I'm a Grown-Up Again

So, school is done. I'm still missing one of my grades, which is kind of stressing me out. And I have a little bit of tweaking to do on my documentary before it's shown at the Grad Film Festival in February. I shot some travel and airport footage on my trip back to Kansas for Christmas. Luckily I managed to get some pretty good stuff before the lady at the Airtran ticket counter in Atlanta started harassing me. She didn't exactly tell me to stop shooting but there was something of a veiled threat in her tone. "You're drawing a lot of attention to yourself with that camera, Miss." And since I didn't want to be put in airport jail or something, I stopped. So I just have to dump those shots in to replace the footage I stole from YouTube and send the whole thing off to my friend Paul to do a sound edit. And then I'm done. But, in the meantime, I've managed to get myself one of those jobs you hear so much about when you're in school. So, I'm the proud new owner the Tape Producer job on the Breaking News Team (more commonly know around the newsroom as "The Crash Team") at MSNBC. And I'm pretty excited about it. The shift is 4 pm to midnight, Monday through Friday, so I'll get to see a lot more of my wonderful, sweet husband than I have in... sheesh... ages. Come to think of it, I don't think we've ever had such similar schedules. When we first met, I was working nights and weekends at KFDI and he had a 9-5 at TAS. When I finally managed to get on a dayside, weekday schedule at KWCH, he was doing the Orpheum thing which involved a lot of nights and weekends. So this will be a refreshing change of pace for us. And the woman I'll be working for just couldn't be more fabulous. And, here's how I'm the real winner. I'm always bugging Bailey to get us a gym membership and he's always like, "It's so expensive and we never go, etc." But over at 30 Rock, where I will soon work, there's a gym on-site. So I will have no excuse not to go and no excuse to try to drag Bailey or make him pay for a membership. So, really, everybody wins.

Summer of Sibling Travel

 It has been a truly cross-continental summer. Not that it's over yet. I still have to book it back to Kansas this weekend in a last, desperate attempt to salvage my thesis documentary. But, as horribly stressed out and depressed and full of self-loathing as I've been all summer over my near complete failure at putting together enough usable material to craft a decent 30-minute documentary, it has been a nice summer. I might not have gotten much done, but I had a good time doing it. There was travel. There was sibling bonding. There was the realization that in just one year, I have completely forgotten how to drive. There was beer. There was wine. There was dim sum. There was the best milkshake I've ever had. And luckily for you, whoever you are, reading this entry and wondering what exactly a Summer of Sibling Travel is, there was much, much documentation.

This photo was taken in San Bernadino, CA at Neil's friend Sal's place up in the mountains. Beautiful place. Very very very scary roads. This is what I look like the morning after a night of drinking.

In case you're wondering, my low tolerance for alcohol is not a family trait. This is what Nick looks like the morning after the same night of drinking. He's doing a little dance for Neil. There were several more pictures in this series but they're best viewed as a sort of slide show, in rapid succession.

A couple of days later at the Muir Woods in San Francisco. This is what I look like when I realize that, though it's blindingly hot in New York, it is kind of freezing in northern California. I had to steal Neil's hoodie.

This is an example of something that IS, in fact, a family trait. Bailey kept laughing at me on our honeymoon when I would take a picture of myself to check that my hair looked okay before I let him take a real picture. This picture of Neil was taken so that he could test his theory that he looks dorky in sweaters.

Our Summer of Sibling Travel has now taken us back east--well, half of us anyway. This is an aerial shot of Neil and me, walking home from the American Musuem of the Moving Image here in Astoria, Queens.

Neil in Times Square. Pretty soon he's gonna try to scale those buildings and take a pretty girl hostage.

We went to see Frost Nixon during its closing weekend on Broadway. Neil's and my trusty student IDs got us some very cheap tickets. Nice to know there's some reward for living in this state of extended adolescence.

Neil and his trusty guidebook found us this awesome milk  bar in Chelsea.

Then Neil, ever the researcher, asked Sarah Wolff what kind of tree she'd be. Everyone is data for his dissertation.

The same night. I believe I am trying to convince Bailey he needs glasses. I don't like being the only one in this marriage with impaired vision!

And, finally, here are some really great pictures Nick took during his leg of the journey.

This is an enormous fig tree in Santa Barbara where we went to collect research for Neil's dissertation. If you look closely, there's a guy sleeping in the roots.

This one is aptly titled "Angry Reba."

Here's my torso, being a rebellious smoker.

My hand and leg, doing much the same.

"Wastebasket Flowers"

Plucking my eyebrows.

Kans-Ass Documentary Trip, By the Numbers

Tomorrow starts the third year of the rest of my life...

Three years ago today, Bailey asked me to marry him. Two years ago today, I made an honest man of him. Now, I can't imagine my life without him. So much has changed in the last two years. Moving away from my family was a lot harder than I thought it would be. School is a LOT harder than I thought it would be. Frankly, just living in New York City is harder than I thought it would be. But, in the end, all is well because Bailey is here with me. Every single day he makes me feel lucky to have found him. There's something about sharing your life with someone else that makes everything simultaneously comforting and exciting. Plus, Bailey's spontaneous tap dance routines are unbeatable. Happy Anniversary, man.

Choking on the fog of pseudo-intellectualism

Okay, I know I came to grad school because I was anxious for a foray into academia. I like school. I like reading books and writing papers. I like learning about things like cinema verite and civil war photography and even the ancient Sumerians (though I feel their relationship to the history of journalism is tangential at best).

But, if I have to listen to one more print journalism student who has never worked in any newsroom, much less a TV newsroom, talk about what's wrong with broadcast journalism and proudly proclaim that they don't watch television or, better yet, don't even own a TV, I'm going to lose my mind. What makes these people think rejecting the 20th Century's  most powerful technological advancement in the dissemination of news and information will make them seem smarter? You don't see them swearing off computers or cell phones or automobiles.

So, yeah. There was a discussion in my History class today. I might have gotten a little defensive. I hope it doesn't affect my grade.

In defense of my in-class bitchiness (or perhaps in celebration of it) here's a short list of some of my favorite things about TV:

*The new This American Life TV show on Showtime. This is what I want to do when I grow up. It's beautiful.

*Frontline. I did a phone interview with Lowell Bergman last week, who produced a Frontline piece a couple of years ago on the McWane Corporation, a steel manufacturer that's basically killing and maiming its workers by putting productivity over safety. Watch it here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/workplace/view/  It's really good. And Lowell Bergman is a genius. (BTW-he was immortalized on film by the great Al Pacino in The Insider).

*American Experience, which just aired an amazing documentary on Jonestown by Stanley Nelson.

*Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. Witty and sarcastic, just how I like my newsmen.

*The Evening News with Brian Williams. Say what you will. He's wicked smart, has a great sense of humor (I got to meet him a couple of weeks ago at an NYU event) and he started his TV career in Pittsburg, Kansas.

*American Morning. I will freely admit that there's a lot of crap in the morning news genre. But CNN does a pretty good job of sticking to actual news. And I like Miles and Soledad. So sue me.

*And, yeah, okay... Gillmore Girls, Scrubs, Studio 60, and Veronica Mars. All very good shows. Nothing to be ashamed of.