Note: I was originally going to make this an entry entirely about what I really thought of each show, but then I realized that talking about how much I liked most of them made for a really boring entry. So I decided to make the whole entry about a single show that a lot of you are not cool enough to have seen have never even seen. I made the opinions on the shows into a seperate entry that you can find right below this one.
As a few of you may know, we at Island Television¹ will no longer be showing any syndicated programming after this week, and will be switching to mostly locally-based programming. The one exception is SAW Wrestling, because they let us air that² for free.
So thus ends my favorite part of the job: Getting to sit back and just watch the shows, the way nature intended. One of the shows that I'll miss the most is The A-Team. There just aren't enough shows that are so awesomely good and awesomely bad all at the same time. Nothing combined so much great action, memorable characters and theme music while simultaneously being awesomely dumb and the most formulaic show on TV since Scooby Doo. Seriously, one time we were preparing to shoot thehosted segments that go in-between the commercials and the pieces of episodes, and the following exchange occured:
Larry: What's the plot for this week's A-Team? Me: (Reading) "A mob kingpin threatens a restaurant owner to sell out to him or be destroyed." Larry: Wasn't that last week's episode? Me: Nope, last week it was a coffee shop.
And it's even educational! Here are just a few things that I learned from watching it:
Once a stolen plane has left the ground, there is absolutely no way of pursuing it further, and everyone chasing it will give up.
If the mafia or a band of thugs is harassing you and your business, don't bother going to the police, just go directly to a group of people wanted for war crimes.
If you're finally captured after escaping from prison, years of resisting arrest, firing at military police and destroying things in order to get away, you will only be in trouble for your original crime.
An attacker who is knocked into water is absolutely, positively incapacitated and will not attempt to get back out and take another shot at you.
Mercenaries on the lam can allow reporters to tag along with them for months at a time and continually publish stories about them without fear of being captured. Also, the military will never think to find said reporters where they work and trace said mercenaries from there.
Even if you're wanted by the military for war crimes, nearly all of the public will automatically be on your side. This includes large corporate entities that have to keep up a pristine public image, like Carnival Cruise Lines.
And those are just the points that I picked up myself. You can find a much more complete list of valuable lessons from the A-Team here. Teachers take note!
Another great thing about this show is that after watching as many episodes as I have, I feel like I can write entire episodes by myself. All it needs is:
- An evil person of power such as a mob kingpin, drug lord or corrupt devloper attempting to extort the owners of a small business.
- The victims being screened by a disguised Hannibal.
- Murdock getting under B.A.'s skin.
- A good-looking woman who is in some way related to the victim. There will be chemistry between her and Face that will ultimately go nowhere.
- Lots of bullets will being fired, but no one ever getting hurt. Bad guys thrown through windows or out of helicopters conveniently fall into dumpsters or into the ocean.
- The A-Team disguising themselves to get inside the villain's lair and learn that there is actually a more nefarious reason behind their plot.
- Their cover blown, the heroes get locked inside a room that happens to include a blowtorch and a ton of metal objects that can be used as weapons.
- Hannibal extolling the virtues of a plan coming together.
See? What am I doing here? I should be in Hollywood writing episodes for major network shows!
I'm giving A-Team a pretty good sendoff; I had Joey and Larry extend its run to Friday (we were going to end all syndicated shows on the 31st), so I could show an episode that is considered one of the best. So yeah, if you happen to be living on the island, you should stay in Friday night and watch TV this week. This one actually breaks nearly every rule I've listed above. Shocking, I know.
Finally, you should watch this, because it's the most relevant, awesome, and nerdy thing you will see all day:
So I'm finally free to say what I really think of all the shows that I've been getting paid to watch for over a year now. However, my predecessor sometimes got way ahead on certain shows, so I barely ever got to watch them. But without further ado, here is my personal, thundering, take-no-prisoners, industry-insider's critique of every show that we aired:
Roseanne: Eh, it's OK.
Will & Grace:"Your shoes are ugly!" *Laughtrack* "Not as ugly as yours!" *More laughtrack, Repeat for 22 minutes* Bleh.
Baywatch: It kept having multi-part "dramatic" episodes where someone would get injured and have to summon the courage to get through rehab. I think one of the producers didn't understand why people watched this show.
The West Wing: I've actually been on the set of this show (no, really). Outside the studio, they had a sign listing all of the awards it had won. It was ten feet tall. They deserved every one. Too bad I didn't get to see more than a few episodes.
My Name is Earl: Funny, funny show. Works even better if you grew up around white trash in the South or elsewhere. And there's an episode that mentions American Samoa. Be sure to go back and watch every single episode until you've found it.
The Office: One of my current favorite shows on TV, and the only one we showed that's still making new episodes.
Everybody Loves Raymond: I actually almost never watched this show because my predecessor had ripped EVERY SINGLE EPISODE. It has nine seasons, we show them in order, and we're not going to get past season three. Yeah. She really liked that show.
Northern Exposure: Awesome, strange show. When someone moved here from New York City, my first reaction was to ask him if he had seen this show.
The A-Team: See most of this article.
MacGyver: I've been told that this one is even more awesomely cheesy than The A-Team. Tragically, it was one of the ones that my predecessor liked a lot and I only got to see a few episodes of. Oh well. At least you have this.
Walker, Texas Ranger: You know, after you get past the whole joke thing with the famous Chuck Norris Facts, this is actually a fairly dum-*POW!*
I filmed,² edited, and uploaded³ it all myself. And there's 6 more clips of it here on the station's YouTube channel. Don't say I never worked way too hard to give you something for Christmas.
¹The island's power company.
²Pretty difficult, considering that the whole display was about three shots wide, and that I never knew which section was going to light up next. I think that's why all the good Christmas light shows on YouTube can fit into a single static shot.
³As anyone living here can tell you, this was easily the hardest part, since the Internet connection is powered entirely by a single hamster wheel. And they couldn't find a hamster, so they used a gecko. And geckos don't move very much without motivation.
Those of you old enough to remember when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, or maybe just that remake of The Prisoner last month will know that in the TV business we have something called a "miniseries." It's when a TV show, instead of having a full-length run of several years, is intentionally made with the short lifespan of a few episodes that shows get in lesser countries.
Here's a link to a blog miniseries of the wacky adventures of a few researchers who came here in 2005 to try and install stations for studying earthquakes or some other silly potentially lifesaving nonsense. At least one of them happens to be from a university that I totally visited once. I'm sure at least one of you has heard of that school.
Be sure to read the entry on Mt. Alava, which I finally got to hike this past weekend.
This should keep everyone happy while I work on another long blog entry talking about the aftermath of the tsunami. Not as long as the one on when the tsunami hit, but longer than those lousy entries where I just write a little bit and leave everyone a link.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it may be hard to believe it, but as of today, November 16th, 2009, I have been here an entire year. And I mean that in almost the most literal way possible- I’ve spent a totally of roughly 48 hours of that year off of the island, and most of that was in Upolu, the next island over.
I’ve decided to mark this occasion with an educational experience for all of you, and so here is my list of:
Random Facts About American Samoa
John Williams, the first missionary to the island, landed in Leone in 1832. His statue is one of the only things in that village to have fully survived the tsunami, despite being right next to the water.
He later drew on that experience for inspiration while composing the musical score to the Star Wars films.
Due to the 25 MPH speed limit and the existence of only two or three passing zones on the entire island, it is very common for a dozen drivers to get stuck behind a single SUV with flame decals going 17 MPH.
All of the traffic problems are actually caused by a single really slow driver. He started on the east end of the island in 1997 and just recently made it up to the mini-mall in the middle.
Apollo 10, 12, 13, 14, and 17 all landed in American Samoa waters. All of these astronauts flew out of here via Pago Pago International Airport.
According to some rumor that probably isn’t true, LBJ Hospital was built mostly with said astronauts in mind. Although that would explain why they built when it was and why no one seems to care about it anymore.
Wikipedia seems to think that this map does an adequate enough job of showing everyone where Tafuna is.
Speaking of Wikipedia, there is a Samoan language version of it here with nearly 400 articles. Please contribute if you can.
Water is really, really powerful stuff.
A solid ¾ of all world maps either cut off the Samoan Islands entirely or mark Pago Pago with a star that covers up the entire island.
The ads for KSBS-FM are actually made by an LSD-using gecko who thinks the chipmunk effect is the funniest thing he's ever heard.
Most Google results for "chipmunk effect" are instructions for how to avoid making audio sound that way accidentally.
The territory consists of five islands and two atolls, for a total area slightly larger than Washington, D.C.
According to legend, Ottoville, the village where I live, was founded by the original Otto Haleck of Haleck Enterprises. Depending on who you ask, he either got the land by immigrating here from Germany and basically squatting it in the late 1800s, before it was really sorted out by any colonizing Western governments, or got it through a series of debt defaults. Or so the legend goes...
It is very bad for one's sanity to be confined to an area that size for more than six months at a time.
No matter where you are in the world, there will always be a neighbor who will wake you up at 7 AM on a Saturday mowing their lawn, be it with a lawnmower or a weedwhacker.
Visitors to the island can do just about everything there is to do here in about a week, and this includes things like the all day hike up and down Mt. Alava.
The average monga-monga, or Samoan cockroach, is big enough to terrorize a Japanese city for several hours.
Pisupo, despite its pronunciation, is not pea soup, but corned beef. And Samoans will never tire of eating it.
I’m not at liberty to say how I know, but CNN is not done with G.A.S. just yet.
With the destruction of the Leone post office and presumed layoffs of the people who worked there, at least half of the mailboxes on the island have been removed. I now have to drive 20 minutes just to mail something. Take a moment to look to the end of your driveway or maybe even your front porch and be thankful for at your at-home service.
At least one of the doormen at the Tradewinds Hotel does not know the difference between a real mailbox and a cardboard box for sending Christmas cards to troops stationed overseas.
Someone somewhere decided that people here were driving too fast and that there weren’t enough bumps in the road, so they had speedbumps installed.
The Governor's personal assistant was shocked, SHOCKED to learn that not everyone likes him. More on that one another time.
Sitting on the porch at dusk and watching bats fly overhead is really fascinating.
The first Google result for "American Samoa facts" goes to a site that appears to have been written by a failing middle school student. One that used really outdated sources. Either that, or the U.S. Navy has retaken possession of the territory.
Said student also heavily confused American Samoa with The Independent Nation of Samoa™, and just went downhill from there. Either that, or "Queen Elizabeth the II is the most famous New Zealand member of the Crown."
It's also written like a string of random facts, with almost nothing connecting them. I mean, who does that?
Some of my readers may not be familiar with the phrase "Oh snap!" Allow me to explain its proper usage:
And here is an example of someone "getting told." In this particular situation, it's GAS (Government of American Samoa), getting told by CNN investigative reporter Drew Griffin:
And here is the CNN-US version, where he walks through the parking lot of the building where I work:
I actually had a hand in producing these, kinda-sorta. The bigger version that aired on TV included an interview with Congressman Eni (yes, the same one that was on the Colbert Report), which was filmed in the Mr. Joey's Cartoon Club Studio.* So now I can say I've filmed two things that have aired on CNN. Watching a high-ranking individual affiliated with ASG actually get asked tough questions was a thing of beauty. Eni actually did a pretty decent job, answered all of the questions, and was a really great guy in person.
On the other hand, I would have paid to have been in the room during that interview with Governor Tulafono, who normally has some really strict conditions for interviews and doesn't make a lot of media appearances besides his weekly radio show. Which is another reason why seeing him get publicly taken to task was such a thing of great beauty.
Governor Tulafono also likes to complain about all the mean things that people say about him on WVUV's weekly call-in show.
That's all I have to say for now. Except that Duke sucks.
Before I begin, I'd like to put this map of the island here so that this blog entry can make at least a little sense when I refer to all of these villages. I live near the star mound site in the Tafuna area:
I was awake that morning a little earlier than I planned on being. Rolled over, tried to get back to sleep. 6:45 AM, still have 15 minutes before I have to wake up.
Then, the whole apartment started shaking violently. Surreal moment #1. Could it be a low-flying helicopter? I wasn't that far from the airport. No, it's lasting too long to be that. Has to be an earthquake. Am I safe here? Is my air conditioning going to fall on me? Probably not. Should I be filming this? Yes. Maybe some people's instincts would tell them to evacuate the building, but not mine. My reporter's instinct kicked in and I ran into the kitchen and grabbed my new still camera and started filming.
Knowing that their might be a tsunami and that my apartment was not only on the third floor but on a village that was too high to get walloped, I stayed right where I was. I turned on Island Info Channel 13, which I just so happen to run, to hear what they were saying about it back at the station. "Get to higher ground, there might be a tsunami coming." Don't know why, but I really didn't expect one. Probably because we had had a tsunami warning a few months ago that didn't come to fruition. I just kept getting ready for work, expecting things to go back to normal soon, like last time.
Took a shower and got dressed. Dad called and has already heard about the earthquake. I tell him I'm fine, only one small aftershock. I go back into the kitchen/living room and Channel 13 has gone off the air. Why?
In fact, both of my channels and government-run KVZKs are off the air. The other local channels are still showing filler footage of Flag Day 1997 as always. I turn on the radio and all of our stations have gone off the air. Some sort of after-effect of the earthquake? Rival station KSBS is still playing music and filling the breaks with something in Samoan long enough to be important. A lot of good that does me. I try to call into work to see if I should be coming in, but the cell phone system seems to be overloaded.
I watched coverage of it on CNN International for a while. Reporters on a major news network actually talking about American Samoa? Really? Surreal moment #2. Soon after, the Internet, which had momentarily gone out, had come back on. I uploaded my video to CNN's iReport.
In the week since then, it's garnered almost 7,000 views, not counting all the times it aired on TV.
I'm watching it upload when a REALLY static-y call comes through on my phone. It's Joey. With the boxes representing static/dropped-out moments, it sounds something like: "▒▓░▒▒▓▒▓▓You OK?▓░▒▒▓▒▓▓Wh▓t?▒▒▓▓▓ Everyone here is fi░▒▒▓▒. Ca▓▓▓ou go se▓ ▓f Muana lef▓ ▓or work ▓et? Thanks. ▒▒▒▓▒▓▒N▓, you don't nee▓ t▓ come in toda▓.▓▓▓▓▓░▒▒▓.
With that, the call dropped and the cell network absolutely refused to let me call them back. I think that they must have also told me that a tsunami had come and gone, but hadn't elaborated on that, so I assumed it wasn't that big. Muana is Joey's girlfriend who lives at his place a few blocks from here. I was about to go over and check on her when I was hit by Surreal Moment #3: A CNN producer emailing me asking about my video and what I knew. I told him everything I knew, which was next to nothing. I went out and checked on Muana, who was fine. But I couldn't tell Joey, who was reachable only by non-working cell phone.
I went back to my apartment and continued watching CNN for my video and talking with CNN producers (!) via both email and Skype. The main one that I had been talking to mostly just wanted me to confirm or deny that there had been one village destroyed, at least two more underwater, and there were a handful of deaths. Kinda hard to do from my apartment. I gleaned what I could from Facebook and KSBS's 15-second English segments, and let her know about them (Most what she had heard turned out to be true).
About the same time, I got a Skype message from John, our morning show host that had been out sick that day, asking if I wanted to go with him up to Pago. As much fun as it was telling this CNN producer everything else I knew (nothing), I decided to go, especially as the tsunami warning had just been lifted.
John came by in the 93KHJ SUV with his family and picked me up. I told him about the CNN producer I had been talking to, and he told me about the producer from the CBS Evening News he had been talking with, his interview with them, and several conversations with a few other major news outlets. No, he wasn't joking. Surreal moment #4.
We tried to stop and get gas from the first station we came upon, but they didn't have any. Went to a bigger place a bit down the road, and got in line for it, something that's pretty rare here. John was on the phone with a CBS producer (!) and passed the phone back to me to talk to him (!!!). Moment #5. He wanted to know if I could send him any pictures or footage. "John says there's no power in Pago and we can't turn around and go back to Tafuna now." But he has to have footage RIGHT NOW! Do I know anyone who may have something they can send him? I go through my phone and give him the names of six or seven different people. Later I learned that he called them out of the blue and didn't bother giving a single one of them the slightest hint as to how he got their numbers, which was kind of awkward for them. Yeah, it was probably me who gave it to him. Hope you didn't mind.
The ATMs and credit card readers were down, so John had to borrow a little cash from me for enough gas to get us to Pago and back. We drove down the road past Coconut Point into the curvy section of the road in front of us to discover how everything was so shockingly different. There...was...SAND IN THE ROAD!
I took lots of video.
Lucky for you, it takes too long to upload them, so I won't trouble you with scrolling past them. The amount of debris strewn everywhere grew higher and higer as we neared Pago. When we got to the Samoa News building in Fagatotgo, traffic came to nearly a dead halt. This didn't stop me from taking pictures and video anyway.
Finally getting tired of waiting, I jumped out to see if we could go any faster on a semi-legal side street. and took more pictures and video on the way.
Yes, that's a chair in the middle of the parking lot. There's actually a little flooded area off to the right, but that picture didn't come out right or something.
The Matai Restaurant, mostly spared from the tsunami, was the target of looters.
Firefighters cleaning up.
The first store cleanup begins.
An aiga bus, enduring symbol of American Samoa, damaged by the tsunami, then vandalized. Sad.
Part of the reason for the gas shortage.
Almost a month later, this boat is still there. I took two pictures of this and my camera's memory card filled up. Perhaps I shouldn't have taken all that video of the sand in the road. Turned out that this was just the beginning of the really heavy damage. I switched to my camera phone.
Around the time I took this picture, John's SUV had gotten through the traffic and had managed to catch up with me. I guess that's OK, because it let me take more pictures and notice things like how the piles of rubble were massive enough to make it impossible to walk along the road in some places.
Big chunk of drywall from what used to be someone's home or workplace.
Outside Pago Plaza, the building where I work. The security guards were standing outside the front entrance, but they let me walk right in.
Downstairs of Pago Plaza. A total loss.
I wondered if those steps were even safe to use, or if someone would stop me. Could I really just walk right up them, the same way I had every day for the last 11 months? Sort of. It involved a lot of carefully stepping around what was left of the National Park Visitor's Center, a lot of which ended up on the landing.
I made it into the station to find that, aside from the power and running water being out, it was surprisingly normal. The highest part of the wave had hit about two feet from the ceiling of the first floor. A small roaring generator was in the hallway, allowing Joey and Lupe to keep a very limited broadcast going on WVUV, which we happened to have installed an extra antenna for on the roof just a month before.
Joey was, as someone else put it, "in Spartan mode." You could tell that he had been through a lot, but was determined to keep the station on the air and the public informed on how to stay alive and what to do next. When he got the chance, he gave us all things to be working on. He handed me the station's main video camera, and told me that there was some really priceless footage on it, including some of the actual tsunami coming in. I was to capture this on my laptop for the world to see. In the meantime, I was free to run around and get footage of the damage in the area while John was to drive around and see how far the station's signal went.
I went about 10 feet past the door of the station before I found the first bit of destruction: The hallway below.
It didn't take long for me to find more destruction. The second part of this clip is the restaurant where I had been filming a commercial and and eating lunch just the day before:
Notice all the traffic that I was talking about.
An attempt at a still from some fairly busy video. Either these guys had won two bowling tournaments in a row and had decided to celebrate by fishing, or they had been looting.
I walked across the muddy debris-strewn space that used to be a park, ducked under a downed powerline, and found Joey's car lying in the middle of another parking lot, still upside-down. Entire SUVs were thrown about like toys, one with a coconut in its grill.
Dead fish baked in the tropical sun. Bay Hardware was now nothing but a concrete slab.
"POLICE! POLICE! THE POLICE ARE COMING!" a man yelled, frantically throwing his arms around and running toward a boat that had washed up onto the sidewalk 50 yards away. Kids jumped off of the boat and scattered. I grabbed all the footage of this I could, then asked him what was going on. He barked, "THEY WERE LOOTING! AND YOU LET THEM!" as if I hadn't just made it abundantly clear that I wasn't even close enough to know what was going on. I guess some people lash out at others when they're under stress. And some people are just jerks.
Still wearing my good work shoes, I sloshed back across the field to Pago Plaza. I checked to make sure John hadn't come back, then took a look at the actual shops downstairs.
In the middle of filming how the maintenance building was now mostly just a spot where the porch abruptly dropped off into the car-filled ravine, I got a voicemail message that I couldn't listen to, due to cell phone service still being overloaded. I went back to filming the reason we had gone off the air: The building's generator, despite being half the size of a shipping container, was now in the ravine as well (Sorry, I don't have any good still pictures of that, just some video that would take a while to upload).
I checked to make sure that John hadn't returned yet, then went to the front side of the building and interviewed a few survivors and the CEO of BlueSky Communications.
This end of the ravine was filled with even more cars, one of which I later learned still had a body inside. Across the street, a tow truck was pulling an agia bus out of the ditch, with a driver behind the wheel. An interview with him showed that he had not been the driver at the time of the tsunami, and that the guy who was had gone missing.
Having filmed just about everything close to the station, I went back inside and waited for John to return and take us all back. On my third try, I managed to hear that message on my phone. It was from the CBS producer, wanting me to call him back ASAP! I frantically tried about 30 times to call him. When that didn't go through, I tried another 50 times. I saw that I had a missed call from home, but couldn't get through to there either. Pastor Rocco's family (the same one from the previous entry) came by and were awesome enough to bring us some much-needed food and water.
John came back, having discovered that the station covered pretty much the harbor area and nothing else. But the important part was that we got to leave. John and his family took myself, Andrew, and Lupe back to our respective homes.
Once back, I STILL COULDN'T CALL THAT CBS NEWS PRODUCER! Had to find a landline phone, fast! Neighbors didn't have one. Maintenance guy Jamie had one...that could only make local calls. Called David, the pastor of my church (getting through on the fourth try), to see if I could use his phone. He's fine with that. I race down to his home in Illii. On the way, I get a call on my cell phone from my parents. Amazingly, it goes through fine. I tell them that I'm OK and a little about what I know, and who I'm racing to go talk to as I bounce over an unpaved back road.
I arrive at the Willis's house, thank them for letting me use their phone, explain to David how that CBS News producer got his number that morning, and start dialing like mad. On the fifth or so try, I get through. The guy is delighted to hear from me. He happens to be from The Early Show. I tell him what's going on, what kind of footage I have and that he should talk to Joey for a really good interview. I call Joey on my cell phone and do a lot of mediating between the two. Surreal moment #644. Lots of media-politics on whether or not we want the footage to be a CBS News exclusive. I get to talk to two other producers (!) who tell me to begin uploading footage from my laptop at home. Joey also wants me to make him an email-sized clip of the tsunami coming in.
I rush back home and set up my "media command center" (my laptop and two external drives on my living room floor, in front of the TV and next to the radio). I then capture THE footage that Joey had told me about. And it really is that incredible:
A lot of that night is an extremely fast-paced blur of media fame and photos of tragedy, but here's about how it went:
While editing that, I had started chatting with the CNN producer on Skype again, and was simultaneously exchanging emails and the occasional phone call that made it through with the CBS producer, who is trying to explain to me how to use their FTP server. Chugged Sprite straight from a 2-liter bottle because the tapwater isn't safe to drink anymore. I was also making several more video clips into something that I can send to Joey and others. In the middle of all that, I get a Skype message from Australia's Seven Network, who also want to interview me, but first I had to send them some pictures or footage to to air while I talked. Found them something, stopped all my other uploads, and did the interview via Skype videochat right there on my living room floor. That came out pretty well, even if it was heavily edited and most of the pictures were taken by someone else:
Wrapped up that interview and went back to the madness. Joey sent Muana over to pick up my clip of the wave on a flash drive. But before she came over, the CBS producer called to ask about Joey's interview with their show. Apparently Joey has gotten an offer from Good Morning America and is thinking about interviewing with them instead. And apparently they steal the Early Show's guests all the time. I started to explain how I really couldn't do much to change Joey's mind on that, but then I got an incoming call from Lupe who had seen my kitchen rattling on CNN and was wanting to know what was going on with all these media interviews (Did I seriously just put a CBS producer on hold? Holy crap, I'm a serious bigshot now!). I wrote down her number and closed my phone when I was done talking to her, accidentally hanging up on the CBS producer (making me a REALLY serious bigshot?), who called right back. Then I continued my Skype conversation with a new CNN person who said that I was backlit, could you please turn on that desklamp or something? Then Joey called to say that the clip I had given Muana was too big to upload quickly. Could I cut it down to a smaller clip for emailing? Almost simultaneously I had email exchanges with a different person from CBS who wanted to know if Joey could do the interview via Skype at my place? He doesn't have Skype of his own. Ran to the bathroom to brush my hair and straigthen the work clothes I had been wearing all day. Shut off all uploads again. Took a swing of Sprite. -STOP EVERYTHING-
Did the CNN International interview right here, in the very same kitchen/living room that I'm usually watching it from this time of night. Talked to the world via the teeny little built-in webcam on my MacBook Pro. Told them that there wasn't a lot of panicking, except panic-buying of gas. Told them that the destruction in Pago was the same sort of thing I had seen in Texas after Ike, just on a smaller area. I told them about looting and Joey's car. I told them everything I could think of. I had my moment on the world stage.
And I NAILED IT!
Back to media madness. CBS production team member is now also saying the two-minute version of the clip was taking two long to load, could I send a smaller one? (I guess they've finally learned how ear-bleedingly slow Internet connections are around here) At the same time, I had to scarf down something for dinner and wonder why my cable TV went out an hour ago. Get a call from my friend Alden, who had also been taking pictures of the cars in the ravine. He says he's been talking to the BBC, and they're looking to do a phone interview with someone who was in Pago at the time of the tsunami. I find Lupe's number in front of me and make her an international media star as well.
Kept going with that same sort of insanity until things started to calm down around 11:30, then I finally went to bed around around 2 AM. By that time, I had done two interviews with major news outlets, sent Joey about ten clips of footage, responded to about a zillion Facebook messages asking if I was OK, had agreed to do another interview tomorrow morning for Seven Network's morning show and still had to email back someone from the L.A. Times. Joey ended up appearing on both the Early Show and Good Morning America.
I finally climb back into the bed where this bizarre day had begun. So much, pain, destruction, excitement, and chaos rolled into a single 24-hour period.
