I covered an awards luncheon today. I introduced myself to the people at the table beforehand so they knew a spy was in their midst.
Here's how it went down: first there was a speech.
Then there were awards.
Then there were thanks. Lots and lots and lots of thanks.
Then a representative of a local politician gave the awardees certificates.
Then another representative of a local politician gave the awardees certificates.
Then another representative of a local politician gave the awardees certificates.
The priest at the table with me, with whom I had swapped jokes earlier, turned to the rest of us and stage-whispered "HOW LONG CAN THIS GO ON?" with this great dumbfounded look on his face. Rolled his eyes.
Then another representative of a local politician gave the awardees certificates.
The priest did a dramatic throwing-up-of-hands.
Trying to control myself, I snorted. Out loud.
Tried not to laugh. Shook with laughter.
The priest caught on to my mirth. Enjoyed my discomfort. His mouth twitched up at the corners.
I wiped my eyes.
I am totally gonna sit with him next year.
Showing posts with label journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journalism. Show all posts
02 February 2010
05 January 2010
All the lovely ladies...
As part of my adventures in newspaper reporting, I spent 75 minutes inside a recycling facility today.
This is the place where everything goes "away" to when you throw it away.
Trash trucks pull up and dump their loads in the middle of a 50,000 square foot warehouse. John Deere skiploaders roar up, scoop the refuse and deposit on a wide conveyor belt.
About 50 young men stand at stations, each one pulling off an assigned kind of recyclable or reject.
One guy concentrates on wood scraps, another on steel cans, and so on. They toss their particular kind of stuff down a chute, where it lands with a loud bang in a gigantic metal bin on wheels.
It was, to put it mildly, disgusting. Noisy, dusty, smelly, with God-knows-what floating through the air from every kind of thing people have tossed in their recycling bins...and believe me, I saw a lot. Car bumpers, toys, Christmas trees, clock radios, on and on and on.
I left feeling like I was covered in a thick film of germ-ridden muck. Nothing that a few hours of soaking in a 10% bleach bath and burning my clothes won't take care of.
I was talking to my old work friend Matt and shared the scene with him, trying to joke away the awfulness. Matt is great for that sort of thing.
He and I have endured much together and usually go down the humor trail of 1) We're totally incompetent 2) We're probably drunk, too and 3) We deserve to be employed in a job that doesn't require much in the way of thinking or responsibility.
I told him about the poor schmucks who have to stand in this environment every day, hand-sorting filthy refuse.
"Oh wow," he said. "Are they hiring?" (For the record, Matt has an excellent job and is good at what he does.)
"Why yes, I believe they are," I said. "In fact, I believe they are always hiring."
"Imagine that," said Matt. "Maybe I should apply."
"And you know the best part?" I said. ""Just think of the reaction when you're trying to impress a woman and you tell her that you're the plastic milk carton guy."
"Oh, I'll bet the ladies are all over that action," he agreed.
This is the place where everything goes "away" to when you throw it away.
Trash trucks pull up and dump their loads in the middle of a 50,000 square foot warehouse. John Deere skiploaders roar up, scoop the refuse and deposit on a wide conveyor belt.
About 50 young men stand at stations, each one pulling off an assigned kind of recyclable or reject.
One guy concentrates on wood scraps, another on steel cans, and so on. They toss their particular kind of stuff down a chute, where it lands with a loud bang in a gigantic metal bin on wheels.
It was, to put it mildly, disgusting. Noisy, dusty, smelly, with God-knows-what floating through the air from every kind of thing people have tossed in their recycling bins...and believe me, I saw a lot. Car bumpers, toys, Christmas trees, clock radios, on and on and on.
I left feeling like I was covered in a thick film of germ-ridden muck. Nothing that a few hours of soaking in a 10% bleach bath and burning my clothes won't take care of.
I was talking to my old work friend Matt and shared the scene with him, trying to joke away the awfulness. Matt is great for that sort of thing.
He and I have endured much together and usually go down the humor trail of 1) We're totally incompetent 2) We're probably drunk, too and 3) We deserve to be employed in a job that doesn't require much in the way of thinking or responsibility.
I told him about the poor schmucks who have to stand in this environment every day, hand-sorting filthy refuse.
"Oh wow," he said. "Are they hiring?" (For the record, Matt has an excellent job and is good at what he does.)
"Why yes, I believe they are," I said. "In fact, I believe they are always hiring."
"Imagine that," said Matt. "Maybe I should apply."
"And you know the best part?" I said. ""Just think of the reaction when you're trying to impress a woman and you tell her that you're the plastic milk carton guy."
"Oh, I'll bet the ladies are all over that action," he agreed.
21 August 2009
Getting it right, getting it wrong
The comments section of my local newspaper's online edition is filled with the most retrograde, racist, xenophobic goobers to ever type a sentence. I hesitate to even log in because I always end up feeling so downcast about the state of humanity after reading what they say.
Any time an article mentions someone with a Latino last name or a subject even tangentially related to homosexuality, the chunderheads go into full zoom-zoom crazyhead mode. Illegals! Gays!
Hundreds of comments. I mean, look. Enough said.
Anyway, when they aren't flipping out about "the illegals" or "the gays," the rabblerific comments section is full of entries about how the newspaper can't get anything right.
I have been working my way through "The Wire," the greatest TV show ever (period, end of story). Season 5 is all about journalism. Oh, it is good. It also gives me the most painful pangs of nostalgia for the newsroom. I can barely stand it.
In one scene, the city editor wakes out of a dead sleep and goes and calls the copy desk to ask about some facts he inserted in a story. He is panting, thinking for sure he got the numbers reversed. Some little minor thing about the tonnage of shipments at the port last month, but he is losing his mind over it.
It reminded me so much of my life when I reported every day. I did that ALL THE TIME. And I asked people at my workplace - I work with a bunch of former news people - if that had happened to them, and they all had stories. Lots of stories.
We had all awakened wildly, thinking for sure we had pooched a fact, something that no one else would notice, but that we would know.
I remember one night when I lay there, tossing and turning until I couldn't stand it anymore. I woke up the exMrStapler, who was an attorney.
"If someone is being held for questioning, are they 'in custody'?" I asked.
I was freaking out because I had said "in custody" and I wasn't sure that was precise enough. ExMrS thought for a bit.
"Was he free to go?" he said.
"No."
"Then you could say he was in custody," ruled ExMrS.
I had awakened sweating because I cared. I didn't care because I would get in trouble or because we would have to run a correction (though that was horrible, too). I cared because I believed all that crap about writing "the first draft of history." I cared because facts are facts, and they are supposed to be right. I cared because I was part of a long tradition of reporting the news, of separating out the true from the false. I really, really cared in a way I never cared about anything before or since.
Those goons in the comment section honestly believe that journalists don't give a hoot, that they screw up and blithely go about their day. Maybe there are some who do. But I have just never met one, and I never was one. I can only hope that they, some day, somehow, care about something as much as I cared about getting the news right.
Any time an article mentions someone with a Latino last name or a subject even tangentially related to homosexuality, the chunderheads go into full zoom-zoom crazyhead mode. Illegals! Gays!
Hundreds of comments. I mean, look. Enough said.
Anyway, when they aren't flipping out about "the illegals" or "the gays," the rabblerific comments section is full of entries about how the newspaper can't get anything right.
I have been working my way through "The Wire," the greatest TV show ever (period, end of story). Season 5 is all about journalism. Oh, it is good. It also gives me the most painful pangs of nostalgia for the newsroom. I can barely stand it.
In one scene, the city editor wakes out of a dead sleep and goes and calls the copy desk to ask about some facts he inserted in a story. He is panting, thinking for sure he got the numbers reversed. Some little minor thing about the tonnage of shipments at the port last month, but he is losing his mind over it.
It reminded me so much of my life when I reported every day. I did that ALL THE TIME. And I asked people at my workplace - I work with a bunch of former news people - if that had happened to them, and they all had stories. Lots of stories.
We had all awakened wildly, thinking for sure we had pooched a fact, something that no one else would notice, but that we would know.
I remember one night when I lay there, tossing and turning until I couldn't stand it anymore. I woke up the exMrStapler, who was an attorney.
"If someone is being held for questioning, are they 'in custody'?" I asked.
I was freaking out because I had said "in custody" and I wasn't sure that was precise enough. ExMrS thought for a bit.
"Was he free to go?" he said.
"No."
"Then you could say he was in custody," ruled ExMrS.
I had awakened sweating because I cared. I didn't care because I would get in trouble or because we would have to run a correction (though that was horrible, too). I cared because I believed all that crap about writing "the first draft of history." I cared because facts are facts, and they are supposed to be right. I cared because I was part of a long tradition of reporting the news, of separating out the true from the false. I really, really cared in a way I never cared about anything before or since.
Those goons in the comment section honestly believe that journalists don't give a hoot, that they screw up and blithely go about their day. Maybe there are some who do. But I have just never met one, and I never was one. I can only hope that they, some day, somehow, care about something as much as I cared about getting the news right.
10 February 2007
Count me out
I went to a leadership conference for college students today, a freelance assignment for the newspaper. I only try to do assignments where I can either have fun or learn something. I suppose this falls under the latter category, because suddenly I was far, far out of my element. It was like a trip to the land of the Path Not Taken.
I have a theory: smart people fall into about three categories. There are smart people with no social skills and boundless enthusiasm for one small slice of the world. We call these people engineers, scientists, inventors and geeks. Then there are smart people with lots of enthusiasm and lots of social skills. Those are the business leaders, ministers, salespeople. And last are the smart people with good social skills but endless, grim humor and cynicism. Those are the journalists, bloggers. You know the type. You probably ARE the type.
So there I was, a journalist trapped in the middle of Future Business Leaders - the type of people who have been in student government since fifth grade. People who volunteer for things. All the time.
I hoped to do my usual disappearing into the woodwork thing. Lay low, take notes. One of my journalist mantras is "Don't be the news," a reminder to stay out of the middle of the story, no matter how strong my feelings are about what is going on.
The first act was a motivational speaker named Nancy. She was peppy! She was convincing! She had a catch phrase, which was "It's ZING time!" (no, I am not making this up).
ZING time meant that it was time to get enthusiastic and involved. As in ama-ZING! She had these students chanting "It's ZING time" and shooting both hands in the air ("An exclamation point!") to show their utter enthusiasm for ZING.
Guess who wasn't ZINGing along with the crowd? Miss Journalistic Crankypants. It wasn't that I was trying to be a jerk. I was just doing my job and staying uninvolved.
After a few ZINGs, Nancy stopped.
"Excuse me," she said, fixing her gaze on me. "But you're sitting there and smiling at me and you aren't participating."
Oh crap. I was sitting at a round table in the middle of a huge meeting room and now 100 college students were staring at me.
"Why not?" she asked me.
"I'm a reporter," I said. "I'm just trying to maintain my...um...journalistic distance."
"Well now," she said. "We're all going to watch as she does it for all of us. "
ZING? I was supposed to ZING?
"What time is it?" she shouted, looking at me expectantly.
Message to Nancy: don't play battle of wills with a non-joiner. Because resisting peer pressure has been my stock in trade my whole life. I am the fifth child in my family, and one thing I learned early was that, the more people try to goad you into something, the worse idea it probably is (examples: Eating that unsweetened chocolate. Saying "Shit" at the dinner table at age 4. Thanks, sibs, for teaching me about peer pressure).
I sat there like a rock. The crowd groaned and "OOOOooh"ed at me dramatically.
I sat there, tension building. I could feel my heart pounding a bit but I didn't flinch. Nancy leaned over expectantly. Silence. I held my ground. Our gazes locked. She realized that she had met her match, her ZING-less rival.
"Oh well, we can still go on and get our energy back," Nancy said, recovering nicely. "What time is it?" The crowd roared "It's ZING time."
I did get a good rush of adrenaline from being singled out in front of so many people. My shaky notes for the next few minutes attest to that. But damn it, I held fast to the code of the non-joiner - don't let them grind you down. Because if you participate, the ZINGers of the world win.
(Nancy later apologized for embarrassing me in front of the crowd. She said she had thought I was a staff member, which would have been a lot more fun. I thought it was actually kind of amusing because I am weird that way. Also because I thought "I am SO blogging this.)
I have a theory: smart people fall into about three categories. There are smart people with no social skills and boundless enthusiasm for one small slice of the world. We call these people engineers, scientists, inventors and geeks. Then there are smart people with lots of enthusiasm and lots of social skills. Those are the business leaders, ministers, salespeople. And last are the smart people with good social skills but endless, grim humor and cynicism. Those are the journalists, bloggers. You know the type. You probably ARE the type.
So there I was, a journalist trapped in the middle of Future Business Leaders - the type of people who have been in student government since fifth grade. People who volunteer for things. All the time.
I hoped to do my usual disappearing into the woodwork thing. Lay low, take notes. One of my journalist mantras is "Don't be the news," a reminder to stay out of the middle of the story, no matter how strong my feelings are about what is going on.
The first act was a motivational speaker named Nancy. She was peppy! She was convincing! She had a catch phrase, which was "It's ZING time!" (no, I am not making this up).
ZING time meant that it was time to get enthusiastic and involved. As in ama-ZING! She had these students chanting "It's ZING time" and shooting both hands in the air ("An exclamation point!") to show their utter enthusiasm for ZING.
Guess who wasn't ZINGing along with the crowd? Miss Journalistic Crankypants. It wasn't that I was trying to be a jerk. I was just doing my job and staying uninvolved.
After a few ZINGs, Nancy stopped.
"Excuse me," she said, fixing her gaze on me. "But you're sitting there and smiling at me and you aren't participating."
Oh crap. I was sitting at a round table in the middle of a huge meeting room and now 100 college students were staring at me.
"Why not?" she asked me.
"I'm a reporter," I said. "I'm just trying to maintain my...um...journalistic distance."
"Well now," she said. "We're all going to watch as she does it for all of us. "
ZING? I was supposed to ZING?
"What time is it?" she shouted, looking at me expectantly.
Message to Nancy: don't play battle of wills with a non-joiner. Because resisting peer pressure has been my stock in trade my whole life. I am the fifth child in my family, and one thing I learned early was that, the more people try to goad you into something, the worse idea it probably is (examples: Eating that unsweetened chocolate. Saying "Shit" at the dinner table at age 4. Thanks, sibs, for teaching me about peer pressure).
I sat there like a rock. The crowd groaned and "OOOOooh"ed at me dramatically.
I sat there, tension building. I could feel my heart pounding a bit but I didn't flinch. Nancy leaned over expectantly. Silence. I held my ground. Our gazes locked. She realized that she had met her match, her ZING-less rival.
"Oh well, we can still go on and get our energy back," Nancy said, recovering nicely. "What time is it?" The crowd roared "It's ZING time."
I did get a good rush of adrenaline from being singled out in front of so many people. My shaky notes for the next few minutes attest to that. But damn it, I held fast to the code of the non-joiner - don't let them grind you down. Because if you participate, the ZINGers of the world win.
(Nancy later apologized for embarrassing me in front of the crowd. She said she had thought I was a staff member, which would have been a lot more fun. I thought it was actually kind of amusing because I am weird that way. Also because I thought "I am SO blogging this.)
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