I've sat in this lobby many times before during the last ten years, but this time I'm not waiting for an edit session or a transfer to begin. This time, I'm holding a little cardboard sign festooned with the number 451 as I listen to the staccato, somewhat musical voice of an auctioneer describe the assets of a company that was all too often my home away from home. Blue Cactus Post, aka Pyramid Teleproductions, aka Tele-Image has finally bit the dust. A n auction is not a garage sale. It's more like a wake.
Most auctions signal that a family, a marriage, a business, a familiar routine has died.
I guess some people attend these events to pick up a bargain. But many others come to pay their last respects, or dance on the grave of their competitor. I look around me at the other people sitting in folding chairs holding their cardboard bidding signs. There is a strange ambience in the room. Sophisticated video equipment that originally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars is being snapped up for a fraction of its true value, but nobody seems all that excited.