Natali Del Conte

So what if Festivus is a silly cultish joke? I’m trying to be an equal opportunity holiday celebrant. My apologies for not wishing you a Happy Hanukkah sooner.

I will not get to spend time with my family this season. I regret that but my family doesn’t make a big to-do about the holidays so I’m not missing much other than watching really bad comedies with my mom (like the travesty that was Boat Trip), making Ranger cookies for my brother-in-law, and gossiping with my sister about our crazy relatives.

Despite missing out on those beloved festivities, I am still feeling the holiday spirit. New York is beautiful (although soooooooo insanely cold) this time of year. It is my first Christmas in a proper winter. Plus, I’m excited for 2009 and heading to Las Vegas for CES in just a few weeks. Thank you to everyone who wrote me with encouraging words about 2008. In my last blog post, I mentioned that 2008 was hard. I moved away from my family and friends and had a rough time adjusting to New York. But as I look back, I have very few regrets. I’m glad I came here and I’m glad it was hard. Hard doesn’t mean bad. It just means hard. I quote General David Petraeus on this one: “Hard is not hopeless.”

Okay, enough optimism. It is Festivus after all. So here is my 2008 airing of grievances. I may add to this throughout the day. Feel free to add yours in the comment section.

• There is no native landscape keyboard, video capture, or MMS for my iPhone;
• There is no Mac version of Chrome;
• The person who found my iPhone in a cab and never returned it is hereby cursed to bad technology karma for the rest of his/her days;
• MobileMe never really does exactly what I want it to;
• Any and all browsers on my Curve behave like an absolute puta;
• The BlackBerry Storm was a big fat letdown;
• Nokia phones are too darn expensive;
• HP’s press representative won’t let me keep this Vivienne Tam netbook for one second longer than I need it for my TV segments;
• Every single pair of headphones or earbuds that come into my possession break within a fortnight – even the high-end ones;
• I never have a jump drive on my person when I need one but have about a dozen when I don’t;
• Google’s speech recognition search engine still can’t understand me;
• Loaded takes so darn long to encode and upload to CNET TV;
• The Teleprompter software we use on the Loaded set was developed by demons;
• Growl likes to freeze my OS;
• Microsoft Entourage, I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anything in my entire life. You make my life miserable every single day. Whoever developed you, wrote the program as a big fat “Screw you!” to Mac users. Message communicated. Screw you too!
• New: Cab drivers who lecture me about paying with credit card.

Yes, they are all mostly tech related. I don’t usually carry grievances for people. Except maybe for those responsible for the dismal performance of the San Francisco Giants this year! They know who they are!

Every year CNET TV publishes blooper reels of all of our on-air personalities. While I am certainly not opposed to airing my foibles, as evidenced here and here, I am a little reluctant. I am always so afraid of being inappropriate but more often that not, I err on the side of authenticity. For better or for worse.

The CNET TV blooper reels started rolling in last week. First came Tom Merritt’s, then Molly Wood’s, Brian Cooley’s, and finally Brian Tong’s. I was afraid to see mine. You should be too. There is some really bad singing going down here. See for yourself:

quicktime-playerscreensnapz001

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While I am laid bare, I might as well admit that this blooper reel came at a time when I really needed to smile. I have made no secret of the fact that this has been a rough year. That is why I am grateful for this uncensored look at myself where I realize how much fun I’ve had this year. So what if I spent my Saturday night reading, doing my taxes, and watching You’ve Got Mail on Oxygen? That is probably how I’ll spend my Christmas given that I have to work on the Early Show and therefore won’t be going home to San Francisco for the holidays. I will ask Santa for a more social life in 2009. That and maybe a hairdresser in New York. My hair is really quite ridiculous.

Please allow me to point out this excerpt from today’s episode of Loaded:

celebrity rant

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I really loathe the celebrity gossip culture. I read an article recently that suggested that celebrity obsession was a healthy outlet for most people. I can’t find the link at the moment but no matter because I disagree with the article. Celebrity obsession is not good for most people. It distracts us from real issues. Al Gore said it best in his book The Assault On Reason:

“At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just an unfortunate excess—an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time: the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy, Britney and KFed, Lindsay and Paris and Nicole.

While American television watchers were collectively devoting 100 million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness. For example, hardly anyone now disagrees that the choice to invade Iraq was a grievous mistake. Yet, incredibly, all of the evidence and arguments necessary to have made the right decision were available at the time and in hindsight are glaringly obvious.”

I hate to lose faith in our society just because we are searching for Britney Spears but it is hard not to. Thus the rant. I’m sorry to be negative. It is not my usual M.O. but sometimes belligerence is necessary.

Oh, and Happy Holidays!