Melissa Patrick the Suicide Evening News
The girl with big glasses, the ponytail, and the insincere smile walked over to me and said, "Are those girls pants you are wearing?" Bewildered I replied, "No? What makes you say that?" I started to panic as glands that I never knew I had began to release sweat. Melissa was one of those girls that you couldn't get away from in 7th grade, she knew who you liked before you liked them. She could see dandruff in you hair three rows away. She knew the GDP of everyone on your street, and the general tax bracket of someone who owned a car like my parents. She was the gossip queen of Longwood; FL there was no escaping the wrath. "They look like girl's pants." My mother shopped a lot at thrift stores and in the rush to save on a pair of brand names, the orientation of the button side of the slacks might have been overlooked. I tried to run, but the proportions of hip to leg ratios held me back. "Yup, those are definitely girl's pants." I could hear her say as I ran for the cover of the locker room crowd.
I would see her again 10 years later.
It comes from normality. It itches each person by the familiar, by the predictable that after a day of work, the evening news is the catalyst that propels the viewer into a "perssistive vegetative state." I myself am addicted to the peace of shutting off the mind. As I sit and watch tag and slug lines, teasers, opens, and inevitable guests and analysts, I wonder about how consistent the 24 hour news is at any given time. But just as I peak out of the numb, I am encouraged to sit through the commercial break because of a "Surprise Break in the Natalee Holloway case, or new developments with the medical condition of stroke victim and Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon."
More Later After this break.
This intoxicating mix of the world's worst events conditions me to believe that life is not so bad where I am. Sure there is a stack of bills, and checkbook to balance. And maybe I really need to change the oil and have my molar looked at. But heck at least I'm not a kidnapped journalist in Iraq. I am not a downed chopper pilot. I am not a missing Virginia teen last seen with an amateur photographer. I am not a missing man on a cruise ship. I am not a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It seems interesting but generally speaking, from day to day, the news is the same. They have reporters stationed in regions who report live, speaking of water levels, levee breaks, hurricane destruction, political stuff in DC, brushfires in the desert southwest, cold weather in the northeast, radical left in Oregon, and the happy radical right in the South.
Internationally, we can always depend on the staple crops of anything Middle East. This is the breadwinner. If Iraq was to end, and Iran said: "Hey we don't want our nuclear weapons, here take 'em in exchange for those awesome Levi's jeans you guys have." If all the rebels in Pakistan fighting western ideas and thought were to lay down their guns and say: "Hey, you win…now give me free tickets to Orlando." The news would be toast. Because aside from the natural disaster wake, and the human trafficking in Manila, there really wouldn't be any news to report. And then it would become blatantly obvious that nothing would be leading, because nothing is bleeding.
As I am about to change the channel, again I'm drawn into the story of a volcano, as I watch the gliding helicopter shot complete with graphics and sound effects from some kind of post production software probably designed to sell an oversupply of cars and the occasional Monster Truck Show tickets. And it is another series of commercials (usually the exact same ones) during a second break. The weather report should be on after these 800 numbers, and financial trading ads. And then I can watch some reporter on a pier with crashing waves, and the vacant surrounding. Or another one clinging to a tree shouting louder than he has to (even though he's holding a microphone) because somehow this reporter ended up near the eye wall of a cat 4 hurricane. Maybe the crew will get lucky and have a stop sign fly right past the camera during the live feed. The best is not so much the action of the on air talent, but the technical stuff. The cameraman's handkerchief appearing in the shot to wipe the lens down, the intermittent static on the microphone, the choppy satellite feed. It makes for addicting TV and as a whole we tend to cultivate what we desire.
I remember being in Israel in the late 90's when a bomb went off where it usually does, at a café near a marketplace near the #12 bus. At least that is what the news told me but I didn't see it, even though I was right there. I saw some commotion, I saw some people shouting. And then it was over. Back at the hotel I watched on the BBC everything I missed. On the flight back, landing at JFK I was greeted by SWAT, Airport Police, and other divisions of NY's Finest because some Egypt Air flight fell out of the sky and left from the same terminal I entered at. I saw reporters doing live interviews, near the terminal (Pre-9/11) as I watched them simultaneously on the airport TV's above me.
At that point I realized that Melissa Patrick and the girls in the back row have gone global. No longer were they they're snickering with each jelly shoed-correspondent spreading the news from class period to class period while I sat in heated shame. But instead of a prepubescent with strange growth spurts, and distasteful fashion sense on the guillotine of gossip, it was the extra ordinary. Instead of the 7th grade it was now any hallowed spot on this island earth. Melissa Patrick and the girls were more sophisticated. Now they had HD cameras with satellite phones, complete with animation and even a news ticker with a rotating clock representing the time zones that matter. They had fast attack traffic helicopters that would show you the congestions while you were in your living room (I still don't get that) they had trucks with antennae arrays that could telescope their way into the houses of Joe and Jill American. They employed perfect hair anchors with perfect skin. The men, confident and eloquent, who have won the trust of many a layperson through the words spoken within that Armani suit, The women who are the finest hybrids of class, vocabulary, charisma, and beauty the human age has ever known. They now owned massive chunks of real estate in NY and LA, they were power brokers building up or destroying their share of the Hollywood elite, Foreign Dignitaries, and Political Candidates alike. They influenced the stockbroker, the teenybopper, the fast food eater, the sports gambler, the moviegoer, the tree-huger, and the patriot. From these one-minute stories we hastily form our opinion of the world that surrounds us. And from those opinions spring forth our knee-jerk reactions. Markets go up and down with yo-yo like consistency, as human nature, we create ways to compartmentalize the complexities of life. We like to package them into nice little neat boxes to rule out the unexpected. We believe everyone in So Cal is involved in some kind of high-speed pursuit, and that there guns, drugs, gangs aplenty. We believe it does nothing but rain Seattle. We believe every beauty pageant winner comes from Texas, that every one in Utah is Mormon and that the English are a bunch of tea-drinking wimps and the French even more so. We believe that every indigenous person in South America has his/her privates strategically wrapped in banana leaves and that there is something truly is rotten in Denmark.
Maybe that's what makes News stories so addicting. In a violent and turbulent way, they either bolster our belief and preconceived notions, or they send them shattering to the ground in an explosion of shock and awe. It is reality TV and a soap opera all rolled into one. And through the footage on the news we live vicariously through the amazing-feel-good stories. But sometimes we relish our comfortable safe spot on this side of the camera lens. But aside from the interactive quality of the media, is the illusion that we are somehow more fulfilled and "socially aware" of our surroundings, of our country, and our planet. The travesty is that if we believe what is broadcast at face value, we will continue to have a more confused and unenlightened/ignorant view of the very thing that is being reported. But the average person is not going to do the fact checking. Who has time for confirming how many foreign donations were given to aid a candidate after campaign finance reform? Who can check the validity of documents produced that claim there was a 2nd gunman on the knoll? What individual has the time to back up evidence of decline in the economy? Truth is we have to believe them, because it is inconvenient to report on our own. We absorb the news as the truth as casually as we eat peanut butter.
I think of all things mainstream other than mainstream news. I think of music. I think of movies. I think conventional wisdom and thinking. I think of living. I think of mainstream ideas of success and of failure. And in every one of these you and I both know exceptions to the rule. You know someone who goes against the system. You know someone who considers success by the friends that he has. You know someone who is living the high life out of a 13-foot trailer or boat. You have a CD that you love, that no one else does. You have a movie that is secretly yours.
Remember these exceptions the next time you turn on the Britney Spears bubble gum pop News. And realize that there are fascinating stories that aren't being told. Remember that the cover story is statistically created to appease and satisfy 64 percent of regular viewing audience. And in all likelihood, if you are tuning into that station out of habit, keep in mind you are hooked. You have become part of the mainstream appetite of the same things repackaged together like the ingredients of taco/burrito/chimicanga bar. But before you wonder why, realize the only way to fight it. The only way to figure out the truth is to investigate yourself. Chase down every lead, confirm every source. Till in the end you will have your real story. And then you would be compelled to tell it. And then you would rely on someone else to trust you that your message is free from influence or slant. And if they do trust you, you would become part of the very entity you are trying to rebel against.
Till then, I'm going to live up the police dashboard cam. I'm going to revel in the overweight special interest topic new discoveries of sources of birth defects/cancer/ADD. I'm going to wallow in the self-pity of convicts who believe they are innocent. I'm going to bask in the starlight of a Michael Jackson chapter of child persuasion. I’m going to enjoy the red carpet ceremony of the awards for the most beautiful/successful societal kings and queens whose vernacular popularity necessitates that they need awards to be able to rank themselves according the highest standard in the land. I choose the sensationalism of weather stories in torrid of rain and over-modulation. But enough of these rantings, there is a press conference on the once trapped, then comatose, and then light comatose, then out ICU, now stable light comatose patient from the mine tragedy in West Virginia. And I got to get my daily fix.
The girl with big glasses, the ponytail, and the insincere smile walked over to me and said, "Are those girls pants you are wearing?" Bewildered I replied, "No? What makes you say that?" I started to panic as glands that I never knew I had began to release sweat. Melissa was one of those girls that you couldn't get away from in 7th grade, she knew who you liked before you liked them. She could see dandruff in you hair three rows away. She knew the GDP of everyone on your street, and the general tax bracket of someone who owned a car like my parents. She was the gossip queen of Longwood; FL there was no escaping the wrath. "They look like girl's pants." My mother shopped a lot at thrift stores and in the rush to save on a pair of brand names, the orientation of the button side of the slacks might have been overlooked. I tried to run, but the proportions of hip to leg ratios held me back. "Yup, those are definitely girl's pants." I could hear her say as I ran for the cover of the locker room crowd.
I would see her again 10 years later.
It comes from normality. It itches each person by the familiar, by the predictable that after a day of work, the evening news is the catalyst that propels the viewer into a "perssistive vegetative state." I myself am addicted to the peace of shutting off the mind. As I sit and watch tag and slug lines, teasers, opens, and inevitable guests and analysts, I wonder about how consistent the 24 hour news is at any given time. But just as I peak out of the numb, I am encouraged to sit through the commercial break because of a "Surprise Break in the Natalee Holloway case, or new developments with the medical condition of stroke victim and Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon."
More Later After this break.
This intoxicating mix of the world's worst events conditions me to believe that life is not so bad where I am. Sure there is a stack of bills, and checkbook to balance. And maybe I really need to change the oil and have my molar looked at. But heck at least I'm not a kidnapped journalist in Iraq. I am not a downed chopper pilot. I am not a missing Virginia teen last seen with an amateur photographer. I am not a missing man on a cruise ship. I am not a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It seems interesting but generally speaking, from day to day, the news is the same. They have reporters stationed in regions who report live, speaking of water levels, levee breaks, hurricane destruction, political stuff in DC, brushfires in the desert southwest, cold weather in the northeast, radical left in Oregon, and the happy radical right in the South.
Internationally, we can always depend on the staple crops of anything Middle East. This is the breadwinner. If Iraq was to end, and Iran said: "Hey we don't want our nuclear weapons, here take 'em in exchange for those awesome Levi's jeans you guys have." If all the rebels in Pakistan fighting western ideas and thought were to lay down their guns and say: "Hey, you win…now give me free tickets to Orlando." The news would be toast. Because aside from the natural disaster wake, and the human trafficking in Manila, there really wouldn't be any news to report. And then it would become blatantly obvious that nothing would be leading, because nothing is bleeding.
As I am about to change the channel, again I'm drawn into the story of a volcano, as I watch the gliding helicopter shot complete with graphics and sound effects from some kind of post production software probably designed to sell an oversupply of cars and the occasional Monster Truck Show tickets. And it is another series of commercials (usually the exact same ones) during a second break. The weather report should be on after these 800 numbers, and financial trading ads. And then I can watch some reporter on a pier with crashing waves, and the vacant surrounding. Or another one clinging to a tree shouting louder than he has to (even though he's holding a microphone) because somehow this reporter ended up near the eye wall of a cat 4 hurricane. Maybe the crew will get lucky and have a stop sign fly right past the camera during the live feed. The best is not so much the action of the on air talent, but the technical stuff. The cameraman's handkerchief appearing in the shot to wipe the lens down, the intermittent static on the microphone, the choppy satellite feed. It makes for addicting TV and as a whole we tend to cultivate what we desire.
I remember being in Israel in the late 90's when a bomb went off where it usually does, at a café near a marketplace near the #12 bus. At least that is what the news told me but I didn't see it, even though I was right there. I saw some commotion, I saw some people shouting. And then it was over. Back at the hotel I watched on the BBC everything I missed. On the flight back, landing at JFK I was greeted by SWAT, Airport Police, and other divisions of NY's Finest because some Egypt Air flight fell out of the sky and left from the same terminal I entered at. I saw reporters doing live interviews, near the terminal (Pre-9/11) as I watched them simultaneously on the airport TV's above me.
At that point I realized that Melissa Patrick and the girls in the back row have gone global. No longer were they they're snickering with each jelly shoed-correspondent spreading the news from class period to class period while I sat in heated shame. But instead of a prepubescent with strange growth spurts, and distasteful fashion sense on the guillotine of gossip, it was the extra ordinary. Instead of the 7th grade it was now any hallowed spot on this island earth. Melissa Patrick and the girls were more sophisticated. Now they had HD cameras with satellite phones, complete with animation and even a news ticker with a rotating clock representing the time zones that matter. They had fast attack traffic helicopters that would show you the congestions while you were in your living room (I still don't get that) they had trucks with antennae arrays that could telescope their way into the houses of Joe and Jill American. They employed perfect hair anchors with perfect skin. The men, confident and eloquent, who have won the trust of many a layperson through the words spoken within that Armani suit, The women who are the finest hybrids of class, vocabulary, charisma, and beauty the human age has ever known. They now owned massive chunks of real estate in NY and LA, they were power brokers building up or destroying their share of the Hollywood elite, Foreign Dignitaries, and Political Candidates alike. They influenced the stockbroker, the teenybopper, the fast food eater, the sports gambler, the moviegoer, the tree-huger, and the patriot. From these one-minute stories we hastily form our opinion of the world that surrounds us. And from those opinions spring forth our knee-jerk reactions. Markets go up and down with yo-yo like consistency, as human nature, we create ways to compartmentalize the complexities of life. We like to package them into nice little neat boxes to rule out the unexpected. We believe everyone in So Cal is involved in some kind of high-speed pursuit, and that there guns, drugs, gangs aplenty. We believe it does nothing but rain Seattle. We believe every beauty pageant winner comes from Texas, that every one in Utah is Mormon and that the English are a bunch of tea-drinking wimps and the French even more so. We believe that every indigenous person in South America has his/her privates strategically wrapped in banana leaves and that there is something truly is rotten in Denmark.
Maybe that's what makes News stories so addicting. In a violent and turbulent way, they either bolster our belief and preconceived notions, or they send them shattering to the ground in an explosion of shock and awe. It is reality TV and a soap opera all rolled into one. And through the footage on the news we live vicariously through the amazing-feel-good stories. But sometimes we relish our comfortable safe spot on this side of the camera lens. But aside from the interactive quality of the media, is the illusion that we are somehow more fulfilled and "socially aware" of our surroundings, of our country, and our planet. The travesty is that if we believe what is broadcast at face value, we will continue to have a more confused and unenlightened/ignorant view of the very thing that is being reported. But the average person is not going to do the fact checking. Who has time for confirming how many foreign donations were given to aid a candidate after campaign finance reform? Who can check the validity of documents produced that claim there was a 2nd gunman on the knoll? What individual has the time to back up evidence of decline in the economy? Truth is we have to believe them, because it is inconvenient to report on our own. We absorb the news as the truth as casually as we eat peanut butter.
I think of all things mainstream other than mainstream news. I think of music. I think of movies. I think conventional wisdom and thinking. I think of living. I think of mainstream ideas of success and of failure. And in every one of these you and I both know exceptions to the rule. You know someone who goes against the system. You know someone who considers success by the friends that he has. You know someone who is living the high life out of a 13-foot trailer or boat. You have a CD that you love, that no one else does. You have a movie that is secretly yours.
Remember these exceptions the next time you turn on the Britney Spears bubble gum pop News. And realize that there are fascinating stories that aren't being told. Remember that the cover story is statistically created to appease and satisfy 64 percent of regular viewing audience. And in all likelihood, if you are tuning into that station out of habit, keep in mind you are hooked. You have become part of the mainstream appetite of the same things repackaged together like the ingredients of taco/burrito/chimicanga bar. But before you wonder why, realize the only way to fight it. The only way to figure out the truth is to investigate yourself. Chase down every lead, confirm every source. Till in the end you will have your real story. And then you would be compelled to tell it. And then you would rely on someone else to trust you that your message is free from influence or slant. And if they do trust you, you would become part of the very entity you are trying to rebel against.
Till then, I'm going to live up the police dashboard cam. I'm going to revel in the overweight special interest topic new discoveries of sources of birth defects/cancer/ADD. I'm going to wallow in the self-pity of convicts who believe they are innocent. I'm going to bask in the starlight of a Michael Jackson chapter of child persuasion. I’m going to enjoy the red carpet ceremony of the awards for the most beautiful/successful societal kings and queens whose vernacular popularity necessitates that they need awards to be able to rank themselves according the highest standard in the land. I choose the sensationalism of weather stories in torrid of rain and over-modulation. But enough of these rantings, there is a press conference on the once trapped, then comatose, and then light comatose, then out ICU, now stable light comatose patient from the mine tragedy in West Virginia. And I got to get my daily fix.
posted by Leo Jaramillo at 1:58 PM
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