Snidely Whip-Pan?

Tonight on an all new episode of Charlie's Angels, the girls take a rare day off from high heeled crime fighting to try out a few new string bikinis by the pool. All goes swimmingly at first - until a shifty-eyed cameraman from a local TV station crashes the party with his shiny mini-cam and scary moustache. Will Kelly drop-kick the photog and look fabulous doing it? Will Sabrina use her gravely voice to seduce the lens-toting drifter into a pair of designer handcuffs? Will a topless Jill pop out of the hot tub and say something lucid? Tune in to find out!

Dead Van Squawkin'

With all the clamor over YouTube, camera phones and backpack journalists, I sometimes wonder what will become of the Sherman Tank of the newsgathering front: the mighty live truck. Okay, so I rarely give these logo’d goliaths a second thought - until I’m stuck inside one, squinting over an ornery laptop and editing from a script some reporter wrote on a KFC wet-nap. Then, I got plenty to say about these ‘mobile newsrooms’ - though usually with words I don’t use on the blog. But rather than spew any more live truck bile, I’ll save it for a healthier species, for it’s becoming clear these lumbering beasts will soon go extinct. Forgive me if I don’t spearhead a petition demanding their rescue. I got my reasons.

Soon after the arrival of videotape freed TV crews from having to pause between shoot and show to process their film, it occurred to some engineer-type how very cool it would be to take this new instant technology on the road. Suburbans, Econolines, old ice cream trucks - vessels of most any heft were fitted with retractable masts, oversized dials and never enough cup holders. The modern live truck was born - and somewhere an old film guy grumbled. Not that the suits heard him. They were far too consumed with dispatching their crafts to they very edge of disasters. At first, it was a noble pursuit. With only a truck or two per affiliate, stations reserved their fleets for the kinds of stories that deserved a live eye. But a terrible thing happened on the way to the broadcast. Live trucks multiplied, their glossy hides slathered in numbers and promises. Before anyone really knew it, even backwaters stations had a truck or two outback and the requisite for the every use came down to how quickly someone could drive it to a late-breaking bake sale.

Today, the overworked live truck is as ubiquitous as the frothy cross-talk between the anchor guy and the sports chick. Some live shots showcase the drama of the day like no other newscast component, but most serve as hollow window dressing for passion plays better left un-pimped. Yes, I’m no fan of the lowly live truck - and not just because they invariably extend my workday. An avoider of top news in general, I’ve always been more into telling stories than flipping toggle switches, more into caressing my every edit than pulling 500 feet of muddy cable up a courthouse stairway. Call me crazy - just don’t make me go live from the sanitarium’s lobby. The beefy dudes in the white coats get real pissy when I roll up in my billboard and start riggin’ up lights.

But like I said three paragraphs ago, live trucks aren’t long for this world. How can they - when cell phones capture sight and sound, when wi-fidelity blankets whole downtown, when even discount laptops troll for signals to leech from. Granted, I ain’t smart enough to predict which new and improved technology will replace the microwave truck, but one not need be a futurist to hear the air-hiss leaking from all those leaning, pockmarked masts. Hopefully, we’ll be smart enough to preserve these garish beasts for future generations to gawk at. Imagine the questions my kids’ kids will ask when confronted with the swooping hues of yesteryear’s paint schemes, not to mention the feint reek of a thousand unfinished value meals. Just don’t ask me. I’ll be way too busy tuning in my eyeglasses, trolling for a hot-spot or berating my robot to detonate the transponder. After all, a producer’s live shot lust won’t die with last month’s technology. They’ll merely morph into a more demanding gadget and give a whole new generation of newsgatherers something to bitch about.

I guess some things never change...

Book Review: Ship of Ghosts

Spend any amount of time out to sea and you’ll wonder what it’s like to abandon ship. I sure did. In fact I spent a lot more time pondering the implications of a watery horizon than I ever did memorizing surface radar interface manuals. Perhaps that’s why they never offered me SEAL training. That, and I get winded after thirty seconds of treading water. Whatever the demerit, I did leave the Navy with a pronounced appreciation for sailors in peril (plus a bunch of old uniforms I’d never be able to fit into again). Over the years, I’ve maintained a vigilant watch, scanning local bookstore aisles for toppled stacks and sun-bleached survivors. When I ran across Ship of Ghosts the other week, witnesses heard my sonar pinging all the way over in the cookbook section. In the next paragraph, I’ll try to explain why.

A favorite of FDR’s, the cruiser USS Houston was the first flagship of the Allied Forces' Asiatic Fleet. But that very designation made it a doomed vessel, for in the months following Pearl Harbor, the far Pacific was nowhere an American sailor wanted to be. In hostile waters brimming with enemies, the Houston dodged bombs and detection along the Java Coast until a near suicide encounter with the Japanese fleet in the Sundra Strait broke the gleaming warship’s proud back, spilling its crew of old salts and former farm boys into the great briny blue. The lucky ones died quick. Those that managed to escape the wreckage, stay afloat and swim to nearby shore were rewarded for their bravery with years of unthinkable suffering working as slaves on the Burma-Thailand Death Railway - all while a war-weary nation focused on actions a world theater away.

Nautical author James D. Hornfischer does a yeoman’s job of following the Houston sailor’s improbable journey: from their robust crew of a president’s favorite ship to the battle-tested veterans of countless torpedo attacks to the emaciated skeletons of P.O.W. camp atrocity. For most sunken warship books, the unlucky sailors' plummet into The Drink is the end of the line. In Ship of Ghosts, it is only the beginning: the opening salvo in a gauntlet of torture and disease that the corn-fed young men of Roosevelt’s cruiser could hardly grasp as they traded the hellfire of battle for the comparative safety of shark-infested saltwater. A scant few of the Houston sailors ever made it back home. Those that did went about their lives with the trademark resolve of the Greatest Generation, their distant heroics and deprivation a figment of their imagination’s buried past. Few are still with us now, but both their plight and powers of endurance still awe followers of nautical lore - even a flunkie peacetime squid like myself.

Lens of the Lost

Ever have that dream...where you're at work minding your own business and suddenly everything gets all tripadelic? You know, the one where you're sucked down some cardboard time portal and you spend the rest of the night chasing Sleestax politicans across cheesy mid-70's dreamscapes - until eventually you wake-up in the hallway closet with the wife standing over you? Yeah, me neither.

Schmuck Alert: Elbow Showdown

Via the all too absent eWink, news of a little elbow fiesta by the bay. It happened yesterday at San Francisco's Golden Gate, where local police denied anti-war demonstrators permission to march across the bridge in protest. ABC7 News photog Randy Davis reportedly asked to be allowed past the crowd (to shoot video) cops informed him that the world famous Golden Gate Bridge was indeed, 'private property'(news to an awful lot of taxpayers). Instead of correcting the officer however, Davis brazeny shouldered his axe - an audacious move that prompted the nearest bridge cop to immediately grab his lens. Perhaps instinctively, Davis removed said beefy law-enforcer mitt and it was then the real pushee-pushee began.

Hey, I wasn't there (I was loitering in a swamped-out church basement, remember?), but I have been in similiar situations. Rabid protestors, hyped-up PO-lice, pushy news crews - it's a recipe for Rodney King 101 and a living diorama of how I don't want to spend my day. While the bridge cop in question was needlessly aggressive, Davis was equally ballsy in breaking that highly unauthorized grip. I much prefer to act like a stabbing victim whenever someone grabs my lens, drop to the pavement as if I'm suddenly boneless and shriek uncontrollably until someone either cuts me a check or at the very least drags me out of the melee in question. But hey, I'm a lover - not a fighter. Tito, get me a tissue!

((Photo hotlinked from SFGate.com, whatever that means...))

Eyeing the Flotsam

I was traipsing through the wreckage a church’s flooded basement today, when I sensed the presence of a competitor. This was no ‘disturbance in the force’ mind you - just a gnawing, knowing sense that predators were on the horizon. Call it photog intuition. I’m calling it Tuesday. Anyway, not wanting to let alarm my prey, I kept quiet, picking my way past the muddy hot dog buns and overturned card-tables as the church deacon pointed out a stack of hymnals caked in brown dirty goop. Happy to be hunting in such a target rich environment, I wrestle my tripod into a suitable squat and opened up the camera’s iris. When it rains it pours, I thought. I was grimacing at the pun, when I heard it - the tell-tale crunch of a white Ford Explorer’s muddy tires on the gravel driveway outside. Knowing the sound of a news unit on final approach, I urged my kindly host to go ahead and show me the pastor’s study.

There was little need to be hasty. The stagnant flotsam of Mount Carmel Baptist Church’s basement space boasted enough indelible images for a dozen news crews. Having already had twenty pristine minutes to poke about the carcass on my own, I would have been mad to expect my canvas wouldn’t soon become crowded. So I kept moving, bagging shot after shot of broken news frozen: the shoulder-high water line on the Sunday School door, a brand new TV lying face-down in the muck, the bloated funk of a ruined food bank…images unavailable at the County Commissioners meeting. No, to wish denial of such a prize on any working crew is strictly bush league and simply not how I roll. Thanking the deacon for his time and access, I took back my wireless microphone and informed him my doppelgangers were at the door.

In the end, it was no rival Highlander crossing the church’s threshold - no fallen Jedi duo come to acrobatic battle. Rather, it was a crew from WDBJ in nearby Lynchburg, working their own deadline and wondering what the Greensboro guy was doing in Danville. Not bothering to explain, I gathered my tools and smiled benignly as a tall stranger with a broadcaster’s booming voice poked his over-combed head into the basement and bellowed a hello. Behind him the silhouette of a female photojournalist hove into view, her piercing white on-camera light announcing the arrival of yet another news crew. “Show ‘em the pastor’s study” , I said before leaving the deacon standing there in the muck. As he welcomed his new visitors in for a spell, I fished out my digital camera and documented my retreat. Popping off a few shots of photojournalist Andrea DiRocco at work, I stopped just before she thought to ask what the hell I was doing.

I'n not sure how I would have answered her...

A Well-Earned Bracelet

I kicked off 2007 like most of you probably did - huddling with parole officers as they slapped a GPS ankle bracelet on a convicted sex offender. Okay, so its no New Year’s Day tradition, but when its your job to fill the space between newscast commercials, you never know what you may point your fancy-cam at. Today it’s registered sex offenders, tomorrow it may very well be Mayor McCheese. Either way, I get paid the same - be my target of the day a lovable mascot or an object of justifiable scorn. That said, bring on the pervs!

Okay, so there was just one of them - a red-eyed twenty-something in baggy jeans and considerable bling. He couldn’t have been too happy to begin the new year with a visit to his parole officer. Seeing me and my camera sharing donuts with the guys in shoulder-holsters had to really suck. Luckily, his feelings didn’t matter one iota, and as he slunk into a small office bathed in ugly fluorescent light, he seemed to know it. Plopping down in a plastic chair, he barely cut me a glare as his parole officer informed him his fifteen minutes of fame was about to begin.

Actually, we were pretty easy on the slouching young cat with the thousand yard stare. Not once during the whole time I loomed over him with my heavily-logo’d lens did I ever point it at his face. His hands, elbows, ankle and neck I documented in great detail, but his face - never! Why not? We didn’t need to. Varner and I could just as easily tell the story of the new state law requiring select sex offenders to wear Global Positioning Satellite tracking devices withOUT subjecting this newly convicted felon to the taunts and derision of his fellow man. It’s all a part of the TV photog’s journalistic creed: frame everyone the same...let any judgments and all aspersions be cast by the lens.

That’s why I didn’t splay his face across the region. I’m there to video, not to vilify. Even if the sick little worm did deserve it.