International Man of Misery

Say what you will about the British: they take to the rain like a new intern takes to an empty news cubicle. Just ask Paul Martin, freelance photog and waterlogged friend of the blog. When not rounding up pictures for the telly, Sir Paul can be found handing out soggy crumpets to his drunken countrymen, frolicking on the still wet lawns of Hampshire, or simply cradling his very own electronics as the liquid sunshine of an English summer rolls down the crack of his ascot! Okay, so he mostly just stands around and glowers at tourists, but with a mug like that, he ain't exactly gonna edge out any Beckhams off the cover of a tabloid, eh? Eh? Anyway, I find strength in his lack of resolve, for it reminds me that dripping skivvies and fogged-up eyepieces are a drag no matter what side of the pond you call home. Besides, closer examination reveals my continental doppelganger uses the exact same facial muscles I employ at Independence Day parades, mythical flash-floods and most any story involving crime tape and lens condensation between the months of, oh, February and November. Yes, with universal truths like this being being bandied about, it is any wonder I wanna move the Lenslinger Institute to Fleet Street? I just might, too - once I wrap my brain around the mother tongue. Speaking of which, does anyone know of a derisive broadcast term that rhymes with 'wanker'?

I got nuthin'.

Funk, Interrupted

What’s a local TV news photog do once his week off has ended? Find a slightly less wrinkled pair of shorts to wear into work. Hey, every day on the clock isn’t a stroll on the beach, but I’d be suffering from sunstroke if I didn’t recognize how closely my chosen - ahem - profession resembles some kind of vacation. Think about it: Every morning I load a couple of cameras into a hatchback, take a stab at my GPS and drive to a strange location. Once there, I drag out all kinds of baggage, ask a few stupid questions and stick my lenses where I damn well please. Then I go eat something greasy, most often behind the wheel. Okay, so it’s no luxury cruise, but I’m betting there’s a claim processor somewhere who’d trade his eight hours of fluorescent light for a chance to point a reflector at a squirming news bunny. Certainly it was this semblance of adventure that first drew me out of the studio, but a rather unfunny thing happened on my way to a million newscasts...

I forgot what a bitchin’ gig this was supposed to be.

My friends outside the business didn’t. They still ask about my job with the kind of excitement I haven’t used on the job since I made deadlines in an acid-washed jean jacket. To hear them tell it, every TV news shift ends in the anchor-team gang fight scene in Anchorman. I haven’t the heart to tell them I spent four hours wishing for death the other day while some overpaid wonk prattled on about city sewage sub-laws. Nor could I being myself to divulge how grumpy I was at that battered woman’s shelter dedication the other week (The nerve of those ladies - making me wait outside like that!). They simply wouldn’t understand how incredibly stressful it is to roll up late to a ribbon cutting and distill the whole damn thing to a single clip... Okay so when I type it out like that, it sounds pretty simple, but the fact of the matter is pixelating trivia requires nerves of steel and shoulders of Jell-O. I mean, it’s not like some prom queen with a camcorder can do it!

Oh...wait.

Better yet, proceed as usual. I’ll catch up, just as soon as I get the wide angle on my perspective tweaked. Maybe then I can get a better look at the long-view, remind myself why I do what I do what I do. Oh yeah - I failed at everything else first. THAT more than anything convinces me I’m still where I’m in a pretty good place, for shouldn’t someone with my qualifications be mopping up a spill on aisle five right about now - instead of trying to decide how boring I find debris fields and backstage passes... You know, twenty years ago I would have strapped my glass to a police cruiser if it mean a new angle on the day. Now, I could probably doze off at a spaceship landing if the pod doors didn’t open quick enough. That’s not something I’m particularly proud of, for my least favorite people in the business (besides those who take themselves so very seriously) are those who swear they’ve seen it all and most of it sucks. That ain’t me.  In an effort to never forget that, I’m reminded of a string of wise words told to me by an old cowboy...

“Ride around, take pictures all day...you ain’t got NOTHIN’ to do…”

How come it seems so much more complicated than that?

Sling and a Prayer

There's a lot to love about Lost in Shangri-La, Mitchell Zuckoff's epic telling of the World War II sightseeing flight that went down in the middle of New Guinea. Only three of the twenty-four Army personnel survived the plane crash: a strapping lieutenant, a reticent tech sergeant and a beautiful young corporal from The Women's Army Corps. Soon the wounded trio find themselves surrounded by stone-age tribesmen as they await rescue from the impenetrable jungle. For three hundred some pages, the survivors wrangle with the natives as military planners hatch a harebrained scheme to return them to civilization. Cross-cultural assumptions, mutual hubris and a sexy heroine: this forgotten yet true episode of the Greatest Generation has it all. But for my money, the bestseller peaks only when a photog drops onto the scene. Literally.

Alexander Cann: Early Gonzo

Alexander Cann was a B-movie actor, a failed jewel thief and an accredited war correspondent with the Australian and the Americans Armies. When he heard about the American fliers trapped in the valley known as 'Shangri-La', he did what any rogue journalist would do in the face of a sensational story. He dove right in. Imagine the survivors (and their rescuers') shock when a supply plane passed over the valley and spat out a flaccid figure under an open parachute. The man under the canopy looked to be unconscious. As he floated towards the jungle floor, his soon-to-be hosts yelled instructions to soften his landing. Alex Cann never responded. Instead he landed spread-eagle in the tall grass soem distance away. Those already on the ground rushed to the spot, where the first person to reach Cann made a not so startling discovery.

"Captain...this man is drunk!"

When he sobered up, the filmmaker admitted drinking a fifth of gin before embarking on his first parachute jump. When asked why he would get drunk before leaping out of an airplane, Alexander Cann replied, "I didn't want to hesitate." Of course, hesitation was never his strong suit. Cann stayed with the survivors and the tribe for eleven days, filming odd interaction between the civilized and the primitive before capping off the 5,000 feet of 16 mm film with footage of a most unlikely rescue. Gripping, stilted and dripping with then modern sensibilities, Rescue from Shangri-La brought this collision of cultures to a wider audience before the earth-shattering news of Hiroshima's fate pushed this novelty into the dustbin of history. Zuckoff's engaging new book corrects that oversight, but decades earlier a certain soused cameraman jumped all over the story of a lifetime and, like everything else he tackled in his legendary career, had a damn good time doing it.

That's living victoriously.

Dead Beach Dads

Do forgive me if I've been a little quiet this week, but for once I have a pretty good reason. No, it isn't existential meltdown number eleventy. I've simply been on vacation. Or to be more specific, I've been living in a rented beach house with an understanding woman and four, count 'em, four teenagers. Why, it's enough togetherness to make an off-duty cameraman wish for an overturned two-ton turnip truck to go rush off to. Not that I've fantasized about such a thing. Much. Seriously, I made a sand diorama of this one scenario that required me to be away from the cottage a good three hours. Okay, maybe I didn't but the fact of the mattter is this sabbatical couldn't come soon enough. June marks the start of Swamp-Ass Season in the Southern states. What better way to usher it in than by donning a pair of day-glo swimtrunks and hauling half your living room to the ocean floor? I've covered horder conventions using fewer accoutrements.

Actually, my portage to the shore has become less cumbersome since my girls aged out of Barbie sandcastles. These days, those two stop just shy of a restraining order assure i don't appear with them in public, to whcih I say "Fine. Drag your own chair over the sand dunes!". As to their reluctance to be seen with me, I just don't get it. I even asked another Dad I met on the beach what he thought of this attitude. He pushed back the pith-helmet back on his balding head, picked some fuzz of his see-through v-neck t-shirt and said it was a mystery to him.

Don't get me wrong: I love my family. And if asked by an angry state trooper or grinning game show host, my family would readily admit they love me too. But a man's got to know his limitations. And every Dad needs an escape hatch. For some men, it's a sports car, a golf game or a girlfriend. For me, it's a beach bike, a rather rusty box-store model I cherish one week every summer and pretty much neglect every other day of the year. Yes, astride this gritty steed, I slip the surly bonds of Fatherhood, rocketing down the coastline as fast as a pair of sunburned photog legs can carry me. Lately, I've been rising early and hammering the sand before the stupefying heat commences with the brain cell melting. Most mornings, I end up by the rock pier. It's there a few of us fathers collect by the jetty, soak our bones in the tidal pools and trade stories of gift shop abandoenemnt ans string bikini payback. Sadly, some of the Dads don't want to leave their seaside sanctuary. Yesterday, I sat beside one guy for like six hours and he never once made a motion to move.

How pathetic is THAT?

Breckfellas

I don't know why this brings me so much joy, but it do. Maybe it's because I'm far away from this fracas, even though it's going down in my hometown. Maybe it's because I've shared air with all three of these men and, well, it's just good to see the fellas together again. Whatever the reason, it's more than simple schadenfreude. John Edwards, it seems, is going down in flames. Now facing six felonies for falsifying campaign finance reports to cover up his mistress, the former presidential candidate is (inexplicably) grinning all the way to the courthouse as his lawyers do everything they can to avoid a speedy resolution. His next hearing is scheduled for late July and I'd be shocked if I didn't find myself in the middle of it, or at least on the very edge with fourteen hundred of my closest camera-wielding competitors. For now, however, I'll huddle by the shore and try not to tee-hee at the sight of a certain horndog millionaire being hounded by two working-class weisenheimer buddies of mine - both who just happen to be fine, upstanding family men.

Funny thing, life.

Schmuck Alert: Hacked off in Sac-Town

Crazy from the HEAT? Ninety degrees? Really?

Don't you just hate it when Mr. Clean falls in a vat of warmed-over butter-bean juice and chases you around the inner city? I do, but, hey, when you drag a TV camera around with you, you're bound to run into the occasional cartoon. Take Sacramento (please!). Temperatures there topped a whopping ninety degrees the other day and news crews fanned out to hype the climate. All went swimmingly at first. People jumped into pools, others sweated on cue and somewhere a giant thermometer was being fished out of a distant prop closet. Then it happened. A rogue ray of sunlight upped and melted one dude's brain. How else do you explain the actions of one Mr. Kermit Shirt, who took such umbrage at being filmed that he ditched a perfectly good bumbershoot and went to swingin' his attache case. Careful, fella! There's three decent issues of Boy's Life magazine and a half-opened juice box in there!

Now I don't know what triggered this particular Schmuckaleptic fit. Perhaps it was the heat. After all, ninety degrees IS almost hot! Or maybe Kermie there just didn't want to be photographed cowering under an umbrella in broad daylight. I can't really blame him, but that's no reason to go all clerical on an innocent news shooter. I only wish the reporter lady had better explained what set this guy off, for sometimes random buffoonery isn't enough. We need context, background, analysis. Hell, they didn't even include the part where Mr. Greenjeans took of with the photog's tripod! Un-cool. That report was already in danger of collapsing under the weight if its own cliches. Finishing it without sticks was downright dangerous, as someone could have got hurt. Luckily, everybody survived and while I may take issue with proper equipment usage, their really is only one tool up there and he's wearing an ugly green shirt. In fact we have a technical term for worms like him...

Schmuck!

Watership Found

Ever chased a famous airplane up a mountain? I hadn't - until Thursday. It began the night before, when the suits of El Ocho learned the very aircraft Sully Sullenberger parked in the Hudson River was going to clip our coverage area and turned to the one photog they could count on they saw first: ME.  Suddenly I was hunched over Google Earth with an early morning mission in mind: Intercept Flight 1549 as it soared down the interstate. When and where was up to me, though the house-cats had suggestions. I glanced at the lack of details and grimaced. ‘Couldn’t I just shoot a gardening segment instead?’ I though about asking. It’s not that I’m skeered, or even lazy. I’m just pacing myself! Stand in the way of current events as long as I have and you learn to duck once in a while. I got enough misadventure coming my way, I don’t need to volunteer for extra headaches. Besides, this little mission wasn’t without its blank spots. I could pull my best Daniel Boone and still only bag a few seconds of video. So I did what any professional news photog would do: I promptly forgot about it and drove straight home. The next morning I rose early, poured a pot of coffee down my throat and dragged my ass uphill. Ducking into a drive-thru, I choked a spicy chicken biscuit and as the heartburn hit me, I wondered if the same feeling hit Sully felt when that flock of birds flew his way.

Probably not.

Then again, the hero pilot was nowhere near the plane that made him famous as it cruised through Virginia at an altitude of about three feet. The big bird was on its way to the Carolinas Aviation Museum, where generations of school kids would marvel at history's largest flotation device. As the convoy of support vehicles surrounding the newest national treasure wound Southward, I hauled glass up Interstate 77. Once I got to the Virginia State line, the terrain steepened and I made my way to a place called Fancy Gap. Once there I began profiling overpasses at sixty miles a clip. All the while the Droid my lap chirped and burped with messages from my station, as well as a student from the NC School of the Arts named Aaron, who was riding with the airplane and answering my every, oh, third text. According to Aaron, the miracle airplane was under an hour away, giving me just enough time to get high. See, I needed an overlook a scenic perch where I might catch more than a glimpse of the passing airbus. I settled for one on the Blue Ridge Parkway but soon realized the woodchuck beside me wasn't gonna cough up any good soundbites no matter how l phrased the question.

So I left.

 I didn’t travel far, however. Backing down the exit ramp, I headed for a rather countrified convenience store I’d passed earlier. The gravel parking lot assured me I’d find proper counsel inside, as did the Earnhardt cut-out in the dirty window. Inside, the clerk was busy, but that was okay. I came for the wing-man. You know, that loitering yokel who chats up the counter help between gulps of Funyuns and Mountain Dew. Those cats are leaning vessels of local lore, keepers of swamp holler secrets and perhaps a little creepy up close. No bother. I'm a fully grown cameraman in a marked news car. I can break a deadbeat Dad with implications of consent. Some jacked up gadfly will quickly do my bidding, even if I have to explain repeatedly what gadfly means. This time however, I was double lucky, for Funyuns was familiar with nearby bridges and only slightly derisive of my mission. ‘Ain’t gon’ find nobody waitin’ for that airplane.  Too damn hot!’ I agreed it was indeed sultry and repeated the directions back to him. Three miles later I pulled up to the overpass the wingman said would be there. It was.  Feeling a bit defeated, I dragged my gear to the edge, certain I wouldn’t get much more than six seconds of passing payload.

Then my Droid caught fire.

Okay so it didn’t erupt in flames, but by the way it began to dance and hum I  was expecting it to go full-on Pentecostal. It did not, but when it spit it out a message saying the famous airplane would have to detour around a busy underpass a few miles up the interstate, I nearly grabbed a snake and started swinging it. Instead I humped my gear back to the car and hauled ass to Hillsville, where to my chagrin actual people were gathering to witness the rolling exhibit. Seems they knew it was coming through and hell, everyone ‘round here knows real big loads always come off the highway and get hung up at the stoplights. I was told this from my new best friends, a rugged scrum of pension collectors and assorted looky-loo’s who treated the news’ guy’s arrival at the roadside post as nothing short of coronation. Suddenly, I was a king, sticking my lens into rural faces and collecting quotes on the impending pass of that big-city aeroplane. When finally the damn thing drove into view, I heard someone yell, “Thar she blows!”  rolled my eyes then realized...

The voice was mine.

The next few minutes passed quickly, though I took it all in slow-motion style. During the eighty seconds that the heavily festooned fuselage rolled in and out of sight, I bagged four wide shots, three medium perspectives and five tight frames of the plane blowing through. I smiled knowing how well they’d fit with the cutaway shots I’d already taken of people staring into the distance, fiddling with their camera phones and generally looking pensive. With the rolling aircraft now plainly out of view, I stuck a small microphone on a twelve year old and collected the best perspective on the spectacle yet. Minutes later, I rocketed Southward, even managing to slip by the airplane and it’s lane-hogging convoy. I was hungry, sweating and perhaps exceeding the speed limit. But an empty bureau awaited in the city of Winston and I was due there soon to write a script for a night-side reporter who was probably still in the shower. As I passed back into North Carolina, I noticed my competitors live trucks parked at the rest stop. Realizing I could have loitered with them at the state line and gotten the same footage footage as they did, I shrugged and pressed the accelerator to the floor...

You can have that kind of fun putting together gardening segments.

 

The Recordist (Rated R)

Mangler ain't been the same since he started freelancing.

"I know what you're thinking. 'Is he monitoring six frequencies or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a Sennheiser ME 66, the most awesomest shotgun microphone in the world, and can pierce your skull from a thousand yards off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? ... On second thought, forget I asked. I've been reading your thoughts with this thing all day, anyway. Oh, did I mention my  forearms are killing me? 'Cause they are. A soundman's got to know his limitations. So, if you even consider asking for another take, or - sohelpmeGod - another set-up, , I'll turn your head into a canoe... I'll be sorting M&M's over at Craft Services if anybody needs me."

Season on the Brink

Somewhere in America, an account executive is dreaming of life as a photojournalist. So it is really a shock that I spend four months a year fantasizing about making cold calls from the sanctity of an air-conditioned cubicle? Because I do. Don't get me wrong; I've ridden this planet around the sun enough times to know the grass is greener on the other side of the horizon. But with every humid June that arrives, I find myself questioning my (lack of) career path. Of course, those particular pangs of regret usually overtake me as I'm trudging through the jungle under a heavy load, Drug bust, state park profile, cadaver dog foot chase: the mission doesn't really matter. For once the very air turns aquarium sludge, I yearn for a term inside some politician's office, where the only hot air is that nonsense that spews from the cake-hole of whatever blowhard who just finished texting his wang to his every constituent. That's heat I can take. The hairdryer to the face sensation that is a Carolina Summer? Not so much. I don't know about where YOU live, but here in the Tar Heel state, Spring slams shut in the middle of May and until October, you think about your underwear about every fifteen minutes.

Why's that? Because, be it boxers or brief, the waistband of your skivvies seeps into your spleen. And while we're on the subject of sartorial swelter, can I just say I may be the one TV news photog who doesn't really like casual attire? Now I'm no clothes horse, but well into my middle age, I hoped I wouldn't have to spend half the calendar year dressed like a third grader on his first field trip. Oh, why can't I be fly? I'll tell ya why: I'm a sweater. No, not one of those horrible crocheted numbers foisted upon you every December by your Aunt Hilda. I'm talkin' transudation. See, as a fairly furry forty-four year old father, I can perspire with the best of them. Truth is, I sweat like a fat man zipped into a gorilla suit. It's embarrassing, really. I've had total strangers hand me their bottle of water, for fear the cameraman may soon pass out.  I never do, but if ever did drop, I'd spend my delirium flitting about some imaginary office park dressed to the nines and coiffed like a werewolf. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go lay out my Garanimals for the morning and crank the A/C to eleven. Then I'm gonna make sweet love to the ice maker. Heh, like YOU'VE never done that!

Early Herd Gets the Worm

Photo by Chad Tucker, Esquire

Perhaps the coolest thing about the crush of cameras outside John Edwards' indictment hearing is the fact that I wasn't there. (Instead, I was thirty minutes away,babysitting a big ole hole in a nearby Apple Store and wondering where in the hell everybody was. Now, I see.) That, friends, is a respectable collection of press representatives - one befitting a visiting prince, a shackled Sasquatch, or some preening worm who cheated on his dying wife with a (GASP!) vid-ee-OG-ruh-fer. That's right, I - like most North Carolinians - consider John Edwards to be a nothing short of a greasy orifice. Back when he was a media darling, we'd travel to his hometown of Robbins for a chat with his longtime supporters. There were none. Then there was the time I waited outside the Koury Convention Center for his limo to arrive. When it did, he bounded out, all teeth, dimples and feathered bangs. I didn't like him then. I don't like him now. Of course you might think my low opinion of the man would compel me to be present when a Federal judge laid six hefty charges on him. You'd be wrong.

See, a scrum of that number doesn't form without a few bumped shots and bruised egos along the way. Be it for a fallen lawyer or rising Idol, reception parties of that magnitude usually devolve into madness. Especially when man in the middle of it all stops for a few more seconds of face time. That's just what Edwards did today and while the world may have hung on his every syllable, I spent the interview scanning the backdrop for familiar, pain-racked faces. There - among the out of town stringers and network jet-setters - that guy ... who I see every week but whose name I've never learned. He looks...constipated. And over there, in front of that dude on the ten foot ladder, it's El Ocho's own Joe McCloskey! Why, he must be positively entranced with the political drama at hand, thrilled to be a part of tar Heel history, breathless with anticipation at what scandalous nugget will be revealed when Mr. Aqua-net emerges from the Hall of Justice. Isn't that right, Joe? ... Joe? 

"I was staking out one entrance for two hours, Duffer was at another one, and the Chief showed up and thirty seconds later... Johnny walked past his camera."

Ahhh, spoken like a seasoned professional who'd rather be anywhere but in the middle of it all. He should have joined me at the Apple hole. Chick Fil-A showed up and handed out free sandwiches. You don't get THAT at federal indictments. Do you?