Swing, Batter! Suffer, Byron!

One of the most popular XSTREAM Media programs is easily Game of the Week. This in-house production produced by my coworkers and me is nothing more than video footage of a Recreation Department-sanctioned team sport being played in the previous seven days of its broadcast. Sometimes the game is Pickleball, at other times it's basketball. Whatever the sport, I dislike having anything to do with it.

For years, every annual "King of the Hill" sports event at ERDCC was recorded with a single video camera, then broadcast without graphics on the person's closed-circuit TV system – and it was fine. That all changed when one of my coworkers bragged about the last prison he was at, saying in our boss's presence, "Back at Potosi, we used to tape every basketball game." It wasn't a week before the boss bought two $1,200 shoulder-mounted Panasonic video cameras and told us to start producing weekly sports broadcasts. So we do. I designed a logo for XSTREAM Sports that transformed the head of our vaguely menacing octopus logo into a basketball. Then I made a Pickleball version. Then I did one for softball. If they ever allow prisoners to play soccer in Missouri, I'll probably have to make a version for that, too.

If only that's where my responsibility ended. Every Tuesday, because no one else is available, the three members of Team XSTREAM who are too nerdy and/or crowd-averse to play team sports – Ridhwan, Jason, and myself – gear up and head out to the diamond to record another "exciting" round of ball-and-stick. For the record, for those who don't know me or haven't followed this blog long enough to know, videotaping a summer softball game is pretty close to being as un-Byronic as an activity can get. (Attending the performance of a Journey cover band, accompanied by two excitable children, would be one that goes a step further.) I'm basically a human-mushroom hybrid and thrive in cool, dark places. There are three simple reasons why: (1) I don't tolerate heat, (2) I quickly scorch when exposed to direct sunlight, and (3) I don't understand the rules – nor the mass appeal – of sport in general. Nevertheless, there I go, every Tuesday, up onto the volleyball stand, to train a camera over a fence and record two back-to-back games of slow-pitch softball. The camera I run sits just beside the batting cage. The commentators who mike up and feed audio into my camera are a couple of wise-asses intent on roasting every player they can: "His teeth look like he just ate a box of Cheez-Its and didn't brush." "Here comes Charles Manson up to the plate." "Armstrong is a terrible player. Terrible." "His pants are so tight, they're cutting off circulation to his brain." "It's Sammy's birthday today. He's 88 years old and still pitching." And so on. About half the time, I get a headache hearing their yammering through my headphones for two hours at a stretch. It would help if they were at least funny.

Alas, sunburn and a sore neck seem to be my weekly lot in life now. It's a peculiar place to be. We don't have Nielsen ratings, just word on the yard. Like I said, though, the population seems to like it – which is what really matters.

Mentoring

Within a couple of days of D.R. moving into the wing, I got to see the range of this young man's talent and humor. We met when he leaned his lanky frame through the open doorway of the production studio where my coworkers and I had just taped another episode of our in-prison cooking show, THIS IS FIRE. D.R. had been lured away from the basketball court by the smell of a Tex-Mex pizza our host had just made.

"What goes on in here?" D.R. wanted to know. In the dreary, do-nothing environment of prison, the bright lights and big green screen of our studio attract a lot of attention. Clipboard in hand, oversized headphones around my neck, I explained THIS IS FIRE's premise, then summarized the other TV programs that we create and broadcast. "Man," he said, "you're like a real producer!"

He and I ended up talking for a half hour, right then. I learned that D.R. was twenty-three years old – about the same age as I was when I came to prison. He was an aspiring rapper from Saint Louis. He showed me, on his tablet, some clips of music videos that feature him rapping about being broke, having personality crises, and living as a young black man in a mad world of biases and belligerence. The kid had bars. I expressed sincere praise.

D.R lived upstairs in my wing. The administration moved him in as part of the mentorship program recently begun here at ERDCC. He was a mentee, a first-time offender who staff believed could benefit from being housed in an honor dorm, undertaking a regimen of self-reflection, and being advised by older prisoners with a good deal of experience doing time. It's weird to think that I now meet the criteria and have been made a mentor. I took a genuine liking to D.R. and spent some time with him, talking about his music, his ideas about living, his dreams, and making TV. He could rap off the cuff as well as write solid rhymes, and was serious about honing his skills. He also had a mischievous streak. As he told jokes, he slung his limbs around with an artless grace that I admired. He laughed freely and often. But I saw anger in him, too. When a guard asked him, more gruffly than necessary, why he was taking two dinner trays at the serving window, D.R. copped an attitude. He could've instead just pointed to the guy on crutches he was helping out. Just as it seemed as if a shouting match would develop, D.R. evidenced some restraint. I told him later that he handled it all right but had enough wherewithal to control his temper better in the future. I knew that involvement with positive activities now could set the stage for his whole sentence. It was all the more important because of the long road that D.R., fresh to prison, now faces. After he and I got better acquainted, I approached my boss to see about inviting D.R. to cohost a show we're developing, The Karaoke Threat, which is basically our answer to Wild'n Out. The boss said yes. I was thrilled to tell D.R. the news. Here was a chance for him to get in at the ground floor and establish himself as a personality with plenty to offer the ERDCC community – an opportunity that, had it come my way, might have changed the whole trajectory of my early years in prison. Like an excited kid, D.R. went around, crowing how he was going to be XSTREAM's first megastar. A couple of days after I introduced him to his cohosts, Luke and Kenny, my XSTREAM teammates, D.R. brought me a crude little illustration of himself onstage with an XSTREAM octopus logo behind him. He couldn't wait. "Just be patient," Luke told him one day. "We're waiting for a couple more people to sign up. Then we'll start taping." D.R. was itching to flaunt his hip-hop chops to the population. Meanwhile, life in the wing was tedious. There's only so much pinochle a guy can play every day before he needs to get out and start doing something. D.R. wanted a job. I advised him to wait until something better came along, but he got antsy. Since the kitchen's always hiring, that's the job he went after, to work the lunch shift. I wanted so badly for D.R. to outshine the image of the angry young black man that some people perceived him as. He could use his talent to such great ends. But when the guards hoisted him off the kitchen's greasy floor and took him to the Hole, D.R.'s first day on the job, any immediate hope for that disappeared.

It's been a week; I still don't know what exactly transpired that afternoon, why the guards used force to restrain him, or what initially sparked the conflict. I might never find out. I do know that we tape Episode One of The Karaoke Threat on Saturday. It won't be nearly as good without D.R. and his freestyling. I hope he's doing okay.

XSTREAM Kicks It Up a Notch

I don't know what you did with the first weekend in your February, but my coworkers and I spent a good portion of Sunday shooting video for seven different ads and public service announcements. Each one of them will play this week on the newest addition to XSTREAM's lineup, Channel X – a platform solely for presenting original XSTREAM Media productions to our imprisoned audience. We're pretty excited about this, mostly because our studio work is a priceless outlet for creativity in such a drab place. With a whole channel all to ourselves, we get to create even more!

XSTREAM Media's studio consists of a green screen stretched across one wall of a little-used staff office in the gym. It sometimes feels like a temporary setup. We have to break down and stow our equipment, from sound-absorbing panels to video cameras, after every shoot to make room for our bosses, the recreation officers, to do... whatever rec officers use their office for. As studios go, ours manages to be simultaneously rinky-dink and impressive. We do a lot with what we have.

Rather than trying to hide our resource deficits, we often adopt a quirky (not to say janky) DIY aesthetic in our productions. We build props from cardboard. We make very creative use of camera angles. In lieu of a wardrobe, we sometimes place our video likenesses behind cutaway flight helmets, suit-and-tie combos, and outrageous hairdos, paper doll-style. Other prisoners are quick to tell us if they think something we're doing sucks. Since they never quibble with our creativity, they must think our stuff mostly works.

As we enter this kind of renaissance with Channel X, there's a spirit of real freedom at play. I'm planning a series of poem-a-day shorts to play between featured programming. We're also developing a game show called "I Knew That"; writing a series of daily affirmations to intersperse with our commercials; preparing informative, entertaining presentations for the host of a forthcoming movie-of-the-week series; and assembling a library of karaoke videos for a project we're calling "The Karaoke Threat." (I've already been challenged to sing the Danzig song "Mother on the show" – a weird choice that I embrace in the spirit of the dare). Where we go from here is anyone's guess, but it's bound to be fun.

Busy, Busy Me

"You're a busy man," an old friend wrote, astutely, in a recent letter. He must've seen that pie chart a few weeks ago. But what makes me so busy?

The crush of extra stuff to handle at work has finally wound down, but that doesn't make me any less busy. Luke and I undertook the production of a new TV series – a biweekly, hour-long talk show for the prison population, which delves into important subjects such as purpose, rehabilitation, institutionalization, and so on. This in addition to our weekly cooking program, This Is Fire; our weekly music-exploration show, The Playlist; our intermittent computer how-to series, Tablet Talk; and the monthly Saint Louis University Speaker Series events that we video-record, package, and broadcast in-house. YouTube doesn't know what it's missing.

Sometimes I worry about burnout. How much dedication to the job is too much, before I'm considered a workaholic? Would I work this hard or this much if I wasn't limited to this prison life? And it's not just work that's keeping me occupied, either. I also have my duties as an officer of the Speak Easy Gavel Club.

When the club received its first written complaint about officer misconduct, it was my responsibility as Vice President to chair a disciplinary committee, which first had to determine the merit of the complaint, then hear evidence for and against the accused, and finally render a judgment that resulted in the club voting to suspend two officers' membership for one year. A friend suggested that I blog about the experience, but by the time the smoke cleared I was ready to shelve Robert's Rules of Order and never again say the words "deliberative standard." I'm sorry if that makes you feel cheated. Auditing the records of members' progress along the Toastmasters education track, putting together the club's 2023 yearly plan, and typesetting our newsletter in Microsoft Publisher have taken some time, too. I should have my Advanced Leader Bronze certification before the year's out. This may seem like a lot. It's not enough to stop me, though. Thanks to Saint Louis University, which I mentioned above, Shaheen Pasha, founder of the Prison Journalism Project at Penn State, will be here on Monday to discuss the history of journalism in prisons. My hope is that she mentions the current state of prison media, exemplified by San Quentin, which produces the excellent podcast Ear Hustle. A podcast or publicly available video production from ERDCC would make for a phenomenal opportunity – for the facility, for its population, and for the Missouri Department of Corrections as a whole. If Ms. Pasha touches on this, the information she shares could be crucial to the proposal I hope to write for the warden's consideration. If you've been reading this blog over the past several months, you might've noticed a slight inclination to thinking about a future outside of my current environment. Last night I had a dream that a coworker gifted me two pairs of shoes to wear when I get out of prison – a dress pair and a casual pair. Both pairs were hideous, and I was overjoyed to receive them. No matter how ugly the shoes, they were a symbol of my immanent release. This from my sleeping brain. As much as I want out, I'm here now. And this is the point I'm trying to make. Even though I'm fixated on getting out of prison, I feel no less driven to change this environment for the better. There are people here who genuinely want to improve how they live, whether they're paroling in six months or sentenced to die in prison. The urge to live a life of purpose exists independent of one's legal commitment. Helping them to realize that feels like the right thing to do.

By staying busy helping them, I'm helping myself as well, in both the short term and long term. Who knows, maybe soon my ambition and intention will carry over into the outside world, where they can benefit the imprisoned and the free alike. In the meantime, I'll just maintain this slightly crazy schedule and continue to wear this small, contented smile.

Prison Programming with a Mission

Beginning on 1 January, I took over as the custodian of XSTREAM Therapeutic, one of twelve closed-circuit TV channels broadcasting to the population of Eastern Reception, Diagnostic & Correctional Center. I willingly traded my previous responsibility, the prison's all-animation channel, for this one. In a true win-win-win situation, XTOON went to our resident anime fanatic, Jacob, who gave our sci-fi nut Paul his own movie channel, so that Paul didn't have to keep justifying the therapeutic value of, say, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Obviously, we get broad latitude in our programming choices, so handling XSTREAM Therapeutic ("XT" to us insiders) means big fun for me. It might not be so cool, except that we recently started receiving educational videos from the Web. How it works is, we give our boss a list of subjects, he goes into his office and returns an hour or so later with a hard drive full of MP4s for us to broadcast. This is a breakthrough that's opened up a veritable universe of possibility.

I've designated Monday as "Art Day," with documentaries on artists, "Great Paintings Explained" videos, poetry readings, and a drawing how-to thrown in here and there. That's followed by TED Talk Tuesdays. Thursdays are for nature and anthropology docs of the Nature and National Geographic sort. "Science Fridays" came from their equivalent on NPR. (We just got the Hubble IMAX documentary I never got to see, as well as cool videos on neuroplasticity, quantum physics, and microorganisms.) I also have a few academic lectures to satisfy the handful of lonely intellectuals skulking around this place. It's a good mix.

People often talk about things resonating with them based on their relatability. With this in mind, I've tried to get more BIPOC-generated content – especially when the subject is academic or falls within one of the fields typically associated with "white culture," such as publishing or classical music. I want this stuff to draw people in, then expand their horizons. Ultimately, I want to promote the empathy that's so sorely lacking in this place.

Because I'm a subscriber to the theory that no discipline better fosters empathy than the humanities do, I'm especially focused on the arts. With their woven webs of words, storytellers, poets, and writers offer real talk. Painters show us new perspectives. Musicians give us novel compositions packed with meaning. By repeated exposure to others' ideas beyond the hand-to-mouth reality of the streets, maybe the seeds of change will take root. Maybe self-esteem will grow. Maybe due consideration for someone else will gain foothold. Maybe inspirational fruit will be born.

Except in states like Vermont, it's an unfortunate reality that far too many of those identified as BIPOC in this country are imprisoned. (Although even in New England, black people constitute a disproportionate percentage within the criminal system.) I believe that XSTREAM's broadcasts should reflect this fact – albeit, without pandering to anyone. It's a point I've been tacitly making with a lot of choices on the job. And I think it's having an influence. Joining the push for inclusivity, our ad-hoc concert curator, Luke, has a growing list of black musical artists for the boss to seek out. (XT plays concerts on weekends.) I also run the Mix, another channel on our network, where I try to play mostly movies and series that feature black faces.

This whole effort could be nothing more than a quixotic attempt by a well-meaning but tone-deaf white person to do what he's deluded into thinking is right. No one's said anything to the contrary yet. In the meantime, if anyone has content suggestions, by all means, leave them in a comment below!

Writing My Own TV Program

The stakes are low when the program you're writing is deliberately low-budget and features episodes that're only sixty seconds long, but they feel high. The Mountain Man Minute is the show in question, a collaboration between me and a former compatriot from the Speak Easy Gavel Club. It puts a spin on survival-based reality TV by presenting well-researched information with pasted-on backgrounds and a dash of twitchy-eyed insanity.

The idea arose in line for breakfast, as Mountain Man (which is not, in fact, his real name) and I joked about the multitude of possible life forms in his Duck Dynasty-worthy beard. The prison's video production studio (which my job requires me to make videos for) was weeks away from opening. Everything had the potential to be a TV show. Why not something absurd about surviving in the wilderness? Taking a cue from 1980s and '90s public access television shows, Mountain Man and I decided that a straight-faced, didactic approach to survivalism would be funniest. We threw ideas at each other for weeks, passing notes back and forth between our wings.

"Greetings and salutations, citizens," the script for Episode 001 begins. "This is The Mountain Man Minute, your port in the storm of society's collapse." It goes on to discuss what contents make the ideal "bug-out bag" – including Febreze, since it covers up your thoughts from the invading aliens, who are able to smell them.

Tips from subsequent episodes include: telling time with sticks, avoiding snow blindness with cardboard, trapping bait fish in a plastic bottle, filtering water with tampons, and all the ways in which "Moss is your friend!"

Because we only ever see each other for a few minutes a day, at meals, the method by which Mountain Man and I have agreed to cowrite the show is this: we each write half of the episodes on our own, then turn the pages over to the other. Then we critique and rewrite as needed. Scripting my twelve episodes took me a couple of hours, unevenly distributed over a three-day period, and was a lot of fun.

For the green screen work that The Mountain Man Minute requires, we're waiting on a shipment of additional studio lights to come in. I'm somewhat too enthusiastic about whenever we might start shooting. Meanwhile, writing the show is a fun diversion. With any luck it'll even make someone (besides us) laugh.

Add "Producer" to My Resume

In the wake of a rash of staff assaults, prisoner stabbings, and general badness, the warden and deputy warden of ERDCC were demoted or fired this fall. As a new administration takes the reins, changes loom. Astonishingly, the changes we've seen in the first month have been positive. The biggest, as far as I'm concerned, is the green-lighting of a multimedia-production studio to be staffed by my coworkers and me, aka Team XSTREAM.

Jefferson City Correctional Center has had a full-featured studio since the '80s – Jefftown Productions, which distributes such scintillating one-off videos as "Progressive Relaxation Techniques," "ParentLink," and the blockbuster hit of 2018, "JP5 Tablet Demo." A couple of other Missouri prisons recognized the benefits of this and followed suit. Various parties have striven to get a studio at ERDCC for years. Even with the full support of the Recreation Department, and a pledge for the donation of all necessary equipment by Saint Louis University's Prison Education Program, the previous warden denied every proposal that came his way. Our incoming warden seems more interested in progress and reform.

And so, earlier this week, Team XSTREAM rallied to adapt the large office that abuts the gym, moving furniture to accommodate a green screen, lighting, microphones, tripods, et cetera, leaving just enough room for what work the staff members need to do in that space. A couple of days after that, we set up cameras. Physical setup was the easy part. What proved to be more involved was the paperwork.

My coworkers brainstormed programming ideas – simple stuff that the four of us, none of whom have done video work, could produce and distribute via the prison's in-house cable system. We tried to think about diversity: a show hosted only by deaf and hearing-impaired prisoners, an LGBTQ+ program, an homage to Mystery Science Theater 3000, a special on positivity and purpose, a collection of tutorials on tricky school subjects, a how-to video on self-care and hygiene.... Our list of proposed titles and one-line blurbs ran to three pages. We didn't even include the programming that Saint Louis University, the Inside-Out Alliance, Ashland University, the Restorative Justice Organization, or the Speak Easy Gavel Club might want to generate.

I made official-looking Word forms for proposals, releases, and program approvals, created a production-schedule Excel spreadsheet, wrote the XSTREAM Media mission statement, and sent invitations for various staff members to appear on our casual interview series ERDCC Profiles, starting with our incoming warden and the new head of Recreation.

I also created an end-credits production logo to tack on to the first programs we produce. Sepia-toned footage of an octopus (the XSTREAM mascot, which we call Hank) hurry-scurryies across the ocean floor; our name flickers underneath, to the clatter of an old-timey film projector. It looks cool, in a ridiculous way that I deeply appreciate. Almost as importantly, my coworkers also like it.

Midweek, we recorded a demo, a silly proof-of-concept thing. First, Luke interviewed me on camera, then our coworkers Gary and Twon did the same. Quick-and-dirty drum-and-bass intro music was set atop a passable graphics intro, and the boss said, "Looks great, guys." He signed off on many of our development ideas right away.

Now the fun of creating those programs begins. I keep remembering the not-great "Weird Al" Yankovich movie UHF, in which a burger-flipping loser gets a job as programming director of a tiny failing public-access station and turns it into a smash hit, developing shows about every stupid, insane thing he can imagine. Could XSTREAM Media be my UHF?

Meanwhile, the Raspberry Pi situation (which sounds like a '70s prog-rock band) continues to develop, step by tiny step. Now if we could just set the damn things' clocks....

Too Much TV for Me

Having been locked down (or not, if you use the prison's questionable terminology) for a month and a half, I'm suffering a variety of the quarantine fatigue that has most of the rest of America uneasy, and, again, like most of the rest of America, I've been seeking at least some relief in the form of television.

I haven't quite decided how to feel about this. I grew up in a household that generally considered TV a last refuge. As if to prove how low-priority we considered televised entertainment, our one TV set was small and janky, a portable black-and-white model with a clothes hanger for an antenna. And of course we didn't have cable. You could make the argument that a child of the '80s raised in a home without MTV is no true child of the '80s. My childhood was atypical in a lot of ways; not being glued to the tube was a very minor one.

Today, bingeing entire seasons, or even whole series, in a few days, carries more than the whiff of a guilty pleasure. I try to convince myself that there's only so much a shut-in can read, but I have a hell of a time trying to truly convince myself of that. My critical mind can be a real hardass. Throughout this quarantine, whenever I turn on the TV, it's said, You could draw instead, or write some e-mails, or reorganize your footlocker, or, basically, do anything else at all. I don't always listen, but the criticism creeps to the back of my mind and stays there.

There are videos online (I see clips on TV) of ordinary people in their homes, getting creative in occasionally stunning ways. Admittedly, my options are a bit more limited than your average joe's. In prison, raw material is generally contraband, and is in short supply. So is range of movement. I'm sure that I'd innovate the shit out of some things if I had a kitchen, workshop, garage, or parking lot or backyard at my disposal. I'm not an uncreative sort. But is this just an excuse to rewatch Tim Burton's Batman, or to check out an episode of Ru Paul's Drag Race on a lazy weeknight?

In Season Three of The Americans [spoiler alert!] Martha's exfiltrated to Moscow after the FBI learns her secret, Pastor Tim and Alice learn about Philip and Elizabeth being deep-cover KGB officers, the Centre demands delivery of a horrific virus, and even though I watched this amazing Soviet-era drama years ago, with bated breath, seeing it again now feels fresh and even richer, somehow, than during the first go-round. I don't feel a shred of guilt for squandering time by watching it. Does not feeling guilty mean it's not a waste? I'll think about it later. The next tense episode is calling my name.

Cable Outage Means Convict Outrage

The TVs go black on a clear, sunshiny day, but I'm busy writing and don't know about it until my neighbor comes to the door. "Wha'cha think about the cable?" he asks, his rural Missouri twang slurred by lack of teeth. I peer at him over my glasses in a way that I hope conveys impatience.

You'll never see a man's mood turn quicker than when a prisoner starts missing his cable TV. On the rare occasion when the facility's cable goes out, the first resort of the TV addict is to games, music, telephone calls, or a nap. (Almost none will read.) My neighbor is one such person. After whole minutes of silence in his cell, he emerged, hoping to commune with someone as miserable as he is.

"I didn't even know it was out," I say. "I'm busy doing my own thing."

"Phew! Cable's been out since lunch. I don't see how you can go that long."

"My TV's been off since 5 o'clock yesterday," I tell him. Might it inspire him to questioning of his own viewing habits?

Taxpayers in Missouri don't contribute to amenities in their state's prisons. While I can't obliterate the suspicion that we prisoners are coddled with good food, full medical coverage, and free cable, I can point cynics to these qualifications: the food is mostly edible, the privatized medical care is shamefully inadequate, and that I'm paying an exorbitant price (just not in money) for this "free" subscription. For the record, I'd happily trade these luxuries for a cardboard box under a railroad bridge in a heartbeat.

My neighbor, maybe not so much. He rubs his mouth like a crackhead waiting for another rock and says, "Yeah, well, some of us can't just sit around like that."

This feels silly, giving life advice to a man fifteen years my senior, but I shrug and offer him one of my shiniest nuggets of wisdom: "Sometimes you've got to make your own fun."

"Fuck that," he says. "I'm gonna go ask them what's the deal."

The cable is paid out of a dedicated account fed by 20% markups to items sold by the institution's canteen, as well as to media for our tablet computers. It's a large account. Also paid out of it are gym equipment, library books and furnishings, board and card games for the housing units, religious service paraphernalia, and visiting room amenities — anything deemed nonessential to the running of the institution, in other words. But even if it's not officially acknowledged as such, the powers that be are fully aware that uninterrupted cable TV service is crucial to maintaining order.

My neighbor ventures out of the wing to harasses a guard in the control module and I think, That won't be the last I hear about it.

My prediction bears out. The evening's a loud one. Twice as many people as usual mill around the wing, desperate for distraction, seeking entertainment in the company of their cohort, left adrift by blank screens. I hide out in my cell.

Peace comes the next morning when many sleep in, unwilling as they are to endure a few hours without someone else putting the thoughts into their heads. Unconsciousness seems to me like a sad pastime. Yet again I wonder what's so scary about being alone with oneself.

Throughout the walk to the dining hall at breakfastime, every conversation I overhear is about how "crazy" it is that we're still unplugged after almost fifteen hours. The man behind me in line stops literally every guard he sees, to ask, "What's up on the cable?" Most of them arrived for their shift a half hour earlier and have no idea what he's talking about, yet still he fishes for... what, exactly? Even if someone were to say that Spectrum techs are on site, replacing filters or whatever, he won't be satisfied until he's sitting in front of his TV, images flashing at his eyes and sounds firing into his ears. Does he even realize that his hunger's insatiable?

"Crazy," he mutters. "Fuckin' crazy. They just hopin' some shit kicks off so they can lock everybody down and not have to worry 'bout us anymore."

This sort of threat of flipping out is common but mostly empty — passive-aggressive venting born of powerlessness. But idle hands being the Devil's playthings means that the vidiots will remain unoccupied for only so long before they do something stupid. My reason for wishing the cable repaired is different from most guys'.

Crazy, indeed. This is the world I live in.

Do All Bald White Guys Look Like All Other Bald White Guys?

What is it about white guys with shaved heads? Even if there's no real resemblance beyond the shiny dome, we get compared to other white guys with shaved heads all the time. Or at least I do. It's ridiculous.

Since I first took a razor to my scalp at nineteen, I've been likened to a slew of other men with prominent pates, fictional and otherwise:

1. Household product mascots

2. Cinematic misfits

3. Angry young men

4. Pod people

5. The undead

6. Comic book aliens (technically not white at all)

7. Teen drama supervillains

8. Video game characters

9. Rock stars

10. Anime heroes

I only kind of agree with that last one, and I've never even watched the series.

A Seasonal Stew of Spooky Cinema

For the first time in sixteen years' imprisonment, October will be chockablock with shocks, thanks to my move to a new prison with a superior cable package. This Halloween aficionado and movie buff was pleased, after coming through one TV programming guide, to find so many of the suspenseful, horrific, and just plain eerie films that I love filling the weeks leading up to the thirty-first. I'm excited. Not counting the classics that'll show up all month long on the in-house movie channel — stuff like Carnival of Souls and Black Dragons — here's my must-watch list:

 

• The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
• The Lady Vanishes
• The Thing from Another World
• Nosferatu
• The Seventh Victim
• The Night Digger
• Faust
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Return of the Living Dead
• 28 Days Later
• The Old Dark House
• Isle of the Dead
• Bedlam
• The Dead Zone
• The Witches of Eastwick
• Fright Night (1985)
• White Zombie
• Mark of the Vampire
• Hellraiser
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (three different productions!)
• Curse of the Cat People
• The Bad Seed (1985)
• Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte
• Island of Lost Souls
• Mad Love
• Spirits of the Dead
• Black Sabbath
• The Pit and the Pendulum

 

There's also a PBS miniseries, The Woman in White, and my trashy FX pleasure, American Horror Story, to follow. No way could my little stash of movie snacks hold out through all of these. I wouldn’t want it to. Eating too much junk too early would spoil me on that epic junk-fest that is Octoberfeast. (Stay tuned for the fifth of my "Halloween in the Hoosegow" posts, by the way, coming in four short weeks!)

When Prison Culture Meets Black Lipstick

Tony and I were walking from the dining hall to the housing unit when he caught up to me. He'd seen the teaser for MTV's 7 September episode of Unlocking the Truth, the one introducing my case, and of course wanted to tell me so.

"They showed a picture of you in drag, all painted up."

I practically snorted, thinking, Good one, Tony. The photo in question shows my pale young face, cheekily glancing away from the camera, wearing eyeliner and a black-lipped smirk. My black velvet shirt and black coat can barely be seen. My fifteen-hole Doc Martens are out of the shot altogether, as are the silver chains draped from my right shoulder. I don't recall wearing jewelry more outrageous than my everyday piercings and two handfuls of silver rings that evening, but that doesn't mean I didn't. Jokingly calling this gothy getup drag was typical Tony, and I accepted the dig amiably.

Only later, replaying our conversation in my head, did I realize that Tony might not have been kidding around. He's been locked up for a long time; might he not know the vast difference between drag and goth? And if he doesn't, what could that mean for others who see the show — people around the prison who don't even know me as tangentially as Tony does?

For the very first time since Unlocking the Truth started delving into my case, I was nervous.

The average convict isn't known for his open-mindedness or reasonableness. Penned in by razor wire and walls, the tattooed swastikas, neighborhood affiliations, and gang code on most prisoners' bodies speak to their intolerance of the Other. Ask almost any citizens on the street and they'll likely supply two accurate facts about prison life: (1) it's governed by a rigorously enforced power dynamic; (2) it's run through with a current of barely contained sexual frustration. What might the sight of me in the summer of my eighteenth year, made up and dressed for a party, inspire in the mind of Billy Badass, DOC number 40926, who's been down since 1981 and ain't never seen no shit like that in his jerkwater hometown, where only whores and queers wear makeup, and the livestock are all a little jumpy? Would his shuttered mind compute? Or would he default to the old mental schema, Lipstick is for girls. The boy in the picture wears lipstick. So he must want to be a girl. I will make him my girl, thereby inciting an unpleasant circumstance for all involved? You can understand my concern.

The episode in question, when it aired, glossed over any meaningful definition of goth, probably because MTV's demographic has grown up in a culture that's more inclusive than those of previous generations. I suspect that every Millennial had at least one goth kid at their high school. My lawyer's description alone, that labeling someone "goth" was how law enforcement, post-Columbine, branded that person as "bad," didn't seem like enough for the population of Crossroads Correctional Center to comprehend the goth subculture.

Walking the yard with my friend and former cellmate, Zach, the following morning, every comment that came my way (there were more than I anticipated) was complimentary.

A neighbor said, "I loved how, in your interview, you threw in a little humor. When you said, 'I was a weirdo — I'm still a weirdo,' that really got me."

Some guy I'd never before spoken with said, "That's exactly what prosecutors do: they dehumanize you to prejudice the juries. You got right to the heart of it, there."

Another guy: "When they came, at the end of the show, and played that phone call, I was like, 'Damn, people, he didn't answer her question because he doesn't respond the same as other individuals would: he's weird.' I just needed to let you know, I believe you, man. Fuck that lying crackwhore."

And so on, from countless strangers and acquaintances alike, for days. No one made so much as a peep about the party photo Tony saw in the teaser. If anyone was struck by my smoky-eyed makeup in almost every other pic, they uttered not a word about it to me. It seems like my concession to weirdness wiped away any questions about my particular, peculiarly dandyish, brand of masculinity.

For decades I've held that the elegance of honesty needs no adornment. My outspoken truthfulness sometimes lands me in trouble, but this time the maxim is right.

The Truth Will Set You Free: Will MTV's Unlocking the Truth Crack the Door for Me Tonight?

The last time a television series addressed the death of Anastasia WitbolsFeugen, the teenage friend I was wrongfully convicted of murdering, viewers got a sensationalistic crap-fest that On the Case with Paula Zahn titled "Betrayal and Regret." I was not impressed, and hammered out my response to Ms. Zahn's journalistic improbity, relying on numerous summaries from friends who actually watched. After getting those thoughts off my chest, the world looked bright and rosy again.

A year and a half earlier, Sharp Entertainment (a production company not affiliated with Scott Steinberg Productions, which excretes On the Case each week on Investigation Discovery) had contacted me by snail mail. They wanted me to submit to an on-camera interview for a new ID series that was in development. The producer who wrote was cagy about its title, though, which sent up a red flag. Following a bit of phoned-in googling, I learned what he'd been reluctant to reveal: the series was Dates from Hell. (David Randag, if you happen to be reading this, you're a shitheel.) I declined more respectfully than was deserved.

With two strikes against the TV weasels, a third production company reached out to my supporters last year. Their proposed series' format was pitched as "Serial for TV." We tentatively agreed to participate, but they were still shopping their concept around to various networks when a producer from Unlocking the Truth called.

The new MTV series wasn't called that yet, of course. It's working title was pretty meh, meaning that, unlike with Dates from Hell, there wasn't any way of knowing what might be in store if we signed on. Our only assurance was the producer's word that this investigative series would strive for an unbiased examination of the facts.

For years, my supporters and I have subscribed to the maxim that "Facts are our friends." As long as MTV hewed close to empirical truths, I felt at ease.

Multiple interviews followed. The familiar visiting room, cleared for cameras, light rigs, sound equipment, and coils on coils of wire, bore a slightly eerie resemblance to its usual bright, crowded self. But the interviews went well enough. The crews were professionally friendly to the point that I, having been duped more than a few times, began wondering when their line of questions would turn hostile.

It never did. Nor did they shy from asking the crucial questions (it was an investigation, after all). My lawyer turned over all sorts of information, but when it came to interpreting the evidence, they consulted their own experts, hired at MTV's expense. We don't know what all Unlocking the Truth learned, but we'll start finding out tonight, when the first of several episodes focusing on my case airs.

For the first time in a long time, I'm excited for the future.

Previous episodes of MTV's Unlocking the Truth can be seen on the network's website, while new ones live stream on the show's Facebook page and air Wednesdays at 10:00 PM Central Time.

Some Thoughts on Last Week’s On the Case with Paula Zahn

The last couple of weeks have been strange ones. At first I thought it was just Octoberfeast — my annual candy-and-treat binge — coupled with the pre-Halloween lineup of holiday favorites on ABC Family. Last week, though, when I heard that On the Case with Paula Zahn announced their show about Anastasia WitbolsFeugen’s murder, I suddenly had something to point at and go, “Yeah, that’s what’s distracting me.” It’s as if I’d been pre-empting my regular schedule in favor of the absent-mindedness to come.

I had no idea the show was being filmed. You’d think a producer worth his or her salt would make at least a perfunctory effort to include the condemned man’s words, if for no other reason than to proclaim, like a carnival barker, Ladies and gentlemen: evil in the flesh! Thrill and gape, viewers, at the sinister visage of the Soulless Man! The perfect seasonal freak show, seventeen years (nearly to the day) of Anastasia’s grisly death. But they needed no interview, not really. Old photographs of the man as a boy, togged out in all his black-and-silver goth finery, were far more superficially tantalizing.

The outcome was predictable. Or so I’m told. The cable package to which Crossroads subscribes doesn’t include Investigation Discovery, and that might be just as well. A lot of my friends speculated that sitting through all the old talking heads — Anastasia’s emotional wreck of a father, the histrionic prosecutor, the ex-girlfriend whose vengeful lies cost me the rest of my life — more than by the surreal feeling of being talked about on TV, I’d be bothered by the sense of déjà vu harking back to my four-day trial, when the things that I thought most crucial to my defense were silenced by a misguided arbiter. At best, Paula Zahn’s show might’ve made me laugh for all its egregious faults and inaccuracies. (Since an ability to laugh at the badness of a thing is what carries me through the worst.)

Do I want to watch the show? Not especially. Would I, if it came on a different channel? Almost certainly. How might I respond if, hypothetically, I did watch the episode in question? By focusing renewed energy on my fight for justice... but only after another brief candy binge. I’m only human, after all.

I Want My Slow TV!

As someone who’s more annoyed than excited by the rapid cuts in so many contemporary movies, televisions shows, and music videos, I’m fascinated by the recent Norwegian phenomenon known as “slow TV.” 

 A few years back, Norway’s public broadcasting company aired an entire seven-hour scenic train trip — from Oslo to Bergen — live, and more than a million people tuned in to watch. The network saw an opportunity to cash in, and later programs in the same vein included eighteen hours of salmon swimming upstream, 100 hours of a Norwegian grand master’s chess match, nearly nine hours of sheep-to-sweater footage — shearing, spinning, and knitting — and 134 hours of a cruise along Norway’s western coast. Do viewers tune in for just a little bit of these shows at a stretch, then go do other things, or is it more common for them to binge-watch, devoting an entire weekend just as our television junkies do with whole seasons of streamed Breaking Bad episodes? Oh, I have so many questions. 

 This probably wouldn’t work for Stateside audiences. Americans who channel surf from Miley Cyrus videos to Internet clip shows to Michael Bay movies would react to National Firewood Night (twelve hours of logs being chopped and burned — no, really) like a dog reacts when you try to feed him a grape: Smells like food, feels like ball. So confused! Some say it’s the patience necessary for making it through those long Scandinavian winters, plus a hint of cultural rebellion, that’s driving the popularity of slow TV. I’m not sure, but I know I’d find that kind of meditative screen experience refreshing. I might even leave my TV on for longer than my usual daily maximum of two hours, if slow TV (other than annual Yule Log broadcasts) ever came to the States.

Those Noisy Aleve Commercials Are Killing Me

Arthritis sufferers deserve relief — I’m not disputing that. I only wish my daily Jeopardy! viewing didn’t subject me to the amplified slurping and swallowing made by the purportedly arthritic as they ingest their palliatives.

For those of you not in the know, no, I don’t watch this, one of my favorite things on TV, with a group of geriatrics. What I’m referring to are Jeopardy!’s commercial breaks, which are frequently sullied by the show’s principal sponsor, Aleve. The Aleve ads feature enhanced audio of pills being shaken out of an easy-open bottle, then taken with a super-loud gulp of coffee. Twice within thirty seconds. It’s too much. These awful adverts make it very hard to get back into a quiz-show mindset. Sometimes they even make me forget my score.

I am not a marketing genius. I am not even a marketing idiot. (I am not in marketing.) But I think a more positive association might have been made by starting the Aleve ads with the sound of creaky knees ascending stairs, then pills dispensing, then the nice silence of knees experiencing whatever is the opposite of inflammation (unflammation?) to illustrate that the pill stops a problem. As they are, Aleve’s commercials are memorable only for being disgusting.

Is there any noise the ad execs could have agreed on that would have been even less appealing than beverage slurping? At least Aleve isn’t foodstuff, or they might have used chewing noises. There is already too much of that on TV. Those Kit-Kat ads, with that percussive crunching, snapping, tapping, and whatnot — you know the ones — are abominations I don’t watch enough television to have gritted my teeth through more than once. Thank goodness. What I’m curious to know, however, is whether I am the only person in North America who is driven to near-mortal terror by the gloopy noises of mastication and imbibement Aleve sees fit to air. If not, why were my sensitive-eared brethren and sistren not invited to participate in the focus group before these nauseating spectacles left studio hands? Someone should be called to account. As punishment, I suggest muzzling.

Watching MSNBC’s Lockup While Locked Up

First things first: I’m no fan of the show in any of its lurid incarnations, from Lockup: Raw to Lockup: Extended Stay to Lockup: Extreme Makeover Edition, even when I’ve made up their titles. (Don’t bother checking your channel guide for that last one.) Watching from my upper bunk as knuckleheads wage war against guards, as low-level innovators demonstrate how to prepare a meal in a garbage bag, or as idle minds while away their sentences with endless weight training sessions, isn’t something for which I need a TV. Unless I was curious about how much better or worse prisoners have it elsewhere, shows like this strike me as Bizarro World takes on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.Yet a lot of prisoners do watch them, my cellmate included.

Then again, perhaps saying “watch” is going a step too far. The Saturday evening mini-Lockup-marathons MSNBC airs do occupy my cellmate’s TV screen, but they’re only paid occasional attention when he looks up from whatever book he happens to be reading. If something catches his notice — that another, luckier prison population is permitted conjugal visits, say — he puts his headphones on to hear all about it. What he learns, or how he benefits from this knowledge once acquired, I never ask. He’s been locked up sixteen years, five longer than me. I can’t imagine the shows offer him much in the way of heretofore unknown convict know-how, only more of the same-old.

Still, there it is. The show flickers at me while I listen to my routine Saturday radio programming, and sometimes my eye gets drawn. Even without sound, it’s easy enough to figure out what’s happening on-screen. One of the things I most dislike about Lockup is its fixation on the worst. True, prison’s a nasty place, no matter if it’s in Indiana, Israel, or Iceland, but must viewers always be presented with the most dangerous, decrepit, and depressing features a given facility has to offer? I fully understand that the tedium that constitutes most of one’s time spent in prison is problematic for television producers, since there aren’t many vicarious thrills to be found in watching two men in an enclosed space entertain themselves with conversation or silent contemplation for hours on end. (Although, my cellmate frequently laughs about how hilarious our conversations might strike anyone privileged enough to hear them.) Just the same, I can’t help thinking of the many ways Lockup might be improved by training its lenses more on the behind-bars behavior that surprises than that which confirms the gruesome stuff viewers may already expect.

Every prison is different. Custody levels and the facilities’ ages play a large role in determining what sort of culture will propagate within the walls and fences. The prison in which I’ve been housed is relatively modern, with limited prisoner movement and security cameras like Fort Knox. It’s hardly the Thunderdome known as San Quentin. Gang activity either goes unnoticed or does not exist. Stabbings occur with less frequency than on your average Sunday morning in some Argentinian backwater. The only cell extractions guards have to perform are on the hoodlums already in segregation for bad behavior. So rare are these things at Crossroads, when they do chance to happen, they’re the only events one hears about for weeks. I dare say, this place is thoroughly under control. No wonder Lockup hasn’t come to Cameron, Missouri, yet. If they did, they would converge on the lower-security facility next door, where prisoners with lesser sentences rampage, killing time with fights and drugs until they are released to run rampant on the streets once more.

Funny, that. The public’s perception seems to be that violent criminals are the last prisoners authorities ought to consider setting free, yet the great majority of violent offenders have been shown, in study after study, to be the least likely to commit another crime after their release. I’m hardly advocating the systemic turning-loose of assaulters and murderers, merely erecting a scaffolding to support my own observation that, of all the people I have had the opportunity to analyze during my imprisonment, those who committed the heinous transgression of taking another’s life almost always did so in a moment of uncharacteristic derangement and are otherwise some of the sanest, most normal (though I hate that word) people here. This was a surprise for me that ranks among the biggest of all my years in this strange place.

This past weekend, my cellmate turned to me, as MSNBC broke for commercial, and posed a hypothetical: “Would you agree to be on this show,” he asked, “if they came here?” I didn’t have to think about it. Knowing my Lockup aversion, he was surprised when I said yes. But what better way to divert their lens from madness than to show them a prisoner who doesn’t have to flood his cell in a desperate bid for attention — he can sit quietly in his cell, writing, and earn notice in a productive way, a fulfilling way, a way that maybe can even influence others for the better? Not every convict is a crook, nor every prisoner a criminal. Lockup could do some good if they let these little secrets out.

The Return of Halloween in the Hoosegow

Do you feel the chill? There's a faint burning scent on the breeze that sweeps from the north to nip through gaps in your coat. It is the approach of Halloween. I feel it in my marrow, the pull — a merciless desire against which I am powerless. For, on the night of the thirty-first, as the moon creeps up to bathe the world in her pallid light, I am compelled to submit to my ghastly craving... for a horror movie marathon and a one-and-a-half square-foot spread of deluxe nachos.

In accordance with the ancient ritual we set forth a couple of years ago, my hunchbacked companion, Zach (all right, so maybe he's just a little slouchy — it's called artistic license, people), and I consulted the fell grimoire that is the prison's canteen price list to begin, weeks in advance, planning and procuring all necessary elements for our diabolically calorific feeding frenzy. We thought early preparedness would ensure our homage to the nacho gods would be a worthy one. But no more are olives sold by the canteen, nor are illicit onions from the kitchen. Our aboveboard and underhanded supply chains failed us equally. Arguably worse, funds were in limited supply. Still, we amassed what we could: tortilla chips, beans, meat, cheese. Even these barest ingredients would cost us dear future comforts, but the All Hallows Eve ritual must take precedence. We would not be denied our celebration.

On the night of the fifth of October, our seasonal plans were set in motion early by the broadcast of the slick new FX Network supernatural soap opera, American Horror Story, signaling the slow creep onto TV of frightful fare. "And so it begins!" I said, a sinister mwah-ha-ha on my lips, as the show's herky-jerky opening credits ran. Oozing sexuality from its every scene, the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink premiere episode was almost too much (and mildly annoying in its repeated somnambulistic exposure of Dylan McDermott's ass); though by the second week of the series my inner critic was pleased. Continued appearances by the redhead maid Moira, as Ben sees her, will assure my pruriently loyal viewership.

"You got a real thing for the girls with colored hair," said Zach, when we first discussed the show.

"No, just saucy old maids," I quipped, convincing absolutely no one.

On the sixteenth commenced the second season of AMC's zombie apocalypse drama, The Walking Dead, which inaugurated the network's "Fear Fest" programming schedule and fated Zach and me to spend the next fifteen days as braindead, hollow-eyed, sleepless trudgers. For we will wait up well later than the witching hour, fixated on our TVs, hungrily hoping for some classic horror films that probably won't even be shown.

Then, a holiday miracle: without notice, one benevolent soul out in the world of the living delivered our Octoberfeast from mere acceptability, by way of an infusion of funds to my inmate account. In the eleventh hour I was able to purchase the picante sauce, jalapeño peppers, and ranch dressing for which our ritual clamors — plus a bite of chocolate for a greedy little dessert. When Zach asked how I was able to afford proper garnish for our garish dish, I summoned my best Vincent Price imitation to mutter, "It came... from the world beyond!"

So shall our screen worship persist, night upon night, until its preordained climax, commemorated by the unholy mass (of smothered chips), on Halloween. Such is the way. The craving will not be assuaged but through our sacred rite. How else might we satiate ourselves, after all — with a glut of food on Thanksgiving? Please.

On the Release of the West Memphis Three

"Are you sure?" I insisted. My neighbor Zach had just rushed to my cell door to relay what he'd seen on CNN. The West Memphis Three, jailed for eighteen years on dubious murder convictions, took an Alford plea and were being released. I abandoned the essay I was writing and hurriedly turned on my TV. Sure enough, there they were — Damien, Jessie, and Jason, dressed like human beings for the first time this century — giving a press conference.

"The one on the left looks a little like you," Zach said. I shushed him, not wanting to miss an instant. Though the networks would replay the clip for days, it never stopped appearing to me as surreal as a fever dream.

Zach had seen photos of me taken before prison. He knew about the media's fixation on my black clothes and eyeliner. He knew, also, that my friends and I used to talk about the West Memphis Three in the reverent tones typically used by the devout when speaking of martyrs. Onetime misfits in a small-minded trailer culture, the trio's persecution was as mythic as it was terrifying. If we teens who lived in an urban, allegedly enlightened environment (in the Midwest, I grant you) were yelled at and threatened on the street for dressing unusally, there was no doubt in our minds that black-clad youth in the American South had it many times worse. Of course we believed Damien, Jason, and Jessie were innocent. Arrest, trial, and conviction were simply legal extensions of the sort of bigotry my darkly dressed friends and I encountered all the time. It would have been difficult not to feel solidarity with those three strangers down in Arkansas, but I didn't hold much hope in their chances for release. Even as a naive teenager, my faith in the United States judicial system, and in people, was virtually nonexistent.

Then my two best friends died. Anastasia was murdered; Justin, her boyfriend, killed himself. Authorities suspected it was a murder-suicide. I knew the homicide investigation was going south when, in an interview, the lead investigator launched into the first of many inquiries into the couple's musical tastes, religious beliefs, and choice in clothing. One mutual friend suggested early on, "This case is going to turn into a witch hunt before it's closed."

And in a way, it did. I partly blame my wrongful murder conviction on the smear campaign that ensued. After my scorned ex took her lies to the authorities, years later, the jury was kept from hearing much of the sensational crap prosecutors wanted to introduce, but there was no shortage of effort on that front. Everything from my car's band-related bumper stickers to my offbeat sense of humor was dragged out, pre-trial. I even suggested during a recess that I detected disturbing echoes of the case of the West Memphis Three. My court-appointed attorney blinked at me from behind his thick glasses and asked, "Who?" He later obliged my worry after a great deal of cringe-worthy debate over the use at trial of the term goth, and I was at least granted a trial free of overt post-West Memphis Three, post-Columbine bias.

So there I sat, innocent yet imprisoned, watching footage of those I once pitied for unjustly living the slow death of the incarcerated. Cellphone snapshots of Damien and Jason's luxurious first night of freedom — Kobe burgers and a five-star hotel rooftop celebration — and of Jessie's family reunion swelled my heart as they stabbed it.

"Man," Zach said as we watched, "can you imagine?"

A happy photograph of Damien holding his wife, whom he married years ago, in prison, flashed across the screen. Before that day, they had scarcely before touched. I just stared. What an experience that all must be, scary and awesome and bigger than anything most people will probably ever know.

I finally mustered a reply: "Actually, I imagine it every single day."

Sneak Peek: MTV Cribs: Tha Big House

[Recently, I welcomed an MTV production crew for a tour of my surroundings, here at Crossroads Correctional Center. I'm told the first episode of MTV Cribs: Tha Big House — a penitentiary-themed spin-off of the network's celebrity homes covet-fest — will air in the near future, placing me in dubious company, with guided walk-throughs of the confining lodgings of actor Wesley Snipes and disgraced plunderer Bernie Madoff. Stay tuned for that, as well as my cameo (via phone) on the current season of Jersey Shore. Meanwhile, here's a teaser excerpted from my segment of the premiere episode of MTV Cribs: Tha Big House.]

EXT. PRISON HOUSING UNIT — DAY

Fast track through the prison yard to a wide two-storied concrete structure, up to its two outer doors. Along the way, we pass INMATES dressed in gray and giving confused looks to the camera.

INT. PRISON HOUSING UNIT — DAY

Continued track into one of four window-fronted wings of the housing unit. Many green doors line two double-tiered walls that converge at the far end of the wing, forming an isosceles floorplan. Track upstairs, to the last door on the right. Door opens and BYRON greets the camera, dressed in a charcoal fleece and black state-issued boots.


BYRON Hello, everyone. Welcome to my — ugh, do I have to say it?


MTV PRODUCER (OFF-CAMERA) It's part of the show.


BYRON (SIGHING) Fine. Welcome to my crib. Come inside, and I'll show you around.

We move through the doorway, into a gray nine-by-eleven cell.


BYRON I know you were probably hoping for it to be bigger on the inside, like the TARDIS on Doctor Who, but it turns out that that whole dimensional relativity thing isn't as easily accomplished as BBC sci-fi series would have us believe. Good thing I'm a minimalist. Oh, watch your shins around the commode, there. It juts.

BYRON indicates the gray metal desk, most of which is occupied by a thirteen-inch CRT television and a typewriter.


BYRON This is my workspace — where the magic happens, I guess. As you can see from the TV tuned to CMT, this blackened old coffee cup, and this stack of hard-rock cassette tapes, this side is my cellmate's. All this paper here, over here, and down there is mine. The typewriter, too, obviously. Old Faithful. Things aren't ordinarily this cluttered, but you guys caught me at the end of a big project. I planned to have my memoir finished last month, but I keep finding where it needs more work. You know how it goes.

BYRON regards some colorful wall decoration above and next to the desk.


BYRON My personal gallery. These are some of my favorite contemporary artists: Ray Caesar, Jonathan Weiner — over there's a snapshot a friend took in an Austrian market last year. It's a Banksy graffito. Good stuff. Here, above my "concert hall" are music-related images — band photos, some band flyers: the Black Heart Procession, David Bowie, Gary Numan, and so on.

Below the photographs of musical artists, BYRON draws our attention to a deep shelf bearing another small television, a boombox, paperback books, compact discs, an oscillating fan, and other smallish items.


BYRON Up here is my "private theater." The TV's only on for a few shows — Jeopardy! and news most days, Fringe on Fridays. The power button only works about a third of the time, and I change the channels by sticking a pen into this hole. The button broke out of it about six years ago. Thank goodness there's hardly anything worthwhile on.


MTV PRODUCER (OFF CAMERA) Ahem!


BYRON Right. Except for MTV Cribs, of course. Naturally. Anyway, here are my CDs. Twenty — that's the property limit, so I keep only the basics. I have... let's see... some Depeche Mode, Einstürzende Neubauten, Goldfrapp, Morrissey, a few Gary Numan albums — I'm kind of obsessed with him. Sorry, no Lady Gaga. She's lyricus incognita for yours truly. My CD player basically stays on all day to drown out the typewriter noise. That, and the neighbor likes to kick out the slow jams, like Kenny G, which is just un-[expletive]-bearable. These cells at the ends of the walk are generally prime real estate — the penthouses of the prison — but sometimes not so much.