This morning I was listening to the radio and since 97.1 decided to change it's format by getting rid of the best morning talk show host, Adam "Ace" Carolla, and replace him (along with the rest of the station) with much needed pop music, I enjoyed some oldies but goodies. As I was listening to "Take A Letter, Maria," I realized that you don't hear any new songs about people writing letters or even about Operators - i.e. Jim Croce or The Grateful Dead or Smooth Operator. Those subjects are obsolete in 2009 and it's almost nerdy to write a song with the current equivalent. You're not gonna hear a song by Justin Timberlake where he dictates an email for his secretary to send to his "wife," stating that he is leaving her. Maybe he can do a duet with Alicia Keyes and they can call it, "Compose An Email, Alicia" ...don't forget to CC your lawyer JT.

I was going to use Chris Brown instead of JT, but I don't think there's gonna be a quick Internet connection where CB is going. Do you think one day, they'll change the one phone call rule in prison to a one text or one email? So, maybe if you know some criminals, you'll get a random text like, hey what's up? nmh. in prison :( NOT LMAO. That would suck if you had a bad connection at that prison and couldn't send it out. I think I'd be alright (despite the fact that I'd be in prison) but I've got the Verizon Network and by alright I don't mean with my service, I mean I would have a posse of Verizon workers behind me and the "can you hear me now" guy, so I'm sure we could take on the guards and start a riot, or at least I can send around a hat and collect bail money.

As I'm writing this rant I can't help but think that Linda is going to use "Take a Letter, Maria" and turn into a Deal or No Deal song. Like, "Take a Deal, Mandel" or "Make it low, Tameka." I know I'm just increasing the odds of this parody by talking about it, but if Vegas had a line on whether or not she was going to do it, I would put all my money on that she would and I would parlay it with her doing a mnemonic device, Dawn to count her days and black, because if I learned anything from Wesley Snipes it's to pay my taxes and always bet on black.

(Don't take that literally like I know a lot of you will. It's just my motto for the year.) "Everything will be fine in '09... if not, then we do it in '010." Will we say '010, or just 10? We better figure this out before it gets closer and everyone is not on the same page. This worries me.

Also, according to historians, the Aztec calendar will end in 2012... so make sure you schedule all your Aztec doctor appointments in the next 3 years... after that they are all booked.

How was everyone's holidays? Again, I got stranded in an airport. This time at beautiful Washington Dulles. After spending over 4 hours in customer service, a night in a hotel, an enchanting interaction with a bitter rental car agent, 10 hours waiting at 4 different gates to fly standby, my name was the 13th standyby-er to be called to get on a plane to Buffalo. Needless to say, I wasn't happy until the plane got in the air. I put my iPod on when instructed it was safe and the first song in the shuffle was The Beach Boys' Sloop John B, which the lyrics, "I feel so broke up, I wanna go home... the captain is sure to let me go home... let me go home," I thought were just fitting. It was a good moment. Then the pregnant Russian girl next to me began to throw up in her barf bag. Couldn't write it better myself.

Speaking of writing, I assure you that those last two posts were me. It's not like I have a team of writers that I hired during the strike last year to help me read and respond to all of you. I mean it would be ridiculous. It's not like we had a meeting on February 12th, 2008 at Barney's Beanery on Santa Monica Blvd. at 11am to draw up contracts, where the 4 of them (3 males, one female named Kristen who ordered a very expensive Cobb Salad--I mean how can you charge $12 for a SALAD, I mean it's basically just lettuce and other veggies. Is there a vegetable shortage?) swore they would never talk about working for me… that is just asinine.

Yours truly,

Nickolas Greico

By the way, check out my video on Funnyordie.com. And be sure to vote FUNNY, unless you wanna make me cry at my computer -- I don't think tears are good for electronics. I'm pretty sure this is the phone call you've all been waiting for. Enjoy.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/5e66afb76f/important-phone-call-from-nick-greco

Thanks to everyone who has made this site their home page and have made more room for this show in their lives than Mother Teresa did with charity work. Imagine if she won a million dollars on Deal. Although I don't think she would have gone past the first offer. Anywho, enough about Mother Teresa on a game show. Thanks bloggers.

And thank you to the producers and staff at Deal or No Deal for letting me hang out with 26 models without me paying. And thank you for paying me. It's a great show to work on and everyone couldn't be better. Except for that Unidentified Model; you could be better- at giving clues, but I guess your husband would get jealous if he knew you were cyber-flirting with me. Or are you just mad about your NFL team doing so bad? Who's your favorite team again? Who am I kidding? It's probably cause you wish you were in the first two rows.

And a special thanks to the NBC.com team for everything they do and for allowing me to have this blog. I never thought a PA job could get me this kind of exposure, but you all make it possible. Thanks NBC.com.

So everyone have a Happy Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chanukah, Festivus, New Year and any other holiday I can't think of off the top of my head.

So, funny story. My friend Paul and I were about to go get some food down at the local food shop and I went to put on a pullover sweatshirt and he says, get this... "Zip up sweatshirts are better." What?! I said, "No way, pullovers are way more superior." And he said, "Nuh uh, zip ups are." And I said, "The zipper just takes up useless space." And he said, "You're useless space." And then I said, "That doesn't help your argument." And he said, "Pullovers mess up your hair." And I said, "You shave your head, you don't have hair." And he said, "Good point." And I said, "Thank you, I used to think about being on a debate team." And he said, "Why didn't you?" And I said, "I didn't like to wear sport coats in high school." And he said, "I don't consider the debate team a sport." And I said, "And another thing..." And we just laughed and laughed. And then I had the tuna melt.

This is what you bloggers have been waiting for...

Here's a picture from Halloween. We were Ol' Timey Weight Lifters. I figured I'd show off our awesome costumes, while potentially embarrassing my buddies in the photo by putting them on the NBC website dressed like this. But, like me, they don't easily get embarrassed.

We walked (and worked out) in the streets on Halloween night where people were partying and I don't have to tell you that people were happier to see us than Angelina Jolie at a third world orphange. The street might as well have been made of a red carpet and everyone else might as well have been dressed as paparazzi, because every few feet we would pose with a huge crowd around us taking pictures. I guarantee we are in thousands of strangers' pictures online.

It's probably the best costume I've ever done. Besides the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume my Mom made me when I was eight. That was awesome.

Every woman we saw we would lift up like it was an event in the Strong Man Competition. And no, you can't buy those weights or anvil anywhere. Those were made by me and Mike Ryan. We're thinking of opening an Ol' Timey Weights company and also a pizza shop. I think we should combine the two. We could call it, Ol' Timey Weights and Pizza Shop. It's a pretty big demo (that's industry talk). Then people can ask, "Hey, how's the ol' timey weight and pizza business?" and I would reply, "It's working out deliciously." Then they would walk away, unsatisfied with my response.

Apparently, since the Banker is ignoring everyone, my site has become the meeting place. I hope I'm not just playing second fiddle to the Banker. Either way, I can't think of the last time this blog had over 100 comments. Granted 48% of them were Andres talking about hot air balloons and the election, but that's alright.

I've also noticed a trend. Each post will average about 1.5-2.9 original songs made by you fans. You should all get together and do a "We Are The World" video. You know the one where all the popular singers from the '80s got together and did the studio video? It had Michael Jackson, Huey Lewis, Cindy Lauper, Hall & Oates, Stevie Wonder and who could forget Dan Aykroyd. You all should just rent a studio, come up with a song about Deal--Linda could do it--and make sure you each have headphones so you can do that move where you just hold one side when you sing, like you're trying to hear better. If you don't know the video or just haven't seen it in a while here's a link.

Remember when Saturday Night Live used to do those... that was awesome.

Since there are so many comments, this post it will be hard to respond to everyone, but I'll make some general comments that might answer a lot.

1. I don't work on the daytime version, so I couldn't answer much about that. To be honest, I don't even watch it. Not only do I get enough DOND as it is, I don't watch daytime TV unless it's Tyra. And by that I mean I watch The Soup in order to see them make fun of her. Joel McHale is hilarious, Tyra is not.

2. No, that is not my silhouette. I am not the Banker. Come to think of it though, I do have a cousin who is a banker in NY. Every family reunion he would sit in the shadows and make me offers on my toys and he'd always wear a headset. I never saw what he looked like and he would only call me on the phone when he wanted to talk. He was very strange and mean. I wonder what he's doing these days.

3. I don't speak to the Banker. So, I don't know where he is. He's probably trying to sell his stocks and personal items on Craigslist.

Marsha- you're scaring me. You're telling me that you know the "real" Santa Claus? Come on! We all know Santa would never live in Colorado. I've been there and everybody is active, whether it's snowboarding, mountain biking, white water rafting or power walking. Santa has to hustle in lightening speed one day out of the year, so I'd imagine on his 364 off days, he likes to sit on the couch and be lazy... Therefore he must live in Green Bay... Hey-O. Sorry Josh, and everyone from GB. That joke comes from this Bears fan.

Andres- I thought everyone was here to talk to me? You all are REALLY just here to be on DOND and win money??? Look at this! You made me use 3 question marks! (I'm just messing with you. Did I lay it on too thick?) Like I said last post, the contest isn't real. I had to put up those disclaimers because honestly, how many of you would take it seriously and expect to be on DOND if you won some contest I made up? I would probably be sued and banned from the Blogging Union. Sorry to go "Maverick" on you and all. I'll try to do more "straight talkin" (wink*)

Linda- Glad you are feeling better. To answer your question, I can't say for sure that they would let me hold a case if you were a contestant, but if you request me to be up there during your game, I'm sure the producers would consider it. I don't get back East too often. Flights are too expensive and my schedule is so sporadic that it's tough to find a good time. But, I do get to go home every Christmas. And like I explained above, we aren't really having a reality contest, it was just a joke. And by reality competition I meant like Survivor, Big Brother, Amazing Race and any other show that is killing creative scripted television.

Hang in there LB