Get Out Of Your Liturgical Comfort Zone

Here ye. Here ye. Come all ye Buckhead Episcopalians, etc. Have a moment tonight with Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye, those former TV creature-preachers of PTL fame, fortune and, ultimately, the Big House (for Jim).

Son Jay is a fascinating preacher-creature himself, and former Atlantan. Tonight, a docu-show about his life, well titled One Punk Under God, makes me wish I had the Sundance Channel so I could watch along. The six-part series premiers there at 9pm. We do breed such terrific oddities in America!

In keeping with simplistic God notions his parents infused him with, if not their fashion sense, here's a bit about his life's work:

Jay and Amanda Bakker relocated from Atlanta in August and Bakker quickly established an arm of his Revolution church here (Brooklyn, NY). His brand of Christianity calls for inclusiveness and embraces gays and lesbians, a recent evolvement that caused his conservative financial backers to bail.

Revolution, said Bakker, "is about letting people know that Jesus is inclusive and loves everybody and welcomes everybody. It's kind of showing that we're not all right-wing Christian Coalition neoconservatives. You can care about social issues. You can care about the poor and the hurting."

Full story here.

Who Polishes The Best Turds?

Or rather, who best polishes the simple turd? According to the Turdpolisher's blog description:

Turdpolishing is slang we TV photogs use for turning an utterly worthless story into something that sticks to video tape -- polishing a turd. Be careful or you'll get some on you.

A perfect case-in-point is a bit from this Turdpolisher entry, Got AIDS?, about trolling for news only the suits can use:

Can I tell you... the only thing worse than attending a poetry reading about AIDS is actually having AIDS. But it gets better, the poets are 11 years old. What do these kids know about AIDS, how one contracts it, lives with it, or prevents it? Luck was on our side...we were late. We got there just in time to shoot the winners getting their checks. But there's still that nagging need for a story tonight.

Having just produced a network shoot this past Saturday, I was reminded, yet again, of just how elaborate the T polish can be applied.

See this hardworking crew dress a set for instance. The crew used-up about an hour of good manpower time creating a curtain to block light so that they could pop-off a couple of interior shots, a couple of shots inside a filthy shack. Of course, you simply can't get a good shot with full sun blaring right into your lens, whether you're using a $150 DV cam from Circuit City or a customized Betacam, as this crew was using that can run you or your network 50K or more.

We were not there to do a story about poverty though, so the camera crew could light and frame to capture a "nice" setting anyway they saw fit, conveniently ignoring the ramshackle squalor our interviewees were living in. (Filth and grime and poverty? What's that to a feature story about overcoming anxieties!? But I diverge. I was just the hired hand on this one. The folks in NYC want a story about an anxiety disorder, that's what they're gonna get. It's not the place of a freelance producer to even THINK about contributing to the editorial direction. You show up on time, you smile and nod, and you ship the NY desk their tapes immediately. That's what they want from us folk on "the ground." Nothing more. Nothing less.)

So here's your case for "real" citizen journalism. And this does not mean just giving a newsroom of highly educated journalists a DV cam and a lesson on iMovie, as only when the stories bubble-up organically from the ground, by any means necessary I suppose, and then go straight up to the suits, and not the top-down method by which we're accustomed to receiving news, will turd polishing become less important. Only then will the TV news audience begin to recognize a genuine turd for what it often is -- the crap or non-news item or PC bullshit or outright lies (WMD) it often is.

And will the print folks ever be able to simply catch up? Should they even try to catch up with video? Should writing and video be mutually exclusive? Tune-in to the blogosphere to find out more. Exciting times we do live in, folks.

NOTE: Do not miss Turdpolisher's short story either, The Blond and The Klan. Hilariously underwritten in a loopy style perfect for capturing the sheer lunacy of a Louisiana local news station. Get this guy an agent!

Hyper Egos Scheduled To Ruin Network News

A perfect example here of why mainstream media/network news is doomed. Doomed I tell you. When egos rule the bottom line, then you've got yourself a house of hot air, stamp your feet say ME ME ME straw.

Only one business-class seat could be procured because the trip was hastily arranged. But "Murphy (Katie Couric's hairdresser) went to the foreign desk and screamed at people about how outrageous and incompetent this was. She threatened that heads were going to roll," an insider says... More here.

It ain't the bloggers who will bring down network news. MSM can do it just fine left to their own devices. Thank goodness for blogs though, as now more people can see what I suffered through in my network years.

Now where'd you put my goddamn conditioner, Zelma? (My dog.)

FU FCC

Not only are we not using lube, we're not using the tube. This is brilliant! Click-on right away.

TV Left To The Stupid People

So TV's dead. Only stupid people watch it now anyway. More on that here.

I'll miss Larry King at 9pm. I have such a nice little night-time ritual of putting kid to bed, then savoring some Tension Tamer (Ooops. Product placement. Hello Celestial Seasonings???!!) with milk and a little A-listing with Mr. King, despite his flinching ugliness, but the guests are always good. Then a little AC 360 for a bedtime global news romp.

As strong a relationship as I've developed with the Internets, I still enjoy cozying-up with a little TV every now and then, especially since I grew-up without one. But I can easily see how that damn Disney Channel sucks the mindwind right out of the young ones. Only a moron could think otherwise. Thank goodness they don't run commercials, its only saving grace, otherwise it'd all be outta here. Still, we need TV for use as a DVD monitor, don't we? In the den?

Ultimately, lying in bed with the laptop watching something on-demand, whether it's a longer form piece from ABC News, a far-fetched conspiracy theory, a movie (The Breakup last night. Quite good.) or a clip from MetaCafe, is pretty darn compelling. All of the above I've done lately. Can't say I've had quite that intimate a relationship with my TV that's fer sure as I've never invited one into my bedroom.

WTF... bring on the broadband. What a party. Smash your TV, but put yourself doing it on YouTube, of course.

CNN Layoffs

Here's the poop on the CNN layoffs, as I hear it: At least five senior, longtime staff were hit. They seem to be aiming for the "high salary" profile this go-'round. Severance packages will likely be excellent for all. More details when they arrive... stay-tuned to the SGR.

Is it too soon to welcome such leftbehinds to the blogosphere? Oh, if they only knew of the fun and games to be trolled here they'd have come running long ago, even without a severance package! But they'll need a good one to navigate, as independents, out here until they hit, uh, warmer waters.

He'd Have Been A Good Man...

"... if he'd had a bad rocker to bash him in the head every day."

Since a couple of you have enquired into the matter, let me direct you to the blog thread from over a year ago in which someone (I'll never tell) posted the "Tony Paris is buried in the Kremlin" comment. Many choice eighties-Atlanta references lie within, if you're over 38 and still alive.

In a devilish new twist, the plot of the Fox TV show, Vanished, set in Atlanta and on Monday nights at 9pm, hints of a romp through the "Atlanta underground music scene." Such a story line should make for intense TV -- how about that wanker redneck drummer from Duluth who once did blow with Ashley Smith lounging about on your East Atlanta Ikea couch for three weeks instead of the one week it promised in the first place? Now that would be frightening.

It's a shame the show does not incorporate the truly evil and horrid realities of Atlanta's much more infamous and always-flourishing sex trade business instead. That could indeed scare someone.

While bad TV, Vanished does make for an excellent drinking game. For instance, you can drink every time they botch an Atlanta reference. Something along the lines of I-20 going through Stone Mountain. You'll be crocked by 9:15, if you can make it through the laughable, very unsouthern-esque acting for that long.

One other note, wanna hear something real pretty? Check out the song on Caroline Monroe's MySpace. Just as lovely as it can be. We were delighted to have her on TrueGritz twice. Caroline's surely a star in the making.