Edward B IrvingAuthor, Magician, Satirist

When You Have a Built-in Fur Coat, Anything is Possible (and Fun)

noreply@blogger.com (Terry Irving) — Sun, 24 Jan 2016 15:31:00 +0000

My Time with Morris Day and the Time

noreply@blogger.com (Terry Irving) — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 15:21:00 +0000

When we interviewed Prince's girlfriend (Aphasia or Azalea or whatever her name was) with her band Vanity Six, the backup band was The Time in beards and overcoats. The disguise was necessary because they were the Main Act--which just involved changing the light grid and removing the fake beards.

They were all spinoffs of the Prince Empire so they had to get along.

We walked the ladies off the stage, hit a light with a star filter we'd prearranged and went to commercial break. Then there was a fistfight among the NABETs to see who would put on the lavaliere mics--the ones where the wire goes down inside your clothes. I do believe that John Bullard won.

The interview and the setup was brilliant. Sadly, it was for the World's Worst TV Show--The Last Word with Gregg Jackson--and to make it worse, it was for the Dress Rehearsal so the interview never aired.

Wow, I used to be able to lie like a used car salesman in those days.

Anesthesia is long gone but Mr. Day is still as wonderful as ever. And if you want a second opinion on that, check the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Meanwhile, The Time is playing Atlantic City.

Two Free Chapters of "Day of the Dragonking"

noreply@blogger.com (Terry Irving) — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 18:01:00 +0000

CHAPTER ONE

The airplane crash woke Steven Rowan.

To be entirely accurate, it wasn’t a crash.

It was the insane screaming of four of the world’s largest jet engines being pushed twenty percent past their factory-recommended maximum thrust only thirty feet over his head.

In addition, awake wasn’t really the correct term for his state of consciousness at that point.

Steve was standing stark naked in the center of the room, jerking back and forth in the classic fight-or-flight reflex—his mind frantically spinning between possibilities, developing and rejecting dozens of possible threats every second, and running through as many options for escape. A small part of his mind was simultaneously working on the less-important questions of who he was, where he was, and what he’d done to himself the night before.

The pulsating howl of the jet began to diminish, but the screaming only grew louder and more intense. Suddenly, Steve fell to his knees, slamming clenched fists into his temples over and over, and screaming at the top of his lungs.

Tears flew from his eyes as he crawled forward and began to pound his head against the glass door to the balcony. A small rational part of his mind wondered that he could be driven to such desperation that he would fill his mind with self-inflicted pain in the vain hope that it would expel the shocking sound, the sheer terror, and the infinite grief.

He felt a sharp spark of agony as the glass cracked.

Suddenly, as blood began to stream down his face, the terrible pain diminished. The confusion and terror, the immense waves of emotions, all of that continued to pour through him, but the anguish had ceased. The massive assault of sound began to break down into hundreds of what he could only think of as voices.

Men and women were screaming, a mother was kissing the top of a tiny head and whispering soothing sounds, a man on a cell phone was frantically dialing and redialing—desperate to leave a message. In contrast, two men were running through a checklist with professional calm, but curses tickled at their throats, fighting to get out.

In the center, he heard a steady sound. A quiet chanting—young voices tinged with success and anticipation.

The glass door exploded.

CHAPTER TWO

Steve opened his eyes at the sound of someone singing about hiding in Honduras and needing “lawyers, guns, and money.”

OK, that was Warren Zevon, so it was probably his phone ringing. On Mondays, he set it to Afroman’s “Because I Got High” just to irritate any senior editorial staff he might run into, but this song pretty well summed up his mood every other day.

He waited patiently until the late Mr. Zevon finished singing about how “the shit has hit the fan” and then listened for the Asian gong that would indicate a phone message.

Instead, Max Weinberg’s driving drumbeat pounded out the syncopated SOS that began Bruce Springsteen’s “We Take Care of Our Own”. Since every journalist knew (but would never report) that this song raised the dead whenever the Boss played within a mile of a graveyard, Steve figured someone was truly serious about talking to him.

In addition, he was curious because he’d deleted it from his phone over a month ago, exhausted by its contrast between the American ideal of “help your neighbor” and the reality of greed and selfishness that was currently sweeping the nation.

“Hello?”

There was a series of clicks and several of those odd changes in the quality of silence that indicate a call is being bounced from machine to machine or area code to area code. Of course, these were also the sounds that you heard when a telemarketer’s robot war-dialer realized it had a fish on the line and switched in the human voice to make the sale.

“Is this a freaking robot?” he said, sharply.

There was a short pause without any clicks. For some reason, Steve thought the caller was thinking.

“Mr. Rowan?” It was a man—the deep and authoritative voice of someone used to giving commands.

“Who the hell wants to know?” Steve hated people with that kind of voice.

Another pause.

“Mr. Stephen Rowan of 14500 Windermere Drive, Apartment D2?” The voice had changed, just slightly. It wasn’t quite as abrasive and superior. Steve thought he could have a conversation with this guy.

“Yes.” Steve’s state of awareness was beginning to recover sufficiently so that it wasn’t taking all of his concentration to talk on the phone. Unfortunately, that allowed him to begin to look around the room.

The smashed sliding door. Glass shards covering the carpet. The dozens of framed photographs he’d hung to remind himself of the good times when he’d worked in cool places were gone. They were in a heap of wood, glass, and photo paper on the other side of his bed. Only one remained. A picture of a Lebanese militiaman with an AK-47 wearing a T-shirt decorated with a picture of an AK-47 and the words “Lebanon War.” He reached over and straightened it.

“Mr. Rowan.” The voice on the phone had changed again. Now it sounded like a person cowering with fear. Hell, this guy was afraid to speak to him. “Umm. Are you busy at the moment?”

Steve looked around the wreckage of his apartment. His cheek tickled and he touched it with a finger. He stared at the blood on his fingertip. “Busy? No, not really.”

“Would you be so kind as to consider possibly doing me a favor?”

Now the voice had gone all the way to obsequious.

“Not until you tell me who the hell you are and what the hell you want.” Steve licked his finger, tasting the blood as if it might tell him something about what had just happened. “And stop sucking up.”

“‘Sucking up’?” There was another series of clicks and silences, and the caller continued in its previous, more confident tone. “Mr. Rowan. Let me ask you a question. Could you use a job?”

Steve reached into his back pocket to check his wallet for his current financial position. Suddenly, he felt a hand stroke his butt. He jumped. When he looked down, he realized it was his own hand because he was still naked. Then, a sudden stab of pain proved that the silvery dust all over him was tiny bits of glass from his broken door and he’d just shoved a shard into his ass. He pulled his hand away sharply and held it out in front of him—carefully examining both sides.

“Mr. Rowan?”

“Oh. Sorry, I was distracted for a second. What...Oh, yeah. I have plenty of money.”

“From your increasingly occasional work as a freelance reporter?”

Steve didn’t say anything. The caller continued.

“How’s that working out for you?”

Steve surveyed his ruined stereo and television and stopped as he saw his metal-cased laptop. It was rolled into a cylinder. He wondered what in hell could do that to an expensive computer. Or at least one that had been expensive when he’d bought it.

“Don’t worry about the laptop. I think you’ll find your telephone will be sufficient.”

Steve’s eyes widened and he slowly pulled the cell phone away from his ear and regarded it carefully—again, front and back. When he turned back to the main screen, his usual home screen picture of the Lebanese militiaman had been replaced by a cartoon of a hand making a “thumbs up” sign.

Steve just stood there and looked at the hand. He knew it was a cartoon because it only had three fingers and a thumb. Somehow, the artist had made it look happy and confident. That worried Steve.

He heard a faint squawking from the phone. He held the phone with only two fingers and raised it gingerly until it was an inch from his ear.

“Mr. Rowan? Can you hear me?”

Steve cleared his throat and answered carefully. “Yes.”

“Good, we can continue.”

“Not until you tell me how you knew about my computer, we can’t.”

“Your computer? Oh, you mean that you were looking at it?”

“Yes. How did you know that I was looking at it?”

The voice sounded more confident, almost comradely. “That’s easy. Look straight out your window. See the apartment building with the exterior stairs?”

“They all have exterior stairs.”

“Well, the one with stairs and exceptionally ugly pink paint.”

“Got it.”

“OK. Look at the left edge of the building and then run your eye straight up.”

Steve saw the gleaming black cube of a building on the other side of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. There were dozens of round white satellite dishes on the roof.

“OK, I see the building across the highway. The NSA or Fort Meade or whatever.”

“Just keep watching.”

Slowly, almost ceremonially, all the dishes on the roof turned, swiveled, swung, or tipped so that they were all pointed straight at him. Without thinking, Steve’s left hand moved to cover his crotch.

He made a noise, but it wasn’t a word. Something between a cough and the beginning of a scream, but definitely not a word. On the top of the black building, all the dishes nodded up and down in what he could only describe as a friendly fashion, and then moved back to their original positions.

“Mr. Rowan?”

Steve cleared his throat again. “I guess you just made that happen.”

“Yes.”

“That was better than anything I ever saw in college, even on mushrooms, but it still doesn’t tell me who you are.”

“No.”

“But it does answer the question of how you could see me.”

“Yes.”

“And demonstrates a certain amount of power over things.”

“Things and quite a few people as well.”

“I would have to say that that remains to be proven, but I can agree that you’ve gone a long way in that direction.”

“Why don’t we leave the rest of your questions for a later time and let me ask you one?”

Steve’s eyes wandered from the roof of the building across the highway. “What am I looking for?” he wondered.

Then he remembered.

“Give me just one more question first.” Steve walked out on the balcony and scanned the horizon as far as he could. “Where is the smoke?”

“Smoke?”

“Smoke. From the crash of the plane that just flew over me.”

“Mr. Rowan. Can I suggest you step back inside? Good. You were frightening several of your neighbors. No, there is no smoke and, as a matter of fact, no airplane. Since there is no airplane, there wasn’t a crash and ergo, no smoke. That’s one of the things I’d like to hire you to investigate.”

Steve thought for a second. “I don’t like it when people say ergo. But we can deal with that later. Right now, I’d like to know why—no wait, let’s begin with how I would investigate the nonexistent crash of an airplane that wasn’t there.”

“You’re getting a bit redundant.”

“You’ll have to live with it. It’s a side effect of the unease I’m feeling due to the stress of this uncommon and aberrant situation.” Steve’s voice rose to a shout. “Stop fucking around and tell me what the hell is going on!”

“Well.” The voice on the phone paused as if choosing the next words carefully. “The jetliner did crash. At the same time, it did not crash.”

“OK, I’m relieved that you made that clear. Now that I understand, I’m hanging up.”

“Mr. Rowan! Wait! Just one more minute.”

Steve didn’t say anything, but he didn’t punch the END symbol, either. He really wasn’t sure why.

“There has been a Change.”

Steve blinked and looked at the phone. He put it back to his ear. “Did you just capitalize the word change?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, I suppose I did. This particular change is a pretty big deal and certainly deserves to be capitalized.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. What do you want me to do about this capitalized concept?”

“Would you work for me? Investigate this Change?”

Steve’s answer was quick and automatic. “I’m an experienced freelancer. I don’t work for just anyone.”

“Really? Not even if it was for the Good of the Nation?”

“Stop talking in capitals and, if you mean working for the government, the answer isn’t ‘no.’ The answer is ‘Hell, No.’”

“I believe those last two words were capitalized.”

Steve’s head felt like it was about to explode. “Possibly.”

“Would it make you feel better if I hired you on a temporary freelance basis?”

Once again, the answer was swift and automatic. “What are you paying?”

“Well, I think I have unlimited funds...”

“Then you’re full of crap. I’m hanging up now.”

The phone began to vibrate in his hand and the voice became agitated. “Mr. Rowan. Don’t do that! It has to be you. No one else observed the airplane!”

Steve’s eyes closed and whatever it was that had woken him up came back with the feeling of a knockout punch. His face twisted up in anguish at the memory of all the people...their terror...their helpless panic. He groaned.

“Mr. Rowan! Are you all right?”

“Not one of my better mornings.”

“I am actually glad to hear that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d hate to think of what it might take to cause a worse morning. What’s your daily rate?”

“Five hundred dollars. Double over ten hours.” Steve always held out hope even though he hadn’t made over three-fifty a day for the past decade.

“You’ve got it.”

Steve opened his eyes. “Plus expenses?”

“Expenses and the use of a car.”

“A car?” Steve walked over and looked out to the space in the parking lot where he’d parked his light-blue Prius. He thought it was still there, but it was difficult to tell because an enormous jet engine was smoking sullenly on top of the entire row of parked cars.

He could make out some twisted pieces of light-blue plastic in his usual parking space.

“I guess I will need a car.”

“Good. Then we are in business, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Good. I’ve got some things to do right now, but I’d appreciate it if you could begin immediately.”

Steve slowly turned around and looked at his apartment. His clothes looked as though they’d been attacked by a knife-wielding fashion critic. He touched his laptop and it rolled away, revealing fluttering bits of paper that he deduced must be his stack of notebooks. One of his shoes was lying by his right foot. He picked it up and slowly poured broken glass out onto the floor. “I’m going to need to be paid up front, I think.”

“Not a problem. Just answer the door.” There was the synthetic clicking sound that cell phones made to indicate the end of a call.

“Answer the—”

There was a firm knock on his door.

Wonderful Review of Day of the Dragonking by Christy Birmingham on Poetic Parfait.

noreply@blogger.com (Terry Irving) — Sun, 29 Mar 2015 19:54:00 +0000

Book Spotlight: Day of the Dragonking by Terry Irving

7 Replies

Cover of Day of the Dragonking by Terry Irving. Photo via Amazon.com.

Hello and happy reading to all! Today I am chatting about the latest book I read. It is Terry Irving’s Day of the Dragonking, which is Book One of The Last American Wizard series. It is a fantasy book that is one heck of a wild ride!

The Day of the Dragonking features Steve Rowan as the last American wizard and Ace Morningstar, a female Navy SEAL who has orders to defend Steve… Well, unless it comes down to defending him or his cell phone, in which case the cell takes precedence.

Let me back up a bit. Steve didn’t realize that saving the world was all on his shoulders until he saw a plane crash in the parking lot of his apartment building and then, soon after, a dragon consumed it. Yes. You read that right. It turns out Steve can see OTN (“Other Than Normal”) phenomena in the world, which no one else can unless they use special glasses. So, nobody saw or heard the crash except Steve. Now it’s up to him to figure out why the plane was crashed by suicide bombers and…

…Oh yes, the cell phone. This part made me laugh throughout the book because I know the author Terry Irving personally, he is my friend, and he has a great wit about him.

(you want to know more, head on over to Poetic Parfait. It's worth the trip regardless.)

Tales of Lt. Charles H. Kirk of the 15th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry in the late Rebellion

noreply@blogger.com (Terry Irving) — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 16:08:00 +0000

(I am the great-grandson of First Lt. Charles H. Kirk, Historian of the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry (Antietam, Stone River, Chickamaugua, Lookout Mountain, Cherokee Indian Battles, Andersonville Prison, Pursuit of Jeff Davis, etc.

Here is a bit of his story of the action at Stone River where he carried no weapon–only the company flag (or guidon):
“At this time a party of Confederate Cavalry was seen in our front, making good time for Murfreesboro, and instantly the boys took up the cry, ‘There they go! Charge them” Go for them!” Major Ward, who was close to me, yelled, “Not, don’t go!. My orders are to only go this far.” Still the yells continued. Some of the men advancing, the Major said, “Damn you! If you will go, I’ll go too, CHARGE!” and then all started, without semblance of formation, most of them down the road and others through a gate across a corn field, where the stalks had been cut and put in shocks. I was yelling as loud as anyone and waiving my guidon like I had seen in pictures, but had never done the like of it before or since, when, somehow, I don’t know exactly how, the stick of the guidon got caught in a corn shock, and my next recollection was lying on the ground trying to remember what happened.
…(alone, Lt. Kirk attempted to find his unit)…
As I got nearer, I saw they they had a butternut-colored uniform, instead of the blue we wore, I was too close to them to stop my horse, and doubt if I could have done so anyhow, but in a flash came to me the drill with lances I had seen when I visited my brother Will in his regiment, Rush’s Lancers. Down came my guidon to a “Charge Lance.”

My first adversary sat stolidly on his horse, fingering the trigger of his musket, his comrades were in the rear of him but all my thoughts were on him and I think his were on this peculiar weapon I carried, and his ignorance of its effectiveness magnified its power, for when I got within a dozen paces of him he dropped his musket to the ground and raised his right hand in token of surrender. the others followed his example and for a few moments I had four prisoners on my hands.”

Personal History - 1989

noreply@blogger.com (Terry Irving) — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 15:14:00 +0000

1989-The End of History

(Written in September 2003)

A year or so ago, when we were struggling to get my teenage daughter through a crisis, her psychiatrist was looking for problems that might have been handed down from my side of the family. "Have you ever spent long periods of time working without sleep?" she asked. 'Yes." I answered. "1989." "Oh. Did you work long hours often back then?" "No," I said. "I didn't sleep for the entire year of 1989."

Perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration but I certainly can't remember getting much sleep as Nightline powered through the fall of the Berlin Wall, the protest and massacre at Tienanmen Square and the release of Nelson Mandela Yes, I was able to be a part of the best television news production staff in the world and help present the most important stories of my generation...but we all paid a high price for those front row seats.

Exhaustion is a relative term. I'm not talking about being tired -1 mean the kind of bone-deep weariness where, when a doctor tells you that you've been walking around with pneumonia for the previous three weeks, you realize that you couldn't tell the difference between the tremendous energy drain of the illness and the normal fatigue of your daily life.

I was well aware of the toll that it took on the producers - exhaustion was the norm and the team I had started with back in 1981 were dropping away. The rational ones left before they burned out. I wasn't particularly rational. I wasn't aware of the toll it was taking on Ted.

Ted had always seemed indomitable--serene in the face of 24-hour days and impossible deadlines. He was the driving force that gave birth to a production team whose working mottoes were "Failure is Death" and "That which doesn't kill me, makes me stronger".

But he didn't inspire us out of fear - at least not the simple fear of being fired. It was that you just didn't want to disappoint him - fail to rise to his expectations. It was, and still is, the best working environment I've ever been in and within it, I created the best work I've ever done.

I had the unique pleasure of working with a group of producers - brilliant people, for the most part, but generally moody, arrogant and egotistical - as a team. In many ways, it felt like I imagine what it feels like within the tight bond of a frontline combat unit.

Ted's expectations kept rising along with our achievements. If you could do an immense story in two days, wouldn't it be interesting if you did it in one? Couldn't we tell an old story in a new way? Without a correspondent? Or shot and edited and on the air faster than any other news show? Or with a depth and complexity that only PBS documentaries with months of lead-time had attempted before? Or perhaps all of those challenges combined?

With the prime-time special on Tienanmen Square, Ted did just that as he threw us into doing an hour special with no correspondents, to be shot within three weeks after the events of June 4th and edited in seven days. We did it of course. There really was never an alternative.

I came into the Tienanmen Square project already in pretty bad shape. There may have been time in-between but my memory insists that I had just finished covering the Berlin Wall. That had been unbelievable highs and lows smashed into one week.

Coming through Checkpoint Charlie on Tuesday, with the eerie fluorescent lights and the border guards taking a grim pleasure out of every bureaucratic delay and every opportunity to demonstrate your powerlessness. Racing through the same maze two days later, brandishing my passport and press card and getting waved through with bemused grins.

Truly, the world had changed forever.

But there had also been mornings where I found myself sitting behind the platform where we did the live stand-ups - sitting on the curb with a series of 24 hour days behind me and the awful knowledge that it was now 730am in Berlin and I had to start all over again. Knowing in my head that I had just pulled off an almost impossible job and feeling in my heart that it wasn't good enough.

So I was in terrific shape heading in to Tienanmen Square.

The scale of the project was massive and demanding. Ted, his hand-picked experts and some of the producers went into Beijing where they got a Nightline program out virtually every day under martial law conditions while compiling the material for the special.

In Hong Kong, over a thousand tapes were cataloged and shelved and 4 edit rooms were constructed in less than a week - while cutting and feeding all those daily pieces.

When Ted and the others finally came out of Beijing, the real work began.

Now, I am certainly wrong, but I cannot remember working on a Nightline show where Ted wrote the majority of the copy. He always wrote the opening scene-setter, the questions were always all his but always ad-lib - the correspondents wrote all the prepared material. After almost 8 years at Nightline, Tears of Spring" was the first time I edited off a script Ted had written.

I know I shouldn't say this but I was surprised - he was pretty damn good! Better than any correspondent I had ever worked with. Smart, smooth and cut to fit the pictures like a glove. As I cut the first piece in the show, I wondered why he hadn't written more.

The first segment of the special went well -1 had maps of Tienanmen Square with all the camera locations marked; timecodes matched so that I could tell what happened where and when, bilingual students to translate the shouts of crowds and the orders of soldiers. Eric Wray edited like a madman as I chain-smoked weird Japanese cigarettes and screened for the next shot. It was done, Ted liked it and it went off to the states.

Then I turned to the final segment. I hadn't paid the slightest bit of attention to it while we worked on the open and now it was one of those impossible tasks. I screened frantically for material - if I never see another Chinese government television program on the bok choi harvest I will die a happy man. Then, before I had a chance to rough cut a piece, Ted gave me a script and I got the word not to screw around with it but just to get it done..

It was then I realized that I wasn't the only exhausted person in this operation. The script had clearly been written just to get the damn show finished. It was all concepts and wrap-up with no flow, no beauty, and no writing to pictures. Every other segment in the special was the exact opposite -good pictures and intense interviews working in tandem with the script's concepts and background.

I took a big chance. Instead of cutting the script as written, I frantically scoured the remaining tapes and began to construct a video piece that could work. I knew that this was very clearly against orders but I just couldn't let all the effort put into the show fall in a heap in the last scene.

Ok, total pride and arrogance on my part, but I wasn’t terribly rational at that point.

That took all night. In the morning, I came in to see Ted with the tape and a torturously-worded request that he consider re-writing to match the pictures. His mouth tightened and I suspect he was about to tell me to get the hell back in there and just cut to what he'd written. But, something changed in his face and he took the scratch tape and said he'd take a look.

An hour later, he walked in with a new script that was not at all what I had roughed out - no, it was much much better. It had emotion and clarity and it cut to the pictures like they had been shot to order, The edit was smooth as butter - great shots seemed to show up whenever we needed them and the final shot - anonymous fingers making a "V" sign through the closed doors on a departing bus was perfect

The final segment was hand-carried to Washington and we were done. Except that when the show aired, Ted did something else I'd never seen: he failed to show up to anchor the live Nightline that followed the special. Charlie Gibson did a good job subbing in as Ted lay in a Hong Kong hospital - flattened by a nasty Chinese lung infection Drought on by complete exhaustion.

Somewhere in here, the 10th Anniversary of Nightline came and went with remarkably little fanfare - even Ted seemed uninterested, just tired of the whole thing.

The end of this story comes just a short while later. In 1990, we all crashed into South Africa for the release of Nelson Mandela. For me, it was a disaster. South Africa, with its 72-hour edit sessions, a diet of triple-strength instant coffee and round-the-clock airtime; was to be my last Nightline experience and it was a walk through hell.

When we were finished, I slept for 12 hours and then took an early plane back to the States. Arriving at the airport, I couldn't find enough money in rand to pay the cabdriver so I gave him my favorite Olympus camera in exchange for about $5 worth of fare and tip.

I cant remember thinking about anything the whole flight home but I don't think I slept.

The stone that broke the camel's back was a joke. About a week later, I returned to a story about two car dealers competing for sales - it was one of those January stories I usually managed to avoid.

Every January, in the creative rush of a new beginning, we would suggest these damn things. A good idea as a piece, but a lousy idea as a show; they turned into albatrosses - endlessly re-edited in the vain hope that it would inspire a great Nightline.

I was on the third re-edit of this sad monster when I got a phone call. I was going to be given a correspondent to turn this dross into gold. My hopes rose. Then I was told who the correspondent was - it was like throwing an anchor to a drowning man.

For the first time in my life, I stood up and announced that I simply couldn't do it and walked out of ABC. A day later, I checked myself into a hospital - it was the only way I could think of to keep from going back work (and to prevent the correspondent I'd walked out on from tracking me down and making me even more nuts. There are times when drastic measures have to be taken.).

I now know that, for me, exhaustion was a symptom and not the cause of my problems. A demon was driving me - no matter how well I did, no matter how many Emmys I won -1 remained convinced that I was inadequate and a failure. So, I kept working longer and harder in a desperate attempt to catch up.

It was a lousy way to live but I also realize that I did some excellent work on the best show on television and I'm grateful for the chance and proud of the accomplishment. I've had experts tell me that no rational person would sacrifice so much 'just for television'. I disagree. I still think of what that incredible team did as something challenging and worthwhile and even, glorious. And it was endlessly attempting to live up to Ted's high opinion of us, of what we could accomplish, of what we had inside that could be brought out - that made it possible.

The end of this story comes about 6 weeks later, when I returned to Nightline. At some point that evening, I walked into Ted's office and sat down on his incredibly ugly mirrored couch. Ted was slouched in his chair with his feet up.

What surprised me were his first comments. He said that he wondered if all this was really worth it - whether the frantic pace and the exhaustion and the toll on families was worth any amount of money or fame. He was concerned with my well-being but it was clear that it was resonating with something inside him as well.

We both made well-meaning comments and, soon, I left for another show and then, finding that doing any other field production after Nightline was a pale reflection of the real thing; took a buyout and went to find other goals and dreams to pursue.

What impresses me is what I saw Ted do over the next year. Instead of quitting, or continuing to do the same old show and inevitably start 'mailing it in'; he completely re-invented the show in the second decade.

He started to write and he really is one of the best writers in television news. He went to field shoots in American home towns and African refugee camps. He took more time off and came back rejuvenated. He broke the iron rule that the show had to be live and that he had to be locked in the chair every night.

My pride won't let me say that Nightline became better after the first decade but it became a new and exciting show - one that continued to capture the audience because it continued to capture the interest of the guy at the helm.

A guy who continues to ask more from his staff than any other staff in television - and continues to get it.

(Written in September 2003)