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The taping of the final episode of Man of the People. The show just wasn't cutting it in terms of P&L. We did 54 episodes, and today's was the biggest audience ever: 107 guests in the audience- we had to bring in extra chairs. The reality of the situation turns out to be that having a full-time staff of eight for 24 minutes once a week just wasn't paying off.
I am deeply saddened by this. I didn't even like the show, but having a live audience in Studio 3 every Friday brought a certain spark and vitality back to the station, which hearkened back to the glory days of Bozo the Clown and Ray Rayner.
As I was leaving work this evening, I passed by the producer who was going up as I was descending the stairwell towards the main exit. We exchanged pleasantries, I complimented her on a good show, and in parting she said "I'll see you later... Actually, no, I won't."
I assume she was going upstairs to pack her stuff into boxes.
That tore my ******* heart out.
For a brief 19 months, we did the best goddamn comedy-news show on local TV anywhere, of all time. And now it's all in the past.
When I was a teenager, my neighbor asked me to look at her dishwasher because it stopped working and I found something almost exactly like this had shorted it out. Yes, we had dishwashers, but it would have been a chore to get out my flash camera and remember to develop the film in those days.
Speaking as someone who goes to sea for a living, I can tell you there is only one rule of the road you need to memorize: the Law of Gross Tonnage. If it's bigger than you, stay out of the way. As far as idiots hitting docks goes, you can't expect much else from deckies.
Speaking as someone who goes to sea for a living, I can tell you there is only one rule of the road you need to memorize: the Law of Gross Tonnage. If it's bigger than you, stay out of the way. As far as idiots hitting docks goes, you can't expect much else from deckies.
A similar concept seems to apply to right-of-way on the roads in many parts of the south.
Still, kind of hard to fault the driver of the riverboat, which was moored at the time, for failing to stay out of the way 65,000 tons of cruise ship barreling towards him.
As for the MSC Opera, reports are that she suffered a loss of bridge controls. The captain dropped anchors and requested tugs to divert the vessel away from the dock, but to no avail.
I am slightly puzzled as to whether comms, even just walkie-talkies, were available to communicate between the bridge and the engine room. Isn't it more or less standard procedure for security officers to be present in both spaces on commercial passenger vessels? You'd think that they'd have been able to communicate independently of whatever bridge controls were inoperative.
A similar concept seems to apply to right-of-way on the roads in many parts of the south.
Still, kind of hard to fault the driver of the riverboat, which was moored at the time, for failing to stay out of the way 65,000 tons of cruise ship barreling towards him.
As for the MSC Opera, reports are that she suffered a loss of bridge controls. The captain dropped anchors and requested tugs to divert the vessel away from the dock, but to no avail.
I am slightly puzzled as to whether comms, even just walkie-talkies, were available to communicate between the bridge and the engine room. Isn't it more or less standard procedure for security officers to be present in both spaces on commercial passenger vessels? You'd think that they'd have been able to communicate independently of whatever bridge controls were inoperative.
Of course you can't blame any vessel that is berthed (hence my comment about deckies). Yes, there are multiple means of communication between the bridge and the engine room. A regular phone system and a sound powered phone system (that doesn't require electricity to function), also the engine order telegraph. Depending upon the ship and how they operate there may be walkie-talkies in use (we always listen in to the deckies during mooring/unmooring operations so we can figure out how long it will be). Can't speak to anything done on cruise ships as I have never worked on one.
If the bridge controls had failed they could at least have switched to engine room control and taken control of the engines. There are many instances of folks not realizing how deep the pile of **** is they are about to hit, and they don't take action in time. All ships now are required to have a VDR (voyage data recorder) system so it can be seen just what happened during an incident. It records data such as speed, position etc as well as voice on the bridge so they can at least find out what was going on there. Supposedly voice recording is going to be installed in engine rooms at some point, unfortunately it can be listened to even when there has not been an incident. Big Brother is watching you.
07-19-2019, 06:48 PM
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