Schizophrenia in the Trenches

With Idol over and early summer in full swing, I once again find myself slogging through the trenches of 'General Assignment'. What's that, you say? Well, just what it sounds like: General Assignment, that non-category of newsgathering that makes up 89.7 percent of your average broadcast. Be it a visiting dignitary, a slow-motion board meeting or a three alarm fire, working 'G.A.' can be a strenuous exercise in intermittent intrigue. It can also be a stone cold drag - especially when you got quite used to cranking out three puff-pieces a week on bald rockers and ditzy southern belles. But my own occupational aimlessness shall have to be the subject of another post, as this one is about the eclectic nature of elctronic image acquisition. In other words, what I lack in sweeping themes I can more than make up for in random photos and meaningless text. Shall we begin?

Holy Bureaucrat, Batman - it's Condoleezza Rice! The Secretary of State (and no longer the only earthling named Condoleezza) was in town yesterday for the Southern Baptists Annual Convention. Moments after her unmarked jet touched down in the middle of Downpour Alberto, Condi ducked into a nearby hangar for a few highly choreographed moments with area Girl Scouts, salivating politicians and soggy cameramen. If you think such an innocuous photo-op would be relatively spontaneous, then you've never haggled with State Department officials as to where you can set your tripod. Luckily, I secured an unfettered spot that afforded me maximum visibility, thus completing my mission and ensuring the future of the Republic. I just wish the fawning Girl Scout crowd had though to bring along some Thin Mints. Mmmmm, Thin Mints...

Uh-oh. We seem to have caught my buddy Austin here in mid-erection. No worries - in a few moments he'll be all set up and dozing behind his camera with the rest of us. Truly, the only reason I took this shot was a failed attempt to fight press conference paralysis - that immobilizing force that drains you of any interest whatsoever in whatever the glad-handing podium jockey is droning on and on about at the front of the room (or in this case front of the client-deprived industrial park). Judging from the posture of the schlub in the distance, Austin's a little late to the party. That's more the assignment desk's fault than his, as deskies are notorious for handing photogs a 10:00 appointment a few minutes before noon. Like any good glass-addict, Austin knows how to jump curbs, sprint across parking lots and throw up his sticks in seconds flat - just so he can lose himself in thought - until the midday sun glints off the mayor's giant scissors and reminds him he's already late for his next gig. I feel ya brother, now get out of my shot!

Not to bring down the room, but chances are this pooch won't be alive much longer. Before you organize a protest however, a little background: Eighteen hours before I huddled over his cage, this Pit Bull and his buddy-in-breed broke loose from their backyard pen, roamed the neighborhood until they found a small stable, where they promptly ripped a full grown horse to shreds. I know, I stood over the mutilated mare this morning while the Grandfather that loved her choked back tears just off camera. To hear Gramps tell it, the two runaway Pit Bulls stalked the hapless horse until the poor animal ensnared itself in the stable fence. Once trapped, the horse was doomed as the two dogs - locked in some kind of pack-mentality bloodlust - literally disembowled the 15 year old Apaloosa as hapless neighbors watched in disbelief. Too grisly for ya? Perhaps you'd be more comfy back in the newsroom - where the biggest perils are paper cuts, air conditioning and scanner noise.

There are however, a few benefits to working in the Big House - namely the slow trickle of semi-famous faces that pour through any TV station's hallowed halls. Here, nightside assignment guy David Smith (in green) strikes a pose with (ex) Carolina Panthers Wide Receiver Ricky Proehl. Now I'm no sports expert, but even I knew who Ricky Proehl is. Over the years, his journeyman mojo and dazzling catches have made me spill my Sunday afternoon popcorn on more than one occasion. I told Ricky this and he responded with some NFL minutia that registered as only pops and clicks in my uneducated ears. Hoping to avert his attention from my lack of football acumen, I asked him about his sister Deb - a lady I manned many an icy overpass with, before she wized up and got out of the biz. These days, Deb sells real estate and from what I can tell, does very well for herself.

I wonder though, does she miss it? Does she ever pause during an over-polite Open House to pine for the raucous days of turning tragedy, trivia and tripe into minute-fifteen passion plays? My guess, is yes ... until the holidays roll around and she finds herself lounging by the fireplace, instead of pacing about some unplanned imbroglio with an unshaven grouch like me. Come to think of it, I wonder of there's any room on her Realty Team for a disillusioned lenslinger? I don't know much about property values, but I look do look damn spiffy in a yellow blazer. Whadaya say, Deb? ... Deb? Hello? Is this thing on?

'Blood Done Sign My Name'

If anyone's wondered why I haven't penned anything too in-depth as of late, place the blame squarely on Timothy B. Tyson. For more than a week the native North Carolinian's masterwork, 'Blood Done Sign My Name' has captivated my imagination, ripped open my soul and made me laugh out loud at more than one Guilford County stoplight. That in itself is a testament to the author's skill, as his source material is far from humorous. When Tyson was but a boy, a white merchant in his adopted hometown of Oxford, N.C. gunned down a young black war veteran in the harsh daylight hours of May 11, 1970. A lackadaisical investigation followed, as did Klan Rallies and Civil Rights marches. Before it was over, several white-owned businesses burned to the ground at the hands of apoplectic African-Americans. Oxford survived the ensuing uproar and the townsfolk quickly went about the business of burying the details of their unpleasant past, (Sound familiar, Greensboro?)

But Tim Tyson didn't forget. Rather, the ugly truth of Henry Marrow's undignified demise forever altered the son of a preacher's 11 year old mind. For years it festered there until, like any good narrative, it became too much for the writer too keep to himself. So, cursed with a book he was born to write, Tyson did the only honorable thing ... he shone the light of truth on every crevice of a complicated tale. When those rays spilled over and illuminated the darker parts of his own family's history, he did not flinch. Instead, he examined the shortcomings of his own enlightened parents and told how even a liberal minister is guilty of the pacifying paternalism many White Southerners still regard as the foundation for proper race relations. Amid all this grisly deconstruction, Tyson does something else unexpected: he entertains, employing a born-raconteur style that this humble blogger can only dream of one day possessing.

Needless to say, I identify heavily with Timothy B. Tyson. Seven years my senior, this fellow outcast of the 'New South' witnessed his destiny in an Eastern North Carolina town barely a hundred miles from the one I begrudgingly grew up in. Though his childhood was far more dramatic (and tragic) than mine, I recognized many of the Southern-fried archetypes he describes: winking, bigoted authority figures that for the longest time made me ashamed to be a white guy from the sticks. Tyson, however, does my breed of thinker proud, by refusing to gloss over the many ways we all fall short of the glory. By doing so, he rights some of the wrongs of our forefathers while making even the most sanctimonious of us re-think opinions we didn't even know we had. Tyson's landmark work is haunting in another way as well. It makes me ashamed that I'm wasting this strange writing compulsion on something as patently vapid, as instantly disposable, as achingly empty as TV News.'Blood Done Sign My Name' is more than a painful chapter of my own region's past. It is a challenge for all would-be writers to dig deeper, until they find a subject matter that sufficiently hurts.

Challenge accepted...

So That Others May Preen

In a recent thread focusing on the various ways broadcasters go about filling their newscasts, Frank McBride revealed a clever, albeit crass war cry often overheard in his neck of the newsroom.

“Launch the Probe!” a desk dork would bellow as an unfortunate photog loaded up in a live truck and steered it into the abyss. Cute … I can just see the deskies high-five each other as they chortle over their air-conditioned brilliance, all while someone with twice the experience and three times the tripod scars ventures off into the storm, the ghetto, or worst of all - the incalculably protracted County Commissioners Meeting. As one who has spent the last decade and a half staging these unlikely sorties, I gotta tell you, the fun (and the frustration) is in the field. Besides, who wants their news served to them on a silver platter?

Not me. I’d much rather cross my fingers behind my back while I sweet talk the guy at the roadblock, than pace under a bank of TV screens and claim victory based on freeze-dried clichés, revved-up graphics and the cruelties of counting backwards. That way I remain seaworthy, a modern day news pirate who isn’t afraid of hostile waters and competitors’ carronades. If I’m mangling metaphors, forgive me, but I’m transcribing from notes I took while circling the block for a better view of some temporary tempest. Judging from my penmanship, I was quite stoked at the time - but that’s what happens when you spend a lifetime turning today’s scanner traffic into tomorrow’s water cooler chat.

Trouble is the open news road is the path to career-long obscurity. No matter how quickly we photogs take that next hill, it is the manager, the producer, the main anchor who swoops in at the last moment and plants the flag in the name of the almighty affiliate. Oh well - at least I have my pride. That and the quiet knowledge that I stand a better chance of making history than my newsroom bound brethren. After all, if nefarious aliens ever do crash land their vessel on our heartless orb, it’s a safe bet some news photographer will be the first schmuck to get his melon scrambled. Look for that footage on the six o clock news. While you do, I gotta boogie. Seems there are some glowing rocks making weird noises out in Lake Cesspool and the desk wants me to ‘put some eyes on it’.

Anybody seen my sunglasses?

Photog at Dusk

The hulking Kentuckian known only as Smitty cuts a lenslinging silhouette in this self-portrait purloined from his own accomplished blog. With his stark posture cutting a heroic hole in the night sky, one gets the impression that no horizon is too distant, no deadline too stupid, no rent-a-cop too pissy to stop this photog from bagging that next needed shot. Then you notice dude is sportin' Adidas flip-flops, and you realize he's just walking his camera out to get the evening paper.

Still, I like the cut of his jib...

Pining for Fife

Neill Shelton is Angry. You would be too, if your plans of building a statue of Barney Fife had just been lopped off at the knees. For the past couple of months, this Mount Airy native and others have been working furiously to bring a bronze effigy of the bug-eyed deputy to Andy Griffith's hometown. Funds were raised and sketches were drawn, but now a letter from a big city attorney has informed the group they don’t have the rights to recreate the late, great Don Knott’s likeness. The cease and desist order from an overdressed out-of-towner has left the wobbly lawman’s legion of fans positively thunderstruck. When I sat down with Shelton the day after he got the news, he crumpled into the Kountry Kitchen’s corner booth like a broken man.

“It’s such a shame we made so much progress,” he said with the empty stare of a freshly displaced storm victim, “just have it nipped in the bud, so to speak.”

If this lavish devotion to a decades-old sitcom character strikes you as strange, you didn’t grow up in North Carolina - and you damn sure ain’t been to Mayberry. If you had, you’d know the echoes of the Andy Griffith Show still reverberate in the Old North State. Sure, those idyllic and omnipotent episodes represent a simpler time that really never was, but they serve as a comforting touchstone for generations of viewers. Further, this indelible folly is an endless source of pride for many North Carolinians. One person’s scatchy rerun is another’s deeply revered mythology. Me - I’m somewhere in the middle. The age old comedy’s glaring lack of Arfican-Americans always troubled me for a series set so firmly in the South, but then again, who looks for realism in a sitcom anyway? I was just happy to bask in the comedic genius that was young Don Knotts. For that reason alone, I always enjoy the breezy streets of Mount Airy and would stand in line to pause somberly before an emboldened Barney in bronze. Alas, it wasn’t mean to be.

“Who wouldn’t wanna pay tribute to one of the funniest humans ever?” Shelton asks.

Attorneys for the Knotts estate, apparently.

Bruised Fruit of the Eternal Pursuit

“Stewart - we got a high speed pursuit!”

‘There goes lunch’ I thought as I dropped the Explorer into drive and pulled out of my hard-earned parking space. Hungry as I was, all culinary quests would have to wait as long as my Assignment Manager was bandying about those three words. The very syllable combination throws down a spot news gauntlet that the even the worst responder cannot ignore. Why, even I leaned into the steering wheel as I shook off the last vestige of cross-town traffic. Somewhere to the South, several Greensboro Police cruisers were chasing an alleged bank robber in a red SUV down Highway 421. But they weren’t the only ones hurled into the void. Behind them, an itinerant detachment of paramedics, investigators, firefighters and journalist raced in their wake - each pushing themselves to personal limits, just so they can be ringside when the shit goes down. Welcome to my Wednesday.

At no time did I harbor any hope of catching the pursuit on camera. Though I’ve seen it done, capturing footage of a high speed chase without a helicopter is tricky at best. I do remember a priceless few seconds of videotape obtained by the great Kevin O Brien, who had the energy and forethought to set up his camera and sticks along the path of a cross-county chase. When the late-model sedan screamed into view, the underage occupants waved to K.O.’s camera like they were the lead car in a parade. In essence, they were. Since then, I’ve drafted after my own share of squad cars and never came away with much more than the bruised fruits of so many pointless pursuits. For a while Sheriff Gerald Hege kept things interesting, what with his habit of chasing offenders out of his jurisdiction and opening fire. (No doubt about, it that guy was good for business.) With the renegade sheriff now concocting his memoirs somewhere far off the highways, sustained chases have been hard to come by. Hey, this ain’t L.A.

It is however, d-e-e-e-e-p in the heart of NASCAR Country, and many a man in uniform considers himself worthy of his very own HANS device. So it didn’t surprise me when the next breathless phone call reported that Phase One of the chase was already over. Seems the squad cars rubbed a little paint in Turn 2 and the red SUV now simmered upside down with a possible fuel spill. Ahead of me, the ambulance I’d been closing in on killed his lights and let off the gas. I followed the rolling box all the way to the cop-car convention in question. When the driver snaked through a phalanx of fire trucks, I pulled my news unit over to the shoulder and hit the flashers. In the distance, I saw the red SUV resting on its roof, surrounded by cops, firefighters and road-kill groupies. Grabbing my gear I schlepped forward and scanned the horizon for whatever may be left of the driver.

Mine wasn’t the only lens aloft when the stretcher did appear. Thirty seconds after I arrived, competitors, rogues and allies emerged from the mist. As a pesky deputy scanned the menagerie of news-gatherers for whom to hassle next, we all fell into easy conversation, picking up on topics we’d delved into the last time the lot of us were stranded by calamity. Of course all talk stopped when the paramedics in the distance wheeled the gurney into view. Like snipers lying in wait, we took to our crosshairs and silently tracked the status of the patient in question. Strapped into the stretcher, he lay perfectly still as two beefy medics steered him toward the ambulance. When the highly-reflective doors slammed shut a few moments later, chatter in the press gallery resumed.

About what, I don’t really recall. A little technical minutia here, a few salacious rumors there - you know, just the kind of thing you yammer on about when standing around bored in your workspace. It’s this water-cooler chat of the roadside variety that has long held your lenslinger in great sway. Something about chewing the fat in the face off all that bent sheet metal reminds me of the good ole days - when every squawk of the scanner brought with it a new kind of adventure. These days I’d far rather wax poetic than drive like a fireman, but since I still serve at the pleasure of the News Gods, spontaneous ditch-bank servitude can only be expected. Perhaps when I retire, I’ll buy an old ambulance and stock it with food, scanners and drink - thus ensuring no working stiff with a wide angle will ever have to listen to his stomach rumble by the fluttering crime tape again...

Naaah, I’ll probably just move to the coast.

Order of the Fork

I was mentally willing a stoplight to turn green today when, inexplicably, I whispered a long-buried refrain:

“We are, we are, we are, we are the Order of the Fork…”

Suddenly I was thirteen again, sweating profusely in a Boy Scout t-shirt as the older guys took up their forks and marched around the mess hall while singing at the top of their hairy lungs….

“We are, we are, we are, we are the Order of the Fork…”

Every Wednesday after the noon meal, the more muscular staff members of Camp Tuscarora struck dread in the hearts of their less developed campers with this most unsanctioned of initiations. For three long weeks in a row I’d sighed with relief as they’d passed me over for some other squirming unfortunate.

“We are, we are, we are, we are the Order of the Fork…”

But I was living on borrowed time. As a junior camp counselor, I was a prime target for the older guys’ abuse. I’d held up pretty well so far, but as a bookish dork not good at anything but reciting Steve Martin comedy albums, I deeply dreaded this inevitable ritual.

“We are, we are, we are, we are the Order of the Fork…”

Their voices grew louder with each new burly member that joined the chant. Marching around the crowded mess hall, they slammed their fist in unison on passing tables to punctuate their mantra. Then they’d poke some feeble young schmuck in the ass and drag him to the center of the cavernous hall.

“We are, we are, we are, we are the Order of the Fork…”

I knew I was in trouble when I spotted Steve-O leering at me with unmitigated glee. Steve-O was a big, rangy farm boy who took special delight in my lack of athleticism and penchant for difficult words. When he and his thug buddies drew near, I knew the jig was up - even before the dull tines pierced my tender flesh.

“We are, we are, we are, we are the Order of the Fork…”

Instantly, I was on my feet, surrounded by a crush of Jamboree ’76 shoulder patches and chest hair. Behind me, straggling members of the Forked Brotherhood reached over and got their own tardy jabs in. I barely felt a thing as I was locked and loaded on the industrial size stainless steel pitcher being held above the crowd.

“We are, we are, we are, we are the Order of the Fork…”

Their off-kilter hymn increased in volume and tempo as a beefy pair of hands poured the pitcher’s grisly contents into an oversized mug and thrust it into my reluctant palms. Though I knew better, I couldn’t help but examine the swill within. The color of pancake batter and the consistency of kindergarten vomit, the gritty bile glistened and sloshed as the crush of counselors pushed the vile mixture to my lips…

“We are, we are, we are, we are the Order of the Fork…”

Afraid I’d dry heave in front of God and everybody if I didn’t get it over it with, I allowed the mess hall rotgut to be poured down my throat. Despite being a committed finicky eater, I swallowed and gasped as thick streams of chunky scum poured down both sides of my mouth. What little cross my tongue tasted like liquid cigarette butts and purified cat litter. But with out-ranking giants all around me, I had no choice but to force it down - knowing for certain that, if it didn’t kill me on the spot, this abominable concoction would somehow make me a man…

“We are, we are, we are, we are the Order of the Fork…”

-------------------------

I hate long stoplights.