"A poor soul on Pompeii ... "

There was that time when I made a complete fool of myself, winning glory.

(Read more ...)

It began with me, gone in (apparent) disgrace from a well-regarded position in broadcasting to a station so bad I spent more time with a WetVac mopping up flooded floors than with a tape recorder.

Many of my old rivals would drive to this tiny town just to walk by and sneer at me through the display window of the little Main Street broadcast studio. Talk about a bell jar.

Then there was this terrible accident at the local lake. An awful multiple drowning. Again.

And they came: the national news media. Again.

This particular town (and lake) had been the scene of an earlier drowning, this one not accidental, that was followed by a sensational double-murder trial.

The victims of the second drowning were members of two families viewing a lakeside memorial to the first set of victims, when their van lost its brakes and they all rolled in to the water.

Except for two, one a mother and a little girl (not the woman's daughter) who watched lakeside as members of both their families perished under the water.

This story is difficult to write about, even now.

But that was not the end of the story, at least not for me.

What happened is this story went national, and a major cable news organization (then just starting out) called the station where I worked and asked for the news guy. Which happened to be me. The young lady on the other end of the phone was a producer, and wanted me to drop everything (I did all the news for the station solo) and drive 40 miles to a network affiliate's TV station to do a one-on-one (argot for "interview") with the host of the new show on the new network.

I suggested instead that I drive to the funeral home where the relatives of those who perished were gathering at that hour. The cable network was owned by a big mega TV network and the big mega TV network had a crew with a "live" truck out there already. Couldn't I just do it there, with them sending the signal to the cable network? I had suggested what the young lady apparently had wanted all along -- a chance to get the "big network" guys to work with her cable deal, too.

So, off I went. Once there, all my local broadcast rivals who'd been gloating at my failures were there, watching me get hooked up to go nationwide. They were green with jealousy. As for me, my chest was out and my head was high. The camera turned toward me, the sound tech gave me the cue, and the audio of the cable network host started -- oh no, it was barely audible over the roar of the diesel generator (which is what a TV "live truck" carries -- that and a satellite dish)!

I somehow made out a question or two the host asked me and I stammered some kind of replies. The live crew's world-famous on-camera big-network reporter appeared behind the camera to indicate to me that I needed to pull my finger out of my ear. Even though I was just trying to hear better, it looked on camera that I was picking the gunk out of my ear on national television. I looked absurd. The cable TV folks switched to someone else somewhere else about something else within a minute or so.

I had made a total ass of myself on national cable television. Yet, the local TV (and other media) journalists didn't seem to notice. They stayed "green" the rest of the time I was out at the scene, and they never sauntered by my station's window to gloat, ever again.

But when I got back to "normal" a few days later, that event (among other things -- this had been building for some time) made me realize what a ghoul I had become.

It had previously never occurred to me that my presence outside the funeral home there contributed (in however small a way) to the pain those victims' loved ones were going through. In the crush of events over the preceding years, so-called "public service" journalism was gone. Out the window. Never seemed to occur to anyone -- especially me.

And that weekend, as I rested up from one very frenetic week of news gathering, etc., I declared a silent war on journalism. Just me. Against all them. I would undo all the rest with silent opposition, come hell or high water.

No high water. (Except for the WetVac when it rained.) Hell? That I got.

And it went on for ten years, job after job. Now, it's over. No more covert, one-man war on journalism for me anymore.

Victory? No. I didn't win.

Defeat? No. I didn't lose, either.

Truce? No. No quarter asked or given on either side.

No. I just quit.

My personal war, that is.

More later ... .

Afternote: More came. I came to realize that my problems with journalism really were my problems with me. I had somehow taken sole responsibility for everyone else in the Great Deadline Game, and then turned around and took responsibility for making covert war on the entire enterprise. A poor soul on his personal Pompeii. I realized many other things, which I may address someday -- probably in another format. But what turned this one? Some drawings of Hellboy's BPRD allies conducting their pointless War on Frogs*. I saw myself doing the same, and I woke up.

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*You can review the covers of the BPRD comic published by Dark Horse at that time to see for yourself what I had in mind. In the story, however, (SPOILER ALERT NOTICE) the fiery passion of one agent destroyed those pesky frogs (and their "eggs").

LJ orig.: Oct. 8, 2008

If Only She and Brian Wilson ...

A few months ago, I posted on my memories about Doctor Who and his first appearance in the US.

What stuck with me most, as I said then, was the show's theme, one of the first (and finest) examples of electronic music exclusively for television. Following what I'd read elsewhere at the time, I casually mentioned that the "recipe" for the original music was lost somewhere in the archives of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Maybe not.

It seems that legendary workshop had an even more legendary member, whose identity has remained, well, maybe not exactly a secret, but definitely in the shadowy background ("Do not look behind the screen! There's nothing in there!").

Now, we can see inside.

(There's always more … )

Her name was Delia Derbyshire. A private legend among aficionados of electronic music, she was the genius arranger who put composer Ron Grainger's orginial score to tape, using techniques that are only now coming to light.

The theme she helped create did not earn her credit at the time, because it apparently violated BBC policy to credit arrangers. However, it is said that when Grainger first heard her arrangement of his theme played for him, he exclaimed, "Did I write that?" "Most of it," was Derbyshire's reply, according to the tale.

You can start digging on Wikipedia for the rest of her history, including the b&w photo that all the sources use of a stylish young Delia in period hairstyle and hairband and miniskirt expertly synching up a tape loop in the Beeb's sound lab.

This is just amazing stuff.

BTW, her legend appears to be growing, now that her work has made the Proms. Somewhere, someone's evanescence must be smiling.

LJ orig.: Sept. 24, 2008

"It's dark down here ... ."

In darkness are dreams, in dreams are light behind the darkness. If, in the way of our entry into light, we fear the darkness, then we fear the light. And thus we are exposed.

Light is evermore, darkness is in the moment. The moment makes the evermore real, and the real makes the moment happen. In purity, there is light and darkness -- there is no other than other there, except for itself. The exception makes us real, when we experience either darkness within or the light without.

We are each other, and each other are we. The darkness is not the enemy of light. The darkness was first.

Originally posted to LiveJournal on Sept. 4, 2008

Never Can Say Goodbye

Some things you can't forget. Some things you can.

There was that summer I bought two LPs that remain in the former category. What one of them looked like was in the latter.

(Thank you, Wikipedia ... .)

It was a sound I can't forget ... It was an album cover I could. Isaac Hayes recorded The Isaac Hayes Movement with, as was his custom then, only four songs on it, two a side. It was inconceivable then to pay full LP prices for only four songs. But they were renditions of familiar tunes re-arranged as only the masterful Hayes could.
I wasn't familiar with "I Stand Accused," but I soon became that way. I played it (on an old stereo in the back) for the very straight-laced and gracious black man who minded me as I helped him clean the store my father managed back then. He was a gospel musician, but Hayes's version of that song completely tripped him out. Yes, he asked to borrow it. Yes, he kept it a week. And yes, I was glad to be getting it back. But I had to loan it back to him again, and I got it back again, and ... .
The rap (or, really, just a monologue) that starts out the track was a stone mindblower. I felt as though I was violating some cultural taboo (theirs, not ours) by just listening to it. But I did. And it was great -- a slow jam to beat them all.

Wiki says you can get The Issac Hayes Movement now on SACD. You won't regret it.

The other was one my best friend's family (four brothers) played for me, maybe the year or so before. I waited and bought it the same summer The Isaac Hayes Movement came out.

Simply called Led Zeppelin, the stark black-and-white photo was just that -- stark. Yes, I'd heard "Dazed and Confused" "Your Time is Gonna Come" and "Communication Breakdown" on the radio and at my friend's house.

But I wasn't prepared for the rest of it. I still remember gasping at the end of "Black Mountain Side." While it was playing, I guess I had forgotten to breathe. I'm sure the SACD is out there.

Neither album got a lot of spins on the family stereo after that. I'm not sure why. Nor years later, as I lugged my LP collection from dorm to dorm, apartment to apartment, until I got rid of it all by necessity in 1998. Led Zeppelin I went to the guy that paid me for the whole thing.

The Isaac Hayes Movement wasn't in it, though. Yeah, I left it on permanent loan, intentionally.

But I never forgot that sound.

How could I?



Originally posted to LiveJournal on Aug. 12, 2008

"First there is a mountain, then no mountain, then there is ..."

Some time ago (I forget when), I talked about how to use a gold watch to hypnotize someone. You know, the typical scene in old-timey Westerns, when the snake-oil salesman pulls out a gold pocketwatch (the ancestor of wristwatches) and waves it back and forth in front of the farmer, saying "count to ten backwards, then sleep ... sleeep ... sleeeeep."

The farmer's head bobs back and forth as he stares at what he really, really, really wants -- the gold pocketwatch. A little clock he can carry with him into the field, would fit just right in that little pocket there on his overalls, and it's ... gold.

The swaying and the counting backwards do not hypnotize anyone -- they relax a person, instead. What fascinates, then hypnotizes, is the timepiece itself -- that not-so-obscure object of desire. Be it an SLK or an ultraportable, a silk dress or custom shoes, it's what we want that holds our interest. Or so I said, at the time.

I think television's "reality" shows* are today's gold pocketwatches, though.* They fascinate us because we tend to identify with one of the contestants (or more -- you need a backup, right?), there is a desireable prize at the end of the rainb-- er, contest ("a million dollars!), and there are the "twists and turns" getting there that are familiar to us all.

Who gets eliminated? Why, oh, why did they have to vote him or her off? Who will win instead -- oh, who? (twists hands anxiously)

They're harmless fun, at the end -- and that's OK with me. After all, isn't it better to learn from others' mistakes, instead of by making them yourself?

But if the stakes were really real -- if the loser of the week didn't just get "voted off the island" or get their publicity photo burned in effigy, what then? And the game were not played in an arena for entertainment, but on the street -- in earnest?

An "indie" movie a few years back explored that idea with a pregnant woman characterized as the ideal assassin, targeting her fellow contestants. I forget the name, never saw it, but it just occurs to me how far ahead of "reality" it was.

But another wrinkle -- what if it looks like reality, but isn't, but is... ? And someone figures that out -- ahead of the green door.

Originally posted to LiveJournal on July 9, 2008

___
*A commenter at the time objected to some of this post's generalizations and asked me to explain them. Here is what I wrote in reply (peppered with more of those idiotic "emoticons"):

The first reality show I watched from start to finish (and over again) was CBS’s “Survivor” (S1). Every contestant that I was rooting for was “outfoxed” by the evil Richard (I think that was his name). (*gnashes teeth*)
CBS made the decision to air the entire thing in repeat mode (in other words, an expanded “cut” of each episode), starting only a few weeks after the show finished that first season.
It was clear to me (watching the second time in hindsight) that Richard seemed to know what was going to happen before it did. :^ He just had that look on his face. Either Richard was “psychic,” or a really good observer, or … . Yeah, there’s that other possibility, isn’t there? ;)
Since then, I have taken “reality” television with a grain of salt. Actually, more like a shaker full of salt. ;D
BTW, a look at the title of the icon (as Romana I gets the better of The Doctor) may provide a clue to the “deeper level.” (*chortles evilly*)
And I _agree_ with you: the “losing” contestants really _do_ look hurt by their experience. If so, the shows are _not_ so harmless! But these shows appear to be so for the viewing audience, who can watch it all from a comfortable distance.

The LJ icon I was referring to has Mary Tamm grabbing Tom Baker from behind by his scarf. I do not recall the title I gave to it.

One Who Made It (His Own Way)

Just starting a book now, The Ten-Cent Plague, that delves into the Frederic Wertham comic-book scare back in the '50's. The McCarthy-esque flame-up involved televised congressional hearings and everything else. It resulted in the death of EC Comics and the birth of the Comics Code Authority -- an industry self-policing censor.

Some comics creators had their careers go up in smoke (along with their comics). But others forged ahead.
What's new in the book (so far, for me) is the elegant detail in the background narrative -- how the social forces that created the scare also created Crime SuspenStories and other comics EC brought out. The big deal here is not so much that an overweening comics publisher crossed the line and got what it deserved, but that a highly creative company used the means it did to talk about the times surrounding it -- and got burned in the process. Rod Serling (I believe) and many other TV and movie pioneers have cited EC Comics as big inspirations for "The Twilight Zone" and others. That's why people interested in the creative process for popular consumption (like me) are still interested in EC. You can get high-quality reprints now -- not like when I was a comics buyer in the 60's. EC was absolutelyverboten then.

My first comic was the Spiderman Annual #2 (I think), in which the Avengers seek Spiderman's help in tracking down one of its original members -- the Hulk. They offer the Web-slinger membership in the Avengers (with much reservation -- Spidey was an outsider, like the Green Guy, back then), something he declines after finding the Hulk in some alley and seeing him change into Bruce Banner and then back again.

My father was horrified that I'd just wasted 25 cents on a comic book! However, I showed him. Specifically, I showed him a word in a dialogue balloon: "neophyte." That's what Thor called Spiderman when the Avengers first approached him. I promised Dad I would look it up as soon as I got home. I did. It means "newcomer." Stan Lee's script saved the day.

Ten-Cent Plague also lists hundreds of artists and writers who never worked in comics after the Wertham scare. One who isn't on the list was an EC standout: Alex Toth.

Toth (which I believe is pronounced like "oath") was a singularly creative artist, who, with absolute minimal pen-strokes, created vivid scenarios and dramatic characterizations. His architectural approach to telling a story (you have to see one of his pages to grasp what I mean) was unlike anyone else. He claimed as his inspiration Noel Sickles, a comic-strip artist (briefly) whose work is soon to be released in a retrospective volume. But I have a feeling that Toth was largely his own man.

His best work (that I've seen) was in romance comics of the 50's, a section of the Ten-Cent book I haven't gotten to yet. Toth's pages move like a three-camera TV set -- but with the style and grace of a pen-and-ink master. Beginning comics artists would do well to absorb his every lesson (as their predecessors have done) on every page he drew. And he kept at it, long after EC was a memory.

His most famous creation? Space Ghost*. (I loved that Saturday morning TV cartoon -- even in high school!)

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*Toth is credited with the "design" of Space Ghost on wikipedia.org. 


Originally posted to LiveJournal on June 25, 2008