Lupi

CERN has invented a new type of fire that can be eaten with a knife and fork

(to the tune of bill nye)

(robot voice) P i l l B u g t h e R o l l y G u y

In American high school we had mandatory classes (English, various Maths, Sciences, at least one language class, etc.) but you could also choose one or two electives every year from a pool, non-essential classes that were more "fun" things like cooking classes or more creative ones.

I remember being approached by a teacher and being asked what elective I'd like to be in. Before she even showed me the list I spat out "Creative Writing" because at the time I had been writing lots of (bad) stories and such. She smiled in that apologetic way and said "uh... pick something else." Because our school did not Have any writing-focused electives. Immediate bummer.

But hey! They have other cool electives to choose from! Like A/V Production! I like cameras, and video stuff, and computers, that sounds like the class for me!

The one year I was in A/V was probably the worst class I've ever had the displeasure of being in? First of all, our "teacher" - perhaps instructor would be a more accurate term - was named Dr. Bland, and was a short, grey-haired white man who only wore button up plaid and khakis, had no sense of humor, and was genuinely quite rude at times. And his name was Dr. Bland. Can't make that shit up.

The older kids in the class, who had been there for more than one year, were all douchebags - the only time I ever encountered an irl instance of the upperclassmen being incredibly smug and rude to the lowerclassmen. There was one kid named Xavier I still distinctly recall who would chug an entire Monster Java every day before we did the school news, and took everything we did extremely seriously because he insisted - and I think truly believed - that this was training him for a real career in newshosting or newsgathering. I tolerated his dickish behavior most of the time, but one time, we were doing the school news, Xavier and another first-year A/V kid were the hosts in front of the camera, and I was one of the two behind the cameras (old JVC HDV news cameras wired directly up to a video rack in another room, if anyone's interested).

I don't remember exactly what happened, but I think the younger kid flubbed a line a couple times, forcing us to start over. Our school news was only 10-15 minutes long or so, but it was done effectively live, with switchboards and everything, to emulate a live show, just recording the output onto a Mac instead of broadcasting or livestreaming it. So it wasn't a massive deal to flub a line, but we did still have to start over when it happened.

Xavier was having none of it. He chewed the kid out, who was clearly anxious in front of a camera, saying he needed to take his "job" seriously and that he was making him look bad.

The kid was only made more anxious by this and looked truly hurt, and I felt that crossed a fucking line. So I leaned around the bulky camera I was operating, stared Xavier in the eyes, and said something along the lines of "Dude, leave him the hell alone, come on. It's not that big of a deal. Can you just try not being mean for once?"

The reaction Xavier had to this is the reason this moment is still etched into my brain. He stood up and walked off the school news set, took off whatever ill-fitting suit he was wearing from the rack we all shared, shuffled into a seat in the corner of the room, and pulled his hoodie up and did the thing where you pull the strings to scrunch it closed. He stayed there, moping his ass off the rest of the class. I didn't mind. Nobody did, really. If the asshole wants to play victim because he got confronted one time on his behavior, by basically just being told to stop it, that's his own business. We got another kid to take the other seat and news went fine.

Above the kids being mean, though, my biggest complaint about A/V Production was that it wasn't actually a class. It was a trick to get free labor out of minors. Most of what we did was just the school news. We all had our roles and we'd change them every week, but everything we did was in service of the school news. Go out and record segments, edit them together, the one thing you would be taught is how to operate the very specific functions of the equipment we were using that were needed for you to your job. You'd be sat down in front of a massive, impressive video switched board and then be told your only job was to press three different buttons at the appropriate times and pull the faced knob, and you'd only be taught how to do those exact tasks. You'd be sat down in front of the video toaster-esque system and told your only job was to edit the opening and end credits appropriate with the date and names of kids under the correct roles, and you'd only be taught how to do those exact tasks.

Oh, I tried, to make Dr. Bland teach me things, for sure! After all, I joined the class to learn about A/V Production and A/V gear! So, when sitting in front of the massive wall of rack-mounted video equipment all esoterically blinking and bleeping away, I'd point to one of the components and ask "what does that do?"

Dr. Bland would glance at me and respond "It doesn't matter. Just focus on your job." Xavier or one of the other upperclassmen would sneer something similar "Why do you care?" I was made to feel like an idiot for wanting to learn anything about how any of this stuff actually worked - you know, like the description of the class I signed up for?

Not only were we out to work for the school news - at least that was in the school, during school hours, and by those terms could reasonably be considered a "class period." We were also required to regularly put in time at the school district's football stadium! That's right. I was not informed of this being a required part of the curriculum before signing up for the class, but in order to pass, we had to (I believe at least twice a month) come out to the stadium during the night of a game and operate all of the video equipment for the entire game.

This was labor. Like. There's no other way to put it. We'd have to be there several hours before the game to run around the entire stadium setting up all the stationery cameras, while kids up in the booth configured all the inputs on the switcher boards. If you were unlucky, you'd get tasked as a mobile unit, meaning you'd be hooked up with a headset, a huge battery and transceiver around your waist, and a 15lb camera on your shoulder, and have orders barked at you by Dr. Bland and co over the headset on where to run your little peon ass around on the field, where to point your camera, where to zoom, etc. At least if you were assigned to a stationery unit you only had to worry about the pointing and zooming.

If you were over 16, the school would actually pay you for this time. If you were under 16, due to child labor laws, the school could not pay you. I mean, you still had to do it, but your child labor was free. You know, to make it legal. If they do it for free, it's not really child labor, now is it? Or something. I was 15 at the time, so I didn't get paid. But at least they catered us - yeah at the very fucking least you'd better feed me - with Chicken Express each time, that was one thing to look forward to.

I recall one time when we were setting up those cameras, I saw Dr. Bland and several kids huddled around one of the stations. They'd gotten the camera attached to the base and properly mounted and all that, but they were clearly having difficult with something. I went over to see what was up.

They were struggling to find where the barrel plug for the power cord went on the camera. Dr. Bland and like 3 kids were looking all over this camera for a DC input jack.

Now, I'm no genius, but I actually do know a thing or two about camcorders, having a small collection and doing plenty of my own research on them. Especially when you get into the huge shoulder-mounted cameras, DC jacks become very uncommon, and it's much more likely that if you want to power your camera off the wall, you'll need a dummy battery that slots into the battery compartment, and just has a wire running out the back of it.

So I stepped forward to posit my theory. "Maybe it doesn't have a barrel plug? Maybe it's one of the cameras that uses a dummy battery, you know?"

Immediately, Dr. Bland looks up and barks "Aren't you supposed to be hooking up [other camera]? Get back to work!" As he looks back at his fruitless task, Xavier spits out "What makes you think you know more than Dr. Bland? You're just a first year!" Dr. Bland was never quite as mean as Xavier, but he also never did anything when Xavier was being very obviously rude right next to him. I left in defeat, knowing I wouldn't be able to get through to any of those people.

Later that night, I was assigned to go down to that camera, which they had apparently been able to get working. As I approached it, I saw it was being powered by a dummy battery.

I did not return for A/V Production II, which my parents found confusing, because, hey, you might even get paid for your mandatory, non-consensual late night labor hours next year!

I think Dr. Bland still works at that high school. The old bastard.

But it wasn't all bad, you see. I did steal plenty of equipment when nobody was looking. I managed to steal 1 school DSLR, a microphone, a Digital8 Handycam hidden away on a back shelf, about 3 boxes of blank MiniDV tapes, and a really cool JVC DVD-RAM/HDD/MiniDV recorder unit with its remote (currently non-functional). So, I got something out of that godforsaken labor camp.