Many mornings I take in the super-softcore porn that is CNN's Headline News with Robin Meade. There's no nudity, of course, except that that occurs in my mind's eye when that pesky newscrawl goes away and we can see more of Robin Meade's assets.
Lately Robin has gotten a new gal pal who is fetching in her own right, Adrianna Costa. While Adrianna provides interesting eye candy, the haphazard quality of her on-air delivery has been jaw-dropping on more than one occassion. Most recently she was announcing the top five movies of the weekend, and as she got to Number One she began frantically rifling through a stack of papers on her desk until someone off camera shouted it to her. "Oh, thank you!," she said. This reminded me of a week or two ago when she fubmled the opening to another of her 1:30 reports and said, "Oh, my GOD are we feeling this time change." For future fumbles I recommend Adrianna blame the pollen, the full moon or post-Arbor Day hangover for her ill-preparedness. The report is only about a minute long, fer cryin' out loud, how hard can it be to prepare?!
Where did this Adrianna Costa come from?, I had to wonder. How many years of small-to-large-market dues had she paid to flounder through one-minute entertainment reports on international news? I did some Google research.
Her sloppiness might be forgiven if you consider she only graduated high school in 1999. Yes, Adrianna is only 25, and she joined CNN when she was just 24. Prior to that she ate some Roman noodles and took some risks by spending a few months at a TV station in Palm Springs, a place where lots of vets who aren't fresh out of college would like to work. That was followed by moving to market #2, Los Angeles, in less than a year, and being an entertainment reporter for a short period before getting on E! and now CNN. She just got her bachelor's in 2003, and by 2005 she was on international television news.
But there were times, back in the salad days, when Adrianna had to ask herself if it was all worth it. Those first two-and-a-half weeks out of school were a real test, but her persistence and do-or-die, sell-it-like-a-pitbull attitude paid off just two months later when she was on TV in Palm Springs, and even more six months later, when she was hired for Good Day, L.A.
Nah. This is just another illustration of something I figured out when I was 26: eating shit is eating shit, making money is making money. The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Forty-year-old suckers will still work for $9 an hour and walk around in threadbare thrift store sweaters thinking glory lies behind the next bounced check, but they're fucktards. If the powers that be want you at the top, you'll be there, even if you can't get a one-minute report together.
By the way I also recently saw Adrianna Costa interviewing Ryan Seacrest, another shining example to all you kids (and old men) making $6.50 an hour sweeping TV studio floors. Recently Larry King was asked who would make a good replacement when he leaves, and he gave the same reply Dick Clark and Kasey Kaseem have given (and Rick Dees, involuntarily): Ryan Seacrest.
Oh, and Adrianna's last name isn't really Costa, either. It's Heber. Very non-Spanish sounding, to my ear. Sounds Jewish, actually. Maybe she's pulling the same trick Jerry Rivers, a.k.a. Geraldo Rivera, a.k.a. Jerry Rivers, pulled in the early `70's? America is crazy for Latinas these days, why not be one?
Anyhow...there's another example of how I'm right about everything. :-D
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In case you've wandered in here from a search engine and don't get why I'm ranting about Adrianna Costa's short period of dues-paying...this post is mostly written "closed-circuit" to a frequent poster here who insists it's wise to spend 20+ years, right into your forties, struggling for a one-in-a-million dream that likely will never come. Thus phrases like "Roman noodles," "sell like a pitbull" and "take some risks" are emphasized -- the poster's words. Costa-Heber and Seacrest are two examples of my philosophy: if they want you at the top, you'll be ushered to the front of the line, period. If not, don't waste your life waiting for it.
