Smells Like Team Spirit

No doubt about it, we TV news crews tend to gather in packs. Pressers, plane crashes, pickle queen fests - you can't sling a lens in most markets without clocking a younger version of you holding a Sony of their owny. Then of couse, you gotta man up and act like you meant to - lest you be booted from the Curmudgeonly Cameraman Club (3 million members and growing!). But go easy! Defend you turf too vigorously and you just might find yourself rolling around on the floor with a competitor on the floor in one of those awful press pit dust-ups that prove once and for all why no on one pays to see pasty suburbanites fight. Next thing ya know, the cursed clip's on YouTube and your daughter's threatening to run away if the neighborhhood boys don't stop singing the theme from Rocky III every time you step outside in your bermuda shorts and knee-socks. A daughter's shame - all because you wanted a wide shot without some cable punk's handycam in it. And you call yourself a parent...

Since your kids do, you'd better chill. You'll be part of the scenery soon enough anyway, probing some distant news frontier with not enough sunscreen on your lips and notions of trophies in your head. There you'll have plenty of elbow room and by jove, you'll need it! No station chiseler green-lights a trip without his own vision - one that usually involves lots of re-cuts, promo shots and if possible a two-gallon jug of photog sweat to use a set-prop (you know - something for the anchors to fondle as the houselights fade). Loss of body fluids aside, most shooters I know jump at the chance to schlep their tools to remote locales. Where else ya gonna clear your head? Besides, I'd rather clock a prarie rat at a thousand paces than guess what kind of deodorant Otto the camera-slug chose to leave untouched this morning. Maybe then the kids will respect what I do for a living. Speaking of which, I gotta scram, There's yardwork to do out back and unless my vision fails me, those little bastards are lining up by the fence again. I'll show them some 'Eye of the Tiger'...