Iron Shoulder

Spike = Iron Shoulder

2009-04-24T18:15:00.000-07:00

Just for Medialine fans:

Spike = Iron Shoulder

So suck on that.

Blog Abandoned?

2006-05-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

Many people have noticed and commented on the fact that I haven't been writing lately. There have been a combination of factors at play. For one thing, not a whole lot has been going on. Sarah has backed off somewhat, but she still has a tendency toward bitchiness. The live truck now has a transmission leak that hits the exhaust pipe and causes it to smoke. Wendy is still... Wendy. There just haven't been many major developments or stories to tell.

So I've been spending my time reading science fiction novels. I discovered the wonderful creative work of Dan Simmons and read the entire Hyperion series (which in part inspired the previous "Fiction Bastards" post). Then I moved to Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Next I think I'll start on some of Phillip Dick's work, since the Scanner Darkly movie is coming out soon. As I've mentioned before, I get most of my reading done for free at Borders, simply sitting in the cafe and reading their books, then reshelving them and hoping that nobody buys the last copy before I come back the next day for another few chapters.

It's a simple existence. I awaken. I read. I go to work. I sleep.

I was trying to fit blogging into that routine as well, but I have been somewhat puzzled by the responses to my writing. First and foremost, I appreciate the advice and encouragement I have received. But for the past couple of months an ugliness has been building that has finally overshadowed the positive feedback and taken away any pleasure I have received from writing.

Some people continue to criticize me for airing my station's dirty laundry. I've had some accuse me of hating women. I've been called a loser for continuing to work here. I've even had people accuse me of making the whole thing up. That last one I understand the least; if people hate me because they think I'm some kind of liar, why do they continue to read it, then send me hateful emails? What does that accomplish?

People have asked me, so I'll answer. Is everything here accurate? Not entirely. I have changed certain details to protect my identity and the identities of my colleagues. Why would I do such a thing? I think it's a perfectly reasonable attempt to protect my privacy, but perhaps I should let this email from one of my readers speak for itself:

Dear 'Max,'

I know that's not your real name. It doesn't matter, because you will be found out soon enough.

You have no business airing your station's dirty laundry. You have no business working in this business. I'm sure you think it's funny. Well now the joke is on you. I figured out where you work. I know who 'Sarah' is. It won't be hard for your nd to figure out who Wendy is. They won't appreciate hearing what you wrote about them.

I figured you would like to know that I just emailed your nd with a link to your blog. Here's what I said.

'Dear [name omitted],

I thought you might like to know that a photog you recently hired is airing your station's dirty laundry on the internet. He has a blog he has used to smear you personally as well as your reporters and producers. He is behaving unprofessionaly and doesn't deserve to represent your institution.

His blog is www.ironshoulder.blogspot.com. I think you may find it interesting reading.

Signed,

A Concerned Citizen'

So how do you like that, 'Max'? Better start making tapes, because your days there are numbered.

Whoa. Someone actually went to the trouble of emailing a news director to get a blogger in trouble. However, it wasn't MY news director he emailed, and I never heard anything more about it. He got the wrong station. Somewhere some ND probably ended up reading my blog and trying to figure out how any of it applied to his station. Hell, maybe he's now one of my loyal readers.

So how much of this is real? Most of it is. Yes, the casket story really happened. Yes, the sheriff really ran into me. Yes, there really was a kid who brought guns to school. The parts that aren't 100% accurate are simply shaded to conceal my identity. I wouldn't try to pass any of this off as newspaper articles, but "Sarah" and "Wendy" are real people. As are "Jake" and "Al." As am I.

I've been asked why people can't find these stories by searching the Internet. Maybe their search skills suck. I do know our website sucks, simply because it's run by one guy who is also our entire "creative services department" and is usually busy making commercials for local mattress dealers. I doubt it has been updated in months. It actually still has a reporter listed on it that no longer works here.

Our local newsrag didn't even cover some of this stuff. Still, I did find some of this material in my own search attempt on Yahoo. If other people can't find it, it's either because I've ommitted or shaded certain details that would help them zero in on it, or maybe they're just too stupid to do a thorough search.

I tried to put a stop to the bullshit by turning on comment moderation here on the blog. Assholes still continued to send me comments. Then they started emailing me. When I ignored them, they posted whiny messages on message boards trying to discredit me. When I refused to respond, they accused me of "running away."

Yet, how the hell can I respond? The only way I can "prove" this is real is to reveal my identity. Great solution. Then the asshole who wrote the message quoted above WILL know who my ND is and will get me fired. It's a catch 22.

This is the only response I intend to make on this issue. If you don't like my blog, don't read it. Go read a book, or watch American Idol, or do whatever the hell it is you people do. I really don't care. I don't make any money off this. I only do it for writing practice and for my own pleasure. Take away the pleasure, and there's no reason to continue.

Have some fiction, you bastards.

2006-05-02T03:00:00.000-07:00

Three o'clock in the morning, and my implant screams to life in my head.

"Incoming call! Incoming call! Incoming call!"

"Sleep mode!" I scream out loud to silence the buzzy voice. I really don't have to speak the commands any longer, now that the bugs have been worked out of the latest neural interface firmware. I could just think the command, but old habits die hard.

"Priority override!" screams my implant. "Incoming call! Incoming call!" I have the station's voice terminal set in my override filter, so that even in private sleep mode calls from the station can get through.

I stumble out of bed to my own terminal. "Voice only," I say. I'm still in my underwear, and I really don't want Wendy to see me sitting here half naked. "Accept."

My terminal screen flashes to life. Yep, it's Wendy, the person I least want to see at three in the morning.

"Max, signal 37. Hey, I don't see you. Are you there?"

"Yes, I'm here," I say. "Signal 37. Where is it?"

"I'm forwarding the address to your implant now. The radio traffic on this one's a mess, so this may be pretty good."

"I'll be out the door in five," I say. "End!" The image on screen collapses to standby mode.

"What's going on?" the young redhead in my bed asks. She's not a real redhead. The last natural redhead was born over seventy years ago. This one has had TGR (targeted genetic retrovirus) treatments to simulate the, um, natural redhead look, but she still can't pass the genes on to her kids.

"Where is this?" she asks, watching me pull on my pants. At the moment I'm drawing a blank on her name. Rachel, maybe? My head is throbbing. I had a lot to drink last night. So did she, which would probably explain why she's in my bed. Lately the rage among these college girls is to get drunk and fuck old men. When I was 22, girls wouldn't even look at a guy my age. Now I can't keep 'em out. As if I would want to.

"Oh, yeah," she says. "You're Mark."

"Max," I say, no longer embarrassed to have forgotten her name. I grab a hangover pill and swallow it as I reach for my shoes. By the time the laces are tied, the headache is already subsiding. Wonderful thing, those pills. I wouldn't be legal to fly right now if not for them.

Five minutes later my vest is booted and the fans are spinning up on my hovercar. I don't really need to wear the vest any more, now that I have storage implants, but old habits really do die hard after more than 80 years in this business. My second wife tried to convince me to have my access shunt removed, but I kept it. Now I plug my vest into my neck and verify that all banks are empty.

"Destination?" the car asks. I silently transfer the address from my implant to the car's navigation system. "Notice to Airmen," the car says. "Temporary Restriction in place over destination." The heads up display on the forward windscreen flickers to show the TR area superimposed over the city map.

"Transmit clearance request," I respond. "News4 Unit 7, holojournalist exemption."

"Clearance granted," the car says. "VFR flight plan filed with Arrington Approach." With that exchange, I'm able to fly anywhere the police hovers can go. It's times like these that I appreciate living in the country of California, where Freedom of the Press is still enshrined in our Third Amendment and ensured by fifty years of case law. I really don't know how newsies in the Republic of Texas or the Manhattan Protectorates can get their jobs done with such restrictions on access. Despite the pressure in those territories to simply report the government releases, they still keep trying. God bless them.

I pull up on the collective and shoot a hundred feet into the air, bank hard left and point the car toward the north end of town. Even at this low altitude I can already see the flashing red and blue emergency lights at the scene. The nose of my hovercar dips as I transition from hover to forward flight and quickly accelerate toward the column of black smoke upon which all the lights seem to be converging.

The ride is short, but it's long enough for my mind to wander. I'll be 103 years old in two weeks. As a youngster, I never thought I would live this long, much less still be working. Hell, I thought I was going to die when I had that hovercycle accident thirty years ago. A ninety foot fall that once would have ensured a certain death left me with ceramic bones and artificial muscles in my legs that are stronger and faster than anything nature could provide. Now I could leap 90 feet if the governors allowed it, but I'd probably give myself a heart attack in the process. I'm proud to say that, unlike so many of my colleagues, I still have most of my own internal organs, and my heart is still pumping as strong as when I started in this crazy business.

This business. I've seen so much change. When I first started "shooting," as they used to call it, we were just making the transition to high definition flat display technology, or HDTV, as it was known then. Dozens of acquisition formats (including tape!) appeared and went obsolete before their sales even paid for their research and development costs. Then came affordable holographic projection, and everything flat was obsolete.

Those first holocams were monsters. We had grown accustomed to HD minicams that would fit in a palm. Suddenly the cameras were back on our shoulders. BOTH shoulders, with lenses on both sides for the stereoscopic view required for holographic display. The first time I wore one, I thought somebody had put a goddamned jet pack on me.

To think we've come to the point where I can get better 3D modeling out of a unit that I can wear like a pair of old spectacles. Some of these younger kids are now actually getting ocular implants, so that they don't have to wear any external gear at all. I personally think these smaller in-the-eye cameras don't produce as good a holo, but the viewers at home don't seem to be able to tell the difference.

The biggest problem with these ocular cams isn't the holo, but the operators. The human eye naturally flits around several times per second, even when the head is perfectly still, to bring various aspects of the scene to the attention of the brain. These things were sold with the idea that the audience would be able to "see what the operator sees," literally, so that the experience would be like being there in person. The problem is that what the viewer wants to see isn't necessarily what the operator wants to see, so simply having the viewer go along for the ride is extremely disorienting. When it's projected in 3D holo, it's even more disorienting, when what might seem like a natural shift of vision when viewed from straight on suddenly becomes a sidewise rush when viewed from any other angle in the room. In other words, it's a mess.

To compensate, operators are now trained for "ten count stares," but few of them can really do it. The ten count stare involves focusing on a single point for ten seconds at a time. The operator counts to ten, then shifts his gaze to something else. Five minutes of unedited holo usually has less than a minute of usable fixed gaze, as instincts take over in between "shots" and eyes flit around as normal.

Most of us old pros still prefer the eyeglass configuration. It's simply much easier to hold your head still for ten seconds at a time than your eyes. Plus, with the larger lenses available on external units, you have much better optical zoom ratios. Read: higher quality.

My own holocam is clipped to my vest as I approach the scene. I look down through my side hatch at the devastation of another terror attack, probably by the Mexicans or Texans. It doesn't really matter which. Ever since Civil War II California (which now includes the old States of Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, and parts of Utah, Idaho and British Columbia) has been a target from Mexican nationalists from both territories. We've suffered sixty years of these attacks, dating from when Governor (and later President) Lindsay Lohan ordered all the Mexicans out during the war.

They've blown an apartment building. From the looks of it, they used conventional explosives, but the entire block is levelled. My hovercar's environmental sensors indicate no radiation. Yep, it was a good old fashioned bomb. I grab a few aerial holos from the hover, careful to avoid the shifting fire containment fields being generated by emergency management. I access my implant for the location of the command post and land a block outside the perimeter the cops have set up.

Suddenly my implant speaks up. "Incoming call!" It's Wendy.

"Status?"

"I just got here," I say.

"Do you have any word on how many victims?"

"No," I say. "I just landed. I'm headed to the command post now."

"We want to take your head live as soon as you can give us a holo of the scene."

"I've already sent you some aerials," I say.

"Yeah, they're here on my screen now," she says, "but I want live head."

You and everybody else, I think. "I'll leave my radio open," I say.

This is one of the problems of working as a one man head. In the old days we would go out in pairs. One of us would handle information gathering and link it to the other through our implants. The other would concentrate on image acquisition. Trying to do both at the same time, while fielding calls from some producer who probably never used her implant for anything more stressful than chatting on the telesphere, can be really exhausting.

I find the command post and jack in with the other half dozen journos and holojays who have arrived. I get the initial nugget of information PIO Ramirez has released, but I'm just in time for the man himself. I don my holocam and begin sending data to the storage packets in my vest.

You might wonder about the name. Yes, Ramirez is Mexican by heritage, but his family dates back to nineteenth century California, one of the so-called "Old Families" that were allowed to stay during the purge. That's not to say that he hasn't met his share of discrimination and racism. His wife was actually murdered by Skinheads, and he was beaten and left for dead in the attack. Cops tend to stick together, however, and some of his old Academy buddies hunted them down and killed them. All of them. Now there are no Skinheads left in California; or if there are, they're not letting themselves be seen.

"Well, let's get started," says the PIO. Ramirez likes to take control early, getting his first word out before most of us have our feet under us on the ground. I hear Wendy chirp in my implant that she's taking my head, so I stand very still and focus intently on Ramirez.

"At approximately 2:53 this morning a blast levelled the entire block along 118th Street in the Franklin Heights area. None of the structures in the block survived. We believe an explosive device was planted in the basement of the apartment building that stood at 1104 118th. We have found some survivors, but our initial estimates are 1231 dead, 85 injured. Those are preliminary figures which will be revised throughout the morning.

"We have already received a claim of responsibility from the Texas Liberty Riders. We are tracking several suspects at this time, and we hope to have something more for you later this morning. That's all for right now; I'll have more for you in a couple of hours."

Ramirez quickly disappears into the mobile command post before the assembled journos can hurl too many questions at him. I hear Wendy give me the all clear in my implant.

Suddenly the ground opens up under the command post and flames shoot thirty feet in the air. I'm thrown to the ground by the force of the blast, but I've been doing this long enough that my instincts take over. I keep my head level and storage packets recording. I can hear Wendy screaming in my implant over the ringing in my ears. "What the fuck was that? What's going on? We're taking your head live again now!"

I get to my feet just in time to see...

Eh, maybe I'll finish this. Maybe not.

Six Months

2006-05-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

I hadn't been in the building five minutes this afternoon before Rick, my chief photographer, came looking for me.

"I need to give you your review," he said.

I was a little surprised, because I had heard nothing about this. My first thought was that I had done something wrong. I soon learned that this was just routine.

"Today's your six month anniversary," he said. I smiled at the mistake. I had a girlfriend once who insisted on celebrating our "one month anniversary." When I corrected her and explained that the word anniversary implies that a year has passed, she got irritated with me and said she was sick and tired of my trying to make her feel stupid all the time. We didn't have a two month anniversary. I remembered that lesson and said nothing to Rick.

"This'll be quick," Rick said, once we got into the conference room. "You're doing fine so far. On the positives, you learned the truck faster than anybody I've had and your shooting is solid."

"Thanks," I said. It felt awkward to smile, but I couldn't help it.

Rick continued. "On the 'need to improve' list, you should try to get along with the reporters and producers a little better. I know they can be frustrating, but you don't always handle it the best way. I can't have you refusing to do stories."

"I haven't refused anything," I said.

"Maybe you haven't outright refused, but you've given the impression you're going to refuse to so what you're told."

"Wait, so I'm being reprimanded for what Wendy thinks I might do?"

"No, you're not being reprimanded, and Wendy doesn't have anything to do with this. This is just a review, and I have to put things in here for you to improve."

That statement seemed a little odd and took me off guard. He has to put things in there? That made it sound like he was under mandate to find fault, even where none exists. Even so, I let it go for the moment.

"I also have to include the incident with the live truck--"

"But that wasn't my fault! That guy hit me!"

"I'm not saying it's your fault," he said. "But I have to include any damage to equipment in the review, even if it's an accident. It doesn't count against you."

"If it doesn't count against me, why is it there at all?" I asked.

"See, this is what I'm talking about, about how you handle stressful situations. You're raising your voice and getting angry, and that's not the proper way to handle this."

I held my tongue and fumed.

"You really need to work on that anger issue. So, overall, it's a satisfactory review. Do you know about the scores?"

"No," I said.

"I can give you a 3, 4 or 5. Three is 'needs improvement.' Four is 'satisfactory.' Five is 'good.' There's also a two and a six, but two gets you fired and we aren't allowed to give sixes."

There was another "secret" mandate. I wondered why the company had a six in their review score if they weren't allowed to use it. "What if somebody really deserves a six?" I asked.

"Nobody deserves a six," he said. "I'm not even sure why we have it."

"Has anybody ever gotten a six?" I asked.

"I think the sales guys get them sometimes," he said. "But that's just some kind of incentive they have. I'm not allowed to give sixes. Anyway, you have a four, which is fine. If you can keep up the good work until your year review, you'll normally get a raise then. It won't be much, like a dime or something."

"Okay," I said. I wasn't feeling very good about this review process.

"Now I just need to sign this," he said, scribbling on the bottom of the second sheet, "And you need to sign here also."

I looked at the paper he handed me. There was a signature line for me at the bottom, above where he had scribbled his own name. Above that was a brief statement which read:

I have read the above and understand it to be an accurate reflection of my performance during the review period. This review has been thoroughly discussed with my supervisor, and I have been given an opportunity to answer and correct any statements herein which I feel do not adequately describe my job duties.

"I can't sign that," I said.

Rick looked surprised. "Why not?" he asked.

"Because I don't agree with what was said about me in there."

"You don't have to agree with it," he said. "You're just signing that you received it."

"That's not what it says," I said. "It says I 'understand it to be an accurate reflection of my performance.' I don't think it's accurate."

"Well, uh... What's not accurate about it?"

"I told you. I haven't refused to do anything I have been asked, and the live truck accident had nothing to do with me. If anything, that's the station's fault for sending me out with faulty equipment."

"I told you that stuff doesn't really matter," he said. "I have to put that in there, but you're doing a good job. I hope you're not going to screw it up by causing a problem with this."

There was silence for a few moments while Rick stared at me, and I stared at the paper. Then I broke it. "What happens if I don't sign this?"

"Well. I don't know," Rick said. "Nothing good, I'm sure. For one thing it will cause ME a headache."

I thought about it for another moment, then picked up the pen and struck through the words "and understand it to be an accurate reflection of my performance during the review period" and "I have been given an opportunity to answer and correct any statements herein which I feel do not adequately describe my job duties." Then I initialed both sections and signed the paper.

Rick took the paper and looked at the lines I had drawn. He seemed to be struggling to decide whether he could accept that. Finally he said, "Well, uh. Okay, I guess. Keep up the good work."

And that was that.

I have had employee reviews before, when I worked at the bookstore. Those gave us the option of disputing whatever was in the review, in writing, and they didn't require us to sign that we agreed with the assessment. It was weird to be instructed to agree to an assessment I believed was wrong.

Later this afternoon I was talking with Dax about it, and he said the GM actually requires the managers to find bad things to put into their employee reviews. "They make you sign that you agree you have problems, so if you ever cause any shit they can pull out the paper and say 'See? You even admit you fucked up.' You could save somebody's life and shit, and they still wouldn't give you a good review. Ain't nothin' you can do about it, so don' worry about it."

I guess I won't. I guess.

Enemies List

2006-04-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

Back in my elementary school days, it wasn't uncommon for a teacher to leave the kids in the classroom under the watchful eye of a class monitor selected from among the students, while the teacher went off down the hall somewhere to do something infinitely more important than supervising those under her charge. The class monitor was usually someone the teacher could trust, which meant a girl with high grades whom most everyone else disliked for her overbearing nature and the speed with which her hand always shot up to volunteer for the part of the snitch. If anyone talked or left his seat during the teacher's absence, it was the monitor's job to write the name of the offender on the blackboard, so that the teacher would have a list of those deserving of punishment when she returned smelling like cigarettes.

The punishment for ending up on the monitor's list usually wasn't very severe. It was the threat of punishment that tended to keep the kids in line. When a boy wanted to tell his neighbor something of great importance, like the fact that he could see the outline of Samantha Harris' training bra through her shirt, it wasn't the idea of being whacked on the palm with a ruler or having to write sentences that kept his mouth sealed. It was really fear of seeing his name on The List that maintained his good behavior.

The List wasn't just restricted to the blackboard, however. Some teachers kept their own lists while they were in the room. If a student whispered out of turn when he was supposed to be reading or doing classwork, the relative quiet might suddenly be shattered by the teacher's thunderous voice: "MAX! YOU'RE ABOUT TO FIND YOURSELF ON MY LIST!!!" Other times there was no warning; the miscreant would think his misbehavior had gone unobserved until just before recess, when suddenly the teacher would call out The List of names: "Joey, Billy, Alan, Bobby and Max, please come up here and see me! Everyone else line up in the hallway for recess!"

The kids quickly learned this listmaking behavior. In fact, they were taught to make lists for various exercises of spelling, science or social studies. "List your favorite things," a teacher might say.

"List your favorite foods."

"List different kinds of animals."

"How many kinds of tree can you list?"

"Make a list of leaders."

"List people you admire."

Of course, the kids quickly learned they could apply this method of categorization and organization of data to their own purposes. For example, discovering one's name on someone's Friends List could be the highlight of the day, unless of course it was the Friends List of one of the Snodgrass brothers, the smelly poor kids who didn't bathe. Then you could count on being tormented at recess for your association with the undesirable element. There were also sex lists, starting in more innocent years as the Pretty Girl List and progressing through the Girls I Like List, Girls I Would Date List and ultimately the Girls I'd Do List in junior high school. If there were positive lists, there also had to be negative ones. There were Ugly Girl Lists and People I Hate Lists.

Not every kid was making all these lists. My point is that The List wasn't uncommon, and it didn't originate in any unhealthy or sinister tendencies among students. Listmaking didn't identify anyone as a problem student or potential criminal, even when they were making Hate Lists. Putting someone's name in writing just created an illusion of some kind of power, like seeing one's name on the chalkboard. "You're on my list," was a vague threat that really didn't mean anything at all.

That brings me to the ultimate Hate List, the Enemies List. In my formative years, Enemies Lists really weren't considered any more sinister than any other kind of lists. It's a natural part of childhood development for a child to begin to categorize the things around him and divide them according to their relationship to him. Having an Enemies List didn't mean a student really intended to do anyone any harm. It was simply another way to process and understand relationships that weren't always positive. I mean, if someone called you names, tried to get you in trouble or punched you in the gut on the playground, why shouldn't you consider him an enemy?

But after a string of high profile school shootings around the country, and especially after the incident at Columbine, bewildered educators and law enforcement officials began looking for the Sure Fire Warning Signs that would positively identify a young mass murderer before he ever took action. Throughout the country, parents who unrealistically expected their kids to be 100% safe at school began to support "Zero Tolerance" policies on this kind of expression. In some places, a kid can actually get arrested for what he's thinking, without ever having actually done anything to anyone. Just the act of categorizing someone as an enemy is enough to get a student expelled from school, despite the fact that the students learn the behavior from their teachers in their early years. Even our own government makes regular use of their own Enemies List of regular citizens they think might be hostile, in order to keep our airports and airlines safe; but if Bobby Teenager does it, he MUST be planning some kind of terrorist attack on his school.

Last week we got a flashy press release from the Chief of Police of a nearby town, which I'll call T-ville for simplicity's sake. T-ville is the county seat, and Chief Axelrod is the same chief mentioned earlier who ran against Sheriff Jones for his county's top cop position and is now rumored to be in the running for a chief position in a much larger city. The heading of the release read, "Terror Plot Avoided at T-ville High School." Then, in smaller letters underneath: "Zero Tolerance Policy Nets Multiple Weapons, 200 Rounds of Ammunition." It was full of Homeland Security buzzwords meant to catch the easily impressed eyes of assignment editors and producers.

Wow! High school terrorists in our own back yard! This has the makings of Story of the Year!

T-ville High is a pretty big school, enrolling 1500 students in grades eight through twelve. Thus, it includes part of the age group usually associated with junior high, with seventh graders graduating directly from middle school to high school. The school itself is a county school, and most of its students live outside the city limits, spread out in rural areas of the county. Since the school is inside the city limits, however, its School Resource Officer (SRO) is a T-ville city cop.

This rural county still maintains many of its old traditions. One of those traditions is for many of the boys to learn to fire their fathers' hunting rifles during their preteen years and accompany their fathers on hunting trips by the time they become teenagers. By their mid teens, it isn't unusual for these boys to go on hunting, fishing and camping trips with their peers and their older brothers, without adult supervision. High schoolers occasionally even go hunting after school for a few hours, and up until Columbine many of them would keep their rifles in their cars to be able to head straight out to the woods together when the bell rang without having to waste time regrouping somewhere else.

The Zero Tolerance Policy on School Violence took care of that; now no weapons of any sort are allowed on school grounds. That's certainly a positive development, but occasionally a kid will forget to take his rifle out of his truck after a weekend of shooting. If he's caught with it, he'll usually face a stern threat from the SRO and a few days suspension to think about it. Usually that's all. The Zero Tolerance Policy also makes it a crime to make "threats against the school, its teachers or other students," even if there's little evidence any such threat will be carried out. What actually constitutes a "threat" is vague.

Nobody has ever been arrested under the Zero Tolerance Policy. Until now.

Mark was still working as my nightside reporter the day this story broke. We were actually working on another story but were reassigned in a flurry of excitement and panic when Chief Axelrod's press release came in during one of the early evening shows. There was no press conference scheduled according to the release, but the Chief would be available most of the evening for interviews and to show us the evidence seized from the young terrorist's home.

We got out there at the same time another station had arrived, so we ended up sharing an interview. Chief Axelrod greeted us with a big smile and handshakes all around, then led us into a rather small room arranged like a classroom. "We can do the interview in here with the evidence, if that's okay with you folks," he said.

There was a large table in the front of the room, on which were displayed a single bolt-action hunting rifle, a small assortment of knives including utility knives for skinning game, a small box of shells for the rifle and a scattering of loose ammunition, most of which were shotgun shells. There was also some cold weather hunting gear, including a mask that would cover most of the hunter's face.

This scene almost immediately irritated me. While it wasn't exactly inaccurate, the press release's promise of "weapons" and "200 rounds of ammunition" brought to mind something much more impressive. I was expecting several guns and lots of bullets, not some kid's regular hunting gear. I began to smell something ugly going on there.

We set up for an interview, Chief Axelrod standing behind the table with his trophies before him. Even though this wasn't supposed to be a press conference, the chief obviously had his remarks prepared and started right into a statement.

"Earlier today Officer Jacobs, my SRO at T-ville High School, was alerted by a teacher to the existence of certain documents indicating that a fourteen year old white male was allegedly planning an attack on other students at the school. Officer Jacobs detained this young man and examined the documents in question. At that time he determined that a threat existed and took the young man into custody. He was removed from the school for the safety of the other students and is currently being held here in our jail pending arraignment.

"Subsequent investigation uncovered the weapons you see here, including two hundred rounds of ammunition. That's enough ammunition to kill or injure this young man's entire class.

"We also seized the young man's computer and discovered an extensive collection of pornographic materials. Our investigators are still sifting through that material to determine if any of it is child pornography or illegal.

"I'm saddened and disgusted by what has happened here today, but I have to commend Officer Jacobs for his quick action to seize control of the situation and remove this threat from our school. I can't release the young man's name to you, since he's a minor, but we have booked him into the jail on charges of making terrorist threats under our Zero Tolerance Policy on School Violence. I'd be happy to take any questions now."

The other station's reporter went first. "You said Officer Jacobs received some documents. What kind of documents were they?"

"This young man had compiled a list of people he intended to do harm," the chief said. "Another student found it and gave it to a teacher, and she passed it on to Officer Jacobs."

"What kind of list was this? Was it just students, or teachers?" the reporter asked.

"It was students," he said. "It had ten or eleven student names on it and said 'Enemies List' at the top. It was in the young man's handwriting, and he admitted writing it."

"Do you have any details on the plot?" asked the reporter. "What was he planning to do?"

"At this time, we have no further information on that, but we're questioning him further to get more details and we'll let you know as we find out more."

I was getting itchy, and Mark was just standing there with his lower lip jutting out, asking no questions at all. There were huge obvious questions that I really wanted to hear answered. I ask questions on my own sometimes when I'm working by myself, but I usually don't speak up when I'm with a reporter, so I kept quiet.

The other reporter continued. "Tell us more about the weapons you seized."

"The rifle is a Remington 223. You may remember that this is the same kind of rifle used in the DC sniper case. There's also two hundred rounds of ammunition and a number of knives. We also discovered camouflaged combat gear, as you can see here."

By this time I was grinding my teeth. The DC snipers did NOT use a Remington, but he was trying to associate this kid with them. I don't know that much about guns myself, but I specifically remembered that they used a Bushmaster. There were also not 200 rounds of .223 ammunition. At least half the pile was shotgun shells, which fit a gun the cops didn't even seize.

"That's all I have," the reporter said, looking at Mark. "You have anything?"

Mark just shrugged his shoulders to indicate he had no questions.

WHAT THE FUCK? I couldn't contain it any longer.

"I have a question," I said. I may have been overstepping my bounds, but something needed to be done.

"Sure, shoot," said the chief.

"You said that's a 223 rifle?" I asked. I was nervous, and I think my voice probably shook a little. Usually the interviews I do by myself are simple little conversations that don't involve challenging the interviewee at all, especially a police chief.

"Yep, it's a Remington 223," he said.

"It looks like there are a bunch of shotgun shells mixed in there. Did you seize a shotgun also?"

"No, those are rounds for another gun," he said.

"Did this kid have a shotgun?"

"No," he said. "They were for his brother's shotgun, but his brother doesn't live there in the house."

"In the kid's house?" I asked.

"Yes, all these weapons were seized on a search warrant for the young man's room."

"Was any of this stuff seized at the school?"

"No, he was keeping it all at his house."

"Did he take any of this stuff to school with him?"

"No, like I said, it was all in his room. Anything else?" The chief was starting to get irritated, and I was starting to lose my nerve. Luckily Mark caught on and saved me.

"So..." he started slowly. "What indication do you have that this boy intended to use these weapons at school?"

"We're still investigating that," the chief said. He glanced over at me menacingly after he said it. I buried my eye in the eyepiece and tried to hide inside the camera.

"Let's go back to this list," Mark said. He was on the scent now. "You said it's an 'Enemies List.' What exactly is that?"

"It's a list of names of people this young man intended to do harm," he said.

"I'm sorry," Mark said. "I know you've been over this already, but sometimes I have to hear something a couple of times before it registers." That, coupled with the fact that Mark looks a lot dumber than he really is, disarmed the cop a little. "I hope you'll bear with me a little bit."

"That's okay," the cop said.

"So, this list... Did it say anything else on it besides 'Enemies List'?"

"It just had the names of the victims."

"Victims?" Mark asked. "Did he actually attack any of them?"

The cop revised his position. "No, I should say 'potential victims'."

"What indication did you have that this kid was going to do something to these people?"

"Well, the list itself is enough," the chief said. "Under our Zero Tolerance policy on school violence, threats like this are considered sufficient to establish that a threat exists to the safety of the school."

"So there wasn't actually a threat to the students?" Mark was on it now.

"Well, sure there was!" the cop defended. "Some kid makes a list of people and calls it an 'Enemies List', that's threat enough!" He was off balance. Mark can sneak up on you like that if you assume he's stupid.

"About this camouflage," Mark shifted the subject. "You called that combat gear earlier, but isn't that more like hunting camo? The jacket even has the orange strip on it."

"It could be used for hunting," the cop said.

"So it's not really military gear?"

"Uh, no, but you could use it that way."

"To camouflage yourself in a school?" Mark asked. I almost laughed out loud at that.

"To... As... As part of the whole intimidation factor," the cop stammered.

"I guess that's all I have," Mark said.

"I have another question," I jumped in. The cop just nodded at me. "You said you were searching his computer for child pornography. Do you have any reason to believe that he's involved in child pornography in some way?"

"No, we have no reason to believe he's involved in it, but it's pretty much standard procedure to look for it. We, uh, we actually didn't seize the computer to look for pornography. That's not what the warrant was for. We were looking for emails or plans relating to an attack on the school."

"Did you find any?" Mark jumped in.

"Not at this time," he said. "But we have some specialists working on the computer to recover any files he may have deleted."

"So how much porno did you actually find?" I asked.

"There was quite a bit of it in his cache," the cop said.

"So it wasn't actually saved on his computer?"

"No, it was saved in the cache."

Holy shit this guy is full of crap, I thought. At this point I was really angry for this kid. The evidence against him consisted of an Enemies List with no other specific threats, his hunting gear and porno on his computer. Take away the Enemies List, and the other two items are perfectly normal for a rural fourteen year old. I would actually be a little concerned if he weren't looking at porn. Perhaps by his age he should have outgrown the interest in making an Enemies List, but not everybody grows up at the same rate. It certainly wasn't evidence that he intended to shoot these other kids, despite the school's Zero Tolerance Policy.

About this time I think the cop began to realize this whole thing wasn't turning into the public relations triumph for which he was hoping. Suddenly his attitude changed, and he tried to get out of the predicament by playing the good cop hamstrung by unreasonably harsh laws.

"Look," he said. "I have to enforce the laws we have. The law says we have Zero Tolerance for school violence, and that includes threats or potential threats to other students. This law is important for keeping our kids safe. What we don't want is to ignore the warning signs and end up with another Columbine. Hopefully now we can get this young man the help he needs. I think that's about all."

And thus concluded our interview. What a weasel.

The kid spent the night in jail, but the next day his parents, the school and the prosecutor worked out a deal to keep him out of court. The prosecutor apparently thought the whole thing was bullshit also. He mentioned to another of our reporters that he thought this was nothing but a publicity stunt for the chief to get his face on television. Then again, the prosecutor is a good friend of Sheriff Jones, so one might be wise to take what he says about Jones' political enemy with a grain of salt.

Things didn't go so well with the school. The kid was asked not to return. He now has to attend another school in the county, which will force his parents to drive him 30 minutes to school each morning.

I have to give Mark kudos on his handling of the story that night. While the other station used the inflammatory rhetoric from the press release and from the beginning of Chief Axelrod's interview to perpetuate a story that didn't exist, Mark said, "I don't want to do this story, but Wendy's gonna make me." He then put together a fair picture of what happened, focusing on the actual offense and highlighting Axelrod's good cop act at the end, letting it seem as though the chief's hands were tied even though the kid really did little wrong. My instinct would have been to make the chief look like the idiot he is; but I'm sure Chief Axelrod was watching, and Mark's story allowed him to save face so that we can maintain a professional and cooperative relationship with his department.

As for me, I suspect that I'm now on Chief Axelrod's Enemies List.

Delays, Delays

2006-04-10T13:40:00.000-07:00

I'm busy. Sue me.

I've mentioned before that this blog isn't the only project that demands my attention. I do this as a diversion from other things that are going on. I enjoy writing it. I hope you enjoy reading it, and I appreciate all the positive feedback I've received. However, given the length of some of these posts (which is usually necessary to properly relate the story), you can probably imagine that it takes a considerable chunk of time to write them. Unfortunately, from the comments I've read lately, it appears I can't keep up with the demand; so the demand will have to simply wait for the supply.

Major developments I have every intention of sharing in the near future include:

The live truck is back, thanks to Jake the Engineer's fine handiwork.

Sarah is back on nightside after a couple of weeks of "help" with her writing.

Lynn isn't talking to me any more because I'm a lying bastard.

Please look forward to those and more, or as my Japanese friends would say, "Otanoshimini!"*

Meanwhile, why not expand your knowledge? For instance, you could learn all about absinthe, the Devil's own liquor. Or you could check out a giant, flying soccer ball. Use one to fuel your dreams about the other, and by the time you come back down maybe I'll have something new for you to read here.

*I actually don't have any Japanese friends. But I know at least one Japanese word, and by God I used it!

So why haven't you written about it?

2006-04-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

I've been hiding from the obvious story I should be telling: What happened after the St. Patrick's Day Incident? These other stories about dead obese women and crazy sheriffs are probably just meaningless, empty diversions, placeholders for what people really want to read. A number of obstacles have stood between me and the telling of the real story, one of which being that I haven't spoken with Kat since she returned home from her visit here.

Last night, however, I received an email from her.

"So why haven't you written about it?" she wrote. That single line is a prompt, a permission and likely a plea. So I'll relate to Kat, and the rest of the world, how I see what happened.

Picking up where I left off:

Kat and I sat up for quite a while that night talking and waiting for Joe to return. Her mood had improved, and our conversation got so far off the issue hanging in the room that at times it seemed like we had forgotten it. By midnight we were laughing and reminiscing in a way we hadn't been able the entire time she had been here, since the two of us had had virtually no time alone together just to talk.

Kat glanced at the clock. It was past midnight. "Don't you have to be at work in the morning?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I should probably get to bed soon."

"Don't wait up on my account," she said.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm just gonna sit up a while and wait."

"Where the hell could he have gone?" I wondered aloud.

"Who knows. He's weird."

"You think he's okay?" I asked. I didn't really want to go look for him, but it made me a little uncomfortable that he had been gone for hours with no word.

"He's fine. He does this," she said.

With that, I retired to my room. Despite everything that happened, I was pretty exhausted, so I drifted off to sleep fairly quickly.

About 2:30 I awoke when my bedroom door opened. Kat was standing in the doorway.

"What's wrong?" I said.

Her voice told me she had been crying again. "I don't want to sleep alone," she said. "Can I stay in here with you?"

"Joe didn't come back?" I asked.

"No," she said, her voice lilting upward as she tried not to cry. "Please," she whispered.

"What if Joe comes back?" I asked

"I don't care." In fact, she didn't have to worry about that at all. By that time, that idiot was in a hotel several hours away. When Joe left my house, he walked to the shopping center down the street, got a cab out to the airport and rented a car to drive back by himself. He fucking left her there, the bastard.

"Please," she said.

"Okay," I said, "But I'm in my underwear. Let me get up and put on--"

"I don't care," she said, as she was already slipping under my comforter. She pressed herself against me, burying her head in my shoulder. She was wearing her sweats. I was at a distinct disadvantage, but something about the situation felt too fragile to risk breaking away from her.

I held her like that for a while, listening to her breathing become more calm. Her hair smelled great. I could feel her heart pounding against my ribs. Certain parts of my body responded in a predictable manner, but I was resolved not to take advantage of this situation.

Unfortunately she was not so resolved.

I'd like to say that I remained the perfect gentleman. Absent that ability, I would like to say that it was beautiful and tender. I could probably say it anyway to make a better story, but Kat would know I'm lying. I can at least say that I didn't make the first move, but that doesn't make me feel any better about it.

It was terrible. I was terrible. It seemed like both of us were all knees and elbows. Our bodies just didn't seem to fit together. Our timing was all off. It was over almost before it started. Unfortunately neither one of us wanted to leave it at that, so we tried again two more disastrous times before giving up in an awkward tension that left us laying on opposite sides of my tiny bed, our backs to each other, each trying not to steal too much of the comforter from the other while keeping a thin demilitarized zone between us. We came as physically close to each other as two people can get, and yet the entire time we've been friends I never felt more distant from Kat than I did that night.

That Saturday morning I left her sleeping and slinked off to work in a guilty stupor. All day I kept thinking what a betrayal I had perpetrated on Lynn. We weren't "officially" dating, but I still knew this was wrong. To make things worse, Lizzie, Lynn's friend, picked up on my mood almost immediately and asked me several times during the day why I was so quiet. I couldn't exactly tell her.

I decided pretty quickly that this was not something Lynn needed to know about (which presented the other major obstacle to relating it here). The reader is probably thinking, "Duh, no shit, moron." Unfortunately, however, while "what she don't know won't hurt her," I have a hard time dealing with my own guilt in situations like that. When I've done something wrong, I have a sense that I should be punished for it. I resolved to make it up to her, even if she never knew the truth, by being the best man I could be for her from that time forward.

The other pressing issue, how to face Kat later that night, was solved for me. She, her car and all her stuff were gone when I got home. I hadn't talked to her since then, but in characteristic Kat fashion she emailed me last night almost as if nothing had happened. She explained what happened to Joe, thanked me for letting her stay and said she had a good time. The only reference she made to our mistake was that one line at the end of her message:

"So, why haven't you written about it?"

I hadn't written about it because I was afraid I had lost my friend. I truly hope that's not the case.

Unfortunately I did lose my girlfriend. I'll save that part of it for another day.

Sheriff Jones

2006-04-03T09:36:00.000-07:00

Lizzie and I went out to the county seat of a neighboring county Sunday to cover a spring fair. The fair itself wasn't supposed to start until 1pm, to give everyone time to get there after church; but we headed over early with the idea that we would grab lunch first, get there right as it started and get back in plenty of time to put something together for the evening show.

Upon arriving in town, we cruised by the park where the festival was being set up, just to get a lay of the land. This was around 11:30, and there were still people erecting tents and scurrying around to get everything ready. At one end of the park, a couple of sheriff's deputies had their cruisers parked up on the grass facing opposite directions, with the driver's side windows facing each other so they could talk without leaving their vehicles. The town also has its own municiple police force, and we found a couple of its officers at the other end of the park, leaning against their cars and chatting. I thought it was interesting that they segregated themselves that way. The deputies had ignored us, but the city cops eyeballed the Hate Van as we cruised by. I'm sure a white, unmarked cargo van is always suspicious, especially when it drives slowly through an area without stopping. But they apparently decided we weren't terrorists and went back to their conversation.

Satisfied with the reconnaissance, Lizzie said, "Let's eat!" We headed back toward the middle of town to find this little home cooking place Lizzie wanted me to try. As I stopped at a red light right off Main Street, we suddenly felt a jolt.

"What the--?" I said. I looked into my rear view mirror to see that a large gray Suburban had bumped into us. "That guy just hit us!" I said.

Not again. I was already having flashbacks as I jumped out of the van. I was pretty mad. But as I approached the Suburban, I noticed the two old guys inside were laughing hysterically. I stopped and just stared at them. "What the fuck?" I thought. The driver rolled down his window.

"You need to get that heap a' shit out the road before you get a ticket!" the man said.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. "You HIT me!"

"Seems to me that you hit ME," the guy said. "I's just sittin' here waitin' for the light to change, and you just backed right into me. I gotta witness right here."

"That's right," said the passenger. "Just backed right into us. Wasn't nothin' we could do!"

"You guys are crazy!" I said.

"Best watch yourself, young man," said the driver. "You might need to cool off that temper at the county jail."

By this time Lizzie was standing on the other side of the Suburban, where the passenger had rolled down his window. She was laughing. I was thoroughly confused.

"Sheriff, you better leave my photog alone," she said. I slowly began to realize what was going on. This was Sheriff Jones driving the Suburban. I finally recognized him from having seen him on our own newscasts, but I had never met him myself. He had been over at the park and had recognized Lizzie when we passed.

"Tell 'im he needs to get that junker outta the road, else I'm gonna have it towed!" The three of them laughed, while I stood there bewildered.

Sheriff Jones is an older guy, probably in his 60s. He's a good old boy with a deep voice and a country style that people like despite the fact that it's obviously all a big act. He has connections to just about anybody of importance in the area; the guy sitting next to him in his truck was actually a county judge.

He also understands the dynamics of rural politics. During the last election year he caused a bit of a ruckus when word came out that he had told all his deputies not to write any more speeding tickets, because speed traps discourage votes. Never mind that the county had come to count on that revenue for certain projects. The sheriff's prospects for reelection might have been damaged by the loss of that money when certain county commissioners in the enemy camp tried to pin the county's budget shortfall on him. The tactic backfired on them, however, when Sheriff Jones reminded them that state law prohibits counties and municipalities from basing their budgets on income from fines.

In reality, every city and county in this state still budget for ticket revenue and set quotas with their traffic officers, pretty much ignoring the law. But the Sheriff managed to play off that law so well that the commissioners in question actually lost their seats in their next election, after he convinced the voters that they were actually the ones to blame for the budget shortfall because of their own ineptitude with the citizens' hard earned tax money. He came out of it looking like a hero who was doing the voters a favor by not harrassing them on county roads while fighting waste and corruption in the county seat.

"What the devil are you guys doing?" Lizzie asked.

"We're on our way to dinner," the sheriff said. "Why aren't you in church, young lady?"

"I'm workin'," she said, dropping into a kind of sympathy drawl to match his style. "Why aren't YOU in church?"

"Won't do any good," he grinned. "At my age, I'm already a lost cause."

The three of them laughed, but I wasn't quite sure how to act. I was still angry at having been hit, especially after the accident in the live truck from a few weeks ago. The sheriff had only bumped us, so there wasn't any damage. Even if there were, the Hate Van is so banged up we wouldn't have been able to tell. Still, I can't just change gears from angry to happy on demand, regardless of who it is.

"What're y'all doin' out here?" the sheriff asked.

"We're coverin' the fair," Lizzie said.

"That's not your story," said the sheriff. "I got a better one for you."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"Well," he started, his voice taking a little more dramatic tone. "'Sources say' that the police chief here in town is up for another chief job out of state."

"What sources are saying that?" Lizzie asked.

"Well, I am, for one," he said. "But you can't quote me on that."

"Who can I quote?"

"Why don't you quote 'sources who wish to remain anonymous.'"

"You know this for sure?"

"I have some paperwork on my desk that'll prove it. And you can always ask him yourself."

Now this was interesting. There was a lot of bad blood between the sheriff and the police chief during that last election, because the police chief actually ran against Sheriff Jones and was backed by the same commissioners the Sheriff effectively escorted out of their seats. Anybody taking on this story would have to tread carefully to make sure the sheriff isn't using her.

"So who can I get an interview with on this?" Lizzie asked.

"Why don't you come by my office some time in the next few days and we'll sit down and talk about it," he said.

"You can't talk to me about it today?" she asked.

"Not right now," he said. "The Judge and I have folks waitin' for us. But you come on by this week and you'll get your story. It ain't goin' nowhere."

"You're not gonna run off and tell somebody else about it first, are you?" Lizzie asked.

"No darlin'," he said. "It's ALL yours."

"All right, I'll try to come by tomorrow."

"That's fine," he said. Then he glanced over at me. "And tell your cameraman he needs to be more careful with his drivin' before I haul him off to jail."

I saw him laughing as he pulled around me, nearly hitting me as I was trying to get back into the van. Then he cut in front of us and squealed the tires as he gunned it out onto Main Street. Crazy bastard.

We covered the fair, but it was pretty obvious that Lizzie's mind wasn't on it. She was excited, but it was clear she was also irritated at having gotten a taste of something she couldn't have yet. I was actually excited about it also, until I realized that since Lizzie works dayside during the week, I won't get to work on it.

Dammit.

I'm Sad

2006-03-27T21:16:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know I haven't updated the site. That's because I haven't felt much like writing this past week after all that happened. Besides that, I'm embarrassed about it and really don't know how to write it.

No, I'm not going to tell you what happened. Not yet, anyway. Maybe in a day or so. Or maybe not at all.

Meanwhile, until I find some new inspiration, enjoy some interesting design. I particularly like the freaky building block apartments in Tokyo with the sloping floors and low doors to make old people have to keep their balance and climb around a lot. If I save for 1000 years, maybe I can afford one.

The Lady in the Casket

2006-03-21T01:13:00.000-08:00

Last night's story was most certainly the weirdest thing I've covered.

Shortly after I arrived at the station, I noticed that Sarah was at her desk writing instead of attending the afternoon meeting. I thought that was odd, but I didn't particularly want to go talk to her to find out what was going on. As I was checking my email, however, my answer walked up to me in the form of Mark, who informed me that he and Sarah were switching shifts for the week.

Whoopeee! Mark didn't know why they had to switch, but I have a feeling it has something to do with giving me and Dax a break from that crazy woman.

As I loaded up the van, Mark began filling me in on our story for the day.

"You're gonna love this," he said. "This 400 pound woman died, and her family bought a coffin that was too small for her. They shoehorned her into it, but the handles on the coffin broke while they were carrying her out to the grave Sunday."

"Jesus," I said.

"Yeah, seriously," he said. "The funeral home is saying they tried to tell them the coffin was too small, but they wouldn't listen. They insisted on the cheapest one. The family is saying the funeral home shouldn't have sold them a coffin that couldn't handle her weight, and they're talking about suing. The daughter says the casket bent up around her, so now they can't get her out."

"Holy shit," I said. "What did they do?"

"Well, nothin' yet. The funeral parlor wants to bury her in that same casket and just give 'em a discount on it. The family wants a whole new casket for free."

"Is the funeral parlor gonna talk to us?" I asked.

"I think so," Mark said. "I talked to him earlier and told him we were coming."

We headed first to the home of the grieving family to speak with the deceased Mrs. Ledbetter's daughter, who had lived with her during her last days. These didn't appear to be very wealthy people. The house was old and run down. The screen door almost came off its frame in Mark's hand when he opened it to knock. Inside, the furniture was broken down and torn, and everything was covered in a yellowish film with the stench of cigarettes.

The daughter, who was pushing 300 pounds herself, directed Mark to the couch, where he found himself surrounded by other family and friends who had assembled to lend their support. I went to work setting up for the interview.

"So, I guess, tell us what happened," Mark started.

"Momma been sick for a long time," the woman began. "She had cancer. She finally passed on last week. Just like, went to sleep, you know?" Her voice turned a little angry. "We were gonna have the funeral yesterdie, but then this all happened."

"What exactly happened at the funeral?"

"Well, the boys took her outta the hearse and started carryin' her up to the grave. The rest of us was all standin' up there already with the preacher. 'Bout halfway up the hill, looked like Billy stumbled. Then the whole casket just dropped on that side and crashed down, like 'whoomp!'"

She demonstrated the crash with her arms. Her anger seemed to be increasing as she continued.

"We thought they'd just dropped her, on account of her size. But when we run down there and looked, we seen the handles broke off! Can you believe that? What kind of funeral parlor sells people a defective casket?"

"What did you do?" Mark asked.

"I was in shock. Shock. When she hit the ground, the lid came open and we could see her arm flop around. We all run down there to see if the boys were okay, and I put her arm back in and shut the lid. It wouldn't close right. Poor Billy, he started sayin' 'I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to.' We was mad at him at first, but then we seen the broken handle. I was horrified. Horrified."

"Was anybody hurt?"

"Well, not physically," she said. "But them young ones gonna be scarred for life now. Little Jessie screamed and started cryin' when it happened."

"How bad was the damage to the casket?"

"It's all bent up on the side where it hit. They cain't get her out of it. It don't shut right, so they cain't leave her in it."

Mark took a deep breath. "I talked to Mr. Jones over at the funeral home," he said. "And he told me he tried to sell you a bigger casket, but you wouldn't buy it."

"They just want money," the woman said, angrily. "He tried to tell me we had to buy an $8000 copper casket. Momma didn't leave us that kind of money. He was just tryin' to take advantage of our grief. He already squeezed enough out of us."

"But he says if you had bought the bigger casket, this problem wouldn't have happened."

"If they'd built the casket like they were s'pose to, none of this woulda happened!" she growled.

After shooting video of a picture of Momma and plenty of b-roll of the family sitting around smoking and grieving, we headed out for the funeral home. I had a huge headache by then from the haze in that place and was glad for the fresh air.

Mr. Jones greeted us warmly in the dim, quiet waiting area of the funeral parlor.

"Welcome, welcome," he said, smiling sympathetically. His suit was perfectly tailored. His handshake was perfectly firm, but not intimidating. Every hair on his head was perfectly in place, in a hairstyle that swept from one corner of his forehead back over his scalp without a part, like a televangelist's wig. His voice was deep and artificially soft and soothing, no doubt from countless hours of practice. He had an odd cadence to his speech, an unusual way of emphasizing certain words to enhance their sympathetic value.

I loathed this man from the moment I saw him.

We set up the interview in a "showroom" of sorts with rows of beautifully polished caskets. The room was decorated with large, fake, electric candelabras, along with some displays of synthetic flowers. The crucifix or cross was the primary religious symbol in the room, with a Star of David here or there to provide a little diversity.

"First let me say we are dedicated to making this right for this family," he began, once I was rolling. "This was a very unfortunate situation, and I will do everything in my power to see that they're taken care of."

"They'll be glad to hear that," said Mark. "Can you tell us a little bit about what happened?"

"Well, you know, the loss of a loved one is a stressful time, and we do what we can to put the family at ease. Sometimes, though, a miscommunication can happen."

"What kind of miscommunication?"

"Oh, with all the distractions, sometimes the family members aren't really in a clear state of mind. That's why we try to take care of everything for them so they can deal with their grief."

It was immediately clear this guy would rather talk around the situation. I've mentioned before that Mark doesn't always come across as the brightest bulb in the package, but in this instance I was glad to see he was willing to push.

"Let's get specific with this case," he said. "Why did the handles break on this woman's coffin?"

"Casket," Mr. Jones corrected him.

"What?"

"We refer to it as a casket," he said.

"Okay, casket. Why did it break?"

"Well, each of our caskets have a certain weight rating. We have some bigger ones that go up to 500 pounds, and some that can handle 300 pounds. The model Mrs. Ledbetter's family selected was rated for 250 pounds."

"So the casket couldn't handle her weight?"

"Unfortunately, yes. But we did explain the weight issue to the family. We did suggest to them very strongly that they purchase a larger casket. Unfortunately they insisted on the less expensive option."

"Why didn't you just refuse to sell them the cheaper casket?"

"Our job is to make things easier for the family, not more difficult. We would never refuse a customer's wishes. When our gentle persuasion proved unsuccessful, we had no choice but to honor their wishes."

"So, I guess the bottom line is, what are you going to do to make this right for this family? Can you give them another casket?"

"No," Mr. Jones shook his head. "Unfortunately that's not possible. We ran into some difficulty with Mrs. Ledbetter's casket and won't be able to transfer her to a different one. What we can do, pending the family's approval, is to send the casket back to the factory to be repaired."

"With Mrs. Ledbetter in it?"

"Um, yes, that's correct."

"What about... Mrs. Ledbetter's daughter said the casket won't seal up now."

"Oh, that casket never sealed," Mr. Jones explained. "The less expensive models don't come with a seal on the cap."

"Cap?" asked Mark.

"The 'lid' is actually called a 'cap.' But that one isn't supposed to seal. I think she's getting confused. Right now the cap doesn't close properly, but they can fix that at the factory."

"So you're gonna ship her out to the factory?"

"Oh, no, we're not going to ship her off, ha ha. The company we buy our caskets from actually has an assembly plant here in town that serves the entire region. We'll take her to the factory in our hearse, and the craftsmen there will see that the vessel is in an appropriate condition. We'll make sure she's treated with the utmost respect."

"And who's gonna pay for this work?"

"Oh, the family will not pay a dime. Not a dime. In fact, I'm fully prepared to offer the Ledbetters a refund on the entire service. We're here to take care of bereaved families, and I'll do whatever I can to demonstrate our commitment to that goal."

After a bit of video of the various caskets, including both the box Mr. Jones recommended and the one in which Mrs. Ledbetter now rests, we had everything we needed. We put the story together and aired it in our late news, much to the shock of our audience. Or, at least, our anchor SAID it was a shocking story in the tease before the show. Our viewers probably weren't as shocked as our anchor thought they should be. But then, what do viewers know, anyway.

And finally, to top off the entire day, the anchor introduced the story with the cliche, "It's a family's worst nightmare." I'm pretty sure Wendy wrote that.

Fight!

2006-03-17T20:08:00.000-08:00

"You wanted to come here!" Kat shouted, as I opened the door.

"Only to keep you from fucking Max!" said Joe.

Whoa. What the hell did I just walk into? I had to run by the bank and the post office before they closed this afternoon, so I had gone out by myself. When I came back, this is what greeted me. It stopped me dead in my tracks in the doorway. I just stared at them.

"Max! Tell him there's nothing going on between you and me!" Kat barked.

"Uh, what?"

"This idiot thinks I came here to sleep with you," she said. "Tell him we've never slept together."

"You TOLD me you thought you might have feelings for him," Joe said. "You don't drive 800 miles to visit somebody you're just friends with!"

"Well I DO!" Kat shouted.

"I'll leave you guys alone," I said, heading for my room.

"No, I'm coming with you," Kat said.

"Oh, no you're not," said Joe. He grabbed her arm above the elbow.

"What the--Let GO of me!" Kat growled. She dug the fingernails of her free hand into his wrist.

"C'mere!" he said. He gave her a pretty violent jerk. "LISTEN to me!"

There's seriously nothing going on between me and Kat, nor has there ever been. However, I wasn't about to let him handle her like that.

"Hey!" I said, and stepped up next to Kat in an attempt to get between them. Joe's actually bigger than I am, so I'm not quite sure what I was thinking. Stepping into his space took him by surprise, however, and he let go of her and stepped back.

"Stay out of this, Max. This is between me and Kat."

"This is MY house," I said. "You need to mind your manners."

Kat turned and went into my room, slamming the door behind her. Joe tried to follow, but I blocked his path. "Joe," I said, in a threatening tone. I was actually shaking where I stood, so I'm not sure how menacing I actually was. But he looked away from my door and made eye contact with me. "I don't know what's going on here, but you need to cool it," I said.

He looked away. He was really angry, but he's not usually an unreasonable guy. "Alright," he said. He took a step back, then looked around awkwardly, trying to decide what to do. He sat down on the edge of the couch, but tense as a coil and poised to spring up again at any moment.

"What the hell is going on here?" I asked.

"Doesn't concern you," he said, looking at the floor.

"Look," I said. "I don't know what you're thinking, but Kat and I are just friends."

"I said, it doesn't concern you," he said, a little more emphatically.

I stood there for a minute, trying to figure out what to do. I was still shaking. Joe slid back a little and put his head in his hands. I decided to try to talk to Kat and turned toward my room. I was relieved that Joe didn't try to get up.

I knocked on the door, two soft raps with the back of the knuckle of my middle finger. It seemed kind of stupid to be requesting permission to enter my own room; but when a woman decides a room is hers, would a sane man argue with her?

Kat didn't answer. "I'm coming in," I said, and tried the handle. Fortunately she had left it unlocked.

Kat was laying on my bed with her face buried in my pillow and with my comforter pulled up over her. I sat down sideways on the edge of the bed.

"You okay?" I asked. She didn't say anything. I reached out and put my hand on the comforter where I judged her shoulder to be. She suddenly swatted backhand at me, not seriously, but just violently enough to let me know to leave her alone. I was just about to do exactly that, when she suddenly turned under the comforter toward me and shifted right up against my leg, burying her face against my hip. I rested my hand on her shoulder, and she let it stay. She was crying softly.

I don't know how long we stayed like that. I can't imagine what torture that must have been for Joe to be sitting in the next room hearing absolutely nothing from us. I heard the television come on and was glad for the break in the silence.

"Hey," I said. She didn't respond. "Hey, are you okay?" She nodded her head affirmatively against my hip. "You wanna tell me what happened?" I asked.

She pushed away from me and sat up, facing toward the other side of the room.

"We had a fight," she said.

"Yeah, I could kinda tell," I said.

"He's so stupid."

"I could tell that, too," I said. She let out a disgusted laugh in response.

"You know what he said to me?"

"What?"

"He asked me if I would have a threesome with your roommate."

"WHAT?"

"Yeah, can you believe that?"

Actually, I could, in a way. Joe's a regular guy. A regular guy wouldn't be able to hear what went on in Suzanne's room the other night without imagining himself having sex with her. Even when you come to realize you'd probably contract some kind of disease and your common sense overrules your penis, you still have a hard time not imagining it.

"I thought he was joking at first, but he was serious. And he wanted me to ask her!"

"Holy shit," I said. "He wants to have sex with her even after what happened the other night?"

"What do you mean?" Kat seemed confused. "What happened the other night?"

"You know, when we were watching the movie."

"Huh? No! Not Suzanne! I was talking about Emily!"

"WHAT?"

"Yeah, he wanted me to try to get Emily to have a threesome with us."

"Holy shit!"

"Yeah!"

"Why did he--" I was flabbergasted. "What makes him think--?"

"It's one of his fantasies to be with two girls," she said. "We've talked about it before, but I always thought it was just fantasy, you know, dirty talk. I didn't think he was serious about it."

"But why Emily?" I asked.

"You know I usually don't hang around with girls," she said. That's true. She has always seemed to prefer the company of guys. "For some reason he thinks that since Emily and I get along so well, maybe Emily would be into it."

Now that I think about it, I can almost see where he's getting that idea. Almost. Emily and Kat really did hit it off, and I've been quite surprised at how well they get along. They're like long lost sisters, which is really unusual for Kat. Last night Emily was hanging around with us, and we all had had a little too much to drink. We weren't wasted, but things got a little loose, and Emily ended up laying on the end of the couch, with her legs dangling off the end, but her head resting in Kat's lap. There was nothing really sexual about it, unless of course you're Joe, and you're thinking about a threesome anyway.

But still. Emily?

"I told him 'no,' but he kept pestering me about it until I told him to shut up. We got into a fight. I said if he wanted to fuck Emily so bad he oughta just do it and leave me out of it. He said, 'Oh, that would be convenient, wouldn't it?' I asked him what he meant by that, and he accused me of wanting to sleep with you. That's about the time you walked in. I mean, he's the one who brought it up, not me."

"Jesus. What makes him think you and I have something going on?"

"I don't know," she said. "He said he wanted to come along this week because he was worried about me driving by myself. Then he sprung that bullshit on me about keeping me from getting with you. You're my best friend, Max. Why can't he see that?"

We both paused in thought. I heard Joe stirring in the living room, and I thought I heard the front door close.

"Huh," I said, finally realizing that if he was jealous of me, it was probably eating him up that I was in my bedroom alone with his girlfriend. "We probably ought to get back in there."

"Screw him," she said. "Let him think we're fucking our brains out in here. Dumbass."

"No, let's not make this any worse." I got up. "You can stay in here if you want. I'm going."

"I'm just... I don't wanna face him."

"That's okay," I said. "You can stay."

But she didn't actually have anything to worry about. When I went back to the living room, Joe was gone. Kat's car was still out front, but Joe's bag was gone. He freakin' left! I don't know where the hell he went, but he took his shit and left!

"Should I go look for him?" I asked, once I had told Kat.

"No," she said. I could tell she was really mad. "Asshole. He does this. He wants me to go running after him, and I'm not gonna do it." I could tell she really wanted to go find him, but I wasn't about to trespass on her pride by bringing him back myself.

All this just happened about an hour ago. After her crying fit, Kat said she felt "wretched" and wanted to take a shower, so I figured I would take this opportunity to write about it while she's not looking over my shoulder. She still reads the blog, and I'm sure she knows this will all end up in here, but I don't think she'll mind. When I've written about her in the past and asked her how she felt about it, she just said, "Whatever."

We were going to go out for a little while for St. Patty's Day, but this has put sort of a damper on the situation. Lynn and my roommates are all working tonight. It was just going to be me, Kat and Joe. Now Joe's gone and Kat's locked in the bathroom, and I have to work in the morning anyway. I hope this doesn't drag out all night.

A Conversation with the ND

2006-03-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

"Do you have a minute?" I asked my news director.

I went in early yesterday just to talk to him about Sarah's meltdown Tuesday night. I had collected and organized my thoughts, and I was ready to present my case. Or so I thought.

"Yeah, come on in," he said. "I wanted to talk to you, too. Let me shut this door."

Hmm. I wonder what HE wants to talk about.

"So," he said. "Tell me what happened last night."

"Oh, you already knew about it?"

"Yeah, Sarah came in this morning to talk to me about it. She says you were refusing to do the story?"

Oh! Bitch! What a fucking bitch! I hate starting out on the defensive, especially when I'm furious. And hearing that had instantly infuriated me.

"That's not exactly the way it happened," I said through my teeth.

"Well, I've heard Sarah's version," he said. "So why don't you tell me how you saw it."

"Lemme back up a little to give you some background," I said. Then I just poured several weeks of frustration all across his desk. I talked about her problems with deadlines. I talked about her bad attitude and foul language. I even mentioned the garbage in the truck. THEN I started on Tuesday night and told the whole story, pretty much the way I wrote it here (leaving out the happy ending, of course).

"Okay, first things first," he said when I wound down. "I can't have a photographer refusing to do a story, no matter what the circumstances. I don't care how much she pisses you off, that's not your call to make."

"I didn't actually refuse--" I started, but he waved his hand at me to stop me.

"I'll say it again," he said. "That's not your place to make that decision. Understood?"

"Okay," I said. That's bullshit, I thought, but what else can I say?

"Now, as for Sarah, you're not telling me anything I haven't already heard. Wendy's been in here half a dozen times already," he said, rolling his eyes involuntarily, "and Dax has made some of the exact same complaints you have." (Dax is the photographer who works with Sarah Thursday and Friday nights, when I'm off.) "Now I can't have either one of you refusing to work with her, so you're both gonna have to put up with it until I can work something out."

"Okay," I said. "What can you do about it?"

"I already talked to her this morning. She has some things going on right now that make things kinda rough on her, so I want you guys to give her a chance. She promised me she was going to try to do better. But you let me know if she pulls anything like last night again. You don't refuse to do the story, but you call me right then and put her on the phone with me, and I'll straighten her out."

It was difficult not to grin. I shouldn't smile at others' misfortune.

"Okay," I said.

"Good," he said. "Anything else going on I should know about?"

"Uh, no," I said.

My immediate thoughts went to my budding romance with Lynn, but that's certainly none of his business. Lynn and I talked about it a bit this morning and decided that it would be best to keep this thing out of the rumor mill as much as possible. There have already been snickers and snide comments about our carpooling situation, but we both agreed it would be better to keep everybody guessing.

I was hoping I might get to stay over there again last night, or at least hang out for a while, but Lynn turned me away at the door. Don't get me wrong, she was very friendly. She apparently just wants to set some limits.

"You're not coming in," she said. "We're not gonna jump into a routine where you're staying over here every night."

Instead, we just made out against the doorframe for ten minutes until she finally just said, "Go! GO!" and pushed me off the porch.

That's okay. I'm not desperate. Really. I'm not. Not at all.

Spanking

2006-03-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

No, this has nothing to do with Suzanne (although I'm guessing she'd be into it). I'm seriously thinking about quitting my job. Up until last night I had every intention of honoring my commitment to my chief and ND to stay a full year; but this is getting out of hand.

The story Sarah decided to cover last night was about spanking. In particular, it was about a kid in a town out on the fringe of our market who was paddled at school by a principal. The kid's mother sent Sarah an email saying that she never gave the school her permission to paddle the kid, and that the principal did it anyway. She says she called the small town police department to try to have the principal arrested for assault, but they refused to file a report.

So off we went to cover the spanking story.

The drive out to Spankingville should have been about 45 minutes. The problem was that I had never been to this particular town before and didn't know where it was. I had a general idea of the direction, but I wasn't sure what road to take to get there. Sarah is newer here than I am, so I figured she didn't know either.

No problem, I thought, I'll just ask the desk for directions. Unfortunately, our dayside desk guy (who is also our 6pm anchor) had no more idea where Spankingville was than I did.

No problem, I thought, I can read a map. I keep a state map in the Hate Van, so my intention was to figure out where we were going once we got loaded up.

"What are you doing?" Sarah asked, when we got in the van.

"Figuring out how to get out there," I said.

"You don't need to do that," she said. "The woman sent me directions."

"Can I see them?" I asked.

"What for?" she said.

"So I can match them with the map and get an idea where we're going."

"We don't have time for that," she said. "It takes an hour to get out there, and we need to get moving."

I didn't feel like arguing with her. "Okay," I said. "Where to first?"

"Head out 70," she said.

So I maneuvered across town through traffic and headed out State Highway 70. But something didn't seem right.

"70 goes south," I said, once we were on it.

"Yeah. So?"

"Isn't Spankingville east of here?"

"The directions say to enter town on 70," she said. "So we're taking 70."

Fine. Jeez. Have it your way.

We drove for about 45 or 50 minutes. I noticed Sarah starting to get agitated.

"Are we still on 70?" she asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"Nothing. Just keep going."

Another fifteen minutes went by, with no sign of Spankingville. We came into another town.

"Are you SURE we're on 70?" Sarah asked.

"Look, there's a sign," I said. There was a sign that did, in fact, indicate that we were traveling south on 70.

"Something's wrong," she said. "We should have seen the turn off by now."

"Should I pull over?" I asked.

"No, keep going," she said. "I'll call the desk for help."

She dialed the phone. I only heard one side of the conversation.

"This is Sarah. I need help getting to Spankingville... I don't know." To me: "Where are we?" I told her the name of the town, and she relayed that to the desk. "Well that's how the lady TOLD me to go... Yes, she said 70... Well that's what the lady said..." She was becoming increasingly agitated. "How the FUCK should I know that?... Hey! Hello?... Fucker hung up on me!"

She dialed again.

"Hey this is Sarah. Hello?... God dammit! Sonofabitch hung up on me again!"

"I'll just pull over," I said, heading off the road.

"Shut the fuck up!" she said. "Keep driving."

"I'm going to check the map," I said, steadily. Don't let this bitch make you mad, I thought.

She didn't answer, because she was dialing again. This time whoever answered handed her off to Al, one of the other photographers, who happened to be standing at the desk. He tried to talk her through it, but he couldn't even figure out where we were. Finally he told her he couldn't help her, and that we were on our own.

"FUCK!" she screamed, and threw the phone on the floor.

Meanwhile, I had been looking at the map and figured out where we were. One thing I can do well is read a map, and I quickly determined that highway 70 went nowhere near Spankingville. We actually needed to go out to the east on the Interstate. We had just driven an hour out of our way.

"Look," I said. "I figured out where we are. We need to backtrack--"

"Jesus fuck!" She said, panic in her voice. "We're not gonna make it in time!"

"Calm down, and I'll get us there," I said. While she was on the phone, I had already figured out an alternate route to cut across toward the northeast, so we didn't have to go all the way back into town.

"I can't believe this," she said.

"It'll be okay," I said.

"NO, it WON'T!" she said. "I can't believe this! God dammit! I can't believe you fucking got us lost!"

At that point I became very, very angry. I just took deep breaths and gripped the steering wheel.

"What? Oh, are you MAD? Serves you right!" she said. "You FUCKED UP my STORY!"

I continued to stare straight ahead.

"You always have to be the MAN," she said. "God forbid you listen to directions! God forbid you ask for help! No, you have to be the MAN!" Okay, now she was just raving.

Without a word, I put the car in drive and pulled a u-turn.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"We're going back to the station," I said.

"Oh, so you're refusing to do the story now?"

"Nobody treats me like this," I said. "Nobody."

"Wait, you're really going back to the station?" Surprisingly, there was a hint of terror in her voice.

"Yep."

She suddenly became a LOT calmer. We drove for several minutes in dead silence.

I got tired of listening to my own heavy breathing and turned on the radio. I was running through what I was going to say when I got back. How could I justify making the decision to dump a story? I don't really have the authority to do that. I had made up my mind, though. Somebody else was gonna have to work with this idiot.

"I'm sorry," I heard Sarah say quietly.

"What?" I heard her, but I couldn't quite believe it.

"I said I'm sorry," she said.

"Fat lotta good that does now," I said.

"No, I'm really sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have talked to you that way."

"No, you shouldn've."

"I know. I, um... I take medication," she said.

"Obviously it isn't working," I said. I was mad enough to say just about anything at that point.

"No, it isn't," she said. "My new doctor is trying to adjust my dosage, so I've been out of whack for a while. Today's a bad day."

"You've been a bitch ever since I met you," I said.

"I'm sorry," she said, very sheepishly. I didn't say anything.

"Look," she said. "I really am sorry. I don't want to act this way. I just get panicked sometimes. I don't mean to take it out on other people."

My anger was starting to fade, and pity was slowly slipping in to take its place. I took a deep breath. "I won't put up with anybody talking to me that way," I said.

"You shouldn't. I'll try to do better."

I thought about it for a minute. We were coming up on the turnoff to cross over to Spankingville.

"Do you still want to try to do this story?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

I made the turn and felt a sense of relief. I really did not want to risk the heat for dumping the story. On the other hand, I still wanted her to think I had the resolve to do it. The threat is usually more persuasive than the act, so I'm glad I didn't have to follow through.

We got there about 40 minutes later, about an hour late total. Sarah had called ahead to the woman and alerted her that we'd been held up, but we missed the principal at the school.

Incidentally, the exit we took off the Interstate to get to Spankingville was 70. County Road 70. It took us right into town, and from there the woman's directions were perfect.

We interviewed this redneck woman and got footage of her helping her kid with homework. He very obviously had some sort of attention disorder, because he kept jumping up and running off. He was also very loud, and at one point he just looked right at her and said, "NO!" She had almost no control over him at all.

Sarah managed to get in touch with the school principal at home, so he came out to meet us at the school for an interview. There I got video of the form the woman signed, giving the school permission to use corporal punishment on her kid. Whoa, what? Yes, this woman actually gave the school permission to beat her kid, then tried to have the principal arrested when he exercised that option on her brat. That's why the police wouldn't file the report. According to the principal, the police showed the woman the form and verified that it was her signature. He gave us a copy.

I was surprised that the principal was able to show that to us, because I thought it would violate some kind of student privacy rule. What he wouldn't do is discuss the kid's actual violation. All he would say is that they reserve paddling as a last resort.

"It's actually more effective to save that as a threat," he said. "Once a kid's been paddled, it's not so scary any more, so it's not much of a deterrent." See how that works with kids?

We got what we needed and headed back to the van. "This is not a story," I said as we left the school parking lot.

Sarah called in and talked to Wendy. "Wendy said she wants us to do it anyway," she told me when she got off the phone. "She wants us to make it about parents who want to take back the right to paddle their kids and what they have to do."

We were dangerously short on time, but we dropped back by the woman's house and interviewed her on the front porch one more time to get her reaction.

"I don't remember signin' no form," she said.

"Isn't that your signature?" Sarah asked.

"I guess it is," she said. "But I don't remember signin' it."

Fucking rednecks.

Sarah called and talked to the principal a bit more during the ride home and got enough information to do the "rescinding permission" story. She actually got right to work on it when we got back and, despite the fact that we were so late, left me 45 minutes to edit!

Still, I intend to bring this up with the powers that be. I realize she has a problem, but I shouldn't have to deal with it. My first stop this afternoon will be the ND's office to discuss this medication issue and what can be done to alleviate this constant unpleasantness.

The day wasn't a total loss. Lynn noticed how tense I was almost immediately when we got into the van for the ride home and asked me what was wrong. I started telling her the story.

"What a spoiled bitch!" Lynn said. "Sounds like SHE's the one who needs a spanking!"

The story was too long to finish during the short ride home, so she asked me inside when we got to her house. She positioned herself on the couch and sat me down on the floor in front of her, leaning back against the couch between her knees. Then she rubbed my shoulders while I talked.

And I think that's about all I ought to say about that.

Weird Night

2006-03-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

After my post last night, things took a weird turn. By now I shouldn't be surprised, because my whole life has gone weird since I got into this business and moved to this town. It just usually doesn't come in such a large dose of strange all at once.

I finished writing just after seven and figured I had at least another hour to 90 minutes before Sarah would be done with her package. I was feeling a little hungry, and I had people at home visiting, so with nothing else to do I decided to run home for a bit to grab a sandwich.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I opened the door. It was obvious, because I could hear it. Suzanne was at it again.

Kat and Joe were sitting on the couch, watching television in a sort of daze. I'm sure they couldn't really concentrate on what they were watching with that yelping coming from behind Kat's door. As I entered the room, they both simultaneously turned their heads my way, eyes wide with what read as shock.

"You're right," was the first thing out of Kat's mouth. "She's loud."

"See what I have to live with?" I said. I headed for the kitchen to make my dinner.

"I hope you don't mind," Kat hollered after me. "We just started Withnail."

"Fine with me," I said. Withnail and I is a movie, for those who don't know (and I wouldn't expect many of you to have heard of it). It's a British film about a couple of perpetually drunken actors at the end of the 60s. It's really quite brilliant in its own way. It was a favorite among my actor friends in school, and Kat and I have each probably seen it a dozen times. She wanted Joe to see it, but I'm afraid it may be a little outside his tastes.

I came back from the kitchen a few minutes later with my sandwich to join my friends on the couch. Suzanne and who or whatever was in there with her were resting for the moment, so it got quiet.

"That must drive you crazy," Kat said.

"Yeah, pretty much," I said.

"How do you, um, deal with it?" she asked.

"I just ignore it," I said.

"CAN you ignore it?"

"I try."

"I'm trying too," she said. "But just hearing it gets me, uh, excited."

"Tell me about it," I said.

"Poor Max," she said. "We need to get you a girlfriend."

"TELL me about it," I said.

We settled into watching the movie. There's a hilarious scene in Withnail in which the character Withnail (played by Richard Grant) is on a drunken rant about a very large British gold medalist in shotput, named Jeff Wode, who admitted to steroid use. Jeff Wode was a real athlete. I had no idea who he was when I first saw the movie, but the scene is funny anyway. Withnail is talking to a character named Marwood, who is hardly listening.

"Listen to this," Withnail begins with his very British inflection, rustling his newspaper. "'Curse of the Supermen: I took drugs to win medal says top athlete Jeff Wode.'"

About that time we heard the first yelp of round two from behind Suzanne's door. Jeez, that wasn't much of a rest. She was actually home between shows for "dinner," same as me. Usually she makes it a quicky when it's on her break, but the evening was still early.

"Jesus Christ, this huge, thatched head with its earlobes and cannonball is now considered sane," the British accent continued.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" said Suzanne.

"Jeff Wode is feeling better and is now prepared to step back into society and start tossing his orb about."

"Oh! Oh god! Oh god!"

"Look at him. Look at Jeff Wode. His head must weigh fifty pounds on its own."

"Oh! God! Oh! God!"

"Imagine the size of his balls. Imagine getting into a fight with the fucker!"

"Oh!... GOD!"

Marwood has his first line here: "Please, I don't feel good."

Suzanne changed pace. "Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh!"

"That's what you'd say," continued Withnail, "But that wouldn't wash with Jeff."

"HEH! HEH! HEH! HEH! HEH! HEH!"

"No, he'd like a bit of pleading. Add spice to it."

"PLEASE? OH PLEASE! OH PLEASE!" She really couldn't have coordinated that any better if she were watching with us. Kat laughed out loud at that.

"In fact, he'd probably tell you what he was going to do before he did it," said Withnail.

"PLEASE? OH! YEAH!" screamed Suzanne.

"'I'm going to pull your head off"."

"No... No... Oh YEAH!"

"'Oh no, please, don't pull my head off.'"

"HEEeEEeEEeEEe!"

"'I'm going to pull your head off because I don't like your head.'"

"AAH? AAH? AAH! AAAHH! UNG! UNG!" She sounded ferocious as she finished.

Kat, Joe and I were just sitting there in stunned silence. The doors in this place aren't very thick, and we could still hear them breathing heavily in there. It was a little uncomfortable, and I was pretty sure Kat and Joe wanted to be alone just then. But I couldn't exactly get up off the couch to leave without a certain amount of... embarrassment. I wasn't so much worried about Joe, because I figured he was in the same predicament I was and wouldn't have much to say about it. I just felt uncomfortable parading past Kat with a huge erection. To make matters worse, it was caught up in my underwear a bit and would almost certainly stick straight out if I were to stand up without a very conspicuous adjustment. She is a close friend, and I'm sure she would understand, given the circumstances. But still...

Just then, Kat saved the day. "I have to go to the bathroom," she said, and bolted from the room.

"I need to get back," I said, and sprinted for the door, adjusting myself roughly on the way.

"Uh, see ya," Joe said. I didn't even finish my sandwich.

I got back to the station in time to wait another twenty minutes for Sarah to finish writing. I used the time to walk around a bit outside with my shirt untucked while testing myself on the state capitals I could remember.

I was still somewhat preoccupied when I gave Lynn her usual ride home in the Hate Van after the show, but I wasn't so distracted that I didn't notice she seemed a little distraught. Her eyes were a little red, which made the steel blue/gray jump out in a really striking way. It occurred to me that this girl is probably beautiful in one way or another in any frame of mind.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Yeah," she snapped. "Why?"

"I dunno," I said. "You're just really quiet."

She let out a big sigh. "I broke up with Chris tonight," she said.

I started slightly. I almost blurted out, "REALLY?!" But I managed to control myself and said nothing for a moment. Glee was probably not the most advisable emotion for the situation.

"When did that happen?" I asked, flatly.

"I went home for dinner," she said. "Chris was there when I got home. We got into a fight, and I threw him out. He wouldn't leave at first, but I said some really ugly things I shouldn've said, and he threw his key at me and left."

"It didn't hit you, did it?" I asked. I was suddenly feeling protective and was really angry with Chris.

"No, he throws like a girl," she said. "At least now I don't have to ask for his key back."

There was a pause for a moment.

"I'm sorry," I said. I tried my best to sound sincere.

"It's okay," she said quietly. "It's been coming for a while."

"You think he'll be there when you get home?" I asked.

"No," she said. "He's not coming back. Not after what I said."

"What did you say?" I asked.

"I'd rather not talk about that."

I would have a hard time guessing the words she fired at him, but I can imagine the tone she used. Lynn has a biting wit that, when coupled with irritation and turned against you, can quickly turn acidic. If she wanted to injure or maim him, I'm sure she did.

I thought about telling her about my dinner experience to lighten the mood, but it just didn't seem appropriate at that moment. Instead, I turned to the radio for help.

"Want some music?" I asked.

"Sure," she said.

We drove the rest of the way to her house without another word. When I pulled up in front of her house, she stared at the dash and said, "Would you mind walking me to the door?"

"Sure," I said.

When we got to the porch, she leaned against the doorframe with her arms folded across her chest, tilted her head to the side and looked up at me with those steel gray eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?" I asked.

"For unloading that on you."

"No, it's fine," I said.

"Thanks for being so sweet," she said.

"Um, I really didn't--"

"It's okay," she interrupted. She took a deep breath, stood up straight and looked at my feet. "I don't want you to think you had anything to do with this," she said.

"Oh. I... don't."

"This has been coming for a long time," she said, looking up at me kind of sideways, like she was trying to sneak a glance at me. She looked back down almost as soon as we made eye contact.

"Yeah, I kinda figured," I said.

"Okay," she said. Now she was looking at my hand. She reached out and took just my little finger and ring finger lightly in her hand. My heart was pounding.

I leaned in. She turned her head toward me, avoiding me with her eyes but allowing me a really light, teasing kiss. I wanted to dive in and wrap myself around her, but there was this delicious tension in the space between our bodies that neither of us were willing to break, lest we ruin the moment. It almost hurt.

Suddenly she put her hand on my chest and gently, but firmly, pushed me away. "I can't do this right now," she said, and abruptly went inside. She let the screen door close between us, but she paused on the otherside before closing the other door.

"Can I have a ride tomorrow?" she asked.

"Absolutely," I said.

She smiled. This was a different from her usual smirk. It was more innocent, like the embarrassed smile of a little girl. It made me want to protect her from all the world's evils. She did this cute, almost impercepticle little hop in acknowledgement and closed the door. My heart skipped a beat.

When I got home, all the lights were off. I figured Kat and Joe must have turned in already, so I tried to creep through the living room as quietly as possible so as not to wake them.

You know how you can feel a difference in the air in a room when somebody's awake and when he's sleeping? Halfway through the dark room I suddenly became aware that I wasn't the only conscious person there. I couldn't help but glance in the direction of Kat and Joe's sleeping bag, and it became immediately apparent that something was happening. They were completely covered from the neck down, but from the height of the lump where their bodies should be and the glint of light on her blonde hair giving away their positions, I could tell she was on top of him. They were frozen in place, probably trying not to make a sound.

At this point it was apparent I had noticed them. How do you get out of a situation like that gracefully?

"Sorry," I whispered.

"'T's okay," Kat whispered back.

I headed straight for my room and got into bed. I didn't even brush my teeth. I wanted to sleep, but my head was swirling with intermingled thoughts of the pornographic version of Withnail to which I had been subjected, the beautifully torturous moment on Lynn's porch, and the knowledge that twenty feet away, Kat was fucking her boyfriend on my living room floor.

At least they were quiet about it.

Various Items

2006-03-13T19:08:00.000-08:00

It's about time for an update on the live truck situation.

First, the truck IS in the shop and WILL be fixed. There had been some speculation among my readers that it wouldn't be repaired. My ND and GM never considered not getting it repaired. CP Rick says the body work should be finished some time this week.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) it won't go back into service just yet, because it doesn't have a generator. Jake the Engineer took the old one all apart, spread the pieces all over the concrete outside behind engineering and played with it some last week. He finally pronounced it dead Friday. The ND said a new generator WILL be ordered, probably some time this week. Then Jake will have to install it. I'm sure he's salivating.

Now for the fun part. The Guy in the Silver Honda is not suing me or the station. However, his insurance company has apparently decided that they don't intend to pay for the damage to the live truck, because they insist that the accident was not their client's fault. The station's insurance company is suing the Guy in the Silver Honda's insurance company to make them pay. This is supposedly not an uncommon occurrence as insurance companies hash out their differences, and everyone seems to expect some sort of settlement.

However, while the station's insurance company hasn't named me or my insurance company in that lawsuit, apparently they did file a claim against my personal liability policy as some kind of "insurance" against a loss in their attempt to collect from the other company. It appears that if they can't get that company to pay up, they're going to go after my insurance company next. I KNEW it was a bad idea to give them my personal insurance information.

My insurance company has requested a copy of the police report and has sent me a form to fill out describing AGAIN what happened. The agent with whom I spoke seemed a little confused and said this isn't the normal way of handling these things, especially since I was driving a company vehicle on company time. She said this sounds like I still have nothing to worry about, and that if the police report matches what I have already told them, they have no intention of paying the station anything. I asked her if my rates would increase, and she assured me they wouldn't.

What a mess.

Meanwhile, Kat and Joe are still at my house, and we all (Kat, Joe, Suzanne, my other roommate Emily and I) hung out together last night drinking, eating pizza and talking. I may not have mentioned that Joe and I have known each other almost as long as I've known Kat. He's a good guy, if a little slow sometimes. He and Kat really don't seem like a very likely match, but she seems happy with him.

A good chunk of the conversation was about school. Kat is graduating this semester, and she's freaking out. She's not sure what she wants to do when she graduates, but she also doesn't want to move back home with her parents. I get the sense this trip to see me has something to do with getting her plans sorted out, but I don't know how I can be of any help. Joe, meanwhile, has had some trouble passing a couple of his classes and had to drop one, so he won't be able to graduate until at least after the summer term.

Emily and Kat have really hit it off. You'd think they had known each other for years. The fact that Emily and I hardly know each other at all after living in the same house for four months makes this turn of events seems even more strange.

They were planning to go roller blading together today. Kat also brought her bike, and they were talking about riding later this week if the weather stays nice. Joe doesn't ride OR rollerblade, so I don't know how he plans to amuse himself while the girls are out sweating. I told him to feel free to watch my DVDs, but somehow I don't think he shares my tastes. I just can't see him getting into Withnail and I or Amelie.

Meanwhile, here I sit at work, writing while waiting for Sarah to finish the package. Earlier this afternoon she asked me to stop by Wendy's so she could get something to eat. She got a chicken sandwich and ate it in the van. I have no problem with her bringing food into the Hate Van, but the last few times we've stopped for fast food she has left her trash in there. I find myself somewhat irritated by that, because I am not her manservant and shouldn't have to pick up after her. It's a small thing, really. But it's still irritating.

When she finished her sandwich tonight, she tossed the bag behind the seat. When I saw her do that, I said, "Hey, be sure to take that with you when we get to the station."

"What?" she asked.

"Your trash. Please don't leave it in the van."

"I ALWAYS take it with me," she said. She was angry. By the way, you know how you can tell when Sarah is angry? When she's breathing.

"Um, usually you don't," I said.

"Uh, YES, I DO," she said.

"Look," I said. "I don't want to argue about it. Please just throw it away when we get back."

"I TOLD you I WILL!" she said. "God!"

"Okay."

I got the silent treatment for the rest of the afternoon. We shot our story, and I dropped her off at the station to write while I went to get some b-roll at another location. By then I had forgotten about the trash. When I got to the location and opened the back to get my gear, there was her crumpled Wendy's bag, still in the van.

I am really, seriously starting to dislike her.

Kat's Arrival

2006-03-12T12:02:00.000-08:00

It's an unbelievably slow Sunday. We actually have no story at all to turn today. There's nothing going on, and Wendy actually shot down the only story idea that Lizzie had. We were out "patrolling" earlier, hoping to stumble on something. Now we've just given up and are sitting here in the station, listening to the sporadic scanner traffic and waiting for something to happen.

That means I have a few minutes to update my blog.

As I've mentioned in previous entries, my friend Kat is still in college. Her spring break is this week, so she decided to use it to come visit me in my new town. I tried to tell her there's nothing much to do or see here, but she wanted to come see me anyway.

Kat and I have always just been friends. We've never dated. We've dated each others' friends, and we ran in the same circles all through school. We've talked about the fact that we find each other attractive, and she even kissed me once, right before I left to move here. There's just never been enough spark between us to get a fire going.

Still, I can't say I haven't been a little excited and apprehensive about her visit. We never really resolved that thing with the kiss, and now she's willing to drive ten hours to stay in my house for a week. My thoughts in recent weeks have been with Lynn and the electricity I feel when I'm around her. But so far that hasn't really gone anywhere. The last few days have been a whirlwind of thoughts of what might be, or what could be, or what should be.

What if Kat wants to pick up where we left off and see where things might go? What if she doesn't? What if there really is some possibility with Lynn? How will she feel about another woman staying at my house? Having Kat around really puts off any chance with Lynn for another week.

Many of those questions were settled late last night when Kat arrived. When I opened the door, she threw herself on me and gave me one of the greatest full body hugs of all time. She smelled great, despite having been in a car all day. But standing behind her on the porch, holding the luggage, was Joe.

Joe, Kat's boyfriend.

Joe and Kat have apparently been dating ever since I left. I knew they were dating back then, but she hasn't mentioned him in our emails or phone conversations in some time. For some reason I didn't even realize they were still together, or perhaps I never really thought they were together seriously enough that it counted.

And she never mentioned that he was coming with her.

I was all prepared to give Kat my bed and sleep on the couch, but Joe declined.

"We brought a big double sleeping bag," he said. "The living room floor is fine with us."

As I said, Kat and I are just friends, and I really had no expectations of anything happening between us while she's here. So why did it irritate me so much last night to know Joe was sleeping with her two rooms over?

Tetanus

2006-03-10T14:59:00.000-08:00

A while back I told you all that Kat, my friend from college, is coming to visit during her Spring Break. That's next week. She's still coming, so I expect to see her late Saturday night.

Since the girls I share the house with are slobs, I spent most of yesterday cleaning. Some of the dishes that were piled in the sink have been there at least a couple of months. I found the handle of a wooden spoon down in the bottom. Just the handle. The rest of it was gone, apparently eaten away while it sat in that biochemical waste. After sticking my hands in that mess, I wonder if I need a tetanus shot.

How can girls be so filthy? And the guys they date apparently don't care at all.

Speaking of that, I walked in on Suzanne giving some guy a blowjob in the living room. I don't think he works at the station. I don't know where she found him. This time at least they jumped up off the couch, ran to her room and shut the door. Actually, she ran, but he only kind of shuffled, because he was covering his crotch with one of our throw pillows in one hand and trying to pull his trousers up with the other. Both continued to laugh hysterically for a few minutes, until the laughing gave way to Suzanne's characteristic moans and yelps.

I hope she'll cool it a bit while Kat's here. I mean, Kat's not exactly a virgin herself, but who wants to have the peace disturbed by some nympho's head being pounded against the next wall?

Poetic Justice

2006-03-07T23:56:00.000-08:00

Sarah, my weeknight reporter, has a bad habit. When we're doing man-on-the-street interviews (in which we ask random people their opinions on whatever subject we're covering), she likes to take off without me, run up to people, shove the microphone into their faces and start interviewing them before I've caught up with her. I'm still setting my frame and rolling the camera during the first answer. The result is that I either don't get the answer on tape, or I get just the audio, while the video is unusable and has to be covered with some other pictures. Either way is a headache that could be avoided if she would just show a little patience and not run ahead. I mean, it's not like we're going to miss our one chance with one of the hundred or so people in the Target parking lot.

She can only do this because I have a wireless microphone. For those who aren't in the television business, I might explain the purpose and usefulness of this little gadget. When a reporter shoves a microphone in someone's face, the sound it captures has to get back to the camera somehow. Before wireless systems, the sound had to travel through a cable connected directly to the camera. That system tethered the reporter to the photographer. But with a wireless system, consisting of a transmitter in the reporter's hand and a receiver on the camera itself, the reporter has freedom to roam around in a greater area without clotheslining little old ladies or getting tangled up in a nest of cable herself.

As I mentioned last night, Sarah broke my wireless transmitter. She was making a big show of being in a hurry, slamming doors, stomping around and shuffling her papers violently to show her irritation with me. She was fumbling around with my transmitter the same way and dropped it. It promptly said, "To hell with this!" and refused to transmit another sound in protest of her rough handling.

As a result I had to resort to my trusty standby XLR cable. The biggest problem with "going hard-wired" was that my shortest cable was 20 feet long. Having the camera on my shoulder only leaves one hand free to wrangle the cable. It doesn't help that Sarah winds back and forth on the end of it the way a shark on a hook trying to get free will foul all the other lines on a fishing boat. Last night we weren't even working in any kind of crowd, and I still ended up with my cable all fouled.

So today my first priority upon arriving at work was to get my transmitter up to engineering to get it fixed. Robert, our main electronics guy, was happy to take a look at it.

"You have a long enough cable to use until I can get it back to you?" he asked.

"Actually, it's too long," I said. "I wish I had something shorter, so it wouldn't get tangled up so bad. Sarah tried to hog tie me with it last night."

"I don't think I want to know about that," he said, "but let me see what I've got." He filed through a pile of cables on a workbench and pulled out a six foot cable. "Would this do?"

"Perfect," I said.

I took the cable and my camera out to the Hate Van, grabbed my microphone and hooked it up. It worked fine. Not only that, but the cable is short enough that I can simply drape the mic over my left shoulder without fouling the cable, so that the mic itself hangs against my shoulder blade, then flip it over my shoulder into my left hand in one swift motion when it's needed. Quick and simple. I practiced my quick draw a few times before heading back in to meet up with Sarah.

It so happened that tonight's story actually involved man-on-the-street interviews, and we went to the Target store to get them. One thing people outside the news business usually don't know is that, in contrast to other stores like WalMart, where security chases away anybody with a camera, Target has some kind of standing policy to accommodate news crews. It's really a smart policy, because Target ends up getting all kinds of free publicity whenever a reporter is doing a consumer or retail story. That's why you see so many news stories shot in Target stores; it's not because they're paying us off, but simply because they give us easy access on short notice when nobody else will.

As we entered the store, I had the camera on one shoulder with the mic draped over the other the way I described above. I was feeling quite proud of my little mic wrangling system. We checked in with the manager, then headed for the checkout lines in search of interviews. As we approached, I skillfully flipped the mic over my shoulder with my left hand, instantly ready for action. I felt so cool.

Sarah, however, wasn't impressed in the slightest. In fact, she didn't even notice my slick little move, because she was already impatiently homing in on her first victim. As usual, she yanked the mic out of my hand and took off, forgetting that she was tethered to me.

I instantly realized what was about to happen and braced for it, grabbing the top of the camera with my (now free) left hand. After two short steps the line went taut. The camera lurched forward and twisted to the right on my shoulder, but I held it.

Sarah wasn't so lucky. She had such a death grip on that microphone that she never let go, and the force of her own impatience jerked her clean off her feet. She landed hard on her ass, legs spread out in front of her. The fairly large crowd of shoppers who witnessed it first hand let out a collective gasp.

My first thought was, "Holy crap, is she okay?" Before I could ask her that, however, she turned her face to me, bright red, with a look of fury that simultaneously accused me of every act of evil ever perpetrated on the human race. When I saw her face, any concern I had evaporated even more quickly than she had fallen. I probably should have been frightened by it.

Instead, it was all I could do to keep from laughing. I had to busy myself with checking the camera's audio connection for damage, so that I wouldn't have to look at her. If anyone else there had laughed, I would have lost it. A couple of people were trying as hard as I was not to let it out, and I had to look away from them and concentrate on my cable connector.

It really was funny.

She collected herself up from the floor, her dignity more bruised than her tailbone, and steeled herself to approach someone who had undoubtedly been witness to her clumsiness for an interview (for our story, not about her clumsiness). For once she just stuck to the pertinent questions and didn't ask anything strange or irrelevant. That was the fastest I think I've gotten through a series of man-on-the-street interviews since I've been here.

She didn't talk to me the rest of the night. Of course it's all my fault.

Postmortem

2006-03-06T23:58:00.000-08:00

Today started with a drug test. Apparently it is company policy to test any employees who are involved in an accident on company time. They made Lizzie go also, even though she wasn't driving. They said her test was to prevent the other party from claiming that she was the one driving and was impaired, and that I'm somehow covering for her.

Apparently they were supposed to send us for testing immediately Saturday, but the clinic they normally use isn't open on weekends. We could have had the test done at just about any hospital. I guess it just didn't seem like a priority then. So, even though I worked the entire day yesterday with no problems, this morning they called me and told me not to come to work until I had gone to pee in the cup.

I'm clean, if anybody's wondering.

The other big events today were a couple of meetings. The first was with CP Rick and Jake the Engineer. The second was with CP Rick, the news director and the human resources lady.

In the first postmortem, Jake and Rick had me go over exactly what happened one more time. To recap, just as I was entering a curve in our microwave van, the mast alarm sounded and the mast warning lights flashed just for an instant. Then the engine died. Those warnings are meant to signal that the mast isn't all the way down in the stowed position for driving. The goal is to keep people from driving away with the mast up and taking out a bunch of telephone or power lines. Jake recently installed a system on the truck that also kills the engine if the mast is up. I explained that once the engine died, I couldn't get it off the road before the Guy in the Silver Honda nailed me.

Jake nodded. "It's probly that switch on the mast," he said. "That triggers everything, lights, alarm and kill switch."

Rick seemed irritated at that. "That's been happening for a while," he said. "We'll just be driving down the road and that damned thing will go off."

Apparently this has been happening even though the mast was completely stowed, although this was the first time I had witnessed the failure myself. The difference is that before Jake's handiwork, that switch didn't kill the engine; it just caused a god-awful racket that at worst would simply induce an involuntary bowel movement.

"I don' know what you expected me to do about THAT," Jake said. "Nobody ever told me there was any problem with the mast alarm."

"Seems like something you oughta have checked before wiring up a kill switch to it," Rick responded. "It coulda gotten somebody killed."

Jake shrugged. "I cain't fix what I don't know's broke," he said.

Apparently the damage isn't as bad as it looked, and the truck can be repaired. Unfortunately the impact damaged the generator, which is mounted in the rear of the van. Jake actually seemed pleased about that.

"I been wantin' to rebuild that genny anyway," he said.

Unfortunately, not everybody is as happy as Jake about his new project. Apparently the Guy in the Silver Honda who hit me has decided that the accident was my fault for having the truck there without any flares or cones out to mark the area. He has already had a lawyer call the station, and apparently the lawyer was under the impression that I was trying to set the truck up there for a live shot. His call was the main subject of the second meeting, and it was probably the reason I had to visit the piss clinic today. The station says they're convinced I did nothing wrong and are ready to fight him if Guy in the Silver Honda tries to sue us.

Again, I'm not in any trouble over this, nor do I appear to be in danger of losing my job. However, there is one thing that is worrying me. During the meeting the HR lady asked me for my insurance information for my personal vehicle. I gave her my insurance card, and she made a copy. Now I'm thinking that maybe that wasn't such a bright thing to do. I can't think of any reason why the station should need my insurance policy information, since I was driving a company vehicle on company time. I sure as hell can't afford an increase on the premium on my truck if they try to file a claim, especially on what they pay me.

To add insult to injury, Sarah was characteristically angry that I had meetings that forced her to wait fifteen minutes to get started. She was in the afternoon story meeting through most of the time I was occupied, so I really didn't hold her up for very long. Even so, the whole night she acted like we were way behind and was making a big show of being in a hurry. She stomped around like she was in a hurry, slammed the van door like she was in a hurry... She got in such a hurry that she fumbled and dropped my wireless audio transmitter, and now it doesn't work. We had to do all our interviews tonight with a microphone on a cable. The shortest cable I have in my kit is twenty feet, and I don't have any sort of cable ties, so it kept getting tangled up on me and everything else. Of course, that just irritated Sarah that much more.

I'm actually starting to dislike that girl.

She gave me the story to edit at 25 minutes before the newscast. It's a good thing we didn't have a live shot tonight. Thanks, Jake and Guy in the Silver Honda.

The bright spot in my day came when I gave Lynn a ride home tonight. Her car is fixed now, but for some reason she has decided that carpooling is better. She got a ride into the station with one of the studio grunts (since I had to go pee in a cup and couldn't be her chauffeur), but she came right up to me after the show was over and asked if I could give her a ride home. Hell yes--er, I mean, it would be my pleasure.

"I heard you had an adventure this weekend," she said, once we were in the Hate Van.

"Yeah, I killed the live truck," I said.

"How are you feeling? Are you okay?" she asked. The smirk was gone, and she sounded genuinely concerned.

"Ah, my neck hurt a little yesterday morning, but I'm fine. It was a pretty good jolt. Lizzie stayed home yesterday."

"I know," she said. "I talked to her. I was worried about you."

"Oh," I said. "Thanks." That made me feel warm.

"I was afraid I had lost my ride," she said. She was smirking again.

Damn. I'm in love.

Crash!

2006-03-04T21:15:00.000-08:00

"So, have you stuck your penis into your slut roommate yet?" Lizzie asked me this afternoon.

"Jesus, Lizzie!" I said.

"Oh, come on," she said. "You haven't hidden the sausage with Suzie?"

"What the fuck? Where the hell did this come from?"

Elizabeth is a very strange girl. She grew up with a police chaplain for a father, a Puritanical tyrant who once embarrassed her among all her friends by storming into the school and trying to get her high school band director fired when he found out a couple of the band kids were making out in the bus during a road trip. Her mother played her part as victim and suffered through what amounts to years of emotional abuse, supposedly for Lizzie's sake, but not without making sure Lizzie knew how much she sacrificed for her. My impression is that Lizzie is every bit as judgemental and conservative as her father on the inside, but she hates that side of herself and rebels against it outwardly. Before she can get completely free, however, she finds herself mired in guilt and unable to escape.

Most of the time her rebellion takes the form of crude words at unexpected moments, but it always sounds awkward and forced. For example, Lizzie would never say, "Have you fucked your roommate?" Nice girls don't say the "F" word. But she would ask me if I had stuck my penis into her or played "Hide the Sausage," which sounds every bit as crude to my ear. It's like she's trying to be bad without really being bad, and failing to succeed either way.

"What's with this all of the sudden?" I asked.

"I need to get laid," she said. "I want Joey to bang me for about three days 'til I'm sore." Joey is one of our producers. Lizzie decided at some point this past week that she wants to go out with him. Unfortunately it appears that Joey isn't interested. He's convinced she's still a virgin at age 24 and isn't the least bit stirred at the prospect of becoming her first real boyfriend. ("Issues, man," were his exact words.)

"I was just thinking about sex," Lizzie said, "and realized I hadn't heard about you gettin' any since you've been here."

I said nothing.

"Have you?" she asked. "Gotten laid?"

"That's not really any of your business," I said. I didn't want to have this conversation. Especially not with THIS version of Lizzie.

"It is my business," she said. "You want to get with my friend. I look out for my friends. I don't want you getting with her if you've picked up some disease from that nasty roommate of yours. You give Lynn a disease and I'll cut it off."

"Lynn and I are just friends," I said.

"But you don't want to be."

"No, but she has a boyfriend."

"You care whether she has a boyfriend?"

"She cares," I said. "So I really don't have a choice."

"But you do like her?"

"Yes," I said. "You know that."

"So you want to slip her the salami?"

"God, Lizzie!"

A few minutes later she was back to normal. She's done this maybe four or five times since I've been working with her. The first time it freaked me out a little, but now I just accept it as her way of dealing with her own problems.

I'm glad she pulled herself together, because we didn't realize at the time that we were driving right into a big problem. Literally.

It happened as we were on our way to do our live shot for the afternoon show. I was winding the live truck along a two lane road when I came up on a blind curve around to the right. Just as I was entering the curve the mast alarm let out one very brief, very loud beep, accompanied by one flash of the red alarm lamps on the dash. At that same moment, the engine died.

Gee, it looks like Jake's "safety" system works.

When I lost the engine, the power steering also died. I've driven a car in the past in which the power steering had failed, but this took me by surprise. It took all my strength to manhandle that truck toward the right side of the road instead of into oncoming traffic.

I was driving pretty slowly through that area, so I didn't have enough momentum to get completely off the road. As we were coming to a halt, I had my hand on the shifter to put it in park to try to start it back up when I suddenly felt us lurch forward and heard a huge "BANG!"

The guy behind me never hit his brakes. The impact shoved us onto the shoulder, but the other guy spun to the other side of the road. His airbags had deployed. His car was clearly totaled.

The guy was pretty dazed. He got out of his car and stepped right out into the road, in the path of oncoming cars. Luckily they slowed down, but I thought we were about to be involved in a news story ourselves. He needed medical attention and ended up going to the hospital.

I feel fine right now, and Lizzie seemed to be okay. CP Rick came out to survey the damage and make sure we were all right. I don't appear to be in any trouble over this, because the mast was down when I left the station. Something weird happened with Jake's handiwork. The damage to the truck looked pretty bad. After we got the police report done, Rick called Al in to take us both home, and he stayed to take care of getting the truck towed.

Obviously the live shot was cancelled.

I have a feeling Lizzie and I are both going to be sore tomorrow, but not the way Lizzie wanted.

Lunch

2006-03-01T11:45:00.000-08:00

"I can't date you," she said.

We had been getting along pretty well and having a good conversation. We had talked about our college days, our thoughts on the station and our thoughts on the business. We had a fun little sideways jaunt into entertainment, and discovered that we like a lot of the same movies. We also discovered that we have somewhat different tastes in music.

Then she asked whether I left a girlfriend behind when I moved here. That led to a mildly uncomfortable discussion of her boyfriend. Of course I wanted to know, but at the same time I really didn't want to know. I listened anyway.

Lynn and Chris work almost opposite schedules. He has to be at work at 6am. She doesn't leave work until after he's already asleep. The lack of time together has put a strain on their relationship.

"I don't feel like we really know each other any more," she said.

They aren't getting along well right now, but she still loves him.

"At least I still think I do," she said.

She didn't sound convincing to me. The question is, was she really wavering as much as she appeared, or was she putting on the appearance of wavering to keep me interested?

I suddenly realized that this kind of conversation was really too serious for a nice lunch date before work between two people who seemed to have a spark between them. I managed to steer the subject to something a little more fun (station gossip) , but every word seemed a tiny bit heavier with the weight of her situation.

Even so, we were still getting along really well, and by the time we got back into the van to head off to work I was feeling pretty confident.

"I was thinking," I said. "Would you like to go out for a drink after work one night? Just the two of us?"

"Hmmm," she said. And then, nothing.

In broadcasting, dead air always seems longer than it really is. If the tape doesn't roll for five seconds while the anchor stares at the camera, it feels like 35 seconds in the studio. What plays on the television at home as ten seconds of black between the newscast and the commercial that didn't run feels like a minute and a half to the guy punching the buttons in the control room.

The same phenomenon settled on the dead air in our conversation. It was mere seconds, but those seconds carried a lot of weight. The first urge that hits you when you get dead air is to fill it with something.

"I mean, it's okay if you're not interested." I winced at my own overwhelming dorkness and felt a large "L" growing out of my forehead.

"It's not that," she said. "I'd like to. But you know I have a boyfriend."

"He's not invited," I said. I glanced over in time to see the corner of her mouth turn upward slightly. The smirk wanted to come back, but it didn't quite make it.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I can't date you."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"No, it's okay," I said. I didn't really mean it.

"You're mad," she said.

"No, I'm not. Really."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, besides, what does it matter if I'm mad or not? You have to do what you have to do."

I was doing my best to mask my disappointment. We were turning into the station parking lot.

"We can still be friends, right?" she asked.

"Sure," I said. In that moment, "sure" meant "no" and "no" meant "yes." And "yes" would have been more of a plea than an answer.

"So you'll still give me a ride home tonight?" she said. She was trying to smirk again and looking at me sideways over the corner of her glasses. Even after all that, there's still something electric in those steel grey eyes.

"Sure," I said. "I'd be happy to."

Monday

2006-02-28T08:26:00.000-08:00

One of the problems with working weekends in news is that when Monday rolls around, even though your week is halfway over, everybody else insists on acting like it's Monday. By Tuesday most people are resigned to the fact they have to be there. They feel like they're caught up with everything. They aren't nearly as flustered. They tackle their jobs with a little more enthusiasm, but also with a lot more calm.

Monday, however, they feel this intense pressure to catch up. They've been gone for TWO WHOLE DAYS! They've missed TWO WHOLE DAYS of news! There's almost a sense of panic as they try to get back into the game.

Thus, those of us who work weekends are completely out of step with them. I think it irritates people when their coworkers aren't in the same mindset, so they try subconsciously to bring them in line with the Monday attitude. Somehow, if you're taking things in stride and not contributing to the confusion with your false sense of urgency, you're not taking your job seriously enough.

A related problem is that whatever happened over the weekend doesn't count. If we break a big story on Saturday, it doesn't matter that the story is two days old. Monday gets it fresh, as if it hasn't been done at all. It's as if the weekend newscasts aren't real news, but just placeholders for the genuine journalism that starts Monday.

Saturday's big story was a fatal trailer fire. The fire itself happened early Saturday morning, while nobody was on the desk, so Lizzie and I had to catch up on the story when we got in four hours later. That wasn't really that much of a problem, since none of our competitors got it any earlier than we did.

Still, we covered all the bases Saturday. The fire department determined early on that it was a simple cooking fire. Apparently the guy started something cooking for breakfast, then sat down and dozed off while the range was still on. We had all that information by the end of the day Saturday. We had video of the scene (still smoldering after several hours). We had interviews with the fire captain on scene, neighbors and even one of the guy's relatives.

Despite the fact that there was no new information Monday, and despite the fact that the story was two days old, the trailer fire was Monday's Top Story. Not only did a dayside crew rehash it, I found myself shooting the story again Monday night.

Of course, this story was new to Sarah, so I figured the fact that I was familiar with it would be a help. Of course I was wrong. Her attitude seemed to be, "If I haven't done the story, the story hasn't been done."

When we got out to the trailer park to talk to the neighbors, I tried to point out who was friendly and who wasn't. The owner of the trailer next door (with the "No Trespassing" sign at the edge of his lot) had been hostile to media and didn't want to talk. Of course that's exactly where she wanted to go. I hung back when she knocked on the door, in case he decided to fire off a warning shot. Luckily he either wasn't home or didn't answer his door.

"I don't want the same interviews everybody else got," she said.

I tried to give Sarah a rundown of the information we had, but she didn't want to listen. She called the Sheriff's department and asked them a whole bunch of fire department questions they couldn't answer. We knew Saturday that this was an accidental fire, and Monday's dayside crew had pretty much confirmed that when they interviewed the fire chief. Yet Sarah persisted in asking questions about "any hint of arson" that might have surfaced. The sheriff's press officer just confirmed what I and the dayside crew had already told her.

She seemed irritated when she couldn't get the fire chief for another interview of her own. Granted, it seems a little lazy to reuse material another crew shot, but there was no point in the chief repeating the same stuff he said earlier.

And then Wendy enters the story.

About the time Sarah had finally given up on the hope of uncovering some new smoking gun in the case, she got a call from Wendy, who wanted to know what we had. Wendy was wholly dissatisfied with the lack of new information.

"What's the point of even running your story?" she asked. "I could just rerun the package from six if I knew you weren't going to get anything new."

Why didn't you, I thought. It's not like this story isn't TWO DAYS OLD. Alas, she didn't follow up on her own train of thought. In a shocking turn of events, Wendy wanted the story after all, with a live shot. Gee, what a surprise. Unfortunately the editing system in the live truck is broken, so we had to edit at the station.

Still, with such a lack of new material, we finished pretty early. Sarah had plenty of time to write. And yet she STILL gave me the script at just over an hour before the newscast, knowing full well we would need at least 45 minutes to get out to the trailer park and set up the shot. Since by now I was already pretty intimately familiar with the material, I was able to cut the package in 20 minutes and get on out there.

The live shot went off without much problem except that Sarah was standing in front of a pitch black pile of what was left of the trailer, in the dark, without much light. It was also cold as hell out there, and the truck's on-board heater doesn't work. Thanks to Jake the engineer's handiwork, we can no longer crank the engine of the truck with the mast up, so we couldn't run the heat from the engine either. It wasn't so much of a problem for me, since I was outside setting up, but Sarah acted like it was somehow my fault that she had to be freezing also while she went over her script.

"Can't you do anything about the heat?" she asked.

"No, it's broken."

"Have you tried it? Maybe it works now."

"Be my guest," I said. "I don't have time to fool with it right now."

"Hmph," she said. Yes, she really did hmph at me.

Back at the station, after I put the live truck away in its pen, I was sitting in the newsroom after the newscast when Lynn walked in. She approached Andrea, the associate producer, and asked her if she was going straight home after work.

"No, I'm going over to Scott's place," she said. Scott is the redneck firefighter she hooked up with last week. Apparently they're now an item. "Why?" she asked.

"Oh, don't worry about it," Lynn said. "My car broke down, so I need a ride. I didn't want to call Chris to come get me, but that's okay. I'll wake him up." Chris is Lynn's boyfriend. I didn't want her to call Chris to come get her either.

Somehow I got the impression she was projecting this conversation to the entire room and not simply talking to Andrea. I recognized the chance. And took it.

"I can give you a ride," I interrupted.

The smirk appeared. "I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble," she said.

"It's no trouble." I sounded WAY too eager, I'm sure.

"Okay," she said.

Hell yes, I thought.

We made idle chit chat during the ride. She asked how my day was, and I gave her the condensed version of my theory on Mondays. She commented on the sad condition of the Hate Van. We were idling in front of her house way too soon.

"Thanks for the ride," she said, opening the door.

Now's my chance, I thought. Now or never. I steeled my courage as she was getting out of the van. She turned back once her feet were on the ground.

"Hey," we both said, at the exact same time.

"Go ahead," I said.

"You wanna have lunch with me tomorrow?" she asked.

"Um," I paused. There was really no reason for me to pause, because I already knew the answer without having to think about it. She just caught me off guard. I had to switch from asking mode to accepting mode without saying, "Hell YES I want to have lunch with you!"

Calmly I said, "Uh, sure."

"Twelve thirty okay?"

"Yeah, that's fine. You want me to pick you up?"

"That would be best, since my car's still in the shop. I don't know if they'll have it fixed tomorrow."

"That's no problem," I said. "I'll give you a ride to work if you need it." And a ride home later, I thought.

And thus, after a typical frustrating Monday, I somehow landed a date with the girl of my dreams with almost no effort at all. I'm meeting her in just a few hours. Once again, I'm terrified.

These things don't happen to me.

Making the Call

2006-02-26T23:44:00.000-08:00

After my (too) brief encounter with Lynn Wednesday night, I could think of nothing else. Unfortunately I didn't think to get her telephone number. I figured the station had it in the telephone directory, but I was off Thursday and Friday and felt extremely awkward calling up the station to ask someone there to look it up for me. It would be my luck Wendy would answer the phone, and I could just hear the disapproval in her voice. I also didn't really want it spread around that I had an interest there, lest I look like more of an idiot than I really am should the whole thing go sour.

First thing Saturday morning, therefore, I looked up her number in the computer and wrote it down on a slip of paper that I folded and tucked into my pocket. I didn't really want to call while Lizzie was around, so I waited through the whole day, until I got home, to call. All day long I kept reaching into my pocket to make sure that slip was still there.

Apparently the matter was also on Lizzie's mind. She danced around the subject for a while, but finally she couldn't resist it any longer.

"I won't ask what was going on in Lynn's room Wednesday night," she said.

"That in itself is a question," I responded.

"Okay," she said, "So what happened?"

"I thought you weren't going to ask."

"Look, he's blushing again," she said.

"Stop it!"

"So really, what happened?"

"Nothing," I said. "She was showing me her photos. They're really good."

"Is that all she showed you?"

"I'm not talking to you about this," I declared. I tried to sound authoritative when I said it, but it's hard to control the mood when you're smiling.

Lizzie turned a little more serious. "I told you she has a boyfriend, right?"

"Yeah, you told me," I said. "I'm not sure what to think about that."

"Well, now I'm not either," she said. "She said yesterday they're not getting along that great."

I felt a funny flutter in my stomach at those words. Does it make me a bad person to rejoice in someone else's bad news?

"Uh, that's too bad," I said. I tried to sound sincere. I really did.

"Oh, don't even try it. That's good news for you," she said.

"I really don't know what you're talking about," I grinned.

Here is where I'll reveal what is probably my most debilitating weakness. I'm afraid of the phone. I don't like to answer it. I don't like to call people on it. It took almost an entire semester at school to get comfortable ordering a pizza. I would go down to the pizza joint and order it in person, then sit and wait on it, rather than use the phone to call ahead. Even more recently, it took every ounce of courage I could muster to return the ND's phone call back when he first contacted me about this job. My friends often think I'm snubbing them when I don't return their calls, but it isn't that. It's the phone.

I actually read somewhere that there's a name for this problem. It's called "call reluctance." Apparently lots of people have it, but they're able to work around it. They keep the problem from coming to light until they have a job that requires heavy phone use. The article I read was in the context of salesmen who couldn't meet their quotas because they're afraid of the phone.

When I finally got home, I was scared to death. I'm a grown man, yet I'm terrified of picking up the phone and even more terrified at the thought of calling a girl. What if I stumble over my words? What if we have nothing to talk about? What if she rejects me?

I lifted the receiver and put it back down. I suddenly had to go to the bathroom. Yep, better get that out of the way so I can be totally relaxed when I talk to her.

I picked up the phone again. The dialtone sounded menacing. I decided to check my email. There was, of course, another message in there telling me to post on my blog more often.

Okay, stop procrastinating and do it, I thought. But it had already been three days since I had talked to her. What if she's pissed off that I haven't called sooner, I wondered. She may not want to talk to me at all.

Nonsense. I decided to make some notes for myself. I discovered that one way to get over my fear of the phone is to collect my thoughts on paper. I grabbed a pen and pad and wrote, "I was wondering if you'd like to go out next week."

That's stupid, I thought. I'm not going to read it off the paper. I'll just throw caution to the wind and wing it.

I reached for the phone, but it rang and scared me out of my wits. It wasn't supposed to do that. I answered. It was for Suzanne, my slut roommate. It was a guy, of course. He wanted to know if Suzanne would be home later. I said I didn't know and took a message. I'm not her hookup service.

"All right, dammit!" I said out loud. I took a deep breath. In a swift series of motions I picked up the phone and dialed the number. I waited for it to connect.

...

...

"The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try again."

What? I know I copied it down correctly, because I checked it twice. I dialed the number again.

"The number you have dialed--"

"Fuck!" I said.

And yet, I felt relieved. Suddenly the pressure was off. That's when I decided to sit down and write my previous entry about Wednesday night.

But the story doesn't end there.

I worked with Lizzie again today. Even though Lizzie has a big mouth and will probably spread it around, I knew she had Lynn's number, so I told her what happened with the wrong number from the station computer.

"Oh yeah, she just moved there a few months ago," Lizzie said. "It takes forever sometimes for the phone list to get updated."

"You have her number, though, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, I have it."

"Weeeell, would you give it to me?"

"What for?" she asked. What for? If she weren't a girl...

"Oh come on," I said, feigning disgust.

"Oh all right," she said. "I don't think she would mind if it's you."

She wrote Lynn's number on her little reporter's notebook and tore off the page for me. Lizzie's handwriting is atrocious, but at least I could make out the numbers. Years from now I'll probably find that note and think "Lujuu? What the hell is Lujuu?"

After a shorter version of Saturday night's game of chicken with the phone, I finally dialed Lynn's number.

I got her voice mail. And I hung up on it without leaving a message. Not just once, but three times throughout the course of this evening. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you are reading the words of the world's biggest coward.

Sigh. Pizza, job interviews and dates. I'll end up having to do this in person.

Electric II

2006-02-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

"So tell me about the story," I said, once we were in the truck.

"What about it?" Sarah asked.

"Well," I said. "Who are we talking to? What are we doing for b-roll? Do you know what angle you want to take?"

"We'll see when we get there."

That pretty much set the tone for the whole night. Sarah was really pissed off at me, presumably because... Well, I really don't know why she was mad at me. She screwed me over Tuesday, and then refused to talk to me all night Wednesday. I did the best I could with the story considering I had no idea what was going through her head. She did leave me 45 minutes to edit (after writing for 90 minutes herself), so after the last couple of weeks I felt like I had an eternity.

After the show I ran into Lizzie in the newsroom. I was surprised to see her, since she had worked dayside that day.

"Escape tapes," she said, when I asked why she was there. She was referring to resume tapes, the demo tapes reporters and photographers send to show their work to news directors when they apply for job openings. While reporters generally don't want to broadcast to management that they're looking for new jobs, very few of them actually have their own systems to edit and dub their tapes at home. They have to rely on the equipment at their stations, and they have to be somewhat discreet about it. Most reporters probably would have waited until the middle of the night to do their tapes, when no one else would be around, but I think Lizzie wants the ND to know she's looking elsewhere, without actually shoving it in his face.

"I'm almost done," she said. "You out yet?"

"Yeah, I'm off right now," I said.

"Wanna go somewhere? I'm off tomorrow, and I don't feel like going home."

"Sure, I'll go."

I waited another fifteen minutes, just surfing the net in the newsroom. Then Lizzie and Lynn popped in together.

"Let's go," Lizzie said.

Hell yes, I thought.

We went over to Lynn's place to hang out. Lynn lives by herself in a comfortable one bedroom apartment carved out of an old house. There are four apartments in the house, and she has the first floor.

The first thing that struck me upon entering the place is that Lynn has really cool taste. To cover the cracked plaster walls, she has old, red, velvet-like cloth hung from the ceiling like tapestries. All her furniture is old, but she has picked stuff with character. She has an old Philco television cabinet, complete with doors on the front, with a newer television stuck inside it to replace the old tube and guts. She sectioned off one part of the room by making a wall of old windows she got from a construction salvage yard and put her desk and computer behind it. Her couch and chairs are all covered with quilts, and at one end of the couch is an old end table with a brass pipe holder built into it. There are plenty of little strange decorative items around, but too many to list here.

Lynn offered us drinks, and for more than an hour the three of us sat in the living room engaged in a discussion of our jobs, which consisted in large part of listening to Lizzie bitch about hers. She told us about some of the places she was planning to send tapes. She explained her theory on the ND's hiring practices, which apparently involves letting his penis choose his reporters. That would explain the discrepancy in the ratio of females to males in the newsroom.

Lynn and I kept catching each other's eyes throughout. The spark was definitely still there. Finally she let out a big sigh.

"Every time I make a new friend, they leave," she said.

"Nature of the business," said Lizzie. "Can't stay here forever."

"What about you?" Lynn smirked, turning her eyes my way and looking at me around the corner of her glasses. "You planning to leave me here too?"

"No," I said, feeling pretty bold. "I'll take you with me."

"Oh really," she said. "What if I can't go?"

"You could go if you wanted."

"I dunno," she said. "I like it here. I might wanna stay."

"I could convince you," I said. Crap, was that ME that said that? Where is this coming from?

"Big words," she said, with her smirk growing a little more like a smile.

After a short pause, Lizzie reminded us of her presence by suddenly saying, "I have to go to the restroom."

"You know where it is," Lynn said.

Now Lynn and I were alone together, and suddenly it seemed awkward again. Why does that happen? One minute you're swimming along, the master of the current; the next minute you're drowning.

"Let me give you the tour," Lynn said, getting up. She led me through a door into a short hallway that connected to the kitchen. There were some framed black and white photographs on the wall there. "Don't look at those," she said. So I didn't, even though I distinctly got the impression she wanted me to.

"This is the kitchen," she said. It certainly was. Just like the living room, it reflected her style. Against one wall was a 50s style red formica table with chrome trim, with matching red vinyl chairs. This was no reproduction, but showed the genuine wear of several decades in the dullness of the chrome and the splits in the vinyl. Her cookware was hanging from a rack suspended from the ceiling, galley-style. The counters and sink were trimmed with black and white tile. I noticed a French press on the counter (girl knows about coffee, obviously), as well as--what's that?

"A waffle iron?" I asked.

"Heart shaped," she said, stepping over and opening the old chrome waffle iron to reveal a heart pattern inside. "It still works, too," she said.

"I didn't picture you as the type," I said.

"Yeah, sometimes I feel like being a girl," she said.

Lizzie was STILL in the bathroom after all this time, so the tour continued. (Thanks, Lizzie.)

Next up was the bedroom. The room was small and was mostly filled with her bed, a queen sized four post frame with a canopy. Off to the side, leaning against the wall on top of a little bookshelf, was a stack of large black and white prints mounted in cardboard frames.

"Don't look at those," she said. This time I wasn't as obedient. I headed straight for them and started flipping through.

"Did you do these?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "I used to use the darkroom in school. At some point I'm gonna set up my own. Now everything's digital, though. I oughta just use the computer."

Some of the photos weren't that interesting, but some were really good. I stopped on a picture of a little kid eating what appeared to be chocolate cake. He had this huge smile on his face. What she captured in that instant was simple, extreme happiness. You couldn't look at it without smiling in sympathy.

"These are really good," I said.

"Stop it," she said. "That's enough." Then she started trying to shove between me and the stack.

"No," I said, "I want to see the rest."

"That's enough for one night," she said. But instead of pulling them away from me, as she had been trying to do, she turned toward me and pushed me away from the stack. I instinctively put my hands up, and she grabbed both of my wrists. Remember, I said this was a small room, mostly filled with queen-sized bed. The only place for me to go was--you guessed it--onto the bed. As I backed against it I lost my balance and sat down on the edge. She moved directly between me and the stack of pictures, still holding my hands.

"I'm not letting you up," she said, moving closer to me. She ended up standing with her knees between mine, but still pushing on my wrists so that our upper bodies weren't as close. I turned my hands to try to catch hers in mine. She responded by loosening her grip a little to allow it. We ended up with our fingers interlocked.

Holy crap was my heart pounding. She was breathing hard also, but we had hardly exerted ourselves at all. Her glasses had slid down her nose a little, but she wouldn't let go to adjust them. Instead she just tilted her head back to look down at me through the lenses. She wasn't smirking.

I pulled my hands apart to take away her leverage, pulling her closer to me in the process. She resisted, but she didn't pull away completely. Then she did something unexpected. She let go of my left hand and ran her fingers through my hair with her right. I closed my eyes and shuddered, not even realizing at the time that my free hand instinctively had gone to her waist.

"Huh-um!" we heard come from the living room. "It's about time I got home!" Lizzie said. We hadn't even heard her leave the bathroom.

"Okay," Lynn said, still not letting go of me. "See you tomorrow!"

"Uh, Max is my ride home," Lizzie yelled back. This is how murders happen.

"Your girlfriend's calling," Lynn said to me. Her smirk was back. She let go of me and straightened her clothes a little, even though I didn't really mess them up. I was hoping to at least get a kiss before parting, but she just turned her back on me and went back to the living room. I followed shortly behind to find Lizzie grinning idiotically and throwing glances back and forth between us. She already had her coat on and turned for the door.

As she went out, I stopped at the doorway and quietly said to Lynn, "Maybe we could pick up where we left off sometime." I almost immediately felt like a lecherous idiot when I said it, but perhaps it wasn't the wrong thing to say.

"Maybe," she said, smirking sideways at me with her head tilted down a little to give me the full effect of those steel blue eyes.

Damn. Electric.

A Quick Update

2006-02-24T08:17:00.000-08:00

Here's a brief update on where I stand with Sarah and the company.

When I got to work Wednesday I pulled CP Rick aside and asked his advice. It turned out that by that time Wendy had already gotten to the ND and complained about Sarah. Sarah, of course, blamed it on me. However, Rick told me not to worry about it, that he knew I didn't have enough time to edit. He wants me to try to get faster, but he also wants me to alert Wendy sooner if it looks like I'm going to miss slot.

I don't have a good feeling about this, but I don't have a particularly bad feeling either. Sarah hardly spoke to me Wednesday night, but I did get 45 minutes to edit.

What happened at Lynn's house after work Wednesday night is the real story this week, but I'll have to write about that later.

Meltdown

2006-02-22T01:45:00.000-08:00

After months of doing the reporter shuffle, with different reporters getting assigned to the shifts I cover, I finally seem to have settled into a routine with two reporters. Lizzie works with me on weekends, although she isn't happy about it. Sarah, the new girl, works with me Monday through Wednesday at night.

I have worked with Sarah several days over the last two weeks, and some disturbing personality traits and working habits have manifested themselves. I guess the worst problem is that Sarah is slow. It sometimes takes her twice as long as other reporters to write her stories. I'm not sure what the problem is, but she has consistently put me under the gun when editing time has rolled around. It seems like the problem has grown steadily worse over the last two weeks.

She also tends to panic and, for lack of a better word, freak out. For example, one night last week she was trying to get in touch with a school contact for a story about a teenage girl who had been accosted on her way home from school (but got away). We got the story too late to catch anyone at the school itself, so she was trying to track down the principal at home. When she could only get his voice mail, she turned bright red and said, "What am I going to do? WHAT AM I GONNA DO? Why won't this FUCKER answer his PHONE?! This is CRAZY! How am I supposed to get a story like this?!"

"If you can't reach him, you can't reach him," I said. "It's not a big deal."

"Shut up!" she said. "I didn't ask for your opinion."

"Okay," I said. After a prolonged silence she apologized, but still...

And that brings me to tonight.

We got our story early this afternoon, right after the afternoon meeting. It was a rather boring story on a plan to rezone an area to allow a housing subdivision to be built. The county guy was easy to reach, and we knocked out his interview quickly. The landowner took a little more time, but we got our b-roll of the area in question while we were waiting for him to call back. We managed to get out to his house for his interview, and all the elements of the package were in house with three hours to go before the show. Although we were the lead story, we weren't even live.

Yet, somehow, she managed to give me the package to edit almost exactly twenty minutes before the newscast.

I know there are guys out there who do twenty minute edits on a daily basis. I'm still pretty new at this, however, and so far the fastest I've been able to do it is thirty minutes. I told her when she gave me the package that she needed to tell Wendy, the producer, that we would possibly miss our slot, and I wasted no time getting to work.

Unfortunately Sarah didn't tell Wendy that there was a problem. Apparently she went back to her desk and didn't say a word. I became aware of this fact at five minutes before the newscast, when an AP came into my room and asked me for the tape. I told her I was almost done but didn't think I would make it, and to tell Wendy to be ready to float us. I'm glad I wasn't in the control room for Wendy's initial reaction.

Unfortunately I wasn't completely off the hook. Less than a minute after the AP had left, Sarah burst into the room and said, "What's the problem?"

"I don't think I'm gonna make it," I said.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Not enough time," I said. "I'm workin' on it."

"How much more time do you need?"

"A few more minutes," I said. "I'm WORKIN' on it."

Sarah stepped out, but outside the door I could hear that Wendy had turned the corner and was discussing it with Sarah. "He won't tell me how long he needs," I heard Sarah say. A beat later, Wendy burst into the room.

"Are you gonna make it?" she asked.

"I don't think so," I said.

"You don't THINK so, or NO, you WON'T make it?"

"I'm not gonna make it," I said.

"What's the problem?" she asked.

"Can't talk about it now," I said, still trying to edit despite these two idiots distracting me. As I sit here now I'm convinced that I actually would have made it if they had just let me work. Both of them seemed to think that by standing there distracting me, I would somehow change my mind and tell them that everything was just hunky dory and I would be delivering the tape at any minute.

Wendy stood there for a second, then let out this huge sigh and left. Outside the room I could hear her say, "He won't tell me, either."

I finished just after the newscast started, but not before the first block turned into a wreck. I went back and looked at the aircheck tape to see just how bad it was. The anchor actually read the intro to our package, then said, "But, um, we'll have that story in just a minute." Then the wrong video was rolled for the next story, and she became visibly flustered on air. I ran my package to the playback booth in time to be the third story, but the prompter operator somehow got lost, so that the anchor had to read everything off her scripts for almost the rest of the first block.

At the time, however, I was letting out a huge sigh of relief after handing off the tape. When I turned back toward the newsroom, Sarah was standing there waiting for me, with her arms folded across her chest.

"You wanna tell me what happened?" she said.

"I didn't have enough time," I said. "You're gonna have to give me the package earlier."

"You had PLENTY of time," she said, "And now I'm gonna get shit because YOU fucked up."

"I don't think I fucked anything up," I said. "I didn't have enough time--"

"Don't give me that," she said. "Any photog here can edit a package in thirty minutes."

"You gave me the package at twenty minutes 'til."

"No, you got thirty minutes. I know because I looked at the clock when I finished writing."

"And I looked at the clock when you gave me the package. It was twenty minutes 'til," I said.

"What are you trying to do to me?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"I know you could have gotten that in on time."

That just hung there for a minute.

"Are you saying I missed slot on purpose?" I asked.

"The thought has crossed my mind," she said.

At this point I was enraged. I was shaking. I was about to explode into a kaleidoscopic display of obscenities. But I held it together.

"I wouldn't do that," I said.

"Hmmm," she said, sarcastically.

"We should talk about this later," I said.

"Oh, WE WILL," she threatened.

I went back to the edit room, shut the door and just sat there listening to the hum of machinery. I guess you could say I was hiding in there, because I did NOT want to come out and face either Sarah or Wendy. I suddenly realized I still needed to cut a video-only version of the story for the morning show, so I reluctantly put myself back to work.

I did run into Wendy after the show. She didn't say a word.

So now I can't sleep, thinking about what happened and obsessing over the fact that I have to work with Sarah. I don't know if I should launch a preemptive strike and go complain about her first thing tomorrow, or if I should wait to defend myself when the inevitable questions come from the ND. I know I need to get faster at editing, but I can't see how she can say the problem tonight was MY fault when she took three hours to write the story.

I'm really starting to worry about this job. It's been fun and interesting up to now, but the prospect of working directly with this woman three days per week for the foreseeable future does not sound pleasant at all.

The Day After

2006-02-13T11:20:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick update on Sunday before I start work for the day.

After Saturday night, I was quite eager to hear what Lizzie had to say about that little exchange with Lynn. They're pretty good friends and talk a lot outside work. Lizzie is also something of a busy body, so I figured she would have a comment.

Strangely, she didn't mention it for the first part of the day. I thought it was a little weird. But finally, while we were on our way out for our live shot for the early show, she brought it up.

"You seemed to have fun last night," she said.

"Yeah, it was nice," I said. I immediately got a mental picture of Lynn's smirking sideways glance.

"What did you think of Lynn?" she asked.

"She's cool," I said. I wanted to say, "She's freakin' hot," but I figured it would be better to play it cool.

"You know she has a boyfriend," she said.

That didn't exactly make me happy.

"No, I didn't know that," I said.

"Yep," she said. "They've been going out for a couple of years now."

Ah crap.

"Oh yeah?" I asked, trying unsuccessfully to sound nonchalant about it.

"Yeah," she said.

"So... I guess they're pretty serious."

"It seems that way," she said.

Dammit. I found myself lost in thought. At that moment I wanted to ask all sorts of questions. Is she happy? Does he treat her well? Does he cheat on her? Does she cheat on him? Is she with him because she really likes him, or just out of convenience? Are they--

"She said you remind her of him," Lizzie said, interrupting my thoughts.

Now what the hell is that supposed to mean? Really, how am I supposed to react to that? If I remind her of how he used to be, before their relationship went sour (as I'm hoping it has) then that would be good. But if they're doing fine, and I remind her of him, what's the good in that?

"Is that a good thing? Or a bad thing?" I asked.

"I dunno," she said. "I think she likes you, if that's what you mean."

And that's where we left it, since we were then arriving at the live shot location and both had work to do.

Let's take a moment to sum up my love life. I work mostly with women, many of whom are really hot but are completely disinterested in dating a poor news photographer when they can land a lawyer or mayor's aide or redneck firefighter. In the past eight months (including the time since I last had a steady girlfriend) I have kissed one woman, a long time friend who is now dating one of our mutual friends from college but who wants to come visit me during Spring Break; and I have had a flirtatious encounter with a smirking redhead with whom I refused to dance and who is involved in a long term relationship. The closest thing to sex I've had is hearing my roommate Suzanne through the wall our rooms share, and it looks like that's the best I'll do for a while.

And people are saying my blog is fake because I'm getting too much attention from women?

Electric

2006-02-11T23:47:00.000-08:00

With the changes in reporter schedules around here, Lizzie has been permanently assigned to work with me on weekends. She's not very happy about that, especially since the new girl, Sarah, is working Monday through Friday. Apparently the ND didn't even bother to make any excuses, instead just telling her it was up to him to decide where to put people in the schedule.

Today was the first Saturday since she found out, so she wasn't in a great mood. We get along well, however, so she didn't take it out on me. She was just extra cynical today. Our truck talk on the way to our stories included her characterization of the ND as a "lecherous bozo," a diatribe on the idiocy of Wendy and a lament on the generally disappointing state of the news business. After work she wanted to go drinking with a friend, one of the newscast directors, and she invited me along.

The director in question is a girl named Lynn. Lynn has short auburn hair in a style that is intentionally messy. She wears a pair of narrow eyeglasses with thick black frames and has steel gray eyes. She's pale, and she doesn't entirely hide her freckles with her makeup. She also wears very red lipstick that doesn't even begin to hide her usual smirk. I would describe her look as that of an "artsy" type, with a hint of the sexy librarian.

Lynn exudes a calm confidence. I don't know if that's from directing shows, or if she's a director because of her natural demeanor. It wouldn't surprise me if some people found her smirk and the smooth tone of her voice a bit condescending. To me, it just seems like she's smiling at secrets the rest of us would really like to know.

So after work, Lizzie, Lynn, an associate producer named Andrea and I went for drinks. The bar had a live band that wasn't very good, so the place was a bit loud. Surprisingly, we were able to get a table to ourselves off to the side.

With three girls at the table, however, we were almost immediately set upon by guys. Most of them didn't even bother to try to figure out my connection to any of the women; I was completely an afterthought. Gee, it sure is great to know I present such a minor challenge to them.

One of the guys who approached was an off-duty firefighter. He was a total redneck dumbass. Even so, he impressed Andrea by raising his shirt and showing his abs. He quickly managed to separate her off from the rest of us to dance.

With Andrea thus occupied, Lynn and I listened to Lizzie bitch for a while about the news director and her job. Lynn listened very supportively without saying much. I found myself studying Lynn's features instead. She caught me looking at her a couple of times, but she just glanced back at Lizzie without really reacting. Finally Lizzie wound down and said, "Where's that waitress with my beer?"

Lynn turned her attention to me. "You should dance with me," she said. Unfortunately, I can't dance. I'm too self conscious on the dance floor to even do the silly beer-in-one-hand frat boy sway. Not to mention that she scared the shit out of me by dropping that so suddenly.

"Sorry, I don't dance," I said.

"Why not?" asked Lynn.

"Trick knees," I said. I heard Don Johnson say that once on Miami Vice. It sounded cool when he said it. But I'm not Don Johnson.

"Bummer," she said. "You just don't want to dance with me."

"That's not it," I said. "I just prefer conversation." I knew what a loser I sounded like even as the words left my mouth.

"Okay, let's converse." Then she stared into me expectantly with her unblinking, steel grey eyes. Boy, did I set myself up for that. She had me off-balance, and the smirk told me she knew it.

"Um," was the best I could do. She let the silence hang there awkwardly, just to watch me squirm. There was a charge in the air between us.

"You're gonna make me do all the work here?" she finally asked, and turned to Lizzie. I had forgotten Lizzie was even there, even though she was sitting right next to me. "SO! How do you like working Saturdays?" she asked.

"You're gonna let him off the hook that easy?" responded Lizzie. I realized immediately that not only had she recognized what was happening and was thoroughly enjoying the show, I will also have a hell of a time living it down. She will DEFINITELY give me a hard time about it tomorrow.

Luckily I was saved by Andrea and her dumbass redneck, who returned to our table. This guy liked being the center of attention, so he flexed his arms at the girls. My attention, however, was drawn to Lynn, and I was quite happy to notice her rolling her eyes at his display. She realized I caught her at it, and she winked at me out the side of her glasses.

Damn. Electric.

Unfortunately the volume in the bar wasn't really conducive to conversation anyway, and I still wasn't going to dance (trick knees, you know), so it didn't really get much further than that. Lizzie and I both have to work tomorrow, so we all called it a night pretty early (except for Andrea, who said she'd be fine getting a ride home from Muscles the firefighter). Lynn went her own way, and I dropped Lizzie off back at the station.

The funny thing is that I KNOW Lizzie has something to say about what happened, and yet neither of us brought it up on the way back. She would only talk about what a slut Andrea is and what a dumbass that firefighter was.

I'm kind of looking forward to work tomorrow.

Live, Live, Live

2006-02-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

Wow. Blink and two weeks have flown by.

We hired a new reporter, Sarah. Sarah is blonde and small, and she looks like Naomi Watts except a little softer. She has a great voice, but her delivery is a little weird. She tilts her head to the side a funny way when she speaks, and she likes to stand sideways when she's on camera. She said it makes her look thinner. This is her second job in the business.

Sarah has been assigned to the night shift, which means we'll be working together. We seem to have hit it off pretty well, so I think it's going to be fun. She has already displayed a tendency toward sarcasm.

She was on dayside Monday and Tuesday, but they put her on nightside with me Wednesday night. Of course, Wendy wanted a live shot. Now that I'm trained on the truck, Wendy wants live shots every night. Sarah was a little nervous about it, because her previous station never did live shots.

When I drove into the parking lot Wednesday afternoon to report for work, I noticed Jake the engineer out in the pen where we keep the microwave van. Actually, I only noticed Jake's legs, sticking out from under the van. After a few seconds, Jake's feet jerked up off the ground and hung in the air for a minute. Then he started laughing and let them back down again. I wondered what the hell he was doing, but I was running late and didn't have time to go find out.

Flash forward to later that evening. Sarah's still not quite accustomed to our system of doing things, and it took her some time to get her package finished and voiced. We were working out of the station, so I was acutely aware of the time creeping up on me as I edited the package. I needed to leave myself time to get the truck out to the live location and set up the shot. I wasn't really happy with the final product, but at least I finished it. We finally left forty-five minutes before the show. Sarah seemed to be in a bad mood, nervous about the time.

Even with my limited experience, I should have had plenty of time. We didn't have far to go. I parked the truck, jumped out to do my walkaround (and look up!) to make sure the site was suitable and cranked up the generator. After a few minutes of warmup I hit the main breaker, while Sarah repeated her prepared copy out loud for the seventeenth time. The genny bogged down as usual as the racks came to life, then recovered. Time to raise the mast.

I pushed the switch up. Nothing happened.

"Uh oh," I said.

Sarah stopped reading her copy. "Uh oh what?" she asked in a mistrustful tone.

"It didn't work."

"Huh," she said.

I just stood there and looked up at the dish for a minute. I was drawing a complete blank on what to do. Every time I have hit that switch before, the air compressor that extends the mast has kicked on and sent the dish on its normal ascent. This time there was no compressor noise, no sound of air leaking from the mast, no nothing.

I'm a fairly analytical person and can often troubleshoot things if I understand the system. I checked the breaker panel, but the compressor's breaker was on. I climbed up to look at the mast itself, thinking maybe it was bound by the cable, but it was free. I had no idea what to do next, so I made a huge mistake and called Wendy.

"I can't get the mast up on the truck," I said.

"You know you're live in half an hour," she responded. Well, no shit. That's kinda why I was calling.

"Uh, yeah, but I don't know what to do," I said.

"I'm not sure what you think I can do about it," she said. Actually she was right. I shouldn't have bothered asking her.

"Are there any engineers there?" I asked.

"No, they all go home after the six," she said. "Call Rick [the chief photographer]."

"Okay, yeah, I have his number."

"And what about my live shot? You think you'll be able to get it?"

"Uh, I don't know," I said. "I need somebody to tell me how to get this mast up."

"I thought you were trained on it," she said.

"Yes, I WAS trained on it. It isn't working right."

"Call Rick," she said. "Call me back and tell me when you get it fixed."

"Okay," I said, "But I'm short on time."

"Just get it fixed and call me back."

Sarah only heard my half of the conversation. "Is she going to scrap the live shot?" she asked.

"No," I said. "She wants me to fix it."

So I called Rick. He had me check the breakers. He had me look on top of the truck to make sure the cable wasn't in a bind. Wendy paged me while I was up there, but I had to ignore it. Rick gave up.

"Call Jake," he said. "I think he was workin' on it today."

Rick gave me Jake's number. By this time I only had twenty minutes to showtime. Wendy had paged me two more times. Sarah was asking me again whether we would get the shot.

"EEEYello!" Jake answered.

"Hey Jake, this is Max," I said. "I can't--"

"Max who?" he interrupted.

"Max from the station."

"Max, max... Oh, the new kid?"

"Yeah, that's me. Listen, I can't get the mast to go up on the live truck. Rick said you might be able to help."

"Sure I can," he said. "Take it on back to tha station. It don't work right now."

"Right," I said, "But I have a live shot in fifteen minutes."

"Not today you don't. I han't finished with it. I still got it disconnected."

My pager went off again. I was dreading talking to Wendy.

"So there's no way to get it working?" I asked.

"Not unless you want to do some rewiring," he said.

I was still on the phone with Jake when Sarah handed me her phone. Wendy had now called her to find out what was happening.

"Why haven't you answered my pages?" was the first thing she said. It was obvious that she was in a fit.

"I've been trying to get the truck fixed," I said.

"I told you to call me back. How am I supposed to plan for my fucking show if you don't tell me what the fuck is going on? Is it fixed?"

"No, Jake said he's still working on it and has the mast disconnected."

"What the fuck?" she said. "DAMMIT! Why didn't he tell me it was broken? Did you know about this?"

"Uh, no."

"Well. Shit. Let's see. So the live shot isn't going to happen at all?"

"No," I said. "Jake told me to bring the truck back."

"Uh. Is there any way to feed me a look-live?"

(A note to those who don't understand the technology here: If I can't tune the microwave signal to send back a live shot, I also can't send anything else back. A "look live" is a reporter standup shot to look like a live shot, but recorded to tape. If I couldn't get the live shot, I also couldn't send her video. She really should've known that.)

Obviously we didn't go live that night. It turned out that Jake had been working on the previously mentioned interlock system and had disconnected some things to try to make it work. He hadn't finished it. But he also hadn't bothered to tell anyone that the truck didn't work. CP Rick told me he had "words" with Jake about it, but that Jake just grinned and said, "Sorry."

Sarah was really quiet the rest of the night. I think she was angry. She didn't say much about it, except to ask me if I thought she would get in trouble for missing her shot.

"No," I said. "I don't see why you would get in trouble."

"You're right," she said. "It wasn't MY fault."

Nor mine. But somehow it wouldn't surprise me if I get blamed for it.

New Live Truck Policy

2006-02-01T08:59:00.000-08:00

Recall that my chief photographer, Rick, knows about this site and has read it in the past. I'm guessing he's still reading, because we received a memo yesterday:

To: All Photographer's

From: Rick --------

RE: Live Truck Policy

I would like to remind all photographer's that it is against company policy to move the live truck with the mast up. If you need to move the truck after the mast has been raised, lower the mast first. It is dangerous to move the truck with teh mast up. Even if you have done it in the past, I do not want to hear about anyone else doing it.

The engineer's will soon install a cutoff system to kill the engine if the mast is up. Jake is working on the design now. Until the safety system is installed, do not drive with the mast up.

Remember, be safe out there. Look up and live.

So there you go. I figure some of you folks who commented on my live truck training would be happy for the update. I'll let you know when it's installed.

Kat's Coming

2006-01-26T23:35:00.000-08:00

I just got off the phone with my friend Kat. If you've been reading from the beginning, you'll remember her as the person who badgered me into writing this blog in the first place.

Kat is still in school. She expects to graduate at the end of Spring semester, but squarely between now and then sits Spring Break. She could spend her last Spring Break at the beach. She could spend her last Spring Break looking for a job. Instead, she plans to spend it in my backwater town, visiting me. She wants to see this place and meet the people who have appeared in my writing.

I am humbled.

And yet I am also apprehensive. For one thing, the house is always a wreck. I'm the only one who cleans around here. I've given up on the dishes, generally using and washing the same set of dishware over and over while leaving Suzanne and Emily's dishes in the sink. I've all but given up on the bathroom as well, although I still feel compelled to scrub out the shower floor so my feet don't stick to it. Before Kat visits I'll probably have to spend several days of cleaning.

Then there's also the issue of where she'll sleep. We have a couch, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I'm pretty sure Suzanne has used it. I figure I'll put her in my bed and sleep in my sleeping bag in the living room floor.

Probably the biggest of my fears is that the town and people won't live up to the picture she has in her head. It may sound interesting when time is compressed and details are all run together in these little vignettes, but the reality is that this town is boring. She's planning on staying for the better part of a week, and I have no idea what we'll do or how she'll occupy herself while I'm off at work.

Even so, I'm looking forward to the visit. She is still my best friend. Plus she's freakin' HOT.

Live Truck Part 2

2006-01-22T22:55:00.000-08:00

So after Wendy's meltdown over the live shot I couldn't do because I hadn't been trained on the microwave van, CP Rick decided it was time to finally get my training out of the way. He had me scheduled for a couple of dayside shifts so that we could go over it.

For those who might not understand what a microwave van is, it's one of the vehicles a television station might use to get a live picture on the air from a remote location. It's usually a van or truck with a telescopic mast that extends 40 feet or more through the top of the vehicle. On top of the mast is a dish that sends a microwave signal carrying the live video back to the station. The van operator has to move that dish around to tune the signal. We usually plug a camera into a cable connected to the side of the van to get a live shot from a scene, and we also feed back video we have edited from editing machines inside the van.

Our van was actually bought second-hand. The previous owners had stripped everything out of it, including the mast, and our engineers turned it back into a live truck themselves using spare and second-hand parts. There are some interesting homemade assemblages in there I don't completely understand. I learned that much of it was put together by an engineer named Jake, who is a master of just rigging stuff up to work (at least temporarily). Jake loves cars and engines and maintains the station's generator, so they figured the live van should be his project.

It was raining the day I learned the van, but since there weren't any thunderstorms forecast for us Rick decided to go ahead with the training. The first thing that I noticed is that the van leaks. Rick says the water inside came from the hole through which the mast extends, where the engineers didn't properly seal it up. It's a problem, because water runs right down to the floor and gets the photographer's equipment wet.

The first thing Rick told me to remember is "Look Up and Live." He said I should say that to myself whenever I get out of the van to raise the mast. Most people never think about this, but if you're extending something up in the air, you have to make sure you aren't going to hit power lines. The first thing a microwave van operator is supposed to do before extending the mast is look above the van to make sure there are no power lines there.

"'Look Up and Live' should be your mantra," he said.

I won't bore you with all the technical details of my training. Basically the operator just sends up the mast, calls into the newsroom, turns on the transmitter and moves the dish around at the direction of someone back at the newsroom. Rick told me at some stations an engineer tunes the shot in back at the station by looking at a meter. At our station, however, the tuning is done by a producer or AP who simply observes the picture and audio on a monitor in the newsroom and tells us when it clears up. Rick said this isn't the best way to do it, but that our engineers are too busy with other stuff to tune live shots every day.

"Sometimes it ain't pretty," he said, "But it's good enough for the thirty seconds we actually use the shot."

Rick had me call into the newsroom and tune in a shot myself. It really wasn't that hard. Then we went over all the systems in the truck. That afternoon he gave me a written test on what I had learned, and I passed pretty easily.

But that was only day one.

The next afternoon Rick sent me out in the truck with Al (the photographer) and Mark (the reporter). Their story took us into a low-lying area on the edge of town, down a gravel road to a construction site for an industrial building from which somebody had stolen some concrete samples. When the construction workers had poured the concrete for the building's foundation, they had poured some samples into cylinders nearby to be crushed to test the strength of the concrete once it set. The cylinders are actually pretty cool and would make good supports for homemade shelving, and evidently someone else felt the same way. The problem is that without those cylinders, the construction company can't prove the building foundation is up to code, and they may have to scrap the work so far and start over.

Al was supposed to let me run the microwave van myself and stand by to help. I set up everything as I had been taught. I looked up (and lived), then sent the mast up. I called in to tune the shot, and...

"No good," said the AP on the other end. "I can see your bars, but it's barely there."

"What do I do?" I asked Al.

"Bring down the mast and move the truck," he said.

I had been given plenty of time to tune the shot before the afternoon show, IF there were no major problems. Unfortunately, bringing down the mast, moving the truck and sending the mast back up would take several minutes. But I had no choice, so I did it.

"Still no good," said the AP when I called back. "You must be in a bad area."

I turned to Al. "Still no good," I said.

"Let me try," he said, taking the phone. He went through the whole tuning procedure himself without success.

"Fuck this. I don't have time for this," he said. "I'll call you back in a minute."

He went around and jumped in the drivers seat of the van, leaving the door open. He grabbed the phone mounted in the front of the van and called back into the newsroom.

"Okay," he said. "Tell me if it gets good enough to use."

Suddenly a very loud alarm sounded and red lights in the dash began flashing as Al put the van in gear with the mast still up. I stood nearby and watched him slowly begin driving the van down the road as he hung out the drivers side door looking up at the mast, while holding onto the steering wheel with one hand and the phone with the other. I thought he was going to fall out any minute. He stopped a couple of times, backed up, moved forward, backed down the street past where he started, drove forward again and finally came to a stop.

"That's good?" he asked... "But is it usable? Okay, I'll leave it here." And the shot was tuned.

He was in a hurry then to get his video fed. I set up his camera for him while he finished his editing, and we got everything done just in time. I didn't get a chance to ask him about his unexpected tuning technique until we were on our way back to the station after everything was over.

"You did a good job with the truck," he said. "We were in a dead spot, so there wasn't much more you could have done to get the shot."

"What about driving with the mast up?" I asked. "Is it okay to do that?"

"YOU probably shouldn't do it," he said. "But I've been running this truck for a long time, and sometimes you have to bend the rules a little."

"I thought you were going to fall out a couple of times," I said.

"Yeah, I don't like hanging out like that, but you gotta look up. 'Look Up and Live,' you know."

Yes, Look Up and Live. It's my mantra. Later, CP Rick asked me how it went.

"Fine," I said, "But I couldn't get the shot tuned in. Al had to tune it by moving the truck with mast up. Is that really okay?"

His face turned serious. For a moment I thought I had gotten Al in trouble, but I felt like I really needed to know if that's what's expected of me.

"Listen," he said. "Al's been doing this a long time. He knows when it's okay to bend the rules a little. But I don't want to ever hear about you trying to do that, okay?"

"Okay," I said.

"The seals on that mast are already screwed up. The last thing I need is people bouncing down the road with the mast up to wreck 'em completely. Plus, it's dangerous to do it for your live shots at night, because you can't always see the power lines."

And thus, I am now officially trained and "certified" on our live truck. I can run Wendy's live shots now, so long as it doesn't require moving the truck with mast up.

P. S. Yes, before I get crazy hate mail over this, I know there's something wrong with this picture.

Live Truck Part 1

2006-01-19T18:00:00.000-08:00

I finally got my live truck training. Is that a good thing? I'm not sure.

Several weeks back I was pulled from nightside to dayside so that I could get familiar with the microwave van, but unfortunately the old beast was in the shop with transmission problems. Even so, word of the mixup never reached Wendy, so she was under the impression that I had been trained on the truck. That's why, during the first week of January, she put a live shot in her show during one of my night shifts. Since I was the only photog on duty, I was the only one to do the shot.

We're down a reporter right now, so the reporters' schedules keep getting rearranged so that I don't seem to work with the same person from week to week. That particular week Mark was reporting nightside. Mark's a strange dude. He's blond, with very short hair he has cut weekly. He has bright blue eyes and a square jaw, but he looks... well, stupid. He may be an intelligent fellow (I really don't know yet), but he has this way of squinting and holding his mouth open, jaw forward, that makes him look like a dumb ol' boy. He carries a GIANT bag with him every day with a change of clothes, makeup and who knows what else inside. He likes to wear jeans and polos while covering the story, then change into his suit just for his standups or live shots. He also loves to stage video, but that's a story for another time.

Since Mark and I have hardly worked together, he had no idea I hadn't been trained on the live truck and didn't think anything about Wendy's instructions to plan for a live shot in the late show. We shot our story (a city government package) without incident. We went back to the station to put the story together. I thought I had plenty of time to edit, but about 45 minutes before the newscast one of the associate producers came back to ask me where our live shot would be.

"We're not live," I said.

"You're in the rundown as live," she said.

"Let me talk to Wendy," I said.

Wendy was in a mild frenzy, but that's not unusual. Evidently she was behind and scrambling, and the last thing she wanted was to talk to me.

"Hey Wendy, you have Mark live," I said.

"Yep." She continued typing without looking up at me.

"Who's running the truck for that?" I asked.

She stopped what she was doing and stared at me.

"I haven't been trained on the truck," I said.

"Yes you have," she responded. Um, I think I would know if I had been trained on the truck.

"Noooo," I said. "I was scheduled to learn the truck, but it was in the shop that day."

"So you haven't been trained on the truck?"

"No."

"Then... Who's gonna do my live shot?"

"That's what I'm asking you," I said.

"Well, I don't have anybody," she said. "You have to do it."

"Uh... I'm sorry, but I can't do it. I don't know how to run it."

"Well... Shit!" she said. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

Yes, I thought. Shit is correct.

"You've seen somebody else run the truck, right?" she asked.

"Well, yeah, but--"

"Then you have a general idea how it works. Do you think you could figure it out?"

"Uh, no, I don't think so. Besides, I don't think I'm supposed to take it."

"Shit. SHIT! FUCK!"

"Can't you just put Mark in the studio?" I asked.

"No," she responded, "I need a live element in my show. If I put him on the set, I might as well just have the anchor read the intro."

"Well, I need to get back to editing," I said.

"Plan on being live anyway," she called after me. "I'll see if I can get somebody else to run the truck for you."

I wish I had been there for the next conversation. I heard it second hand from Al, one of the other photographers. He said she called him at home at thirty minutes before the newscast and asked him to come get the truck. He said she tried to make it sound like spot news going on over at City Hall, so he started to run out. But then he remembered that he was talking to Wendy and asked more questions. When he realized what she was doing, he went ahead and came in to get the overtime. But he didn't rush, and he didn't get the station to pick up the truck until the newscast was about to start. He wouldn't have had time to get the shot up anyway. At that point Wendy told him not to bother and put Mark in the studio, where the lights accentuated his squint to make him look another 10% less intelligent.

The next afternoon, CP Rick walked up to me and said, "I just had an interesting conversation with Wendy."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, she said that you refused to take the truck out last night to do a live shot for her--"

"Oh, now wait a minute," I interrupted. "How can I do a live shot for her when I haven't been trained on the truck."

Rick grinned. "No, don't worry about it. You did the right thing. You actually would have been in trouble if you'd tried to run the truck without the training. But I do need to get you caught up with that."

Thus was the impetus for my live truck training, which I'll describe in part 2...

I Have Returned!

2006-01-17T00:32:00.000-08:00

I have FINALLY gotten my Internet situation straightened out. It's a long and complicated story, so I won't bore you with the details here. Let's just say that since my roommate Suzanne can't manage the bills, I'm the only one in the house with Internet access now.

I do have some old stuff to catch up on, so I'll start back at the holidays.

December 18: The Company Christmas Party

"Are you guys going to the party?" the weekend producer asked us Sunday evening as we were leaving for the night. My reporter and I had had a full day, but we actually got out in time to make it there.

"I can't go," I said. "I didn't know if we would be done in time, so I didn't return the RSVP."

"You can still go," my reporter said. "They always plan for a few extra."

I should say that I'm not really good at parties. Although my writing might give a different impression, I'm not really good with conversation, especially with people I don't really know; and I really don't know that many of the people at the station well enough to hold a decent conversation. Besides that, I have rapidly discovered that people in the news business aren't the slightest bit interested in the topics of conversation in which my weird group of college friends engaged.

On the other hand, there was going to be free food. I was running late Sunday morning and didn't pack my lunch, so I hadn't eaten all day. My stomach started growling at the thought.

My stomach won.

I ran home to put on a tie and jacket. I had heard various versions of the dress code for this party, from business attire to regular street clothes. I figured I couldn't really go too far wrong with a casual business look, something like a cross between a contractor and a college professor.

The party started at 7:30, but it was after 8:30 when I finally got there. Luckily there was still food, and it was good. I had a good dinner for the first time in a while.

There was also a cash bar. That's a cruel thing to do to television people. Let's throw a party for people who can't afford their own alcohol and then make them pay for their drinks.

Despite the fact that it was Sunday night and many of them had to be at work Monday morning, the folks who could afford the booze were enjoying it immensely. A couple of the sales guys were already well on their way to smashdom. By the end of the evening, the human resources lady was actually hanging from the general manager's neck, red faced and barely able to stand.

I didn't have to be at work until 2:30 Monday. But I still couldn't afford to spend money on the cash bar. Cruel.

I had missed some of the earlier festivities, including the general manager's speech to his assembled underlings. Still, he made his way around the room, mingling with the employees. When he got to me, he called me Mike and asked how I was settling into my new job.

"Just fine, sir," I said.

"That's great, Mike, great." Before I could decide whether to correct him, he had moved on to other underlings.

Several of the photogs ended up at a table together, but the conversation rarely drifted away from sports. I'm just not a sports guy, so I couldn't really participate. After some fifteen minutes or so of listening to football talk, I got up to "get another drink" and didn't return.

I tried to latch onto a conversation here or there with little luck. A reporter might introduce me to someone who works upstairs somewhere. There would be a polite interrogation concerning how I liked the city and the station. Then the conversation would turn to matters of which I had either no knowledge or no interest, and I would find myself outside some imaginary boundary even though I was standing right in their midst.

Suzanne showed up for a while. She had to work Sunday night, but the studio crew came over for a bit between shows. I tried to talk with her, but she was more interested in flirting with Brian, that guy I saw nailing her in her room when she left the door open.

I finally ended up where I usually find myself at parties, sitting off to the side somewhere just watching. That's when Wendy, the producer who screwed me over with the ND, approached.

"Havin' fun?" she asked. I doubt they pay Wendy much more than they pay me, but she wasn't letting that stop her from enjoying the bar. She wasn't plastered, but her face was a little red.

"Sure," I said. I was a little uncomfortable talking to her, considering that I hated her.

"Oh, come on," she said. "You need to have more fun."

"I'm okay like this," I said.

"You don't have a drink," she said. "You need a drink."

"Naah, I'm gonna pass tonight."

"Oh, good," she said. "You can be my ride home."

Great. Just fucking great. The last thing I wanted to do was spend time with Wendy.

"Uh, well, the heater in my truck doesn't work," I said. "It gets pretty cold."

"That's okay," she said.

"Uh, okay," I said. I'm such a pussy.

Wendy wasn't ready to leave just yet. But she also wasn't interested in the party, either. Instead, she sat there and talked with me. Oh, the joy.

"I don't really like parties," she said. "I never can find anything in common with people to talk about."

Wow. That sounds familiar. "Uh, yeah, same here."

So Wendy started asking me questions about myself, and college. She told me about her background. This is her first job out of school also, but she's been here a year and just signed another year's contract with the station. I was surprised to hear that a producer at this market level was under contract, so we talked about that for a while.

Before I knew it, I realized I was getting along pretty well with Wendy. Maybe it's just because she was tipsy.

Finally she decided she was ready to go home, so we left. As I walked out the door, one of the other photogs stepped up close to me and said, "Nice."

Ah, crap. Now what kind of rumors could I expect Monday?

Monday

Yes, I did end up fielding some of the rumors, primarily from Lizzie. I worked with her the next day.

"Sooooo," she said, once we were in the van on our way to our story. "I heard that YOU took WENDY home last night."

"I just gave her a ride," I said.

"Oh, I'll bet you did."

"Shut up."

"Ha! You're turning red!"

"Shut up."

"That's so adorable!"

I managed to convince her that nothing happened and that I had not the slightest interest in Wendy, but it didn't stop her from ribbing me the rest of the week.

The problem was that, as lonely as I have been here, for a brief moment I found myself actually considering Wendy as a possibility. Shudder. Lucky for me she showed her true colors again before the week was out.

December 22: The Nat Pack

I have discovered that not everyone reading this works in news, so a little terminology lesson is in order.

When you watch the news, you'll see and hear several reporters and anchors delivering the stories throughout the newscast. If you listen closely, you'll notice that the stories themselves are often pre-recorded segments with the reporter's narration (called the voice track), video and soundbites from interviews all edited together. Usually these segments are between one and two minutes long and are called packages, because everything is "packaged" up in a neat, cohesive whole. A reporter may introduce her package herself, live, or an anchor may introduce it.

The video that you see in these packages usually has audio with it from the scene. That audio is called natural sound, because it is the sound that occurs naturally when the video is recorded (as opposed to sound added later in the editing room). For example, if you see video of kids on a playground and hear them also, what you hear is natural sound. Natural sound usually gets shortened to nat sound when we talk about it.

I mentioned that packages usually have a reporter's narration in them. Sometimes, however, we can make what is known as a nat sound package, usually shortened to nat pack in conversation. A nat pack is a package without a reporter's voice, where the interviews tell the story themselves. One of the major networks used to do an "In Their Own Words" segment occasionally, where the big newsmakers of the week would tell their own story in one of these nat packs.

Back in college I took a documentary class that was offered through the film program, in which we had to make short documentaries. The first assignment was to make a three minute documentary without any narration. The major storytelling requirement was that the documentary had to have a beginning, middle and end, just like any other story; but we had to use the interviews to construct it. It was basically the same as a nat pack.

When I first started here, CP Rick showed me where he kept a stash of tapes of the winning stories from news photography contests sponsored by the National Press Photographers Assocation. On those tapes I saw a number of nat packs. "Wow," I thought, "These are just like shorter versions of that documentary I had to do." Ever since watching the tapes, I've been itching to do a nat pack myself for air.

The week of Christmas I found my chance. During one of my multiple holiday shopping stories during the week before Christmas, I noticed that the gift wrapping service at the mall was staffed by some entertaining characters. What's more, while the service itself was free, they were actually doing it to raise money for a childrens program and were asking for donations. Some of the kids were helping out, so it looked like I had a good story.

The problem was that I couldn't do that story by myself AND get my regular reporter package done during a regular workday. I decided instead to come in on Thursday before Christmas, which was my regular off day. I wasn't sure whether I would get paid for the day or not. I just really wanted to see how I would do with my first nat pack.

So I went out to the mall and stopped by the office. They were customarily rude, but I had already talked with the giftwrappers about the story and arranged the story with them, so the mall cops left me alone.

Personally, I think the material was very good. The guy in charge was a very vocal effeminate man wearing a red Santa hat. He kept running around cooing suggestions at people. I had a hard time keeping up with him, but he made for great sound. He was also a great interview, and I had no trouble using his soundbites to frame the story with a beginning, middle and end. Then, to fill in the spaces, I had interviews with one of the ladies doing the wrapping and one of the kids, plus a whole lot of ripping, taping, crunching and crinkling of wrapping paper.

It took me almost three hours to edit it. The end result told the story but had lots of energy and what I thought were pretty good visuals and sound. Santa Hat's interview really made the piece. I was proud of it.

So I went to Wendy, who was producing the late show, told her what I had and asked if she would be interested in running it.

"Oh, I don't know, " she said. "How long is it?"

"A minute fifteen," I said.

"What is it, like rollout video?" Our newscast isn't always full, so occasionally the producer will eat up time at the end of the show by rolling credits while the anchor just sits there and makes small talk with the studio crew. If there's extra video from the newscast, sometimes we'll run credits over video instead. That's what she meant by "rollout video."

"No, it isn't rollout video," I said. "It's a nat pack. A package."

"A package? Who did the track?"

"Nobody," I said. "It's a nat pack. You know, the interviews tell the story. I can show it to you--"

"Oh, that's okay. I'll use it as a kicker." (For those who don't know, the kicker is the last element of the show, usually a light or funny story.)

Cool! My first nat pack on the air! I could hardly wait.

It was pretty late by then, so I stuck around and hung out in the control room during the newscast to see it on the big monitor and hear it on the big speakers. Thirty five minutes never seemed like such a long time. Finally we came back from the last commercial break.

Anchor: "Finally tonight, we leave you with the sights and sounds of giftwrapping."

Director (in the control room): "And... music full."

What? No! No music! They're trying to use it as a rollout!

Sure enough, they blasted the music over the top of the opening sequence of giftwrapping sounds. I had a good five seconds off the top of paper rustling and Santa Hat encouraging the wrappers. Then his interview started.

"Hey, what? There's soundbites in this!" said the audio board operator. He dropped the music a little bit so it could be heard.

"What is this, a package?" the director asked.

"Yes, it's a package!" I said from behind him.

"No, this is rollout!" said Wendy.

"Kill the audio and bring music back full," said the director. Santa Hat fell silent in mid sentence, without explaining anything about what the hell they were doing there. It just left a talking head on screen saying something the audience at home couldn't hear.

NO! I thought, but the damage was really done by then.

"We're out in ten," said the director, after the package had only run for thirty seconds. Then he counted them down to the end of the show. All my hard work faded to black, not even halfway through.

The director, who probably had no idea that I was the one who shot it, took his headset off and said, "What the FUCK was that?"

I was shellshocked and couldn't even think of what to say. I was infuriated with Wendy and wanted to scream at her. Instead I just left the room, went out to the Hate Van and drove home. She didn't say anything at all as I left.

I was depressed through the weekend, especially having to work Christmas day and do another story about feeding the homeless that was almost identical to the one from Thanksgiving. We even saw the creepy plastic smile woman there again.

Monday morning brought a bit of redemption. The morning show producer came walking through the newsroom after the show. I don't think I had ever talked to him before, but he stopped where I was sitting.

"Hey, you're Max, right?" he asked me.

"Yeah," I said.

"Hey, I've been meaning to compliment you on your nat pack the other day."

"Oh, thanks," I said, "But it wasn't supposed to look like that. It was supposed to run as a package."

"Yeah, I know," he said. "That's how we ran it."

"Huh?"

"Friday morning. We ran it in the morning show Friday morning."

"Really? I didn't know that," I said. "It looked okay?"

"It looked great," he said. "Why? Was something wrong with it?"

"Uh, no. It's just that Thursday night they ran it as rollout video."

"Well THAT's stupid. Didn't you tell Wendy it was a package?"

"Yeah," I said, "But she didn't understand it."

He laughed. "That kinda figures. Well, we really enjoyed it, and I always have room for something like that in my show. Next time just bring it to me. I especially like fresh material nobody else has run."

I was happy to hear that. At the same time, I was still irritated with Wendy. She's been here a year and doesn't know what a nat pack is? If it were a matter of her not having time in her show, I would have understood. But she just made a train wreck out of it. There went any progress we made at the Christmas party toward any kind of mutual respect.

At least my hard work did actually air. Too bad I didn't see it.

Not Dead Yet!

2006-01-02T22:35:00.000-08:00

Hi folks.

Yes, I know you want to read more. And I have more to tell you, about the company Christmas party, my first nat pack, Christmas, New Years, etc.

But unfortunately Suzanne hasn't been paying the bill for our Internet access (even though Emily and I been paying HER for it). I'm actually writing this from the station right now. It's no problem to use the station's computer for a short message like this, but some of my posts take some time to write. I really don't want to/can't/won't sit at the station for an extra hour to compose these tales of intrigue and horror.

Fortunately, my parents gave me the best gift of all for Christmas:

Money.

What, you were expecting something more meaningful?

Anyway, I was making the $6.25/hr thing work pretty well, but my parents felt sorry for me and gave me some cash. The first thing I intend to do with it is fix this Internet situation. Then the words shall flow.

And Suzanne can kiss my ass if she thinks I'm gonna share my connection. Especially after stealing my hot dogs. I had two left to hold me one more day until payday, and bitch ate 'em!

Happy New Year everybody!

Folgers' Crystals

2005-12-19T19:42:00.000-08:00

Many have wondered where I've been these last several days. Well, with the holiday season upon us, it seems as though someone is off just about every day. Since most of our news seems to happen during the day, they have been pulling me off nights to cover the daysiders' shifts. But then, since Wendy wants material for her late show also, I end up working well into the nightside as well.

My apologies to my readers. With several twelve hour days (and one sixteen hour day) over the last week, I haven't had much time to blog. However, I did want to log in and relate this one interesting story.

Last Monday one of our photogs, a guy named Al, called in sick. I got a call from the desk asking me to come in and cover for him. I was happy to oblige, but only after I had taken a shower, which my news director seemed to think would take too long. I think I've been accommodating, so I didn't think showering was too much to ask.

Anyway, Sunday night there had been a big (at least for our area) prostitution bust. We're a small town, yet there's still an area where a guy with $40 can pick up a girl on the street and get it on in his car. Apparently the guys would pick up the girls and simply drive around the corner to a street with a bunch of abandoned houses, then circle back around to let the girls out when they were done.

In the first half of their operation, the cops picked up several women who usually worked that stretch of street. Then they secretly replaced them with imitation prostitutes and recorded what happened with hidden cameras. It was like those old instant coffee commercials, but with whores.

None of the news outlets in the market knew about the sweep until the cops announced the results that Monday morning. They had arrested six prostitutes and fifteen Johns. Except that one of the Johns wasn't a John, but an Al. The same Al who called in sick Monday morning after spending most of the night in booking, wishing he hadn't chosen Folgers' Crystals. Our crime reporter didn't even look at the names the cops gave us, and nobody here would have noticed if the newspaper hadn't printed them.

Interestingly enough, nothing has been said. Al was in his own car on his own time and wasn't identified with the station in any way, so the managers are pretty much acting like it's none of their business.

Maybe they're just in the holiday spirit.

Heat

2005-12-09T17:48:00.000-08:00

If you've been reading since the beginning, you might remember that my personal truck stranded me shortly after I started working here by pouring copious amounts of coolant on the ground and threatening to overheat. The coolant seemed to be coming from the back of the engine. I don't claim to be any kind of mechanic whatsoever, but the first place that came to mind as a source for the leak was one of the gaskets on top of the engine. My understanding is that a blown gasket leaking green fluid from the top of the engine is generally a really bad $ign.

Lucky for me, after climbing over, under and through the engine compartment, I traced the source of the leak to the heater core. Apparently this heater core device has nothing to do with the engine itself, but instead takes hot liquid that has passed through the engine and uses it to blow hot air inside my truck. I learned this from the wonderfully illustrated manual I bought at AutoZone.

I called my friend Littlefield from back in school to get his advice. It occurs to me that I don't even know Littlefield's first name. We all just called him Littlefield. He's a wizard under the hood, so I called him up, told him what I saw and asked him how much he thought it would cost to fix it.

"Just bypass it," he said. "Coupl'a bucks."

"Bypass it?" I asked. "Don't I need it?"

"Not really." Littlefield then proceeded to explain to me how to bypass it. It was really quite easy. One hose delivers hot liquid into the heater from the engine. Another hose returns the liquid to the engine after the heater core is done with it. To bypass the heater, you just pull the hoses off and connect them together.

Tools: Flat head screwdriver.

Time: Five minutes.

Cost: $2.78 for the hose connector.

That was a great relief, because at $6.25 per hour, $225 per month for rent, an $87 per month charge for my health insurance, $78 per month for my truck insurance, etc., I have NO MONEY to replace a heater core or any other expensive automobile part. I'm barely making ends meet as it is. I didn't even try to find out how much that thing would cost, because I know it just isn't going to happen.

Now for the catch. There had to be a catch.

Sure the truck doesn't need the heater core. It works just fine without it. The problem is that without hot water running to the heater, there's no heat in the truck. And it's cold as hell here right now. I heard our Weather Nerd (his words, not mine) say we're running about 15 degrees below average right now. Luckily I have the Hate Van to drive to and from work, but we're not allowed to drive station vehicles off the clock. If I want to go anywhere--to the store, to a bookstore, to simply explore the area, etc.--I have to take my truck and freeze my balls off. Once frozen off, they don't reattach easily.

Further, when I've been driving the truck for a little while, my own body heat brings the temperature inside up slightly. It's not enough to make it any more comfortable, but it IS enough, with the moisture from my breath, to fog up my windshield. I have to run the defroster to be able to see where I'm going. But the defroster only blows freezing air, making the truck cabin feel that much colder.

I drive as long as I can with the defroster off, until I can only make out shapes shifting around behind the opaque screen of glass in front of me. Then I turn the defroster on full blast until the glass is clear, only to repeat the cycle.

It's not fun being poor.

Reprimanded!

2005-12-06T20:02:00.000-08:00

I recently related an event that happened last Thursday in which I was called out on my day off to shoot a "Pedex," what our station calls a pedestrian accident. You may recall that our on-call system has all the photographers on-call all the time, except on our off days. When we're off, they're supposed to leave us alone. Since I was off Thursday, I theoretically shouldn't have been called, so I reminded the producer of that policy. She told me she needed me to shoot it anyway, and I did.

This morning I was back on dayside again for live truck training. Again it didn't happen, because the van is still in the shop. After the morning meeting, my news director called me into his office.

"I'm a little concerned about what I'm being told about you shooting spot news," he said.

"What's the problem?"

"Wendy said you refused to shoot the Pedex Thursday night."

"Uh, no," I said. "I did shoot it."

"But she said you gave her attitude about coming in," he said.

"No, I didn't give her any attitude, I--"

"Did you tell her you didn't have to shoot it because it was your off day?" he interrupted.

"No, I didn't put it like that. I just reminded her it was my off day. I didn't refuse to shoot anything. I didn't say I didn't have to--"

"Look," he said. "If we call you out to shoot something, we expect you to shoot it."

"I DID shoot it," I said.

"What I mean is that we expect you to shoot it without giving us any attitude about it. I don't care if it turns out to be nothing, you go when you're called."

"I didn't give her any--"

"I don't think you're listening to me," he said. So I was quiet. He continued, slowly and deliberately, as if talking to a child or an idiot: "You're new here. It might take some time for you to get used to the way we do things. I expect that. I just want to make sure you're not getting off on the wrong foot. This is a 24 hour business. Sometimes we're going to ask you to make sacrifices. We won't ask that often; but when we call you out, we expect you to jump, even if it's your day off. Do you understand?"

"Yes, but the way Rick explained things to me was that the station didn't call people out on their days off," I said, making an effort to stay calm. "I figured Wendy forgot it was my day off, so all I did was remind her."

"It's not your place to tell her who to call," he said. "That's my job. If Wendy calls you out, you go. If you have a problem with being called out, you tell me, and I'll deal with Wendy. But I'm telling you right now that sometimes we're going to need you to go above and beyond. If you have a problem with that, we need to get it out in the open right now so this doesn't become an issue later on."

"No," I said. "There's no problem."

"Okay. Just so we're clear. I expect good things from you, and I just didn't want you to get a bad reputation around here this early in the game."

A bad reputation? Refusing to go on a call? Giving attitude? What the hell?

I have to say that I was REALLY pissed off. But what am I going to do? I have no power in this situation, so I just have to bend over and take it.

I am, however, glad to have learned what an evil skank fuckwhore piece-of-shit bitch this Wendy is before she had a chance to REALLY fuck me over. Why the hell would she run off and tattle on me for something like that? What did I do to her to deserve this?

I try not to hold grudges, but I don't always succeed. I know now to be careful. I wonder if she does.

Live Truck Training

2005-12-05T19:17:00.000-08:00

I was back on dayside today for live truck training. Since I'm the only nightside photographer three days per week, the news director wanted me up to speed on setting up remotes so that we can go live in the late shows. I was instructed to report to the parking lot after the morning meeting to get acquainted with our microwave van.

There was only one problem. The van broke down Friday night and was still in the shop today. There's no word on when it will be back.

Oh, well.

Gimme a Break Already!

2005-12-01T23:10:00.000-08:00

As I have explained about our on-call system, there isn't one. All the photogs are "on call" all the time. We have our addresses marked on a map in the newsroom, and when something happens the closest photographer is supposed to be called.

What I failed to mention earlier is that we're not supposed to be called on our days off unless its a true emergency. That means that since I'm the only photog on weekends, I will usually be the only one called out on weekends. It also means that on Thursday and Friday, my days off, I'm not supposed to be called out, especially since the rest of the photog staff work those days.

That didn't stop our producer, Wendy, from paging me tonight for a "Pedex" with a child involved. "Pedex" is what our newsroom calls an accident in which a pedestrian is struck by a car. I don't know where they got that name, because the cops don't call it that.

When I called in, I told Wendy that it was my day off after seventeen days straight. She didn't care. She asked me to go do it anyway.

"You're closest, and I don't have anybody else available," she said. I can't help but wonder if she actually called anyone else. But I got my gear together and went.

When I got there, there was nothing. Not a thing. No cops. No kid in the road. Nobody around. I double checked the location. I was in the right spot.

"Drive around that area and see if you see anything," Wendy instructed me when I called in. So I drove around. I still didn't find anything.

A few streets over there was a convenience store, so I stopped there and asked inside if the clerk had heard anything. In fact, she had. One of her customers had told her a teenager walked out in the road and got clipped by a car, but that he was okay and went home. She said that conversation had happened more than an hour earlier.

"Spray it and come back," Wendy said, when I told her what I had discovered. "I'll get the info from dispatch." So I "sprayed it," meaning that I quickly shot video of the scene where Wendy believed the accident had taken place, and went back to the station to edit.

"Oh, don't bother with that," she said when I came into the newsroom. "It turned out to be nothing. Some teenager got bumped by a car, but he didn't even go to the hospital."

Now I'm back home, and I can't help but feel a little irritated. She called me out on my day off, after I worked seventeen straight days through the holiday, for something that was at least an hour old when I was contacted and turned out to be nothing. On the other hand, I feel guilty for being irritated, because I know this job requires personal sacrifice. Still, I'm wondering if this job is going to stay like this. I'm enjoying it, but sometimes I really start to think maybe I should have listened to the naysayers when I first took this job.

I Have Survived

2005-12-01T14:50:00.000-08:00

I FINALLY have reached a day off after seventeen straight days on the job. I am weary.

And how do I spend this time?

I slept until 1pm. Now I'm doing laundry. I'd like to go do something, but I have no money. My roommates are both working tonight, so I have the house to myself for the most part.

Television and cheese curls are my companions for the evening. I'm a happening dude. Cutting edge, you know.

I go back Saturday, then they have me on day shifts Monday and Tuesday for live truck training. I'm looking forward to learning the truck

I would post more, but my brain is now produce. Melon pulp, I think.

Shooting

2005-11-28T13:12:00.000-08:00

As I've said before, I work dayside on weekends, so despite the heavy workload I was home by 7:00 last night. Lucky for me, my pager sounded at 7:15.

"You're the closest," the producer said when I called in. I should explain our callout system. There is no specific person "on call" at any one time. We're all considered "on call" all the time. Spot news assignments are made based upon location. If you're the closest person to the damage, you get the call.

"There's a shooting," she said. "I'm sending the address to your pager."

I'm beginning to wonder if there's something wrong with my gut. So far I have run on spot news five times, and every time I get a burning sensation deep down in my abdomen. I want to run right out the door, but I'm horrified by the idea of being stuck out somewhere without a toilet around if I don't take care of it before leaving. So I make a pit stop first, then feel guilty about not responding with all possible speed. One day I'm afraid I will have missed something major because I was on the crapper; that fear makes the need all the more urgent.

Anyway, that taken care of, I headed out the door to the scene of the crime. It wasn't in a great neighborhood, so I was simultaneously relieved and irritated that photogs from the other two stations had beaten me there. One of them was kind of young, like me. The other was an older guy who has been in the market for a while. I had been a little surprised that my station hadn't sent a reporter with me, and I was even more surprised that the other guys didn't have reporters with them either.

"Sunday night," the older guy said. "They won't drag out reporters for this. This is a VO."

I was excited by the story, my first real crime coverage. The other guys didn't seem that interested. In retrospect, I guess it wasn't really a great news story. Some guys got into an argument over drugs, and one shot the other.

Still, I was all over the place, shooting every angle of the house that I could get from behind the police tape. I shot cops walking around. I shot cop cars. I shot the ambulance. I shot people standing around. I shot everything while the other guys just hung around by the tape. After a while I was running out of things to shoot, so I called in to find out what more the producer wanted.

"Wait there 'til they bring out the body," she said. "Then come on back."

I joined the guys back at the tape just about the time the coroner's people were bringing out the corpse. I was all set to shoot it when the older guy said, "What are you doing? You don't want to shoot that."

I looked over, and both the other guys had turned their cameras away from the house and stepped away from them. "I always turn it away to let the cops know we're not shooting that shit," the older photog said. "Just shows some respect. There's enough to shoot without the body."

I hadn't thought about that. Something inside told me the producer would be pissed if I didn't get the body coming out. Something else told me this photog was right. I went with my gut (which had started to burn again) and turned my camera away too.

Curiously enough, it didn't become an issue. The producer was really busy, so she barely lent me her ear long enough to give her all the info for the story. I watched the story from home, and she didn't even use most of what I told her.

Still, I wonder if I should have shot it anyway.

Black Friday, Black Asphalt

2005-11-25T20:02:00.000-08:00

Day 12 of 17 found me working dayside again and standing out in the parking lot of my local mall. It's Black Friday, so we had to do a story on shopping. The problem was that another crew was already doing shopping. Lizzie was counting on doing the shopping story herself, and her only other idea was to do a local story on the X-Box 360 overheating. The producers didn't like that, so Lizzie quickly found herself at their mercy for an alternative.

And what did one of them come up with for us?

Parking.

Our assignment was to stand out in the parking lot and get people to tell us what a tough time they had finding a place to park. "Find somebody who had to fight for a space, or maybe somebody who got a space snatched out from under them," the producer instructed. I may be new at this, but that really didn't seem like a great story to me.

It got worse. Our mall has a HUGE parking lot, with a multi-level deck off one end, built by the developer in anticipation of the hordes of people who would stay home to shop instead of traveling to a larger city not too far away. He anticipated incorrectly. This place was never able to attract the right stores, so people still drive out of town for big shopping trips. Back here, they never fill that lot. There are actually weeds growing up through the asphalt in the outer fringes. There were even spaces still left in the deck.

Thus, nobody had any trouble finding parking, and our story didn't exist. Lizzie called in to let the producer know what we had. I only heard Lizzie's half of the conversation.

"No, we don't have that... Because the parking lot's not full... No, it's not full... No, they're just driving to the empty parts... No, that's not happening... We did talk--... We did--... We DID talk to people... No, they aren't... Okay, but that's not going to happen... Because people aren't FIGHTING over spaces!... Okay, we'll do it... I said we'll DO it!"

"That didn't sound good," I said.

"Get this," she said. "She wants us to set up the camera over by the entrance and wait to get video of people fighting over spaces."

"But they AREN'T," I said.

"I told her that, but she doesn't believe me. She's convinced nobody went out of town to shop because of the gas prices. She thinks everybody HAS to be here."

"But the gas prices went back down," I said. They have. A few weeks ago we were running almost $3 a gallon; now we're at $2.19.

"Try telling HER that! She's got this picture in her head of people running down little old ladies to get spaces. She said she already has the parking story in her rundown, so we have to do it no matter what. "

So we asked a bunch of bewildered shoppers whether they had trouble finding a parking space. They looked at us like we were idiots. I can understand why. Then we turned in a boring two minute story about people having no problem whatsoever finding parking. Lizzie strung together eight different people saying they had no problems. I wallpapered it with people driving through the parking lot and parking in an orderly manner.

It was one of those stories I imagine the folks at home watching and saying, "What the hell was THAT all about?" I've seen these stories myself on television and just thought the reporters were stupid. I didn't realize how this kind of thing happens.

I feel bad about that now. So to all those reporters I've called morons through the television screen over the years, please accept my heartfelt apology.

Yellow Gravy

2005-11-24T19:19:00.000-08:00

Here I am, in a small town hundreds of miles from home on a miserable Thanksgiving night. I'm exhausted, my parents are pissed off, my roommate's a slut and my truck is still dead so that I can't run away and join the circus.

I should start today's story with last night, when a good ol' boy frying a turkey caught the back of his house on fire. I should mention this was late last night. Why anyone would be frying a turkey at 11:45 at night is a mystery to me.

I was home after a long day at work when I got the call. "You're the closest, so I need you to check it out." Just like previous spot news situations, the excitement gave me an urgent need to use the toilet. I wonder if that ever stops happening...

I got video of flames. I got video of the guy being treated. I got the info. I got into the Hate Van and drove out to the station to edit. I finally got home a little after two this morning and couldn't go to sleep.

Unfortunately, the holiday schedule had me working dayside today, so I had to be back at 9:30 to work with a very perky reporter named Lizzie for the first time. We had a skeleton crew, but the morning meeting still took almost an hour and a half. What do they talk about in there for so long? Around 11:00 we headed out on our assignment: Thanksgiving dinner for the poor and homeless.

We were hardly underway before Liz started asking me questions about myself.

"I heard you room with Suzie," she said.

"Yeah, her and Emily."

"I don't know Emily," she said. "But what do you think of Suzie?"

"She's okay."

"Just okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, it's fine. Why?"

"I'm just wondering what you think of her."

"In what way?" I asked.

"You think she's attractive?"

"I guess so, but I'm not really attracted to her myself." Suzanne isn't unattractive, but I explained earlier about the dishes.

"Oh," Lizzie said.

"Why did you ask?"

"She'll sleep with you if you ask her," she blurted.

"Huh?"

"Suzie's the station bicycle," she said. I understood the metaphor and was prepared to ignore it, but Liz insisted on finishing it. "Everybody gets a ride."

"That's a little mean," I said.

"Oh, are you guys friends?"

"No, but... She IS my roommate."

"Oh, it sounded like you didn't really like her that much," she said. "But you could still sleep with her." She was grinning ear to ear.

"No, don't think so," I said.

From there the conversation consisted of a catalog of all the people at the station who have pedaled my roommate in the year and a half she's worked there. It's an impressive list. Apparently she has nailed multiple reporters, photographers, studio guys, a married producer and the sports anchor, among others. That last one supposedly denies it even though she told people about it herself.

"Well, if you get lonely," Lizzie said, "Just remember she's a possibility."

Fortunately or unfortunately at that point in the conversation we had arrived at our destination. I know I sound callous, but this story was unpleasant. It was a church feeding of poor and homeless people and families. The church made them sit through a service before they could eat. Then they fed them a very foul imitation of a turkey dinner, with mashed potatoes, greens and this runny (yes, runny) dressing that looked like vomit. They covered everything in gravy, but the gravy was actually yellow and looked gelatinous. How did they make yellow gravy?

We were greeted by a woman with the church whose hair and smile were equally stiff, like plastic. She smiled constantly and condescendingly, talking through her smile in a really creepy way.

Mrs. Plastic told us we could shoot anything there, but we had problems. I saw some kids playing around at the table, throwing things at each other, and moved in for a shot. Suddenly their mother, a redneck woman who had to weigh 400 pounds, started screaming, "I din't give you per mishin! I din't give you per mishin! Don' chu film my kids!"

Plastic hair came running over, smiling, and smiled an admonishment at the woman. "You hush up now," she said. "These people aren't bothering you."

About that time one of her kids turned around and flicked mashed potatoes at the camera. I reacted in time to save the lens, but I ended up with that nasty crap on my shoulder.

"Ha ha ha," the fat lady bellowed. "Git what chu deserve!"

By the time we finished I was feeling nauseated by the smell of that stuff. I didn't think I would ever be that anxious to get back to the Hate Van from a shoot.

"Well, that's Thanksgiving," Lizzie said.

Later on, I got a call on my cellphone while I was waiting for Lizzie to finish writing. I kept my phone when I moved here, but I should really get rid of it to save money. Anyway, it was my family, wishing me a happy Thanksgiving.

Or at least it was at first. Then it quickly degenerated into a guilt trip for not coming home for the holidays. In an earlier conversation, my dad had said he would pay for a plane ticket to come home. That made no difference, because I had to work. He said he didn't understand why I wouldn't take a couple of days off to come spend it with the family. I had the most difficult time making him understand that I simply couldn't take days off at will like he can at his company, because the television biz places different demands on its employees.

He started in on me about it again today. "You shouldn've taken a job where you can't spend the holidays with your family," he said.

By the time I got home tonight I was starving, because it didn't occur to me that even the fast food places would be closed today. NOTHING was open here, not even out by the interstate. My only opportunity to eat all day was when Mrs. Plastic offered me a vile plate of turkey and vomit with yellow gravy. I have been eating from a noodle cup while I write this. At least I saved some money.

However, seeing as how it's Thanksgiving and all, I should give thanks. I'm thankful that I have a damned cool job. I'm thankful that I HAVE a job, unlike so many of those people at the church today who couldn't afford to feed their families a decent Thanksgiving meal. I'm thankful also that I have parents that want me home badly enough to be pissed off at me. And I'm thankful that I have a roommate who would sleep with me if I asked, even though there's no way I would. I know lots of guys wouldn't mind being in my shoes.

But if you'll excuse me now, I need to go collapse.

A Very Long Week

2005-11-20T20:11:00.000-08:00

I don't know if anyone's checking the site now, but if I do still have some readers I have to apologize for not keeping up with updates. You see, I'm in the middle of a seventeen day week.

That's right. I'm working seventeen days straight. Why? Bear with me, and I'll explain:

When I first started, I was on a Monday through Friday schedule dayside, but my ultimate schedule is supposed to be nights and weekends with Thursday and Friday off. I went to nightside this past week; but when I looked at the schedule on Monday, I was scheduled to work every day this week.

The news director explained that this was a "transition" week, and that they had still planned to have me working Thursday and Friday, but they had also already promised the guy who has been filling in on weekends that he would have Saturday and Sunday off. So that gave me seven days right there.

Then I got a look at the schedule for this coming week and realized I'm also working Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday. The ND explained that everyone else already had their vacation request in for Friday, and since I'm the new guy, I have to work the holiday AND the day after AND my weekend shifts. That makes fourteen days. And that rolls right into the next week, giving me seventeen straight days before my next day off, the first of December!

The up side is that I can use the overtime. My paycheck is already small, but it was a shock to get that first check and get hit immediately with my $87 contribution to the health plan. I'm almost tempted to drop it, but I'm afraid I'll get hit by a truck and not only have to pay my own medical bills, but also cover the accident myself for the station.

On a more positive note, I have an interesting story to tell about Suzanne, one of my housemates. When I was first considering living here, I didn't know how the privacy issues would work out, having never lived with girls. I really didn't need to worry. Suzanne is not modest at all. She has no qualms about walking around the house in panties and a t-shirt, and she doesn't always bother to close her door when she changes clothes. Emily, our other roommate, isn't quite as carefree; but she doesn't seem to embarrass easily either.

You might think this would be sexy, but these girls aren't the most hygenic people on the planet. It isn't that they don't bathe. It's just that they let the house get nasty. I spent a lot of time cleaning up the kitchen and bathroom when I first got here, and I'm the only one who washes the dishes. They also leave their clothes laying around. Having to clean up after a couple of girls who won't do it for themselves is more of a turnoff than Suzanne's pink panties might overcome.

Suzanne works at the station, up in the studio, during the newscasts. Between the early and late shows she doesn't have a lot to do, so she often goes home for dinner. It's practical because we're only a few miles from the station. I thought that was a good idea, so when possible I have been dropping by the house in the evenings to make a sandwich.

Thursday when I dropped by, Suzanne's car was out front. I heard a great commotion as soon as I opened the front door. Her bedroom door was open, and when I passed it to get to my own room I got a really good look at her bent over the edge of her bed with her panties around one ankle while another guy from the studio named Brian pounded her from behind. They were completely oblivious to my presence. They were so far into their own world that I probably could have pulled up a chair and watched the show without their ever noticing me. Even with her face buried into a pillow, she's really quite vocal.

I had difficulty concentrating on making my sandwich. I had even more difficulty concentrating on editing when I got back to the station.

I really need to find a girlfriend.

Seventeen

2005-11-13T19:41:00.000-08:00

My pager went off a little before 3 o'clock this morning. I was a bit surprised by it, because the overnight desk usually isn't staffed on Friday and Saturday nights since there's no Saturday or Sunday morning shows. During the week the desk is staffed by the morning show producer, and he doesn't usually arrive until 3am anyway.

So, as I said, I was surprised to be jolted awake. That pager has to be the most annoying sound on the planet, next to my friend Rob's constant whistling. The page instructed me not to call our desk, but to call our crime reporter at home. It turned out he had gotten a call from one of his police contacts about a bad car accident that he needed me to check out.

My first spot news. The excitement of it was a little overwhelming. I suddenly really needed to use the toilet.

A few minutes later I was out the door and on my way in the Hate Van. I'm still learning my way around here, so I had to stop twice and look at the map book again. Unfortunately my map book is four years old and is missing a few pages; CP Rick says he'll get me a new one soon.

I finally found the accident. The police had put up crime scene tape a good distance from the scene, around a curve where I couldn't see a whole lot. I was told to stay there. I didn't see any other photogs around, but a newspaper reporter was already there.

A little later an ambulance came around the curve. An officer pulled the tape loose on one end to let it out. It wasn't going very fast and didn't have its lights on.

"Not a good sign," the reporter said. "He's not in a big hurry."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means there's no rush to get to the hospital."

A few minutes later the public information officer for the police department came out to the tape. By that time a newspaper photographer had shown up, and the three of us were briefed by the PIO.

"What we have is a single car accident," he said. "The driver proceeded around the curve here at a high rate of speed, lost control of the vehicle and departed from the roadway."

"It was fatal," said the newspaper reporter.

"One fatality," the PIO confirmed. "We've made contact with his family, but we're not releasing the name yet. There were no other passengers."

"Can you tell us how old?"

"Seventeen."

This kid had been out late with friends. He had dropped them all off and was on his way home when he took the curve too fast. The cops said alcohol didn't appear to be a factor, just speed.

They kept us where we were a bit longer, then took the tape down and let us go around the curve to get pictures of the scene. The tow truck was already hooking up the car to take it away when we were finally let in.

When I saw the car, I was somewhat surprised. It was a newer model Mustang. It had left the roadway all right, but it had simply skidded up an embankment and rolled onto its left side. It had already been pulled upright by the time we got back there, so we could see pretty clearly that it had very little damage. I walked up close; there was no blood anywhere, and the airbag hadn't even gone off. It certainly wasn't how I expected a fatal accident to look.

I got the attention of an officer nearby. "I don't understand what happened," I said. "It doesn't look like enough damage for somebody to have died."

"See that dent in the door?" A large dent in the driver's side door was the only significant damage on the whole car. "That was where his head ended up, with the car on top of him."

I stared at the dent. "How did he end up like that?"

"Wasn't wearing his seat belt. When it rolled over, it slung him halfway out."

I don't know how it would have affected me if I had seen blood and guts everywhere, or if the car had been smashed into a crumpled mess. But all day today the stupidity of what I saw has been bothering me. There was absolutely no reason for that kid to die like that. If he had been wearing his seatbelt he would have walked away. Hell, he probably would have driven away after the car was back on its wheels. Seventeen years old.

I went back to the station, edited a VO and left the tapes for the producer. I was back in bed around six, but I didn't go back to sleep.

Shedding Some Light on the Matter

2005-11-10T19:30:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post I mentioned the lack of lighting in the equipment package issued to me when I started here last week. There was no light on the camera. There were no lights to put on stands. There were simply no lights, because the few that had been in the kit had been pilfered by other photogs while the gear had been in storage.

This was worrying me a bit, since I am supposed to start the nightside shift next week. While I'm no great lighting genius, I would like to be able to see the subject I'm shooting. A top light would have been fine. I learned basic three point interview lighting in school, so a real kit would have been nice also.

Today when I returned from my shoot, CP Rick called me into the equipment storage area. "I have presents for you," he said, and handed me an Anton Bauer top light. It's actually bent a little, but it works fine.

"I don't know what became of your lights," he said. "So you can have these." He pulled a black case over to me. Inside I found two Lowell Omnis and two VIP Lights, with barn doors and stands.

"These are brand new," I said, quite pleasantly surprised.

"Well, not exactly. They've been riding around in the back of Billy's truck for the past two years."

"But the stands still have the paper on them!" In fact, the stands were still in the brown paper sleeves from when they were shipped from the factory.

"Yeah," he said, "Billy has no idea what to do with a light. But I figured you might, so you get 'em. If you don't use 'em, I'll give 'em to somebody else."

"Thanks," I said.

"Don't mention it," he smiled. "I wouldn't want you to really think that I'm... What was it? 'Not a nice person?'"

Uh oh.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, I may be grouchy, but I don't think I'm really THAT mean."

Oh shit.

"And I haven't made up my mind yet whether you're an idiot."

Oh god no. He let it hang there for a minute.

"Jesus Christ," he said, as he started to crack up laughing. "I really wish you could see your face right now."

Oh, he IS mean after all, to actually be enjoying this, to be laughing to my face about it.

"You read it," I said.

"Yep."

Awkward pause while he just grinned at me.

"So... What does this mean?" I asked.

"I don't know. What does it mean?"

Now I'm confused. Obviously I'm in a world of shit at this point. But if I were really in trouble, would he be giving me brand new lights?

"Do I, uh... Do I have to take it down?"

"You damn well better not!" he said. "That was some funny shit. Especially that shit about Jake. I've seen him standing up there before. I think he just likes to watch it go around." He was grinning ear to ear.

"So you aren't mad about what I wrote... What I wrote about you?"

"Why would I get mad about that? I AM mean. You better get used to it too, because I'm gonna ride your ass. You keep bringing back crap like that first day and I'll tear it to shreds. But I can't really fault a man for telling the truth."

At this point I was shaking. It was a combination of fear and excitement, and I couldn't suppress an embarrassed grin myself.

"Look," he said, turning a little more serious, "You can trash me all you want. I can take it. But I can't speak for other folks here. There are some fragile egos in this place. I'm not gonna tell anybody else about it, but... I can't exactly give you permission to do this either. If you get in trouble with it, you're on your own."

"Okay." That's all the response I could really muster at that point. My head was spinning.

"Now show me what you can do with the lights," he said, and kicked the case over with a loud thud. "I think I read somewhere you need a wireless also. I'll see what I can do about that."

It was a little tough to edit after that. I kept grinning spontaneously. The reporter gave me an odd look when she gave me her script and said, "Something funny?"

"Just happy to be here," I said. Now she thinks I'm weird.

An Easy Day

2005-11-08T21:09:00.000-08:00

Yes, today turned out to be an easy, quiet day. I was on VOSOT patrol, and nothing much happened. The break couldn't have come at a better time, because it gave me a chance to really think about all the advice I've been receiving, the balance of which seems to indicate that I should give up my blog and delete everything lest my colleagues discover loose lips within their midst.

The station has a Doppler radar tower behind it, a fairly short tower with a big white ball on top. As I was headed to my truck to go check out a potential pedestrian accident, I happened to glance over that way. I noticed for the first time that there's a ladder that runs up the center of the tower to a trap door in the bottom of that ball. The reason I noticed it is that one of our maintenance engineers, a good ol' boy named Jake, was standing at the top of the ladder with his head up inside the trap door. It looked like a little man with a giant head standing up there. He didn't appear to be actually doing any work. He was just standing there with his head inside that ball.

I reached my van and put the camera in the back. As I came around the side to mount up, Jake pulled his head out of the ball and looked around. When he saw me, he gave me this HUGE grin. Then he stuck his head back inside the ball.

Now, those of you who have advised me to stop blogging, I ask you: How the hell can I NOT write about this?

The Hate Van

2005-11-07T20:08:00.000-08:00

Last week one of the other photogs asked me if I knew which vehicle I was supposed to be assigned.

"Rick said I'm supposed to get the engineering van," I said.

"Oh ho!" he laughed. "You mean the 'Hate Van.'"

The Hate Van has been in the shop for a while and wasn't ready when I arrived here. Its previous driver hated it and tried to kill it. He drove it for 12,000 miles without an oil change. It finally stopped working, but those who make the decisions at the station decided it would be better to fix it than replace it. Today CP Rick finally drove me out to the dealer to pick it up.

The Hate Van is a short wheel base Ford Econoline van. It was a "good deal" offered by the Ford dealer that provided our other vehicles and was purchased with the idea that the engineers would use it to build out a live truck themselves. They were supposed to buy a mast and transmitter and install racks in it. The project was abandoned when they actually started planning it and realized they couldn't fit everything into a short wheel base van. Unfortunately the station had already paid for it, so the engineers kept it around to use for errands before it was returned to the news department. But not before they ran the hell out of it.

It's a cargo van, so the inside isn't finished out. I have to figure out a way to keep the gear from bouncing around in the back. It's white. Mostly. Fortunately it isn't marked with the station's logos, but that's only because the condition of the paint and body won't really accept a decal job.

The side cargo doors do not open. That's because the previous driver had an encounter with the lift gate on a Coca Cola truck that folded them together, effectively sealing them forever. That was NOT a repair the station felt was necessary, since we can still load gear into the back. It's also missing a chunk out of the front grill and has no cover over the left front turn signal.

Inside isn't that bad. It has a stereo and air conditioning at least, and the seat belts seem to work. The odometer reads 63,000 miles. The seats have a few tears, but nothing major. The dash, however, is cracked in several places. It actually looks like someone has been beating on it with a blunt object.

And finally, across the dash in front of the steering wheel, right above the instrument cluster, someone has scrawled the following inspirational message:

"Kill A Redneck."

I'm now told the van has a history of stranding photogs at unfortunate times and in unpleasant places. Thus there is a good deal of hate directed toward it, and it seems to harbor some resentment toward us as well. Hence the name:

The Hate Van.

Unfortunately I noticed on the way home that it pulls noticeably to the left, and CP Rick has promised to get it back to the shop for an alignment sometime next week. It has now had a good deal of engine work, however, so perhaps it and I will be able to establish a new relationship based on mutual trust and understanding. I have promised to take good care of it and treat it kindly.

The First Week

2005-11-06T18:05:00.000-08:00

My apologies to all for not updating sooner. It has been a stressful and exhausting but interesting week. I'll just go day by day and pick up where I left off:

Wednesday

Training day. I spent the day with my chief photographer. His name is Rick, from here on referred to as "CP Rick."

CP Rick is not a nice person. CP Rick is mean and grouchy. CP Rick is convinced I am an idiot. CP Rick made sure I knew I'm an idiot.

I wasn't quite what to expect, since I hadn't seen him on Tuesday. You'll recall I spent Tuesday morning in the lobby, and he had been out on a live shot that afternoon, so we hadn't met. He walked in Wednesday morning wearing old, faded jeans and a ragged button down shirt. He has shoulder length hair and apparently only shaves once a week. I would guess his age at 40, but it's hard to tell.

"You're Max?" he said, giving me the evil eye.

"Yes," I said. "I guess I'm riding with you today."

He literally looked me over from head to toe. I now realize that photogs don't really dress that well, but I didn't want to make a bad impression my first couple of days and was wearing khakis and a polo shirt, tucked in. I also shaved, which doesn't seem very popular with our crew.

"Are you some kind of neat freak?" he asked. "You look like you might be a neat freak." He didn't wait for me to answer, but instead went looking for his reporter. I followed along.

When we arrived at our first shoot location, he opened the back of the truck and handed me his camera. "You're shooting this," he said. "Don't fuck it up."

So I shot my first package. I kept looking to CP Rick for advice or pointers, but he seemed bored and completely uninterested in what I was doing. I remembered all I had read about the importance of communication between reporter and photographer and asked the reporter plenty of questions. Every now and then CP Rick would scoff at one of my questions.

The real pleasure came when I got back to the station to edit. Rick stepped in and said, "I'll edit this. You just watch." Then he proceeded to bitch about everything I had shot.

"Let me tell you why this shot sucks." And he did.

"Crap. I can't use THAT shot." And he didn't.

"Ha. It's obvious you haven't done this before." And it probably was.

When it was all over, he said, "It ain't the worst I've seen. At least none of it was blue."

I think that was a compliment.

Thursday

I finally got my gear. It's a bit... disappointing.

We shoot Beta SP. My camera has apparently been brutalized by its former users. There's a strange line that runs through the middle of the viewfinder. Fortunately it's only in the viewfinder and doesn't go to the tape, but it's still a bit annoying. There's a permanent spot in the coating on the front of my lens that does show up quite distinctly on tape.

The tripod is a Gitzo, the kind with collars on the legs that you twist to lock. Unfortunately, when you twist these, they don't lock. The head also feels like it has gravel in it, and it has no handle.

The kit has no lights at all, not even a camera light. It also has no wireless. Apparently it once had these things, but when the last guy left the other photogs raided his (now my) gear. I do have a stick microphone, but I only have a thirty foot and a fifty foot cable.

I have four brick batteries. I have a dual charger that only charges two of them at a time. Unfortunately, one side is dead, so it really only charges one battery at a time.

CP Rick was a little annoyed when he saw the state of the gear. He said he hadn't intended to stick me with so many problems and promised to track down some of the stuff that has been looted.

I chased VOs and VOSOTs the rest of the day in a borrowed vehicle. My van is still in the shop. The last guy ran it 12,000 miles without an oil change, and all the oil leaked out.

"You better take better care of it," CP Rick said. "We're not buying new trucks any time soon, so if you break it, you're walkin'."

Friday

Speaking of walking, my own truck broke down. I noticed coolant coming from the back of the engine. That's probably a bad sign. So I walked to work Friday (three miles each direction) and will continue to do so until it's fixed unless I can convince someone to give me a ride. That's tomorrow's major goal.

I finally shot and edited a package by myself, without helpful criticism from CP Rick. It was a dull story on a tax proposal. It was mostly uneventful, and the reporter insisted on using a lot of file.

I left work Friday night sullen and dejected. I went home to an empty house, since both my roommates work nights. I just sat in front of the television. I don't even remember what I watched. I wanted to go out somewhere, but I really need to save my money.

I think this is just the excitement giving way to the reality of the situation. I knew what to expect, but I think I was still harboring some unreasonable hopes. I still don't think I've made a mistake. I just need to get into the swing of it, build up my confidence and do my best.

The Weekend

Mostly uneventful. I tried to clean up around the house, which is a little scary (I'll write more on my living situation later). I hardly brought anything with me in the move, yet I could hardly move among the boxes in my room. At least now things are taking shape a little better.

Probably the most interesting development of the week concerns my friend Kat. I had left her a message earlier this week with my new information, and she called me back Saturday. She says she wants to come visit. It's an awful long drive, but she sounded serious about it.

We'll see.

For now I just have to get my head right for the coming week. Hopefully this week I can prove I'm not a moron.

Inauspicious Beginnings

2005-11-01T19:30:00.000-08:00

I arrived at the station 8:45 this morning, a full fifteen minutes early for my first day as a television news photographer. I walked nervously through the front door of the station, only to find the reception area empty. I patiently sat down in an uncomfortable chair to wait. A few people wandered through, each one in a slightly bigger hurry than the last as the nine o'clock hour approached. I offered each one an inquiring glance, hoping one of them would wonder who the hell I was and what the hell I wanted, and perhaps lead me to someone who could get me started. No such luck.

Finally, at 9:05, a receptionist wandered in from somewhere in the back. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "Can I help you with something?"

"I'm here to work," I said. "I'm your new photographer."

"Your name?"

"Max."

"Have a seat, Max. I'll call back and let them know you're here."

She indeed made the call. "They'll be right with you," she said to me.

And so I waited. 9:15 came and went. A little coffee table in front of the chairs offered up a copy of a very poorly written local business magazine, which gave me some insight into why I wouldn't want to locate a business here. 9:30, and still no summons to the newsroom.

"Let me see what's going on," the receptionist said. She made a call. "This guy is still up here. Yeah. What was your name again, hon?"

"Max," I said.

"Max, she said. "Okay. I'll let him know." Then to me: "Sit tight a little longer. They'll come get you when they're ready."

So I read about some local entrepreneur who truly believed in the service she was providing the community by insuring it from all manner of disasters. Boats, fires, cars, floods, homes, she could do it all. There was a picture of her posing by her giant yellow H2, apparently ready to jump in and come sell me a policy.

10:00 came and went. I was exhausted from moving into my new place yesterday, and despite the uncomfortable seating area I began to doze off a little. "There's coffee right in there," the receptionist said, as if on cue. I got myself a cup and resumed the wait.

At 10:30 I began to worry a little. Finally at 10:35 a young woman bolted through the door that led to the inside. "Max?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. I'm not sure exactly how I did it, but as I got up I managed to fumble my coffee. I didn't drop the cup, but I jostled it enough that it splashed out... right on the front of my light blue shirt.

Great. My first day, and I have to spend it advertising a big brown stain to everyone new I meet.

The girl was just an associate producer. The news director and chief photographer weren't ready for me, so they sent her to send me to Human Resources. I had paperwork to do there anyway, so I'm not sure why I waited almost two hours to get started. Finally the paperwork was done, and I was sent back to the newsroom.

"Hi, I'm [News Director]," said the ND. He shook my hand as he looked disapprovingly at the brown stain on my shirt.

"Coffee," I said.

"Huh." Great. I was making SUCH a great impression.

From there, it's amazing how uneventful the rest of my day was, and yet how exhausting at the same time. The ND gave me a very quick tour of the station and threw a hundred names at me by way of introduction to the staff. Then he said, "I don't have much for you to do today. Just wander around and watch how we do things."

With that, he was back in his office. I ended up watching the AP from earlier take feeds, listening to the assignment editor (who also happens to be the 6pm anchor) deal with crews on the phone, observing a couple of photogs editing and generally wishing I wasn't such an outsider. I couldn't get introduced to my gear today because the chief photographer was out running the live truck. I did hear that I am probably going to get the "Hate Van" as my vehicle, once it comes back from the shop. I'm not sure what a Hate Van is, but it doesn't exactly sound encouraging.

However, I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when I'm supposed to spend the day with the chief photog getting my training. It's time to get this party started already.

I came along, and wrote a song for you

2005-10-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

He was sweaty. He was shaking. And he kept staring at me from under the hood of his sweatshirt.

I'm speaking of the skinny, unshaven white guy in the lobby of the drug testing facility the station had me visit Thursday. I guess he was there for a test, too. I had my doubts about his results.

I, on the other hand, have little doubt that my test will come back clean. I smoked a little during my community college days, but transferring to a real university carried with it a new attitude. It was time to get serious. I'm quite sure that now, a couple of years later, the chemical content of my urine is within acceptable parameters.

So why did I feel guilty?

It's just a drug test for a new employer. I haven't done anything wrong. But just going in there makes me feel like I'm under suspicion. It's not like I'm shivering in a cold sweat while I give the sober people in the lobby the evil eye.

"Max, come on back."

Beverly, the fat redneck piss technician, led me to another room and handed me the cup. Beverly wasn't in a good mood. She seemed like the kind of person who was never in a good mood. If I had hair that bad and a job smelling piss all day, I'd be upset also.

"You have to fill up to this line," she said, pointing. The cup had a little thermometer on the side of it. "That will tell me if it's really yours," she said, when she saw me looking at it. "If it's too cold I'll know you cheated."

She opened the door to a tiny restroom. "DO NOT close the door. DO NOT flush. DO NOT wash your hands. You do any of that and you'll have to do it all over. And I won't be happy about that."

Yeesh, like I want to be here any longer than I have to. So I contributed the proper sample and got the hell out of there.

As she was showing me out the door, she called the guy wearing the hood. "Barry, you think you're ready to try again?" Those feelings of smug superiority I had previously directed toward Barry gave way to sympathy. No wonder he was in such bad shape. He apparently had made Beverly unhappy.

I'm Here!

2005-10-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

Well, the trip was mostly uneventful. Just long. I didn't get in until late last night, so I'm really only seeing this town for the first time by this morning's light. My first impression? From what I see, it appears to be a combination of run down areas and new sprawl, like so many other cities or towns around the country. Right now my primary interest is coffee, so I'll have to expand on the rest later.

I'm lucky that this motel has a "business center" off the side of the lobby with computers and free Internet access. Thus I'll be able to check in here during the week until I find a place to live.

Kat came by Sunday night after she got back to town. If you've been reading, you can probably imagine the questions on my mind. Yet she acted as though nothing whatsoever had happened, and it seemed too awkward for me to bring it up. So I didn't.

On the other hand, she didn't mention Joe at all, nor was there any discussion of her dating him. I don't know what the hell that was all about. I guess it doesn't matter now, because that's 800 miles behind me.

I have to hit the ground running, so the agenda today involves apartment hunting. I'm going to look around this afternoon and get an idea of the areas of town. I mentioned earlier that I had been emailed by someone from the station who needed a roommate; I'm supposed to meet with her and her other roommates (I would make number four in the house) this evening.

And now... COFFEE!

Blech.

2005-10-23T10:35:00.000-07:00

I'd just like to say:

Packing sucks.

Where did all this stuff come from? How did it get here? I don't have any money, so when did I buy it? Why did I buy it?

Why in the hell do I have a waffle iron? I've never made waffles.

Why was I keeping this broken CD player?

What ever made me think this stuff in the closet back here was art? Why am I still reluctant to throw it away?

Why do I have an outdated Mole Richardson lighting catalog?

Why am I keeping my notebooks from college? Why do I still have any of my textbooks?

Why do I have an Indigo Girls CD? Did I ever really like them?

Should I throw out the porn? Naah.

What should I do with this parking meter? How did I end up with a parking meter? I think it has change in it!

All this crap has to fit into a U-Haul trailer? What the hell was I thinking?

Last Day!

2005-10-22T07:06:00.000-07:00

It's finally here. My last day at the bookstore.

I thought people were supposed to be sad when they left a job, but I'm really happy about it. I can't wait to not have to deal with customers' stupid questions and complaints. I won't miss the literature nerds who expect me to know every obscure author (or simply pick obscure authors to try to make themselves sound smarter). Even with the more well-known writers, there are always those who want to discuss authors' works with me while I'm trying to work. "Did you know that Vonnegut got his start writing science fiction for magazines?" Sure I did. But I really don't care. And I'm not impressed that you knew that.

I also don't care about your fad diet. I'm sorry Atkins didn't work for you. No, I don't know if the Zone is any better. No, I don't know if the Biblical diet is really based on scripture (What Would Jesus Eat?). Yes, we have the caveman diet book; it tells you to hunt squirrels in your back yard with a stick and eat them raw.

I sure as hell won't miss having to chase stinking homeless people out of our restrooms. Why choose a bookstore as a place to bathe in the sink? You're scaring the children. Get out.

Speaking of children, the childrens' reading events have to be the most horrible torture ever devised for book clerks. Look, they're three and four years old. They aren't going to pay attention to these boring stories written by new age parenting experts that are supposed to teach them complicated life lessons. No wonder they wander off and pee on the floor somewhere.

I figure all these folks telling me to pass on this television job don't remember what it's like to work at a McJob. I'm glad to be getting the hell out.

One more day. Just one more day.

My decision

2005-10-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

I have thought long and hard about it, and after so many people have advised me that I should run like hell from this job, I have made a decision:

Nope. I'm going to continue on as planned.

Tomorrow is my last day at the bookstore. I'm going to pack up the last of my crap on Sunday. I intend to pull out of here early Monday morning. I should be able to make the entire trip Monday.

Yes, yes, I'm probably an idiot. But I'm an idiot with a job awaiting me at a television station, and not an idiot whose immediate future includes working at a bookstore and wishing he were working in television.

I'm pretty sure that despite the previous odd conversation with the ND, I do, in fact, still have a job, because someone from human resources called me Wednesday to talk to me about the piss test. It seems that they were supposed to arrange for me to take the drug test at a facility near here before I moved. There was evidently some sort of miscommunication about that between the ND and HR, so now I'm supposed to do it there when I get into town. Thus it appears they still expect to see me there.

I'm sure people are wondering about Kat. I haven't spoken to her. She avoided me for a couple of days, and now her roommate says she left to go visit her parents. I'm not sure what to think about that, but now there's something else going on. There's another guy in our circle named Joe who apparently thinks he is dating her. He's pretty happy about it. I haven't told him that I was kissing his girlfriend a few days ago.

Otherwise, the waiting is excrutiating. My gut gets all twisty when I think about the future.