These are the days that make you wonder two things. What did I ever get myself into? And wow, isn't this the coolest job in the world?
What I did today made me ask myself both of these questions.
Today, I was scheduled to go to San Jose to interview a 17-year old professional soccer player from Gambia, and then return later in the afternoon to cover the two high school baseball playoff games in Golden Gate Park.
On our way back to San Francisco, the Raiders released Jamarcus Russell, the former No. 1 draft pick and one of the biggest busts in NFL history.
So what did we do? The cameraman and I went to stake out Russell's house, like those goons you see on TMZ harassing celebrities.
This was around 1 p.m. and we stood outside the house just waiting for something to happen. A car pulled up and one of his friend's came out and told us that Jamarcus has nothing to say, and in lighter terms, get the heck out of here.
We were on public property so we had the right to stay. His friend, wearing a wife-beater and jeans, with tattoos all over his arms repeated. Get the camera out of here, we have nothing.
And there we stood.
Maybe a half an hour later, a moving van came down the block and the people inside said hi to us. Turns out the driver was one of his cousins, and he agreed to find Russell for us. Russell wasn't even home, but his cousin got him on the phone. So we interviewed him on the phone. Watch this video below.
Click here for the RAW video.
As this interview was happening, the guy in the wife-beater was yelling at us telling us to "go away", and the interview as you saw was very brief. We ran back to the van just in case the guy in the beater was going to chase us down.
After feeding the video back to the station, we were told to go back to the house and stake it out. So the camera man and I basically waited there until 6 p.m. before we called it a day. The guy in the beater opened the door several times for the numerous people coming in and out of the house and repeatedly told us to just go away and that "Jamarcus is in Frisco."
Then when he opened the door again, he said something else that was not too kind that I can't print here.
It was hectic to say the least. We had people look at us like we were crazy, people swearing at us, people inside Russell's house peeking through the blinds to see if we were gone yet.
But that is all part of the job and this is something that I could not do every day. For work, it had to be done. But then again, how would you feel if you got fired and then you had a news crew outside your house waiting for you to say something?
Madness, I say. Absolute chaos.
So...how was your day?
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