Want to hear me say “UHHH” several hundred times? Here, this should scratch that itch:
I can’t help cringing when I watch this, but I really did have a good time, and I’m grateful for being given the opportunity to represent Sunlight.
Washington Journal is an impressively high-volume operation — you’re led into the studio and then it’s almost immediately time to go. It’s a little bit disorienting. The fact that the studio turns out to be exactly on the other side of wall on which the green room monitors are located doesn’t help matters. It’s like a video window, man! I appreciated the coffee and the chocolate croissant, but it seems like an even nicer thing to do for your guests would be to minimize the mind-bending spatial revelations that you expose them to.
I can’t say I’m immensely pleased with my performance during the first half of the show, but things did improve as we got further in and moved on to topics that I’ve been working on for more than a couple of days (this recovery.gov stuff has been kind of sudden). By the twenty minute mark I was still acting weird and stilted, but not much more so than I do in real life. If I get another chance to do this maybe I’ll find a way to speak fluidly for more than six syllables at a time — that’s the dream, anyway.
I wish I had more amusing thoughts to share about the experience, but at the time I was too terrified to make many wry observations. Besides, I’m pretty sure that everyone who works in D.C. winds up on Washington Journal eventually — when I signed my name in the guestbook (marking myself as a total n00b, no doubt), I wasn’t at all surprised to see the name of a friend-of-friends that I run into at parties a couple of lines above my own. What I’m trying to say is that you’ll no doubt have a chance to have this experience yourself if you you have both a job in Washington and a collared shirt.
Oh yeah! They gave me a coffee mug! This small piece of proof (the above clip could of course be entirely computer-generated and for all I know is) is now my most prized media-appearance-related mug. Previously this position was held by the mug I received for my appearance at the NBC4 Health & Fitness Expo, which involved walking in and helping myself to a complimentary mug. I think someone was getting crowd shots, though, so it totally counts.
