Anchorboy

by Jay Onrait

  “Well, I need to see something more than just you reading highlights. I need to know you have the personality to pull this off.” I should point out that at the time I wasn’t exactly dressing as the Phantom of the Opera and screaming at the viewer every five minutes like I did on SportsCentre. Other than dressing up in an afro wig and disco outfit for Halloween I had kept things pretty normal at Sportsline (admittedly, dressing in an afro wig might not be considered “pretty normal”). The demo tapes I was sending out reflected a young, competent, but fairly boring broadcaster. Not much “personality” to be seen there. Luckily, I have friends who are a lot more talented than I am.

  My friend Jeff Cole was in my class at Ryerson and is now a highly sought-after freelance television director and cameraman in Toronto. He was the guy at Ryerson that everyone wanted to have working on their projects, because he was the guy at Ryerson who actually knew what he was doing. One day in 1997 I told him I was going to try my hand at stand-up comedy at Toronto’s Laugh Resort alongside my much funnier friend Peter Sayn-Wittgenstein. The Laugh Resort was located in an old firehall on Lombard Street. The one-time home of Second City in Toronto, the club would hold an amateur night every week. Peter and I, longtime fans of stand-up comedy, thought we’d give it a shot.

  We had just returned from a weekend trip to New York where we had hit up the legendary comedy club Catch a Rising Star. The headliner that evening happened to be a young comedy writer named Louis CK, who at the time was just beginning his stand-up career. I’ll never forget how Peter and I sat in the front row and literally laughed until we cried at Louis’s incredible set, despite the fact that the rest of the crowd pretty much sat in stone-cold silence. I vowed to follow his career from then on, hoping he might catch a break and make it big someday.

  I made two appearances at the Laugh Resort in Toronto, and my best joke involved an article I had recently read in Details magazine (back when people read Details magazine, or should I say, back when people read magazines at all) about how gender roles were reversed in the porn industry: The women had all the power and made all the money, while the men made next to nothing and had to wait around all day to get called to the set, leading luminaries of the genre like Peter North and Randy West (why were so many male porn stars named after directions?) to complain that they had “no life.”

  “So let me get this straight …” I said onstage in my best stand-up delivery, “they sit around all day and do nothing, and then get called to a porn set to have sex with beautiful women and get paid for it? No life? That’s my ideal life!”

  Needless to say, my stand-up career was short lived.

  Thankfully, though, Jeff Cole kindly attended one of my few appearances and, as he always did, brought his highly sophisticated VHS camera along to record the proceedings. Afterward he gave me the tape, and I sent it home to my mom for safekeeping.

  Fast-forward years later and I’m on the phone with Darcy talking about the Big Breakfast job, and she’s asking me if I have “anything else that might show my personality.”

  “Well, a couple of years ago I did some amateur-night stand-up comedy, and I may have a tape of it floating around somewhere.”

  “I need that tape,” said Darcy, in the same ultra-serious tone she would use to say “I do” during our wedding four years later.

  Soon I was off the phone with Darcy and on the phone with my mom in Kelowna, asking her if she wouldn’t mind digging through their basement and tracking down a VHS tape that said “Jay’s Stand-Up” on it. Luckily, I am the light of my mother’s life, and she managed to find the tape in question almost immediately, shipping it off to Winnipeg later that day. Two days later I got a call from Darcy asking if I would like to be the new host of Winnipeg’s only local morning show.

  I was a steadfast negotiator. I flat-out refused to accept anything less than $48,000 for my first year and $53,000 my second year after initially being offered $40,000 for year one and $45,000 for year two. Read all about my negotiating tactics in my next book, Zero Leverage: The World of Canadian Television.

  Truthfully, it was a big salary bump from what I was making at the time, and at this point it wasn’t really about the money anyway. It was time to try something different and challenge myself a bit. I had been given the sports director job in Saskatoon based on the promise that I would stick around for five years, but it was time to move on and Lisa wasn’t too upset about it. She said some wonderful things to me when I told her I was leaving, telling me I had really grown as a broadcaster and she was sad to see me go. I really appreciated how kind she was. I was sad to be leaving Saskatoon for other reasons. I had made amazing friends there in a very short time, people I remain friends with to this day. I will never forget my time in that city, but it was time to start wandering back east.

  Goin’ to Winnipeg …

  CHAPTER 13

  Felching is Funny

  MY CO-HOST ON THE BIG BREAKFAST was Jon Ljungberg, a Massachusetts-raised stand-up comedian by trade who, when travelling through Winnipeg twelve years earlier, met a girl at a gig. The next thing you know, he had two kids and a nice bungalow in the Windsor Park area of town. We immediately hit it off. I remember walking into the station for the first time and seeing him in a Hawaiian shirt, like a complete parody of a stand-up comedian. He was so friendly and immediately offered to take me “for a drive.” I assumed at that point I’d either get fed or raped, and I thought it was probably pretty likely the former. Off we went, and within twenty minutes we were having a conversation about how funny the concept of “felching” was. Felching is a sex act in which a man extracts his own semen out of his partner’s anus through a straw. Literally in tears laughing as Jon waxed poetic about the concept, I said to myself, “I will get along with this person. This person and I will be friends.” We are still friends to this day. And felching is still hilarious.

  We would have about eight thirty-second “chats” on the show every single morning, five times a week for two years. Jon’s sense of humour, like mine, was mostly just silliness. We would tape “best of” shows at places like the amusement park and the Forks Market, stopping at various businesses and using props or eating food. I knew everyone in the city within three months. The mayor, all the restaurant owners, all the local bands, they all came by to be on the show. It was really fun. I would have loved to have been making more money, but I didn’t think about it that much.

  When I finally met Darcy in person I was swept off my feet. She was so sexy and so indifferent to my antics, but she was a good boss who gave Jon and me a lot of leeway to have fun and be ourselves. I was really starting to show my personality on television—three hours of unscripted live TV will do that for you. The only catch was working mornings, something I did not handle well back then and still don’t to this day. Jon asked some of the local radio DJs for advice about how to feel more awake while doing the show, and they all said, “You will never feel awake while doing a morning show.” It was a bit like the advice the camera guy gave me at ITV: You will always be working when everyone else is off.

  I told Jon I had a crush on our boss, and he laughed at me and wished me luck. During the first A-Channel Christmas party in December 1999 I decided I would approach her about going on a date. I figured that everyone at the party had been drinking, and if she was appalled or offended or worse wanted me fired, I could explain it away the following Monday morning by telling her I had had too much to drink and didn’t mean what I had said.

  We were living together within a year.

  I really had no plans to leave Winnipeg. I honestly thought I might never leave.

  CHAPTER 14

  Humiliated by a Woman on Live TV

  “EVER BEEN IN A BAR FIGHT?” asked Boston Celtics star Kevin Garnett to TNT NBA reporter Craig Sager after a particularly contentious win over the Orlando Magic in early 2012.

  I’ve had my ass kicked in a bar once or twice. Most recently, it happened just before I left my first wife. Our relationship had
truly hit the skids, and I was out with Dan O’Toole and a few of his friends one night. I’m not a person who has ever enjoyed nightclubs very much, but they insisted on hitting a typical douchified Toronto establishment, the name of which I will withhold to protect the innocent. Having had a few too many cocktails, I was susceptible to engaging in conversation with people I shouldn’t have, and when a beautiful blonde woman recognized me from the show I couldn’t help but lap it up a bit. I was feeling lonely and miserable and fully aware I was probably about to get divorced. The lovely blonde and I made our way upstairs to continue our conversation in private in the VIP room.

  After what was probably a half-hour of serious flirting, and perhaps even some light petting, I suggested we take the party to a nearby hotel. While the blonde was trying to figure out how to reject my offer as painlessly as possible, I was suddenly attacked out of nowhere. I didn’t even get a good look at the guy, but the next thing I knew I was being punched square in the forehead four times. Fortunately for me, my forehead is a massive target. Any other part of my face would have been much more susceptible to real damage. A bouncer rushed over to pull the guy off of me but it was too late. The dude had been wearing a ring and cut me wide open. I started bleeding everywhere. While the guy screamed and yelled at me while being bear-hugged by a King Kong Bundy look-alike, I glanced over at the blonde, who gave me a sheepish “I’m sorry” look. Jealous ex-boyfriend. I should have known. I guess that was karma for the whole “attempting to cheat while you are married” thing. Not my best night out on the town in Toronto but a lesson learned: You should always be prepared for something bad to happen.

  A couple of years before that I got my ass kicked even worse. And here’s the rub: It happened on live television, and the person who kicked my ass was a very, very powerful woman. In both cases I was not prepared for what was about to happen. In both cases I suppose you could say I got what I deserved.

  If people regularly watched me host The Big Breakfast in Winnipeg, the first thing they ask me about is the time I was beaten up by Dominique Bosshart. Dominique had just won a bronze medal in kickboxing at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney and had returned home to a hero’s welcome, fielding plenty of national and local interviews about her success. Eventually, she was kind enough to show up on The Big Breakfast one morning to not only answer a few questions about her time at the Games but also do a quick demo with me on kickboxing technique.

  We liked to “do things” on the show, and what could be more fun than a powerful, athletic woman showing off her greatest kicks? We planned it out before the segment started: Dominique and I would talk for a minute or so about her experience in Sydney and what it’s like to return home an Olympic bronze medallist, and then she and I would stand face to face and she would demonstrate a roundhouse kick, with me holding up a thick pad about waist-high to protect myself. No head gear, no other padding, just me and my Backstreet Boys outfit and my heavily gelled frosty tips to protect me. What could possibly go wrong?

  Before the segment started, Dominique showed me how to hold up the protective pad, and by “protective pad” I mean a rather thin gym mat you would expect children to do somersaults on in kindergarten. For some reason this seemed perfectly reasonable protection to me. Did I mention before that I’m not much of a details guy? Dominique and her coach, who had joined her that morning, wanted me to hold the protective pad up high, so that the bottom was around belt-level and the top was just around my chin. But I was having none of it—I had visions of her perhaps losing her footing and kicking a bit lower than normal, with her foot ending up promptly wedged into my balls. Instead I insisted on holding that pad just a little bit lower to protect myself in the nether regions. After a few practice kicks during the commercial break, in which Dominique gave about 22 percent effort, we figured we were ready to go. We had to be ready to go … we were live.

  The plan, which, yes, seems flawed now but at the time seemed brilliant, was to have Dominique go all out with her roundhouse kick like she would in a competition. All out. Again, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan to me. No one ever accused me of being smart. The segment started off beautifully: She was a seasoned pro and had given a million interviews, so she was friendly and comfortable on camera. Once I saw the “3 minutes left” sign from my floor director, Chris Albi, we were off.

  “Let’s demonstrate a roundhouse kick,” I said with the confidence of a much smarter man. For whatever reason, instead of standing in a ready position with one leg firmly planted behind the other and knees bent like I was about to start a race, I decided the better option was to stand straight up with my feet right next to each other. It was as if I thought I was waiting in line for Tragically Hip tickets. Any reasonably strong human could have walked by me in that stance and shoved me over onto the floor.

  “I’m ready!” I said with a smile.

  They might as well have been my last words.

  Dominique and I stood face to face as planned, and suddenly I had this feeling of terror wash over me. She exhibited the stance of a real kickboxing champion, and I quickly realized I may have made a horrible, horrible mistake. Too late to turn back now, however, as we were live. Live television doesn’t wait for the man who finally realizes he’s about to be humiliated in front of his audience.

  Her coach counted her down: 3 … 2 … 1 …

  With the speed of a young Ben Johnson, his blood filled with illicit substances, Dominique spun around. Next came her powerful, powerful leg, swinging toward me like I was a piñata. Her foot hit me square in the protective pad, and I felt like I was an extra on Bloodsport and had just taken one straight in the gut from a young Jean-Claude Van Damme. But it wasn’t just the kick. It was the momentum of her pure power that simply overwhelmed my very slight frame. This was not going to end well …

  The woman had so much power, and I was so very weak and barely awake, that I was sent barrelling backward ten feet, stumbling and trying to maintain my footing along the way. There was no stopping it. In hindsight, I should have tried to fall to the ground, but in the split second it happened there was simply no way to change my momentum. I was heading straight backward, and the only thing that was going to stop me was a big brick wall. Attached to that big brick wall? A beautiful, expensive, and somewhat brand new neon sign that lit up and said The Big Breakfast.

  I was heading straight for that sign.

  Purely by instinct, I reached out for the wall as I was falling into it, putting my hand straight into the sign and smashing it upon impact. That was followed by my entire body colliding with the sign, smashing it further and rendering it relatively unrecognizable. The bulb was destroyed, the massive neon coffee mug was destroyed, and “Big” and “Breakfast” were destroyed. Only “The” remained from an otherwise horrible mess.

  After I had completed mass destruction (all of this taking place within about five seconds), I fell to the ground in a heap on top of a couple of amplifiers that had been set up for that morning’s musical guest. It took about one and a half seconds for everyone in the crew, everyone in the newsroom (which faced our studio and offered a beautiful view of the entire incident), and everyone who was a guest on the show to digest what they had just seen. That was followed a half-second later by all of them bursting into uncontrollable laughter. They had just witnessed the ultimate live TV moment: a morning show host getting his ass kicked by a woman and destroying property in the process. Again, I’m amazed this clip hasn’t ended up on YouTube somewhere, and I imagine that someday it will.

  I slowly made my way to my feet as floor director Chris Albi showed the only concern for my well-being. You could hardly blame everyone else for standing back and enjoying my humiliation. It was hilarious and clearly my life wasn’t in danger—only my pride and my gut were in pain. The real victim was that neon sign. It was destroyed beyond repair and had to be replaced. Dominique wasn’t too concerned. She had known what was going to happen. The segment appeared on every “best of” show we ever did
after that, and eventually they replaced that sign.

  CHAPTER 15

  What Do You Mean They’re Not Going to Call Them “the Jets”?

  I WAS ABLE TO RETURN to Winnipeg in early April of 2012 for the Winnipeg Jets’ final regular season game in their first year back in Manitoba’s capital. When I lived in Winnipeg in the late nineties and early aughts, there was never any speculation about the team’s returning, because no one thought it was even remotely possible. They were gone, and they were gone for good. My favourite local Winnipeg band, jazz/hip hop/instrumental collective, the Hummers, even called one of their albums Save the Jets in 2001 as a joke about being late to the party to keep the team in Winnipeg. I never got the feeling the city was still devastated about the loss of the team when I lived there, because enough time had passed and I think Winnipeggers had fully come to grips with it. It was only when NHL Southern-belt teams like the Atlanta Thrashers and, yes, the former Jets-now-Phoenix Coyotes began to struggle that suddenly there was a glimmer of hope.

  The city had built the 15,000-seat MTS Centre for their American Hockey League team, the Manitoba Moose, as well as for concerts, and it was a tremendous success, but there was a perception that the rink was simply too small to lure an NHL team back north of the border. There was also a perception, and I fully believe this was held by NHL senior executives like Gary Bettman, that the city was simply too small and obscure a market in this day and age to house a pro team in one of the four major sports.

  Luckily, a guy who happens to be the richest man in the entire country and one of the twenty richest men in the entire world thought otherwise. When David Thomson saw the way principal owner Mark Chipman was handling the day-to-day business of running the Manitoba Moose of the AHL, he soon bought out all the other partners until it was only Chipman and Thomson writing the cheques. Thomson’s family had donated the land the MTS Centre sat on downtown, and he clearly saw the potential of an NHL return in the city.