The night,
not the ice pick stabbings of light that burn through it, but that night which
rolls over us, no not rolls, there is nothing that comes. Not washes, not a
tide, no. We sit beneath the sky and watch the collaping rays of our dying sun
erode around us, and watch it reveal what the light concealed.
There are
some decadent italian sweets, so rich that they are usualy served in cubic inch
servings, which are composed of a light chocolate cake at it’s base and resting
above is a black gel quivering shimering, impenetrable. Black, the absense of
color, in it’s obsidian shimmer, we see it quiver as it shakes in the air,
reflecting colors at radom off it’s surface with its core impenetrable. That
reminds me of night.
Above us,
in that darkness emerges fire, the forests are on fire, two heilocopters have
gone down. It is a few miles down to the south, our eyes a yellow candle flame,
through the lens, it becomes a camp fire, double extend the lens, it is an
inferno. Pipe it back to NYC, it will look great to read the weather over. The
guy behind the camera wears a cowboy hat and has an enormous cock.
On my
arrival at the FAT live position, they were slicing the roast beef. The chef’s
assistant was putting out the plates, lighting the sternos, and setting up
tables. Salad: red tomatos, fine boston lettuce, thin slices of fresh red
pepper, olive oil. Beef: red, blood, steaming, crisp near black exterior. Fish:
Tilapia, steamed in white wine, parsely, St. Peter’s Fish, do you have the
courage to reach in and pull the shekl from his mouth. Bottles, bottles,
bottles, water and wine. All of this placed under TV lights, red heads 300w,
thowing wide cones of light on this feast.
The
sandwiches in my bag, sponges with curdled milk. The shortest distance between
me and that food, well a straight line. Grab a cucumber and ask for the asstant
beuro chief.
Flames on
the sterno cans. Yellow tounge waiving, dances emerging from the night. It is
deep red in it’s base among the trees. This deep red slowly blends to yellow,
leaping up into the night sky...
The main
corispondent, Kuhuna, lies on the roof and stares at the stars:
-God look
at that sky, it would be great to have some pot right now.
The cowboy
with the big dick looked through the lens to reframe on the fire. He’s called
Hoss.
You don’t
expect to see cowboy hats in Israel, it just doesn’t seem like the place. Ok
Ben Gurion called the Palestinians : our red indians, but this guy wasn’t like
that. Hoss was a big guy with a shaved head. His body was a block of muscle,
with a giant dick that protruded out of his tight jeans. He made all of the US
crews really unconforatble. It wasn’t his talent, he wasn’t a camera man, he
was just working it because everyone else had rushed out. It was that he kept
using the words ridiculus, stupid, apartide, saying them in an Israeli accent,
that kind of thing and it made the Americans feel uncomfortale. Or it is his giant dick. The americans
were constantly avoiding looking at it, averting their gaze in any direction
but the dick. That and his dick, some things you just got to keep down.
Kahuna
scaned from star to star, his feet tapping to the sound of heavy weapons fire:
-It’s
wonderful not to be in the damn studio, to be where the story is. It’s a crying
shame to be trapped here, a shame not to be out there, where the action is.
Damn exects...
Kahuna
stooped foward in the mocking motions of an old man:
-You’re
too big of an investment. If something would happen to you, we’d be fucked. Its
amazing, to be so valuble that you are useless. God a joint would be great
right now.
Lurch, the
camera man from New Zealand called up from below:
-Kauhna,
you’re up in ten.
Kahuna
jumped up and his hair was perfect. There was no sense that it was just gel, no
his hair was just perfect. Kahuna just leaps up and every strand was in place,
ran over the roof and came to the edge, and looked down at the roof terrace
beneath him, lit up with TV lights, the steady movements of workers. Past the
edge of the terrace were the outlines of trees touched by our lights, disolving
in the acid of night.
Kahuna
dashed down the ladder, arms elated, hand over hand like a student at school he
went down and landed by the 3 meter sat dish, from behind that he ran twoards
the lights.
The ground
floor terrace, where the food had been layed out, was swarmed with insects.
Less interested with the food, they came to the lights. Gathering within the
tight cones they cast. Between the light stands a spider had started to spin a
web. The FAT beuro chief turned them off, lites a cigarette and pours himself a
glass of wine.
We had set
up three live positions, each one at a different angle to the ridge rising
before us to the east. At each was a cable drop, lights and two flight cases to
stand on, one for the corispondent one for the cameraman. From the live
positions the cables formed tributaries of news flowing into the river of
copper, entering a white room with marble floors, once an executive conference
room, now littered with folding chairs around an electric alter of video, three
paths of video running back to new york. The video priest seated before the
monitors, switches, encoders and little blinking lights, was Sean O’casey,
already drunk on Golan Wine. His red stained fingers, played over the buttons
insuring the sacrificial lambs of the news were slaughtered; impromtu abitoir.
Behind
Sean was Jimmy Giatano in a Judas Priest Tee shirt, that was brand new. How disturbing,
a new Judas Priest tee shirt, someone made this recently... what excuse could
they have to make one? Perhaps
they just over printed them in ’83 and kept them in some wearhouse in Florida,
which is where Jimmy was from. Don’t get me wrong, Judas Priest rocks, but the
fashion only works in the Gay Leather Boy S&M, Breakin the Law sense. Or
put more simply, the Judas Priest sense and Jimmy never said if that was the
sense he made of it.
The
building we were in, a digital video bunker. The facility was top line, built for war.
The guy who owned it had been Rimjob’s main stringer and had put every dime
into the place on the bet the border would go up in flames. Good bet. A Better
Homes and Bomb shelters installation with it’s multiple views of the ridge that
marked the border with the Lebanon. On top of the ridge were a few Kibuztim,
and the word was, they were a party. Lots of drugs, lots of sex, dancing into
the night. Not tonight of course, tonight the were big targets, for the Gay
Leather Boy S&M Islamic fundamentalist paramilitary scene next door. Not
the Judas Priest sense at all.
My finger rolled over the SX edit
controller, machine to machine tape editing. The Americans bought thousands of
these units for Afganistan, and they suck. Just another trick by the Sony
corporation that they fell for. Black, squat, monitors built in, and the whirl
of the tape within.
American
corispondents are very different than corispondents from the rest of the world.
Most corispondents sit with you, work with the pictures, rewrite the script so
that it speaks directly to the picture. Perhaps they run out to do a few lines
of coke, or go appolgize to their spouce and you fill in some black holes.
Americans
hand you a tape with their voice recorded on it and they go away. You sit and
cut it in twenty minets, then sit three hours waiting for your producer to
approve it. And when they don’t, you have ten minets to make the changes.
The story
featured the a female corispondent with great hair, who embodied gravitas for
FAT, she was a brunette. The story was that she was walking among the young IDF
troops and stareing at their huge weapons. Like a pixie she jumps into a
foxhole. Crawling around trenches with young sweaty soldiers, asking them if
they were feeling good. At one point she tickled the balls hanging on a tank. No
bullshit, she tickled the dangeling steel balls on a tank. The tanks in this
divison had small metal balls haning around it, which the corispondent swore
was to divert missles. Or that’s just what the soldiers told her, while trying
to get those balls in her mouth.
The ray
gun sputters, she starts licking the tank’s sack. She leans over to get the
whole thing in her mouth, as an 18 year old hikes up her dress from behind. He
licks his fingers and puts down his rifle.
Polly Flinders,
the twenty four year old producer, comes over to see the piece. She loves the
balls. She freaks when she sees the images of rifle and artillery fire striking
a Lebanese village:
-My god
you put an image of a Mosque there!
Yea it’s a
great shot, really emblematic; it was on your field tape.
-Why would
you put that shot in?!
It is a
haunting image that gives a clear sense of the location.
-But we
can’t put that in there. We don’t want to give people the idea that the IDF is
fireing on Mosques, said Polly.
At which
point, on the tape, automatic weapons fire hits the Mosque. Polly Ann looks at
me, like shit is spewing out of my ears:
-You
really don’t get this story don’t you.
Quick shot
change, generic stone house, generic faceless dead. Barbarella, the corispondent, comes over brushing her long
brown hair, strokeing the forearms of two passing soldiers, looking for a
manwich. She’s cool with it,
except that in her standup she says something that makes her sound stupid. She
wants me to cut her off in mid sentance to make her sound less stupid. Which is
impossible.
-Just what
is that supposed to mean? asks Barbarella.
My point
is not that it is impossible to make you sound less stupid, that should be
quite possible, there must be a way, we did put a man on the moon... it’s just
that we can’t make the cut here, your voice is cueing that your sentance is
continueing, you would be up cut.
-Well a
real editor could make the cut, says Barbarella.
A real
editor, Jimmy, comes over and looks at the tape. Barbarella asks him to make
the cut.
-You
can’t, you would be up cut. You would sound like an idiot, says Jimmy.
Idiot in
network nomenclature is worse than stupid. The pecking order goes, fool, fuck up,
moron, stupid, idiot and executive producer.
Barbarella
does a hair flip and walks out onto the terrace.
Kahuna is
already standing on a flight case, with a part of the forest behind him alight
on Camera 1. Barbarella stands with the edge of the ridge behind her on Camera
2. On Camera 3 we have Cheri Blonde who is doing all the afliates, she is also
reporting for them.
Sean pours
himself another plastic glass of wine and slaps at the the mosquitoes devouring
his pasty white legs.
-Ok in 5
Kahuna is going to do an interview remote with Barbarella, he says.
But they
are standing two meters away from each other.
-God damn
it Jack, they are standing two yards away from each other! We use American
measures, New York time, and other shit like that! And don’t you fucking refer
to them as imperial measures again, this is the United States! Sean yells at me
while pointing out the window at Israel. He grasps wildly at the floor.
-Where is
that god damned bottle... Now one more time; Kahuna is in FAT HQ Israel and
Barbarella is in Kiryat Shmona. That is what their screen IDs say and that is
where they are. You get it.
Sure, this
is better. If you give one corispondent a camera you have to give the same
camera to the other corispondent, or else they get jelouse and fight. Also if
you shoot them together, then they look at each other like human beings, shoot
them separate then they look like snide roadkill, right befor the MAC truck
smears them cross the road.
Sean
smiles:
-That’s
the spirit! Good you got it. Semus! Semus! Get your fucking head out of the
fucking Yankee game! We are on the air!
Semus was
dressed in a Yankees jersey, Yankees atheltic shorts, Yankees socks. Yankess
jock strap and had a Yankees logo tattooed on his forearm. He had set up a
video encoder at FAT in New York to encode the Yankee game and transmit it on
the internet to his laptop. He seemed to like baseball.
Semus
protested:
-Comon
Sean! My girls braces are riding on this game! If we lose she’s got to have
crooked teeth till next season.
-God damn
it get your ass outside and give a hand.
The
insects of the night gather around the video lights . With wings they come,
some black, some with spekeld backs, but they come flying to the lights. The
caterers bat them away, covering up the food under steel covers and the breads
underneath cloths.
The
assitant beuro cheif brags to the crews on brake:
-We have
hired the best chef in the Golan to cook for us up here. He had to shut his
resturant because no one want to vacation in the North with this situation.
There are
murmurs, and awhs, and so sorrys, as the chef nods and smiles politely. Grab
Sean another bottle of wine and look at the americans. They are all wearing
shorts and tee shirts. They are all batting at the mosquitos on their arms and
legs. It is best to dress in long light linens, black pants and a red shirt. It is best to wear bug repellant
bug repellent at night and in the light you wear sunblock 50. Funny how the
assistant beuro chief thinks of hireing the best chef in the Occupied Golan and
doesn’t think of putting out sunblock and bug repellent. Does he like watching
Americans scratch and burn? Or is it just easier to keep them on a short leash
that way?
Run back
inside and up the stairs, hand Sean his bottle of wine and look at the
monitors.
Jimmy
points at the screen:
-Look at
Kahuna, he is just the best. Look he just left the teleprompter script, he is
making the changes he wants to make and wait, wait, wait. he’s back on. Not
even a hitch, not even a bump. He’s just so fucking smooth.
Sean pours
himself another glass of the ruby clear wine and says:
-It was
fucking pointless bringing over prompter for this guy. He doesn’t fucking need
it. To spend this fucking money on a video path all the way back from New York,
and then the nightmare of trying to sync it. With a guy this good, why does New
York even want to put words in his mouth.
They are
right, Kahuna is amazing. Talking to heads across time zones, this guy standing
on a box, spins from point to point, listening to ever one coming in and
waiting for an opening. Less corispondent than cobra, he is quick. And the
questions are real. What separates him from Cronkite?
Cronkite
was a mass of pain, belife and care, who held back the tears and the jugments.
Objectivity for Cronkite was a religion. Underneath Kahuna is cold steel, and
cynicism. For Kahuna objectivity is the knowledge that no one is innocent.
Kahuna probably does a better job.
The heliocopters that went down, one over
the border that Hez say they shot down, and the two that crashed into each
other up here. We still can’t get a confirmation on if they were Cobras or
Apaches.
Footage
has come back from the sight, it’s metal, scorched earthed, and an ambulance.
The cops part ways and guide the cameramen to the scene.
Pump out
the tape, back to New York, where it will arrive like drops of rain.
The wind
kicks up high shaking the lights, you can see them moving across Kahuna’s face.
Run out and grab the stand. Wind your hand up the stand, closer to the light,
hold it firm. The bugs flie around us, ever closer, one of the camera man slaps
his neck and smears blood across it.
Kahuna
gets down off the case, checks his blackberry. We have called a car for him. He
looks up:
-Fuck,
what the fuck are these guys going to do. There’s no way they can pull off a
military victory on this. Only way is to just kill everyone in Lebanon.
He smiled
like he just solved a math problem.
Impossible peaces : The Jordainian Option
Two state
solution – uni-national
Jordan
takes the West Bank back into the nation and also assumes control of Gaza. This
option is prefered by many settler groups and by some of the Israeli old guard.
Jordans pragmatism and relative secularism calms fears of a terror state
emerging next door. Some deals could be reached to leave the settlements in
place and leave East Jerusalem in Israel.
Palestinian
conservatives also like this option, with the West Bank having been a part of
Jordan from ’48 to ’67, roughly two thirds of the population are of Palestinain
decent (though less than half of those people claim that cultural idenity and
refugee status) and particually with Queen Rania being a Palestinian from
Jenin.
The only
people that are against it are the Hashemites. The addition of two million more
Palestinians into a country that has always treated them as second class
citizens, would almost certainly set off a civil war. This would probably leave
some form of terror state in its place.
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