I try not to bore you guys with my media mentions too often (if you really care, I put them on this page), but I thought you might like to see my TV debut. I got a call a couple months ago from the guys at Current TV asking if they could do a short profile piece on me. Of course, I said yes, but I had one stipulation – they had to send me a copy because I don’t get Current on my cable system. Fortunately, they put all their programming on their website.
So, here’s the clip. Head down below to read more about the filming experience and let me know what you think.
So, that’s it. It was actually a really fun experience. I started by telling my story to the guys at Current and they found a producer, Dave O’Brien, who came up with a plan. This seemed like it would be easy to set up with one exception. He wanted to do some filming on a plane.
Fortunately, the folks at Southwest were more than happy to help. They were able to arrange a Saturday morning visit to John Wayne/Orange County airport so that we could film on a plane. As you probably know, Southwest planes don’t sit on the ground for long, so if we wanted to do it, it had to be REALLY early in the day.
We met with our friendly Southwest contacts at 530a and went straight to the shiny new 737-700 that still had that new airplane smell. (It was only a couple months old.) We got that filming out of the way as quickly as we could so that they could prepare it for a full day of flying.
Once we finished in there, we filmed in the terminal, by the ticket counter, and just far enough away from security that the TSA wouldn’t hassle us. By 9a, I was already pretty tired, but the day was only half over. The producer and I had talked about some of my favorite planespotting sites, and of course I mentioned the park by the In ‘n Out at LAX. So, we left the OC and headed up the 405 to LAX.
Once there, he had the unique problem of getting me to focus on the camera long enough without looking up at the planes. As you can see in the video, that didn’t go so well because I couldn’t stop turning when I heard a plane go by. He had me talking for a long time over there about everything and anything related to the industry. Finally we finished around 11a and by then I was more than ready for a Double Double (animal style, no tomatoes) to cap the morning.
It was a very tiring day, but it was a lot of fun. Dave was a really nice guy, and though I’d never done anything like this before, he made it easy and time passed really quickly. The only snag? I have transition lenses on my glasses (yes, I’m a huge dork), so they couldn’t film me wearing them outside. I must admit, it’s pretty weird watching myself without my glasses on.
Just a couple notes here. InsideTrip was one of the many websites we discussed throughout the day, but they got some great PR here when the editing was done. In case you were wondering, I’m not affiliated with them in any way, but I did have an email exchange with the founder when I wrote my post about the site.
Also, you may be wondering why I didn’t dress up for the occasion. First of all, I hate dressing up. Seriously. I mean, I wear flip flops to PriceGrabber during the day. But more importantly, they wanted me to dress as I do when I travel. I always wear a sweater, comfortable jeans, and closed-toed shoes, usually tennis shoes.
Anyway, thanks to Current for being interested in putting this together, and thanks to Dave for doing a really great job with it.
