Boy, Interrupted

When I read the story of 12-year-old Ronin Shimizu, who committed suicide last month after enduring consistent bullying for being a boy cheerleader among other things, I had two reactions. The first and obvious one is a stew of sadness and anger over how his school system failed him after complaint after complaint about the problem. The second is a wish for more children to have Ronin's level of guts.

If I had a chance to do my life over again, I would have started embracing Colonial and Scottish dance as a child and followed that passion right into adulthood. Kids picked on me already, and people would taunt me no matter what I did, so why not go all in? I could've donned the tricorn and kilts much earlier and set free a lot of internal repression I didn't realize I was carrying around.

I told my beloved Madame Noire this, and she replied, "But there weren't any groups like that around when you were a kid."

Maybe. But I could've found some.

The bullying of young Ronin makes even less sense when you think about the group he joined. What young boy wouldn't love being surrounded by beautiful smiling girls in bright uniforms? I bet you some of his bullies were secretly envious. But more than that, Ronin followed his passion, and he found kindred spirits.

When we help young boys deal with bullies, we often teach them how to defend themselves or tell them to "man up." We tell them nothing's wrong with them, but how far will we allow them to take it? Parents, be honest with me. If your 12-year-old boy wanted to join the cheerleading squad, would you let him? How about ballet? Or the Royal Scottish Country Dancing Society? Or the Society for Creative Anachronism? Or a figure-skating group?

Every parent says they love their children and want to support them. Reality tells me a lot of parents don't want to bear the burden of having an unpopular sissy-boy. They would rather steer that child into being cool rather than dealing with the tears, fears and grunt work of being supportive. Ronin's parents knew their child, loved their child, and loved his heart. They didn't freak out about his aspirations. They didn't measure their success as parents by the hipness of their child. A friend of mine tells me about a father who found his son growing his hair long as a possible prelude to some classic sissy activity. He made that child get a buzz cut.

Parents, if you are raising a child to fit your personal aspirations, you are not raising a child. You are raising a trophy. You are creating something designed to sit on your mantle for boasting. When the child decides not to run your race, you grow bitter.

I remember talking to some friends of co-workers about a trip to New York City and enjoying the musical Wicked.

"Do you have anything from that show for my son?" one person asked. "He's a [homosexual slur]. He loves Broadway."

Shocked as I was, I gave him some Wicked swag to pass along, fairly confident that the son was only a homosexual slur in his father's eyes. I'll stick up for the child. I won't stick up for his father's loutish conclusions.

Ronin had a small circle of close friends, and although he showed a predominantly quiet side, he didn't fit neatly into the mold of introvert. When a child dies like this, we start looking for all the warning signs that came before it. I'm not sure Ronin gave us any.

Thus comes the guts. Whatever Ronin's support system was, it wasn't enough. They may have had his back privately, but not publicly. I'm inspired by the example of a squad of Queen Creek, Arizona high school football players who stepped up to defend a developmentally challenged girl. They made it clear: you mess with her, you mess with us. Ronin could have used his own special team.

We Interrupt This Special Report For Something That Will Make Us Money

Long ago and far away, I worked at a TV station that hated network special reports when they ran too long, especially when they started knocking out commercials we were planning to run in the programs our general manager or programming director wished we were showing.

The problem reached a head in the 1999 plane-crash death of JFK Junior, when the networks went wall-to-wall with the story on a weekend. We got calls from angry viewers who wanted to see tennis. A station exec grumbled about announcements coming from the network telling people where they could tune -- away from us -- to see it. "They're just repeating the same things over again," she snorted. We couldn't do anything. We didn't have any alternative programming as it was, but we were losing the revenue from the local station breaks.

Eventually station brass came up with a solution. We had the generic end of a network special report on tape saying, "This has been a special report." If the toppers thought the network was droning on too long, they would have Master Control bail out of the report with the generic end tape and go back to whatever local programming we were showing.

I don't know if the network ever caught on to this. They would've been livid if they knew. In 2002 a decade ago, CBS threw a fit when it learned one of their owned-and-operated stations in Pittsburgh was using a device called the "Time Machine" to delay and compress a live football game in order to squeeze extra commercials. I found the outrage laughable. Before this time, dozens of stations had been using the device on the down low. They only stopped when they got caught.

I understand why local stations are trying to protect or amp up their revenue. The networks that used to pay them to run their shows are now squeezing them for money they get from cable companies for permission to retransmit their signals. The NFL also comes around with its hand out -- and remember, this league gets cushy tax breaks. Then when cable contracts come up and stations have to raise their retransmission fees to protect their behinds, it's the stations who get the hate mail.

People will talk about trying to find a new business model for television, but it's talk. I would rather the networks and the NFL find a way to cut costs so they don't have to ask so much of their stations. NBC tried managing for scale with the ill-fated Jay Leno Show experiment, but affiliates screamed. Shoveling cheap shows onto the air isn't the solution. If I knew what was, I wouldn't be sitting behind a news producer's desk.

"Everybody Is Getting Underwear!"

By this time, I gather you have gotten mostly everything you wanted for Christmas, exchanged what you didn't, or are hustling to get what didn't end up under the tree if you just can't wait until next year. Undoubtedly, some of you ended up with things only a parent would love.

I'll talk about ugly sweaters in a moment. But let's get to what mothers are fond of giving when you don't ask for it: underwear.

Bill Cosby -- long before he found himself in the middle of a sex scandal -- once joked mothers care more about the condition of your briefs than your body. Get into an accident, and Mom wants to know if you were wearing clean underwear. Well, maybe you were.

Moms care about this issue because they did your laundry. They sorted, they saw, they grimaced. If nature and natural wear and tear didn't get to your skivvies, the pests would.

"The moths like to eat a lot of things," I remember the Queen Mother lamenting while I was but a wee subject. "But the one thing they love is underwear. They love to eat underwear."

Men don't naturally replace underwear on their own volition. Boxers are like toothbrushes. If they fit and they still hold together, they're good. Somebody else will deal with them in the wash. Even in college, when I started doing my own laundry, I didn't think of keeping a brief budget. What works, works.

Then one Christmas in the mid-1990's the Queen Mother reached her limit on ratty, rotten, holey underwear. In addition to our regular Christmas gifts, every member of the family got a nice new package of stark white briefs.

"Everybody in this family is getting underwear!" she said.

Yes, your humble servant included. For the record, I actually asked for some high-end boxers this year. They look good, they feel great, and they don't draw moths.

And I always know if I don't put anything on the list for next year... guess what I'm getting?

Snow Wars

One winter in Southern Arizona, and you won't want to return to the midwest, the plains, the northeast, or any place with the potential of snow. However, if you have kids, you can make it. They get to shovel the driveway.

So my brother Michael and I have to deal with the Charge of the White Brigade. The typical battle is against six inches of snow over a sheet of ice.

KMBZ-AM Kanasas City, January 1979:

"Hello, you're on the Walt Bodine show."

"Yes. A lot of people out there shovel snow, and it's like they're fighting a war."

We have no way to flank. We have no heavy artillery, just hand weapons. That snow is relentless. It's packed and it's stubborn. We can't push it or scrape it. We have to attack it in layers.

Once that's gone, we have that sheet of ice underneath, and it just won't break, as much as we stab at it. It's too cold. We might as well be trying to shovel the concrete underneath.

Many families would spring for a snowblower. Crikey, Grandma and Grandpa Lawson have one. But they have one because they don't have kids to shovel the driveway. In the old days, you had kids to work the fields. History repeats and adapts.

We do have a tool called the "snow-throw," a large angled shovel on wheels. You push it, and it's supposed to throw the snow to your side, but mostly it just packs the snow in tighter or rolls over the top of it, taking the easy way out.

Some years later, my folks get a Toro electric power shovel, a poor man's snowblower with a rotating plastic blade. Between the cold and the mess of an extension cord, it rarely works properly. The plastic blade isn't wasn't powerful enough to chop through that six inches. Occasionally, Grandpa Lawson comes over with the snowblower, showing mercy on his grandkids. He blasts through enemy lines and celebrates at Officers' Quarters inside our house with a shot of Jack Daniels to get his heart started.

I wish we could have borrowed a flamethrower and melted that snow down in five minutes. Not only would it get the job done quickly, it would avoid the other problem: anything that takes up mass like snow will continue to take up mass once it's clear of the driveway. Much of that mass goes to the sides of the drive, but a lot of it goes out in front. That means any car pulling out is going to hit a redoubt of the conquered enemy and perhaps get stuck, rendering the driveway campaign a lost cause.

The Royal Father gets around the issue by loading old saved magazines in the back of the car to give it more traction. This is about the only time my Queen Mother is glad he has them.

"Your father is a magazine saver," she grumbles.

It works more times than she wants to acknowledge.

Back then, as now, people end up in the Emergency Room for shoveling snow. We were kids, and we were fortunate. And we got paid for it. I think.

The Nerds' Revenge

Going by statistics, you've probably broken every one of your new year's resolutions already. But you can start over, and if you keep just one, I would suggest this: labor to treat your Facebook friends as if they were standing right in front of you, face to face. I had to take that step two years ago, abstaining from most political posts (and nearly all political blogging) after a thunderous comment row with a friend.

Part of me believes so-called social media is the biggest, most successful act of revenge by those nerds people teased mercilessly as children. Now, they not only own half the world, they also own our lives through their creations of Facebook and Twitter. They have pulled the ultimate con on us, thinking they're making us more connected. We can't see it, but we're unraveling thread by thread.

I know many of my Facebook friends in real life. Many are admirers I've friended even though I really don't know them. I've friended other people I admire. On an altruistic level, it should mean, "I'm interested in your life. I want to know more about you. I want to share in what you enjoy, and perhaps support you in the tough times."

Put that status update in front of some people, and it's a weapon. When politics and faith gets into the mix, otherwise beautiful people turn ugly. I know folks who know better than to rant out loud like they do on their pages, and yet their news feeds scream with namecalling, flaming and trolling.

Now-former Arizona Public Schools Superintendent John Huppenthal got caught "sock-puppeting:" posting under pseudonyms with whoppers like this one:

"Obama is rewarding the lazy pigs with food stamps (44 million people), air-conditioning, free health care, flat-screen TV's (typical of "poor" families)."

And this one...

"No Spanish radio stations, no Spanish billboards, no Spanish TV stations, no Spanish newspapers. This is America, speak English."

Once exposed, he wept in front of the cameras but refused to resign. Voters booted him anyway. I watched his press conference and chalked up his remorse to a man who didn't believe he could get caught. Words come with meaning, whether you type them or speak them. People like Huppenthal think it's okay to play dirty on the Internet because it's already such a free-wheeling din of free speech. Something in their mindset believes an equally poisonous rant exists out there in cyberspace and they are merely providing balance. We forget rights come with responsibilities.

So we feel free to post, share and comment bile. It's okay if you type it. Retweets can't scream at you, and you can unfriend, ignore and block as need be. Technology is great, allowing us to click people off like they're on the other end of the remote. And then we have to deal with the real people behind those icons in the news feed.

In what became a cruelly ironic teaching moment, I shared one of Washington's Rules of Civility, along with a beautiful painting of our beloved first president. It read: "Let your conversation be without malice or envy, for 'tis a sign of a tractable and commendable nature, and in all causes of passion permit reason to govern." The comments section blew up. Fifteen years ago, I might have enjoyed watching a catfight. It's heartbreaking watching people you know in real life with their talons out.

I think of that line in The Godfather: Part II: "Hyman Roth played this one beautifully."

And so did all those nerds who came up with a way for us to destroy ourselves from within.

Flashing Lights

Parents, I know you marvel at the things that will entertain a child and how simple and straightforward they are. A mere toilet paper tube will provide hours of enthrallment. But let us step things up a few levels: a car trip passing by several marquee signs, flashing arrows and chaser lights can hold a child's attention. At least it did mine.

The Royal Mother will easily recall all the trips we made by the "flashing lights." In my childhood home of Raytown, Missouri, we had several signs that fascinated your humble boyhood servant:

• The Holiday Inn off 350 Highway
• The giant arrow over the door of Clark's Appliances
• The marquee lights on the side and above the box office of the Brywood Six Theaters
• The sign outside Fun House Pizza (which remarkably, has changed little in 40+ years)
• Both signs outside the Raytown Plaza shopping center (one of those signs still existed until a few years ago)
• The marquee around the drive-in canopy of L&M Steakburgers

Broadening out to Greater Kansas City, I can also include:

• The gigantic Coca-Cola neon-and-light-bulb sign with the time and temperature near downtown (which I recall was dimmed or scaled back during the late 1970's energy crisis)
• Numerous Best Western signs
• The "Owl Motel" (now defunct)
• The Holiday Liquors sign and marquee (also long gone)
• The Commerce Bank sign downtown
• The Western Auto building

What was my fascination with dancing, flickering bulbs? Beats me. You might as well ask the child playing with the toilet paper tube. Perhaps it was colorful and stimulating in a covert psychological way. Perhaps they reminded me of the game shows I loved watching on TV at the time.

Some of you are asking, "Did you ever go to Las Vegas during this light fetish?" Yes, in 1977. This was old-school mob-skimmed Vegas, and the signs blinked fabulously. Back then, even the Sambo's Restaurant had a flashing sign. Some places still do, but we're now in the age of LCD displays. It's just not the same.

And as curiosity will do, I once went wandering far beyond my back yard trying to get a better look at a mysterious blinking sign on 350 Highway through the labyrinth of trees. What is that green light on top of the yellow light?

I realized after awhile it came from the "Triangle and the Star," my own name for the sign outside a dingy no-tell motel off of the highway.

"I hear they used to show X-rated movies there," the Queen Mother once said.

Fortunately for her, I never made it there.

Nowadays, we have a solution for any child with a light fascination. Just venture on to the Internet and pick up some lighted marquee letters. But I don't think they flash.

Dog Days

In my sub-teenage Missouri youth, I didn't have a dog at first. So I buddied other people's pets, especially if they had a habit of getting loose. That's how I met Rod.

This purebred beagle had a bark useful as a homing device. "Byrrr! Byrrr!" reverberated across the neighborhood when he made his way onto to his master's back porch deck and cut loose. Rod's white-tipped tail whipped back and forth in a crazy metronome. When he escaped, he would explore the neighborhood, nose working along every fence line with a soft snorting analogous to a muffled teletype.

His owner, Mr. Olsen, didn't mind me coming over more than few times after he caught up with his pup. So observed Rod interacting with his big-brother German Shepherd and chomping out of his sibling's dish.

"Rod," his owner chuckled, "you eat Puppy Chow!" That would make sense, if Rod thought he was a puppy.

I also knew Taffy, a toy poodle up the street. Taffy wouldn't get loose like Rod, but she had a soft white neatly-trimmed coat, and she could roll around in the grass and make me laugh. In a bit of convergence I wished I hadn't been around to witness, Mr. Olsen's German Shepherd got loose and bit Taffy one evening, drawing blood and forcing a confrontation between neighbors.

"Your dog just chewed up my itsy-bitsy poodle," Taffy's owner complained in the backyard, firmly but calmly as another member of the family examined Taffy inside. I didn't hear Mr. Olsen's response, but he stayed cool and perhaps even apologetic. Taffy came through all right after a bit of cleaning up. I don't think she even needed to see a vet.

Befriending other people's dogs came with several advantages. I didn't have to pick up dog poop. Laugh at it, yes, but not pick it up. I could play with them on my own schedule, not theirs, and break off the relationship whenever I wanted -- no long-term commitments.

I had other dog acquaintances: Jody the Shepherd across the street, Elrod down the block (who a neighbor girl and I lured back to his home with a trail of treats after he got loose), Bandit next door and Missy and Champ through my backyard fence.

All of this interaction with dogs means eventual interaction with their owners, and the Queen Mother used to spank or chew on my royal rear for getting too chummy with people and animals she considered strangers. This, remember, was in a different time -- the late 1970's and early 1980's -- before we invented sex offender notifications, locked on to serial perverts or lived in fear of mass child murderers. Fortunately for all of us, I lived in a middle-class neighborhood free of sleeper-cell criminal scum.

When I finally earned a family dog after so many chores and gold stars on a bedroom chart, all those extracurricular activities ceased. Now I could let Cinnamon drag me around the block a few times and catch my breath while she paused to chew up grass clippings and sniff the mailboxes. Oh my dog...

Somewhere In The Darkness

Going back through my journals to put together the stories from the past week brought back a lot of memories, not all of them pleasant. I still consider 1999 to be one of the worst years of my life in terms of the personal drama and depression I had to contend with.

Snippets of what I wrote back then show the day-to-day grinding of my soul better than I can explain it to you now:

"This is the third time or so [this problem] has happened in recent months, and I’m personally getting sick of the problem not being solved."

"I’m tired of attitude, technical problems, [bleeping]ing, and slacking. I’m tired of seeing other people skate by. I’m tired of having to teach people stuff they should've learned in college. I’m tired of being pulled in one direction by management, another by anchors, and another by reporters. I’m tired of us lapping up the words of consultants. I’m tired of us letting good people get away from us. And I’d still like to know where the heck my raise is for this promotion I got."

"We had technical problems with the trucks. The editors weren’t working right — the two-way and cell phones weren’t working either. And then [redacted] was flustered. To make matters worse, [the consultant] was at the station today on another of his consultant visits, and he was there to gripe to us about what we did wrong."

"After days like today, I wonder how or why I put up with it all. We had a great day planned — only to see it fall to [bleep] because one package didn't get edited on time — even though it was approved at 2:00."

"I had other annoyances to deal with — [redacted] had to shove editing her package for the six onto [redacted] while she ran to the pound to get her boyfriend's dog (why the [bleep] did we let her, I'm still wondering). We had weak audio on one package. And oh yeah, [redacted] quit on us today."

"[redacted] gripes to me, behind closed doors, that I'm not communicating with him enough, as I'm asking to borrow a camera sitting in his office so [redacted] can cut audio. He's upset that I'm 'communicating' more with Jenny and Robert than I am with him — like they're my bosses and he isn't. Well, sorry, [redacted], but it's hard to communicate with you when you're always on the phone, or out of the office, and I've got packages to approve and scripts to write and people to talk to. Besides, it's a two-way street. Jenny takes the initiative with me."

And this is only from January to March. It doesn't get any better.

For the record, I didn't dump a whole stack of grievances on the news director's desk when I left KRGV. That's not good form for any job. Say your thank-yous and goodbyes and get going.

But I wonder if I also should have looked for a job outside news? Perhaps something in PR, or as a public-relations person for one of the numerous school districts in the Rio Grande Valley, or one of the numerous police departments. I might have stayed in the Valley a little longer -- a little.

When I left the Rio Grande Valley, I had no roots to pull up. I yanked myself out like a weed. It's going to be much harder to do that in Tucson, given everything and everybody in my life. I have had ups and downs here, just like KRGV, but the low points here versus the low points there are a lot different and a lot fewer. That's even though I found 2011 an especially tough year, given multiple local tragedies in the news cycle, starting with the January 8th shootings.

I tell people considering a news job one of the most important things they can do for themselves is find a life outside the business for the sake of their sanity. I don't care whether it's with your church, your gardening club, your volunteer group or cavorting around in a kilt once a week. Find something that gets you out of the fishbowl and into the world you are reporting on but yet separated from. Live, thrive and survive.

Somewhere In Arizona

I spend September and October of 1999 dealing with the grind of producing two newscasts a day amid staffing issues, equipment issues and consulant issues. More duties end up in my lap, lengthening my already long days, when we dismiss a news promotions person. I'm growing depressed and irritable and waking up every morning dreading what I'm going to have to deal with. But I also know I'm out when I get the right opportunity.

It starts with a phone call from a news director at KOLD in Tucson on November 9, 1999. Diane (name changed) asks for a tape, in what is a standard ritual with so many ND's and Executive Producers. I don't know a think about the station, but I find out she's already called Jenny. I wonder if she's called my other boss.

This time, the tape gets some action, and Diane decides to kick it up to the next level. She books a flight for me on November 20th.

"Kiss a cactus for me," Jenny jibes.

The flight runs behind because of fog, but I make to Tucson, and to the start of a new beginning.



Diane and KOLD General Manager Mike (name changed) meet me together at Tucson International Airport, but rather than take me back to the station for the power interview, we do it over a power lunch in the airport lounge. "Welcome to Tucson!" Diane smiles as we clink glasses. She goes through her news philosophy, and I go through mine. I answer a few questions about what I believe and why. It's not a tough sell.

"I think you've told us everything we need to know," Mike says with a smile.

It's small talk from here out, as Diane gives me a lightning tour of Tucson, winding me around through the University of Arizona ("I know the Wildcats are gonna go far!") and out to Old Tucson Studios ("We were the only station out here live when they had the fire..."). We get to the newsroom, and I meet Assistant News Director Gary (name changed), along with the weekend anchor duo of Dan Marries and Valerie Cavazos.

Gary is friendly and highly organized. He's got the 5:30 Saturday newscast lined up with no sweat for stories. The station has toys, including digital videotape, a monitor wall, and a helicopter. The big story today is "El Tour De Tucson," a giant bicycle race. It's a neat weekend story. We also get some neat spot news: lots of dogs removed from a home. Any other place, that might be a lead, but I'm not going to quibble with Gary's choice. It's different and fun, and he has team coverage built around it with the sports guy.

I watch him roll through the 5:30, and we grab a quick bite from McDonald's before coming back to do the 10. Gary unleashes me on writing a couple of stories in the rundown, and I tear into them quickly. I ask if I can help write anything else, and I take on one more story, meaning we get written in what seems like record time.

The 10pm sails by, and I'm liking what I see and feel, and it's not just the huge newsroom with high ceilings and monitors all over this place. This is a nice station with nice people and a good team spirit. I want to work here. I want it.

As we're calling it a night, Gary realizes we have a problem. Diane has forgotten to take my luggage out of her car after dropping me off at the station earlier in the day. Now we have to go to her house and get it. I now get a look at Tucson at night, during which Gary fills me in on the weekend team and how they operate.

We get to Diana's house, and we can see through the window she's asleep on the couch. But Gary can see my luggage inside. Gary tries ringing the doorbell, but when that has no effect, he quietly slips through the unlocked door. He grabs my bag as I stand guard outside under a full Arizona coyote moon.

Gary and I laugh about it in the car on our way back to my hotel. "This has to be the strangest interview experience I've ever had!" I say.

We have some slight trouble with the hotel reservation, but I get a room for the night, walking over to a Denny's after I check in for a tall milkshake. It's like I'm celebrating early. Diana picks me up the next morning, and we continue small-talking at the breakfast counter until she realizes I may miss my flight.

"I gotta get you to the airport," she says, half-alarmed.

I make the flight less than a half-hour before departure time, meaning I lose an assigned seat but not the plane.

Back in the Rio Grande Valley, I'm looking forward to what's next. Thanksgiving comes and goes, and I don't have an answer. But on December 1, 1999, I get it.

KOLD wants to hire me for a weekend producer position. The money is right. The environment is right. The vibe is right.

"You got me," I smile over the phone.

A contract arrives in the mail a few days later, and I break the word to my boss. He knew this day was coming, and still he grumbles.

As I prepare to make my move over the next two weeks, a burden lifts from me. I can enjoy the approaching holidays. I don't care about the headaches or the grind so much anymore. The light is in sight. My co-worker friends hate to see me leave, but many have been rooting for me. "How's Tucson grab ya?" I had told one of my directors, who loves the idea of me going west to Arizona.

I begin my new job on December 31, 1999 -- a heckuva day to start with everybody worried about the Y2K bug or fired up about the year 2000. I would've started earlier, had it not been for the sudden loss of my Grandfather Francis, a sad counterweight to the Christmas and New Years' season. But I have a new chapter of my life to begin... no more sending out tapes, no more returning calls.

I'm free... I'm free...

EPILOGUE: To this day, KRGV remains a dominant station in the Rio Grande Valley, and Rick "Mr. D" Diaz remains on the anchor desk. He retired as news director and left the station in the late 1990's only to come back as a fill-in anchor when his desk mate, Peter Torgerson, hit a Texas Lottery jackpot. It became the longest fill-in anchor gig I've ever seen. Jenny, mentor and friend, is now news director.

Fifteen years later, I'm still at KOLD. I've moved from weekends to weeknights to weekdays and seen a lot of comings and goings, but I have absolutely no regrets about making the move when I did. So how long will I be here? I'm leaving that to GOD...

Somewhere In Florida

As 1998 rolls to a close, I roll up to a new position. After four years, I'm finally off of weekends, and just in time to make the annual KRGV Christmas party on South Padre Island. Our generous owners are not only splurging for an evening of fun with an open bar by the surf, they're paying for hotel rooms so nobody has an excuse to drive home skunked. Things are definitely looking up, including my paycheck.

But after a month in my new shift, I realize I'm inheriting a whole new set of issues, ones I didn't have to deal with while associate producing, when I retreated to the control room, built the show graphics and stayed out of the fray. Now I'm handling logistics and egos and crises, along with a new news director. Mr. D has taken a well-earned retirement. I know I want out. Soon.

I phone the headhunter I've worked with in the past, who is all too glad to hear I'm back in play. "Great! Send us a tape." I do, but it's August before I get another nibble, and not from the headhunter.



WINK in Ft. Myers, Florida comes calling after a referral from a college advisor who's helping hook up producers with stations needing them. It's a longtime powerhouse CBS affiliate. They ask for one of my tapes, which I send, but I also get one of theirs. News Director Lisa (name changed) and I talk on the phone a few more times, and she picks my brain for advice.

"I have a producer who loves live shots," she says. "But some of them just take so long."

I give several suggestions, including just signing out instead of letting the anchor ask a question. Lisa gets more interested the more we talk. She likes hearing my thoughts. She also talks to Jenny on the down low, asking her what she thought my weaknesses were.

"Sometimes he tries to do too much," she tells her.

"Oh, I do that all the time!" Lisa replies.

Meanwhile, the new KRGV news director seems to know I'm sniffing around. He asks if I'm leaving. I tell him, no, and that's the truth. At least, not yet. I have a feeling Lisa called him, too.

A few more weeks pass, and I have little time to think about WINK. Hurricane Bret comes through and floods us with stories, even though it spares us the worst. Then comes a hurricane special I have to co-produce. The new ND blows his stack a few times, at least once in my direction. I know more than ever, I want out.

Jenny is reassuring through all of this. She knows I'm on borrowed time, even though she reassures me that she and others still have faith in me.

Lisa calls back in early September offering me more than an interview trip. I've got the job if I want it. The pay is roughly equal to what I'm making now, but there's issues. First, the benefits leave a lot to be desired, including the lack of a dental plan. And Jenny has some inside info, having worked in that market herself. "There's just not a lot for young people there," she tells me. And I haven't even seen this station on the inside or got a feel for the newsroom environment. I'm risking trading one set of undesirable circumstances for another. I could get lucky, or I could get burned.

I explain the situation to my parents, and even though the Queen Mother doesn't seem to understand it all at first, they understand to move up successfully in broadcasting, everything has to move up.

I politely pass on WINK. Other stations nibble at me and tapes go out, but the process goes no further than that.

Then, in November, I get a call in the newsroom from a news director in Tucson, in what will be my ticket out...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Somewhere In Kentucky

After the KSN opportunity fissles in January of 1997, I learn I might have an opportunity to move up in my own workplace, perhaps take over the 10pm newscast and get off of weekends. But I don't know when, and I'm keeping my options open.

A station in Lexington, Kentucky -- WTVQ -- gets a tape from me in the spring, but it goes nowhere until October, when I get a call from their Executive Producer, who wants to see more. I send off another tape, along with scripts and a critique. It's enough to move me to the interview stage, but it's at a crucial time: the first week of the November ratings period. Again I play it straight with Mr. D, and again he's understanding. I'm off to Lexington, chasing another ticket out of the Rio Grande Valley.

It's a two-cushion shot to get there: McAllen to Houston, Houston to Cleveland, Cleveland to Lexington. The second leg goes fine until the very end, when the plane get stuck in a holding pattern for who knows what reason. We don't have snow; we don't have ice -- just a bunch of planes stuck in the air. Again, my arrival and departure gates are miles apart, so I'm running again to make the connection to a Beechcraft commuter plane. Rainy weather and winds toss the plane around, and I don't think I can make it without using the airsick bag. I'm nearly sick to my stomach as I land in Lexington under an overcast sky. Not having eaten, I only have gas and Dr. Pepper inside of me.

Fortunately, I have it all together as Mr. EP meets me right at the gate. We spot each other immediately, and we are off to the station.



WTVQ NewsChannel 36 is expanding its newsroom under new ownership. I'm told the previous owner looked as news as more of a community service project than a money-making enterprise. The new owners of the ABC affiliate want to win, and they have the task of bringing the number-three station up over WLEX and long-time leader WKYT (who has also contacted me, but didn't pursue me). I'm aiming for a weekend producing gig, but Mr. EP advises I might end up with a weekday job as they consider whether they want to move people around.

I expect some heavy-duty grilling and hardball after I met Mrs. News Director. But in fact, I end up grilling myself. I expose my news philosophy and beliefs to them: "Relevance and interest.” I think I go a little too deep, but my prospective boss doesn't see it that way.

"You’ve really done your homework on us," she marvels. "I think you’re the kind of person that would fit in here."

I sit in on a 3:00 producers’ meeting, watch part of the 5 and all of the 6 from the control room — and meet the General Manager. He seems very curious about the market I'm working in, and he gets out his little white market guide, perusing it as I talk. He thinks he knows the KRGV general manager from somewhere — probably from the affiliate meeting. He said he doesn’t have a position open "for now" — but that could change very soon.

The newsroom uses a computer system I’ve heard about but never seen. It’s BASYS, and to me, it’s a throwback to the Stone Age. Nearly all the computers are green-screen WYSE terminals run off a mainframe. Mr. EP and Mrs. ND tell me the system is very powerful despite looking low-tech compared to an off-the-shelf copy of Microsoft Windows. I learn one of the photographers has actually written some add-ons to the system.

The shows? They’re very fast-paced and very graphical. My graphics-trained eagle eyes spot a misspelled graphic on the 5:00: A story on bus service had "fair" instead of "fare," and I quietly mention it to the bosses. The camera operators also have trouble getting some shots on the six, and a producer forgets to kill a page out of the rundown, which leads to a foul-up on a liveshot. I’m amazed the director gets out of it without going to black. She's under a lot of pressure.

After the early newscasts, Mr. EP takes me over to the Carriage House — a highbrow restaurant populated by horse owners and other high rollers. A gentleman takes my coat. We almost look out of place.

"Let's check out the bar!" he half-exclaims.

I'm not much for drinking, but I order a rum and Coke, thinking the ration will be 50/50. It's more like 70/30, and with nothing in my stomach to slow it down, my head starts spinning. Some fellow producers and an assignment editor, all young ladies, soon join us at the dinner table. We share a lot of stories, a lot of shop talk, and loads of laughs. Somehow I manage to appear uninebriated. All five of us seem so young. It’s the best power dinner I’ve ever had. The station may be in third place and trying to rebuild, but the people love their jobs. Maybe I will fit in here.

At the morning meeting the next day, fully sober and better fed, I actually pitch a story during the morning meeting and get to fool around on one of the BASYS terminals while looking over the shoulder of producers and reporters. Before too long, Mr. EP and I are on the way back to the airport.

He tells me the money is comparable to what I’m making already on wage, which surprises me. But I guess it shouldn’t. Mr. EP can tell I'm mulling over my options.

"Got a lot on your mind, I guess," he says.

"Yes," I reply. "It’s hard to make a move sometimes."

A few weeks later, WTVQ sends me a contract offer for $500 less than I'm making with KRGV, soon to be $1500 less because of a merit raise my current bosses are set to give me. Again, the Jenny rule comes into effect: everything must move up. Wise counsel from my deal-making Royal Father advises me to at least make a counter-offer.

After some phone tag I get back to Mrs. News director. She can only go $500 higher. They're still $1000 short. Regretfully, I have to pass. It's business, not personal, but it still leaves me in the dumps. I wanted the job, wanted to work with that team, wanted to be a part of a rebuilding phase.

Some time later, however, my regrets are tempered when I learn the news director who wanted to hire me is no longer there. I'm not sure about Mr. EP. I wonder what would have happened if I had stepped into the mix.

I take my merit raise at KRGV and the news watch goes on.

And then Florida comes calling.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Which Is Easier: Decrypting The Code Or The Codebreaker?

Reel To Reel: The Imitation Game

Going Rate: Worth full price admission
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley
Rated: PG-13 (but really could be a hard PG)
Red Flags: Some depictions of war violence, mentions of homosexuality (notice I did not mention "historical smoking" as the MPAA does, which is the silliest content advisory I've seen since the catch-all of "intense thematic material.")

You are reading this on a computer because of the groundbreaking work of scientist and mathematician Alan Turing. You are also not having to salute Hitler before you do it because of Alan Turing. His work on codebreaking helped win World War II, and yet he committed suicide after he was prosecuted and chemically castrated for being homosexual.

The Imitation Game, named for one of Turing's papers, is the study of a man who seems to know puzzles better than people, and although the movie takes many liberties with the real life of Turing, including exaggerating his social awkwardness, it remains a fascinating character study in the lines of A Beautiful Mind.

Turing, portrayed masterfully by Benedict Cumberbatch, is an English professor recruited to join a team of codebreakers trying to crack the secrets of the Nazi's powerful encryption machine, the Enigma. The Allies have secretly acquired one of the machines, but they don't know how to operate it to decrypt the reams of encrypted messages flowing from the enemy every day. The Nazis change the configuration of wires and dials every day, meaning the key to decrypting a message is only good for 24 hours before a new key combination is chosen from hundreds of millions of dial and wire combinations. Codebreakers have solved a few messages, but they have haven't gleaned much intelligence.

Turing envisions a machine that can deduce a key quickly using a monstrous array of gears, dials and wires. We would call it a computer, but Turing calls it "Christopher" after a boyhood friend. (In reality, it was called the "Bombe.") Getting the machine built requires Turing to convince a skeptical British military to trust and fund him. He also sets out to build a team of codebreakers using a crossword-puzzle test, which brings him into an awkward but productive relationship with math whiz Joan Clarke (Knightley). With the other lads, Turing must deal with the frustrations of mathematical limitations, military bureaucrats, suspicious characters, and secrets that don't come from the Nazis.

The Imitation Game works on two levels: Turing trying to decrypt a cipher, and others trying to decrypt him. As he is written in this film (and distorted, according to historians), Turing should alienate us, but Cumberbatch plays him with just enough humanity and humility to win us over. Knightley's Clarke is strong-willed and yet accessible in that particularly British keep-calm-and-carry-on way. Even though we learn Turing is gay, the film generates something of a romance between them that doesn't seem forced for the sake of the picture. The film moves at a brisk pace even as it cuts among three different periods in Turing's life, including his bullied time in boarding school and his later arrest for a homosexual encounter.

Grandfather Francis

In real life, Turing's heroic work had a direct connection to another war hero: my Grandfather Francis. He worked with cryptographers and radio operators who processed groups of five-letters, those strings which relayed orders and positions and troop movements. My regret is that I never asked him more about what he did during the war, although he loved to see me work with shortwave radios and an RTTY decoder I had as a child. He told me about figuring logarithms to tune in radioteletype traffic before we had technology to help us. He never told me about the code work, and he probably couldn't. And as was the nature of so many World War II heroes, when the war was over, they put it behind them -- as did Grandpa.

Alan Turing's work went mostly unrecognized for years because of its secrets. Now with some of those secrets safe for declassification, Turing is getting the credit he deserves with his homosexuality as an afterthought. And yet this movie doesn't throw his orientation in our face or hit us with a gay-rights crusade. Turing's treatment after the war for the breakthroughs that saved lives and towns seems like just another puzzle, only it's up to us to solve it.

Somewhere In Kansas

December of 1996 finds me busy up to my armpits, working on a news special in additon to my regular duties. I'm pulling some long hours and even a morning show shift. By the time Christmas rolls around, I'm glad to get home to St. Louis. When I return, I have an extra present waiting for me: a call on my answering machine from a news director at KSNW in Wichita, Kansas.

Jim Tellus has seen my first tape through that same headhunter that got my first tape to Texas. I return his call, we chat, and he wants to see more. Great, I say, I'll send you another tape from this coming weekend. We have a church bus accident on Sunday, and we're all over it. Out goes the tape, and two days later, he's calling me back saying he's equally impressed. Now we're moving into the interview phase.

However, we have a complication. We want to arrange it on my days off, next Monday and Tuesday, but those are days weather could foul things up. We're in danger of getting a freeze in the Rio Grande Valley, and when we get a freeze in the Valley, farmers start getting nervous, people start worrying about a citrus crop disaster, and the Expressway might close down because people don't know how to drive worth a darn on a slick highway. Maybe the Winter Texans do, but conventional wisdom says everybody else doesn't. In essence, all hands might be needed on deck.

It's time to talk to my mentor Jenny about how to break it to Mr. D. As a former news director in other markets, she could warn me about the trapdoors. She advises me to play it straight, as soon as possible. I approach the boss after the 6pm news in his office, and I frame it as a professional matter.

"This is not about the environment here," I tell him. "I've learned more here in three years than I learned at KOMU." And that's the truth. I also offer to work Monday and take a personal day on Wednesday. He advises me to just go ahead and do it on my days off so we wouldn't be setting a sticky precedent for anybody else doing an interview.

We set up the interview for Monday and Tuesday, even though ice threatens. After getting on the plane in McAllen at 7am, it takes the crew an hour to thaw out the plane, mainly because McAllen doesn't have any high-pressure hoses. As expected, DPS shuts down the entire expressway from Brownsville to Mission, but thankfully, I'm not driving that risky road. I spend my next few hours navigating through delays and cancelled flights until I finally make it into Wichita around 3pm.



KSNW may be licensed to Wichita, but it serves a huge wedge of central and western Kansas through a network of full-power repeater stations in small towns: KSNC in Great Bend, KSNG in Garden City and KSNK in Oberlin (which also serves the small community of McCook, Nebraska). It's true of Wichita's other network affiliates as well, as they extend the reach of their signals through lonely towers surrounded by golden fields across the vastness of the Sunflower state. KSN, as the network is collectively called, maintains bureaus and small studios at all its satellite stations. Reporters send in stories to Wichita through a network of microwave links, and during the 6pm news, the KSN satellites cut away from Wichita for about 2 minutes for headlines local to their respective areas. I've known about KSN from its inception in the early 1980's, seeing ads for it in TV Guide while living in Kansas City and occasionally picking up its stations from e-skip.

Under Jim Tellus, KSN stresses relevance, stories that matter to people's lives. Already I'm on board. The station has a feature called "KSN Listens" highlighting stories suggested by viewers. He tells me a viewer from the tiny southwestern Kansas community of Ulysses called in about a murder that had gone unreported for at least a week!

After a brief talk with Jim in his office, I hang around in the control room and watch their producers tackle the 4pm hour-long "Kansas Live!" show, a hybrid news-talk program with lifestyle segments and viewer calls. I watch the anchors try out a new soda between news segments, including a satellite shot from Topeka on the Kansas State of the State address. (KSNT in Topeka used to be part of the KSN network, but it isn't anymore.)

The producers boogie around the logistics of a loose 4pm format and "First News" at 5pm. Commercial breaks are short, as they are for many stations in January when people aren't buying as many ads.

"These one-minute breaks are killing me!" one director grumbles, frustrated at barely having enough time to catch his breath during a fast-paced half-hour.

"I know," the producer empathizes. "This is supposed to be the last week of these breaks."

Other problems pop up. The reporter in Topeka knocks what was supposed to be a package down to a SOT/VO/SOT/SOT/VO on two tapes at the last minute. It drives the video editors and the producer/assistant news director nuts. One tape has to be rolled hot from an edit bay, and it isn't routed correctly into the control room. Further confusion between producer and director leads to a butchered story on the air. The producer steams about it all through the newscast.

"I assure you, Chris," he says, "Things aren't always like this."

He, Jim and I do the wining-and-dining over at the Amarillo Grill near the airport. I need the nourishment, having eaten nothing but complimentary Girl Scout cookies someone brought to the newsroom. It's a jovial session, as Jim talks about life inside and outside the newsroom over steak and ale, passing on "many good things" he's heard about his second-in-command. I like this boss. I like him a lot because of his mellow, upbeat demeanor. He doesn't seem like the kind of person who whips a newsroom into shape, but rather a person whom talented people gravitate to for leadership and inspiration. Tomorrow, the real grilling begins, as I'm put through a 4-hour problem-solving test.

Make that plural. I sit in a windowless room, filling out a battery of multiple-choice exams with a No. 2 pencil. I plow through personality tests, critical thinking exams and leadership surveys. Then Jim gives me a 20-minute "mental alertness" test that measures how good I am with word problems, number sets, and word association. Nobody finishes it, he says, and I don't. either.

We both want to talk more, but as I'm busy with the tests, he's also busy with meetings. However, I do get to watch the assistant news director work on the day's 6pm, constructing a VO/SOT on an anti-drug program the Kansas governor mentioned in his speech last night. He scrounges for more stories, something I'm all too familiar with.

"This block just refuses to be written," he says.

He also mildly confronts the reporter who burned him in Topeka last night. "That was restraint," he tells me.

I sit in on the afternoon editorial meeting. Producers pitch their rundowns and talk about finding some additional content on a slow news day. "Gonna need a package," Jim observes patiently from behind his desk. His staff finds a way to pull it off.

Between observing and querying the staff, I have to confront some realities involving the icy weather. My flight from Wichita to DFW is cancelled, and the carrier doesn't have any other flight that will link me up with my connection to the Rio Grande Valley in time. So the airlines come up with some fancy re-routing.

Just after 4pm I'm back at the Wichita airport, with thanks to Jim for everything, hoping to pull off a two-cushion shot: Wichita to DFW, DFW to Houston, Houston to McAllen. I have to change terminals at DFW and Houston, and I end up running to make one of the connections, but it all works, and I'm back home around midnight. Now all I have to do is wait. I'm aiming for a slot helming the 10pm newscast. The money and the benefits seem right. The move seems right. It's definitely closer to St. Louis.

One week later, I come back home from the story to find another message from Jim on the machine. I immediately return it, and I have my answer.

KSN is going with a lady from Houston.

I can't believe somebody would want to jump from a top-ten market to a sixty-something market, but Jim explains she was looking to get off a morning show. And speaking of that, he has an offer for me to work on their morning show.

I can't take it. First and foremost, I hate morning-show hours. But more importantly, the pay is lower than what I'm currently making at KRGV. I explain it to Jim and he understands perfectly.

"I wouldn't want you to take a job that pays less," he says with his mellow understanding. We thank each other and he urges me to stay in touch.

I call Mr. D next. "The word's in from Wichita, and it looks like you're stuck with me."

"Well, I'm sorry and glad," he chuckles.

Working in Wichita would have been a nice step up. But as Jenny advised me, everything needs to move up, not just the market size. So life goes on at KRGV while I wait for the next opportunity... one from the Bluegrass state.

TO BE CONTINUED...

EPILOGUE: Jim Tellus made several moves up himself a few years after our meeting at KSN. He went on to become news director at WVEC in Norfolk, VA, then moved to KOMO in Seattle before taking the news department reins at WTHR in Indianapolis, where he then became General Manager. To the great shock of many in the broadcast industry, he died in 2010 of a heart attack while on a business trip in Ohio. It seemed so unfair at the time, and it still does.

Somewhere In Texas

I've told you previously about how I landed my first TV producing job outside college at KRGV in Weslaco, Texas, where I stayed five-and-a-half years.

"Don't you know you're heading to the hottest, driest place in Texas," my former Six Flags boss chuckled, himself a Texan. I don't really care. I just wanted to start working in the business I earned a degree for.



In those five-and-a-half years, I earn my stripes as a producer, learning every trick in the book from Jenny -- my weekday boss and mentor -- along with things they should have taught me at Mizzou's J-School. Even the world's greatest journalism school can't cover the same things as on-the-job experience. I put together a lot of newscasts, win a lot of leads and mess up more than a few times.

My first weekend, I'm under the watch of the weekday 5pm producer, who's looking to move off weekends as soon as I'm up to speed. She shows me what elements I have, how to get more, how to work the wires and the feed services and get it all done by deadline. Saturdays run slow. Sundays run even slower. "But you have the Texas Lottery," she reminds me when I'm hunting for filler material. I learn how to do assignment editing and remind the reporters to make their beat calls in more ways than I can remember.

Weekend news is an exercise in scrounging, especially at 6pm with a skeleton staff. I figure if each of our two reporters can get me a package, a VO/SOT and two VO's, I can take care of the rest. I insist on hard-news leads: no more stories on car washes or craft fairs. I'm going to make the weekend shows more like the weekday shows, and that's the way it's going to have to work if I'm going to level up.

I can dress down. I can wear shorts, but I keep a pair of slacks in a bag just in case the general manager or some other higher up decides to pay a weekend call.

My first outing in the November 1994 weekend ratings comes with disappointments. We're not winning a single newscasts, even on Sunday. The margins of victory compared with KGBT is small, but it's still painful.

Mr. D, however, is optimistic. "Look here," he says, pointing to one number. "You doubled your lead-in."

"You're shaking all over," Jenny observes as we talk about the numbers in the boss' office. "You can't say you're a failure."

I lick my wounds and fight on. Eventually, like a football coach rebuilding a mediocre team, we develop a strong but fun weekend team and we own our turf. Eventually the Sunday 10pm newscast, which carries a lot of weight with advertisers, gains a 10-point lead over the competition.

Still, I keep looking for the next move. The Rio Grande Valley is not my home, and it never will be, not for a highly Anglo kid from Kansas City who speaks broken Spanish like a tourist living in a border town. The goal is to get back to family.

So as I work my tail off in Weslaco, Texas, I scout other stations in bigger markets. If I can't jump directly back to St. Louis, I can find the next step up.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Somewhere In Nebraska

I begin a new edition of 30/30 with a look back at several job-seeking trips. Let us start in a rural part of America, where one doesn't expect to find a TV station...

It's a long-day rim-shot journey in July of 1994 on my father's frequent-flyer miles: a 7am flight to Minneapolis from St. Louis, down to Lincoln, Nebraska, and into a rental car -- a rental car that costs double what it should've because I'm under 25. Then I'm off on a road trip for about 100 miles west to Kearney, a small town off Interstate 80, a somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

This is my first shot at a TV job outside college. I've been sending out resumes, audition tapes, and writing samples for the past two months. I have cast a wide net, taking shots at both reporting and producing positions. I've considered a job-hunting trip, where I would throw some tapes in the back of my car and journey to several stations in Illinois, giving a heads-up to news directors I'm passing their way and offering a quick interview.

I get a tip about KHGI in Kearney, pronounced "car-knee," from an advisor who knows they have some job openings and whose news director doesn't mind getting a cold call. Better, he likes hiring University of Missouri grads.

I dial the station. I don't get the news director, but I do get Jim (name changed). He's a reporter and fellow Mizzou grad who gives me some inside dope on the news director's ego: "It's his way or the highway." He outlines it for me, and I can feel his eyes shifting over the phone. "Guard the door, man," he says parenthetically to somebody out of range.

Mr. News Director calls about a week later. "Got a few minutes?" he asks. He says he has the audition tape and writings samples I've sent over and he likes what he sees. He also has a few tough questions.

"Define journalism."

"Define success."

"Why do you what to do this?"

I have to pause more than a few times to dig out the right words -- which I now forget. But I pass the test, and Mr. ND wants to "take it to the next level." He queries if I want to pursue reporting or producing, and I choose producing. Great, he says, let's see a producing tape. I send him one. Another week later and we're setting up the interview. He doesn't have budget to pay for a flight, but he can help with hotel and gas expenses if I can get there. Driving 10 hours from St. Louis is not something I'm up for, even though my 1986 Chevy Celebrity is built like a tank. Fortunately, Dad steps into offer a few flight miles.

I land in area where stations from different smaller cities overlap in a patchwork quilt like the farmland I gaze at on the final leg of the flight, one of those small commuter jets where you drop off your baggage by the side of the plane and pick it up the same way.

KHGI, Channel 13, sits in the middle of a field about 10 miles south of town. Along with repeater stations KSNB in Superior to the east, KWNB in Hayes Center to the West, and a handful of low-powered translator stations, the ABC affiliate serves a gigantic wedge of south-central Nebraska under the "Nebraska Television" banner.



Inside the lobby, next to a TV playing General Hospital, the station proudly shows up one of its original studio cameras with a giant "NTV" logo inspired by a road sign. Mr. ND meets me, greets me, and takes me to the conference room, where I meet the operations manager and they begin their interrogation.

"The hours are bad. The pay is [bleep]. Why do you want to do this?" Mr. ND asks.

I tell him, without sounding arrogant, I have a talent I would like to exploit. I pass the interview.

Mr. ND gives me the standard station tour, navigating me through the bowels of Master Control. He shows off the station's M-II tape decks ("People rip on this format, but it's really not too bad") and the new receivers going in to let the station carry football via the Fox network. I catch glimpses of the Kodak slides still used for station ID's and weather bulletins sitting near the ancient TCR-100 cart machine. We venture into the newsroom. Aging 3/4" U-matic tape decks sit in the edit bays next to Commodore 64 computers which provide video slates for each story cut on tape. But those are the only computers in the operation. The newsroom is getting computers very soon, I'm promised. "What did we hear back from the hospital sponsoring the closed-captioning?" Mr. ND asks his second-in-command. Reporters and producers are still pounding out scripts on IBM Selectric typewriters, and now it's my turn. I have to rewrite some wire copy as I move into the writing test.

Some of my copy looks downright ugly because I've been using word processors since elementary school. I'm used to typing something, backing up and correcting it, and then wrestling with it some more. Typewriters force you to think before writing. Deadlines force you to write before thinking. Mr. ND wanted to see how I'd handle it.

To my amazement, some stories I wrote for the test shared a lot of similarities to the scripts actually making it on the air from the same source material. Mr. ND says I have solid writing skills, but I tend to overwrite. I hope that isn't a deal-breaker.

I watch the 6pm news tucked into a small corner of the control room, right next to the audio board, which is next to a small slice of real estate for the producer, who has to contend with a few buttons, a gooseneck microphone, and a two-way radio wired to a phone receiver. The Grass Valley switcher dates back to the 1970's, old enough for me to hear the buttons (or relays) clicking inside when the director changes a source. To his side is one of the first-generation "slide-squeezes," those devices that can shrink video into boxes and move it all over the place.

Mr. ND invites me to get dinner on my own and take a spin around town, coming back for the 10pm. He has to produce -- as well as co-anchor -- the 10pm newscast. If I do well on this tryout, the 10pm will eventually be my show.

(This clip with director comments to the crew is from 1998, but it's similar to what I saw and heard four years earlier.)


Kearney is not a one-horse town. It's a town with the branch of the University of Nebraska and a growing population. Why? Mr. ND explains people are finding it is "just a good place to raise a family." Grandma Lawson seems to agree when she spots it on the map: "That ought to be a busy little town right off the interstate!"

Indeed, it's intriguing. It's not too big and not too small, a lot like Columbia, Missouri -- where I just graduated from college and where I would like to stay if I can get a job there. Chances for that are slipping away unless I want to work for the University of Missouri, and that's out of the question. It's time to start working in the real world, making real money, and getting clear of academia.

I grub up at a rock-and-roll diner near the interstate before heading back to the station to watch the 10. The director helps keep time from a paper rundown with back-time information scribbled in. At every commercial break, he grabs the gooseneck and fills them in: "30 seconds over," "Forty-five under." The weather and sports guys can help cover or cut the excess when needed. Especially the weather guy: Bob Geiger, aka "The Weather Tiger." Viewers love him. He's their Walter Cronkite.



After the late show, the talent and staff gather around the anchor desk while the ops manager goes over what the other stations had. It's not a heated competition for spot news in this part of the country. The NTV reporters chase issues, not ambulances. Mr. ND and a few others stack a few tapes and pre-written carbon-pack scripts up on a desk to help the morning show get ready before calling it a night. I thank the man who may be my future boss, who tells me he'll have a decision soon. I'm up against a few other candidates.

At the hotel, I meet up with a friend and fellow Mizzou grad in town who's hoping to land a bureau chief position at NTV's Grand Island bureau. We trade gossip, and he lets me on a secret: "He told me your writing knocks the hell out of him."

About two weeks later, Mr. ND makes his decision, and it's not me. He calls to tell me I lost in a three-way tie: "All three of you could have come in and done the job," he consoled. The job went to a young lady from North Platte who had the advantage of already having some knowledge of Nebraska issues and politics. My friend fares much better: he lands the bureau chief gig and he's already on the beat.

It's a completely fair and reasonable decision. And when I get the news, I'm not discouraged one bit, because the salary offer is significantly below what I would be making if I land my next job prospect... in Texas.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Moviegoer

Reel To Reel: Exodus: Gods And Kings

Going Rate: Worth matinee price
Starring: Christian Bale, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver, Joel Edgerton, Indira Varma, Ben Kingsley
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Battle violence and plagues of Biblical proportions

The Ten Commandments is the Bible of your Sunday School class, where GOD is awesome and powerful, and Charlton Heston's Moses has more charisma per square inch than just about anybody in Hollywood (especially the executives at Sony Pictures Entertainment right now). Yul Brenner's Pharaoh's heart isn't just hardened by GOD, it's encased in concrete by that slimy queen Nefretiri. It has that unforgettable parting of the Red Sea. It has GOD as a Pillar of Fire. It's an epic treatment of a epic subject, and its yearly broadcast on ABC testifies to its enduring epicness.

Now let's talk about Exodus: Gods And Kings, that film which aspires to humanize both Moses and Pharaoh. We have a spurned member of Egypt's royal family who just learned a family scandal and a Pharaoh who's a walking Blue Star Ointment commercial for half the film -- both spiritually and morally ambiguous. We have a lavishly effeminate viceroy. We have a Red Sea parting, or falling, or maybe just at low tide. And we have GOD... only it's a peevish, creepy little god-boy of whom I will not give the dignity of capitalization.

The film picks up the story in 1300 B.C., with Egyptian general Moses (Bale) and soon-to-be Pharaoh Ramesses II (Edgerton) routing a Hittite army, establishing them as friends, brothers and warriors. Then comes the grunt work of dealing with problems among the Hebrew slaves. Moses goes to see the aforementioned viceroy and meet with the slaves, where he learns the awful truth about his real family. Even though he tries to hide the truth, it gets back to Ramesses. Moses is banished to the desert, and his former brother in arms ascends to the throne.

You probably know the rest, or you should know it, because this film reduces Exodus to a bad trip. When Moses ventures up the forbidden mountain and first encounters GOD, he gets a bonk on the head and a blue burning bush accompanied by that creepy god-boy. This would be a huge stretch on its own, but we keep seeing god-boy throughout this movie making god-boy pensive statements staged in such a way to suggest Moses still hasn't recovered from that bump on the head. Moses is not a charismatic leader but a reluctant warrior. Pharaoh is not a hard-heartened bully, despite his orders putting slaves to death, but a monarch who seems lost in it all. And wait till you see how god-boy handles the golden calf and the Ten Commandments.

At least the plagues are epic: CGI-enhanced storms, yucky skin lesions, and attacks of locusts, flies, frogs and crocodiles. Crocodiles? Wait, that isn't in the Bible. A lot of this film isn't in the Bible either, as devout Christians and Jews will notice, and as Biblical archeologist Ellen White points out. She doesn't even bother to list all of them, telling you, yes, it really is that bad. The parting of the Red Sea, while it does get some things right, also leaves a lot of room for doubts. Director Ridley Scott leaves open the possibility that it could have been natural rather than supernatural.

Hollywood was going to remake this film eventually, and you can argue it needed a remake. For everything I like about The Ten Commandments, it's also full of cheesy dialogue that's rife for riffing in the style of Mystery Science Theater 3000. But Cecil B. DeMille had a lot more respect for his source material, and he turned to the ancient historians Philo and Josephus for help filling in the gaps.

Exodus: Gods And Kings suffers from the same problem as another historically-inspired Ridley Scott film, Kingdom Of Heaven. I noted that film lacked passion. This one does too... and a whole lot more. You may want to see it just to note all its deficiencies. So let it be written.

In Search Of The New World

Reel To Reel: Interstellar

Going Rate: Worth full price admission (especially in IMAX)
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, Michael Caine
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Sci-fi violence

Christopher Nolan makes movies for people who like heady sci-fi thrillers. He gave us a masterful reboot of the Batman franchise, the innovative adventure Inception, and now he comes at us with a mash-up of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Contact, and last year's Gravity. At times I felt like I needed a physics degree to understand some of this film's concepts. But with so many films dumbing things down, why can't Nolan force his audiences to smarten up?

The film takes place on a decaying Earth sometime in the future. We don't know how many years have gone by between now and the future, but we see the world is in a dust-bowl crisis. We're running out of food, and even the corn farmers grow won't sustain life forever. Towns keep getting hit by haboobs -- presumably both Phoenix and Tucson, I gather, for all of you gripers who wonder why you're the ones who always have to clean all the sand out of the pool. In this future shock, science and scientists have taken a back seat to agriculture, demonstrated in a scene where a school leader explains the government curriculum that's hilariously ignorant.

Joseph Cooper (McConaughey) used to be an astronaut. Now he's running a family farm, occasionally turning old tech into something useful. During a dust storm, his young daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy) notices something weird about the way the dirt is landing on the floor. She thinks ghosts are out there and trying to talk to her. Cooper, no believer in ghosts but a scientist at heart, works with her on trying to decipher the messages. It leads the two of them back to a secret base where NASA has been preparing for a mission to inhabit a new planet. Professor John Brand (Caine) reveals Earth is dying, and humanity has two choices: either find a way to efficiently get people off Earth and to a new world, or restart humanity from the beginning, something conveniently called "Plan B." And you thought moving to a new house was tough.

But first, we have to find that ideal planet. Several astronauts have already gone through a wormhole, a wrinkle in time that takes them to new universes with potentially habitable worlds. Cooper joins up on a mission with several other experts -- and a few creepy robots who look like walking ATM machines -- to follow up on the astronauts' work and potentially pick a planet. The journey will test not only the laws of physics, but of time, space and emotional resolve.

So much of this film revolves around scientific accuracy and danger that it feels more like an episode of Cosmos at times. But the TV series didn't play out in IMAX the way the movie does. It uses the large format and theater sound for maximum effect. I felt I was riding along with the astronauts in key scenes. When the starship rumbles, you feel it in your gut.

I thoroughly enjoyed Interstellar. It doesn't have the emotional grip of Gravity or the revelations of Contact or 2011, but it's a geek-out film for physics and astronomy geeks which isn't afraid to take on tough questions or answer them intelligently.

The Revolution Will Be Televised

Reel To Reel: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

Going Rate: Worth full price admission
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Sci-fi violence and war atrocities

The Hunger Games is not science fiction as much as it is social-science fiction. It's not a fantasy about how people have advanced or the tech surrounding them, but what they have created or destroyed and done to themselves that transcends any timeline. This is why Suzanne Collins' universe has so much impact. It's not about tomorrow; it's about today disguised as tomorrow modulated against your political leanings.

I noted the second film in this saga was mostly setup. Now we're at the payoff stage. Panem is coming apart as the rebellion grows, and Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) is the reluctant face of the revolution. It's not a battle she wants to fight, but yet she is motivated by the capitol's destruction of her former home, District 12. Now living with her family in District 13, a deep underground bunker of the resistance, she has to find her role in this struggle. If she refuses to take leadership of the uprising, it could flame out. If she does, the cost could be tremendous, including the life of her love Peeta Mellark (Hutcherson).

Peeta is now in the hands of the Capitol, and he looks like he's turned traitor. Maybe. You know how your girlfriends always seem to know more about you than you think? Kat detects something is amiss as Peeta nearly begs for peace on state-controlled television. The resistance, in the meantime, is planting "propos:" propaganda bombs even more powerful than the dark money ads we saw in the midterms. Katniss is their star, but getting the right message out requires more than just looking good on camera.

Enter handler Effie Trinket (Banks). She's depressed and de-ruffled after ending up in the resistance bunker, sentenced to drab green instead of her beloved gaudiness. If this revolution succeeds, will the districts sentence the Capitol residents to wear t-shirts and sweat pants? Never mind. Trinket still knows how to coax out the right words, but it's up to Kat to give the performance. Gamemaker-turned-propagandist Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman, in a bittersweet farewell performance) knows exactly what needs to happen with the businesslike manner of a political public-relations man. District 13 president Alma Coin (Moore) has a cool and inspiring manner of a stateswoman, but you have to wonder, is she a little too cool and measured? At the other end, we have the Capital's President Snow (Donald Sutherland), who continues to be as kindly and yet cold as his hair is white. He tells his people that Panem can only survive through cooperation while continuing to repress everyone and kill whomever he wants.

It's now clear that Panem does not exist on planet Earth -- or even a future Earth -- but in some parallel universe, otherwise I would expect some references to the U.S. Constitution, the Magna Carta, or at least the Declaration of Independence. We don't even get a token tricorn hat. Because it doesn't drag out history, it forces us to see the parallels in our own world through our own eyes.

Breaking this final part of the book trilogy into two parts makes sense once you see the end result on the screen. Hang on for the final part, but I'm betting this series still has enough gas for a few bonus episodes.

"Ideals Are Peaceful. History Is Violent"

Reel To Reel: Fury

Going Rate: Worth matinee price
Starring: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf
Rated: R (but should be NC-17)
Red Flags: Graphic and intense war violence and language with as many f-bombs as real bombs. Not for the squeamish or faint of conscience. For mature audiences.

While watching Fury, I thought back to the problems United Artists executives handled during the development of Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, as chronicled in Stephen Bach's book Final Cut. Bach described the film's scripts as "brutally depressing and depressingly brutal" and "violent and profane" making it a "serious commercial gamble." Eventually UA made that film -- now considered a classic -- because it goaded the production into framing its protagonist as something more than a "cockroach." I wonder if a similar dynamic took place during Fury's production, with studio heads demanding the picture evolve beyond a two-hour reminder that war is hell.

Fury largely exists to erase what latent gutsy warmth we had from World War II pictures like The Longest Day and The Guns Of Navarone. The movie finishes off a process begun by Saving Private Ryan. In fact, it borrows a key plot element: a rookie soldier who has never seen active combat lumped in with the battle-scarred veterans. This time around, the rookie is Norman (Logan Lerman), a typist suddenly assigned to replace the assistant driver of a tank named "Fury." The crew is led by Sgt. "Wardaddy," (Pitt) whose tough exterior hides his shell-shocked soul. "Bible" (LaBeouf) quotes verses and kills krauts. "Gordo" (Michael Peña) and Grady (Jon Bernthal) pretty much do the same with fewer verses. Everybody curses. A lot.

The movie opens in 1945, as the desperate Nazis throw everything they can into defending their homeland against the advancing Allies, whose tank forces are outgunned against superior German machines. The war will end, but everyone knows it will not end quietly. Wardaddy and company get orders to come to the aid of forces trapped by the Axis or at risk of getting cut off, against long odds and heavy fire. Along the way, they also have to make a soldier out of Norman. He is naive to the horrors of war, and his humanity keeps him from shooting Hitler Youth, potentially endangering an entire tank platoon.

Norman is an intensely sympathetic character juxtaposed against unlikeable heroes, although they remind us they are doing a necessarily evil job of exterminating Nazis. That the crew occasionally do so in ways of questionable morality isn't supposed to matter to us in the long run because the victory is what matters and what people remember. Still, the picture takes a breather to allow some display of conscience, when Wardaddy and Norman share a polite breakfast with a German woman and her daughter only to see it disintegrate into boorishness when the rest of the tank crew barges in. Ultimately, we come to the compulsory Big Battle At The End, where the Fury's crew must take a crucial stand.

Saving Private Ryan had a soul and a patriotic vibe. Fury has guts, grit, grime, GOD, and some semblance of conscience amid watery ethics. But will it go down as a Great War Movie in the vein of Apocalypse Now, whose DNA it shares? Audiences will answer that question. I will tell you intensity and greatness are two different beasts.

All This And A Mercenary Raccoon, Too!

Reel To Reel: Guardians Of The Galaxy

Going Rate: Worth full price admission
Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, voice of Vin Diesel, voice of Bradley Cooper, Glenn Close, Benicio Del Toro
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Sci-fi violence and blasters, mild language

A movie which opens with the ethereal multitracked harmonies of 10cc's "I'm Not In Love" will get my attention from the opening frame. That's promising because it's going to take a lot to get me over the cognitive dissonance of a snarky, genetically-engineered raccoon. Fortunately, Guardians Of The Galaxy delivers. It doesn't dazzle or challenge us so much as team up oddballs and throw them through a series of plot twists, making this film more like Mel Brooks' Spaceballs than Star Wars.

The film follows Peter Quill (Pratt), a.k.a. Star-Lord, a galactic petty thief and hustler who could've been Han Solo before he met Chewbacca in another galaxy far, far away. He thinks he's in for a quick haul of cash after stealing a rare orb while rocking out to Redbone's "Come And Get Your Love." An analog Walkman is Quill's best friend after aliens sucked him up from somewhere in Missouri back in the 1980's. We're not supposed to worry about why the aliens chose an emotionally fragile boy who just lost his mother to cancer one scene ago.

Quill gets a bounty on his head with the orb everybody else wants, including an alien race led by a megalomanic dark lord known as Ronan (Lee Pace). He's Emperor Palpatine with a wardrobe change. Ronan sends the green -- in color, not in experience -- assassin Gamora (Saldana) after him. Along the way, the aforementioned raccoon bounty hunter Rocket (Cooper) spots Quill, backed by his living-tree, limited-vocabulary sidekick Groot (Diesel). The four end up in a fight and get thrown into a galactic Alcatraz, only to find they have to work together to bust out. Along the way, they pick up help from giant blue warrior Drax (Dave Bautista), who lost his family to Ronan. But they have a bigger problem: that orb contains an infinity stone, a super weapon capable of leveling entire planets with more power than 100 atomic bombs and Chuck Norris. The orb has gotta go to a safe place, but to whom... and where?

Notice I'm not diving deep into the names of the planets or the alien races, not merely because I don't want to try to spell or pronounce them for you, but because it really doesn't matter in what universe this film exists. It doesn't matter they're going after some orb. This motley crew could be shopping at Kmart for all we care because of their chemistry and dysfunctional exchanges, like this one:

Peter Quill: I have a plan.
Rocket Raccoon: You've got a plan?
Peter Quill: I have PART of a plan!
Drax the Destroyer: What percentage of a plan?
Drax the Destroyer: What percentage of a plan do you have?
Gamora: You don't get to ask questions after the nonsense you pulled on Knowhere!
Drax the Destroyer: I just saved Quill!
Peter Quill: We've already established that you destroying the ship I'm on is not saving me!
Drax the Destroyer: When did we establish that?
Peter Quill: Like three seconds ago?
Drax the Destroyer: I wasn't listening. I was thinking of something else...
Rocket Raccoon: She's right, you don't get an opinion... What percentage?
Peter Quill: I dunno... Twelve percent?
Rocket Raccoon: 12%?
[breaks into laughter]
Peter Quill: That's a fake laugh.
Rocket Raccoon: It's real!
Peter Quill: Totally fake!
Rocket Raccoon: That is the most real, authentic, hysterical laugh of my entire life because THAT IS NOT A PLAN!

Source: imdb.com

It also drops a hysterical reference to Kevin Bacon and Footloose I'll let you discover for yourself.

Guardians Of The Galaxy comes from Marvel Comics' ever-expanding galaxy of superhero material padding the profits of Walt Disney, although I read a commenter on Nikki Finke's website compare it to the original Star Wars. If you're talking about viewer satisfaction, yes. Sequels? One's already on the way.