Author Archive | Alison Rosen

I did, it’s true, I couldn’t help it. I mean, I could have. I could easily not have put down a paper towel on the floor of my shower and gone to town on these pale dogs here but—wait, am I the kind of person who refers to my fluorescent feet as “pale dogs”? I don’t think so—but anyway, I could have easily not, it’s true. However I fear a swath of translucent foot may appear onscreen tomorrow and I don’t want to be accidentally sending Morse code. At the same time I don’t want to look like someone shoved two carrots out the ends of my pant legs, even though that would be kind of harvesty and seasonally appropriate. If this spray tan experiment goes horribly awry that’s what I’m going to say: “Hello, I’m here to talk about politics and entertainment. I dyed my feet pumpkin orange for the occasion. Boo!” Although now it occurs to me that I could just have said my feet were dressed as ghosts and that’s why they’re so white and “boo!” Dammit!

I was doing a segment a couple weeks ago and I didn’t think I needed the teleprompter because I had memorized what I was going to say (it wasn’t a conversational thing, it was something where I needed to stick to the script and say the lines in a certain amount of time) and so I asked if I could try it first without the teleprompter. In general, I think producers prefer is you use a teleprompter because it’s easier for them to follow along and time things out. So anyway, I tried it and messed up and then admitted that I needed the teleprompter and as I was doing it I had this weird sense of resignation/defeat in a science fiction way, I think because I was trading a certain amount of autonomy for efficiency.

Using a teleprompter well is a skill though, sort of like being able to see the image in those 3-D posters. You have to be able to read without looking like you’re reading. Actually, I’d say it’s the second part of a two part skill set. The first is to be able to talk to the camera as if the camera is a person, because if you talk to the camera as if it’s a camera, you get this weird creeped out look on your face and it’s uncomfortable all around. I think I’ve mastered that as I can talk to any inanimate object. Sometimes they talk back.

So back to the teleprompter though, I think you can easily begin to depend on it, or … you know what? This whole thing is a long roundabout way of saying that my blackberry is messed up right now and I can’t receive email on it and even though I am sitting at the computer, where I can receive email, I still feel deeply unsettled and can’t think straight till this is resolved. And I had many metaphors and twists and turns and ways of getting from the teleprompter to the blackberry perhaps stopping off to discuss dialysis and this whole thing was heading in cyborgian science fictiony direction but I have no time for florid language or fancy theory or even metaphors because Tasha at Verizon is supposed to call me back.