When last we saw Rick 'Turdpolisher' Portier, he was helping us bury evidence in the desert outside Vegas. Since then, he's really laid low. But recently, the veteran photog as seen rising from some Louisiana sewer. Hey, Batman's got his cave, Rick's got his cesspool. They both wear tights. But that's not important right now. What is important is that we get to the bottom of Rick's subterranean homesick view. Turd?
"It ain't easy serving up the fecal buffet. Don't believe me, spend a few minutes with any Assignment Manager. These hearty souls have an entire newsroom to please: interns who want to be stackers, stackers who want to be reporters, and reporters who want to be anchors not to mention wrangle photogs only concerned with where their next free meal is coming from. Throw in a cacophony of scanner traffic and the chaos of CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and the competition's newscasts blaring in the background, and you can see why your average Assignment yearns for calm, and thrives on symmetry.
For someone with a crappy handle, symmetry means your name is at the top of the shit-list every time the word 'sewer' poops up on the menu. So when a few industrious rednecks decided it might be profitable to swipe the iron sewer grates in a spiffy new neighborhood, I grabbed my rubber boots and a change of clothes and headed to the land of milk and hayseeds that is Livingston Parish.
You know the not so old saying, "You gotta get dirty to polish a turd"? It's true -- especially when your reporter wants a cool looking stand-up for her escape tape. That's how I found myself wedged into a place too small and too nasty for Mike Rowe. But the joke was on the Assignment Guy, because after all that work, the local constable who phoned us about the story backed out, and our mas"turd"piece never graced the flat-screen.
Now if you'll excuse me, I know where there are scanners that need their volume knobs removed."
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