Some Cheer On A Friday

I believe it’s time to close out a rather sad week with some humor.  The memories of former employees of WTVH-TV are pouring into this blog under the comment section of an article I wrote entitled “A Tribute to my Former Colleagues”.

There are as many reactions to the closing of channel 5 as there are people to feel them, and yet the way they structure those feelings reveals a consistency somewhere between poignant and comforting.  There really is something to be said for the cliche “we’re all in this together”.

So many of the comments which at first addressed me directly and now speak to all who are visiting the site, (which is why I stopped replying to every post) began in pain and ended in laughter.   “I feel like my childhood home burned down this week” wrote Robyn.  Mike said “Monday’s news was a punch to the gut”.  It’s terrible pain about a place of employment that was so much more.

But it’s Friday, so I turn my attention to the hilarity of the comments as well.  Like Al who won the competitive Syracuse Press Club award for Photojournalist of the Year and soon after lost his grip on the camera and dropped it from the roof of the old MacArthur Stadium.

Or Tony the assignment editor who felt so responsible for not missing a single story out there, even if it was just a couple of parades on a holiday.  So on a day when everything went wrong and the morning parade was covered with no pictures and the afternoon parade was covered with no sound,  some quick-thinking problem solver in the newsroom had the brilliant idea to put the two together and as Tony writes in the comment section “nobody knew the difference” which will not be held as an example of journalistic ethics at the Newhouse school, and which makes it funnier still.

There’s more.  Bob and Jon racing to the airport to cover a national political figure when the news vehicle broke down in GM Circle and would then only move in reverse.   The make and model of the vehicle alone is enough to get you laughing.  It was a ford pinto.  Like dogs who resemble their owners, I always thought news vehicles resembled their television stations, but this image is like matching a shih tzu with Donovan McNabb.  Anyway, Bob and Jon got to the airport backward.

My usual source of laugh-out-loud humor is the weekly Headline gag on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.   Viewers send him items from newspapers and printed ads with mistakes in them, like the thumbnail photo of a house for sale in California among many other thumbnails of houses on the page, only this one has the smoke from a wildfire filling the sky in the background.    Leno added a quip,  “better make an offer before the place burns to the ground”.

The point is, the realtor should have known better than to photograph a house in the path of a wildfire, and the fact he or she didn’t, is so funny to me.  In that spirit, allow me  to share the single most embarrassing moment associated with my television career, a moment that thankfully did not play out on camera, but was bad enough for occurring in front of 400 people where I was invited to be Mistress of Ceremonies at a benefit.

It was the annual dinner dance for Enable, an advocacy group for the disabled.  They do great things for even greater people so it was always a joy to help.  Prior to the event, I checked in with director Sara Wall Bolinger who told me it wasn’t in the program but at some point would I please recognize a birthday for someone important to the organization.  I don’t recall his name, we’ll say John Smith.  I asked Sara where in the room John was located so I could at least be looking in the right direction and she pointed to the last table by the wall where my bad eyesight made a table full of people appear like a gauzy pastel drawing.  Every guy was seated, had a face with no features, and wore a navy blue jacket.

The moment came, I told all 400 people there was a birthday to celebrate and I said it was John Smith’s, so “John, please stand up so we can recognize you”.   People clapped and looked in the direction I pointed to, but nobody stood up.  I think you know what follows next.

By the time I squinted my eyes enough to bring the table into focus, I could see everyone looking at me with pity, for John was in a wheelchair and I was publicly requesting that he stand up.  Yup.  I did that.   As Jay Leno would say, it’s like asking a blind person what they think about the colors of the Tonight Show set.

The best humor can come out of the most unlikely places.   Back to the comments about Channel 5,  Brenda said she never laughed as hard as she did working at 5.  Ditto Brenda, same goes for me.  And if anyone in any business would like to share a funny story or two, start typing.  There’s plenty of Friday left.