by David Eddie
Me, I acquired a “Junior Magician” magic set, and started giving post-prandial magic shows for the benefit of my parents’ dinner-party guests. For a while, I enjoyed their shammy gasps of surprise and exclamations of faux amazement. But it soon wore off. There was so much work involved, all that practice, going to the magic store, etc. I wanted to be entertained, goddammit; I wanted to sit like a stump while someone else busted their hump trying to amuse me, not the other way around. I gave it up, and wound up mostly doing… nothing, which was alright, but quite dull.
“Mom, I’m bo-o-o-red,” I said one day, stretching out the vowel to kill a little time.
“Why don’t you read a book?” she said, quick as a flash.
A book? They forced us to read books in school. The last thing I wanted to do with my free time was read a book.
“Aw, c’mon, Mom…” I began.
Suddenly she cocked her ear, like a rabbit listening for a twig snapping in the nearby woods, and held up a single hand, palm flat, fingers outstretched.
“Shhhh. Do you hear that?”
I heard it: a scratching, scraping sound, emanating from the basement. It sounded like a very large, horrible animal trying to claw his way into our house. Mom was at the door, ready to go down.
“Mom! Don’t go down there!”
It was a pure B-movie situation: don’t touch that door! But, just like in a B-movie, she didn’t listen, and started down the stairs, with me behind her, clutching her skirt. Due to some axe-murder-encouraging design flaw, the light switch was located at the bottom of the stairs and you had to descend in darkness before you could illumine the murky depths of our (unfinished) basement. We descended the stairs, in total darkness, and total silence except for the rasping scraping sound. When we hit the bottom of the stairs, Mom threw the switch.
What greeted our eyes was the saddest and most pathetic sight I ever hope to see. My brother, on his knees, with a nail file in one hand and a flashlight in the other, sawing away at the lock to the door that housed the television set. He looked up, his eyes — lab-rat eyes, trapped-rabbit eyes — still feverish with frustration, with the intensity of his purpose.
The next day our mother frog-marched us to the library, and asked the librarian to recommend some books. After grilling me with a few cross-generational questions — what subjects did I like at school, what were my hobbies — the kindly, somewhat equine-looking librarian went to the shelf and drew out Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse.
To this day, I have no idea why she chose that particular book. Maybe she sensed I was different, set apart, like Hesse’s wolf of the steppes destined to live aloof and apart from the crowd.
On the other hand, it’s also possible my long hair, ratty clothes, and earring tipped her off that I might enjoy the “psychedelic” scenes towards the end of the book.
Whatever, Steppenwolf hit me like a hammer. I especially couldn’t believe how honest Hesse was about his loneliness. Shit, I was lonely, too, but you’d never catch me telling anyone about it, even if I were tortured for days in the darkest dungeon. It was my deepest, darkest secret, yet here was Hesse laying it all down in black and white, for all to see.
Steppenwolf had a weird, double-edged effect on me: simultaneously I realized what I hadn’t before, that I was lonely, that this gnawing hunger in my soul was for other people, for love, friends, a social life; and at the same time I felt less lonely, because a 50-year-old German man from another era had touched my soul. He was my friend.
Are there any others out there? That’s what I wanted to know. Every few days, I took a stack of books out of the Palmerston Library, to return a week later for an equally large stack of books. I became an avid reader.
And that led to wanting to become a writer and all the rest of it.
Since then, I hadn’t watched much TV. Not out of any sort of snobbery: I found TV dull, repetitious. TV doesn’t tell you much about your inner life; and more and more that’s what I wanted to hear about.
So now I had to make up for lost time. For an entire week, I did nothing but eat, drink, smoke, shit, piss, sleep and watch TV. Not just information television, either, but everything under the cathode-ray sun: nature docs, cooking shows, sitcoms, music videos, soaps, talk shows, infomercials, gardening shows.
TV had changed quite a bit since I watched it last — for the worse, I felt. But then, TV always gets worse, and always will. Like water TV continually seeks fresh lows.
Music videos were a particularly demonic new development, I felt. They were just ads, really, ads within ads. Like Prince’s “Batman” video, which was airing at the time: the video was an ad for his record, which was an ad for the movie, which in turn was an ad for the merchandise, the biggest moneymaker of them all.
And infomercials: Tom Wu cruising around in his yacht or Rolls, always stuffed with bikini-popping babes, extolling the virtues of his “bargain property” system. “This is a picture of my family when we first came to this country. Now look at me. Look at my house. I got a waterfall in the front, pool like a lake. I get tired of looking at all the water!”
But of all the sounds and images that washed over my consciousness in that cathode-dazed week, the one that stuck with me was a conventional commercial featuring Derek Danby, former host of Man Rising, the Cosmodemonic info-spiritual program. An ad for specs: “As a journalist, I was sceptical about Lensmaster’s claim to have specs delivered in one hour,” the cardiganed Danby began. “But after their team of experts made me a pair of top-drawer glasses during my lunch break, all my doubts vanished.”
Something like that. I was saddened to see Danby descend to this level of hucksterism and spec-shilling. I mean, he needs money, like everyone, but surely Danby had a generous pension from the Cosmodemonic Cash-Cow? The thing was, Derek Danby had been a sort of spiritual leader for many of his viewers. People followed his advice, took what he said seriously. Now he was just saying what he was paid to say, like everyone else. I mean, I know you’re supposed to distinguish between what people say in commercials and what they say at other times, but it casts doubts on their other statements. What if Jesus had said: “Consider the lilies of the field — and while you’re at it, consider Sheckey’s sandals. If camels are the ships of the desert, then Sheckey’s are the sails!” No one would have taken his other statements as seriously, and where would we be today?
And I was joining it all, the Cosmodemonic conspiracy, selling my words to the highest bidder. At least it’s the news, I consoled myself. It’s not like I’m cranking out dialogue for Three’s Company. I’m performing a valuable service, I’m helping inform the populace.
But even that wasn’t much of a consolation, after a while. I found the more “information television” I watched, the less I retained. I can remember things I’ve read for months, years, a lifetime, but I couldn’t remember any facts I’d learned from all my TV watching for more than a few hours. It was as if my brain were made of Teflon, and sprayed with Pam. In the end, I decided “information television” only provides an illusion of information, an info-llusion. Or maybe it’s just me.
Of course, I didn’t regale Bill Frizell with these thoughts and observations when I returned to his office at the end of the week. Instead, I laid a carefully edited version of my more positive points of view on him, liberally salted and peppered with praise for all Cosmodemonic newscasts. Hey, man has to eat, me more than most. This body of mine, as I believe I’ve mentioned, is no compact little econo-model; it’s a block-long 1972 El Dorado Gas Guzzler Supremo, with fins and a steer-horn hood ornament. I need four squares a day just to keep this baby idling, let alone operating at peak efficiency. I had it with this starving-writer business. Knut Hamsun could have it.
Frizell seemed pleased.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I’ll start you observing on the overnight shift, with Roxanne Jones, the producer, and we’ll see where we’ll go from there.”
“So you’r
e offering me the job?”
“Frankly… yes, yes I am.”
I screwed up my courage and asked about salary.
“How does 40 sound?” he responded.
For a split second I didn’t know what he was talking about. Dollars an hour? Lashes with a whip in the public square unless I got out of his office immediately? Then I realized he meant thousands a year. I blinked; I may have swallowed.
“It sounds good,” I said. “Forty? Forty sounds about right.”
That night, over dinner, with Max and Sam — Les was working late — I announced the news. I accepted their congratulations and huzzahs like a beloved emperor returning from exile, or like Elvis returning from the army.
“Thank you, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.”
“How much are you making?” Max asked.
“Max! That’s not a polite question,” Sam said.
“No, I don’t mind,” I said. “Forty grand a year.”
Max stared at me, trying to imagine, perhaps, what a David Henry with money might look like. Then a slow smile spread across his face and he held his glass aloft for a toast.
“Dave? Welcome to the middle class.”
“Welcome back,” Sam said.
Clink!
15
Rise
It’s my first night on the job, and I’m observing, sitting behind a sour-faced French-Canadian woman named Roz, watching her work. Roz is a writer, Rox the producer. The “Roz and Rox show,” the overnights are called.
“Write to the pictures,” Roz keeps saying. “Write to the pictures.”
Roz takes me downstairs with her, to “E.N.G.,” Electronic News Gathering. On the way down the stairs she says, “You have to change the picture about every three seconds. The eye grows bored with an image longer than that. And clips shouldn’t be any longer than ten seconds.”
“What’s a clip?”
She looks at me strangely.
“A quote. Something someone says.”
E.N.G. is a rabbit-warren of editing suites, each stacked to the ceiling with elaborate-looking electronic equipment that turns out to be basically a bunch of VCRs linked together with electrical wire and manned by a touchy, unionized tape editor.
Our mission is to “cut down the kicker,” i.e., shorten the last piece in the newscast, which in this case is an item about a 13-year-old Armenian paraplegic girl who lost her legs in an earthquake, then came to Canada to be fitted with prosthetic limbs. Stories of this tearjerking type are an ancient journalistic tradition, known within the trade as “brave gimp stories.” The item ends with the Armenian girl leaving the hospital to return to her homeland. As she walks across the parking lot on her new plastic legs, wobbling like a newborn fawn, the narrator intones: “ … and that was the moment young Annie paid her debt of gratitude with her tears.” Hold on her cheerful/tearful face. Hold. Ho-o-ld. Dissolve.
Because of the brevity of the overnight newscasts, we have to edit this piece from one minute thirty seconds to one minute in length. But it’s not so easy. Under Roz’s direction, the E.N.G. tape editor takes out a doctor’s comment here, some facts about the earthquake there; but we’re still 10 seconds short of our goal. We scroll back and forth through the piece several times. Both Roz and the E.N.G. editor are stumped.
“I don’t know what to take out,” Roz says. “This piece is just too tight.”
I know I’m supposed to be simply observing, not making observations, but finally I can’t help myself.
“What about the bit at the end?”
Roz cranes her head around to stare at me.
“What bit at the end?”
“The bit where she’s crossing the parking lot in tears and the camera zooms in on her. Is that so important to the story?”
Roz’s face is a mask of disdain and disbelief.
“But that’s the money,” she says.
“Yes, but don’t you think it’s a little maudlin?”
Mystified, she trades a where-do-they-get-these-guys look with the editor, then back to me.
“Listen, where are you from anyway? Print?”
She spits out the word like a piece of bad fish. Never in my life have I heard anyone screw such contempt into a single syllable. I vow, then and there, for the rest of my Cosmodemonic career, to keep my eyes open and my mouth shut.
A vow I wasn’t able to keep for long, unfortunately. I worked hard, attempting to master my new craft. There was a certain art to it, similar to writing a haiku. Every word counts, and you have to pack a lot of information into a few lines:
Tanks rolled on Tiananmen Square today.
Four people were killed, dozens more injured.
Hilary Smith reports.
See? They were haikus, info-haikus. I bought a book called Writing for Broadcast which advised, among other things, to keep your sentences short, eleven words or less. Avoid commas. Tell every story as if you had just met someone you knew on the elevator, and you only had two floors to tell it. Oh, hey, Dave. What’s happening today? Hi, Ralph. Well, tanks rolled on Tiananmen Square today. Four people were killed and dozens more were injured. Hilary Smith is in Beijing, and she has the story. Oops, here’s my stop. Catch you later.
At the end of every night, per Frizell’s request, I dropped photocopies of my scripts on his secretary’s desk so he could monitor my progress.
One day, he phoned me at home. It was about one in the afternoon, and after working all night, I was just waking up.
“Can you come see me in my office?”
“Sure. When?”
“How about today, about four?”
“O.K.”
Pedalling to his office, I assumed the worst. Oh, well, it was good while it lasted, I thought. I made a little extra cash. Wonder what my next step will be?
But when I arrived in his office, I found he had a surprise in store for me.
“Sit down, sit down.”
I sat.
“I’ve been looking over your work, David,” he said. “And frankly… I’m impressed.”
As you see, he had an unnerving habit of saying “frankly” before many of his comments, even the positive ones.
“I don’t like all of your verbs,” he continued. “And some of your sentences are still too long, but you show a great deal of promise. I’m going to put you on the Saturday Evening News, with Reed Franklin. You’ll work there Wednesday to Saturday. Sundays you’ll work on the Sunday Report.”
Sunday Report was the flagship newscast, the highest-rated of all Cosmodemonic info-productions, anchored by none other than the 600-pound gorilla, the heaviest of all Cosmodemonic anchors, Peter Rockwell himself. I sat for a moment, in stunned silence.
“You mean you’re promoting me?”
“Frankly, yes. Yes, I am.”
I got up and pumped his hand.
“You won’t regret this, Mr. Frizell. I appreciate this chance.” When I exited his office, I was walking on air. In the newsroom, I paused and looked around. Watch out, you hacks, I thought. I’m going to take over this place!
My new job on the Saturday Evening News was to write the “continuity” for the show, also to write and produce “The Week in Review,” a round-up of the highlights of the week’s news events. Our meetings, the meetings of the Saturday Evening News crew, took place right after the main morning editorial meeting. Just the four of us: me, Reed Franklin, Cynthia Butch (the producer), and her sidekick, Joanna Knelman.
Cynthia and Joanna did most of the talking at these meetings. I understood occasional words, and sometimes whole phrases, but for the most part their mumbo-jumbo technobabble might as well have been Swahili:
“We’ll need a flyaway feed for the talkback,” Cynthia would say.
“Maybe we should do a live hit from the microwave truck,” Joanna would respond.
“We’d better buy a window on the NBC bird.”
“I’ll get Resources to put it on the A3R.”
The only consolation was, I th
ink even after all those years in the news business, Reed Franklin was equally baffled. He and I sat in stumped silence, waiting for the conversation to turn to editorial matters.
Talk about imposter syndrome, I had it. I not only thought I was an imposter in my new job, I knew it. I was a spy, an interloper, a double-agent, a double-crossing Benedict Arnold, a cross-dressing Mata Hari.
Cynthia Butch had an unnerving habit of her own. I’d usually roll in around 10:30, since there wasn’t much to do until the all-staff morning meeting at 11:00. Chill, read the paper, get some coffee. Sometimes I’d meet Cynthia in the hall and she might say something like: “We should do something about those murders in Moncton.” Or: “They caught the Fratellinis.”
Statements like these never failed to put me into a cold sweat. What murders in Moncton? Who the fuck were the Fratellinis? This was obviously something I should know about, be conversant with, but I wasn’t. I’d give her some sort of neutral answer, accompanied by a neutral facial expression that implied neither knowledge nor ignorance, in case she followed up with a question like: “You know all about the Fratellini story, don’t you?” Which she sometimes did. After these harrowing encounters, I’d scoot back to my computer and check the wires and find that these stories were only a couple of hours, maybe even only a few minutes old. They had “moved” only that morning, yet Cynthia talked about them like they were old hat.
Eventually, I learned this was just a facet of newsroom ball-breaking etiquette. No matter how fresh and recent a story was, you have to talk about it like it’s ancient history. It was a complex dance. You start with something neutral, only a few code words, and the other person has to show they already know all about it, even though the story broke only a few minutes ago.