Resslin' Around

Welcome to this week's edition of Resslin' Around. I'm Frank Ameduri … Casey Ressler is on vacation this week. You've heard that sort of thing before on TV news shows. I like the Lehrer News Hour on PBS, and Jim Lehrer is on vacation all the time. One of his three indentured news servants always gets to run the show when Jim has better things to do.

You can kind of pick out the pecking order on news shows by paying attention to who's doing the filling in for a given show. For instance, if the anchor of the day says, "Welcome to the Bubba Gordon News Hour, I'm Jocko Renquist … Bubba's on vacation tonight. And a Merry Christmas Eve to you all," that's the bottom guy on the totem pole. Bottom guy always gets Christmas, New Years, Independence Day and Super Bowl Sunday.

There's no real pecking order process here. Ressler claims to be taking care of out-of-state guests, and somebody had to write his column. I was the closest to a computer, and that's how we work things around here. Still, if Casey thinks he's getting Christmas off, he's got another thing coming. He'll be sitting over in his dark little corner writing the holiday version of "Being Frank." And it better be good.

Vacations are always a bone of contention in the newsroom, as are three-day weekends. Newsroom people are traditionally spread as thin as rice paper. At least that's what we'd like people to believe. We're running around frantically, barely staying ahead of the mass of news that thunders with tsunami force into our department. The shores of knowledge are constantly battered with information, and the newsroom staff, with arms linked, form a protective barrier against untruth and inaccuracy. When one of these soldiers of syntax is out "showing college friends a good time," the chain is weakened.

This week we've actually been without the ample blocking power of both Casey and our sports editor, Jeremiah Bartz. JB was supposedly attending the Hall of Fame game and various concerts. I watched part of the game, and didn't see JB in the crowd. If I have to write his sports column later today, I know who will be holding down the fort on Super Bowl Sunday.

Frank Ameduri is always low person on the totem pole, no matter what his mom thinks.