Juliet's Journal

Pearl Jam, Imposters, Obesity and Other Things

June 26, 2008

The Pearl Jam concert was amazing, except for the fact that if you’re not a die hard fan (ie the type of fan who knows more than just the songs they play on the radio) you probably didn’t know 2/3 of the music. I was disappointed that they didn’t play the amazing repertoire that I’ve come to love over the years. No “Jeremy”, no “Black”… it was strange, and kind of a bummer for me.

But when they DID sing their hits, like “Better Man”, it more than made up for the fact that their other smashes were ignored. They’re great live. And their fans are like my peeps, the U2 fans. They know every song, even the most obscure ones, word for word. And everyone –from the second the show started at about 8:45pm til the final bow after 11:30pm—was on their feet and amped up. It was a great experience, worth the price for tix and I’d definitely see them again. And Eddie Vedder…well let’s just say he’s getting better with age.

Unfortunately…the night started off on a sour note. I feel the need to tell you why, because I think you need to be warned about something I found more than just a little shady. Doug knew that the show was going to end late, so rather than shlep home, only to have to head back in for an early meeting, he thought he’d get a last minute hotel room via Priceline.com. He called at about 3pm and ended up booking a great room at the Intercontinental Hotel; a 400.00 room in a 4-star hotel for about 170.00. Great deal.

Luckily, we do live fairly close to the city, and we weren’t relying heavily on having that hotel room; it was really a perk/convenience/splurge kinda thing. But what if you had booked the room, driven all the way in from, let’s say Albany (a few hours away) and had not only expected to stay in the city but HAD to stay? Well, if you were in our position, you would’ve been totally stuck.

At dinner (what was supposed to be a romantic dinner) Doug started getting calls from a non-recognized number. He didn’t answer them at first. But after the second call, he listened to his voicemail and it was Priceline. They informed him that the reservation had been canceled. No reason given, just “it’s canceled”.

Long story short, Doug had to sit on the phone the entire dinner waiting to speak to a real person. Once he did, they basically said “sorry, due to extenuating circumstances, the room is not available, the hotel is booked solid but we’ll refund your money”. Doug asked to speak to a manager, and the woman wouldn’t transfer him. She said he’d have to go on the website and write a complaint!!!

What if we had trekked all the way into the city??? They’re going to just cancel us, on a whim, no reason given? It was really slimy, and incredibly frustrating. Our dinner was lame because he was on hold the whole time, and once he actually spoke to Miss Unhelpful, he had to leave the restaurant because it was too loud. He was out on the street for about 20 minutes… I know there are much bigger problems in the world, but I can only imagine how often this type of thing happens, and how badly it messes up people’s nights…or worse – vacations.

We wrote them an email, suggesting they have a manager contact us, but no one has as of 2pm east coast time.

With the horrific cost of gas, and the unbelievably high cost of hotel rooms here in NYC, a customer relies on these companies to honor their “confirmation”. If there’s going to be a problem, DON’T CONFIRM MY RESERVATION. I argued with Doug at first that maybe it was the Intercontinental’s fault; maybe they agreed to open a room to Priceline, but then when they realized they could get more for the room from someone else, they snagged it back.

We called the hotel directly, and they said they were booked up.

Either way, Priceline sent us a confirmation that we had a room, for a rate of 170-something. That should have been honored, or at the very least, they should have made certain we had a comparable room somewhere in the city for a comparable price.

Bad business. Beware when you use Priceline. I’m curious – anyone else have problems like this with these types of companies? Sounds like a good M&J investigation.

The shows this week have been filled with information, and hopefully you’re learning new, interesting things.

Today’s show got a bit feisty off the top (or maybe I should say I GOT a little feisty off the top) during our segment about the man who was allegedly posing a police official in Missouri, busting people for drugs and other crimes. Despite driving around in a Crown Victoria and looking the part, Bill Jakob was actually an unemployed truck driver who had just filed for bankruptcy. Oh, and he has a criminal record. The kicker — he was working in some capacity with the town’s police department! Strangely, the guy’s still not being charged, although I suspect charges are coming…

I was slightly chastised by one of my colleagues during our “post-mortem” today for not letting the man’s attorney, who was on satellite; explain his side of the story. I don’t typically cut people’s explanations off unless I think they’re “spinning”; which is what I felt he was doing. I read the pre-interview and knew what he was about to say, which was that his client did something wrong, but not thaaaat wrong. He was trying to suggest that Jakob made some bad decisions but the real crime was that the police let him do this. I’ll talk to attorneys for the town’s police about THEIR culpability; I was asking about Jakob’s culpability. So… as I sometimes am known to do, I reacted loudly, and aggressively (and snidely, I admit) with an “Oh come on”.

I take it my colleague thought it was rude; he felt that I intended to cut him off. Actually, my reaction was a visceral reaction. And my intention was not to cut him off but rather to convey the fact that I thought the attorney’s defense on that particular point was nonsense. My intention was to swerve him back into reality. Some might think it was just bad interviewing. I can’t say I’d change what I did, although I do feel it’s probably best to hold back a bit when doing satellite interviews; there’s a delay, you can’t see who you’re talking to or who’s speaking to you, and that gives the person in my chair an unfair advantage. But ultimately, to be honest, sometimes I just get sick of spin. And I know it when I hear it.

That’s the fun thing about those post-mortems…it’s open season sometimes, not particularly pleasant but at least you know what people are thinking.

Interestingly, that segment was troubled from moment one. Marvin, the producer, rocks – he lined up all the players and they all came through. Unfortunately, they were on satellite, and as you’ve seen before, satellites sometimes go down. We had word from our producer Nancy in our ear about a minute before the show started that the satellites were down and we had neither the newspaper reporter’s shot nor the attorneys’ shots. Then the shots came back. Then they went down again. It was crazy… Normally we wouldn’t have started with the attorney on-set who was not a player, but rather an observer. But when we lost both shots, we had to go to Gwen, who gave us the basic overview of the case from an outsider’s pov.

Another segment that caused a bit of a furor today was the childhood obesity segment. The doctor was unhappy with our style of interviewing (a trend?); he felt we were a little too harsh on the young girl with the weight problem. He came up to me after the segment, saying he thought it was too rough when Mike asked her if she was worried her weight was hurting her. With all due respect to the doctor, who is an expert in childhood obesity, the point of the segment was to make everyone, including kids, aware that serious obesity is unhealthy. The doctor himself told us that the life expectancy of kids today is shorter than it was during the Civil War. I wasn’t really sure how he expected the conversation to go. I think he was worried about scaring her; but it seems like now is the time to act because if she doesn’t, life could get a whole lot scarier. Interested in your thoughts…

Tomorrow is Friday, and also the beginning of our hiatus. That doesn’t mean we’re in re-runs. We’re in “Best of’s” –the best of the best segments we’ve done over the past few months. We’re also going to be playing CBS’s The Early Show in softball tomorrow. Despite a huge win against Morning Joe, on MSNBC two weeks ago, we lost to CBS Evening News, but not by much. I’m feeling good about this game, even though our stud-ette Randi Clarke, our Assistant Director and fearless Captain won’t be playing. If you happen to be around Central Park’s softball fields around 1:30pm tomorrow, stop by and cheer us on. And check out our gorgeous players. We have the most talented and cutest staff in morning talk, I’m telling you.