A friend and colleague from my first days in television died this morning after a long battle with cancer. From my CFRN video archive, here’s a classic clip of John.

I guess it’s my obligation to report the bad news along with the good news.  My primetime show on CNBC has been pulled from the schedule after two weeks of dismal ratings.  The network says it will try to find a better way to promote Crowd Rules before putting any more episodes on TV.

Pat and his staff are taking a few extra days off—okay a week—to celebrate the Memorial Day weekend. There will be no Pat’s Picks Monday, May 27th through Monday, June 3rd. We’ll resume our regular schedule on Tuesday, June 4th. Have a great week and we’ll see you then!

Summer is approaching quickly (you hear that, rain clouds) and that can only mean one thing: days filled with ice cream, swimming and trivia! On Wednesday, July 24th I’m heading back to the Bell House to host TrivWorks Ultimate Summer Trivia Slam. And I hope you join me.

On our media tour for CNBC “Crowd Rules” I stopped in to chat with Ali Wentworth at Yahoo’s “Daily Shot.” Not content for a simple question and answer session, Ali asked me to do a NY1-style summary of some headlines from Cosmo and Self magazines.

My “Crowd Rules” co-host Kendra Scott and I stopped by the “Today” show to talk about our new show yesterday.

Many people have covered David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” but none of have done it quite like Commander Chris Hadfield. VIDEO

The New York Daily News gave my new show on CNBC a shout out in this morning’s paper.

This may be the coolest mashup video I’ve ever seen. It’s the cast of the ‘Downton Abbey’ “doing” One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful.” But instead of singing like the boy band idols do, this is a spoken word version. Someone time-consumingly (seriously—this must’ve taken forever) spliced episodes together to get all the words in. Result: amazing.