CNN, PBS, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NBC's Dark Skies, Polygram's The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, FOX's M.A.N.T.I.S., ABC's Eye on LA, Paramount's Taking Advantage, KVAL, KEZI, KVOA, KZEL, Media Prep... these are most of the business cards I've accumulated over the years. I don't usually dwell on this job hopping but tonight, you see, I have a new scanner.
And so the evening became teaching myself how to use this new Canon CanoScan 8400F scanner. It turned into a lesson on PhotoShop. That's because the software DVD that comes packaged for the CanoScan includes ArcLight PhotoStudio but, unfortunately, it only works in "native" formats and I have a new "universal" iMac with the Intel chip. The term universal seems like a misnomer because I have the opposite problem but, oh well, I do love this new iMac.
My daugher, Lauren, actually taught me how to use the scanner with PhotoShop and then I taught myself a few things through experimentation. What I did to amuse myself during this learning process was to scan in some old business cards. Here they are... a little trip down memory lane...
I have to admit, seeing them all laid out like this, it either reminds me what a grand run of fun it's been, or that something is seriously wrong in my life. I guess this proves that when you work in television news or the Hollywood entertainment industry, there's no such thing as a steady job.
Anyway, we close out with the coolest business card I ever had, the least practical by far, but the first one ever. I was just getting out of college and I was hired at the counter-culture FM leader in Eugene, Oregon to do their morning news which was so hip it couldn't be called news but was "News & Information." My hair was down to my shoulders and news was never this much fun again. The card had a front and a back and had to be folded in the middle.
How about that? All those jobs, and the card that means the most was still the first.
There is one card that's inexplicably missing from this odd little collection. It's the business card I had when I worked as an investigative reporter at KCET, the PBS affiliate in Los Angeles. It was a phenomenal job, working on one 15-minute news piece a week, really reporting in depth. Maybe I actually used those cards up trying to get at some of those stories...
Now, finally, here's the really crazy part. I have had so many other jobs where they never gave out business cards. I can't even bear to start counting those... by way of explanation, though, the life of a writer/producer is equivalent to being self-employed. One job leads to another and to another and you end up working with half the town at one time or another. It is totally insane, but I love it.
