Remote Patrol

Should ever my life flash before my eyes, have I got to watch all those silly live shots again? And how about those endless minutes between live shots? I'm not sure I can suffer through those extended sentences a second time. Then again, I'm still wearing residue from last night's protracted encampment from the side of the road. Sure, I've washed off all the carbon monoxide and flop sweat, but there's still a groove in my gut from slumping over the steering wheel while my reporter pounded out rejoinders on the world's grittiest laptop... What, like YOU'VE never power-napped as a deadline loomed, never left your body as soundbites danced through your head? Hell, I once found myself floating above the truck only to look down and see the real me molesting an innocent sandbag.

You can imagine my shame.

Or you can keep reading as I try to justify my rancor at having to drop anchor. As a kid, the notion of a protracted encampment in one of these mobile newsrooms would have made me downright giddy, but as a grown man staving off a mid life crisis, nothing makes me feel like I'm wasting my days than some interminable afternoon spent peeling faded logos from the corners of what's left of my critical thinking skills. I'm not saying live trucks make me dumb but the other evening I spent ten full minutes admiring the way I'd coiled an extension cord. If that weren't enough I took real pride at the amount of back-light I milked from a dying street lamp. Add that to the way I convinced that drunk we were breaking down (instead of setting up) and you have the very definition of meaningful remote execution.

And yet it leaves me so empty.

Part of it is, of course, the weather. This time of year it simply gets dark too damn early. That's a big deal when you're trying to make a brick wall interesting, let alone relevant to the earthquake/clam bake you covered seven hours earlier. Of course, I'm just wasting my breath. I know this, just as sure as I know that neglected nine volt battery powering the talent's earpiece will die a sudden death the moment she begins breaking down the deposition. You know, the one they recorded across the street this morning. Look over my reporter's shoulder and you may catch a slice of courthouse window. That, my friends, is the most you can hope for when adding filigree to facts. It won't win you any Emmys but it will put bread on your table if not fill you with quiet pride as some jack-hole with a leaf blower shows up to drown out your shot.

Now back to you.

Points to Squander...

Funny how a single TV camera can turn a bustling post office into a barren wasteland...

Odd how those protestors stop chanting the moment I drive away...

Eerie how a bag full of dead camera batteries can cause an entire freight train to derail...

Scary how much that Black Friday piece resembled the last sixteen I did...

Strange how that kid yelled "Hi Mom!" just before he flipped me off...

Spooky how those people with the golden shovels think this is real life...

Typical how a reporter who phones in every other assignments spends three months crafting his Emmy entries...

Baffling how they set the podium in front of that plate glass window...

Ironic that a woman with so much gravy on her teeth insist on being interviewed...

Weird how unsatisfying writing lists can be...

Bum Rush the Show

I admit it: when news broke of another shooting at Virginia Tech last week, I promptly dove under my desk. Blacksburg may be a couple hours away but in the Spring of 2007, almost every news crew within this hemisphere made a beeline for the small Virginia town. Even Z-block zealots like myself made the trip, if only to witness one of the largest TV truck summits ever convened. There was, of course, great tragedy at hand - but for the distant affiliates, foreign bureau chiefs and network hotshots who roamed the campus that week, the massacre made but for a backdrop. and what a backdrop... Hundreds of tripods stood at attention as spotlights large and small chased shadows across Blacksburg's darkest day. It was a sight to behold and not for the best of reasons. By the very first nightfall, what began as a madman's fantasy had transformed into a slick and salacious sat-shot juggernaut, a commodity of sorrow served up in every skewed perspective our 24/7 news universe has to offer.

This time, however, the crime at hand did not involve mass casualties. That makes it no less horrific to those involved, but it did prevent the matter from devolving into some kind of hi-def circus. Perhaps no one was more thankful of that fact than El Ocho's own crew, who can be seen above reporting the facts -- withOUT turning aftermath into stagecraft. Me, I'm just sorry the latest shooting had to happen at all. Virginia Tech is a fine school. It no more deserves wanton gun-play on its campus than it does armies of correspondents trying to make their bones over gross and random depravity. As for that massive sat truck encampment on the far side of the school, it was awesome to watch, but it just ain't the kind of thing one wishes on any institution, let alone a campus as bucolic as Virginia Tech. Personally, I don't want to be part of a scum that large unless it's parked under a giant spaceship that just spit out Freddy Mercury.

Maybe then, I'll come out from beneath my desk.   

Walk The Line

Though I was working in North Carolina television at the time, I did not know Bart Smith, Rick Sherrill or Jim Lane. But when all three men perished in the 1991 crash of WTVD's helicopter, the impact sent shock waves through every television station in the state and nation. Since that time, I've grown to know several people affected by that terrible night in ways big and small. They don't talk about it much and I don't ask. But with the Twentieth Anniversary of the crash upon us, I feel compelled to dip my lens in honor of these exciting young men struck down in the prime of their lives. Of course, nothing I can say will assuage the pain still felt by loved ones, so I hesitate to try. Instead, let's hear from journeyman photog Dave Wertheimer - who doesn't need anniversaries or tributes to relive that awful call...

Twenty years ago I was a Photojournalist for WTVD and I got a call in the middle of the night from Bonnie Moore. The chopper went down and I had to go cover it. At the scene Dave Boliek met me there. I concentrated on keeping my right eye on the black and white viewfinder, trying to insulate myself from the reality that Bart (my roommate), Rick (my best friend) and Jim (close friend and former next door neighbor) were dead in the wreckage. All three were engaged or soon to be. I stayed focused on the black and white images I was recording until I heard Bart's voice pager go off, the voice was his soon to be fiance Karen saying "where are you, are you with Dave? Call me". At that point I had enough and could not shoot any more. I spent the next day or so going between the houses of Karen, Diane and Lisa trying to comfort them in their loss. In the days to come I went to all three funerals. In the years to come I became a "video gypsy" of sorts, moving from station to station trying to find myself, still remembering December 7, 1991 as the worst day of my life.

My condolences to those still suffering...

Hunchbacks of Happenstance

As a hardened guardian of the Fourth Estate, it's hurts my heart to watch it all crumble. But crumble it does as the tectonic plates of television grind beneath our feet. Thanks to faltering funds, a groundswell of gadgetry and an exodus of peasants, what was once considered bedrock is now a billion shifting pixels. This curtain of uncertainty threatens to swallow us all, until whole fiefdoms cease to be. But you know, it's not the Knights in Shining Hairspray or even the Damsels of Duress I worry about most as those castle walls begin to fall... It's the hunchbacks.

You know, those poor souls you still see scampering up turrets or floating in the moat. What with their medieval machinery and olde world aroma, it's easy to dismiss as little better than serfs. Until, that is, you see them chase a rainbow, quiz a Visigoth or just heap scorn on reports of a unicorn. Of all the subjects in this whole kingdom, it is they who seemed strangely free, despite their outdated armor and fondness for grog. What will become of them as new civilizations rise from this abysmal industry? Will they rise up and fight - or slink away like some kinky alchemist in the night? Why, I'd give up my one good eye to know...

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm needed in the watchtower.

Milk for Free

CNN's recent bloodletting has the folks at Comedy Central thinkin'... if the Most Trusted Name in News can shit-can their staff and (not) hire a bunch of amateurs, why can't they? Enter South Carolina's cleverest export, Stephen Colbert!

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The decaying state of television news doesn't make this clip any less funny, but amid the giggles, Colbert and crew lacerate this business with weapons we have handed them. The revolution may not be televised, but this industry's tailspin will be prodded for jollies all the way to the bottom. See ya there!

Born to Porter

With a name like Porter Versfelt III, he has to be good. So good that fate placed him behind the glass during the very first season of COPS, the show that convinced a generation of lenslingers to ditch their sticks and strap on some running shoes. I was among that number, for nothing felt more natural at the age of twenty three than to chase a bunch of hopped-up constables through subsidized doorways as guys I knew from community college flashed handguns and badges. It's a wonder I didn't get shot. If I ever did, I probably would have blamed that Barbour /Langley production for getting me and the boys so worked up in the first place (not to mention thrusting the shirtless, blubbering felon into the American consciousness). These days, I don't watch a lot of COPS and I avoid the front and back seat of police cars every chance I get. But in the early Nineties, every story I produced ended with somebody walking away in handcuffs. Little did I know back then I was aping the moves of the third Porter Versfelt to roam these fruited plains. Now his own boss down in Atlanta, Mr. Versfelt looks back fondly on his season on the street...

It was fun. And dangerous. That's a bullet-proof vest I was wearing there. I sat in the front seat of the police car. My sound man was in back. The door locked automatically back there (to keep prisoners in) so if I didn't open that door in the heat of the moment when arriving at a crime-in-progress, my sound man was stuck inside. I'd shoot for this kind of show again in a heartbeat. :)

For street cred like that, who wouldn't?