Anchorboy (12 page)

Every time you walked into a suite to interview one of the actors, your name and affiliation were announced as if you were competing in a beauty pageant. “Jay On-RAYTE, TSN,” said the person in charge. Nelson took one look at me and said a dismissive “hello” and we were off. I thought that maybe I should start by asking him a somewhat serious question about the film even though it was a comedy, because I imagined that Nelson was the kind of actor who took his craft seriously no matter what the genre. So I started with “You’ve obviously done comedy before to great success,
but this movie was kind of absurd, not exactly what we’re used to seeing from you. What made you decide to sign on for a Will Ferrell movie?” (BRILLIANT, ONRAIT.)

He stared straight at me and said nothing. After the most uncomfortable five-second pause in my life, he replied, “Well, why not?”

“Yeah, good question,” I said.

Silence.

“Uh,” I muttered. “So, you a big figure skating fan?”

He laughed. A genuine actual hearty laugh! My strategy had worked! Convince him that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing (no problem there) and hope he would take sympathy on me and see that I wasn’t another one of those fake-hair, fake-teeth entertainment cattle that he would be facing throughout the day.

The final two minutes of the interview were a bit of a blur. I believe I asked him about the plausibility of two male figure skaters forming an ice-dancing team and whether it’s something he would actually watch. I think he had already tuned me out at that point, but the truth is I had absolutely no intention of using any of this material for my finished story anyway. Unless he said something brilliantly profound, which he didn’t. I was just happy he didn’t reach over and punch me. I suppose if he had, that
definitely
would have made the story.

Next, I was instructed to head across the hall to another suite where Amy Poehler and Will Arnett sat waiting for my brilliant and poignant questions. Amy is well known as a former
Saturday Night Live
cast member and the star of the flat-out brilliant
Parks and Recreation
, a show that is very likely an unrealistic depiction of what it’s like to work in a parks and rec office in a small Midwestern city. However, since I’ve never worked in civic administration, I’m not bothered by it and can enjoy the show as the instant classic that it is. Also, the character of Ron Swanson (played by Nick
Offerman) wears a moustache that is the inspiration for my duster every Movember.

Arnett was one of the stars of the equally brilliant
Arrested Development
. Not to mention the fact that he is a born-and-raised Torontonian and has stated often that he is a huge Maple Leafs fan and that Wendel Clark is his favourite player. I wasn’t really planning on working that angle in the interview, but then I entered the room and they announced my name and affiliation: “Jay On-RAT,

TSN.”

“TSN? I love TSN!” said Arnett.

“He
loves
hockey,” said Poehler.

Thank you, TSN!

What followed was practically a lovefest for all things hockey: “Every Saturday night he watches Don Cherry,” said Poehler.

“He’s on another network; we won’t be talking about him,” I replied, to uproarious laughter from my interviewees.
Uproarious laughter! Maybe I should be doing the whole story about these two wonderful people
, I thought to myself. We didn’t even talk about
Blades of Glory
and I didn’t care. The fact that Arnett was talking non-stop about the Leafs and Poehler was playing along was a perfect angle for a sports-network reporter to take on a story like this. They had already made the day a success.

The only disaster came at the end.

Like many people, when I get nervous my palms get sweaty. It’s a curse. The area under my nose where I would grow a mustache also gets sweaty, which is a bizarre thing and highly embarrassing. Dan calls it my “coke lip.” The sweaty-palms thing is easy to hide unless you’re about to shake hands with two actors following a highly successful and enjoyable interview. As the end of the interview approached I thought about wiping my palms on my pants, but it was impossible to do so in a subtle way. Believe it or not I also seriously considered giving both of them the Howie Mandel fist-tap
that he gives everyone because he is a germaphobe. I probably should have gone that route, but I thought it was just too weird at the time. Instead, I offered my sweaty palm to Will, who shook it without hesitation. Guys obviously notice this stuff and find it gross, but I think he was still on a high from talking about the Leafs. Amy wasn’t so easily distracted. I reached out my hand in all its clammy glory and her smile immediately turned into a frown. I made Amy Poehler frown with my sweaty palms. Oh, well.

And then it was on to Will Ferrell …

Whisked down the hallway with surprising speed (they likely were on to the fact that I didn’t belong there and wanted me out as soon as possible), I entered another suite, where Ferrell and Jon Heder sat side by side chatting pleasantly. Once again my TSN affiliation worked to my advantage …

“Jay On-RAY, TSN.”

Ferrell perked up.

“I’ve seen you,” he said.

“Yeah?” I replied, trying to contain my excitement.

“You’re on TSN?”

“Yup, I host the late-night
SportsCentre
.”

“Right! Right! That’s the one with the one guy in Vancouver and the other guy in Toronto, and you have the two screens … I’ve seen you!” Ferrell was getting genuinely excited at this point and turned to Heder. “When I was filming
Superstar
in Toronto I would watch TSN every night!”

I didn’t have the heart, desire, or time to correct him at that moment, but I understood exactly what he was saying. Back in the late ’90s
SportsCentre
(then called
Sportsdesk
) tried an experiment to appeal to viewers on the west coast. This was another futile attempt to placate viewers in the rest of the country who were convinced our network’s initials actually stood for
Toronto Sports Network
because of our heavy-handed coverage of the Maple Leafs.
The network bought a studio in Vancouver, and every night during the 11:00 PT show we would feature two anchors on the screen linked via satellite, one from the Vancouver studio and one from the Toronto studio. The experiment was short lived, and a couple of years later the studio was actually sold to Sportsnet. That’s where Vancouver sportscasting legend Don Taylor hosts his show to this day.

“Or maybe I saw you when I was in Montreal,” continued Ferrell, working it out in his head.
Blades of Glory
had been partially filmed in Montreal, and the entire cast had spent months of the past winter there, making it entirely possible that Ferrell had seen me while getting ready to start his day or even late at night. Either way, the ice had been broken and we were off. For my second straight interview we barely spoke of the movie. The entire four minutes was spent talking about how
Sportsdesk
was now
SportsCentre
, just like ESPN but spelled
C-e-n-t-r-e
instead of
C-e-n-t-e-r
. (Believe it or not Heder also seemed genuinely interested in this). I also asked Ferrell about his aborted sportscasting career. “I did think about it,” he said.

“Really?” asked Heder, who was unsurprisingly unconcerned that I was basically ignoring him.

There was one person working in the room whose sole job was to tell you how much time you had left in the interview. We quickly reached the “one minute” mark, and I knew I needed to pitch my idea for him to read the opening headlines. So I explained my plan, knowing he would be familiar with the concept, having watched so much
SC
over the years. I handed him my small piece of hotel stationery with the various team matchups on it and then told him to say whatever he wanted about
Blades
at the end. He took one look at the paper, smiled, laughed quietly to himself, and then looked directly into the camera and said this:

“Hi, I’m Will Ferrell, and welcome to
SportsCentre
here on TSN! C-E-N-T-R-E [mock disgust] … Today we’ve got some exciting Leafs–Thrashers action! As we chase for the Cup! [points at me off-camera
and smirks] That’s followed by the Oilers and Blue Jackets, and then it’s the Flames and probably the best team in the NHL … the Los Angeles Kings [the Kings were the worst team in the NHL at the time and Ferrell was keenly aware of this], plus an exclusive look at my new movie,
Blades of Glory—
thanks!”

I was in awe. The guy could have blown me off completely and told me he wasn’t interested in doing my shtick. He and Heder could have laughed in my face and told me to take my hotel stationery back to Canada with me. Instead, Ferrell seemed to get genuine enjoyment out of the whole exercise like it was some sort of welcome creative break to his day. It was a huge relief. I left Ferrell and Heder with sweaty handshakes and said my goodbyes to the Paramount staffers working the junket.

I ran into former
Good Rockin’ Tonite
host Terry David Mulligan in the lobby as I was checking out of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Terry wanted to have a drink later that afternoon, but I had already planned to head down to Santa Monica, find a cheap motel, and spend a couple of days living like a beach bum. I found a place that looked and smelled like it hadn’t been renovated since 1974. It happened to be just down the street from the Zephyr Surf Shop where the original Z-Boys skateboard team used to hang out, a fascinating bit of trivia for a guy like me who used to try to pretend he was a skateboarder. It was perfect.

I was still pretty wound up from the whole junket experience, so I managed to secure a small amount of much-appreciated marijuana from a shady character on the Venice Beach strip. I had heard that the Venice strip was the place to buy drugs locally, since I wasn’t about to trek to downtown Los Angeles. Ignoring the fact that getting arrested for purchasing marijuana in a foreign country that I had travelled to on the company dime might not be the best thing for my career, I took a walk down to the famous muscle beach just after checking in to my fleabag palace. It didn’t take long for my
darting eyes to catch the attention of a guy about my age wearing a backpack on a bench just off the beach. He took one look at me and called out, “Hey, Tom Hanks!”

Weed secured soon after, I returned to the much less sketchy Santa Monica strip, parked myself on the beach, and mentally checked out for a few days.

The
Blades of Glory
feature itself turned out just okay. I tried to include Gino Reda in the piece for comedic purposes. Gino was a regular host during the show’s Vancouver–Toronto satellite days, so I thought I could tie it in to Ferrell’s comment about watching the show in that format. Gino has long been a source of comedy for us on our show, and he’s been very good-natured about it. Unfortunately, in the case of this story I think my inclusion of Gino unintentionally came across as snarky and mean, and I really regret it. I don’t exactly think my bosses loved the piece either since they never bothered to send me on another junket. It’s probably just as well. The next time I tried to buy weed on the Venice Beach strip, I probably would have been arrested by an undercover agent and accused of setting up a Canadian drug ring. I can see the headline now: “Tom Hanks Doppelganger Thwarted.” I think it’s probably for the best that I stick to my natural studio habitat.

But whenever I catch Ferrell in a movie these days, I always remember how nice he was about my stupid little piece of hotel stationery.

W
HEN I WOULD FINALLY DRAG
my stuffy ass into the TSN studios in beautiful Scarborough, Ontario, my first stop every night was the makeup chair.

I should qualify that statement: The first stop of the night was the Shell station up the road. Dan and I have a
slight
addiction to energy drinks.

How do I know it’s an addiction? Because despite the fact that it’s very likely killing me at a slow pace, I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. I imagine that drinking a king-size beer can of citrus-flavoured NOS five minutes before the show is a little like what it would have been like for John Belushi to perform high on cocaine on
Saturday Night Live
back in the late ’70s. I’m sure it’s not affecting the way we host the show at all. Let’s just say we were lucky that drug testing for Bell employees didn’t include taurine.

I also realize I’m taking a risk by devoting an entire chapter of this book to the art and practice of applying and wearing makeup as a necessity for my job, but I’m good with it if you are. I wear makeup
every single night I go to work. There’s no shame in that, is there? Would it make you feel any better if I told you watching me on television without makeup would be a bit like watching Vincent Price host
SportsCentre
on his deathbed? Too harsh? Just thought that might put things in perspective. The truth is, those studio lights are powerful, and you need makeup just to look
normal
and not completely washed out. I always appreciated the fact that I spent most of my on-air career in a studio as opposed to being a field reporter, where my pale skin and dark circles would likely have distracted viewers from everything I was saying. All you aspiring reporters now know the most important element to a successful career in the field: perfect skin.

I am a man who loves sports and I wear makeup. I don’t think these things need to be mutually exclusive. Whether you realize it or not, men have been wearing makeup in the sports and entertainment industries for years. Let’s think of a few examples. Oh, I just did. And then I wrote them down:

Think about all the football and baseball players who wear eye-black under their eyes on hot summer days. If anything, it’s become a symbol of masculinity. Plus it gave Tim Tebow another place to display John 3:16, and we all know how important that is to Tim. How about the superstars of wrestling? The Road Warriors, Animal and Hawk, wouldn’t have been quite so fierce had they come into the ring without any war paint. Sting wouldn’t have had any gimmick whatsoever; he’d be a guy ripping off the lead singer of the Police. And don’t even get me started on the Ultimate Warrior. Can you imagine the Ultimate Warrior without makeup? He would have just been a bulked-up dude with a mullet. In other words, he would have looked like quite a few people I went to high school with in Alberta. How about Bowie? Or the New York Dolls? Or Poison? Or Boy George? (I probably should have stopped with Poison.)

When I got my first on-air job as the sports director at Global
Saskatoon, I didn’t even realize I would
have
to wear makeup on television. They certainly didn’t teach us that at Ryerson. I realize I probably should have known this on my own, but as I mentioned before I’ve never been a big “details” guy. My co-anchor in Saskatoon, Corey Ginther, was kind enough to take me under his wing right before my first broadcast and give me a few quick tips: Dab a bit of powder under the eyes and on the forehead, cover up the beard, make sure you haven’t missed any zits or razor burn marks. Had someone been able to film that moment in my life, it would have been the closest thing to watching two drag queens discovering their craft for the first time.

The following year I was hosting
The Big Breakfast
in Winnipeg, and by then I knew my way around a container of pressed powder. A year of makeup application had not exactly turned me into Oscar winner Rick Baker, but I could at least do a credible job of covering up my mug and making it slightly less hideous. Dragging my ass out of bed at 5:30 in the morning in the freezing Manitoba cold made me grateful for my newly acquired makeup skills. I was fairly certain Winnipeggers didn’t want to wake up to a show hosted by a guy looking like a hobo who had just robbed a liquor store. Especially when that hobo was wearing clothes rejected by the Backstreet Boys. I’m a pale, pale man. As white as they come. Sickly, even. Combine this with my thick Homer Simpson beard that grows back the instant it is shaved, and you either have someone who should have starred in the sequel to
The Pianist
or at the very least someone who should never appear on TV without some sort of assistance from the good people at MAC.

Then, when I arrived at TSN, I suddenly had professionals to do my makeup for me. It was every boy’s childhood dream! No longer would I have to worry about my container of foundation exploding in my pocket like a dropped bag of flour. Now I could just sit back, relax, and catch up on industry gossip. The makeup room is
always
the place to go for the latest chatter. People love to confess things to their makeup artists as if they were their therapists. If anyone should write a tell-all book about the history of Canadian television it should be someone who has done makeup in this industry for a few decades. The ladies of the makeup room basically run the network from within.

When I started at the network, the makeup artists were using a motorized spray machine to apply makeup, much like a pressure washer or a paint machine. They would pour liquid makeup foundation into a canister, hold the nozzle up to our faces, and paint them. Please, no porno jokes. This was a super-fast way of getting in and out of the makeup chair every night. I was perfectly happy to participate in the spray method for the rest of my days at TSN. That was, until a couple of years later when CTV abandoned the practice. Turns out all those fumes from the spray machine may have in fact been permeating the air in the makeup room and slowly killing us. It was kind of like when people first learned asbestos was bad for you after having spent their entire lives working in an asbestos factory. I look forward to suing CTV over the matter one day.

So now it’s back to the old-fashioned way of having makeup applied: with sponges and powder puffs and brushes and, in the case of one veteran makeup artist, the occasional round of sexual harassment in the chair.

For years our regular nighttime makeup artist was a TV industry veteran named Elaine Saunders.
Mrs. Saunders
, as she would call herself, was a widow who had worked in Canadian television for around forty years and was finishing her work tenure at CTV with a cushy gig as
National News
anchor Lloyd Robertson’s main makeup artist. Since Lloyd basically worked the same hours we did, Mrs. Saunders happily did our makeup as well. I became very fond of Mrs. Saunders, but she really was kind of crazy. I asked her if I could say that about her in this book and she said, “Yes, you
idiot!” and then laughed. Mrs. Saunders grew up in the industry and worked on many of the most famous shows in Canadian television history. She spent decades at the CBC during the glory years, a time when many Canadians had only their public broadcaster to turn to for entertainment on the tube. She was there when working in Canadian television actually seemed to be a prestigious thing to do. But Mrs. Saunders wasn’t living in the past. I think she enjoyed her CTV years almost as much as her CBC years because she had free rein to terrorize us in the makeup chair. She could also be wildly funny.

I loved to hear her tell stories about making up Scott Thompson and Bruce McCulloch in drag for
Kids in the Hall
, or taking the shine off Johnny Cash’s forehead for his latest appearance on
The Tommy Hunter Show
. Mrs. Saunders probably made Johnny Cash up when he was addicted to painkillers and likely made up several booze and drug addicts in her television travels. She did work in television, after all.

She would also talk about her appreciation of the kindness of Vegas hookers (“They’re so pretty and so sweet. I love when one or two of them get on the same elevator as me at the Bellagio!”), and the fact that she planned to move into my condo with me at any moment. “You’ll just have to buy a condo big enough for my tchotchkes!” she’d insist. (I’m pretty sure tchotchkes are “old-lady knick-knacks,” but you’d have to ask Mrs. Saunders to be sure.)

Mrs. Saunders was also Joan Rivers’s personal makeup artist for the comedienne’s regular monthly appearances on the Shopping Channel. She had known and worked with Joan for many years, and she and Joan had a love-hate relationship. Yet you have to admire Mrs. Saunders for doing makeup for a seventy-two-year-old woman whose face had been stretched to the point that her pores surely had the consistency of dried pavement. Making up Joan must have been like spreading flour on the sidewalk with a spatula.

I could always tell what kind of mood Joan had been in the previous weekend at the Shopping Channel by the way Mrs. Saunders acted on Monday after working with her. If she was bright and cheerful and showing off some brand of cheap earrings and bangles that Joan had given her, then it had been a positive work experience for Mrs. Saunders. If she was quiet and sullen and lamenting her lot in life, then Joan had been in a bad mood throughout her Shopping Channel duties. Mrs. Saunders called Joan Rivers by her real name, Mrs. Rosenberg, and Mrs. Rosenberg did a lot of nice things for Mrs. Saunders. By all accounts, Mrs. R was clearly a
very
generous person with people she cared about. I honestly think the two ladies saw a lot of themselves in each other: They were trailblazers in an industry that was once completely run by men.

Every night when I’d arrive at work I’d head straight to the makeup room, and the routine would always be the same. Mrs. Saunders would apply a layer of makeup to my beard and under my eyes, followed by a dash of powder to take away the shine and a quick comb of the bushiest eyebrows this side of Gene Shalit. Then she would ask me to feel her tits.

If there’s such a thing as being sexually harassed in a humorous and relatively harmless way, then it happened to me in Mrs. Saunders’s makeup chair. I don’t mean to make light of sexual harassment. I’m well aware that it’s a serious issue in many a workplace. My situation was slightly different, however. We’re talking about a woman, nearing her seventies, who was having a little fun at my expense. This has not scarred me. I would never sue Mrs. Saunders for sexual harassment. If there is a way I can sue CTV for it in the future, then of course I will. At this point I think it pretty much goes without saying that my “retirement plan” is to sue CTV at some point in the future for some sort of made-up trauma. It really does make more sense than RRSPs.

Mrs. Saunders’s regular wardrobe would usually consist of some
sort of bedazzled sweater or sweatshirt that she could easily lift up. This is something she would do very near my face about once a week. She would stand right beside me as I sat in her makeup chair, then she would begin with what I can only imagine was her idea of “setting the mood.”

“What do you think about old people having sex?” she would begin with a wry smile.

“Mrs. Saunders, do we have to go through this every single night?” I’d reply.

“Old wrinkly bodies, farting, burping, bumping together, and having sex. Their undergarments smelling like pee ….” Mrs. Saunders really should have written for Penthouse Forum.

Mrs. Saunders had been widowed several years earlier, and whenever I broached the subject of her dating again she would practically gag. “Old men are burping, farting dogs,” she’d reply. “I don’t want to have to deal with that every night. I already did it.” Then upon realizing she had been distracted from her present task of getting me to touch her boobs, she’d fire up the “dirty talk” again, not realizing or caring that she was contradicting what she had just said. “Just imagine two old people getting down and dirty between the sheets! Plump old bodies banging together, sweating! So hot!”

“Mrs. Saunders, I
really
don’t want to think about that,” I’d plead to no avail.

I know what you’re thinking: “Onrait, you’ve just never had to deal with a woman who is going through menopause.” Sorry, my well-educated friends. This woman was beyond menopause. This was a woman who simply loved to
fuck with people’s minds
. Sitting in her makeup chair every night was like signing up for it. After a few more minutes of dirty talk, Mrs. Saunders would lift up her bedazzled sweatshirt. Underneath this sparkly shirt, to my horror, she would be wearing an “old woman bra.” This “bra” looked suspiciously like a full-body bandage that a young doctor would have
used to patch up a wounded soldier in Vietnam. It supported not only her “droopy tits” (again, her words) but basically her entire torso as well. It was a little like one imagines Mormon undergarments to be. She would proudly stick her chest out like a peacock.

“Feel my tits!” she’d demand with a grin, making it sound like this should be a privilege for me. She was not asking.

“Mrs. Saunders! I’m not going to feel your tits!”

“Don’t you wanna feel my tits?” She’d be stifling a giggle at this point.

“No, Mrs. Saunders, I
do not
want to grab your jugs.”

“Why not? Don’t you think I’m sexy?”

“I just don’t think of you in that way, Mrs. Saunders.”

“Why not?”

“I guess for starters I would answer by saying that you’re old enough to be my grandmother.”

“I’ve got experience!”

“You
do
realize that this is sexual harassment, don’t you?”

“What’s that?” she’d ask innocently.

“If I were to report you to human resources you could be fired! Do you want that?”

“Oh, I don’t fucking care!” Mrs. Saunders would happily reply. “What the hell are they going to do to me now?” She really did have a point.

Eventually she’d pull the shirt down, sufficiently happy that she’d humiliated and embarrassed me to her satisfaction. Then she’d throw a little more makeup on my giant forehead, helping to keep the shine from blinding people, and send me on my way.