I'm (not) an Anchorman!

I am used to embarrassing myself. In fact, I do it quite regularly and, of all the things I do well, making a fool of myself is something I do with aplomb.

However, today I did it again, but completely unintentionally and entirely quite professionally.

Yep. Today I was the world's court jester. The only thing missing was the funny harlequin costume with the little bells on my curled-toe stocking feet.

What did I do that was so embarrassing?

Spoke in 2-minute increments (more like 30 seconds, actually) to a video camera.

And I did this twice. Once each for competing trade journals.

Oh sure, they say it's easy. Just "act natural and pretend you're talking to a customer."

Right.

It ain't as easy it looks.

The videographer would say, "3. 2. 1 and ... Go!" and I would announce myself like this:

"Hi! My name is Gore Snooklocker and I'm bergenfletzer flatzenkatz to be here. Our thingy here does things exceptionally gooder than the other guys, umm ... Did I say my name already? Can we try that again? Dang. This is hard!!"

No kidding. Every time I tried I failed. My brain and my mouth were completely out of sync. Why does this happen? I talk all the time and, usually, quite sensibly, but turn the camera on and I become a blubbering idiot.

Stop snickering, some of you that know me well. You know who you are. You're the ones saying, "Sensibly talking usually? Right. More like blubbering fool all the time!" But the truth is, once the camera is turned on, I can't even blubber well. Nerves take over and I freeze.

Dang it. I did this, too, right in front of a bunch of people and now I'm told these 2 videos will be distributed tomorrow or the next day to at least 100,000 potential viewers!

I hope those video editors are gifted. Maybe somehow they can take that jabbering incoherence and turn it into something useful.

At least I said, "Hi!" well.

I think.