Off the Street

Ahhh, the slog - that inglorious task that some stories demand: body dumps, unplanned landings and everyone's favorite - the long-distance pot pull. Such was the case yesterday when a trio of co-workers took to the woods for a deputy-led dash through the brambles of Davidson County. I was recovering from my morning show steak shoot at Lucky 32 when the call came in: seems Grice and the boys found a sizable operation south of Denton. Any news crews wanna hike out to the site? I sank lower in my chair of course, but the trip that ensued reminded me of the good ole days; when chasing deputies with machetes was a buzz to be discovered...

See, I cut my teeth on eradications. It was dawn of COPS and ride-alongs were all the rage. I was but a mullet in training; my mentors crusty one-man bands who picked the police blotter clean. They taught me how to forge good ole boy friendships with the high and tights. Soon my bag-phone rang with invitations to all kinds of Crown Vic conventions... late night drive-bys, prostitution stings, speed trap skeet shoots. All I had to do was get their good side. That's tough of course when you feel like your spleen is gonna explode if you have to forge one more briar patch. Call it the War on Drugs if you must, but after about a half mile of ass and elbows, you start to realize who the foot soldier is.

That's why we sent Kid Nathan. Fresh-faced and quip-lipped, he was just the youngster to trudge through the muck and bring back evidence of the demon weed. Actually, he was one of three (3!) El Ocho operatives on scene, but when you're sending a fella into a tick infested thicket with a hard deadline andthe possibility of being shot by a heavily jonesing stoner, you kinda have to pump him up. Me, I usually start with an anecdote or two about bustin' up moonshine stills back in the day, then move into meth lab territory. By the time I bring up the black helicopters and hard target take-downs, he's so ready to check off his bucket list, he'll carry everybody's tripod.

For a mile or two...

The Dirigible and the Dude

Q.) Why do so many photogs insist on dressing like tourists?

A.) Because they never know when a vacation's gonna break out.

Now I'm not saying this unidentified shooter didn't earn his pay that day. Hell, just keeping up with that Dave Malkoff guy requires some kind of stipend. But having hitched a ride on a flying bladder myself, I know the delights of dirigible flight. It's a great way to levitate; sort of like riding a minivan strapped to a cloud. When I went up ten years ago or so, it was courtesy of the Goodyear Tire Company. As I watched the pilot turn around in his seat and pass out personalized trading cards, it occurred me news photographers weren't the only ones with interesting jobs.

But enough about me. What's the story behind this fellow and his zeppelin? Dave?

Iconoclasts of My Past

In all my excitement about the approaching coastal break, I neglected to report on an important rendezvous. But first, A Message To The Kids: Take note, Junior, You may think you're pretty radical now, but before you know it you too will be reluctant leaders of the Status quo (if you're lucky!). Take the above unfunky bunch. Sure, they're the very definition of harmless now, but once upon the 80's they were part of a freewheeling cabal, a loose-knit cell of insurgents hopped-up on Prog Rock, Marlboros and Meister Brau. Now, look at them: Chemists, IT Guys, educators, some boob who chases ribbon-cuttings for a living. Lame, I know - but it wasn't so long ago these operatives huddled under their mullets and congratulated each other on how charmingly prescient they all were. These days, most of them can embarrass their kids just by getting out of the car. Take a good long look, all you Jonas Brothers out there... this too could happen to you.

Now for what I learned: Goldsboro, North Carolina is a mostly unremarkable place. This very fact haunted me as youth; I cursed my forebearers continuously for landing me in what had to be the planet's most boring community. To this day, I hyperventilate a little whenever I cross into Goldsboro proper, for I have watched enough Wayne County corn grow to last a couple of lifetimes. But the older I get, the more I reconnect with survivors of that distant time , the more I'm forced to reconsider the merits of my homeland. For all its lack of intrigue, some of the most invigorating folks I know came from the home of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. Knowing that my own experience is but a microcosm of a larger America, I'm momentarily convinced there is hope left for humanity. Then I go to work, sit in on a City Council Meeting and all those warm feelings melt away like so much spilled, cheap beer... the kind teenagers drink when they think nobody's looking.

Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

Cell Transfer

Not since I rocked a Motorola the size of a shoebox have I been so smitten with a cellular telly-phone. It’s just an old LG, really - a battered slab of scratches and plastic that’s ridden my hip through deadlines and drive-thru’s for three years. Sure, it’s an electronic leash, but this half-scorched Tricorder allows me to span the cosmos - or at least keep up with my peeps while I go where every other cameraman has gone before. Was a time I squawked ten-codes into two-way’s, talkin 'bout drive-by's and fender-benders like I was calling in air-strikes. But that G. I. Joe shit fell out of favor as cell towers started popping up over strip malls everywhere. Soon bag-phones began appearing in floorboards and paramedics, news crews and pizza guys could be seen hunched and mumbling into glowing handsets, using more minutes than ever to convey the particulars of their fruitless pursuits. I myself have had a half dozen station-paid models in that time, an ever shrinking parade of handsets that no longer require their own car battery. With my latest cell phone I reached a comfortable plateau…. It lodges in my watch-pocket, ha a damn good memory and sports a picture of my beloved Grandmother. What’s not to love?


Plenty, I'm told. It won't let you text without knowing some wretched thumb-fu they only teach twelve year olds. It doesn't have the foggiest idea how much I should tip the delivery guy and without a few accessories won't make the first french-fry. And they call that a PHONE? PFFFT! They ain't sen my NEW rig - a cranberry-colored comm-link that will spit out dispatches in all eight flavors, not to mention launch a satellite or two. I've only had it a week and already I'm learning which button to push whenever it starts to levitate. The other day I ignored it for a few seconds... it triangulate my GPS position with my most recent Tweet and when I showed up at my shoot an army of dorks with clip-boards and zombie voices asked if 'I could hear them now?' ... What's up with that? I use to roll up on house-fires with nothing more than two cans and a string on my side. Now I can't gut a simple ribbon-cutting without a few new avatars flashing at me? What's next? Wi-Fi in my windshield?

Hang on. I gotta take this call...

Far Side of Crazy

I was taking the clicker around the horn this evening when I stumbled upon this National Geographic special on The Shooting of Ronald Reagan. I dropped the remote. It's the same reaction I always have when I see footage of John Hinckley's misdeed, for it never fails to bring me back to that March afternoon in 1981 when the network suits broke into programming and unfurled a fresh historical document at thirty frames a second. I was but a 14 year old punk that day, not yet a news junkie. But the unbelievable images radiating from every set left me positively thunderstruck. I simply couldn't imagine watching the world change through a viewfinder.

Today, I have a slightly better idea of what that might feel like - though certainly I've never recorded anything that cataclysmic. No so for ABC's Hank Brown, CBS's Charlie Wilson and NBC's Shelly Fielman. They were the three network photographers waiting outside the Washington Hilton that day when a misguided drifter tried to impress a movie actress by spraying the President and his aides with gunfire. Twenty-eight years later, it still makes no sense - but if ever there was a definitive breakdown of that afternoon, this National Geographic special is it. I can't recommend it highly enough, if for no other reason the above photograph. In it, the three network news crews smile happily, minutes before Reagan emerged from the hotel. A closer look reveals the would be assassin himself (third from the left) standing idly by, contemplating madness.

Chilling, no matter whose lens you sling.

A Lack of Happenings

"Honestly you have a much more interesting job than just about anyone I know."

My friend meant it when he said it and I didn't argue with him. But I'd be remiss in my self-appointed duties if I let anyone believe the life of a photog is one of unbridled adrenaline. It ain't. Just ask any news shooter who's tried to claw their own eyes out at the back of a County Commissioners meeting. Or wandered through a flea market five days before it opened. Or wished for death as some expert prattled on about matters the chick with the microphone is only pretending to understand. Yes, like any field of study, Cameramanthropology has its drier chapters. But those of us who have been doing this awhiel have learned to savor those doldrums, for the News Gods are a pissy, vengeful bunch and they can smell complacency from three states away. No sooner than you curse the times for its lack of happenings, some jackhole in the hood stabs his whole family over a Playstation dispute , Mother Nature takes a dump on the tri-county region or Bigfoot gets caught shoplifting at the Circle K. Then suddenly your pulse is pounding through your viewfinder as the live truck throws a rod and your cell phone melts in your pocket. So the next time you hear a news photographer complain about a slow news day, ask to see his press credentials. Chances are the laminate is still warm...

Hmmm. I guess it is pretty interesting, after all.

The Word of Turd

Sure, I've TALKED about it - but the Louisiana lenslinger known as Turdpolisher up and DID it. He wrote a novel! Ten days ago or so he sent me the first three chapters. I was staring at my own blank screen when it arrived; before I knew it I was racing through words I wish I'D written. Halfway past the first chapter, I set it aside. Jealousy demanded I stop reading immediately - lest my very melon explode. Now that I'm older (by about a week and a half) I willingly revisited Rick Portier's manifesto and despite my newfound maturity, I'm still a little green with envy. WHY?

Because, Writing is HARD and anyone who sits down to do it on purpose is more than a little misguided. This I know well - and I mainly just peck around in cyberspace. To actually commit to a long project like a novel is to fend off self-doubt at every syllable - with no visitor's comments to lift the spirits or buoy the soul. So far, the grind of such a protracted slog has left me questioning if I had any business stringing words together at all.

And now this hairless Cajun has delivered on his threat to complete a manuscript and he had the nerve to make it freakin' readable! Where Turd goes from here I don't know, for literary success is foreign ground to me. I just know that the three chapters he sent me is a taut plunge into the world of Louisiana news, complete with ghetto preachers, obnoxious hotties and a bruised and battered photog who's pretty sure he's shot it all. Over the top and wholly believable, profane yet elegant, Portier's latest leaves me proud, defensive and a little mad at him for making so good on his promise. I guess at some point, I'm gonna have to tell him how I feel.

Perhaps I just did.