I shot Underoath at Warped 2009, the Hartford date. They were the last band I shot on that particular day. Good thing too, as it was getting dark.
I was shooting three Warped days in one week, Hartford, Scranton, and Camden. I have six 16gb memory cards for my two cameras. If that sounds like a lot, it isn't. I'm shooting raw files which are huge and the 3 cards per camera are just enough to get by.
My plan was download and back everything up on the days between shows. I shot Hartford on Sunday, but had to work Monday and Tuesday before the Scranton day on Wednesday. Due to limited time, I rushed through the download and back-up as fast as possible so I could reformat the cards for use in Scranton.
Same drill between Scranton and Camden.
When the dust settled, I finally had a chance to go through everything. I was making selects of the Underoath gallery when I noticed there didn't seem to be enough pictures. I noticed right away that I didn't have any shots of Chris Dudley, the synth player and I was positive I'd shot him.
My stomach got cold and tingly. High capacity memory cards separate images into different folders. Was it possible I didn't download one of the folders and had lost the pictures?
I checked into it. The last picture taken by my "B" camera at Hartford was #3221 (the camera assigns each picture a unique number in ascending order) and the first picture shot on that camera at Scranton was #3386. Numbers 3222 thru 3385 were missing. 165 pictures. Ouch.
I scoured my two back up hard drives, but found nothing. The pictures were gone. The chill in my stomach turned to a writhing nausea. For a photographer, there's nothing worse than losing pictures. And it had to be Underoath, one of the bands I was most excited about.
Then I remembered a program called Rescue Pro that had come with my San Disk memory cards. I'd never messed with it because I'd never needed it. I rooted through my drawers until i found the disk, installed the program, and ran it on the card where the Underoath pictures would have been. Remember, the card had been re-formatted, but I knew that formatting doesn't erase data. Data is only erased if you write new data over it. So was there a chance the card still had some missing Underoath pictures on it?
The answer was yes. Not only did the card still have some Underoath pictures on it, it had all 165 of the missing shots. By some fluke, I hadn't shot enough at Scranton or Camden on that particular card to write over them.
An unusual outcome, but a welcome one. Half the shots in the final gallery were recovered and otherwise would have been lost to the mists of time.
Thanks, San Disk. I promise to be more careful next time.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Fun with Underoath Part 1
The first time I shot Underoath was last year the the Fillmore NY. I'm down in the photo pit, that neutral area between audience and stage, waiting for the band to come out. I've got my two D700s and 30 pounds of lenses strapped around my neck. I'm tired, it's been a long day.
The lights go out; the audience screams; the bands charges on stage like the small army they are. I don't know what lead singer Spencer does backstage, but he must have a treadmill or something back there, because he comes out already soaked in sweat. His long hair is positively dripping. He runs up to the front of the stage, whips his head back, then forward sending a spray of sweat flying. I don't know how much of it made it to his intended target - the audience - because I'm pretty sure all of it landed on me.
Then he takes a big swig of water and spits that out in a spray, soaking us hapless photographers a second time. What the heck, it washes some of the sweat off.
When I get home, my wife says "wow, must have been hard work, I can smell how hard you were sweating."
I give her a sickly grin. "Actually, it's not my sweat."
That one takes some explaining.
The lights go out; the audience screams; the bands charges on stage like the small army they are. I don't know what lead singer Spencer does backstage, but he must have a treadmill or something back there, because he comes out already soaked in sweat. His long hair is positively dripping. He runs up to the front of the stage, whips his head back, then forward sending a spray of sweat flying. I don't know how much of it made it to his intended target - the audience - because I'm pretty sure all of it landed on me.
Then he takes a big swig of water and spits that out in a spray, soaking us hapless photographers a second time. What the heck, it washes some of the sweat off.
When I get home, my wife says "wow, must have been hard work, I can smell how hard you were sweating."
I give her a sickly grin. "Actually, it's not my sweat."
That one takes some explaining.
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Serial Killer
Donald Harvey’s killing spree came to an end in 1987. It was a fluke. He’d poured cyanide into the feeding tube of a near-comatose patient who’d suffered massive brain injuries in a motorcycle accident. Ohio law dictates that anyone dying as a result of a traffic accident requires an autopsy.
In a second coincidence, the young pathologist who performed the autopsy on Harvey’s victim had training in chemistry. The assumption was the cause of death was pneumonia, a common occurrence in accident victims with major head trauma. The autopsy bore that out.
Until the stomach was opened and the rookie pathologist was overwhelmed by the smell of bitter almonds. Due to his background as a chemist, he recognized the smell immediately as cyanide. Toxicology tests were ordered and the results were conclusive. The man had not died as a result of pneumonia; he’d been poisoned.
Harvey was eventually fingered as the killer. While Harvey was in custody, an intrepid local reporter began gathering evidence that Harvey had committed more than that single murder. With pressure building, Harvey confessed that he had in fact killed more people, and was convicted of 33 murders, though the total number he dispatched was believed to be higher. Most of them were so-called “mercy killings,” but a few were of the decidedly non-merciful variety.
When a tenant living upstairs from Harvey’s lover, Carl, discovered that Carl was cheating him on a shared electric bill and threatened to call the police, Harvey poisoned him. A similar fate met a young woman who, rightly, accused Carl of embezzling money from a business where they both worked.
When Harvey began to suspect his lover was cheating on him, he poisoned him, slowly, with arsenic, not enough to kill the man, but enough to make him sick and keep him home and away from temptation.
When another lover, a married man with a wife and children, gave Harvey trouble, Harvey dispatched him as well.
On one occasion, when an elderly stroke patient threw a bedpan at Harvey, he retaliated a few days later by jamming a straightened coat hanger up the old man’s catheter, perforating both the man’s bladder and bowel. An infection set in, and the man died three days later.
They say that in the film business you get to go to all sorts of places and meet all sorts of people. This is true, because a little while ago, I met Donald Harvey.
As usual, the context was a shoot for a cable TV show about autopsies, specifically the autopsy that had led to Harvey’s arrest. We interviewed the pathologist who had caught that fateful whiff of poison, and we interviewed Harvey’s lawyer. All that left was Harvey himself.
I have to say. It feels weird to know you’re going to meet a man who killed so many people. The weirdest thing about the experience was how casual it was. We pull up at the prison, and walk into the visitor center where two jovial, constantly joking guards greet us. They ask us to sign in, and hold onto our IDs (“so we can identify the bodies later,” one quipped) then take a cursory look through our cases of equipment. (“CNN brought a whole load more ‘n this,” we learn.)
Another guard comes out with a big flatbed dolly for us and we roll inside the prison itself.
Inside we meet our media relations person, a terrific guy, who leads us to the interview room. We pass through a couple of those automated gates and go into one of the parole hearing rooms. Other than the bars on the window and the fact that every piece of furniture is bolted to the floor, the room is only remarkable because of how unremarkable it is.
We set up. I’m wondering if there are any guidelines: don’t run any cables or put any lights too close to where “Inmate Harvey,” as he is known, is going to sit in case he might decide to grab something and try to up his body count. But no one seems concerned. It’s just another shoot, except for the clanging of the big metal gates and the occasional announcements over the loudspeaker that “the count is clear.” (Prison talk for “All prisoners accounted for.”)
We’re finally ready and Inmate Harvey is brought in. No handcuffs, no leg chains, no hockey mask, no burly security guard with him (though a guard does stand ready outside the door).
As for Harvey himself, you could not ask for a more unassuming person to fill the role of serial killer. Harvey is in his 50’s, average height, average weight, average looks. The only thing remarkable about him is his quiet, delicate manner and his eyes, which are slightly crossed – the effect magnified by the thick glasses he wears. He’s very concerned with his appearance; after we put a lavaliere mic on him, running the wire down his shirt, he takes a long moment to make sure the shirt is tucked properly. As the producer applies powder to his face so his skin won’t shine on camera, he remarks, “We’d better not let the other inmates know I’ve got make-up on, or they’ll start chasing me around again, like they did when I was younger.”
We have exactly one hour with Inmate Harvey and get right to it. Our producer has no fear, asking him point blank why he killed and what it felt like to kill. I really wish I had something amazing to write about the interview, but other than the pure surrealism of sitting in a room and calmly and openly discussing the means by which Harvey disposed of his victims (“I used whatever methods were available to me at the time.”), there’s nothing much else to report.
We’d been warned that Harvey liked to fuck with people, find their weak spot and prod it like some cut-rate Hannibal Letcher. For example, sensing that a previous interviewer was homophobic, Harvey began describing his relations with some of his lovers in graphic detail, utterly freaking the guy out.
None of this is on display as we work through the list of questions. Harvey answers questions with long, rambling, self-defensive monologues that mainly argue that “he’s not the only one who did things like this,” blaming doctors and nurses for also putting patients out of their misery. As far as he was concerned, he was helping the people he killed, though I doubt the man who got the coat hanger up the catheter would agree.
The one time he shows any true remorse about what he’s done is when he tells the story of mixing cyanide to kill one of his patients. He did the work under the hood of his stove. The hood was blocked, and he sniffed some of the gas himself, throwing himself back from the work area to avoid killing himself.
Checking the vent outside, he discovered that vapors had escaped and killed a family of birds nesting near the vent outlet, including a number of babies. That, according to the man who’d taken the lives of so many people and shown almost no remorse or emotion, was “real sad.”
The only clue to Harvey’s evil is his eyes. His voice his soft, his manner is soft, but there’s something stirring behind those eyes, something vast and pulsing, a squirming horror from a Lovecraft novel.
His rambling, sometimes incoherent answers often lead the producer to ask him to rephrase. Since her questions will not be included in the interview, he needs to give his answers as complete thoughts. (The example we always give to interview subjects is: “If I ask you what your favorite color is, don’t say “red” say “my favorite color is red.”) This leads to the one truly remarkable moment in the interview:
Producer: How many people did you kill?
Harvey: (After a moment’s thought.) Eighty-seven.
Stunned silence. None of us had any idea the count was that high. But after a moment:
Producer: Okay, I need that again as a complete statement.
Harvey: Oh, I’m so sorry. I forgot. (Clears his throat, folds his hands on his knees.) I killed eighty-seven people.
Ah, showbiz!
In a second coincidence, the young pathologist who performed the autopsy on Harvey’s victim had training in chemistry. The assumption was the cause of death was pneumonia, a common occurrence in accident victims with major head trauma. The autopsy bore that out.
Until the stomach was opened and the rookie pathologist was overwhelmed by the smell of bitter almonds. Due to his background as a chemist, he recognized the smell immediately as cyanide. Toxicology tests were ordered and the results were conclusive. The man had not died as a result of pneumonia; he’d been poisoned.
Harvey was eventually fingered as the killer. While Harvey was in custody, an intrepid local reporter began gathering evidence that Harvey had committed more than that single murder. With pressure building, Harvey confessed that he had in fact killed more people, and was convicted of 33 murders, though the total number he dispatched was believed to be higher. Most of them were so-called “mercy killings,” but a few were of the decidedly non-merciful variety.
When a tenant living upstairs from Harvey’s lover, Carl, discovered that Carl was cheating him on a shared electric bill and threatened to call the police, Harvey poisoned him. A similar fate met a young woman who, rightly, accused Carl of embezzling money from a business where they both worked.
When Harvey began to suspect his lover was cheating on him, he poisoned him, slowly, with arsenic, not enough to kill the man, but enough to make him sick and keep him home and away from temptation.
When another lover, a married man with a wife and children, gave Harvey trouble, Harvey dispatched him as well.
On one occasion, when an elderly stroke patient threw a bedpan at Harvey, he retaliated a few days later by jamming a straightened coat hanger up the old man’s catheter, perforating both the man’s bladder and bowel. An infection set in, and the man died three days later.
They say that in the film business you get to go to all sorts of places and meet all sorts of people. This is true, because a little while ago, I met Donald Harvey.
As usual, the context was a shoot for a cable TV show about autopsies, specifically the autopsy that had led to Harvey’s arrest. We interviewed the pathologist who had caught that fateful whiff of poison, and we interviewed Harvey’s lawyer. All that left was Harvey himself.
I have to say. It feels weird to know you’re going to meet a man who killed so many people. The weirdest thing about the experience was how casual it was. We pull up at the prison, and walk into the visitor center where two jovial, constantly joking guards greet us. They ask us to sign in, and hold onto our IDs (“so we can identify the bodies later,” one quipped) then take a cursory look through our cases of equipment. (“CNN brought a whole load more ‘n this,” we learn.)
Another guard comes out with a big flatbed dolly for us and we roll inside the prison itself.
Inside we meet our media relations person, a terrific guy, who leads us to the interview room. We pass through a couple of those automated gates and go into one of the parole hearing rooms. Other than the bars on the window and the fact that every piece of furniture is bolted to the floor, the room is only remarkable because of how unremarkable it is.
We set up. I’m wondering if there are any guidelines: don’t run any cables or put any lights too close to where “Inmate Harvey,” as he is known, is going to sit in case he might decide to grab something and try to up his body count. But no one seems concerned. It’s just another shoot, except for the clanging of the big metal gates and the occasional announcements over the loudspeaker that “the count is clear.” (Prison talk for “All prisoners accounted for.”)
We’re finally ready and Inmate Harvey is brought in. No handcuffs, no leg chains, no hockey mask, no burly security guard with him (though a guard does stand ready outside the door).
As for Harvey himself, you could not ask for a more unassuming person to fill the role of serial killer. Harvey is in his 50’s, average height, average weight, average looks. The only thing remarkable about him is his quiet, delicate manner and his eyes, which are slightly crossed – the effect magnified by the thick glasses he wears. He’s very concerned with his appearance; after we put a lavaliere mic on him, running the wire down his shirt, he takes a long moment to make sure the shirt is tucked properly. As the producer applies powder to his face so his skin won’t shine on camera, he remarks, “We’d better not let the other inmates know I’ve got make-up on, or they’ll start chasing me around again, like they did when I was younger.”
We have exactly one hour with Inmate Harvey and get right to it. Our producer has no fear, asking him point blank why he killed and what it felt like to kill. I really wish I had something amazing to write about the interview, but other than the pure surrealism of sitting in a room and calmly and openly discussing the means by which Harvey disposed of his victims (“I used whatever methods were available to me at the time.”), there’s nothing much else to report.
We’d been warned that Harvey liked to fuck with people, find their weak spot and prod it like some cut-rate Hannibal Letcher. For example, sensing that a previous interviewer was homophobic, Harvey began describing his relations with some of his lovers in graphic detail, utterly freaking the guy out.
None of this is on display as we work through the list of questions. Harvey answers questions with long, rambling, self-defensive monologues that mainly argue that “he’s not the only one who did things like this,” blaming doctors and nurses for also putting patients out of their misery. As far as he was concerned, he was helping the people he killed, though I doubt the man who got the coat hanger up the catheter would agree.
The one time he shows any true remorse about what he’s done is when he tells the story of mixing cyanide to kill one of his patients. He did the work under the hood of his stove. The hood was blocked, and he sniffed some of the gas himself, throwing himself back from the work area to avoid killing himself.
Checking the vent outside, he discovered that vapors had escaped and killed a family of birds nesting near the vent outlet, including a number of babies. That, according to the man who’d taken the lives of so many people and shown almost no remorse or emotion, was “real sad.”
The only clue to Harvey’s evil is his eyes. His voice his soft, his manner is soft, but there’s something stirring behind those eyes, something vast and pulsing, a squirming horror from a Lovecraft novel.
His rambling, sometimes incoherent answers often lead the producer to ask him to rephrase. Since her questions will not be included in the interview, he needs to give his answers as complete thoughts. (The example we always give to interview subjects is: “If I ask you what your favorite color is, don’t say “red” say “my favorite color is red.”) This leads to the one truly remarkable moment in the interview:
Producer: How many people did you kill?
Harvey: (After a moment’s thought.) Eighty-seven.
Stunned silence. None of us had any idea the count was that high. But after a moment:
Producer: Okay, I need that again as a complete statement.
Harvey: Oh, I’m so sorry. I forgot. (Clears his throat, folds his hands on his knees.) I killed eighty-seven people.
Ah, showbiz!
Sunday, July 27, 2008
How Cobra Starship Changed My Life
The Road to Warped
Or
How Cobra Starship Changed my Life
My wife, son and I are all into music, though often it’s very different music. It was my wife and son who dragged me to The Chance in
I wasn’t looking forward to it. I'd been a big concert goer in my youth. In high school that meant big arena rock shows - Van Halen, The Police, Blue Oyster Cult, David Bowie. In college I switched to punk. Concerts in those days weren't that great. The big shows were impersonal, the bands didn't seem to give a shit about the audience, were going through the motions, collecting a check. If they did give a shit, it was hard to tell from halfway back in some huge auditorium. The punk shows were more raw, but the bands were often indifferent or outright hostile toward the audience. The Ramones, wonderful as they were, acted as if the crowd wasn't there. I remember Jello Biafra from The Dead Kennedys excoriating us all as "brain dead sheep." What a way to build a rapport.
The first act was Cobra Starship, a last minute addition to the bill and a favorite of my wife and son. I’d never heard Cobra before, and only had the vaguest clue who they were. Yet once they took the stage, I realized how wrong all my preconceived notions were. I was blown away. They were simply amazing. Their connection with the audience was real. Their energy was impossible to fake. I loved it. And I realized that music had changed since I was a young man. The bands were really into it. Really working it.
The other reason I’d come along was to take some pictures. At this point, the digital camera our family owned was a Fuji Finepix F550. A decent enough little rig for birthday parties and vacation photos, but no where near good enough for taking concert photos from audience position in a darkly lit space like The Chance.
To put it mildly, the pictures sucked ass. Here’s an example, in case you don’t believe me. Shit, right? I think that's Gabe. Maybe.
Thus began my obsession – getting decent concert photos. I especially wanted to capture Cobra. I wanted to record that energy on film, freeze it in time, and let it live forever.
I shot all through the night, as four more terrific bands played culminating in an amazing set by TAI. I wasn't crazy about all of the bands, musically speaking, but I respected them. These were young artists working their asses off. Anyone who works their ass off in pursuit of a dream can hold their head high, as far as I'm concerned. I had a chance to chat with some of them in the merch area, including Gabe and Rylan, and found them all to be smart, level-headed people who were willing to do what it took to succeed and had a genuine loyalty to and love for their fans.
That was the good part of the night. The bad part was the pictures. I kept taking photos, with little but shit to show for it. I tried every strategy I could think of, and failed.
I vowed to do better next time.
Our next concert was Fall Out Boy at
I decided to upgrade cameras. After researching extensively, I settled on a Canon point and shoot model. My wife and son went to see Cobra again at The Chance. (I missed it because of work.) The pictures were better, but they were too busy dancing to take that many.
I was disappointed I didn’t get to go to the show. I wanted to see Cobra again and, damn it, I wanted to get some good photos of them! This is a totally male thing. Present us with a challenge and we won’t quit until we beat it. This was my challenge.
Our next concert was The Bamboozle where both my wife and I shot. Most of the event was day lit, and the night shows were very brightly illuminated. So we did okay.
But not good enough. Shooting from the audience position just wasn’t cutting it for me.
It was time to stop screwing around. I decided to take this seriously, to the point of founding my own website devoted exclusively to pro-level concert photography. The seeds that had been planted trying to shoot that first Cobra Starship show had blossomed. Thus, was Shotmonster born.
Having the idea wasn’t enough. I spent days researching cameras and lenses, finally settling on the Nikon D300. (Now that the D700 is out I have to seriously consider upgrading one of my bodies) But having a site and a camera wasn’t enough, I needed a show to shoot. I went straight to the Cobra website to see when their next tour was. I saw they were on Warped, pleaded for a photopass, and what the hell, I got one.
I shot the
I threw myself into the shoot. It was one of the most exciting days of my life. Being so close to the bands, right in the middle of the action, was a non-stop adrenalin high. I didn’t stop for a second, running from stage to stage, covering every band I could.
But the one band I had to get was Cobra Starship. By the time their 8pm set rolled around, I was utterly spent. I’d been on my feet all day with 20 pounds of camera gear hanging off my neck. I’d had no time to eat anything except the beef jerky and trail mix I’d brought with me. I’d been hit with water bottles, kicked in the head by surfers coming over the barricades, argued with stubborn security guards who didn’t understand that my photo pass meant that yes, I was actually allowed to go right in front of the stage for the first three songs of each set.
So, yeah, I was exhausted. I parked myself in front of the Highway 1 stage, set my cameras on a speaker stack to get the weight off my neck, and watched as the sun set, praying it wouldn't get too dark to shoot.
Even as the last notes of the Gym Class Heroes set next door faded, Cobra took the stage. All exhaustion was gone and I lit up like a Christmas Tree. Their energy was infectious, and I shot over 900 pictures in the space of maybe twenty minutes.
We got kicked out of the pit after the third song. I decided to get the hell out of dodge, get to my car and beat traffic. I had a nearly three hour drive home staring me in the face. As I was walking out, I heard Gabe begin his intro for Bring It. No way I was going to miss this. I turned around, made my way to the edge of the crowd and raised my camera to my eye.
Full circle. I’d started in the audience at The Chance shooting Cobra Starship with a Finepix F550. Now I was back in the audience, shooting them again. Only now I had the firepower to actually capture something usable. Better than that, I got the thrill of being there for an incredible.
Think about these guys do. Not just Cobra, all of them. They're on Warped, traveling hundreds of miles a day, from city to city, playing over and over again, yet each time they come out, they perform with an energy that makes it seem like the first time they ever played live. Simply amazing. My hat is off to each and every band, from the smallest acts playing outside near the ticket booth, to the biggest acts playing main stage. You guys all rock.
What a day.
Thanks, Cobra, for getting me into this. I hope you guys like the photos.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Fun in 14B
Fun in 14B
If you’ve traveled for business as much as I have, (which is way too much) you’ve probably noticed a very particular thing about airline magazines. No, I’m not talking about the Mensa test that everyone’s afraid to take because they’ll flunk it and realize they’re not as smart as they thought they were, it’s the ads.
Ads in airline magazines share two properties – they’re the same no matter what airline you’re on, and they’re fucking weird. Brazilian Steakhouses. I love Brazilian style steakhouses, you know, those places where waiters bring huge hunks of charred meat skewered on swords to your table and serve it to you by carving a slice right onto your plate. (Hot tip – wave off the first few skewers because those are the cheap cuts). But for some reason, every airline magazine has five or six ads for Brazilian Steakhouses in different cities in them. Why the emphasis on Brazilian Steakhouses? Why not Sushi, or BBQ? Did the Brazilian Steakhouse consortium get some kind of deal on bulk advertising, or is there something about being cramped on an airplane for three to six hours that makes you crave charred meat?
Then there’s the executive dating services. Women join for free, of course. These agencies are always run by some hot-looking babe in her early 40’s who promises her clients she’ll find them love and happiness, or at least a willing trophy wife, whichever they prefer. I’m not going to use the phrase “high end prostitution” but I won’t deny it’s crossed my mind from time to time.
Things get really strange with the Human Growth Hormone ads. They’re not as omnipresent as the Brazilian steakhouses, but they crop up once in a while and they’re fucking bug-ass crazy. They tell you that by using HGH you can reclaim your youth and basically reverse the aging process. Does anyone from the FDA ever travel on airplanes? Or all they all smart enough to bring a book?
One of these features this doctor who’s in his sixties. He’s an advocate of HGH and uses himself as an example of how great it works. There’s a picture of him standing there, shirtless. It’s creepy – Twilight Zone creepy. This dude is in his late 60s, but has the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger, even though his head and face are those of your dead old grandpa. A grandpa who could kick your ass before breakfast then come back for seconds after lunch. The ad claims the photo was not “digitally retouched” which make me speculate that perhaps they used old-fashion air brushing. (After all, retouching photos was high art long before the digital age, as anyone who’s ever read the Weekly World News in it’s early 1980s hey-day can attest.)
For me, the best ad is the ROM machine. It’s this exercise machine that claims you can get a complete physical workout in only 4 minutes a day by using the
They have a website, but I’m afraid to go to it. If I become any more fascinated by the machine I’m going to have to explain to my wife what that $15,000 charge on our Mastercard is for. Of course, maybe someone from ROM will see this blog and send me one for free, you know, to try out.
So once I’ve popped some HGH, stuffed myself silly at the nearest Brazilian Steakhouse, then worked off the meal on my ROM machine, maybe I’ll finally have the balls to take that goddamn Mensa test.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
FIVE SECONDS IN HELL
1.25 million people have been shot with a Taser. I’m one of them. This is how it happens.
I’m shooting for National Geographic Channel’s show Who Knew with Marshall Brain. The show profiles how things are made, and for this particular episode, we’re in
When the team arrives at Taser, we are a mess. The first day of our two-day shoot was at Penn Tennis Balls. We spent 17 hours on the factory floor shooting hand-held with the Sony F-900/3, one of the heaviest video cameras currently available.
So we’re in pain. I’ve got a splitting headache from not drinking enough water the day before. Add in that one of the key features of the Taser factory is an ultrasonic welder, a machine that joins plastic parts by vibrating them so fast they fuse together. As it performs this particular trick, it emits a high-pitched squeal that makes your teeth vibrate. My headache gets worse until I’m pretty sure my skull is going to crack in two.
We suffer through the day to the part we’ve all been waiting for – the product demo. Our intrepid host, Marshall Brain, has agreed to be tased on camera. And if
The Taser guys tells us they’ll just tape the Taser probes to us, but
We set up downstairs in a conference room. My headache is really getting bad now. I’ve taken Advil, to no avail. I am seriously hurting.
The trainer yells. “Taser, Taser, Taser,” and shoots
When the tasing ends, he looks up at the camera and gives a very concise report on the experience.
Then it’s my turn. For the fun of it, we’re going to be filming me getting tased as well.
I take my place on the mat. Terrified I might embarrass myself, I’ve invoked the “long car trip” rule and made sure to go to the bathroom before getting tased.
I can’t see the trainer with the taser, but I feel him behind me. I feel the goddamn thing pointing at me. My headache worsens, my brain boiling inside my skull.
Let me explain, up to this point, I thought the idea of getting tased was pretty cool. Even after watching
Now, with two people holding me, a guy pointing a Taser at my back, three freaking cameras rolling, and the whole room watching, I realize it was maybe not such an good idea after all.
But when the trainer asks “Are you ready?” What am I going to say? “Forget it, I don’t want to do it?” Like I’ll ever live that down. So I suck it up. “Ready,” I yell, and what the hell, my voice barely quavers.
Then ring the bells of doom. “Taser. Taser, Taser!” The trainer yells.
I hear the thing fire, a flat pop. I can hear the darts coming at me, actually hear them zinging through the air, hear the tiny little wires paying out behind them, angry wasps seeking tender flesh.
A momentary digression on how the Taser works. The Taser cartridge contains two barbed darts - think straightened fishing hooks - attached by very thin wires to a handgrip where the battery is. The probes sink into your flesh, and the wires carry an electrical charge into your body. The waveform of the electrical charge is designed to make every muscle in your body seize up. I have to tell you, before taking the hit, the thing I was most worried about was how they get those barbed probes out of your back. That, I figure, is going to hurt.
That bit of nastiness is forgotten as the probes hit. The entry of these things feels like a double bee sting, only these are bee stings delivered on the end of a well-swung baseball bat. One hits me in the lower back, the other goes right through my belt and stabs me just above the right butt-cheek. The probes are maybe 15 inches apart.
I have only a moment to comprehend that violation when the charge hits and my descent into hell begins.
The first thing you feel is actually nothing. You have no idea what in hell is going on and have no way to process it. That lasts for maybe a tenth of a second. Then you notice your entire body has gone stiff. I’m suddenly standing on tiptoes, every muscle straining. I can feel the current going from probe to probe with the muscles of my back between them.
I now fully comprehend how magnificently awful an idea this was. Imagine ten million electric hyenas set loose in your body. Each of them has a muscle fiber in its slavering jaws and all of them are tugging and ripping in different directions at once.
Now add in some intense heat. The spots where the probes hit turn painfully hot.
I can hear the Taser clicking away. It makes this weird noise, like a grandfather clock ticking away a supersonic speeds. That’s got something to do with the way the charge switches between the two probes.
It hurts like hell, and I am maybe a second into the experience when all this comes clear to me. Four long seconds stretch out before me. A single thought runs through my mind: “I volunteered for this why?”
Unlike Marshall, who went down with nothing more than a long moan, I manage to get a few words out. They are, of course, all curse words. “Fuck!” I say through gritted teeth. “Motherfuck! Goddamn it this really hurts!” I’m saying this as the guys lower me to the mat. I have no idea I’m being lowered to the mat. All I know is that one second I’m standing, the next I’m flat on my belly.
The pain goes on. It’s bad, but there’s something worse, a sense of wrongness that makes the experience truly awful. It is such an unnatural, terrible sensation, as if some horrible alien living inside you was now making a bid for freedom.
Finally, the clicking stops. Five seconds are up and the Taser shuts down. The pain ends with the finality of a slamming door.
I feel insanely relieved. So relieved I just shout “wow, wow, wow” several times before my brain realizes I’m repeating myself. I look into one of the cameras taping me and explain the experience. The phrase “that fucking sucked” comes up a lot.
Now the probes have to come out, the part I feared the most. But after getting tased, they can rip barbed needles out of me all day, I don’t give a rat’s ass.
With the probes out, and band aids in place, I stand up to get ready to film the next victim, our producer, as she takes the hit. As I move behind the camera I realize something wonderful.
My headache is gone.
The Taser cartridge I was shot with.
Pointy, nasty things.
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