Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (16 page)

Although my ’fro had shrunk, my self had grown, just as the Queen of Talk urged us to do through our TV screens every day. But since we’re keeping score: That overreaching photo attempt was only Strike Two with the real-life Oprah.

A few years later, ever-resilient me was back in Chicago working on some story, and I set up a quick “hello” meeting with Oprah’s new publicist, who was gloriously not Colleen, and who thoughtfully arranged for me to sit in on a taping of the
Oprah
show. I was ecstatic to be in the audience, as a fan. During a commercial break I got up the nerve to say hello. To
Oprah
. Again, I could not possibly overstate my level of respect, devotion, and esteem for this woman.

“Hi, Oprah, I’m Paula Zahn’s producer!” I chirped.

Steeee-rike Thuh-
ree
!

Apparently Oprah had seen
CBS This Morning
just the day before. Now, the good news was that despite our rocky history, Oprah somehow caught a moment of
CBS This Morning
, which was a miracle in itself given that it was relatively unwatched. But the bad news was that she’d caught a snide comment that Mark McEwen—our weatherman, who
never ever
made snide comments—had made about her, Oprah, and her weight loss and something to the effect that if
he
had a chef and a trainer then
he’d
probably lose all that weight, too. Awesome.

She recounted the entire story to me. Into her microphone. As I sat there amid three hundred Oprah-adoring audience members all wearing red blazers and obvious expressions of sympathy. She proceeded to say how
hurtful
it was for someone to
assume
that a trainer and a chef were the only reasons she was able to lose all the weight. As the ladies all scowled at me, I felt like the living, breathing example of her hurt. She was displeased. Because of
me
. Again!

During the next commercial break, in which I planned to stare at the floor with my head down, I got the urgent beep (it was still beepers then) to call CBS News in New York. It was Bill Owens—the guy who’d kicked me off the
Evening News
set when I was an intern and was now a colleague—telling me there’d been a huge explosion in Oklahoma City and that I needed to get on the next plane headed there. I tried to beg off, and what I am about to recount to you is something that shames me far more than the time I tricked Oprah at the very beginning of this chapter.

“Bill, I am in the audience at
Oprah
right now. I can’t possibly leave. Is this story really a big deal? Are you
sure
I have to go?” I pleaded. “I
really
think it’s best for the show if I stay. Oprah’s
really
mad at Mark, CBS, and our show. Can’t we wait to see what develops in Oklahoma, because I don’t even get what the story is…”

I did end up going to Oklahoma City, and it soon became all too clear what that story was. And if I’d ever felt silly and small because of a few dumb things I’d done in front of a TV idol, I felt absolutely humbled, chastened, and reduced by what was unfolding in front of me. For years afterward I watched
Oprah
with a twinge of guilt.

My Oprah Angel Network Book Club Aha Moment regarding this experience is something I still haven’t really learned, and maybe never will … sometimes it’s not about you. Not one little bit.

SIX MOMENTS I’D LIKE TO FORGET

I’ve had enough embarrassing moments to fill a book, but maybe it does matter that you think I’m cool, so I’m only going to mention six more.

On a remote in New Orleans for CBS, I said some unkind things about one of the anchors in New York City to our weatherman. Little did I know that his mic was on and it was open in the ears of both our anchors. When I got back to Manhattan I had some serious ’splainin’ to do.

I got busted by open mics again years later on the set of
Top Chef
in Miami when I inadvertently regaled the entire control room with a detailed story of a sexploit between me and a woman. (I’m not saying anything more about that.) I thought I was privately telling Gail Simmons, Padma Lakshmi, and Tom Colicchio as they waited to begin taping, but they were wearing live mics. Will I ever learn?

While I was an intern at the CBS affiliate in St. Louis, Helen Slater came to promote her movie
Supergirl
. I assumed that the woman with her was her proud mother. Wrong! The woman informed me she was her publicist and that she and Helen were the same age. I then made the classic stupid male move of assuming the publicist was pregnant and asked her when she was due. Do I even have to finish this story?

I was hosting the Miss USA pageant when the director told me that we were running short, meaning we had time to kill. What he didn’t tell me was that they’d added material to the teleprompter, including an introduction of Miss Universe, Ximena Navarrete. The degree to which I botched her name on live national television was fairly extreme: I read her first name as Eczema, like the skin condition. Months after insulting the Venezuelan population, I further revealed my moronic teleprompter skills on
Watch What Happens Live
, when I read that someone from “La Calif” had a question, not realizing that I was meant to say LA, California. I made myself Jackhole of the Week for that one.

I wish I could explain this outfit to you. This photo qualifies as an embarrassing moment, right?

The first time I was ever overserved—I believe it was Tanqueray, and I know I was in high school—I awoke in the middle of the night and became immediately aware that I wouldn’t make the ten steps to the bathroom without throwing up. Thinking fast, I took off my boxer shorts and threw up in them. I then tossed them out the window onto my front lawn, I suppose in an attempt to get rid of the evidence. As if Evelyn Cohen would miss that one.

At my job selling Deadhead gear out of a pushcart at Faneuil Hall, some guy came up and started talking to me about pot. He was getting a huge shipment later that day and told me he would sell me an ounce for the unimaginably low price of $450. I literally walked to the bank machine, emptied my account, handed him the money, and waited for two hours for him to deliver my pot at a bar across the street after work. I realized when he was five minutes late that he wasn’t coming, and I have never felt like a bigger sucker. At least he wasn’t a cop.

FEEL THE PAIN

Here’s what … I’m sort of a wimp. I was the kid in glasses who couldn’t even mow the lawn because of grass allergies. Being risk-averse doesn’t lend itself well to the news business, and I got the same pit in my stomach every time I headed in what most sane people would consider the wrong direction—into, instead of away from, disaster. When I arrived in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, I rented a car and headed straight for the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. I quickly found myself in the midst of fiery rubble, with devastated families helplessly looking on as first responders performed triage. A truck bomb had exploded at 9:02 a.m., demolishing the building and making a huge chunk of downtown Oklahoma City look like a battlefield. A light rain was falling, which underscored the somber mood of the shaken city that from that day forward would be synonymous with America’s worst act of homegrown terrorism.