The vacation began in typical JMD flying style — I arrived at the airport with only minutes to catch my flight…
We had just finished an incredible week in Banff — a week that shall hereafter be known as the “2006 Endurance Test for my Liver”. For those of you unfamiliar with the Banff World Television Festival, imagine frosh week for adults. Most of whom have less self control than a typical 18 year old.
Ok ok. There were a few cool seminars and some fun stuff. I met David Shore, the creator of one of my fave shows on TV — House. How did I meet him, you might ask? Good question. Seconds after this uber-powerful creator of a hit Fox series, passed by us in the hallway, my good friend Glenn Cockburn was bitching a lot too loudly about the fact that he had, “Tried and tried but just could not get a meeting with David Shore!” Sure enough, Shore turns back around and said “Hi! I’m David Shore. Nice to meet you”.
I climbed a mountain with Paul Haggis. Ok ok, it was more of a small hill, but still. And I had a some outstanding meals with a group of “Superfriends”
Anyways, the final contest of the Liver Endurance Test was a 2:30 am latenight with not only my sister in style (and liver cancer),Toni Miceli, but also our fearless leader at Magee TV, El Heffe himself, Al Magee.
Yes folks, that is Al and Toni, in front of the world famous Banff Fudge Store at 2:30 in the morning on our last night in Banff. Believe it our not, if you put enough vino and scotch into Al, you CAN keep him up past 8:00 pm. Although, I don’t necessarily advise it…
We were doing our best to keep a close watch on Al, as he was a little delirious with being up so far past his bedtime. Plus, between the fine Pinot Noir and the single malt scotch, Al was working on his very own Liver Endurance Test. This photo about was taken just moments before Al lost it completely and broke into the Fudge Store, desperate to adhere to our most important company goal for Banff 2006: A.B.E. (ALWAYS BE EATING)
Before he smashed in the door, we tried to convince him to come for pizza, but he just looked at us with disgust — “Pizza isn’t FOOD, it’s something we feed our crew to keep them from mutiny! Let’s get some FUDGE!!!”
When the RCMP arrived, Al was already waist deep in the vat of Maple Fudge. But they were surprisingly kind to both Al and us. They’ve apparently seen Fudge Rage a number of times before. They helped us wash him off and even gave him a police escort back to the Banff Springs. Now, I won’t lie to you all, it definitely helped that Toni had the wherewithal to let them know of Al’s recently acquired celebrity status. (Al won the “Innovative Producer Award” at the festival. A fact that will surely come back to haunt me for years, as I was one of the instigators of his nomination.) Anyway, those cops weren’t about to deal with the paperwork involved in a crazy publicity scandal that would have surely arisen from arresting the latest addition to the secret society of “World’s Most Innovative Producers”.
Anyway, I was talking about being late for a plane. After a solid 3 hours of sleep (yes, I know, that’s like 2 days worth of sleep at Magee TV…) and an excellent breakfast of warm Pepsi and stale pretzels, I got behind the wheel of our styling white Caravan and drove at about 190 mph most of the way through the Rockies, careening to a stop outside the airport terminal. Had Toni and Al not been there to take the car back to the rental agency, there’s no way that I would have caught my flight. (Airport valet parking won’t return your rental car for you. Even if you offer them a really big tip. Trust me.) But there Al & Toni were. White knuckled and ashen faced after our mach 2 drive. And when I leapt out of the van with a casual “See Ya in Two weeks!” they only took about 10 minutes (and two bottles of oxygen a piece) to recover, return the rental car and make their flights out of Calgary…
So anyway, I arrived at the airport with exactly 4.3 seconds to spare before my flight took off. (For those of you who’ve never flown with me, a quick warning — if you ever do, make sure you’re wearing running shoes and pack light. Also, be sure to leave your belt, change, any pens, metal objects (such as guns or knives) behind. Because you will be required to sprint through security. If that buzzer goes off as you walk thru, I’m leaving you behind for sure…) Anyway like I said, I had 4.3 seconds to spare. But I’d already taken advantage of the on-line check-in I knew that they couldn’t take off without me. So I put those 4.3 seconds to good use – I raced by UPS and shipped:
a) our binders — the 8 volume “Magee TV Manifesto – How to Look Cool at Banff”,
b) the four hundred thousand business cards from all of my “new friends” and
c) the 1.5 pages of notes I took during the entire week of seminars. That way I wouldn’t have to carry all that crap on my vacation. Ooops, sorry. “Carry all those important documents” is what I meant to say… Either way, they were out of sight and out of mind. And I cruised onto the plane.
And yes, I was the last person to board…