“IS THIS WHERE I should stand?”
“Yeah, and when I give the signal, I want you to point to the building behind you and start with ‘Coming soon.’ While you’re doing the spiel, we’ll have the camera pan up.”
“Okay.”
Today, we were covering a Tokyo landmark for the umpteenth time—in this case, a brand-new commerce tower. With clear skies and no wind, it was the perfect weather for filming. Despite that, I was freezing and I wanted to get it all done in a single take so I could go the hell home already. I stood patiently with an unaffected smile on my face, awaiting the director’s cue.
Just then, a shadow passed overhead, darkening my vision, the color of my suit, as well as the hand that clutched the mic. Suddenly, it looked like I was standing in a puddle of darkness.
A cloud? On a day as perfect as this? Right as I craned my head up at the apex of the tower, a film crew member gasped.
“It’s a blimp!”
The winter sky was as cold and clear as a frosty lake, but suspended there was a single tiny blimp, trailing its shadow over the earth as it slowly chugged along.
“Is that the Jipang TV logo?”
“Zoom in with the camera!”
“One sec… Wow, it is!”
Around us, the passersby all stopped to marvel at it and take pictures, but I felt differently. That stupid blimp was disrespecting us, ruining our footage by putting a weird shadow and a different network’s logo in the shot, and it pissed me off. But because it was miles above us, we had no way of telling them to move. God, I wish I could reach up and tear off that stupid little gondola with my bare hands! Go away already!
The cameraman read the text on the side of the blimp out loud. “‘A brand-new show combining news and entertainment: Newsment, coming this spring.’ Damn, they’re using a blimp for PR?”
So? Is it any more expensive than putting ads on trains and station pillars?
“Oh, there’s a photo. Who are they?”
“Let’s see. One of ’em is… Ugh, I can’t think of his name, but he’s a veteran newscaster, and the rest…” He listed out a few people who were at the peak of their careers—or, to phrase it like a soulless network exec, people who brought in the numbers.
“Wow, that’s an all-star cast.”
“What time slot is Jipang’s news, anyway? Morning? Evening?”
“No, it’s late-night. I heard the whole story. They ran a drama series and a food show, but neither pulled in enough views, so they decided to fill the whole slot with news instead.”
“For real? Damn, that’s a huge overhaul.”
“Wait, but late-night would mean—”
“It’ll air at the same time as The News.”
The blimp lingered close by, its shadow boring a small black hole in the earth. Well, maybe it wasn’t that close, being up in the sky and all. Never had I despised sunny weather more than I did right now.