Mr. Oatmeal doing movie reviews on the radio - evidently NOT???

I seem to be unable to make it through and I do not know or understand why – Sorry Melissa.

About a month ago the place I work launched a new daily call in talk radio show called First Coast Connect. It is a great show and the host, Melissa Ross is a FANTASTIC on air personality and a great person as well. I give you that background so I you can understand the rest of the oratory. A couple of weeks ago I was asked if I would be interested in doing movie reviews for the show. I was intrigued, now I found my voice with the blog I thought it might be a natural extension of that. So I would be playing a character and she told me a story about a guy who did movie reviews while playing a character called “Normal Guy” on the radio in Chicago. Normal Guy was from the south side of Chicago and played it up pretty good, the stereo typical south side of Chicago blue collar worker who just went and watched the movies and then reviewed them on the radio. Simple enough I remember thinking. After that initial conversation I thought about what this character might be like, he was to have been born, raised and living on the west side of Jacksonville and I was not and do not. What might this guy’s name be, it had to be something that immediately and unmistakably screamed I AM FROM THE WEST SIDE OF JACKSONVILLE! What might the ranking scale be, not stars of course – maybe it could be Giorgi’s pork sandwiches, maybe moon pies, I was unsure.

So I agreed to do it, I had no idea what I was in for and I still cannot figure out what happened to me. We had several more conversations about the character and worked on picking a name. We decided that we would pick a street name and associate a name with it, for example – Lane Ave Louie or Mike McDuff or Wesconnett Willy. We never did nail a name down but we had eliminated several. I remember Melissa wanted the first movie I reviewed to be a chick flick, some tough west side dude reviewing a chick flick – I thought that was great and that we could make it funny. After a week or so there were no chick flicks that were newly released. At this point I was thinking I could just bull shit my way through a movie review, just like I do here in my oratories. I learned later that this is EASY compared to sitting in front of a microphone and reading your work. I know I call this an oratory and that is not without reason, simply a funny inside joke. I was to learn that actually being an orator is A LOT harder than I thought and much harder to BS your way through. So anyway we decided that “The Informant” would be the first movie I would review. I was planning on watching it over the weekend with Bride but the jalopy was calling for some attention and I was unable to carve out the time.

Monday I went to see Melissa to tell her I did not see the movie and she told me she had not seen it yet either, I was somewhat relieved. I was talking the day off on Tuesday to spend the day with my Bride on our 19th anniversary so we decided that matinee and then lunch would be a perfect date. That was a great day to by the way, we were up at 5am and off to the beach with coffees and we watched the sunrise. About 8am we came home and went for our morning walk, we are up to about 2.5 miles and go 6 days a week. After a swim and showers we were off to the 11:05 matinee showing of The Informant at the Regency 24 theaters. After the movie we stopped by Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch, my niece works there and when I asked for the check I was told the manager comp’d our lunch and wished us a happy anniversary. For those who know me you know how excited I get about a free lunch. After that it was home for another swim and a nap. Dinner and another movie, on demand this time, and it was a perfect day. Anyway, sorry I got sidetracked thinking about bride. So that evening I sat down and wrote a little something down about the movie. I just let it flow like I do here and thought it was pretty good. The next morning I tweaked it a bit more and sent it on to Melissa to see what she thought. She may have been humoring me but she said she liked it. After I read it again I started to wonder though.

So that is when I realized I had, like usual, no idea what I was doing. I rarely let that stop me but this was something else all together, it was Melissa’s show, it was on radio, it was all of the sudden scary. I started researching how to be a reviewer, my review did not follow any of the advice I found on how to review a movie. Now I was thinking, wow what am I doing here? I went back over my script again and while I thought it was good I was not so sure anymore. This is when things started feeling odd for me, anxious I guess. Now for those who know me know that I do not get anxious or excited about things. My life philosophy is to remain calm and balanced in all situations so I could not understand what was bothering me. Not wanting to throw in the towel right away I thought about it, a lot, trying to determine why I was feeling this way. I even pondered it for a while, some people call that meditation but to me it is ponderin (no g). I went through thoughts like, what if this character get popular and what would that mean to me? Would I be asked to do pledge shows, we are an NPR station? Would I have to make appearances, where I do not know? Was I afraid of it succeeding? Was I afraid of it failing? I have tried and failed at any number of things and have learned that to grow we must fail so I did not think it was that.

I could not find anything that seemed to touch this new nerve. I spent quite a bit of time going through the scenarios and nothing stood out as the reason for my nervousness. I decided that I would keep forging forward to see if something presented itself. We met to record the review I had written, and was approved by her boss. That is when my anxiety shot up even more, it was a very weird feeling for me. It has been YEARS since I had any anxiety, I was still in the military. We attempted to record and I was having all kinds of problems, so bad I started to break out in a sweat while we were trying. After several attempts with little progress and not wanting to waste anymore of Melissa’s time, I thought I would record it by myself, I knew how to operate the board and the digital recorder and I told her I would continue trying. It was not much better by myself, I went and got a drink of water and stepped outside for a couple of minutes. After several more attempts to read what turned out to be about a 3 minute piece I got one close and after a bit of editing I came up with the spot. I was not happy with it but was relieved it was over.

I let her know I was done and finished up some other work and headed home for the evening. On the way home I started pondering the “why was this happening” topic again and still could come up with nothing. I got home and went for a swim, noodle dangling actually, and decided that if doing these movie reviews was going to cause me this much stress that it might not be worth doing. I thought maybe this was just the nervousness that comes with trying new things, after some time on that I realized that I know what that feels like and this was not the same. After 44 years of roaming about the world I have learned to trust my gut feelings and this thing was screaming at me for some reason. After some more pondering and talking about it with Bride I decided I was going to let Melissa know that I was not going to be able to do them. It was weird, the moment I decided I felt completely different – the anxiety was GONE. I knew right away that I made the right decision, I sent an email explaining the way I was feeling and apologizing for backing out. Even a couple of days later I am still not sure what the deal was or what it was, specifically, that was causing my problems – Who knows. I am going to start a blog doing movie reviews, The Informant will be my first one but I will stick to my Mr. Oatmeal world, that is a place I am comfortable doing and saying whatever I want.

I have always had a great deal of respect for the on air talent folks but man I am here to tell ya, I have a whole new respect for them, especially the ones doing it "live." I want to apologize to Melissa, one more time. I am so sorry that I screwed up your idea for a west-sider movie reviewer and hope that you can forgive me as well as find someone that can make it work for ya.