Calf and a Half

In the justly underrated Young Guns sequel, a late-80's iteration of Billy the Kid (Emilio Estevez. Really?) informs a new victim of his impending immortality. "Yoo-hoo, I'll make you famous," he hisses before cocking his prop... It's an iconic line from a forgettable film and it's stuck with me through years of staring down debutantes and dirt-bags in the name of news. Today it burbled from my lips again as I peered into the abyss of a young calf's cornea. Of course the beast regarded me with udder indifference (sorry!), but the two fat green flies floating over his eyelid did dip and wink at me in some sort of cross-species solidarity. Then again, I could have been hallucinating. It was close to a hundred degrees and my day had turned weird an hour or so earlier, when I slept-walked into the morning editorial meeting only to see three cryptic words etched in dry-erase marker by my name:

Six Legged Cow

Hoo-Boy. Either I was about to point my lens at an after-market bovine or profile a local Emo band with the worst name since Panic! at the Disco. Either way, it was gonna be a hot ticket for nothing tweaks the show-stackers like imperiled animals or troubadours in guy-liner. Me, I'm for anything that'll get me to the end of a digital timeline, be it a little elbow fiesta in a courthouse hallway or a triple-lit sit-down with Bigfoot's sister. Yes, when it comes to assignments, I got no rock-bottom. The producer staff seems to test this theory at every juncture, which is how I came to recite bad movie lines to a three week old calf with two extra legs hanging off his haunches. At no time during my spiel did a young Jon Bon Jovi wander out dressed like some Anglo-American Indian and warbling about drawing first blood, but... truthbetold, had the chick metal heartthrob sprung forth from a rhododendron bush singing 'YMCA', it would have made the day stranger by only a couple of degrees...

But enough of MY drivel. It's YOUR turn to be severely weirded out:

Crazy from the Heat

THIS JUST IN: Summer is here and it's even HOTTER than Spring! I know, I know: it seems pretty obvious, but apparently the nation's TV viewers have a hard time wrapping their heads around this increase in heat and humidity. Why else would local affiliates lose their collective cool as they alarm the populace over this shocking change of season? I dunno...but I can tell you that Hell hath no fury quite like that of an overheated meteorologist. So, while I french-kiss this old water bottle I found in the floorboard of an abandoned news unit, please review the...

Top Ten Signs Your Station is Overdoing its Heatwave Coverage

10) The one guy still left in your Art Department spent the whole day rendering a seventeen second 'Exploding Sun' sequence - that will never air.

9) Worried their many reporter-photog teams were close to perishing in the midday sun, the managers got together and threw an ice cream party for the studio crew.

8) In a morning news satellite interview with Al Gore, the busty weather girl veered away from 'crazed sex poodle' talk long enough to ask a few questions about global warming.

7) The latest WeatherCenter promo looks like the egg-eating scene in Cool Hand Luke.

6) Officials with the local water park AND the nearby homeless shelter have taken out restraining orders against your field crews.

5) By replacing 'Apocalyptic Computer Glitch' with 'Spontaneous Pet Combustion', the Promotions Department people are pretty sure they can rework all those leftoverY2K pamphlets.

4) One of your more senior photogs got caught having carnal relations with the sat truck's air-conditioning vents.

3) The logo'd wifebeaters arrived!

2) The intern blamed for breaking the oversized prop thermometer was indeed forced to 'spend a night in the box'. Charges are pending.

And the Number One Sign Your Station is Overdoing its Heatwave Coverage...

1) Temps the Weather Pooch is sporting a new Brazilian.

Patti Gets Paid

Normally, when someone receives more than a million dollars in damages, it's customary to kid them about buying the next round. But one gets the feeling former photog Patti Ballaz would just as soon do without the money- and skip May 1, 2007 altogether. That's the date members of the LAPD lost their collective minds long enough to assault a group of journalists covering an immigration rally in MacArthur Park. Patti was wearing press credentials and wielding a KTTV fancycam when helmeted officers, apparently worried the Rodney King legacy of years past was fading from the nation's memory, went medieval on the Fourth Estate . It made no sense then; three years later, it makes even less...

Which, in my not so humble opinion, is why a Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded Patti $1.732 million in damages - after a single day of deliberation. Sound excessive? Apparently, you've never been struck repeatedly by police batons and threatened at gunpoint just for doing your job. That job is one Patti has not returned to. Having received severe physical and emotional injuries from the attack, she opted not to settle her civil lawsuit and went to court instead. Now she has a million dollars to show for it, but even that amount won't render Patti whole...

“May 1, 2007 is a day that I will never forget, it is a day that has changed my life forever,” continued Patricia Ballaz. “My genuine hope is that this trial and its verdict will serve as a strong reminder to the LAPD to think twice about using excessive force in any kind of situation. Our free speech and civil rights are precious and if we can’t rely on the police to protect them, who can we trust?”

Good question, Patti. Should you ever get an answer, let us know. Meanwhile, I'll be respecting you from afar and reminding the official whiskey of Viewfinder BLUES is Maker's Mark, or if you insist, Knob Creek.

Just sayin'...