The technical people are going to hate me today, but sometimes the best television is when things go wrong.
You know what I mean, when the camera's in the wrong place, or we're in the wrong place, or everything is just, well, wrong! It tends to domino when it happens, and the results can be hilarious.
So let me just say, that for as many hours as we are on television, it's a rare occurrence when something goes wrong. Or you could call it a rare treat!
We have robotic cameras and today, one of them went renegade and apparently had it out for Elita Loresca over at the weather center. You can see what happened here, with the Jaws sound effects added by the "Frogmen in the Morning" over at KFRG, but I also had to find other instances of this type of camera aggression because I remember seeing a few particularly funny ones on that bloopers show we have on NBC.
This is one of my favorites, as a robotic camera actually shoves an entire news desk out of frame and there's really nothing the anchors can do about it. If you think these are hysterically funny to watch, imagine if you're on a set and this is all going on behind the scenes while you're trying to remain calm and read the news. We've had cameras crash into each other, nearly run over our traffic reporter, and swing around spastically just a few feet away from us and let me tell you, keeping your composure can be tough! When the viewers gets to see the mishap too, at least it's easier because they're probably laughing too.
As we say, it's just Television -- not rocket science. Which reminds me of one thing I surfed by on the web this morning. Did you hear the one about the astronaut who dropped her toolbox? No, really. Channel 4 news in the UK (no relation!) posted the story with NASA video and again, it's one of those ooopsie moments where you realize, hm, there's really nothing I can do about this. The toolbox is orbiting two miles away from the International Space Station. Sadly there is no Home Depot in space so the astronauts are having to, er, "re-tool" their mission.
Along the way I also hit upon a story about India planting a flag on the moon. This happened on Saturday but the story got lost under all the fire coverage, I think! Can you name the countries that have their flags on the moon? They're listed in this story, which also says that India's flag is likely scattered across a crater because of a hard landing by the probe they sent to the moon's south pole. They say the crash landing was planned, and they'll do a soft landing and maybe even a manned mission in coming years. Of course I wasn't sure how many people have actually walked on the moon, and if you believe what's on the Internet, it's twelve -- all Americans.
