Transcripts For WRC Today 20091104 : vimarsana.com

good morning. grand old night. republicans win the governorships in both virginia and new jersey, even though president obama had stumped for the democrats. is it a repudiation of the president and what does it mean for the democratic party natiwide? this morning, the view from both sides. tragic end. three missing college softball players found dead inside a jeep submerged in a north dakota pond, two days after they placed panic calls to friend. this morning, what investigators think happened. and 100 days to vancouver, and as you can see, we re throwing an olympic-size party on the plaza today, wednesday, november 4th, 2009. captions paid for by nbc-universal television and good morning, and welcome to today on a wednesday morning. i m matt lauer. i m meredith vieira. that s either the olympics music or the triumphant march of the republicans yesterday. we re being told the president did not watch the election results, but i bet he s hearing them this morning. didn t want to watch, probably. the biggest win in new jersey where chris christie narrowly defeated jon corzine. president obama stumped for corzine five times, three times in the last week alone, as late as sunday. in virginia, it was a landslide win for republican bob mcdonnell who defeated democrat creigh deeds after obama campaigned for deeds twice. we ll talk about the results and what they mean for both the parties and president with the chair of the dnc and the house republican whip. also ahead, one of the families caught in a horrible fertility mix-up. carolyn and shawn savage just gave birth to a baby b but had to hand the baby over to another couple because carolyn had been implanted with the wrong embryo. what was that moment like for the couple? this morning in an exclusive interview, the savages speak out for the first time since that extremely difficult day. it s been a difficult story to follow. also, on a much, much lighter note, three words ann curry sings. get out. you heard that right. she went along with an improve group who spontaneously broke out into song at a popular food court ding lunch, blaring it out. we re going to talk about that in a little while. let s just say, i don t think you d call it singing, but we did have fun. we ll be the judge. let s begin this wednesday morning with our decision 2009 coverage and those important wins for the gop. chuck todd is nbc s political director and chief white house correspondent. chuck, good morning to you. reporter: good morning, matt. well, look, the debate s going to rage all day and perhaps all week about how much of a referendum this is on president obama, but this much is clear after three years of losing, the republicans are back in the winning column. reporter: for republicans, the biggest victory of the night came in new jersey, where chris christie came out on top. hey, new jersey, we did it! reporter: new jersey is where the president put his prestige on the line. fired up! ready to go! fired up! reporter: hoping his last-minute campaign efforts would drag the unpopular governor jon corzine across the finish line. it didn t work out. let s turn the page. let s put the petty politics of the past behind us and let s start a new era of hope and optimism in new jersey. reporter: christie survived a brutal negative campaign by corzine. the former head of goldman sachs out-spent his opponent nearly 2-1. the people have chosen tonight. that does not mean that the people in this room, the democrats in this room, the democrats across this state or across this country don t have an agenda to carry forward. reporter: christie won by pulling independents into the republican column. among this key voting group, christie topped corzine 58% to 31%. last year, barack obama as the democratic presidential nominee carried new jersey independents 51%-47%. in virginia, it wasn t even close. republican bob mcdonnell swamped his democratic opponent creigh deeds, winning a substantial majority in a state that just one year ago helped propel barack obama to the white house. i never dreamed that i d have the chance to follow in the footsteps of thomas jefferson and patrick henry, and yet, you ve made that come true for me tonight. reporter: the republican victory was across the board, reversing obama s winning formula. in 2008, mr. obama carried independents in virginia, 49-48. on tuesday, mcdonnell won independents by a whopping 31 points. and in what could be a worrisome sign for democrats in 2010, turnout among young voters and african-americans, two of president obama s strongest support groups in 2008, was dramatically down. just 10% of voters in virginia this year were under the age of 30. in 2008, that number was 20%. meredith, the interesting house race up in new york 23, a bit of a consolation prize for democrats. in an upset, bill owens got 49% of the vote. the conservative, after chasing out the republican, got 45%. believe it or not, the republican ended up playing spoiler with just 6%. and in something that ought to scare incumbents across the country, michael bloomberg, after spending $100 million, was only able to eke out a five-point victory over a candidate that seemed to barely spend a dollar. it was a stunning almost loss for the mayor of new york city. yeah, scary moment, i m sure. chuck todd, thank you very much. david gregory is moderator of meet the press. good morning to you, david. good morning, meredith. as chuck just reported, the president did stump for the two losing gubernatorial candidates in new jersey and virginia. republicans are saying this morning it is a repudiation of the president s administration. fair statement or overstated? well, probably unfair when it comes to a repudiation of the president himself, because his own approval numbers in new jersey and virginia are still quite high. but as chuck points out, it s the obama coalition that was so successful in 2008 that did not show up independent voters, younger voters, african-american voters. that was part of a unique coalition that he put tether for his presidency. this anti-incumbency mood is significant. it says that that change message that obama carried on to victory is still holding true, but now it s being used against democratic incumbents. yeah, you mentioned the independents. and as you pointed out, they went heavily for obama in 2008. this time they went with the republicans. so, what is the lesson that both the republicans and democrats should take away from that? well, again, it s the an anti-incumbency mood, it s the fact that there s less trust of government, that there s a disaffection with both parties, which is why i think this new york 23 race is important, because it s a fight between conservatives and moderates in the republican party. for republicans, they make the argument here that the independent wave is part of a different atmosphere, that there s concern about the debt or health care. some of obama s policies, some of the democratic policies. that s the message that they hope to build on and they will try to nationalize that message today and going forward. let s talk a little bit about the congressional race in the 23rd district in new york. it sort of pointed out the descension within the republican party between the moderates and those that are far more conservative. in the end, it was the democrat who won that particular race, so how does the outcome of that race factor into national politics? there s still going to be a big fight in the republican party about what the party should be. should it be a more conservative party that gets back to its smaller government days or should it be a moderate party that can change some positions to get more independent voters to expand that coalition? what s striking is you have the results in new york 23, which democrats will hold up as a great result for them, but then you have mcdonnell winning in virginia, a purple state. he s a social conservative for his political career, yet runs more as a pragmatist, a centrist and wins big among independent voters. that dynamic within the republican party, that fight about what it wants to be is going to go on. midterm elections next year, do you think that legislators will be looking at the results from last night and recalculating how they re going to come down on tough issues like health care reform? it s going to be a real fear within the white house that those moderate democrats are going to now find it more difficult to cast a difficult vote on health care that could increase the deficit, that may be unpopular with key parts of their constituencies as they face voters next year. that s something that the president s going to have to really work on. all right. david gregory, thank you very much. thanks, meredith. it is 7:08. for more, here s matt. thank you. virginia s outgoing governor tim kaine is also chairman of the democratic national committee and congressman eric cantor is the house republican whip. guys, good morning to both of you. good morning, matt. good morning, matt. i want to talk about the president and i want to talk about virginia specifically in a second, but let me start with the bigger issue, and governor cain, let s give this one to you. jobs and the economy were voters priorities in this election and republicans take the two key slots here. so, what does it say about the way voters think republicans are or will handle those two key issues? well, there is anxiety out there about the economy, matt, and that played a factor in a lot of these races, but what we see is for 24 years, the party that holds the white house loses both of these governorships. that s the historic trend, and last night followed that trend, unfortunately. we were very interested in the new york 23 race. jobs and economy is a big issue there, too, but the republican candidate, eric and his colleagues put nearly $1 million into that race, got chased out by the right wing of the party, endorsed our candidate, and we won a seat in that district that a democrat hasn t held in over 100 years. so, the jobs and economy issues are out there. what we re seeing is a president who is dramatically cut the rate of job loss from where it was under the bush administration. the president is very popular in virginia. the exit polls showed both in virginia and new jersey that the president really retains a strong popularity among the voters in both states. all right. let me get to congressman cantor. obviously, governor kaine is putting the best possible spin on this, but republicans are very happy with their wins in the governors races yesterday. but is it possible you look too much into these result you put too much into them? well, matt, what i think the voters of both virginia and new jersey said last night was that they would like to see a more positive-based policy, agenda. they would like to see a much more united message focused on jobs and the economy. clearly, i think voters here in virginia and new jersey saw candidates that rejected the politics of attack and wanted to see us all come together so that we can provide some solutions. taking away from this, you know, we look to 10, and i do think that the virginia model shows that when we re united as a party, independents are attracted to our message of vision for the future, where we can empower folks to get their economic security back. let me go back to governor kaine. let s talk about virginia for a second. creigh deeds lost badly here, by double digits. he was out-spentn advertising. so, what turned virginia back to the republican side after it went democratic for president obama in the last election? well, as you know, matt, in virginia, the fact that a republican would win a statewide race in virginia would be news, it wouldn t have been news five years ago. it would have been like the sun coming up in the morning, but in the last few years, we ve won both u.s. senate seats, we have won a majority of the house, we ve taken back the state senate and we ve won electoral votes. but last night s match in virginia was a rematch, as you know. creigh deeds had run against bob mcdonnell four years ago and lost. and so, when he became the party nominee this year, bob had been a statewide official for four years and had been able to build up both a war chest and name recognition that that gave him, and everybody knew that creigh was the underdog in this race. we had been winning a lot of races with underdogs in virginia, but not every underdog wins. creigh s a great state senator, but in the rematch, you know, he just couldn t improve upon where he was four years ago. again, we ve got this trend in viinia. right. it s been 36 years where the white house goes one way and then the governors race goes another. this schism, though, within the republican party, that was demonstrated in new york 23 with the right-wing candidate chasing out the republican moderate, we re seeing that play out all over the country coming into 2010 in florida, in texas, in dust-ups yesterday between tim paw laevenlt and olympia snowe, arlen specter s defection from the party from the democratic side. you re going to see this story continue. congressman, governor kaine obviously wants to talk about that. i want to go to one other thing, the president and his popularity. he put his prestige on the line in these two big races, although we were told by voters that 55% of people in virginia said he was not a factor in their decision. 60% of voters in new jersey. and i m not sure whether that s good or bad news for president obama, that people didn t care or didn t blame him. what do you think? well, y know, matt, it really was about the policies at the president s been promoting. and listen, i think the telling numbers were 85% of voters in virginia said this election was about their concerns over the economy. 90% of the voters in new jersey said this election was about the economy. people have clearly made a choice in our states. they have said no to the one-way street of the economic policies of the obama administration and the pelosi congress, and they have embraced the very different way and the better way that bob mcdonnell and chris christie have been promoting as to how to get this economy back on track. two very different points of view this morning. matt real quickly, governor. i was just going to say, matt, even chairman michael steele last night said this wasn t a referendum on the president because the exit polls showed very strongly that the voters in both states still have a very favorable view of how this president is doing his job in a very tough time. governor kaine, congressman cantor, thank you very much this morning. we appreciate your time. thank you. now let s get a check of the rest of the top stories from ann curry at the news desk. good morning to you, ann. good morning to you, meredith and matt. sing out. sing out later, first the news because there is some serious news to get to. good morning, everybody. we begin with a violent clash, actually, more than one this morning, in iran, where security forces were out in force using tear gas and batons to break up antigovernment marches. nbc s tehran bureau chief ali arouzi is joining us on the phone. what can you tell us? reporter: thousands of government supporters are gathered outside of the former embassy to celebrate the seizure and hostage-taking of u.s. personnel 30 years ago and to vent their hatred towards the united states and israel. but in an ironic twist, other movements staged a rally across tehran and the scene turned ugly quickly when thousands of iranian security forces who were assembled on the street to prevent opposition rallies and rein in political dissent, fired shots and tear gas at the crowd as well as beating protestors with batons. there are still some bursts of violence going on in the streets as we speak. all right. this is ali arouzi in tehran. thank you so much for yr reporting this morning, ali. and also in iran, an earthquake this morning in the southern part of the country injured more than 700 people. it was a magnitude 4.9 and it sent people running into the streets. meantime, israel seized a ship during the night that officials say was carrying missiles and other weapons from iran to hezbollah guerrillas in lebanon. in ohio, police found four more bodies tuesday at the home of a convicted rapist, bringing the number so far to ten, at least six of them women. anthony solo is facing murder and kidnap charges. overseas markets are higher this morning. cnbc s trish regan is at the new york stock exchange. trish, a lot of attention today on the federal reserve. absolutely, ann. in fact, it s ending its two-day meeting, its policy meeting, and the expectation is that there will be no change in its zero interest rate policy. however, investors are watching very carefully to see if the fed gives any indication of when it may actually raise rates. the concern, of course, is that by having so much money supply out there, it s affecting things like the dollar, which caused commodity prices like oil to move higher, and that hurts all of us. all right. we ll keep an eye on it. please do. trish regan, thank you so much. and buckle up your seatbelts, because tonight in new york, it s game six of the world series. the yankees now lead the phillies three games to two. it is now 7:16. let s go back to meredith, matt and al. it s a little nerve-racking. yep. yeah, it is. a late night. yes, it is. nail-biting. not as bad as tomorrow night. worse? i like the way you re thinking. all right seven games. we ll be good. anyway, we ve got weather to get to. you can see we have a little bit of a clipper coming across the great lakes, bringing mixed precipitation up to the u.p. of michan. for this morning we ve got showers through the lower mississippi river valley. by this afternoon we re seeing some snow showers around the great lakes. tonight, rain moves into interior parts of new york and pennsylvania, stays away from the world series here in new york. forecast cloudy, good morning. dawn in washington. it is frosty cold in the suburbs and many of the rural areas on this wednesday morning. here is a live view from our sky watcher camera showing the morning sunlight, now gleaming all across the region. it is at or below freezing, especially west of interstate 95, frosty cold. it is just 39 in washington. afternoon highs into the mid 50s with increasing clouds. could get showers late this evening and then partly s that s your latest weather. meredith? al, thank you. and now to the tragic end to the search for three college softball players in north dakota. their bodies were found on tuesday, two days after they placed frantic phone calls to friends asking for help. nbc s john yang is in dickinson, north dakota, with the latest. john, good morning to you. reporter: good morning, meredith. here outside the student center on the campus of dickinson state university, a makeshift memorial has sprung up overnigh no classes today. the president canceled them for what he calls a day of remembering and mourning. in the dickinson state university student center tuesday night, a massive outpouring of grief for three friends, ashley neufeld, afton williamson and kyrstin gemar, all in their early 20s, all members of the school s softball team. it s shocking. there are really no words to describe it. it s unbelievable. it s sad. words cannot convey the sadness in our hearts. we have suffered a great tragedy today. reporter: the greatest emotion came when kyrstin gemar s father lenny spoke. today is probably the worst day of my life. the softball family that i ve come to know the past year my daughter was on the team is like no other. i got no greater joy than watching her play and no greater joy than watching her play with you guys. reporter: the three women were last heard from late sunday night in two brief, scratchy, panicked cell phone calls to a friend asking for help. then the line went dead. she got the call. they were talking something about water and there was some hysterical noises in the background. reporter: from the air and on the water, authorities searched nearby ponds and lakes. late tuesday, the tragic news. the bodies of the three women had been found inside their vehicle, a 1997 white jeep cherokee, submerged in a pond. vehicle tracks were found leading into a stocked pond with oil residue floating on the surface. they re top-notch kids, and the first thing that goes through my mind is disbelief, you know. you don t believe something like that would ever happen, especially to kids that you ve grown to be close to for, you know, the three years. reporter: kyrstin ger s father said the three often went star-gazing, a simple pleasure shared by three schoolmates, teammates and friends, now mourned by an entire college community. keep kyrstin, afton and ashley in your hearts, and the blue hawks softball team go take first this year. reporter: this morning, authorities say they are continuing to investigate what happened. there are no signs of foul play, they say. it looks like it s just a horrible, terrible accident. meredith? john yang, thank you very much. and still ahead, outrage over bailed-out credit card companies doubling interest rates for millions of americans. what s going on and what c just ahead, should drivers who text behind the wheel be treated like drunk drivers? plus, the couple caught in the heartbreaking embryo mix-up speak out for the first time since giving birth. good morning. 7:26. i m barbara harrison. the republicans are celebrating success. bob mcdonnell won with nearly 60% of the vote. bill bowly and ken cue chin nellie won their races. drivers to use the dulles toll road could soon pay twice as much. today, the airport authority is expected to take up a proposal to raise the tolls. drivers will pay $1.50 at the main gates. this is supposed to pay for the metro extension to nice morning but it feels like december. scraping frost. clouding up later. could get showers tonight. how is the traffic, jerry? jammed along 95 and 395. a series of problems are out of the roadway. slower than normal. maryland, loading up and slowing wn on t roadway. traffic computers messed 7:30 now on this wednesday morning, the 4th of november 2009. bright and sunny, but a cold start to the day here in rockefeller plaza. perfect weather, actually, for our 100-day countdown to the winter olympics. we re going to meet some of the athletes hoping to shine in vancouver in just a bit. inside studio 1a, i m meredith vieira alongside matt lauer. and also ahead, a sign of the tough economic times. we re going to meet a father who after losing his job last year decided to sell his house and now his family lives out of an rv, and they aren t the only ones. we re going to have much more on at story, just ahead. also ahead, the latest on a heart-wrenching medical mix-up that we have been following. a woman implanted with another couple s embryo during fertility treatment. carolyn savage and her husband sean decided to carry the baby to term, even though they knew they would have to give that child up to the other couple. so, what happens now? well, th savages are with us exclusively for the first interview since carolyn gave birth. but let us begin with skyrocketing credit card rates. the house votes today on legislation to speed up the effective date of new rules aimed at protecting some consumers, but is it too little, too late? nbc senior investigative correspondent lisa myers has more on this story. hi, lisa. good morning, matt. this is all being driven by public outrage toward bailed-out banks, which in recent months have doubled credit card intestates for millions of americans. what congress is moving to do now would merely prevent further increases on most balances. it will not undo what has already happened. for months now, consumers have been outraged by unwelcomed credit card notices. ed niska just got the word that bailed-out citibank is doubling his rate to 30%. it does anger me, because here i am, a citizen, and i helped bail them out. reporter: hank parker just got his second interest rate increase this year from citi on the $3,500 he owes. i m getting whacked for 30% on an interest rate? i just it just knocked me over. reporter: linda and jay gallagher had downsized so they could pay all their bills after their consulting business was hit hard by the economy. then, chase doubled the interest rate on their $5,000 credit card bill to 15%. it was an injustic it was a great injustice to us, who we had worked so hard and we weren t missing any payments. reporter: the law signed by the president in may would prevent credit card companies from doing exactly what was done to these three consumers, raising rates on existing balances, money consumers have already spent. but congress agreed to give the banks until next february to comply. the banks asked for additional time in order to upgrade their systems, but they have used this time instead to hike rates unconscionably. the banks abused the time. i was i think we made a mistake. we gave them too much time. reporter: the bill expected to pass the house today would now speed up the new rules. instead of next february, the rules would kick in next month. a spokesman for the bank says that s unworkable. the new credit card laws are emassive changes to the industry and prevent them from being compliant by november 31st. reporter: they would like them to act on their own and stop the rate increases in the pipeline. after all, taxpayers own 34% of citi. surely, if the obama administration can set the pay for bailed-out bankers, they could prevent them from ripping off consumers. bank officials say they understand that consumers are upset but that rate increases are justified because of increased risks in a bad economy, and they emphasize that consumers always can opt out and close their accounts. and we should note again, matt, that even if congress does act now, it will not roll back all those rate increases. yeah, that s the bad news. lisa myers in washington. lisa, thank you very much. jean chatzky is today s financial editor. good morning to you. good morning. what lisa is saying, if the damage has already been done for a lot of people that s absolutely true. they re not settled with these high rates. whether or not the legislation passes, you have tips for people. first, call the bank and complain. absolutely. call the bank and ask if there is anything they can do to get rid of that new annual fee or get rid of that new rate increase, but be careful. we don t want consumers giving the banks information that they re not asking for. for example, what kind of information? for example, if something has changed in your job situation. if you ve lost a job, that presents a real additional risk to the bank that you won t be able to pay them back. don t give up that information. simply ask for what you want, and if the representative starts asking questions, you walk away. next tip is transfer your balance to a card with the lower rate, but there s a caveat here. i want you to try to transfer the balance to a card that you already have. if you go out and you start looking for additional credit right now, that is going to take down your credit score, which is going to make it likely that the other cards in your wallet see a rate increase. that s not what we want to happen. so, if you have a card in your wallet with a lower interest rate, call that card and see if you can move the money. finally, the nuclear option is to opt out, just stop using that card, which sounds like common sense. is there a down side to that, though? there s a down side and it s tricky. when you get the information that the rate increase is coming, you have to opt out right then, because if you use the card again, that is a tacit acceptance of the new contract. call the bank, let them know you re opting out, don t use the card, and generally, you will then have five years to pay off the balance at the old rate. the down side is that you won t have access to that credit in your wallet. and of course, the other thing we have to take into consideration, all this is happening as we re entering the season where consumers use their credit cards more than at any other time of the year. right. we ve still got a good couple of weeks, a good couple of months until christmas. if you can just take $100 in cash or whatever you expect to spend every single week and stockpile it until the holidays, you may be able to get through without using your credit cards at all. now let s talk about credit reports and credit scores, and you ve got good information on people, where to get free information on those scores and reports. big story in the new york times yesterday pointed out that freecreditreport.com is actually trying to sell you a credit monitoring service, which gets expensive over time. if you want a free credit score, you go to credit.com, creditkarma.com or quizzle.com. for all of those sites, you actually can get a free score. they may try to sell you things on the side, but they re not going to ask you to opt in or opt out of anything. quickly before i let you go, on this whole credit card story, has this created an increase of use of debt cards? debit card use is soaring, but we talked about overdraft fees before. you have to be careful there as well. jean chatzky, thanks very much. sure. now let s get a check of the weather from mr. roker. thanks, matt. we re here with some nice ladies, some oncology nurses. what s the story? good morning. november is lung cancer awareness month. we are the new york city chapter of the oncology nursing society here to promote awareness and a commitment to cure for lung cancer in america. all right. and full disclosure, ann helped take care of my dad when he was dying of lun cancer. let s show you what s going on. cold wake-up this morning. baltimore 33, crossville 32. freeze advisories thursday morning back from kentucky through tennessee, but temperatures rebound nicely, 30s, 40s up through good morning. we have a clear sky. re is frosty cold in mainly west of interstate 95 and into the mountains this morning. right now, 39 in washington. at or below freezing, just west, even a few isolated spots south and east of washington and southern maryland. increasing clouds later today, highs, mid 50s. could get a few passing showers later tonight. mostly cloudy to partly sunny. highs, mid 50s. we ve got the bobsled team right here, four-man bobsled. hey, don t forget, if you want to check your weather any time of the day or night, go to the weather channel on cable or weather.com online. meredith? all right, al, thank you. 18 states and washington, d.c., have now passed bans against texting while driving, and recent studies show that it can be even more dangerous than driving drunk. so, should the punishment be just as severe? here s nbc s dawna friesen. reporter: texting while driving, it s a dangerous habit that to some seems innocent enough, except it isn t, as this british public service ad graphically shows. those few seconds spent on one quick text can kill. the ad is aimed at young people, like 22-year-old british driver philipa curtis, who was sentenced to 21 months for an act of carelessness that cost 24-year-old victoria mcbride, a promising young fashion designer, her life. mcbride s car, a neon yellow fiat similar to this one, had broken down. it was a clear night. she had put on her hazard lights. then curtis plowed into her car, killing mcbride instantly. initially, it seemed like a tragic accident. curtis hadn t been drinking, but a witness found her cell phone on the road, and the police discovered that in the hour before the crash, she had exchanged nearly two dozen text messages with at least five friends, mostly about a singer she had served at the restaurant where she worked. did you sing to her? a friend asked. curtis replies, i sang the wrong song. one last message never opened came in seconds before the accident. a jury took less than an hour to convict curtis of causing death by dangerous driving. the court reckoned that she was driving dangerously because she had been texting in the minutes leading up to the crash. even though she wasn t, apparently, sending a text at that precise moment, she must have been distracted. reporter: using handld cell phones while driving, whether talking or texting, is banned in the uk, in most european countries and some u.s. states. research has shown it reduces reaction time by 35%, impairing drivers as much or more than alcohol. pressure is growing for a nationwide ban in the u.s. and there is evidence to back it up, like this texas bus driver busy typing ay at the wheel, and the driver of this california train who was texting when he crashed, killing 25 people. but britain has been the most aggressive in prosecuting cases. if you hit somebody, if you kill them and you were distracted, even if you weren t distracted at the moment of the accident, you re liable to go to prison. reporter: no-nonsense message that could save lives. for today, dawna friesen, nbc news, london. you know what? i think they shoul g tough, i really do. they have to get tough, because it s everywhere. i drive, you know, a couple hours every weekend, and it s just amazing how often i passed somebody on the road. and you see them. and i look down they re not only texting, they re reading maps. i ve seen people read books on the steering wheel. it s just out of control. and people lose their lives. still ahead, on a much lighter note, ann gets a laugh and sings in public when she joins a group that specializes in causing chaos and joy in public places. but up next, we re going to meet a family who now calls an rv their permanent home after the tough economy forced them to sell their house. first, these messages. back now at 7:44. with the high rate of foreclosures and national unemployment figures edging toward 10%, many families are going to extremes to survive. nbc s michelle franzen has the story of one family now spending their days on the road. reporter: jolene and dave dudley are mapping out the day. should we turn that way? reporter: driving to mt. rushmore for a sight-seeing trip with kids justice, jaden and adrian. ooh, there it is. reporter: it looks like a picture-perfect vacation right out of a movie. how about the wally world national anthem? reporter: but for the dudleys, driving state to state in an rv has been a way of life for nearly a year since dave was laid off as vice president at a software company. the economy kind of hit. things happened at work, too, where i was no longer needed at the time and i was let go. reporter: it didn t take long before the couple realized they would have to let go of their washington state home and lifestyle. i panicked. i saw six months down the road and my husband still not having a job and having a mortgage that we wouldn t be able to pay. reporter: they sold it all and drastically cut expenses. just taking care of the house with the mortgage and insurance and utility bills and things like that, we were probably looking at $3,000 a month. now we re looking at $300 a month for the same thing. reporter: amerins have always hit the road in search of adventure, but in the past few years, families have been turning to living life on the road full time out of necessity to survive in this recession. now we live on the road. reporter: performers kimberly and dennis goza have nearly 20 years experience of rv living and run a website for families living on the road. she says they have seen a spike in membership and more average families like the dudleys are joining. i would say it s ten-fold, the number of families that are listed on my website, and that s only the ones with websites. reporter: the biggest dilemma, downsizing. the dudleys living space is just 400 square feet. did you share a room at the other house or each have your own room? nope. own room. reporter: instead, the whole country is their backyard and classroom. nebraska, kansas and missouri. reporte the kids are enrolled in online school programs and there are other lessons along the way. in a big house, you re not really with your family at all. it just you re everywhere. you re at a friend s house, a soccer game, school. reporter: you don t miss that? no. not at all. reporter: dave recently landed a job where he can work from the road, but the family is not financially secure yet. who knows when the economy s going to turn around. it could be next year. it could be five years or ten years. and so, we re just making plans with the best that we can go on right now. reporter: investing in family and hoping it all pays off down the road. for today, michelle franzen, nbc news, south dakota and wyoming. and still ahead, the couple who had a baby and had to give him to another family following a heartbreaking embryo mix-up. they re with us to speak out for the first time about that extraordinarily difficult event. coming up, ann puts her pride aside and her public singing voice to the test. uh-oh. this is going to be something. i think it s well, just maybe you need your earplugs for this one. are these warm-ups? this is warm-ups, and this is a great group, improve everywhere. you ve seen them probably, you know, on youtube. yes. they do all these great things. they just break into song. surprise people. yeah, i think they drop their drawers, i think did you do that some. i did not do that part. that would have been a great tease. does ann drop her drawers? okay, very nice. was it fun? you know, they were so talented. you felt so out of their league, but it was hysterically fun and to see the people s reaction, that s funny, especially my singing. is this something that s going to be played on youtube over and over? do you think it s got the potential? i think there s a possibility. especially this video right here. yeah. this one s so riveting. all right, well, ann we look forward to it, ann. put her pipes to the test. first, these messages, your local news and the all-important weather forecast. good morning. i m barbara harrison. our time right now is 7:56. an early morning power outage is affecting some of metro s computer system. we are told buses an trains are running but thegencies website and call center are down at this time. in addition, bus fare box rs not functioning. customers cannot make purchases with their debit cards and the public address system and telephones are down right now. this will affect riders trying to use any electronic system, as in purchasing tickets to ride the bus or rail. we are working to gather more information for you right now. we will bring you that information as it becomes available to us. trains and buses are running. in many cases, you wil a very chilly start to this day. it is still frosty cold in many locations. it will rapidly warm up. a clear blue sky, a chilly 39. above freezing in prince george s, montgomery and arlington. in western fairfax and northern montgomery, and points west, below freezing. it will rapidly warm up and we will hit the mid 50s for highs in the afternoon with increasing clouds. a chance for passing showers late tonight. partly to mostly cloudy tomorrow, sunny, dry, and chill yi into the weekend. jerry, how is the traffic? montgomery county, a major mess going on. the computer that operates the traffic lights is on the fritz. georgia avenue, jammed. most of the major roadways, because of the traffic lights, are much slower than normal. quite the challenge. we will continue to 8:00 now on a wednesday morning. it s the 4th day of november, 2009. looking down on rockefeller plaza with all the olympics decorations on the plaza, because we ve got 100 days from right now until the opening ceremony in vancouver for the 2010 winter olympic games. can t believe it. we ve got lots of olympic athletes on our plaza, and one of those guys right there is jarrett speedy peterson. we ll talk with him and some others. a lot of hopefuls. people hoping to make the u.s. olympic team, in just a couple minutes. should be jumping, not spe speedy, right? can you imagine i am not gifted athletically. they are really talented. out on the plaza, i m matt lauer along with the left than gifted meredith vieira. you have an update on a story. a little more than a month ago, carolyn savage gave birth to a baby who was not hers because of an embryo mix-up. and she and her husband sean had to give the baby back to his biological parents. they have not spoken since the day of the delivery, and they are speaking with us exclusively this morning. they are quite an amazing couple. they have three wonderful children and family and friends that have supported them through this, but ultimately, it s a very lonely journey. also ahead, on a lighter note, nbc first artist in residence, bon jovi and the band will join us in a live on concert from london coming up. speaking of music, ann curry takes a turn, working out her pipes a bit. and she does some singing with an improve group to make people smile and laugh. and we will see whether we are among the group smiling or laughing. for now, we ll see ann s serious side, because she is standing by at the news desk with the headlines. hey, ann. all right, thanks a lot, meredith and matt. good morning once again, everybody. we begin with the election. the republican party is celebrating this morning after some big wins last night. in new jersey s governors race, republican chris christie beat out incumbent democrat jon corzine, whom president obama had campaigned hard for. in virginia, republican bob mcdonnell won in a landslide over democrat creigh deeds for the governor s seat. and in a down to the wire election, mayor bloomberg narrowly won despite out-spending his opponent by nearly $80 million. violent clashes today in iran, where police opened fire and used batons and tear gas on supporters of iran s opposition le lead yer moussavi. instead of chanting death to america, as is usual, today they chanted death to the dictator. secretary of state hillary clinton is calling on israel to stop building settlements in the west bank forever, and she says the u.s. does not accept their legitimacy. she made those comments in cairo this morning during a meeting with egyptian president hosni mubarak. clinton is trying to soothe arab concerns after she praised isel over the weekend for offering restraint but not halting the building of settlements. a sad end to the search for three missing north dakota college students. their bodies were found tuesday inside their jeep, which was submerged in a pond. the women were last heard from on sunday night when they made two panicked cell phone calls pleading for help. police do not suspect foul play. it is just 100 days until the winter olympics in vancouver, but in london, they re already looking forward to the 2012 summer games. today, queen elizabeth took a tour of the olympic stadium under construction and she helped plant the first tree at olympic park. and now here s brian williams with what s coming up tonight on nbc nightly news. hey, brian. hey, ann, good morning. coming up tonight, american taxpayers bailed them out, so how are the banks paying us back? well, some of them raising credit card rates through the roof. see what you can do to protect your good credit. join us for that tonight on nightly news. ann, for now, back to you. all right, brian, thanks so much. it is now 8:04. let s now take a check of the weather with al. announcer: today s weather is brought to you by advil cold and sinus. with the power of advil plus a strong decongestant. ask for it at the pharmacy counter. today, all the olympic winter sports have booths and activities set up here all around 30 rockefeller plaza. and look who we found in the skating area, sarah hughes, 2002 olympic gold medalist. sarah, good to see you again. thanks for having me. so, eight years since salt lake, almost nine. what were your fondest memories back almost eight. almost eight, i mean, yeah. my math is not correct. so, what were your fondest memories? you know, i was 16 when i won, and you know, having it in the home country and just skating and having all my family there. it was unbelievable, i mean, the whole thing. you had a lot of stuff going on along the plaza here. tell me about these skates. this is pretty amazing stuff. yeah. so well, today marks the 100 days to vancouver. right. so, now we need to remind people about figure skating, i guess, and here are skates, their blades throughout the ages. this is from the 1800s. wow. and skating started being popular in holland. and what people would do is they d take these blades and they d strap them to the bottom of their shoes. like their wooden shoes. their shoes, right. and so, this is the strap that would go around. that s cool. now, as it progressed, you can see here there wasn t much of a toe pick at all. right. and so, that started coming around here, and here they start to get a little more advanced in that you would be able to tie it to a key. and now, these are my skates 200 years later. and as you can see the difference from a little bit of a change. the first one. yeah. technology change. so, you graduated from yale this past spring? yes. you re thinking about law school? yes. a little break from school for now. all all right. good morning. here, we still have considerable areas of frost to the west of interstate 95 around the region at this hour with a clear sky. just now beginning to get a little above freezing. many locations are having the frost remain just west of i-95. 44 in washington. over the next half hour or so, all art yas of frost will be getting above freezing. later on today, increasing clouds. highs mid 50s. chance of a and that s your latest weather. matt? all right, al, thanks very much. when we come back, we re going to talk to the couple who received the wrong embryo. she has now given birth and they had to give that child to another couple. we ll find out how they re doing right after these messages. but nothing comes out! advil cold & sinus knows that the real problem isn t always mucus. it s often swelling caused by inflammation in your nasal passages. the right medicine for the real problem is advil cold & sinus with a strong decongestant that reduces swelling to relieve sinus pressure plus the power of advil for the pain. advil cold & sinus. the right medicine for the real problem. ask for the red box at the pharmacy counter. another take? 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[ female announcer ] you can t pass inspection with pieces left behind. it s soft and more durable. so you re left with a more dependable cle. fewer pieces left behind. new charmin ultra strong. when you re trying to lose weight, the more options you have, the more likely you are to stay on track. that s why there s 8 delicious kinds of special k cereal. because every girl could use a little variety. special k now in 8 delicious flavors. back now at 8:09 with an update on an emotional story that we have been following, a woman who carried and delivered someone else s baby after being implanted with the wrong embryo. carolyn savage and her husband sean are with us for an exclusive interview, but first, today national correspondent amy robach has the very latest. good morning to you, amy. meredith, good morning to you. it is a heartbreaking story for both the savages and the other family involved, the morrells, two couples brought together because of one very big mistake. life is slowly getting comeback to normal for carolyn and sean savage and their three children, this less than a month and a half after carolyn gave birth to a healthy baby boy that she immediately turned over to his biological parents, paul and shannon morrell. i think he looks the same. reporter: we first met the morrells and the savages when carolyn was 35 weeks pregnant with the morrels baby. i was sitting in my office and about 4:00 received a call from the physician who performed the transfer. he let me know at that moment, in almost one sentence, that carolyn was pregnant, but they had thawed and transferred another person s embryos. so, i was upstairs in my bedroom, and he came through the door and he just said i have really bad news, and i kind of sat up. he said, you re pregnant, but they transferred the wrong embryos. reporter: the couple had originally turned to invitro fertilization, or ivf, many years ago, after struggling to have a third child. it worked. carolyn gave birth to biological daughter mary kate after ten years of trying. and as with many cases, there were leftover embryos in the laboratory, fertilized eggs that could one day become a child. we felt strongly that we needed to give every embryo that we created a chance at life. reporter: in february, the savages went in to have those embryos thawed and transferred into carolyn s body, but the clinic made a mistake and implanted her with paul and shannon morrel s embryos. they, like the savages, had leftover embryos from the process of conceiving their two daughters. you were hoping to conceive. sure. we have two adorable girls that have bless us. we always thought about those six embryos. reporter: but then they received shocking news from their ivf doctor. he said, your embryos wer implanted into another woman, and i just went, ugh, and i just fell back in the couch. reporter: although they didn t expect to have a child under these circumstances, they are grateful to the savages for bringing him into the world. whatever access they want, they have. and hopefully, we ll move forward together. reporter: and as carolyn and sean prepare to turn the baby over, they just had one request. i said, we want a moment to say hello and good-bye. reporter: later that week, carolyn gave birth. and the morrels released a statement through their lawyer. paul and shannon morrel are pleased to announce the birth of their baby boy, 5 pounds, 3 ounces and 18 inches long. it s been a long, difficult journey and they re thrilled that their family is now complete. they will be eternally grateful for his guardian angel, carolyn savage, and the support of the entire savage family. meredith? amy, thank you. and carolyn and sean savage are with us exclusively this morning. good morning to you both. good morning, meredith. good morning, meredith. carolyn described it they de and difficult journey. for you it s been over a month since you gave birth. how are you coping? we take it one day at a time, just like we did during the pregnancy, and we re trying to get back into our regular, daily lives. every once in a while, the loss kind of sneaks up on us, but we know he s doing very, very well and he s thriving in the morell home, and that helps a lot. that helps a lot some. mm-hmm. september 24th, you gave birth to a baby boy that you knew you had to give away. mm-hmm. he is not your child. talk to me about the delivery. delivery itself went as well as we had hoped it would. we were thrilled that he was born healthy. he came out kicking and screaming, very feisty little guy. we kind of knew that from the pregnancy that he was going to be a mover and a shaker. so, it was a miracle. it was a childbirth. and just like any childbirth, we were thrilled when he was born. and then, sean, you had to take that little boy, that baby boy, into another room where the morrels were waiting, shannon and paul, and hand him over to his biological parents. what was that like for you emotionally? there were many emotions, because as carolyn mentioned, the miracle of childbirth is amazing, and we just had experienced that, and then shortly thereafter, within about ten minutes, i went with the nurses and the baby down five stories to a room where the morrels were waiting for him. and during that very short walk, it was exceptionally emotional. i was crying, but at the same time, there was a sense of pride of what we were doing and that what we were doing was right, and upon entering the room, just the joy that the morrels had at that moment it was within ten minutes, almost a second childbirth, where they got to see their baby for the first time, and that was neat and we were very, very excited for them, but at the same time, very, very sad about what we were experiencing ourselves. and what you didn t know at the time was that, carolyn, you were really in trouble on the table. i mean, you were bleeding profu profusely. yes. it was i learned later when the doctor came up it just seemed like quite some time after the initial delivery until carolyn was able to go to the post-operation room, and it made us wonder, and the doctor let us know that carolyn lost a tremendous amount of blood, that it was a very difficult surgery. she was fortunate to have two surgeons in there working simultaneously, and it was very scary for the doctor, which made us very scared as well. but thankfully, everything stabilized eventually and things did get better. i know the next day, you as a family with your three children had a chance to be alone with the baby to give the hello and good-bye that you was so important to you. yeah. how was that moment? well, we were so grateful to the morrels that we were allowed to do that, and it was bittersweet. it was fun to see the boys with the baby and our daughter. just kind of enamored by this little life that i was holding. and you know, it was a good hour that we got to spend with him. will you be seeing him again? have you worked out any sort of arrangement with the morrels? we haven t seen him since they left the hospital, the day after he was born, but we re hoping to see him hopefully in the next couple weeks here. everybody s kind of battling some colds and things and we certainly don t want to expose the baby to that. so, we re waiting until everybody s healthy. but is that hard, knowing each time you see him, you have to leave? yeah. i don t know what that experience will be like. everything in this journey has been new to us, and we re taking it one step at a time, and we ll see him at a time when we think is right and we ll see what that experience is when it happens. you still have frozen embryos that were not used. do you plan to and i know you cannot carry another child for medical reasons. do you plan to seek out a surrogate? and if so, where are you in the process? we do, and we already have a surrogate, a wonderful woman, who has volunteered to help us. we have a signed contract with her and we ll be moving forward with that some time probably in the spring, so, we re looking forward to that. any message to that little boy? oh, well, we love him very much, and he was always loved from the second he was we found out that he was coming to us, and we re happy we were happy to bring him home to his family. and we wish him happiness. we wish him a wonderful life and we look forward to any opportunity we have to see him and be a part of it, but that will play out over time. and know that it s a cautionary tale, too, for other families who are considering invitro, who may have frozen embryos and also that you re in discussions now with the medical facility that did this, in terms of what next. so, we appreciate, carolyn and sean, you spending this time with us. thank you. our best to you and your family. thank you, meredith. carolyn and sean savage. and we ll be right back. space behind the third row. most and traverse beats honda on highway gas mileage too. more fuel efficient and 30% more room. maybe traverse can carry that stuff too. the chevy traverse. america s best crossover. compare us to anyone and may the best car win. 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(pointing to self) windows 7, my idea. the sparkly flakes. the honey-bed bunches! the magic s in the mix. my favorite part? eating it. honey bunches of oats. taste the joy we put in every spoonful. honey bunches of oats. our natural sweetener comes with zero calories and a clean sweet taste. it won t insult your intelligence or make your butt look fat. it s the sweetness of the stevia plant served straight up, honest, uncomplicated. enjoy. try the first great-tasting, zero-calorie natural sweetener born from nature. truvia. honestly sweet. find it at your grocery store. this morning on our countdown to the olympics, 100 days to go until the opening ceremony in vancouver, and this morning we re going to give you a look at some of the athletes who hope to shine when those games begin. in the mountains of whistler, lindsey vonn is expected to contend for medals in all five alpine skiing events, while bode miller, one of the sport s biggest stars, tries to improve on a lackluster performance at the last olympics. downtown in vancouver, figure skater sasha cohen and ice dancers ben agosto expect to turn their silver medals into gold and the reigning men s figure skating champion evan isacek has plans to land on top of the stand. and the gold medal winner is a favorite again. skater apolo anton ohno will be chasing victory with five olympic medals already around his neck. he s hoping to become the most decorated u.s. olympian ever. the shaun white show will be at the half pipe, where he ll be going for back-to-back olympic golds. and snowboarder shaun white is certainly one of the athletes to watch in vancouver. shaun, good to see you again. good to see you, too. it s been a while since we saw you in torino. i know. what s been going on some. it s been great. i m doing my thing, riding, learning new tricks. this past season s been amazing, just practicing. i went to new zealand this summer and getting ready. when you look back at torino standing on the center platform and getting the gold medal, things like that, how did your life change immediately following those games? it just, i don t know, everything kind of blew up. i was already becoming successful with the board. it was just that extra push over the edge. i don t know. i went on this whirlwind tour, and i mean, people were applaudingn the airports and it was wild. i remember that you had made a name for yourself in the x games, and i thought when you went to torino, you had kind of a target on your back. everybody was talking about you. certainly now going to vancouver, you definitely have a target on your back as the defending gold medalist. how does that impact your psyche and your preparation? i don t know. i mean, i don t rember the last event i went to or where i was as one of the guys looked at to do well. i m excited. it s kind of a fun thing in a way. i kind of take it and use it, if everybody s counting on me to do well, there s got to be a reason for it, and i use that as a motivate or motivator, some pressure. when it comes to new tricks, how do you try to figure out what s going to be the next big thing? you know, it s tough. i mean, there s so many competitors and the tricks are always changing, sport s always changing. but i don t know, i ve cooked up some new tricks this year, and it s always you always take one trick and then evolve that into something else, and what s good fun is the recent tricks is, you come out of one flip, and where you would normally land, you go into another one. so, it s really and how do you develop something like that? do you work with an individual? do you work on a trampoline? how do you do it? i don t know. i mean, trampolines help. you know, we started doing stuff in snowboarding that the dudes, the guys in motorcycles do and land in foam pits and airbags and stuff like that, some stuntman action. but yeah, it s you know, that only gets you so close. you ve got to just sit there and dig deep and go for it at one point. i just want to mention, before you go, you re also very involved in target house. do you want to quickly tell people what that is and why it s important to you? target house is basically in memphis next to st. jude hospital. it supports the hospital and it s a long-term care facility that, you know, houses families while they re undergoing treatment. and it s amazing. i went down there when i was 16 and saw the place and couldn t wait to help out, time now is 8:26 on this wednesday, november 4th, 2009. breaking news, an important alert for any metro riders. metro s headquarters had a power outage. it s data computers are down. this means the agency website and customer call is down. riders can ride for free. rail customers cannot make purchase with debit cards. the e-mail alert is also down. all the trains and buses are running this morning. all electronic comnication systems on metro are not working due to computer problems. metro is working on this issue. there is no timetable for when everything will be back up an running. we will continue to follow this breaking news story throughout the morning. more breaking news. there is also problems on the road. let s go to jerry. since 3:00, the traffic management computer system of montgomery county went down. the traffic lights are having a major impact. they are working against each other in nonrush-hour mode. the good news, if you are going to be traveling in tacoma park. everywhere else is jammed. 8:30 now on this wednesday morning, november 4th, 2009. as we had mentioned, vancouver olympics just 100 days away, and we ve got athletes training all over rockefeller plaza, like these men and women. they are heading to vancouver as members of team usa s curling team. well, that s not them, but still ahead, for the first time anywhere, we re going it reveal what the team usa athletes are going to wear on the medals stand and at the ceremony. and after yea of practice, ann curry s making her singing debut on the today show as she thrills some people in a local food court. we re going to find out more about that. talk about a build-up. also coming up, the people who really do know how to sing, and that s bon jovi. we re going to be hearing from that band coming up, as members of our first artists in residence. in london. mr. roker, got a check of the weather? yes, i do. for today we ve got sunshine along the eastern seaboard, a little on the chilly side, sunny ouwest. we ve got snow showers across the great lakes, gulf coast as well. tomorrow we ve got a clipper bringing some rain along the coast, snow inland in the northeast, rain in the good morning. after a frosty, cold start, the frost is now melting. temperatures are just now getting above freezing. 44 in washington. a high today reaching the mid-50s wit increasing clouds. a cool front coming through tonight may trigger a passing shower late this evening. partly sunny tomorrow. morning lows near 40s should be dry and chilly on friday. frost in the morning and afternoon highs, low 50s. over the weekend, sunny, saturday. highs, near that s your latest weather. now let s head on down to washington, d.c., and say hello to mr. willie scott. hello, willie! hey, big guy. nice to see you. we had frost on the pumpkin, first one of the season. actually, a little freeze and our tomatoes are finished. that s the story of my career. happy birthday. how sweet it is. as we turn the jam jar and we say hello, lily! lily burnstone. she s from garden city, new york. 107. works at an interior design center with her beautiful daughter and reads three novels a week. how about that? what a woman. berthold herpe of kelseyville, california, 100. holocaust survivor. god bless. gives speeches at the sin going and loves the chicken dance. my favorite dance. and millie varga is 103. is a yankees fan. god bless. well, tonight may be her night, huh? evelyn johnson of morristown, tennessee, 100 years old today. world record holder for the most flight hours as a female aviator pilot. secret to longevity is doing what she loves. i don t think anybody argues with that. james stoops, summersville, missouri, is 100 years old today. get this, he survived a heart attack at 4, different kinds of cancer, and ran one of the first telephone companies in his tone. boy, that is a tough fella. god love him. and john bondurant is from bartlesville, oklahoma, 101. lifts homemade hand weights every single week. that s it. that s all. now back to meredith in new york city. thank you very much, willard. coming up, get ready to smile, because ann breaks into song with an improve group. but first, this is today on nbc. oh, dear! oh, dear. i love to laugh loud and long and clear now to our special series today gets a laugh, and ann, you re up. well, matt, it was a rare opportunity to join a group of merry pranksters called improve everywhere. their spontaneous acts of coordinated absurdity are a hit on the internet, so we thought we d give it a shot and see how people would react when something turns an ordinary day into an extraordinary experience. in a minute, we re going to synchronize our watches. reporter: undercover agents. we re going to freeze in place. reporter: secret missions. everybody s going to do jumping jacks. they must be twins, i think. reporter: no, they re not spies, but members of an improve comedy collective who put on spontaneous performances in the most unlikely settings. they are improve everywhere, and professional prankster charlie todd is their founder. we cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places. reporter: they froze in place at grand central station. hundreds of people frozen everywhere. this is wild. reporter: stormed a best buy posing as fake sales people. staged a phony u2 concert. if you didn t come to take your pants off today, you re in the wrong spot. reporter: and even dropped their drawers for their annual no-pants subway ride. our main goal of improve everywhere is to give a complete stranger a really great experience and a really interesting story to tell. reporter: their newest recruit, a prankster wanna be. our mission, a spontaneous musical about lunch. our target, lunch-goers at the famous trump tower atrium. days before, our surveillance teams mount hidden cameras throughout, and a dusty store room poses as our command center just a few feet away. first, we meet a few hours before go time. and start off with some vocal warm-ups. next, time to learn lines. we love lunch, i m eating clam chowder sorry! you guys are great. i need some work! yes, i have a solo, just one little line that could lead to one big mistake. i am a little nervous. i mean, i ve never done this before. i don t sing out in public. i m eating clam chowder my biggest worry is i m going to miss my cue. but after some more coaching i m eating clam chowder i think i m ready to take down the house. nice. moments away. okay, i m going. you ve got to go, too. come on. audio ready. ready. video? ready. go. hey, paul. hey, paul. jeff, what are you doing, man? it s lunchtime. i know. why are you yelling? what s going on? because i love lunch. yeah, i know. jeff. jeff, don t sing a song, man. i love lunch, it s half way to dinner, i love lunch, if that s a sin, then i m a sinner there s soup to slurp and chips to crunch, i love lunch come on, there s got to be somebody out there who does. i love lunch. sing about it! okay. i ve worked since nine, now it s time for me to take a break and eat roasted beats and fava beans on a bed of mixed greens i love my chili with corn i like my sandwich warm that looks delicious, wish i could eat lunch twice does this every day. we all love lunch, we re going to use our forks now we love lunch, we re major lunch dorks now there ain t no shame in lovin lunch e love hey! what the heck s going on here? we re singing a song about lunch. singing a song about lunch? we love lunch. i love lunch, too, he loves lunch, too, he loves lunch, too, i love lunch too we love lunch, we re gonna sing it louder we love lunch, i m eating clam chowder clam chowder, how s it taste? you know, it is a little chilly. need a break and escape the clock, you punks, we love lunch bum, bum, bum, bum [ applause ] can we eat now? yeah! off broadway sensation! bravo. they were so much fun, but you know what, and the looks on the people s faces was just so priceless. and it s really harmless. it s just about giving people joy. give us that line one more time. and i m eating clam chowder nice. very nice. you know, the song is catchy. it is. i love lunch it s great. yes. bon jovi singing that song. i don t think so. everybody will be singing it this afternoon if they re watching the show. it was very fun working with them. your pipes were good. sounded great. really did. i wish more people were like that, that people just did break into song, that cartoon characters walk by. exactly right. all that stuff. people felt unbound to express themselves. sometimes, though, you wish people would not sing. remember when natalie sang take me out to the ball game? take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd she actually has a nice voice. she does. that s not the best example. this is the show where nothing goes away permanently. it s just saved in some vault and pulled out. the only reason we do that is because when we come back, some people who can sing who? nbc s artists in residence, we re back at 8:44, and now to nbc s artists in residence, bon jovi. you ll see a lot of them over the next month acros the networks of nbc. it all leads up to our big concert on the plaza three weeks from today. this morning the guys are in london. we ll talk to them in a moment, but first, more on the new jersey boys 25-year, chart-topping route. on july 15th, 2008, bon jovi brought to a close the biggest grossing tour of the year at new york s legendary madison square garden. we re not supposed to still be here. oh! here we go! reporter: bon jovi has rocked the globe for a quarter century, an extraordinary milestone by any measure, sometimes even to their surprise. shot to the heart and you re to blame reporter: the documentary when we were beautiful follows the band s 2008 lost highway world tour, giving you unprecedented backstage access to life on the road. the band, keyboardist david brian, drummer teco torres, guitarist ritchie sambora, and of course, jon bon jovi, reflect on their times together, good and bad. new jersey-born jon bon jovi was a rock star in the making at an early age, pying clubs in his teens and at age 21 formed a band and signed a record deal. she s a little runaway reporter: jon was the frontman and boss and wildly ambitio ambitious. their slogan at the time the best-kept secret in rock and roll. their first two albums enjoyed some success, but in 1986, their third release shattered their slogan. it sold a staggering 12 million copies. you give love a bad name reporter: the band released hit after hit and toured the world several times, selling out stadiums from moscow to tokyo. they were young and wealthy beyond their dreams, and everything was at their fingertips. but by 1989, one of the most dominant rock groups of the late 80s had become victims of their own ccess. there was a lot of touring. touring was almost senseless. didn t know where you were, why you were there anymore. it became a machine. at one point, almost wasn t about the band. we were just a mess, emotionally, physically. we were in the cocoon of a tour, the cocoon of being in the biggest rock and roll band, without a doubt. you get to that crossroad and you burn out like we did. reporter: in 1989, the music stopped, the members went their separate ways. jon married his high school sweetheart and released a solo album, but the band of brothers put rumors of a breakup to rest and recorded a new album, keep the faith. jon expanded his artistry to include acting and developed a strong interest in politics and philanthropy. and if you think bon jovi will ever rest on its laurels, think again. jon says the first 25 years are just the opening act. we weren t born to follow, come on and get up off your knees tico, richie, jon and david are in london promoting the release of the circle released in the states next week. how are you doing? good, matt. good to see you, man. so, let s talk about this documentary. why now? why did you want to do this? well, it was just giving people a very unique view inside the working mechanism of a band. it s not all life on the stage. it s the rest of it that goes with it. and it was just told in realtime by fr individuals, and better than a memoir, you know, and it s not inflated. it s just the truth and the whole truth. richie, most of your fans have followed this band for a couple of decades now. when ty watch this, are they going to be surprised by anything? well, you know, they re just going to see why, i think, that the band is still relevant today. i think that s the unique thing about the documentary. and also why this organization and why this family is still together and why we re still making great music and people, you know, flocks of people are still coming to see us. so, it s a great look, as jon said, behind the curtain. tico, one of the things that s impressed me about you guys when you come to the show is before the concerts, you re always hanging out together, laughing with each other and with us. sometimes we get groups coming here and they ve been together for years and it s like we have to build separate holding facilities because the members don t want to talk to each other. how have you guys managed to avoid the drama for the most part? we re brothers, you know? i mean, we ve gone through everything together, and the beauty is to be able to play music together. i mean, to be 16 and do what you love is the reason we re here. so, i mean, thank god we could do this and hopefully for another 25 years. and david, what about the challenges in the industry right now? the music business today is not what it was when you guys got together 25 years ago. are the changes for the better or for the worse? the changes aren t it s definitely a different world than when we first started out with the internet and different ways of getting records. but i think the one thing that we have and always will have is that we re a great live band and we love to play live, and that s the one part where you can t copy or you can t get. it you have to come and see it. but jon, the touring, man, it s tough. you guys have got families at home, and how is life on the road today as compared to when you started out? well, it is what it is, matt. i mean, this is what we do. it s a good way to make a living if you can get it, you know? there s no complaining here, and we love our job. so, as long as we re happy, we ll keep doing it. well, we re happy that you re traveling a little bit and then coming to rockefeller plaza the day before thanksgiving for a huge concert out on the plaza. guys, good luck there. we can t wait to see you. thanks, matt. thanks. cheers. all right, next wednesday the guys are going to be here for a special veterans day performance in honor of our servicemen and women. if you want to come on down, remember, bring your military i.d. and again, it all leads up to their concert on the plaza november 25th, the wednesday before thanksgiving. up next, team usa hockey heroes past and present. but first, this is today on nbc. we are back with more of our countdown to vancouver. in 1980, the u.s. men s olympic hockey team made history with a stunning win over the soviet union. to this day, the miracle on ice remains one of the most watched hockey games ever, and team usa would go on to win the gold, defeating finland. michael aruzioni scored the winning goal on that night. jim craig was the goalie. they re here with a contender for the 2008 team. good morning. 30 years ago, jim, if you can believe it, a momentous memory. is it still a vivid memory? yes, it s a great memory, but michael always says, it was something that was very positive for america and usa hockey and the olympics in general. we re hoping that they can bring it back this year as well. mike, at the time, you scored the winning goal. you ve described it as indescribable. how did it change your life, that victory, in personal terms? well, if we lost, i wouldn t be here. you know what, it s just given myself and i think my teammates and i so many opportunities to do so many different things, and it s been fun. and jim mentioned, it was an opportunity that not only was special to us as a team, but to a nation. and when you can have an event touch so many people s lives like ours did, it s pretty special. and dave, now you re hoping to make the usa team. how inspirational are these guys? they re huge. we ve had a few dinners with these guys and they ve told us their stories and the journey that they had, and we re hoping to repeat not only on the 30-year anniversary of the 80 olympic team, but the 50-year do you think we stand a chance of a medal this time around? we re going to work our butts off. we have a group of guys coming together and we only have one day to get our stuff together when we get to vancouver, but we re going to do our best. well, i d like you to teach me to shoot a goal. i think that s a good idea. i ll get rid of my papers. thank you, mark. you ve got your full gear on there. she s right-handed i ve got 40 seconds to do this. let s give her a bunch of pucks here. can we get her a wider net? a wider net. wise guy! what do you do? let s start it back here. now just sling it. just perfect! whoa! one. you may have a spot on the team if we re not careful whoa! one. two. two more. two more, two more? there you go! all right. whoa, whoa, that one doesn t count. very nicely done. y good morning. 8:55 on a wednesday. it is a beautiful morning out there. i m barbara harrison. in the news at this hour, we have breaking news, an important alert for anyone ridinghe metro. their data computers are down. agency website and customer call center are down as well. some bus fare boxes are not functioning. which means riders can ride those buses for free. rail customers cannot make purchases with their debit cards. the e-mail alert system is also down. we will bring you more as it comes in to us. they tell us the problem is not connected to the power company. all trains and buses are running. we repeat, all trains and buses are running this morning. all electronic communications systems on metro are not working right now due to computer problems. we are also following breaking news on the rhodes at this hour. jerry edwards, can you tell us about that? barbara, chopper 4 is over montgomery county, route 29 ov fairlane road. big problems. the traffic computer has been malfunctioni all morning long. the lights are not on regular cycles. in some spots, they are working against each other. most of montgomery county major roadways are just gridlock. if you are going to be traveling rockville or tacoma park, no worries there. downtown rockville, jammed good morning. plight and sunny. temperatures climbing into the 40s. chance of passing shower we re back with more of today on a wednesday morning, the 4th day of november, 2009. all morning long we ve had olympic fever. look at the pretty flags there on the plaza. we re marking 100 days until the opening ceremony at the vancouver winter olympic games. and we re not done yet. we re going to help celebrate a little more in just a few minutes. meanwhile, out on the plaza, i m matt lauer along with al roker and natalie morales. we ve got kind of a crazy crowd here. a little improve. they re inspired by ann, i think. a little crazy out here. coming up, we ve got our money 911 experts in line, helping you with your money problems, everything from retirement savings to should you pay off your house or your other debt before you stop working. and what if you re out of a job, should you raid your retirement savings to pay off your mortgage or pay your mortgage? answers to those questions and more, coming up. all right, and then, often you hear about it a lot, you know, lately, whenever you read about the latest sex scandal or affair, you hear about sex addiction. is it a real disease and what are the sns of sex addiction? dr. drew pinsky has moved on from celebrity rehab to sex rehab for those who are coping with this addiction. we ll find out what the signs are and what are some of the treatments as well. and on a much lighter note and a little bit more fun note, our last finalist for our today s kid reporter will learn his or her fate live. all month we ve been checking on some kids who want to be part of our today team. well, today, one more journalist in training will find out if he or she will continue in the today s kid reporter challenge. yay! a lot to get to. let s go inside. ann is standing by. she s got a look at the headlines. i do. thanks, matt. good morning once again, everybody. in the news, the votes are tallied, and this morning republicans are celebrating some big wins. in virginia s governors race it was a landslide victory for republican bob mcdonnell over democrat creigh deeds. and new jersey s new governor-elect is republican chris christie. he beat out incumbent democrat jon corzine, despite corzine s strong show of support from president obama. meantime, new york city s mayor, mike bloomberg, barely w a third term after heavily out-spending his democratic opponent. violence erupted in iran today during competing rallies marking the 30th anniversary of the u.s. embassy takeover there. thousands attended a government-sanctioned demonstration at the former u.s. embassy, where militants seized americans and held them hostage for days. nearby, authorities used tear gas and bombs to scatter people who were protesting what they call a rigged presidential election last june. a moderate earthquake, meantime, struck overnight in southern iran, damaging buildings and injuring at least 700 people there. the 4.9-magnitude quake was centered in the court city of bander abbas, home to a large oil refinery. classes are canceled at dickinson state university, where the mystery of three missing students has ended tragically. the north dakota campus is in mourning today after police found the women s bodies on tuesday inside a car pulled from a pond. there were no signs of foul play, according to police, and the victims, all members of the softball team, were last heard from on sunday night when they made cell phone calls for help. in philadelphia, fire broke out this morning on a crowded commuter train, but there were no reports of any injuries. the fire complicated rush hour traffic for a second day of a mass transit strike. and today the federal reserve wraps up a two-day meeting on interest rates. many analysts expect the fed to leave rates where they are. and a daytona beach man thought he was big winner when the bell started ringing and the numbers started flashing on a slot machine at a tampa casino. he started screaming when the machine flashed that he had won more than $166 million. the casino owners told him that the machine had malfunctioned and said that he hadn t actually won a thing. well, now he s looking for a lawyer. it is now four minutes past the hour. let s get a check of the day s weather from al. wow, that s a tough one. all right, let s check it out, see what s going on. for today we ve got a little clipper bringing some moisture through the great lakes and the upper ohio river valley. some frozen precip mixed in there. you can see this clipper coming across, bringing showers this morning. by this afternoon it moves into the central great lakes, brings some more rain, and this evening, a little bit closer. that rain gets into interior sections of western new york, pennsylvania, on into west virginia, but it should stay dry tonight for the world series in yankee stadium. cloudy, cold, light winds, 8:00 temperature, 47. by the time it s all over, temperatures in the 40s. hopefully, yankees win tonight, good morning. bright and sunny now. earlier, we had widespread frost over most of the region west of interstate 95. now, it has warmed into the 40s. its 48 in washington. highs today into the mid-50s with increasing clouds this afternoon. there is a chance of a few passing showers late tonight and partly sunny on thursday. morning lows near 40. afternoon highs, near 50. could have more frost near friday morni somebody called 911 now to today s money 911, where our experts help you solve your money emergencies. this week, our all-star team is today s financial editor jean chatzky and cnbc s personal finance correspondent sharon epperson. across the street, ann s got some questions at dean&deluca. so, let s get started. here we go. okay. first of all, we ve got a viewer on the phone sorry, i ve got that out of order. pardon me. first, we are going to check out dennis in napa, california, and had a s got a question on the phone live. caller: good morning. my question is, regarding retirement. we re looking at retiring probably in a little less than seven years, and from time to time before retirement, we come up with a little bit of extra cash. and i was wondering, is it better for us to put our extra savings in retirement investments or should we pay down the mortgage on our house, which would be due just about the time we re ready to retire? all right. well, jean, what should they do? it s a very good question. you have to look at this as a question of the return on your money, and the return that you get from putting money into your mortgage is probably about5% at this point, minus the tax deduction, which gets you to about 4% or maybe 3.5%. if you can beat that by putting money in your retirement accounts, if you re getting any sort of a match on the money or if you re earning more than that, even though it s not guaranteed, i would probably load up those retirement accounts, although i do have to say that in general, i like the idea of going into retirement with no mortgage whatsoever, because when you stop working, it makes it more important to be able to reduce that cash flow. all right. we ve got another question here. this is from david on the phone in st. paul, minnesota. tough one here. david, what s your question? good morning. caller: hi, good morning. thanks for taking my question. i ve been unemployed since february and my savings and unemployment are going to run out probably around march 2010. and i m wondering if i should use my 403(b) retirement to subsidize my living expenses and pay my home mortgage or sell the home, which has very little equity in it? so, sharon, what do you think he should do? david, that s a really tough one. i think you have how much do you have in your 403(b) right now? about $80,000. well, the problemis, i never like people to raid their retirement fund, and the problem is, when you take that money out, if you re under 59 1/2, you re not going to have $80,000 to work with. probably for every $1,000 you take out, you may only have about $650 to work with there to spend. and so, that may not really help you over the long term. you may still lose the house in a year or two. what you really need to think about is how you re going to reduce your expenses and stretch that money that you have for as long as possible right now. talk to a non-profit credit counseling agency. go to the national foundation for credit counseling, or do you think he should sell the house? i do think he probably should sell the house. the sentimental value tied to a home, yes, he doesn t have a lot of equity in the home, maybe he can consider a short sale, but it s better because all of your expenses when it comes to renting will be cheaper with utilities and insurance, things like that. so that will be the best way to reduce your expenses. good luck, david. ann s got a question from our crowd. that is true. kathy is from detroit, michigan. she s got a question about the stock market. yes. when s the best time for us to get back into the stock market? is now a good time? i bet a lot of people want to know that. i ve got an answer. hi from detroit. i m from detroit, also. yay for detroit. listen, yesterday is the best time to get back in the stock market. right. you never wanted to get out of the stock market. what you want to do is make sure you re iesting across all levels, because neither sharon nor i or al can tell you when the market s going to go up or go down. so your best bet is to buy at all levels so you can work this roller coaster until you get to retirement. let s head to leland, north dakota, and pauline. she s on the phone with a question for us. good morning, pauline. caller: good morning. hi, i opened a college account for my 6-year-old daughter about two years ago, and i deposited around $8,000. and now it s gone down to around $4,000. i only have a certain amount of money for college fund and i can t put little money that i have on risk and don t want to keep losing money, because when it s gone, it s gone. should i move the money to a cd or somewhere else? you know, sharon, pauline s probably in the same situation a lot of people are. yeah. a lot of people are in that situation, and i m in that situation. i have a 529 plan for my son and my daughter. what you need to do is think about what you need to have for that college education. it may not be the full tilt. so, first of all, don t panic that you haven t saved enough for college, because perhaps your daughter s going to end up working i hope my son or daughter do and they ll help contribute to their education. the other thing you need to think about is you probably need more conservative investments to help you sleep at night. north carolina s plan, you can go to the website. they have age-based options on a conservative track to help you figure out the mix of investments to have and they ll change over time asour daughter gets closer to college. don t put it in a cd. another thing you might want to think about for saving for college and for yourself as well is a roth i.r.a. contributions that you make to the roth i.r.a. you can take out tax-free at any time. you can use it to pay for college at that time. all right. good luck, pauline. caller: thank you. thank you. now let s go to denver, colorado. we ve got andrew on the phone and he s got a question for us. andrew? caller: hi. in the past five months, i have graduated college, started my career and have gotten married. i don t have such great credit right now and my student loan grace period is set to end this month. i have $14,000 in student loans with a 6.86 interest rate and $6,000 with a variable interest rate that s about 2% right now. i want to rebuild my credit, save for emergencies and save for my wife s 2010 tuition. what will my first steps be? sounds like your wife is a student? andrew, it s good that you ve got this laundry list and you re saying what s coming first. and your tuition payments, your student loan payments don t come first. back burner them. you ve got a tax deduction on the amounts of those loans that you re paying back at least for the next five years. so, pay those off over time. right now, what i would do is focus on building an emergency cushion and then starting to invest for your own retirement. take a look at your wife s tuition needs. apply for as much financial aid as you can possibly get for her. and then weigh the cost. if you ve got a 401(k) match that you re being offered, the return on that money is so much better than any loans that she might possibly have to take out for college that it s okay to borrow in that instance. all right, andrew. well, good luck, and weope you and your wife can get things on track. now, let s go one more time over to ann, who s over at dean & deluca. this is pretty cool. jason is from dayton, ohio. and he s the first person to ever go to college and graduate from college in his family. he s got debt to pay off. i was wondering what the best way would be to pay off my students loans would be? sharon? one of the things i would say is just start to come up with a plan now to pay them off systematically. go to a calculator at finaid.org and you probably already know what you re paying every month. if you can consolidate them, that may be a good way to go. it may not eliminate the payment, but it may keep you on track to pay on time. please, remember to pay on time and also pay automatically. that may be able to reduce your interest rate little bit and give you a little relief. all right. good luck, jason. way to go. ladies, thank you very much. jean chatzky, sharon epperson. thank you very much for your help. if you have questions for our experts, head to todayshow.com. coming up, one woman s secret to smoother parenting, and it all has to 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(announcer) this season, walmart will match any other store s advertised price. the price match promise. it means you can stop chasing sales, and start enjoying christmas. save money. live better. walmart. that, on the list of things kids love, our party pizzas have just passed toy robots. awkward. kids love totino s party pizzas. to earn cash back. talk about simple. earn cash back on purchases to pay down your credit card or go into savings. with the power rewds® visa® credit card. only from bank of america. dr. drew pinsky tackled the world of drugs and alcohol addiction for his reality show celebrity rehab, and now he s back taking on one of society s most hot topics, sex addiction. his latest show on vh1 is called sex rehab with dr. drew, and it follows eight addicts as they go through his intensive treatment program. dr. drew pinsky, good morning. good to have you here. thanks for having me. seems like every time we hear about sex addiction, it s involving some celebrity who s cheated on his spouse and ends up checking into rehab to be treated for sex addiction. is this a real disease? oh, absolutely. it causes real destruction. in fact, one of the reasons we did the show, such as celebrity rehab is we got tired of people in the press making fun of our patients. we said, look, these are serious people with serious suffering and we want to show how this works. sex addiction is an addiction like any other. who s affected? i mean, really looking at the statistics. it s like 3% to 5% of the country. it s a common thing, particularly internet porn these days is a rapidicly increasing diagnostic category. but you mention people being brought in by their families, but that s common with any addiction. it s usually the family, the courts, the doctors bringing them to the treatment and it s the same. what are the telltale signs of sex addiction? it s deeply embedded in who the person is. there is usually trauma in chilood abuse. sexual abuse, neglect, that sort of thing. but the common threat is consequence. if you have problems in your relationship, schools, health, financial status, and yet, this behavior is continuing in spite of all that, that s the time to look into it. this is a behavior that normally brings people closer and creates joy. instead, it s creating shame and tears people apart. ultimately, these disorders are intimacy disorders. these are people tha can t tolerate closeness, and sexual compulsion is the substitute for that. and we usually think of men having this as a problem, but it affects men as well, because in your show, you follow eight patients, and five of them are women. sure enough. it does affect women. women tend to come into it through love addiction, though you ll see on the show that three women came straight in through sex addiction. love addiction. which is an interesting topic. i think love addiction, pretty much everybody can relate to. it s a romantic obsession built on fantasies, and we ve all done that at 14, 16, 17 but we grow out of it. right. you don t grow out of it and it gets worse and you can t have a life or relationships because you re building these fantasies, and if you get into a relationship, you can t tolerate the closeness and that s when sex addiction kicks in. people cheat. obvious question, you re putting these different people under the same roof to be treated and they re sex addicts. does that create some problems? it challenges them, but this is a professional environment. we are on top of them. we teach them to dress a certain way. they re not allowed to touch each other, and in fact, they  talk about the feelings they have as a result of not being able to manifest the way you would. you see jennifer ketchum, who jumped deeply into treatment. she in the porn industry and didn t anticipate having an experience with our treatment. she actually came in to sabotage us, as she tells the story. but she s having a profound experience and her life is changed. what s the course of treatment, besides teaching them to dress better, how to talk to each other better? it s different than other addictions. there s a 12-step model and it s difficult for a couple reasons. one, there s a lot of trauma issues. two, the behavior s deeply embedded in who we are. and three, it s like an eating disorder. you have to eat, and this is a behavior that eventually they have to restore, but for a while, they re completely abstinent. they have an inner circle where they can t do these kinds of behaviors and you see what kind of feelings emerge when they can no longer use these strategies. once again, we have heard about sex addiction again when we heard about espn analyst steve phillips fired from his job after it was revealed he was having a relationship with a 22-year-old co-worker. to the critics out there who roll their eyes and say, yet another one who, you know, has entered sex addiction rehab, what do you say? i say, this is a man who is suffering, there s no doubt in my mind. this is a family that s suffering. that if he doesn t meet criteria for sexual addiction, he couldn t be admitted. you have to meet certain criteria in order to be treated in these environments. and yes, it s easy to say it s almost an excuse sometimes. it s easy to say it s just an excuse. right. but again, that s why you need to watch my program, because you ll see how deeply embedded and very serious pain and trauma these behaviors are. when people really would like to control their behaviors and they cannot and it destroys people they love, that s an addiction. and what does it do to the spouses and the loved ones? i mean well. this is an ongoing course of therapy, right? and now i think i ll have to come back and do another segment about the spouses, because they too have to engage in the treatment process. there is a reason they were trapped in the addict in the first place. they have to grow with them. thanks for being here. you can watch sex rehab with dr. drew on sunday nights. coming up, the secrets restaurants don t want you to know, like, is the bread recycled from one basket to another? 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(announcer) you know you re gonna need it. why not stock up for less? walmart has unbeatable prices on everything your family needs for cold and flu season. save money. live better. walmart. more now of our countdown to vancouver, 100 days to go. we heard earlier from some members of the 1980 u.s. hockey team who made history with their miracle on ice against the soviet team. soviet team. what you may not know is the 1960 u.s. hockey team performed their own miracle, taking home the gold for the first time in their sport. they defeated the canadian team that had dominated the sport for five of the previous seven games. nd bill cleary was the team s leading scorer. bill, good morning. yay! how many goals did you score? all right! that s wonderful. so, i mean, when you think of that, 1960, 50 years ago, and you guys i m surprised they can even remember it, you know? the underdogs a big difference between us and the 80 team was they did that in color. we were black and white. black and white, right. when you said beating the canadians in hockey is like c canada beating the u.s. in baseball, it was really unthinkable for you to do this. yes, and i played in two olympics. i played in 56 and we beat the canadians twice. i ve got to get that in. are we going to beat the canadians with this team? what do you think? i hope so. thank you. thumbs up for bill cleary. even h1n1, from surfaces. but, lysol disinfectant spray has the power to stop the spread of cold & flu viruses. it s approved to kill more germs than any other brand. it even kills h1n1. lysol is the number one brand recommended by pediatricians. lysol. disinfectant to protect. look for money saving coupons for lysol products. only in this weekend s wspaper. (announcer) not just sinus headache. ahhhh! but pressure. and congestion. introducing new sudafed pe® triple action™. for more complete relief from the sinus triple threat. new sudafed pe® triple action™. a great day out there. frosty cold this morning. things are warming up in the mid and upper 40s around the region. afternoon highs should peak in the mid-50s. chance of a passing shower later this evening. partly sunny tomorrow, mid-50s. warming gradually oh, my little sweet thing something about this music s really fun. just a little shake in your walk. he was born in new zealand, raised in australia, but now keith urban is the darling of nashville, and tomorrow he s going to be our darling, right, natalie? can t wait for that. when he s in the studio for a live performance. he is married, you know? he is. to the beautiful nicole kidman. a lot of star power in that marriage, and not the only one with a lot of star power. check this out. what? we love lunch, we re gonna sing it louder, we love lunch, i m eating clam chowder i don t think i was singing there! that s just hard! i m craving clam chowder. improve everywhere. i love them. the group stages these impromptu, fantastic things, staged a musical during lunch yesterday. recently. a few weeks ago. they re called improve everywhere. you can go to youtube and just see tons of videos where they ve gone on subways and they ve dropped their pants, but in a kind of a clean way. we do that here, actually. it s a good thing you weren t stuck doing that one. i know, exactly. but the point is, the idea is to give people, have them walk away with a story, where they can have a good experience is the whole idea. it was fun seeing the people there, the surprise. then we ve got some other singing, too. oh, come on! why would you do that? why are they doing that. shh, we have to hear. no, we don t have to hear it. give me some peanuts and cracker jacks, i don t care if i never get back i m sorry, natalie. i was pregnant. is that an excuse for not being able to sing? that s okay. now, why would we ow. natalie even i admit it s atrocious. you know, you tried. if you listen closely, you can hear dogs howling. stop. all right, back to business. okay. coming up in this half hour please. with the winter olympics just 100 days away, we re going to show you what the u.s. athletes will be wearing. it s an exclusive look at what they ll be wearing for the on the stands, on the winner stands, and the closing ceremony. very nice. plus, we ll meet the final finalist in today s kid reporter challenge. also, if you have kids, the woman who claims she can tell you specifically what your baby meant each time she cried, she s back now and she s here to share the secret to handling your children. she says it s primarily knowing about what their primary sense is, whether or not they re more auditory, more taste exactly, taste or smell-oriented or tactile. so, she s going to tell you how to desire and how to best interact with your child, given whatever their primary sense is. okay, all right. we ll find out a lot about that, but first, let s check on the weather. all right. for today, basically sunshine along the eastern seaboard. we ve got [ howling ] oh, yeah, natalie doing another number. sunshine through the southwest on into the gulf coast. then for tomorrow, we are looking at bringing some rain into parts of new england, interior sections of new york and pennsylvania may see some snow showers. we re looking at rain in the pacific northwest and sunshine from texas on into the southwest. oh, look, actually, we have the dog that was howling. just take a quick lo, we ve got a picture of him. there he is. sammy sammy bright and sunny morning. we had widespread frost around dawn but that frost is all melted off now and at this hour, temperatures are well into the 40s. 48 in washington. highs today climbing into the mid-50s. we ll have increasing clouds from the west as a cool front arrives. we will have a possible passing shower by late this evening. partly to mostly cloudy tomorrow. highs in the mid-50s. chilly weather for friday. afternoon highs, low and that s your latest weather. al, thank you. and coming up next, how to unlock the secrets to your child s behavior, right after this. grandma, take me there. but with my occasional irregularity i wasn t always up to it. until i discovered activia and everything started to change. announcer: activia is clinically proven to help regulate your digestive system in two weeks when eaten every day. now i enjoy every minute. my grandkids are happy, and so am i. activia like 2009 h1n1, wash your hands and get your flu shot. regularly disinfect surfaces. and talk to your friends about doing the same. let s help spread protection against flu viruses like 2009 h1n1. hey, you re supposed to be a vegetable! there s a full serving of vegetables in every manwich. besides, you re a grain anyway. - but i m corn! - yeah, corn s a grain. 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save money. live better. walmart. announcer: today s moms is brought to you by walmart. save money. live better. walmart. this morning on today s moms, customized parenting. remember the woman who said she could translate the meaning of your baby s cries? well, she is back, and if you re struggling with a cranky baby or rebellious toddler, behavior specialist prescilla dunston says determining your child s primary sense will help you understand them better and create a happier home. her new book is called child sense. prescilla, good to have you back here with us. thank you for having me. what exactly do you mean by child sense? that s improving communication between parent and child, and it s based around the five senses. we all have five senses, but we have a dominant sense, and when you understand what your child s dominant sense is, it means you can communicate in their language. so you re going with their natural inclination towards understanding rather than forcing upon them a way of doing things that s not comfortable. so, you can be a better parent if you can read your child better based on whatever that dominant sense is. that s right. it s about communication, and when there s clear communication, the relationship is much better. i was trying to figure out i have a 13-month-old, and i was telling you before what he is, because he s very much tactile. he learns by touching and doing. but what are some of the senses and how do you figure out where your child fits in? with the five senses, and if they re a dominant sense, you have tactile, where these children are very physical and they touch a lot. if they re a baby, they need to be held all the time. as they get older, they express themselves physically. so, if they re happy, you know, they ll squeeze you really tightly. if they re upset, they ll push you away. then you have auditory, which everything is about what they hear. they re very sensitive to the tone of voice, very sensitive to sounds and they re aware of themselves in the world through what they hear. visual children are about what they see, and they can pick up any little detail what jewelry you re wearing and they notice all these little things about you. and then taste and smell. yeah, they re much more emotional. they re aware of people s feelings, and you know, they feel safe in the world as long as mom and dad are feeling safe in the world. we had parents who send in questions asking you for advice. the first is a video from charlotte in san antonio. my 2-year-old daughter is very social. she approaches strangers to talk to them and i m afraid her outgoing personality is going to put her in harm s way. how do i teach stranger danger in a way that she ll understand? can you help? so, priscilla, stranger danger for a 2-year-old. is it too early to start talking to them about this? i think we can certainly start encouraging them to learn about boundaries. and one of the ways to do it with a 2-year-old is to encourage them with jobs. so, if you re in the supermarket, you know, can you please put the groceries on the conveyor belt, can you, you know, help mommy push the stroller, giving them jobs so they know what they re supposed to be doing. and then they also learn that, you know, you talk to the cashier if they re handing over the money. they learn that communication, interaction with people around them is really more about a job at hand, and that will set them up so that later on, you can explain to them that you don t just talk to anybody. right. it s all about talking to people that you approve of. yeah. all right. next we have katherine, a mom in new jersey, and she writes, our 2 1/2-year-old daughter fights us every night at bedtime. she slept in a big bed for months until baby two arrived and now she won t sleep in it all. how do we handle this? i think this is a common problem when parents bring the second baby home. there are two issues. one is the anxiety of having another sibling. it s like when we have our first child. this girl has just had another person brought into her life. so, there s always going to be that sense of the world is changing. if it was an auditory child, one of the things to be aware of is that the baby comes in as a lot of noise, it s a lot of people. and so, the noise can often be very distracting and upsetting for an auditory child. often they re told to be quiet. right. and really, they should be, be quiet, the baby s asleep. but the best thing is to ask them to use a quieter voice rather than asking them to be quiet, because auditory children express themselves through what they say and right. dnd through what they hear. right. so distractions, minimizing distractions, and also making a special time at night for them to talk. all right. priscilla dunstan, great information. the book is called child sense. thank you for coming back. and priscilla will be answering your questions on the website. so go to todayshow.com and join the today s moms community to participate. coming up next, an olympic fashion show, right after this. the magic s in the mix. my favorite part? 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[ band plays anchors aweigh ] [ ship horn blows ] this morning on our countdown to vancouver, just 100 days to go. that s right, the olympics gets set, get under way in just over three months. and this morning we ve got some olympic hopefuls joining us. here to show off for the first time anywhere what american athletes will be wearing during the competition, lisa baird is chief marketing officer for the united states olympic committee. lisa, good morning. good morning, al. how are you? all right. and we have got people chanting go, usa. we love this. what are the trends we ll be looking at this winter? well, we re going to be looking at a classic american palette, red, white and blue. the nike outfits are stressing performance. they ve got to perform really under any condition. let s get started. this is the medal stand look. we hope to see this a lot in february. and showing off our look, short track speed kaser j.r. cheleski and gretchen bleiler. good to see you again. tell us about this look. it s fantastic. for the men, the hat, it s all about warmth, it s all about comfort. are you warm? very warm. surprisingly. and with gretchen, you ve got a cat with a slightly different cut. it s about being sporty and also looking great. will this hat stay on when you re snowboarding? only on thepodium, al. there you go. only on the podium. and what about these tops here? these are water-proof down jackets. they re a first of a kind because they re made entirely from recycled material. oh, cool. yeah. they re sustainable. and the great part about them is that no two are alike. all of the prints are different. they re like snowflakes. and folks can buy these, right? folks can buy them starting now. tell us about the shoes. oh, the shoes are great. you can see them. the shoes are air glazers. again, they perform under any condition and these athletes see them all, don t they? thank you very much. let s look at the closing ceremony outfits, and for that, we ve got freestyle skiers sho kashima and emily cook. hi, guys. how do you like the outfit? we love it. we re excited to be here showing off the clothes. very neat. what do we have? we have hats again. these are vintage-inspired. they re classic american with a modern flair. we ve got beautiful wool cardigans with usa on the back. we have the whole look, of course, the team usa logo, which is what you ll see. what about the shoes? oh, the shoes are fantastic. you can see they re team usa on the side. they re alpine boots. they ll stand up to any kind of weather and snow and ice, and that s what we re seeing. that s terrific. thanks, guys. thanks so much. good luck coming up in february. thanks. last but not least, you get a chance to personalize your own gear. that s right. this is by athlete tim burke, hey, tim. how do you like it? stylish, but a little cold right now. that s great. you can buy this and customize it at teamusashop.com. and you can have your name on the back. tim will show you. you can get the logo. and you can get themn any color, even purple. how do you order this? at teamusashop.com, and it s open today. fantastic. let s bring all of our models back out, show off that look. very nice. nike and ralph lauren, thank you so much. and thank you. thank you. look forward to seeing you in vancouver just 100 day announcer: today s kid reporter is brought to you by carnival cruise line. okay, now we re getting serious for today s kid reporter, because on monday, we introduced you to our fourth and final group of semifinalists and asked you to weigh in. and they were tyree from new jersey, sofia from new york, jack from illinois and stephen from georgia. so, now it is time to announce the winner of this latest round. drum roll. and the winner is 10-year-old jack hennessey from naperville, illinois! naperville. naperville. yeah! look at those eyes! whoa! that s so cool. you seem excited, jack. you seem excited. what s making you so excited about this, the most excited about this? well, i m most excited because i just because out of all the kids, i was so surprised when i was 1 of the 16 finalists, and now just to know that i m moving on farther in the contest, it s just really fun. hey, jack, what was it like when you got back home in naperville, and how did your neighbors and your school, your classmates treat you once you got back? when i went home, everyone was just joking around going, can i have your autograph, jack? aww. and they re like and then someone wanted to pretend to be my agent and they re going to be my bodyguards. and it was fun. how quickly it starts. so, now you get to come to new york. you ve got to hop on a plane today and come here, because you ve got a busy, busy day planned for you tomorrow. are you ready? yeah, i m ready. i m really ready. it s really cool. you know, you really were inspired by this garden that you made and your parents, your grandparents gave you that garden. so, i bet you want to give them a big hug today after all of this. what do you want to say to your family? yeah. i want to give them a huge i want to give them a huge hug. aw well, take a deep breath, jack. and have a great day at school today, jack. yeah. and then we ll see you here tomoow, okay? get ready to do some work, because you all have some reporting to do for us. that s right. tomorrow, jack joins our other today s kid reporter finalists. so we ll see them tomorrow. that s right. they get their final assignment. we ll be back. 9:56 is your time. good morning. i m eun yang. we are continuing to follow breaking news affecting metro riders. metro s headquarters experienced a power outage. their data compute are down. this means the can us mer call center and the e-mail alert system are down. some fare box rs not functioning which means passengers are riding free. rail customers can also not make purchases with their debit card. all trains and buses are running. all electronic communications systems on metro are down. we are following breaking news out on the roadways. let s go to jerry edwards. chopper 4 remains over what has turned into a horrific commute for folks in montgomery county. the computer that operates the traffic lights has malfunctioned and has been so since 3:00 this morning. the traffic lights are out of sink, working against each other. there is old georgetown road, bumper to bumper for miles. an example of what it looks like on many of the major roadways. tom, hope you have better news on the weather. a sunny day. frosty, cold start. temperatures are warming up into the upper 40s to 50 degrees. mid-50s by mid afternoon as we have clouds on the increase from the west. ol front coming through tonight. likely triggering some passing showers this evening and partly sunny and cool tomorrow. cool and dry into the weekend. eun? thank you, tom. well, we re just laughing up a storm. yes, we are. it s wednesday. it s matinee wednesday. yes. it s the 4th of november. all those things, it is. it is. we re going to go see memphis today which is getting really great buzz. u ve already seen it. i have seen it. i liked it so much i want to see it again. the music, you just rock out to. you really enjoy. my friend chuck kuper is one of the people that is in it. he s going to be singing for us tomorrow on everyone has a story. it s all going to work out nicely. i almost wasn t here today. were you sum monoed for something? i don t know about you guys. when i go to my mailbox i hardly read my mail anymore. most stuff doesn t come in the mail. you pay your bills online. you do? yeah. ads, political junk, and whatever. i just mainly throw everything away. right. do you know how many trees died so you could throw your mail away? i didn t ask for it. i parentally i got two things that i shouldn t have tossed away. and they are juror questionnaires. who even knew what that s for? what the heck is wrong with you? it must be a thing. i m not interested. i threw away one. apparently, i don t remember. and then i threw away two. if you weren t entertaining the fleet in that apartment of yours all the time, maybe you d pay attention to your mail. then i get a third thing in the mail. i go, what s this? i open it up. it says here juror subpoena failure to respond. i was like, oh, those must have been important. whatever. our records indicate that you have failed to respond to juror questionnaires that were sent to you. questionnaires. you don t think that s mandatory. you think you can feel it out. questionnaires usually mean, please, would you like to fill it out? due to this failure you re required to report to the courthouse within ten days. nonappearance may subject you to a fine and/or imprisonment. you deserve it. jail. you do the crime, you do the time. i tried to go yesterday. it was election day. i drove all the way down to 60 center street. it was closed. i m running out of day so if i m not here, i m in prison. what is the moral of this tale? the moral is open your mail even though it looks like it s just junk from banks. i usually tear it. i don t even open it. rip, rip, rip. who opens all their mail? who has time? you look at the i could go to jail, joe. no one can hear you, joe. no one can hear you. now she s proven, joe, you re not miked. anywho. speaking of voting and elections, election day hey, hey. hold it down, people over there. all right. so we had there were big elections in new jersey. and virginia. and virginia yesterday. and the incumbents were tossed in both states. right. the democratic incumbents. corzine was out in new jersey. that was a big upset. it was funny. i remember watching some ads that appeared obviously in the tristate area. and the other the guy who won is a little on the heavier side. chris christie. so what. you can see that. most of america is. the ads that were run that corzine ran, were clearly, like, fat guy ads. mocking him. putting a sweaty actor playing him. they said that part of what happened started to turn after those negative ads. what probably turned there a long time before that, i think it s among the highest property taxes in the nation. a lot of people are fed up. and income taxes. and new jersey s losing a lot of people that are leaving, fleeing the state, just as they are here in new york as well because there are other states to live in. people go, you know what? enough. i don t want to have to pay these taxes. right. given the job situation and the economy if you are an incull bent trying to get reelected chances probably aren t that great just given thentire climate. especially if you re talking about raising taxes, too. on people already tremendously burdened. it s going to be interesting. it s interesting again. it s been one year since mr. obama was elected. it s 100 days until the olympics. something about that is kind of the 100. it s kind of interesting. it is interesting. we re the only people that work at nbc that are not going to the olympics. i want to go. we re the only ones. yes. they don t want an international incident with us there. we will be reporting on it, though. we undetand. yes. we ll be doing a lot from there. yes. we ll be doing tons of stuff on the olympics. tonight is a big sports night, sports fans. which you aren t. i am. at the end of everything. you don t even get it. you re the kind of person they resent. i don t care. i love the drama. right now it s game six. it might go to game seven. it s thrilling. i know. the yanks and the phillies, tonight, 6:00. no. game six. 8:00. the yankees are ahead 3-2. why don t they play the games a little earlier for the kids. for the west coast, i believe. i don t know. they used to do monday night football at 9:00. kids want to see the game. they can t stay up till midnight. people who work early want to see the game. it s all about money, hoda. if you read your mail, you d know that. andy pettitte is going to be pitching. pedro martinez is the starting pitcher for the phillies. we just want the team with the best personnel to win . right. because we re not rooting for anything. we want to be fair. we have lots of friends in philadelphia who love their phillies. lots of fans here. and the yankees. a lot of people who love the yankees. they do. they do. i m just saying. the studio. all this week we ve been trying to get a laugh. i think the jury s out if we ve gotten some. i think meredith got some, al got some, and i think ann got some, too. she was part of this singing troupe. they go to places you don t expect to see them. they start singing around people, sort of like a mini musical popping up. it s rehearsed. they know what they re going to do. in that sense they put on a little musical which is always there s ann. what happened was they were in some food court eating. trump tower. one by one, let s listen. singing the song called i love lunch. let s listen. we love lunch hold it. hold it. jazz hands. look at that. it was really, really cute. she was terrified. that s not easy to sing in front of people. i m just saying, it s not simple. i once had a thriving career. not exactly thriving. yes, it was thriving. all right. so on friday coming up, we re doing something. tomorrow, i guess, is matt. i can t wait to see that. yes. you ve fallen for many, many men in your life. did any of them have an accent? yes. and what accent did they have? the sexiest accent i think in the universe is british. british? british. close your eyes and just hear it. so good. doesn t even matter. you don t care about anything else. this is exactly what you said about john grisham yesterday, too. if any of you guys have your eye on hoda, use an accent. number one in the world turning out, irish. an irish accent. i know. it s bizarre. number two? italian. interesting. yeah. three? they like lots of women at the same time. so that s a little problem, right. italians. next? scottish is three fren french. i love that. then the english. australian s five. i think australian and south african accents. where s american? we re ten. number ten. look at us at number ten. i don t think we have an accent. we have dialects. southern accent. the brits would think we have an accent. we re going to joe. who is not miked. we re passing joe. going straight to sara. i say australian. i say the fans on facebook agree. australian across the board. amber, hope. we also got some of the typical ones. scottish. i could listen to girard butler read the phone book. i think australian won on our wall. i can t believe that was fifth. australian. i know. you always wonder, who are the people that were polled? it was 1,000 international people. international people. all right. what about these. pickle pops. i don t know why they re here. when i was a little girl i did drink pickle juice. is this frozen pickle juice? bob s original pickle pops. that is like a kosher i don t even like no. how is it? terrible? okay. anywho. coming up next we have two funny, funny people. jerry stiller, george ka stanza s father. anne meara. she was so dirty downstairs in the make-up room. she s filthy. we ll be right back. the only agony i have is staring right back at me. i would sell him for a dab of rouge. how about a touch-up? oh, sweetheart. i would love one. could you get me my make-up kit? it s over there in the cup board. don t break your back lugging that trunk full of war paint. jerry stiller and anne meara find humor in the most unexpected places. in a scene from nbc s popular hospital drama mercy tonight they make a guest appearance. today they re making a guest appearance with us. we re with kathie lee and hoda kotb. pronounced right. thank you, anne. thank you. how are you? i was just told that nothing happens in the first half hour of the baseball game, so watch mercy tonight and you catch it s an incredible show. anne and i are featured. we re heartwarming. i love that you guys are funny. the promos look very sad. you guys add some humor. i have something that happens to me in it. but it clears up in the third act. she breaks her hip on the night before we have our 65th anniversary, wedding annirsary. why don t you leave room for them to ask a question? why? and then what happens is james putter, the doctor, the orthopedist who comes back from a tour in iraq, comes back and fixes the hip. his name isn t putter. it s tucker. he s a wonderful actor. he has a kid named atlas. ann heche s lover. i m talking about babies and things that you don t even care about. you were such a mediocre father. hoda kotb. in real life how long have you all been married? 56 years. 56 years in therapy. he can t take it. what s the hardest thing about living with her? it s it s been a wonderful trip. let s say that the easiest thing is when we get on stage together and we have a little activity he ll never tell the truth. he just glosses it over with a sick patina of sugar. there s no such thing as it s not hard to live with anne. you just have to put up with that. that s all. you are so lucky. what s the hardest part of living with him? he s always late. always late. he genuinely is happy if i m doing something he s not in and i do good. he acts like it s him. there s no boundaries. you have a couple of projects going, don t you? oh, he has such a lot of projects. is that cute how she segued to that? there s a hallmark it s coming out sometime next year. commemorating the olympics. i play the part of a caretaker of an ice rink that s now being hit by the wrecking ball. and we try to save the rink in the small town. ain, you re heartwarming. maybe it stinks. we don t know. we didn t see the movie. people are going to have to determine that. what s the other the other one s a movie called what? swingers ? swinging with the finkles. i like it. hoda kotb. i love you guys. she s not drinking. she s just like this. this is sober. my daughter is mandy moore. you know her? adorable. very good actor. you know the rest of the story. amy and mandy in my mind are the same people. she s a psychologist. i m a psychologist talk about mercy. tonight is mercy. we wouldn t be with hoda kotb and kathie lee gifford. you wanted to hear the plot line? no. thank you for asking. the nice thing is, we live. i like what s happening on this show. we actually at the end they actually wo people, 65 years married, we make love. we put bags over our heads. no. we put bags over our heads! it s a happy ding disgusting! she plays vivian lee. i play clark gable. i don t even look at you when we make love. we survive. if you can stand it, there s more of them tonight on mercy at 8:00/7:00 central. we don t die. i ll give you that. coming up next, what restaurants don t want you to know, after this. we don t die. i ll tell you that right now. we re back with our special series. today we re talking about the things restaurants don t want you to know. like is the bread basket recycled? is that order of fish really fresh? steve worked as a waiter and manager for ten years and is the author of waiter rant. and danny myers, a restauranteur and author of setting the table. danny, let s start you. often when it comes to the basics like getting a reservation, is there the best way to make sure you get a good reservation, a good table? i think the important thing is to know why you reoing out to eat. if it s a real important business dinner or maybe it s romance or you re entertaining in-laws for the first time. you should really have a reservation. on think, on the other hand, one of the most fun things to do is call a restaurant the day of. and your odds actually increase on getting a table. because people have canceled? people cancel at the last minute. sometimes somebody got sick. sometimes a restaurant was playing it a little too careful because they wanted to be on time for the reservation. the reservation book can fall apart at the last minute. restaurants love when they hear from you at the last moment. it s a much ruder world. do people show up later and later and later and then not even call when they re canceling? we re finding the opposite. which is that more people have the courtesy these days to cancel. there s a new service called opentable.com where people can use online table reservations. that works beautifully. let s talk about the bread basket for a second. we always see this bread basket. it gets delivered to your table. whether you want it or not. what happens to the bread you don t eat? in every restaurant i ve ever worked in, it goes in the trash. in the trash? we don t recycle. that s sad. can t we somehow find a way to give that tohungry people? in days like today with viruses and illness it s probably not a good practice. it goes right in the garbage. some places, though, the rumor was they reused it or turned it into bread crumbs. that s something i ve never seen. what if food gets dropped on the floor. if you re at home cooking a nice rib-eye and it hits the floor, what are you going to do? cook it. right. that s what they do in restaurants. unless it hands in a puddle of chemicals. some do, in some restaurants. not one of yours, danny? that s correct. when they often read you the specials and tell you what s wha, tell us about that. special is a great opportunity for you to get to know more about the restaurant you re dining at. classically the daily special was really used as a way for the restaurant to use up yesterday s le leftovers. that s not really a bad thing. yesterday s meat could make a great la sanya. yesterday s vegetables could make a great soup. it s a great way to distinguish between restaurants that uses specials as a way to get rid of leftovers or promote what s fresh. how would you know? get in tune with the seasons. any time you hear cues like braising greens. pumpkin this. pumpkin that, squash, whatever, that s definitely seasonal. when you start to hear something in the middle of the cold weather months that sounds like aspare gus or raspberries, i wouldn t go for it. i think a great way for diners to save some money and save time at the same time is to take meats that are tougher cuts that take longer to cook that you may no do at home. but they re a lot less expensive. anything that s really expensive like steaks and chops, you can cook at home anyway. a restaurant s going to mark it way up. take something like short ribs or brisket. the kind of cut that takes longer to cook, restaurants know how to do it. it s a lot less expensive. it saves you time. what about the water thing? there s such a so much talk about water these days. are they just trying to sell water, basically, or is the tap just as good for you as the bottle? i think that depends on where you re from. i always ask people if they wanted perier or source municipal? what would they say? i m a big believer you should not feel bad because you want a tap water. it adds several dollars to your bill. i d rather spend those dollars on an extra bottle of wine. coming up, stunning fall hair makeovers. you re not going to believe these. after your local news. the latest on breaking knew. a traffic nightmare. traffic lights misfunctioning in montgomery county causing huge backups. good morning. i m eun yang. also coming up, the new warnings about a chemical found in some plastic food containers. critics say it is we re back on this wednesday with today s beauty. ways to solve the hair faux pass. whether it s the wrong cut for your face or color that looked bet ordinary reason the box. li we scoured the streets in search of women whose hair needed a little help. you plucked people out. where did you guys go this time? we were up and down fifth avenue. i m turning into a pretty bold guy. basically, i have to go up and say, hey, lady, we got to talk. usually they respond. sometimes they do a little duck and shuffle. the first woman was a woman named annika. let s watch this little incident. hi. i work for nbc. i do the today show. every friday we do ambush makeovers. have you ever seen them? i think i have. we re doing another segment now where we re picking people from the street who we think could benefit from a little bit of a hair color and a great haircut. what do you think? sounds great. i d love to do it. are you game? i m game. we re going to do it right now. that s cool. seemed a little reluctant. at were her issues. let s look at her before picture. number one, she grew her hair way too long. you know why? because she didn t know what to do with it. right. common syndrome. here we go. annika, let s see the new you! step on out here. watch this. oh! wow, wow, wow! it really is extraordinary. tell us about the cut. that s gorgeous. dana did the haircut. she cut off ten inches. gave it layers. side added highlights. you look years younger. what do you think? i love it. look at you before and after. this is a perfect example of why not to fall in the beauty rut of just staying the same. shake it up. the next woman is cara. let s listen as luis ambushed her. i work for the day show on nbc. we do makeovers. i see you have a new baby. not too much time to spend with yourself. i was wondering if maybe you d like a haircut and hair color. maybe. it will be a lot of fun. a completely new look. i will do the best to make you look the most beautiful i can make you look. sure. it s a deal then, kiddo! let s walk in the salon. then we ll talk about it from there. okay. oh, wow. so most people are fair game. just drop everything to get it done. i just have such a way with women. this is cara s before picture. all right, cara. come on out. let s see the new you. oh, nice! tell us about the hair. the first thing is, you know, cara had too much of a good thing. long, beautiful, thick hair. we layered it, gave it shape, movement, which it needed desperately. she could have gone blond or red. i made her this light golden red and made her blue eyes pop. i knew it was the right color because when she was finished she said this was my mom s natural color. what do you think of the new cut? it s great. it s always been kind of like that. they did a great job. perfect for a new mom. sometimes you have time. most of the time you don t. that s right. you look adorable. thank you. all right. the last woman you went up to was a woman named jennifer. let s watch liouis in action. i m the hair expert from the today show. i think you d be the perfect makeover. are you ready for a change? sure. why would you like to change your hair? i m not actually sure. i ve always had the curly hair. it s kind of in a growing out phase now. you know what? change is good. change is fun. we re going to do it toy. okay. are you ready? sure. let s go. jennifer s before picture. it s curly. tell us about the hair issues. okay. jennifer has curly hair. she loves her curls. basically she s putting too much product on, gel, letting it sit like that. she desperately wants to be able to run her fingers through her hair. all right. come on out, jennifer. let s see what louis did. come on out. oh, my gosh! did you grow your hair? isn t that funny. it just curls. it tightens it up. dana cut it and reshaped it, layered it. it gave it movement. again, she can run her fingers through it. i saw from the dark brown hair color, even added the most minimal light golden brown highlights. it s a completely new look. what do you think? the best i ve felt in years. that s astonishing. will she be able to do it herself, louis. yeah. and she can wear it curly or straight. or if she wants to she can do a treatment that will make her hair stay straighter longer. all you ladi didn t mind being ambushed at all, right? it was okay? you look terrific. louis, another home run. louis has a salon right here in manhattan on fifth avenue and a great one out in beverly hills. coming up next, jill martin coming in to solve your fashion emergencies after this. such a show-off. time for today s style and solutions to your fashion emergencies. oh, yes. if you like to step out of your house in style every day, you re going to need some tools to do it. if you want to be a true fashionista you must always be prepared for that last-minute wardrobe malfunction. jill martin is here for help. hey, everybo. fashionistas. let s begin. even fashionistas need a little help. this, i love. this drys, this nail polish from sally hansen, $5 at drugstores, drys in 60 seconds. 60? 60. i m going to time now. i purposely didn t do my nails. at the end we ll see if it s dry. same color. if your feet are painful feet are painful. i m always in flats during the days, heels. these are great. under $15. hollywood fashion tape. you fold them up and they go right in your bag. are they comfy? yeah. small, medium, large and they re disposal. $15. wear them a few times. then throw them away. flying. or out at night. then you throw them in your clutch. we re in the tight department. this is a fashion emergency. because so many people think their outfits are bland or they re tired of wearing the same old thing. they want to in second get a whole new look. look at all these different tights. throw them on. $12 to $20. really changes your outfit. tights are so in right now. it s a veritable pluth e.r.e these are new from the container store. these are for panties or tights. look how organized this is. for bras. this, i m not insinuating anything. i know how you love to work out. most detergents that were made in the 50s, they don t take away the odor, preserve the fabric. what are you saying? i think ur work outclothes should be preserved. this is win, a new detergent all the athletes are using. it takes away the odor and preserves the fabric more. two minutes. we got it. these, joey is a big fan of. producer joey. that smells good. i like that. u love that. i came in with a little oil. blot it. look how much it s taken off. it s your favorite thing. christine got me on those. touch-up. 90 for $30. look at all this oil on your face. it s lovely. jeans, instant hem. look at this. can you see this? it just clips to each other. what a smart idea! hemmingway.com. it folds up. look what it looks like. it s an insta hem. they just stick on the side? it sticks and you fold it under. that s genius. this, i love. who wants that? come on! loohow organized my tooth paste is. look how organized this is going to look when i have people over. this, i love. these are ear pockets. tommy is wearing them. can we get a shot of tommy? i knew you were wearing earrings. they have pockets in the scarf. do you see? there s pockets here. oh, you put your hands in them? you can put your hands or you could put a credit cardor money if you re going somewhere. and the ear pops from the same company are great. you don t mess up your hair. how do they stay? look at tommy. look. you put your ear in them. it doesn t mess up his hair. exactly. want to try it? they re very cute. i ve got earrings. jill, you always come up with the best stuff. you do. i like the scarf with the pockets. jill has a book coming out. it s called the tease. we re going to play who knew? you re going outside. is my nail dry? it s dry! it s dry! it is that time of the week when we take you outside our studio walls for our who knew? quiz show. because today marks the 100th day countdown to the vancouver olympics we decided to put your winter knowledge to the test. kathie lee is outside on the plaza ready to hand out $100 to the winner who is know their stuff. to those who do not they get kathie lee s cd. it s an excellent cd. that s what i ve heard jimmy roberts, nbc sports and correspondent and 13-time emmy award winner is here to help me fact check. is it true this is going to be your 13th olympics? you know what? i don t count anymore. you don t count? there s no doubt about it. whatever i do, it s the most fun. nothing like it. first book out, called breaking the slump. we have to all go out and get it. ask jimmy if he knows who hosted the nighttime olympics from calgary. i remember, kathie. which city hosted the 2006 winter games? was it torino, italy, athens, greece, or salt lake city. torino, italy. you got that right, sweetheart! torino, italy. it was a lot of fun. a lot of people may notemember that torino was the first capital of italy. and the games, of course, going back to vancouver for the second time that a winter games is going there. back in 1988 in calgary was the first one. let s go back across. gentleman from alabama. with a metropolitan area population of 2.2 million, vancouver is the largest city to ever host a winter olympics. true or false. let s go with true. let s go with true, alabama! good for you. wow. all right. true. the answer is right. yeah. very, very smart crowd out there. not only is it the largest metropolitan area to host a winter games, but we re coming off the beijing games which was the largest metropolitan area to ever host any olympic games. of course the summer games in beijing two years ago. how big is beijing? you stumped me on that one. can i get a kathie lee cd, please? let s go back across. he s so funny. what sport is known as the fastest sport on ice, ms. dallas, with athletes reaching speeds of over 95 miles per hour on the 2010 olympic track. speed skating, skeleton or luge. c. is that right? yeah, that s right. yeah. congratulations. the answer is everyone s nailing it. the luge. did somebody give these people out there the answers? they re all keyed in. it s crazy. just sliding downhill. there s the picture. amazing. nothing more than gravity and your weight carrying you. speeds of about 90 mile answer hour. the speed skaters get to the speeds just about between 30 and 40 miles an hour. that s pretty quick, too. do you remember wh al and matt went down on the luge on top of each other. that was a special olympic moment. nice folks from boek ka ra tone. what is the official motto of the vancouver games? one world, one dream. no? i don t think so. no. come on. this is a great cd! so the answer is actually with glowing hearts. how did they come up with that? the way they came up with it is maybe the canadian national anthem is on kathie lee s cd. the line actually comes from a line in the lyric in the canadian national anthem. with glowing hearts we see the rise, the true north strong and free. could you sing that? i cannot. but i know somebody around here who probably will take a stab at it. back across to kath. i don t like his attitude today. from new mexico, who is the most decorated olympian of all time? i have to say b. you have to say b, so you d be right! there you go. bonnie blair. we got to get these people working in the olympic research room. everyone but one so far. bonnie blair. bonnie blair, six olympic medals. but, you know, perhaps one of the great underappreciated stories of all time is the five olympic medals, all gold within that eric hyden won at the olympic games. apollo ono also five going for six in vancouver. eric hyde won all gold in distances. time for one more. go back across. two friends who have been friends for 40-some years from atlanta. which event new for vancouver will have men s and women s competition and bring the number of medal events to 86? ski half pipe. did they get it right? no. no. which one is it? i m not sure. it s ski cross, ladies. i m so sorry. no. you re going to get thank you. what is ski cross, by the way? it s amazing. if you haven t seen it, you ve got to see it. it s basically a bunch of people skiing downhill, bank turns. the best way i think to descri it is it s kind of like nascar on snow and ice. oh, wow. it s all, you know, no holds barred. they re heading downhill. great stuff. thank you so much. good luck with your book. we wish you good luck with that. you c catch all the olympic action from now until the games, including complete coverage and information on the universal sports website. that s universalsport univsalsp. kathie lee is going to come back across the street and we ll be back with more of today on nbc. okay. a program reminder. don t forget to vote for the regular guy you think should join our all-guy panel. just go to our website at klgandhoda.com. vote for the guy you see fit. you have until 3:00 p.m. eastern time on friday. that s going to be a lot of fun. let s switch over to sara over at her post. gina saying the rocker dude may be interesting. he might have some juicy stuff. the dad, stacy wrote he was cute and has a cute little boy. totally selling out. that was strategy on his part. lee wrote in, definitely number two if his wife doesn t text him the responses. then my favorite was jamie wrote i only want to hear from curtis ste anyway. and today is curtis s birthday. happy birthday, curtis! working on he apprentice. also i think we should consider jerry stiller. i love him. keith urban tomorrow.