The Lid's Off the Box

I didn’t really have time today to explain on-air why I decided to launch our new morning show by performing Michigan J. Frog’s one mega-hit!

Back on October 24th 2011, News Director Karen Macdonald was heading out for a quick bite to eat with Managing Editor Alexandra Henderson, Senior Anchor Jamie Orchard and Mike Omelus, currently a Senior Director for Shaw Media. Karen suggested I tag along, so I did.

At the restaurant across from our office at Peel and Ste-Catherine, they were explaining to Mike who I was and what I did in the newsroom. One of the women described me as the frog in the 1955 Bugs Bunny cartoon, “One Froggy Evening”! They told Mike, like the cartoon frog who suddenly performed when his box lid was opened, I suddenly perform when the cameras come on!

That I was the performing frog, was news to me!

When Karen offered me the position as host of the new morning show January 3rd, I thought to myself, these crazy people are swinging open the box lid and letting the performing frog loose!

Singing Michigan J. Frog’s trademark number to launch Global Montreal Morning News this morning, seemed, to me, entirely fitting!

Drench City

We arrived in New York City late Friday afternoon and by the time we got our dogs, Moose and Spike, settled-in at the hotel, the clock had begun ticking! Tristan had his eye on limited edition headphones at the one and only Beats store in the world.

Our hotel was on West 46th, between Times Square and Avenue of the Americas, right around the corner from NHL offices. Undaunted by the pouring rain, we headed off to this one and only Beats store in the world.

We walked in the rain for about six kilometres to Green Street in Soho, asking directions from various New Yorkers along the way. All of them were eager to help, although some, had us heading back from where we had come, before others returned us to the proper heading.

In the end, we made it to the store before its 7 o’clock closing time. We were drenched and some of us had aching feet – moi! The two brothers who run the store, David and Drew, were impressed with our blistering trek, claiming the headphones had been sold-out until that very day!

We snapped a few pictures of the one and only Beats store in the world and began the walk back to the hotel.

Walking is a great way to see New York City; even in the rain!

On the way back, we, inadvertently, walked past a murder scene on Spring Street in Soho. There were obligatory stops at Hollister, Bath and Body Works and the Supra store. We walked by Grace Church, with its stunning Gothic revival architecture, near East 11th and Broadway.

We got back to the hotel, saturated with New York City rainwater, but stoked the headphones had been available at the one and only Beats store in the world.

Final News Final

Someone on the crew turned out the studio lights just as I was about to pull open the door. It was January 8th and I’d just finished my final “News Final”! Wistfully, I turned back to watch the studio darken.

I’d been doing “News Final”, Global Montreal’s late-weeknight newscast, for more than a year. Since news about the morning show was officially released yesterday, I can finally admit to viewers I am no longer anchoring “News Final”.

There are exceptions, but, generally, newscasts are well-defined, with no real mysteries. I know when to start talking and when to stop. I know when tapes start and when they end. Everything is timed and scripted. I can build the newscast and move stories around in order to differentiate “News Final” from our earlier, evening newscast. In terms of writing and story line-up, “News Final” reflected my news judgement.

It was fun and I was happy to work at attracting more viewers to the show. I had a great team of people working on the newscast, including Alfred, Kevin, Trena, Cam, Adam and Robyn, aka “Klash”! They ran tapes, put up supers, worked prompter, checked timing, solved problems, gave me my cues and helped fulfill the illusion of competence on my part. I appreciate their professionalism, dependability, humor and attention.The goal, for us, every night, was perfection! '

Circumstances conspire and confounding variables, lurk. We worked every night to avoid spelling mistakes and technical glitches and when we succeeded at avoiding those, I’d, inevitably, stammer, gag, or crack my voice. My tie might be crooked, a glaring white flake might be perched on the shoulder of my jacket, or a hidden piece of turkey sandwich might suddenly dislodge itself from between my teeth, only to soar, in a slow arc, toward the camera!

As he did his nightly rounds, Jerry, the security guard, would graciously ask how the newscast had gone. I would rate them on a scale of one-to-ten.

While filling-in on the December 4th evening newscast, I can remember doing a “five”! We were testing a state-of-the-art newscast automation system called Mosart. Kinks were being worked out. The script for every story would appear in the teleprompter and then, promptly, disappear! Normally, with relatively minimal stumble, I would continue reading from the paper copy on the desk in front of me, but, that night, the newsroom printer had smudged all the words on the right-hand side of the page, beyond intelligibility.

Even in giganta-font, which I use so my eyes have an easier time reading off the page, I couldn’t decipher the smudged words! As a result, I had to guess how sentences on the paper in front of me were meant to be written! Fortunately, every time a two-minute report aired, I would ask the crew, who I hear in my earpiece, to read me the full sentences of stories coming up, so that I could hurriedly scribble the missing right-hand chunks, in ink!

Offered the huge opportunity by Global Montreal News Director, Karen Macdonald, earlier this month, I’ve decided to host Global Montreal’s new morning show. It’ll be challenging and fun. I’ll have a chance to be creative and stretch myself in directions I’ve always enjoyed. Much of the three-hour show is unscripted and not nearly as defined as my thirty-minute "News Final" broadcast! Nevertheless, I’ll continue striving to do the best job I possibly can.

The day after my final “News Final”, I participated in a photo shoot in Verdun, where I met Camille Ross and Jessica Laventure.

Nutbars!

Lesson Learned

It’s only since I began dating Susan that I was obliged to adopt the tradition of Christmas stockings.

As it was explained to me, the contents of these stockings typically lack the excitement and festive appeal of other Christmas gifts. They tend to group themselves under the rather unfortunate heading, “practical things” and include deodorant, razor blades, shaving cream, socks, keychains, floss or a toothbrush.

Fortunately, to break up the monotony, the Christmas stocking may, on occasion, include candy, or a chocolate orange.

I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but I can, and do, buy those items for myself, as required.

I say, why bother?

To pull them out of my Christmas stocking verges on pointless and I’m afraid I cannot, for the life of me, express the same appreciation for deodorant as I have reserved for real gifts. To have to shop for "practical things" for someone else and then, individually wrap them before stuffing them into a stocking, is downright chore-like!

Really? They have to be individually wrapped; each bottle of hand sanitizer? I’ve got things to do!

This year, I asked my wife whether we might forego the madly mundane Christmas stocking. I perhaps, too honestly, admitted the only item I looked forward to finding in my stocking was the chocolate orange.

Here's a look at the contents of my Christmas stocking this year.

Santa's sense of humour sears. Don't doubt each of the different flavors of chocolate orange came individually wrapped! I had no idea there were so many! My appreciation for the Christmas stocking has grown considerably and, for a while anyway, I’ll be quietly eating my words.

Settling My Nerves

At some point this morning, I awoke to the sounds of someone moving things around our dark room. With help from the light in the hallway, Susan was searching for a boot. The pants she had sent for dry cleaning are ideally styled for these particular boots, but she could only find one. No other boots would do.

She planned to wear the dry-cleaned pants and these boots to her company Christmas party tonight.

Eventually, her search moved to another room and I drifted back to sleep; actually, it was more collapsed, than drifted!

I got up much later this morning, ready for a fine Friday, when I noticed one boot on the floor in front of me, with a note beside it. My first instinct was to immediately throw on a heavy coat, wig, dark glasses and set off for some distant continent.

The note didn’t even include the word “please”! My mission, should I freakishly choose to accept it, was find the dang boot! There’s no way to accurately evaluate the psychological and physiological stress I experienced as I hesitantly began searching, by process of elimination.

Here was a seminal, defining moment; a chance for a common man to emerge hero, or zero. I, generally, steer clear of moments like these!

Fortunately, I found the boot.

Susan called a couple of hours later to inform me she had gone out and purchased a skirt! She, evidently, assumed, having married an obvious zero, I would not be able to find the specific boot. Apparently, she was certain I would fold under the pressure of crunch time.

Cooly, I told her I had found the boot and explained to her exactly where I had located it. Thinking I was off the hook, free and clear, she casually informed me the dry-cleaned pants don’t only go with the boots, they also go with a particular black leather jacket and belt!

As my breathing sped-up, the trees of the forest closed-in around me; I was not out of the woods yet! How stupid of me not to have anticipated such extraneous variables. Nervously, I searched a couple of closets and found the coat and, a few minutes later, through beads of sweat, attentive scaning and dollops of blind luck, I even located the belt!

Toss me the hero hat, I’m still settling my nerves.

Honk If You Understand

Do you ever infuriate yourself?

It sounds difficult to do and yet, I do manage to infuriate myself quite a lot. I get angry at myself for forgetting things. I get angry at myself for being too clumsy and for not being clumsy enough! I get angry at myself for being too quick and for not being quick enough! I get angry at myself for being too slow and for not being slow enough!

You get the idea. I sometimes find myself so aggravating, I positively exhaust myself.

I’ll eat too fast and then bite my tongue. I’ll carry too many items and drop one of them. I’ll bang my elbow on door jams and stub my toe on stairs. On it goes!

I don't ask for these idiotic outcomes and yet, I get the feeling I'm not doing enough to guard against them.

In one incident which seems to have gained legendary status in our home, I was hurriedly rinsing utensils in the sink before putting them in the dishwasher. Out of the corner of my eye, in the midst of all the clattering, I was fairly sure I saw a butter knife fall through the slot and down the drain. It was too dark to see down there. Questioning whether a knife could even fit through a drain slot, I slowly lowered one of our butter knives into the drain slot and then, accidentally dropped it down the drain!

To this day, two butter knives still sit in the kitchen drainpipe.

Infuriating!

Last night, I got home after midnight. It was dark. I was about to put my key in the door when I noticed an insect of some sort on the door frame, near the keyhole. Not fond of spiders, I took out my smart phone in the hopes of identifying the bug. The glow of the screen allowed me to determine it was a moth. No problem. As I turned the screen off, I somehow started the car alarm honking. It was blaring loudly, over and over!

The quiet neighborhood echoed with the sound of the infernal car alarm.

I know my own car remote pretty well, so I pressed the alarm button to stop the honking. Pressing my remote started my car alarm blaring! It had actually been my wife’s car alarm that I had triggered, but, since we both drive vehicles made by the same automaker, the alarms sound identically obnoxious. Now I had the alarm on my wife’s SUV honking, along with the alarm on my car!

Infuriating!

As neighbors began to turn on lights and peer out windows, I ended up dropping my smart phone on the cement stoop. I first turned off my car alarm and then, in the dark, stared with great concentration at the remote to my wife’s vehicle. We haven’t had her vehicle for a long time and, while it does hang on my keychain, I’m not as familiar with her remote. On top of that, in the darkness, the alarm button on her remote seemed to be pretty much the same color as the “lock”, “unlock” and “trunk” buttons!

@#%$^&^!

It took me what seemed an eternity to finally stop both alarms from honking.

%^#@*&^!

Naturally, the mishap woke my sleeping wife. My son, who’s a night owl anyway, greeted me in the hallway with a giant, patronizing grin, miming applause.

Infuriating!

Getting It Done

Last night, it was windy.

Our assignment for the six o’clock newscast took us to Garon Arena in Montreal North for a live interview with Penguins goalie, Marc-Andre Fleury. He was at the arena to do the ceremonial puck drop, launching the “Equipe McDo” 2012-2013 hockey season.

Our microwave truck operator, Sylvain, was pretty sure the wind gusts were still within the microwave mast’s tolerable limits. After pulling wires from the truck to the spot inside the arena where Louis, our cameraman, had chosen to set up the interview, Sylvain was preparing equipment outside the truck. He had left one of the truck doors ajar with the key in the ignition. As he worked, the howling wind pushed the door closed, locking him out of the truck!

He burst into the arena and announced there would be no “live” because he’d locked the keys in the microwave truck. There wasn’t enough time to have someone at the station drive the spare key to our location, plus, traffic was pretty heavy. Sylvain called our boss to say the “live” wouldn’t happen.

As he hung up the phone, I suggested calling CAA and getting them to unlock the door. That made Sylvain remember taxi cabs offer a “door unlocking” service. He called a cab as the seconds ticked closer to our assigned broadcast time.

When the cab arrived, Sylvain worked on one side of the truck, as the taxi driver worked on the other door.

They finally got the truck unlocked and, as the 60-foot mast swayed in the wind, Fleury walked in, signed autographs, posed for pictures, did the live interview and went into the arena for the puck drop.

Once again, Sylvain holds it all together (See blog "Merci, Mille Fois" April 1, 2012) and makes it happen.

No sweat.

Our camerapeople do a swell job and, hey, my sincere thanks to cameraman, Martin, for warning me my zipper was down as we stood out on the sidewalk at the corner of Ste-Catherine and Peel one evening in mid-September, waiting to do a live report.

Sure, now I triple-check when I change shirts, but why couldn't he have noticed earlier!