WORST SEAT IN THE HOUSE

There are times when I wonder whether there is a better, more efficient way to bring you, the Stars fan, the glory that is Stars Hockey on TV.

The other night in Anaheim was one of those nights.

I took the time to snap a couple photos with my iPhone to accompany this entry so as to better make my case.

Here is how the day in the Southland unfolded and why I think you and many others might be better served if we called the game from a studio in Los Colinas.

5:25 AM            Due to two hour time change for this divisional game I’m up with the friggin’ birds. I lay in bed for half an hour watching local morning programming and learn that the “Balloon Boy” dad was media hungry (Just like every “talent” on L.A. morning TV) and that Madonna is lending her entire library of hit songs to the show “Glee” - an “Up with People” rip-off.

6:10 AM            I brew some Wolfgang Puck coffee in the room. It sucks. I pour the crap down the sink, get dressed and make a life-in-my-hands frogger run thru morning traffic to Starbucks across the street.

7:00 AM             I pop open the computer and scan the usual gameday websites: TSN, Dallas Morning News, Dallas Stars, NHL Media, Martha Stewart, and Victoria’s Secret.

10:15 AM            Bus leaves hotel for the rink, spend the next hour and forty-five minutes hanging around, getting notes, killing time, highlighting a few interesting nuggets from the game notes, thinking to myself “This is two hours I’ll never get back”. The door to the Stars dressing room is locked shut (So much for that access the league promised back in 2005) I guess they are in meetings. Stars PR goon Graham “Big Country” Clark stands guard in the hallway “like a gorilla protecting the nest”.

12:30 PM             Bus leaves for return trip to hotel.

1:00 PM            I annihilate the treadmill in the fitness center for 4 miles at 6.5 and a 1.5 degree grade, and I don’t wipe it down afterward cause that’s not my job – and that’s how I roll.

2:00 PM            Transfer notes to the “Book of Razor”, talk on phone, iChat with family, shower, wax, paint my toe-nails, and meditate.

4:00 PM            Go back to arena, continue organizing notes and set up in the booth. (You can see the spacious, well located and cutting edge technologies we are afforded in the rafter-height booth location at the Honda Center)

5:15 PM            The pre-production begins with a major audio problem and a faked “live” radio hit with the studio at The Ticket. I fight thru the fact I can’t hear myself in my headphones and give a Marlee Matlin sounding preview of the game.

6:20 PM            I head downstairs to ask Steve Ott some hard hitting questions for the pregame show. He is engaging. I’m rock solid. The hallway where we do the interview is dark and institutional feeling so our crew attempts to lighten the shot by duct taping a white towel to the wall across from me and then bouncing the single spotlight we are using off that soiled bath sheet. I believe this is a common practice used in single camcorder xxx movies. The tape doesn’t hold, the towel falls during my talk-back with the studio in Dallas, and a stagehand tries to replace the fallen towel with a piece of cardboard. I’m a pro, my concentration never wavers. (Here is a picture of longtime LA stage manager, the sarcastic and smarmy John Reynolds, basking in the light)

6:40 PM            I go back upstairs to the broadcast booth (Which could not be farther from the ice, nor smaller) and get ready to perform the open of the show. I catch only the last five minutes of warmup then plug in and “poodle up” for the call of this divisional battle.

7:00 PM            We go live. Our make-up and hair products are now on full display and I proceed to call the piss out of the tilt that is being played in front of a sparse California hockey crowd. All replays you at home are watching on your 50-inch LCD I’m struggling to describe off of my “mammoth” 7-inch monitor in the booth in Anaheim. (That’s a pack of gum I have placed next to the screen to give it some size context).

9:45 PM            I finally sign off the air after finishing my satellite-delayed two-way talkback with Dana and Luddy in the studio in Los Colinas. (We go the entire game not hearing a word about either studios’ reaction to the contest). I’m stunned to learn that James Wizniewski has been selected as the game’s #1 star and that both the 1st and 3rd stars were Ducks players. This forces me to utter a WTF and question what I thought I just saw in a Stars 4-2 arse-whipping of a disinterested and disjointed looking Anaheim club. Again, we were located a long way from the action and had Sony Watchman sized monitors, so…?

10:00 PM            Scarf down an In-N-Out burger and a couple beers on bus ride to the Omni hotel in downtown L.A.

11:00 PM            Drop bags in room, wash face, hit the sheets. Stare at ceiling asking myself “Why am I here, why are any of us here?”