Thanksgiving
is an American holiday that we all know, but it's turned into a forced
celebration like Christmas. Everyone knows the story of the Puritans and
the Indians who helped them survive the winter, and how it was
Lincoln's wife (I think) who insisted ol' Abe make it a national
holiday. I guess it made for a good early winter break, coming as the
sun enters Sagittarius (I'm no astrologer, I just put on airs), a month
after Halloween. And it was still probably a good idea when I was
growing up as a boy for family celebrations -- most Americans then still
living within fifty miles of their hometowns. Now, we live all over the
place, and as our population ages, it gets tougher and tougher every
year to pull Thanksgiving off. I love the idea of this unique American
holiday -- but we're past the commercialized phase, and now we're down
to just slogging through it. The relatives I did manage to meet up with
all looked very tired. The interesting thing about it remains for me is
this -- the day after. No, I'm not talking about Black Friday (the
dreadful shopping madness that retailers used to love), but the
celebration given that day every year after Thanksgiving by a Native
American tribe I covered as a reporter some years ago. The festival on
their reservation includes history, crafts, food, and traditional
drumming-and-dancing demonstrations -- all the things you'd expect from
such an event. No one ever mentioned to me why it's held the day it is
-- until I figured it out myself while covering it one year. It just
dawned on me -- there are all these Americans for whom this traditional
holiday I'd been brought up to think was so wonderful means the exact
opposite of what it does to me. And they choose to celebrate their
native traditions at a time that should remind us of that difference --
and we never notice. (By the way, one of the displays they're proudest
of was the medals their men have won in war -- the Revolutionary War,
the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean Conflict, Vietnam,
and Desert Storm -- all fighting on "our" side! I left the area well
before the current Iraq conflict began, though I'm sure their people are
likely in uniform in that now, too.).
LJ orig.: 11/25/06
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
My Friend Rocky
Cool, cloudy, threatened rain not here yet.
My Columbia SC apartment was nice. It was really meant to house state lawmakers and the like for a few months out of the year, then maybe salesmen traveling. It was built in the 80's, and had a bathroom sink partly in the bedroom, like a hotel room. Back when it was built, you or your company would rent this kind of apartment pre-furnished. So, you'd have a little home away from home for extended stays. Now, in the States, there are entire hotel chains devoted to that purpose alone. So, the apartment was rented to schmoes like me who figured all the one bedroom apartments looked just like the "show sample". No, that one had another few square feet, enough for a real bathroom, for thirty dollars a month more. "Oh, the cheaper one's a little smaller." Yes, and it makes you feel like a tourist year round.
But it had high ceilings, and more room than I really needed. So, it was OK. It had a little deck, too. and the roof line was all wood, and angular. Cool looking from the outside, except for the dumpster just outside my door. Nobody ever wanted to park beside it, so ... hey! An advantage there, too. (Do you know about the boy who was given a roomful of sh*6 for his birthday? He jumps in and starts digging, saying, "There's a pony in here somewhere!" Old joke.)
There were woods just beyond the fence where I parked. It separated us from the nicer (but smaller) apartments that were 50 dollars a month cheaper. See, my apartment complex was the first one on a street that dead-ended into a small golf course. You're new to town, you assume the ones down the street are higher, so you don't go any further. The ones next door were better managed, and they built a full-service gym for residents while I looked on from my palatial-looking digs with doorknobs that came off in your hand and refrigerators that worked most of the time. Next to the dumpster. In the back of the complex, where all the oddballs live. Oddballs like me.
Living in a government town means two things: crazy is normal, and you have no friends. But I had one -- for almost a year. Rocky. My pal.
You see, I had to dress up every working day and go downtown to where laws are made (no, seeing sausage made looks better). Very formal, "Yes, Senator; No, Mister Chairman; I'm just leaving, Mister Sergeant at Arms bigger than my parents' house. And I'm leaving quietly too, see? Bye." Very demanding: "What did he say? They passed what bill? Just now? What was the vote? What do you mean you won't tell me? I squared you on the debate yesterday! What do you mean 'that was then'?" So, you needed a break when you got home. You needed to see or at least hear from a friend who did not judge you, who made his own rules, who lived like (and looked like) a bandit and got away with it, time after time. And that was my pal, Rocky. Rocky, the raccoon.
The odd angular roof line was mostly empty space underneath. It held large support beams, electric wiring, insulation, our ceiling (which made its floor) and not much else. Maintenance could get up there (rarely), but residents had no access. So, hey, a tree house just right for a raccoon! Also for squirrels. Little grey fuzzy fellows that squeaked. Squeaked when they got scared. Squeaked when they saw Rocky's beady eyes glowing at them in the dark. I didn't realize raccoons liked squirrels so much. But it appears they do. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Since Rocky was largely nocturnal, I got to hear his adventures across my ceiling at night. "Go get him, Rocky! He's been driving me crazy up there for a week!" You'd hear silence, then a terrified squeak, and then the pitter-patter of little clawed feet ripping like lightning across the ceiling. Then, a fury of mad pitter-pattering in the corner, and then ... silence. Dead calm.
No smell. Rocky took care of things. He also was fun to watch in the evenings. You see, raccoons like to hang around dumpsters, because they are losing their habitat in the States as "civilization" advances. They can also be a threat to humans, because some of the rodents they chase (not squirrels) can carry rabies. Little bitty mice don't really bite humans unless you corner one and are dumb enough to try and grab him. But they can bite raccoons, and raccoons have fangs that can tear into your flesh very quickly. They are not often intimidated and can be very territorial. I was content to let Rocky perform his nightly drama in my "attic" undisturbed. If you leave them alone, they usually leave you alone.
But then, a good thing, as all good things must, came to an end. It started when Rocky (now quite large) appeared on the roof to watch his human friends most evenings. He would perch above my apartment and watch us come home from work. We'd open a beer, start a grill, get some meat on it, and he'd know where to go for leftovers that night. One evening, Rocky was bold. He didn't hide behind the fake gable; he was an inch from the gutter! "You'd better watch it, Rocky," I told him silently, and pointed my finger at him with my warning. He looked straight at me and ducked his little bandit's head.
The next week, as I was trekking down the hill to the laundry room (my nocturnal activity), I saw Rocky climbing from one third-story deck rail down to the next one like Spider-man. He was bigger than an alley cat, and twice as muscular. The bigger he got, the bolder he became. I knew it was a matter of time.
Then, on a clear Saturday morning, a white truck parked next to my car, and two men got out with some nasty looking implements. I went inside and closed the blinds. I didn't want to know.
Sure enough, no more squirrel attacks. No more peeking around alcoves and phoney roof gables. No more private communications between me and my secret friend. Rocky, oh, Rocky, how I miss you! (Sob!)
It goes to show you: Whom Fate would destroy, she first makes great. And gives plenty of squirrels.
A footnote:* after I moved out a few years later, I learned that new management had come in, and spent time and money fixing up the place. I'm confident raccoons don't have roof entry now, and no doorknobs come off, the fridges are good, everyone knows exactly what they're renting, and the place next door now rents at parity. Things do get better sometimes.
___
*I didn't start calling them "afternotes" until years later. This one was added a day or so after the initial post was made.
LJ orig.: 11/20/06
My Columbia SC apartment was nice. It was really meant to house state lawmakers and the like for a few months out of the year, then maybe salesmen traveling. It was built in the 80's, and had a bathroom sink partly in the bedroom, like a hotel room. Back when it was built, you or your company would rent this kind of apartment pre-furnished. So, you'd have a little home away from home for extended stays. Now, in the States, there are entire hotel chains devoted to that purpose alone. So, the apartment was rented to schmoes like me who figured all the one bedroom apartments looked just like the "show sample". No, that one had another few square feet, enough for a real bathroom, for thirty dollars a month more. "Oh, the cheaper one's a little smaller." Yes, and it makes you feel like a tourist year round.
But it had high ceilings, and more room than I really needed. So, it was OK. It had a little deck, too. and the roof line was all wood, and angular. Cool looking from the outside, except for the dumpster just outside my door. Nobody ever wanted to park beside it, so ... hey! An advantage there, too. (Do you know about the boy who was given a roomful of sh*6 for his birthday? He jumps in and starts digging, saying, "There's a pony in here somewhere!" Old joke.)
There were woods just beyond the fence where I parked. It separated us from the nicer (but smaller) apartments that were 50 dollars a month cheaper. See, my apartment complex was the first one on a street that dead-ended into a small golf course. You're new to town, you assume the ones down the street are higher, so you don't go any further. The ones next door were better managed, and they built a full-service gym for residents while I looked on from my palatial-looking digs with doorknobs that came off in your hand and refrigerators that worked most of the time. Next to the dumpster. In the back of the complex, where all the oddballs live. Oddballs like me.
Living in a government town means two things: crazy is normal, and you have no friends. But I had one -- for almost a year. Rocky. My pal.
You see, I had to dress up every working day and go downtown to where laws are made (no, seeing sausage made looks better). Very formal, "Yes, Senator; No, Mister Chairman; I'm just leaving, Mister Sergeant at Arms bigger than my parents' house. And I'm leaving quietly too, see? Bye." Very demanding: "What did he say? They passed what bill? Just now? What was the vote? What do you mean you won't tell me? I squared you on the debate yesterday! What do you mean 'that was then'?" So, you needed a break when you got home. You needed to see or at least hear from a friend who did not judge you, who made his own rules, who lived like (and looked like) a bandit and got away with it, time after time. And that was my pal, Rocky. Rocky, the raccoon.
The odd angular roof line was mostly empty space underneath. It held large support beams, electric wiring, insulation, our ceiling (which made its floor) and not much else. Maintenance could get up there (rarely), but residents had no access. So, hey, a tree house just right for a raccoon! Also for squirrels. Little grey fuzzy fellows that squeaked. Squeaked when they got scared. Squeaked when they saw Rocky's beady eyes glowing at them in the dark. I didn't realize raccoons liked squirrels so much. But it appears they do. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Since Rocky was largely nocturnal, I got to hear his adventures across my ceiling at night. "Go get him, Rocky! He's been driving me crazy up there for a week!" You'd hear silence, then a terrified squeak, and then the pitter-patter of little clawed feet ripping like lightning across the ceiling. Then, a fury of mad pitter-pattering in the corner, and then ... silence. Dead calm.
No smell. Rocky took care of things. He also was fun to watch in the evenings. You see, raccoons like to hang around dumpsters, because they are losing their habitat in the States as "civilization" advances. They can also be a threat to humans, because some of the rodents they chase (not squirrels) can carry rabies. Little bitty mice don't really bite humans unless you corner one and are dumb enough to try and grab him. But they can bite raccoons, and raccoons have fangs that can tear into your flesh very quickly. They are not often intimidated and can be very territorial. I was content to let Rocky perform his nightly drama in my "attic" undisturbed. If you leave them alone, they usually leave you alone.
But then, a good thing, as all good things must, came to an end. It started when Rocky (now quite large) appeared on the roof to watch his human friends most evenings. He would perch above my apartment and watch us come home from work. We'd open a beer, start a grill, get some meat on it, and he'd know where to go for leftovers that night. One evening, Rocky was bold. He didn't hide behind the fake gable; he was an inch from the gutter! "You'd better watch it, Rocky," I told him silently, and pointed my finger at him with my warning. He looked straight at me and ducked his little bandit's head.
The next week, as I was trekking down the hill to the laundry room (my nocturnal activity), I saw Rocky climbing from one third-story deck rail down to the next one like Spider-man. He was bigger than an alley cat, and twice as muscular. The bigger he got, the bolder he became. I knew it was a matter of time.
Then, on a clear Saturday morning, a white truck parked next to my car, and two men got out with some nasty looking implements. I went inside and closed the blinds. I didn't want to know.
Sure enough, no more squirrel attacks. No more peeking around alcoves and phoney roof gables. No more private communications between me and my secret friend. Rocky, oh, Rocky, how I miss you! (Sob!)
It goes to show you: Whom Fate would destroy, she first makes great. And gives plenty of squirrels.
A footnote:* after I moved out a few years later, I learned that new management had come in, and spent time and money fixing up the place. I'm confident raccoons don't have roof entry now, and no doorknobs come off, the fridges are good, everyone knows exactly what they're renting, and the place next door now rents at parity. Things do get better sometimes.
___
*I didn't start calling them "afternotes" until years later. This one was added a day or so after the initial post was made.
LJ orig.: 11/20/06
Friday, November 18, 2011
Oh the Pain! (in the ...)
It seems to me that the first journalists were
also the first writers. All the earliest writing samples we know of
(hierogylphics, cuneiform, etc.) came about when some king wanted to
leave a record of his exploits on a wall or a ziggurat or something. Or
maybe he wanted to know how many men were in his army, how many bales of
wheat he had in storage, etc. Somebody had to collect the information
and then commit it to the writing medium of choice (a rock, a clay
tablet, whatever).
Then, at some point, the scribe had to actually go out to the battlefield to watch what happened, and jot something down to give to a courier -- rather than just hope a runner like the first marathoner makes it far enough to yell "Rejoice, we conquer!" before dropping dead. The on-scene scribe has got to make sure what's on the note is right, it's readable, and it's usable. It doesn't have to be fair to the other side, it just has to be basically correct.
The first public journalist was said to be the Greek historian Thucydides, who was in Athens during the Peloponnesian War when the plague hit. I think he caught it, but survived, unlike Pericles and lots of other people. He wrote about that first-hand (if I recall correctly) and left it to posterity. He did lots of historical writing as well, but the part he saw he bore witness to.
I believe the first English journalist was thought to be Samuel Pepys. He was a government bureaucrat, who was in London during the Great Fire and the ensuing plague there. He wrote about what he witnessed first hand, but apparently was afraid his candid observations would get him in trouble, so he posted to his journal in a personal code. I don't think it was broken until sometime in the 1800s. Again, a witness-bearer to violence and disease, but this one apparently recognized how easy it is to make somebody angry when you're telling the truth.
Then comes my favorite -- John "That Devil" Wilkes. He was jailed for doing something that was highly illegal in his day: going to Parliament and reporting on the debates that went on. I think he was sent to the Tower for it. He did it for his own newspaper that I believe was called The North Briton. Wilkes eventually got himself elected to parliament, took the side of the colonists in the American Revolution, and got his name put all over the place here. I grew up in one of those places.
Then came Benjamin Franklin, then the Constitution and its First Amendment, and so it went from there.
If I may put on my pontiff's tiara (or at least my white skullcap) for a moment: it may be that money and power have become so entwined with the news media that reporters have gotten lost on some basic points along the way. Those early pioneers did stuff that was scary for their day and time, and some suffered as a result. But instead of bearing witness to plagues in cities, could it be that reporters have become a plague on society? I hope not.
LJ orig.: 11/13/06
Then, at some point, the scribe had to actually go out to the battlefield to watch what happened, and jot something down to give to a courier -- rather than just hope a runner like the first marathoner makes it far enough to yell "Rejoice, we conquer!" before dropping dead. The on-scene scribe has got to make sure what's on the note is right, it's readable, and it's usable. It doesn't have to be fair to the other side, it just has to be basically correct.
The first public journalist was said to be the Greek historian Thucydides, who was in Athens during the Peloponnesian War when the plague hit. I think he caught it, but survived, unlike Pericles and lots of other people. He wrote about that first-hand (if I recall correctly) and left it to posterity. He did lots of historical writing as well, but the part he saw he bore witness to.
I believe the first English journalist was thought to be Samuel Pepys. He was a government bureaucrat, who was in London during the Great Fire and the ensuing plague there. He wrote about what he witnessed first hand, but apparently was afraid his candid observations would get him in trouble, so he posted to his journal in a personal code. I don't think it was broken until sometime in the 1800s. Again, a witness-bearer to violence and disease, but this one apparently recognized how easy it is to make somebody angry when you're telling the truth.
Then comes my favorite -- John "That Devil" Wilkes. He was jailed for doing something that was highly illegal in his day: going to Parliament and reporting on the debates that went on. I think he was sent to the Tower for it. He did it for his own newspaper that I believe was called The North Briton. Wilkes eventually got himself elected to parliament, took the side of the colonists in the American Revolution, and got his name put all over the place here. I grew up in one of those places.
Then came Benjamin Franklin, then the Constitution and its First Amendment, and so it went from there.
If I may put on my pontiff's tiara (or at least my white skullcap) for a moment: it may be that money and power have become so entwined with the news media that reporters have gotten lost on some basic points along the way. Those early pioneers did stuff that was scary for their day and time, and some suffered as a result. But instead of bearing witness to plagues in cities, could it be that reporters have become a plague on society? I hope not.
LJ orig.: 11/13/06
Thursday, November 17, 2011
It's ludicrous, silly!
Clouded up and rained like mad last night. Clear
and much cooler for Sunday go-to-meeting time, now fairly cold.
Tonight's title refers to a misspelled word in Friday night's marathon post.
That post is a good example of the problem of the "natural" journalist. We simply do not know when to stop. It's a compulsion well illustrated in the "Smallwood" series. Cloe Sullivan absolutely has no idea how much trouble she's getting into until Superboy has to save her. If you don't have a Superperson to pull your fanny out of it, you'll have the life I've led -- if you call it living and you call what I did leading. What makes it worse for the "natural" is he or she can't wait to turn pro -- without realizing the nature of most professional journalists. Most pro journalists are more like the Lois Lane character in "Smallwood". I'll let you choose your own adjectives.
I understand why people hate us. We have a dirty job, and we don't always face that fact squarely, trying to paint over the dirtiness of it with "our First Amendment responsibility." At least that's how it goes in the States. There are ethical journalists here, don't get me wrong. But you can get carried away all too easily.
So here's my career hint of the night: if you're a "natural" at journalism, don't make a career of it. Maybe do it for a year or two for pay to see what it's like, then get out. Go back to school and learn to be something else. Then your "natural" talent can be used as a hobby, like a blog or photo album, or as a hidden asset at work -- the person in the office who does well on presentations, for instance. The more you keep your natural thing to yourself, the better off you'll likely be. That may apply in a lot of fields.
If I sound like I'm pontificating, OK. But I think it's wisdom from the pain. Sometimes when the knife feels like justice, it is.
LJ orig.: 11/12/06
Tonight's title refers to a misspelled word in Friday night's marathon post.
That post is a good example of the problem of the "natural" journalist. We simply do not know when to stop. It's a compulsion well illustrated in the "Smallwood" series. Cloe Sullivan absolutely has no idea how much trouble she's getting into until Superboy has to save her. If you don't have a Superperson to pull your fanny out of it, you'll have the life I've led -- if you call it living and you call what I did leading. What makes it worse for the "natural" is he or she can't wait to turn pro -- without realizing the nature of most professional journalists. Most pro journalists are more like the Lois Lane character in "Smallwood". I'll let you choose your own adjectives.
I understand why people hate us. We have a dirty job, and we don't always face that fact squarely, trying to paint over the dirtiness of it with "our First Amendment responsibility." At least that's how it goes in the States. There are ethical journalists here, don't get me wrong. But you can get carried away all too easily.
So here's my career hint of the night: if you're a "natural" at journalism, don't make a career of it. Maybe do it for a year or two for pay to see what it's like, then get out. Go back to school and learn to be something else. Then your "natural" talent can be used as a hobby, like a blog or photo album, or as a hidden asset at work -- the person in the office who does well on presentations, for instance. The more you keep your natural thing to yourself, the better off you'll likely be. That may apply in a lot of fields.
If I sound like I'm pontificating, OK. But I think it's wisdom from the pain. Sometimes when the knife feels like justice, it is.
LJ orig.: 11/12/06
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Elected Out
Sunny, warm, a little humid. I didn't get out till late.
We had a national election day earlier this week. I know this is not a bulletin for most people. I voted, and that was it. It hasn't always been like that. Most of my posts have focused non-career stuff, except for some of the more luducrous* foibles. I don't think I've ever mentioned I was a career newsman -- 26 years. I say, was because the future does not look promising, but I could be wrong.
The reason I bring it up now is because rolling around my head this week was one flashback after another of election days past. They are hell. Absolute hell for anyone in journalism. In the states, big network TV anchors always used to say how excited they are about a political season. That's because all they do is sit there. The rest of us have to go out and work like dogs, and then come back and work like beavers till we drop.
The dog part is hounding people to get voter comment, turnout numbers, and all kinds of other stuff. Then, once the voting stops and the counting begins, you must go to some election HQ or some candidates HQ and wait. If you're in broadcasting, you must send off reports about how everyone is waiting for results, and just try to make enough chatter to suit your employers.
The last one I did was probably the worst, but I would hate to have to go back and rate them. As a radio broadcaster, I had to pull my normal shift (a fair challenge in itself), wolf a sandwich and then off to election central with my recording kit and a company cell phone. As I have mentioned, my feet are not in good shape, and election central has a floor of bare concrete. The few chairs are taken by workers or volunteers. I announce best standing, so I was already hurting when I got there, burping the gases from an inhaled sandwhich. "Hello, Senator such and such, how's (burp) it (gasp, brrappp, gulp) goin' (urp)?" The next thing that went wrong, my cell battery died in the middle of my first report. So I reached in my kit for the spare. (Both were freshly charged, I was told). Gone. Must still be in the car. By now, it's dark. It wasn't when I parked there. I had hopped out of the car and walked the half-mile (presidential election year -- lots of cars before me), without noticing the deep hole inches before my car's front bumper. I had just wanted to avoid the steep gully to the car's passenger side, and get the car off the potholed road leading to election central. Off I go, frustrated and still belching, when I approach my car and -- yikes! -- down the hole I go! Oh no, the (very dim) streetlamp reveals a pile of two-inch-square blocks of gravel headed toward my face! My hands go out, aaauggh, the gravel bites into my palms. This hole is deep, so I'm falling hard with my recording gear flying everywhere in the (almost) pitch black, and I get my head forward enough to -- bleah! -- eat a faceful of nasty smelling dirt. My right knee really hurts. The other one is numb. My less-sore foot is twisted sideways, but not at the ankle. How is that possible? Jump in black hole half-full of industrial sized gravel and run-off crud to see for yourself. I slowly tried to get up and, still spitting nasty dirt, I feel a couple of tickles on my arm (I'd rolled up my sleeves -- warm night like tonight). Little black specks barely visible hopping like tree spiders all over 'em. I shake off all, but one of the more nimble devils hops off my chest and onto my left arm. I swipe, but he doesn't move. I do. My arm flies back as if hit by a nail gun. It felt like it, too. The little devil had the bite of a cobra! I got him off, dancing around as one leg fell back into the pit, spewing nasty dirt and gravel all over my gear. Wincing in pain, I get to my car, get out the flashlight, and locate the scattered pieces of recording gear, including the dead phone.
I get inside, and grab the other battery I'd left in the seat somehow. Back to election central I go (It's actually a warehouse). Just in time for report number two. The new battery goes dead in the middle of my second sentence. Results are starting to pour in, and I have no idea who is winning what. My sample ballot lay somewhere in the black pit, and we had to read results as they periodically flashed across one of four computer monitors with print as small as what I'm typing now. I search the warehouse for the one electrical outlet we're allowed to use. It's four inches from the floor. I attempt to get on one knee (YEEOUCH! That one's no longer numb), then I just plop face forward on the floor as I hear feet shuffling behind me and whispers commencing. (Are they coming to help me? Are you kidding?) I stab the charger's prongs into the outlet, realize the battery switch has killed speed dial, and now I have to find the special election-day-only number to call the station for a replacement phone. I wait an hour for a new phone to come. Meanwhile, I madly play catch up, trying to hold my notepad with the left arm that has sprouted a purple and red blotch and has begun to throb like a trip hammer. I decide there's no catching the other reporters. I just have to stoop to eavesdropping on their reports, so I can regurgitate their material when my phone comes.
But there's good news in the interim. A former TV reporter had gotten herself hired as the new elections director. She was that night running around as if her hair were on fire, and I spot her board members doing work an elections director is supposed to do. I breathe a sigh of relief, as I realize the final results would be a little late. But breathing out forces my chest to move, where a chunk of gravel had nestled itself so gently only a little while ago. Now my chest is not numb, either. The phone arrives, and its courier looks at me oddly. "Are you OK?" "Oh, sure, sure -- I'm fine! Want to stay and help!" "Oh, no, you're doing a great job! Bye!" Oh, well.
The night wears on, and spectators decide watching TV at home or in a bar is a better idea. I get a chair, phone in some kind of numb-brain results, get a few interviews (my recorder works! the dirt I knocked out of it did not jam it! now if i could just get that clod of foul-smelling crud out of the microphone screen! raise an aching foot to tap the mic head on the sole and -- oh, no. Not that too.) I'd found the only bathroom in the place and had washed my face and hands between reports, but no first aid kit anywhere. I thought about doing a Sean Connery and suck the poison out of my spider bite, but, my, wouldn't that look odd on Election Night? Just let it throb. Maybe my arm will fall off and I won't have to worry about it.
I get a call to wrap up and come back to the studio to help produce the morning's reports. It's only 11 pm. I'd been at work since 10 ... am. I'd been given a two hour break to go home and nap earlier that day around 3, but I didn't sleep. As soon as I got to the studio, I hobbled to the production room. The afternoon anchor greeted me with unusual gusto, briefly recounted what was on the tape machine, and promptly left the station. When I pulled my mouth off the floor as she smartly shut the door, I bent down to the tape machine and started to work. Four interviews, plus my own. Two more came in later. I decided to work on one story at a time, do all the versions required, and then write and produce the next set, in order of what I thought would be newsworthy. The rank of the winners (President, Senator, state official, etc.) set my course. The dim production room light began to bother my eyes around 2 am, so I cut all the audio I needed, jotted down the cues and went to the brightly lit newsroom to write the rest of the stories -- alone. Around 4 am, I pretty much stopped feeling anything except profound indigestion from the food an advertiser had brought for us to enjoy during "our" allnighter. At 4:30 the morning jock from one of the other stations in the building came in to make the coffee for everyone else on the morning shift. "Hey, are the rioting in the streets? Har, har, har." I just looked at him. Finally, my mouth came unstuck, and I managed to offer "Is there a riot too? I don't know about a riot ... ." He shook his head and left. I stacked all my work, knowing my station's morning crew was due in 30 minutes, and if I saw them coming in, I might grab the fire axe just above the station console.
The resulting newscast won first prize in the state competition. The prize added enough to our yearly tally to make us Station of the Year -- again. Who's names are on the plaque? The station's call letters, of course.
It turned out that the afternoon anchor would be covering my shift the next day and hers too. That's why she left when she did. I took the entire next day off, being careful not to sleep on my left side. The spider bite ached for a week, but it didn't get bigger or leave a scar.
A night to remember. I'm glad I don't do elections anymore.
___
* I left words such as "ludicrous", "sandwich" and "allnighter" misspelled, just as they were in the original post.
LJ orig.: 11/11/06
We had a national election day earlier this week. I know this is not a bulletin for most people. I voted, and that was it. It hasn't always been like that. Most of my posts have focused non-career stuff, except for some of the more luducrous* foibles. I don't think I've ever mentioned I was a career newsman -- 26 years. I say, was because the future does not look promising, but I could be wrong.
The reason I bring it up now is because rolling around my head this week was one flashback after another of election days past. They are hell. Absolute hell for anyone in journalism. In the states, big network TV anchors always used to say how excited they are about a political season. That's because all they do is sit there. The rest of us have to go out and work like dogs, and then come back and work like beavers till we drop.
The dog part is hounding people to get voter comment, turnout numbers, and all kinds of other stuff. Then, once the voting stops and the counting begins, you must go to some election HQ or some candidates HQ and wait. If you're in broadcasting, you must send off reports about how everyone is waiting for results, and just try to make enough chatter to suit your employers.
The last one I did was probably the worst, but I would hate to have to go back and rate them. As a radio broadcaster, I had to pull my normal shift (a fair challenge in itself), wolf a sandwich and then off to election central with my recording kit and a company cell phone. As I have mentioned, my feet are not in good shape, and election central has a floor of bare concrete. The few chairs are taken by workers or volunteers. I announce best standing, so I was already hurting when I got there, burping the gases from an inhaled sandwhich. "Hello, Senator such and such, how's (burp) it (gasp, brrappp, gulp) goin' (urp)?" The next thing that went wrong, my cell battery died in the middle of my first report. So I reached in my kit for the spare. (Both were freshly charged, I was told). Gone. Must still be in the car. By now, it's dark. It wasn't when I parked there. I had hopped out of the car and walked the half-mile (presidential election year -- lots of cars before me), without noticing the deep hole inches before my car's front bumper. I had just wanted to avoid the steep gully to the car's passenger side, and get the car off the potholed road leading to election central. Off I go, frustrated and still belching, when I approach my car and -- yikes! -- down the hole I go! Oh no, the (very dim) streetlamp reveals a pile of two-inch-square blocks of gravel headed toward my face! My hands go out, aaauggh, the gravel bites into my palms. This hole is deep, so I'm falling hard with my recording gear flying everywhere in the (almost) pitch black, and I get my head forward enough to -- bleah! -- eat a faceful of nasty smelling dirt. My right knee really hurts. The other one is numb. My less-sore foot is twisted sideways, but not at the ankle. How is that possible? Jump in black hole half-full of industrial sized gravel and run-off crud to see for yourself. I slowly tried to get up and, still spitting nasty dirt, I feel a couple of tickles on my arm (I'd rolled up my sleeves -- warm night like tonight). Little black specks barely visible hopping like tree spiders all over 'em. I shake off all, but one of the more nimble devils hops off my chest and onto my left arm. I swipe, but he doesn't move. I do. My arm flies back as if hit by a nail gun. It felt like it, too. The little devil had the bite of a cobra! I got him off, dancing around as one leg fell back into the pit, spewing nasty dirt and gravel all over my gear. Wincing in pain, I get to my car, get out the flashlight, and locate the scattered pieces of recording gear, including the dead phone.
I get inside, and grab the other battery I'd left in the seat somehow. Back to election central I go (It's actually a warehouse). Just in time for report number two. The new battery goes dead in the middle of my second sentence. Results are starting to pour in, and I have no idea who is winning what. My sample ballot lay somewhere in the black pit, and we had to read results as they periodically flashed across one of four computer monitors with print as small as what I'm typing now. I search the warehouse for the one electrical outlet we're allowed to use. It's four inches from the floor. I attempt to get on one knee (YEEOUCH! That one's no longer numb), then I just plop face forward on the floor as I hear feet shuffling behind me and whispers commencing. (Are they coming to help me? Are you kidding?) I stab the charger's prongs into the outlet, realize the battery switch has killed speed dial, and now I have to find the special election-day-only number to call the station for a replacement phone. I wait an hour for a new phone to come. Meanwhile, I madly play catch up, trying to hold my notepad with the left arm that has sprouted a purple and red blotch and has begun to throb like a trip hammer. I decide there's no catching the other reporters. I just have to stoop to eavesdropping on their reports, so I can regurgitate their material when my phone comes.
But there's good news in the interim. A former TV reporter had gotten herself hired as the new elections director. She was that night running around as if her hair were on fire, and I spot her board members doing work an elections director is supposed to do. I breathe a sigh of relief, as I realize the final results would be a little late. But breathing out forces my chest to move, where a chunk of gravel had nestled itself so gently only a little while ago. Now my chest is not numb, either. The phone arrives, and its courier looks at me oddly. "Are you OK?" "Oh, sure, sure -- I'm fine! Want to stay and help!" "Oh, no, you're doing a great job! Bye!" Oh, well.
The night wears on, and spectators decide watching TV at home or in a bar is a better idea. I get a chair, phone in some kind of numb-brain results, get a few interviews (my recorder works! the dirt I knocked out of it did not jam it! now if i could just get that clod of foul-smelling crud out of the microphone screen! raise an aching foot to tap the mic head on the sole and -- oh, no. Not that too.) I'd found the only bathroom in the place and had washed my face and hands between reports, but no first aid kit anywhere. I thought about doing a Sean Connery and suck the poison out of my spider bite, but, my, wouldn't that look odd on Election Night? Just let it throb. Maybe my arm will fall off and I won't have to worry about it.
I get a call to wrap up and come back to the studio to help produce the morning's reports. It's only 11 pm. I'd been at work since 10 ... am. I'd been given a two hour break to go home and nap earlier that day around 3, but I didn't sleep. As soon as I got to the studio, I hobbled to the production room. The afternoon anchor greeted me with unusual gusto, briefly recounted what was on the tape machine, and promptly left the station. When I pulled my mouth off the floor as she smartly shut the door, I bent down to the tape machine and started to work. Four interviews, plus my own. Two more came in later. I decided to work on one story at a time, do all the versions required, and then write and produce the next set, in order of what I thought would be newsworthy. The rank of the winners (President, Senator, state official, etc.) set my course. The dim production room light began to bother my eyes around 2 am, so I cut all the audio I needed, jotted down the cues and went to the brightly lit newsroom to write the rest of the stories -- alone. Around 4 am, I pretty much stopped feeling anything except profound indigestion from the food an advertiser had brought for us to enjoy during "our" allnighter. At 4:30 the morning jock from one of the other stations in the building came in to make the coffee for everyone else on the morning shift. "Hey, are the rioting in the streets? Har, har, har." I just looked at him. Finally, my mouth came unstuck, and I managed to offer "Is there a riot too? I don't know about a riot ... ." He shook his head and left. I stacked all my work, knowing my station's morning crew was due in 30 minutes, and if I saw them coming in, I might grab the fire axe just above the station console.
The resulting newscast won first prize in the state competition. The prize added enough to our yearly tally to make us Station of the Year -- again. Who's names are on the plaque? The station's call letters, of course.
It turned out that the afternoon anchor would be covering my shift the next day and hers too. That's why she left when she did. I took the entire next day off, being careful not to sleep on my left side. The spider bite ached for a week, but it didn't get bigger or leave a scar.
A night to remember. I'm glad I don't do elections anymore.
___
* I left words such as "ludicrous", "sandwich" and "allnighter" misspelled, just as they were in the original post.
LJ orig.: 11/11/06
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Miscellany
Super nice, clear sky, sunny and like late September all day.
Played Tetris and started listening to the Fu's latest on AOL before starting to write this. It's a live recording. Cool acoustic set so far, which includes "My Hero" and "Another Round."
I hope any readers caught my self-satire in the last post. When I was a comics buyer in another 'burg, I was as bad as anyone else. I used to wait for the mall days on end to open to get my fix. Working on the other side of the register killed it.
I hope I caught the tone of the typical Cerebus letter page of that era with the post. When Dave Sim was still publishing replies to selected letters, not only did he print one of mine, but had a pretty neat reply. He was starting to get controversial even then (mid-80's), and I wrote to say he had the right to say what he wanted in his own book. I never read Cerebus again after I left the comic book retail business, but I understand Sim went off the deep end with Cerebus years later. I understand he's now pretty much a recluse.
A duo still cranking out work is Los Bros. I don't have money -- a perpetual problem -- to buy their stuff, but I do read bits standing when I can. Discovering that kind of thing around '85 was a real breath of fresh air. Hopey and Maggie started me off, but I gradually came to "get" Palomar later on. If you're not a reader of Love and Rockets, give it a try. The quality black and whites might be a better long term value than the color graphic novels, which are expensive, I think. I did scrounge for a copy of the Fray color graphic novel a few months back, though, and continue to enjoy re-reading parts. (The Fu's are sticking with the acoustic set, and I'm about seven tracks into it now. There are 15 in all. It's very folky. They even have a string quartet playing behind "Live Again". The audience is really quiet*, like they're wondering "Where's the rock?" The second set has now started, and it's just Dave on vocals and guitar.)
There's another black-and-white from my retail days. It was called Usagi Yojimbo. The hero was a walking and talking rabbit who was a displaced samurai, a ronin. The footnotes explained samurai culture and Japanese terms as the story of Usagi unfolded. Quit before the mini-series finished, but maybe it's another oldie to look up. (Dave's now doing "Best of You" -- still solo acoustic guitar and vocals. The audience is singing along, so I guess they didn't all leave.)
Journey was another black and white title in a kind of limited series. Very high quality cartooning and storytelling, along with some historical material. William Messner-Loebs did the comic guy stuff, while I think his wife did the research. I really remember one sequence where it's snowing like crazy in the story (now why would I remember that?) and the snow looked like it was 'whiting out' the characters. Neat effect.
Most people into comics are not going to go for titles like that, I realize. Color titles like Ronin and the Elektra series by Bill Sin-KEV-itch (sorry, I can't spell his name -- the fanboys taught me how to pronounce it. Yes, I was friends with several of them. It was just that one day.) were way ahead of their time and really popular.
The Watchmen (the Alan Moore book) started coming out in comic book form a little after I got thawed out that year. I read the first issue or two, but could never "get" Moore in any title. I loved the way he told the stories, but couldn't quite handle his attitude toward them. I had the same problem with Frank Miller, except with the art. I liked his style, but not his actual execution. (Fu's have quit -- rockers beware! Skin and Bones is all acoustic.) I did see "V for Vendetta" earlier this year, and really liked the movie. Moore didn't -- so I guess his stuff is not my cup of tea (Twining's Russian Caravan, if I ever get back in the money ... . Not likely.)
OK, so I've lost everybody. But look up the Sienkiewicz book. (I did, for the spelling, on Wikipedia just now.) Frank Miller did the story. It's called Elektra: Assassin. The art was way gone. (Is that how you say it?) OK, I'm done.
____
*I later bought the Fu Fighter's CD, and I still enjoy listening to it. On the CD, the audience is anything but quiet. They are going crazy between songs, and it makes the CD that much more enjoyable.
LJ orig.: 11/09/06
Played Tetris and started listening to the Fu's latest on AOL before starting to write this. It's a live recording. Cool acoustic set so far, which includes "My Hero" and "Another Round."
I hope any readers caught my self-satire in the last post. When I was a comics buyer in another 'burg, I was as bad as anyone else. I used to wait for the mall days on end to open to get my fix. Working on the other side of the register killed it.
I hope I caught the tone of the typical Cerebus letter page of that era with the post. When Dave Sim was still publishing replies to selected letters, not only did he print one of mine, but had a pretty neat reply. He was starting to get controversial even then (mid-80's), and I wrote to say he had the right to say what he wanted in his own book. I never read Cerebus again after I left the comic book retail business, but I understand Sim went off the deep end with Cerebus years later. I understand he's now pretty much a recluse.
A duo still cranking out work is Los Bros. I don't have money -- a perpetual problem -- to buy their stuff, but I do read bits standing when I can. Discovering that kind of thing around '85 was a real breath of fresh air. Hopey and Maggie started me off, but I gradually came to "get" Palomar later on. If you're not a reader of Love and Rockets, give it a try. The quality black and whites might be a better long term value than the color graphic novels, which are expensive, I think. I did scrounge for a copy of the Fray color graphic novel a few months back, though, and continue to enjoy re-reading parts. (The Fu's are sticking with the acoustic set, and I'm about seven tracks into it now. There are 15 in all. It's very folky. They even have a string quartet playing behind "Live Again". The audience is really quiet*, like they're wondering "Where's the rock?" The second set has now started, and it's just Dave on vocals and guitar.)
There's another black-and-white from my retail days. It was called Usagi Yojimbo. The hero was a walking and talking rabbit who was a displaced samurai, a ronin. The footnotes explained samurai culture and Japanese terms as the story of Usagi unfolded. Quit before the mini-series finished, but maybe it's another oldie to look up. (Dave's now doing "Best of You" -- still solo acoustic guitar and vocals. The audience is singing along, so I guess they didn't all leave.)
Journey was another black and white title in a kind of limited series. Very high quality cartooning and storytelling, along with some historical material. William Messner-Loebs did the comic guy stuff, while I think his wife did the research. I really remember one sequence where it's snowing like crazy in the story (now why would I remember that?) and the snow looked like it was 'whiting out' the characters. Neat effect.
Most people into comics are not going to go for titles like that, I realize. Color titles like Ronin and the Elektra series by Bill Sin-KEV-itch (sorry, I can't spell his name -- the fanboys taught me how to pronounce it. Yes, I was friends with several of them. It was just that one day.) were way ahead of their time and really popular.
The Watchmen (the Alan Moore book) started coming out in comic book form a little after I got thawed out that year. I read the first issue or two, but could never "get" Moore in any title. I loved the way he told the stories, but couldn't quite handle his attitude toward them. I had the same problem with Frank Miller, except with the art. I liked his style, but not his actual execution. (Fu's have quit -- rockers beware! Skin and Bones is all acoustic.) I did see "V for Vendetta" earlier this year, and really liked the movie. Moore didn't -- so I guess his stuff is not my cup of tea (Twining's Russian Caravan, if I ever get back in the money ... . Not likely.)
OK, so I've lost everybody. But look up the Sienkiewicz book. (I did, for the spelling, on Wikipedia just now.) Frank Miller did the story. It's called Elektra: Assassin. The art was way gone. (Is that how you say it?) OK, I'm done.
____
*I later bought the Fu Fighter's CD, and I still enjoy listening to it. On the CD, the audience is anything but quiet. They are going crazy between songs, and it makes the CD that much more enjoyable.
LJ orig.: 11/09/06
Monday, November 14, 2011
A Most Holy Aardvark
Clouds
and yuck all day. The sun set, the clouds left, and the temps started
dropping. A foot-long trip down the Subway and I'm all better.
I promise to set aside my pontiff's tiara when I post in the future. Yesterday's was ... OK, don't read it. Please.
I worked in a comics store for eight months. I was the manager, chief sales clerk, bathroom washer, floor mopper and backstock counter. I was king of this street-level triangle cut out of a building laid down in a old tobacco town's odd angle. There was an air conditioner in the transom, but no heat. The old coal furnace had died, and the owner refused to replace it. My boss, who rented the space, brought a clunky portable kerosene heater when autumn set in, and he said I'd need to buy the kerosene myself. He left me a little plastic hand pump as well. This was still the American South, right? Winter was a cool breeze or two ... no problems. Except we got more snows that winter than any ten previous. We got more actual snow on the ground than the previous ten years total. One was a 14-incher with one inch of ice on top of it. The weather that followed was subfreezing for two weeks. The mail stopped. City services stopped. Anybody caught without enough oil in their home heater reserve tanks either found shelter or froze to death. I had a half-inch left on the heating oil measuring stick when the snow and ice finally began to melt. Before that, I would run the heat for an hour a day, just to try and hold out. I was renting two rooms in an antique house with walls you could blow air through with your mouth. The heater was a basement (or cellar) model than was at least fifty years out of date. To boot, (this is a pun I intend, grimly) I owned one leaky pair of cowboy boots. That, and a worn pair of Clark's Wallabee Weavers, was all I owned to put on my feet. I damn near died.
Why did I damn near die? Fanboys. All stores, restaurants, and nearly everything else was closed. But that didn't stop the fanboys. The store owner, who lived in a city many miles distant, called me at home the day after the snow fell for eight hours straight that night, and demanded to know why his store was closed! I tried to explain to him that this town was not prepared to cope with winters made for Buffalo, New York. He said he found me my apartment within a few blocks of the store for a reason, and I'd better get going! When I finally stumbled over there, who should be waiting but a line of fanboys six or seven deep. They had gone to a pay phone (this was ten years before cell phones) and called the owner at home to demand their comic books! For those who may be a little clueless, fanboys are not 12-year-olds -- physically. They are adult males, some in their 30s and 40s, who are obsessed with comic books. Not adult-oriented graphic novels or Japanese imports, no. Comic books. They are not collectors, either. No, they only want new comic books, but in mint condition, in case they ever become collectors. They were all bigger than me, and I don't carry a sidearm, so I opened the *#%^@*(!ing store.
You see, I had gotten the weekly shipment (the owner ran his own distributorship), complete with unsorted special orders (that was half the shipment) the evening before as it started to snow, but after store hours. These fanboys were not at work the next day because of the snow, and they were bored. So, they all got in somebody's Rachero Deluxe (again, this was many years before passenger SUV's were common) or whatever the thing was called, and somehow made it to the store.
They didn't even let me get the heater running. They wanted their damn comic books, and they wanted them now!
In a way, I am to blame. I took the job, thinking it would be fun for a while. I had enjoyed comics as a lad, and some even in college, as I've mentioned. Before I knew about the job, I'd begun reading some of the newer ones of that time, and enjoyed many -- American Flagg, Journey, Love and Rockets (in my faves list posted earlier) Mister X, and several others I don't recall. I took the job, believing I would sell Marvels and DC's to 12-year-olds and the "alternative" titles to single adults like me. I did not know what a fanboy was. I learned. I learned the hard way. I stopped reading comic books of any kind. Except one.
Cerebus The Aardvark. It kept me alive.
LJ orig.: 11/08/06
I promise to set aside my pontiff's tiara when I post in the future. Yesterday's was ... OK, don't read it. Please.
I worked in a comics store for eight months. I was the manager, chief sales clerk, bathroom washer, floor mopper and backstock counter. I was king of this street-level triangle cut out of a building laid down in a old tobacco town's odd angle. There was an air conditioner in the transom, but no heat. The old coal furnace had died, and the owner refused to replace it. My boss, who rented the space, brought a clunky portable kerosene heater when autumn set in, and he said I'd need to buy the kerosene myself. He left me a little plastic hand pump as well. This was still the American South, right? Winter was a cool breeze or two ... no problems. Except we got more snows that winter than any ten previous. We got more actual snow on the ground than the previous ten years total. One was a 14-incher with one inch of ice on top of it. The weather that followed was subfreezing for two weeks. The mail stopped. City services stopped. Anybody caught without enough oil in their home heater reserve tanks either found shelter or froze to death. I had a half-inch left on the heating oil measuring stick when the snow and ice finally began to melt. Before that, I would run the heat for an hour a day, just to try and hold out. I was renting two rooms in an antique house with walls you could blow air through with your mouth. The heater was a basement (or cellar) model than was at least fifty years out of date. To boot, (this is a pun I intend, grimly) I owned one leaky pair of cowboy boots. That, and a worn pair of Clark's Wallabee Weavers, was all I owned to put on my feet. I damn near died.
Why did I damn near die? Fanboys. All stores, restaurants, and nearly everything else was closed. But that didn't stop the fanboys. The store owner, who lived in a city many miles distant, called me at home the day after the snow fell for eight hours straight that night, and demanded to know why his store was closed! I tried to explain to him that this town was not prepared to cope with winters made for Buffalo, New York. He said he found me my apartment within a few blocks of the store for a reason, and I'd better get going! When I finally stumbled over there, who should be waiting but a line of fanboys six or seven deep. They had gone to a pay phone (this was ten years before cell phones) and called the owner at home to demand their comic books! For those who may be a little clueless, fanboys are not 12-year-olds -- physically. They are adult males, some in their 30s and 40s, who are obsessed with comic books. Not adult-oriented graphic novels or Japanese imports, no. Comic books. They are not collectors, either. No, they only want new comic books, but in mint condition, in case they ever become collectors. They were all bigger than me, and I don't carry a sidearm, so I opened the *#%^@*(!ing store.
You see, I had gotten the weekly shipment (the owner ran his own distributorship), complete with unsorted special orders (that was half the shipment) the evening before as it started to snow, but after store hours. These fanboys were not at work the next day because of the snow, and they were bored. So, they all got in somebody's Rachero Deluxe (again, this was many years before passenger SUV's were common) or whatever the thing was called, and somehow made it to the store.
They didn't even let me get the heater running. They wanted their damn comic books, and they wanted them now!
In a way, I am to blame. I took the job, thinking it would be fun for a while. I had enjoyed comics as a lad, and some even in college, as I've mentioned. Before I knew about the job, I'd begun reading some of the newer ones of that time, and enjoyed many -- American Flagg, Journey, Love and Rockets (in my faves list posted earlier) Mister X, and several others I don't recall. I took the job, believing I would sell Marvels and DC's to 12-year-olds and the "alternative" titles to single adults like me. I did not know what a fanboy was. I learned. I learned the hard way. I stopped reading comic books of any kind. Except one.
Cerebus The Aardvark. It kept me alive.
LJ orig.: 11/08/06
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Graphic Story Part 2
Started
raining, as promised, very early this morning and well into the
afternoon. Stopped in time for the voter turnout to surge. Naturally, I
was caught in it.
One of the things that stands out in my memory was the strange way Jack Kirby drew hands in his comics for action scenes. An outstretched hand was forever jumping off the page toward the reader, with the palm down and the fingers all fanned out, but with the wrist bent outward a little. Didn't matter if it was Mister Fantastic, The Thing, the Human Torch, Captain America, the Hulk, the Silver Surfer (what a comics character!), the Black Panther, one of the Inhumans, or even Galactus pronouncing destruction, or Doctor Doom pronouncing ... well, doom. They all hand this outstretched arm with very carefully fanned out fingers and the wrist bent outward a little. It was Kirby's signature. If you saw that hand sticking out of the cover (in effect), you knew Kirby drew the comic, and it was going to be fun to look at.
Kirby knew what to exaggerate to bring a kid into the action on the page. Shoulders always big, legs really muscular, waists tight. Eyebrows were always thick and drawn together in concentration. And all the hair stayed in place, unless maybe somebody got clobbered hard, and a lock would fly out. (Speaking of clobbering, of course the Thing's hair stayed on tight under all those orange scales!) But that wasn't all. Kirby would sequence a fight scene across an entire page, with Cap or somebody jumping over the evildoer and flipping end over end, and then kicking the guy in the head, with style, to boot! (No pun intended, but I'll take it.)
As I said in yesterday's post, these things stick in a kid's head. I later found out more about Jack "King" Kirby shortly before he died back in the mid-80s. Kirby lived in New York, grew up tough, and yearned to be in the circus. It was a means of escape for him, to fantasize being a trapeze artist, flying high above the crowd. But for some reason, he never pursued it. Then, I was watching something on TV ("Circus of the Stars") and a trapeze artist was trying to show some TV actor how to swing on a trapeze. He said you didn't want to grab the bar overhand if you were going to do some kind of flip. You had to fan out your fingers, aim your thumbs at the bar, grab it underhand as it swung toward you and lock your grip with your thumbs coming over the top. Like the "Kirby hand." So, Jack maybe did learn something about trapeze flying, after all!
But if so, why did he quit? One of my Marvel faves was Daredevil -- the Man without Fear. (This was years and years before Frank Miller made Daredevil into, well, a devil.) Kirby drew the first Daredevil cover, and probably designed Daredevil's first uniform -- a bright yellow with a black singlet and a cowl with devil's horns. I'd read years and years later that Kirby had intended it to look like a trapeze artist's costume. Why would Daredevil be The Man without Fear? He can't see converging lines -- so he can't get vertigo. Vertigo is an optical illusion that many trapeze artists fear, because it can come on you suddenly, and for no apparent reason. Daredevil's hypersonic hearing made him completely immune to vertigo -- hence, no fear. Maybe Jack had a problem with getting vertigo, and couldn't do the high wire. I guess we'll never know. (Kirby could draw as a kid, and maybe used that skill to get himself a cartoonist's job in the Army so he could get off the World War Two battlefield's front lines.*
Look at the Fantastic Four -- they're all in trapeze costumes. One of the acts in a circus was a man who shot himself out of a cannon while holding flames or being "on fire" as an extra stunt. He was called The Human Torch. On the circus midway were people who could do contortionist tricks -- Mister Fantastic. There was always a brutish strongman doing seemingly impossible feats of strength -- The Thing. And the Invisible Girl? Making a woman disappear was a standard magic act on the circus midway. I think that's what lay behind The Fantastic Four's popularity -- the unconscious connection with many a little boy's dream -- to run away and join the circus, just like the king of comic artists wanted to do.
Kirby had a lot of younger imitators who adored his work. I mentioned Barry Windsor-Smith yesterday. He was one. Another was responsible for my quiet revenge on the cool guys who bought the FF and Spider-Man comics before I could get to the store. His name was Jim Steranko. Part Oriental*, Steranko was into martial arts -- judo, I think. And Steranko loved movies. He took over drawing a failing comic from Kirby -- Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. It shared a comic with Doctor Strange. (By the way, the only woman who drew a Marvel comic in those days was Marie Severin. She temporarily took over the title when Steve Ditko quit Marvel. If you can get back issues that old, you may agree that she did a better job than Ditko -- better by far, in my opinion.)
Steranko got a few issues under his wing, and all the cool guys bought the comic before me, again. They laughed at me as I begged to borrow them when the teacher wasn't looking! Steranko drew huge futuristic guns and outlandish vehicles, as well as really sexy female counterparts to Nick Fury -- who wore an eyepatch. And Steranko was so good at storytelling that Stan Lee just let him take over, and then gave Nick Fury his own comic. That's when Steranko went wild -- OpArt effects, wild panel layouts, or maybe no layouts at all, detail unheard of in comics art before that, and imaginative spy stories, blended with eerie science fiction twists. It left the cool guys behind. They didn't like it, because they didn't understand it. I had Nick Fury comics all to myself. They stuck in my head, as I saw nearly twenty years later. Steranko's work was that far ahead of its time. What happened twenty years later? Next time -- along with the reason behind another of my faves.
___
*I later learned that Kirby was a soldier in WWII, and he experienced combat first hand. Steranko is Croatian. 'Hand' instead of 'had' is left as I originally typed it in 2006.
LJ orig.: 11/07/06
One of the things that stands out in my memory was the strange way Jack Kirby drew hands in his comics for action scenes. An outstretched hand was forever jumping off the page toward the reader, with the palm down and the fingers all fanned out, but with the wrist bent outward a little. Didn't matter if it was Mister Fantastic, The Thing, the Human Torch, Captain America, the Hulk, the Silver Surfer (what a comics character!), the Black Panther, one of the Inhumans, or even Galactus pronouncing destruction, or Doctor Doom pronouncing ... well, doom. They all hand this outstretched arm with very carefully fanned out fingers and the wrist bent outward a little. It was Kirby's signature. If you saw that hand sticking out of the cover (in effect), you knew Kirby drew the comic, and it was going to be fun to look at.
Kirby knew what to exaggerate to bring a kid into the action on the page. Shoulders always big, legs really muscular, waists tight. Eyebrows were always thick and drawn together in concentration. And all the hair stayed in place, unless maybe somebody got clobbered hard, and a lock would fly out. (Speaking of clobbering, of course the Thing's hair stayed on tight under all those orange scales!) But that wasn't all. Kirby would sequence a fight scene across an entire page, with Cap or somebody jumping over the evildoer and flipping end over end, and then kicking the guy in the head, with style, to boot! (No pun intended, but I'll take it.)
As I said in yesterday's post, these things stick in a kid's head. I later found out more about Jack "King" Kirby shortly before he died back in the mid-80s. Kirby lived in New York, grew up tough, and yearned to be in the circus. It was a means of escape for him, to fantasize being a trapeze artist, flying high above the crowd. But for some reason, he never pursued it. Then, I was watching something on TV ("Circus of the Stars") and a trapeze artist was trying to show some TV actor how to swing on a trapeze. He said you didn't want to grab the bar overhand if you were going to do some kind of flip. You had to fan out your fingers, aim your thumbs at the bar, grab it underhand as it swung toward you and lock your grip with your thumbs coming over the top. Like the "Kirby hand." So, Jack maybe did learn something about trapeze flying, after all!
But if so, why did he quit? One of my Marvel faves was Daredevil -- the Man without Fear. (This was years and years before Frank Miller made Daredevil into, well, a devil.) Kirby drew the first Daredevil cover, and probably designed Daredevil's first uniform -- a bright yellow with a black singlet and a cowl with devil's horns. I'd read years and years later that Kirby had intended it to look like a trapeze artist's costume. Why would Daredevil be The Man without Fear? He can't see converging lines -- so he can't get vertigo. Vertigo is an optical illusion that many trapeze artists fear, because it can come on you suddenly, and for no apparent reason. Daredevil's hypersonic hearing made him completely immune to vertigo -- hence, no fear. Maybe Jack had a problem with getting vertigo, and couldn't do the high wire. I guess we'll never know. (Kirby could draw as a kid, and maybe used that skill to get himself a cartoonist's job in the Army so he could get off the World War Two battlefield's front lines.*
Look at the Fantastic Four -- they're all in trapeze costumes. One of the acts in a circus was a man who shot himself out of a cannon while holding flames or being "on fire" as an extra stunt. He was called The Human Torch. On the circus midway were people who could do contortionist tricks -- Mister Fantastic. There was always a brutish strongman doing seemingly impossible feats of strength -- The Thing. And the Invisible Girl? Making a woman disappear was a standard magic act on the circus midway. I think that's what lay behind The Fantastic Four's popularity -- the unconscious connection with many a little boy's dream -- to run away and join the circus, just like the king of comic artists wanted to do.
Kirby had a lot of younger imitators who adored his work. I mentioned Barry Windsor-Smith yesterday. He was one. Another was responsible for my quiet revenge on the cool guys who bought the FF and Spider-Man comics before I could get to the store. His name was Jim Steranko. Part Oriental*, Steranko was into martial arts -- judo, I think. And Steranko loved movies. He took over drawing a failing comic from Kirby -- Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. It shared a comic with Doctor Strange. (By the way, the only woman who drew a Marvel comic in those days was Marie Severin. She temporarily took over the title when Steve Ditko quit Marvel. If you can get back issues that old, you may agree that she did a better job than Ditko -- better by far, in my opinion.)
Steranko got a few issues under his wing, and all the cool guys bought the comic before me, again. They laughed at me as I begged to borrow them when the teacher wasn't looking! Steranko drew huge futuristic guns and outlandish vehicles, as well as really sexy female counterparts to Nick Fury -- who wore an eyepatch. And Steranko was so good at storytelling that Stan Lee just let him take over, and then gave Nick Fury his own comic. That's when Steranko went wild -- OpArt effects, wild panel layouts, or maybe no layouts at all, detail unheard of in comics art before that, and imaginative spy stories, blended with eerie science fiction twists. It left the cool guys behind. They didn't like it, because they didn't understand it. I had Nick Fury comics all to myself. They stuck in my head, as I saw nearly twenty years later. Steranko's work was that far ahead of its time. What happened twenty years later? Next time -- along with the reason behind another of my faves.
___
*I later learned that Kirby was a soldier in WWII, and he experienced combat first hand. Steranko is Croatian. 'Hand' instead of 'had' is left as I originally typed it in 2006.
LJ orig.: 11/07/06
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Graphic Story, Part 1
Warmer still, and the rain's on its way, they say.
I got into comics like every other American boy, when I was 12. That's when my friends started suddenly raving about their new comic book faves, acting as though they'd been fans for years. Waving the colored little pulp mags in my face, like, "Look what I have, and you can't get one now!" Sure enough, when I walked by the local newsstand-record-and-book store in my little hometown, the comic rack was right in the front window. And all the Spider-man and Fantastic Four issues were always gone by the time I got there. Nobody bought Captain America/Iron Man, though. Or DC titles like The Flash. There was no point looking at Superman or Batman in those days. TV series and years of market domination left those titles aimed at audiences even younger than 12. Well, that's what we told ourselves, anyway. The high school kids were getting the FF and Spideys, in those days, so reading one as a sixth-grader was considered advanced, at least by us. My friends were getting their copies from sources they never revealed. Neither had older siblings, so that remains a mystery.
Anyway, Flash had story lines by two greats: Julius Schwartz on story and art by Carmine Infantino. So it was well worth the read. Plus, the myth of Mercury has worldwide appeal, so it was a good title, as long as those two titans of the comics world were doing it. Cap and Iron Man shared a comic book, and they were straight-ahead comic book stories that lacked the hip appeal of Marvel's first line, but they were good enough for me. King Kirby did Cap's art, and Gene Colan did Iron Man. I loved those titles, partly because they were all I could get my hands on that weren't silly to me. Oh, yeah, Hulk sold out, too, but that title never appealed to me. I don't know why.
Later, I learned (after interrogating one of my friends) of a old fashioned grocery store up the road a ways that sold "reader's copies" -- in other words, they were reselling used back issues. The store was on the way to my Grandma's (the other one, my mother's mother), but not one my mother ever wanted to stop at, for some reason. But I begged and begged, and actually got an hour in the store as my 13th birthday present. That's where somebody had left battered copies of Spider-Man at Ditko's peak. I would take them home and read them like they were writ in gold. They were just gems. I couldn't believe I even held them in my hands, much less owned them. Something like that stays with a guy.
But I grew up, discovered girls, and forgot comics entirely in high school. And by then FF and Spidey had lost their luster, with the departure of Kirby and Ditko as artists, so they weren't hip anymore. Also by then, I'd taken up reading adventure stories, with Doc Savage and Tarzan (Ballantine had reprinted all of the Edgar Rice Burroughs classics -- I must have read a half-dozen or more). Conan the Barbarian had covers too racy for my parents to tolerate, so I let the "cool guys" have those (but I stared at the tiny cover art by Frazetta, totally obsessed, when no one was looking). As luck would have it, Ballentine published a Burroughs bio* and retrospective of his work in mass-market paperback when I was a high school wage earner. It had Frazetta ink drawings all through it, and I think I "read" the binding off that one!
By college, I dormed with a guy who was a local to the campus area, and he had a car! He knew where to get the records and mags in the nearest town (the campus was rural), and that's where I tasted being a 'fanboy". Barry Windsor-Smith had brought out a "book-length" Conan in black and white, around that time. I loved it, as a college kid would, somewhat dispassionately. Frankly, I'd found music a much better source of pleasure (see previous posts), and I stunned my college friends by using spending money for Miles Davis Live at the Fillmore East, instead of rather sick Vampirella titles (I bought a couple to try and fit in. Great art, but disgustingly cynical stories, at least to my taste.) My cool jazz and "middle period" Joni Mitchell records (For the Roses, Hejira etc.) were always getting borrowed by guys who hated the music, but used them to try and seduce their dates. At least for a year or so, before the girls figured out what came next after Joni or Miles. (That's where the Free Jazz record mentioned a few posts back went for -- revenge. As if it was my fault! No, I didn't try the technique myself. I'd found a girlfriend, who told me flat out it was creepy to lend records, knowing what they would be used for. You figure out the rest what happened to my poor Ornette disc!) Oh, well.
___
*The Burroughs bio is Master of Adventure by Richard A. Lupoff. It is now published by Bison, with a new forward by Michael Moorcock. The Bison Frontiers of Imagination series is a collection of sci-fi/adventure classics.
LJ orig.: 11/06/06
I got into comics like every other American boy, when I was 12. That's when my friends started suddenly raving about their new comic book faves, acting as though they'd been fans for years. Waving the colored little pulp mags in my face, like, "Look what I have, and you can't get one now!" Sure enough, when I walked by the local newsstand-record-and-book store in my little hometown, the comic rack was right in the front window. And all the Spider-man and Fantastic Four issues were always gone by the time I got there. Nobody bought Captain America/Iron Man, though. Or DC titles like The Flash. There was no point looking at Superman or Batman in those days. TV series and years of market domination left those titles aimed at audiences even younger than 12. Well, that's what we told ourselves, anyway. The high school kids were getting the FF and Spideys, in those days, so reading one as a sixth-grader was considered advanced, at least by us. My friends were getting their copies from sources they never revealed. Neither had older siblings, so that remains a mystery.
Anyway, Flash had story lines by two greats: Julius Schwartz on story and art by Carmine Infantino. So it was well worth the read. Plus, the myth of Mercury has worldwide appeal, so it was a good title, as long as those two titans of the comics world were doing it. Cap and Iron Man shared a comic book, and they were straight-ahead comic book stories that lacked the hip appeal of Marvel's first line, but they were good enough for me. King Kirby did Cap's art, and Gene Colan did Iron Man. I loved those titles, partly because they were all I could get my hands on that weren't silly to me. Oh, yeah, Hulk sold out, too, but that title never appealed to me. I don't know why.
Later, I learned (after interrogating one of my friends) of a old fashioned grocery store up the road a ways that sold "reader's copies" -- in other words, they were reselling used back issues. The store was on the way to my Grandma's (the other one, my mother's mother), but not one my mother ever wanted to stop at, for some reason. But I begged and begged, and actually got an hour in the store as my 13th birthday present. That's where somebody had left battered copies of Spider-Man at Ditko's peak. I would take them home and read them like they were writ in gold. They were just gems. I couldn't believe I even held them in my hands, much less owned them. Something like that stays with a guy.
But I grew up, discovered girls, and forgot comics entirely in high school. And by then FF and Spidey had lost their luster, with the departure of Kirby and Ditko as artists, so they weren't hip anymore. Also by then, I'd taken up reading adventure stories, with Doc Savage and Tarzan (Ballantine had reprinted all of the Edgar Rice Burroughs classics -- I must have read a half-dozen or more). Conan the Barbarian had covers too racy for my parents to tolerate, so I let the "cool guys" have those (but I stared at the tiny cover art by Frazetta, totally obsessed, when no one was looking). As luck would have it, Ballentine published a Burroughs bio* and retrospective of his work in mass-market paperback when I was a high school wage earner. It had Frazetta ink drawings all through it, and I think I "read" the binding off that one!
By college, I dormed with a guy who was a local to the campus area, and he had a car! He knew where to get the records and mags in the nearest town (the campus was rural), and that's where I tasted being a 'fanboy". Barry Windsor-Smith had brought out a "book-length" Conan in black and white, around that time. I loved it, as a college kid would, somewhat dispassionately. Frankly, I'd found music a much better source of pleasure (see previous posts), and I stunned my college friends by using spending money for Miles Davis Live at the Fillmore East, instead of rather sick Vampirella titles (I bought a couple to try and fit in. Great art, but disgustingly cynical stories, at least to my taste.) My cool jazz and "middle period" Joni Mitchell records (For the Roses, Hejira etc.) were always getting borrowed by guys who hated the music, but used them to try and seduce their dates. At least for a year or so, before the girls figured out what came next after Joni or Miles. (That's where the Free Jazz record mentioned a few posts back went for -- revenge. As if it was my fault! No, I didn't try the technique myself. I'd found a girlfriend, who told me flat out it was creepy to lend records, knowing what they would be used for. You figure out the rest what happened to my poor Ornette disc!) Oh, well.
___
*The Burroughs bio is Master of Adventure by Richard A. Lupoff. It is now published by Bison, with a new forward by Michael Moorcock. The Bison Frontiers of Imagination series is a collection of sci-fi/adventure classics.
LJ orig.: 11/06/06
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
(no title)
Again the witching hour approaches, and I'm typing away. Less cool here, some clouds tonight.
One of the things I'm trying to write (won't call it a book, don't know where I'm going with it) is about the "power of personal choice". It really is a powerful thing we humans have, the freedom to use our wills however we want, within the limitations of time, space, genetics, and other factors in our immediate environment. We can choose to lie, cheat, steal, fake stuff, be an idiot when you know better, etc. And we have the power to do otherwise, to make better choices. Plus, we have the additional power to respond to those who do either -- something good for us, something bad to us, and the like.
Once upon a time, a guy chose to take some of my personal identity (not account numbers, it was other stuff -- I need to be vague here) and use it to acquire status that I at that time could not have. When a relative informed me of this, the situation was that I could basically do nothing to retaliate at that point. I felt powerless. I got angry for a while, but then I realized something that has helped me ever since. It was this: I had something worth stealing. Some phony took from me something I had made, and was pretending he could do the same things with it I could. He could not, because it was my creation: my God-given ability to create inhered in it, and I could still use that power to do more. After maybe a year, the guy disappeared from the scene. Because what I did once I realized I still had power -- the power to create something even better in the place of what he'd taken -- made it so. I employed additional skills I'd honed from other God-given talents to create something much better, and something no one could ever take away -- because this time, I created something that had more of me in it. It was inimitable. It was either me doing it, or no one. The "secret ingredient" was that the process itself was the secret. Once I realized I had something inherent in me that created something worth stealing, or copying, or whatever -- that meant I could make something else to replace what I'd lost, more of it, and make it better than before. The power of love (I loved what I was doing), the power of insight, the power of self-help, the power of honest work -- all essential. But none of them were worth anything until I used my power to choose.
LJ orig: 11/05/06
One of the things I'm trying to write (won't call it a book, don't know where I'm going with it) is about the "power of personal choice". It really is a powerful thing we humans have, the freedom to use our wills however we want, within the limitations of time, space, genetics, and other factors in our immediate environment. We can choose to lie, cheat, steal, fake stuff, be an idiot when you know better, etc. And we have the power to do otherwise, to make better choices. Plus, we have the additional power to respond to those who do either -- something good for us, something bad to us, and the like.
Once upon a time, a guy chose to take some of my personal identity (not account numbers, it was other stuff -- I need to be vague here) and use it to acquire status that I at that time could not have. When a relative informed me of this, the situation was that I could basically do nothing to retaliate at that point. I felt powerless. I got angry for a while, but then I realized something that has helped me ever since. It was this: I had something worth stealing. Some phony took from me something I had made, and was pretending he could do the same things with it I could. He could not, because it was my creation: my God-given ability to create inhered in it, and I could still use that power to do more. After maybe a year, the guy disappeared from the scene. Because what I did once I realized I still had power -- the power to create something even better in the place of what he'd taken -- made it so. I employed additional skills I'd honed from other God-given talents to create something much better, and something no one could ever take away -- because this time, I created something that had more of me in it. It was inimitable. It was either me doing it, or no one. The "secret ingredient" was that the process itself was the secret. Once I realized I had something inherent in me that created something worth stealing, or copying, or whatever -- that meant I could make something else to replace what I'd lost, more of it, and make it better than before. The power of love (I loved what I was doing), the power of insight, the power of self-help, the power of honest work -- all essential. But none of them were worth anything until I used my power to choose.
LJ orig: 11/05/06
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
(no title)
Cold, full moon, clear sky, and the heart of Saturday night
lay downtown. Lots of students out and about, fun just me walking and
having a nice gyro. Reminded me of college days gone by.
Because I wasn't much different then. I had longer hair, wore Clark's instead of Birk's Footprints (wrecked my feet covering the South Carolina legislature a few years ago -- six hours standing a day without orthotics is a bad idea for a flat-floot like me). Thought of myself as an outsider, but I always had my nose to the glass of the Inside World. Wondered what it was like feeling normal, back then. Now, I don't care. Normal is what I call it, long as I don't cheat, steal, lie, attack somebody, etc. But back then, it was something that looked like it was out on the horizon, always further away the faster I ran toward it. Phantoms are like that.
Still, that outsider feeling is not altogether a bad thing. I just bought (hardly can afford to, but ... ) the DVD set of Buffy Season Six -- the one everyone says they hate. I'm hooked solid, watching an episode almost every night. I relate to being somebody who is living a life in a world they never made, and irritated as hell about it.
My habit was to buy a season and watch one episode a week, always on Sunday night. It made a nice end to the weekend, and gave me something to look forward to at the end of the work week. Plus, it was like a defiant little "miracle" play, a story about love and belief, a counterpoint to churchly piety.
I'd never thought about the show much, before 2002. I thought it was a trendy little piece of fluff that I didn't miss not being able to watch (cable-only in my area -- and I haven't had a cable hookup in nearly 20 years). But Nine-Eleven (an assignment brought me to NYC three months after the planes hit -- saw Ground Zero, interviewed firefighters who'd lost friends, etc) and its aftermath of more plane crashes and aerosolized anthrax haunted me, and left me channel surfing blankly night after night -- just numb. Then, in January, the local Fox affiliate began airing Buffy re-runs late Sunday nights. They started, for some reason, with Season Four -- the other season nobody likes. I settled down and watched, just because something finally caught my attention. Within twenty minutes, I was hooked for life. The station ran the shows in sequence, but only the WB ones. After season five ended with Buffy swan-diving to her death, the station went back to Season One repeats the following week.
Oddly, another station declared it would broadcast part of the WB and part of the UPN schedules in early 2003. I got to see the last eight or so broadcast episodes of BtVS as they were aired on Wednesday nights, not in repeat -- and then watched the repeats of Season Two on Sunday nights. So, when I could (I'd gotten fired again by that time -- radio, don't ask), I bought all of Season Three, then all of Season Seven. Finally, I'm watching the season that had eluded me all this time. And, to me, it's better than all the others. I know I'm the only person on Earth who feels this way. Sorry -- but remember, I'm an outsider.
There is an advantage to watching the show like this. You relate to it personally, because everybody else who possibly could have cared has already seen it. You feel as though the shows are speaking directly to you. And there's no need to analyze them, because when they're personal, they are burned into your unconscious like a CD-ROM. The other advantage is that (this is a not-too-well-kept secret) the shows in repeat are often rough cuts. They have to leave in a total of 30 seconds or even a minute to compensate for less advertising, and to keep the aired version copyrighted. So, you'll see boom mic's hanging down over the actor's heads, slight miscues, and other tiny bits of stuff that actually make the shows a little more interesting (If you're watching for it, you can see things like that on Seinfeld, Friends, all the big shows running in heavy syndication). One of the better ones in Buffy re-runs is when Zander is squirting water on evil rodents chasing Cordelia out of a house. Charisma Carpenter runs out of the house, yelling "Oh, that water's cold! Stop it, Nick!" Meanwhile, Nicholas Brendan is grinning evilly, continuing to spray his co-star. Bad boy, Nick!
LJ orig.: 11/04/06
Because I wasn't much different then. I had longer hair, wore Clark's instead of Birk's Footprints (wrecked my feet covering the South Carolina legislature a few years ago -- six hours standing a day without orthotics is a bad idea for a flat-floot like me). Thought of myself as an outsider, but I always had my nose to the glass of the Inside World. Wondered what it was like feeling normal, back then. Now, I don't care. Normal is what I call it, long as I don't cheat, steal, lie, attack somebody, etc. But back then, it was something that looked like it was out on the horizon, always further away the faster I ran toward it. Phantoms are like that.
Still, that outsider feeling is not altogether a bad thing. I just bought (hardly can afford to, but ... ) the DVD set of Buffy Season Six -- the one everyone says they hate. I'm hooked solid, watching an episode almost every night. I relate to being somebody who is living a life in a world they never made, and irritated as hell about it.
My habit was to buy a season and watch one episode a week, always on Sunday night. It made a nice end to the weekend, and gave me something to look forward to at the end of the work week. Plus, it was like a defiant little "miracle" play, a story about love and belief, a counterpoint to churchly piety.
I'd never thought about the show much, before 2002. I thought it was a trendy little piece of fluff that I didn't miss not being able to watch (cable-only in my area -- and I haven't had a cable hookup in nearly 20 years). But Nine-Eleven (an assignment brought me to NYC three months after the planes hit -- saw Ground Zero, interviewed firefighters who'd lost friends, etc) and its aftermath of more plane crashes and aerosolized anthrax haunted me, and left me channel surfing blankly night after night -- just numb. Then, in January, the local Fox affiliate began airing Buffy re-runs late Sunday nights. They started, for some reason, with Season Four -- the other season nobody likes. I settled down and watched, just because something finally caught my attention. Within twenty minutes, I was hooked for life. The station ran the shows in sequence, but only the WB ones. After season five ended with Buffy swan-diving to her death, the station went back to Season One repeats the following week.
Oddly, another station declared it would broadcast part of the WB and part of the UPN schedules in early 2003. I got to see the last eight or so broadcast episodes of BtVS as they were aired on Wednesday nights, not in repeat -- and then watched the repeats of Season Two on Sunday nights. So, when I could (I'd gotten fired again by that time -- radio, don't ask), I bought all of Season Three, then all of Season Seven. Finally, I'm watching the season that had eluded me all this time. And, to me, it's better than all the others. I know I'm the only person on Earth who feels this way. Sorry -- but remember, I'm an outsider.
There is an advantage to watching the show like this. You relate to it personally, because everybody else who possibly could have cared has already seen it. You feel as though the shows are speaking directly to you. And there's no need to analyze them, because when they're personal, they are burned into your unconscious like a CD-ROM. The other advantage is that (this is a not-too-well-kept secret) the shows in repeat are often rough cuts. They have to leave in a total of 30 seconds or even a minute to compensate for less advertising, and to keep the aired version copyrighted. So, you'll see boom mic's hanging down over the actor's heads, slight miscues, and other tiny bits of stuff that actually make the shows a little more interesting (If you're watching for it, you can see things like that on Seinfeld, Friends, all the big shows running in heavy syndication). One of the better ones in Buffy re-runs is when Zander is squirting water on evil rodents chasing Cordelia out of a house. Charisma Carpenter runs out of the house, yelling "Oh, that water's cold! Stop it, Nick!" Meanwhile, Nicholas Brendan is grinning evilly, continuing to spray his co-star. Bad boy, Nick!
LJ orig.: 11/04/06
Monday, November 7, 2011
(no title)
The default userpic* is a crop of a shot of me trying to turn
off the flash on my little Nikon while I'm standing in the bathroom
facing the mirror. I'm trying to look at the viewer on the back of the
camera while tripping the shutter for a test shot. I thought the crop
made me look like some evil scientist creating something bad out of the
blue glow at the bottom left. Now that I see it in LiveJournal mode, I
realize I just look like an a**!ole. Oh, well. I can change it.
One of my more modern music faves has apparently announced she is through with performing. I liked Fiona Apple's last CD, probably because I must like the sound of self-torture. Anyway, the producer of two of the tracks is someone else I like, and I liked his arrangements. Also, I bought the CD about two weeks before my broadcast news career came to its conclusion, and the songs just fit my mood to a "T". But it begs another question. What is a middle-aged character like me doing listening to someone like Fiona Apple? There's an answer.
It all goes back to the end of my daily print journalism career, back in 1984. I just walked out (after two weeks notice) with no job. My upstairs neighbor ran a local record shop, part of a small regional chain -- the same chain I bought the Ornette Coleman record at, though in a different, and smaller, town. I was older than everybody, except my neighbor. I had focused on my career, to the extent that I bought very few records and mainly listened to my old college collection over and over again. Occasionally, while a newspaper hound, I'd get the odd movie to review when the regular reviewer had a conflict, so I'd see a free movie, hear a song in it I didn't know but liked, and bought the record, which I'd end up hating. Other than that, I knew nothing about the music scene (local commercial radio was then pretty much like now -- very commercial -- and I did not live in a town with an "alternative" station or get an NPR affiliate that wasn't all classical). I got an education just walking in the door the first day. At the register stood a local politico's daughter (whom I did not know), hair in a four-color mohawk, tats on both shoulders, at least six piercings in each earlobe, and wearing a some kind of tore-up tee shirt under a leather vest. She didn't notice me, because she was busy slamming a customer's record in a bag with the words "Seizure, dude!" She also looked like she was ready to rip somebody's head off. It turns out she had just been told for the millionth time she could not play Black Flag records in the store during operating hours. At the back desk filling out special orders (all had to be done by hand, pressing down the pen as hard as you could to get all four carbon copies to print through) was a slightly older employee. He had his hair in what we called a "shag" cut, was a musician, and hated the manager so passionately he refused to speak to me (the manager's uncool neighbor hire) for about two weeks. He was into ... I don't remember what he was into, actually. I think he played synth in several local bands, apparently hating them all. I think he liked Howard Jones and stuff like that, but he didn't communicate with me. Then there was assistant manager, a large black super friendly guy who knew all music and liked mostly soul and light jazz. I hid my old jazz tastes from him and everybody else, because I was afraid they'd think I was a nut (Plus, I held so-called "light jazz" in utter contempt -- another thing I wanted to hide from the assistant manager). The other employees were music hounds who were quitting in droves. They all hated the manager, who was fired shortly after that. Now I had no one on my side, and was held in such disdain by the staff that all the records I played in-store (we had to take turns changing whatever was on the turntable) were promptly removed with a loud scratching sound. ("You want to play Juice Newton? What are you?") The first CD's were about six months from being released -- it was all vinyl and cassettes then. The job was not boring to me, but Friday and Saturday nights were pure bedlam. Hordes of working-class youth poured into the only record store in town to buy the latest KISS ("Animalize"), Def Leppard, Dio, Ratt, and -- brace yourselves -- Hank Williams Jr. cassettes. The hardcore girl brought her friends over during the last hour before closing -- all to sneer at the kids buying music they also liked, but wouldn't admit. I was saved partly by a work ethic I learned in newspapers and retail (I come from a long line of retail managers), and because the new manager liked me. She was the best boss I ever had. Sympathetic, fair, and friendly -- but also a music-retail pro. She was from Athens, Georgia, and knew REM and others in that scene personally. (The hardcore girl knew Black Flag -- she'd house them when they came to play the Milestone Club in the nearest Big City). The synth guy's replacement was a true music snob, but who knew his stuff. He played bass in an actually good local band. His favorite band was The Smiths. His band didn't sound like them, though. The new manager loved alternative stuff, and played a lot of female singer songwriters that preceded Fiona Apple. I'm writing this while listening to The Deftones' latest release on AOL Listening Party. I like most of it. Another I've heard I liked is "BeHeMe" by a group I'll think of later (something to do with gardening).
So that's what a guy in his early 50's is doing listening to music people half his age are listening to. He remembers when going to work was fun.
(By the way, I screwed up something in the earlier post. Vinyl went in bins, cassettes went in racks. CD's went in two to a bin -- three wide didn't quite fit.)
___
*The default userpic was an LJ feature. First names of fellow employees have been removed from my original post. A four-letter word is also newly garbled. The "gardening" band was named Annuals.
LJ orig.: 11/03/06
One of my more modern music faves has apparently announced she is through with performing. I liked Fiona Apple's last CD, probably because I must like the sound of self-torture. Anyway, the producer of two of the tracks is someone else I like, and I liked his arrangements. Also, I bought the CD about two weeks before my broadcast news career came to its conclusion, and the songs just fit my mood to a "T". But it begs another question. What is a middle-aged character like me doing listening to someone like Fiona Apple? There's an answer.
It all goes back to the end of my daily print journalism career, back in 1984. I just walked out (after two weeks notice) with no job. My upstairs neighbor ran a local record shop, part of a small regional chain -- the same chain I bought the Ornette Coleman record at, though in a different, and smaller, town. I was older than everybody, except my neighbor. I had focused on my career, to the extent that I bought very few records and mainly listened to my old college collection over and over again. Occasionally, while a newspaper hound, I'd get the odd movie to review when the regular reviewer had a conflict, so I'd see a free movie, hear a song in it I didn't know but liked, and bought the record, which I'd end up hating. Other than that, I knew nothing about the music scene (local commercial radio was then pretty much like now -- very commercial -- and I did not live in a town with an "alternative" station or get an NPR affiliate that wasn't all classical). I got an education just walking in the door the first day. At the register stood a local politico's daughter (whom I did not know), hair in a four-color mohawk, tats on both shoulders, at least six piercings in each earlobe, and wearing a some kind of tore-up tee shirt under a leather vest. She didn't notice me, because she was busy slamming a customer's record in a bag with the words "Seizure, dude!" She also looked like she was ready to rip somebody's head off. It turns out she had just been told for the millionth time she could not play Black Flag records in the store during operating hours. At the back desk filling out special orders (all had to be done by hand, pressing down the pen as hard as you could to get all four carbon copies to print through) was a slightly older employee. He had his hair in what we called a "shag" cut, was a musician, and hated the manager so passionately he refused to speak to me (the manager's uncool neighbor hire) for about two weeks. He was into ... I don't remember what he was into, actually. I think he played synth in several local bands, apparently hating them all. I think he liked Howard Jones and stuff like that, but he didn't communicate with me. Then there was assistant manager, a large black super friendly guy who knew all music and liked mostly soul and light jazz. I hid my old jazz tastes from him and everybody else, because I was afraid they'd think I was a nut (Plus, I held so-called "light jazz" in utter contempt -- another thing I wanted to hide from the assistant manager). The other employees were music hounds who were quitting in droves. They all hated the manager, who was fired shortly after that. Now I had no one on my side, and was held in such disdain by the staff that all the records I played in-store (we had to take turns changing whatever was on the turntable) were promptly removed with a loud scratching sound. ("You want to play Juice Newton? What are you?") The first CD's were about six months from being released -- it was all vinyl and cassettes then. The job was not boring to me, but Friday and Saturday nights were pure bedlam. Hordes of working-class youth poured into the only record store in town to buy the latest KISS ("Animalize"), Def Leppard, Dio, Ratt, and -- brace yourselves -- Hank Williams Jr. cassettes. The hardcore girl brought her friends over during the last hour before closing -- all to sneer at the kids buying music they also liked, but wouldn't admit. I was saved partly by a work ethic I learned in newspapers and retail (I come from a long line of retail managers), and because the new manager liked me. She was the best boss I ever had. Sympathetic, fair, and friendly -- but also a music-retail pro. She was from Athens, Georgia, and knew REM and others in that scene personally. (The hardcore girl knew Black Flag -- she'd house them when they came to play the Milestone Club in the nearest Big City). The synth guy's replacement was a true music snob, but who knew his stuff. He played bass in an actually good local band. His favorite band was The Smiths. His band didn't sound like them, though. The new manager loved alternative stuff, and played a lot of female singer songwriters that preceded Fiona Apple. I'm writing this while listening to The Deftones' latest release on AOL Listening Party. I like most of it. Another I've heard I liked is "BeHeMe" by a group I'll think of later (something to do with gardening).
So that's what a guy in his early 50's is doing listening to music people half his age are listening to. He remembers when going to work was fun.
(By the way, I screwed up something in the earlier post. Vinyl went in bins, cassettes went in racks. CD's went in two to a bin -- three wide didn't quite fit.)
___
*The default userpic was an LJ feature. First names of fellow employees have been removed from my original post. A four-letter word is also newly garbled. The "gardening" band was named Annuals.
LJ orig.: 11/03/06
Saturday, November 5, 2011
My misspent youth
Spent all day yesterday pulling out some of the needles. Most, it seems, I put there myself!
Fast post about music. My memories of the 70s are probably not most people's. I remember taking a music appreciation course as a high school sophomore, and hearing the teacher's description of her 60s trip to New York with a group of other high school music teachers. On their itenerary was a concert by the Ornette Coleman Quintet (he'd added a violin by then, I think). Naturally, I waited for the monthly trip to the nearest Big City (I'm a very small town kid) to check out the only real record store in 100 miles. In the bin (vinyl records go in bins, CDs in racks -- how I know this is another post altogether) was the store's only Ornette Coleman record -- a double album called "Free Jazz". With some trepidation, I marched to the register and laid down my cash (about two week's worth) for it. The first spin was a challenge, the second spin (many weeks later) even more so. I took it to the music appreciation class (the "play your record" Friday) and the kids' jaws just dropped. We couldn't play the whole thing (I listened to the whole thing at one sitting only twice in my life -- and I owned the record!), but what they heard just was unbelievable. Naturally they hated it and hated me for playing it. I loved them hating me. It's stamped my life forever. So, even though I gave away the record to a college girlfriend (don't ask) some years later, I never forgot the experience of listening to it.
As a sidebar: The tiny little newsstand-cum-record-store in my hometown would only stock two or three copies of the then-highly controversial Rolling Stone magazine. The 70's era underground folded tab was a far cry from the mainstream hipster pub it is now. What the shop did to appease complaining kids like me was to also stock Creem and the others, but also another folded tab called "Changes" -- published by Charles Mingus's wife. A perfect compliment to my Ornette experience, I saw in an article about the Jazz Composers Orchestra Association, got its catalog, and ordered avant garde jazz to my parents' absolute bewilderment. Don Cherry's solo effort (forget the name -- recall excellent tracks "King of Tung Ting Lake" and "Desireless" -- or something like that), Robin Kenyatta's Girl From Martinique, and something by the Manhattan Quartet (didn't like except for the bass solo). Everybody thought I was crazy. I was. I am. And that's why Free Jazz is in my fave list.
LJ orig. 11/02/06
Fast post about music. My memories of the 70s are probably not most people's. I remember taking a music appreciation course as a high school sophomore, and hearing the teacher's description of her 60s trip to New York with a group of other high school music teachers. On their itenerary was a concert by the Ornette Coleman Quintet (he'd added a violin by then, I think). Naturally, I waited for the monthly trip to the nearest Big City (I'm a very small town kid) to check out the only real record store in 100 miles. In the bin (vinyl records go in bins, CDs in racks -- how I know this is another post altogether) was the store's only Ornette Coleman record -- a double album called "Free Jazz". With some trepidation, I marched to the register and laid down my cash (about two week's worth) for it. The first spin was a challenge, the second spin (many weeks later) even more so. I took it to the music appreciation class (the "play your record" Friday) and the kids' jaws just dropped. We couldn't play the whole thing (I listened to the whole thing at one sitting only twice in my life -- and I owned the record!), but what they heard just was unbelievable. Naturally they hated it and hated me for playing it. I loved them hating me. It's stamped my life forever. So, even though I gave away the record to a college girlfriend (don't ask) some years later, I never forgot the experience of listening to it.
As a sidebar: The tiny little newsstand-cum-record-store in my hometown would only stock two or three copies of the then-highly controversial Rolling Stone magazine. The 70's era underground folded tab was a far cry from the mainstream hipster pub it is now. What the shop did to appease complaining kids like me was to also stock Creem and the others, but also another folded tab called "Changes" -- published by Charles Mingus's wife. A perfect compliment to my Ornette experience, I saw in an article about the Jazz Composers Orchestra Association, got its catalog, and ordered avant garde jazz to my parents' absolute bewilderment. Don Cherry's solo effort (forget the name -- recall excellent tracks "King of Tung Ting Lake" and "Desireless" -- or something like that), Robin Kenyatta's Girl From Martinique, and something by the Manhattan Quartet (didn't like except for the bass solo). Everybody thought I was crazy. I was. I am. And that's why Free Jazz is in my fave list.
LJ orig. 11/02/06
Friday, November 4, 2011
(no title)
A better day overall, I must say. Since I'm in a better mood, I want to list some faves:
"Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys
"The Roominghouse Madrigals" by Charles Bukowski
The watercolors of Andrew Wyeth
"I Love Lucy" black-and-whites I watched as afternoon reruns when I was eye-level to the center of the console screen.
"Love and Rockets" by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez
"Memories, Dreams, Reflections" by C.G. Jung
"Free Jazz" by Ornette Coleman
"The Mike Douglas Show"
Here's a link* to another one, a Lost Fave I remember well. The show was one of the best ever on television. Just to hear it described, it doesn't sound like much. But you need to remember two things as you look at the season rundown: nothing like this had ever been done on national network television before. Sequential stories, all tragi-comic, and all linked to an overall theme. After it was canceled, the star used to complain over his inability to get the show syndicated or out on video (at the time). He eventually created another show around a few ideas the canceled show had. He and his producers put the story in a contemporary setting, used some of the same actors from the canceled show, and then made the new one work for I think six or seven seasons. It was called "The Rockford Files." But hardly anybody remembers the show that informed "The Rockford Files" back in the 70's, and dozens of TV shows since!
___
*I didn't preserve the link to the cancelled show. It was called "Nichols".
LJ orig. 10/31/06
*I didn't preserve the link to the cancelled show. It was called "Nichols".
LJ orig. 10/31/06
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Take a walk, trust me
I felt like absolute
garbage, dried out and still stinking, today. All day, really. I was so
*&%#ing depressed I could barely move. Slept most of the afternoon
after church (religion is pretty much a requirement in Dixie, kind of
depressing in itself, but I'm a believer, so it's usually cool with me),
but felt even worse after I got up. Wolfed a bowl of spaghetti, which
just gave me heartburn. Laid my head on the sofa arm and just shut my
eyes and grooved straight into misery. Dragged myself to the grocer's
for weekly foodstuffs, and caught dreary little Dido on the in-store
Muzak, going down with her ship. Fit my mood to a "T".
Cool night, quarter Carolina moon, even some stars twinkling through the haze and the streetlight glare. So, once I got the food packed away, off I went, down the sidewalk. No cars, no people, no nothin' -- just me and my footsteps. The air nipped at my hands, so I picked up the pace. Within three or four blocks, I was all better. Made a mile or so, just to make sure. Now it's the witching hour, and here I am, typing away on my new journal, happy as a clam in deep water.
LJ orig: 10/29/06
Cool night, quarter Carolina moon, even some stars twinkling through the haze and the streetlight glare. So, once I got the food packed away, off I went, down the sidewalk. No cars, no people, no nothin' -- just me and my footsteps. The air nipped at my hands, so I picked up the pace. Within three or four blocks, I was all better. Made a mile or so, just to make sure. Now it's the witching hour, and here I am, typing away on my new journal, happy as a clam in deep water.
LJ orig: 10/29/06
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