The Far Side Of The Moon
I try to get in front of as many audiences as I can. In 2003, it meant joining the 135 candidates running in the California Gubernatorial Recall Election campaign. The established news media tried to shut off coverage of so many candidates, so we candidates banded together to help maximize media coverage.

Early in the campaign, about 60 of us candidates met on the deck of the USS Hornet aircraft carrier museum, which is docked at Alameda, in San Francisco Bay. After our meeting, we descended the gangplank and deigned to meet the media. In turn, the media did their best to kick our pretensions out from under us.

I noticed the clever folks from Fox TV-2 in Oakland carefully panning my face at close range with a camera with a very wide-angle lens. At last, I thought, I'm getting the attention I deserve!

That evening, I received a phone call from a friend in San Jose. Together with campaign event coverage, Fox TV-2 had also aired my footage on the evening's television news. The camera panned my face so closely that ancient acne scars became magnified into majestic lunar craters. Minor wrinkles became vast canyons. My nose loomed like an asteroid. Plus, they played ominous music - something along the lines of the 'Jaws Theme'. My friend was laughing so hard he could barely speak.

It was worth it, my friends, because THAT is how the American democratic tradition works.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 7:20, Reply)