I Heart Roger Clark

Poor Roger. His first appearance in primetime and he's reporting on the "Great Thanksgiving Balloon Inflation" in the dark and the rain wearing nothing but a NY1 windbreaker to protect him from the elements and the gaggle of small, chubby children who gathered around him as if recreating the final moments of Mr. Sebastian Veneable in "Suddenly Last Summer." Rog was a trooper and tried to chat up the kids on all things Thanksgiving. But like good little jaded X-Box playing rugrats, they all said they had no plan to show up at the parade and that, oddly enough, their favorite balloon was Garfield. One kid, who looked like a mini Roger and actually copped to being from Staten Island, explained that there was no point to watching the parade in person when you can watch it on TV. Duh. Not surprisingly, this kid towed the party line and claimed to like the Garfield balloon too, which triggered the Clark dinner theater humor parachute (a tactic reserved for desperate on-camera emergencies) and Roger responded that he himself didn't like the Garfield balloon that much because he's allergic to cats. Ba-dum-dum-ching! Little Staten Island looked confused and Rog moved on.

At this point, the rain started getting a little heavier and I started wondering at what point Rog's microphone or earpiece was going to electrocute him in front of the kids for whom this would suddenly become "The Great Thanksgiving Balloon Inflation" to remember. Roger, sensing that the NY1 windbreaker couldn't take much more of the wet stuff, tried to pick up the pace and jazz up the questions, probably to alert the director in his/her nice warm truck that it was time to throw to Weather on the Ones and get him the hell out of there. A little girl named Molly looked up at Roger with big smiling eyes, eager to be asked the same beleaguered balloon question only to have Roger hunch down at her and shout "What the heck are you doing here? It's raining!" Molly must have figured she'd ponder the philosophical implications of this statement later and shared that her favorite balloon was Elmo. And Clark, so damp and cold that his lie-to-the-kids instinct went to sleep, said "Elmo isn't going to be here this year." Nice one. I was waiting for "There's no such thing as Santa Claus" and "The Easter Bunny is a drunk" but thankfully the slaughter of childhood dreams was over.

Rog buddy, sorry I didn't come stalk you this evening, but the pull of a nice cup of cocoa and the fear of a restraining order kept me indoors and out of the fray. Nice job. Hopefully the kids didn't eat you alive.