Da Finger

I have a good friend named Rich Brace. He was the promotions and marketing chief at one of the stations I worked at years ago. He came to dinner one night at our home and entertained my kids all night long with "Da finger." Da finger for those who aren't aware is the digit finger. No big deal to most of us. But Rich had managed to turn it into a super hero of sorts.

He would say to the kids, "What we need now is the power of "Da finger." Then his finger would glide through the air, moving all around. Both Trevor and Courtney were watching in rapt attention. Until finally "Da finger" would make it's attack. Da finger for some unknown reason would always end up tickling either Courtney or Trevor. Throughout the evening the kids would cry out, "Da finger, Da finger!" Rich true to form would jump back into action. His impact that night was unforgettable. The kids would ask about the man with "Da finger" for months.

I hadn't thought much about Da finger until Christmas Eve. That's when a 12 year old boy threw a football at "Da finger." He didn't really throw it, he whistled it in at what I would clock at about 100 miles an hour. Okay that's an exaggeration, but I have to say when the ball hit the tip of "Da finger," it "hurt like you know what." It felt like someone hit it with a sledge hammer. I figured it was dislocated, I never thought it was broken. But it was. It took months to get the correct diagnosis. Then months more of "Da finger" immobilized with a series of hideous splints.

I had friends e-mailing asking if I was going for the sympathy viewer vote so to speak. One viewer asked if I couldn't do the newspaper section pointing with a different finger and sparing the viewers "Da finger." You can only guess what finger they suggested amidst gales of laughter.

Tonight, "Da finger" is back at work helping me write this story. Today the doctor gave me the go ahead to take the splint off. My finger will never be the same as he says. It will always be slightly deformed, but at least now I can use it and I won't have to deal with that dumb splint. To me sans the splint I do in fact have a super hero on my hand, I have "Da finger!!" Rich Brace if you are reading this, you were always right, there's nothing quite like "Da Finger."

Dear Old Dad

Father's Day is coming up. So I'm riding home in the car on Friday night and listening to Neil Young on the way home from dinner at a restaurant in Fairfax. The Compact Disc is titled, "Live at Massey Hall 1971". I don't get this C.D.. Let me explain why. When it was first recorded a Compact Disc didn't exist. Back then it was L.P.'s and 8 tracks. So when is this released, not in 1972, of course not. It was released earlier this year. I bought it at Starbucks on a lark one Sunday.

So we are driving home, passing George Mason, and I turn up the volume because I love this C.D.. I think that it's got all of his great recordings, and his voice is so pure back then. My wife turns to me and says she wants to trade this c.d. for another that's stuck in my car. At first I'm surprised. Then I'm not sure if I'm ready to trade one of my c.d.'s, and then she tells me which one she wants. It's Sarah McLachlan. I mean is that really a fair trade? Please! I was quick to agree. But then I went into denial. How on earth is Sarah McLachlan's C.D. in my car?

I start thinking about it, and I just kind of come to the conclusion that it must have ended up in the car when we were going on some road trip. I had a buddy of mine who used to listen to nothing but hard rock, and then one day I looked at his collection of music when I was in his car, and there's Charlie Rich. I looked at him like he had five heads. I asked the question any guy would ask in a situation like that, "Charlie Rich?". He looked at me sheepishly and said, "I've got a girlfriend!"

So naturally I have a wife, so I have Sarah McLachlan in my car. Thank God Neil Young recorded the song "A Man needs a Maid". That's the only reason why she wants to make the swap. She says emphatically, "I don't like that song!" I don't know why but it gets me thinking about my big day.

Wouldn't it be great to get some new music on Sunday. Sunday is Father's Day. Of course that means I'll get another wide assortment of ties and boxer shorts. But why can't it be something more exciting? I'll tell you why. Guys are boring.

I was at Applied Physical Theraphy today. That's where they are working on my back and neck. They are working magic. I'm feeling much better, so I stop by to say goodbye to Tony, the guy who's really managed to straighten out my messed up neck and back. I'm also here to pay my insurance co-pay. I mention that the big day is on Sunday. Kathy at the front desk says, "Oh yeah Sunday is Fathers' Day. I still haven't got my Dad anything." I say, "That's the problem we are always last on the list." Kathy responds, "My dad is so hard to buy for!"

What does that really mean? I'll tell you what it means. We just don't know how to express ourselves. So what happens? We end up with shirts, ties, and boxer shorts. I guess it's better than the alternative, I could be getting a Charlie Rich C.D. or worse yet Barry Manilow's greatest hits!

Media Meeting and Other Matters

Some days are brutal on this shift. Today I rolled into work fighting back the yawns that plague me by the end of each work week. We were out on Wednesday night for the opening of the new Bonefish Grill in Alexandria. We stayed out way too late. So I'm paying the price.

I'm doing the morning show when it comes to my attention that I will get the distinct honor of dancing with some of the gazelles from River Dance. Imagine an elephant dancing with Fred Astaire and you have the mental image of me dancing with these folks. Naturally I have an objective. The objective is to get out of this dance segment! This isn't like dancing with the stars. I'm a middle-aged white guy, translation I can't dance. Sure I can move my arms and legs. I just do it without any sort of rhythm. That's just fine by me. But standing next to someone who knows how to dance, someone who makes it look effortless will only bring more attention to my feeble effort.

Before the 9am show even begins we end up in the studio and the pleasant dancers are there to give us a crash course on the dance move. They show us how to position our feet before the move. They shift their feet and then within in an instant they've moved all over the place and I'm still trying to figure out where to position my feet. I can see immense River Dance ridicule in the near future. Fortunately the show moves along quite nicely. And then it's my moment of humiliation. I ask if I can just do that pogo stick jumping thing that they do. You know that move where they jump up in the air and kick their feet around. That doesn't seem as difficult to me. They laugh and say they don't know what I'm talking about. I'm doomed. So Kim and I are positioned on the outside with the professional dancers sandwiched in between us. This by the way is all Kim's idea. She has her motives. She says something like this, with a wry smile, "It's always a good idea to be out on the dance floor with someone who can't dance. That way you don't look so bad." She's right of course.

The show ends and then I head upstairs for a mandatory meeting about the future of our station in the digital age. I admit I'm not much of a high tech guy, so it's seems like a lot of it is really techno mumbo jumbo. Actually I'm kidding of course. You never know my boss might just read this. I'm saying it's techno mumbo jumbo, because I'm pretty sure it's top secret strategic planning stuff. So in other words I'd better not tell you what was discussed. I came away from the meeting thinking it's a good thing I'm blogging. It's the future. Actually it might just be the present. But it doesn't really matter whether it's the future, or the present, I'm doing it! And that's a good thing.

Miriam Wright is sitting next to me at the techno mumbo jumbo meeting. She works on the Dot com side of things. She understands all this stuff. She nods her head at just the right moments during the meeting. I wait for an opening and then pounce. I lean in and ask if she's read my latest blog entry. She's pretty perceptive, "Yes Mike I read it, it was for Monday, today is Thursday." She's right of course. Today is Thursday. Now my theory is that was a pretty good blog for Monday, but posting it on Thursday is even better. You know it's like a fine aged wine. Of course Ms. Wright doesn't see it that way.

So why is it posted on Thursday? Well I've got this problem. I'm a nervous wreck about this thing called proof reading. I always have someone look over my stuff before I post. And so it languished for a few days. I could count on Miriam to proof. But she's like David. You remember him. He took on Goliath. She has this mammoth beast she has to feed all the time. She's up against it. You know the great thing about David is he won. It makes a great story. But you have to remember it wasn't a best of seven series like the NBA. If it was, David would have been squashed like the Cavaliers. So I get nervous about things like this. But today I'm out on the tightrope. I'm ready to launch. You official blog reader are my extra set of eyes. Please take your job seriously and report any infractions.

By the way, after our meeting I got in my car and got stuck in traffic behind a black Lincoln Continental. It seemed appropriate that on a day when I displayed a tremendous lack of prowess for dancing the car in front of me would have the personalized license plates that read Tango!

Thursday And Beyond

Earlier this week on the air we had highlights of Barry Bonds latest bomb. You see a couple of guys going for the ball, and of course the lucky guy lifts up the ball to show it off to the world.
So this prompted me to share a story about last Thursday on the air. I mentioned to Peggy that I went to the game last Thursday along with my lovely wife Kate and wonderful daughter Courtney. We joined Kim Martucci and her boyfriend Ben at RFK. Ben had four tickets to the Nats game, and they were kind enough to invite us along as their guests. I told Peggy and the viewers that out of the five of us, only one fan in our area caught a ball at the ballpark. And that someone was me!

I learned a long time ago the best way to tell a story. I thought this story was pretty good. Except that Kim had to come along and fill in the details. I did catch the ball, but it was after the outfielder for the Pirates was done warming up and he tossed it into the stands where we were sitting not too far away. I heard all the commotion, saw all the people jockeying for position and then looked up to see the ball going over all of their heads and easily landing in my right hand. It was either thrust your hand into the air and catch it, or watch the ball land right there on my hotdog. So Kim managed to fill in all these details which helped to diminish the impact of my story.

Thursday was a fun day at the ballpark, but Friday was when the real fun began. Kate and I flew down to Florida to go to a wedding of a close friend, Glen Abbott. The wedding was at St. Augustine. We were both looking forward to a weekend away. So what happens? We get on the plane, and about a minute into the flight, the beast child comes alive. This child, about 18 months, managed to cry and scream and throw tantrums almost the entire flight. The kid was brutal. In case you are keeping score at home, I counted at least one hundred No's!

Mom: “Honey please stop."
Beast Child: "No, no, no!!!"
Dad: "Come over with Daddy, I'll hold you."
Beast Child: "No, no, no, no, no, no!!!"

Throw in a couple of wahs, and you have the dialogue that went on for almost two hours. At one point, I decided I would save everyone on theflight from this excruciatingly difficult journey. I was going to make the beast child my friend. So I began playing hide and go seek and making all these crazy faces. The child responded, he began to smile and laugh. His parents turned around and looked at me and mouthed thank you. But the child didn't have much of an attention span and after about 5 to 10 minutes of peace and quiet, he immediately returned to his screaming self. Finally the flight was over and we could disembark.

The rest of the weekend was a lot of fun, then Sunday morning came & it was time for our return flight. We had to stop to refuel our car before dropping it off at the rental car agency. I began to fill up and noticed the gas price was $4.69 a gallon. Here it was the only gas station in sight and it was right next to all the rental car agencies. I remember the contract that I signed advising us to bring the car back with a full tank of gas or pay $5.69 gallon for the gas used. So here I was, getting robbed. I was certainthat the gas station was owned by a cooperative that included Avis, Hertz, and every other car rental agency within site. I filled up the car and we dropped it off and headed to the airport on the shuttle bus.

Before long we were on our flight heading back to Dulles. It was almost as if Central Casting was in charge of our flights. Now instead of a beast boy, it was the beast girl. A little girl bellowing, crying uncontrollably. Her mother, armed with a pacifier that she used as a weapon, constantly thrusting it into the child's mouth in an effort to silence her. The child turning the pacifier into a dart, spitting it out with precision. It would bounce off the chair in front. I braced myself for another miserable flight.

I had survived the first one. Clearly this won't be so bad. But it was, because now we had the second most annoying thing you can find on a flight. We had the armchair man. I have a rule about flights... sitting in the middle sucks, so if the guy there wants to take the bulk of the armchair - so be it. But the guy next to me did more than that. He decided that he also should get part of my chair. He kept thrusting his elbow into my air space. I couldn't even change the pages of my book half the time. I thought it couldn't and wouldn't get any worse. Boy was I wrong. When we landed I got up to get my luggage out of the overhead bin when the elbow man decided he was a defensemen on a hockey team. He jumped up and shoved me. Just so he could get to his piece of luggage. I lost my balance momentarily, but recovered. I did what most anyone would in this case, I shot him the glance. Normally this is all that's needed. But no, he didn't even notice.

By now the beast child was screaming again, and her older brother, who was about four, kept saying over and over, "I want to get off, I want to get off, I want to get off"! After hearing from his mother that he couldn't get off as there were other people in front of him. And after hearing the father say the same thing and after his grandfather said "Stick a sock in it" - my wife, the former school teacher, leaned forward and said in a firm voice, the voice of God, the voice of authority, "You have to wait." He looked up at her and stopped. I marveled at how effective she was. And then I thought if only she had started earlier.

My Blogging Experiment

Okay so I threw down the gauntlet with my blog yesterday. I wasn't ashamed that I challenged America to read my blog. Wait a minute. This is the world wide web. So I really challenged everyone in the entire world to stop what they were doing to read my blog.

I posed the question, is anyone home? Is anyone reading this? So I found out who does read my blog - Miriam and Rick the dot com folks. They loved it. So Miriam is saying to me today, "You've got to do this all the time! People will find it. They'll read it every day." So quite naturally I'm thinking what does this really mean? Will I be looking over at Miriam taking a nap later today? Does my insane blogging mean less work for her? No, of course not. Wait a minute, some guy just tapped me on the shoulder. Okay, now that I've told him where he can put the cot for Miriam I'll get back to what I was talking about.

I've been on a mission now to find out who reads blogs. I asked Tucker on the set today, "Do you read these blogs?" No was his answer. I asked Peggy Fox, "Do you read these blogs?" No was her answer. Tucker pledged to read mine. We'll see. Peggy insisted she was going to read my blog. In fact, on the set she immediately logged on to the website and started fishing around trying to find my blog.

A half hour later here was the exchange:Mike: So what did you think?Peggy: About what?Mike: About the blog?Peggy: What blog?Mike: My blog?Peggy: Oh yeah, your blog. I can't find it. How do you find it?

I instruct her on how to find my blog. She reads part of it aloud and laughs.
Next I asked Kim.Mike: So Kim do you read any of these blogs?Kim: Yeah, sometimes I read yours and Brett's.Mike: Oh.Kim: What does that mean?

Already I can tell she's concerned. Deep down inside I know that Kim knows that I have included her in the blog. She can tell by my wry smile. A little later she comes out and says. "I read your blog, I've updated mine and I posted a comment on yours. So there."

As I continue to bang away at my computer terminal, I'm interrupted by Jay Mishkin. He's our world famous Morning Executive Producer. "You need to get out on the set for this interview." We are pre-taping an interview for the 9am show. Jay tries a weak joke about it. "You'll be interviewing Les Trent. You can ask him if he has more."

I stare blankly at Jay. He tries again. "You can ask Les if he has more." I look at Jay my blank stare still in tact. I wait a sizeable amount of time and then say. "Jay, I got the joke the first time. It doesn't help to tell the joke twice." I walk out to the set.

Pretty soon I'm interviewing Les. No, I didn't ask him if he had more. Les is talking about Senator Hillary Clinton. He interviewed her yesterday. I ask a couple of questions, the whole time wondering should I ask him, "Les, have you read my blog yet?" Or perhaps even more importantly, "Les, do you think Hillary reads my blog?"

Blogging About Blogging

Okay, I am not a high tech guy. There, I admit it. So this blog thing is foreign to me. It's like an online diary in many ways.

There are three ways to approach blogging. One is to open up your life and your mouth and just talk about anything that comes to mind. The other approach is to be really circumspect and question how much you really want to share with people you don't know. The third is me. I just sit here and say to myself -"I really don't want to do this. And you know what - I don't think anyone is reading this, so why bother?" But then you are confronted with the bragging bloggers. Our station has a couple of them.

I will do everything in my power to protect their identities. Today, all of a sudden, one of those unnamed bloggers (Okay it's Howard Bernstein. You got it out of me, but I'm not mentioning any others!) hovered over my desk and insisted that I read one of his blogs. I looked at this with the same sort of interest and desire that I might exhibit if someone asked me to kiss a rattlesnake. But I knew if I didn't read it, Howard would still be hovering over me and I would never get anything done.

So I start reading Howard's blog and there it is, a bad word. He had misspelled something and as a result it was one of those words that you would never utter in polite company. Think of the word "shot". So I point this out to Howard producing a look of terror on his face and he sprints off to fix it.

Which gets back to something I considered earlier. "Is anyone really reading this stuff?" I thought I had made my case, but then I began looking at the other blogs and noticed that like me, some on air types - they will go unnamed (okay one is Kim Martucci, but I swear I'm not giving up anyone else) are rather infrequent in their blog updates. I mention out loud that one of our staffers hadn't blogged in about a month, and our Morning Executive Producer Jay Mishkin shouted, "You think that's bad, look at Martucci's!"

So now I know what's going on - we are all blogging for the benefit of Jay Mishkin. So Jay, if you are reading my blog, I hope you found this to be a fascinating entry. If this is someone else reading this, I'm going to deny I ever mentioned Howard or Kim's name. By the way, if you do read this, be kind enough to add comments below and tell me what you thought of it

That Komen Connection

One of the true privileges of working at 9NEWS NOW is each year on one Saturday in June, I get to witness something truly amazing. Everyone at the station comes together on one day to either work on our broadcast, or walk and run in the Komen Race for the Cure.Every year we get to see the same familiar faces - the faces of the courageous... the men and women battling breast cancer.

We also get to know their families. Families that provide the support and strength in those quiet moments when they are truly challenged and asking why me? So, we see husbands and wives. We see the children. We also see the face of an entire community. Washington is the Nation's Capital - an important city in the world scheme.

On this one day, however, it takes on all the characteristics of a small town. People come together from everywhere, and exchange hugs and smiles and words of encouragement. People that may only see each other once a year, come together and act like family. It's a special time indeed and one that makes me proud to be a member of this community, and a member of the 9NEWS NOW family.