Gold in Them Thar Reels

If you're like me, you've not watched a single frame of Discovery's Gold Rush. But that's about to change now that the show's producers have unleashed a wicked new Behind the Scenes episode. It ain't news, but one look at what the production crew has to go through up there in the Klondike will make anyone with a camera groove in their shoulder wince in solidarity. Killer mud, pissed off prospectors, rogue excavators! Reminds of a few groundbreakings I've attended. Then again, nothing I've seen on the golden shovel patrol can compare to what folks like Nick O'Mealley experienced while living for months in the middle of untamed Alaska. Don't believe me? See for yourself - just don't go around trashing those 'pampered' production crews. After all, when's the last time a hungry bear bum-rushed your ribbon-cutting?

Been at least a couple of months for me...

Master of the Grab

You can keep your Chet McChindimples and vaguely ethnic Barbies. I need a real man for the mission at hand, one who isn't afraid to wear a connector necklace, sensible shoes and a bright red fanny pack. Such a person is John P. Creel, III, otherwise known as JPC-3PO. I myself have never met the man, but Richard Adkins has. And to hear RAD tell it, Creel doesn't just commit television news, he embodies it...

John Creel didn’t teach me how to shoot, he didn’t teach me how to edit. What John Creel taught me was Survival in the world of TV News Photography. What John Creel knew that so many in the business missed, is that a good News Photographer has to be part Journalist, part Boy Scout, part artist and part asshole. All while being a good person.

John is an early adapter of technology, while others were still playing Pong, John had a home computer. Before cell phones were small enough to fit on your glove-box, you could always talk to John via his Mobile Radio Phone. And John taught me how to fix what broke, at least good enough to limp through the next live shot.

Creel is that guy who you never catch off-guard… stuck on a stake out at the scene all night? Creel will bring out a box of food stashed away in his truck. Rain? He’s got you covered… literally. Every gadget, every adapter, every thing you need… John can pull out of his pocket in an instant.

After working with John for about five years, I ran in to him later on assignment. I’ll never forget that night at the Great New Madrid Earthquake… a zillion Sat trucks lined the levies of the river, a long day, a long night… and while everyone was tired, folding up lights and rolling up cables after the last live shot, we all caught the smell of freshly popped popcorn… we looked around there was John, offing up hot popcorn from the microwave in his rig… and I just may have imagined this part… but I’m pretty sure there a cooler of cold beer with arms reach!

Adapters...popcorn...BEER? What say we clone this Creel fellow and improve television tenfold!

Shooter in the Crosshairs

Brock Nicholls screwed up. Now, he's stuck where his career started, Baton Rouge. When an arsonist begins torching the city, it's his ticket back to the top, but he'll have to fight his boss and partner to get there. When he meets the arsonist, Brock discovers he has one more demon to exorcise...

For years now, Rick Portier and I have ruminated on the rewards of writing. During countless phone calls and more than a few times in Vegas, we've knocked back top-shelf liquor and traded lies about jack-slapping the muse. Now, that dodgy little photog has put his imagination where his mouth is. With Shooter in the Crosshairs, Rick's combined his knowledge of the news business with his gift for depiction to create a freakin' page-turner. The nerve of that guy!

When his television career went down in flames on the steps of a Dallas courthouse, it made national news and earned the TV photog a night in lock-up. Now, Brock’s stuck in the place where it all started, Baton Rouge, working for a mental midget like Percy Finch and his "Good News" strategy that has viewers flocking to the competition. If that weren't bad enough, Finch has Brock locked into shooting pet parades for Katie Couric wannabes like Nancy Patrick....

Are you kidding me? With a set-up like that, square-dancing zombies could do-see-do all over the next chapter and a half and I'M STILL IN! Luckily for us though, the -AHEM- author steers clear of the undead and instead sticks to the streets he knows so well. It's that authenticity that will leave anyone who's hoisted or stared into a fancycam nodding their head in recognition. As for me, I'll try and keep my head out of the nearest oven as I ingest the quest of one Brock Nicholls, a world-weary news shooter who I'd love to see team up with G. Lee. First though, there's an arsonist to catch and I know just the man for it.  

Along the way, Brock reveals newsroom secrets and rails against everything that is wrong with the business he loves, a business that's cost him every relationship he's ever had. When he finally comes face-to-face with the man behind the sheet, Brock discovers he has one more demon to exorcise – one from his youth. In order to do that, he'll have to decide between telling the story of a lifetime and sending a murderer to jail.

How does it end? How the hell do I know? I'm reading this thing along with the rest of you! So while I don't need an extra copy, surely there's someone in your life who does. So buy Shooter in the Crosshairs and help a brother achieve his dream. And do it soon, before the artist formerly known as Turdpolisher lands a three picture deal and won't return any of our calls.

At the End of the Day...

Funny how the average live truck can crisscross three counties, race through rush hour traffic, squeeze into a breakdown lane, idle for six hours straight, double as an audio booth, sleep three (un)comfortably, attract transients and school children, backfire only in sketchy neighborhoods, boast the logos of three separate consultant firms, power enough lights to be seen from space, suck just enough gas to ensure you'll have to fill it up later, harbor the remnants of a thousand dollar menu items, inspire new whole methods of laptop hackery, serve as a grooming booth and/or rest station for restless 'talent', spew engine exhaust on anyone rolling up cables, emit the kind of aroma that brings to mind sea travel...

...only to break the hell down on the way back to the station.

Okay, so it's not funny at all - especially when you've put in a long day of news gathering and are still FAR from home. In fact, of all the inconveniences I might wish on a competitor (weak camera batteries, brittle light bulbs, flatulent reporters), I wouldn't foist a dead live truck on my worstest enemy. Just ask A.J. Willen, the Atlanta lenslinger who posted this photo and jump-started my my memory banks... I remember one remote van in particular that would seize up with 'vapor-lock' every day at dusk and shut down on the highway home. "Nothin' you can do 'bout it but sit and let it rest for awhile", said the engineer on the other end of the cell phone. One fall evening I nearly abandoned the damn thing along Route 421. ("%#$@% this!", I remember thinking. I'll just live like Caine from Kung-Fu; ya know, walk the Earth, drop-kick evil villagers...)  I got about a half mile down the road, thought about my mortgage and the mud-hole my wife would stomp in me if I marooned a mobile newsroom..

It took nearly two hours to get that live truck back to the shop. At one point a car full of Goth kids happened by and began heckling me, 'til I threatened to microwave their piercings. I think I was justified...

Arose Such A Clatter...

'Twas the week before Christmas and all through the land,
News crews were squeezing into their vans.
To airports and malls they carried their loads,
They even went LIVE by the side of the road...

Around them the world began to slow down,
But they were too busy looking for sound.
Grilling last minute shoppers and fake Santa Clauses,
Their producers would cue them when to take pauses...

Back at the station, managers vanished,
The green room sat empty, its visitors banished.
Top anchors split early, their substitutes preening,
Thank God the Year-Ender was due for a screening...

Over in the studio, the pizza's arriving,
It's all that keeps the floor crew surviving.
But the Sports guy dives in, as do the slackers,
Back in the live truck, they eat chap-stick and crackers...

But if good food and family are things you will miss,
What the hell are you still doing in this business?
Why you're lucky to have a job at this station,
Unlike normal folk, The Truth takes no vacation...

So hang in there, all of you stuck in a truck,
Our industry's changing and so will your luck.
But should you start feeling merry - now or later,
Know you're breathing in fumes from the truck's generator.

Pride and Petulance

When an ABC Sports executive wanted to spin off Monday Night Football into a Saturday morning animated series, Howard Cosell was said to be livid. "Do you know who you're speaking to? I am the biggest name in show business today. And you want to make a cartoon character out of me?" The irony, of course, is by then that's exactly what Howard Cosell was: a cartoon character. But after reading Mark Ribowsky's withering new biography of the sportscasting legend, I can't help but remember him in all three dimensions. Then again, I'm a child of the Seventies; when Cosell was a bigger pop icon than Justin Timberlake is today. Howard was everywhere: quizzing a glistening Mohammed Ali, enabling a young Joe Namath, lording over such heavyweight fare as Battle of the Network Stars. Yes, the man born Howard William Cohen (in Winston-Salem, no less!) enjoyed a most unlikely career, turning untold hubris and his loquacious nature into a ringside seat to the Twentieth Century.

At 436 pages, Ribowsky's book seeks to cover much of Cosell's rise and fall. Especially the fall. With a subject as repugnant as this, it's understandable ... but in so gleefully depicting every instance of Howard dancing on some enemy's grave, the author commits a little schadenfreude of his own. Still, the book's a ripping good read, if not, like the man at the center of it all, a bit long-winded. I guess that's only fitting, like a custom-made toupee or a mustard yellow ABC Sports-jacket. That's what I'll remember about this American Original. That and the staccato barrage of his trademark nasal tone. Howard Cosell didn't just love language. He molested it. And while that was enough to win my teenage admiration, I've grown to know enough gifted communicators to recognize a few as straight-up assholes. Howie certainly seemed to be that and so much more. But he forged new territory in television and brought the kind of gravitas and grit to sports commentary that Bryant Gumble is still trying to pull off. All while sucking the air out of every room and knocking back lots of vodka.

Hard to hate on that.

Natural Born Slinger

Three months after a Milwaukee police sergeant roughed up the oldest photog he could find at a house fire, city officials have admitted Clint Fillinger did nothing wrong. That is to say they've dropped all charges against the Fox 4 photojournalist. Readers will remember Fillinger as the - ahem - seasoned lenslinger who responded to a house fire call only to be accosted by an oddly hostile cop. "All the way back!" the sergeant barked, as he and a fellow officer walked the accredited photographer away from the news scene. Fillinger protested as he backpedaled, until finally the cops put him on his ass. When they did, his camera took a hard bounce but it did capture the sixty eight year old community menace being unceremoniously cuffed and stuffed.

At the time we issued a stern Schmuck Alert, a move met with stiff indifference by all parties involved. We're cool with that, though one of the core tenets of The Lenslinger Institute is that clashes between The Fourth Estate and first responders would not occur so readily were certain people not so insistent on being absolute douche-bags. It's even written in our by-laws. So, you can imagine our delight at hearing the city of Milwaukee have reconsidered their position and expunged Mr. Fillinger's record of any and all cooked up charges. Hey, being publicly identified as a forty five year old veteran of television news is enough to live down. No one needs a rap sheet they didn't earn.