Schmuck ALERT: Just Go Away!

Calling All Cars! Calling All Cars! Proceed to Sycamore Avenue. Sergeant Pornstache has skipped his meds again and is now accosting a photog. Witnesses say he pushed the cameraman back a block, ranted about his thirty year career and threatened to go viral. The camera's red light glowing. Repeat, the red light is glowing! Apprehend immediately! The repeated use of tasers HAS been authorized...

Sadly, that dispatch came too late. Before reason could be restored to Suffolk County, a member of the local media got locked up and a veteran cop proved himself a complete tool. It started where it ended: Long Island. A photog named Phillip from Stringernews.com responded to a police chase turned car crash and quickly fell out of favor with the force. It's unclear if any officers were injured in the wreck, but judging from the pulse of one Sergeant, Robocop himself was pinned under a couple of Hummers and the TV truck had just backed over the jaws of life. "GO AWAY!" yells Sarge - the first of thirteen times. Phillip does so, slowly - all the while being told his just being there threatened a perfectly good investigation. It's hard not to notice kids ambling by the crash scene as the credentialed photog is forced back a block. Near the end of the inevitable Youtube clip, we see the angry officer swooping in by squad car, whereupon arrests Phiilip the photog for obstructing an investigation some distance away... Can't we all just get along? Apparently not. Ya know, it only makes so much sense to argue with a guy who's packin' heat, but I would like to ask Sergeant Neckvein there just what America looks like on his watch. From where I stand on a public street, it doesn't seem to matter whether I'm holding a fancycam or a dandelion as long as I stay out of the way. As a guy who finds himself at just such occasions, I dread the day I come across a deputy so bedeviled by my presence. SCHMUCK!

Lenservention

You there, with the leisure wear and thinning hair... Just look at yourself: forty four years old and still running your hands over complete strangers in the shadow of some skeevy newscast. What would your children think? Oh, that’s right. They think you’re a cable installer. It’s probably best that way. For if they could see the way you spend your day: scouring the hinterlands for a minute-fifteen of fluff, pursuing that minutia as if it held the very keys to the planet, ruing the day you staggered into that first affiliate... it’s all just so predictable. Would life have not grown rosier has you instead stumbled into some hallowed hall of higher education? That way your world outlook would have been shaped by a sheltered expert, not a revolving door of lead investigators, ghetto preachers and gassy passers-by.Who knows what heights you could have reached had you not burdened with yourself with a Sony you didn't even own. I don't wanna tell you how to live your life (or mine), but twenty some years into this silly gig and you're just now realizing you got the world's most interesting dead-end job?

Worse yet, you been at this so long, there's really no hope for recovery. It's not like you could go out and get a real job! No, you'll never be promoted to Vice President of Stapler Arrangement with that limited attention span of yours. You know, the one you fractured years ago with all those disposable vignettes you've foisted on an unsuspecting public. And that driving record of yours? No church will ever ask you to cart around their flock, that's for sure. But perhaps the most troubling aspect of your diminished condition? That half-baked notion you've seen it ALL. Look, two decades of putting every type of person and predicament on the news does not an education make. For insight like that, you have to rise in the corporate ranks, get a teaching fellowship or at least be put in charge of a french-fry vat or two. Only then can you possess the kind of enlightenment that comes with random letters behind your name, or a good ole fashioned hairnet. So, do us all a favor there, Fellini: Back off that deadline. The only thing you're killing is any hope your Mom and I ever had of you becoming a professional bowler.  She may still claim your kind, but me...

I can’t even look at you.

The Iceman Slummeth

Great filmmakers have tried and failed. Now, the dude who made Cutthroat Island is tackling the photog psyche. Sigh. Now, don't get me wrong. I hope 5 Days of War will be a bold and brainy blockbuster, but something tells me it's gonna be more like that wretched Godzilla remake than the next Broadcast News. Then again, we TV stevedores have been taking it on the unshaven chin for as long as Hollywood has seen fit to feature us. Whether it's a romantic comedy or a political thriller, the guy (or gal) behind the glass usually comes off as some thwarted doofus more comfortable with cameras than conversation. Okay, so that's not so far from reality, but still, movie-makers seem to go out of their way to deride the role of the television news photographer. What with our odd job and sensible shoes, we're natural bit players, comedic foils, roaming props. I get that, but when the most textured interpretation of a TV News cameraman belongs to Chris Elliot in Groundhog Day, you know your profession has been cinematically shortchanged.

Now this... a glossy thriller about the Russian-Georgian War, as seen through the lens of an American news crew. I'd feel better if it were some animated schlub holding his camera the wrong way. Maybe then, we could chalk any and all discrepancies up to technical mistrust between the trades. Otherwise, we're going to be forced to defend the cross-cultural bumblings of a fictional camera crew - as envisioned by the genius who brought you The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. How could THAT go wrong? It's not like the Finnish wunderkind went out and bagged some has-been actor for a pivotal role... Wait a minute - is that Val Kilmer?  Sure, he made for a mean Morrison and his Doc Holliday was tops, but a photog? Was Richard Dean Anderson unavailable? Don't answer that; just know that we here at The Lenslinger Institute don't hold out much hope for a slick flick about a messy war helmed by the guy who tried to wrap a pirate franchise around Geena Davis.

In fact, we're delegating this whole messy matter to broadcast archivist Amanda Emily, who after hanging out with these losers, knows a thing or three about cameraman semantics. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to gather some rotten fruit for the premiere.

Master and Commander

If you ask him about 'that train wreck', he'll tell you to be more specific.

He takes his live truck funk with justatouch of pretty reporter hairspray - yet he hates the taste of catch-up.

Politicians, cops and models slow their roll whenever he looks their way.

He can drive blindfolded at night on a mountain highway, but won't park a call in the newsroom for love nor money.

Judges, bums and drum circles play to HIM.

He's backpedaled before Presidents, bum-rushed the funkiest of dumpsters and bodily jostled rock stars. All without changing his socks.

He can smell darkness.

If he happens upon a picket line, protesters remember what they're mad about.

Many a waking bailiff has wish him dead.

He's escorted more gorgeous females to their lunch table than a Hollywood agent.

He's the reason Dog the Bounty Hunter dresses that way.

His very best stories, he keeps to himself.

He's not even The Most Interesting (Camera)Man in the World, but dude's survived lunch meat riots, crashed landed hot air balloons and mastered his craft before most of his cohorts put down their Sippy Cups.

Stay thirsty, my friends.

Noyz in the Hood

It was stupefyingly hot on Wednesday so of course I spent it outside. After all it’s part of the Photog Credo: “Neither rain, nor sleet nor oven door heat will stop me from venturing out in the names of news.” Seriously, I covered some spot news in the inner city that felt like a scene from Cool Hand Luke: everyone sitting around trading bromides while glistening in sweat. In this case however, it wasn’t an egg eating contest at the center of attention. It was a gas leak. Not one of those foisted on family members by a flatulent fourteen year old either, but an unauthorized dispersal of natural gas. Seems the copper tubing at the bottom of an abandoned house was too much for the crackheads to ignore, so they shimmied underneath in the middle of the night and made off with the metalwork. One wonders if they smelled the gas as they took apart the tubing. Neighbors surely did. By daybreak, the fumes were overpowering along Bessemer Street. Someone called the PO-leece, who called he fire department, who made so much noise about it on the scanner that a certain grizzled lenslinger was torn away from his morning cup of joe and told to beat feet toot sweet.

“Hey neighbor!”

If years of violating personal space with a TV camera has taught me anything, it’s how to approach people with a microphone and a smile. Seriously, if I’d been as successful at engaging strangers during my short-lived car selling career, I’d still be pushing Volvos, Jeeps and Beemers. But where I was never all that great at convincing people to drop coin on a pricey ragtop they didn’t need, I’m a certified Closer when it comes to bagging sound. “You there - with the housecoat and lump of snuff in your lip! I know you were forced out of your home at four in the morning, but wouldn’t you like to step in front of my lens and tell the Greater Piedmont Googolplex what it feels like to be displaced by some overly-jonesing yutz with a crescent wrench? No? how about your friend there with the tattooed torso and visible shakes? He looks like a talker!” Okay, so I wasn’t that brazen. More than anything I was nice and nonchalant in that southern kind of way that big city actors never quite master on screen. But I wasn’t just collecting quotes, I was making friends!

I mean that. For every drug-addled young plumber making unauthorized house-calls, there’s half dozen sweet grandmas shaking the heads at the gall of today’s kids. Not ALL of them will talk on camera, but unless you’re a monumental dick a few of them surely will. Of course it helps that whenever a marquee crime lights up the shady side of town, residents pour onto the street with lawn chairs, hand fans and I-told-you-so’s. Gas leak, homicide, alien spaceships on the horizon... it all draws a crowd in the ghetto. And while the very term “ghetto” is probably not politically correct, it’s what the good people I interviewed yesterday called their hood. “Hey Mr. news man! What brings you to the ghetto?” Upon hearing that, I made a beeline for the three hundred pound lady who wanted to know, for one of the first rules of soundbite acquisition is to quiz the curious. Example: you just pulled up to a drive-by shooting scene and while a few felons ducked their herads at your arrival, others are doping backflips to get your attention. Those are the folks you start with, for if a guy’s gonna stand on his buddy’s shoulders and hurl one-liners your way, there’s an excellent chance he’ll climb down ling enough to weigh in on whatever tragedy is at hand. Call it profiling if you will. But, please, let me start rolling first so you can say it on camera. For if I don’t capture it on tape, it never happened and courtroom sketch artists don’t ride along with us news types at midnight.

Pity, that.

Man Overboard

As a raving fan of The Deadliest Catch, I want to like Captain Keith Colburn. He's in business with his brother, takes advice from his adorable little girl and owns a kick-ass crab boat. But time and time again, this skipper had proven himself to be a dill-weed of the highest order. Those who watch the show know what I mean. The only thing more predictable than a shot of some greenhorn deckhand losing his lunch are extended sequences of Captain Keith losing his shit. I suppose it makes for good TV. After all, several (edited) minutes after launching into one of his nearly incoherent tirades, Cap'n Keith can be counted on to repent. Seriously, this guy delivers more sobbing apologies than he does King Crab. And it works! Just when you want to write him off as a psalty psychopath, he says he's sorry, all while reminding everyone within earshot what a tough gig he's got. As a viewer, I've cut him a blank check more times than I can remember. Yeah yeah... killer waves, bad crab, some dude sticking a lens in your face when you're trying to drive... it can't be easy! No matter that all those other captains seem to manage the same thing without berating their crew to the point of mutiny - he's just an emotional guy!

Well, this week a clip from an upcoming show surfaced that has forever erased any slack I may have granted this seafaring putz. In the video, Keith is seen lamenting his fate as a successful businessman when the wheelhouse telephone rings. It's a Discovery Channel cameraman asking for a co-worker. This is apparently against the Wizard's policy, as the commanding officer of said vessel promptly storms below deck to confront the offending lenslinger. What follows is an exercise in absolute gas-baggery. Keith hurls (irrelevant) insults, throws in a few threats for good measure and when the cameraman doesn't back down, frog-marches the two of them from stem to stern before crashing into a distant bulkhead. Even with Keith's history of hissies, it is an embarrassing display of a captain come undone. Of course a crab boat passageway isn't a board room and behavior deemed unacceptable on dry carpet is simply the price of business out to sea. But, Keith, really? Is Discovery putting a little something extra in your check if you promise to go mental every fifteen minutes? I guess it makes up for a lack of crab action, but you're establishing yourself as a villain on a show that really didn't need one.

Worse yet, you came dangerously close to incurring the first ever waterborne Schmuck Alert! Had their been an actual camera in that cameraman's hand, I would have had no choice but to throw the secret switch here at the Lenslinger Institute and bring shame to your entire fishing village. And really, what good is owning your own fishing vessel, appearing regularly on cable TV and starring in your own Sears commercial if much of the nation and every living TV photog considers you an utter tool? Something to think about the next time you're about to 'show your ass' on camera. Just look what it did to David Caruso...

Fade to Jack

You can keep your Will and Kate (Okay, Kate can stay). My favorite power couple from across the pond is Colin and Chris Weir, the former TV cameraman (and wife) who just scored £161 Million in Europe's biggest Lottery payout. £161 Million? White-Balances for everybody! Sorry, but it's hard not to root for this working class duo with the newly engorged checkbook. He's a retired studio manager! She's a former nurse! They've been married so long they look alike! What's NOT to love? And I'm not just saying in that in hopes the Weirs will see fit to contribute to the Lenslinger Institute - that most deserving center for the advancement of cameramanthropology! No, I'm truly stoked for this bloke and his Missus, if only because career TV tech types rarely get anything but a chintzy wristwatch and walked out of the building when they've surpassed their expiration date. Hell, dude even worked a broadcast term into his official soundbite:

"When we first realized we had won, it felt like a dream. Everything went into slow motion. But it feels like a good thing; something we should not to be afraid of but for us to enjoy with the children."

As well you should, charming Scottish couple I'll never meet! Here's hoping neither of you buys an island or starts collecting showgirls or some other such nonsense that so often befalls lottery winners here in the States. Tell you what , should all that cash ever become cumbersome, why not ship a crate of it across the Atlantic? I'd gladly sink it into my own self-aggrandizement, maybe send you good people a postcard from a certain writing shack in Cabo... That or you could spend it on your own grown children; they're certainly deserving. But so help me, I see ONE paparazzi shot of you two trading whiskey shots with the Beckhams and I'm jetting over the briny blue for a full-on intervention. I'll be the one walking backwards in front of Dr. Drew...

Esquire on Deck

Geoff Johnson: Sling of the World!

What sort of man reads Viewfinder BLUES? A roguish soul on constant reconnaissance, lens always within reach, a natural born distiller of minutia and mayhem. His gaze is steely, his fingertips rough. But what would you expect from a man unafraid to rock the boat and a professional fanny pack at the same time? Don’t answer that. You’ll only ruin the sound he’s recording. Careful, though. Both those elbows are considered weapons in seven different states. But this fortune hunter of sorts would rather over-light than out right fight. He’s rather parry and spin around any opponent, strike glancing blows with well-placed pans before centering up for a rock steady assault. Yes, this TV stevedore is more than assassin with panache. He’s a weathered escort of the only moments you’ll remember from tonight’s newscast. He knows where to park outside the courthouse, who to woo when the room goes stupid and what to wear when sailing over a pirate ship. Call him a cameraman and he won’t mind, but neither will he answer. He’s far too consumed with what flickers on that tiny screen, the same images you’ll soon see dance across that giant plasma perched atop your hearth. What sort of man reads Viewfinder BLUES? A master of the glass whose world view is limited only by the polish of his press pass and the glow of his cojones.

I guess that explains the wide stance.

Shake and Bake

HOW hot was it yesterday? So hot the reporter doffed his suit jacket before fronting his poolside live shot! So hot the photog broke out his still camera just to stave of delirium. So hot our every newscast began and ended with dire warnings of face-melting across the Heartland, Upper Crescent, Golden Valley --  er, the six closest counties. Honestly, the great/maddening thing about being the tip of the spear is your constantly thrust in the middle of the action. If a crushing heatwave falls over your homeland, your undies will be the soggiest. If a blizzard blows in, your mustache will sport the best snotcicles. If an alien space ship hovers over the city, your rectal probe will glow the rosiest... you get the idea. Honestly, when I was in my mid-twenties, being in the middle of the action was the only place I wanted to be. At 44, I'd just as soon take your word for it that mutant crocodiles are rising from the sewer and swallowing pedestrians whole.Why, it reminds me of hurricane season, when otherwise lucid broadcasters fight each other for the right to dodge flying trashcan kids and eye-gouging pine needles.

Problem is, after you do this silly gig for enough years, all that interloping begins to feel normal. I know that when I left news for the placid world of promotions, I nearly passed out from jealousy when my hurricane chasing colleagues struck out for the coast with nothing but hubris Slim-Jims. 'That should be ME out there!, I screamed from my air-conditioned office. A few months later it was, as I shirked the duties of a house-cat hack and took my talents to the front lines. Drought, pestilence, County Commissioner workshops! For the past 14 years, I've braved them all, just so some overly perfumed executive could experience flea and tick season without ever getting itchy. That reminds me, anybody know a cure for heat-induced psychosis? Something came over me the other day while licking  humidity off the live truck and now all I want to do is run naked through the inner city. Pretty soon, I won't even be able to form whole sentences. How will I complain then?

Oh, I'll find a way.

Out of the Office

Every week I hit the street, a crusty pusher of soft and gooey news. My mission: fill a few minutes of broadcast with something that won't pollute the Greater Piedmont Googolplex. Most days I pull it off, other times... not so much. But whether I'm slingin' straight up trophy bait or chewed-up filler covered in catch-up, it's always, ALWAYS on time - for what good is that totally kick-ass super slow-mo sunset sequence if Sally Joe Housecoat flips away when the anchors start to stretch?

 On Tuesday I found myself stalking that most elusive of species: the quick-turn kicker. It all began when an anchor poked his head in the morning meeting and said a single mother had crashed his private pool. This proved quite the pitch for soon after I was soaring to said oasis, where I found kids, chlorine and, warming eggs in a nearby planter, a sitting duck. Affecting my best David Attenborough, I sidled up to the wildlife and addressed her in crisp, English tones. When the young mother duck glared back as if she were about to rip my lips off, I backed away and quizzed a few six year olds in elbow floaties. A man's GOT to know his limitations.

 Mother ducks are nice and all, but why not use that glass to reflect the very best of humanity? It's why I rose early the very next day and raced to Raleigh-Durham International. It was by the baggage claim I found my peoples. Rounded shoulders, lots of pockets, tripods by their sides... Seems I wasn't the only photog looking to shine a light on some world class athletes. 'Fine', I thought as I made cross-market small talk, 'at least we're not fixin' to fawn over some infantile jock with a million dollar contract. That's when the concourse dissolved into applause and a stream of gold medal heroes poured onto the floor. The next few minutes passed quickly, but the interior grin lasted all day.

 Of course, every day ain't an exercise in nobility. Some days it's like pulling teeth. Of course if teeth are to be pulled, I'd much rather be a cameraman knocking over Novocaine tanks than any of those souls with hardware hanging out of their mouths. That was me Friday, as I roamed the floor of a free dental clinic. "You there! With the recent pink slip and aching jaw. Wanna be on Tee-Vee?" Didn't think so, which is why I tread lightly at these kind of soirees. Folks don't stand in line to see the dentist because they want to. Whether they want to share their woe with the region at large is their choice, not mine. Besides, there's always some untroubled soul willing to share their views with a stranger from The News.

Always.

Schmuck Alert: INCOMING!

File this under ways I won't die: set ablaze with bottle rockets by some shirtless yuck in the middle of the night. Sure, some reprobate might wing me with an attempted forehead scorcher, but his next target will be the logo on the back of my news unit, for dodging bottle rockets falls just beyond my job description. Guess I'd make a lousy war correspondent. Veteran Dallas TV News photographer Robert Flagg, however, may have The Right Stuff. That's him sticking around far longer than I would have the other night as some upstanding taxpayers celebrated our nation's freedom by aiming their rockets not at the heavens, but at each other. (Officer Darwin, paging Officer Darwin...) When photog Flagg rolled up with fancycam in tow, the fine citizens of the Creekside Villa apartment complex took direct aim at The Fourth Estate."The missiles — or whatever they were — they were hitting, they were bouncing off my chest and off my camera," Flagg said. "One hit me in the back, and it burned my neck and it burned my shirt." When the PO-leece arrived, they too became targets, a development we here at the Lenslinger Institute find downright disturbing, for our great nation is indeed in peril when Independence Day in Texas begins to resemble the trailer for RoboCop. While strapping plate metal to some hack-cocked officer would make for interesting video, we simply can't afford it. Thus, we're locking our doors tight, turning down the scanners and issuing a blanket Schmuck Alert for any yahoo stupid enough to launch incendiaries at a cop, a camera, hell, even a consultant.

Schmucks!

Esprit de Noir

Say what you will about the Casey Anthony verdict (everyone else has), I'm just glad I wasn't part of the thunderous scrum outside that Florida courthouse...

Sure, it's the Trial of the Century (11 years in), but I'd still rather chase a double rainbow that was never really there to begin with than ride herd on some pasty trollop's flogging. Not that I don't enjoy a good sat truck farm: the illegal parking, the muddy cables, the smell of fresh take-out and diesel fumes. Throw in a few celebrity sightings and you have the makings of at least a heavy metal parking lot. Look! Past that guy with the porno mustache. Is that legendary lenslinger Brad Houston? Why's he standing behind Geraldo? Doesn't matter; Dude could wrestle Rivera to the floor with half his chin-cabbage tied behind his back. Hell, I once saw him hold a lecture hall full of photogs hostage with a single showing of his resume tape!

Of course, they gave him a standing O before he got it out of its protective sleeve, but that doesn't subtract from the fact that Brad's had a helluva career, from flying around with former first ladies to traipsing across dead zones to holding court at the annual NPPA Workshop In Norman, Oklahoma. It was there he huddled with yours truly there back in 2000 for a quick tape evaluation. "Oh, he said, after watching my favorite story from the previous year, "I see what you're trying to do." Ouch!  Little did I know then what a powerhouse Houston was. When I did find out, I took his remark as a compliment, though I never did figure out what it was I was trying to do.

Now that the interwebs have made the world so much smaller, I've reconnected with my former sensi. He even said it would be okay if I stuck some of his photos on my humble blog. The one with the cameras outside Camp Casey, I really like. The black and blue foreground, a blonde on the side, the ever present logo on the horizon... I can see what he was trying to do.

Independence Fray

Of all the holidays a TV News photog has to work, the Fourth of July is one of 'em. Actually, it's a lot like working President's Day - just with a greater chance of heatstroke. I should know...

I've schlepped my weapon through more re-enactor campsites than any dues-paying militia member within the six county confederacy.

I've spun like a top in the middle of Main Street as mostly sober grandpas sporting the latest in fez-wear tried to kill me with go-carts and halitosis.

I've soaked in the smoke of a wide open pig-cooker a total stranger in an American flag apron insisted I take a whooping To-Go plate back to the studio. I usually ate it in the car.

I've felt concrete bridges flex beneath my feet as a State Trooper aimed his radar gun down at passing traffic and chuckled as the truckers flinched.

I've dropped wisecracks in the firecracker shack before a guy with nine fingers and a mouth full of worm dirt, er, chewing tobacco shushed me, spraying his collection of PVC pipes in warm, brown spittle.

I've seen steady beads of sweat run down my forehead, drip off my brow and land on a tiny black and white TV screen, until I wiped it dry long enough to zoom in on an approaching beaming beauty queen.

I've huddled with chums in the breakdown lane as men in Smokey Bear hats held up a tarp to block our view of head-on collision victims. 'Cause, you know, we're always putting dead bodies on the air around here.

I've wrung-out jungle-flavored flop-sweat from my third shirt of the day as an on-air partner remained dry and fly under the strain of my reflector and his necktie. Strange get-up for a water safety story.

I've baby-sat dying live trucks outside amphitheaters as sunburned citizens rushed home to watch digitized glimpses of the very fireworks shows they just saw spread across the heavens. Never understood that.

Yes, I've hauled glass to (and from) every Independence Day cliche that's out there, even made up a few new ones along the way. All the while I've chortled and bitched about double-time not being enough to ease my freedom, and if the schedule I read on my way out of the office of Friday is correct...

I get to do it all again this year. Happy Fourth of July!

Blessings Accepted

Condensing distant events without much video can make for difficult television. But one of the benefits of working solo, (besides listening to your own music in the car) is near total control of your product. In the case of Lost Ring Found, I arrived on scene to find another news crew fully engorged. Luckily, they were friends of mine and we stayed out of each others' shot. But a crowded palette and Friday-itis convinced me to quit shooting long before I should have. Thus, this story isn't all that it should be, but the sweet Southern people at its center more than make up for my lack of effort. Good to know the News Gods can still smile down upon me. Almost absolves all those thunderbolts.

Almost.

Pimp My Ride

It's been nearly a month now since the suits slapped stickers on my unmarked news car and I'm STILL trying to get used to it. Don't get me wrong; I steered a succession of rolling billboards across the open newscape for many, many moons. But for the past few years, I've been the pilot of a quieter ride: an off-white hatchback with only a few scratches to distinguish it from a million other Mommy mobiles. It. Was. Liberating. No longer hassled in traffic, I could roll up on office buildings and imbroglios without ever letting anyone know a jackal of the Fourth Estate was chewing on the scenery. No more. Now, my once forgettable Ford has enough excitable adjectives etched onto its surface to qualify it for the pole at Pocono. So much for being aloof. Still, I've (re)learned a thing or two in my time behind the decorated wheel, mainly that volunteer firefighters bearing oversized flashlights are far more impressed with embossed lettering than they ever were at my encyclopedic knowledge of old Bullwinkle episodes.There are a few OTHER things to consider.

I'm not so much a reckless driver as I am an emotional one. Twenty years of running down deadlines with a genetic lead-foot will do that to a fella. Couple that with the fact that two high-speed interstates tattoo my home market and you get a pretty good idea why I prefer motoring about incognito. Now that a certain set of call letters adorn my every car door, I've tried to drive more like a gentleman and less like an escaped prisoner. Why, just the other day I edged off the eighty mile per hour mark when I realized the letters of my logos were sliding off the side panels. 

Whether it's Metallica's Kill 'em All, some Kool Moe Dee or simply that new Katrina and the Waves track, you'd be wise to hold down the volume at red lights when your station's web address is splayed out in patriotic colors across your hood. Otherwise, you may have to explain to your superior why a news shooter who looks a lot like you was spotted singing along to The Phantom and the Opera soundtrack in mid-town traffic. And don't dare claim to be part of some cross-cultural music exchange program. My boss didn't buy that at all. 

Now, I would NEVER pull my news unit under a shade tree and sack out on company time - especially now that it's wrapped in day-glo promises. But a station vehicle is more than a company car. It's a home on wheels. I have personally changed clothes, nodded off, dissected equipment and even held a seance or two in a news car - ALL in the line of duty. Okay, the seances were really just spontaneous events borne of tedium at hostage stand-offs. Whatever the case, I sure won't be as eager to host any mobile AVON parties now that the outside of my ride screams 'look over here!'.

It's human nature; you pull up to an idling news car at a stoplight and look over to see if a local celebrity is behind the wheel. Instead, you see me: a furry faced father of two hoarking down a burrito. This is good marketing? Yeah, it probably is. But I gotta tell ya, nothing will bring you out of a post-taco stupor like six set of eyes boring down on you from a primer-gray Chrysler idling beside you. And no matter how guilty I feel for not being that cute weather bunny everyone wants to see in public, I'm just not willing to cross-dress.

Yet.