Dennis Bolen, a laid-off homebuilder featured in The Baltimore Sun last month, is still looking for work. But he has gotten one lucky break: an appearance on The Tyra Banks Show.
After spotting reporter Scott Calvert's article about Bolen, a producer with the show invited Bolen and his wife, Ann Marie, to appear. The show airs at 11 a.m. tomorrow on WUTB-24.
The topic of the show is "middle-class Americans suffering through the economic crisis," said Bolen, who'd been an assistant builder for Beazer Homes.
Might sound like a downer, but the trip up to New York for the taping was fun for the couple and their two children, Cadence, 2, and Ryan, 5.
"It was a neat little mini-vacation," he said. "For the kids, first time being in New York, first time on a train. It was real exciting for everybody."
Bolen said he wasn't fazed about appearing before the studio audience. Before kids came along, he played trumpet before tens of thousands as a member of the Colts and Ravens bands. But then Tyra Banks came out and sat beside them on the couch. "That's when it hit me." He was on TV !
Bolen overcame his jitters, got through the show, and then got to the really good part: the swag bag.
"God, I can't even remember everything," he said. "My wife got a Calvin Klein handbag. A couple real nice watches. Other goodies."
Including a gizmo that turns your iPod into an alarm clock, which would have been even better if the Bolens had an iPod. "Maybe Santa might bring an iPod," he said.
Something even cooler could be on the way. When I reached Bolen yesterday, he was driving to a job interview.
Connect the dots
Molly Shattuck fans, tonight's the night. The former Ravens cheerleader and wife of Constellation Energy CEO Mayo Shattuck appears on the Fox reality show Secret Millionaire at 8 p.m. on Channel 45. She spends a week waiting tables and ringing up groceries in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town, passing herself off as a regular gal needing a fresh start. She eventually comes clean and gives away at least $100,000 of her own money to someone there. "I'm especially excited because one of the people I helped will be here watching the episode together with my family and friends," Shattuck said. ... Bob and Kendel Ehrlich got tripped up in that old plural/possessive trap on their Christmas card, which offers holiday greetings from "The Ehrlich's." I thought the Ehrlichs - see, just add an s to make a singular plural - still had communications gurus on the payroll. ... Maryland capital police are scooting around the State House complex in Annapolis on something called a "T3 patrol unit." The $9,300 vehicle looks like a three-wheeled Segway. Purchased with a Maryland Energy Administration grant, it gets more than 500 miles to the gallon and costs about 10 cents a day to operate. Now if we could only get Gov. Martin O'Malley to trade in his SUV for one.
