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Selling papers.

Cer­tain jobs are more than jobs. Every edi­tor who’s writ­ten a head­line knows this. Say you are vio­lently mur­dered tomor­row. If you’re a sys­tems ana­lyst, the head­line on your mur­der story won’t read SYSTEMS ANALYST DEAD IN GRISLY SLAYING. (In some smaller mar­kets, the slay­ing will be “GRIZZLY” for the first few hun­dred papers. Until an edi­tor we’ll call “Kirk” stops the presses and swal­lows five Val­ium in lieu of beat­ing the offender with a pica pole.) No, you’ll be “local man” or “woman, 42,” but never “sys­tems ana­lyst,” and not because it’s too long for the head­line. Accoun­tants have the same problem.

Now, say you’re a nurse. Or a teacher. Or a dancer. But espe­cially a nurse. Noth­ing like nurs­ing to spice up a head­line. NURSE FOUND STABBED TO DEATH IN APARTMENT — now there’s one to goose street sales. It doesn’t mat­ter that the victim’s job had noth­ing to do with the crime. Some jobs sim­ply tran­scend such triv­i­al­i­ties. The death is not just a loss to the victim’s fam­ily and friends, a blow to the peace of the com­mu­nity; it’s one less nurse in the world. No one gives a crap about sys­tems analysts.

I must point out the obvi­ous — that many of these jobs-that-aren’t-just-jobs have dis­tinct erotic over­tones. Admit it: When your mind’s eye envi­sioned the stabbed nurse, didn’t you see her (never him; a male nurse would be “local man”) sprawled out in a short white dress with a spread­ing blood stain, starched cap askew? Of course you did, you pervert.

(Man, I can’t wait to see the Google ads on this one.)

Teach­ers are another. It’s more under­stand­able with teach­ers; a dead teacher calls to mind a class­room full of sad chil­dren strug­gling to under­stand why Mrs. Who­ever won’t be back the rest of the year, in fact for­ever. You think of hushed con­fer­ences at the class­room door between the flus­tered sub and the prin­ci­pal, of the grief coun­selors who will soon be descend­ing in an unmarked van, each car­ry­ing a box of Kleenex.

(True story: Alan once sent a story about those satel­lite trivia com­pe­ti­tions in bars to the copy desk. The open­ing anec­dote was about a grade-school teacher who spent three nights a week sip­ping cran­berry juice in her favorite tav­ern, play­ing elec­tronic trivia con­tests. A copy edi­tor replaced her actual name with her online han­dle, so hor­ri­fied was she that we were TELLING THE WORLD that a TEACHER goes to A BAR. The next time some­one men­tions the olden days, when teach­ers used to have to resign when they got preg­nant, remem­ber we haven’t come so far.)

Doc­tor, lawyer — these are also more-than-jobs. But not all the pro­fes­sions qual­ify. ENGINEER KILLED IN STREET-DISPUTE CROSSFIRE…nah, just doesn’t work. Even den­tists are bor­der­line; no one ever wrote a suc­cess­ful one-hour TV drama about hot den­tists in love. But a dancer? Oooh, yes. Doesn’t mat­ter if the dece­dent hadn’t put on toe shoes, or tap shoes, or even a span­gly thong, for years. Once a dancer, always a dancer.

Go ahead, try it at home. Insert your job title in any of the fol­low­ing headlines:

(BLANK) DIES IN SHOTGUN SLAYING
MAN HELD IN BLUDGEONING OF LOCAL (BLANK)
POLICE SAY (BLANK) ‘FOUGHT HARD’ WITH KNIFE-WIELDING KILLER

Some abbre­vi­a­tion is allowed. If you’re the sec­ond vice-president in charge of cor­po­rate dona­tions for a well-established char­ity, you can call your­self NON-PROFIT EXEC. But not TYCOON.

OK, then. You can tell it’s exer­cise sea­son again, because these are the things I think about on long bike rides. Noth­ing like shar­ing the road with cars to get one think­ing of death and headlines.

Blog­gage:

Ken Levine’s going to build a fran­chise on his “Amer­i­can Idol” post-mortems alone. This one isn’t his best per­for­mance over­all, dawg, but he starts out so strong — Get­ting it out of the way first, San­jaya, with the new mohawk hair­style is now just the Gimp from “Pulp Fic­tion” — that I’ll keep him around another week. (I missed much of Idol last night; kept switch­ing back to “Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows” on Flix. I came in 30 min­utes late, but found it mes­mer­iz­ing. How can you not love a movie that fea­tures both a gull-wing Mer­cedes SL and a Miles Davis score? Of course it’s not sched­uled again for DVRing. Drat. Good luck find­ing that one at my local Blockbuster.)

Laura Lippman’s hav­ing quite a week: NYT best­seller list, full-page ad in NYT, and shoot­ing a cameo on “The Wire.”

A few weeks ago I men­tioned I was doing a radio essay, on a topic that failed to grab the atten­tion of all the print edi­tors I usu­ally deal with. Work­ing title: “Elmore Leonard’s Mas­ter Class on Detroit.” It came out…just OK. (My crit­i­cisms are all of myself and my stu­pid voice, not the pro­duc­tion, which was excel­lent.) It aired last week, so I’m embed­ding the MP3 file here. (Requires Quick­Time.) There­after it will live in The Clip File. And I recorded another this week, which I like bet­ter. It’s nice to learn new things at my age.

In honor of the impend­ing release of “Grind­house,” Kim Mor­gan assem­bles a list of her favorite car movies. As a Detroit par­ti­san, let me point out that no one makes movies like this about Toy­ota Cam­rys. (And the Mini Cooper chase scene in “The Ital­ian Job” doesn’t count. That was just a big fat prod­uct place­ment.) Got any favorite car movies? You know where to discuss.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 9:58 am
in Media, Movies.

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44 responses to
“Selling papers.”

  1. Peter said on March 28th, 2007 at 10:06 am

    Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows (l’ancanseur pour l’echefaud, if I recall) is cer­tainly a great film — bet­ter than any­thing Truf­faut pushed out. If you like that one, you’re ready for hard core — try “Bob le flam­beur” (Bob the Gam­bler) or Le Samourai from Jean Pierre Melville — superb!!

  2. John said on March 28th, 2007 at 10:13 am

    I must have seen Van­ish­ing Point ten times in high school as it was always the B movie of a drive-in dou­ble feature.

  3. Kirk said on March 28th, 2007 at 10:22 am

    Thanks, Nance, it’s always nice to be remem­bered. As you know, the same prin­ci­ple applies to fatal acci­dents and — espe­cially — sex crimes.

    And a ver­sion of it still comes into play in pho­tos, too. A pic­ture of some­one rid­ing a bicy­cle, play­ing catch, eat­ing ice cream or engag­ing in any num­ber of every­day activ­i­ties doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily make for an arrest­ing image. But put that per­son in Amish cloth­ing, and you can’t keep the pho­tog­ra­phers away. The same used to apply to nuns, but they’re not as pop­u­lar anymore.

  4. Dorothy said on March 28th, 2007 at 10:23 am

    ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT DIES IN SHOTGUN SLAYING

    MAN HELD IN BLUDGEONING OF LOCAL SECRETARY

    Both of them kind of give me the creeps. Maybe I should change jobs? And I’ll work on avoid­ing any­one who looks like they mighit blud­geon me.

  5. Kirk said on March 28th, 2007 at 10:29 am

    “Admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant” isn’t too sexy, but “sec­re­tary” can have the same kind of head­line appeal as “nurse.”

  6. Dorothy said on March 28th, 2007 at 10:48 am

    I was think­ing the same thing, Kirk. I don’t know exactly why “sec­re­tary” is no longer what we are sup­posed to call our­selves. “Admin­is­tra­tive Assis­tant” is a real mouth­ful. Really we just say “admin” most of the time.

  7. brian stouder said on March 28th, 2007 at 11:00 am

    When I read this a day ago, I thought it wouldn’t have made the news if the Wal­Mart exec­u­tive were a man…but then thought it might still…but it wouldn’t have been news in the 1960’s…

    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​1​7​7​7​1​3​7​2​/​s​i​t​e​/​n​e​w​sweek/

    (an excerpt)

    Law­suits are always writ­ten to make the tar­get look guilty. But even by those stan­dards, the coun­ter­suit filed last week by Wal-Mart against Julie Roehm is a dev­as­tat­ing nar­ra­tive. It alleges that before being fired in Decem­ber, Roehm, for­merly the retailer’s top ad exec­u­tive, broke com­pany rules by accept­ing meals and gifts, acted uneth­i­cally to steer Wal-Mart’s $580 mil­lion account to an agency with which she’d dis­cussed tak­ing a job — and most sen­sa­tion­ally, car­ried on an affair with a sub­or­di­nate, Sean Wom­ack. The law­suit offers what it says are excerpts of their e-mails (“I think about … lit­tle moments like watch­ing your face when you kiss me”), quotes an anony­mous co-worker who saw them “pinned against the wall in an inti­mate pose” at a bar, and alleges that Wom­ack told his wife how many times he and Roehm had sex on busi­ness trips.

    say — saw this about local fave The Sopranos

    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​1​7​8​2​8​0​0​9​/​s​i​t​e​/​n​e​w​sweek/

    this reviewer thinks it will end in a mess

  8. Danny said on March 28th, 2007 at 11:17 am

    I know I am prob­a­bly steal­ing Connie’s thun­der, but the first occu­pa­tion that came to mind was librar­ian. Every­one knows the type. Long, mouse-brown hair kept in a tight bun. Small frame glasses that only par­ti­laly hide deeply beau­ti­ful, brown eyes. Dark gray, skirt and jacket with white blouse that comes to up to the neck. Sen­si­ble shoes (but with a heel) and dark or opaque stock­ings. All designed to hide any clue of her real sensuality.

    At least, that is what I have heard about librarians.

  9. Jessica said on March 28th, 2007 at 11:24 am

    Didn’t the Bob Newhart show have a Den­tist in Love sub­theme? Not to men­tion Den­tal Assis­tant in Love sub-subtheme?

  10. LA mary said on March 28th, 2007 at 11:28 am

    My mother in law was a librar­ian, and she was noth­ing like that. She was born to be a mother in law first, a librar­ian second.

  11. Marcia said on March 28th, 2007 at 11:37 am

    Waaah. Nancy, you’re scar­ing me.

  12. MarkH said on March 28th, 2007 at 11:47 am

    Danny, you just described per­fectly Donna Reed in Jimmy Stewart’s alt-life mightmare.

  13. jcburns said on March 28th, 2007 at 12:00 pm

    DESIGNER HELD IN BLUDGEONING OF LOCAL CLIENT

  14. brian stouder said on March 28th, 2007 at 12:00 pm

    And Bed­ford Falls didn’t high­light the clas­sic small-town news­pa­per editor.…although May­berry used to! Every­time Barney’s name got in the paper, it was “Bernard Fike” — which made him mad every time!

    Speak­ing of librar­i­ans, though — many many (many) years ago, my mom would take me down the block when the library truck came (Tues­days, I think) and the librar­ian was a crusty old white-haired guy (think of a grungy Cap’n Crunch fig­ure) who was ALWAYS smoking!

    So in my sub­con­cious — THAT is the clas­sic librar­ian (not to say contrarian!)

  15. nancy said on March 28th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    Mar­cia, you may be too young to remem­ber one of the most noto­ri­ous dou­ble homi­cides in Colum­bus in the ‘80s — the slay­ing of two NURSES in a small lab just off the ER at River­side Hos­pi­tal. (Kirk, I am cer­tain, is not.) It was such a spooky crime, not just for the obvi­ous idea that some­one could kill (with a knife? I think) two able-bodied women so close to one of the busiest ERs in the city. You also had to con­sider that he’d done so, then slipped out, cov­ered with blood, and no one thought any­thing of it, because of course you expect to see bloody peo­ple in the ER.

    The crime went unsolved for years until one of the vic­tims’ hus­bands was killed in a shootout with the FBI down in Florida. He’d evaded sus­pi­cion and slipped out of town after a decent inter­val. It was only when he died in the prover­bial hail of gun­fire that cops fig­ured out he prob­a­bly wasn’t inno­cent in the mur­der of his wife, years earlier.

    But yeah, that was one time when des­ig­nat­ing the victim’s job actu­ally was rel­e­vant to the story. Essen­tial, even.

    It also seemed to under­line a depress­ing real­ity in too much vio­lence: Maybe it’s the junkie look­ing for drugs in the hos­pi­tal, and maybe it’s the black-ops gov­ern­ment agent seek­ing to silence the med­ical researcher for learn­ing too much about the sus­pi­cious deaths down in the morgue, but more likely than not, it’s the husband.

  16. Marcia said on March 28th, 2007 at 12:12 pm

    Um, yeah, thanks so much for that last paragraph.

    Any­way. I did read about that crime in a his­tory of River­side book some­one had.

    I always fig­ure if any­one does me in at work it will be a par­ent who has lost cus­tody from Children’s Ser­vices. We get threat­ened with that sort of thing fairly fre­quently – not death so much as using vio­lence to take a baby.

  17. Kirk said on March 28th, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    Yes, I remem­ber that one too well, and how the hos­pi­tal peo­ple kept try­ing to chase our reporters away. “Spooky” is an apt descrip­tion. It made peo­ple feel how I felt for a few days after JFK got popped: If they can get the pres­i­dent, they sure as hell can get me. (The miss­ing logic of why they would want to bother escaped me, of course; I was, after all, only 11.)

  18. LA mary said on March 28th, 2007 at 1:10 pm

    There was that hor­ri­ble mur­der of seven nurses by Richard Speck in Chicago in the six­ties as well. I remem­ber one nurse sur­vived by hid­ing under a bed.

  19. Kirk said on March 28th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

    That might be the cham­pion all-time nurse-murder story. Wasn’t it deter­mined that he had weird chro­mo­somes that made him a rav­ing, mur­der­ous psychopath?

  20. Susan Gillie said on March 28th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    I started with my offi­cial title,
    Line cook dies in shot­gun slay­ing. Won’t sell papers.….
    I padded the resume,
    Man held in blud­geon­ing of local chef. Now, we’re get­ting some­where.….
    Then I remem­bered, I write a dopey lit­tle food col­umn for a nascent (read, ama­teur­ish) blog.
    Police say Food Writer Fought Hard with Knife-Wielding Killer.
    Oh yea, hot.

  21. Lance said on March 28th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    The Minis in “The Ital­ian Job” were an homage to the orig­i­nal movie.

  22. MarkH said on March 28th, 2007 at 1:27 pm

    Absolutely, Lance. As well as to the chase vehi­cles, the Ital­ian State Police Car, my beloved Alfa Romeo Giu­lia Super! THAT makes the orig­i­nal per­fer­able to me anytime.

    Susan, you should be doing more than writ­ing a “dopey lit­tle food col­umn”, my friend.

  23. nancy said on March 28th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    The Minis in “The Ital­ian Job” were an homage to the orig­i­nal movie.

    Ouch. I stand cor­rected. That’s why you get for not watch­ing enough orig­i­nals, I guess.

  24. Danny said on March 28th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

    Danny, you just described per­fectly Donna Reed in Jimmy Stewart’s alt-life mightmare.

    Mark, that is too funny. Ever since I first saw that movie I thought of Donna Reed as one of the most beau­ti­ful women to grace this planet. I guess I really inter­nal­ized that and didn’t real­ize as I was typ­ing that I was totally but, sub­con­sciously think­ing of her.

    Michelle Pfeif­fer kinda had that same look, but as an admin by day, Cat Woman by night, in one of the Bat­man movies.

  25. Kirk said on March 28th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

    Danny, I was involved sev­eral years ago in a “TV Land”-type dis­cus­sion in which sev­eral guys recounted lust­ing after Shel­ley Fabares when she was on “The Donna Reed Show.” I said, “Hey, I thought her mom was pretty strong.”

  26. brian stouder said on March 28th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

    and one occu­pa­tion that will ALWAYS get the head­line —  is ‘dominitrix’

    (“Cops cite domini­trix for fail­ure to yield”)

  27. LA mary said on March 28th, 2007 at 4:41 pm

    I used to have a dom­i­na­trix as a next door neigh­bor. She drove a per­fectly restored 1964 black cadil­lac with the license plate,
    “SUBMIT.” Surpis­ingly, she and her hus­band, broke up. She was busy with her job, which required fre­quent flights to UK. I guess her ser­vices were very pop­u­lar there.

  28. michaelj said on March 28th, 2007 at 4:43 pm

    Den­tists aren’t juicy as mur­der vic­tims, but I think they rev up head­lines when they com­mit may­hem. (We knew they were all for­mer Nazi tor­tur­ers; why would any­one want a career inflict­ing pain?) It’s also inter­est­ing to me that pro­fes­sions and, par­tic­u­larly, voca­tions that extract the most empa­thy and bathos for vic­tims evoke max­i­mum pruri­ent inter­est in mur­der­ers and molesters.

  29. brian stouder said on March 28th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

    Way way back when I was a kiddo (and had hair!) and worked in a super­mar­ket, was when I first met a gen­uinely scarey person.

    He was a bit­ter old divorced meat cut­ter (back when they cut meat in super­mar­kets!); he had no end of black-hearted the­o­ries of the world.

    Quite an eye-opener for a 16 year old

  30. michaelj said on March 28th, 2007 at 5:00 pm

    Now that I think about it, there’s also a decided inverse value involved in this cal­cu­la­tion. The less jazzy a head­line mur­der vic­tim your job or cir­cum­stance make you, the more likely it is that you make a fas­ci­nat­ing mur­derer. Spin­ster Librar­ian Aunts in Bach­e­lor Caller Ser­ial Mur­ders. Autopsy Finds Traces of Elder­berry Wine and Arsenic.

  31. Danny said on March 28th, 2007 at 5:10 pm

    Hahaha. Good one Michael.

    Hey, Brian, what you posted reminded me of the recent story about the guy who killed and dis­mem­bered his girl­friend and cooked her remains to ashes on his grill over a two day period. The author­i­ties were called because of the smoke and smell but, he was even suc­cess­ful at allay­ing the fears of the fire depart­ment by telling them every­thing was under con­trol. One neigh­bor was curi­ous because he was usu­ally invited to bar­be­cues at this guy’s place, but the guy told him he was cook­ing for a wed­ding (oh, the irony of that remark).

    Some­one wrote that the woman must have been his “grillfriend.”

  32. brian stouder said on March 28th, 2007 at 5:10 pm

    what a great play! (the movie is ok, too) I played Teddy Brew­ster in our high school play, and had big fun

  33. Bob said on March 28th, 2007 at 6:23 pm

    Brian, it’s “dom­i­na­trix”, not “domini­trix”. How can you hope to find what you’re look­ing for, if you don’t spell it right?

  34. LA mary said on March 28th, 2007 at 7:01 pm

    The Dom­i­na­trix would cor­rect his spelling for him.

  35. Danny said on March 28th, 2007 at 9:18 pm

    Nancy, your voice sounds fine. I hate the sound of my voice too when I hear a record­ing of it. I think most peo­ple do.

    I won­der why it is that A) my voice sounds dif­fer­ent in my head than from a record­ing, but B) when I do an imper­son­ation of some­one, oth­ers can think that I nail it. To me, an imper­son­ation should suf­fer from the same audi­tory per­cep­tion skewing.

    Hmmm. Now I must get back to crunch­ing numbers.

  36. ashley said on March 28th, 2007 at 9:35 pm

    There’s no way “Pro­fes­sor” will ever make it as a head­line — at least, not as a vic. As a perp, yes: PROFESSOR SLAYS GERMAN TOURISTS.

    So the best I can hope for is my role as fam­ily man: FATHER OF THREE BLUDGEONED TO DEATH.

  37. basset said on March 28th, 2007 at 9:52 pm

    >(back when they cut meat in supermarkets!)

    reminds me of the time my younger brother had a part-time job help­ing out at the local mar­ket in a small town in south­west­ern Indi­ana back in the Sixties.

    He wrapped up a… well, let’s just call it an arti­fi­cial phal­lus of remark­able, although not humanly impos­si­ble, length, girth and pink­ness… on one of those foam-plastic meat trays, stuck the shrink wrap around it and a price sticker on top, then set the whole pack­age out in the cooler among the ham­burger and the stew meat.

    I for­get exactly what the price was per pound, it got snapped up pretty quickly though.

  38. cce said on March 29th, 2007 at 8:13 am

    Land­scape Archi­tect fought hard with gun wield­ing delu­sional client in the pink bathrobe? Does that work? I guess it all depends on how the pub­lic con­jures an image of a land­scape archi­tect? Help me out here, I’m too close to the calling.

  39. John said on March 29th, 2007 at 8:17 am

    “Pro­fes­sor Found Skew­ered With Over­sized Safety Pin”

    C’mon Ashley…use your imag­i­na­tion a bit!

  40. brian stouder said on March 29th, 2007 at 11:07 am

    Mine could be one of those hybrid news/entertainment headers -

    Death of a sales­man investigated

  41. Dave K. said on March 29th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    “Union Vice-President Dies In Shot­gun Slay­ing”, “Man Held In Blud­geon­ing Of Local Union Griev­ance Com­mit­tee Chair­man”. That doesn’t look good at all, not while we are await­ing a fed­eral bank­ruptcy judge’s rul­ing to can­cel our contract.

  42. LA mary said on March 29th, 2007 at 6:51 pm

    Con­sul­tant Found Dead, Mul­ti­ple Con­fes­sions Pour In

  43. joodyb said on March 30th, 2007 at 12:12 am

    Police review death of salesman

    ha!

  44. The lost race of statuesque blondes. « Got that New Package! said on January 14th, 2008 at 11:12 am

    […] the stat­uesque blondes. Many reporters have riffed for both comedic and dra­matic effect on news­room clichés. Lipp­man has an inte­rior mono­logue in one of her books […]

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