From Aarne Heikkila, TODAY producer
It's difficult to comprehend just how tall 7 foot 6 is until you see Yao Ming duck through a doorway. Correspondent Peter Alexander and I caught our first glimpse of the NBA star at a recent press conference in Houston, where his mere entrance elicited 'oohs' and 'ahhs' from fans and reporters. That's because Yao didn't just walk into the room, he bent his knees, slouched his body, and ducked his head underneath a doorway that I probably couldn't have touched if I had jumped.
For Yao, it's just a part of everyday life, but for those of us who are fortunate enough to spend just a little bit of time with the superstar, its an image that makes for a lasting impression.
The NBA agreed to sit down with NBC News for an exclusive interview just prior to returning home to China where he's hoping to lead the Chinese basketball team to Gold in Beijing this summer. In the two hours we spent with him, the superstar touched on the pressures he faces from the 1.3 billion Chinese back home, his Olympic dreams, and his life as a newlywed (Yao married 6 foot 3 Ye Li, a former member of China's national basketball team, last year). CONTINUED >>
(From Janet Shamlian, NBC News Correspondent)I
was unprepared for the flood of e-mail following our report on women
and alcohol. (
Read the original post here.) Your letters were heartbreaking and inspiring, from
courageous stories of recovery to desperate pleas for help. None was
more touching, though, than the one from a mother named Laura. She's a
recovering alcoholic, sober more than a year, who wrote about her "rock
bottom" moment. With her children in the backseat of her car, she drove
them across town so drunk she didn't even remember doing it until the
next morning.
We met Laura for a follow up to our initial report.
She speaks honestly of her struggle and how she got help. That was a
question from many viewers who asked about the options for treatment.
Several of you said you could never leave your families for a month to
go to a rehab center. There IS help and support available close to home
and we've addressed those options in our report.
See today's video here.
To find out if daily sex for a whole year would strengthen a marriage
or reveal its cracks, Charla and Brad Muller gave it a try, and
chronicled the experiment in
their new book.
So, what do you think? Given the opportunity to have sex for 365 days
in a row, would you take it? Tiki Barber headed to Central Park to find out what married men and women had to say...
This morning, Natalie interviewed Robert Burck, the Naked Cowboy, about his lawsuit against Mars Incorporated. WATCH VIDEO
I remember the days when the best way to establish your ownership of, say, a pair of underwear, was to sew a tag into the waistband.
Now, apparently, it's acceptable to use red paint on the backside. What a world.
(From Ryan Osborn, TODAY producer)
By putting just a photo of Obama and no text on the cover of Rolling Stone, the magazine is putting the presumptive Democratic nominee in the company of John Lennon.
In a 50-minute interview with the Editor and Publisher of Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner, Senator Obama talks about Bob Dylan (specifically the song "Maggie's Farm"), his priorities if elected (Iraq, health care, and energy) and also what he has on his iPod ("everything for Howlin' Joe to Yo-Yo Ma to Sheryl Crow to Jay-Z"). WATCH VIDEO
As the issue lay on my desk, it was the image on the cover that people kept noticing.
Here were a few of the reactions (after the jump):
CONTINUED >>
(From Nick Palladino, associate producer and TODAY softball captain)For those of you who missed it, TODAY softball ran its record to 3-0 with a thrilling come-from-behind victory against MSNBC rivals Morning Joe on Friday. After being taunted by the Morning Joe folks ON THE AIR on Friday morning, TODAY fell behind early and faced an uphill climb for most of the game, with Joe opening up a 9-3 lead in the middle innings.
But TODAY mounted a huge comeback in the final innings, narrowing the gap to 9-6 by the 6th inning. Sparked by an RBI single by Matt Zimmerman, a base knock by Sean Reis, and an RBI by Chase Levy, TODAY closed the deficit to 9-8 after six.
CONTINUED >>
From Stephanie Becker, TODAY producerYou might have caught t
his morning's piece on Al Roker's day as host of "Celebrity Family Feud." (video) We followed Al for his 13 hours on the set. The show airs tonight. While I'm hardly impartial (I adore Al), I'm not a big fan of game shows. (Except the real life presidential nominating ones.) Al cracked me up, so I'll probably watch tonight, just to see how much of the really good stuff gets past the "standards" department. But I did see the standards rep laughing several times.
By the way, I know who won. I can't tell you. I know what's on Hugh Hefner's nightstand, according to what the survey says. But I can't tell you that. I know what the cast of Playboy's "Girl's Next Door" says it is. I can't tell you that either. I even know the No. 1 answer to what your mother always does better than your wife. I can't say. I know who wins the throw down between the team of Dog the Bounty Hunter and Mrs. Dog and their puppies versus Kathy Lee Gifford and her family. All I will say is Cody Gifford sure liked looking at the Girls Next Door. And I know if the doughy white guys of “The Office” beat the buff team of the “American Gladiators.” But, if I told you, Wolf or Titan would probably pummel me. (Which might not be so bad, Wolf's kinda cute in spandex.) And I can't tell you whom Al Roker had a verbal smack down with. Of course all in good humor. Really.
CONTINUED >>
George Carlin passed away of heart failure on Sunday at age 71, and the obituaries and rememberances are pouring in -- including one from NBC News correspondent John Larson. WATCH VIDEO
Everyone always mentions Carlin's "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" routine, and it certainly was a big deal and groundbreaking.
But his real legacy was as an innovator and role model to a generation of comedians that rose to prominence in the 1970s and afterward.
As Richard Zoglin writes in his 2008 book, Comedy at the Edge, Carlin played a crucial role in shepherding stand-up comedy from Borscht Belt schtick to topical material and social commentary, a legacy that continues every night, when "The Daily Show" airs.
CONTINUED >>
Lukasz Zbylut is an 18-year-old high school student in Brooklyn, New York, and he has the distinction of receiving acceptance letters from 18 of the country's most prestigious universities.
He talked about his college admissions process this morning with Matt and Meredith. WATCH VIDEO
Of those 18 schools, seven of them are Ivy League institutions, causing The New York Post to dub Zbylut, "A One-Man Ivy League." He applied to seven of the eight Ivies, leaving out Brown. I wonder, though, if you're going to apply to seven of them, why not go for 8-for-8?
TODAY Producer Sabrina Clay spoke to Lukasz in preparation for this morning's segment. Here's what he had to say (after the jump):
CONTINUED >>
(From Janet Shamlian, NBC News Correspondent)
With a job that sometimes requires all night travel to reach a story, it would be easy to believe my sleep suffers most when I'm on the road. But with five children, none yet a teen, the truth is my most sleepless nights are at home.
It doesn't take lightning out the window or a monster in the room for a child to find their way to my bed, where -- in truth -- I'm already awake thanks to the early alert system: the sound of little feet bounding down the hall.
So by the time they've arrived I'm alert and mentally calculating how much more sleep I'll get after dealing with that night's particular "emergency," which in the last week have included:
1. I'm hungry
2. I've got a growing pain
3. It's dark outside
4. I threw up on my bed
CONTINUED >>
