The Hulk and the Hurricane

It's not every day you tell a grown man you loved him as Thunder Lips, but that's exactly what I said to Hulk Hogan when I ran into him at work on Wednesday. He told me was I was dating myself. I said that was okay around here. He half chuckled before ambling down the hall - gingerly, like a man who's taken a folding chair to the face. I was in suitable awe, but I couldn't linger too long on this deflated superhero. There was a bigger name on the other line. IRENE. Seems this salty wench is intent on crashing our Carolina shores and if that's going to happen I simply have to be there. Why? Hard to say. Voluntary deprivation is normally not my bag, but the pageantry attached to these marquee winds draws me in like a punch-drunk barfly. Too bad escorting a harlot onshore is such thoroughly miserable business, with little to no reward. In the end, there are only bragging rights, the ability to name-drop the latest storm at the very next keg party; it's the TV news equivalent of getting a new tattoo. All I know is for me, the only thing more unpleasant than chasing a hurricane is watching someone else do it. Thus, I'm hustling to the coast with electronics in tow and safety in mind. Friends are joining me. Dirty weather awaits. I'll try and keep the blog updated but things get hinky when trashcans take flight. So check my Twitter feed or Facebook. Get with.  Know that I'll be checking in... Courage!

Stalking Leatherheads

Damn that George Clooney. After months of avoiding my lens at different Leatherheads shoot, today he and his crew popped up in plain view at War Memorial Stadium in Greensboro. Problem was, I had very little time for the Sexiest Man Alive. Why? It’s Sweeps, baby. Instead of traipsing around the Piedmont with the soft news assignment of the day in my pocket, I’ve been teaming up with our hard-nose reporter staff for an endless series of lead stories and live shots. Ugh. I’d much rather go solo and turn the kinds of stories that stick with viewers far longer than the breathless babble that makes up the front of your average newscast. What kinds of stories are those? The ones built on striking visuals … like, say, a gaggle of grandmothers swooning every time a globally known actor tears himself away from chatting up starlets long enough to graze on a few munchies at the craft services table.

That was exactly the scene unfolding this morning as reporter Angela Rodriguez and I rolled up on Greensboro’s crumbling showpiece of a historic baseball stadium. That’s where Clooney and crew were shooting scenes for his upcoming movie about the birth of pro football. The palette was staggering. Extras dressed in ‘20‘s garb, Model T’s sputtering in the mist, film crew hippies fiddling with lighting rigs, local cops corralling a horde of hyperventilating housewives and smack dab in the middle of it all, Clooney himself - loitering, laughing and sending shockwaves through the crowd with his every glistening dimple. A one-eyed hobo with a broken surveillance camera could have made award winning TV out of that scenario. But all I could do was spray the place - for A-Rod and I were soon due elsewhere downtown to shoot a story so boring I’m almost afraid to link to it.

So did what I could. Firing up my camera, I zoomed in on the matinee idol in the distance and clocked his every tuxedoed move. Why exactly he was so dressed up I’m not really sure, but I feel certain the clutch of female fans plastered around my perch could have explained every facet of the movie in the making. But there was simply no time. All I could do was curse the weakness of my extender lens, collect a few more cutaways and confuse the hell out of newspaper reporter Tina Firesheets by calling her by name (and what a name!). Had there been more time, I would have gladly interviewed every hysterical woman that could still form words. Instead, I could only throw up in my mouth a little every time the 75 year old lady beside me screamed for Clooney to 'show that sweet bod'!!!

I hate sweeps.

Mooning for Clooney

Please Lord, let Leatherheads wrap. The George Clooney vehicle has been shooting in and around the Piedmont for weeks now and quite frankly, I'm growing weary. Why? Every other morning I walk into work, some show producer accosts me with a road map and an 8x10 glossy of the Sexiest Man Alive. This, I can do without. But ever since a newspaper picture of Rosemary's nephew overpaying for lemonade hit the stands last week, there has been a fatwa of sorts on the actor's visage. Today that image jihad struck your local lenslinger and before I could check my station e-mail, I was dispatched forty minutes down the interstate, late for a sorta-date with that dude from 'Syriana'. God, how I hate Mondays.

My mood improved when I spotted the logo. Until then, I wasn't sure I would get anything. But when I saw the News 14 truck parked by the entrance to the Transportation Museum, I knew I wasn't the only one on Operation: Overgroomed Goose Chase. Aaron Mesmer already had the museum's PR chick framed up when I sidled up beside him. A one man band himself, the young reporter and I exchanged cowboy nods as the lady with the name-tag prattled on for our cameras. Yes, Clooney and crew were just beyond the gate and no, lowly TV types like ourselves were NOT invited to come in and do Botox with them. No surprise there. I knew before I ever left the parking lot that I stood a better chance of running over Osama Bin Laden somewhere outside Thomasville than score any onscreen time with Mr. Dimples. So I eyed the perimeter for other prey...

And then I saw them. Like birds on a wire, they huddled close in the shadows, heads bobbing in unison with the glimmer of every distant gaffer's laminated backstage pass. Balding father-in-law types with birdwatcher lenses, thug-wannabes sporting Unabomber hoodies and shiny camera-phones, grinning grandmothers with lawnchairs and homemade signs - just the kind of homemade paparazzi that could help fill the ninety second void that would go between the anchor intro and outro I'd already written. Aaron noticed them too, and five seconds after the PR chick stopped talking, we were engaged in an awkward foot-race as we hauled glass toward the clamoring crowd. Mistaking us for friendlies, they foolishly cheered our approach.

That's when things got blurry. Like a scene from the Matrix, Aaron and I dove into the throng all slow-motion like - separating the chatty from the drifter, pinning tiny microphones to the lucid and the cute, fending off those who thought we wielded authority - instead of zoom lenses and silly questions. Mere minutes later, young Mr. Mesmer and I had worked the crowd of Clooney goons for every angle and entendre that sprang to mind. Even the extras dressed in itchy 1920's garb across the street looked form the craft services tent, stretching their per diem necks to see what was going on over in the cheapseats.

TV news, that's what. Mr. Million Dollar Grin may be whining and dining flight attendants in his trailer somewhere, but I got a slot to fill. If that means televising giddy housewives instead of pampered matinee idol, so be it. I'll still eat at home tonight. Of course, the suits will probably send me back here tomorrow, so if you could just pass Mr. Clooney my card, I really would appreciate it. If you need me, I'll be over in the park, trying to get an interview with that guy berating the big oak tree. Hey, I know my place on the food chain...

Remnants of Hipness

Nineteen months ago Shannon Smith and I met a chrome-plated unknown with brooding presence and thunderous pipes just outside Greensboro's Natty Greene’s. Almost begrudgingly, the dude Shannon knew from the local Honda dealership confessed he was about to audition for American Idol. We thought little of it at the time; having covered plenty of Idol stops before, we’d interviewed scores of delusional losers with musical aspirations. Something about this guy was different though, his brooding looks oozed confidence and unlike the glittered army of Idol aspirants we’d encountered in the past - he didn’t seem the least bit insane. So, when that same lowly auto clerk returned to his adopted hometown a swaggering rock star with a red hot album, it was only right Shannon and I team up for one more go at the Chris Daughtry phenomenon.

Or so we thought. Our enthusiasm waned a little early on as we hung out just by the slowly-rising stage and profiled roadies. There seemed to be hundreds. Burly bouncer types, vampire look-a-likes, a few longshoremen - all working furiously to erect the spotlight Daughtry would dominate nine hours later. Nodding at a lumberjack, I casually covered my camera’s logo as Shannon and I sauntered through an area we’d been told to keep out of. Fat chance. With a cadre of competitors jockeying for spots and my own affiliate's self-professed experts demanding something exclusive, we were on a mission - lack of press pass be damned. Not that we hoped to find Chris himself. Having told us earlier he’d be spending the day with his family instead of us media jackals, Shannon and I were forced to troll for lesser bait. After a hearty debate on sideburns and class structure, we deciphered which unwashed young man was in charge. Minutes later, we huddled outside a gleaming back tour bus with a pensive Gen-X’er in a pimp hat and drumsticks in his back-pocket. Exclusive scored.

The rest of the day stretched into a blur. Parked by the train trestle overlooking the stage, we chopped out footage in an air conditioned live truck as the sun beat down on Hamburger Square. By mid afternoon the roadies were almost through fiddling with their hanging stacks of speakers, their endless banks of colored lights and umpteen formats of pricey film cameras. Earlier in the week, word had filtered out that Chris’ hometown stop would be filmed for next video (‘Home‘, of course). Perched there above the fray with a lens or two of my own, I hoped Greensboro’s free concert wouldn't become Greensboro’s free film shoot. A wall of photog-asses is no fun to look at - even if you didn't shell out jack for a front row look at the vocalist of the moment. Already, people poured into the square, happy to claim a spot by the stage hours before the first guitar would scream or crunch. Young women in adhesive t-shirts with ’Daughtry’ emblazoned on them, Soccer Mom’s slathering sun-screen on their youngest, grown men with box-top signs and disturbingly high waistlines. For not the first or last time that day, I thanked God I wasn’t the object of their adulation. Though I gotta figure the paycheck ain’t half bad.

An hour and a half before the opening act was set to kick off their set list, the throng of concertgoers had eclipsed every blade of grass and square of sidewalk. Between live shots, I panned my lens over the crowd, taking in all the parents, pre-teens and pickpockets. Knowing I’d soon have to wade right through that mob to get to my pre-ordained camera position, I took a long pull from a three dollar bottle of water and took out my cell phone. A full block away the sun-baked silhouette in my viewfinder reached down and yanked something off his hip. Joe McCloskey had been on the roof of McCoul’s all afternoon, it was blazing hot and his earpiece batteries were dying - but he still humored me with a few gestures in my lens’s direction. Days earlier, we’d first scaled the three story building in search of a vantage spot for our Julie Luck to field anchor from. Initially I was bummed that I wouldn’t be the one manning the roof cam, but as I watched Joe’s profile sweat in black and white, my shady stage-right perch didn’t seem so bad.

Two hours later, all sunlight was gone. An estimated twenty-two thousand hopped-up fans stood spangled t-shirt to Nascar coverall, well-healed suburbanites mingling with the denizens of rundown mobile home courts. Daughtry the unifier, I thought as I stretched my tripod to its full height. Thirty minutes earlier I’d abandoned the safety and Cheetos of my live truck nest to forge a path into the very heart of that pulsating pack. Now wedged into a space by the soundboard, I suffered the slings and arrows of the half-inebriated fans around me. TV cameras will do that: spark showers of affection from total strangers while causing others to curse your very shadow. But since Athenaeum was ripping through their set at full volume I couldn’t tell if the good people behind me were wishing me well or telling me to get the hell out of their way. I just nodded and smiled, but I gotta admit I winced a little when Athenaeum’s guitarist dropped an F-bomb laden message to President Bush in front of all those kids. Political rants from musicians are shrill enough when delivered by chubby country singers; they’re extra stupid when shouted out over the jangly chords of last decade’s second place pop. Wrong room, pal.

Of course all thoughts of politics evaporated the moment what’s their name left the stage. The folks crammed onto South Elm street hadn’t turned out to cheer blue or red states. They’d come to throw the goat, to bathe in the mainstream glow of what many dismiss as pre-fab middle of the road corporate rock. I wish I were that cool. Instead I’m a forty year old father of two who probably would have liked Daughtry’s populist fare even if Shannon and I hadn’t stumbled across him on the eve of his meteoric rise. As the bakld one’s roadies scrambled to finish their last minute tweaks, local deejay Jack Murphy removed any remnant of hipness with his overcooked Top Forty shtick. Finally he relinquished the microphone to my colleague Julie Luck, who - though hard to hear - didn’t sound like she was providing color commentary at a celebrity tractor pull. When she introduced the video I’d put together tracking Daughtry’s transformation, I pulled back from the viewfinder and watched about eight thousand people react en masse at all the right moments. Heady stuff for the sequestered editor. I’d hoped Chris and the fellas would storm the stage as the video’s soundtrack thundered to a close, but no such luck. Five more minute passed before the spotlights swirled center-stage.

The Chris Daughtry that took the south Elm street stage was an electrified version of the quiet dude I've met. How couldn’t he be? Once a working class schlub with funky sideburns and a struggling band, he was now a certified global sensation with a double-platinum album under his studded belt. Prowling the stage in a skull cap and laser straight stubble, he flashed a grin to friends and families while portly grandmothers in Daughtry t-shirts squirmed and swooned. From my sniper’s nest by the soundboard, I stood on my tiptoes under the camera reached up to control the focus. Around me, restrained bedlam ensued as mechanics, accountants and derelicts pumped their fists and bit their lower lips. Rock and roll ain’t pretty, man and after the requisite first two songs were captured on my optical disc, I broke down my gear and prepared to fight the mob all the way back to the live truck. I could still see Shannon up on the ridge, backlit the soft-box I’d set up earlier, bobbing her head to the beat when not checking her watch. The footage I’d just recorded was due to air in twenty minutes and thousands of euphoric fans were between me and my deadline. Great.

Still, I couldn’t help but stand there and soak up the view sans camera. Colored lights swirled over the shoulder to shoulder as a boom camera swooped and dove, eliciting shrieks of orgasm wherever it happened to glance. On stage, Chris paced and bellowed, working his band of tattooed twenty-somethings into a pop metal frenzy. He even peppered his lyrics with impromptu whoops and mid-ditty patter, easily displaying ten times the charisma he managed to eek out during the half dozen interviews we’d conducted during last year’s Idol odyssey. Watching him wring the songs (and the female-heavy crowd) of every last drop of over-emotive rock god possibility, I realized why. The dude was finally free of Idol’s soul-crushing saccharine grip. His debut album may not exactly be cutting edge, instead it offers the familiar trappings of fully-belted barnburners power ballads, and one finely textured rock-star wail. 'Never Mind the Bollocks’ it ain’t - but who cares? For now, Daughtry’s voice and music holds many in the mainstream rock audience enraptured for now. I once thought his reign of the charts would be typically short lived, but after watching him render his hometown crowd to camera-friendly cinders, I’m beginning to think he’s just getting started. Party on, Chris...