When the Sportsnet executives approached me about doing some anchor work in Toronto during the Beijing Olympics, I was genuinely excited.
And it wasn't because I wanted the opportunity to try something new and move up the corporate ladder. Instead, I was excited to come to the main offices in Toronto for the chance to finally steal some office supplies.
As a bureau reporter for the past six years, I've been forced to buy cheap pens and Post-It Notes like some sort of common reporter. Now, I can raid the supply closet for paper clips, highlighters and the seldom-used three-hole punch.
However, I must admit that my kleptomaniac-induced excitement was somewhat tempered by the news that I would be anchoring the early morning weekend shows.
That meant having a wakeup call at 3 a.m. in my hotel room. So when I strolled down the hallway of my hotel at 3:25 a.m. on Saturday morning, I was in a slightly foul mood. I decided to flip everyone's "Do Not Disturb" signs over to the "Please Service Room." That way, everyone on my floor would suffer an earlier than expected wakeup call as well.
And as I walked down Bloor Street at that ridiculous hour, my mind raced back to the first time I ever tried my hand at anchoring the news.
It actually happened back in 1996 when I was a journalism student taking a tour of the CNN Center in Atlanta with my parents.
They had a special studio set up for tourists to come in and have an anchor audition. They even gave us blue CNN blazers to put over our clothes. In my case it was placed over a Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl XXX Champions T-shirt. (You remember those shirts with the oversized cartoon heads of everyone on the team? Except after three or four washes, you couldn't tell the difference between Emmitt Smith and Troy Aikman because they faded so quickly).
So I went onto the stage, got my scripts... and proceeded to freeze under the bright lights and pressure. I stumbled and fumbled once the red light turned on, performing not unlike a young Andre Racicot.
Behind the glass, my mother must have been thinking two things:
1. "I can't believe we spent an additional $19.95 on top of the tour price to pay for this debacle."
2. "I can't believe we spent thousands of dollars to put this guy through journalism school."
On my end, I was clearly humiliated. I'm pretty sure I saw Wolf Blitzer walking by the studio and laughing his bearded head off. It was the low point of my television career.
But now, 12 years later, I feel a lot more confident and ready to handle this role. And these are some big shoes to fill on the morning show. I've got to follow the path of notorious AM hotties like Hazel Mae, Jody Vance and Jason Portuondo.
Now I will admit that I was nervous about reading off a teleprompter, which is something I don't do as a reporter in the field. Years of playing video games have wreaked havoc on my eyesight. (It pains me to say it, but there is a downside to playing Tecmo Bowl.)
I have subsequently developed a degenerative eye condition known as "Ticker-it is." Simply put, it is the inability to read scrolling information that appears on the sports tickers on various networks. For years I would erroneously report to everyone that Joe Sakic had been traded -- only to look like a fool when my far-sighted friends would inform me that Joe Sacco had switched teams.
So if you see me wearing glasses on the air, it's not some lame attempt by me to appear more intelligent to the casual viewer; I actually need them.
The two weekend newscasts went fairly smoothly, considering it's tough to write witty material for scripts at 4 a.m. (Some of you are probably wondering if I write the majority of my blogs between the hours of 2 a.m. - 4 a.m.)
I even did UFC highlights, using terms like "ground and pound" that made absolutely no sense to me. I was able to poke fun at the Blue Jays (which is so hard to do right now) and I threw to a Theo Fleury baseball story without laughing once. I was pretty impressed with my anchor debut, considering how it all started for me 12 years ago.
And fortunately, nobody will ever see that CNN tape of mine, unless my Mom suddenly has an axe to grind with me and discovers how to upload files to YouTube.
So I think I've come a long way from that geeky journalism student at the CNN Center. I'd love to see where that Wolf Blitzer guy ended up. I bet he'd be pretty jealous of me.
