From my inbox:
AL ROKER ENTERTAINMENT
LAUNCHES “ROKER SHORTS”
February 2, 2010 (New York, New York) – Al Roker Entertainment, founded in 1994 by television host and producer Al Roker, is expanding its Manhattan operation to include a full service creative production company that will include state of the art facilities to create, produce and edit commercials, corporate films & videos, webisodes, TV promos and branded content on a global basis.
Did you know that Al Roker has a production company? That for almost 16 years now he's been plotting to take over all entertainment? That he's been quietly storing his guffaws in jars under his bed in the hope of amassing enough to form a subliminal Roker soundtrack that will play underneath all commercials, corporate films, webisodes, and TV shows across all channels for all time? I didn't. But that's why I read press releases: to learn.
Formed in 1994, Al Roker Entertainment, Inc. (ARE) is a thriving multimedia company based in NYC involved in the development and production of network, cable, home video and public television projects. Al Roker is CEO.ARE produces programming for a diverse clientele. Recent productions include …“Inside Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade” (NBC), “Recipe for Success” (Food Network), “Renovate My Place” (TV One), “Roker on the Road” (Food Network), “Heavyweights” (Food Network), “The 2007 Quill Book Awards” (NBC), “Diabetes: The Quiet Killer” (NBC), “Brain Attack: A Stroke Survival Guide” (NBC), “Uncovered: The Hidden Lives of Miss USA” (E! Entertainment Network), “Meth, Murder & Madness” (Court TV), “Sheila Bridges Designer Living” (Fine Living), “Intimate Portrait: Judge Judy” (Lifetime), “I Lost It – Primetime Special” (Discovery Health).
I get it. "ARE" as in the plural of "to be." As in "We ARE watching ARE." Or "Al Roker and Al Roker Entertainment ARE threatening to make all of the things that no one else wants to make." Or "ARE those menacing guffaws I hear in the background of Intimate Portrait: Judge Judy"?
Clearly, after years of drawing strength from the many, many hours he is on television, Al Roker has broken out of the corral in Rockefeller Center where they keep the Today Show hosts, and now we cannot defeat him. He is all around us at all times in many terrible, terrible forms. He even brags about it on the ARE website:
"There's a lot of AL ROKER in what we do." That explains why there was BBQ sauce and stilted banter all over Brain Attack: A Stroke Survival Guide, and why you kept thinking about Al Roker during E!'s Uncovered: The Hidden Lives Of Miss USA.