Want to amuse your friends at this year's Christmas party? Invite a few TV news photogs over and ply them with fruity drinks. Within minutes, you'll have more grisly banter than an entire episode of CSI:Miami. It's not that we're all heathens, mind you - but when you spend your days sucking life through a tube, it's difficult to kibbitz without offending a few innocents. Hey, it's not our fault we measure time by its relation to the next newscast ("It was T minus twelve minutes before I ever got a script!"), pepper every sentence with more meaningless acronyms than the average fighter pilot (I was laying down my SOT's when the IFB died!"), or base street directions on tragedies past ("Take a left past the laundromat where that lady got shanked..."). But what we lack in refinery we more than make up for in real world knowledge.
Know where to find the more lucid homeless folk in your town? Wanna know what the Governor says when the cameras aren't rolling? Know how to make a Rent-A-Cop soil himself? Ask a photog. Even if they won't say, you'll be able to tell by the glint in the thousand yard stare you've touched on one of their many areas of expertise. But please - don't ask them if the weather bunny is nice as she seems in your living room, why tornados always sound like freight trains or how we only interview shirtless inbreds at accident scenes, 'cause you wouldn't like the answer! Just keep the finger sandwiches coming, would you?Or maybe walk Aunt Doris to the far side of the room when Hector starts talking about that ball-gag convention he covered last week. You'll be glad you did. And for the love of all that's a misdemeanor, STOP asking me about the missing silverware; I told you...
I don't know nothin' 'bout that.
No comments:
Post a Comment