Today Show Will No Longer Serve Curry

Savannah Guthrie has big yellow pumps to fill and she must be acutely aware of the delicate tightrope she now walks while the NBC buzzards circle overhead. NBC announced earlier today that Guthrie will replace Ann Curry as Today co-host, and Guthrie sat awkwardly this morning on the Today couch next to Matt Lauer and the gang after Curry was unceremoniously publicly executed on national television on Thursday.

Curry, long the scapegoat for Today’s ratings slips, made it crystal clear among tears and sobs that her departure was not of her making saying, “This is not the way I expected to leave.” Like many loyal Today viewers, I choked on my morning cup of Joe while I painfully watched America’s big sister be handed a cigarette and blindfold. True, the ratings are not what they were after Meredith Vieira packed her bags, and her sass, just over a year ago, but to blame Curry for the plummet in ratings is shortsighted. Curry was clearly not the ratings killer that the NBC suits would have you believe. The plunge in ratings after Vieira’s departure only proves that she had a loyal viewership despite the glib and arrogant Lauer. Vieira had the balls to hold Lauer by his, a task the sincere and professional Curry simply wasn’t up to. Yet, Curry was the one who got axed rather than Lauer, whose following is receding quicker than his hairline.

To use a phrase made popular by Today’s News Reader, Natalie Morales, “here’s what’s trending.” General consensus among those who left comments on Today’s Facebook page is that Lauer did Curry something dirty and while he may not have actually stabbed her, he certainly held the knife she fell on. During Curry’s four-minute soul-baring farewell, viewers noticed an irritated Lauer lean in to give Curry the kiss of death as she clumsily tried to shield herself from his embrace, as if it wasn’t awkward enough to watch Lauer casually sling his arm across the back of the couch just stopping short of pissing on the throw-pillows to stake his territory.

While some have ridiculed Curry for her blubbering four-minute farewell, I cannot think of a better way for her to exit. She was honest, raw and sincere, attributes we have all come to admire from Curry. True to form, Curry once again exhibited her trademark bravery and grace she typically reserves for her reports from war zones when she gave NBC the finger as she recounted her flawless credentials. She looked dead into the camera lens and told viewers, “You are why I have ventured into dangerous places and interviewed dictators and jumped out of planes and off of bridges and climbed mountains and landed in the South Pole and convinced the Dalai Lama to come live in our studio.”

But where was the big fanfare? The video synopsis of a near-perfect 15-year tenure with Today? As one person so astutely commented on Today’s Facebook page, “Meredith Vieira got a four-hour farewell, I went to the kitchen for coffee and Ann Curry was gone.” And that’s the rub, Vieira got the bash of a lifetime while Curry simply got bashed. Next to Curry’s earnestness and nerdy charm, Lauer seemed smug and disingenuous and Curry simply didn’t have Vieira’s brass, or the girlish pep of Katie Couric to counterbalance Lauer’s ego—cue Guthrie.

A lawyer by training, Guthrie seems fresh out of the sorority house and may not have the prowess to navigate this sinking ship safely to harbor. Sure, she’s cute and bubbly, but she sometimes comes off ditsy and won’t likely possess the personality to keep Lauer in check. I for one will not tune in to see the-girl-next-door date raped by Lauer each weekday morning.

I tuned-in to Today this morning expecting some sort of explanation for yesterday’s shenanigans, and when it became apparent an explanation was not to be had, I changed the channel for the first time in 15 years. I scarcely remembered that my TV has other channels, but I landed on CBS. And, while CBS’s This Morning is more sober and stoic than its counterpart on NBC, it just felt right. After the public disgracing of one of America’s most beloved journalists—America’s big sister—I felt more sober and stoic.

CJM

Soiled Carpet

On Mother's Day

I was young when my two brothers and I would spend every day after school and at least nine hours a day with my grandparents during summer vacation. Both of my parents struggled to make ends meet and my maternal grandparents were retired; it only seemed logical that my parents would take advantage of the free daycare that my grandparents provided. My grandparents didn’t mind looking after us, to them we were a wealth of free labor directly at their fingertips.

During the summer months, my two older brothers and I were like migrant workers. My brother Mike would mow the expansive lawn careful not to run over the rose bushes and iris beds that dotted the lawn like fragrant land mines. My brother Patrick would busy himself trimming the hedges and pulling weeds, quite mundane and most of all, rather harmless tasks that would somehow lead to his eventual loss of blood. Patrick had a real talent for bleeding, and by the end of the summer, hundreds of dime-size droplets of his blood would splatter the front porch.

After the cut, gash or puncture wound of the day, Patrick would sprint to the front door gripping the bleeding extremity and crying for my grandmother’s help. She would answer the door, eyes squinting against the summer sun and holding whatever utensil she was using moments before for cooking. She would always ask in a smooth and even tone “Pat honey, what in the world did you do to yourself this time?” She displayed stoic patience for Patrick’s sobbing and the stream of blood running down his face, arm or leg. She would leave him lamenting at the front door while she made a path for him to walk on out of large black garbage bags. If there was one thing she would not tolerate, it was soiled carpet.

I would spend the summers in the house with my grandmother. She was afraid that Mike would run me over with the riding lawn mower and I believed her. Mike once had the plastic string of a trimmer break and hit him in the eye, so I wasn’t very confident in his vision. I would sit at the breakfast table and break green beans from my grandparents’ garden until my thumbnails were green and my fingertips throbbed. My grandmother would can green beans to use in winter for our Sunday dinners and she had strict specifications for how large each piece should be. Break a piece too large or too small and that was grounds for a forceful smack on the back of the head. She insisted that you do things her way and if she was satisfied with your toils, you earned your daily pay of tuna salad sandwiches and lemonade with angel food cake and strawberries for dessert.

My grandparents could not have been more different. My grandfather was jovial and kind-hearted and would often warn of the dangers of picking up wooden nickels. He would cry at commercials both happy and sad and any commercial depicting starving children would ensure that he would spend the next half hour with tears blurring his vision while he looked for his checkbook that incidentally was always in his front shirt pocket. “It’s always the last place you look,” he would comment while moving on to search for his glasses that inevitably rested on the top of his head. My grandmother, on the other hand, never shed a tear. I didn’t see her cry once when one after another of her nine older brothers and sisters died. She would simply shake her head and mutter to herself, “I hope they were right with the Lord.”

I realize now that she kept me in the house with her not because my brother was likely to mow me down literally, but because in me, she found a sparring partner that could match her harsh quips better than anyone could. One day when I was 11, sitting on my legs at the kitchen table breaking a pie plate full of green beans, she turned to me with a scowl and flatly stated, “If I find one piece bigger than an inch I’ll choke you.” Of course she wouldn’t really have choked me, but instead wrap her callused fingers around my neck to scare me into submission. I looked up from my pie plate and very plainly replied, “I will do what you want. But only because I know you’re not likely to live until next summer as old as you are.” She winked at me while she loaded her green bean packed Mason jars into the pressure cooker and asked if I wanted a piece of cantaloupe. Of course, she lived through the next summer, even if she was on the verge of death she would have pulled through merely out of spite.

A few years back she was close to dying. I remember sitting in the hospital holding my mother’s hand while my grandmother lay in the hospital bed motionless and hooked up to several beeping machines. By all of the doctors’ accounts, she would pass within hours. I went to her bedside wanting to tell her how much I loved her along with all the other things that she would have never tolerated me saying to her in the past. I put my hand on hers while tears began to sting my eyes. She turned and looked at me solemn and determined and said, “Con, now you stop this horseshit. I am not going to die, I haven’t made jelly yet.” She was right. A week later, she was discharged from the hospital and home washing raspberries to make jelly.

I was 16 years old when my grandfather died of Parkinson’s disease. He spent the last eight months of his life in a VA hospital 100 miles from where we lived. My grandmother made the two-hour trip to see him everyday for eight months; she never missed a day. I never once heard her tell my grandfather that she loved him, but actions speak louder than words, as the adage goes and if that is true, then a two-hour trip to sit next to man who barely remembered you for 10 hours a day for eight months speaks volumes.

After the funeral, my grandmother sold the house where she and my grandfather had spent 30 years together:  Thirty years plowing, planting and picking. She couldn’t take care of the yard and the garden by herself, especially with both of my older brothers now adults and not as willing to work for tuna salad sandwiches. She moved into a small town house on the south side of town, but not until I relocated every last iris bulb from the yard from which she took such pride.

We replanted the iris bulbs in her new yard as my mother watched nervously afraid she might spot a worm in the soil. I still spent my summers with my grandmother, not because I needed the supervision, but because I enjoyed her company and loved her stories. When she was 18, she and her niece, who incidentally is a year younger than she, took a train to Calif. They soon found work, in addition to a group of sailors ready to be shipped off to war the following day.  They danced all night at a club where Glen Miller and his band were performing. I loved to see her bright eyes and her mischievous smirk spread across her face as she recalled her youth, both of us knowing full well that she was saving a few details for herself.

I would beg her to tell me “the chicken story”, not because it was particularly pleasant, but I liked to dare myself to listen to the story in its entirety and not squirm from disgust. When she was about 15, she lived on a farm in rural Ill. Her mother had asked her to get a chicken from the yard and kill it for dinner. It was the first time she had ever killed a chicken, or any animal for that matter. She spread the chicken’s neck out on the chopping block and closed her eyes as tight as she could. When she opened her eyes again, the chicken was running around the yard while its beak lay to the right of the ax embedded in the wood. My grandmother darted to the door terrified of the beakless chicken that was perhaps ever so slightly more terrified than she. She would throw back her head and laugh with her whole body slumped over the arm of her burgundy Lazy Boy recliner and gasp between fits of laughter, “I was never asked to kill another chicken!”

I sank back in my chair gagging and appalled at the senseless carnage and wondering how she could just laugh it off. If a bleeding grandson, nine dead siblings and husband and a beakless chicken didn’t give this woman a moist eye then nothing would.

Later that summer after I had come into the house from mowing the lawn, I noticed that my grandmother’s cat had something moving in its mouth. My grandmother swatted at the cat with the wooden spoon in her hand when the cat released a small mangled, shaking rabbit. My grandmother scooped the frightened prey up into a hand towel, lowered her glasses from her head to the bridge of her nose and carefully examined the squealing rabbit in the blood soaked cloth. She determined that the poor bunny was indeed suffering and would not live. The rabbit needed put out of its misery. I trusted her opinion; after all, she grew up on a farm.

I began scolding the cat as my grandmother made her way through the sliding glass doors to the back porch with the rabbit still enveloped in her hand towel. She closed the door behind her. There was silence for about thirty seconds, then finally I heard the loud smack of a cement block crashing against the concrete porch. It was done. Moments later, she returned with tears streaming down her face. She walked over to the kitchen sink and moistened an old washcloth. She then started to clean the rabbit’s blood from the carpet while softly crying to herself. If there was one thing she would not tolerate, it was soiled carpet.

CJM

Humiliation 360

After my all-too-brief 15 minutes of fame from yesterday's NPR article, I decided to post a story I wrote in June 2006 about my own encounter with a celebrity.

I’ve never been one to swoon over celebrities and have always been of the opinion that they are just like me but with better clothes and an endless Botox reserve. Of course, I can count the number of celebrities I have seen in person on one hand. I was bewildered to see Rod Stewart driving a very small British convertible as his puffy hair trailed in the wind. I saw Christina Applegate walking in Boston’s theater district surrounded by, what I assume to be, hired muscle. I met David Sedaris at a book signing where he pointedly asked if I enjoyed his monkey, he was referring to his primate friend that sat on his shoulder while he read. And, last night I met Anderson Cooper.

Anderson Cooper was scheduled for a lecture at the Boston Public Library to promote his new book Dispatches from the Edge. I have a lot of respect for Anderson and daydreamed about having a conversation with him since I first spied the announcement that he was coming.

While on my lunch break three days ago, I scooted off to a nearby Barnes & Noble to purchase his book. A book of this nature is not something I normally would enjoy, preferring tomes by the likes of Judy Blume or the adventures of Amelia Bedelia, but since he was coming to Boston, I desperately wanted an excuse to meet him and getting my booked signed was the ticket.

That night, I stayed up late to read his book cover-to-cover in case the universe smiled on me and I was allowed to meet him. I wanted to be prepared when he asked what I thought of his book or insisted I reveal my favorite parts. I was resolute to be astonishingly articulate and charismatic; I wanted to leave him thinking, now that’s a guy I want as a friend. I imagined he would say something like, “Gosh Conor, you should be on CNN, why don’t you be my co-host for 360?” I knew that if he met me we would be best friends forever.

Yesterday morning I picked my clothes for the office with Anderson in mind. I paired my gray trousers with my favorite shirt, a white button-down with thin vertical blue stripes. I navigated the length of smart blue and white diagonal striped tie that I thought Anderson himself would wear. The weather yesterday morning was cold and drizzly so I completed my ensemble with a charming black wool sweater. My hair fell in all the right places, my skin was especially clear and I just had a handsome glow. I imagined people would nudge one another on the street and whisper, “Is that a Ralph Lauren model?” I was ready to become Anderson’s best friend.

I wasn’t disappointed when I got to the library. They were selling Anderson’s book in the lobby, a good omen that ensured Anderson would be signing copies. Upon entering the lecture hall, a dowdy young woman (surely not the kind of person that should be around Anderson) greeted me and asked if I wanted my booked signed. I shook my head vigorously unable to form any sort of audible confirmation. She handed me a numbered card that would designate my position in the book-signing queue. I heard the couple behind me grumble, “That asshole got the last card.” I beamed; I was the asshole that got the last card, which meant I was the last person he would talk to. Without a line behind me, it wouldn’t be awkward when he invited me for cocktails.

I grabbed a seat in the exact center of the room, reasoning this would be the best seat for viewing no matter where he was on stage. I sat in my seat silent and waiting with sweating hands and rehearsing my talking points for when we met.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr. Cooper, I really admire your frankness when writing about your coverage of Bosnia.,” or “where did the government go awry when responding to Katrina?,” or “I found your book to be a riveting memoir about loss and survival. How did you find the courage to weave your own personal story of grief into the plot?”

Anderson gave a brief lecture, and to my disappointment, he regurgitated excerpts from his book, but it didn’t matter. The real magic would happen when we met.

After the lecture, the frumpy mess handing out cards began calling numbers by groups of 20. I waited anxiously and wondering what he would say to me. “Numbers 110 through 130,” the woman at the podium finally called. I was up! I was 130! I waited what I thought was a reasonable amount of time to join the line and hoping to be last. Unfortunately, a few others were even slower. Apparently, an oxygen tank makes one really pokey. Six or seven people stood behind me, but it didn’t matter, Anderson would surely have the courage to invite me for drinks in front of a few people. I would then turn to them and smirk slyly as if to say, “He could have asked you, but he asked me, bitches!”

The woman in front of me was getting her book signed and I began shaking nervously. When it was my turn, I handed over my copy, turned to the title page, with a trembling hand.

“What’s your name?” he asked extending arm for a handshake and I grabbed his hand and he gave a firm squeeze. “Cah— Conor,” I managed while still holding his hand.

“That’s a cool name,” he said, “C-O-N…?” “C-O-N-O-R,” I said, still squeezing his hand.

“Are you from Boston, Conor?” “Nah— no, I’m from Illinois, orig—originally,” I stuttered, becoming self-conscious and finally releasing the death grip I had on his fingers.

“Where in Illinois?” “Between Chicago and Decatur—um wait—I’m from Decatur—St. Louis—no wait—between Chicago and St.—well if you draw a line… Central. I’m from central—central Illinois!” I cried. I wasn't prepared for the question. Damn your ruthless interviewing tactics, I thought.

The blood drained from my face and I began giggling uncontrollably while trying to push my extraordinarily short hair behind my ears. The couple behind me earlier in the evening was right. I was an asshole. He handed back my signed book and with a large smile on his face, said, “Thanks for coming out Conor,” in the tone of voice one uses to thank a child who put away his toys without any help.

I let out an odd shriek reminiscent of a dolphin distress call, a sort of “ea-a-ooo-a-ewww” in a decibel that I’m sure only a dachshund could hear. I finally composed myself and managed a guttural “thanks man” while walking backwards and leering at him. I felt like I was out of my body and witnessing the entire painful exchange from the ceiling. It was like a conversation between Sandy and Flipper—Anderson, impish and good-looking while I flailed my flippers and squealed.

Anderson and I did not become fast friends, but just to make certain, I laid in bed with the covers tight over my head and replayed the entire excruciating incident in my thoughts until sunrise. Cool and charismatic I was not, but at least I got my book signed.

I imagine one day Anderson and I will sit in a swanky Manhattan bar and laugh about the whole episode.

CJM

Had I'd Known NPR Would Link to My Blog

1. I would have updated my blog last night with something witty or plagiarized a short story by Mark Twain instead of drinking five glasses of Franzia and scraping peanut butter out of the jar with my tongue.
   
   
2. I would have Photoshopped (Adobe hates that verb) the photos of me on this blog to make myself appear more like Homeland hottie, Damian Lewis, rather than a Ronald McDonald impersonator who struggles with sobriety or a convincing argument for genetic testing.
   
   
3. I would have taken the day off so I could monitor my site’s visitor activity, instead of sending a company-wide email urging my coworkers to “suck it!” and trying to convince anyone who listens that it is only a matter of time before I have Terry Gross’ babies.
   
   
4. I would have never mentioned in previous posts that I curled my dog’s hair, take Tylenol PM as a method for forming brilliant ideas, decoupaged breasts onto a coffee mug or claimed to have once handled snakes to achieve spiritual enlightenment.
   
   
5. I would have said something cleverer, had I known Alan Greenblatt was going to quote me directly in his article, Identity Crisis: Your Name Is Famous But You Aren't, although this is honestly the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Thank you, Mr. Greenblatt.

CJM

An Earth Day Message From the Lorax's Brother, Otis

Dear people of Earth,

You have been led astray, and that’s why I write this letter today.

My brother, the Lorax, though he means well, spreads rumors of disaster that I feel I must quell.

It all started in college where he majored in Sociology, and so to you I issue this apology. He became liberal and soft like the Grickle-grass under foot, pointing his finger about smoginess and soot.

A hippie, a tree hugger, misguided, indeed. Recycling and bicycling and speaking for trees, as if there were need.

“The Truffala Trees, the Truffala trees,” he cries and he judges. From his soapbox, he scarcely budges. Looking down his Lorax nose at you and at me, refusing to see he need not speak for the trees.

He wasn’t always this way I tell you my friend. He took suit with the Bar-ba-loots and that was the end. Dope-smoking degenerates, those Bar-ba-loots are, preaching sustainability and strumming guitars.

My brother, like I, grew up with religion. A detail he hides for fear of derision. Like you and like I, he followed the Savior, and partook in none of this immoral behavior. A creationist, pro-life and anti-gay, he heard the Swomee-Swan song and they led him away.

He joined PETA, ate organic and became ever bolder—began to believe that the Earth was much older.

His conclusions, these delusions, were liberal and misguided. “The Earth was warming,” he warned and he chided. “Global warming is a farce,” I said to my brother, but he spewed his false beliefs one after another.

“I speak for the trees,” my brother insisted. Yet, even I knew his logic was twisted.  “Fossil fuels are to blame and the weather is changing,” his beliefs are so wrong, so liberal and wide-ranging.

“You’ve got it all wrong,” I said with correction, knowing full well I’d meet his objection. “Buy an SUV, you’ll feel so much better, and forget all about your ideas on the weather. Forget all about your fears of pollution. If there’s a problem, buying more is the solution.”

He huffed and he shouted, he foamed and he spit; “It’s you that’s got it wrong; you’re voting for Mitt.”

“Get a job,” I retorted from under his glare. “Become a banker, a lawyer; start a family in Whoville, who cares? Just stop with this nonsense, for once and for all. Buy this and buy that, spend more at the mall.”

He turned on his heel and left in a shout, back to his protests on Wall Street, no doubt.

And, so on this Earth Day, I make this confession, to free you all of environmental oppression. My brother, the Lorax, says he speaks for the trees and has developed a following who whole-heartedly agrees.

These people, they’re soft; their ideals are wrong. They blog on their MacBooks and puff on their bongs.

Consume more for the economy, I soundly advise. Pay no more attention to my brother, his lies.

And so, dear reader, this concludes my fair notice. I’m the Lorax’s brother. Buy more.

Yours,

Otis

CJM