The Iceman Melteth...

The life of a TV news Photog is one of backaches, callouses and scratches.Then Summer rolls around and it gets really uncomfortable. Think I'm exaggerating? Obviously, you've never babysat a meth-lab raid in late July. Or toured a humidifier factory while wearing a beard-net. Or hounded a Founder's Day parade at high noon. If you had, you'd know we're on the cusp of The Punishment - that three months stretch of eternity when weather bunnies refuse to go outside and news shooters stew in their own juices. Or is it just me? Granted, I'm a white guy covered in fur, a suburban Dad with a perspiration pattern normally seen only in prison movies, a flaxen haired bookworm who sweats like a gorilla zipped into a monkey suit...

But I reveal too much.

Fact is, even an overexposed sweat-hog like me is lost in the puddle of a Southern-bred Summer. Take my friend Rick Portier up there - he of Baton Rouge burger fame. Dude ain't huddled under a towel 'cause he thinks it looks cool. No, he's just trying to stay upright. To do that, he'll suffer the slings of indignity known to photogs far and wide: He'll dress like a kindergartner on a field trip to the zoo - even while slumming inside some governmental press junket. He'll hide his last bottled water in his boxer shorts while fending off winos at the corner of Crackpipe and Swine. He'll accompany a hot news intern through a crowded ballroom with his bald head held high - even though he looks like he cat-napped in a car-wash. Hell, he won't even flinch when said intern catches him french-kissing his news unit's air-conditioning vents.

So what can you do? Not a lot, air-conditioned news viewer, but remember: If the overly-coiffed news tease standing in front of that brick wall on your tee-vee looks a little hotter than usual, know that her beleaguered stevedore is somewhere near, hunched over his rig, summoning the strength to plunge a rusty Leatherman into his own roiling gut as a sweat-soaked swatch of terry cloth covers his pate - but not his shame.

Now step over that wet patch of pavement, would ya. If I'm not mostaken, that puddle used to be a friend of mine...