Work

Apologies for the brief absence. In the interest of maximizing my productivity and meeting my deadline with HarperCollins – the kind folks who bought the book I am contractually obligated to deliver this month – I locked myself in a house with no other humans, no internet and no TV for nearly two weeks. During that time I wrote quite a lot and learned many things:
-It is scary being in a house by yourself. In New York City I have a doorman and one point of entry. In a house there is no doorman, multiple points of entry, and me sleeping with a bread knife.
-It is nice being in a house by yourself when not focused on the fact you’re in a house by yourself.
-When I am in a house by myself working on the book I’m contractually obligated to deliver to the publisher in two weeks, I don’t shave and I walk around thinking out loud. This might mean I’m crazy.
-Being without internet for nearly two weeks made me realize how addicted I was to the acquisition of unimportant information. Not being able to get instant answers to questions like “What happened to Wham’s Andrew Ridgely?” means more time spent being productive.

Before 50 Cent was worth a nickel, he had to get his study on. My curriculum for the aspiring artiste, for Cracked magazine.

This has to have been the most star-studded make-up room of the year – putting John Bolton and Anderson Cooper’s previous appearances to shame.
First there was the legendary Larry King, surrounded by a coterie of admirers fawning over his every word. He was chatting away, which is exactly what he gets to do for a living, which makes him a very lucky man. He was telling an interesting story about a doctor he knew, who I think was named Phillips. The doctor’s office had a sign that read “Doctor Phillips” with an arrow pointing upstairs. When the doctor died, his grave marker read “Doctor Phillips” with… an arrow pointing upstairs. Everyone cooed. Mr. King then complained that CNN was endlessly showing the surveillance footage of Lady Diana’s last moments. He said she was the only royal he’s liked.
But the real whoppers were Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Robert De Niro. Their presence turned the house upside down. You’d have expected that a television operation used to having various celebrities in it at any given time would know how to behave. But no. It was chaos, with an entire hallway filled with people who had no business being there. Folks from other floors, from accounting, from the cafeteria, maintenance folks and what seemed like people straight off the street awkwardly milled about the hallway, bumping in to the Jolie-Damon-De Niro entourage and the CNN security guards. You’d have thought Jesus was around the corner signing autographs but no, three actors getting powder on their mugs. It was a mess. If people behaved like that around me, I’d freak out and hide in Namibia too. No wonder these people go insane.
As Glenn is on the road this week, this segment took place on the set of the show as opposed to my usual closet with a camera. His console has fun sound effect buttons on it like “game show theme” which I’d love to press. The set is in the same soundstage as Nancy Grace’s. It’s about 50 degrees in these things which is great because at about 53 degrees I sweat like a White House press secretary.
Though I doubt the Grateful Palate bacon-of-the-month folks want their product back, it’ll be interesting to see if Melitta asks for their $200 weather-telling coffee machine.

I shared the makeup room with Glenn today and was impressed by the multi-tasking he’s capable of. While he’s getting sprayed in the face with a jet of makeup, he somehow manages to handle talking to three people at the same time, while listening to the script and dictating changes. Me? I’m silent and watch the backwards reflection of CNN in the mirror. This probably explains why he has a more robust income than I.

A little thing I did for Cracked online.

The make-up room today featured CNN’s Jack Cafferty and a pensive, pre-election Anderson Cooper. I’m always tempted to say “love your hair” to Cooper, because then he’d see we had similar hair and we’d laugh and laugh and laugh. But there’s also a 20% chance he’d just say “Thank you,” and then I’d look like a big, gay dummy.
Jack Cafferty is my favorite CNN guy. He doesn’t mince words. I’d like to get liquored up and give him a big hug because he amuses me greatly by saying very funny things in a very dry way. One of my favorite moments is when he called MSNBC the network with “five call letters and no viewers.” Brutal, but brutal-funny. Politically, he takes shots at everyone who deserves them – as it should be.
Jack’s not afraid to wander downstairs to the mall at Time Warner Center with a long cable dangling from the earpiece assembly that’s clamped on the back of his shirt. I take that to mean he’s not afraid of anything.

In the makeup room today was Alex Kuczynski. Normally I’d have no idea who on earth she was, but Gawker’s been going on about her for the past two weeks, so when I heard the name I made the connection. I’m sharp like that.
After she was all powdered and left someone asked who she was, to which another replied “She had a lot of plastic surgery done then wrote a book saying no one else should.”
For the record, I think elective cosmetic surgery is sad and insane.
Also for the record, my Bob Dole bum arm impersonation was accidental.

When they first asked me to write for Cracked I said, “The Mad magazine rip-off from 1960?” and they said, “Yes, but it’ll be different.” I was skeptical, but they were right, it is different, and pretty much only the mascot and the name have remained. There’s celebrity-mocking, satire, parody and comedy-relevant information. And it’s glossy, whereas the old magazine looked like a comic and smelled funny after a month.
Issue #2 is out and it’s chock full of sheer genius. Then there’s my contribution, a piece on page 17 called Nostradamus: The Lost Episodes wherein you’ll find this quatrain on George Michael getting a hummer in the woods:
Whispers in the dark, not careless but planned
Men of different stature, camouflaged, strike their swords
The battle over, a victor emerges, the darkness dissipates with a flash
The Sun comes out; a star, having more than once fallen, falls more.
If you don’t subscribe already, you should, because then they make more money and a terribly small portion of that finds its way to me.

The green room is the room you sit in while you’re waiting to do your TV thing. It’s not green, and I haven’t bothered to look up the history of the term, so I have no idea why they call it that.
Today I shared the green room with Andy Dick and his entourage. His entourage is two ladies and his voting-age son. They were there to do Showbiz Today.
My brother can recognize celebrities even if they’re hiding under a comforter. I don’t have that skill and I did not know it was Andy Dick until I saw his discarded security badge lying in the bathroom. Andy Dick reminds me of Fred Schneider of the B-52s, but more flamboyant.
In case you’d ever wondered “Does Andy Dick leave the door open to the bathroom when he pees?” the answer is yes. Andy doesn’t care to close the door when he fancies a pee, even when his entourage and other green room guests are right there.
You may have believed that Andy Dick would wash his hands after taking a public pee. I can tell you from my first-person perspective that this is not the case. Andy has a busy schedule which apparently made him very late for his Showbiz Today appearance and does not allow him time to wash his hands or discard his security badge.
I do not know Andy, and I imagine I never will because I have a low tolerance for overly energetic people who pee in mixed company.
Now to my segment.
My segment did not go as planned. If my segment were a valley I would name it Surprise Valley. I expected a clip that never materialized, I expected something to be a still image which was instead a clip, and I did not expect a weird sound effect to go off in my earpiece. It was not very smooth, and afterwards I cried on the inside.

I don’t think I totally understand make-up. Some days I sit in the chair and the lady does me up with all sorts of stuff and sprays my face with an airbrush and it takes a good 10 minutes. Other days I’m in and out of the chair in two minutes – a little dab of makeup here and there and a dusting of base. Either way I wind up looking the same. Why are some of the makeup gals spending so much more time on me for the exact same results? It makes me sad to think of all that wasted time. They could be writing the next great novel. Or Cliff’s Notes.
Anyway, kudos to today’s make-up lady. You wouldn’t know it because of her 2 minute handiwork, but I had a red gash near my right eye from where my homicidal toddler son tried to poke my eye out with an American flag on a sharp stick. I forgive him because he’s about as smart as a Rhesus monkey at the moment, but I don’t trust him with patriotic symbols anymore. I also think it’s un-American to attach the flag to sharp sticks.

Since we’re entering Nightmare Election season It was decided that today I would offer political commentary rather than simply pick on Glenn. I had several index cards of things I wanted to talk about, but time was not on my side. Sadly, America will never know what I think about Katherine Harris or the Muslim guy running for Congress. I was happy to get in a Star Wars reference, although I really had a good Twilight Zone analogy I never got to.
If I could go back in time I would not have said “How do you know the mayor of Yonkers does not exist and suddenly there he is, fighting Hillary?” because that doesn’t make any sense. But hey.
Glenn Beck
Weeknights 7 & 9
CNN Headline News

I’m not very good at recognizing people, though I’d probably recognize Martha Plimpton because I adored her my entire childhood.
So far in the makeup room before taping I’ve recognized only Anderson Cooper. He was all chatty with the makeup ladies. He seems like a nice guy, and he’s blazing trails for silver-haired men on TV so good for him.
But today was exciting. While I was sitting in the makeup chair, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and his posse came into the room. The Ambassador was probably doing Cooper’s show or Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room. I thought it was funny because only seven posts ago I was having fun at his expense. I thought, “What a small world.” And then I thought, “He looks like Wilford Brimley.”
When it comes to makeup, Bo-Dog is all business. He didn’t talk. He just sat in the chair and waited for the Polish makeup lady to work him over. He seems like he’s got a lot on his mind and as he works for the U.N. I can imagine that’s exactly the case. He’s probably fantasizing about capping Kofi.
It seems every time I go into make-up I get a different lady with a different technique. Men get about three minutes in the chair while the ladies get much longer. I accept this. I shall not litigate.
Some ladies airbrush my face and some of them do the old-fashioned wiping-it-on-with-sponges thing. I prefer the latter because I don’t shut up, and if I talk during an airbrushing I get a mouth full of makeup.
The worst make-up job I ever had was in the ‘90s for an NBC improv TV show called Kwik Witz. It was a poorly-executed rip-off of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and it wasn’t really improv. The makeup lady made me look like George Hamilton. It was sad for me.
But I digress.
Today a makeup lady made me look whiter than normal. I really felt like an albino. When she announced she was finished I thought she was kidding. I spent my remaining time before the taping asking everyone in the hallway if I looked too white. I thought I was going to come across as a sickly ghost. Even my eyelashes were white. I felt awkward and thought I should be ill.
After looking at the footage I can say it’s definitely not my favorite makeup job. But I don’t think I look like the guy from Powder.
At any rate, I got my Bolton fix.

If you’ve recently had a face transplant, I hope you’ll find my guide to the newly-faced full of helpful tips for coping.
You’ll find it in the premiere issue of the new Cracked magazine. Or you can find it right on their website, for free.

I learned something new today when the guest before me, a former FBI agent, came to the studio with his own IFP (earpiece). I wondered why he would bother. Then I realized that the IFP I’ve been using is the same IFP everyone else uses. So he’s a germ freak, and I’m probably pushing Wolf Blitzer’s ear wax into my head.

In case you’re thinking about introducing a clip on TV, here’s a good way not to lead into it: “…And you got me all excited. I was rea-caus-yuh-yeah-I’ll play the clip!”
Glenn Beck airs on CNN Headline News weeknights at 7, with repeats at 9 & midnight.

Special Vive La France edition.

Please note: Glenn accidentally broke the snow globe within 40 minutes of receiving it.
Glenn Beck airs on CNN Headline News weeknights at 7, with repeats at 9 & midnight.

As a journalist, I have to be prepared to go wherever the story is. Unless the story is in Somalia. I’m definitely not going there.
When the Glenn Beck show said they were sending me to Fort Wayne, Indiana I didn’t bat an eyelid or fear for my life – the story is more important. I simply asked them where Fort Wayne was and started walking. Fortunately they sent a car to pick me up and take me to plane place, where the giant flying birds are. I walked into the flying bird belly and a few hours later found myself in Fort Wayne.

Continue reading…

If you think me sitting in a studio sweating is exciting, wait till you see what happens when they send me to Fort Wayne, Indiana next week. Did you know when you fly into Fort Wayne an old lady gives you a cookie? No strings attached either. Just a nice lady giving you a cookie and welcoming you to their city. Which is really, when compared to Shanghai or New York, a hamlet. Or house-cluster.

Glenn Beck
CNN Headline News
M-F at 7 p.m. with repeats at 9 & midnight. And other times during the weekend in order to maximize overexposure.