Hello. My name is Jim Cantiello.
My Wednesdays are absolutely insane at the moment because my "Project Runway" and "American Idol" worlds are colliding. I’m covering both shows for MTV News, and as a result I’m pulling cuckoo hours to get my recaps done. One of my co-workers thought it’d be interesting if I broke down my Wednesday night shift into a blog post, and being jacked up on caffeine and unable to sleep at the moment, I think it’s a fine idea.
· 7:40pm: Dinner time. I try to grab a big meal now because it’s unlikely I’ll eat again for 24 hours. At the same time, I turn on my 10 year old laptop because the piece of crap takes about 20 minutes to fully boot.
· 8:00pm – 9:00pm: “American Idol” airs. I bang out notes while I watch it live, stopping occasionally when my phone rings to think to myself, “Who the eff is calling me right now? Don’t they know I’m working?” Nine times out of ten, said caller is a Tufts University student trying to get money out of my Tufts-graduate wife.
· 9:00pm – 10:00pm: It’s game time. I try to write as much of my “Idol” recap as humanly possible before “Project Runway” begins, but chances are I’ll get sidetracked when my cats do something cute, my wife does something cute, or even worse, my wife and my cats do something cute together.
· 10:00pm – 11:00pm: “Project Runway” airs. Note that at approximately 10:01pm, my wife and I snicker at Heidi Klum’s accent when she says “chance of a lifetime” in the opening credits. Also note that this happens Every. Single. Week.
· 11:01pm: I set out for the subway, and pray that a cab intercepts me before I get to the station. I live wayyyy uptown in Upper Manhattan so the chances of me getting a taxi at this time of night are as good as my chances of actually being able to afford an apartment closer to civilization.
· 11:04pm: No cab yet.
· 11:09pm: Well, maybe this subway ride will do me good. I can get more writing done on a train than I can in a cab, right?
· 11:10pm – 12:00am: My endless subway ride. I try to write but can’t because all I can do is ponder, “Why is the express train running local? It’s only supposed to do that ‘late night’ and shouldn’t ‘late night’ be later than 11 pm?”
· 12:01am – 12:15am: I head to the Times Square Starbucks (well, one of the four in the Times Square area) to get a triple tall nonfat latte and an espresso brownie. I pray that a drunken group of tourists aren’t jonesin’ for hot chocolate thus making my excursion much longer than it oughta be.
· 12:16am – 1:30am: Time to turn my scribbles into a fully formed “Runway in 60 Seconds” recap. When in doubt, I make a joke about Rami draping fabric, Sweet P being awesome or Ricky crying.
· 1:31am – 1:35am: I wake up my boss who needs to approve my script. He’s so delirious from being awoken that I could probably read him gibberish and he’d give me the okay. I still haven’t tried doing that.
· 1:36am – 2:00am: I tape the segment by myself. Some nights a security guard doing rounds will scare the bejeezus out of me, and then I’ll have to explain what I’m doing so he doesn’t think I’m a crazy person who talks to himself.
· 2:01am – 7:29am: I’m in the Avid cutting together the recap. Note that around 5:00am, I have a good cry, thanks to sleep deprivation and the torture of having to hear my own voice over and over again for hours on end.
· 7:30am: Super-editor Joe starts his shift and relieves me of Avid duty. I try to hug him but he pushes me away because I smell like rotting flesh.
· 7:31 – 9:00am: I revisit my “Idol” recap for MTVNEWS.COM that I started writing ten hours ago, which now feels like weeks ago, and then submit the finished product to the dot-com team.
· 9:01am – 9:30am: I clean up my edit while my co-workers arrive. 99% of them will say, “Damn, man, you look tired.” And I want to hit 100% of them.
· 9:31am – 9:35am: I stumble out of 1515 Broadway, bleary eyed and inexplicably sticky, and roll into a cab.
· 9:36am – 9:55am: I fall asleep in the back of the taxi and then get rudely awoken when the cabbie needs directions to my apartment.
· 9:56am: I overtip the cab driver.
· 9:57am: My wife greets me by telling me that my job is "[expletive deleted] ridiculous."
· 9:58am: I crawl into bed and have a panic attack fearing that I won’t be able to fall asleep. This lasts for about 10 seconds and then I pass out until my alarm wakes me in time for dinner.
The End!
Tags American Idol, Project Runway
