Sling For Your Supper...

Ever drag a fully functional fancycam through a Department of Social Services? It’s like covering a red carpet event in reverse! Seriously, if I have one more crack addict look at me in disgust, I’m gonna go throat-punch my high school guidance counselor. Then again, I never paid much attention to that lady anyway. Now that I’m all growed up, though, I can’t help but think what a little forethought may have done for my state of mind, let alone something as meandering as my career path.

Would I be the same person if I never knew the reaction one gets when asking fresh vasectomy patients if they’d like to remove the bag of frozen peas from their lap and tell central North Carolina just what Obamacare means to them?

Could I better relate to the proletariat had I not first learned to pin Wal Mart shoppers in their cars until they came up with six good answers to “Hot enough for ya?” (Lay on their hood and twitch. It stuns them until you can get the microphone out.)

Would I feel the same about the judicial system had I never been dressed down by that bailiff that caught me filming him chortling in his sleep? And do you know of a website that would properly pay for that sort of footage?

Should I have truly pursued higher education, instead of filing daily digests on everything from hard cider homicides to tips on picking that perfect poinsettia? Would it have made me a more intoxicating cocktail party guest?

Would I have so warned my children about the perils of zealotry had I not spent so much of my working life sharing air with convicted criminals, city council members, and (shudder) TV consultants?

Could I have possibly spent s-o-o many hours writing about my workaday adventures had I fallen into something less skeevy that TV news? Like crime scene clean up, Port-A-John repair or premature taxidermy?

You're right: There's nothing's skeevier than TV News.

Lark of The Beast

Ever have an old chum ring you up and be all like...

 “A tanker truck full of cucumber juice just flipped over on the interstate! We got all three westbound lanes knee-deep in pickle spit! Strother’s gonna meet you with the jet-pack! GO!” 

No? You must not shoot news. If you did, you’d be perfectly versed in the Doctrine of Improbability. It’s a basic precept in the Book of Lenslinger that exposits - through a series of Cheeto-encrusted flash cards - that the less likely something is to actually happen, the more likely you’ll be on call when it finally does. I can’t really explain it without breaking out the Handy Wipes, but just know the next time you’re scrambling up an overpass for a better look at the chunky purple smoke plume, you probably had it coming. Me, I got Inconvenience on speed dial.

Which is not to say I totally loathe spot news. Freight train derailments have their place (down by the tracks, I’ve found) but you really have to be in the mood. I wind my way to the back of the newscast, where there’s more control amid the whip cream rodeos. Less bloodshed, too. Not to mention other non household stains... “What’s that? Geysers are spiraling over the waste-water treatment plant and you need me on scuba-cam? That could be a problem. See, I’m all the way over in Itchy Grove, where they’re having their annual ‘Macrame Days’. I got all the sound I need, but the Mayor’s about to bust out his best oven mitt and I don’t wanna miss it. Fountain of brown wouldn’t look good in plasmas anyway. Clashes with the rest of the set. Hmm? Yes, I know, hot open and three teases. Bye.”

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, the breakdown lane. Ya know, I can’t recommend you ever loiter there, as many photogs I know consider it to be their own private flight path...

“Hey, life’s what happens when you’re missing slot. Besides, that glimmer in the distance is the competition raising their mast. If you don’t put the hammer down now, we’re gonna miss the widow again. Last time that happened, bossman made me spend the night in The Box! I didn’t walk upright for three days! Now is that a tripod in your trunk or did you just skip middle college? Those glass shards aren’t gonna rack themselves into focus, ya know. And that throng of zombies glaring at the sheet metal? They’re bristling with Emmy Award winning soundbites! Now step on it, before there’s no state troopers left to grill! For the love of Savitch, I want us turning wreckage into spectacle before that cable news trollop heaves the first bosom! My God, man, is there no logo on your soul? G-O-O-O!”

I gotta run.

Just Add Water

It may only look like a hole in the road to YOU, but to us local TV goobs, it's a galloping chasm that could screw up your commute, flush your 401-K and quite possibly kill your goldfish. Okay, so the goldfish part I just made up, but when you spend a chilly afternoon staring into the abyss of a brand new water-main break, the mind starts to wander...

Did I REALLY just run a grandmother off the road to babysit a mud puddle?

The house-cats seem to think this thing may swallow us all. What are THEY swallowing? Psilocybin?

Is it TOO LATE to go to night school?

Wonder how many orange cones I can gather up before the road crew throws ME in the hole?

How much do those guys in the hard-hats MAKE, anyway?

If they pull the lost ark of the covenant/ a glowing 'possum  out of that hole, am I gonna have to WORK LATE?

How are we gonna tie THIS into the Fiscal Cliff?

Isn't this EXACTLY how that Y2K expert I use to put on TV so much said the end would begin?

When they DO let traffic back on this road, think they'd mind if I lie down in the fast lane for a bit?

How did a guy who reads as much as I DO end up standing behind a camera for a living?

Wait - don't answer that last one. I don't wanna know... 

Rolling in the Deep

Boom microphones burst into flames if they dip into his shot.

He can change receiver frequencies using only his mustache.

Wherever he sets his tripod, begonias soon cluster.

High-speed police chases always follow his chopper's shadow.

Batteries grow stronger when placed in his pocket.


Oprah's photog comes over and jumps on his couch.

Whenever he wears jorts, a new South Pacific island chain forms.

His every whim comes with its very own time-code.

He once fed an entire village from a single fanny-pack.


Men on the Street stop to ask him questions.

He is The Most Interesting Cameraman In The World and his name is David R. Busse. Back in the summer of 1983, he even caused floodwater along the Colorado River to evaporate - but not before stopping to pose with a couple of mere mortals...

"We had no satellite trucks or other live capability from the California-Arizona border area, so we spent three weeks flying out there each day, shooting a story and flying back, to feed our footage from an airport tarmac in Riverside, Rialto or wherever..."

Sure you did, Busse, sure you did. Stay thirsty, my friend.

Kid and Spray

This isn't the first time nine year old Carter has manned a fancycam and unless authorities step in, it probably won't be the last. And to think it happened on a high school football field, where risky visual stimulants can render innocent youngsters agog with possibilities. Wanna capture a kid's imagination? Give 'em a gizmo that captures action, bends time and mines the horizon. But beware, that kind of magic can befuddle an otherwise focused child's attention. Before long, your little mathlete could lose interest in equations and then one day you find him deep in the glow of a local newscast... heckling reflections, berating bad light and shot-calling axis-fractures. It isn't pretty, and I would have hoped a full grown photog like Tommy Normanly would have known better. But dude says he has a damn good reason for handing his boy an apparatus that should come with a caution... (SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Use of this device may malign the spine, interrupt deep sleep and slow overall career trajectory.)

"I'm hoping by letting him play with it now, it will be like locking him in a room with a box of cigarettes. He'll hate it, get it out of his system, and never want to touch a camera again."

I hope so, Norm. Otherwise I'm calling Social Services...

Resume the Position

We've all been there: stuck upon a heffalump, squinting through an electric toaster, wondering where it all went wrong. Okay, maybe I'm projecting a bit. For all I know, Universal Newsreel legend Mervyn Freeman willingly wedged himself atop that hefty herbivore -- though for the life of me, I can't figure out WHY. Then again...

... I once camped out in the back of a police van overnight in hopes a smash-and-grab artist would have the courtesy to hit the convenience store in the middle of my camera's cross-hairs. He never did, but I made some new cop buddies and even got invited to an autopsy. (Note to Self: Finger sandwiches not right for every event.

... Once I got soclose to an orphaned lion, the damn thing cocked his leg and pissed in my lens and on my face. To make matters worse, the hippie zookeeper lady had just told me it was about to happen! There's a lesson in there, I guess, but I'm not sure what it is. All I do know is I can't so much as watch The Lion King without a bottle of Windex by my side.

... Not only have I waded into the chaos of a fresh crime scene, high-fived my way deep into a Republican fundraiser and openly associated with known news anchors, but I've even manned up and walked a camera into the middle of a coliseum full of American Idol hopefuls. May not sound like much, but have YOU seen how high a cross-dressing Streisand fan can kick?

... If I had a dime for every time I've stuck my glass in the face of some shackled ass-hat, well, I wouldn't be seen scrounging in the floorboard of my news unit for soda money. I only wish all that backpedaling had made lined my pockets with silver, instead of just making me paranoid about gutter curbs and newspaper shooters.

... Long ago, I allowed myself to be locked in the back of a live truck in mid-edit while a reporter drove the damn thing down a mountain. I won't let it happen again. For one, staring at a screen three inches from your face while hurtling backwards at sixty miles per hour is no way to go through life. Secondly, vomit's really hard to wash out of station fleece wear. 

Kinda makes a hippo ride not seem so silly.

Cursed Responders

A monadnock I'm fond of is about to burn and I have yet to get there. This bothers me a bit, as I still feel the need to be On Scene, no matter how I try to hide it. Most photogs do. Unplanned calamities are, after all, our profession's breadfruit. Without them, our little slugs and rundowns would slow to a crawl, no matter how many tap-dancing poodles or weather center wedding proposals we come up with. I, myself, cringe at the sound of scanner traffic. It's that kind of static that interrupts my meals. (I can still taste the steak I never finished the night some guy shot his wife twenty years ago.) I've probably woken up on the phone in the middle of the night more times than I've called my Mother. These days, I'd rather bob for close-ups in the Zumba pool than circle the drain of a drive-by shooting. Still, when a beloved landmark falls victim to stupidity and dizzying visuals begin to spew forth, even this Z-block operative finds himself eyeing the horizon...  

For a moment, anyway.