I have always had a hate-hate love-hate relationship with the media, particularly when I’m in them. On the one hand, it’s cool being in front of that many people, but on the other hand, the media’s success in actually quoting what I say and getting my name right has been fairly abysmal.

One of my first TV appearances, for example, was made when WISH-TV, a local CBS affiliate, showed up at school one day and wanted to interview me and two classmates for our work on the Legacy Initiative, a high-school product that collates, edits, and publishes a large collection of war letters. That particular day, I hadn’t shaved, badly needed a haircut, and was wearing a heavily beat-up sweatshirt. I’m not petty when it comes to looks, but if I couldn’t be broadcast looking my best, I wish I’d at least been broadcast looking my average.

As part of that same project, I was interviewed by WIBC, a major Indiana radio station. Unlike WISH-TV, I knew about that interview a day in advance, and because I did radio as part of speech team, I was actually looking forward to it, prepared ahead of time, and gave a solid interview. WIBC used a lot of my sound bytes in the story. It was great.

Except that no one listening would have known, since they attributed the quotes to a Brian Pollack.

So over the weekend, I heard with some trepidation that Aardvark’d: Twelve Weeks with Geeks is now on IMDB. I’m not on the cast list, though; Banjamin Pollack is. Lerone made a typo when submitting it, and due to the lethargy that is IMDB, it’ll take weeks to get fixed.

Ah well. I suppose it beats having my name be correct due to a centralized personnel database, but still, it’d be nice, just once, to be in the media without something going awry.