A quiet place to think out loud Who put the filling in the pie in the sky?
Sunday, March 31, 2002
SAVE THE WHALES... SAVE THE DOLPHINS..
Save the HINGES! For those of you who don't (or don't any longer) work in the same place as I... here's what you missed in email this week:
Subject: STUDIO DOOR
Effective today, I would like to have a policy regarding the Studio Door going into the News Studio.
Simply put, someone from the floor crrew is responsible for seeing that the door is open after all cut-ins are complete in the morning, and left open until news time at other times of the day. Xxxx, and Xxx can be responsible for Monday-Friday, and Xxxx and Xxxxx can be responsible for weekends.
We are trying to reduce the wear and tear on the door by constantly opening and closing it during the day. It needs to remain open or closed as much as possible, and personnel traffic both news and operations should use the personnel door off the hall.
PLEASE BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS POLICY. IF THE STUDIO DOOR HAS A PROBLEM, WE WILL HAVE A MAJOR PROBLEM. NORMAL TRAFFIC IN AND OUT OF THE STUDIO WILL USE THE PERSONNEL DOOR AND NOT THE STUDIO DOOR.
Thanks for your help.
Because I am an investigative reporter, I have gotten an advance copy of the next memo - due out any day now:
Subject: BATHROOM POLICY
Effective today, I would like to have a policy regarding the Rest Rooms.
We are trying to reduce the wear and tear on the flush handles by constantly using the toilets during the day. They need to remain in the neutral "non-flushed" position as much as possible.
Simply put, someone from the floor crew is responsible for monitoring flushings. Effective immediately, we will keep monthly totals on toilet use on the same board as the staff pictures. Each month, the person responsible for the most flushes will become the new STUDIO DOOR MONITOR (see previous memo).
PLEASE BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS POLICY. IF THE FLUSH HANDLES HAVE A PROBLEM, WE WILL HAVE A MAJOR PROBLEM. NORMAL TRAFFIC IN AND OUT OF THE REST ROOM WILL NOT BE A PROBLEM. BUT, LIKE YOUR MOMMY TOLD YOU, IF YOU CAN GO BEFORE YOU LEAVE HOME - OR HOLD IT UNTIL YOU GET HOME - ALL THE BETTER. AND DON'T FORGET THERE'S A SERVICE STATION JUST A BLOCK AWAY.
Thanks for your help.
Coming next week: Toilet Paper Policy: Not a Square to Spare..
When I was growing up, THE Hall of Fame (not to be confused with THE 10 o'clock news) was the baseball hall of fame. I was somewhat aware that there were others.. for other things.. but they were somehow secondary. Of course, as I got older I became aware that other major sports, music genres, etc. had their own halls where people visited and paid homage to their favorite stars.
Today I learned about a new one: the Toy Hall of Fame which, today, inducted the Raggedy Ann doll and the jigsaw puzzle into its hallowed halls. At first, I wasn't too impressed by the idea. But now, that I think more of it, I wouldn't mind popping in for a visit the next time I'm in Salem, Oregon. Apparently, Monopoly, the frisbee, crayons and Mr. Potato Head have already been inducted. Even more cool: there's a panel of people that votes every year on what gets in. How cool would that be? Do you get your own version of the toy to use over and over to help you decide?
There are so many choices. I was always a big Lite Brite fan.. don't know if that's HoF material. If Mr. Potato Head is in.. surely GI Joe is already there. (I know.. don't call him Shirley). Anyway... those are my picks.. what are yours? (I'm pretty sure most inflatable "toys" aren't allowed).
Forget (the very special) blossoms on the trees.. and the sunny warmer days. Let's get to summer. Long days with hours of daylight to go after work.. warm nights where a cold beer somehow tastes even better.. and jackets and coats are the things collecting dust in the closet you haven't opened in a couple months.
I can't wait.
Speaking of waiting (that is what we in the TV biz call a (bad) transition).. let me share (left over California-speak for "tell") part of an email I got from one of the students in my class last night:
hey chris:
sorry my computer and clemson email was messed up and i just got all your emails today. here is my paper.
Not really remarkable.. except I haven't seen her since February 14th and the paper was due two weeks ago. There aren't many things that just make me stare and wonder.. but I'll admit to gazing and coming up with some pretty interesting scenarios in my head last night. It would have to go well beyond "My dog ate my homework." Maybe her dog peed on the computer.. causing a massive electrical fire that left her hospitalized for six weeks and giving her amnesia. She just left that part out.
I pulled a lot of shit in college. I missed so many classes my freshman year.. that I tried doing all evening classes in Fall Sophomore year. Guess what - I missed more. I didn't account for happy hour. But I'm pretty sure I never disappeared for six weeks.
I've sent this student an email asking how exactly she expects to pass the class.. I imagine it will be early May before I hear back. Thankfully, grades are due at the end of April.
Remember back to when you got to use the word "break" instead of vacation. It's a shorter word.. but it usually meant a longer period of down time. Christmas break was a couple weeks (up to a month).. a week for Spring Break... three months in the summer. Now, they have Fall Break... a long weekend added in to lessen the tension of six weeks of work after three months off. If any of this sounds like I don't look upon the "break system" fondly.. think again.
Even though my time on college campuses these days is limited to about three hours a week - 28 weeks a year... I am still excited that this week - I don't have to devote those three hours (PLUS DRIVING TIME!) to anything academic. What will I do with those hours? A movie? Happy hour(s)? Perhaps I won't move off the couch. In any event, it's kind of nice to be able to experience one of my favorite parts of college all over again.
So.. this is a contest of sorts. If you saw The Simpsons last night.. you heard one of the greatest plays on history ever: Set to the scene of soldiers hiding inside the wooden horse to sneak into Troy: "From now on everytime someone gets wood, they'll think of Trojan." (Homer, of course).
Let it twist and turn in your mind.. and see if you can come up with something just as clever. It should be fun. Any Trojans (um.. the kind who went to 'SC) should consider the Trojan humor.. er... covered.. and move on.
Oh, and by the way, GO BRUINS! Double overtime win! I know I didn't pick you last year (and I paid dearly for it).. but maybe born-again loyalty can be profitable after all. (Pepperdine notwithstanding).
There's one main reason why I do this for a living: to give people who can't speak up for themselves a chance to be heard.
Aside from that - I do enjoy being paid. And, every once in a while, it's nice to hear that your peers think you do a good job.
In this business, we make something of a cottage industry out of honoring ourselves with awards. I'm not big on the whole idea.. but I certainly like to know that I've won something. So, for about five minutes today, when it looked like I had won first place for a story last year.. it seemed great. Especially since it was a story that we worked on for three years. We busted the bad guy.. gave the good guy a chance.. and then went back and busted the bad guy again for not going out of business when we was supposed to.
Turns out.. it was a misprint. Another story our station entered won. I should feel just as happy for them as I did for myself when I thought I had won. Eventually, I will. We still took a second place for what I thought was the best story I did last year. And it actually made a difference... Maybe these things are a little more important to me than I thought.
I spent some time this morning talking with a single mom and her high-school junior son. They're trying to figure out how to pay for his college on her minimum wage income. They figure annual tuition could exceed what she makes in a year. So they've been planning. Talking to financial aid people, scholarship people, different colleges...
The thing is - this kid wants to make a difference. He wants to study criminal law and put the bad guys away. He works at Burger King to save a few bucks so he can contribute something. You could tell by talking to these two - mom and son - that life had dealt them a few low cards. But they've been working at figuring out a solution for almost a year already - and at no time during our conversation did they even ponder the possibility that this wasn't going to work out. I used to work for a guy who said the easiest way to guarantee success - is to eliminate the option of failure. He'd go absolutely nuts if you used the work "try" in a sentence (because that meant you had considered the possibility you might fail). I'll bet this kid - John is his name - really makes something out of himself. Because at 16.. he's already decided how it's all going to come out... I wouldn't bet against him.
Before I worked here, I worked for a very bad station. It's hard to put it any other way. Many of my friends have heard the stories about the newscast I anchored with the fire alarm (in the studio over my head) going off for the entire 35 minutes (the last 15 with the fire department in the studio actually trying to shut it down)... or the one where our programming department hadn't considered that a non-network prime-time program's overrun might affect our ability to hit Nightline.. so my news director called me in the middle of the newscast and told me to just stretch 15 minutes so we can hit the 12:05 feed (I anchored/wrote/edited/produced the newscast).
In that context, what happened during our 11pm newscast here tonight isn't much. But by the standards I've become used to here, it was awful. We ran several wrong tapes. Of course.. they involved our top two stories.. to make things really look bad. But I didn't help make it better. Working at that other station taught me a lot of good habits for bailing out of any bad situation. Four years of not having to do it.. made me lazy.
The problem is - one mistake lead to another.. and another. The producer lost me (or, more accurately, I lost her). Teleprompter lost all of us. I went on as scripted. But.. one of my lazy habits now is to discard scripts after I read them... which I did after I thought we had corrected our mistake the first time. You can see the problem. No co-anchor.. no soundbites to stop at.. and now.. no scripts to go back to if my producer should tell me to go back. The real problem is.. my job is to deal with that and minimize the problems. I did the mechanics right.. put my scripts back together while I was reading.. put the script for the twice-bungled story aside so I could grab it if I needed it. I got through it.. but anyone watching could hear how angry I was. That's not supposed to happen. It's better to screw up the mechanics a little.. and be cool.
What really bothers me - is that's something I'm usually good at. Most things don't bother me on the air. Again - bad station experience - they've all happened already. One of the best things I learned about anchoring from someone who's really good at it - is if you just smile and roll with the punches.. the audience will roll with you. If you get upset.. they'll get upset with (and sometimes at) you. That's the part I fucked up tonight.
One of my other "old station habits" was to hang on to my anger until the show was over - then clear the building with a temper tantrum that could be felt on the richter scale. I'm glad to say I don't do that anymore. However, I think one of my new habits is going to be to not ask questions about what went wrong until the show's over.. because I let knowing the answer make me angry enough to keep me from doing my job well tonight. But that's an excuse.
I guess every story has a lesson.. and for now.. I'm going to take this one: All that experience working at a bad station was so that I could be good when I got to work at a good one. Maybe it's time to review some of those habits...
As part of our commitment to political coverage, we look for new and innovative ways to cover politics. Apparently, some politicians are doing the same thing. I specifically recommend we do NOT try this in South Carolina (if you want to know why.. review your list of who's running for office):
(AP): Here's one way to get the voters' attention -- take off your clothes. Olena Solod is a 28-year-old housewife who's running for a seat in the Ukrainian parliament. She did a striptease the other night during a live T-V address to voters. If anyone was paying attention to the issues, Solod says she supports legalization of prostitution. Solod contends her strip appeal is just a reflection of real life.
I believe with this blog.. (and since, to most of us here, doing anything twice consitutes a tradition).. I have started a new weekend tradition of delivering bizarre news about nudity. I think I'll try to keep it up (insert joke here)(heh heh.. he said insert). Maybe we should start a tradition of the month club.
I know I kind of promised that I was done with this topic.. but it's back. Tonight, our friends at the Fox station here have caught the virus being spread by our other competitors: they're making phone calls! They're not as obnoxious about it.. but at about 10:30 tonight.. they started off a segment with: "Here's what we learned on our beat calls tonight.." and proceeded to spout off some crime stories.
Now, instead of ranting about that's what we're supposed to do.. or how no one at home knows what beat calls are.. I'm going to try to translate this need to tell the public what we do to get ready for our jobs into some other businesses...
Dentist: I cleaned the sink FOR YOU.. so you'd have a place to spit.
Check out clerk: I put change in the register this morning FOR YOU.. so you could have these pennies.
Teacher: I went and got this chalk FOR YOU so I could write on the blackboard.
Mechanic: I bought motor oil in bulk so I could charge YOU $45 to change it.
Enough said... for now (I reserve the right to re-rant in the future).
On another note - bought two plane tickets today.. one to see my family and one to go to Vegas! Sing outloud: Leavin' on a jet plane. OK... don't. It's a bad song.. well.. maybe hum it a little..
One of the very strange things about I do - public appearances. I don't do a lot of them - but sometimes they come in clusters. This week, I'll speak before three different groups of 50-200 people.
That's not really the strange - the strange part is my station will furnish me with glossy pictures of myself to take with me. People will ask me to sign them. Most of those will end up on car floors.. but some will actually be kept and even put on a refrigerator or two. That's odd.
On Sunday, I signed an autograph for a woman who told me she already had two.. so I should write something different on the picture. I was stumped. First of all, I always write the same thing on the pictures (I think she's on to this).. but THREE? My mother doesn't have three of those pictures of me in the house. We used to have station magnets and things to bring along and hand out. That was great because I could "forget" the pictures in the car and still have things to give to people. Now, I have to either walk in with nothing.. or a stack of glossies with my face on them. Maybe I'll take pictures of other people who work here.. and write clever things they might say on the pictures.. and sign their names to them.... Not a bad idea...
If you've spent time on the left coast.. you may know they often call UC Berkeley "Bezerkley". There have historically been many reasons, but this is probably right up there:
(Berkeley, California-AP) -- The guys at Cal can go back their sex class -- but they have to keep their pants on. Officials at the University of California, Berkeley, are allowing a class on male sexuality to resume, on a probationary basis. The sex ed class was shut down last month when reports surfaced of an orgy at a class party -- and a trip to a strip joint as part of a final project. A university spokeswomen says the questionable extracurricular activities weren't an official part of the course work. New sessions of the male sexuality class will be conducted under strict faculty supervision.
In a separate story, faculty members are lining up on the sidewalks to become "faculty supervisors" for the class. There was no comment on the pre-requisite in the course catalog saying students should come to class with 500 $1 bills and a willingness to look at course material from every angle.
