...And You Certainly Don't Need A TV Weatherman To Tell You It's Snowing

Okay, awhile ago I waxed about the glories of being warmed up after you've been really cold. That doesn't mean I like being cold, though, and I certainly don't like driving in and walking through blowing snow like I seem to have been doing for the last 24 hours. After some teases and (thank God) near misses, winter has definitely arrived here in Cleveland. I hate it.

But what I really hate is one local TV weatherman in particular. This guy:

Mark Johnson of WEWS-TV 5. The guy makes anything above or below a seventy-two degree cloudless, windless day into a catastrophe, and if it's a slow news day, well, Armageddon is on the horizon. A few inches of blowing snow, poor road conditions, and a few truck driver classes canceled stink for us all, granted, and did I mention I hate it, but it's all pretty par for the course in late December in these parts. So, Mr. Johnson, cool your heels a bit, take a Valium, and report, not super-hyperbolize. Please.

On the flip-side, over at WKYC-TV 3 is the anti-Mark Johnson, a cherubic guy named A.J. Colby

who is quickly ascending the ladder to get to the perch where Ted Koppel, the late Peter Jennings, Andrea Mitchell, and my guy Lester Holt reside: TV News Nirvana. A.J. gets it. We in Cleveland are used to this kind of weather hell, so just tell us the facts. A.J. is the calm in Mark Johnson's or anybody else's storm. I don't know why I'm using this metaphor, but for weather in Cleveland in late December it seems apt: A.J. is the undertaker you like and who actually does give you some comfort; Mark is the obsequious one you want to push into the nearest unoccupied casket. I'd happily walk into a tornado with A.J. by my side. If Mark Johnson passed my way on a beautiful June day I'd run helter skelter looking for a tornado.

Which gets me thinking. I offer my services to any major magazine that would like to send me to a TV weather person's convention. All I ask is expenses, and I'll come back with 15,000 words that will inform and entertain. I want to see all these guys gathered somewhere, looking at the latest gizmos available for their hi-tech maps, arguing over whether the gig is tougher in Buffalo or Santa Fe, getting pointers on not standing in the way of the cold front coming in from the west, and hoisting a few cold ones while telling their favorite standing in the middle of the storm stories. What can I say? Some guys get all excited about strip clubs; I just want to be in a large convention hall with scores of TV weather people. And if I see you there, A.J., the first few rounds are on me.

Massive Attack-Weather Storm