Stayin up Late

I’m back to Sugar Crisp because it seems like a healthier choice than Cocoa Puffs, for some reason. I’ve eaten them every morning this week while I watch Conan O’Brien which comes on Star TV at 10:00am every day.

I’ve been able to fall asleep a little earlier at night ever since I got back from Florida, so I haven’t been watching a ton of late night TV. It’s awesome that Star TV repeats the previous evening’s broadcast of Conan’s show.I’m a huge fan of the late night talk show genre. I can remember being a little kid and being at my grandparent’s house sometimes when they were baby sitting me, and begging them to let me stay up and watch Johnny Carson with them . I distinctly remember telling them that I thought Johnny Carson was the funniest man in the world and if he had animals on the show that night, I really wanted to see it.
I was too young to actually admire Johnny Carson for being as brilliant as he was, but I always got to stay up late to watch the Tonight Show, and getting to stay up late when you’re a little kid used to be a big deal. It was to me, as I recall!

Watching all the old footage of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson that has been airing this past week sure has brought back a lot of good memories. Somewhere along the line, I actually ended up getting really hooked on the Late Night Talk Show genre.
I think Letterman is still the man, but there will never ever be another Johnny Carson and Late Night Television will definitely never be the same again.

Anybody can get a show on TV these days I suppose.You don’t have to have any real talent at all or at least that's how it seems which is a good thing I quess. It means that I still got a shot!!(lol)

So I'll just keep pluggin away and see what happens .........

JR

Sucks to be me right now!

I’m sitting in the Ottawa airport waiting to find out if and when I can get back on a plane that will take me to the Hamilton airport where we tried to land a couple of hours ago. Apparently there’s too much snow blowing around there which is why we couldn’t land.

On our way down to land I couldn’t see a thing, it was completely white. I like night flights better, which is what I had last Friday on my way down to Venice Beach in Florida. When it’s totally black out you can stare out the window at the millions of little lights that are shinning brightly below you. You don’t have a clue where you are or what city you are flying over but if you're listening to the right music and you peer out form under the brim of our ball cap that you have pulled over your eyes, you can pretend like you have a cool life that requires you to jet set off to some party on a Friday night. My music of choice was The Shins, Young Pilgrims was the song I played most frequently this past week. The flight was filled with old people which was a constant reminder to me that I wasn’t flying off to some party in Miami, I was heading to Florida to sponge off my parents for the week.

My dad was offered an early retirement package and he took it so they packed up and moved to Florida for the winter to escape all of this snow that has me stuck in this airport right now.

I’m still listening to The Shins, I did all week long. I guess I’m compulsive like that. I can usually listen to the same song or CD over and over until I’m totally sick of it. I was listening to Turn A Square for the 600th time the other night when I got the shit scared out of me.

I went for a run on the beach and took in the sunset, when I saw something under the lifeguard tower and into the tall grass just off the beach. It was pretty dark by then and I wanted to see what it was so I climbed the stairs to the platform and started stomping my feet to the beat of the music so that I would scare the little critter out from the grass. It turned out to be a cat, and as I turned around to leave, this crazy looking homeless dude was standing right behind me. He was just staring at me.

I almost shit myself. I pulled my headset off and said, “there’s a cat down there”. The dude just kept staring at me, he didn't say a word. He must have been sleeping on the other side of the tower or something. It probably freaked him out that I was up there stomping my feet like I was. I said sorry and something else about the cat again as I got the hell out of there, as fast as I could. I forget what song was playing, maybe Kissing the Lipless, which is another song I listened to a lot, this past week.

This is turning into a little bit of a music review, and really should go find out if there’s any updates on my flight home. I probably missed an announcement because the volume is cranked up a little too loud here. If you live in Ottawa and you're reading this as the snow continues to fall here, come pick me up, I might need a place to sleep tonight. It's good to have fans from lots of different places.

It’s nice to be blogging again!

Radio Show Pilot

I still haven’t figured out for sure what the purpose of these blogs are, but I read a huge article in the paper about blogs and how popular they are getting.

According to the website statistics, thousands of people read our blogs, but what are you guys interested in reading about when you read these things? Is my blog supposed to let you know that I bought a new box of cereal at 2:30am this morning and that I switched things up and bought Cinnamon Frosted Flakes?

Should I write about how long I stood in the cereal aisle looking at all the options before I picked a cereal that I had never tried before or should I blog about why I can’t get to sleep at night, which is why I’m shopping for groceries at 2:30am?

Maybe I should just fill my blog with my thoughts on world events, tsunamis, and stuff like that? I’m not really sure, which is why we have created a place for people to comment on the blogs on the message board. If there is something you may be interested in reading about in my blog, then make a post, I read the board at least a couple times a week.

One thing people may be interested in is the radio show we are working on. I have to get going right now because I have a 2:00pm lunch appointment, but I’ll fill you all in about the new radio show in a couple days and leave you with this audio blog that we recorded earlier.

Dilemma of the day

I just had one of the new lemon donuts at Tim Horton’s along with a large tea. I’ve gotta try getting off coffee I think. After spending the holidays mostly eating and doing nothing but sitting around and being lazy, I feel pretty crappy and I don’t have much energy. I found out a few years ago that I’ve also got an ulcer and my stomach has been killing me over the last few days. I can’t handle being in pain or feeling discomfort of any kind. I could never get a tattoo no matter how cool it is to have one.

Intentionally inflicting pain on yourself seems like a really bad idea to me, although I do volunteer to clean the bathroom at work, because I don’t want to have to ask Branden or Shane to do it. The budget these days isn’t quite big enough to hire a cleaning lady, but I sometimes imagine what she would look like if we could hire one. That being said, we now have two co-op students here and I have to find stuff for them to do for the next seven weeks. Can you ask a co-op student to clean the bathroom? Looks like I have a little bit of a dilemma here. Feel free to go on our message board and let me know what you think; I’m pretty good about reading all the posts that get made each day.

It’s sunny out right now. Sunshine is good

Later,

JR

Dead Fish

It’s the start of another new year and today was my first full day of work on the show since it was pulled off the air last year. It’s only been two and a half weeks, but saying it happened last year makes me feel like I better get back to making new shows and figuring out how to get them on the air again before every sacrifice I’ve ever made in the pursuit of this darn network deal ends up being all for nothing.

A really good friend of mine took me out for dinner earlier tonight. We were going to hook up for a beer and a quick bite to eat since we didn’t get a chance to over the holidays, but then he gave me a belated Xmas gift, and since I didn’t get him anything, I suggested that he may as well pay for dinner as well in the spirit of giving and all that kind of stuff. I suggested we go for a nice steak dinner, it was awesome. The gift was the Garden State DVD that just came out. I had a great night, good friends are hard to come by, but the laughs come easy when you’re with one!

Earlier today I gave two new guys the guided tour of Lazy Town headquarters, where we work on the show each and every day. They are co-op students who are going to be working with us for the next couple of months. Russ is going to be working on the website, so look for lots of new stuff on the site over the next few months. Dan will probably do some editing and little bit of everything which will make for a few laughs around here in the coming weeks I’m sure.

First thing this morning, I threw away one of my favourite pair of boxers. I won’t bother boring you all with the details of why I had to do that, but I just thought I would let you all know about it, because it was the most eventful part of my morning. It was kind of fantastic, actually – they had fish on them and I’ve had them a really long time!

Happy new year everyone,

JR