Karl Klockars

I love news.  See that last post where I spent 1200 words talking about newspapers?  I love news.  My earliest memories are of going to the Post Office and getting a cookie.  My second earliest memories are of events like Grenada and Tienenmen Square.  It was a weird childhood.

But news can be really stupid sometimes.  They’ve got plenty of time to fill, and when you’ve got a slow news day, like so many around the holiday season in between elections and inaugurations, you’ve got to come up with some goofy stuff to plug around local sports and grinning weathermen.

So there’s always something timely to do, right?  Here comes Turkey Day!  So I’m looking forward to the damn fool stories that we’ll see on news stations all over the country.  Here’s a few that we might tune into, film at 11.

Turkey Story 1) Let’s go live to the Butterball Turkey line! I guaran-damn-tee that you will see this story Thanksgiving morning.  Probably around 7 or 8am, which is about the time that Housewife Susie is getting ready to start putting together the feast.

"We all hate each other! Film at 11."

It will be discussed by a grinning anchorperson who’s secretly thinking to themselves, “We do this story every goddamn year.  If you don’t know how to roast a turkey after a couple times, you’re better off not threatening your family with your horrible bird.  Jesus, just throw it into the oven at 350 for a couple hours and drink whiskey while you’re waiting for it to get done.”

Anchor A: “Now back to you in the studio!  How do you guys cook your turkey!”

Anchor B:  “Ha-ha-ha, I’ll be calling them later for sure!  I’m a terrible cook!”

Anchor C:  “Ha-ha-ha, that’s right!  I feel bad for your eventual husband, being saddled with such a joyless mannequin of a woman, who’s so married to her TV career that she can’t figure out how to put a turkey in the oven!  Ha-ha-ha!  Now here’s Jim with your nicely weather.  Hope it’s not a turkey!. ”

Turkey Story 2) Local good-looking anchorperson will go to a turkey farm.  Good-looking anchorperson who wouldn’t have gotten hired in a major market except for her blonde hair and her perfect teeth will walk around in jeans and a sweatshirt (advertising a local sports team) and ask, “Do you know where your turkey comes from?  We’ll find out, today at 5.”

"I'm a noble bird. And I'm tasty."

Then good-looking anchorette will do the standard fish-out-of-water story where she looks uncomfortable around animals, where they make her feed the animals, where they make her wander around a flock of birds, where they ask her if she wants to help “process” the birds and she giggles “oh, no!”  Then we’ll learn nothing about turkeys.  Because they’re birds.  It’s a good excuse for good-looking anchorette to get out of the city and do some cheap outlet shopping on her way back into the studio.

Turkey Story 3) “You may be getting stuffed with Thanksgiving Dinner tomorrow, but will you be shopping on Black Friday? Many more people will be staying home, and we’ll tell you what it means for the economy, coming up at 4:30.”  Local news loves the retail shopping stories.  Love sending out camera crews to run tape on things like huge TVs, appliances, and love sending the sales people out afterwards to try to hook ‘em in for a few spots.

(No one would ever admit this, of course.  News is completely independent of sales and advertising!  But sales isn’t completely independent of smarts.  If they can go in and say hey, we made you look great the other day, Best Buy representative.  Now what do I have to do to put you in this ad buy today?  C’mon.)

Also, it’s a gimme.  Tanking economy = bad sales everywhere = easy story.  Go out, get some MOS (man on street) video of people saying they’re not going to get up at 4am to buy the big TV because they can’t afford it.  Get some similar AAA video (same as MOS, but this acronym is “ask any a-hole”) of people saying they’ll be out buying more on Black Friday because they can’t afford things any other day.  Depending on what camp gets more tape, change the teaser line to “The economy may be bad, but sales on Black Friday may surprise you!  More at 4:30!”

Turkey Story 4) Another idiot story about how tryptophan doesn’t actually put you to sleep.  It’s actually a combination of booze, and intaking obscene amounts of food.  Go figure. But each year, there’s always a tryptophan related story from another lazy newsroom that has fantasies of playing Mythbusters for a few minutes.  It feels good, guys, but seriously, we all get it.  Tryptophan.  Sedative.  Turkey.  Who started this stupid bird-shaped urban legend?

I can't begin to imagine why we're all so tired.

I think just about everyone on earth knows that it’s not the turkey that gets you all sleepy, but some dipwad always makes a crack about “eating a lot of turkey to get that tryptophan buzz” at the table and everyone giggles like it’s accurate.  I’ve got a nickel on my brother saying that this year, when it’s really going to be the 5 Heinekens he puts away before, during and after the feast.

But I’m in charge of turkey this year, so the Oxycontin I’m working into the salt-water brine might have something to do with the lethargy.  Do a story about that, Channel Whatever.

Thank God we can get all of this over with in a week, and then move on to much more newsworthy things, like the hunt for the guy who puts gold coins in the Salvation Army buckets, and the ongoing War on Christmas.  Will Christmas survive this year?  Only time will tell.  But I think we can all expect to hear a lot about it.