It's Picture Day at KMBC! Oh, boy! Yes, it is a lot like grade school picture day but with a little more hair gel, mascara, hair gel, lipstick, hair gel, rouge and, did I mention, hair gel? And, that's just the anchorMEN! Anyway, this is the day we all line up and get our pictures taken. The photos are used in promotional ways and sent to viewers who request an autographed picture. Well, that's how most are used. Mine are sent to the City Market for use in wrapping fish and to area pet shops to line the bottoms of cages. It has been shown that using my photo actually encourages animals to become paper-trained. Something about being an attractive target. Anyway, the station has to schedule these photo-shoots every few years in order to make sure the pictures actually still look like the person, unless your anchorman is Dorian Gray. As for me, in the photos I had taken when I first started here at Channel 9, I appear to be about 13 years old. Then, as the years went by, I made the trip from youthful dorkiness to elderly twerpiness. Believe it or not, when I first hit the air in Madison, Wisconsin, some near-sighted viewers thought I looked like Michael J. Fox. A couple years ago, while doing the weather in front of an area high school, a group of 10th graders approached me and said "You know who you remind us of?" In my head, I'm figuring they will say Michael J. Fox. Either the Family Ties version or the Spin City version. I'm fine with either one. "No...who?" I replied, with a smug and knowing smile. In unison, they hollered as if doing some sort of spirit cheer: "REGIS PHILBIN!" That's why they take new photos.

Getting pictures taken was one of the hardest things for me to participate in back when I first started on TV. Of course, this was in the time before cameras so you had to sit very still for a very long time. Okay, that's a minor exaggeration. At that station in Madison, they took the photos in the basement of the place. I went downstairs wearing my hip salmon-pink sport coat. Trying to make Madison Nice into Miami Vice...and failing. The photographer told me to smile naturally. I tried. "Come on, Joel. It looks like you ate moldy olive loaf. Just smile so I can get out of here and watch the Packer game," he pleaded. This was not a guy who lived for his art. He was no Ansel Adams but, then again, I wasn't the Grand Tetons. I simply had not yet learned to smile on command. I worked with a master of that art in Madison. He was the most popular on-air person in town, weatherman Elmer Childress. His smile was so warm and friendly he should have been working with the State Department. I am convinced that if you just let Elmer chat with the aggrieved parties, maybe have him sing a couple songs, world peace would break out all over the...uh...well, world. Elmer's secret was that he was, and is, a genuinely nice person. He was sincere in his smile. As a famous Hollywood exec once said "It's all about sincerity! Once you can fake that, you've got it made." For Elmer, it was not a ruse. But, for a punk like me...not at all sure I could do what I'd been hired to do...it wasn't so easy. Now, all these years later, I'm more chunky than punky and I KNOW I can't do what I've been hired to do, so I may as well smile.

Today's picture party, does remind me of those photo days in grade school, though. The best one I ever had taken was in first grade. I had several of my front teeth missing and, for some reason, a bit of a black eye. I was wearing a white shirt, green paisley clip-on tie and red velvet vest. I looked like the love-child of Rocky Marciano and Liberace. By junior high, most of my photos looked like something that should have been hanging in the post office. Then, you hit your senior year and, thanks to air-brushing, you look like the cover of Tiger Beat!

Back then, the photos were taken in the fall and that was it. You'd order sight-unseen and take what you got. Now, you have several different packages to choose from. Do you want an 8x10 and four 5x7s plus 16 wallet size and 400 photo stickers, a bookmark, a fridge magnet and a luggage tag all with your child's mug on them? Speaking of mug, you could order the photo-emblazoned coffee cup, too. All for one low price that may or may not involve refinancing your house. You work your way down from there. The photo company diplomatically refers to the various packages using letters of the alphabet, but, I have the feeling, around the old dark-room, they're saying things like "We need 100 'I Love My Child Most and Want To Do All I Can To Boost His or Her Self-Esteem El Grande Super Packages' and six 'Sure, I Love My Child But Really What Am I Going To Do With 400 Stickers and A Bookmark and A Luggage Tag Just The Basics Packages.'" Then, in the spring, the grade school pulls a sneak attack by taking another photo and sending the whole package home with the child. Which means, if you really don't want or need or like the photos, you have to send your child back to his room carrying the packet full of himself. Sending the clear message that "Well, your mother and I feel we have more than enough pictures of you around the house and, frankly, this isn't your best work. So, be a good scout and just hand them all back in." Of course, the company knows that most of us parents operate on a mixture of luck, hope, prayer, fear and guilt. They are banking on that last element kicking into overdrive. It usually does.

The more I think about it, the more I think I've found the right presentation for today's photos. I'm going to get a green paisley tie, a red velvet vest, black out a few teeth and walk into a door. I may as well face facts, when it comes to my photogenic qualities, it's all been downhill since first grade.