Jim Lang

Jim works with Brian on a feature on Saints tight end Jeremy Shockey.

Wednesday finally felt like we were covering a Super Bowl in South Florida, with gorgeous sunny skies and a nice cool breeze off the ocean.

Before I talk about what happened on Wednesday, I have to talk about what happened Tuesday night at the NFL media party in South Beach.

Since I had a lot of writing and work to do Wednesday morning, I made the call to "fall on the grenade." Meaning I was the designated driver.

It worked out alright because I had more room in my belly for all the amazing FREE food on hand. You name it, they had it and I ate it. The best of the best was the slabs of Grade A beef direct from Don Shula's steak house.

A little later in the evening I ran into Shaun Majumder. He's that comedian you see on the CBC's This Hour has 22 minutes. Shaun is a great guy and a Newfoundland native. My personal motto is that anyone from Newfoundland is a friend of mine.

I promised Shaun I would include the link to the bit he did with Sidney Crosby on the "power" of numerology and why Team Canada will win Olympic Gold in Vancouver:

After the media party wrapped up we made our way back to the car. Now the invitation said the party was just behind the Delano Hotel. So we parked the car there. To get to the car we had to walk through the ritziest, most high-end, uber hotel I have ever seen. Some of the lads thought they would like a drink in this place. I'm driving so I said go for it. Our producer Brian said he would buy the round. Four mixed drinks at the Delano set him back $75 dollars US. No joke. The lads downed their drinks and we got out of their before we suffered any more financial carnage.

After we got the car we started cruising South Beach. Now picture the scene: I'm driving our Cadillac SRX loaded down with a bunch of hosers listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and acting like a bunch of 14-year-olds. Needless to say we didn't exactly fit the mold of the typical South Beach crowd.

Wednesday finally felt like we were covering a Super Bowl in South Florida, with gorgeous sunny skies and a nice cool breeze off the ocean. It was almost surreal weather to a knob like me from Canada. South Beach was really beginning to fill up with stretch Hummers, starlets, models and the rich and famous. A guy could really get used to living down here.

For the Saints and Colts this was the day each team held its first official practice during Super Bowl week. The more I work with him, the more I realize that Jamie Dukes is such a pro. As a former centre in the NFL, he had some amazing insight to the feature story we had put together on Peyton Manning and Jeff Saturday.

The fact that we had the beach and the Atlantic Ocean in the background didn't hurt either. One of the things that I appreciate about guys like Cory and Brian, or all our cameramen and producers for that matter, is that they share my obsession with getting the perfect shot when we are taping something. It takes a lot more work and it can be a hassle sometimes but in the end it's always worth it.

After we wrapped up we headed back to Fort Lauderdale for some Italian food. Then it was back to the hotel to do some more writing and editing. In the picture above you can see me and our producer Brian going over the script for a feature story we are doing on Saints tight end Jeremy Shockey.

Thursday we are heading back down to South Beach to hook up with the Saints to do some more interviews.