Tuesday, February 10, 2009

How to be a TV weatherman in three simple steps

With the current economy and job situation, I will provide a public service. Yes, I am going to give you the skill set needed to be a TV weatherman. Follow these steps, and you're well on your way.

1) Look pretty.
2) Act so perky that even Rachel Ray will ask you to tone it down.
3) Be a complete fucking idiot.

For three days, all I have been hearing on the local newscasts is that it was going to snow this morning. Look, I understand being a weatherman in Tucson must suck. You have to come out every day and say "Sunny, nice weather", and make it sound interesting for 10 minutes. That's why they all use all those meteorological vocabulary words to explain what is going on. Complete waste of time. Just let me know if I need a coat, an umbrella, or if the wind is going to make me sneeze. That's it. Quite wasting my time and let's get to sports.

Last night, it was the lead story for the third straight night. I wasn't falling for their ploy. I remembered back when El Nino was going to devastate Tucson. They were trying to get us to get sandbags, and to board our windows, etc. I was actually worried about this. Then they day of the storm came, and we got a little wind. No damage reported, nothing. To quote Jay, "TV weatherman are so full of shit."

So I wasn't biting this time. My lady friend still watches TV news. I don't. I usually get all my info off of the interwebs, like God intended. But my kids were with their mom this weekend, so I spent the weekend hanging out with her. This involved my subjection to the TV news. I told her that they were full of shit, and she disagreed. She argued that would be unethical. I countered with "This is local TV news, ethics are the least of their concerns." Seriously, they dangle this shit out in front of us like worms, waiting for the baby birds to snap it all up.

So I wake up this morning, ready to check out the layer of frosty white goodness (ew, that could be misinterpreted as something gross) straight out of a Bing Crosby music video. Heck, from the sound of what was hitting my roof all night, these must have been the biggest snowflakes in history.

All I saw was wet. Yep, nothing but rain. It really wasn't even that cold. I turned on the TV with the sole purpose of them saying "Hey, we fucked up. Sorry." Of course not. They were still pimping that there was going to be rain/snow all morning. Give it up dudes. You're not fooling anyone. It was sunny, and somewhat cool. Not exactly a blizzard in the making.

The thing that made me laugh the most was when they were talking about school closures. They said that there weren't any yet, but they would let us know if there were any. If any of the schools closed because some dipshit on TV said it was going to snow, then I think the people in Washington that want to blow up the public school system may have a point. Luckily, our educators are not as stupid as the TV media.

It's actually tough always being right. It takes a lot of surprise out of my life.

1 comment:

Paul E. King said...

haha, love this post. being a weather person in southern-az is like being peyton manning's backup qb. you can pretty much be in a coma and pull it off.

i mean if Brick Tamland of Channel 4 News in San Diego can do it, anyone can. Hey-oh!!!