Tooth or Consequence

Thing is, he KNOWS you've seen it. What red blooded American news crew hasn't? After all, that scene where Bob Barker wipes the golf course with Adam Sandler is considered one of the greatest movie cameos of all time. So while that skinny microphone shtick may make it with the ladies on Aisle 5, this legendary game show host must realize that to a large swath of the population, he's that old cat who kicked Happy Gilmore's ass. Which is precisely why I wouldn't bring it up should he blow through my town. So far he hasn't. But he did drop in on a certain bohemian hamlet to my immediate West. While there's no official tally of how many pets he spayed and neutered with his bare hands, I'm told by my friends at Ashvegas that he didn't drop a single photog while he was in town. Phew! Clearly no one challenged him to fisticuffs, no one disrespected lovely Janice, no one stepped up and told him, "The Price is Wrong, b-”

Well, you get the idea. Celebrities are a prickly bunch. Sure, they may flirt and twinkle with TMZ, but when they wander far from Hollywood, they're best left unprovoked. Take it from me; I once asked Garth Brooks if he ever tired of singing that 'Achy Breaky Song". He laughed and I was emboldened. Several weeks later I jokingly told Richard Roundtree of Shaft fame to "Shut yo mouth!". He didn't, but he gave me a look that caused me to spend the rest of my time at that celebrity golf tournament wishing I'd shut mine. So the next time a showbiz legend, sports icon or washed up soap star finds themselves slumming in your zip code, tread light-ly. The only misconception you'll shatter will be your own and if any fans are tagging along, they'll rip your throat out at the first sign of anything but fawning respect.

Now if you'll excuse me, I believe I see Mr. Leno over there. Wait'll he hears these knock-kock jokes I wrote down in ketchup...

From Messiah to Pariah

Sure, that fancycam feels good on your shoulder, but if you're going to carry it around for any length of time, you'll have to get used to uncomfortable situations. I'm not talkin' cop car cockpits either, (though two hours in a tricked out Crown Vic with a certain type of officer will leave permanent scarring). No, I'm talking about the derision heaped on any news shooter brave enough to wander away from the waterskiing squirrel convention and toward, say, the courthouse. That's where you and your lens will plunge to new depths of unpopularity, for few folks want to be on the tee-vee when they're facing charges. It's something every photographer gets used to. Depending on your location, you can go from rockstar to leper in the time it takes a rickety elevator to dump you outside Courtroom "C".

Why in my time under the glass, I've been heckled by hippies, threatened by meth-heads and spat at by shackled madmen. And that was just outside traffic court! Move a little higher up the judiciary scale and you'll find all kinds of open hostility. I once had a dentist who was accused of fondling his unconscious patients act like I was the lecherous perv. Murder suspects and their weeping mothers have unleashed the kind of bile on me you usually have to watch a Lifetime movie to witness. More times than not, you're powerless to retaliate but I have found that a shit-eating grin and the occasional 'Enjoy your jumpsuit!" will silence the especially testy defendant.

Yes, I dare say I'm impervious to the kind of hallway taunts our justice system has to offer. Until I saw the above photo, in which a stoic shooter sits center square while a whole bunch of scary polygamists people mumble turn-of-the-century curses at the filthy fornicator in their midst. That his buddy thought to pop off a shot of his pain only makes him one of us. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go to the restroom. Seems the lady in the beehive threw some kind of hex on my nether region and I have to go change my underpants.

It's a living.

One Hump or Two?

It doesn't take a lot of fancy book learnin' to note the similarities between the camel and the lowly photog. The sand-scoured hide, the lumpy silhouette, that whole thing with the spitting... Okay, so that's just me, but the fact of the matter is we camera-humps gotta stick together, After all, a great culling of the herd is upon us; if we're to survive at all we have to do more than carry harems across imaginary deadlines in the sand. We must (gulp!) evolve. Now, this isn't gonna be one of those breathless screeds in which I compare the post-modern photojournalist to crippled antelope or crushed flowers... Those were fun to write the first twenty times but by now everyone knows a reconjiguring of the Fourth Estate is well underway, right? Right?

Depends on where you sling that lens, I guess. Out in L.A., where the Dashing Dave Malkoff snapped the above photo of his partner for the day Scott Moultin, natural selection still seems to be the order of the day. Sure there's a new breed of news gatherer lurking around the edges, but if you're going to chase gangbangers or even Michael Jackson's brain, you better pack on the taxonomy. But here in the Carolinas we're a bit more fluid with our DNA. Reporters packin' glass, Photogs firing off questions, producers learning to Tweet between trip to the break room and their rundowns. What's next? Cats and dogs going LIVE together?

Don't answer, as I'm not sure I want to know. What I would like to find out is when all this evolution reaches its natural conclusion. I'm guessing 'never', for just as soon as we master the demands of the 24/7 news cycle, Apple or somebody will unleash a new iLid Flip-cam and even multi-tasking stevedores like me will be out of a specialized gig. Will the viewer benefit? Hardly matters. When the elders of news film were supplanted by youngsters with video-cameras back in the early 80's, no one stopped to ask whether the public wanted to watch their train wrecks in smeary beta-tape. They just did it and before you know it folks across this fine nation were watching ribbon cuttings, traffic jams and bake sales LIVE as they happened.

Was it progress? Who can tell? All I know is someone better slap a logo on that camel before it's replaced by an ostrich with a handycam strapped to its ass...

Six in a Pickle

Leave it to JL to jolt me from my doldrums. In his latest menagerie, the self-admitted timelord leads a vantastic voyage of cosmic scale and deadlines lost, one in which his tiny broadcast talisman lurches for purchase on a peyote-strewn surface before slipping into another dimension. Another Dimension? Dwarfed by a world that defies team smotherage, the plucky news truck misses live shots and deadlines before achieving what can only be described as the prickliest of vistas. By juxtaposing the risk and reward of such otherworldly remotes, the artist otherwise known as Little Lost Robot illustrates the inner struggle of electronic interlopers everywhere.

That, or dude's just takin' pictures of his toys again. I can never decide.

Duck and Mother

A woman just pointed at my tripod (no camera attached) and said "It's not on, is it?"

I nearly sprayed my laptop in Old Grand-Dad when I read this, for I've never even looked to see if my tripod had an On/Off switch. Then again, passersby have been making strange requests about TV gear since the first photog threw his back out. These days of course, even your toaster comes with its own tiny lens but the proliferation of videocameras in everyday objects has yet to dawn on the looky-loo. Diminutive lenses in the hands of amateurs will change that, but for now those magic boxes that distill reality continues to confuse and frighten your average caveman.

Just ask any news shooter who's stood with a garishly-logo'd fancycam bristling on his shoulder, only to have the person he just removed a shiny lapel microphone from ask when this would 'be in the paper'. That gets me every time.

Then there's the Ugly Duck. You know, that little move people make when they walk by a fully erect tripod with fancycam on top. Most folk bend at the waist and scuttle on by like Mr. Miyagi stuck on perma-bow. Others kind of crab-walk, or drop to the floor in a back-breaking limbo move that would impress even that dude in the tight shorts at the Roller Rink. Hell, I've seen old ladies crumple to the floor like a late 80's break-dancer to avoid whatever death ray she think my lens emits.

That's cool. These frightful folk, often in their sunset years, are the polar opposites of the jacked-up kindergartner who wants to fog up my lens while pouring out chocolate milk for his homeys back in pre-school. I get that. But sometimes the lack of grasp some people have over simple electronics even astounds a relative technophobe like myself. Take for inst---

Hmm? 'Are we LIVE?' Let's see, I'm straddling a canoe in the middle of Lake Upchuck. You've got a bent fishing pole and I have a single camera on my shoulder. "Yes, yes we ARE live. In fact I'm beaming this straight to the jackhole in Hollywood who green-lit that stupid prison scene in Up Close and Personal. That one film did more to damage camera credibility than a thousand 'Blair Witch Projects'".

A-hem. Anyway, I'm projecting and since I haven't so much as picked up a fancycam in two whole days, I have no business displaying that kind of angst. In fact I should be happy when people cower in fear at the sight of my gear, for once eyeglasses come with their very own hard-drives, my silly equipment will lose much of its mystique. Still, it's hard to not to flinch when someone overreacts to the presence of a news crew. Take... that guy... the one low crawling past my camera on his fingertips. I understand you're being polite, Sir, but if I didn't want people walking in and out of frame would I really be hunched over my viewfinder on the floor of the Food Court?

Hold that thought. The rent-a cop to your left is eyeballing the over-sized fannypack I left over by the Cin-A-Bon. Two more clicks on his walkie-talkie and he'll probably call in an airstrike...

The Way It Ain't

Far be it from me to piss on anyone's hagiography, but amid all the misty-eyed remembrances of Uncle Walter, can we examine just how badly we effed up his legacy? Like Cronkite's beloved Apollo Program, early television news was a monument in motion. Never before had the machinery been in place to blanket the globe with real-time data. The immediacy of radio, the precision of print: early television news bristled with potential before it ever left the pad. Best of all, those souls at the top of the stack took their missions seriously. With stentorian voices and natural born gravitas, Cronkite, Murrow and many more forged an exciting new path in intellectual exploration...

But something happened after lift-off. What was a rigid template of factual import morphed into a gelatinous tube of gimmickry and game show faces. Soon the pattern was all too predictable: Breathless headlines, a smattering of hard news, Commercials, super-duper dorked-up weather, Commercials, big board sports!, More Commercials, then back to the studio for a wide shot of toothy lookers snickering over something silly. Not so simply put, we chortled, hyped and adored ourselves into oblivion. From the canned banter to the feigned urgency to the whole crime and grime paradigm, WE FAILED OUR ELDERS. That includes me, of course. The Z-Block fodder I so enjoy producing wouldn't impress Uncle Walter much. He's prefer hard news rife with detail and analysis - you know, the kind of thing you have peel open a newspaper to read.

So where do we set our vectors for now? How about a new frontier of credibility? But we damn well better blast off, for our window of opportunity is fading. See, what used to pass for the voice of God now sounds like so much sorority house blather. Bloated and gloating, there’s not been an industry so ripe for revolution since Kodak dismissed digital cameras as just some passing fad. Viewers are through being led by the avuncular hand. Now the audience can wander around unencumbered, explore hidden new worlds without the need for a narrator's flair. News nerds can cue up that story they missed when the dog soiled the rug - without having to sit through endless teases rife with close-ups and clichés. Best of all, newscast consumers can file a complaint, register a request, or add to the subject matter at hand with wisdom and insight once deemed unworthy of inclusion. The end result: a deeper, more detail-oriented news product - one that boasts the immediacy of moving images, the analysis of long-form print and the interactivity found only in a hyper-linked world. It's a brave new world out there, on that the early explorers of our once great field shudder to recognize.

I too watched Walter Cronkite as a kid and never thought to question him. He's gone now and while the sepia toned memorials are more than deserved, it's the once promising frontier he helped discover that I truly mourn.

Toxic Hop Scotch

Hey, wanna make the photog in your life wince in pain without - you know, touching him? Simple, whisper these two words in his (or her) one good ear: "Walking Tour". Chances are they'll double up on the spot - or at least grumble a bit, depending on how much time has passed since their last extended amble. Me, I'm still aching from Tuesday's forced march through a local elementary school. It seems the old place has been making teachers and students sick for y-e-a-r-s. Headaches, rashes, nose bleeds; just a few of the symptoms a group of parents described to federal inspectors before the whole lot of them decided to traipse through the campus in search of noxious smells, bleeding walls or even a certain ooze. Of course when I heard experts were touring a building known for making its occupants sick to their stomach, I knew I had to be there!

Actually, I didn't have much choice. The grown-ups said 'GO!' and since those damn lottery numbers didn't pan out the other night, I went. Not that the federal inspection team wanted me there. Their leader, a sophisticated lady with a cool British accent, eyeballed me the moment I came crashing into the media center, where a table full of teachers and parents threatened to bring in stool samples and gnarly Polaroids if something wasn't done about their sick school. If she didn't like the looks of my lens, I thought, wait until she get a load of my friends. See, this is the Greater Piedmont Googolplex, home to three TV stations and a cable news outlet that acts like one. A bullfrog can't pass a wet fart on the highway without a handful of jaded news crews showing up for extended team smotherage of ToadShit '09!

True to form, by the time the inspectors dismissed the parents and gathered up their clipboards, no fewer than four fancycams waited to follow their every move. And....we're off! You know they may call it a 'walking tour' but the only ones getting their sashay on were the ones wearing wingtips. Those of us in cargo shorts and sweat stains weren't quite so economical in our movements. You can't be when you're trying to be a well placed fly on the wall, one that captures sweeping vistas of the group making their way down deserted hallways and rock-solid tight shots of whatever the hell it is they point out along the way. Thus, I and three of my closest competitors bounced off each other like pinballs, sprinting ahead, falling back, crouching in corners - all while trying not to pile-drive the Queen or her minions into any open, oozing lockers.(Sorry, lady!)

Yes, nothing makes you feel like hired help more than flanking a bunch of out of town experts as they poke, prod and frown their way through your particular jurisdiction. The fact that your not alone only makes it worse, for the presence of a competitor always ratchets up the action. Even though I considered the other lenslingers there good friends, it's my sworn duty to get better shots than them. They of course feel the same way about me, which is why a simple tour of a supposedly mold-ridden school can easily resemble a light saber fight sequence from one of those God-awful Star Wars sequel ( minus the back-flips and bad acting). Truth be told, I had what i needed about ten minutes in, but with every other camera sticking close I didn't dare break away - lest some overdressed expert jimmy open a janitor's locker to find a smoldering, toxic scarecrow stirring a vat of cafeteria peanut butter and that sawdust they use to cover up kid vomit...

THAT never happened, but the slightest possibility that it might kept me in the game longer than my gams wished I had - which - along with the fact that my ass is numb from driving nine hours in the past two workdays - explains why I'm walking kind of funny. That and the fact that Swamp-Ass Season is upon and I finally ran out of that Boudreaux's Butt Paste that Portier gave me.

Sorry, Too Much Information...

Being Alfonzo

It's tough out there for a tape. Fancy new recording formats, hot news car interiors, cell phones that double as fancycams ... it's enough to make your average industry standard go rogue. That appears to be the case with one Alfonzo Beta - the yellow videotape currently on a quest to become uber-famous. Sure, Bruno's cashing in on that very concept at the nation's multiplexes, but has he been spotted lounging at Lake Tahoe, hanging at a WNBA game with UFC meathead Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell, or crashing the clamor at the American Idol finale? I think not. Even if he did, I doubt that Sasha Cohen dude could have pulled it off with the panache of a certain mustachioed Sony SX. Said to have left a wife and a couple of Mini-DV's back in Sacramento, Alfonzo's known to stay out all night clubbing with little regard to his state of rewind. Will he survive the gauntlet that is worldwide stardom or suffer like so many other cast-off ingenues and find himself compromising his inner spools in some seedy alley off the Sunset Strip? Hard to say, but we here at Lenslingers Anonymous will monitor Alfonzo's trajectory until he achieves one-named fame, lies down to die in the gutter or at the very least score his own development deal with FOX Reality.

Stranger things have happened...

Before the Swarm

What little I know about Australia has been gleaned from repeated viewings of Crocodile Dundee and making this guy tell me about Survivor: Outback. In short, I'm not UP on all that's Down Under. But I do know scrums, the power of amassed glass and the intrinsic whims of lenslingers. That's why the above shot by Aussie photog 'Widescreen' needs no explanation... Obviously, some dog and wallaby show was mere moments away, giving this grizzled assemblage just enough time to swap alibis, question each others' lineage and trade tips on where to eat when this particular cluster is done. At least that's how we do it in the States. I for one learned much of what I still remember about newsgathering from these impromptu summits. What judge to avoid when shooting in court, which filter to use inside a crowded school bus, which local ghetto preacher still scored rock ... I can't tell you how much I've discovered in these scared huddles. Of course as soon as the action starts, the lessons are over and whatever mentor I just finished quizzing would gladly body-check me into a prickly hedge if that's what it took to get his shot...

I wonder if they do that in Australia?

Schmuck Alert: Spit and Rinse!

Hey, what's worse than being stuck in a live truck with a gassy engineer? Getting SPIT ON down at the courthouse. That's what happened to WCBS photog Don Collins recently, when a man accused of practicing illegal dentistry dug deep and flung lung-butter on him. Now, I don't know how that plays in Jersey City, but down here in the South we consider that Justified Ass Whoopin' in the First Degree. Of course we're not advocating violence. We here at the Lenslinger Institute for Better Camera Management are far too droll (and cowardly) for that. We're just saying what a shame it would be if Dr. Spit and Rinse there woke up to find his New Jersey co-op flooded with the guts of the Port-A-Pottie fleet leftover from outside Neverland. Maybe then he'd learn to keep his felonious DNA to himself. Schmuck!

Mascot or Not

Bloated torsos, extreme tunnel vision, halftime flatulence ... you'd think photogs would have a lot in common with the average mascot. Not. So. Sure, there's a few decent sorts 'inside the head', but for every mutant turtle who simply wants to fist-bump the cameraman, there's a Styrofoam pirate who wants to jab with me with his dagger, a felt hillbilly with a hundred gallon hat and hemp on his whiskers or some deranged cheeseburger who won't keep his pickle to himself. The kids may go nuts when these lumbering icons bum-rush the cheap seats, but me - I don't like 'em. Perhaps I've rubbed up against too many in packed, pungent locker rooms, could be I've caroused with a giant chicken across the wrong county line, maybe I was just dragged to Chuck E. Cheese a few too many times when my kids were little...

Oh, who am I kidding? My distaste for corporate mascots goes back a decade and a half, to a lovely Spring afternoon at a swanky country club where I got totally dissed by a certain churlish clown...

It was the mid 90's and I was till producing promos. Most were smarmy anchor profiles, 'teeth and hair' pieces I called them. But amid the hometown hero poses and super-duper Doppler spots, I was occasionally tasked to shoot a P.S.A. Public Service Announcements, that is, those unpaid segues urging you to donate blood, save the clock tower or stockpile water for the coming apocalypse... we've all seen them, and three out of four of us tuned them out. Which is why I really wasn't sweating it the day I met two household names on the back nine of a high dollar golf course outside Greenville. VIP #1 was an NFL quarterback who will remain nameless, a lump-shouldered cretin coming off a stellar year who counted among his many vices expensive cigars and cheap women. He was a handful himself that day, but the real putz of the hour was VIP #2, a grumpy, vaguely chubby Ronald McDonald.

The plan was simple: Captain Quarterback would lob the old pigskin at everybody's favorite carnivorous clown, who'd catch the pass with a modicum of flourish before delivering his line. It was not to be; hours passed before we got the shot. The sun, the gear, the fact that my NFL guest was more concerned with the relationship status of the country club's cocktail waitress than fulfilling his charitable obligation that day ... each contributed to the lack of progress that afternoon. In desperation to finish my mission, I began to work the crowd of PR flacks and hangers-on that turned out to watch tee-vee not be made. At one point, I ended up standing beside Ronald, who exhibited a good deal more facial tics than I'd ever seen on those Saturday moring cartoons. Wondering how one came to embody the globe's burger joint of choice, I leaned over and asked that clown what felt like an innocent question...

"So, what, do they have a Ronald for every state or do you like work the whole Southeast region?"

McDonald's head swung as if on a swivel, a ghastly sneer stretching across his heavily made-up face as he looked at the local TV schlub in disgust...

"Man, I cain't be tellin' you that!" he sputtered in a high, Southern drawl before spinning on the heel of one incredibly big red shoe and flopping away in indignation. As he did, the quarterback looked up from the digits he just scored from his new waitress friend and chuckled through the haze of overpriced stogie smoke and I vowed to never again give a walking logo so much as a passing glance... Now if you'll excuse, that creepy Burger King guy is at my rec room window again and this time he swears he scored some special sauce....

Glamour Be Damned

(Photo by Daniel Kovach)

Meaningless awards, urine-soaked fish heads, free t-shirts, the ass-end of a cadaver dog. Work in TV News long enough and you'll experience them ALL. It's not the kind of thing they cover in J-School. (Actually, I haven't the funkiest what they cover in J-School; the closest I came to any hallowed halls was once pretending to be an ECU student after being caught in a woman's dorm after hours.) But ask anyone who's chased news stories for more than a fortnight and they'll tell you: local television is about as glamorous as a really good mail postal route. Sure, I've clamored at a few Hollywood red carpets, dodged sheet-metal as hurricanes slammed on shore and was even yelled at once by that jackhole Rusty Wallace - but those kind of encounters featured far more manure than allure. Don't believe me? Take my American Idol ordeal: Seacrest and Simon may be playing grab-ass over a catered buffet - but I'm usually stuck in the next room with a beefy dude from the mountains who thinks all the world really needs is a rapping lumberjack. Or take the time at the beach: Chad Tucker may have gone LIVE(!) from a hotel balcony while winds lashed his backdrop, but I spent most of my time downstairs, hunched over in a funk as sea-spray and bird spit soaked my granola bar. Yes, it all seemed so glitzier when I simply watched it from my couch...

I'm reminded of the CSI craze of the recent past. On all those awful chows, the crime scene team is usually an attractive couple in chiseled cheekbones, matching trench coats and designer shades (which they inexorably rip from their temples mid-sentence). In real life the mobile crime lab consists of a heavyset dude in a brown jumpsuit who rolls up in a county-owned van and eats his lunch out of the same tackle box he keeps the Luminol. The only time you'll hear Roger Daltrey scream in his presence is when he forgets to eject The Who's Greatest Hits cassette from the dashboard of his Ford Aerostar. You know, the one he sleeps in when there aren't any body fluids to sop up. Yes, like so many bad hour long dramas, the local news appears far more enchanting from the safety of your living room. Rode with me and you'll soon discover that Live, Local and Late Breaking are code words for 'You're gonna be sucking live truck engine fumes all night, no matter WHEN they find that fisherman'. It's just as well, really. Were this business as fabulous as it's portrayed in the movies, this blog would be written by a far more handsome sort who'd insist on appearing on web-cam shirtless. As it is, I'm fully dressed - and not just because I gotta take the dog out for his midnight dump.

Now, where DID I leave that leash?

Shööting for Brüno

Sure, that dude Brüno's got grapes, but so too does his crew. Of course, I've wondered about the hearty souls who follow Sacha Baron Cohen into those cringe-worthy incidents since before he was Borat. Maybe it's because I've escorted hundreds of reporters (and a couple of real clowns) into many an expert's offices over the past two decades. Most often I'm permitted to daydream - as long as I keep it in focus - but there have been a few times where I've wondered whether or not I was being Punk'd. Alas, Ashton Kutcher never once lept from the curtains to envelop me in a bear hug of insincerity, so I have to assume the stupid questions, awkward pauses and moronic non-answers I've recorded over the years were straight. Still, it doesn't make me want to vanish any less when the toothy news-reader I've so carefully lit mangles the college professor's name because she was too busy penciling in her eyebrows on the way over to do A LITTLE FREAKIN' RESEARCH!

But I digress. What I logged in to talk about was the near genius of Sasha Baron Cohen, the reckless satirist who's been cracking me up since he first bumrushed the scene as Ali G. His toilet humor I'd happily flush, but Sasha's habit of saying unthinkable things to gladhanding tight-asses often makes me expel food matter of the plasma. What can I say? I enjoy watching authority figures shift in their seat. I just wouldn't want to be in the same zip code when Cohen shows up for the interview in butt-floss and a bad accent. Does that make me weak? Perhaps. Southern, certainly. No, the photogs who drag glass behind Bruno must have pokerfaces onn their chins, running shoes on their feet and not a lot on their bladders. How else could they capture the kind of tape being played in the latest trailer? Don't ask me. It'll be nine months or so before I catch it on pay-cable...

(Oh, please know that the moon-eyed shooter pictured above has ZILCH to do with Bruno, Borat, Ali G. or any other future Cohen creation. He' s actually a journeyman lenslinger some call 'Spike', who - according to Senator Robert Hollins - is a nat sound master craftsman. Here's hoping he's got a sense of humor. Sure looks like it...)

Walkin' on the Sun

June is history, Independence Day has come and gone and it's about to get wicked HOT. Longtime blog visitors will tell you these ain't my finest hours, as I'll no doubt be heaping scorn on the elements well into September. What can I tell ya? Despite being a Southeastern biped covered in fur, I have the core temperature of a tuxedo penguin. Thus I suffer mightily when the summer sun begins to slur, when the mercury shoots past ninety by breakfast time, when a photog's underwear gains mass and volume before that first frantic phone call of the day hurls them into the humid void. Soooo, to reinforce just how much I detest the heat, I give the Top 5 ways I'd rather spend my lack of summer vacation...

I'd like to try my hand at Consultancy. You know, rock a black turtleneck and blazer combo, jet out of town on some poor legacy broadcaster's dime, hole up in a swanky hotel conference room and tell a captive audience of desperate executives how their livelihoods will be saved only if they destroy all video cameras weighing over five pounds and hire that pimply kid in the film fest t-shirt... I don't see how anyone could possibly break a sweat doing that...

Or perhaps I'll be an Ice Cream Man. Sure, I'm probably not pervy enough to be considered, but if I had the keys to one of those white box vans, I'd lock the door and crawl in the biggest freezer. First though, I'd unplug that damn polka music, for if there's one thing I don't need when I'm hibernating on ice is some snot-nosed crumb-snatcher demanding I pony up a couple of Klondike bars all because he found a wrinkled five spot in the family sofa! You know, come to think of it, I'm probably not cut out to peddle Push-ups..

I could always score a job as a Bailiff. No, two-tone brown polyester ain't exactly the look I'm going for, but have you seen how much rest those guys get in the heat of the afternoon? I once watched one dude sleep through opening arguments only to snap awake and yell at some skate punk for smackin' his gum! All I'd have to do is get a flat-top haircut, master the laser pointer and develop a deep seeded hatred of men wearing hats inside. I already despise cell phones! What? I'd have to tackle the occasional jump-suited jackal? Man, I'm a lover, not a fighter...

Maybe Marriage Counselor is the way to go. Granted, I've never stepped foot in any kind of post-wedding therapy, but I have been hitched for damn near twenty years. Throw in teh fact that I have two teenage daughters and I should be qualified to help husbands everywhere. I could teach them my favorites like "Yes, Dear!", "Of course you're right!" and the ever popular "I'd like to go to my room and think about what I said!"... Yes, with genuine lines like that, there's no telling what good I could do, whether I was in private practice or trying to ply my wisdom on the evening new-- Wait! THAT'S IT!

I'll be a Newscast Producer! From what the ones I know tell me, it's a pretty tough gig, but I dunno... I like to write, don't mind watching Ellen and am more than willing to scour YouTube for something to amuse my cubical mates. Then, later in the day, I could pound out a rundown, weave my stories together with spoken word cliches and douse the whole thing in promos, anchor blather and overwrought weather updates! Not only that, I could help shape young news minds, read tea leaves - I mean overnight ratings each morning and work hand in soft supple hand with returning news crew----

On second thought, I'll be lying under the live trucks should anyone need news story shot....

(Thanks to Erin Winking for the use of his photo.)

...When People Stop Being Polite...

When word reached me that a cameraman from 'The Real World' clashed with a crew from WUSA, I asked the same question you probably did: They still tape 'The Real World'? Apparently, they do and this year producers of the groundbreaking reality show are following their cast of aspiring models, rappers and actors all over the nation's capitol as Washington becomes the backdrop for all that lusty teenage angst. Meanwhile, the denizens of D.C. are less than thrilled but more than curious about the 'reality' currently being contrived in their town. Enter Lindsey Mastis, a VJ from WUSA, who had the unsavory task of interviewing the crowd of bloggers and fans outside The Real World house. Soon enough she found an affable chap to chat with, but that's where MTV cameras tried to up the ante by sending their own cameras to interrupt the interview. What followed was a case of lens intimidation that has to be watched repeatedly to be believed...

Now I suppose the pasty guy in the Apple t-shirt was just following MTV's orders, but he so flagrantly blocked Mastis' shot, that he has to be classified a complete douche bag anyway. Sadly, Mastis didn't protest ( she did giggle) and even signed an MTV release so she her non altercation might pop up on the show. You know I guess there's no controversy here at all but at the risk of sounding sexist I have to ask ... Would Apple Boy have done the same with your garden variety news crew? In this case, all he had to do was crowd out a cute female with a baked potato-cam. What would have happened had he tried that with a 300 pound lifer with 20 years of experience and twenty-five pounds of camera? Hard to say, but I know some fellas who would have taken enormous offense and while I don't condone violence, it's not hard to imagine emergency medical technicians being called with great haste to remove a beefy photog elbow from Apple Boy's throat.

They wouldn't have signed releases either...

Millions of Peaches

I'd barely stepped foot in the newsroom when someone glanced at me and uttered the P-word. I didn't fight it. I just crawled back into my mobile cocoon, popped in a favorite CD and kicked it to Biscoe. Actually, I drove w-a-y past that highway hamlet, coming damn near Candor before finding the sort of emporium I was looking for. Johnson's: a roadside oasis boasting cold ice cream, sweet people and super fruit. It was there I gorged for a full forty minutes, filling my lens with plenty of Prunus persica before striking out for the orchard that bore those glorious orbs. That's where things got sticky. See, what used to be silent laminate wedged between the seats is now a smug touchscreen insisting I ignore the new by-pass and twelve miles of clogged logging road instead... Okay, I got a little lost, but I'm tellin' ya, that smarmy bitch inside my GPS don't know squat about Montgomery County! That - or I got distracted by that peach cobbler ice cream concoction I juggled over the wheel ... Turbulence or not, THAT thing was righteous!

Anyway, by the time I barrelled into the orchard I was fat, dumb and unhappy to be late so I sprayed the place while shouting questions the man who ran the place, a nice old chap with hearing aids in both ears. I tried to smile a lot to let him know I wasn't dangerous, but he had to wonder why the rumpled TV man with sherbet on his chin was in such a gol'durn' hurry. (Sorry, Pops, I'll take the whole tour later.) When finally I did roll up on El Ocho, I was saddle-sore and still swatting fruit flies, but I had to finish the task! Sooo, I locked myself in an edit bay, sliceed out a few soundbites and clumped a fee cliches around them. Soon after I popped out of my bay to find Bob Buckley wandering by. With little more than a "How do you do?", I jammed my new words into his hand and pushed him into an audio booth. The next fifty minutes I spent hunched over a candy-colored keyboard, watching a timeline form at the flick of a sticky fingertip. I'd hoped to go funky with the musical bit, but I barely had enough time to fill in the black...

Still, I sent it to the servers down the hall with no great degree of shame - a good minute and a half before it eventually aired. That's a lifetime in my business and - deadline aside - my finished piece was no great shakes. But as I headed for the door, I couldn't help but feel like a winner anyway. I even noticed a co-worker's raised eyebrow of respect as I brushed by her out the door.

Of course it could have been the chunks of waffle cone stuck in my beard.

Escape from Camp MJ

YOU may be hitting the road this long holiday weekend, but many of my West Coast brethren are spending Independence Day camped outside Neverland. That's right, a full week after the King of Pop assumed room temperature, the Fourth Estate is still feverishly storming his old castle. Lauer scouring the walk-in closets, Larry King hunched over the breakfast nook, Geraldo threatening to blow the dumb-waiter sky high for all the world to see ... is it any wonder the technical set stays outside? That's where you'll find second generation broadcaster and friend of the blog Sean Browning; apparently he's taken to splaying himself on the pavement, where high def histrionics and below the belt speculation appear almost logical at a certain worm-level. Me - I just wonder how many sat trucks are parked outside Karl Malden's old crib...