Thursday, December 20, 2007

Gallows Humor And Other Fun

  • In what other profession are you allowed to pretend to be a hooker for some story b-roll (footage) by smearing lipstick on your face and guzzling cheap champagne out of a graceful flute?
  • Is it wrong to create a techno song by repeatedly singing a clip from a 911 witness call?
  • I cannot imagine another job that offers as much intense stress and drama - one minute you'll be tossing out a string of four letter words about everyone from your mother to Jesus, another minute you'll be cheering your success in capturing the money shot live on television.
  • It's a double-edge sword: manners are forgotten in TV news. Sometimes you're the one who gets crapped on, other times you're the one who gets sh*tty. Most of the time you just apologize and say bygones over a beer.
  • This industry is solely responsible for my inability to grow nails. Sometimes I bite them off because I'm too stressed out. Other times they get chipped and break off after all the feverish typing.
  • Most of the time it's completely acceptable for me to roll into work in jeans or cargo pants. Most of the time I feel guilty about it.
  • I am comfortable sitting in one place for approximately nine hours.
  • There's so much that happens behind the scenes to get a newscast on the air - the triumph is in concealing all that chaos from the folks at home.
  • We will find a dirty joke in almost anything.
  • Sometimes we have to wait for the news to happen. That's when we start having newsroom dance parties, watching you tube and dishing about prime time television. Yes, we're still on the clock for that.
  • Other times we have to work longer hours on holidays, during snow storms and breaking news events.
  • We'll bad mouth each other in the break room, but God help the competitor across the street who talks trash about one of our own - we're definitely a family.

1 comment:

Denae said...

my friend Casey said she was pretty stressed working in the emergency room at a memphis hospital. lots of gun shot wounds. i think alicia also has some pretty tough training sessions in the fighter jet for iraq. but, yeah, the news biz has its incredibly intense moments. its also tough to put it in perspective when news managers are screaming about a car crash and demanding that you fit it into the top of your already slammed newscast. the competition between other stations also makes people react in ways that add to the drama and intensity. sorry you had to work on christmas - another perk of the news biz. but oh how we love it! i think news is also difficult sometimes because the payoff is not as great as say being a doc or a pilot in the airforce. we get low pay, weekend hours, schedule changes without much notice and major stress. there are still worse jobs out there. i would hate to drive the tube around the tunnels of london. also bin collecting: not on my list of preferred professions.