31 October 2005 (yesterday) (tomorrow)

It was a quiet night at work on Monday.   As soon as I got in around 6:30 p.m., I hit the ground running and loaded A-E tapes from Game 21 in room N17, Game 23 in room N13 and Game 28 in room N2A.   I e-mailed Nick and John about the deliverables and the intern, I had Kevin put in a call to Eric about timecode issues, made hot tea and popped some popcorn and watched, watched, watched the Sony Trinitron monitor and tapped, tapped, tapped the Avid's faded peach-colored keys.

The strange thing about watching the raw footage from a reality TV show (in this case Discovery Channel's reality game show "Cash Cab") is that you see the producers constantly interfering with the action, interrupting people and explaining to them how they should behave and could they please try it again and roll camera!, okay that wasn't quite right, until you start to distrust every "real" moment that you see on television.  (In fact, the only reality show I enjoy anymore is The Surreal Life, because it's just so utterly, joyfully contrived.)

My mind wandered as I logged, digitized and edited in three rooms.   I thought about the buried fears that had sprung up in the past three weeks, unearthed by an unusually powerful connection with a woman.   The scars on my heart pulsed bright red.  I terrified myself and talked myself down repeatedly.

A cacophony floated up from the street below. The Halloween Parade.

I lowered the window and sat down at the Avid.  I caught myself in the glass-- I was dressed exactly like a New York City taxi driver, right down to the windbreaker and the bushy moustache.  I had finally found my Halloween costume.  I looked straight ahead, tapped the keyboard and drove my cab without fear into the insomniac night.