You Too!

Brian Regan at the Long Center

Update: So...Lisa got in trouble with the copyright police for using a Van Morrison song in the original version of this video. So I had to change the music and re-post the video. Oopsie!

Last Thursday Katy, Marla, Sarah, and I went to see Brian Regan downtown at the Long Center, after I snagged some unclaimed tickets from the station. It was a blast! You can watch my video to see the whole story!



Until later!

What Makes Me Happy

I am wrapping up what has turned out to be a GREAT weekend.

Let me tell you why.

First, I had an wonderful meeting Friday with my boss. I still don't want to spill the beans on this work stuff, but I can basically tell you that things are going really well at work! Which is really good, because there's still a year on my contract there and with my upcoming anniversary, I've been thinking about where I want to go next and what I want to do. I've always liked producing the morning show, but after a year I was starting to think of all the bigger, brighter, shinier things that must be out there. Because the honest truth is, if I stay where I am now, I've got nowhere to go. I can't go to the evenings unless I wait out the contract of the evening producer, and then what if she doesn't want to leave? And even if she did want to leave, I don't really want to move to the evenings anyway, because I love the people who work in the mornings, and as crazy as it may sound, I actually like working while everyone else is sleeping! In fact, I'm seriously considering looking for a morning producing position for my next job. And sleeping in a coffin and sucking the blood of humans and living forever. Just kidding...I just get the ol' vampire joke quite a bit these days. And wouldn't that be a fun way to freak out people when out for dinner as a new girl in a new town?

"Hey, what do you do?"
"Well...I work at night."
"Oh, the graveyard shift, huh?"
"Yessss, you could say that."
"When do you sleep?"
"During the day."
"Yeah, it must be killing you to be up right now when the sun's out, huh?"
"You have no idea."
"So when do you eat?"
"Whenever the opportunity presents itself."
"Right, I guess this would be more like breakfast time for you. Is Italian OK or would you rather go somewhere they serve breakfast?"
"It's fine. Just...nothing with garlic."
"Hmmm, allergic? Well let's just start with a glass of wine. White or red?"
(Spooky smile)...
"Red."

OK, the fact that I took that long to type that out is proof that I should probably stay on the morning side for the sheer fact that I'm a humongous dork. Annnnyway, back to work...where the great thing is that now I still have something to look forward to and get excited about at my current job, rather than just look ahead to when my time's up and I can leave.

On with the weekend!

After work and a solid 5 hours of sleep, I went to a friend's house for dinner with a bunch of friends I haven't seen in awhile, especially Issa, who's home for the first time since going to IU! I love that girl so much and getting to hug her and talk to her NOT on the phone was so refreshing! After dinner, we met up with some more HSM buddies and their friends for "My Best Friend's Girl," at the movie theater. There I got to see Landon, who was also home for the first time since going to IU. And even though we were at the movie theater, we were able to do a little catching up and mostly hugging, which is the best!



This is why we love each other.


So good to see this guy!


My weekend continued Saturday with the Twin Lakes Marching Band Invitational. We had practice in the morning with the color guard girls, so I spent the 45 minute drove over there thinking about how I was going to spend the time between noon and 6:00 without driving back here. Luckily Ethan, the color guard head coach, already had that figured out. He surprised me with tickets to good ol' Indiana Beach and a visit from a couple of friends we used to go to Purdue with! We rode all the rides and spent time sitting and catching up with each other's lives and people watching (IB is a GREAT place for people watching!) and it was a great day! Then we went back and watched some of the bands perform before eating dinner in the staff lounge and then getting our girls warmed up to perform.

We performed in exhibition since we were hosting, but the girls did the best I've seen them do yet. They finally seem to get the concept of smiling even when someone messes up or drops a toss, and I was so proud of them! We also found out that if we HAD been competing, we would have won our division! Our scores were some of the best we've had so far, which was encouraging for the kids. And boy, did they need it. Friday had been a traumatic day at Twin Lakes because four students had been killed in a bus accident and everyone was naturally pretty somber. We dedicated our show to the memory of those students, and our band director had tears in his eyes as he was talking about it before we went on the field. I think the kids, in a small way, needed something like a great score recap to encourage them Saturday night.

I was so pooped by the end of the day that I took no time at all going to sleep when I got home at 12:30 AM. When I woke up, it was Sunday morning and time to go to church to see the Purduettes! The girls sounded great and it was so good to see some of those girls and hear about what's going on in their lives. It just made me proud to be a part of that organization.

So yeah, overall an awesome weekend! Hopefully that will carry into my week with this new project at work still on the line...

Until later! :)

Coming Up...

OK, there are a few fun and exciting things in my life I want to talk about, but some of them are still pending and others of them I still need to go through pictures/video for, so this blog entry will serve as a tease for future blog entries! (Can you tell I work in television or what?!)

So here's what's ahead on "Do You Have to Like Coffee" this fall!

I got to see my favorite comedian ever, Brian Regan, right here in downtown Lafayette tonight! How I got free tickets, who came to the show with me, and why we laughed our butts off, coming up.

Because of going to see Brian Regan, I missed the season premiere of "The Office," so I'm going to have to watch it online tomorrow. Check in soon to get my reaction and see if my predictions about last season's cliffhangers were right!

As I finish my first year of producing here at the station, I've got big plans for Year #2! We're giving the morning news show a makeover! New faces, new features, and new furniture, coming soon!

Alright, that's it. I know, I am a goofball. But that's just who I am. And I'm also wound up because of all this fun stuff going on, and because my friend Issa is coming home this weekend from IU and I'm so excited to see her! Issa was Gabriella in the production of High School Musical I was in this summer. She is such a sweetheart and we got really close this past summer, so I can't wait to give her a hug!


So inappropriate. Love it.


OK, one more random thing...I am sitting at work right now, and I can hear snippets of Austin Powers movies playing from the sports office across the hall. Well I snooped around the corner, and our sports director is sitting there at his computer watching clips of Dr. Evil on YouTube! Ha!

Mmmkay, that's it for now! Stay tuned!

O-kaaaaaayyyy...

Burn After Reading. (Spoiler Alert!)

That movie is now scratched off my mental list of wanna-sees. Is it ever! Here's the thing -- I feel like I usually can handle dark comedy. But this was a little too much for me to handle. I think the key to keeping a dark comedy funny is to only kill characters we either (A) don't know well enough to care about or (B) hate and won't care if they die. If you DO kill off a character we have any sympathy for, you shouldn't actually show it happening.

In "Burn After Reading," they did NOT follow these guidelines! They killed the funniest character in the whole show, thus killing most of the funny for the rest of the movie, and then they killed the only guy who seemed to have a decent head on his shoulders, which made me sad. I know, the irony is supposed to be what's comedic, but having to watch him be brutally killed was really terrible. And I hate graphic grossness anyway. And murdering in general. So yeah. But I mean, I got it. I got the jokes. It just wasn't quite my taste.

What was funny is that Frances McDormand, who plays the lady who unwittingly causes all the trouble, does a great job of playing this character who seems to think she's in a spy movie. She's melodramatic and delivers all those cliche lines she's probably seen on TV shows or read in paperback novels. She was brilliant. So was Brad Pitt as a dumb, classless gym rat who never seems to know what's going on but is ready to jump in and be a part of it. The best part of the movie was his phone conversation with John Malkovich, in which he's trying to get a reward for finding a CD of what he thinks is highly classified secret information...it gives me an insight into some of the people who call the station thinking they have a Grade-A story for our newsroom. It's hilarious.

I also laughed every time Malkovich said the word "memoir" even though I know that probably wasn't supposed to be funny.

This isn't the kind of movie that you leave feeling good about the world outside the movie theater, and it isn't even one that you leave repeating all the great one-liners. It just leaves you feeling much like the two CIA agents at the end of the film when they say, "What did we learn? Uh...not to do it again? Although I don't know what it was we DID..."

Next on the list are "The House Bunny" (which, let's face it, I'll probably just wait to see when it shows up in the Redbox machine), and "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist." As you probably know, I'm a Michael Cera fan, and the premise of the movie looked cute, so I think it'll be worth watching. Ooh! I also saw a preview for a movie adaptation of one of my favorite books of all time, "The Secret Life of Bees." Can't wait to see that!

OK, that's all I've got for now. Until later! ;)

Let's go to the movies...

...let's go see the sta-ahhh-ars!

There are lots of movies I want to see. I saw one of them today and I'll tell you about it in a minute. But first, the other ones I want to see are "Burn After Reading" and "The House Bunny." I think there are some other ones coming out soon, but I can't remember...so the list will grow. And friends, be ready to go see them with me!

OK, so I had the best day ever because one of my dearest girls, Katy, is back in town with a teaching job, and we went to church, lunch, Starbucks, and a movie today and laughed more than I probably have in a month. I love that girl like a sister! And I'm so glad she's in town so I can (hopefully) see her more often!

Now to the movie--"The Women," a remake of a 1939 film of the same title. I made sure to watch the original first so I could compare the two (if you want to see the 1939 version, you can watch it on YouTube), and I have to say the original is better (which is usually the case, isn't it?). Meg Ryan and her all-star supporting cast was great, but I felt like the story was a lot weaker than the original. Part of the reason why, I think, is because the women in the 1939 version were catty and gossipy more than they were caring and considerate of each other's feelings. The new version's women were much more sympathetic, but less entertaining. Part of what makes the old movie so fun is watching busybody Sylvie Foster get in everyone's business and make arch comments at all of her so-called friends. The 2008 Sylvie is kind of a cutthroat, business-first woman, but truly does care about her friends underneath the harsh exterior. And though I liked that the new version has Sylvie and Mary making up and working as a team to bring down Crystal Allen, I felt that they could have done a lot more with that part of the story.

Speaking of Crystal, that character was very underdeveloped and under-used in the remake. When you have someone as gorgeous and fun to watch as Eva Mendes cast in the role, you need to put her on the screen more than what they did. Joan Crawford's Crystal in the original is so villainous in the way that you just love to hate her, and I think Eva could have done the same if they would've given her the chance. The same can be said for Bette Midler's Countess, although I will say that I and the two other people in the theater who'd seen the original (they were sitting down and to the right) got a big kick out of "L'amour, l'amour..." I appreciated them keeping that and several other great lines and scenes in the screenplay.

The neat thing about this movie and the original is that you never see a man on screen the entire time. However, the way they did it in 1939 was in a way that you didn't really wonder where all the men were; you were just seeing the world from a woman's perspective, in a time when all the men went to the office all day and all the women went to spas, salons, fashion shows, and department stores all day. In the modern version, it's more like an alternate universe where men almost don't seem to exist. Part of this is probably due to bigger, wider camera shots we use now that couldn't have been achieved on some of the soundstages of 1930s Hollywood. But I felt like it was forced...even writing in a lesbian character seemed more of an excuse to put the ladies in an all-female night club than to present a more modern version of women.

Overall, I felt like most of the characters were underdeveloped, as was most of the story, and taking all the catty fun out of the script made the movie seem a little boring and slow. But Meg Ryan is a lot of fun to watch (as always) and the film has some great touching and funny moments, as well as several nods and winks to the original. Something worth seeing, but I probably won't buy it when it comes out on DVD.

OK, DAVID'S CALLING!!!! So I better wrap it up. Until later!

a few minutes

I'm a little ahead of schedule at work, so I'm just taking a break for a few minutes...

OK, so I watched the first episode (parts 1 and 2) of the new 90210. I have to say, it's pretty alright. I never watched the original; I was kind of on the edge of that generation. I also watched two episodes of Gossip Girl--the wedding one, and the season 2 premiere. I know I should go back and get allllll the dirt from season one, but let's be honest: 99.99% of the reason I watch that show is for the clothes. Everyone looks like a page out of Harper's Bazaar. I so wish I could dress like that! Although, let's face it, that would look really weird in Lafayette. And all of the boys are like...pretty. And so are their clothes!

Watching those two shows has made me feel like my life is very un-glamorous. That's ok; I mean, I know the drama is pretty fictional. You can put their problems in any Midwestern high school and they suddenly seem pretty normal. The clothes, on the other hand, are kind of non-fictional...I'm pretty sure people on the Upper East Side and in Beverly Hills actually spend ridiculous amounts of money on clothes I would have to save an entire year's salary for.



That's Leighton Meester as Gossip Girl's Blair Waldorf. And I love whoever chooses the clothes for her character. Those outfits are seriously the #1 thing that will keep me watching that show. My little sister could totally pull off Blair Waldorf's style. I don't know that I could...but it's fun to look at, like reading fashion magazines.

On a more content-based note of excitement, I'm sooo ready for some new episodes of The Office. Will Jim finally get the chance to propose to Pam? What will happen when she moves to New York? Who will get Ryan's job? (I say Jim should, since he was up for it before it was offered to Ryan...that way Jim and Pam can be together in NY. I would also guess Karen, but Rashida Jones moved on to another show, and as long as that's working out for her, I doubt we'll see much of Karen.) What will happen with the new H.R. lady and Michael? Will he stay involved in Jan's pregnancy? Will Dwight and Angela be outed for secretly hooking up, or will Phyllis keep her trap shut? (She is sort of the office gossip.) Will Angela go through with her engagement to Andy or will she go back to Dwight? How long have they been hooking up in secret? Can you believe I'm talking about a comedy??!!

OK, my few minutes are up and it's time to get back to work!

rants of a small-time news producer, part 2

(The Happy Ending)

So yesterday I was REALLY upset (see the previous post). And after 24 hours, I was still upset, but I had calmed down a little and I prayed about it and I wasn't sure what to do; should I confront the people who had upset me, or just suck it up because this is just part of being in this business? Was I being too sensitive, or did I have a valid reason to call them out on their behavior?

After the show this morning, I was talking to one of my anchors, and finally expressed my frusteration about feeling like I had to stick up for myself all the time back in the control room. He had heard some of the comments from the production guys yesterday and thought it was really wrong of them to say I was being biased about what I put in the show, because even joking about that is a big no-no in this business. I found out that he had stuck up for me out on the floor, which made me feel a lot better, and after having a good conversation with him, I felt much better about the whole situation--it was just good to know that someone else got where I was coming from and thought my feelings were justified. So he told me that I should talk to them and tell them that it upset me and everything.

Yikes.

OK, I am good at arguing for the sake of argument, but I am REALLY bad at confronting people about stuff like this. But I took a big gulp and went back to the production office to talk to the guys.

And, like a big dork, I immediately burst into tears the moment I started explaining why I was upset. I hate that I'm a crier, because it makes people feel really bad and really uncomfortable, and confrontation is uncomfortable enough without me being in tears. But I trucked on through and explained that I was really upset by their comments and that I considered them friends, which is why I cared so much about getting mutual respect from them. And they said they didn't realize it upset me that much and that they don't really think I'm biased about my job and that I'm the best producer they've ever had and that they were jerks and were just shooting their mouths off and that I shouldn't take them seriously, but that they would try harder to be more considerate of how their comments affected me. They gave me hugs and we were friends again, and hopefully they're not going to feel weird around me tomorrow!

So needless to say, I feel a lot better about things, and I want to thank Kelsey for the prayers because I think talking to my anchor was a little nudge from God to not chicken out of sticking up for myself.

And tomorrow is Friday! And a payday! And my internet is working again!

Lots of reasons to be happy. The end. :)

rants of a small-time news producer

(Warning - I'm pretty upset.)

OK.

I hate when people spout their opinions with blatent disregard for anyone around them who may not agree with what they say.

Working at a TV station, especially during an election year, it could go without saying that politics naturally becomes a topic of conversation during the newscast. And my show's production crew happens to have quite a few people who are passionate and opinionated about what they believe politically. Most of them share similar beliefs. I tend to hold the opposite viewpoint of the majority in the control room, and this has been increasingly difficult for me to deal with. Here's why: I am also passionate and opinionated about what I believe, and I also like to argue for the sake of argument. But I am also responsible for choosing the content of the newscast. So what happens is, I voice my opinion in response to the numerous opinions so eagerly shared around me, because it feels wrong to just sit there and have to listen to someone else's remarks without getting to add your own. But then those people call me out for putting content in the news that supports or is related to my personal beliefs, even though 9 times out of 10 I add stories that have nothing to do with my point of view, my political alignment, or my own personal beliefs. Most of the time, my preferences are not at all represented in the news. But when they are, I get a hard time for it. I get called "bias." And that's something that I take to heart, because I am very passionate about balanced and fair news reporting and I take very seriously my responsibility to balance my shows.

Here's the hardest part--the person who gets me the most upset, who makes the most arbitrarlity judgemental comments, who says things that offend me, who doesn't want to hear or respect MY opinions and beliefs even though I have to listen to all of HIS, is also the person that at one time I felt like was my closest friend there. And in the past few months, I feel more and more like he isn't really my friend, because he doesn't respect the fact that I have different beliefs and that I am entitled to those beliefs. He speaks condescendingly and gives off the attitude that no intelligent person would dare disagree with him.

I have NO problem with people having and sharing opposing opinions. But I don't think you should EVER make someone feel stupid for having an opinion or a belief that is different than yours. Isn't that what it's all supposed to be about here? And especially if someone is your friend, shouldn't you be all the more willing to respect--even if you don't accept--that person's point of view?

What really stinks is that I could argue all day with this guy and it wouldn't matter because he is the kind of person who finishes an argument with "you're stupid." Which makes me realize that all the intelligent arguments in the world wouldn't make a difference because they still wouldn't make him RESPECT (again, not "agree with" or "accept," just "respect") my beliefs. And so I often just give up debating altogether because I know it's pointless and it's going to get me nowhere.

If I didn't value this person as a friend, I wouldn't care this much. But the fact that I consider him a friend is what makes this bother me a lot! I have been thinking for months now about talking to him about it, but I'm just afraid he would think I'm being really lame and then make fun of me for it, or get mad and defensive and then get everyone else to gang up against me and act all weird around me. But I guess if he does either of those things, he really ISN'T my friend after all, and then the problem will be solved anyway because then I won't have to care about what he says. It'll just make my job suck a little bit. Because one of the things I liked best was working with people I love.

Anyway, this has really been stressing me out for a long time now, but it all kind of collapsed in on me mentally and emotionally this morning. It just gets to me after awhile, because not only do I feel like I have to single-handedly defend my personal beliefs, but I also feel like I have to defend the content that I put in the show, as well as stand up for the news reporters when the production people rip them apart for "stupid" news and "stupid" video and "stupid" writing. Because it's easy to bash someone else's work when they aren't there to defend it themselves, and when you're not the one who has to go out and cover all kinds of tedious meetings and fundraisers and then put everything together in an understaffed department. It just sucks to have to be the only one sticking up for myself or for others...ALL the time. Every day. It's wearing me out.

A lot of times, people just don't know what they're talking about in general. Now I've moved on to our viewership. People call in asking why we only covered a story in the morning but not at noon or in the evening. Well, if they'd been watching any time during the ENTIRE DAY BEFORE, they'd realize we ran that story in every newscast--why do you think it was on this morning?!! Another guy calls in to say that police around here are racist because a white guy leaves his kid in the car while he's in the store and nothing happens, while a hispanic woman leaves her kid in a Walmart and there's a search warrant out for her. Well, if this guy watches the news more than once a month, he'd know that the woman has been ALL OVER the news because she ABANDONED her son...as in, never hoping to see him again!!! And then we have the folks on the opposite end of the spectrum who call in to tell me that they think there should be a law that bans the speech of foreign languages in public places, because "how do we know they're not saying something bad about us?" I don't know, maybe you should LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE AND EDUCATE YOURSELF!!! People call us to ask if they're going to get cancer from living by a wind farm. People call and tell me about how they saw Bigfoot while they were hunting. People call at 2 in the morning to ask me why a Mexican immigrant gets hired for a job while they are home unemployed. MAYBE YOU SHOULD GET SOME SLEEP AND LOOK FOR A JOB IN THE MORNING INSTEAD OF STAYING UP ALL NIGHT COMPLAINING TO ME!!!

Apparently, I'm not allowed to have an opinion. I just have to listen to everyone else's, no matter how misinformed I think THEY are, and give everyone the equal opportunity to express themselves while they display a total lack of sensitivity for the fact that maybe someone else disagrees with them. But no, apparently to some people, their opinions are as good as fact, and I'm just supposed to accept that. And if I don't, then I'm stupid, or bias, or unpatriotic, or racist, or out of my mind.

I devoted most of my college academic career to studying various topics of media and political science. I guess that's why I'm the producer and can make intelligent, fair decisions about how to put together a show. I devoted my heart to Jesus, who blesses me every day. I guess that's the only reason I have any patience to deal with the stuff I get thrown at me at work every day. One of the things God wired into my personality is a huge capacity for acceptance. Accepting people and ideas that are different than me. It just frusterates me that it's so hard for other people to be accepting sometimes.

God, help me to accept the struggles that face me, too! And please give me the patience to do it! Amen!

It feels a lot better just getting all of this out. I'm sorry to anyone who actually read all the way through it; I'm sure it took a long time. But thanks for listening, if you did read any of this!

Whew. I feel better.