Say That Again?

Flirtatious: A wink, A twitch, A stumble over a step falling on your back looking up at the object of your affection.

Real Mood? Magnanimous

The Picture? Never assume you are alone.

I've got a lot of things swimming around in my head, and here comes some of them. Asked to come up with some new references for my job, I set out on the wonderful journey of getting in touch with some old friends.  Along the way I had a nice chat with Dan Hopkins, the Governor's Press Secretary. Dan is one of the savviest Public Relations people on the planet. We had a nice chat about the status of everything relevent to this time in history, pausing  a lot to laugh..

Among many attributes, Dan has this great sense of humor. I mean a GREAT sense of humor.  He doesn't memorize jokes and use them with an  agenda.  No he just looks at the things around him, sees the humor in them, and laughs.

We share that perspective that just about everything is in some way funny.  Suppose your overlings are in no mood for levity? We've both  have been around long enough to make sure there are no open microphones or cameras on. Then we laugh.

Remember Nixon's Faux Pax when he didn't know the microphone was on? Soupy Sales had a nice one. Anybody who has been around a while in radio or TV owns a tape or two of their own screw ups. They typically consist of unintentional malaprops and double entendres. But for those of you who are not card carrying members of the broadcast media, I'd like to pause and reveal what we may have saved you from.

Reporter Dave Minshall and Photographer Bill Hitchcock (I think) were rushed to the mountains for some dramatic criminal event. They are rushing around looking for a spokesperson and find the sheriff.  In their haste to get a soundbite on the air, they forgot something.  They forgot to retrieve the active microphone from inside the sheriff's shirt. The unknowing and/or unthinking sheriff headed off to the restroom. You probably saw the movie version in a Chevy Chase film. But the obvious taped "sound" was just the tip of the urinal, so to speak. The local gendarme, thinking he was in a safe place, talked rather openly about the crime. He then pretty much exhausted the Anglo Saxon dictionary expressing his feelings about the media. Sheriff, whoever you are, you owe the media big time. None of that made air.

Here's an even better one. There is this hall of fame ex shortstop who has since gone into coaching and hot dog eating. Well the super hero of yore is asked to put on a baseball seminar for woman at the stadium.  He shows up and is quickly fitted out with a wireless stadium microphone so all these baseball widows can hear him.   Lucky for this round little man that photographer Gary Barkley also talks him into wearing one of our wireless microphones. Here's the scenario.

They've been testing the stadium sound system, and bringing up individual microphones one at a time. Just seconds before they get to the ex shortstop's "mic", he looks up at about 1,000 women and says, "Look at all that ___________up there."  A few seconds later and he would have shared what should have been his private thoughts with the stadium.  They were in fact shared with Gary Barkley, who got it all on tape. Nice guy that he is, Gary runs to the stubby little guy to whisper in his ear, "I got that on tape."  And he cautioned this middle aged man still trying to fit into pinstripes, that his utterances from that point on would also be on tape, and very likely heard by the 1000 women in front of him. It was a medical phenomenon. The man's face changed color about four times, winding up purple.

None of  what he said, even in bleep form,  got on the air.  I think that guy owes Gary the equivalent of a signing bonus. But it's my understanding the short, round, hall of fame, middle aged, ex-shortstop never even offered up a thanks.  I hope Gary still has the tape sitting in a time capsule somewhere.

Who is the short stop? What word filled up the blank? You won't get that out of me. But as soon as we do a 4 gig digital sweep of the room, Gary, Dan Hopkins and I are going to have a great laugh.