06- ROK-TV **A Brilliant Bit Of Enlightenment**

ROK-TV

       I left KUSA on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1989, after almost eleven years at the station; a double reason to raise a pint every year on that fine mid-March day.

Channel 9 had been a big part of my life and, even after I began freelancing, I continued to work with the station on various projects. One was ROK-TV, a dance show appealing to teens and 20 somethings shot at Club LA, a hip Arvada nightspot.

       I was 44 and normally wouldn’t be hanging with a crowd this young but I knew and liked the music so I didn’t feel entirely out of it, the beat, I suppose, smoothing the age factor.

My camera was hand held for the live-switched show, using what was, then considered, the new MTV style; never mind that MTV had been around for 10 years. Clients asked for that new look for years to come. Low, wide angle, Dutch angle and shaky-cam shots were in.

Jeff Wilkins was on the level above me, also hand held. Gunnar Blanke was running the jib, soaring over a couple of hundred writhing dancers dispersed on various levels around the club; spotlights bathing us in pulsing, colors.

     Music videos played on giant TV walls and flashed on  monitors throughout the room. The show had VJs, Christelle and Scott Patrick, introducing the music videos, enter-cut with the kids dancing.
I was on one of the larger floors, surrounded by dancers who obviously liked being on camera.

One attractive, and very young, lady in particular was relating unusually well to my lens. I’d drop to one knee and shoot up at her as she seductively swayed her body back and forth.
Occasionally Duke Hartman, the director, liking the shot, would ask me to hold it until he could work his way around the room with the other cameras. So there were times when I stayed on her for quite a while. She obviously liked the camera. And it sure liked her. The fantasies running through my head would make Jimmy Carter blush. She had to be at least 20 years younger than I...at least... but I wasn’t thinking about that then. I mean I didn’t lose it or anything. I knew this was just a job, and all that, but there were no rules saying I couldn’t enjoy my work. We were very creative. This lady was smoking. It was good for me and I wondered if it was good for her too? When the show finished, the house lights came on and reality reinserted itself.

       I was putting my camera away when I saw her coming from across the room. Oh, my God. There went the fantasies again. “Hi” she cooed. I was intoxicated.

“Tell me something. Are you married?” I nearly dropped the camera, unable to say a thing as vivid images ripped across my imagination.

“Me? Oh...” hesitating ever so briefly “...Yes” I stammered, “Yes, I’m... I’m married.” “And very happily.” I laughed grinning sheepishly.

She looked disappointed. My heart was going pit-ti-pat. She really wanted me. What a guy. My ego was in the stratosphere.

“That’s too bad.” she said looking up at me with these huge blue eyes.

“My Mother would really dig you.”

Like they say, it’s not the long fall that gets ya.

It’s the sudden stop.

I hope I never forget that moment.

There was a brilliant bit of enlightenment in that exchange.

There just had to be.............

I‘m still searching for it.