That's a Wrap

2011 is almost over and I've yet to work up the obligatory Year in Review post. Oh well, what better way to wiggle out of all that reflection than to share one of Sean Browning's Go-Pro masterpieces! In his latest submission we see not some frazzled photog staring into the abyss, but rather a bugs-eye view of a live shot at dusk. Funny, I don't remember my least favorite part of the day being so beautiful. Then again, life's all about how you perceive it. Whereas many lenslingers see only knotted drop cords drenched in generator fumes, others aren't afraid to simply gape at the heavens. I rather like the latter and in the coming year I vow to look up (and live) a little more often. So while I can't promise to be as sunny as my West Coast brethren, I'll try my best to turn down the Sturm und Drang. Now if you'll excuse me, I have half a mile of orange cord to untangle and this lousy daylight is dying fast.

Happy New Year...

News You Can Lose

It hasn't just been slow this week. It's been inert. That's to be expected, for during this week after Christmas, a good percentage of the hemisphere stays home. Not us newsies. We've got a show to put on - even if it means filling our broadcasts with a complete lack of happenings. You'd think it would make for an easy week. You'd be wrong. Me, I'd rather race from turnstile to rubble pile to live truck dial than try to make news out of nothing at all. Take the past few days - please! I've played more phone tag than a telemarketer with Tourettes, left quizzical missives with executive assistants, drooled over the kind of press releases I'd usually use for spitballs...

Yes, Public Works? Nigel from Channel X here. We just got word you guys were waxing speed bumps this week and we wanted to know if we could send a crew over? Excuse me? You don't see WHY this is newsworthy? Look pal, you're the one who sent the press release! I'm just keeping my place in the food chain. You know what a slow news week it is? My assignment editor had to breathe into a paper bag before your fax ever made it through the machine. She's laying down right now! So before you go changing your mind, you should know my satellite truck is circling your block. Inside are two separate news crews, one to cover 'nuts and bolts', the other in search of a sidebar. I got my best graphics guy cooking up an over the shoulder as we speak and I'm thinking about sending my main anchor over to break out the gravitas. So unless you wanna tell the entire Upper Valley Homeland Crescent why you're wasting valuable fax paper, I suggest you get the fellas out there and out there NOW! Otherwise, we're going straight-up investigative on your ass and YOU'LL be the one explaining why a half dozen city workers were caught on tape getting high by the salt pile! Hmmm? What's that???

Yeah, I can call back tomorrow.

Terminal Viscocity

After eleven days off, I wasn't sure I'd remember how to push minutia through a tube. But mere minutes after planting my camera outside a busy department store, I realized - like dirty looks from women who didn't do their hair before venturing out to return those oven mitts - those news-gathering callouses weren't gonna fade any time soon. For instance...

I can still profile with extreme prejudice. You would too if persuading strangers to yammer on camera were part of your daily duties. So if I accost you in a crowded parking lot, be honored! I let the last weirdos pass without so much as a game of slap and tickle! Now tell me, what brings you to the syphilis clinic, Senator?

I can still think on my feet. Today, certified gajillionaire Jerry Neal escorted me around his palatial estate. It was awkward at first, until we realized we both knew Jerry Bledsoe and Phil Morgan. From there, we gabbed like old friends, despite our differences in age and income. Maybe he'll come mountain biking with us!

I can still remember when crossing county lines felt like a lo-o-ong way to go to fill forty seconds of airtime. Now I'll crisscross the entire region six times for one close-up of an eggplant that resembles Martin Van Buren. Make that seven if the lady who grew it speaks with an odd accent. Throw in a funny wig and I'll go well past eight.  

I can still tell who used my gear while I was gone simply by examining the physical evidence. Viewfinder out of whack? Must be that shortsighted sports shooter down the hall. Shutter speed cranked to the high heavens? Film school student at twelve o clock. The faint smell of Egg McMuffins and desperation? I'm lookin' at you, morning crew!    

I can still recall a time when chasing scanner blather felt like a really important thing to do. It was the dawn of the nineties and I was high on acid wash jeans and Jane's Addiction. These days, everything has changed except my musical tastes and while the siren's song doesn't thrill me like it used to, I still can't meet a screaming fire engine on the street without mumbling curses and giving chase.

But I'm working on it..
 

Sling, Slank, Slunk!

Contrary to what my wife may tell you, that ain't me. In fact, on this not so brisk Christmas morning, I couldn't be merrier. Much of that has to do with the fact that I've been on vacation for going on ten days now. That will change tomorrow, when I skulk back to El Ocho with a bag full of jacked-up toys slung over my one good shoulder. I'm expecting a hectic week: one filled with live shots, handheld soundbites and not a lot of news to go around. Whatever (doesn't) happen, I'll try not to complain, for who wants to hear the grumblings of a wordy camera nerd with garlic in his soul? Not me. For while my heart may be full of unwashed socks, my head is back in the game. 2011, with its bouts of doubt and toadstool sandwiches, is nearly a thing of the past. I'm looking more than forward to Twenty Twelve, if for no other reason it reminds me of a Rush album I dug in middle school. That and the world's gonna end when this new calendar runs out. What better reason to get off my felt green ass and commence with the sentences? None that I can think of, so if you try not to roll your beady little eyes so much, I'll try and do better by these pages in 2012 - even if I have to pillage the entire Piedmont Triad Googolplex to do it.

Merry Christmas.

Gold in Them Thar Reels

If you're like me, you've not watched a single frame of Discovery's Gold Rush. But that's about to change now that the show's producers have unleashed a wicked new Behind the Scenes episode. It ain't news, but one look at what the production crew has to go through up there in the Klondike will make anyone with a camera groove in their shoulder wince in solidarity. Killer mud, pissed off prospectors, rogue excavators! Reminds of a few groundbreakings I've attended. Then again, nothing I've seen on the golden shovel patrol can compare to what folks like Nick O'Mealley experienced while living for months in the middle of untamed Alaska. Don't believe me? See for yourself - just don't go around trashing those 'pampered' production crews. After all, when's the last time a hungry bear bum-rushed your ribbon-cutting?

Been at least a couple of months for me...

Master of the Grab

You can keep your Chet McChindimples and vaguely ethnic Barbies. I need a real man for the mission at hand, one who isn't afraid to wear a connector necklace, sensible shoes and a bright red fanny pack. Such a person is John P. Creel, III, otherwise known as JPC-3PO. I myself have never met the man, but Richard Adkins has. And to hear RAD tell it, Creel doesn't just commit television news, he embodies it...

John Creel didn’t teach me how to shoot, he didn’t teach me how to edit. What John Creel taught me was Survival in the world of TV News Photography. What John Creel knew that so many in the business missed, is that a good News Photographer has to be part Journalist, part Boy Scout, part artist and part asshole. All while being a good person.

John is an early adapter of technology, while others were still playing Pong, John had a home computer. Before cell phones were small enough to fit on your glove-box, you could always talk to John via his Mobile Radio Phone. And John taught me how to fix what broke, at least good enough to limp through the next live shot.

Creel is that guy who you never catch off-guard… stuck on a stake out at the scene all night? Creel will bring out a box of food stashed away in his truck. Rain? He’s got you covered… literally. Every gadget, every adapter, every thing you need… John can pull out of his pocket in an instant.

After working with John for about five years, I ran in to him later on assignment. I’ll never forget that night at the Great New Madrid Earthquake… a zillion Sat trucks lined the levies of the river, a long day, a long night… and while everyone was tired, folding up lights and rolling up cables after the last live shot, we all caught the smell of freshly popped popcorn… we looked around there was John, offing up hot popcorn from the microwave in his rig… and I just may have imagined this part… but I’m pretty sure there a cooler of cold beer with arms reach!

Adapters...popcorn...BEER? What say we clone this Creel fellow and improve television tenfold!

Shooter in the Crosshairs

Brock Nicholls screwed up. Now, he's stuck where his career started, Baton Rouge. When an arsonist begins torching the city, it's his ticket back to the top, but he'll have to fight his boss and partner to get there. When he meets the arsonist, Brock discovers he has one more demon to exorcise...

For years now, Rick Portier and I have ruminated on the rewards of writing. During countless phone calls and more than a few times in Vegas, we've knocked back top-shelf liquor and traded lies about jack-slapping the muse. Now, that dodgy little photog has put his imagination where his mouth is. With Shooter in the Crosshairs, Rick's combined his knowledge of the news business with his gift for depiction to create a freakin' page-turner. The nerve of that guy!

When his television career went down in flames on the steps of a Dallas courthouse, it made national news and earned the TV photog a night in lock-up. Now, Brock’s stuck in the place where it all started, Baton Rouge, working for a mental midget like Percy Finch and his "Good News" strategy that has viewers flocking to the competition. If that weren't bad enough, Finch has Brock locked into shooting pet parades for Katie Couric wannabes like Nancy Patrick....

Are you kidding me? With a set-up like that, square-dancing zombies could do-see-do all over the next chapter and a half and I'M STILL IN! Luckily for us though, the -AHEM- author steers clear of the undead and instead sticks to the streets he knows so well. It's that authenticity that will leave anyone who's hoisted or stared into a fancycam nodding their head in recognition. As for me, I'll try and keep my head out of the nearest oven as I ingest the quest of one Brock Nicholls, a world-weary news shooter who I'd love to see team up with G. Lee. First though, there's an arsonist to catch and I know just the man for it.  

Along the way, Brock reveals newsroom secrets and rails against everything that is wrong with the business he loves, a business that's cost him every relationship he's ever had. When he finally comes face-to-face with the man behind the sheet, Brock discovers he has one more demon to exorcise – one from his youth. In order to do that, he'll have to decide between telling the story of a lifetime and sending a murderer to jail.

How does it end? How the hell do I know? I'm reading this thing along with the rest of you! So while I don't need an extra copy, surely there's someone in your life who does. So buy Shooter in the Crosshairs and help a brother achieve his dream. And do it soon, before the artist formerly known as Turdpolisher lands a three picture deal and won't return any of our calls.

At the End of the Day...

Funny how the average live truck can crisscross three counties, race through rush hour traffic, squeeze into a breakdown lane, idle for six hours straight, double as an audio booth, sleep three (un)comfortably, attract transients and school children, backfire only in sketchy neighborhoods, boast the logos of three separate consultant firms, power enough lights to be seen from space, suck just enough gas to ensure you'll have to fill it up later, harbor the remnants of a thousand dollar menu items, inspire new whole methods of laptop hackery, serve as a grooming booth and/or rest station for restless 'talent', spew engine exhaust on anyone rolling up cables, emit the kind of aroma that brings to mind sea travel...

...only to break the hell down on the way back to the station.

Okay, so it's not funny at all - especially when you've put in a long day of news gathering and are still FAR from home. In fact, of all the inconveniences I might wish on a competitor (weak camera batteries, brittle light bulbs, flatulent reporters), I wouldn't foist a dead live truck on my worstest enemy. Just ask A.J. Willen, the Atlanta lenslinger who posted this photo and jump-started my my memory banks... I remember one remote van in particular that would seize up with 'vapor-lock' every day at dusk and shut down on the highway home. "Nothin' you can do 'bout it but sit and let it rest for awhile", said the engineer on the other end of the cell phone. One fall evening I nearly abandoned the damn thing along Route 421. ("%#$@% this!", I remember thinking. I'll just live like Caine from Kung-Fu; ya know, walk the Earth, drop-kick evil villagers...)  I got about a half mile down the road, thought about my mortgage and the mud-hole my wife would stomp in me if I marooned a mobile newsroom..

It took nearly two hours to get that live truck back to the shop. At one point a car full of Goth kids happened by and began heckling me, 'til I threatened to microwave their piercings. I think I was justified...

Arose Such A Clatter...

'Twas the week before Christmas and all through the land,
News crews were squeezing into their vans.
To airports and malls they carried their loads,
They even went LIVE by the side of the road...

Around them the world began to slow down,
But they were too busy looking for sound.
Grilling last minute shoppers and fake Santa Clauses,
Their producers would cue them when to take pauses...

Back at the station, managers vanished,
The green room sat empty, its visitors banished.
Top anchors split early, their substitutes preening,
Thank God the Year-Ender was due for a screening...

Over in the studio, the pizza's arriving,
It's all that keeps the floor crew surviving.
But the Sports guy dives in, as do the slackers,
Back in the live truck, they eat chap-stick and crackers...

But if good food and family are things you will miss,
What the hell are you still doing in this business?
Why you're lucky to have a job at this station,
Unlike normal folk, The Truth takes no vacation...

So hang in there, all of you stuck in a truck,
Our industry's changing and so will your luck.
But should you start feeling merry - now or later,
Know you're breathing in fumes from the truck's generator.

Pride and Petulance

When an ABC Sports executive wanted to spin off Monday Night Football into a Saturday morning animated series, Howard Cosell was said to be livid. "Do you know who you're speaking to? I am the biggest name in show business today. And you want to make a cartoon character out of me?" The irony, of course, is by then that's exactly what Howard Cosell was: a cartoon character. But after reading Mark Ribowsky's withering new biography of the sportscasting legend, I can't help but remember him in all three dimensions. Then again, I'm a child of the Seventies; when Cosell was a bigger pop icon than Justin Timberlake is today. Howard was everywhere: quizzing a glistening Mohammed Ali, enabling a young Joe Namath, lording over such heavyweight fare as Battle of the Network Stars. Yes, the man born Howard William Cohen (in Winston-Salem, no less!) enjoyed a most unlikely career, turning untold hubris and his loquacious nature into a ringside seat to the Twentieth Century.

At 436 pages, Ribowsky's book seeks to cover much of Cosell's rise and fall. Especially the fall. With a subject as repugnant as this, it's understandable ... but in so gleefully depicting every instance of Howard dancing on some enemy's grave, the author commits a little schadenfreude of his own. Still, the book's a ripping good read, if not, like the man at the center of it all, a bit long-winded. I guess that's only fitting, like a custom-made toupee or a mustard yellow ABC Sports-jacket. That's what I'll remember about this American Original. That and the staccato barrage of his trademark nasal tone. Howard Cosell didn't just love language. He molested it. And while that was enough to win my teenage admiration, I've grown to know enough gifted communicators to recognize a few as straight-up assholes. Howie certainly seemed to be that and so much more. But he forged new territory in television and brought the kind of gravitas and grit to sports commentary that Bryant Gumble is still trying to pull off. All while sucking the air out of every room and knocking back lots of vodka.

Hard to hate on that.

Natural Born Slinger

Three months after a Milwaukee police sergeant roughed up the oldest photog he could find at a house fire, city officials have admitted Clint Fillinger did nothing wrong. That is to say they've dropped all charges against the Fox 4 photojournalist. Readers will remember Fillinger as the - ahem - seasoned lenslinger who responded to a house fire call only to be accosted by an oddly hostile cop. "All the way back!" the sergeant barked, as he and a fellow officer walked the accredited photographer away from the news scene. Fillinger protested as he backpedaled, until finally the cops put him on his ass. When they did, his camera took a hard bounce but it did capture the sixty eight year old community menace being unceremoniously cuffed and stuffed.

At the time we issued a stern Schmuck Alert, a move met with stiff indifference by all parties involved. We're cool with that, though one of the core tenets of The Lenslinger Institute is that clashes between The Fourth Estate and first responders would not occur so readily were certain people not so insistent on being absolute douche-bags. It's even written in our by-laws. So, you can imagine our delight at hearing the city of Milwaukee have reconsidered their position and expunged Mr. Fillinger's record of any and all cooked up charges. Hey, being publicly identified as a forty five year old veteran of television news is enough to live down. No one needs a rap sheet they didn't earn.

 

Remote Patrol

Should ever my life flash before my eyes, have I got to watch all those silly live shots again? And how about those endless minutes between live shots? I'm not sure I can suffer through those extended sentences a second time. Then again, I'm still wearing residue from last night's protracted encampment from the side of the road. Sure, I've washed off all the carbon monoxide and flop sweat, but there's still a groove in my gut from slumping over the steering wheel while my reporter pounded out rejoinders on the world's grittiest laptop... What, like YOU'VE never power-napped as a deadline loomed, never left your body as soundbites danced through your head? Hell, I once found myself floating above the truck only to look down and see the real me molesting an innocent sandbag.

You can imagine my shame.

Or you can keep reading as I try to justify my rancor at having to drop anchor. As a kid, the notion of a protracted encampment in one of these mobile newsrooms would have made me downright giddy, but as a grown man staving off a mid life crisis, nothing makes me feel like I'm wasting my days than some interminable afternoon spent peeling faded logos from the corners of what's left of my critical thinking skills. I'm not saying live trucks make me dumb but the other evening I spent ten full minutes admiring the way I'd coiled an extension cord. If that weren't enough I took real pride at the amount of back-light I milked from a dying street lamp. Add that to the way I convinced that drunk we were breaking down (instead of setting up) and you have the very definition of meaningful remote execution.

And yet it leaves me so empty.

Part of it is, of course, the weather. This time of year it simply gets dark too damn early. That's a big deal when you're trying to make a brick wall interesting, let alone relevant to the earthquake/clam bake you covered seven hours earlier. Of course, I'm just wasting my breath. I know this, just as sure as I know that neglected nine volt battery powering the talent's earpiece will die a sudden death the moment she begins breaking down the deposition. You know, the one they recorded across the street this morning. Look over my reporter's shoulder and you may catch a slice of courthouse window. That, my friends, is the most you can hope for when adding filigree to facts. It won't win you any Emmys but it will put bread on your table if not fill you with quiet pride as some jack-hole with a leaf blower shows up to drown out your shot.

Now back to you.

Points to Squander...

Funny how a single TV camera can turn a bustling post office into a barren wasteland...

Odd how those protestors stop chanting the moment I drive away...

Eerie how a bag full of dead camera batteries can cause an entire freight train to derail...

Scary how much that Black Friday piece resembled the last sixteen I did...

Strange how that kid yelled "Hi Mom!" just before he flipped me off...

Spooky how those people with the golden shovels think this is real life...

Typical how a reporter who phones in every other assignments spends three months crafting his Emmy entries...

Baffling how they set the podium in front of that plate glass window...

Ironic that a woman with so much gravy on her teeth insist on being interviewed...

Weird how unsatisfying writing lists can be...

Bum Rush the Show

I admit it: when news broke of another shooting at Virginia Tech last week, I promptly dove under my desk. Blacksburg may be a couple hours away but in the Spring of 2007, almost every news crew within this hemisphere made a beeline for the small Virginia town. Even Z-block zealots like myself made the trip, if only to witness one of the largest TV truck summits ever convened. There was, of course, great tragedy at hand - but for the distant affiliates, foreign bureau chiefs and network hotshots who roamed the campus that week, the massacre made but for a backdrop. and what a backdrop... Hundreds of tripods stood at attention as spotlights large and small chased shadows across Blacksburg's darkest day. It was a sight to behold and not for the best of reasons. By the very first nightfall, what began as a madman's fantasy had transformed into a slick and salacious sat-shot juggernaut, a commodity of sorrow served up in every skewed perspective our 24/7 news universe has to offer.

This time, however, the crime at hand did not involve mass casualties. That makes it no less horrific to those involved, but it did prevent the matter from devolving into some kind of hi-def circus. Perhaps no one was more thankful of that fact than El Ocho's own crew, who can be seen above reporting the facts -- withOUT turning aftermath into stagecraft. Me, I'm just sorry the latest shooting had to happen at all. Virginia Tech is a fine school. It no more deserves wanton gun-play on its campus than it does armies of correspondents trying to make their bones over gross and random depravity. As for that massive sat truck encampment on the far side of the school, it was awesome to watch, but it just ain't the kind of thing one wishes on any institution, let alone a campus as bucolic as Virginia Tech. Personally, I don't want to be part of a scum that large unless it's parked under a giant spaceship that just spit out Freddy Mercury.

Maybe then, I'll come out from beneath my desk.   

Walk The Line

Though I was working in North Carolina television at the time, I did not know Bart Smith, Rick Sherrill or Jim Lane. But when all three men perished in the 1991 crash of WTVD's helicopter, the impact sent shock waves through every television station in the state and nation. Since that time, I've grown to know several people affected by that terrible night in ways big and small. They don't talk about it much and I don't ask. But with the Twentieth Anniversary of the crash upon us, I feel compelled to dip my lens in honor of these exciting young men struck down in the prime of their lives. Of course, nothing I can say will assuage the pain still felt by loved ones, so I hesitate to try. Instead, let's hear from journeyman photog Dave Wertheimer - who doesn't need anniversaries or tributes to relive that awful call...

Twenty years ago I was a Photojournalist for WTVD and I got a call in the middle of the night from Bonnie Moore. The chopper went down and I had to go cover it. At the scene Dave Boliek met me there. I concentrated on keeping my right eye on the black and white viewfinder, trying to insulate myself from the reality that Bart (my roommate), Rick (my best friend) and Jim (close friend and former next door neighbor) were dead in the wreckage. All three were engaged or soon to be. I stayed focused on the black and white images I was recording until I heard Bart's voice pager go off, the voice was his soon to be fiance Karen saying "where are you, are you with Dave? Call me". At that point I had enough and could not shoot any more. I spent the next day or so going between the houses of Karen, Diane and Lisa trying to comfort them in their loss. In the days to come I went to all three funerals. In the years to come I became a "video gypsy" of sorts, moving from station to station trying to find myself, still remembering December 7, 1991 as the worst day of my life.

My condolences to those still suffering...

Hunchbacks of Happenstance

As a hardened guardian of the Fourth Estate, it's hurts my heart to watch it all crumble. But crumble it does as the tectonic plates of television grind beneath our feet. Thanks to faltering funds, a groundswell of gadgetry and an exodus of peasants, what was once considered bedrock is now a billion shifting pixels. This curtain of uncertainty threatens to swallow us all, until whole fiefdoms cease to be. But you know, it's not the Knights in Shining Hairspray or even the Damsels of Duress I worry about most as those castle walls begin to fall... It's the hunchbacks.

You know, those poor souls you still see scampering up turrets or floating in the moat. What with their medieval machinery and olde world aroma, it's easy to dismiss as little better than serfs. Until, that is, you see them chase a rainbow, quiz a Visigoth or just heap scorn on reports of a unicorn. Of all the subjects in this whole kingdom, it is they who seemed strangely free, despite their outdated armor and fondness for grog. What will become of them as new civilizations rise from this abysmal industry? Will they rise up and fight - or slink away like some kinky alchemist in the night? Why, I'd give up my one good eye to know...

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm needed in the watchtower.