Dichotomy's Rot

Okay, this is the part of the show where I pull a few fresh photos and assign some irony to them. To be honest though, it's Sunday night: in the past two days I've ridden 18 hard mountain bike miles, quelled a few sibling insurrections and changed the cat box a time or two. I'm tapped out. Still, it's my self-appointed duty to provide cogent cameraman analysis, so here goes...

Anoop Desai is a nice guy. (Hey, that rhymed!) He's also the smartest American Idol contestant you'll run across at Charlotte's Freedom Park. That's where Shannon Smith and I met him Thursday morning, not quite by accident. See, we're putting together a 'Where Are They Now' piece on some North Carolina Idols and that kind of thing would simply be incomplete without a visit with everyone's favorite UNC Grad student turned R&B singer. Anoop (Dawg) is done with Idol, of course, but he's still making music. Currently unsigned, he's living in Atlanta and shopping his tunes around town. It can't be easy. Don't get me wrong: Anoop's got serious vocal chops and a helluva brain to go with it, but fame is a fickle bitch. What was so fresh and new two seasons back is often but a distant memory to the twelve year olds and asexual shut-ins who hang on Idol's every ingenue. I just wish Anoop would a write a book about his post Idol experience. Contractually, he probably can't - but dude's got some sober-eyed observations on what it's like to step OFF that global merry-go-round. Me? I'd be holed-up in some bad hotel lounge reminding anyone who would listen just who the hell I used to be. Not Anoop. He's got too much savvy, class and talent to go that route. Look for his music soon. Hell, use the twenty you were saving for that Adam Lambert disc and buy from the one American Idol contestant on the planet who could explain the social implications of our state's urbanization without using all his fingers...

Speaking of fingers, I'd just wrapped mine around a most righteous hamburger when I got my next assignment of the day: Babysit the plane crash. Okay, that's not a direct quote, but you get the idea. Some eighteen hours earlier, a small plane had crashed into a High Point neighborhood, killing the pilot and a passenger. Tragic, yes and big news to boot. Before neighbors could even grasp what had happened, a squadron of photogs, reporters and even a few management types were assembling on scene. I myself was lucky enough to miss it, as other duties pulled me out of pocket. But a debris field waits for everyone. Which is why, a full day after impact, The Suits dispatched me post-haste. It was not my first plane crash scene and most probably not my last. But unlike other crash locales, this one was occurred in a neighborhood much like my own. Trees clipped in descending order, fuselage wedged in a house, intact engine sitting in the street...let's just say you had to be there. And the media WAS there - print, TV, even a radio reporter or four. By five o clock, we'd gathered in a semi-circle, each crew vying for an unobstructed view of the destruction. Did we stop to gawk at the plane parts, wax emphatically on the frailty of life, vow to never board a stump-jumper again? Not really. We were all on deadline, you see. We were far more concerned with editing, audio and IFB. The fact that the backdrop was a debris field was sad, but not particularly distracting. If that makes me a jackal, well, you know where to send Animal Control.

Now, about that irony. Honestly, there is none. Interviewing a pop-star wannabe in the morning and shooting a fatal crash in the afternoon is about as unique as that burger I barely finished. Or maybe I've just become numb to the vagaries of the chase. Do anything for long enough and it becomes the norm - be it looking at life through a tube or feeling compelled to write about it (most) every night.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a beveled reflection I must avoid...