Day Three - Friday April 13, 2007

Special Ed woke up today at 8:30 am and went to the gym. I chose to do back because it is a weak bodypart for me. I have a good mind-muscle connection but with a bad shoulder, many back movements are painful, including the King Exercise, pullups. Not that I can exactly do any pullups at 240 lbs, but it's fun just hanging there. And painful too.

My workout consisted of lat pulldowns to the front for four sets. As stated, I don't really pay much attention to the weights because lat pulldowns are a silly cable exercise, but I'm in the 140-160 lb range after my warm-up and I use good form. After pulldowns, I did some t-bar rows. It's hard doing shit like that in the morning. I don't have any energy until mid-late afternoon and my preferred workout time for energy and strength is in the evening, around 9pm. But I know how important it is to get the workout in and done with, so I'll be working out every morning and sometimes I will double up in the evening if I had a chance.

After t-bars, I did a few sets of hyperextensions. I have been having some back pain lately and I know sometimes that can be the result of an imbalance in the core muscles. So I think it's important to strengthen my lower back and stomach before I get to crazy with the weights.

I spent about twenty minutes peppering my friend and NPC National Contender Dana Capobianco with some questions about diet. Dana is a serious bodybuilder and personal trainer with a lot of knowledge.

Running low on time, I hit the treadmill for 30 minutes on 3.4 with an incline of 2-5. And that was it for the gym.

After speaking with Automobile Magazine several times during the week about covering the New York Auto Expo for them, I was looking forward to picking up my brother-in-law Phil so he could work the camera for me at the show. We headed out to the Autoshow around 6pm and got there at seven. We went downstairs to get our media passes and of course, the idiot at the media desk takes one look at Phil with his cornrows and do-rag and tells us that without a business card, he can't help us. A business card?? I get emails all day long from a company offering 500 free business cards and this turd is acting like a business card is the be-all, end-all.

I tell him that I'm a contractor hired to cover the event for the magazine which doesn't persuade him in the least. Knowing full well, that the magazine offices are closed for the day, I ask him if he can just call the magazine and ask for my contact. This tactic seems to gain some favor with him by adding to my credibility when I produce a telephone number in Detroit that probably matches up with his own contact numbers. He asks me to wait while he disappears into the "back room". While I'm standing there, I see Aamer Haleem, the VH1 Countdown host, walk in with his VH1 camera crew. I call out to him and he comes over and I tell him I'm a big fan of his show "Bands Re-United" even if they couldn't get EXTREME back together again. I ask him if I can interview him for SpecialEdTV.com and he says "Sure!" I tell Phil to load up the camera and get it ready to go. I briefly show him how to operate the camera (it's a Sony), and show him which button to press to record and pause. It's not rocket science.

I walk back to Aamer and he's actually already online watching my videos on SpecialEdTV.com on his computer. I signal Phil to start recording and crack Aamer up with my first question: "Out of all the rock stars you've met, who most deserves a big smack in the mouth?" Aamer has a great sense of humor and he handled all of my questions like a fellow wise-ass, throwing in some funny tidbits of his own. When we finished, I saw the "front desk guy" looking over at us. I walked back over and he simply stamped our press passes without saying a word. I had a positive feeling that it was going to be a good Special Ed day for interviews.

That was until I went to interview a spokesmodel right out of the gate, and I saw Phil pressing on the 'photo snapshot' button and not the 'record' button. "What the fuck are you doing?" I asked, pointing to the right button. "Oh," was his limited response. I rewound the tape and sure enough, the interview with Ameer was nowhere to be found. Just a few snapshots of me smiling like a goofball while I asked him questions. DOH!

We made the rounds at the AutoShow and I have to say that the people there at the booths were not the friendliest group on earth. I understand that some of them had been there for the past 6 days and they had been there for 12 hours already, so perhaps it was my own fault for trying to interview people in grumpy and tired moods.

To add to that, I found that most of the "product specialists" are independent contractors trained and hire by the auto companies to represent their product. They travel around the country appearing at the various auto shows. What I didn't know was that most companies forbid them from appearing on camera to talk about the cars. My guess is that's either because they don't want them saying something incorrect about one of their products and having that appear on national television, or it's because they're afraid that a jackass like myself might make of their beautiful spokesmodels look silly by asking her about her prices for "Hummers" for five minutes before she finally catches on. Or, maybe someone tipped them off that SpecialEdTV was coming.

Either way, we didn't get great audience participation, but I think there's enough to satisfy the masses. Of course, I haven't reviewed the tape yet, so I don't even know if there's any video at all or if Phil continued to take snapshots for the entire show. I will keep you posted. You can check out my Youtube Channel to see a trailer for the Autoshow clip collection soon.