The one thing about being on vacation for a long time and note going anywhere is that it sort of messes up my schedule. Hence, the spotty blog-action here for the last week or so. It’s not even that I blog at work, I think it has more to do with the enforced schedule that I find motivating. But not to worry, I get back on schedule next week so all should be well with the world again.
Last Monday I had one job to do – male escort. You see the GF works in the world of local television and the show she works on was nominated for a local Emmy award. So I had to get a tux and play the role of arm candy for the evening. It was a pretty big affair, with lots of locally famous people* in expensive outfits being led through the program by the host**. One interesting thing was that they didn’t allow acceptance speeches on stage during the show. Instead winners were ushered offstage to a side area where they could give a speech that would be posted on the Emmy website after the show. Honestly, I thought this was a great idea as it shaved off at least a half hour from the overall program and let us get to the post-show party*** sooner.
Since I didn’t really know most of the other folks there, the GF and I spent most of our time at the post-party hanging out with her associates from her station. And I made pleasant small talk and people-watched. From this observation, I learned that while many people figure out that anchormen are tall, they might now know how tall some of the anchorwomen are. Trust me, they are giants. Anna Davlantes, for one, must be close to 7’ in heels, which was surprising since she seems much shorter on the website. But it wasn’t just her – all the women anchors were towering over the rest of the show. In retrospect, this probably made it easier for them to find each other at the post party.
The other amusing takeaway from the evening was how many Emmy’s are awarded for soft news. Here’s a sampling of actual soft news story titles that were nominated in the category of “Outstanding achievement in a regularly scheduled news program – Soft news Single Feature”:
- “Figure Flattering Jeans”
- “What’s Up There?”
- “Can you Sudoku?”
And that doesn’t include the 4-5 nominations for a story on Texas barbeque that won several Emmys but basically qualified as torture for showing endless clips of beef being basted and slathered with sauce to an audience of 1000+ who all hadn’t eaten dinner yet.****
The most annoying part of the evening for me personally was the proliferation of men wearing tuxedos with long ties. It’s a pet peeve of mine, and granted, it’s a minor pet peeve***** - but I cannot stand long ties with tuxedos. I mean, if you get a tux and wear it with a long tie, then there’s almost no way of anyone knowing that you’re not just wearing a black suit! So what’s the point!?!? You can’t see the studs or the majority of the tuxedo shirt. Of all the men there, I can say pretty safely that I was a rarity by sticing with the traditional bow tie. Even if it was the rental one that hooks around my neck instead of being an actual bow tie.
Still, by the end of the show I was pretty excited because the GF’s show won the Emmy they were nominated for! So now I can go around telling all my friends that I’m dating an Emmy Winner. And now those of you who’ve met her can say you know an Emmy winner too! That means you’re only 3-4 degrees away from Kevin Bacon now! Neat huh?
* See, I don’t really watch much local news so there were lots of people who I sort-of-recognized, but I couldn’t tell you their names or which station they were on.
** In a total coup, the local NATAS scored the guy who played Sweetchuck in the Police Academy movies to host and frankly, he was better than some Oscar hosts.
*** Translation: food
**** By the last time it was nominated, I could have eaten my armrest and thought it was a brisket
***** Unlike all those major pet peeves that are otherwise known as “actual problems”
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