With a Molly Hatchet 8-Track still in my glove compartment, I'm no early adopter. But thanks to the camera on my shoulder, I do get access to the latest gadgets and silliest of trends. From PS2 to Y2K - I've profiled, previewed and pimped 'em all. Today, it was the iPhone's turn. But it almost didn't happen. All day long a series of top secret calls were placed above my paygrade, requests made, embargoes cited. By half past three this afternoon, I figured negotiations had broken off. That's when my hip began vibrating. Ten minutes later I pushed my way past a clutch of smug technogeeks camped outside an utterly forgettable AT&T store. Inside, the harried manager whsiked me to a back stockroom, where a man from Cupertino sat waiting quietly in the shadows. His face I couldn't really see, but his name tag read iCarl. Weird, that.
Ask me to name my most feared assignment and I won’t cite the late night drive-by, won’t mention multiple murders or scribble a list of hurricane names. No, my worst case scenario is a lot more bloodcurdling than that. For the one shoot that strikes dread in the crusty heart of this lenslinger is … The Budget Meeting. Be it county, city or haughty suburb - there’s no place I’d choose to loiter at less than a contentious summit of low-level politicos. I’d rather chase cadaver dogs into the woods. Even the old ones that pass gas when they run. That would still be better than choking on the noxious fumes that stain the ceiling tiles of your local County Commissioner Chambers. Sure, it’s odorless, tasteless and otherwise invisible. But something inside those musty halls makes the clock hands slow to a creep, causes my calf muscles to ache and gets me mulling over the upside of a good ole fashioned lobotomy. I know it sounds extreme, but sit through enough line-item reviews and all manners of madness will run through your skull. That is, before you forget your name completely.
The only solace is, you rarely suffer alone. Take yesterday in Wentworth -where I peered through the haze of egocentric blather to lock eyes with a doppelganger of sorts. He was the only familiar face in the jam-packed galley, but I didn’t know his name. That’s damn rude of me too, since we’ve both made hollow chit-chat at countless camera conventions over the years. But as I studied his lack of expression, his chosen moniker escaped me. That’s okay for I could feel his pulse from across the room. It came in low and slow and I began to realize my cross-town competitor was hibernating on his feet. Sure, he was functioning on some physical level, propped up on his side of the hall as some blowhard with a chintzy necktie placated his constituents ... but his gaze was as empty as the vaulted chambers were full.
Pulling back from my own viewfinder, I stopped to admire the chrome on his thousand yard stare. That’s when the head Commissioner began railing on ‘The Media’, taking a local newspaper reporter to task for coloring his words. Scanning the room for said offender, he came up empty, settling instead on your truly and his trusty Sony - neither of which penned the article in question. “You people in the press should be ashamed of yourself”, he said as he bore a hole into my lens. I just smiled weakly and tried my best to flip him off with my mind. It didn’t work; he just babbled on with the self-satisfaction of a small market news anchor watching hid first promo. Ignoring a few snickers from the crowd, I looked over at my semi-conscious colleague for support,. He just stood and stared, but he blinked back his own message in photog Morse Code…
I was plowing through a most righteous bowl of banana pudding at one of those buffet places today, when I heard him.
Just when I thought I knew all the bloggers 'round these parts, I meet someone new. Jayne England Byrne has been push-button publishing since June 2006 - soon after she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. In that time, the Guilford County resident has written insightful, lyrical passages examining every facet of her treatment, providing hope and understanding for countless other Breast Cancer patients. Recently, she even allowed Julie Luck and me inside her home to shoot a quick profile. That piece aired tonight and I hope the finished product helped ease her initial reticence. News crews can be invasive - even when they mean well. Personally, what I know about Breast Cancer can be spray-painted on a Tic-Tac, but when Jayne speaks of the therapeutic wonders of sharing her story with others - that, I understand...
Normally one finishes reading a book before reviewing it, but I'm so taken with Mike Mullane's irreverent take on astronaut immortality, I simply cannot wait. Riding Rockets is the memoirs of a shuttle-era astronaut - a bracing, funny look at the thrill of manned space flight and the soul-crushing bureaucracy behind it. Make no mistake, this ain't The Right Stuff... But then again, driving space trucks ain't exactly a moonwalk, either. To hear this military man tell it, NASA's second generation of space explorers weren't all cast from the square-jawed, flyboy mold. Instead, the shuttle crew candidates of 1978 included overly-schooled doctorate wonks, pasty scientist-types and humorless pioneers of the Feminist movement. Mullane's account of the resulting culture clash of these very different overachievers is worth the price of the paperback alone, and I got three hundred more pages to go! I can't wait to see how this gifted writer describes space flight itself, or how he handles on page the dark days following the Challenger and Columbia disasters. Whatever the case, I got myself a new favorite astronaut - not so much for his in-flight service, but for the unobstructed view he shares with the rest of us terra-firma schlubs. It's enough to convince this author-wannabe to get his schtick together - for like Blue Blood, Kitchen Confidential, Newjack and Rivethead, Riding Rockets is the exact kind of book I'm trying to write. Just replace 'space shuttle' with 'live truck' and you pretty much have 'Viewfinder BLUES'. That may not sound like high praise, but it is. I mean, what else can you say about an autobiography that opens with the author in mid-enema? You won't see that on C-Span...
...but if we did, we'd extend mad props to one JL Watkins, aka Lost Little Robot - who picked up three (3!) more Emmy’s this weekend for his madcap work as photog /tech geek impresario way down there in the Upstate. Not bad for a nerd from the great Northwest.
...We’d also like to dip our lens in the general direction of Winston-Salem, where one Jon Lowder tries his hand at cameratology and gets a bad case of the shakes. In Lenslinger I Ain’t, the otherwise respectable family man laments his lack of acumen and credits me with being far better than I am.
...Lastly, there’s a loyal reader and casual acquaintance I must acknowledge, because he insists on acknowledging me. I don’t know Charlie Layno well, but the El Ocho engineer seems to read my thoughts daily and he isn’t even afraid to admit it. Thanks, Charlie. Remind me to break something in your honor very soon.
Joe Rosenthal endured a lifetime of attention after capturing the iconic conquering of Japan's Pacific stronghold in 1945. But the marine who recorded the same flag-raising on 16mm color film did not. In fact, Sgt. William H. Genaust never made it off Mount Suribachi. Killed by machine-gun fire days later as he helped fellow Marines secure a cave, his remains were never recovered. But now, thanks to a Pennsylvania businessman, the 38-year-old combat photographer may finally leave the battlefield. On his own dime, Bob Bolus began researching the possible location of this lost MIA, reminding everyone Genaust deserved better than to be left in a creak of a crag-heap. Now the military is on-board, with their own experts pouring over the topographical maps, GPS coordinates and DNA samples gathered by Bolus. With forensic teams now scouring Hill 362A, perhaps this forgotten photog can be brought home. How about Arlington?
Garrett was unconscious when the call came in. Wedged back in a corner of The Pit’s skanky sofa, he’d dozed off to the dulcet tones of Bob Barker sleepwalking through another episode. But about halfway through Plinko, Hector burst into the tiny alcove yelling something about a school bus wreck, Camilla and Live Three. Suddenly he was up grabbing keys and batteries as he headed out the door, Camilla behind him, wrestling with her bag and one of those cheesy News Leader 3! jackets. Outside, Garrett realized why. The late morning sky was purple and gray, low clouds with the makings of a midday monsoon roiled in the distance. Looking at the live truck keys in his hand, he read the letters etched into the plastic orange fob. Live 3. Damn! Spotting the relic parked in a corner spot, he headed that way. As he did, the first of a million raindrops began to fall, the larger ones darkening his threadbare shirt. By the time he’d slung the rest of his gear into the faded white Suburban and backed it out of the lot, the shirt hung like a wet beach towel on him. Riding shotgun, Camille cradled a cell phone and scribbled down directions. Garrett pulled a knob and encrusted wipers skittered across antique glass, turning the windshield into an abstract canvas, slathered in pollen, mud and bug guts. Halfway down the driveway, the fabled news chariot back-fired causing a fat squirrel dash from a nearby bush. Turning out on the street, Live Three rocked from side to side before centering up, at which point Garrett looked in the rearview mirror and reviewed his new assignment.
