An ambitious shoot day today for sure!  5 interviews!  Each one is taking about an hour so that doesn’t leave much time for driving around or lunch.  Fortunately Dave Rhodes has coordinated a finely tuned schedule and when it’s all said and done, we will have 13 celeb friends in the show.  13… just like WQED13… Coincidence?  Absolutely.

First stop is that gleaming gold building that towers over Greentree Hill and is also the home of the many Clear Channel radio stations in the ‘Burgh including WDVE.

While Jim, Randy, Val, Mike, and ace producer, Ryan Camuso put the finishing touches on today’s ‘DVE Morning Show, Dave, Frank & I set up in a cozy studio just down the hall so we could catch resident funnyman Jim Krenn right when he gets off the air.  Jim is another one of our real media friends in the show.  His legacy in Pittsburgh radio speaks for itself and it’s always been an honor for us to consider Jim a friend and mentor.  He was there when Dave & I started doing TV and welcomed us onto the WDVE airwaves for several years where we were really able to make a name for ourselves with the vast WDVE listenership and hone our comedic skills at the same time.  So we have a lot to thank him for and having him in the show will be a treat.  Some people are funny and some people are not.  Jim is funny.  ‘Nuff said.

After we extended Jim’s workday by an hour, his morning show partner, Randy Baumann made his way into the interview hot seat so we could mentally work him over for an hour.  While not a native Pittsburgher, Randy’s been in and around the ‘Burgh for most of his life and sitting at the controls every morning on WDVE puts him right at the epicenter of Pittsburgh nation.  Most of what I said about Jim, also applies to Randy.  He also really helped two guys named Dave become “Dave & Dave.”  We were hoping for lots of Randy’s trademark, lightning-quick wit and highly creative comedy, and he really let us have it!  When Frank laughs behind the camera Dave & I know that’s the good stuff!

Since we’re in Greentree, Frank insists on a late breakfast/early lunch at the Original Pancake House.  He and his family are regulars at the McIntyre Square location and h’s been wanting to visit their Greentree franchise for a few months.  We all got pancakes and as usual made fun of Dave R for the way he slices them all beforehand… and his little glass of chocolate milk too.

Okay, with bellies full of flapjacks, it’s off to the new home of Channel 11 to visit our meteorological friend, Julie Bologna. When we found out Julie B was coming back from Dallas, we were totally thrilled!  She’s another what-you-see-is-what-you-get celeb… Super nice, sweet, funny and now the mother of two cute sons.  Julie was so nice to us years ago when we did a series of “MTV Cribs” style shows, and she agreed to be our first one.  That was a huge leap of faith letting us into her home!!  Julie gave us a nice tour of WPXI’s new building and what a facility it is!  Very swank.  And during her interview she cleared up a few of our weather questions too.  We now know that partly cloudy is actually better than partly sunny.  There’s more sun.

Not letting us borrow chopper 11, we had to race our WQED van back down the parkway north to Oakland where our pal from MTV, Susie Meister was waiting for us.  Susie took Pittsburgh pride down under for the world to see on her season of “Road Rules,” which had her criss-crossing Australia reality show style.  Susie’s been on a few of those “Challenge” shows too where they pit people from “Road Rules” and “The Real World” into crazy inferno-like competitions.  But how will she do in our hot seat?  Turns out… just fine.  Susie’s been doing lotsa TV stuff for “OnQ” and other outlets and we’re happy to have her joining us in this show too.

Hot on the heels of Susie’s interview, we welcomed Anji Corley into the studio!  For those of you who do not know, Anji is Pittsburgh’s real slash.  Radio personality/TV personality/model/actress… and lots more slashes, but you get the idea.  Anji’s day job is the midday voice of WAMO-106.7 FM and we’re thrilled to have the opportunity to catch some of that ‘Anji style’ for our show.  Although Ms. Corley is originally from New York, she like Randy from ‘DVE has been baptized by the Pittsburgh population as one of their own.  Her energy is as big as her smile and she made our job super easy.

Now that I think about it… what a rough afternoon having to spend it with the likes of Julie Bologna, Susie Meister and Anji Corley.  Talk about dream jobs!! - Dave H.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Pittsburgh N'at with Dave & Dave and Friends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.