"Whatcha Been Up To?"

Flirtatious: "You don't look a day over 60."

Real Mood? Completely Nostalgicated

(For newcomers I am making a statement against AOL's assumption that all human moods can be reduced to sixteen. " I don't think so?")

Prediction: Bruce Binns' daughter will get one whiff of the humidity in Asheville, North Carolina and come running home. (Plus they talk funny there.)

Any gathering of former attachments is going to be full of Powerful Emotions, Powerful Memories. The greater time lapse between gatherings seems to be directly proportinate to the level of Emotional and Memorial exaggeration. And there is a multiplying factor on that exaggeration based on the common bond of the gathering group.

I'm guessing the origin of "Tall Tales" can be traced to reunions of primative cave artists and clan gossips. A modern day newsroom is likely the natural evolutionary extension of those societal roles. 

I think this is sufficient build up to letting you know I am now recovering from a reunion of fellow TV employees. Most of them are or were newsroom employees.

Our common touchstone is a guy named Bruce Binns. For most of our adult lives Bruce has been the one there to pull us out of the fires, and set us high on a hill where we can scream our reports to the World.  He's found a unique supportive role and milked it to the Nth degree. Bruce is the station sattelite uplink truck engineer. He gets falsely miffed when I mention he got the "National Engineer of The Year Award" three years running. "Come on Bruce, you love it!"

Of course what endears us to Bruce has little to do with engineering. What Bruce can't  seem to stop doing, even to this day,  is save our collective _________'s. (Lynn Setzer says her organization often blocks my BLOG based on the language. It'll be interesting to see if that get's through. Lynn?) 

All truck engineers can tell where to point the dish. But I'm guessing there are few Sat Truck Guys on the planet who have a working historical knowledge of the life of Socrates. And if they do I can almost guarantee you he's the only one who wickedly uses the Socratic method to direct human beings toward acceptable behavior. You'll need some examples.

"Did you mean to go on air with snot running down your cheek?"

"Maybe you'd want to get some light on that face so people at home won't get frightened. What do you think?"

"Is this really where you want to do that live shot from? I'm just asking because the fire seems to be over there."

"I know you're the reporter, but wouldn't "gets" be more grammatically correct than "gots?"

This is already more praise than Bruce can handle in one sitting, so I'll pretty much stop. 

Bruce quickly picks the time and place(his place). He quickly organizes this event pretty much by word of e-mail mouth. We pretty much show up in mass 'cause we know he'll be calling those who didn't asking, "why?" ( I got four calls from him making sure I got the e-mail.)

So we followers of Bruce pretty much fill up the small town that lets him live there. The place is packed, the rum is running, and the memories are marvelous. I can't tell you a whole lot more because there is a code. "What's said in the news car (truck) stays in the news car (truck)." A lot of it you wouldn't believe it anyway.

But I am going to break the code somewhat because I only got to share this memory with the few people left in the middle of the following morning.  And besides the main character in this story didn't show up and deserves to be exposed.

So I'm working the assignment desk some *%$^years ago ( I wonder if Lynn's boss will edit that), and we are in the middle of the 5 o'clock newscast. We have two breaking stories going on that I'm trying to coordinate. It was a tough day because we'd just been given the mandate to trim the overtime budget and the breaking news was killing us. So all of a sudden I hear the dreaded crackle of a photographers two-way radio.

"Eleven, News!"

"Yeah Ed.Go ahead eleven."

It was Ed Cullen, a bureau photojournalist, who I was assuming was about tell me he was going off the clock.

"I think we got something here."

"What?"

"I see some smoke.".

My brain froze. There was no way we had a chance of getting that smoke on the air. On the other hand if it turned out to be a major fire, and I couldn't come up with some video for the 10 O'clock?

"Go ahead and check it out Ed, but make it quick." 

We're well into the newscast and things are running relatively smoothly when I hear from Ed again.

"Eleven, News."

"Yeah, Ed."

"I'm starting to see some fire now."

I'm thinking "darn!" ( I don't think I've ever thought "darn" in my life, but I want Lynn to be able to read this.)

"Alright Ed, keep going. Let me know what you've got."

So I don't hear from Ed for the rest of the newscast, and quite frankly I'd forgotten about him. That's an admission you'll rarely hear from an assignment editor. So now the show is over, and we got our two live shots on the air. Time to take a deep breath and relax.

"Eleven, News!"

Whoops!

"Yeah Ed, whadda we got?"

"Well there is smoke!"

"Uh, huh!"

"And fire."

"Yes, Ed, but WHAT...have we got?"

"What we've got is a crematorium."

*&^)$$%#@

"So go ahead and put me down for a half hour of overtime."

The End.

Thanks Bruce for a great time.