Awkwardness is International

One of my favorite movies is Notting Hill. If you've never seen it, you should. It's a wonderful study in awkwardness starring the master and mistress of that particular trait, Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. Hugh, the regular Joe, lives in Notting Hill in London, and falls in love with the American movie star, Julia.

In the movie, they make a big deal of that fact that Hugh lives in a tiny little townhouse with a Blue Door. Capitalized because that's the key point.

Being in London and finding myself in the Notting Hill neighborhood, my sister and I began looking on every street for a blue door. Naturally, not a single blue door was to be found. After giving up on our search, my mother suggested we try one last street before we headed to the tube. Kara and I started up the street and the first house had...a blue door! I scampered up and plopped myself on the front stairs to get a picture, only to hear the door swing creakily open, and turned to see a very confused British girl about my age looking at the creep on her stairs.


What does one do in that situation? This one smiled, said "hello!," jumped up, and skipped down the stairs to where Kara was spinning around, taking pictures of just about everything in sight to appear less creepy and in effect, just looking more creepy than before.


But I got my picture of the house with the Blue Door in Notting Hill.

This Week with ... JB?

It's time for an amusing little anecdote about my time here in DC. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, my friend Julie is interning here in WashDC for ABCNews. She's a media intern at the bureau, and works with some pretty high-ups in the news business. About a week ago, Julie texts me asking if I'm free this past Friday to help with blocking for the new This Week with Christiane Amanpour (now that the host has changed, the set needs redone, the blocking, the lights, etc.). I had been given the day off, so I figured why not help out ABCNews, get to see the studio, and get paid a little bit extra?

Friday morning, I traipsed off to the Newseum on what I expected to be a grand adventure sitting in a chair and chatting with other stand-ins like myself for a few hours, nothing more to it.

Boy, was I wrong.

After spending about 20 minutes waiting for the security guard to decide to give me a real ABCNews Crew badge (!!!), fellow stand-in Marissa and I wound our way to Studio B aka the PA Ave Studio. There we met our colleagues John and Melanie, and did actually partake in the sitting in a chair and chatting for a few hours before being dismissed for our lunch break. Unfortunately, we weren't permitted to take pictures of the set, because it wasn't being revealed until Sunday's show, but the new layout and lighting are great! Now that you've all seen it, I can say that the red looks awesome, and Christiane really knows what she likes.

Following our lunch break, colleague John and I were snatched by one of the production managers and taken to the control room. It was a scene of chaos. People yelling about Bed,Bath&Beyond and colors and online shopping; I was sure I was hearing wrong. Au contraire. Amy, the operations producer, called us over and gave us a mission: make it to the nearest BB&B, find seven (7) black coffee mugs that fit their specifications, and make it back before they needed us to block again. I am proud to say, mission accomplished! Upon handing over the treasure, Amy informed us we could then each have a mug with the old This Week logo on it!!

I have to stop at this point and tell you that this mug is more precious than gold. I cradled it the whole way home on the metro, and when I later showed Julie, her gasp could have shattered a window. Not only do they not give these away often, it is now a collector's item, never again to be produced with that logo. The mug is quite possibly my favorite souvenir from this entire summer.

Upon returning to blocking after this momentous occasion, I was able to meet Christiane Amanpour herself, and offer her her hostess's seat for the show. She was pre-taping an interview with Defense Secretary Gates that afternoon, and I was lucky enough to still be in the room when he was escorted in by his Secret Service men. I had to leave for the actual interview, but Amy invited me to the control room to watch the taping. Christiane really knows her stuff, as I'm sure anyone who has seen her reporting knows.

I'm not sure I would like to be in the news industry for an actual career, but what a chance to get an inside look at one of the top (and my personal favorite) news networks in the country. Typical WashDC.