I Want That Job #1

Every year, when the heat arrives on the East Coast, the news thinks the heat is headlining news. The main story is "The Heat." Every year, it arrives earlier than expected, so the weather people tell us about records from the past and how we almost broke them or we did break them. "We" really didn't do anything. The heat happens and we are subject to it. We can hold a thermometer and say, hey look at how hot it is.


Which brings me to the job I'd like to have. CBS was rattling off how to keep your kids safe when the heat comes on (like don't let them play in the car, which is really a good parenting technique in any kind of weather considering children cannot drive so they should not be alone in a car in case, you know, they somehow start it and ram it into a tree or a garden gnome). They went to their field correspondent, who was standing in a park. With an infrared thermometer.

Her segment was about how hot things were. She held the instrument over a patch of grass and read that it was about 97 degrees. Then she went a few feet forward onto concrete and read that it was 103 degrees. Proving that grassy areas are the places we should seek out when we're outside.

Ohhhhh, that's some real good advice. I'm so used to seeing all those people picnic on concrete. Grassy areas! Good idea.

Anyway, then she was showing how playground equipment can get hot in the sun, especially the metal parts. She gave the temperature of swings, steps up to the swings, and slides. Then she read the temperature for a metal bench.


This girl is not screaming because she's having fun. She's screaming because her ass is on fire. Someone should have really checked the temperature of that swing.


At the end of her report, she was standing by for her next segment. You know those thermomemeters that look like clocks? She had a big round one on the dash of a dark truck's dashboard so we could read it through the windshield as it sat in the sun.

I want this job. I want to walk around with a microphone in one hand and a thermometer in another. I want to point an infrared ray at things and read off digital numbers into a camera. I want to make money saying, "Ooh, wow, that's hot!" not in a Paris Hilton way, but in a business-like, reporter way. Next open call, I'm there.