The Morning Cut-in

It's piercing. I would bet it's one of the loudest alarms I could buy. Standing at the end of my block, you could still hear the most annoying, obnoxious sound on earth penetrating through my open window. It's that damn loud. But I still roll over slowly, and through the greasy haze of the middle of the night I glance at the clock. It's way too early. People should not wake up this early. It reads 2:30 AM.

My head is pounding like a hard night of drinking, thrown into a cocktail shaker with a migraine headache, but I didn't have anything to drink last night. It's just that early.

"It's OK," I say to myself, "I'll hit snooze, fall back to sleep for 15 minutes." I rationalize it to myself. "I should call out sick," the angry, groggy voice in my mind tells me, even though that makes no sense, being that it's an hour before my shift. The next thing I know it's 15 minutes later and the hell-arm goes off again.

I drag my arms under my chest, and in a pathetic display of weakness I do a half push up. It's like my arms say get up, my body says not a chance.

I roll my self out of bed and into a shower, standing there, water pouring through my hair, blankly staring at the wall like a kid watching voltron on a Saturday morning. Twenty minutes later I snap out of it, dry off, get dressed and pour myself into a bowl of honey nut cheerios. I feel like the heroin addict. I finally get that first cup of coffee which barely helps. I don't really wake up until my first live shot at 5 in the morning, the time when everyone else in the world is doing what I did three and half hours ago. At least I'm done, I've hit the gym and I'm at happy hour as the evening shift starts work. That's the life of the morning shift.

Severe Weather Warning

My clothes are both itchy and sticky at the same time. My skin crawls with a salty layer of sweat that I can only describe as incredibly uncomfortable. Summer is in full swing and I am a miserable mess of perspiration. It's supposed to be 97 here right now, but with the humidity it feels like the seventh level of Dante's Inferno (aka hot as hell). My hair has a bed of gel I didn't put in it and my eyes are stinging with tears from my brow. It's hot. It's steamy. It's disgusting.

Now, I don't mind the heat. Nothing better than sprawling out at the beach, wearing shorts, a ratty old (yet trendy because it's ratty and old) T-shirt. The problem is, I am not decked out in beach wear. I'm in the compulsory uniform of the news reporter: The suit. Yeah, I have my sleeves rolled up (I'm a working man of people), my top button unbuttoned and my tie worn loosely, but it's still hot.

I lived in Florida, I've dealt with the heat, but there is no way to get used to this type of torture. I'm sure not even John Yoo would have allowed this torment in the 2003 torture memos. Water boarding, maybe, Maryland summer humidity, not a chance. I think I've sweat 23 out of the 24 hours of this day.

Weather Tease

Here's the problem with my job. It's not really normal. We end up in some of places the average person would never expect, want, need or mean to go. Hurricanes, for instance. My dad was a reporter too, and some of my fondest memories were trips to the beach, but unlike everyone else, we would head to the beach when they would leave. When the meteorologist would say, "batten down the hatches," pop would say gather the kids up, it's time to head to the beach. (maybe I'm over exaggerating a little bit-- we stayed home for the really dangerous ones).

I remember one storm, the weather started out pleasant enough. We were shacked up in an average hotel, at an average beach in average America. I was young enough to enjoy the fact that a storm was coming and old enough recognize the fact it was a big a storm. It's true what they say, there really is a calm before the storm, and sometimes it can be absolutely beautiful. Blue skies opening up to a lightly radiating sunshine. The perfect weather for ice cream.

So the fam decided to walk down the boardwalk (which every beach seems to have), and get ice cream. Nothing better than boardwalk ice cream when you're 6.

When a hurricane is coming you can literally see it roll in. First the wind picks up from a blithe summer breeze to short indignant bursts. The peaceful, open skies are pushed out of the way by the ominous clouds. Then the rain starts. We got back to the hotel before the rain started, but it's incredibly hard to eat ice cream on a cone in gusts of wind that eventually could get up to 80 miles per hour (it was a weak storm) . We were inside the safety of our hotel long before they got that bad, but not before we were completely covered in ice cream. The rest of the storm was pretty uneventful. Dad worked, we watched on TV inside our room.

Since then I've covered several hurricanes, rode around brush fires on ATVs and helicopters, froze in snow storms, and spent all night running around tornado damage. All while my friends sit at home drink, and have hurricane parties. I'm working twelve hour shifts and they get sent home early.

I wouldn't give it up for the world though, who else can say they've been into the eye of a storm?

-- To all three people who might right this, you should check out my friend's blog http://specialagentm.com/ It's hilarious and I'm in it some times--

The Live Intro

I was told, in my live shots, I need to be more edgy. It's a self defining direction, I guess. I'm assuming it means more authority, more presence, more self importance. It's not my style, but I was prescribed this remedy as my path to network and bigger markets. If I want to move up, I need to step up. It's not really my style, it's not really a style I like, but I can kind of understand what this occupational guru is telling me. This occupational guru could be my connection to the next level, so I'm at least trying to do what she says. I have to send her some new samples of my work and she has to approve it.

So I'm mentally scanning the network reporters and anchors in my head to decide who has the most edge and who I can emulate. I scan through the big network three first. Brian Williams, he got the most authority, but not much edge; Charles Gibson just kind of blends in; Katy Couric is about as edgy as the top of Matt Lauer's balding head. Anderson Cooper, he's kind of edgy. He's keeping 'em honest. Confronting the bad guy. Going where no news reporter has gone before. But is that what makes him edgy? His show is definitely edgy, in that it's on the cutting edge of the evolution of the business, but that doesn't make him edgy. I think the edge is an extension of his personality, his physical presence.

That's not really me. I'm laid back, a little more 'everybody has a story' than 'planet in peril' (despite the fact that I mostly do crime stories). But if that's what they want, that's what I'm going to try to do. I actually already started. I thought my live shot today was fucking Ginsu Knives. So much edge it could have cut through a tab cola can.

And of course, nobody back at the station recorded the show...

The Interview

As she talked I could feel her breath burning every hair in my nostrils. It's amazing how far you can stand away from someone and still smell the liquor marinating through her lack of teeth. She'd obviously indulged her self with a Friday afternoon cocktail. It was about 4:30, the start of the weekend, why not?

I looked around. This neighborhood was a pretty dilapidated, but not in as bad shape as most of the neighborhoods you end up in when the police find dead bodies. Most of the homes actually had people living in them, instead of decorated with plywood sealing the decaying inside off from the rest of the world. I only saw one liquor bottle in the open lot we walked across, which is always a sign.

Everyone was outside their homes, sitting on their front or back porches. It's usually next to impossible to get anyone to even make eye contact with us, let alone talk to us, but the second our live truck rolled up to the sidewalk someone ran up to us to show us where police found the body. Everyone had something to say about this body, but of course, no one wanted to say it on camera.

That's when she walked up. She looked like she had been run over at one point in her life. she was about 5 foot 7, rail thin and had the mouth of a baby (who just started teething). She was completely willing to talk about the body and the neighborhood. Maybe it was the booze talking, but it was a good soundbite. She was so excited for her 20 seconds of fame.

Too bad we got pulled off the story.

The Lead In

This week I had to drive through "My First Market"© the spot I launched my cosmic journalism journey, and it got me reminiscing.

It all started about 6 years ago. TV is broken up into markets. New York is number 1, Los Angeles is Number 2, St. Louis is 20, Glendive Montana is market 210. I started in a market closer to the size of Glendive.

I moved out to "My First Market"© on a Friday night. My ex-girlfriend helped me move out there. She packed up her monstrous SUV with my mattress, and everything my dorm room from college could hold (I followed behind in my small hatchback), and we headed out toward the East Coast. I'm not talking about big city east coast, I'm talking about cornfields. Lots of corn fields.

About an hour into the 3 hour drive, we drove by Dairy Queen. There was a line of people wrapped around the corner. It looked like everyone in town was at the Dairy Queen. That's when I got that sinking feeling. This is what my Friday nights are going to be like for the next two years. Dairy Queen.

Luckily it was not that bad... some nights it felt close, but not that bad.

The Tease....

I started to feel it deep in my stomach. It started as a small twisting feeling. An icy, cold stomach ache, like all the acids in my belly quickly froze and burned at the same time. The feeling crept up towards my lungs, and I could feel each breath get shorter and shorter. I could feel my heart pounding like a door knocker against my rib cage. All my muscles started to tense up. I tried and tried and tried to stay calm.

I could hear the news programing through my earpiece (AKA my IFB). I don't remember exactly what they were talking about, and I don't remember exactly what I was supposed to talk about, but I still remember exactly how my nerves were completely unraveling. This was live television. I was out in the thick of it, doing exactly what I wanted to do, ready to talk to the camera in front of any given crime scene and bring the power of what I was witnessing home to the audience. I had done it few times before, but I was no where near calling myself experienced. I was in a new state, with a new boss, at a new television station, with new responsibilities and new expectations. I could feel the sweat drip down the back of my poorly ironed, shapeless dress shirt.

I didn't have much to say, not enough for the time to fill, and that twisted my stomach into a full saltwater taffy twist. I looked at the photographer stationed behind the safety of about a thousand watts of manufactured sunshine, watched the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, then glanced down at the lack of bullet points scrawled across my slim reporter's notepad.

That's when I heard the TV news anchor, stationed in the cool, quiet safety of the studio say my name...

I crashed... I burned... but it wasn't bad enough for them to fire me on the spot. I still get those feelings occasionally, never to the same extent, even when I started my new freelance job, but when I do I've learned how to use it.