Today
It should have felt odd, I suppose, to be standing in Rockefeller Center with a Today Show laniard around my neck, watching my cousin rock Matt Lauer’s socks off. But it didn’t.
Funny thing about life these days: nothing’s shocking. It’s not that I think I’m all that, or am impressing myself with anything. It’s just, well, it’s just my life. I feel blessed, fortunate, excited. I built it like this: relentless, ambitious, hopeful, seeking. And here it is.
Like last night. I was sitting behind Michael Musto at the “The Squid & The Whale.” In my early years in New York, his “La Dolce Musto” was my favorite column. I waited on Wednesdays. Last night, there he was plain as day, and regular as pie.
And today I spoke with “The Squid & The Whale” standout Jesse Eisenberg. He was calling from the Greenway Court Theatre in L.A. where he’s starring with Al Pacino in “Orphans.” Nice kid: real soft, real bright, real modest. Kinda’ sweet.
Yesterday, I stood on the sidewalk in front of 30 Rock — a few feet from one of my first job interviews at NBC News, and just down the street from my first job at Rolling Stone — MTV News microphone in hand, interviewing World Leader Pretend. It was difficult to focus amidst the rubbernecking tourists, honking cabs, and falling rain, but there it was. I was nervous, and distracted, but settled into the job. I reminded myself, ‘This is what you do,” and did it.
This morning I raced to catch Andrew’s Today Show performance. I stepped behind the barricades just as Katie said the band’s name. I stood behind the throngs of wide-eyed, screaming midwesterners starved for a Matt and Katie sighting. I smiled at Andrew, thre the devil horns high, and snapped photos like a tourist. It didn’t occur to me to wish that it was me in those shoes. It only occurred to me to be glad he was in his.
Afterwards, Andrew shuffled me inside. I milled about with the band, and revelled in the afterglow. They signed autographs, and generally tried to recover from the adrenaline rush of twenty million eyeballs.
Andrew said to me, “Dude, who would have guessed this one, huh?”
I took off my sunglasses and looked into his sparkling, youthful eyes and said, “You just have to keep imagining, man. You just have to believe that you can, and you will.”
New Orleans Rockers World Leader Pretend Soldier On After Hurricane
NEW YORK — “Rain seems to follow us wherever we go,” World Leader Pretend’s Matt Martin joked with the drizzle-soaked crowd at Rockefeller Center on Thursday.
The guitarist had good reason to joke. Humor — and music — may be about all the New Orleans band has left.
The quintet was celebrating its first day off in over a year of touring behind its album Punches when Hurricane Katrina devastated its hometown.
“I woke up late the morning it hit,” drummer Arthur Mintz said. “I had like 40 messages on my answering machine. People were like, ‘Dude, just leave town right now. Don’t bother boarding up; your house is not gonna be there when this is all over.’ So we drove to Baton Rouge and stayed with my mom.”
The resulting floods most likely swept away WLP’s tour van and trailer and choked their rehearsal space with mold and mildew. Not that they know for sure — they haven’t been able to go home.
“We tried to go back last week,” Martin said. “But then Hurricane Rita came through.”
The spotty damage assessments the band’s received thus far have been from friends. For Mintz, who grew up in Slidell, Louisiana, the outlook isn’t good.
“One buddy of mine went home in a boat. His bedroom — which is on the second story — was still underwater. Furniture was floating,” he said. “It’s been really emotional.”
“Fortunately I don’t think we lost much of anything other than musical equipment and some cars,” singer/guitarist Keith Ferguson said. “But we’ll see.”
The band was in New York to contribute to the Make a Difference Today hurricane-relief initiative forged by NBC, Warner Music and Habitat for Humanity. In addition to Thursday’s lunchtime performance, the band lent a hand with Habitat’s homebuilding efforts, also at Rockefeller Plaza.
The coup de grâce of the band’s visit, though, was the performance of its forthcoming single “Tit for Tat” on the “Today” show Friday morning (September 30). The rain had stopped, the sky had cleared. And just as Katie Couric and Matt Lauer signed off, they presented the band with new equipment, courtesy of Gibson.
“We never expected to be in this situation,” Ferguson said. “It’s the kind of thing you see on TV, but never expect to experience.”
The band performs in St. Louis on Saturday before returning to New Orleans on Sunday.
This article first appeared on MTVNews.com.
