It was just a lazy Saturday afternoon. I was scheduled to run a SAT Truck for the 2012 Grammy Awards, so I’d taken a little photowalk in the Arts District in downtown Los Angeles (and I must not hate on hipsters).

I was sitting at my computer just transferring the shots from my memory card and my daughter (the “occupy my den” one, not the married pregnant one) came and sat down and told me Whitney Houston had died.

“Oh, sh##.”

It was maybe two minutes before the phone rang. Can I come in to work?

That’s how I wound up doing live shots from the truck farm that we’d cabled the day before for our Grammy coverage. The station wanted a crew at LA Live and Staples Center and I was one of the very few people who had a truck farm credential, could run our fiber/Edius ENG truck and (this is the main reason) I was crazy (no, not stupid) enough to pick up my phone on the weekend.

I carry Whitney Houston songs on my iPhone. It was what I listened to as I drove up to Staples Center. It was Kevin Costner that I was thinking about while I was trying to get the security guards to allow me to drive my unauthorized vehicle over to our encampment within the collection of media production vehicles parked near the Grammy red carpet enclosures.

They told me it wasn’t going to happen. No unauthorized vehicles.

I think Kevin Costner (who played the bodyguard opposite Whitney Houston in the movie, “The Bodyguard”) would have done something badass and gotten his vehicle into the compound.

Me? I’m only that kind of badass when it comes to last minute-hail mary-OMG, are they going to make slot– getting a story on TV kind of badass.

In my defense, Kevin Costner only does that stuff in the movies. It’s not like he can punch out a security guard and run over him to park his car wherever he wants.

You know, I bet Harrison Ford has done that.