Like This?

I remember being in middle school, (or was it late elementary?) when the 10:00 news was just something I had to get through before I could watch David Letterman with my mom. The news we received in northern Wisconsin was from the nearest city large enough to warrant a news station. In our case it was Duluth, Minnesota. The news rarely pertained to us, since we were in another state and over an hour away, and it rarely covered anything you could call "breaking". It mostly had the typical stories of old ladies doing extraordinary things like living to eighty and playing accordion for a traveling polka band. Though that's not a fair criticisism. Old people are news everywhere. I recently saw the Minneapolis news featuring a ninety year old woman on their program. Though she was on for being punched in the face before being robbed of her purse. The anchor's angry reaction to the story still hangs with me, "It's disgusting. She's just so...old."

But in between stories of old ladies and results of high school football games, the Duluth news had a star. His name was George Kessler. He was a spot-on weatherman. In fact, in his commercials, at least to a young person highly suseptible to advertisements, it seemed George Kessler was some kind of meteoroglical marvel. The one person in the universe that could accurately predict the weather. In the commercials, actors would be shown looking up at the sky with their palms up catching snow flakes or rain drops then saying into the camera, "George said it would be like this."

"George said it would be like this," was a genuine tag line, one almost everyone at school knew and would repeat. This tagline furthered the myth of George in my young mind. I really thought George Kessler was on to do great things in the meteorology world. He wasn't handsome so much, pretty nerdy actually, but so excited about weather it was contagious. For the three minutes he was on explaining what in the world an Alberta clipper was, I could almost picture myself someday waving my hands in front of a map of the midwest. Me, a real weatherman on TV like George.

Over the years, I lost track of George. Not for any fault of his, but because we started getting more channels, and I could watch syndicated TV shows for the warm up of Letterman instead. I had completely forgotten about George until I was in Duluth watching the local news last night. He was still there. And as much as I'd like to say he hadn't changed, he most certainly had. It seems the weather had worn him down. The chipper George Kessler I remembered was replaced by a man wearing twenty extra pounds around his waist and a three day scruff on his chin. I couldn't help but wonder if he had been kicked out of his house and forced to sleep in the studio. It looked like he was woken up by an intern, only to steal the much thinner intern's sport coat before stumbling in front of the cameras. To complete the ensamble he was wearing a tie that must have been bought when "Magic Eye" posters were still pretty neat.

I couldn't believe how far George had fallen. I don't mean to be hurtful, but it was a shock to see the great George "said it would be like this" Kessler down and out. He had been left behind while younger, tanner, weathermen were moving up; by moving south to Minneapolis to cover less intense weather falling on more intense people. But maybe I assume too much. Maybe George's dreams were not quite as great as those I had for him. Maybe George likes Duluth, and being one of the only celebrities within a four hour radius, he's content to come to work apparently hungover. For all I know he's hungover from all the booze and sex he had at the killer celeb pool party he threw.