My Interview With Venus Williams

So I'm a journalist. Or at least I pretend to be. The type of writing I like doing is of the investigative type: investigating the personality of a person. I find the most interesting parts of people tend not to be about their stats, accolades or feats, but instead of how they laugh, how they interpret life, how they react to what I'm saying. Those are the moments I live for, the meats to the bones of my writing.

A little more than three weeks ago I got to interview Venus Williams. The mega-star athlete is, not surprisingly, a South Florida resident, Palm Beach Gardens to be specific. I absolutely love tennis, and I've followed her ever since she was a beaded-hair teen blazing onto the scene. Needless to say, I was pretty pumped for the interview.

I got 20 minutes, all on the phone, with her publicist hanging to every word of the conversation.

People ask me how the interview was. I'm truthful. It was OK. Venus was nice, succinct with her answers, exactly how she is on TV. She laughs a lot; she jokes, too. Without giving away too much away of the interview, she gives off the impression that she doesn't take herself too seriously and wants to be relatable.

When I tell people my interview with her was OK, the reaction is usually "That's it?! Just OK?" Yeah, I respond. In my head, I wonder all the time what I could have done differently to make the interview better. My boyfriend joked around that I should have asked more questions about little sister Serena. Not personally knowing Venus, I'm not sure I got the "real" Venus. Answers were, as I mentioned, succinct. There really was no elaborating nor strong character building. I've covered and watched tennis enough to know that the Venus Williams I got was the same Venus Williams that every other reporter gets. Even Bryant Gumbel when he interviewed her for his TV show "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel."

Still, I've been kicking myself over what different questions I could have asked, what different interviewing techniques I could have employed. I teach young journalists all the time that they are conductors of their interviews and if it goes well, it's because of them. Conversely, if it goes poor, it's because of the interviewer as well. I teach these young'ins that it's their job to make the interview go smoothly and to get the subject to spill the beans. And now, I feel like such a hypocrite that I may have failed on my own advice.

My publisher keeps telling me "writing is thinking." Interviewing is thinking, too. The best interviewers make it look easy, effortless. For example, I'm really digging Tavis Smiley's interviewing skills these days. He asks such good questions and he does it in such a well-intentioned manner that's full of genuine interest. I've been fortunate to interview hundreds of people in my life (wow, I'm getting old!), and a couple dozen of those folks have been celebrities at or near Venus' stature. At times, interviewing really becomes second nature to me. It's like being an athlete: I heard that when Tiger Woods is "on" his golf game, the hole looks as big as a paint bucket. Same thing happens when you're interviewing someone -- questions and the delivery of them come with such ease and intrinsic interest. When I'm on, I'm on. I'm not going to say I was off when interviewing Venus (I'm too cocky to ever say I'm off), but I also can't say that I was on.

But in truth, after having more than three weeks to reflect, it's hard to pinpoint what I would have exactly changed. Maybe I should have demanded a face-to-face interview. Or requested the publicist get off the line. Either way, I didn't do any of that. And that's a lesson I'm going to insist I follow during my next interviews.

The Joy of (Not) Cooking

I just finished watching the movie "Julie & Julia." Decent movie, other than the fact the two lead female characters love to cook.

I'm not much of a cooker. It's a tad ironic as I'm a huge eater. I love over-buttered mashed potatoes as much as the next person; a perfectly crispy-top creme brulee is my best friend; and a week without bacon is a bad one in my book. Compound the irony with "Top Chef" being one of my favorite shows, and my disdain for cooking doesn't make much sense.

As I've lived by myself and grew as an adult, I've learned to cook. Basics food, yes; delicious, complicated meals, not so much. I've progressed from my college days of cooking boxed mashed potatoes to now adding fresh herbs to my hand-peeled and mashed petite red potatoes. But do I like to cook? Not really.

A few of my friends are self-proclaimed lovers of cooking. I've been lucky that two of my roommates were in that category. In my final year of college, my then-roommate was patient enough to teach me a few things. His mother was a magnificent cook, opening up her own restaurant in Jacksonville, Fla. If out of sheer desperate circumstances the producers of the TV show "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" were to ask me about the best thing I ever ate, I'd say it was his mom's vegetable sandwich, hands down. Being the benefactor of her son's talent suited me just fine. After he witnessed me adding dry pasta to a room-temperature pot of water, he knew he'd had to start at the rudimentary level with me.

He taught me the "secret" to a well-cooked salmon was to sear it first and then put it in the oven. He even taught me the basics of coffee making. With travels in Italy and France under my belt, if there's one thing I really appreciate, it's a really, really well-brewed cup of coffee. He taught me how to use a French press, aka, the only way to brew coffee. He taught me how to buy good beans, how to simply know if your espresso-to-boiled-water ratio was just right by solely looking at the color of the mixture. He even showed me how adding orange peels to a French-pressed coffee could totally give it a beautiful kick of flavor.

And my last roommate I owe a lot to as well. Without him, I'd be at the drive-thru window of the nearby Boston Market most every night of the week. After part-time stints in the restaurant business during his high school and college days, he accumulated a lot of cooking knowledge. Beyond that, he really, really, really loved to cook. Even if he'd a had a long day at work (he was a general contractor in which long days can get longer when on a job site), he'd somehow be able to whip out a three-course meal that night.

I wonder if I'll ever get to that point. I would love to be like my mom when I become a mother -- work a long day and still be able to prepare a delicious meal for the kids. My mom is one of the best cooks I know. Her food is fantastic, always fresh and completely varied. No meal is ever the same. I'm no traditionalist, but I would see myself a disappointment if, as a woman and mother, I couldn't cook a good meal every night for my family.

I'm not sure why I don't enjoy cooking. I've analyzed the possibilities, but I'm not sure any are easily remedied. I don't particularly enjoy the labor that goes into cooking a meal. For example, I really don't like peeling and chopping onions or peeling and dicing garlic. Perhaps it's those are monotonous tasks don't engage me. Nor do I really like the exact science of heating and physically cooking things. I wish heating a piece of protein had more of a grace period or forgiving nature to it; if it did, a lot more of my food would appear less over- or undercooked. They might actually be edible.

Perhaps I don't like cooking for a very simple reason: I'm just not good at it. It makes sense. I mean, I don't like swimming because I'm no good at it, I don't like playing "Call of Duty" online because I can barely hit a target, and maybe -- just maybe -- I don't like cooking because I'm pretty awful at it.

I'm proud to say I've mastered a pretty capable beef bourguignon this year, and it's become a staple at dinner parties (yes, more irony as I've hosted a few dinner parties where I've contributed a dishes of my own). With the right tools and quality ingredients, my mashed potatoes are second to none. But a cook I am? Still, the answer is no.

People tell me that I shouldn't fret, that cooking -- good cooking -- will come as a necessity, if for no other reason. They tell me I'll learn to love cooking and that I will cook many a meals for my children and family. Maybe it's like gardening. I think it's pretty unexciting to garden, but maybe it'll grow on me. Just like cooking will.

The Best Ever Christmas Song

The best Christmas song ever: Stevie Wonder's "What Christmas Means to Me"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga-qd5FYUjA

Kids These Days Part III

Some time ago I wrote a lil' blog entry about kids these days. In fact, I'm pretty sure that was the title of the blog: Kids These Days.

Anyhoos, the blog wasn't affectionately slanted toward the youths (or yuths, as Joe Pesci would say). I wrote it as we were looking to replace our former associate editor, and in our search, we found some folks who I felt did not exude the general respect and politeness I was accustomed to when I grew up.

Well, I'm slowly changing the way I see these yuths. I recently visited two college classrooms to discuss life in the real world. I was asked to give the students some tips to approaching an interview as well as answer any questions they might have. And so happy I was after meeting these students.

The first class was at FAU, a Women, Business and Power course. (The "power" part really trips me up as I really don't know if I'm the right person to talk about it.) Anyhoos, there were about 30 or so students in it, and my focus was to discuss how, as a woman, I've managed to work my way through the publishing field. I'm really not sure if I helped the students out too much; in fact, I may have actually devolved their knowledge base. Nonetheless, from my perspective, I was immensely impressed with each question the students asked. They really wanted to know what life was like on the other side of college.

Someone asked what my thoughts on tattoos were, if someone walked into a job interview covered in tats. My response? I could care less. That is, unless the tattoo was of a swastika.

The next class I spoke with was at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, a public relations and fashion merchandising class. Again, another good class with several students really interested in propelling forward in their careers.

I can't say everyone was an angel during my visit -- yes, I did see some texting in the middle of the talk -- but I guess I can rest assured the world is preparing these students pretty well. Kids these days aren't that bad, huh?