On The Tube
Thursday, June 19, 2008
On The Tube
My classmate from primary school became an overnight sensation when he was spotted on the evening news, along with the rest of his family for reasons that I can no longer remember. I vaguely remember my classmate and his two other brothers sitting on the doorstep of his house playing poker cards, doing tricks with them and stuff like that. It does sound somewhat like a dream that I had, but I can assure you that if it was indeed a dream, then somehow everybody in school had the very same one. I think the reporter interviewed his parents or something, and the brief glimpse of his family life sparked off quite a bit of chatter amongst the student body because, well, being on television used to be a very big thing. We were all children, and we all thought the television broadcast center to be some kind of sacred crowds where only the famous and the cool people would hang out. At least that was the perception we got from the television programs we watched while we were young, although we didn't actually know how it all worked. We probably didn't take into consider just how easy it was to be on television - you really only need to do something stupid or outrageous to be featured, anyway. Everybody remembers Michael Fay and the can of spray paint that skyrocketed him to instantaneous fame.
My classmate from primary school became an overnight sensation when he was spotted on the evening news, along with the rest of his family for reasons that I can no longer remember. I vaguely remember my classmate and his two other brothers sitting on the doorstep of his house playing poker cards, doing tricks with them and stuff like that. It does sound somewhat like a dream that I had, but I can assure you that if it was indeed a dream, then somehow everybody in school had the very same one. I think the reporter interviewed his parents or something, and the brief glimpse of his family life sparked off quite a bit of chatter amongst the student body because, well, being on television used to be a very big thing. We were all children, and we all thought the television broadcast center to be some kind of sacred crowds where only the famous and the cool people would hang out. At least that was the perception we got from the television programs we watched while we were young, although we didn't actually know how it all worked. We probably didn't take into consider just how easy it was to be on television - you really only need to do something stupid or outrageous to be featured, anyway. Everybody remembers Michael Fay and the can of spray paint that skyrocketed him to instantaneous fame.
Being on television used to be a big deal, but being on television and be seen by your friends is an even bigger deal. It doesn't matter if you somehow get an hour interview with some reporter and nobody is there to see it. It's tricky to announce to your friends that you are on television in a way that won't make you seem too proud or desperate to be famous, but everybody wants to be in a public medium one way or another. It doesn't matter if you are going to be on television for an interview, for a crime, for an acting job, or for a mere few seconds behind the reporter holding up a peace sign or pointing the finger because it is being broadcast live, everybody wants their little time of fame on television somehow. I remember the first time I caught myself on television, and that was a completely coincidence by any standards. First of all, I wasn't aware that I was being shot by the camera on the streets, and secondly I certainly wasn't expecting myself to be watching the television at the exact moment when they showed that clip of random people walking down Orchard Road. I looked just like any other doofus on the streets, with a blank look and probably an even blanker mind. But that was a long time ago, and I was onscreen for a grand total of half a second before the camera panned elsewhere.
The second time I got featured on television wasn't very glamorous either, at least it didn't get the kind of attention my primary school classmate had when he was featured. It was Christmas, in 2005 or 2003, I really cannot remember which. I was in Taiwan at that time, and there was this Christmas Eve event held at a local community park that was going to be shown on television. It was an outdoors event in the middle of December, but the weather in the morning was rather warm for a winter day. My aunt and uncle drove the both of us to Taipei for this event, simply because my sister wanted to catch her favorite boy band do a gig at that time, and I was just there because she didn't have anybody to go with. This is me, going to an event with boy bands, so you can imagine just how agonized I was before the event even started. The event itself was punctuated with boring cultural dances, even more boring children performing some biblical story on stage, and the mayor at that time gave a speech in a white robe and little plastic angel wings too. The camera just floated around in front of us since we were in the first row, and the three hour event just ended up with my sister being really pumped up and excited about the boy band and I being grumpy and cold at the very same time.
You see, the temperature took a deathly plunge that night for some reason, and I wasn't wearing enough clothes to keep me warm that night. The cold winds blasted at my face in the middle of the park's theater, and I couldn't even hear my thoughts for the most part of the show. My sister urged us to go home as soon as possible that night because she wanted to check out the band on television, since it was supposed to be repeated on television three hours later in the night. We got home, turned on the television, and realized that we were on television for half the time the cameras panned to the audience, since we were right smack in the middle of the first row. There I was, in my thin sweater and hugging myself like a silly eskimo, and then a face of disgust and dread when the boy band did their thing on stage. I swear, that was probably one of the worst public performances ever, and it was even more confusing for the fact that all the young teenage girls - whom my sister was not at that time - were screaming and yelling like a bunch of crazy hyenas. There I was, thinking that the band couldn't get any worse on their studio records, they actually broke through rock bottom and gave us a completely different view of just how bad they could get.
So, it was Christmas Eve and the television program was on the whole night. My face, the grumpy one, was on television for the entire Christmas Eve as well. I'm pretty sure those who caught sight of my face must have involuntarily killed some of their Christmas spirits. Either way, it was a cold night filled with horrible music, and every minute of it was caught on camera for me. Properly documented by expensive cameras and probably recorded and stashed in a giant vault in a television broadcast center somewhere, you are going to find a very unhappy person in a very happy crowd of teenage fans, trying to knife himself with an invisible sword. That was me, my longest feature on the television - how glamorous. I guess I just haven't had a lot of luck with the television crew over the years, with myself either looking like a doofus or a really pissed off person on Christmas Eve. It wasn't a great Christmas, but I thought the whole thing about me being caught on camera in that state was pretty amusing. I mean, my sister was completely oblivious to my state of unhappiness until she saw me on television. Or, maybe I spoke the words of so many other people in Taiwan who thought the same about that boy band. They probably went "That boy said what I wanted to say on national television!" OK, probably not.
Today, some crew from Channel News Asia came into our lecture theater for some filming during Julie Bowker's class, and everybody seemed so death quiet all of a sudden. Julie Bowker probably has the most authority over her classes out of all the lectures I have ever been to, but today the class was exceptionally well-behaved and silent for the most part. It was a little strange, but then I guess none of us wanted her to look bad on television with an out-of-controlled class anyway. So the crew sort of haunted the lecture theater like ghosts, walking around the crowd and around Julie Bowker like spirits of the dead, silently filming the classroom and the students typing away on their computers. It was bad enough that the camera was initially set up right in front of me, but I had to be wearing a black and white striped shirt today that screamed of attention on camera. Now everybody is going to see the doofus in a black and white striped shirt like some convict, typing away on his Macbook and pretending not to be bothered by his past television appearances. April next to me had a close up on her Macbook as well, and I only hoped that their camera wasn't good enough to capture pimples from far.
It must have been because of the film crew that Julie Bowker decided to dress nicely today, but I bet some people dressed up on purpose for sure. I guess it is an genetic thing to want to be on television, even if it is just a glimpse. It's just interesting to see yourself on the tube I suppose, although I haven't had a lot of experiences. I'd like my friends and family to watch that piece of news though, not so much because I am probably going to be in a few frames, but because of what I'd like them to know about the classes I am having and the lecturers that I am having. Of course, not to mention the fact that I am, in fact, studious in class - OK, maybe not. They disappeared through the back doors after about twenty minutes of filming, and Julie Bowker breathed a sigh of relief, obviously being a lot more tensed up before. It's probably not going to be on television until some time next week anyway, and it's probably going to feature about one minute of video out of that twenty they filmed. Anyway, this might be my best moments on television, out of the three times I have been filmed. It'd be like, I don't know, my first breakthrough or something, the first blockbuster. I am surely exaggerating things, but a man is allowed to dream.
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