Studio Attention




At the station, I got better and better at operating the camera, and got a few more responsibilities in running the shows.

And Electra got lots of attention.

It’s really no surprise, she gets it everywhere.

First, it was just the matter of scheduling, keeping us away from the people that had issues with sylphs.

Then the sound guys started to want to play with her. They’d spend hours, if we let them, recording her voice and experimenting with microphones and filters and so on. The goal was to find a match of settings so that they could record a sylph in conversation with a human in the same studio.

The state of the art at the time was to put one or the other in a sound booth.

So, Electra recited the Preamble to the Constitution about a zillion times.

I recited the opening four paragraphs of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in reply. Because there was just no way I’d be able to do half of the Preamble. I couldn’t quite memorize it because I don’t talk that way.

To be honest, I also don’t usually say, ‘when the drugs began to take hold,’ either, but at least it as more modern grammar.

At the same time, producers were wild to experiment with backdrops and props to film her against. Some were trying to make her look five feet tall. Others were trying to present her as a sylph but keeping her from disappearing as insignificant in the view.

We were staying late the night the circus came to town. We were working with Mark Furrey, who had an afternoon radio call-in show that covered a wide range of topics. He was toying with the idea of moving it to television, and he was playing with the format.

That afternoon, he had me posing as a famous athlete, while Electra interviewed me about my recent successes. He sat in the booth playing around with camera views and stuff.

“So, Mr. Rad, can you tell us a little bit about your sport?” I did not DARE try to compete with Electra’s knowledge of sports and competitions, so I invented one. I was a professional pitchforker. I told her that. “Pitchforker? As in chasing the monster to the castle with torches and pitchforks?”

“Exactly.” We went on for a bit, me making things up and her drawing me out. I really didn’t think Furrey was paying much attention, he just wanted noise being made while he and his crew adjusted things, noted timing, made decisions about the future format, discussing movements with his cameramen. Electra was really challenging me to come up with details, stuff I hadn’t thought up but that she knew would be part of the story.

“No, no,” I was saying. “I didn’t work my way up through torches. Torches are an entirely different discipline all together."

“So, what’s the pipeline for a pitchfork wielding peasant?” she asked.

I was thinking about saying something like mucking out horse stables when the director of the Rock/Disco radio station came into the studio, shouting for Mark.

I picked Electra up and held her while we waited to see if we were done.

Mark and the director talked quietly but urgently in the booth for a bit, then they both came out to where I sat.

“Conrad,” Mark asked, “What do you know about Amelia Anthony?”

Conrad is no dummy. Conrad held up the hand cupping his smart sylph.

“Amelia Kamal was the first person to sylph on live television,” she said. “She had just helped translate for a rescue of the President’s family, and the crew of Air Force One, and she shrank in the Press Briefing Room.” She had been shouting to be heard. The two men waited as she took a couple of deep breaths.

“President Anthony took possession of her from the Secret Service and she’s been a family pet ever since, usually associated with the girls, Melissa and Samantha.”

“And now she’s Amelia Anthony,” Mark said.

“Uh….huh,” Director Thomas said.

“Why?” I asked.



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Index

21. Princess(N)

23. The Anthonys