Stuff I Never Told You...

I've damn near made a career of whining about my job, but a glance at my calendar shows how good I got it. Take July; a summer month not known for its stellar television. Still, with a flock of photogs on vacation and even more news-makers pretending to be, I managed to pack in enough surreal situations to keep my little repository of thought here bristling with piss, vinegar and the occasional insight. Why there was even stuff I never got around to mentioning....

Back on the 9th, I bum-rushed perhaps my twentieth Native American Pow-Wow. I'd only been there a few minutes when what was either a shaman in the grip of a religous vision or a cross-state trucker on half a bag of mushrooms approached with what appeared to be a necklace made of salt-shakers. "Bawitdaba da bang a dang diggy diggy" he said, shaking the suddenly smoking salt shakers at the sweaty cameraman. Actually, I don't know what he said; I was too busy trying to figure out whether I should film, thank or deck him. I opted for the middle way, and mouthed some old Neill Young lyrics at him as he shook the smoke at me and mumbled something back about being the walrus. I chuckled as he did, but soon after he passed I realized that's exactly how more than one Stephen King books start.

Less than a week later, I raced to a village on the Northern edge of Rockingham County so desolate, so remote that I've already forgotten its name. We'll call it Hell - not for it's many sinners, but for the very fact that it was about six hundred degrees Fahrenheit the day I rolled into town. My mission: get in front of a slow-moving convoy of wide-load trucks as they inched a massive generator ever so closer to its new power plant home. I've had good luck with Big Things Moving. Three story mansions, one room churches, library wings: I've hop-scotched around them all as real men in hardhats held power lines apart. Ancestral homes are the best, as the many descendants of the folks who used to live there often trail behind on foot in a slow parade of wistful soundbites. But a hunk of unemotional metal being dragged down a ribbon of rural highway? Not so much. Sure, there were a few woodchucks upset that about all the commotion, but I could tell by the way the fat one kept givin' me the eye-gouge, they weren't talking.

By the 22nd of July, the Piedmont was entering its sixth week of August-like temperatures. In fact the heat became so unbearable it was all anyone could talk about. That included of course the air conditioned souls who hurl me into the great unknown on a daily basis. I'm no longer surprised at what they come up with and most days, neither are they. On that particular day, the brain trust was focused on our bovine viewers. "What pray tell, was the heatwave doing to local dairy cows?" I shrugged a non-response and wondered which one of them listened to the Farm Report on the way to work. But I didn't dawdle, as the guys in Graphics were already searching their database for a picture of Bessie to hang over our anchor's shoulder. So I got busy flipping through my mental Rolodex until I half-remembered a certain cattle farmer I'd interviewed in the past. Hours later, as I followed my new friend through a cloud of black, bloated flies - I wondered how I could share this experience with the cubicle rats back at the station. Luckily, the half inch of moist cow shit that remained stuck to my shoes all day took care of that.

Of course not every news story is as well planned as a stroll through nature's landmines. On Tuesday I managed to pull a full morning of thwarted phone tag, before arranging a hurried shoot at a microbiology science camp. Several rack focuses later, I bid the campers a seemingly fond adieu and made my way through a summertime, visions of dry edit bay dancing in my head. I never made it. Five minutes into my return trip, the bosses called. Seems a lightning strike had sparked a fire at a building at the college I'd just left and the grown-ups in the newsroom no longer gave a rat's ass about some silly science camp. Suddenly I was late - a fate I more than adjusted with my stuntman worthy driving skills. Just ask the fire chief who I tailgated toward a building with a distinct lack of smoke plume rising from it. When the chief jumped a curb I did likewise, but I made the mistake of parking too early by a cluster of fire trucks. Little did I know the hoses ran to the other side of the building. By the time I hustled my gear to a respectable vantage point, my glasses were askew, my boxers were wet and a couple of campus cops were thinking of new reasons to push me back a block or two.

Who needs some old Indian curse when you got a job like mine? Don't answer that. I got a powerful hankerin' for sun-baked cow pie as it is...

Dance Hall Daze

What little I know about fancy dancin' can be etched into the side of a Cheeto, but that didn't stop me from strolling through the rehearsal halls at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts the other day. Actually, it was more of a forced march - as I was low on cutaways and high on deadline. Still, Gary Taylor and his crack staff of choreographers understood that the cameraman was in a hurry, so they did what every good subject should do: they ignored me. Thus, I was free to shuffle from one well-lit open space to another, leaving a trail of mud-chunks from the structure fire my tripod and I had waltzed through the day before. I swear, one of these days I'm gonna take all the time in the world to file one of these reports, instead of bum-rushing the scene before runing away with whatever impressions I managed to collect in under an hour... Who am I kidding? Certainly not the talented young dancers who put up with my presence as they practiced their pirouettes. They knew the photog was just passing through and probably didn't understand what he was looking at anyway. To be honest, I didn't - but I did manage to act all cultured and not knock over a single ballerina.

I'm just sorry I kept belting out the hook from 'Fame'. That was wrong.

Trackside Fashionista

A good photog knows how to blend, how to become part of the backdrop, how to see and not be seen. That's why when the photog affectionately known as 'Chim-Chim' wades into the Madhouse that is Bowman Gray Stadium on race night, he does so in audacious, trademark style. A high-octane orange shirt, delightfully oversized rig and trousers so splashy they confuse airplane pilots splashing overhead. But I come not to mock the wily Amernick, but to praise him. See, he's a highly-seasoned shooter, a fierce competitor and a funny guy who really knows how to kill time at a crime scene. Who cares if his pretty new bride is dressing him in Garanimals? I don't but - but then again, I once wore faded jorts and a wrinkled hula-girl shirt to an autopsy presser. No wonder they didn't invite me back.

Let's Get Physical...

Perhaps it's my blue-collar upbringing, or maybe it's my learned disdain for academia - but a recent study really chaps my batteries. Actually, the study has some merit, for in elucidating the obvious it finds that the newfangled crew of one (read:VJ) is capable of only pre-planned, simplistic mews coverage. That is true, to a point. For example, I shoot, write and edit TV news stories sans assistance every day - by choice. Such an arrangement affords me the kinf of freedom and autonomy most photogs can only dream of. I like it - a lot. Still, I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to voice my own reports again. Here's why I don't: The moment I go back on-air as a one-man-band, my bosses will throw me to the wolves, er, expect me to play full-on reporter.

No longer will I be able to waltz into the morning meeting and cherry-pick the the most visual story of the day. I'd be required to come up with lead stories, schmooze prickly contacts and cover city hall. Out with the biker club prayer breakfast. In with the heated city council meeting. No thanks, I've climbed the widow's porch solo as a younger man and while it's not beyond me, I simply garner no joy from standing by live outside the meth-lab. Sooo, I hide behind capable anchors with far smoother delivery than mine and foist actual happy news upon an unsuspecting public. It's a living...

And not a bad one, I might add. As practiced as I am in the art of whine, I truly dig what I do. Which is why I take such O-ffense at the study in question's other key assertion...

Another struggle for many VJs is the physical strain of working alone. “This is a craft that demands not only intellectual capacity but real physical stamina and a lot of people are not going to be able to do this simply because they haven‘t got the stamina,” one VJ says. ... The National Union of Journalists in England is starting to hear health complaints–such as exhaustion or back problems–from VJs who have been on the job a few years. There’s also the problem of doors. As mundane as they are, doors pose problems for VJs because their hands are nearly always full, and they have no partner. Getting through a door with the equipment, and protecting the equipment from being damaged by a slamming door, is a daily challenge. (One VJ reports a new appreciation for automatic doors!)

Don't get me wrong, humping gear up a courthouse's steps all by your lonesome CAN be a bitch. I do it every day. But photogs have been doing it daily since the first broadcast engineers traded a few horse blankets for an Indian-stitched test pattern. Try as I might, I cannot recall a single breathless study decrying the health risks suffered by generations of TV stevedores. And with good reason. See, even when the average news shooter schlepped 60 pounds of gear on his or her back, it just doesn't compare to actual backbreaking work like , say, appliance repair or ostrich farming. No matter how stridently I might disagree after a long shift of the one-eyed backpedal, electronic news-gathering is not the long haul some would have you believe.

Rather, it's a brisk run through someone else's reality - often followed by a stop at Starbucks for a Java Chip Frappuccino and a little handheld wi-fi. To compare carrying a fetus-cam around for an hour or two a day to actual labor does a great disservice to working folks everywhere and I want to do everything I can to distance myself from such self-serving horseshit. Am I being too sensitive? Probably, but when journalists of any stripe start complaining about their jobs being too physically strenuous, I'm more than a little sickened. Can field crews have a rough go of it once in awhile? Youbetcha. But can a lusty ingenue toting an eight pound camera compare to the many travails of a factory worker or traffic cop? Not on her worst day.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a shelf full of self-serving trophies not to polish. I gotta tell you though: my back is killing me!

Frosty the Moron

"Well, you ain't dressed for the deep freeze..."

I chuckled and followed the plant manager out of the lobby, certain we'd pass a rack of surplus parkas along the way. We did not. Instead, my most gracious host led me through a series of heavy metal doors and around a corner, where suddenly every whisker I owned straightened like a pin, what little nose luggage I had on me turned to tiny stalactites and my very skeleton tried to dance out its skin. I'm telling ya, it was cold. Twenty Below, to be exact, which explained why the guys suddenly hustling around me were all dressed like nervous Eskimos. As they brushed past me, I thought I heard a few muffled chuckles under those ski masks. I tried to think of a snappy retort, but by then my brain pan had almost frozen over and I found myself focusing on a wall of ice cream sandwiches, my knobby knees knocking as I wondered what flavor they'd find me slumped over, a doofus cameraman who'd wandered into some sub-zero deprivation chamber while dressed like a third grader on a field trip. Aiming for a box of Neapolitan, I wondered what network feeds I'd make as the cameraman in cargo shorts who died of hypothermia in July. As I began to gray out, I remembered thinking how ironic it was that I'd actually pitched this frigid collision...

Okay, so perhaps that's overselling it, but the fact of the matter is I damn near froze my back-focus off in the name of a counter programming. How was I supposed to know the same folks who'd offered me a thick growncoat ten years hence was suddenly understocked in the outerwear department? Certainly such knowledge would have stopped me from piping up in the morning meeting about what had to be the Coldest Job in the Piedmont. Or at the very least scrounged up some logowear before I'd left the station. As it was, I didn't think about it until I was in the car, at which point I remembered tossing my cold weather gear in the garage just a few weeks back. After all, who needed gloves, scarf and parka in the middle of what may turn out to be the hottest Summer in a decade? Mike Rowe?

Perhaps, but that beefy wiseguy was nowhere to be seen as the color drained from my face and my pancreas congealed. Still, I knew the show must go on, or more accurately, the newscast producers would insist I find another way to fill two minutes of time. Frozen testicles or not, I wasn't about to restart my Friday this close to lunchtime, so I centered myself, hunkered down and tried to man up a little as I did what any self-respecting photog would do: I sprayed the place, swinging my axe from Popsicle box to bundled-up lumberjack, all while basking in the relative warmth of a red RECORD light. Several minutes later I was all but done, proving that, if nothing else, I had indeed visited the coldest workplace in the Piedmont. As a result, my freeze-dried piece of television ended up looking like ass and while that far from pleases me, I'm quite happy to have escaped that icy hell with all my appendages still relatively squishy. It is, after all, the 'small victories' that propel a photojournalist through his or her day and if briefly lowering standards in the name of self-preservation is today's definition of success, well then, I'm your flash-frozen huckleberry.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to soak in a warm bath. I seem to have lost feeling in a few key corpuscles...

Wrapt Pupil

It was the Spring of 1983 and I was bristling with failure. Having spent most of my Sophomore year lettering in Truancy, I found myself masterminding a cover-up and flinching every time the phone ring. How else was I going to support my lifestyle of academic leisure - than to deceive my parents into thinking I was doing okay in school - when in fact I was rarely ever there. Oh, I'd roll up in the morning with halfway good intentions, but it only took about three syllables to convince me my time would be far better spent tooling around town in search of intoxicants. More often than not, we found them. It was, after all, the early '80's and while my crowd wasn't yet part of the burgeoning yuppie class, we were already partying like rock stars. At least during school hours. Afterward, I'd slink back home or to my ratty fast food job, usually under the false pretense I'd just wrapped up a hard day of class. It was not so. Still, I'd erected one hell of a facade and I managed to hide behind it until late in the school year...

Then I got caught.

Let's just say my car was spotted out and about during school hours. I wasn't even in it that day, but the fact that a classmate was cruising the strip in it on a Tuesday afternoon was more than enough to tip off my poor Mother, a Godly woman who didn't deserve a reprobate for a son. A day or so later, the loudspeaker summoned me to the library. I walked in to find Mom sitting at the head of a long table with every teacher I had that year flanking her sides. A most painful intervention ensued, one ending not in rehab but the equally sobering news that I'd get another crack at tenth grade when I returned in the Fall to do it All. Over. Again. Now, I can't fully explain what I was trying to accomplish with my year of living dangerously, but repeating the sophomore experience wasn't it. Still, I left the library that day a broken soul, knowing that I - a kid with a reasonable intellect and a highly developed sense of self-doubt has just failed the tenth grade.

A word on failing the tenth grade: I don't care how clever, hip, insouciant or permanently stoned you happen to feel, getting 'held back' in high school will wreck your social standing and plunder your soul. Not that I didn't deserve it. I did. In the months that preceded my spectacular flame-out, I pioneered new methods in vagrancy, sloth and stupor. I no more should have been promoted a grade than the wino down the street, but unlike him, I still had my own teeth - if not a modicum of teenage ambition. So, I hunkered down...NOT. To be honest, I stayed pretty much the same - an occasionally clever young man who read every book he could find - minus the ones assigned him. Sure, I learned a thing or two about managing frivolity, but I remained a slacker with a massive vocabulary. A few years later, I wormed my way across the stage to pick up a diploma I'd just barely learned and fled the area. I'd like to say I never looked back, but you know me better than that. To this day, I dream of being in high school, lost in the hallways with no idea what grade I'm supposed to be in that day. Whenever I find myself slinging a lens around a classroom, I look past the pretty people and find some awkward soul to fill my screen. It may do them no good, but it makes me feel better...

So why am I telling YOU all this?

Well, in just a couple of days I'm attending a most unlikely event: Eastern Wayne High School's Class of 1985 25th Reunion. I do so as an expatriate of sorts, for if you'll do the math, you'll find I graduated a full year later. Still, the organizers of said reunion have graciously invited me - and after much consideration, I've decided to go. Why? To see some long lost friends, of course. I may have logged an extra year in high school, but many of the classmates I fell behind were souls I've known since kindergarten. Being the kind of guy who likes to drunk-dial old pals, this kind of commiseration is in my wheelhouse, so I'm putting my pride in a suit coat pocket and wading into the fray this Saturday night. Will there be some awkward moments? Perhaps - but truth be told, that second helping of Sophomore year made me who I am today and I'm not the least bit ashamed of what I did to get here. Sure, it helps that I get to squire around my pretty wife, but this particular evening will be about more than ego. It will be about reconnecting with characters from my past, catching up with folks who remember me only for my beat-up junker and flare for idiocy. Don't get me wrong: I make no excuses for my (lack of) high school performance and while teachers and classmates may be surprised to hear I'm semi-succesful despite myself, I'll try my best NOT to totally come off like George Costanza.

Wish me luck.

Cleared for Take-off...

I never met Richard "Jet" Jackson, but I've been lucky enough to know a few like him: a bear of a man, whose grizzled exterior and ever present lens couldn't hide the huge heart inside. For thirty years, this regional hero covered the trials and triumphs of Oklahoma City for KOCO-TV. But he didn't just go through the motions. Instead he embedded himself with beat cops, wonks and politicians. Among law enforcers, he was a favorite - and not just because he bled the kind of street cred that regularly convinced shackled madmen to confess fresh crimes - on camera! High profile or otherwise, Jet Jackson tackled them all with aplomb and in the process made himself a hero to colleagues and competitors. Sunday, he succumbed to lung cancer and judging from his station's heartfelt goodbye, he'll be missed long after the next walk-down is done. When city leaders stop to honor a fallen photog, you know he made an impression. Richard "Jet" Jackson did just that and his legacy is worth more than a million breathless newscasts. Rest In Peace...

Felt at Eleven

As one who props up hair-do's for a living, I'm a major proponent of puppets in the news. Trouble is, most of them refuse to perform without a hand up their ass. Maybe that's why I'm such a fan of Ted, the rising CNN iReporter with the lime green complexion and delightful British accent. Recently, the little guy was spotted working the crowd outside a Manhattan structure fire. Though primarily an entertainment reporter, Ted effortlessly blends into the citizenry, questions a few looky-loo's and gathers the facts - without ever once showboating like that bitter cur Triumph. Come to think of it, Ted (and/or his handler) is pretty damn disarming for a guy with a fuzzy red nose and horrendous under-bite. He even charms a fellow newsie - a hard-nosed photog who never once scoffs at being questioned by a Sesame Street cast-off. Yes, with chops like that and charisma to boot, I think we know who should really be replacing Larry King.

Just think of the Muppets he could book...

Polyester News Gods

...In this rarely scene publicity still from the movie Anchorman, two extras are seen preparing for the famous news crew street fight scene. The two initially made it in the the film's final cut, but were edited out at the last minute by worried producers, who felt the costumes and equipment were simply too ludicrous to be believed even in an irreverent period romp...

What's that? It's NOT a behind the scenes snapshot from that overrated Ferrell flick? It's an actual photograph from 1975? Featuring folks still vibrant enough to wax my keister should I offend them with my mockery and nonsense? Why didn't you say so?

...In this recently shared artifact, KPRC reporter Alan Parcell and photographer Ken Cockcroft move in on a SWAT Team situation in a Texas neighborhood. Not only were the pair rocking the latest in polyester hotness, Cockcroft was sporting a state-of-the-art Ikegami HL-33, the first ENG rig in Houston capable of live TV. With its single silver cell battery, attractive backpack and 3/4" u-matic tape recorder, this "Handie-Lookie" was pure poetry in motion - give or take a hernia or two. As for the drag on those trousers, Cockcroft admits they, like the sixty pound 'mini-cam', were a product of the times...

"The wind load on those pants was horrible...it's a good thing the camera outfit was heavy."

Under the Mast

Ever huddle on the rim of someone's discontent and throw up a big ole antennae? It sounds like an awfully rude thing to do but it's exactly the tactic employed by your typical news crew. I'm talking about those cursed live trucks, a fleet of vehicles I've heaped dispersions on ever since I first piloted one across the Piedmont. Wicked blind spots, missing 9-volts, fast food detritus: the average TV news van has all the charm of a bus stop. And it's that business of waiting I find so grating, for nothing slows time like the rough idle of a fully-striped live truck. Throw in these vehicle's natural attraction to black smoke and fresh traffic jams and you have a couple of reasons why I won't spend my retirement hunting rest stops in a motor home. I'd just as soon sit through all those groundbreaking speeches I left on the cutting room floor... again.

Luckily, most modern day news crews aren't as haunted as I when it comes to manning these outposts. In fact, some even prefer the environs of a remote locale, eager to wallow in near solitude as they process the atrocity of your typical news day. Take Scott and Sheeka. The other day, this intrepid pair positioned their craft outside the Davidson County courthouse and happily hunkered down for an afternoon of editing under glass. Despite my grumblings, I have great respect for that kind of work ethic, so when I finished with my clown convention/three-eared yak/mortuary camp story, I decided to hustle on down there and lend 'em my support... Okay so the suits insisted I go see if they could use some extra help, but hey, if you want a documentary, go turn on PBS, I'm talkin' here!

Now, so where was I? Oh yeah, clinging to the hull of an unmarked news van in the mean streets of Lexington. I only had to knock six times before my colleagues tore themselves away from their laptops long enough to let me in. Inside the lack of tension was palpable. From the looks of the ice level Big Gulp cups, this seasoned news crew has everything under (remote) control. Thus, I decided if I could not help them, I'd harass - er, observe them in action. Sheekers barely noticed, probably because she was locked in a staring contest with a progress bar that refused to blink. It didn't surprise me, as I've found Sheeka (Shakira, to strangers) to be proud, pleasant, poised. She doesn't even lose her cool when certain photogs climb the mast and scream for back-up. How do I know? She didn't even flinch when the fire department came to help me down.

Then there's Scott. A battle-hardened veteran of the South Carolina news skirmishes, Mr. Garrand is highly skilled - without that creepy thousand yard stare that tends to set in during one's second decade of deadline execution. Come to think of it, dude many be the cheeriest news shooter I've ever met - a fact which makes me truly like - if not trust - him. Heck, he didn't even get surly when I grabbed a reflector and tried to turn Sheeka's corneas to dust seconds before air! That's interior bliss, my friend. It's just the kind of cosmic feng shui all news crews should display in the field and I kept trying to let 'em know ()in my own special way) they had my respect and I had their back -- right until Sheeka tossed it to her piece, at which point both reporter and photog turned my way and, ever so kindly, asked me to leave...

Perhaps it was the vuvuzela.

Reflections of a Specter

If you've ever stalked a plate glass window, you might be a photog. Relax, I'm not gonna go all Foxworthy on you - but the above self portrait by Gulf Coast photog Chris Sasser sure makes me want to. Why? Because, there isn't a news shooter alive who hasn't framed up his reflection and hit RECORD for the heck of it. Oh, it ain't vanity -- it's boredom. Hey, YOU loiter in a box store parking lot pretending you're invisible, see if you don't use every prison yard trick in the book. I've been known to count the paces between fire hydrants, scan the perimeter for Rent-A-Cops and keep an eye out for chatty pedestrians.

"You, Ma'am - in the Smurf Island t-shirt - care to tell me your opinion on the moratorium the city's not building? No? Okay, how about your son there. Surely any young man brave enough to bare that much underwear in public possesses a cogent understanding of local events ... if not a belt. What's that? You're calling security? You're aware this is a Wal-Mart, right? You know I slipped the head Greeter a couple of TV station bumper stickers to look the other way? Yeah, it's Standing Operating Procedure for those of us in the Corps - I mean those audio/visual geeks who never grew into a real job. See, it's right here in the Photog Handbook, page three, right between 'How to Dress Slovenly' and 'Why You're Allowed to Drive Like A Cop.' Here, I'll read it out loud...

'When gathering man on the street interviews in possibly hostile parking lots, try to curry favor with the rental authority or volunteer retiree brigade through through the use of station freebies. Coasters, pencils, those logo'd propeller beanies that never really took off... Should they protest, it's often helpful to browbeat them with the name of your consumer reporter - or promise them the requisite goofy weatherman will gladly come to their child's classroom for a game of 'slap and tickle...'

How's that? You hate my station? You can't understand why the traffic chick outlines her lips in eyeliner? (Yeah, me neither.) Hmmm? Your husband is polishing his Conceal/Carry permit back in the El Camino? What's that?He won't let the fact that he's on full disability stop him from pistol-whipping a one person news crew???"

...I'll be over there recording my reflection if you need me.

Calf and a Half

In the justly underrated Young Guns sequel, a late-80's iteration of Billy the Kid (Emilio Estevez. Really?) informs a new victim of his impending immortality. "Yoo-hoo, I'll make you famous," he hisses before cocking his prop... It's an iconic line from a forgettable film and it's stuck with me through years of staring down debutantes and dirt-bags in the name of news. Today it burbled from my lips again as I peered into the abyss of a young calf's cornea. Of course the beast regarded me with udder indifference (sorry!), but the two fat green flies floating over his eyelid did dip and wink at me in some sort of cross-species solidarity. Then again, I could have been hallucinating. It was close to a hundred degrees and my day had turned weird an hour or so earlier, when I slept-walked into the morning editorial meeting only to see three cryptic words etched in dry-erase marker by my name:

Six Legged Cow

Hoo-Boy. Either I was about to point my lens at an after-market bovine or profile a local Emo band with the worst name since Panic! at the Disco. Either way, it was gonna be a hot ticket for nothing tweaks the show-stackers like imperiled animals or troubadours in guy-liner. Me, I'm for anything that'll get me to the end of a digital timeline, be it a little elbow fiesta in a courthouse hallway or a triple-lit sit-down with Bigfoot's sister. Yes, when it comes to assignments, I got no rock-bottom. The producer staff seems to test this theory at every juncture, which is how I came to recite bad movie lines to a three week old calf with two extra legs hanging off his haunches. At no time during my spiel did a young Jon Bon Jovi wander out dressed like some Anglo-American Indian and warbling about drawing first blood, but... truthbetold, had the chick metal heartthrob sprung forth from a rhododendron bush singing 'YMCA', it would have made the day stranger by only a couple of degrees...

But enough of MY drivel. It's YOUR turn to be severely weirded out:

Crazy from the Heat

THIS JUST IN: Summer is here and it's even HOTTER than Spring! I know, I know: it seems pretty obvious, but apparently the nation's TV viewers have a hard time wrapping their heads around this increase in heat and humidity. Why else would local affiliates lose their collective cool as they alarm the populace over this shocking change of season? I dunno...but I can tell you that Hell hath no fury quite like that of an overheated meteorologist. So, while I french-kiss this old water bottle I found in the floorboard of an abandoned news unit, please review the...

Top Ten Signs Your Station is Overdoing its Heatwave Coverage

10) The one guy still left in your Art Department spent the whole day rendering a seventeen second 'Exploding Sun' sequence - that will never air.

9) Worried their many reporter-photog teams were close to perishing in the midday sun, the managers got together and threw an ice cream party for the studio crew.

8) In a morning news satellite interview with Al Gore, the busty weather girl veered away from 'crazed sex poodle' talk long enough to ask a few questions about global warming.

7) The latest WeatherCenter promo looks like the egg-eating scene in Cool Hand Luke.

6) Officials with the local water park AND the nearby homeless shelter have taken out restraining orders against your field crews.

5) By replacing 'Apocalyptic Computer Glitch' with 'Spontaneous Pet Combustion', the Promotions Department people are pretty sure they can rework all those leftoverY2K pamphlets.

4) One of your more senior photogs got caught having carnal relations with the sat truck's air-conditioning vents.

3) The logo'd wifebeaters arrived!

2) The intern blamed for breaking the oversized prop thermometer was indeed forced to 'spend a night in the box'. Charges are pending.

And the Number One Sign Your Station is Overdoing its Heatwave Coverage...

1) Temps the Weather Pooch is sporting a new Brazilian.

Patti Gets Paid

Normally, when someone receives more than a million dollars in damages, it's customary to kid them about buying the next round. But one gets the feeling former photog Patti Ballaz would just as soon do without the money- and skip May 1, 2007 altogether. That's the date members of the LAPD lost their collective minds long enough to assault a group of journalists covering an immigration rally in MacArthur Park. Patti was wearing press credentials and wielding a KTTV fancycam when helmeted officers, apparently worried the Rodney King legacy of years past was fading from the nation's memory, went medieval on the Fourth Estate . It made no sense then; three years later, it makes even less...

Which, in my not so humble opinion, is why a Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded Patti $1.732 million in damages - after a single day of deliberation. Sound excessive? Apparently, you've never been struck repeatedly by police batons and threatened at gunpoint just for doing your job. That job is one Patti has not returned to. Having received severe physical and emotional injuries from the attack, she opted not to settle her civil lawsuit and went to court instead. Now she has a million dollars to show for it, but even that amount won't render Patti whole...

“May 1, 2007 is a day that I will never forget, it is a day that has changed my life forever,” continued Patricia Ballaz. “My genuine hope is that this trial and its verdict will serve as a strong reminder to the LAPD to think twice about using excessive force in any kind of situation. Our free speech and civil rights are precious and if we can’t rely on the police to protect them, who can we trust?”

Good question, Patti. Should you ever get an answer, let us know. Meanwhile, I'll be respecting you from afar and reminding the official whiskey of Viewfinder BLUES is Maker's Mark, or if you insist, Knob Creek.

Just sayin'...