br /><br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/26/43904484_3431357a79_m.jpg" align="left" />It took the motel alarm clock several beeps to convince me to open my eyes. When I did, I wasn’t exactly sure where I was. But the rumpled co-workers shaking off sleep in the lamplight along with the freaky howl of the wind triggered some inner synapses and it dawned on me I was finally inside Ophelia. Then a colleague clocked me with a pillow and someone snapped a towel, setting the tone for the rest of the day. The four guys I’d rendezvoused with the night before - seasoned professionals who took their craft very seriously, were like myself equally capable of Grand Larceny Grab-Ass. I wouldn’t have it any other way personally, but I don’t always get a say. This time though I felt lucky, as all the jokers assembling gear and cracking wise around me were most agreeable - even at this ungodly hour in the morning. With the first of Ophelia’s Class 1 winds lashing the balcony, Wes squeezed through a gap in the sliding glass door to power up the lights he’d bungee-corded to the railing the night before. When he did, the a curtain of horizontal raindrops lit up like a theatrical backdrop - which of course it was. When Danny opened the hallway door to head for the sat truck downstairs, a slicker-clad Chad Tucker entered the room rubbing sleep out of his eyes. Meanwhile I donned my own protective suit of shorts, shirt and sandals. Joe, not due to run the truck for several more hours, lay in bed and questioned everyone’s lineage. Sensing all was well with my colleagues, I jammed a soggy ball-cap on my bed-head and hit the stairwell.<br /><br /><img height="274" src="http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b5d739b3127cce94127f4dd01b00000015108CcsWjRu3c0" width="172" align="right" />The heavy metal door on the ground level almost broke my nose when I tried to push it open. It gave way at first before a sudden gust of saltwater and warm air slammed it back in my face. I cursed as the driving rain soaked one side of my face, pointed my chin to my chest and jogged across the dark, wind-scoured parking lot. As I did, Danny poked his hooded head out of the sat truck’s rear door, half eaten Pop Tart in one hand, the other wrapped around a cell phone. He shouted something, a smart remark probably, lost in the din of the approaching hurricane. I answered with a one-fingered salute as I ran past, before stopping in front of trusty unit four to fumble with the car keys. By the time I climbed behind the wheel, I was soaked from head to toe. Jamming the key into the ignition, I thought of how I used to dress for hurricanes: heavy boots, two piece raingear, hood pulled tight. Since then, I learned that trying to stay dry during sideways rain was as annoying as it was futile. So I embraced a certain minimalism, choosing a wardrobe much like that of any other beachgoer. It was all gonna cling to me like a second skin anyway I reasoned as I dropped the Ford Explorer into REVERSE and backed out of the spot. Besides, I thought as I pulled out onto the deserted, rain-choked streets.<br /><br />Zipping up and down the streets of a deserted beach town while a Class 1 hurricane whips sheet metal and shingles across the hood of your two-door SUV is nothing less than intoxicating, affording one the type of buzz familiar to hardcore video-gamers. But since there were more than pixels flying through the air, I leaned into the steering wheel and tried to stay focused. Back on the third floor of the hotel, Chad manned his windblown balcony perch and talked into Wesley’s lens. As he went live (!) for our station back home and countless affiliates across the country, I squinted through a bleary windshield and looked for icons.<br /><br /><img style="WIDTH: 281px; HEIGHT: 182px" height="173" src="http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b5d739b3127cce94127f36515000000016108CcsWjRu3c0" width="281" align="left" />It didn’t take long to find them. Stop-lights wobbling in the wind, fountain-worthy water formations arcing off the corners of shuttered buildings, flashing traffic signals swaying on their wires like laundry snapping on the line: everywhere I looked I saw the images I needed, so I parked my news unit’s nose into the wind and with a just a tinge if hesitation, leaned into the door. Outside, stinging darts of rain peppered my face and legs as the screaming wind tried to rip the raincoat off my body. Under the tailgate, I found solace, as well as quite a bit of camera equipment. I grabbed my tripod, plopped it down in the fives inches of stormwater swirling around my feet and placed the Sony on top of it. With a flip of a switch, light erupted from the viewfinder, bathing the camera’s eyecup in a soft blue haze. Leaning in, I squinted through the lens, trying to decide which water droplets were on the front of the lens, which were pooling up in the eyecup, and which were streaming down my fogged-up glasses. I twisted the focal tube and dabbed the lens with a balled-up t-shirt. As I did, a loud metal screech rang out behind me, snapping my head in that direction.<br /><br />Twenty feet ahead , a twelve foot section of gutter piping skittered across the pavement, driven by the winds toward my truck. Yelping out a curse, I hopped up into the back of the cargo bay as the razor-sharp piece of sheet metal passed a few yards by me. As it clattered out of sight, I sat there in the dark, knees to my chin, laughing nervously. I was wet, sleepy hungry - yet pumped - the exact conditions I’d dreaded as I crossed the bridge the evening before. Climbing back down to my camera, I popped off a few bleary shots of windblown streetlights and flash-flooded streets As the wind drove raindrops up my nose, I couldn’t help but think the same thing I did the first day of boot camp:<br /><br />‘I volunteered for this?’<br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/28/43240258_f11a772011_m.jpg" align="left" />As the slow-motion hurricane scoured every crevice of Carolina Beach, we TV geeks got our broadcast on. Riding point was Chad Tucker, pushed out on a rain-lashed balcony bathed in electric light. As streaks of water strobed behind him, the young reporter held a finger over his earpiece as Wolf Blitzer asked him a question. Just inside the third story room, Wesley Barrett reached from behind the camera and wiped the lens. In his ear, Blitzer moved on to CNN’s meteorologist for yet another look at the radar. ’Not bad, Chad...’ Danny said, breaking into the line from the satellite truck parked downstairs, “Next up is Fox News -”. A series of telephone beeps and boops followed as Chad wept water from his brow. Inside, I was drying off too, back from another excursion through quickly flooding streets for images to accompany Chad‘s narration of the storm. Taking off my windbreaker, I flicked water on Joe McCloskey, who - still wrapped in bedcovers - manned the motel’s remote control. When Fox News Channel popped up on the TV, I grabbed my digital and waited for the right moment to click the shutter. Seconds later it arrived, with Chad’s image filling up the motel’s 19 inch set. The resulting image captured the satellite delay and satisfied me greatly. Unfolding my laptop, I plugged in the camera and uploaded the picture. A minute later it was on my blog. “Is that cool or what?” I asked the others, excited about what I may post on-line throughout the day. I did then realize we were about to lose power for the next twenty hours.<br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/28/43653356_b8dbdc58d2_m.jpg" align="right" />But humid hotel rooms, long hours and lousy food are hallmarks of hurricane coverage and Ophelia did not fail to hold up these long-held traditions. While only a Class One, the swirling Cyclops of wind, rain and debris inched through town at a wino’s pace, tipping over gas station canopies, downing power lines and sending heavy manhole covers floating down the streets. Through it all, I plowed through the flash-floods in trusty Unit Four, parking strategically into the wind and using the Explorer’s tailgate lid and overstuffed cargo bay for cover. As dim morning light shone through the thick layer of clouds, I was able to find humans to interview. All around the island, stalwart locals hunkered down. A hunched over old hippie behind the only open counter in town scoffed at Ophelia as he counted back my change. At his suggestion, I drove to the marina to interview his fishing buddies, but the gruff men standing in a circle under a fish shack’s roof and sharing a lumpy cigarette didn’t seem to want to talk. Three blocks away, a woman in a pick-up proved far more gabby and I soon had her in the crosshairs of my lens. A few minutes after I left her idling in a rain-swollen parking lot, her answers to my questions ricocheted through outer space.<br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/29/43904482_f28cd36195_m.jpg" align="left" />As did Chad’s drenched image. Throughout the morning, the King, North Carolina native’s face appeared on TV sets across the nation. From L.A. to Orlando, viewers stopped to watch as the young man told in dulcet tones of the worsening conditions along North Carolina’s Crystal Coast. But by noon the producers and suits back at the shop had tired of Chad’s third story high wire act. From a fleet of soggy pagers came the terse order: <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">‘Get him off the balcony. Get him on the beach.’</span> With a good deal of eye-rolling and a wee bit of bitchery, we did just that - breaking down our camera, lights, tripod and three floors of cable all so we could set it up a half mile down the coast. Our new broadcast home wasn’t as palatial as the electricity-free Marriott. Instead, we holed up by a dilapidated oceanfront apartment complex, parking our sat truck close against the salt-encrusted building for protection from the wind and pushing Chad out onto the boardwalk as far as our broadcasting common sense would allow. In the process of all that moving, Wesley’s news unit sprung a flat tire, courtesy of a screw-laden piece of gutter pipe that attacked the underside of the Explorer. As a result, I ferried my co-workers from hotel to sat truck; light duty indeed - except for having to traverse a flooded intersection that rose a few inches with every passing. While one colleague would recommend I cross the swollen intersection at a snail’s pace, my next passenger would insist I merely ’punch it’ to get across. I found both methods worked fine - as long as I kept my but-tocks clenched in the driver’s seat.<br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/33/43904483_b933a52086_m.jpg" align="right" />By six o clock, we were firmly ensconced in our new locale. The wind and rain still roared but not quite as ferociously as before. It could still send sheet metal flying through the air, but it probably wouldn’t drive a pine needle through your skull like they used to talk about on those grade school filmstrips. We even got chance to break a little bread, in the form of frozen ham sandwiches and Pringle’s purloined from the hippie’s convenient store freezer down the road. Having been up and wet since 4 a.m., we were all delighted to hear our bosses’ plans of letting us sleep in the next morning, while our crews in Atlantic Beach covered their portion of Ophelia’s path. This news lifted everyone’s spirits, as while we all prided ourselves as swarthy news warriors, a little downtime in a pitch black hotel room that smelled of sweat socks was more than welcome. With only the ten o clock show to execute before we could all go get some sweaty shut-eye. I was hunched down by the sat truck ladder, catching rainwater while polishing off a Ham-sicle sandwich and a few soggy potato chips, when those glorious plans changed.<br /><br />“Hey Stew,” my assistant news director said through the antiquated cell phone in my ear, “CNN won’t play ball with our guys in Morehead. Can YOU do live shots in the morning?”<br /><br />“...Stewart Pittman is standing by live in Carolina Beach and joins us now, Stewart?”<br /><br /><img style="WIDTH: 253px; HEIGHT: 167px" height="169" src="http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b5d700b3127cce940d449fb48f00000016108CcsWjRu3c0" width="289" align="left" />I opened my mouth and began talking, but didn’t really listen to what I had to say. I’ve found that, for me, there’s no quicker way to mangle a live shot than to over-prepare or concentrate too hard. Back when I first began going live in the early nineties, I’d make the rookie’s mistake of writing out a script, only to fumble on a word, lose my place and somewhere in the process forget to breathe. This rarely made for a good performance and as a result, I have nothing but painful memories of my earliest attempts at live reporting. But time heals all wounds they say - even botched TV remotes. By the time the proverbial red light came on last Thursday morning, I tackled the assignment with nary a nerve on display. As I scrunched my toes in the sand and talked to Wes Barrett’s camera some two hundred feet away, my only real regret was that I’d rushed out of the hotel room without visiting the Little Photog’s Room. As a result, it was all I could do to stand and deliver the news without dashing offscreen to go desecrate the nearest sand dune.<br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/31/43904485_aed04f55c9_m.jpg" align="right" />Instead, I stayed on my mark and filed live updates for my own station, as well as Fox affiliates in Orlando and D.C. There really wasn’t too much to tell: Ophelia had taken her sweet time moseying through town the day before, toppling signs, ripping up shingles and flooding streets. But as anyone with functional vision could tell, that had all changed. With the sun poking through the clouds, a light breeze rippling off the ocean and seagulls swooping down on crustaceans, the day after Ophelia had all the markings of a beautiful day at the beach following a bad storm - which is exactly what it was. I’m not sure if it’s solely a matter of comparison, but the immediate daylight hours following a hurricane are some of the most tranquil displays of dazzling nature you’ll find on this heartless orb. Too bad you’re usually ready to pass out from sleep deprivation by the time it arrives. This time though, I was pretty well rested. Having made a beeline for the hotel as soon as I got my orders the evening before, I endured an ice cold shower in a pitch black bathroom before crawling on top of the covers for a fitful night of feigned rest in a humid room. By hurricane coverage standards, I was livin’ large!<br /><br />Which is why I tried not to complain as I loitered on the boardwalk between live shots. Further up the coast, Eric White and Brad Ingram manned a similar post at Atlantic Beach, not far from where Ophelia had made a fine mess of my childhood vacation spot of Salter Path. I didn’t envy them, for while this latest hurricane was less than cataclysmic, covering the aftermath of even a Class 1 was work indeed. I’d much rather work the front end of a storm; as setting up electronic camp and screaming ’Here it comes’ is far less drudgery than churning out round-the-clock coverage of a community’s broken dreams. Been there, thank you very much - got the t-shirt, only to realize it smelled like feet thanks to being balled up in the corner of a sweatbox hotel room for three days.<br /><img style="WIDTH: 375px; HEIGHT: 155px" height="170" src="http://static.flickr.com/31/45434927_cab0f5424d.jpg" width="431" /><br />No, I fared pretty well in the storm this time, I realized as I watched the sun‘s ray appear for the first time in days. Waiting for the voices in my head to prod me, I watched stalwart locals poke their heads outside, pick up shingles and carve one more defiant notch on their hurricane belts. That goes for me too, though I’m not quite as brazen as those crusty fishermen smoking discount menthols at the local store. I’m just a TV geek, one who loves nothing more than to suddenly race Eastward only to complain once I got there. I did plenty of that this time, though there in retrospect, there wasn’t THAT much to bitch about this time. Chances are, I’d once again toss my packed bags on the bosses’ desk the next time a marquee wind came our way. Until then, I’d man the sand at Carolina beach, tell the good people of the Piedmont what little I knew of Ophelia’s visit, before repeating the same message for Orlando, Atlanta and whatever other Fox affiliate that was jonesing for a satellite hit. I just hoped the Broadcast Gods would soon cut me a bathroom break, before I lost all control of my innards and made ‘The Daily Show’.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1124292629906392352005-08-17T08:29:00.000-07:002005-09-10T06:57:28.116-07:00Recent Reviews of Viewfinder BLUES..."</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Through the lens of his TV camera</span><font>, Lenslinger bears witness to the funny, the tragic, the inane, the incomprehensible. On a good day, it must be like being a rock star. On bad days, it must be like being the tax collector. On days like this, I am glad that he's there. Not because he's acquiring the footage, but because he reminds me that there is still such a thing as journalistic ethics, and for that, I'm really grateful."</span> -- <a href="http://chewok.blogspot.com/">Chewie World Order</a><br /><br /><font>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Stewart Pittman at Viewfinder Blues is an oddity</span>: a lensman who can write. And his latest report from the frontlines of journalism is a gem. It’s another great piece, written by a guy who (despite a certain surface cynicism) clearly loves what he’s doing.</span>" -- <a href="http://www.tamark.ca/students/index.php?s=lenslinger&submit=Find+it">Mark on Media</a><br /><br /><font>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">He writes like</span> no one else I've ever read."</span> -- Natural Born Stringer of <a href="http://b-roll.net/">b-roll.net</a><a href="http://donatacom.com/archives/00000917.htm"></a><br /><br />"<font><span style="font-weight: bold;">There are hundreds of bloggers</span> in Greensboro, but this guy’s site is in a class by itself. Lenslinger’s been a camera jockey for television news since 1989 and currently shoots for FOX 8, but he’s a writer at heart and he uses this blog to feed that particular jones. He posts media critiques, reflections on entering middle age (with pictures) and inside tales from his very specialized gig.</span>" -- Brian Clarey of <a href="http://www.yesweekly.com/main.asp?SectionID=21&SubSectionID=48&amp;amp;ArticleID=219&TM=78268.67">Yes! Weekly</a><br /><br /><font>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Stewart is</span> a contemporary news photographer who understands what's taking place in the media world. Go read him."</span> -- Terry Heaton of <a href="http://donatacom.com/archives/00000917.htm">Pomoblog</a><br /><br /><font>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">I see his work on the nightly news all the time</span>, but reading the stories behind the stories is far more interesting than the six o'clock news will ever be. If this man isn't signing me a copy of a newly published book in less than a year (I know for a fact he's writing one.) then the entire publishing industry is no more than a lost cause destined to rot until the stench is more than we can bear.</span>" -- <a href="http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/2005/2/18/in-the-news.html">Billy the Blogging Poet</a><br /><br /><font>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">The way this guy writes</span>, I'm surprised that he hasn't already made a jump to a more fulfilling career."</span> -- Jamey Tucker of <a href="http://www.blogger.com/The%20way%20this%20guy%20writes,%20I%27m%20surprised%20that%20he%20hasn%27t%20already%20made%20a%20jump%20to%20a%20more%20fulfilling%20career.">Blogsquat</a><br /><br /><font>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Stew,</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">the way you just described this man's story</span> in your own words was more intresting and meaningful than any twenty second vosot could be. My friend you are much more than just a lenslinger, you are a journalist. Edward R. would be proud."</span> -- <a href="http://colonelcornscamera.blogspot.com/">Ken Corn</a><br /><br /><font>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Come to B-roll, tender a request</span>, and you shall learn from one that has traversed the cosmos from beginning to end. From a cosmic being of such unimaginable complexity, that both his corporeal form and his consciousness sit astride twelve dimensions at once! From Lenslinger...who has bathed in the spectral ethers which swirl beyond time. Ask and learn, young tog."</span> -- Low Lt. of <a href="http://b-roll.net/">b-roll.net</a><br /><br /><font>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">There are few bloggers out there</span> who capture some of the day-to-day challenges of journalism (and the effect it has on your soul), whether he’s writing about the humour of covering news...If you want to know about journalism, as it is practiced, read Stewart. Daily."</span> -- <a href="http://www.tamark.ca/students/index.php?s=lenslinger&submit=Find+it">Mark on Media</a><br /><br /><font>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Viewfinder BLUES is a blog</span> by a cameraman who can write like a ******f****r . My blog is by a writer and editor who can't photograph his way out of a paper bag. I am not worthy."</span> -- <a href="http://theredactor.blogspot.com/">Colin Brayton</a><br /><br /><font>"</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">You have a multi-layered</span><font>, sophisticated ambivalence toward your profession that cries out to be the subject of its own story, and you can be onscreen."</span> -- Melinama at <a href="http://pratie.blogspot.com/">Pratie Place</a><br /><br /><font>"...<span style="font-weight: bold;">the King</span> of the Photog Blog."</span> -- <a href="http://lightscamerajackson.blogspot.com/">Smitty</a><br /><br /><font>More love for <span style="font-weight: bold;">Lenslinger</span> at</span> <a href="http://www.lostremote.com/archives/004864.html">Lost Remote</a>, <a href="http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/2005/6/24/stewart-pittman-viewfinder-blues.html">Blogsboro.com</a>, <a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0106327/2005/05/30.html">Bob Stepno</a>, <a href="http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2005_06_27.html#009945">Buzz Machine</a>, <a href="http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/2005/06/25/wkrntv_gets_it_they_really_get_it.php">Corante</a>Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1114515742133856982005-04-26T04:33:00.000-07:002005-04-26T04:43:10.936-07:00Things Isabel Taught Me<img src="http://b-roll.net/stories/photos/camp-isabel.jpg" align="left" />(<span style="font-style: italic;">From Several Years Back...</span>) <span style="font-weight:bold;">U</span>nless you spent all of last week in some kid of weird cryogenic chamber, you no doubt saw a number of rain-slickered news reporters flailing in the winds of Hurricane Isabel. As much as I'd like to deny any involvement in this time honored cliché, I cannot. I spent all of last week in the shore-side hamlet of Pine Knoll Shores, where I and five other colleagues parked our garishly-painted satellite truck at the foot of the Iron Steamer Pier. All week long we up-linked customized live shots to Fox stations all over the country, as well as a handful of ABC affiliates in the Southeast. We even did a live shot for that bastion of frivolity, "Good Day Live!" If you were by some chance forced to watch this nationally-syndicated tripe-fest on Thursday and saw a cute and perky reporter named Shannon Smith go LIVE(!) from the North Carolina shore, might I suggest you immediately go have your eyes rinsed out with cold tap water.<br /><br />Now, Hurricane Isabel wasn't THE BIG ONE, nor was it the first time I've ventured out in Mother Nature's wrath in the name of higher ratings. Those of you who know me well may remember my Kitty Hawk adventures in 1993, when a Hurricane by the name of Gordon bitched-slapped me and high-dollar camera into temporary sea-soaked oblivion. While nothing that dramatic happened with Isabel, the week was replete with all the hallmarks of 21st century storm coverage: from the stoked surfers chasing the perfect wave (or at least pretending to long enough to get on camera), to the stoic locals pledging to ride it out (all while boarding up anything that didn't move), to the giddy media sticking cameras and microphones in everyone's grill (until there was no one else to interview but each other, a sure sign of the coming apocalypse). Now, I don't want to sound like an innocent bystander -it's my chosen profession to document the tragic and the trite and Isabel afforded me the chance to snap out of my usual feel-good coma, and dig on a real story for a change.Having said that, here are the...<span style="font-weight: bold;">Top Ten Things I learned covering Hurricane Isabel</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1) Fishing Pier Employees are NOT Preoccupied with Dental Hygiene</span>.<br />I met some good people at the Iron Steamer Pier but none of them will ever threaten the livelihoods of any toothpaste model. In fact, to a person, they all sported smiles reminiscent of the rough-edged planks that made up their beloved pier. Must be part of their benefits package. If you're ever at The Iron Steamer Pier, check out the wall of Polaroid’s behind the counter. My group will be the one with the brightly logo'ed rain wear and all our own teeth.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2) Expensive Electronics and Driving Rain Don't Mix</span>.<br />No mystery there, but I cannot tell you how difficult it is to keep your<br />average TV camera up and operational when it's raining up your nose. For all the customized camera rain-covers out there, nothing beats trash bags and duct tape. Perhaps my station should invest in one of those Plexiglas Pope Mobiles, or buy up all those useless telephone booths that so litter our nation. The pay phones in them certainly don't work.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3) The Bigger the Market, the Cheesier the Anchor</span>.<br />Like I said, we did satellite live shots for stations across the country, from L.A. to Tampa to Philly to Vegas and all points in between. Without fail, the bigger the city, the more over-affected and cartoon-like the anchor's voice on the other line. I heard enough booming voices and over-enunciation to last a lifetime - or at least until I do another self-serving piece on the local Top 40 radio station. Or a profile on the visiting tent evangelist. Like Sting says, they all sound like game show hosts to me.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4) Eat Enough Granola Bars and You'll Soon Welcome Starvation</span>.<br />With all reasonable-minded folks headed inland, all seaside restaurants and stores sit vacant behind a sheath of hastily erected plywood. This leaves your friendly media crew sifting through its own meager rations, and what seemed like a good idea on aisle five quickly proves otherwise. At one point some National Guardsmen offered me an M-R-E, citing the plugging qualities of said dried foodstuffs. Thanks, but I'm not quite ready to eat a meal based solely on the bowel movement it produces. Not yet, anyway.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5) When Facing Danger & Discomfort, Pick your Playmates Wisely</span>.<br />Imagine teaming up with five of your least favorite co-workers for an<br />extended trip into the Great Unknown. That's what covering a hurricane with the office asshole can be like, and in times past, personal conflicts have caused much more trouble than hundred miles an hour winds. I was lucky this time. Everyone on board was a veteran of prior storms and a good buddy to boot. Who needs an expensive Outward Bound excursion to build employee morale? At the end of our trip we had enough group hugs to fill up a Hallmark commercial.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6) The Media's Appetite for Over-Hyped Clichés Knows No Bounds</span>.<br />Again, no real news flash there - but I was a bit flummoxed by all the<br />verbal hackwork pouring from my soaking-wet earpiece. "Residents are<br />battening down the hatches as Mother Nature's Fury takes aim at the Crystal Coast" And how about all those second references? I heard Hurricane Isabel called "Dizzy Izzy", and "The Angry Lady". But my favorite was some yak on The Weather Channel, who kept referring to the approaching weather system as "The Malevolent Cyclops" What is that? A Pink Floyd bootleg? A Dean Koontz Novel?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">7) The Southern Side of a Category 2 Hurricane is Nothing to Sneeze At</span>.<br />Much was made of Isabel's previous Category 5 status, and some of my ilk were pooh-poohing the downgraded punch it packed onshore. But even the comparatively safer side of the hurricane that passed by us made it rain sideways for about 18 hours and anything that wasn't nailed down became an instant projectile. It's my belief that the only person allowed to trash-talk a hurricane better has an "S" on his chest. As for me, my suits at the cleaners<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">8) Local Law Enforcement CAN Be Bought Off With enough Logo Wear</span>.<br />I won't name any names, but let's just say the Pine Knolls Shore Police Department has a brand new collection of assorted FOX NEWS ball caps. Move any higher up the law enforcement tree and you have to dig a little deeper. That being said, don’t pull that crap with any State Troopers. They'll take your swag and re-pay you with a new pair of shiny, oversized matching bracelets if they see fit. Try asking what part of our fine state they hail from. Always seems to throw them off.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9) Viewers DO Want To See News People Pelted by Mother Nature</span>.<br />I know, I know - it's stupidity in action, but research and ratings show, for the most part, people LOVE to see reporters and anchor types bracing themselves against the storm -- despite what they may claim. Whether it's our duty to put a human face on the story, or just an excuse for some good ole high-tech showboating, the viewing public tunes in in staggering numbers. At least that's what I told my reporter when I took away her umbrella.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10) Sleep Deprivation Is a Stronger Force of Nature than Hurricanes</span>.<br />By the time Isabel came ashore, I was existing on four days of<br />four-hours-a-night sleep. Factor in long workdays and lousy food, and I was tapped out by the time the wind really picked up. Around midday on Thursday, I took advantage of a break in the broadcast and crawled in my by-then filthy Ford Explorer to try and catch some Z's. This I did with no problem, despite the fact that wind gusts of up to 100 miles per hour were rocking my news unit. About a half hour later I woke up, only because driving rain was seeping in through a tiny gap in the window and soaking my left temple. Mildly annoyed, I gave up on any slumber, hopped out of my company vehicle and trudged across the windswept parking lot to the battered satellite truck I called home.<br /><br />Does that make me strange? Maybe where you work. But where I sit, a lackadaisical attitude, false sense of immortality and a good dose of gallows humor are exactly what you need to survive. I'm not defending the often stupid behavior exhibited by news people during times of crisis; in fact, I'm usually befuddled by it the most. I'm just saying that, for better or worse, I'm well-suited for this increasingly silly business. Here's hoping you enjoy your job as much as I do mine.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1112870489625369492005-04-07T03:39:00.000-07:002008-09-06T14:46:51.839-07:00Hurricane STEW!<img src="http://photos4.flickr.com/9413559_36bfc966de_m.jpg" align="left" />Don’t turn your back on an angry ocean. It is one of the many lessons I took away from my 1994 encounter at Kitty Hawk. Hurricane Gordon had just blown through and I was one of many surly journalists milling about the beach amid the wreckage of a collapsed vacation cottage. Actually, I was a 27-year-old news punk running around in a station windbreaker and feeling a bit outgunned. All around me, three-person network crews in matching rain slickers roved about with their pistol-grip betacams and looming microphone poles. I however was a one-man-band, on the coastal edge of my rural TV news market and more than a little unprepared. It wasn’t my first time chasing storms, but it WAS my first time at a network-level Hurricane Circus. Maybe that’s why I stuck to the edge of the pack, ignoring the crashing surf behind me as I watched the big boys strut their stuff. In my stupor, I made myself an easy target.<br /><br />Why else would Mother Nature kick me in the ass?<br /><br />A sharp yell kicked off the waylay. I don’t remember the exact words, but the tone of the distant voice snapped me out of my trance and I looked up over my shoulder. In an instant, I understood why strangers were shouting at me. An avalanche of whitewater quickly filled my view. As it did, I couldn’t fathom was how the Atlantic Ocean had raced up the beach so fast. But in the nanosecond I took the waist-high wall of tumbling seawater to reach me, I realized I was about to get my bell rung. I just didn’t know how hard it would strike, or how long it would echo. I tried to move. I twisted around to block the station-owned camera from the wave’s impact and wondered just how wet I was about to become. That’s when everything around me turned to foam and the rogue wave picked me up off my feet. Holding the camera in a death grip, I struggled to gain control, as the wall of water tossed me around like just another twig it intended to snap. Sand and saltwater filled my nasal passages as I cart wheeled in the Atlantic’s frenzied spin-cycle. I tried desperately to come up for air but the pounding surf planted my face into the sandy bottom and tried to rip the dying camera from my grip. My Nantucket Sleigh Ride had begun.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/R9AGVNrT140&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/R9AGVNrT140&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="260" width="320"></embed></object><br /><br />I’d like to say I tapped my inner Aqua-Man and rode that battered Panasonic into shore like an electronic boogie-board. But what I really did was suck seawater as the forces of nature gave me the Mother of all sand-wedgies. All I could do was hold on to the camera, determined not to lose what was most certainly a mortally wounded piece of recording equipment. But I wasn’t alone in the ocean’s crush. All those broken boards, metal shards and bricks I had been standing by were now part of that rushing river of sea foam. For a second I broke the surface and got a quick, scary look at the jagged lumber swirling around me. A piling the size of a telephone pole bobbed past and I prayed I wouldn‘t come to rest with a stick through my gut. Then the wave pushed me downward and I was break dancing underwater once again.<br />-----<br />In times of great peril, time has a funny way of skipping a beat, slowing down to make seconds feel like several lifetimes. Thus, I had lots of time to contemplate my fate as I slow motion tumbled through the barreling surf. I wondered how I would explain this to my bosses, my wife, and my buddies. Mostly though, I thought about how I came to be swimming alongside an expensive TV camera in the first place.<br /><br />“No sweat - drive up early in the morning, shoot a couple hours worth and boogie back for the early shows.”<br /><br />I nodded in agreement, as my bureau mate packed up his briefcase. We had just finished a conference call with the news director, who wanted one of us to head to the Outer Banks in the morning to cover Hurricane Gordon. My colleague had a few years on me and seemed more than a little eager to pawn off the long workday on yours truly. I didn’t really mind, though. This televised storm tracking was a blast! Recently, I’d chased a few spats of bad weather up the Carolina shore, including the weird trifecta of systems later immortalized in ‘The Perfect Storm’. I had even covered some hurricane aftermath, but never the powerful storms themselves. That evening I left the office and went straight home, eager to prepare for the next day’s adventure. Little did I know just how much adventure I‘d get.<br /><br />The next morning I rose early, kissed my sleeping wife and climbed into my mobile office - a thoroughly dogged-out Ford Taurus wagon with bright peacock logos and a fading white paint job. They called it Unit 11, and as I pulled out of my neighborhood, I hoped it would get me to my destination. It did. Three hours, two Mountain Dews and half a pack of Marlboros later, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and crossed over the Albermarle Sound. Entering Nag’s Head, I lingered long enough do a live report, thanks to the station’s latest addition to my newsgathering arsenal. In fact, I couldn’t stop fiddling with the shoebox-sized ‘bag phone’ sitting in the floorboard the whole trip. Yes, I was living on the technological edge as I idled in a convenience store parking lot and repeated what I had just heard on the radio into the phone’s receiver. Back at the station, the director punched up a frozen picture of me from the previous day’s story and daydreamed while I yammered on about sea swells and wind gusts. After some phony cross talk with the morning anchors, I signed off, dropped the news wagon into drive and pulled onto the deserted street. Enough talk - time to back up my words with pictures.<br /><br />Trouble was, there wasn’t a lot to shoot. Since it sprang to life in the western Caribbean several days earlier, Hurricane Gordon had veered drunkenly all over the Atlantic - killing more than a thousand people in Haiti before ending eight more lives in Florida. But by the time it swerved onto the Outer Banks that morning, Gordon has lost most of his lethal punch. The most damage the highly erratic storm could muster was the toppling of five dilapidated beach houses; abandoned cottages condemned a year earlier after Hurricane Emily’s visit. At the end of a drunken spree of violence and death, the intoxicated weather system took a few last swipes before stumbling back out to sea.<br /><br />In its wake, an island full of bored locals and soggy journalists slowly came back to life. As I drove through row after row of empty beach house, I wondered how I‘d fill my allotted newscast time that night without some human participants. Finally, I found a pair of shirtless stoners prying nails out of hastily boarded-up windows and pulled over. Fishing my gear out of the hatchback, I wondered for the first time that day why I’d dress so casually. Baggy khaki pants, a denim shirt and freebie windbreaker were all that protected me from the weather, which despite Gordon’s hasty exit, remained quite foul. Soon, stinging rain peppered the back of my neck as I looked down into the upturned viewfinder of my precious S-VHS camera. Above me, the two locals wrestled a warped ply-board off a window frame.<br /><br />“So much for Gordo, eh dude?” - one chortled through a mouthful of chewing tobacco. I smiled and nodded silently, grateful to capture some usable nat sound and hoping he wouldn‘t hurl wad of tobacco spit my way. I glanced at the red tally light in my viewfinder. Recording. It had already been a long, rain-filled morning behind the wheel and I was glad to finally pull the trigger. As I closed in on a tighter shot, the erstwhile carpenter spoke again.<br />“Radio says there’s a dozen houses knocked down in Kitty Hawk.”<br /><br />If he was trying to get rid of me, it worked. Before he could twist one more nail from its plywood home, I was back in Unit 11, unfolding a map and sputtering up the coastline. Five miles later, I entered the town where two bicycle makers changed the world nearly a century earlier. However, as I passed the turn-off for the Wright Brothers Memorial, I didn’t give it much thought. I was late for my own inaugural flight.<br /><br />Like Kill Devil Hills behind it, Kitty Hawk was dark, shuttered and seemingly empty. Only a passing TV truck gave the drowsy corner stoplight reason to do its job. With my other-guy radar pinging loudly in my head, I pulled in behind the brightly marked sat truck. ‘Virginia‘s News Leader‘ -- the logo boasted. Do it, I thought. It did, down the street and a sharp right into a crowded cul-de-sac, where I gulped at the biggest gathering of TV news vehicles I’d ever seen. Satellite trucks, microwave vans, news cruisers and unmarked Suburbans sat parked at crazy angles. Beyond the pack of news chariots, a group of local sheriff deputies stood in front of a string of flapping yellow tape. I found a space and got out of the car in time to see a heavy man in a billowing orange poncho lift a bullhorn to his lips.<br /><br />“If all ya’ll people will wait about thirty minutes, we’ll get ya down there! Them houses ain’t goin’ nowhere! We’ll take ya, but the road’s washed out and ya cain’t go by ya-self. We got some big army trucks on the way so just sit tight!”<br /><br />A rumble of indignation traveled through the crowd. Grizzled truck techs cursed under the breath and a square-jawed reporter tried to negotiate a better deal from the man in the poncho. It was no use. Mr. Poncho - whom I later learned to be the County Sheriff, would not budge, no matter what the stranger with the pretty teeth said. After a few minutes, the pack of media jackals thinned, as individual crews retreated to the drier confines of their spacious sat trucks. I had no such luxury though , and as I leaned on the hood of my faded white Taurus Wagon, I realized I had to something if I was gonna keep up with these high-tech Newsonauts. Watching the crashing surf beyond the row of beachfront homes, I thought about my heroes.<br /><br />‘What WOULD Andy do?’ I thought. Andy Cordan, a brash reporter-photographer who had recently left my station was the ballsiest news-hunter I knew - a sawed-off tree trunk of a man who approached newsgathering like a SWAT team cop on truck stop speed. He’d been the top story every night I could remember, repelling down walls with firemen buddies, goading handcuffed strangers into on-camera confessions or ad-libbing a high speed chase while riding shotgun with cops who wouldn‘t even return my calls. Andy would never let something as flimsy as yellow crime-scene tape and a distorted bullhorn keep him from a story. Puffed up with young newsman bravado, I opened the hatchback and streamlined my gear. Closing the lid as quietly as possible, I held my camera down low and slowly faded into the background.<br /><br />Big mistake. Those two words simmered in my brainpan as I sunk up to my crotch in cold wet sand. Having left the sat truck scrum two blocks back, I was determined to get to the collapsed houses first, before the scene teemed with competing camera crews. But the only way to do that was hoof it on foot behind a row of boarded-up beachfront condos. Trouble was, the beach itself was pretty slim as swollen waves crashed into the bleach-white seawall. Sticking to the boardwalk, I made my way as far as possible before having to abandon it. However, the surface I stepped on was only pea soup thick and I immediately found myself stuck up to my watch-pocket in soggy wet sand dune. As I struggled to keep the camera above the surface, I wrestled my leg out of the sandy quagmire. My mountain boots bulged in wet goopy beach and my thin khakis clung to my leg like cold, gritty Saran Wrap. I didn’t feel much like the mighty Cordan as I peeled myself out of that muck. Still, if I was to make it to the collapsed houses at the far end of the beach, there was no turning back. Slowly I righted myself and began goose-stepping across the unstable surface, as a National Guard army truck rumbled past a block over, back toward the way I came.<br /><br />After twenty minutes or so of this slow motion tiptoe, I finally spotted the target. Up ahead, a crumpled heap of salt-treated wood, chipped cinderblock and splintered decking lay in the distance, flanked by three other vacation homes apparently untouched by Gordon‘s wrath. For a moment, I felt like some brave explorer, traipsing over virgin territory unseen by other humans. That’s when I spotted the unmarked satellite truck parked under one of the surviving vacation homes. Following the truck’s cable up to the cottage‘s top deck, I watched as three hooded figures leaned on the railing and fiddled with their network camera set-up. As I closed the distance on foot, I could hear their idle chatter. They sounded like old fraternity pals shooting the breeze at a college football game. So much for being a pioneer.<br /><br />With more than a little sheepishness, I skirted the perimeter of the fallen beach house, hoping to avoid the attention of the cocky network crew perched above me. At least I can pop off a few ground-level shots of the rubble. Small victories, I thought, small victories. But just as I white-balanced my camera and began to roll tape, I heard the unmistakable rumble of a heavy diesel truck approaching in the distance. ‘You gotta be kidding me ‘, I thought as the National Guard troop truck rounded the corner and came to a screeching halt within three yards of my pathetic form. Seconds later, an army of matching rain suits poured out of the back, gingerly handing down their expensive cameras to one another and joking to Sheriff Poncho about the great curb service. Feeling defeated, I slunk away from the growing crowd and down the beach, lest anyone ask why my right pant leg was dripping wet.<br /><br /><br />Back in the tumbling surf, the powerful wave was trying to undress me. As the watery avalanche pushed my shirt up the back of my neck, I managed to surface for a second but still couldn’t make any real purchase on the sandy bottom. Spitting out a mouthful of saltwater, I saw a blue and red blur to my right - signs of another camera crew being swept off their feet and sucked into the watery vortex. Thank you God, thank you for not making me the only one to suffer this injustice. He answered by gratitude by pushing my head back underwater, but not before allowing me a glance of a thin slatted beach fence rushing toward me. ‘That’s gonna hurt’, I thought as I tightened my grip on the camera tumbling in the surf. It didn’t. I hardly felt a thing as I crashed through the brittle boards. Mercifully though, the fence’s impact slowed down my momentum and I realized this unwanted underwater ride was about to be over. Sure enough, the rogue wave receded a few yards past the beach fence, unceremoniously depositing me in a swirling tidal pool before quickly retreating to the sea.<br /><br />‘I’m alive’, I thought as I lay there in two feet of roiling surf. Then I realized I no longer had the camera in my grip and for a moment, I regretted my newfound survivor status. Like a punch-drunk boxer recovering from a skull-rattling knockout, I scrambled to my feet and began fumbling blindly in the knee-high water. Mercifully, my fingers raked across the electronic corpse. Grabbing a hold of the handle, I lifted it out of the water and placed it backwards on my shoulder. As I did, dirty ocean water poured out of the camera’s insides- an unthinkable sight for one so used to cradling the machine with care. It was then the second wave hit me, an avalanche of implications washing through my mind and scattering all other thought. So I did what came natural. I cursed. Long and meaningful profanities poured forth as I noticed for the first time a soaking wet soundman fumbling with his boom microphone right beside me.<br /><br />As I dropped every blue word the Navy taught me, I glanced upward and realized my misery was being preserved for the ages. For directly above me, from the safety of their top deck perch, the hooded silhouettes of the network crew hunched around their cameras and zoomed in on yours truly. For a split second, I made eye contact with the camera’s lens before turning away in search of higher ground. All around me, electronic journalists reached out to help me, but all I could see was the back of the National Guard truck idling in the distance. As I traipsed out of the surf, my brain clicked through several stages - from initial surprise to sad acceptance to unfathomable embarrassment. Vaguely aware of the other ruined camera crew behind me, I briefly considered leading them back into the crashing surf, drowning our shame in the Atlantic Ocean and giving the snickering camera crew above something to really feast on.<br /><br />Instead, I pushed on toward the waiting truck, ignoring everyone around me and barely holding on to the electronic doorstop in my hand. Plopping one soggy shoe in front of the other, I slogged up the beach and felt the camera’s steely gaze on my back. Finally, I made it to the truck where none other than Sheriff Poncho waited, smirking as he chewed the stub of a half-smoked cigar.<br /><br />“Ya’ll boys ‘bout had enough?”, he asked before chuckling at his own cleverness.<br />I wanted to tell him where he could shove his Boss Hogg cigar, but I figured a jail cell would be a lousy place to dry out. Mumbling under my breath, I hoisted my multi-thousand dollar boat anchor up in the covered truck bed and climbed in after it - wet, unhurt but totally humiliated. Behind me, the sound guy in blue did likewise, followed by a red-suited older photog with his own waterlogged betacam. As we all plopped down in agonized defeat, the truck driver fired up the truck’s diesel engine and pulled away from the seaside media circus. The drive took only a few minutes, but as we all sat there in stony silence, it felt like forever.<br /><br />But it wasn’t. Ten minutes later, I arrived at my trusty news unit, still reeling in disbelief. I placed the sopping wet camera in back, fished a dry smoke from the passenger seat and eyed my bag-phone in the floorboard.<br /><br />‘How am I ever gonna explain this?’ I asked myself as I lit the cigarette and dug sand out of my ear. Still not knowing, I grabbed the receiver and punched in the ten longest digits of my life. Seconds later, my news director answered the line.<br /><br />“Yeah, Ron - I don’t know how to tell you this -- “<br /><br />“You don’t have to, Pittman,” he barked back. “We just saw it on the bird! How‘s my camera?”<br /><br />That evening, the footage of my impromptu waterslide dominated the opening moments of the ABC, CBS and NBC Nightly News. CNN aired it every half hour all day, even playing the shot of me pulling my dead camera out of the water in slow motion. However, it would take hours before I ever saw it. Once my superiors finished their cell-phone guilt trip, they told me to stay put and wait for another camera and photographer to arrive. In the three hours that took, I slopped into a nearby K-Mart, grabbed some dry clothes off the rack and ignored the strange look all the retail clerks gave me. Then I checked into a rundown hotel, burst through the door like a madman, stripped down to my skivvies and filled the bathtub up with water. Standing over the tub, I paused for a moment before plunging the camera-corpse into the water. Even though the engineers told me to do so, it felt as wrong as drowning your baby. While salt and sand floated to the tub water’s surface, I sat in the adjoining room and chain-smoked in silence.<br /><br />Back at my station reactions differed. Co-workers feigned concern but chuckled to themselves as they opened every newscast that day with my soaking wet joyride. Many were still in the newsroom when I arrived there that evening. The Promotions Manager, a friend of mine, slapped me on the back and thanked me for wearing the heavily logo’d windbreaker he had fought so hard to purchase. The General Manager and News Director grumbled about the loss of their S-VHS piece of crap and acted as if I had done it on purpose. They didn’t fire me, but my relationship with them was never the same. My fellow news shooters treated me like a fallen hero of sorts and the engineers begrudgingly admitted I’d found a new, rather high-profile way to kill a camera.<br /><br />When I finally sat down at my desk, a producer handed me a long list of phone numbers. Seems stations from around the country had called all day, hoping for a phone interview to go along with the incredible footage of my watery break dance. I called the first number on the list, but after the cheesy-sounding Phoenix anchor kept interrupting to ramble about his own storm-chasing days, I crumbled the list up and threw it in the trashcan. I didn’t quite yet know how to feel about the last twelve hours, but I wasn’t about to help some unseen blowhard showboat. Leaving the station, I drove my pick-up home where I had some ‘splainin’ to do to the wife. She didn’t ask twice about the camera, but seemed confused as anyone why I decided to suddenly go swimming.<br /><br />It took me years to live down the notoriety of that day. But eventually, colleagues stopped calling me ‘Splash’, neighbors ceased their requests for details and viewers stopped asking where my surfboard was. Since then, I’ve moved on - covering enough floods, murders and Easter egg hunts to render my brush with Gordon just another faded memory. But the video lives on. In fact, it has become a treasured heirloom of sorts. Whenever hurricane season rolls around and some rookie starts talking big about their weather-chasing adventure, I whip out my tape and render them speechless. I even ran the video through an old video ‘toaster’ once, capturing the frozen image of me with a soaking wet camera on my shoulder and looking sourly into the network lens. That shot now hangs framed in my home office, a constant reminder that in this silly business, the worst thing you can do is focus on your competitors and lose sight of the story at hand. That, and expensive TV cameras make lousy swim buddies.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1108819176972513572005-02-19T05:17:00.000-08:002005-04-17T15:01:21.080-07:00Moon Rock Madness<img src="http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38152000/jpg/_38152046_moonrock150.jpg"align="left">It was a painfully slow news week when a perfectly good story fell from the sky. Soon after it rolled to a stop, the first of many phone calls came into the newsroom. When it did, the nighttime assignment editor barely looked up from his crossword puzzle. <br /><br />“Newsroom…”<br /><br />Scanners crackled in the background as the goateed desk jockey’s eyebrows twitched.<br /><br />“You got a WHAT in your living room?” <br /><br />Sitting up, the night guy let his newspaper fall to the floor as he scanned the edges of the cavernous room. To a left, a well-coiffed reporter lounged in her cubicle with a phone to her ear. A few desks over, a photographer sat hunched over a keyboard, trying his best to melt into the screen. Behind his goatee, the assignment editor smiled. Minutes later he was back at his crossword.<br /><br />In the car, the newly dispatched news crew bemoaned their new luck. ‘There’s NO WAY this is gonna turn’ they told each other as the city streets streamed by. Yet another wild goose chase. But much to their surprise the object in question lived up to its advertising, for the Klumpf family of 2240 Huff Lane did indeed have a hole in their roof, a dent in their floor and a mysterious hunk of smoldering metal to show for it.<br /><br />Soon the guys from the local station house showed up at the two-bedroom ranch and started pawing over the metallic object, all while the grateful news crew rolled tape. To a man, the firefighters pawed over the cylindrical rock before passing it along. Halfway through the game of hot potato, someone mentioned those scary flying guys from the second Superman movie. That’s when a junior firefighter was sent to the truck for the Geiger counter. It read negative, everyone felt better and they all went back to sniffing at the burnished can-shape glob . What could it be? A meteorite? A hunk of space junk? The cam shaft off a late-model UFO? What ever it was, it descended on the fifteen year old home with considerable force, piercing shingle, puncturing plywood and drilling through dry board before shattering the glass top to one hideous coffee table. The mystery had begun.<br /><br />Later, at the end of the ten o clock newscast, our trusted anchor team traded in their death masks for complimentary looks of wry bemusement. Between them a flat screen monitor screamed the words ‘What IS it?”. Halfway onto the second anchor’s sentence, the words on that screen turned into the nightside reporter, looking radiant in a burgundy power-suit. A lower--third graphic - ‘LIVE North High Point’ lay claim to the patch of darkness behind the her shapely form. I was at home, staring at my computer screen and only watching the ten o clock show with only one eye when the reporter’s voice caught my attention. As she hit every nuance of a well-crafted intro, I noticed the backlight feathering her shoulders. <br /><br />When she finished her intro, the director back at the station punched up her pre-recorded piece and a close-up of the mysterious gray rock filled screen. The report moved quickly, with lots of angles of hands pawing over the rock in bewilderment. The mother of the family worried out loud about her damaged property, the firefighters scratched their helmets, looking out of place as they stood around the modest living room in full turn-out gear. Next a stranger in a FAA jacket said whatever it was, the lump of mysterious metal was NOT part of any known aircraft. The piece ended with the reporter leading the viewers through the projectile’s angles of impact. In a four part on-camera stand-up the attractive nightside reporter traced every angle of the rock’s trajectory, breaking down its path like Jim Garrison dissecting the Zapruder film.<br /><br />Before the reporter could wrap up her live shot with a few words of wisdom, the phones in the newsroom erupted one by one. They would stay that way for quite some time. <br /><br />The next afternoon I walked by an assignment meeting and into a raging debate. Loosely huddled around a long conference table, my co-workers ignored the bank of TV monitors behind them. Instead they all stared at the starfish-shaped speakerphone in the middle of the table and argued their point.<br /><br />“No one cares about some school that’s not even built yet. The moon rock’s our talker”, a shaggy young producer said. “You see last night’s numbers?” <br /><br />“Sure, but unless you got men in white suits crawling all over the place I’m not putting a reporter on it”. The assistant news director poured over his Wall Street Journal with a sniper’s eye. When he found what he wanted he looked up from his fifth morning paper of the day and looked for a certain sculpted hairstyle, <br /><br />“Erik, go do the school story. Stewart, go see the moon rock family. And someone get those phones!”<br /><br />With my camera hung low on the shoulder strap, I rang the doorbell and counted the cars in the driveway. Five, about three too many. But at least none boasted bright TV station logos. That was my job. <br /><br />The door opened and a weary looking woman in a beautician’s pant suit stared back at me, her face lit from above by a yellow lightbulb. <br /><br />“Mrs. Klumpf, hi - I’m Stewart from the TV station - we just wanted to follow up on the rock….”<br /><br />“Yes, well we already have…” The woman’s voice trailed off as she looked over her shoulder, a confused look in her tired eyes. I followed her gaze and saw why, two middle-aged men were wrestling with a step-ladder in her living room, upsetting knickknacks and arguing astrophysics.<br /><br /> Aw Geez, I thought, Not Frick and Frack from the Astronomy Club. The same two very two excitable old telescope geeks had chewed up hours of my time six months ago. Should have known they’d be here, taking measurements and complicating matters. At least they’d be good for a few sound bites, I thought as I pushed past the Moon Rock Mom. <br /><br />“Not another damn ghostbuster!”, the man sitting at the kitchen table in his ball-cap sliced his pork chop and gave me the once over. Beside him, a boy of twelve or so stared over his glass of iced tea at the camera hanging off my shoulder. I hoisted my toy and powered up, recorded a shot of the he-man dinner club. A few seconds later I panned over to the the living room, where one skinny silhouette helped the fat one up the ladder. I smiled inside the viewfinder, knowing I’d just bagged my Opening Shot. <br /><br />Moving on the living room, I hovered around Frick and Frack as they shined flashlights up the hole in the ceiling. To my delight, the barely acknowledged me, instead they babbled back and forth to each other in a stream of consciousness astronomer code. <br /><br />"From the steep trajectory, we know it came from above!", Frick the Thin spat. "Yer darn tootin', snapped the fatter Frack, I'm a go get my scopes, W'ere puttin' this rock under the glass!" <br /><br />With that Frack almost ripped the hinges off the door, caught up in a scientific frenzy I recognized from before. When the door slammed shut, I was surprised to see a tall young fellow amid the curtains. I’d never seen him before, but something about his wily afro and workman-like dress clothes screamed newspaper reporter, even before I spotted the tell-tale skinny notebook in his hand. <br /><br />‘This place is getting crowded‘, I thought as my cell phone started ringing. <br /><br />“Yeah, Stew…” I could hear phones ringing in the background as the shaggy producer scanned his rundown, “the Network’s going nuts for your Moon Rock story. They want it on the bird by 9:30.”<br /><br />“They want fries with that?” I barked. Just what I needed, people in New York shaving off precious turn-around time.<br /><br />“I know dude, but when you’re hot you’re hot. Do ya know what it is yet? We got all kinda crazies callin’”<br /><br />Out of the corner my eye, I watched Frick sniff at the oblong metal mass, squinting intently behind a pair of bus-window eyeglass frames. In the kitchen, Frack had squeezed his considerable bulk behind the table, pulled several weird rocks out of a dusty leather case and was laying a serious science lesson on the trapped family of three. <br /><br />“They ain’t ALL on the phone. Gotta go.”<br /><br />I put the cell phone back on my hip and shouldered my camera. Walking up to the skinny man in the Members Only jacket, I stuck my lens in his upturned hands and focused on the object in question. Under his flashlight’s beam, the edges of the rock glistened, casting off weird flickers of green and silver. I could smell the cafeteria coffee on the old man’s breath as the wooly-haired print reporter joined us from the curtain’s edge.<br /><br />“All right Professor - what’s your best guess?”<br /><br />I can’t say he didn’t tell me, though I understood darn little of what came out of his mouth. Well-meaning and well versed, the stargazing scholar unfurled a looping thesis of everything the mysterious rock might NOT be. I tried not to think about my aching back as I panned the camera from the rock to his face, all while he went over the finer points of purloined moos dust. The newspaper reporter, who I came to think of Sideshow Bob, scribbled intently in his skinny notebook and said nothing. I backed off for a two shot of the unlikely pair hunched underneath the ceiling fan before moving onto the kitchen. <br /><br />Bad move. The family sat with glazed looks on their face as Frack pulled musty photographs and cinched bags out of his cracked leather case.<br /><br />“Now, this here is a piece of an asteroid from 1974, note the scarring on the edges, a distinct sign of burning entry…”<br /><br />As I hovered over the kitchen table with my lens, the man of the house looked over at me. With his name on his shirt and his dirty fingernails, he didn’t seem too enticed with the science fair unfolding over his pork chops. The look in his eyes reminded me of a couple of hostage stand-offs I had attended. Poor guy, I thought, zooming out to better capture the catatonic clan, probably just wants to watch SportsCenter, not listen to a bunch of rock-obsessed lunatics expound on their favorite constellations. I almost felt real pity as I zoomed in for a tight shot of his hypnotized eyes.<br /><br />After shooting a few sequences around the table, I returned to the living room where Frick was working himself into a theoretic lather. Sideshow Bob leaned in on every word, still bleeding chicken scratch into his tablet. Not wanting to appear too ignorant, I nodded behind the viewfinder and pretended to understand the litany of scientific terms. But I found myself drifting…maybe this was an honest-to-God Moon Rock, a one in a million piece of Green Cheese that would catapult the family and I into a whole new orbit. For all the astro-babble that Frick and Frack were peddling, they seemed growingly convinced the hunk of metal was not of THIS world. Maybe after all these many years of chasing tripe and trivia, I somehow stumbled across a story that would go down in the History books. <br /><br />That’s when my cell phone rang. <br /><br />It was Shaggy, chuckling under his breath.<br /><br />“Check it out, dude. Some yahoo just called and swore he knew what the moon rock is. He says, ’what chu got thar is a broke tooth off a tub-grinder’ - you know, one of those big wood-chippers? I wouldn’t have called but the guy sounded CERTAIN.” <br /><br />“Wood chipper? “ I said, incredulous. Then I noticed the look on Frick’s face. As my own eyebrows scrunched, I heard a thirteen year old voice ring out from the kitchen.<br /><br />“WE gotta Wood Chipper out back!”<br /><br />The seven words ricocheted off the brown-wood paneling of the small home, rendering adult life forms motionless and spraying implications everywhere. Only the kid seemed unaffected. He darted underneath the kitchen table and ditched Frack’s rambling science lesson for an impromptu field trip. Frick followed and before I knew it, my easy little feature was running out the door. <br /><br />I followed, but none too gracefully. Dropping the cell phone, I dashed across the room and ripped open the screen door. Upon exit, the top of my camera’s light post caught the top of the doorframe, jerking me backwards as I slid on my ass down the porch steps. Frick and the boy barely gave my awkward ejection a second glance though as they rounded the corner out of sight. I fell in behind them, switching filters, guessing light temperatures and flipping camera presets all the way. Behind me, I could hear Sideshow Bob join in the chase. If a jogger had passed by and seen the frizzy haired stranger chasing the cameraman chasing the old coot chasing the boy…well, I’m curious how‘d he interpret the scenario. Chances are it wouldn’t be astronomy.<br /><br />Behind the back yard, a dense line of trees towered over the swing sets and doghouses. With the last of the daylight evaporating into shadows, I could barely make out the hole in the underbrush the boy disappeared through but ole Frick followed with ease so I did likewise. As I entered the forest at full speed, my camera shouldered and rolling I blinked in a vain attempt to squeeze more light of the air. It was hard to see where I was stepping, especially with a one-inch screen bobbing one inch in front of my right eye. That’s when I heard the boy’s voice call from up ahead.<br /><br />“Careful - they’re used to be some holes back here”<br /><br />‘USED to be?’ I thought as I planted another foot on the forest floor and sunk to my shin. With my foot suddenly tangled in a crevice of underground tree roots, the rest of me kept moving forward until I smacked into the ground with a painful thud. Before I could absorb the hit, the weight of the camera met with the side of my head, leaving a bright red spot on my dirt-smeared forehead. Behind me, Sideshow Bob approached meekly.<br /><br />“Are you okay?’ he asked - his first and last words of the evening.<br /><br />“Son of a --”, I never finished the thought; instead I yanked my foot out of the hole and took the young newspaperman’s hand. I didn’t say much as he helped me up - I was too busy checking my camera and picking up my cool points. I had to leave a few on the ground when I herd rustling up ahead. <br /><br />“Over here!” the boy’s voice echoed.<br /><br />Sideshow jogged behind me as I half-limped, half-trotted toward the voice. In the dying light, I saw the boy and Frick peering through a tall chain-link fence, their silhouettes backlit over the fence’s gridiron. The sight reminded of my camera and I squared up the shot, leaning on a tree to compensate for my heavy breathing. After a few seconds, I moved up to the fence itself and zoomed all the way in. Through the blue haze of the viewfinder, I filled the screen with the industrial size wood-chipper that dominated the middle of the city-owned compost yard.<br /><br />“There’s your space ship,” Frick said, with more than a little disappointment in his voice.<br /><br />A half hour later I crawled in my news unit, cranked up the engine and checked the dashboard clock. 8:04 -- two hours until the Ten o Clock news music filled living rooms around the Piedmont. After our woodsy excursion, I came back to the house and interviewed the moon rock family one last time. The parents seemed confused as ever; only the boy seemed to appreciate the irony of the metal blob’s apparent earthbound origin. Even Frick admitted on camera, that the formerly mysterious object was most likely indeed a broken tooth from the massive wood-chipper out back, even noting how the trajectory of the grinder’s chute lined up with the hole in the house‘s roof. After Frack put the metal mass underneath a powerful telescope and found little tiny flecks of grass and wood chips, the luster had officially worn off my magical little moon rock. <br /><br />But not for the viewing public, apparently. The phones back at the newsroom were still ringing off the hook with assorted theories, suggestions and overall hysteria. So much so that the Ten o Clock producer had promoted the moon rock follow-up to his lead. I was picking dried up dirt flakes off my forehead when he called to tell me the news.<br /><br />“The lead? It’s a freakin’ tooth from a wood chipper!” I yelled into the cell phone.<br /><br />“Maybe so,” the voice said, but for the next two hours, its a moon rock, and we’re milkin’ this baby! Get back here!”<br /><br />I did as told. The next city officials examined their giant wood chipper, found a broken metal tooth stub and reluctantly agreed to look into the matter further. Two days later, I was sitting at my desk and struggling with a script when the shapely night-side reporter hung up her phone.<br /><br />“Check it out” she said to the passing assistant news director. “The city’s gonna pay for the Moon Rock family’s roof! We’re doing a follow-up!”<br /><br />“What did I tell you?” the well-tailored manager said, “We’re making a real difference in people’s lives out there...”<br /><br />Yeah, I thought, but we‘re peddling our share of hype too. I then returned to my computer and hashed out a script about a dog in a funny hat. I love local TV news.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1108242621969822452005-02-12T12:59:00.000-08:002005-02-12T13:11:59.056-08:00Viewfinder BLUES<img src="http://photos3.flickr.com/4547035_187a140292_m.jpg"align="right">Herein lies the Longer work of Lenslinger. Most of these tales have appeared in some form or fashion on <a href="http://b-roll.net/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=1">b-roll.net</a>, a website I am most indebted to. For my far more frequently updated site, please visit <a href="http://lenslinger.blogspot.com">Viewfinder BLUES</a>, where I skewer the mighty and trip on the downtrodden - all in the name of television news. Beats my old job at the windshield wiper factory.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1106006305521274532005-01-17T15:55:00.000-08:002007-07-04T06:57:08.606-07:00Operation Idol<span style="font-style: italic;">Check it out dude, You're in 'US Weekly'."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/86947467@N00/147520025/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/48/147520025_3eebbad1a3_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Operation:IDOL"align="left" /></a>Looking down at the glossy magazine thrust in front of me, I took in the two page spread. 'Is Clay About To Crack?' asked the headline. Underneath, Clay Aiken lounged seductively in a blue pantsuit. Scanning the page, I spotted the picture in question - a tiny inset photo of the American Idol runner-up being swarmed by cameramen. There I was smack dab in the middle - my future bald spot already shining in the spotlights glare. Chuckling to myself, I thought about how much work it took to snag that particular spot.</span><br /><br />My Monday started early one morning last spring when the cell phone inside my company car began pitching it's usual fit.. Distant klaxons blared warnings inside my head as I opened the door, grabbed the offensive gadget and looked at my watch.<br /><br />"8:00" -- it blinked in bright-blue digits. This can't be good.<br /><br />"Unit 4."<br /><br />"Stewart, do you have gear?", a familiar female voice sputtered.<br /><br />Hmm. Morning assignment editor, sounding panicky. Trouble indeed.<br /><br />"Yeah, I'm leavin' the house."<br /><br />"Great. We're gonna need to send you to Raleigh ASAP. But you need to come here and pick up Cindy. Clay Aiken is visiting with the Governor."<br /><br />"Who the hell's Clay Aiken?"<br /><br />"CLAY AIKEN! American Idol! He's one of three contestants left on the show! He's from Raleigh and we just found out he's visiting the Governor at ten!"<br /><br />"Ten o'clock! Geez, that's gonna be TIGHT!"<br /><br />"Yeah I know, but Lance is on call and I can't find him. We gotta get moving". The exasperation in her voice rang all too familiar. It was in fact, a well-worn groove inside my battered cell phone.<br /><br />"All right". Pulling out of my neighborhood, I leaned on the gas and did the math.<br /><br />Greensboro to Raleigh, hour and a half - but I gotta pick up Cindy - fifteen minutes away in the other direction. This bites.<br /><br />As I wove my marked news unit through cross-town traffic, I tilted the rear view mirror to check the equipment stashed behind my seat. Camera, batteries, tapes and tripod. That and a mountain of other gadgets in sight told me I was ready to go. Sure as I was of it's status, I'd glance reassuringly at the gear to my rear a dozen more times during the trip. Call it professional paranoia, or some weird occupational tic. But rolling up on a raging warehouse fire out of town only to find an empty camera case in back will do strange things to a fellow. Even if it was thirteen years ago.<br /><br />But today my luck was better. A song or two from a favorite Chilli Peppers CD and a few cross-city short cuts got to me to the TV station I worked for in record time. As I swerved into the parking lot and gunned it for the loading ramp, I felt a little better about my chances of making it.<br /><br />"Can you believe this?", Cindy Farmer asked as she climbed into the Explorer with her purse, briefcase and breakfast. "You're gonna really have to shag a ---"<br /><br />SLAM!!! I punched the accelerator the moment she slammed the door. The perky soccer mom fell back in the seat but juggled her biscuit and oversized fountain drink like the news veteran I knew she was. I steered my mobile office out of the parking lot and quickly ducked onto the interstate ramp. To our left, ten eighteen-wheelers jockeyed for position at 80 miles an hour. I zipped in between two semi's, got in front of one of them and stood on the gas. As I left the convoy of big-rigs on my mad dash eastward, I chewed a toothpick and punched the clock in my head. Yet another sudden jaunt into The Great Unknown - all for a few fleeting moments of pixilated gossip. Not exactly what I had in mind when I used to watch "Lou Grant' on my parents' television.<br /><br />But life's not a Mary Tyler Moore spin-off, and I ain't 'Animal'. The job at hand was Clay What's-His-Name, and if his mug on tape was what it took to get me home this evening, then pity the fool who gets in my way. With new resolve I leaned into the steering wheel and eyed the cluster of vehicles in the distance. Beside me, our station's sweetheart polished off her breakfast with the veracity of a cross-country trucker. Picking crumbs off her canary-yellow business suit, she placed them in the biscuit's wrapper and filled me on the American Idol Dynamo.<br /><br />Something I had assiduously avoided until then. By it's second season the show was one of the few treasured franchises in the Fox line-up. Unlike much of the network's current programming, American Idol posted stellar numbers in a key time slots, creating huge lead-in audiences for the local Fox newscasts that followed at ten p.m.<br /><br />That included the station I worked for - in fact, we boasted one of the highest local ratings of American Idol in the country. Thanks, unbeknownst to me, to some jug-eared warbler from Raleigh. Though I'd yet to witness the reason for all the Clay-mania, his legion of fans were quickly extrapolating all over the state, and sending my news managers into a frenzy.<br /><br />Recognizing the local angle to a national phenomenon, my bosses had recently shifted their considerable focus away from the crime-and-grime of the day just long enough to exploit all things Idol. Well-dressed junior executives could be seen huddling together in conference rooms - pouring over network press kits secure in the knowledge that it held the key to their future. I'd floated on it's far edges as long as I could, but now I was hurtling toward the very vortex of the Clay Aiken Experience.<br /><br />"I've been talkin' to his mom," said Cindy, sipping her lipstick-stained straw. " Real sweet lady. Called me this morning to say he's in town. They're on a break before the final two shows, and the Governors giving him the royal treatment. So much for my promo shoot."<br /><br />Our station's popular morning anchor had done her homework. As soon as the awkward crooner belted out his first show tune for Simon, Randy and Paula, she begun a prolonged telephone-courtship of the singer's family. It paid off a few days ago, when Cindy and another photog had traveled to suburban Raleigh for a on-camera interview with the Aiken matriarch. Now, a chance to score a one-on-one with the human muppet himself was at hand, but only if we bent time and space to get there.<br /><br />Which is what we pretty much did along the crowded corridor of I-40. Not that I went faster than five or six miles over the speed limit. News stories, especially ones this silly, weren't worth the trouble of tickets and such. If we made it on-time (and it looked like we would), we'd do so without breaking the law or endangering lives. Anything else, however, is fair game. After all, no one likes to be late in my business, especially at a press conference. When you're dragging camera, tripod and lights with you - there is no sneaking in quietly. Especially in a small room with too many people in it; the very definition of a 'press-conference' in the first place.<br /><br />Lucky for me, mid-morning traffic was light and we dodged getting hemmed in by any of those spontaneous parking lots along the interstate. By the time nine-fifty rolled around we were hurtling along Raleigh's inner belt line and closing in quickly.<br /><br />"Take South Saunders. The Administrative Building is on Wilson Street." After eight minutes (and one U-turn) we were mere blocks away from our destination.<br /><br />"I think we're gonna make it after all. You GO, Stew!" chirped the mother-of-two beside me as she applied fresh make-up to her face.<br /><br />"We ain't there yet, you wanna stick mike or lav?"<br /><br />"Lav's fine. Holy ---"<br /><br />BWWWAAAAAAAA! From the left a live truck from Durham station veered in front of us, his horn trailing back over the stowed-mast atop the oversized broadcast van. When the driver took a sharp right ahead, I followed. The administrative building loomed before us, but every available parking space was taken - with brightly-stickered SUVs, wagons and step vans from other TV stations. I'd expected one or two crews to be there, but I quickly counted thirteen different logos, all promising to be first, fair and accurate and provide team coverage that's working for me.<br /><br />"That's a lot kids in the sandbox ", Cindy mumbled. Through the windshield, I saw a photographer break from his parked car and sprint for the door. The clock in Unit Four's dashboard read 9:58. Time for action.<br /><br />"Hold on."<br /><br />With a grunt, I squeezed in a half-sized space behind a Toyota 4Runner From a Charlotte station, hoping my own logos and commercial plate would convince any meter maids to ignore the fact that the back two tires were on the sidewalk. Slamming it in park, we jumped out and ran to the back of Unit 4. I popped the tailgate and fished a bulging red fanny pack out. Clicking it around my waist, I grabbed my camera and sticks - then tossed Cindy the wireless microphone transmitter, a metal box about the size of a cigarette pack with a corded lapel microphone on it's side.<br /><br />"Use all your womanly charms to get this around his neck," I said -slamming the tailgate shut and triggering the automatic lock tab in my pocket.<br /><br />"I don't think you understand..." Cindy giggled as we both made a mad dash up the state office building steps.<br /><br />---------------<br /><br />Inside, a small hallway gave way to a large two-story domed atrium. Mid-morning daylight filtered in through high windows on the statues and busts of lawmakers past that stood guard in the round high-ceilinged rotunda. At the entrance to the grand space, a uniformed security guard rode a podium, and chatted with a woman in a powder-blue pant suit. Gripping a palm pilot in quiet indignation, she approached us as we entered.<br /><br />"Everyone's already set up in the Gov'nuh's office," she said, motioning to a side door. "There's not much room."<br /><br />Peeking inside, I saw she wasn't kidding. Photographers, reporters, PR flacks, and assorted government officials packed almost every square inch of the small ceremonial office. Through the crush I could see a forest of cameras on tripods set up in a semi-circle around an oversized mahogany desk. Wrapped around each of those cameras was a surly photojournalist, each flipping switches, squinting through viewfinders and trying to expand their personal space. A local shooter with a frayed ball cap spotted my late arrival and nudged his buddy from across the street.<br /><br />"Man, they're comin' out of the woodwork. This one's all the way from Greens-berry"<br /><br />With that, the crowd of weary lenslingers chuckled as a whole. A few glanced up, smirking as they surveyed the shiny logos on my less than shiny gear. I returned their expressions with a sour smile and quickly raised my tripod to it's highest position. As I methodically untwisted the telescopic legs at lightning speed I stared defiantly at the electronic pack - hoping they'd somehow sense this wasn't my first trip to Capitol City.<br /><br />It was a half-cocky move I felt pretty good about, until I tripped an extension cord with the sweep of a tripod leg - unplugging the hastily-erected spotlights and plunging the whole room into dim-blue overcast daylight.<br /><br />"Yo! Check it! --- lights OUT!" --hmph! - LO-SER!!"<br /><br />Their jaunts and sneers fell around me as I plugged the cord back into the low wall outlet. As the lights popped back on, I stood to face the crowd of news gatherers - all craning backwards to get a better look at me. Rumpled camera lifers in utility vests stood upright, abandoning the blue glow of their viewfinders to watch the bumbling latecomer upsetting the scene. Well-lacquered anchor bunnies even looked up from their nails and giggled. Print photographers leaned on their monopods and silently sized me up. Even the gaggle of government pages stopped cackling long enough to take in the long awkward looks being exchanged around the room. From the corner of my eye, I could see Cindy slowly creeping away from me and trying to melt into the wall, not an easy feat in her canary-yellow business suit. All around the room, weary eyeballs danced and darted in my direction, and somewhere overhead God pressed the slow-mo button.<br /><br />Tough Crowd... I HATE Mondays...<br /><br />The unsettling silence continued as I slowly hoisted my camera into it's home atop the towering tripod. As I powered-up, a rustling sound from the front of the room signaled the start of competition. Like birds on a high wire reacting to an unseen force, the flock of news hawks wheeled in unison and bent back over their cameras. A dozen recording decks engaged as two figures entered the room from a door I hadn't even noticed yet.<br /><br />Craning my neck upward into my high tripod perch I shot over the crowd of station ball caps and zoomed in on Governor Mike Easley. Grinning goofily, the top lawmaker escorted a foppish young gentleman around the assembled pack of media hounds to the prearranged spot in front of the huge State Seal .The clutch of office onlookers erupted in excited whispers - one raised her well-manicured hand to her mouth in frenzied glee. I glanced over at Cindy alongside the far wall and the dizzy twinkle in her own eyes told me the guest of honor had indeed arrived.<br /><br />As flashbulbs popped and the Governor made small talk, I took a closer look at the gangly young chap standing beside him. With his untucked long sleeve shirt and carefully-arranged bed head, Clay Aiken looked more like he should be folding clearance-items at the nearest Old Navy, instead of stealing the spotlight of the World's Most Overly-Hyped Talent Show.<br /><br />This is the guy I raced through five counties for? For him I gotta fight off a pack of pissed-off news-hunters? All for a shot of Opie with a bad hair-cut?<br /><br />Still, I'd covered contrivances far more mind-numbing than this. So with a heavy sigh I was getting all too used to, I zeroed in on today's target of choice and tried to put all thoughts of why aside. Watching the one-inch black and white screen with the distracted intent of a veteran cabbie, I zoomed, racked and focused - collecting every conceivable vista from the limited perch of my too-tall tripod. As the throng of competitors leaned into their own cameras, Governor Easley presented the blushing young crooner with a picture of the 'James Taylor Bridge' - a recently dedicated passage named for another famous tarheel tune smith. Focusing in on the picture, I tilted up for a tight-shot of the current hometown hero. Looking overwhelmed at all the fuss around him, the skinny twenty-something giggled nervously, eyes darting at the pack of gadget-bearing strangers tracking his every move.<br /><br />But for me, it was just another day behind the lens - what exactly I pointed it at these days sometimes ceased to matter. Today I'm stalking a fledgling pop star, tomorrow I'll be camped out at a train wreck. I get the Good, the Bad and the Stupid, and rarely in that order. As a result, I'm a little burnt-out from being so close to the media blowtorch all these many years. Sometimes I wonder if I can be surprised anymore.<br /><br />Back in the Governors Office Clay Aiken laughed it up with the Governor as the print guys clamored for close-ups. Perched high in the back, I worked my own lens. As I eyed the red glow of the 'RECORD' light, I chewed my lip, and stopped wondering what Alfred E. Newman's gay younger brother might look like.<br /><br />From there my mind could have wandered even farther of-center, had something the Governor said not pulled me out of my stupor.<br /><br />" ..and in just a moment we wanna regroup in the rotunda but for now let me say how proud I am..."<br /><br />The Governors voice continued, and I monitored it's pitch and fall by watching the audio needle dance on the side of my camera. Glancing the other way, I spotted Cindy still inching along the side wall. She was only a few feet from the door the Governor and Clay had entered through, which was now blocked by a burly government thug in a blue blazer. I watched her flash him her perfectly toothy telegenic smile, channeling all her southern-fried trophy-wife charm on the big lug, as if he were the floating floor cam she flirted with four hours a day every morning. Of all the on-air talent I've worked with over the years, a select few give you the feeling you could wake them from a deep slumber and they'd immediately be ON. Perky, aware, informative. Bubbling over with natural verve and wit --spouting all the appropriate non-sequitors and broadcast cliches right on cue. Cindy Farmer is one of those people. So it was no surprise when I saw her pass by the now-beaming blue-blazered hulk to just a few feet away from the gushing songbird and the giddy Governor..<br /><br />Slipping my camera's coiled ear piece into my right ear, I quietly pulled the lever on the tripod plate, picked up the camera and shouldered it. Feeling it's familiar heft, I slowly side stepped toward the door I'd entered from. Up in front, the Governor continued his rant praising Raleigh's new favored son, and wishing him luck on the upcoming final two episodes of American Idol. As he held the pack of electron hunters in rapt attention, I gave my tripod one last, reluctant tug across the floor. Leaving it there, I backpedaled out noiselessly - hoping my over-extended tripod parked in the doorway there wouldn't be TOO MUCH of an obstacle for my fellow journalists.<br /><br />-------------------<br /><br />The first thing to hit me was the noise. The mixed chirp and chatter of a preadolescent army filled the high-domed interior as what looked like fifteen fourth grade field trips ambled about the marbled floors. What had been a quiet lobby leading to a calm stately space was now overrun with hundreds of bored, insolent teens. Up above, little faces peered back down from the circular railway lining the second and third stories that formed the Rotunda. Hugging a wall next to what I thought might be the correct door, I checked the camera's time code and watched the kids pass by. Before I could think, a bored nine year old noticed my camera and it's Fox logo. The gig was up.<br /><br />"Ooh Fox TV! Hey Mister, PUT ME ON TEE-VEE! I WANNA BE ON THE NEWS!!"<br /><br />A thousand bike-ramp haircuts and ponytails swiveled in my direction - Tired of hearing their surly teachers drone on about the Old North State's many founders, the pack of preadolescent angst'ers descended on me with a fervor not unlike early Beatlemania. As the pitch of their young vocal cords heightened to a deafening shriek, I shooed the kids away and tried to look mean. It was no use - their honest excitement at having discovered a true-life news cameraman during their forced march through state history was undulating through the preteen crowd, whipping them into an eerie frenzy.<br /><br />Looking up past the throng of faces I tried to concentrate on the tiny dust motes floating in the invading daylight at the top of the painted dome roof. As it backlit the circular throng of screaming kids at the balconies, I once again wondered about my career choice.<br /><br />Coulda been a paramedic, a salesman, maybe a park ranger...<br /><br />I stood half-frozen there, musing on what all this bedlam was doing to my plan, when my ear piece sprung to life and almost shattered my eardrum.<br /><br />"YEAH IF I COULD JUST PIN THIS ON YA! SO HOW YOU DOING - YOU HAVE TO BE SO EXCITED...."<br /><br />Cindy's syrupy sweet voice filled my head at an unbearably high volume. Cranking down my monitor switch I listened as Cindy chatted up her prey with practiced skill. As she pinned the lavalier microphone to something scratchy, I heard static and fabric rustling -- followed by the giggle of what sounded like Michael Jackson with a southern drawl.<br /><br />"YES! So YOU'RE the 'triad connection', Mama's mentioned YOU!"<br /><br />Stepping out from my shelter of the wall, I looked back in time to see the door to the Governors office swing open. An invading flank of photogs, reporters, sound guys and radio hacks poured forth through the narrow doorway, wading into the sea of fourth graders towards me. The local news division was now decamped and it was every man (and woman) for himself. No holds barred - no quarter given.<br /><br />Spinning back around to the suspected (but still closed) door - I peered through my viewfinder, steadied a shot and braced myself for the lightning round of Elbow Fiesta that was about to ensue. I'd barely remembered to roll tape myself when the door swung open and out strode The Governor, The Star, and one brightly-clad bubbly morning anchor. Camera-mounted lights popped on and closed in behind me, triggering a renewed series of screams from the astonished ten year olds. As the throng of lenslingers congealed around the Governor and his guests, I found myself being squeezed into it's epicenter. Suddenly I was face to face with the Guv and the Showstopper as camera jocks of every description trampled the shrieking field trippers around me. Soon I was shoulder to shoulder with photogs on both sides, bracing myself against the push of the pack as the American Idol wannabe stood just inches away from me. A large boom microphone dangled overhead and the crush became even tighter. Wedged up against the Governor, Clay and a tightening throng of photog body parts and lenses, I could smell what many of them had for breakfast. They call these little get-togethers 'gang bags' for a reason.<br /><br />Sensing the crowd was at maximum density, the State's top Bureaucrat piped up with a sense of delight not even exhibited the night he gained that lofty office. I should know - I was there.<br /><br />"Now Clay, if you could favor us with a few bars of a song from your upcoming album. Now I don't wanna plug your album..."<br /><br />"OH! I'LL plug it !" the alleged singer gushed and chortled - in much the same manner Charles Nelson Reilly did back on Match Game 76.<br /><br />Looking up at the oval of young faces staring down at him, Clay Aiken cleared his throat and for a moment gained the composure of someone totally enlightened and free.<br /><br />"YES - YOU BELONG TO ME! I'M YOURS EXCLUSIVE-LEE-EEE"<br /><br />With a force of nature unexpected from such a birdlike chest, Clay's voice rang out rich and true. Preteens and media jackals alike fell silent as his majestic voice filled ever crevice of the historical structure.<br /><br />"INSEPARABLE IT SEEMS! WE'RE FLOWING LIKE A STREAM"<br /><br />The VU meter on my camera pegged at precisely the right point, as my wireless microphone on Clay's collar captured every nuance of his incredibly powerful pipes.<br /><br />"RUNNING FREE FLOWING - ON THE WINGS OF LO-O-O-VE"<br /><br />Through my viewfinder I zoomed in on the rapturous expression that floated over the psuedo-celebritiy's visage. As he attacked the refrain with a voice that would send Jeffery Osbourne back to his singing coach, I followed his voice with my camera, panning up to the frozen throng of onlookers - their mouths forming tiny O's at the undeniable glory of this unlikely heartthrob's golden throat.<br /><br />"TOGETHER , FLYING HI-I-I-GH!<br /><br />FLY-ING HIGH UPON THE WINGS OF L-O-O-O-O-O-O-V-E!"<br /><br />As the apparently seasoned showtune-belter wrung the last syllable for all it was worth, a collective gasp of serendipity floated over the frozen onlookers. Even the ivory-white busts of long-dead lawmakers seemed to smile and sigh. When the expertly bent final note finally echoed to a close, a burst of enthusiastic applause took over the room. I would have clapped myself had my hands not been full of badly-aging television equipment. Trying to regain my well-earned armor of nonchalance, I no longer wondered what made this jug-eared kid special in the eyes and ears of viewers. Simply put, the dude could WAIL - wherever the current craze took him, he would definitely earn his living with his golden pipes. And no doubt it would be a very good living indeed. For a moment I felt a bit foolish for having so heavily disparaged the American Idol juggernaut. But that feeling quickly turned to panic as the Governor dismissed quickly himself to a cadre of awaiting handlers. As the pack of media hounds surged toward Clay for the traditional torrent of questions and answers I couldn't help but notice my 'weak battery' light flashing furiously inside my viewfinder.<br /><br />There was no time to switch out batteries however as well-dressed arms jammed logo'd-microphones under the singer's chin and the talking hair-do's took over. Through the pack I noticed a patch of canary yellow growing bigger as Cindy stretched by and reached over a fellow anchor-lady , finally clearing enough room to slither through. Her normally expertly-groomed appearance paid dearly in the process but the plucky veteran of a thousand newsroom wars wasn't going to let a few out-of-place hairs deny her 'The Get' she'd worked so long and hard for.<br /><br />"So, Clay" - she continued as if the two were gossiping idly at the corner deli, "Tell us all about that mean nasty Simon..."<br /><br />As Clay began defending the Brit's barrage of pithy insults, microphones, zoom- lenses and tape recorders leaned in even further and swallowed my peripheral version. Every few minutes another blown-dry reporter would try to wiggle in on Cindy's turf but she fended them off with the ease of Michael Vick slipping off would-be tacklers on the gridiron. Cindy was, after all, a Virginia Tech grad, and her allegiance to her school's conquering quarterback was legendary. From the look of her moves she had studied the game films.<br /><br />Fighting my own leaning battle against the crush of lens jockeys to either side of me, I reached down and plucked my wide-angle attachment from my belt pouch. Trying not to upset anyone's shot too much, I fixed it to the front of my lens, recording the rest of the prolonged interview on a wide two shot. Figuring the promotion guys would appreciate footage of Clay and Cindy in the same shot, I stared at the blinking red battery light piercing the blue calm of my viewfinder. Through sheer willpower I drained every bit of life force the old battery had to offer at an achingly slow rate. All while Cindy gabbed with the Golden Voiced Skinny One like they both belonged to the same sorority. By the time my battery finally sputtered, choked and died, Cindy had wrung the Idol-in-the-making of every detail she could possibly think of. It was just as well, as the other news teams clamoring for questions were growing increasingly exasperated at Cindy and Clay's extended girl talk. The two spotlight hogs half-hugged each other as Cindy pulled the lav mike off his shirt.<br /><br />As we broke away, the jostling scrum of dry-cleaned talent and wrinkled photogs closed in the gap -- the hired mouthpieces all shouting questions in a confusing blend of well-trained voices. While the pack desperately played catch-up under the ticking Rolex of a power-suited Fox rep, Cindy and I sauntered off more than a little triumphantly. Her canary-yellow suit looked like she'd taken out a few of the dirtier fourth-graders by force and my ugly Hawaiian shirt sported a whole new network of stains and wrinkles. Looking at my watch, I was astonished to see it was only Ten-thirty. A scant half-hour had passed since we'd first stormed the premises. Grabbing my tripod from the empty office door, I collapsed the legs and hoisted it over my shoulder. As Cindy held the door, I high-fived her with my only free hand.<br /><br />"That, " I said through deep breaths, "was a surgical strike to be proud of..."<br /><br />"Yeah," she answered, straightening her skirt as we trudged back to the badly-parked news car, "too bad no one will remember it a week from now..."Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1105812095394947682005-01-15T09:47:00.000-08:002005-01-15T10:07:44.853-08:00Fire On VineI SWEAR, I do more than cover fires. In fact, I'm pretty adept at avoiding lead stories altogether. But with colder weather upon us and the ratings period in full-swing, fires are bound to happen. And occasionally, I'm on call when they do...
<br />
<br />Woke up on the phone again this week. The shrieking of the bedside telephone ripped me from the abyss of hard-earned slumber around 2:30 Friday morning, or so I assume.
<br />Truth is, I didn't regain consciousness until about ten seconds into the call.
<br />
<br />"...on Vine near Centennial. Can you check it out "
<br />
<br />"Snorgle thwat? ", I offered. Blinking into the pitch black, I pictured a giant Viking ship lying on its side - an image from the dream I was just having.
<br />
<br />"Vine street! There's a God-awful house fire on Vine street. The scanner's goin' nuts - says there's people jumping out the window. Can you roll on it?"
<br />
<br />Now I was awake. As I sit up in bed, I could hear the feint sound of a fire truck's wail echoing in the distance. Must be pretty bad if they're rolling units from as far away as my neighborhood.
<br />
<br />"I don't have gear - I gotta come by the station. Print the street directions and meet me at the back ramp in ten minutes."
<br />
<br />I hung up before she could answer and rolled out of bed - upsetting the cat in the process, and prompting an unintelligible grunt from my sleeping bride. Minutes later I was working the gears of my pick-up through the deserted streets of High Point. As the overnight deejay quizzed his guest about the Kennedy assassination, I rubbed my eyes and fumbled around the dark for my wallet. Not finding it, I blew through a red light at an empty intersection instead - hoping the city cops who liked to loiter nearby were instead checking out the four alarm fire just blocks away.
<br />
<br />They must have been, because I wheeled into the station parking lot a few short minutes later. Felicia, the overnight producer opened the door as I sprinted up the loading ramp and ran past her. Just inside the door, the camera lockers stood silently in a row. I popped open the one with the Stevie Ray Vaughan sticker on it and grabbed my battered betacam and a few lukewarm batteries - all while Felicia ran through the details in a scattered stream-of-consciousness.
<br />
<br />"According to Mapquest, Vine street's a block off Centennial - near the homeless shelter. The city's rolling everything they got - scanner said there could be as many as thirteen people involved -- "
<br />
<br />Her voice trailed off as I ran down the ramp, juggling my gear and wondering what looked so odd about my news Explorer parked in the distance.
<br />
<br />I figured it out as soon as I got behind the wheel and swerved onto the street. The steering wheel pulled sharply to the left, and as I leaned out the window and looked down, the sight of my half-flat front tire told me why. Cursing under my breath, I made a sharp right into the parking lot of a closed gas station and scanned the perimeter. AIR - 50 CENTS, the sign read above the dented yellow air box on the side of the building. A wave of relief washed over me, before crashing into the shores of my own stupidity.
<br />
<br />Idling by the air-hose machine, I jammed my hands in my pockets and scoured every nook and cranny of my dashboard. Nothing - not a dime, let alone five of them. Cursing my ill-preparedness I stared through the windshield and did the math. Going back to the station and switching out my gear to another news unit would chew up time I didn't have. With a sigh, I dropped the transmission into drive and punched it, trying my best to lean to the right as I sped toward where I thought Vine street might be.
<br />
<br />It wasn't hard to find. Flashing multi-colored lights ricocheted off trees and houses like beacons, casting a rainbow of strobes on the billowing tower of smoke hovering above the rundown neighborhood in question. From the look of the ash-gray smoke, I guessed the fire was for the most part, out. Which meant no flames for the viewfinder - the image of choice when responding to a blaze. Still, I knew there'd be plenty to capture on tape, and as I limped along the darkened, narrow streets on my half-flat tire - the sight of hastily-parked fire trucks and neighbors in housecoats told me the story was far from over.
<br />
<br />Not wanting to block any emergency vehicles, I parked out of the way on a side street and grabbed my gear out of the back. Up ahead, yellow crime tape blocked the entrance to the 400 block of Vine street. Beyond that flimsy barricade, a massive fire engine blocked most of the view down the pitch-black street. Yellow, red and blue lights from a dozen dashboards hurled flashes and shadows at every directions, making the cloudy, smoky night all the harder to see in. But seeing was precisely what I'd come to do, and as I clicked my camera up onto the tripod head, I wondered how many of these late-night numbers I've been to before.
<br />
<br />With the flick of a switch my camera's viewfinder erupted in blue-light. I twisted a wide shot into focus, with another finger I pulled the iris all the way open, searching for any available light. Slowly panning from right to left - I poised a thumb over the record button. Not to much to work with. From my vantage point at the crime tape I could only see the front corner of the house. Only a fraction of the aging home's front porch was even visible, it's charred exterior lit up every couple of seconds by the crazy dance of the strobes. To the left of the front door a giant jagged hole in the wall revealed an orange glow from within. I rolled tape and focused, stayed with the image for ten seconds before moving on to another shot.
<br />
<br />When I did, a firefighter inside walked past the hole in the wall - creating a silhouette of the classic helmeted hero, back lit by orange. Jerking the tripod's smooth fluid-head, I trained the lens back on the hole, checked the 'Record' light and waited. A few seconds later the fireman form returned and paused in the middle of the vaguely fiery hole. As if on cue, the silhouette pointed a hose upward. When he lay on the nozzle the blast of water brought down thin smoldering planks from above. I'd bagged my first shot.
<br />
<br />After only a few minutes of casually leaning into my battered tripod position, I gathered more than a dozen shots on tape. Wide - medium - tights, at ten to twenty seconds a pop. Brief video/audio recordings of firefighters and hoses and trucks and houses and water and smoke. Nothing I hadn't documented a hundred times before; but in doing so again I knew I'd please my bosses and gather more fodder for the machine. Where that leaves me is a question I often wrestle with. But this is a story about a house fire isn't it?
<br />
<br />Certainly, shooting a fire at night isn't brain surgery, or even dental science for that matter. In fact, it takes about as much skill as driving a golf cart. The secret is in the timing. If you do happen to capture footage of a fully-engulfed structure fire, then credit your assignment desk more than yourself. Nine times out of ten you're left mopping up images at the corner. But I've learned that stories like these are more about people than flames, so I turned around and got shots of a few dazed spectators huddling at the bus stop sign. Something in the way they craned their necks past me made me turn back around, and as I did, I saw a crowd of people in dirty pajamas walking straight towards me. Trying to be casual I glanced at my glowing-blue viewfinder to make sure I was getting the shot. As they slowly filed past, none tried to make eye-contact with me. Instead, they treaded by clutching blankets and looking at the ground. They appeared more annoyed than anything else. I knew how they felt.
<br />
<br />After the interrupted-sleepers walked out of sight a few weary-looking firefighters followed in their path. I scanned their sooty helmet nameplates for monikers I knew, but came up short. As the last member of the sweaty group passed my camera, he eyed me with a professional deadpan squint.
<br />
<br />"Captain Lynch is lookin' for ya."
<br />
<br />"Pree-shate it ", I countered -- not knowing who Captain Lynch was or how he knew I'd be here.
<br />
<br />Refocusing my attention on the smoldering home a block away, I stared at a few firemen-shaped shadows in the front lawn of 403 Vine Street. They all kept glancing downward, motioning to something at their feet. But the slope of a neighbor's fence blocked whatever was at their heavily-booted feet.About that time I noticed a familiar diminutive fire-fighter form approach from the darkness. No more than five-foot two, this helmeted-hero had curly blonde hair bounding underneath. You might mistake the fire department's Public Information Officer as a perky soccer Mom, were it not for her turn-out gear.
<br />
<br />"Denita! How you been?"
<br />
<br />"Oh, you know -- we're busy as always in High Pockets ", she said with her customary twinkle.
<br />
<br />"I hear ya. ". I muttered as I fished a wireless microphone out of my overstuffed fanny-pack. Denita took it and without a word attached it to the thick lapel of her fire coat.
<br />
<br />"Oh yeah " I remembered, "Who's Captain Lynch? "
<br />
<br />"ME, silly" - she beamed and held her hand out to show me a sparkling new wedding ring.
<br />
<br />"Hey, congratulations. I've been hitched 14 years myself."
<br />
<br />Denita and I stood there by the crime tape, chatting pleasantly, as grim-faced residents folded their arms and turned back for home. EMT's and police officers milled about outside their vehicles and gossiped. Some of the firefighters huddled under a tree branch- cocking back their helmets and taking grateful sips from paper cups. A half-block away, the clock in my news unit glowed 3:15, as air slowly seeped from my left-front tire. Business as usual at the news factory - another day at the office, but far away from any cubicle.
<br />
<br />"All right, you good? " Denita asked, as I checked her picture in the one-inch screen jutting off the side of my camera. The red glow of the tally light inside told me I
<br />was rolling.
<br />
<br />"Yeah...what we got here Captain Lynch? "
<br />
<br />All pleasantries left Denita's face as she he ran down the facts.
<br />
<br />"At ten past two o clock we received a report of an involved structure at 403 Vine Street - we also had witnesses reporting people were jumping from the second floor. Units arrived to find eight residents outside the home. There was one fatality..."
<br />
<br />The fact that someone died inside the house on Vine Street was news to me - and would soon be news to the entire Piedmont. As tragic as this new development was however, it didn't exactly fill me with sadness. I've been at this too long for that. But something inside me did grimace and I tried to remember that somewhere, someone would reel in agony at the information I now possessed. But the thought was truly only a flicker, and I asked a few more on-camera questions without missing a beat. When the newly-wed Captain Lynch divulged her minimum of details, I stopped the tape inside my camera and took the lapel microphone off her coat.
<br />
<br />When Denita saw that I had stopped rolling, she locked gazes with me and said quietly,
<br />
<br />"FYI, victim was a twelve year old handicapped boy".
<br />
<br />"Really? Mmm...that sucks." I offered feebly.
<br />
<br />The new detail sunk in and made me feel lousy on some distant level. But closer to the surface, I thought of how the station I worked for would soon trumpet the details of a young boy's horrible death as the lead story of the early-morning newscast. Bleary-eyed overnight editors would cull the most dramatic images from my shoot tape - the fiery hole in the wall - the firemen looking down at an unseen body, the dazed-eyed parade of pajama-clad relatives walking straight for the camera.At five o'clock sharp Channel 10 on your cable dial would awake from it's slumber of nocturnal infomercials and begin blaring the tragedy for all of central North Carolina and beyond to wake up to. Housewives would lean into their sets and shake their heads over their morning coffee. People getting ready for work would catch a few details and hash out opinion and theories around the copier at the office. Some school nearby would call for grief counselors and by nightfall, some child would ask his uneasy parents why his classmate had to die.
<br />
<br />For now though, the news was in the hands of a select few, and I counted myself a little cursed to be one of them - especially since I was about to shout it from the rooftops. As Denita turned to answer a print photographer's question, I broke down my tripod and carried my gear back to my Explorer with the now entirely-flat front-left tire. With a familiar sigh, I stashed the recording equipment in the back and rooted around for the jack and spare. For a second I cursed my own rotten luck, but then felt worse considering a twelve year old handicapped boy lay dead under a sheet a half block away. I'd already hit speed dial by the time my cell phone made it up to my ear.
<br />
<br />"Felicia, Hi. You may wanna rethink your morning live shots. This is a fatal - a 12 year old..."
<br />
<br />-------------------
<br />
<br />Eight hours later I returned to Vine Street. The fire trucks were gone - replaced now by live trucks from four stations, their fifty foot masts still fully extended from their noon live shots. As I piloted my shiny new left-front tire up the street, I spotted who I was looking for. My buddy Matt saw my car, and stepped away from the pack of reporters and photogs and leaned on my door.
<br />
<br />"Stew - what brings you to the rodeo? Shouldn't you be covering some band camp?"
<br />
<br />"Cute - who do ya think got you all your overnight stuff? Got time for some Mexican?"
<br />
<br />"Naaah, we'd better not." He looked over his shoulder at the pack of fellow media jackals across the street. "Channel 12 got the family to talk. The suits just saw it
<br />and now they're losin' their shit. Tara's gettin' yipped at right now."
<br />
<br />He motioned over to our newest co-worker, a tall attractive woman in a sharply pressed burgundy pant suit standing in the distance. When she saw me, she smiled and rolled her eyes at the cell phone in her ear.
<br />
<br />'Business as usual', I thought as I steered my news unit off Vine street. ‘Business as usual.’
<br />Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1104258141100833302004-12-28T09:27:00.000-08:002004-12-28T10:24:01.260-08:00The Stupid and the DoomedI'm still sometimes astounded by the behavior of people at crime-scenes. From the inner city ghetto to the upscale gated-community, the sudden appearance of emergency vehicles are often cause for instant fellowship, no matter what brought the flashing lights there in the first place. Be it a simple drug bust or a triple homicide - the immediate area comes alive with macabre excitement. A swarm of citizenry gather at the perimeter, as people who might not normally talk to each other trade whispers over sudden trouble. It's simply human nature to stop and gawk. Hell, it's what I do for a living.
<br />
<br />But in neighborhoods where crime and tragedy occur more frequently, the assembled masses just outside the crime tape can be downright freaky. I was reminded of this the other week when I spent a couple of hours at a rural trailer park south of Burlington, just hours after a disabled woman burned to death in her modest mobile home.
<br />
<br />It happened around three in the morning but my reporter and I didn¹t roll up on scene until nine a.m. The fire was well out by then but the charred remnants of the run-down trailer still hissed and simmered in the distance. Sweaty firemen in turn-out gear milled about and talked shop with a crew-cut fellow from the SBI Arson Team. A dozen neighbors clustered and preened at the far end of the hastily-strung black and yellow tape.
<br />
<br />"This should be easy", Erik the reporter said - and without a word we got out of brightly-logo'ed Ford Explorer. As we unpacked our gear we continued our idle office gossip from the ride over, but as we turned to walk toward the trailer and crowd, we both quieted and took on far flatter expressions. Unsaid, yet understood - it was simply the decent way to act around victims of tragedy. Of course, different reporters take different approaches to this kind of thing, from the wide-eyed drama queen to the over-empathizing advocate to squinty seen-it-all cynic. Lucky for me, Erik was a pro. His casual stride and 'just-the facts' demeanor told me we'd be able to handle the whole thing with calm and dignity and still be hitting the Chinese buffet by noon.
<br />
<br />As we neared the scene, a rumpled newspaper photographer whom I'd never met approached. Jostling his many lenses, he looked up with a knowing smirk.
<br />
<br />"Careful, fellas. They ALL wanna be on Tay-Vay..." Over my shoulder I could hear him chuckling - then suddenly a shout from ahead...
<br />
<br />"Yo! News crew in the hizzle Fo' SHIZZLE! Ova here dawg, I tell you wha'chu wanna know!"
<br />
<br />Several of the neighbors motioned wildly at us, the largest one waving with both hands. Erik rolled his eyes before turning to walk toward them. Meanwhile, I stopped to shoot the twisted metal that someone recently called home. Through my viewfinder I scanned and recorded eight second shots - a wide perspective of the trailer and yard - a medium shot of the blackened door, a tight shot of a charred flower pot sitting on the front step. Nothing brilliant, just the perfunctory angles destined to become file footage one day. Walking to the far side of the lot, I perched on my tripod and zoomed in on the crowd. Erik was talking to the big one so I cropped him out of the picture and centered on a young woman in a Stone Cold Steve Austin t-shirt. Sucking on a cigarette for all it was worth she quickly spotted me and threw what looked like a gang-sign at me. So much for grief stricken neighbor shot, I thought as I stopped recording.
<br />
<br />Erik walked up, his dapper suit and sculpted hair looking out of place in the dusty trailer park yard. "Old lady, epileptic - they think she he had a seizure while smoking a cigarette. Two neighbors ran in to save her but they couldn¹t get to the back room. One of 'em was transported for smoke inhalation. Let's get some sound."
<br />
<br />With that, I followed back to the crowd. The first choice was obvious; the massive young chap who dominated our view. Decked out in oversized sweat pants and too-tight Dale Earnhart Jr. t-shirt, he topped it all off with a healthy assortment of pawn-shop bling-bling around his neck. As I rolled tape, I saw he was furiously chewing on a drinking straw, the crumpled plastic tube bent every which-away inside his grinning mouth.
<br />
<br />"Okay", said Erik when he saw that I was rolling. "what's your name?"
<br />
<br />"They call me Biggie."
<br />
<br />"Biggie? You got a last name, Biggie?"
<br />
<br />"Biggie, just Biggie."
<br />
<br />I looked up, wondering how long Erik would give this clown. As he asked Biggie to recount the events of the previous hours I stared at the one inch black and white screen inside my view piece, and silently debated whether his thousand yard junkie stare was real or not.
<br />
<br />"..yeah I know Miss Alice. She get her check EVERY month. See her a lot walkin' to the mailbox or smoking on her back porch...Iz is gon' be on TV?"
<br />
<br />"Probably", Eric dead-panned. "I understand you tried to go in to get her out?"
<br />
<br />"Man, we tried - but it was too damn hot. Smoke pourin' out of ever where. Yo, what time's dis gon be on?"
<br />
<br />As Biggie enjoyed his moment of glory, his squirrely pack of buddies pushed in around him, entranced by the lens of my battered betacam. Scanning the crowd, I thought of my own youthful days wallowing in the muck and redneckery of manufactured housing. Seems unfortunate teeth, free t-shirts and frizzy mullets are still the uniform of the day in certain mobile home courts. Take away the ghetto fabulous flourishes and it could have been any of countless southern fried trailer parks I frequented in the late seventies. To that end, I wasn¹t particularly surprised to discover the sound of the engine idling nearby was coming from a thirty year old Camaro Rally Sport sporting patches of primer gray.
<br />
<br />But I was a little taken aback by Biggie's overall giddiness. If what he said was true he just witnessed the horrible death of a friendly neighbor lady. But he was strutting and preening like he¹d just won the lottery. Though I had no emotional ties to the elderly victim, I felt more bummed out about the whole thing than he was. And I¹ve had the misfortune of covering more fatal trailer fires than I can honestly count.
<br />
<br />As the camera rolled, I noticed Biggie was playing more to his crowd of buddies than the lens. Turn down the sound and it looked as if he was auditioning for some kind of white boy Def Comedy Jam reality show. Every few seconds he¹s glance nervously at the cops and firefighters gathered just yards away. But he wasn¹t gonna let their presence rob him of any glory. As he chewed his straw and grinned crazily at the camera , Erik went for broke.
<br />
<br />"Sounds pretty grim. What's going through your mind now?"
<br />
<br />"Man, you know I'm sad and shit. But...we did all we could do, youknowwhatI'msayin, dawg...hey, how much dat camera cawst?"
<br />
<br />It was time to move on and we did. We grabbed a quick interview with the Sheriff, who backed up Biggie's theory of epilepsy and cigarettes. I took more shots of the scorched remainder of Miss Alice's trailer, noting how the smell of a structure fire on a chilly morning brought back a flood of news scene memories (I been at this too long). We were packing up when the fire trucks began pulling away. Even the SBI guy was packing up, no doubt late for a firefighter rendezvous at the nearest country-fried diner. They must have wanted to beat the lunch crowd, because they took off in a hurry. We quickly shot a stand-up, a handheld shot panning from the a blackened windowsill to Erik walking past the rubble.
<br />
<br />"Fire fighters aren¹t sure the exact cause of the blaze but they say Alice Floyd¹s epilepsy and smoking habit played a major part in her untimely death"
<br />
<br />Minutes later we were all packed up and began slowly driving out of the trailer park. As we passed by the trailer with the idling Camaro parked in front, I noticed Biggie and his pals sharing a cigarette under a distant tree.
<br />
<br />"Yo dawg, twenty dollahs and I'll get ya inside that trailer!" he roared, sparking an outburst of hysterical laughter amid his set - all of whom looked healthy enough to be find more suitable employment on this fine Tuesday morning than scavenging through some dead old lady's few burned possessions.
<br />
<br />"That's okay man, we don't need to go in there" Erik yelled as he rolled up the window. "Geez, that guy's missing a few chromosomes..."
<br />
<br /> -------------------------
<br />
<br />Still, Biggie found his way into our story that night. His ghetto-redneck savoir-faire spiced up a pretty typical trailer-park tragedy. But I had a devil of a time finding footage of the neighbors that didn¹t look like it came from the parking lot of a Monster Truck Show. Especially Biggie. Thr burly young thug grabbed his crotch, spit loogies and issued high-fives all through my tape. What I would have given for a shot of him looking pensive. But this ain't Cinema - It's News, and reality rules the day. Biggie had his moment in the sun.
<br />
<br />But at what price to poor dead Miss Alice?Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1102273209889932992004-12-05T10:59:00.000-08:002004-12-05T11:00:09.890-08:00Jasmine at the Tragic FactoryWhenever someone sees me coming with camera and questions in hand, they invariably ask ‘Where’s the Reporter?”
<br />
<br />“Oh, it’s just me today,” I say while setting up my gear. I rarely tell them I most always work alone. It would take far too long to explain how years of babysitting rookie reporters drove me to go solo. They wouldn’t understand, anyway. And though I never do, I’m sometimes yearn to tell them about a young lady who pushed me over the professional edge - a diva in-the-making who oozed arrogance, incompetence and success. We'll call her Jasmine.
<br />
<br />From the moment Jasmine arrived at my station, she pioneered new ways to piss people off. Though not technically a rookie, she'd spent a year or two as resident morning anchor bunny out west before making a sizable jump to my shop - where she was erringly heralded by management as 'the next Katie Couric'.
<br />
<br />To her credit she wasn't half-bad on the set. With her stylish hair-do and reasonably good looks, she could melt the Windex off a teleprompter at fifty paces. Trouble was, she was hired to report - and after only a day or two it became glaringly obvious to our journeyman group of veteran photographers that this chick couldn't write a grocery list without a six person support staff.
<br />
<br />This of course made her exceedingly unpopular with the lens-toting set. Every morning we'd slink in to see what unfortunate sap got 'the bullet'. Grown men would tremble in their photog vests as they watched the assignment editor chalk up their name beside hers. I know, I was one of them.
<br />
<br />It wasn't just her lack of experience that made working with her such a traumatic experience. Jasmine seemed to regard anyone off-camera as a lower life-form and wouldn't listen to even the most well-intended advice. Never burdened with tact or charm, she had a preternatural ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.
<br />
<br />Once we were in the home of a b-list NASCAR driver, doing morning live shots with a bunch of racing wives as they hawked an upcoming tour of homes. Jasmine simply didn't 'get' NASCAR and went on and on to the assembled trophy wives how stock car racing was 'a bunch of hillbillies riding in circles'. Silence fell over the kitchen we were huddled in and I fought the urge to low-crawl out of the room as the clueless news queen endlessly disparaged the industry that paid for all those palatial homes. The NASCAR wives threw silent daggers with their eyes but my vapid partner-for-the-day never got the hint. I even agreed with much of what she said, but as she prattled on about 'the idiocy of all motor-sports', all I could do was stare at my tripod and fight the urge to bludgeon her to death with it. She was quite simply, the most unlikable person I have ever met. That's saying a lot, considering the business I’m in.
<br />
<br />For awhile her fate seemed delightfully shaky as she butchered a series of high-profile live shots. Not used to working outside the cushy confines of the studio, the little anchor princess repeatedly short-circuited on camera, prompting low-key high-fives from the control room to the photog's lounge. If this world-class vixen was going to crash and burn LIVE every night, her co-workers were more than eager to make popcorn and roll tape.
<br />
<br />Sadly, I was the poor schlub saddled to her star the day she halfway redeemed herself. It was an impossibly muggy summer afternoon when she and I rushed to the scene of a fatal house fire. Deep in the barrio of an outlying county, a run-down house had burnt to the ground, killing three small children of an extended migrant family, and whipping the surrounding community into a frenzy.
<br />
<br />It was bedlam when we rolled up. Grim-faced paramedics and firefighters milled about as a growing crowd of shocked neighbors whispered and wailed outside the smoking rubble of the gutted home. To make matters infinitely worse, the crowd of shrieking family members and looky-loo's spoke only Spanish. "No problem", Jasmine declared, "so do I". But I had my doubts as she grabbed my wireless microphone and delved into the crowd of grief-stricken Hispanics.
<br />My suspicions were right when, after using the three Spanish words she knew, she stared blankly at the rush of foreign words her questions sparked. As she spun around helplessly with microphone in hand, I did my best to hide behind a light pole.
<br />
<br />Eventually she gave up, resigned to the fact we'd have to rely on sound from the fire chief . Even that was painful, as she repeatedly asked the chief WHY he didn't yet know what started the blaze. He shot me questioning looks and I did my best to pantomime an apology. When she finally ran out of yes/no questions, I managed to lock her in our recently-arrived satellite truck. I was doing my best to soothe the fire chief's feathers when Jasmine escaped from the truck and bounded up to me with the joyous glee of a showcase showdown winner...
<br />
<br />"We got the 911 tape! We got the 911 tape!", she bellowed through her perfect grin. Glancing at the aggrieved family (who understood enough English to know this vile women was doing back-flips over the bodies of their dead children), I herded her back into the truck and considered throttling her with an orange drop-cord.
<br />
<br />Instead I sat with her as she stared at her empty reporter's pad. Despite the fact I wanted to see her fail spectacularly, I listened to myself give her an idea of where to start the story. After about a half hour we were ready to track audio, most of the words coming out of her mouth my very own. When it came time to go live she got through the three line intro and close with barely a hitch, much to my chagrin (and relief).
<br />
<br />On the way back to the station, she basked in the after-glow of her first successful live shot in weeks, as I tried not to bite a hole in my lip. She was obviously aware of her precarious position with the bosses and now oozed self-absorbed relief.
<br />
<br />"Ya know, I really think it was fate", she said as she checked her look in the mirror, "it was God's way of rewarding me for working so hard. I just needed the chance to show them what I can do..."
<br />
<br />I stared at the stretch of two-lane blacktop in front of us and tried to process what I was hearing.
<br />
<br />"Let me get this straight", I asked, "God killed three Mexican kids so YOU could have a good live shot?"
<br />
<br />The rest of the trip was in silence.
<br />
<br />----------
<br />
<br />‘Jasmine' held on to her gig a little while longer before being unceremoniously dismissed and replaced. I'm not sure where she landed but I'm certain she hoodwinked some other news executive and is no doubt out-earning me as I write this. Which, in the world of TV news, makes perfect sense.
<br />Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1101260404849318912004-11-23T17:38:00.000-08:002004-11-23T17:40:04.850-08:00Up the River with EdRecently the camera on my shoulder dragged me to a place I thought I'd never see - Death Row. Thankfully, it was a brief visit. I made the ninety-minute jaunt to Raleigh's Central Prison at the behest of my producers, who were conjuring up a local tie-in to an upcoming John Walsh special on executions. They needed some 'dramatic footage of our state's killing floor', and while it sounded kind of cheesy, I was all up for visiting the Big House. As long as they let me out when I was through. Which they did. But my time inside was long enough to convince me I was right to put off that tri-state killing spree.
<br />
<br />A sour-faced woman in a gray uniform rode an ancient desk in the Visitors Entrance of Central Prison. When I approached her with a smile, she shot it down with a ready-made grimace. As I tried to explain the reason for my visit, she looked me over, taking in my camera, tripod and loud Hawaiian shirt with institutional disdain. Never uttering a single syllable, she thrust a clipboard forward and motioned to the seventies-era plastic chairs in the corner. Ten minutes later I was still filling out forms, surprised at how much personal information was required to visit a facility I helped finance. As I hunched over the clipboard and scribbled furiously, a heavy male voice spoke out.
<br />
<br />"You the TV man?"
<br />
<br />Looking up, I came face to face with a sawed-off tree trunk of a man. With his wide tie, short-sleeve shirt and sensible brown slacks, my guide for the day looked like some extra from an old 'Barney Miller' episode. But this flatfoot wouldn't be cracking wise to a canned laugh track. Ever. With a suspicious glare, he took the clipboard from my hands and stared at it with the air of a man eternally constipated. The expression fit his face as naturally as the heavy stubble he kept so closely shaved. As he eyed with naked contempt the blanks I'd filled in, I stole a glance at his nametag. ED, it said. Watching him scour the forms for any mistakes or deceptions, I got the feeling Ed didn't give a flip who I thought he looked like, as long as I'd printed it neatly on one of those forms.
<br />
<br />Still, it was his house, and I wasn't about to make waves in a building where they inject poison in your veins if you piss them off enough. So for once, I kept my mouth shut and avoided any sudden movement as Ed dug through my fanny-pack, no doubt looking for drugs, pornography and black market cigarettes. When he found only tapes, batteries and a half-filled box of tic-tacs, he handed me the pack and turned to walk down the hall, grunting instructions for me to follow. As we approached a heavy steel door, he paused. Somewhere from within the walls another state employee threw a switch and the door slowly groaned opened - revealing a long, under lit hallway.
<br />
<br />"I s'pose you wanna see the death house" - Ed muttered over his shoulder with all the warmth of, well, a prison guard.
<br />
<br />"Yeah, that'd be great", I offered. As we made our way down a long corridor, the polished heels of Ed's shiny black shoes echoed their cadence. Slate-gray cinderblock walls watched us pass with blank indifference. A rigid line of caged light bulbs split the narrow ceiling in half, and the blended aroma of sweat, bleach and mothballs reminded me of my time at sea. Somewhere deep in my head, The Doors launched into their longest song.
<br />
<br />'This is the end, beautiful friend, the end...'
<br />
<br />The sharp thunk of the door reversing in its tracks snapped me back to the present, and I instinctively rolled tape to capture the sound. Ed never broke his stride. As the door behind us closed, one in front of us opened. We waited wordlessly while the massive metal divider rumbled along. When it reached the end of it's chain-driven path, Ed stepped inside to a low-ceiling round room lined with heavy doors. I followed, more than a little reluctantly.
<br />
<br />Eight, identical doors line the round room, staring back at each other but unable to see. A waist-high twelve-inch lidded-and-locked slot were the doors' only adornment. A single surveillance camera perched over every locked entrance to nowhere.
<br />
<br />"This is ya death house. Six weeks away from execution date, we move tha inmate out of general population and in here. Right now it's empty", Ed said, with just a hint of disappointment in his voice.
<br />
<br />Suddenly, one of the eight doors roared to life, rolling leftward on its tracks to reveal a cell no more than ten by ten feet. Squinting through the viewfinder, I centered up the shot and pressed RECORD. It was one of the half dozen sequences requested by my producers, and I remembered why I was taking this hellhole tour in the first place. I glanced at Ed and thought of a way to phrase my next request.
<br />
<br />"Hey, you mind if I, uh --"
<br />
<br />"Help ya'self".
<br />
<br />Something in Ed's tone spooked me, but I dismissed the notion and stepped inside the cell. Hoisting my camera atop the tripod I'd been dragging along, I focused on the room's few items and got to work. The images were suitably Spartan - metal bunk, dull-rusted sink, stainless-steel toilet. As the tally light inside my viewfinder glowed red, Jim Morrison spoke from the grave.
<br />
<br />The killer awoke before dawn; he put his boots on...'
<br />
<br />The sound of slow-rolling chains suddenly filled the air, and I wheeled around to catch sight of the cell door slowly closing. Ed was nowhere to be seen. Not knowing exactly what I was supposed to do, I did what came natural. I put my eye back to the viewfinder and squared up the shot. WHAM! The sound of the door slamming home bounced crazily off the walls.
<br />
<br />Pulling the viewfinder away from my eye, I almost yelled something to myunseen captor but thought better of it. Ed was apparently having some fun with me, and no doubt getting his rocks off in the process. Not wanting to spoil or heighten the experience for him, I put the camera on the floor and sat down on the metal bunk.
<br />
<br />As I slowly looked around, I tried to take in every atom of the four walls and ceiling - wondering what details must reveal themselves after a lifetime of staring at the same small enclosure. I realized the room was about the size of my walk-in closet, but opposite in every other way. Instead of being stuffed with well-used possessions, this room was impossibly sterile, devoid of anything feeling like home, bereft of all creature comforts. For some souls, this was the last stop on Planet Earth, A weigh-station to another world. A place to pace, ponder and prepare to die.
<br />
<br />The door remained close and I looked at my watch. Only three minutes had passed but it felt far longer. As I stared, the second hand of my watch seemed to slow down. Looking around at the faceless concrete walls, I tried to fathom what it must feel like to spend twenty-three
<br />
<br />hours a day in such a place. Months spent deployed on a U.S. Navy ship had already introduced me to incarceration, but that pales in comparison to spending the rest of your life in a box.
<br />
<br />'This is the end...my only friend, the end...'
<br />
<br />I was relieved to hear the door began sliding on its grooves again. It opened to reveal Ed standing before me, an almost imperceptible smile under his five o'clock shadow.
<br />
<br />"Thought you might wanna get a few mo' shots for ya TeeVee sto-ree"
<br />
<br />"Yeah - you got me," I glad-handed, not ''s favorite prison tricks. As I stepped out of the cell with camera and tripod in hand, Ed broke into a sickly grin.
<br />
<br />"Let's go see The Chair"
<br />
<br />A few hallways and groaning doors later, we reached what for some, was
<br />
<br />their final Earthly destination. The gas chamber sat empty and silent and as I stepped inside, the medicinal smell rather surprised me. Keeping one eye on my growing-creepier-by-the-moment host, I framed up a shot of the heavy wooden chair dominating the lethal room. Thick leather straps hung from the legs and arms of the chair, straps that had kept doomed men in place while the State pursued justice. In the back corner, a heavy steel stretcher caught my attention. Rolling tape, I panned the room. From behind me, Ed spoke the most words in a row I'd yet to hear him utter.
<br />
<br />"This here chair's more 'n sixty years old." Course we don't use it no more, we just roll the stretcher in front of it. Ever' body says lethal injection's better, but I don't know..."
<br />
<br />Something in his tone made me look up, and I noticed he was staring at the gas chamber chair with a look usually seen on men admiring racecars, speedboats or exotic dancers. Wondering what good ole Ed might do for fun on his off-time, I turned back to my trusty camera and got back to work. After a few minutes, I had what I'd come for and was growing anxious to taste fresh air again.
<br />
<br />But one last sight made me linger. With the death chair directly behind me, I looked through the thick plexi-glass window into the witness room on the other side. Ten empty chairs glared back at me. I thought of what it must be like to stare through that window, to see disaffected press members, distraught relatives and the seething hatred of the victim's family - all while sullen men in catalog-ordered uniforms readied the potion that would soon induce your death. I found myself wondering which searing, sterile image burned into the doomed men's corneas as theycrossed over to meet whatever consequence awaited them.
<br />
<br />'Get out', a voice in my head feebly offered.
<br />
<br />"Okay, that should about do it", I muttered to Ed - apparently snapping him out of his own haze. "Thanks for your time, I'd better go run and meet that deadline..." I listened to myself prattle on, hoping I didn't sound as eager to leave as I thought I did. Luckily, Ed seemed eager to get rid of me as well. Ever since we'd entered the gas chamber, he'd grown distracted. Perhaps he wanted to polish his beloved gas chamber chair without any outsider's intrusion. Whatever his plans, he seemed in a sudden hurry to see me off, and that was fine with me. As we neared the visitor's lobby, his previous lack of expression returned. Reaching over to pluck the visitor badge off my shirt, he locked eyes with me. As he drew a little too close for comfort, I could smell institutional coffee and Texas cinnamon rolls. Ed smiled that smile again; the same sickly grin he flashed when first mentioned The Chair.
<br />
<br />"Ya'll come back and see us"
<br />
<br />Within a few minutes I was behind the wheel of my news vehicle, the images I needed caught on tape, and a few I didn't need seared into my frontal lobe. While my brief tour of North Carolina's only sanctioned murder scene didn't totally change my support of capital punishment, it's certainly made me look at it from a whole new perspective. And from now on, whenever I hear of my home state poisoning yet another inmate, I'll know that somewhere deep within the dark confines of Raleigh's Central Prison, my good buddy Ed is wishing they'd use The Chair instead.Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9029852.post-1100396870719024702004-11-13T17:46:00.000-08:002004-11-13T17:53:12.563-08:00A Day In the Strife<blockquote>There are days I LOVE my job...</blockquote>
<br />
<br />A Last Friday wasn’t one of them. Nothing earth shattering happened, just a prolonged series of predictable events that the average photog might call typical. Thing is, I ain’t average - or typical. I work hard to produce solid packages WITHOUT a reporter, and as a result, I enjoy a bit more autonomy than most shooters. However, two days ago forces outside my control conspired to screw me and at times, I took it like a rookie. Along the way, there were moments of great déjà vu - certain episodes and aspects of the daily chase that strike me as almost universal. I may be wrong, but perhaps this has happened to you…
<br />
<br />First Man Down
<br />
<br />I knew I was screwed the moment I entered the newsroom. As usual, I’m the first photog in. Say what you will, it is a long-held habit that pays great dividends in story selection. Today however, I would not get to cherry-pick my gig. I’d barely made it to my desk when a burly assignment editor scurried up, shuffling papers and radiating panic. Seems a shooter called in sick and since we were down he needed me to ’load up and hit the road’ with the tall well-dressed fellow standing behind him. I recognized the tall guy as our most recently hired reporter, and as the assignment editor babbled on, I realized resistance was futile. Minutes later, my partner-for-the-day and pulled out of the station parking lot, passing several arriving photogs along the way. Knowing I’d taken a bullet for at least ONE of them, I grinned and flipped-off them ALL.
<br />
<br />The New Guy
<br />
<br />He seemed nice enough, and was awful cheery -but as I merged on the interstate, I could barely bring myself to look over at my reporter. When I did, a well- groomed twenty-five year old grinned back innocently. He’d only been with us for a week or two and the constantly grinning chap was bubbling with wholesome enthusiasm. His hair cut-close, his dark slacks pressed, and his tie a sensible one - the guy looked like he should be selling bibles somewhere in the Midwest. I know reporters come in all flavors, and I ‘m pretty sure I’ve tried them all. But at the moment, I was more in the mood for some bitter, disillusioned hack than the starry-eyed choirboy seated to my right. As we sped down I-85, I chewed a toothpick and fought the urge to throw his bright Tupperware lunch out the window.
<br />
<br />Running Behind
<br />
<br />It was then my colleague unfurled our itinerary. Our mission was to package the latest chapter in a controversial school re-districting plan. A press conference was scheduled for eleven o clock and according to the desk, sparks were certain to fly. Not a great story, but okay. I was soothing my veteran feathers with thoughts of one-stop-shopping when The New Guy ruffled them all over again. “Oh yeah, before that we gotta swing by and pick up a vosot. We need to hurry though, it started an hour ago and is probably almost over” Biting my toothpick in half, I spat out the remains and stood on the gas. Racing the clock for forty seconds of forgettable television is something I’ve spent way too much of my life doing, and all familiarity breeds contempt. As I once again made that mad dash, I drove imaginary spikes though assignment-editor voodoo dolls in my head. The fact that I knew we’d make it in time (as we always do) made doing so all the more unpleasant.
<br />
<br />Late Morning Collapse
<br />
<br />The finger sandwiches told me all I needed to know. As my tall colleague and I sauntered in early to the Department of Education boardroom, I couldn’t stop staring at the decorative lunch items on the corner table. They don’t serve happy food like that at heated confrontations, that is mere workshop fare. I didn’t know all the details of the debate at hand, but I did know my bosses back at the station were desperate for a decent lead story. The ongoing school board saga had provided fodder for weeks, and the suits back at the shop smelled blood. I however, smelled pimento cheese and it told me there would be no controversy here. Pulling my reporter close, I told him of my fears. This ain’t what we thought it was, we’re gonna end up shooting enough for a lame-ass package and they ain’t gonna want it…” I handed him the cell phone and told him to call the bosses, hoping against hope I was wrong. As it turned out, I wasn’t.
<br />
<br />Midday Reshuffle
<br />
<br />“What else ya got for us?” I could hear the head-deskie’s voice coming out the cell phone receiver. My partner, still cheery but growing confused, stammered an answer. I sat behind the wheel and stared at the school board building parking lot through the windshield. ‘What ya got for us? How ‘bout an empty stomach and a bad attitude?’ I chewed over other replies as Too Tall nodded and repeated okay’s into the phone. He hung up and looked over at me. His grin was still there, but it was growing a little vacant. “They want us to go to the strip. The Women’s ACC Tournament’s in town and….”
<br />
<br />“They want us to talk to local businesses about the economic impact”, I answered. “I did that same weak piece last year”. Dropping the gearshift into drive, I pulled away and grimaced. If they want me to repeat myself, FINE, but sweeps ended two days ago, it’s now Friday afternoon and I already got thirty minutes of tape in the can. It’s a hell of a time to ask for one of Stew’s Greatest Hits.
<br />
<br />
<br />Sizzle and Salivate
<br />
<br />Fifteen minutes later, I was loitering in the kitchen of a Sports Bar Steak House. After a few too many in-camera questions for the restaurant manager, I shouldered my camera and began collecting b-roll. Busy cooks squeezed past me and passing waiters did double takes at the floating betacam in the prep area. I stared though my viewfinder and bent over the grill, bringing the image of a thick sizzling burger into focus. A plump cook leaned in and made matters infinitely worse by adding bacon. The glorious smell of the savory bacon burger washed over me and I nearly grew feint with imaginary hunger pains. Swallowing my drool, I tried to act casual as I worked the lens into submission. After a few more minutes of deprived taste-bud delirium, I stumbled out of the kitchen and made eye contact with the grinning tall man. “We got enough - get me to a drive-thru, quick!”
<br />
<br />
<br />Voices From Beyond
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<br />The burger I soon devoured was a pale imitation of the one I’d caught on tape. Still, I sat in my mobile office and polished off the McSomething as my reporter exited his fourth hotel in ten minutes. Opening the door to my idling news unit, he hopped in and slammed the door. “Guy said business sucked! Then he went corporate on me.” I chewed my straw and watched passing traffic. I was about to lay out my umpteenth smartass assertion of the desk’s incompetence when the cell phone rang. There wasn’t just one idiot on the line, a half dozen voices called out, sounding as if they were at the bottom of some metallic hole. Speakerphone, the communication choice of the think-tank set. “ Guys, head over to the Mall - It’s been sold - We’re sending you a truck!” The straw dropped from my lips as I processed what I was hearing. When the voices fell silent, I knew they were waiting for a reply. ‘Eff the Mall!’ I wanted to yell. ‘The next time you wanna play jack-around-the-new-guy, LEAVE ME THE HELL OUT OF IT!” Instead, I looked over at my no-longer grinning partner. “Tell whoever’s bringing the truck to meet us on the JCPenney’s side.”
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<br />The Truck Swap
<br />At its best, a truck swap can be a moment of reprieve from battle, like the scenes in the Highlander where the far-flung immortals rendezvous briefly at some unlikely spot. It can be a chance to vent, bum a battery or cigarette. Unless of course, the person pulling up in the rolling billboard is LESS than a buddy, a friend or a pal. Then the transaction takes on the air of a tense prisoner swap at some hostile border checkpoint. As you switch gear from the news vehicle to the larger live truck, you try to maintain eye contact with the driver, and wonder if he’s there to aid and assist or merely gather Intel for the goons back at the shop. For better or worse, my would-be rescuer seemed anxious to unload the live truck and be on his way. He did just that, and I found myself hoping I had what I needed as he pulled away in my beloved Ford Explorer - no doubt planning to race it’s engine and pilfer it’s contents.
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<br />The Long Wait
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<br />What with having to interview uneasy Mall officials, shoot exteriors, process our four stories and cut countless teases, my tall partner and I had our hands full. As curious shoppers rubbernecked their way past our live truck, we juggled the phones, tapes and papers required for your average live shot. And average it was. With a view of the Mall, nearby Convention Center and interstate exchange, there was plenty to look at it and nothing to see. Once the stories were cut, I set up the camera, raised the mast and tuned in the shot. After feeding the tape back to the station and talking trash with the head edit chick, I settled in the back seat of the truck and started the long wait. The generator engine rumbled and the air reeked of exhaust fumes. Up front, my favorite Tall Guy was applying make-up and cheerfully mumbling the lines he would soon deliver live on camera. Amid all this technology and preparation, I sat frozen in the back - my eyes glazing over like some spaced-out junkie. Forty minutes to Showtime, then another fifty-five minutes before our hit at six. As the generator rumbled its long pathetic song, God pressed the pause button and went out for a sandwich.
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<br />Mopping Up
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<br />By the time we made it back to the station, my reporter was no longer grinning. He’d been used and abused by the desk this day, and he was smart enough to know it would happen again. Still, he took the punches and rebuffs well, never losing focus and cursing far less than I. This makes Him the winner and I told him such before dropping him off at the station. Looking down at the gas gauge, I saw that I was well under half a tank. Knowing a half-empty tank would lead to terse voice mails from the chief, I steered the live van back out on the street. The gas station was a block away, and besides after this quick errand my day would truly be done. That was when my pager began vibrating and as I struggled in the darkness to decipher the feint letters I already knew what it probably said. “Don’t forget your ten o clock re-cuts” Once again, I was right when I didn’t want to be.
<br />Lenslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04483764922430522266noreply@blogger.com0