On Father's Day, I posted a photo on Facebook which I also submitted to a photoblog called Dear Photograph (dearphotograph.com). Weeks later, the site became really popular and wound up being featured on MSNBC, Yahoo News, Oprah's blog and others. My photo, being an early submission, was included with every feature that I saw. As a result, it's been reblogged and commented on a bunch. And that's all been very satisfying.
Two weeks ago, I got an email from a producer at ABC Evening News asking if I'd be one of the people they featured when they run their feature. On the TEE Vee. The ABC Nightly Goddamn News with Diane Holy Crap Sawyer.
And I said sure, and a producer called, and we chatted, and she asked be to record my voice reading the caption, and I said 'yup' and now, if you happen to watch the ABC Nightly Goddamn News tonight at 6:30 est, you'll hear me reading my caption and see that photograph on the same screen you used to watch the Super Bowl and the finale of Lost.
So...bananas. Right?
And you should watch it. Not just for my fifteen milliseconds of fame, but because Dear Photograph is a fantastic site filled with strangely touching images. Its creator claims not to be the first to post these sorts of images, but he's executed this site beautifully and you'll find one or two things there that you won't be able to shake for days.
But, because you recognize me, you might just focus on my voice despite yourself. Just to deepen your enjoyment, here's the story of my recording.
I'm crazy weird about hearing my voice recorded, and about other people listening to me record it. But, since I get up while the roosters are in the Random Eye Movement stage of sleep, I thought I could just record it then -- while the house is quiet and everyone is in their beds.
But my son is on summer vacation and he has the sleeping habits of a narcoleptic vampire on meth. So I couldn't convince myself that he wasn't awake, listening and snickering. I decided to record it in the car, jotting down the exact wording of the caption on a deposit slip.
I left the house a little after 2 am, intending to record before I drove to work. But as I sat in the car with that crazy, paranoid quiet buzzing in my ears, I convinced myself that my family had heard me leave and was now wondering why I hadn't started the car. So I started the car.
The new plan was the rest stop in Bridgeville. In my mind, that seemed perfect. But as I arrived, it was teeming with people. It looked like Atlanta in The Walking Dead. I mean, you wouldn't walk up to someone at a rest stop at 2:30 in the morning and strike up a polite conversation, so why would you assume it would be super cool and no big deal to park among them and start talking into a recorder? I drove slowly past the long haul truckers, and the people who love to be around them, and set out for Pittsburgh.
And that’s when it started to rain.
You’ve sat in a car in the rain, right? It’s a peaceful, zen experience and there’s nothing not to like about it unless you happen to be recording your own dumb voice and trying not to sound like you’re frying bacon.
My options were suddenly very limited. Park under an overpass (traffic noise, dutiful cops), stop midway through the tunnel (traffic noise, dutiful cops, almost certain rear-end collision), huddle under a walkway downtown (Horne’s building on Penn near 5th - construction / PPG on 4th - entire janitorial staff on smoke break / Oxford Center on 4th - produce truck unloading). I finally settled on the thruway under the David Lawrence Convention Center. No foot traffic, no cars, too much light for drug deals or prostitutes - even at 3 am.
So, that’s where I am as you hear my voice. I took four passes at it and picked the one where it sounded the least like I was reading. It happens to also be the one where I sound the most like a weirdo in a car.
So watch it, won’t you? And you’ll get to be there when the one picture my dad took forty years ago gets seen by maybe a million people. Because that’s our world now.
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