Part I

The prospect of spending a full day on the set of MSNBC at its headquarters in Secaucus, New Jersey was inviting. I had been there only once before, on a Sunday when I had to be in New Jersey anyway for my brother's engagement party about a year ago.

I was supposed to start at 10:00 am and be available for commentary on a regular basis throughout the day. I would end at five in the evening, when the Hardball-Equal Time-Mitchell Report block began.

After some negotiations it was decided I should come up to New Jersey the night before - this to avoid taking a train at six in the morning requiring me to get up at 4:30 and getting a car at 5:15. I would be met at the Newark, NJ train station by a car service, whisked away to my motel, met again in the morning, driven in luxury to the MSNBC studio there to impart wisdom spiced with humor, infused with insight.

The train left Washington's Union Station on time at five pm and my excellent adventure had begun.

It lasted for about 90 minutes at which point the train stopped. This was a Metroliner. Metroliners stop for no man.

Metroliners do, however, stop for broken down trains in front of them. We were informed there was no estimate on the amount of time we would be delayed, but the train in front of us was going exactly nowhere.

After about 20 minutes we were told we would take on the passengers from that other train. I had visions of "Alive." A long line of refugees from the local would trudge up the tracks barely able to reach the doors of our express. We would reach down and help the weaker of them aboard. Snow would soon be piling up against the windows of the train, blocking out the moon and stars, then the morning sun. We would huddle together singing songs to the children to keep their spirits up.

After a few weeks of ever-diminishing food and water we would have no choice but to learn to play rugby and begin to nosh on those who had not survived.

This all took place, I should note, about three miles north of Trenton, New Jersey in 52 degree weather.

The total delay was about an hour which meant we arrived in Newark at about 9:45 instead of the 8:44 promised in the Amtrak schedule. No matter, my car and driver - smiling, perhaps bearing a sign with the NBC logo in the window to impress people I didn't know and who didn't care about me - would be waiting to whisk me … well, you know the rest.

No car. No driver. No NBC logo.

I turned on my cell phone to find a message from the very car service asking me to call them to explain why I had not shown up at the appointed time. They neglected to leave a phone number.

A thirty six dollar cab ride to beautiful downtown Secaucus was in the offing but only because I induced the cab driver to stop at a bank along the way with the explanation that I had enough money for the fare and the tolls, but if he wanted a tip he had to find a bank with an ATM machine.

He agreed.

We pulled up to the motel and I wanted to go back to the stranded train. It was a Red Roof Inn. That is the motel chain whose spokesman is the aptly named, Martin Mull. If your spokesman is a guy whose career pinnacle was being the star of "Fernwood 2 Night" you are not likely to be confused with a Four Seasons.

This particular Red Roof Inn was of the outside entry variety but I, having already survived being stranded in the 609 area code, paid off the cabby and walked into the lobby. I waited patiently at the front counter for the conversation between the three people there to end.

The debate the three people were having was on this topic: Resolved: It is better to be in jail in the United States than it is to be in jail in either Puerto Rico or Columbia. They looked and spoke as if they had personal experience upon which to draw.

I checked in and was told my room was three buildings down. I hoisted my bags and began the hike. The room next to mine had clear plastic completely covering the door. After what I had witnessed in the lobby I suspected room 143 might well have been a crime scene.

The Monday Night Football game had already started and I tuned in just in time for the graphic which showed that for the previous 734 years, if the Redskins won their last home game before a Presidential election the incumbent party had won the election. If the 'Skins lost the last home game before an election the opposition party had won.

First of all what kind of dweeb thinks of this stuff? Second of all I, a Redskins fan who wants the Republican to win the election, began to root, root, root for the away team.

I decided I needed to eat, so I put on my shoes, my jacket and my bullet-proof vest and ventured back to the lobby which was by now locked. I had been promised by the bookers at MSNBC that this motel had a restaurant. It did not. The vending area behind the lobby was accessible via a side door which I found and entered.

The choices in the vending machine were Tums, Twizzlers, and chocolate chip cookies. I passed on the Tums.

I fell asleep with Tennessee comfortably in the lead, perchance to dream of inaugural balls.

My cell phone rang and it was the late night shift at MSNBC checking to see if I had gotten in ok. I had gotten in, but it was not ok. The very kind woman said she had gotten worried when there was no answer at the motel's main number. I may have mentioned something about the St. Valentine's Day massacre, but I was a little drowsy.

The next morning I found out that the room next door was not a crime scene. It was, in fact, a construction zone. And New Jersey constructors go to work very early.

The morning shift at MSNBC called to check in and I asked that a car be sent early. As soon as possible, in fact. "Is it disgusting?" the woman asked in that particular way that Northern New Jersey girls have of pronouncing the word "disgusting."

Northern New Jersey girls' speech pattern is as distinctive as their west coast counterparts. Except in New Jersey they're Passaic Valley girls.

Anyway, she promised to have the car company come post haste.

I went to the lobby to check out. Looked for, but saw no evidence of mass murder, and read USA Today while I waited for the car.

A young couple came in and asked the woman behind the counter about some tourist attractions in the area. The conversation was in Spanish and, if you don't count the Jimmy Hoffa tomb at the Meadowlands, I didn't know of any tourist attractions in that area.

The car service announced its arrival by calling me on my cell phone. By the time I gathered my bags the couple had gotten into the back of the black sedan and it had driven off.

This is all true - except for the eating the dead people part.

I punched in the number which showed up on my caller-id and informed the driver he had taken aboard stowaways. By this time he realized his error and was returning to the parking lot.

They got out. I got in. The driver was muttering - in an eastern European accent - about taxicabs, in the United States, being YELLOW.

The ten minute ride to MSNBC was uneventful I went in and was buzzed through to the studio which looks like what you would get if you combined the sets of "Thunderdome" and "Star Trek."

It was 8:30 in the morning.

Part II on Friday.