Transcripts For WRC Today 20100212 : vimarsana.com

good morning. let the games begin. they ve trained years for a few precious moments, a chance to make history. to dazzle the world with athletic perfection and daring. a chance to burst on to the world stage. you never know what s going to happen. or to redeem a dream delayed. i can guarantee you that i m going to do everything i can. from all over the world, the athletes have come to vancouver and we ve got a front-row seat to all the excitement, all the drama, all the fun, as the olympic winter games get under way today, friday, february 12th, 2010. captions paid for by nbc-universal television and good morning, everyone. welcome to today on a friday morning, 12th day of february. you re looking down at the city of vancouver, now up to our location here on grouse mountain, a beautiful spot. we re happy you ve joined us. i m matt lauer. i m meredith vieira. ann curry. al roker. you me it! congratulations! good to have you here. hail, hail, the gang s all here. you got out yesterday? got out and now we re here and ready to go. this is exciting! it s beautiful up here, isn t it? it really is. it really is. you know what s nice is when the wind shifts and the smoke comes in your face. i ve got a pork shoulder in my pocket. that s a whole other story. thimountain, ouse mountain, is open 24 hours a day now throughout the duration of the olympics, and it s 4:00 a.m. here, and take a look at the crowd. how wonderful they are to come out. give us a cheer, folks. it s nice. we re just hours away from the opening ceremony for the 21st olympic games. that s right. in a short period of time, all attention will be on the building we re going to show you right now. this is bc place, downtown vancouver. and for the first time ever, the opening ceremony for a winter olympic games will be held indoors. so, what do the canadians have in store for the rest of the world, especially considering that they are following that incredible opening ceremony in beijing two years ago? we re going to speak to the premier of british columbia in just a couple of minutes, see if we can get some sneak peeks. well, you re covering it. can you tell us anything? i have the information. you couldn t beat it out of me. let s try! put him in the fire! and this is all about the athletes, ultimately. 216 americans here representing usa, including lindsey vonn, still dealing with that serious shin injury. she to to the snow yesterday for a short period of time. she s going to let us know how she did. okay. and then of course, carrying the olympic torch it is quite an honor, and you got to do that yesterday. breathtaking experience. it really was. you re going to share that with us later on. i lik that outfit. really nice. i didn t drop it i know that was the next question. i did not. doing a good job down there. also, we ll have a very special guest this morning. michael buble, the crooner we all love, is actually from vancouver. he s going to be giving us a special concert. all right. we have a lot to get to. we want to start, though, with news that s broken the last 24 hours back home, a health scare for former president bill clinton. he spent the night in the hospital, though he has just checked out after having two stents inserted in a blocked artery in his heart. right now we ll get the latest from rehema ellis at new york presbyterian hospital. what can you tell us? reporter: we can tell you that the former president and his daughter, chelsea, left the hospital just a few moments ago, matt, and we also should tell you that the doctors said shortly after the procedure they did on the former president, he was back on his feet and the prognosis is excellent for a full recovery. thursday night, secretary of state hillary clinton arrived in new york from washington to be with her husband. doctors say the former president had been experiencing chest discomfort for a few days before seeing his cardiologist thursday. that cardiologist inserted two metal stints to open a blocked artery in president clinton s heart. the procedure went very smoothly. president clinton has since been up and walking around and visiting with his family. he s in good spirits. reporter: president clinton has a history of heart disease. in 2004 he had quadruple by pass surgery to open four blocked arteries. clinton, known for his grueling schedule and love of junk food, has not slowed down, but doctors say he did change his lifestyle after that major surgery nearly six years ago. his cholesterol numbers and other risk factors that we follow have all been excellent. reporter: this latest scare comes just as former presidents clinton and george w. bush are focusing on relief efforts in haiti. last month, clinton spoke with matt on today. as we get into the recovery and the rebuilding phase of this, that s what former president bush and i are supposed to do. we want to keep america involved over the long run. reporter: spokesman for clinton pointed out the 42nd president s a fondness for this hospital. not so long ago, he attended a groundbreaking ceremony here. he d hoped to come back as a visitor and not as a patient, but nevertheless, he s in great spirits and on his way to a speedy recovery. reporter: we want to show you me tape now, matt, of the presidenand his daughter, chelsea clinton, leaving the hospital just a few moments ago. the doctors had said yesterday that they wanted to be clear that the president did not, he did not have a heart attack and there has been no damage to his heart. the doctors also said that, again, the prognosis was excellent for recovery and said that the former president could be back at his desk working on monday. matt? all right, rehema ellis in new york for us this morning. thank you very much. dr. nancy snyderman is nbc s chief medical editor, and she joins us now. nancy, good morning to you. hi, matt. i was surprised to see him walking out of the hospital. i ve known people who have gone in for minor surgery and they wheel them out in a wheelchair. but this is bill clinton, and this is the standard. you go in, have that blood vessel opened, the stent put in and there s no reason to walk out. rest over the weekend, but then back to his life. what does this tell us about his overall health, nancy? he had a quadruple bypass two years ago, now two stents placed in a blocked artery. what does it tell us about the condition of his heart and heart disease? one, that the heart disease is extensive. that s why he had the coronary arteries bypassed and the stents not put in several years ago. and we know that in about 20% of patients who have undergone regular bypass surgery, the arteries would block up again. and the idea that stents being put in not all that unusual, but it underscores the most basic thing once you re diagnosed with heart disease, you can talk about reversing it or dialing it back a little bit, but it s a chronic condition. it s a little bit like damaclesord. you can go on to have a real life, but this is a real problem. i was interested in at cardiologists said, the blockage was not because of the president s diet or lifestyle. then what is it because of? well, probably genes and his eating habits when he was a youngster. we know that in toddlers, in teenagers who have not had healthy lifestyles, you can start to see that plaque build-up. and he is a product of his generation. now, can you make the case for the fact that stress, never being on the same time zone, may be additional factors? probably, but he lost weight, he s been good about his medicines, he s never been a smoker. he s going to go back to the big lifestyle. quickly, he had symptoms on wednesday, didn t get in to see a doctor on thursday because of the snow, mostly. but let s just make sure we give some news you can use here. if you have the kind of symptoms, the chest pains that he had, get to a doctor quickly. this is the president, a former president of the united states. a snowplow would have gone and picked him up. if you have underlying heart disease and you suddenly have overwhelming exhaustion, shortness of breath, that foreboding feeling of just not feeling well, you have to assume that maybe it s cardiac in origin, and that s when you speed dial your cardiologist and you get to where your doctor is. 48-hour wait does not make me happy and i m sure it didn t make his doctors happy. nancy snyderman here with us in vancouver. thanks very much. you bet, matt. now with more, here s meredith. matt, thank you very much. the countdown is finally over. tonight the eyes of the world will be on vancouver s bc place for the opening ceremony of the 21st olympic winter games. ann is here with a look at what we can expect over the next 2 1/2 weeks. hey, ann. that right, meredith, just hours to go now before vancouver officially welcomes the world. over the next 17 days, the city will play host to politicians and tourists and athletes, in all, more than 500,000 people. as athletes put final touches on routines, today the pressure is on organizers who say the awe-inspiring pageantry two years ago in beijing is not the right compison. we did not pay any attention to what anyone did other than what we wanted to do and how creatively we could do it. reporter: the ceremony tonight is expected to balance the natural beauty of the country s culture, rooted in traditions with the modern style of a metropolitan city. we believe we have a great show. we think it s going to be magical and fun, and it will tell a great story. reporter: speculation over who will light the flame is in full swing. a long list of possible names includes actors, musicians and athletes, including the great one. if you were going to las vegas and you had a betting inclination and you picked the name wayne gretzky out of a hat, that would be a pretty good bet. reporter: canadian stars nelly furtado, brian adams and sarah mclaughlin are all expected to be part of the festivities. reporter: at bc stadium, five-time olympic luger mark grimmette will carry the american flag, and with it, high hopes for team usa. it is very possible, very possible the americans could win the medals count. reporter: but on thursday, questions swirled about the u.s. ski team and what has been called the most famous shin in all the world. nothing is ever perfect, and you know, you just have to do the best that you can every y, and you know, that s just all i m tryin to do. reporter: american skier lindsey vonn later wrote on her facebook page, my xinhua still very painful, but i feel like the injury is finally progressing a bit. the pain level has gone down from a sharp, debilitating pain to something that i feel i may be able to grit my teeth through. yet, while she was ready for her training run, the weather was not. earlier in the day, teammate stacey cook fell in low visibility and had to be airlifted from the scene. cook was treated and released. a reminder of the fragile olympic dreams that all athletes are chasing in vancouver. we have some good news to report to you, as well, and that is that stacey cook, who we just told you about, doctors say she s expected to make a full recovery in time for the competition. and also, though it s rained on cypress yesterday, it s expected to snow today and tomorrow, and that will be really good news, if it happens, for the snowboarders and the freestyle skiers. meredith? a lot of fingers crossed. ann, thank you very much. gordon campbell is the premier of british columbia. premier campbell, good morning to you. thanks for joining us. great to see you, meredith. you ve waited a long time for today, over six years. what are you feeling right now? anticipation, mostly. i m very excited about the opening. i think that we have a great team that s put together the opening. and you know, it s a pretty exciting time for british columbia and for canada. this is going to be the first time ever we win gold medals here at the olympics in canada i can t believe that on your home soil you have never won a gold medal. we promised you in new york we re going to win a gold medal. i m sure we re going to win a gold medal. unfortunately, they wouldn t let me on e team this year. you were in beijing with us. that s a tough act to follow, that opening ceremony. i m sure you watched that. and you ve got to have a little gulp in your throat because you re next up. tell us what you can about your ceremony. our ceremony i think will introduce the world to canada, which is what we always wanted to do. i think in some ways it will remind canadians of who we are. but it really is about the olympic spirit. it s about bringing the human family together on this common quest to be the best you possibly can. the olympics is such an incredible, incredibly long driver, you know. it s a strong driver by people s passions, and i know matt carried the torch yesterday, and he probably felt it, but you know, that torch is a lot more than fire on a stick, and it s brought together our whole country. so, i think everyone s getting very excited about the opening coming, and then, of course, the 16 days of incredible athletic and cultural activities, which will, i think, be something we ll always remember. yeah, it s also a very expensive endeavor. you said back in 2001 the games will pay for themselves. right. there s been some controversy recently. you re no stranger to that. you know what i m talking about. right now the price tag is hovering around $8 billion, some say. is it still your position that the games will pay for themselves? the games are paying for themselves. they ve paid for themselves. i think at people have missed in a lot of the discussion is that this vanoc team has been truly exceptional. a time when we ve had some of the best economies in our lifetime. and vanoc is the vancouver organizing committee. vancouver organizing committee. all the venues were brought in on time, almost a year before they were required. that s unheard of in olympic history. and we ll have dollars left over as a legacy to other athletic activity and endeavor, and i think the real legacy of any olympics is the sparkle and the way it touches young people s eyes. as i have gone around the torch relay, you know, every young person i met, you can just see that drive in their eyes, and it s going to touch them forever. and there are going to be three people watching around the world. what do you hope they take away from this olympics? what do you wan them to know about canada that they may not know already? i think most people don t know what a diverse population we have i m sorry, 3 billion. yeah, 3 billion people. it s going to be incredib. but to know we re a pacific country, we re the doorstep to the pacific rim, that we re multicultural. we ve got great and vital cultural drive and sort of a fusion that takes place here. we re really the doorstep to north america for a lot of communities in asia and, in some ways, in europe. so, i hope they get to know the country a little better and i hope they know we want them to come back. welcome to vancouver, welcome to british columbia, welcome to canada. and you ve got your mittens. thank you very much. meredith, where are your mittens? i ve got my mittens. i m putting them on. now here s matt. here they are, okay? and meredith, we have an update. the three people are going to join friends. we re now going to have 3 billion people watching around the world. thank you. obviously, anticipation is high for tonight s opening ceremonies, being held in downtown vancouver at the bc place. it s the first time that a host nation is holding the event inside. bob costas and i will bring you nbc s coverage, and we sat down on thursday and i started to talk to bob about it and i started by asking him about tonight s ceremony and how it can possibly compete with beijing s jaw-dropping start to the 2008 summer games. we said it at the time, retire the trophy. the combination of artistry and imagination and the resources that they had to pull it off, nothing could ever approach it and no one should try to. and i think the approach taken here has been, a, it s a winter olympics, so it s always on a somewhat smaller scale roughly 80 countries as opposed to 200. and also, their intention is to make this a bit more intimate, to speak to the heart and soul of canada and to capture people emotionally rather than something that makes them shake their heads in awe, something that makes them nod in appreciation. this is the first time i m hosting with you a winter olympic games. i picked a good one because we re inside. yeah. we re not going to complain. we ll be i shirt sleeves, but how s it going to impact the mood? you ve got to convince people here and at home that these are the winter olympics. it s going to be 70 drees in here. well, we ve seen a couple rehearsals, and i don t think it takes long for people to suspend this belief. you get into the feeling that s created, and we might note that the reason it s indoors isn t because of any fear of cold temperatures. it s the threat of rain, which is likely tonight. i did a little research. in the 70 preceding february 12st on record, it s only snowed eight or nine times, but it has rained 47 times. so, that was really their concern. what amazes me is how much free time you have on your hands. yeah, yeah. clearly too much. you re doing the today show and i m in the hotel flipping through the almanac. let s get past the opening ceremony. let s talk about the events and athletes we want to watch. prior to these games, probably the most talked about athlete for the u.s. is lindsey vonn, on the cover of sports illustrated, and we know now she has an injury, and it s not a minor injury. it s a fairly severe injury. how will that affect, in your opinion, what she attempts to do here in vancouver? we ll know more by sunday night. technically, she s entered in five events, the first on sunday. we ll know if, a, she s ready at all, b, if she competes at her usual level. the one where she s the overwhelming favorite in the downhill is on wednesday. so, we ll know a lot, i think, on sunday. if there s one thing to maybe look positively at this, it s that she s gone through something like this before. this is not a young lady who is a stranger to adversity. yeah, but she herself said earlier this week, this is the most excruciating injury i have ever had. and probably, were it not the olympics, she d take some time off, but it is the olympics and this is her springboard, not just to winning medals, but she has been positioned as someone who will emerge from this as a transcendent star. and so, she s got to do something on the slopes for that to happen. normally, for winter olympics i d say stay warm, my friend. i don t have to say in anymore. no, we re already overdressed. we could do it in t-shirts. thank you, bob. see you tonight. it s going to be fun. don t do it in t-shirts. why does it matter? it will be a usa t-shirt. it s going to be great. i ve seen the show and i have to say, i think people are going to be wonderfully entertained. i m sure they will be. i m sure they will be. a reminder, you can watch our coverage of the opening ceremony of the vancouver games starting tonight at 7:30/6:30 right here on nbc. and now let s toss it over to hoda kotb, who s in new york with the news of the day. good morning, hoda. good morning. we re looking forward to opening ceremonies tonight. good morning, everybody. we begin with a new development in the case of 7-year-old somer thompson, the florida girl murdered last year. a person of interest is in custody. nbc s mark potter reports. reporter: after searching a house in somer thompson s orange park neighborhood, just doors down from where she was last seen alive nearly four months ago walking home from school, investigators named 24-year-old jared herrell as their first person of interest in the murder case. police say herrell used to live in the house now being searched, which is just a few blocks from where 7-year-old somer thompson lived. herrell was arrested on child pornography charges by federal agents in meridian, mississippi. he was arrested without incident and is being held on a $1 million bond on those charges. reporter: police say their search of the home stems from the child pornography investigation in which gerald herrell is now charged with 29 counts of illegal possession. according to an arrest affidavit, he downloaded erotic images of girls as young as 6 to 8 years old on his computer, which were discovered by roommates. i cannot comment further about how harrell may be connected with the somer thompson case. reporter: while harrell has not been charged in the thompson murder case, police say he clearly is being investigated now. mark potter, nbc news, miami. this is a national day of mourning in haiti, marking one month since the devastating earthquake struck. on thursday, a judge recommended that ten u.s. missionaries indicted for trying to take children out of haiti be released while they await trial. the prosecutors say they will respond to the judge next week. nbc s kelly o donnell confirms that rhode island congressman patrick kennedy will not run for re-election this fall. the son of the late senator ted kennedy recorded message that will air sunday in which he says his life is taking a new direction. his departure will mean no kennedy in congress for the first time in more than 60 years. today, winter storm warnings from texas to the carolinas. slippery highways were blamed for dozens of accidents on thursday. dallas broke a record with more than a foot of snow. it is now 20 minutes past 7:00. back to matt, meredith and al. i just want to push that snow over to you guys so you can have a little out by you. although thanks, hoda. we have some flurries out here now, right? yeah, starting to get little snow. not bad. meanwhile, great to have you here. it really is. glad you made it out safely. thanks a lot. you can see some of the snow out there. i m telling you, this winter we re getting snow where people are not used to it. as hoda mentioned, we had 12 1/2 inches in dallas. well, guess what? we re looking at snow in the deep south today. we re expecting that snow. we ve got winter storm warnings and watches from texas all the way to the carolinas today. on the radar, you ll see we ve got a lot of wet weather down mobile on into tallahassee. but to the north of that, jackson, mississippi, seeing snow, montgomery, alabama. it s going to move into central georgia and on into columbia, south carolina. we re talking anywhere three to six inches of snow. hartsfield airport in atlanta, and that storm may bring a few flurries to virginia on saturday, but not an impact here locally around the metro area. right now this morning under a clear sky, we re in the 20s all around the region. it s now 29 in washington, highs should reach the upper 30s. mostly cloudy saturday, highs mid 30s and maybe a few flurries in virginia. then on sunday partly cloudy to mid 30s. for presidents day, still looking like a chance of light accumulating snow monday afternoon and evening. and that s your latest weather. meredith? al, thank you very much. much more ahead on this speal friday morning, including the u.s. athletes to watch here in vancouver and my spin on the ice with apolo anton ohno. less a spin than just standing still, but just ahead, we ll catch up with the producer of tonight s opening ceremo and we ll take a tour of our home here at grouse mountain. plus, matt s big moment carrying the olympic torch. sweet, delivery pizza! actually it s not delivery no, i know, it s my turn to pay. well, there was a bit of a rush charge. premium topping tax and a doorbell ringing fee. doorbell ringing fee? awesome toppings and a fresh-baked crust. taste. believe. it s not delivery. it s digiorno. 7:26 is your time. in the news for today, metro is back and running today with limited schsz. several stations are still closed. the blue and green lines are the only ones that are open. riders should expect longer waits than usual. routes will be running mostly along the snow emergency route. we re going to take a quick break, your weather and traffic are next. stay with us. good morning, a quiet weather pattern giving us still more time to dig out from the wednesday s storm. we ll have highs in the upper 30s. then some melting, perhaps some flurries in virginia. highs each day the mid 30s. could get some light accumulating snow late monday and early tuesday. a big pothole now inbound 66, ramp to the outer loop is jammed to vienna. you re losing travel lanes under ice and snow between german town and rockville. 7:30 now on this friday morning, february 12th, 2010, the day vancouver has been waiting for for 6 1/2 years. tonight the wait is over as this country welcomes the world with the opening ceremony of the 21st olympic winter games. and these folks who have gathered here with us here on grouse mountain seem more than excited about that, right? way to perform on cue. exactly! that s what we re talking about! we have to remind people, it s like 4:30 in the morning here. i know, it is. they haven t had their coffee yet, but we llrovide that. and we re starting to get little bit of a spit here. i mean, it s not quite snow, but in between a hail and a snow. sleet. a snain. meredith, matt, al, ann. we re envious of you, matt, because you got to carry the torch. how was that? one of the most unbelievable experiences of my life it was a real honor. also ahead what we re going to do, you look a the sports played at winter olympics and you say, i d like to try that. then some you think those people are just plain crazy! the aerialists would fit into that latter category and we ll catch up with jarreeret speedy peterson and emily cook have made their way up the mountain and we ll talk to them in a couple minutes. also, apolo anton ohno, one of the most popular athletes in vancouv vancouver, and in the coming days, he could become our country s most decorated olympian ever. we ll hit the ice with him coming up. and i literally hit the ice. you hit the ice. all right, but we want to start with the olympic torch relay, and on thursday, i did, as meredith just said, have the hor of taking part in that relay and carrying the olympic flame on one of its final legs before the opening ceremony. it s been the longest relay of any torch in olympic history. a 106-day, 28,000-mile journey that s touched even the furthest corners of this country and captured its spirit along the way. that s the olympic torch! reporter: it has inspired all sorts of people in all kinds of ways. woo! reporter: in the end, the torch will pass through the hands of 12,000 runners. i was lucky enough to be one of them. this is your hat. great. you have beautiful mitts. do i get to keep these mittens? these are coveted. yes, they are, and they re specific to the torchbearer because you have a grip on that. and your pants and your jacket. you re all set now. we ll see you a little bit later. i ll be back in a second. a little change, and now i m officially a member of the olympic move. after suiting up, we gather for a briefing. rule number one, please don t forget to smile. if you re tired, don t be shy, you can switch arms whenever you want. olympic torch! whoo-hoo! reporter: then it s off to our starting points, as the excitement among my fellow runners and i builds, so, too, does the energy on the streets . i was mr. nonchalant until a few moments ago. we were talking about how we got here and now i m one massive butterfly. i couldn t be happier. finally, the moment i had been waiting for. congratulations. thank you. you don even notice the rain. it s too fantastic. it s too fantastic. woo! good luck. that s the longest 300 meters i ve ever run in my life, but it s just because it s so exhilarating. it really is. and i hold in my hand a piece of olympic history. slide this down. look at that. there it is. oh, matt. wow. you actually you get to you can actually purchase the torch. they take the canister, the gas canister out of it and you cut it because you can never light this again. because it s the olympic flame. grab it. take it. this would get heavy after a while. you re lucky it s only 300 meters that you re running. if it were longer than that, you d need a longer arm. it says vancouver 2010. it does, so you ll never forget. and our nbc president steve capus ran with it, and the flame went out. no, no. maybe it went out on nbc, but no, only kidding. hey! that is so cool. by the way, they tell you never clean it. really? never clean the soot off because then it becomes a fake, but if you have the soot on it congratulations. that was very nice. a lot of fun. mr. roker, you have a check of the weather. let s see what s happening. again, we are talking a little snow here in vancouver. that s the good news. pacific northwest, another big storm coming in, and that s going to be affecting the pacific northwest and vancver. we ve got rain, mountain snows, about one to two feet of snow in the mountains in the pacific northwest. the vancouver forecast, here s what we re looking for. downtown today, showers becoming steady rain, temperature 48. more clouds and showers tonight. and then for tomorrow, whistler mountain, we re looking at some snow accumulations, one to three inches tomorrow. tonight they re going to be good morning here, we have got a clear start to this friday morning, our temperatures around the region in the 20s, it s 29 in washington. the winds are still gusting around 20 miles an hour. so the windchills are in the teens occasionally. the winds will diminish today, highs in the upper 30s. a slight chance of flurries tomorrow in virginia. partly cloudy sunday mid 30s. could get some light accumulating snow late monday into early tuesday. and that s your latest weather. matt? all right, al, thank you very much. freestyle skiers emily cook and jeret speedy peterson have been friends since emily was 12 and speedy was just 10. they re competing in the aerials competition tonight. they will march together in the olympic opening ceremony. emily and speedy, good to see you here. great seeing you. thanks for being here. thanks for having us. talk us through it. tonight, opening ceremony. we ve got second and third olympics, but what s it going to be like to enter that stadium here in vancouver? it s one of my favorite parts of the olympics is getting to walk into the opening ceremonies it was my favorite part in salt lake. unfortunately, emily wasn t able to be there. and it was the same in torino when they were driving that race car and i m excited to see what they have tonight. how much can you be aware of your surroundings in the opening ceremony? are you aware of the crowd? are you aware of the effects and the show that s going on around you? yeah, absolutely. it s so much fun. you know, walking in with my teammates in torino 2006 was one of the best moments of my life, and just looking up and looking around and seeing everybody, you know, cheering us on, and you know, just feeling all that support is really the most exciting thing ever. speedy has already alluded to the story of what happened in 2002, and you were going to go to the olympics and then couldn t go at the last minute. he took your spot on the team and there was that wonderful moment where you had that little signal for emily with the sign on your hand and then the moment where you were on the side and you had the sign for speedy. yeah. this friendship really seems to kind of fuel the two of you in terms of your competitive juices. ah, it definitely does, you know. we ve beenhrough a lot together, and it s pretty exciting to be up here in vancouver competing together, for sure. what are your goals here, speedy? i want to win. we re actually fortunate enough to see t olympic medals just earlier today, and it was amazing how much it just got me. yeah. it s a motivator, for sure. and your goals, emily? absolutely, i m out here to perform my best. you know, i was excited just to go and participate in torino, but i m here to jumpy best and definitely hoping to take home one of those medals. can i just mention, so nice of you to get up so early when the competition is just on the horizon. we really appreciate it. jeret speedy peterson and emily cook, good luck, you guys. thanks,matt. pleasure. when we come back, meredith will skate with apolo anton ohno. but first, these messages. to kn to love, to hope, to the world. those words changed my life and inspired my open hearts collection at kay jewelers. as the number one jewelry store in america, kay was the perfect choice to help me turn my mom s inspiration into something beautiful and eternal. you were right, mom. keep your heart open, and love will always find its way in. vegetables are naturally low in calories. v8 juice gives you 3 of your 5 daily servings. it s a tasty, nutritious way to make this number go up. and help this one go down. v8. what s your number? . unlock an outdoor dreamland for your indoor cat. exciting flavor combinations, plus a touch of garden greens make it irresistible. friskies indoor delights. feed the senses. with relief from dry, uncomfortable skin. only aveeno skin relief has an active naturals oat formula. to improve all five symptoms. of winter skin in just one day. discover the beauty and comfort of skin reef. only from aveeno. fruit - we all know it s good for us, discover the beauty and comfort of skin reef. but most of us find it hard to get as much as we need or want. try del monte fruit naturals. these portable cups of pre-cut, chilled fruit are ready-to-eat, so the only thing you need to peel is the lid. you ll never be disappointed with fruit that s unripe or spoiled every mouthful is just right, and bursting with flavor. enjoying a delicious fruit snack can be this easy. look for del monte fruit naturals chilling in your produce section now. brand power. helping you buy better. so good inside oh, and when i double up on my lovin you re gonna be satisfied now you can double your extracare rewards. for a limited time, you can earn double bucks on prescriptions and on cvs/pharmacy brand items. gonna double your lovin , double your fun you get two for the price of one double bucks means double savings! sign up for double bucks today, only at cvs/pharmacy. announcer: today s athlete to watch is brought to you by p&g, proud sponsor of moms. this morning on today s athlete to watch, u.s. short track speed skater apolo anton ohno. he s competing in his third olympics here in vancouver, and the five-time medalist has the chance to become the most decorated american athlete in the history of the winter games. with the flash of his skates and spray of hard ice, apolo anton ohno lives life in the fast lane, racing at an average of 35 miles per hour, taking turns leaning almost 45 degrees into the cold ice below. when you re out on that ice skating as fast as you can, what is that feeling like? it feels like you re in a very fast sports car and you just put it in automatic, and it just feels almost easy. and being in that zone is there s no better feeling in the world. reporter: apolo ohno struck goal at the salt lake city games in 2002, but his victory was shrouded in controversy. the win came after south korea s kim dung sun was disqualified for illegally cutting apolo off. kim s disqualified! in other words, oh, my god, it s an unbelievable feeling. just, oh, man, that s great. reporter: still, apolo s two medal wins in salt lake, gold and silver, and his brazen good lungs earned him a rock star following. people who remember you in salt lake city remember the bandanna and the patch, the look. i haven t seen my chin in years. i don t know what s under there, maybe a smiley face, maybe a tattoo, i have no idea. who cares? reporter: four years later, torino. apolo ripped across the ice to three more medals, including a gold in what he calls the perfect race. american boy reporter: but after the 2006 winter games, he took a slight detour. who would have thunk it, you end up on dancing with the stars ? i know. my initial reaction was there is no way i m dancing in front of millions of people, and i had no idea what i was in for. and after the finale, i felt like i had more confidence in myself. more than you had prior to this, having won the gold and the silver? much more. it s different, because when i step out there, i know what i m doing. and all of a sudden, i m getting scores and it s like, it s over. hope i don t fall down. they tried to make you spandex, but you said no. no spandex. i wear spandex on the ice. that s about it. reporter: all this talk about spandex got me thinking, if he could dance, i could skate. lane number two. lane number two, two, two. representing the united states of america, the today show s meredith vieira! ready. and then go. reporter: what was i thinking? instead, i challenged the dancing champo a tango. reporter: but these days, apolo s focus is squarely set on the games in vancouver. it s where he first launched his way to olympic glory. you say it s like coming home, it s full circle? i learned to speed skate in vancouver. my father was drove me back and forth between seattle and vancouver. you called him big papa your twitter feed. he s been so influential in your life on and off the ice. he s played a vital role in all decisions in my life. reporter: apolo was just 1 when his parents divorced. his father, yuki, a hairstylist, raised him. growing up in seattle, he says he was always a step away from trouble. i heard one of the reasons your dad got you involved in this is because you were kind of a rebellious kid and this was a way to keep you on track. my dad had seen the path i could potentially be leaning towards. which would have been? maybe i d be in jail, maybe dead. i have no idea. reporter: now with his bad boy days long gone and five olympic medals to his name, the 27-year-old says competing in his third winter games was no easy decision. do i truly want to do this again? and i came to the conclusion that, you know what, i love the sport, i love the olympic games, my body s healthy, i m still one of the best in the world. others want to go to the olympic games because they want to win a gold medal. that s their destination. i m living my destination every single day. you know, like the journey is what i trulynjoy. very cool guy. and apolo s record-breaking quest begins tomorrow with 1500-meter race. up next, matt, ann, al and i will make our predictions as to who we think will light the olympic cauldron. much more coming up from grouse mountain right after this! you heard them. want to make this a valentine s day they ll remember? 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[ female announcer ] and save up to $15 off your fills. go to nasonex.com for details, terms and conditions. looks disgusting. mine is good on this side. so, there s a burning question still looming. not t marshmallows. but who, guys, do you think is going to light the olympic cauldron tonight at the opening ceremony? well, i know one of the favorites in british columbia is betty fox, whose son suffered from cancer, started that marathon for hope and had to stop because it had spread to his lungs. since then, people have continued to contribute to cancer research. so you think betty fox. i think that s a very good pick. i think sometimes harkening back to australia, i wonder if the aboriginal history of this nation may play a part in tonight. i think michael j. fox. another famous canadian. ye. okay. which means i can t have a pick because you know. i know who s are you trying to create so, we re reporters, so, do you want to give us any information here? that marshmallow s not hot enough to get that information out of me, but it s going to be an amazing ceremony. by the way this is cooked. that s great. we welcome the man behind the ceremony, the producer. - it shines like glass. - so soft. - smooth. i would definitely recommend this to my clients. then we revealed what was really in the bottle. it s suave professionals. suave, really? i m shocked. i didn t know suave could do that. top stylists were surprised. you will be, too. suave professionals. salon proven to work as well as salon brands. suave professionals. rethink salon hair. salon proven to work as well as salon brands. 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host: does charlie daniels play a mean fiddle? fiddle music charlie: vo: geico. 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance. by later on today we ll have clouds developing in the metro area. we might get a few flurries in southern and central virginia. monday, presidents day, might get some light snow during the day and during the evening. and now, jerry, how s the traffic. 66 to the tr jammed. just off the bridge it s jammed because of severe lane restrictions. elsewhere the outer loop is crawling through the american leon bridge. be careful out there. jerry, thank you. we ll have another local news update for you in just 25 minutes. but for now, back to the tod 8:00 now on a friday morning. it s the 12th day of february 2010. we are grateful for those people right there who have made their way to grouse mountain in vancouver in the wee hours of the morning to stop by and just spend little of their energy with us. we really, really appreciate it. we re at the highest peak in metro vancouver, a beautiful spot to call home for the next couple of weeks, as we cover the winter olympic games. i m matt lauer along with meredith vieira, ann curry and al roker. the gang s all here. who s ready for the opening ceremony? yes. yes. yes. yeah? looking forward to it. really exciting. i got to see one of the major dress rehearsals. i can t give away the details, but the images are beautiful, the music is fantastic. there are a lot of surprises. i don t think anyone s going to be disappointed. coming up, we ll talk to the man behind it, the creative director, the producer of this, who happens to be an australian, by the way. interesting. we know one thing, the remake of we are the world will premier tonight during the opening ceremony. here s a little taste of it. that s right. and the choice we re making, we re saving our own lives, it s true we ll make a better day you re looking at never-before-seen footage of the recording session, including barbra streisand s part, but if you want to see the finished product in entirety tonight, that s coming up tonight on nbc at the the opening ceremony. cool. looking forward to that. also ahead, it s not the winter games unless you know about the athletes. we re going to introduce you to the americans you need to know, including 16-year-old figure skater m yer mirai nagasu. mirai nagasu. took me a while to learn that. taking part in her first olympics. and i said betty fox s son is michael. i apologize, it is terry fox. we all know that. terry fox and michael fox very inspirational men, but very different. meanwhile, we want to show you something we think is very cool. this is your first live look at the medals and the victory bouquet that will be going to the winning athletes here in vancouver. we ve got them on the table in front of us. not allowed to touch these unless we put gloves on. but they re very different in terms of their design, a free-form design, inspired by what, the waves? the waves, the mountains and the blowing snow. right. each one is unique. that s right. no two are exactly alike. that s right. abstract art, made every medal one of a kind. they re one of a kind medals. i think the abstract art represents the orca whale and the raven. exactly right. so, each piece is a part of that larger artwork. the orca whale i think is for the olympics and the raven for the paralympics. paralympics. exactly. they re beautiful. they re enormous and very heavy. and al, next to you, if you want to pick that up you don t need gloves, i don t think, but this is one of the victory bouquets, and i have some information here. these were all made by women at just beginning flowers. they offer training to mentally and physically challenged women as well as marginalized women, including those recovering from addiction. and they have 22 of them. that s why the committee picked this group, because not only were the designs beautiful, the floral designs, but the social consciousness of the actual organizing people. and according to the ioc rules, they have to make the bouquets really exactly the same. they have to make 1,0 of them. now you know little bit more. can you pick out the green spider mums there? the beads. right, the beads. not so hard. we have more cing up from grouse mountain, but first, let s go back to new york city. hoda kotb s at theews desk filling in while ann is out with us. she s got all the headlines of the morning. good morning, guys. good morning, everybody. doctors in new york say the prognosis is excellent for former president clinton after he had two stents inserted in a clogged heart artery. the former president who was recentlyn haiti, had complained of suffering discomfort in his chest. doctors say he did not have a heart attack. he left the hospital this morning and could be back to work as soon as monday. a man held on $1 million bail is being called a person of interest in the case of somer thompson, the 7-year-old florida girl murdered last october. jarred harrell was arrested in mississippi on child pornography charges. prosecutors executed a search warrant at his one-time florida address just blocks from his home. people are still digging out from this week s east coast blizzard. one maryland car dealer had a massive job just to find his inventory. japan is denouncing an antiwhaling group after the latest confrontation at sea. it says protesters threw acid and sprayed water at a whaling ship off antarctica on thursday, injuring three crew members. a new addition in space. astronauts attached a new room with a view on the international space station this morning. it s got a bay window for an even better look back at earth. and walter frederick morrison has died. if you don t know his name, you probably know what he leaves behind. morrison is credited with inventing the frisbee. 200 million sold and a staple found at beaches and college campuses. he died this week in utah at the age of 90. it is now five minutes past the hour. let s check back in with al with weather from vancouver. hey, al. hey. thanks a lot, hoda. got a nice group. they re inside, nice and warm, having a good time. and as we look and show you what s happening as far as our weather s concerned for today, we have got big, big stuff going on down in the south. our pick city happens to be steubenville, ohio, nbc 9. they re going to have snow showers, temperatures in the 20s. and as you look, we see a lot of wet weather down through the south. in fact, we ve got snow to the north of that rain. parts of the south will see snowfall amounts three to six inches, stretching from mississippi all the way into south carolina. wet weather moves into the pacific northwest. sunny through the southwest. well have highs today into the 30s with increasing clouds, and again could have some flurries in central and monday afternoon and evening. d that s your latest weather. meredith? al, thank you very much. up next, coming home to the gold. the members of team usa you need to know, incding 16-year-old figure skater mirai nagasu. we re going to talk to her and her coach, right after this. and i m like, oh, promise mommy you ll never ever pick up a cigarette. and brian looked at me at eight years old and said, promise me you ll quit. i had to quit. my doctor gave me a prescription for chantix, a medication i could take and still smoke, while it built up in my system. 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[ male announcer ] talk to your doctor to find out if prescription chantix is right for you. where all your cat s favorite flavors, including real carnation milk, come alive. friskies feline favorites. feed the senses. if toyota gets credit for being the most fuel efficient car company in america, well, then how do you explain all this? chevy malibu, cobalt, silverado, and the all-new equinox. compare them to anyone. may the best car win. welcome back to grouse mountain here in vancouver, british columbia. by the way, vancouver the largest city ever to host an olympic winter games, and the world will come together tonight for the opening ceremony. then tomorrow, the athletic competition begins in earnest. the question is, who are the athletes to watch? here are a few you should definitely keep your eye on. it will be my fourth olympics. it never gets old. i actually carried a little hockey card of the miracle on ice team in my wallet when i was little because i wanted to be an olympic hockey player. five seconds left in the game! do you believe in miracles? yes! unbelievable! this moment 30 years ago when team usa beat the heavily favored soviet union will forever be etched in the memories of many americans. here s this miracle on ice team that i looked up to and thought was so inspiring, and suddenly, i could do the same thing. reporter: the miracle on ice was one for the ages, but the winter games often deliver surprises. sometimes even scandals and record-setting achievements. with six medals, bonnie blair holds the title for the most decorated u.s. winter olympian ever. but here in vancouver, that could change. apolo anton ohno already has five medals around his neck. two more and he ll break blair s record. it s the beautiful thing about the olympic games is, you know, obviously we want to win medals and obviously we want to represent the united states as best we can, but the memories, that s what s going to stay with me the longest. at the halfpipe, shaun white will be going for back-to-back olympic golds. i ll never forget standing on the podium, and it was obviously all time. i like the fact that there is a new challenge and there are better riders and they re all kind of coming and meeting at this one halfpipe to battle it out. in torino, speed skater shani davis became the first african-american to win an individual winter games gold. he s a favorite again. reporter: ice dancers tanith belbin and ben agosto have their sights on gold as well. we came in second at the last games. we certainly don t want to come down from there, so there s really only one direction to go, and that s straight to the top. it s the kind of dream that inspires you to put in the hard work every day. this is a dream come true for evan lysacek. what a performance! the reigning world champion in men s figure skating, evan lysacek, has high hopes to land atop the medals stand. i look to vancouver now as a mission, and it s kind of like the light at the end of this one-track tunnel that i m in, and that gives me chills to think about, because the olympics is so important to me. in the mountains ofhistler, bode miller, one of alpine skiing s biggest stars, will go for the one prize that has eluded him, an olympic gold medal, here at his fourth winter games. despite her injury, lindsey vonn is still hoping to contend for medals in all five alpine skiing events. i want to make the u.s. proud and set a good example for little kids who, you know, are inspired by the olympics just like i was. picabo street in the 98 olympics. picabo street into the lead! i definitely, i loved her tiger helmet. i remember that very vividly. so, it s that olympic spirit and the olympic dream that s really kept me motivated and kept me working hard every single year since i was a little kid. who won, lindsey? i win! so, those are some of the athletes to watch. right now it s coming up on 14 after the hour. let s go down to the rink and meredith is with another athlete to watch. yeah, matt, thank you very much. speaking of athletes to watch, we re joined now by 16-year-old u.s. olympic figure skater mirai nagasu and her coach, frank carroll, who is a phenomenal coach. welcome to both of you. thank you. thank you. mirai, you said before this you didn t think you would be part of this olympics. you were really aimingor 2014. now here you are about to walk in the opening ceremony in just a few hours. how do you feel about all this? it s just a lot of excitement built up into one arena, and it s been a lot of fun, and i m just here to get good experience and have fun. well, good enough. frank, how would you describe mirai s skating style? she s been referred to as the kind of it girl onhe ice in terms of her charisma. well, i think her artistry is magnificent, and i think that s the best side of her skating. she s a good athlete, but you really see that artistic side when she skates. how would you compare her to rachael flatt, the other american skating in the olympics? well, rachael is outstanding and strong, and mirai is artistic. they skate differently. they re not alike. so, i understand you re going home after this to california to continue practicing and then you ll be back for the short program, february 23rd. and i heard some very good news, your parents who run a sushi restaurant in your home in california, wasn t sure they could make it here because it was so expensive. they will be here to see you skate. what does that mean to you? it means a lot to me, because the fact that my dad will actually take a day off, it s a miracle. really, a day off from the restaurant? yes. so, i m just honored and hope to make him proud as well. well, we re all looking forward to seeing you skate. thank you. miraigasu, frank carroll, thank you both and good luck to you. thank you. thank you. up next, a special preview of tonight s opening ceremony from the man behind the magic, and that s right after this. the favorite flavor with a fever on top. code orange. when the fever is high enough to be a code orange, you need children s motrin. the brand pediatricians recommend most. to bring high fever down fast. children s motrin. a lot of activity here at grouse mountain. you look down at the bay and the convention center in downtown vancouver, as we welcome you back, and we also now get set to take a look at bc place, which is the home of tonight s opening ceremony of the 21st olympic winter games. an estimated 3 billion people worldwide are expected to be watching, and it promises to be a spectacular show filled with plenty of surprises. i caught up with the man behind it all, executive producer david atkins. this has been your life for 2 1/2 years. i mean, you ve been concentrating on this opening ceremony for an awfully long time. it s about to unfold. you re about to unveil it for the world and the people here in this stadium. what are your emotions? to take the pressure off of it there. it s an incredibly exciting time, not only for me, but for the entire team that have been dedicated to this for that period. we re prepared. i think we re in very good shape. everyone s had the opportunity to work through the dress rehearsals. we ve had fantastic response from our dress rehearsal audiences and feedback from them, and i think we re more than prepared and just can t wait to show what we ve created to the world. it seems in the months leading up to this, the elephant in the room has been beijing. everybody talks about that opening ceremony, and i m wondering how much, when you watched that opening ceremony, how much did it impact what you wanted to do or didn t want to do tonight? in lots of ways, it was a tremendous relief for us to see that ceremony be as epic and fantastic as it was, in the sense that we had always intended and desired to go in a different direction because this ceremony has always been about intimacy, about emotion, it s always been about capturing the spirit of the people and the landscape here. i was reading where you wanted this ceremony to be about inclusion and community. how are the people at home and the people in this stadium going to see that play out? we ve got an incredible cross section of cultures and people and ages and personalities, and we focus on single individuals. there are moments, a number of moments in the ceremony where there s just a single performer in the stadium. and so, those single performers become the audience for us. they become the canadian. they become the every man for us. it s the first time an opening ceremony for a winter games has ever been held indoors. so, what you ve got to do is you ve got to ask people to leave reality at the door. you ve got to convince them that they re watching a winter scene outdoors. how tough is that? from a theatrical perspective, we ve been able to create a winter landscape. we ve been able to create snow. we veeen able to create vistas and use our projection equipment to create a very, very controlled environment. outdoors we would never have that control. so, 60,000 people are going to leave the stadium after the opening ceremony. a few billion are going to watch it at home. what do you want them to say when it s over? from a canadian perspective, i want people to travel through a series of emotions. we reay want the audience to cry. we want canadians to swell with pride at what s been achieved and how they feel about their country and themselves. and the people who aren t canadian? to want to come here and enjoy this place. you ve got a lot to do. it s nice of you to spend time with us this morning. we appreciate it david atkins. good luck. thank you. thanks. i m one of those who will be crying, for sure. it is a big night for athletes and their families, but also a big night for two fashion designers whose work will be on display and our own dawna friesen has their story. their names are dean and dan kate. they re identical twin brothers who grew up in canada dreaming of making it big in the fashion world, and they did. their label, d square, is a big success, and for months they ve been working on top-secr designs just for tonight. dean and dan katen have been called the most important fashion design team to come out of milan since dolce & gabanna. their firm dsquared2 has gained attention in the fashion industry for clothes that are flashy, classy and spectacular. catching the attention of music s fashion trend-setters from christina aguilera to fergie and rihanna. it s not a job for you. no. it s not a job for us. it s a passion. it s a passion. and i think that s the fun part and we are so lucky that we can actually make money and do something we love to do. reporter: the youngest of five children, they grew up in suburban toronto. inspired by fashion even as kids, they started designing for their sisters. after a start at the parsons school of design, the two knew they were hooked. i remember the first day of school in the auditorium, they said, listen, if you don t drink, eat, sleep and live fashion, get out right now because this is a nine to five job. it s a lifetime. and we looked at each other, didn t say a word and we knew we were in the right place. they launched dsquared2 in 1994. 16 years later, they got their own stores, featuring men and women s wear, shoes, perfume, even sunglasses, often sneaking in signs of their proud canadian roots and racking up sales of nearly $175 million last year. our kind of philosophy is we re no trying to recreate the wheel. we re just trying to make it roll better. so, we re trying to make fashion that people will wear and feel good about wearing them and they look good in. i think that s a look matt lauer can pull off. reporter: the brothers are inseparab inseparable, not only working side by side in milan, but sharing a fashionable flat in london and being twins, they say, is their strength, giving them a distinct advantage in the cut-throat world of fashion. together, we re one really strong person. yeah. i don t think we re not strong as individuals so, we re like but we re like, together we have a force that s stronger than anything else. this is underneath that shirt. reporter: dean and dan now face the most daunting role of their career, dressing celebrities for tonight s olympic opening ceremonies. when you were approached, was it kind of a no-brainer, yes, we ll do it? of course. yeah. reporter: the twins have been sworn to secrecy and just won t give an inch when i try to find out what we can expect to see tonight. there s no kind of hidden covered olympic stuff, is there? no. reporter: dean and dan are now celebrities in their own right. a recent star on canada s walk of fame, a radio show on xm radio good evening, everybody. i m dean. i m dan. we are dsquared2. reporter: and a new reality show on bravo called launch my line, where would-be designers are paired with experts. but tonight they are competing on the biggest stage, the olympic opening ceremonies, a chance to show off their style on their home turf. and they really are a dynamic duo. after the opening ceremony, they fly back to milan to present their latest women s wear collection, then get bk here to vancouver for the closing ceremony. meredith? i did not realize that you are a canadian. i am, and i used to live in vancouv so it s like old home week for me. and a big night for you also. you know, i will cry. i m sure i ll cry. i want to remind the audience, you can catch the opening ceremony tonight at 7:30 eastern right here on nbc. and just ahead, a live concert from canada s only michael buble. but first, your local news. we have sunshine out there and still very cold. things are slowly starting to return to normal in the nation s capital. metro is back up and operating this morning with limited service, all stations on the blue, green and yellow lines. five above ground stations on the red li, three on the orange line. and riders should expect longer waits than usual. a limited number of metro busses will be running as well. mostly along snow emergency routes. we re going to take a break now good morning, sunny now, temperates in the 20s. settled weather into sound. jerry, how s the traffic. university boulevard closed between beersville and virginia. it s a water main break. elsewhere the drive in, along the major interstates. you re losing lanes for snow and ice removal. we ll have another local news update in 25 minutes, but 8:30 now on this friday morning, february 12th, 2010. and our new friends on grouse mountain are already in fine olympic spirit, and the opening ceremony is not for another 11 hours or so. and one of the reasons they are so excited is because one of our favorite folks, canadian michael buble, is here to perform for them live in just a minute. i m meredith vieira along with matt lauer, al roker and ann curry. and st ahead, a skier s getting a lot of attentn, american bode miller. bode miller is back. that s right. you remember his last olympic experience was probably not all it was high up to be, so, can he get his mountain mojo back here in vancouver? we re going to check that out in just a couple minutes. plus, the fact of the matter is we don t go anywhere without eating. we like to eat. we do. and we are going to be tasting some fantastic local fair and a visit from the chef. by the way, the folks from lululemon, kind of cool stuff. that s very cool. you like that? yeah, i m going to get michael buble to wear this during his performance. probably not. also ahead, did you ever wonder what it s like to compete by the way, the first olympic medals will be handed out tomorrow in things like the moguls. ever wonder what it s like to do that? you ve seen it o tape. well, patrick deneen, who is a competitor in the moguls, the freestyle, decided to give us a look at what it s like. take a look. when you re standing at the top of the mogul course and you see these huge jumps, you re skiing down, everything s happening so fast. when you come into that jump, you have to make a quick decision, are you going to do it or not? and the obvious answer is yeah, you re going to do it and you do your back flip and everything gets calm for that split second, and then you land and everything s hectic again, and you re going as fast as you can to get to the next air and you do the next trick and it s the same feeling. then you get all the way to the bottom and you finish your run and you re like, oh, all right. i ve got to go do another one of those. i think we should try it as a group. oh, be quiet. be quiet. come on, dmn. you re at the olympics! let s see you do it. i m with you, matt. i ll do it. he could do it! ann and i are going to try it. and we will be rooting for you at the bottom of the hill. we will guarantee we will make it to the bottom, one way or another. may not be pretty. no, exactly. you ve got a cck of the weather, mr. roker? let s see what s happening for your weekend. we ve got more wet weather moving into the pacific northwest, that storm system in the south. that moves on out. watching another clipper come down as we move into sunday, sunday! good morning, clear and cold on this friday morning, the clear sky, blue sky being reflected in the snow, the snow has a pastel blue tinge to it. we ll have a few clouds developing this afternoon, mostly tonight and saturday. highs tomorrow mid 30s. might get some flurries in central and southern virginia. sunday partly cloudy, mid 30s and on presidents day, we could get some light accumulation of snow in the afternoon and evening. and that s your latest weather. all right, mr. roker, when we come back, we re going to a little eating, as you mentioned, scallops and pork belly with daniel balut. then anybody want to hear music? want to hear music? we ve got this morning on today s olympic kitchen, vancouver s food scene. whether you crave seafood, sushi or just about anything else, there s no shortage of great food here, and over the next two weeks we re going to explore it all, beginning with daniel balut, owner of two vancouver restaurants as well as daniel s back in new york. good morning to you. yes, meredith, how are you? you ve got several restaurants here in vancouver. what drew you to this city, was it the food? i guess it was the food, yes. the people of vancouver, think they re really fantastic. they love food. and look, here we have a beautiful array of the seafood, the pacific seafood. let s start with the seafood and then go to something a little meatier. i m doing a sea scallop where i am just toasting the sea scallop. i put a little bit of oil here. okay. a little bit more. and i m just toasting the sea scallop. what is that that you re dusting it with polenta, a little bit of polenta. polenta, ah. the other side is seasoned as well. so, this is going to be roasting. and with that, we have also a little bit of cole slaw here. so, first i have a little bit of pure of parsnips, where we re going to put three little scallops, so that s parsnips? yes. that s the dish we do, and then i have a little bit of cole slaw here, like that. that looks delicious. we have a little parsley to go with that. we know scallops you can get here. what other kind of seafood is good t get in vancouver? look, we have about seven different kind of oysters from the bc area, and we have also, of course, indungeness crab crab. and the sea scallop as well. you cook that how long, daniel? a few second, i would say. then i have a little persipi st well wh a little barbecue sauce right there, and then as the scallops are cooked, i ll put them right over like this. oh, this looks good, guys. so, you see, it s ten seconds like that. ten seconds. and of course, if you have time, i will put your little dumpling of apple. then we have really mountain cooking. mountain cooking is i m making here a sauerkraut. and actually, i have the chefs from a couple local bistros here, and of course, we created that dish together with the scallops. now, this is pork that you re doing. with stefan, we created the sauerkraut. so, this is pork. this is a little young pork from the region of alberta, and voila. so, you have a little rice, you have a little loin, you have a  little leg. we like a little leg. -of-got to have a little leg. absolutely. a little sausage, homemade sausage. oh, daniel, that looks fantastic. a little, also, part of the fillet. a little potatoes. now, this is your own creative take on a dish you might find here in bc, or not only that, but that s sort of bringing a little bit of french to bc. ah. so, here we have a little mustard sauce, and this is really mountain cuisine. i mean, this is really the spirit of the olympics, having a nice sauerkraut, a nice beer at the bistro, that s perfect, and go ahead. i have the chef here, actually. this is the chief at lemiere and stefan, the chef at db bistro. it s basically the spirit of lemiere and db bistro in the dish. combined. i don t think a lot of people appreciate the fact that vancouver is well known for its we re kind of settling into our temporary home here at grouse mountain and we ve got everything we need, spectacular scenery, an eagle-eye view of vancouver and plenty of room to spread out and have a little fun. over 4,000 feet at its peak with 212 acres of terrain, grouse mountain, just a short drive from downtown vancouver, is a  local treasure. you can talk to anyone in vancouver, they ve had an incredible moment on grouse mountain. and generations of people have come here to learn how to ski and to recreate. reporter: in fact, visitors haveeen coming to grouse for over 100 years. a hunting party came here in 1894. people lived up here during the depression as a place to get away from the city and the cost of living there. reporter: in the 1950s, grouse made history with the installation of the world s first double chair lift, confirming vancouver and grouse as a playground for the jet set. ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the skyride. reporter: the iconic skyride opened in 1966. it carries over 100 passengers at a time over miles of alpine rainforest and remains the largt aerial tram of its kind in north america. today, grouse mountain is a year-round playground. one, two, three, woo! reporter: where visitors come to fly. that was awesome! reporter: hike. and ski miles high above vancouver. it s a great place to bring the kids. 20 minutes from your house and you re skiing. reporter: our own crew arrived weeks ago with the daunting task of bringing the today show to a live mountaintop location. logistics challenges are getting all that equipment, about 44,000 pounds of equipment, down in the parking lot, 3,700 feet below, up on a gondola that normally just carries people. reporter: including an early morning ride for our four generators, weighing in at 6,000 pounds apiece. with over 100 lights, 11 cameras and 100,000 feet of cable, this was no small undertaking. his is a special edition of today. this is a great location for the show. reporter: we came to grouse for the same reason people have been visiting this mountain for generations spectacular view of one of the world s premier cities, ready for the spotlight. over the years, we ve run out of superlatives for our technical crew. they have, once again, made the impossible look easy, and we thank them very much. and up next, a live performance from canada s only michael buble. but first, this is toda his fa his fans followed the way up to a top of a mountain, grouse mountain, to hear him sing. so, ladies and gentlemen, michael buble! hello, everybody! georgia, georgia, the whole day through just an old sweet song keeps georgia on my mind on my mind i said that georgia, georgia, mm, a song for you, it comes as sweet and clear as that moonlight through the pines you know it does, baby, let s go georgia, reach out to me, oh, other eyes smile tender ly, stil in peaceful dreams i see the road leads back to you, oh, i, i said georgia, oh, georgia no peace i find, there s just an old sweet song that keeps georgia on my mind oh, just an old sweet song keeps georgia on my mind but i love you vancouver yeah! michael buble, thank you so much. there is more music in a moment. but fi gosh, how much does one guy want? michael buble has sold 22 milln albums around the world. he just won a grammy a award. he s extended his crazy love tour. and yesterday, here on home soil, he got to carry the olympic torch. how cool is that? michael, good to see you, pal. i m going to talk about the torch in just a second, but you are a canadian, born in burnaby, canada, british columbia. you re here at grouse mountain, here at grouse mountain on home soil, and you sing georgia ? what s going on here? i haven t written a song about vancouver yet. you have to get to that in time. i know i do. talk to me about the feeling of carrying that torch. i know there were something like 40,000, 50,000 people around you. i m always proud to be canadian, and it s the first thing i say everywhere. but tonight i got goose bumps because you guys me me proud to see all these people standing out there supporting us, and we were so patriotic and excited, and i ve heard nothing but good things abouts welcoming all these different countries in with open arms, and it was i got goose bumps. i couldn t sleep last night. are you going to go to the opening ceremony? no, i m not. you re not? i m going to watch it on tv. well, that s a good way to watch it, with about 3 billion other people. totally. i ve got to study because i ve got to do i basically do journalism for a bunch of other countries where they re going to ask me questions, so so you re cramming tonight? i ve got to know what i m talking about. crazy love tour s extended. that album s been on the charts basically since it was released. -of-got to be thrilled about that. amazing. absolutely. how did you come up with that title, by the way? crazy love ? because it s crazy. love is crazy. how many of us get into relationships, 99% of the time they don t work out and end badly, probably, and we still end up falling in love a few months later, saying we ll never do it again, and you know, it makes us crazy, but when you find it, it s worth it. what are you going to sing now? i don t know. all i do is dream of you. thank gosh we have you here. ladies and gentlemen, michael buble. thanks, matt. all i do is dream of you, the whole night through, with the dawn i still go on dreaming of you you re every thought, you re everything, you re every song i ever sing summer, winter, autumn and spring, anever more than 24 hous in a day that will be spent in sweet content dreaming away when skies are gray, when skies are blue, more than moon and nighttime, too all i do the whole day through is dream of you that s it, kids. nice. nice. i like that. dee, dee, bop, dit, dit, dit, and whether more than 24 hours in a day oh, they d be spent in sweet content dreaming away, when skies are gray when skies are blue, in the morning, noon and nighttime, too all i do is dream of you the whole night and day through bop, bop, bop, bop, bop thanks, everybody. michael buble. from burnaby, british columbia. and you re going to give me a tour of vancouver next week. i m looking greatly forward to it. i am, too. have a great weekend. enjoy the opening ceremony. when we come back, we ll show you around this facility. but first, this is today on nbc. good morning to you. our time right now is 8:56 on this february 12, a friday here in t nation s capital. metro is back in service after the blizzards but it all depends on which station you use. the stations which have fluctuated throughout the morning. here are the latest closures, these stations are closed. shady grow, rockville and twin brook. on the orange line these stations are closed, vienna,ary fax and westph falls church are all closed. we re going to take a break right now and we ll come back and look at our weather and traffic. stay with us. good morning, more settled weather into sunday giving us a chance to dig out today, tomorrow and sunday with highs in the mid 30s. then we might get some light accumulations of snow monday afternoon and evening ending early tuesday morning. how s the mid morning traffic. 66 is jammed from just east of fair oaks to the beltway because of a very large pothole. jammed both ways. potholes across all lanes. we ll have another local news update in 25 minutes, but now we ll go back to the today we re back now with more of today on this friday morning, the 12th day of february 2010. you look at the olympic rings in the water just along the shoreline of vancouver, the downtown section, as we push northward, you can perhaps catch the lights, i hope, of grouse mountain, which is our location for today and the next couple of weeks as we cover the 21st olympic winter games. and boy, it s a pretty spot up here. we ve got it all. beautiful. i m matt lauer along with meredith vieira, ann curry, al roker, and look who s joined us, after spenng most of the week up at whistler mountain, natalie morales has made heir way down. you think we re going to get rough with you or something? got the helmet on. tough crowd, so i m ready. a lot going on at whistler. you ve been covering that for us and talking about lindsey vonn. and yesterday was the first day of practice. although they were fogged in. she put her boots back on, did a little free run, but not the run she needs to do. so, she s going to hopefully get some practice in today. great. another skier people are talking about is bode miller. he is kind of always talked about. didn t do all that well, at least by some standards, during the games in torino. so, can he bounce back and win some medals here? we re going to check into that in a couple of minutes. ann, you have a preview of the games for us. i do, because hours from now, vancouver officially welcomes the world. and for the next 17 days we ve got politicians, we ve got tourists, we ve got athletes all coming here. the city s going to be hosting all of them, basically more than 500,000 people. as athletes put final touches on routines, today the pressure is on organizers who say the awe-inspiring pageantry of two years ago in beijing is not the right comparison. we did not pay any attention to what anyone did other than what we wanted to do and how creatively we could do it. reporter: the ceremony tonight is expected to balance the natural beauty of the country s culture, rooted in traditions with the modern style of the metropolitan city. we believe we have a great show. we think it s going to be magical and fun and it will tell a great story. reporter: speculation over who will light the flame is in full swing. a long list of possible names includes actors, musicians and athletes, including the great one. if you were going to las vegas and you had a betting inclination and you picked the name wayne gretzky out of a hat, that would be a pretty good bet. reporter: canadian stars nelly furtado, brian adams and sarah mclaughlin are all expected to be part of the festivities. building a mystery reporter: at bc stadium, five-time olympic luger, mark grimmette, will carry the american flag, and with it, high hopes for team usa. it is very possible, very possible the americans could win the medals count. reporter: but on thursday, questions swirled about the u.s. ski team and what has been called the most famous shin in all the world. nothing is ever perfect, and you know, you just have to do the best that you can every day, and you know, that s just all i m trying to do. reporter: american skier lindsey vonn later wrote on her facebook page, my xinhua still very painful, but i feel like the injury is finally progressing a bit. the pain level has gone down from a sharp, debilitating pain to something that i feel i may be able to grit my teeth through. yet, while she was ready for her training run, the weather was not. earlier in the day, teammate stacey cook fell in low visibility and had to be airlifted from the scene. cook was treated and released. aeminder of the fragile olympic dreams that all athletes are chasing in vancouver. and we ve got some good news, because earlier we told you abt stacey cook. well, in fact, doctors are now saying that she s expected to make a full recovery. in fact, in time to compete. and as you know, it s rained at cypress mountain yesterday. well, today snow is predicted, and also for tomorrow. so, that s some good news, especially for the snowboarders and the freestyle skiers. okay, ann, thanks for that. by the way, we do want t mention that you re wearing a helmet because you are actually going to ski. this little run here in just a little bit, give you all a preview of what grouse mountain has to offer. cool. okay. and we also want to mention that the opening ceremony of the 21st olympic winter games begins at 7:30/6:30 central time right here on nbc. let s get a check of the morning s headlines right now. hoda kotb is back in new york fiing in while ann is joining us here in vancouver. she s got all the headlines. hoda, good morning. good morning, guys. and good morning, everybody. former president bill clinton is out of the hospital after spending the night following a procedure to fix a blocked artery. nbc s rehema ellis joins us now. rehema, what are the doctors saying out there? reporter: the doctors say that they expect a full and speedy recovery for the president. take a look at these picture hoda. the 63-year-old former president walked out of the hospital this morning with his daughter, chelsea. he waved to the cameras as the car drove by, and the clintons are already back at their home in chappaqua. true to form, there are reports that the president was talking out haiti on his cell phone as he was wheeled into the operating room on thursday. today he s probably back coordinating relief efforts for haiti, and doctors say he can go back to work on monday. ho hoda? he is on the go. rehema, thank you so much for that report. a man under arrest in mississippi is being called a person of interest in the somer thompson murder. jarred harrell used to liv near the 7-year-old girl in orange park, florida. he s being held on $1 million bond. an update on jaycee dugard, the girl who spent 18 years in captivity in california who bore two children, allegedly fathered by the man charged with abducting her. well, new court documents reveal a chilling account of her captivity, in her own words. details from nbc s george lewis. reporter: for all those years that she was held captive, jaycee dugard lived here in a ram shackle warren of sheds and tents behind the antioch, california, home of philip and nancy garrido, now charged with kidnapping and imprisoning her and the two children she allegedly had by garrido. papers filed by prosecutors quote a journal jaycee kept. in 2004, she wrote, it feels like i m sinking. i m afraid i want control of my life. this is supposed to be my life to do with what i like, but once again, he has taken it away. how many times is he allowed to take it away from me? i m afraid he doesn t see how the things he says makes me a prisoner. this comes in response to a motion by attorneys for the garridos who want to contact jaycee dugard and her children. it may be that they want to tell her what to say or what to do or they want to find out, more likely, what information she has, what she is going to say. reporter: under california law, jaycee dugard can refuse to have any contact with the garridos, and prosecutors say she wants nothing to do with them. george lewis, nbc news, los angeles. and the snow is deep, deep in the heart of texas. the dallas area got about a foot of snow on thursday. it collapsed the roof on a tire warehouse. the storm this morning is hitting the southeast. it is now seven minutes past the hour. we re going to head it back to matt, meredith, ann, natalie and al. guys, the coverage looks great from here. thank you. thanks, hoda. thanks. you know, ann, you mentioned the snow coming to cypress mountain, which is a good sign. more snow in vancouver. well, unfortunately, it s starting off as snow, then it s probably going to change over to rain. it s going to be a back and forth. it s really tough right now. so, as we take a look but again, the places where they re not expecting snow, they re getting it. dallas, 12 1/2 inches of snow yesterday. we have winter storm warnings and watches in effect from texas all the way to the carolinas. unbelievable. on the radar you ll see heavy rain through the panhandle of florida, but to the north of that we re looking at snow. how much snow? we are talking about three to six inches of snow stretching from mississippi all the way to the carolinas. atlanta today is going to see somewhere between four and six inches o another day to dig out with good weather to do that. temperatures near freezing in washington and we ll have afternoon highs climbing into the upper 30s so there will be some more melting and a lot of standing water and we ll have increasing clouds after a sunny morning. right back down to freezing tonight. we ll see everything freezing back up into the mid 20 tonight light accumulations of snow possible monday afternoon and evening. that s your latest weather. and of course, we re here in canada, so, this would make this studio 1-eh. that s from our camera guy, bob yager. i like that. that actually was really good. you lik that? yeah, that was cool. all right. bob yager, ladies and gelemen. good one. let us move on. all eyes are going to be on bode miller when he takes to the slopes up at whistler tomorrow. he s 32 years old now, competing in his fourth winter olympic games. some people think these will be his last games. remember, he was supposed to shine in torino four years ago. that did not work out. so, will 2010 be different? take a look. bode miller, a two-time world cup overall winner in alpine skiing and arguably the best american skier of all time. heading into the torino games in 2006, expectations were high for bode, who was attempting to medal in all five alpine events. oh! bode did make headlines in torino, but for all the wrong reasons. failing to earn a single medal, he was criticized by some for his off the mountain antics. after the games, he told the associated press that while he didn t win olympic gold, he got to party and socialize at an olympic level. did you party your way through the olympics? no. i mean, i was out it s not, you know, not anything different than i ve ever done in my entire career, and i think for me athletics always comes first. when you lose, everybody hates you. when youwin, everybody s behind you. reporter: frustrated with the structure of the u.s. ski team, in 2007 bode decided to part ways to start his own team, but last year he had a change of heart and rejoined team usa. the ski team has been super supportive. they ve had great success over the last years, and i think we re looking forward to continuing that. reporter: giving him the opportunity to compete in his fourth olympics and the chance to try to take home the gold medal that has eluded him thus far. there is nothing the american public likes better than a tale of redemption. bode miller, the only thing missing on his resumé he s got 32 world cup wins, he s the most accomplished american skier of all time. the one thing missing is the gold. wouldn t surprise me a bit if he gets it here. reporter: after winning his first world cup race of this season just last month in switzerland, bode is off to a strong start and has said he feels confident going into these games. it is a different challenge, and in a lot of cases it allows you to elevate your intensity or your focus or your inspiration to a level you couldn t achieve on your own, and i think that s unique to the olympics. bode does better when he is not the man, when he s not under the glare of the spotlight 110%, and he s not this time. this time, in fact, he s sort of an underdog, which is the way bode likes it. and again, bode s first race is the downhill tomorrow. you can check it out on nbc. coming up, what makes our home here at grouse mountain so special? we ll take you on a tour right after these messages. there are many paths to good health. that s why nature s bounty makes. a full line of high-quality vitamins, like fish oil for heart health. go to naturesbounty.com now for a $2.00 coupon. nature s bounty. perfect for every body. destroy them with lysol neutra air. it eliminates odor-causing bacteria in the air. and kills 99.9 percent of bacteria at the source. oust air sanitizer is not approved to kill bacteria at the source. enjoy nothing but freshness. with lysol neutra air the ultimate odor eliminator. and try lysol neutra air freshmatic for clean, fresh air automatically. make that first 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(announcer) not just sinus headache. but pressure. and congestion. ooohhh. that rescues you from all three symptoms introducing new sudafed pe® triple action™. for more complete relief from the sinus triple threat. get more complete relief. with new sudafed pe® triple action™. also find sudafed® behind the counter. so warm and fluffy. make the most out of the most important meal of the day. ladies, raise your spoons. now there s nothing left standing between you and a satisfying breakfast. introducing special k low-fat granola. with 50% less fat than the leading granola. and 5 grams of fiber per serving, it s a satisfying way to help you manage your weight. spial k low-fat granola a taste of freedom. announcer: today s friday whip is brought to you by mcdonald s. and we are back with an olympic edition of today s whip, and we decided this was as good an opportunity as any to take you on a little tour of our home away from home here at grouse mountain, just outside downtown vancouver. and why not start right here in the control room? this is the brain trust, right here, of the today show. granted, it doesn t look like much, but these are the people who put this show on every day. they are our executive producer. everybody in this room has one purpose, and that is to make this guy, our director, joe michaels, look good. it doesn t always happen, but that s their job. coming from the control room, let me move back into engineering a little bit. again, remember, a of this equipment was shipped from new york or other places around the country and then trucked to grouse mountain and then lifted up on that tram to the top here. all of this equipment, just so we can bring you this show on a daily basis. a little hard to come in and out of here, tight quarters. anthony, see if you can follow me f a second. we ve got a hallway over here that leads us, yeah, right down this way to our green room and makeup room areas. hi, jimmy, how are you? right around the corner here is hair and makeup, where they re busy working on each other in here right now. hi, matt! hi, ladies, how are you doing? then jimmy, be careful, back up. then if you come over this way, we re expecting a lot of guests here, a lot of olympic athletes and dignitaries to join us here. for example, people like michael buble, who s just checking out the buffet here after a great performance. this is our green room here at grouse mountain. michael, thanks. great show. loved it. let s go down to ann. all right, and matt is upstairs from us. we re coming down the stairs. coming downstairs, this is called peak chalet, built in 1966 to replace one that burned down in the 1930s. you can see the natural wood that s being used here. this is actually home base, as you can see. this is where we normally you can see this on television. you saw it this morning. there s room for five chairs. over here to the left of it is the interview area that we ll be using a lot during our stay here. then as we come back around in here, we re going to show you that right over re, right behind me, now we re looking at all these people. al and our weather and they were the ones cheering so wildly for michael buble. it s so great to see you. then just over here, the reason why they re so happy is this is the production area where michael buble and others will be performing throughout our tour. and now we re going to send you right outside, because just past those doors is al. al? hey, thanks a lot, ann. this is the fire pit area. this is very popular. this is where we re toasting marshmallows, getting warm, we ve got our crowd here. and we also have just over this way, we ve got our bunny slope. so, if you see any bunnies, that s where they ll be skiing. and we ve got our ice rink production area over here. and then, this is great, we ve got our own ice skating rink, which is prettyimpressive. and on the ice skating rink we ve got meredith! thank you. pretty impressive. 8,000 square feet. our gold medalist and special correspondent for the today show, kristi also asked to hold my hand while we skate. yes. i want to hold meredith s hand. 8,000 square feet, the only one of its kind on the west coast. and anybody with a mountain pass automatically gets to skate for free. and during the olympics, guys, it s actually open 24/7 along with the mountain. so, at 2:00 in the morningf you decide to slap on the skates and do some fancy footwork on the ice, feel free to do so. do you want to do anything, kristi? well, i think you re showing us just great. somebody in the crowd told me, you look so terrified. relax. we ll send it now to natalie. a little twirl, maybe. there you go. nat? all right, well, i m here with olympic gold medalist picabo street, also a special correspondent for us. look at her. she s doing some turns here, because actually, there are 26 great runs here at grouse, five black diamonds, two double blacks. that s more your speed, isn t it? yes, it is. and you can actually do some climbing, some hiking here. the first single chair lift is in sun valley, idaho, my hometown, but the first double chair lift is here at grouse mountain. that s right, exactly. so, a great place to hang out, only 25 minutes from downtown vancouver. can you believe it? doesn t get any better than this. bring the family here. it s just around the corner. it s nice to be here. i feel the need for speed. we ll have to do a couple times, all right? let s do it. we ll be back right after this. let s go back up. okay. winter can be beautiful. with relief from dry, uncomfortable skin. only aveeno skin relief has an active naturals oat formula. to improve all fivsymptoms. of winter skin in just one day. discover the beauty and comfort of skin relief. only from aveeno. wellbeing. we re all striving for it. purina cat chow helps you nuture it in your cat. with a full family of excellent nutrition. and helpful resources. purina cat chow. share a better life. after all the rich holiday food. purina cat chow. and activity you were.? 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(chuckling): are you sure about this? definitely, it s my treat. alright, alright. i ll just have a little something. whatever you want grandpa, as much as you want, please. grandpa (chuckling): ok. grandson: ok? vo: olive garden introduces handmade pansottis. our new pyramid raviolis stuffed with italian cheeses. try them with chicken in a portobello alfredo sauce. or with grilled sausage in tomato alfredo. starting at $10.95 with unlimited salad and breadsticks. thank you. where d you learn to be so generous? i guess it runs in the family. vo: olive garden. when you re here, you re family. how was the snow? it s a little slushy because i think it rained here yesterday, but you know, i m told up there it s pretty good, so, we re going it give it a go. maybe one day we ll get up there. that would be nice. by the way, a programming note, and i think the canadians here are going to like hearing this they like hearing their names! you haven t even heard it yet. monday here live on our show from grouse mountain, the one and only, or we should say, the great one, wayne gretzky. so, that should be fun. that s awesome. along with bobby orr. we re going to go for the big double, that s right. one more, we ve got a hat trick. throw the hat on the ice and everything like that. coming up, we re going to talk about sunday, valentine s day. that s right. yeah. but we re making chocolates, right, with a famous canadian chocolateer, coming up this morning. and you get a free gift for your husband, richard, because it s his birthday. it is his birthday. i don t want to tell him it s free. never something free for you. never. , your valentine is who you want to sit by, who you get in trouble with, who you tell your secrets to, who you play with at recess. i said, well, that s daddy, too. this valentine s day, wouldn t your valentine. like to know how you feel? give them a refreshingly real card from hallmark. to get more of the fiber you need every day, try fiberchoice. with the natural fiber found in fruits and vegetables and 33% more fiber per serving than benefiber. fiberchoice, the smart choice for the mostiber. ammonia free color? that s right! only 10 minutes. th natural instincts. and the more often you use it the healthier your hair looks. natural instincts. it s all good. 89:26 is your time right now. check your airline before approximate you head out. in the news this morning, mro is back in service after the blizzard, but it depends on which station you use. several stations are still closed because of all the snow. here are the latest closures. on the red line shady grove. a limited number of metro bus routes are also running on snow emergency routes. we ll have your weather and traffic when we come back. stay with us. good morning, we have bright sunshine and temperatures near 30 degrees around the region. and then remain above freezing in the mid and upper 30s in the late afternoon. then we freeze right back up. we ll have clouds overnight tonight. there s a chance of a few flurries from chart charlottesville and south. there s a chance of some light accumulations. jerry, hu s the traffic? the remnants of the traffic jammed as you come out of college park. one more stop, look at that, it s a parking lot literally along interstate 66. only one lane open and once you get into the district, 23rd and constitution severely restricted due to snow. we ll have another local news update for you in just 25 back now with more of today at our home away from home here at grouse mountain high love vancouve british columbia. and just like back in rockefeller plaza, we have some fine folks here with us, waving hello and chatting hello to their loved ones. coming up, can the four-man bobsled team reach victory lane here in vancouver? we ll meet the men who like hurling down the track at speeds of up to 95 miles an hour. so cool. but before we get to anything else, look who s here, lester holt is joining us here at grouse mountain. hi, lester. hi. i have the honor of making a terrific penetration. the squamish nation has been using this paddle to help people along their journey for years, and in the spirit of our journey here, they are lending it to us so we are new caught up the creek without a paddle. that is so beautiful. beautiful. hand-carved. the carving on that is gorgeous. the bird. it s amazing the art, the aboriginal art. it s so amazing. great stuff, isn t it some. stunning. it s also the regional nature of this region. . it s a loaner. we have to give it back. it s a loaner. all right. meanwhile, what do you have coming up this week? coming up this weekend, jason priestly of 90210 fame is from vancouver, he grew up just miles from here. he showed us both sides of the harbor. so, we do that. chinese new year is about to be celebrated, so we ll take you to vancouver s chinatown. and of course, the morning after the opening ceremony, we ll some of the athletes who participated and have a wrap-up. that will be fun. great. and before we go any furthe you ve got a check of the weather. you bet, we do. let s take a look, see what s happening. we re talking about a weekend that starts off with a little bit of vancouver weather. today we re looking for showers becoming steady rain. tonight downtown cloudy with showers and about 44. whistler mountain, snow accumulations about one to three inches. then for tonight, they ll pick up another three to six inches. that s good news. for the weekend, we ve got sunshine up and down the gulf coast, sunny skies on the east coast, some morning snow. then on sunday, sunday, we re looking at more rain in the pacific northwest, we re looking for some snow showers in the northeast, some rain gets itself together in the gulf coast and we ve got a clipper that we re keeping an eye on that may bring morenow monday great weather for digging out. we ll get above freezing in the next hour or so, and remain above freezing in the afternoon, and highs should reach the upper 30s. cloudy tonight, down into the mid 20s and mostly cloudy saturday, mid 30s, might get some light snow, maybe some flurries in central southern new jersey. that s your latest weather. and we ve got these nice bells. that s right. they re from one of the or the nice people who have come to see us this morning, and there are three different bells. they represent the cypress, grouse and seymore mountains, and basically, they re a good thing for hikers to wear. also for the squamish nation, represent sea, water, land and air. thanks for bringing these. i ve got to mention this lady behind me, lisa here from canada. when you went sunday, she said that s her favorite part. aww. good to have you here. when we come back, the night train with members of the u.s. bobsled team. but first, these messages. 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you can make it in just 14 minutes mmmh, orange chicken. great. i didn t feel like going out anyway (announcer) wanchai ferry. restaurant quality chinese in your grocer s freezer so you ate lots of decadent rich food during the holidays. and i got irregular and sluggish. then you took the activia challenge. activia! honestly, i had my doubts. but activia really works, i can feel the difference! oh, good! help get your system back on track! activia with bifidus regularis helps regulate your digestive system in two weeks. you re convinced! i ll be treating myself to activia every morning. mmmm! take the activia challenge now. it works, or your money back! activia welcome back to grouse mountain in vancouver as we continue tonight s opening ceremony. for the first time in more than half a century, the u.s. four-men bobsled team enters the winter games as reigning world champions. steve holcombe is the driver and curt tomasevicz is the pusher. did i get that right? i find the names of the winter olympics much more difficult than the summer olympics. i don t know what that s all about. reigning champs going into this, first time in 50 years for the u.s. to have the gold medal. how does it feel going into the olympics knowing you have that behind you? feels great. we put the pressure on ourselves, if there s any pressure at all. we re just excited to race and we know that we can do it and just excited. yeah. i mean, we ve dominated all season. we re going to do what we do, our best, come out here and race and have a good time, enjoy the journey and hopefully the destination will be just as long. it s the second olympics for both of you. is it different the second time around? i think it s a lot different. we actually, we kind of know what to expect now, so we can actually relax and still get up but stay grounded and calm at the same time. well, i ran into you in the olympic village the other day. you were very relaxed, wearing flip-flops i was. as a matter of fact, with no socks, which i think is a good thing, but looks like you re very comfortable. yeah, you know, we re having a good time. this is a good olympics so far and it hasn t even started yet. we re having a good time and it will be a good end to the season. you do the two-man and also the four-man bobsled and your team is known as night train. where did that name from come? it kind of came from our sled engineer and our mechanic. they got together, brought out a brand new sled couple years ago. it was flat black, a matte black, just had a primer on it and didn t have time to paint the sled before the season started. so, overnight they came up with the logo, somehow, in their head and came up with the night train. you got on it the first time and you knew that was it. yeah it was a test sled. it wasn t meant to use that season, but we used it anyway and won the world championships. in a lot of ways, you shouldn t be here because you had a degenerative eye disease, even thought about retiring. then you tried a special surgery. now your eyesight is 20/20, is that right? that is correct. i had a degenerative eye disease where your eyes get worse over time and eventually you go blind and you have to have a cornea transplant. how did you drive? i just did it by feel. you use visual cues, but also drive by a sense of feeling and over the years i developed that sense. so, do you have to retrain yourself now that you can see? a little bit, actually. it s been difficult. i have to keep my visor scratched up and dirty from too much information distracting me. and you push. do you have something less to eat the night before or what happens? absolutely. we try to get as much energy as we can, i guess, and we work out well as a team, so, that s the way it works. speaking of energy, as we leav steve, i understand you do a special dance called the holcombe? the holcy dance. that s in honor of matt lauer, right? what s that? in honor of matt? well, we had the where in the world is matt, dancing around everywhere. we ve been dancing in all the locations everywhere just for fun and we ve kind of decided to do it. take it away then, steve. we ll say good-bye to steve holcombe you can join me. thanks to both of you. up next, valentine s day canadian style, right after this. i ll do it with you. go ahead. all right. i just can t wait to see all those crunchy flakes in action. i hope i get a chance to put two scoops!™ of raisins in some boxes. you know what will really get us in the spirit? 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(announcer) school mornings are busy mornings. so i make them pillsbury toaster strudel. warm, flaky pastry with delicious, sweet filling my kids will love. plus i get box tops for their school. toaster strudel. the one kids want to eat. this morning on today s olympic kitchen, valentine s day chocolate. tis the season, especially at one of canada s most popular companies. it s called purdy s chocolate, produced more than 2 million pounds of chocolate every year. we have peter higgins,he chocolate scientist. that s an auspicious title. that means you can really make this stuff. good morning. we re going to make some chocolate here. chocolate is such a technical product. we meld the science and the art of chocolate and i ll let you all be chocolateers here. so, what we ve got in front of us is one cup of 70% dark chocolate. yum. so, very, very good. so, the first step okay. everybody s ready to go here. you re looking good. we re going to temper the chocolate. what that means is tempering the chocolate, is get the right structure so you get that proper snap and shine of high-quality chocolate. right. so, a little tip for home is if you melt you take your chocolate bars and you melt it to about 80% and then you stir in the rest. so, that s what i ve done here. what do you mean, 80% melted? 80% melted, and then you stir in the 20% solid. that s left over. that s right. that s what we re doing today. we ll assume it s perfectly tempered for now. now we re going to mix the wonderful ingredients. it all starts with high-quality ingredients. right. we re making a blueberry almond bar today. so a healthy bar. and it makes you grow tall. it makes you grow very tall. as you can see, chocolate is good for you. how long have you been making chocolate? i ve been making chocolate about 15 years. all right. it s been a passion of mine. we re going to start with the almonds. okay. the almonds are from california. so, lightly roasted to bring out that natural flavor. we re going to add about four ounces for this recipe, or to taste. so, stir that in, make sure they re all nicely covered. i m going to get little bit of mine. there we go. i notice that the chocolate is very big in canada, everywhere i go, and it s like very dark chocolate,ome of it, like 60%, 70%. this is 70%, and that s the amount of cocoa content. the higher the amount of cocoa content, the better for you. and that makes it much more healthy. absolutely. full of antioxidants. we re going to add our blueberries now, about two ounces. are these dried blueberries? these are dried blueberries. we grow a lot of blueberries in the vancouver area. so, we ll mix those in. this looks so good. you re making a lot of the olympics chocolates. look at these, with quatchi, with the mascots. no licking your fingers yet. so, now what we re going to do is pour it out on the wax paper. oh, okay. so, we re going to pour that out on the wax paper. just flat? just about half inch thick all around into a nice rectangular shape. mm-hmm. and you can get your hands right in there, if you want. that s the fun part of it. oh, yeah, yeah. this is going to be a gooey mess. okay. so, we mix it out to about a half inch thick all around. get those nice inclusions set up there. and then what we re going to do is we let that cool for about a half an hour at room temperature. and once that s set, you ve got the best darn chocolate bars you ve ever got. that s great. and you can have fun at home. you can make some of your own recipes. what we re going to do now, we re not going to wait a half an hour. we re going to taste some. let s do it! i love it. we re going to set that up. you can eat that. so, we re going to grab some of the blueberry almond. i ll take you through how it tastes. oh, this is how it comes out, right there. you ve got some in front of you. natalie. and we re going to tte this. first of all, we want to have the right snap. you ve got to use all your senses. the snap. the right snap. the texture, the shine. and you put it in your mouth and taste that. let it savor over your taste buds. you get the salty, the bitter notes. appreciate all those different notes, savor that you can really taste the blueberry in it. the aroma of the bluebey. yes, the aroma is incredibly strong and that starts with the high-quality ingredients. speechless. ou have a signature chocolate. what is that? our signature chocolate, two things. sweet georgia browns and hedge hogs. our sweet georgia browns, you can taste them here. are you okay tasting more chocolates, you guys? i guess we have to. twist my arm. we heard michael buble talk about georgia. georgia pecans. oh, sure. these are the best pecans you can buy. best ingredients make the best chocolate. and these guys? the hedgehog. we ve got our hazel nuts here. it s just a fine blend of hazel nuts and into a nice pure mixed with the belgian milk chocolate. and look at this yes, you re using himalayan sea salt. now why do you go this route? so, this is from an ancient deposit high up in the himalayan mountains. right. so, some say it s the purest salt in the world. so, it is fantastic. and so, if you want to try a himalayan pink salt caramel. it actually dates back to aboriginal recipe that richard purdy, when he started purdy s in 1937 we re 103 years old when he started it, this is the original caramel recipe. we put a twist on it with the himalayan pink salt. that looks amazingly fresh for 103 years old. i look good for 103. we re going to bring these over here to these kids here, helping us out. you want to try some? go ahead. help yourself. how long before we start getting tall when you start eating this? several years? it takes a few years, but keep eating it. and a constant, steady diet of it. exactly. i eat seven to ten pieces a day. it s great for you. peter, thank you so much. happy valentine s day. helping us enjoy valentine s day coming up, and thank you so much for helping us learn how to all right, we are back and just about to wrap up day one of our fun time here at grouse mountain, just outside vancouver, as the opening ceremony gets under way tonight. we ll tell you more about what you can expect to see over the weekend in just a second. what are you guys looking forward to doing here? come on in, ann. come on in. we ll slide over. and kristi and picabo, come on in. come on in, guys. what are you looking forward to seeing over the weekend? we ve got tickets to see speed skating, looking forward to that, the moguls as well. ooh. i m seeing apolo go for his sixth gold. sounds fantastic. are you excited? i m excited, yes. yes, yes, the answer is yes. he s working. i ll be happy just to get that behind me, but it s a fantastic show, no question. picabo, what are you looking forward to? the men s downhill. thas tomorrow? yes. downhill will be fun, but also apolo tomorrow night. and you re taking natalie and me, we re going out. partying! the girls are going out, yeah. have a nice time. you ve got to get some action going on. we have michael buble on monday. you join me on that. i m on it. unfortunately, we re going to do it at 9:00 in the morning. have you guys been fitted for your spandex outfits yet? when is that happening? we don t have to be fitted. we ve got a whole wardrobe oh! you know what you re going to do? we brought it with us. and younow what you re going to do, i take it. it s the second biggest secret aside from who s lighting the cauldron. natalie, what are your plans this weekend? hanging out with the girls. cool. and opening ceremony. great. let s remind everybody, opening ceremony tonight at bc place. you can watch it, 7:30/6:30 and kathie lee are next.n nbc. have a great weekend, everybody. thanks for coming! captions by vitac www.vitac.com 9:56 is your time right now, 31 diagnosis right now, still below freezing, a lot of sunshine out there on this friday the 12th of february. in the news for today, metro is back in service after a week of heavy snow, but it depends on what station you want to use. a lot of stations are still closed. the numbers of those stations have fluctuated throughout the morning. the red line, shady grove, rockville and twin grove are closed. west falls church station is close. a limited number of bus routes are closed. let s go to tom kiron to find out about our forecast. more good weather for digging out after wednesday s storm, temperatures should make it into the upper 30s again. mostly cloudy tomorrow into the mid 30s, maybe a few flurries central and southern virginia tomorrow. partly cloudy sunday, afternoon highs mid 30s. could get a light accumulation of snow monday afternoon and evening. jerry, how s the traffic now? it is jammed all over 270 southbound remains extremely backed up. there are significant delays along connecticut avenue and rockville pike. making the drive from northern virginia, 29 crawling from duke street to the 14th street bridge. we ll have more captions paid for by nbc-universal television hey, everybody, it is friday, february 12th, 2010. kathie l is still on vacation. dan abrams, the famous dan abrams joins me as my co-host. glad to have you here today. this is fun. this is pretty cool. right? drinks and first time i ve ever been able to drink alcohol on television. see what happens when you come to visit me? this is so fun. vancouver, we re not in vancouver. we re the only hour of the today show not in vancouver. we re not upset or hurt at all. look at the crowd we turned out. vancouver had a pretty good crowd. not that shot. that make it is look small. yes, that s the shot. that s the money shot right there. you realize what happened. what? i invited my whole family. they re out there? yeah. you see? come, please. just so you feel at home? just so someone believes it matters. let s start with a toast because we have to christen you into the fourth hour of today. okay, good. ts is a drink with strawberry and champagne. what s it called? the lady in red cocktail, i believe. lady in red should we do this? stop it? can we? oh, hoda. this is so much better than kathie lee. hoda. so much better. what a nice way to srt. see how easy we re going to ease in today. we ve got a lot to talk about. the olympics, you know, is going on. kind of a big news story out of new york yesterday. president bill clinton was at the hospital, where he had a stent put in. he had a history of heart trouble. it was not a heart attack, they re clear on saying. he s out. he s walking out. he looks good. when i saw the news first and it said president clinton taken to the hospital, it sounded dire. but the truth is it seems this is what they re almost calling maintenance to some degree. yeah. that they kind of expected that at some point around this time he would need to do something like this. he had that quadruple bypass in 2004. they say once you have heart disease it sort of stays with you. he has always had the trouble, like a lot of us. like with eating right, junk food, didn t exercise much and all that sort of stuff. so, i ll be curious now they say he s fine. they say he was on the phone coming out of the hospital, talking about stuff he want ed o do when it came to haiti. do you know what s kind of cool? president clinton was kind of a controversial figure but the minute you hear about something bad happening to any ex-president, the country kind of comes together. yeah, you re right. that s true. and they say, you know what? i m really, really hoping, ro rootiroo rooting, praying for him. as the news broke, you look on twitter and places where you get sort of immediate reaction and the primary reaction was, even from people who don t like him yeah, yeah. oh, hope we move past this. i hope this is okay. which is really nice. isn t dan cute? have you guys noticed? hoda, hoda, please, do stop. i mean, not really. it is very nice to have a very cute guy up here with me. valentine s day is coming. who is in your life? is there someone? yes, there is. i was asked out for valentine s day about three weeks ago. see, women should ask men out. the date was solidified by my 93-year-old aunt shannon. here is the the thing about it is that aunt shannon feels sorry for me. she wants to know that i have someone to be with on valentine s day. why don t you have someone? what s the story? it s you know, i don t have an answer. i don t. if i had an answer, i would probably have someone. but you ve dated a lot. we see you around in the magazines. i have dated. yes. and i have can i drink while we re talking about this? yes. i think you ought to. i don t tend to talk about my personal life while i m sober. people are probably wondering this really good-looking guy. you run this website called the media-ite. yes, it s a media website. what do you get on that website? it s about the media. and it s a lot of fun. it s been fun starting that one. we started a site called ecosystem and we re starting some more. that s been a lot of fun. so, back to you. back to aunt shannon. yeah. so, yeah, i don t really have an answer. i do think that i m pitied by my family. well, okay. i m going to do a little quiz with you. oh, really? yeah. so, there was this oxygen no, that s not the one. do you want to quiz me on john mayer? compared to john mayer, i am the ultimate valentine. i want to ask you this. they say most guys don t know basic questions about the girls they go out with, basics, okay? think of your last girlfriend. we re not going to mention who she is. right, just do you know her dress size? i would have probably known her dress size, yeah. do you know her eye color? absolutely, 100%. what color? that would disclose blue or brown? come on. blue. brown. brown. okay, brown. do you know her bra size? probably not. probably not? i mean, i think i would be able to tell you the ballpark but, you know i mean, you know, i would. i would be able to give you a good guess between two sizes. but do you think it s true do you think that s true i mean, if i knew exactly, i think i don t know if there s anything that means you bought her lingerie at some point. right. so the answer to that question is no, i never bought her lingerie. okay. because they say what do you think, though, that a lot of guys don t know basics? what did it say, 12% of guys didn t know eye color? eye color. that s ridiculous. yeah, you should know those kinds of things. of course you should know. how about shoe size? depends how long you ve been dating. some of them didn t know her title at work, what she did. see, that s the worst. at, to me, is almost worse than eye color. really? it means you re not listening, right? if the question becomes, are you listening or looking, most women probably rather you lisn. but most guys look, right? they do look. but the fact that they just think about that. if we re talking about long-term relationships like husband/wife stuff where they don t know eye color or what they do at work, i mean i think that s really pathetic. but it s easy for me to judge because as a nonmarried person i can judge all the married people and tell you what they re doing wrong. what they re doing wron right. it s crazy. valentine s day stuff, i want to do some of that stuff. there s a poll that also shows that women would rather sleep than have sex and men would rather have sex than sleep. yeah. shocker! hello! yeah. ooh, we needed a poll to tell us this one. there s nothing really new there. women just feel like we need our rest sometimes. again, this is where the outsider view comes in, but the people who have been married for a long time, sleep increasingly become morse important over time. i don t know. i would just think that sleep becomes a bigger priority. what s your longest relationship? let me grab a drink. okay. longest is? ah, yes. i have to chug that. year and a half. that s pretty long. yeah, few of those. okay. few of those. few year-and-a-halfers. if you re watching our olympic coverage, which is terrific. yeah. you saw matt lauer dressed in quite a getup. nice outfit. he carried the olympic torch for three meters. he said it was one of the thrills of his life. he ran down one of the streets down there and he passed it off. he said just the crowd and the feeling that he had being part of that was something he ll never forget. and our boss, steve capas, also there s matt. cute. steve capas did it as well. i want to see steve s outfit. everyone is commenting on it. there it is. yes, look at steve. that wasn t very figure flattering, that outfit. yeah. no, it s but, you know, he and matt both look like athletes when they re running. they do, jocks. they re athletic when they re running. not only are they both athletic men, they re handsome and powerful menace well. yes, they are. they look wonderful. on our desk, since we re distracting people here, we have got a rubik s cube, old-time and this is the new fangled version. this guy is electronic. what is your name, honey? hi, i m tyson. how are you? tyson is going to show us how thishing works. you re going to turn it on. okay, it s on. this is the new puzzle being introduced. let s get this ooh. viewing at the toy fair. take me to your leader. it s very easy to play. hold on. let me make sure people can see what you re doing. do your thing. basically you re trying to solve each puzzle. this is where it starts and you re trying to get the lights here. you can move it around. you can also twist it. it s very tactile. you solve the puzzle. it takes you to the next stage. i ve never solved one, what am i saying? it would take me a long time. how long is it going to take you to do this one? i think you can do it yourself, actually. anyone can do this. you try. i want to time you. that s one puzzle stage. they get increasingly harder as they go along. i thought you could do it in 18 seconds. what can you do? come on. i m solving each one. you re done, is that it? it s different stages. so, you can go through, there are 10,000 of these, very addictive. it s directed toward a casual gamer. okay. i don t really get it. but okay. i guess you have to be really smart to no, no, no. anyone can do this. apparently you don t qualify as a casual gamer. she s too advanced. that s the problem. honey, thank you. thank you, thurks thank you. coming up next, your kids know who this next woman is, teen sensation her name, selena gomez, right after this. everything comes naturally it comes naturally when you re with me baby evything comes naturally that is 17-year-old selena gomez, who your kids may know as alex russo on the disney channel hit wizards of waverly place. you saw, selena s passions revolve around music. yes, indeed. kiss and tell album is making its way up the charts. good to see you. hi. it s already in the top 40? my single just hit top 40. i m very excited. this thing came out in 2009, right? yes, september. was singing something that you always wanted to do, you had a real passion for? yes. i was an only child growing up so i pretty much entertained myself. i would always sing and put on plays for my family. music has always been a passion but doing it professionally was always scary for me. there s an interesting story behind the name of the album, selena gomez and scene. i love that family element. i wanted to do music, i wanted to take that family feel and put it into my music, so i have a band. do you want to focus everyone knows you from the wizards of waverly place. you ve got that music career going. do you feel you can balance the two or do you want to put more emphasis on the music or more on the acting? at the moment i feel like i have a good balance of both and i m happy with it. in the long run, i hope i can continue acting and i think that will be my main thing. so, you re 17? yes, i am. and you ve got a hit show and you ve got a best-selling album. thank you. and you ve got a clothing line. what? and you re doing a ton of work for charity. thank you. are you having fun? yes. i feel like that s the whole point of it. i enjoy doing it and i love my fans. when it s not fun anymore, i shouldn t do it. there are kids standing outside here with your pictures and stuff. hi. they really, really look up to you. do you feel like there s a lot of pressure to be the right kind of role model because we ve seen, as you know, all kinds of women out there doing things that aren t terrific that kids look up to. i don t feel pressure. i feel very fortunate ithe way my parents have raised me and i understand that i m human, that i make mistakes but i think it s my job to keep those mistakes to myself and not let it interfere with my fans. is it hard to be in the spotlight, everything in your life, your social life, where you go, what you re doing? you re always being watched and you re still it s a little frustrating at times when people want to know about things tt you may not really be open about talking about, but other than that, i feel very lucky and i love what i do. thereas a picture of you and nick jonas and everyone was like, oh, my god, they re back together. what is the story with you and nick? he s a good guy. he s a good but is it as soon as there s a photo taken that s everything. the rumors go flying. absolutely, of course. do you try to get out there and get in front of it or do you just let people say what they re going to say? you don t have any control over it. so you have to let it do what it s supposed to do. she was asking me question. selena, that s what this show is. i understand. that s what this show is. i understand. unicef is a big deal for you. yes, it is. why is that a charity that s close to your heart? it works with children and that s obviously very close to my heart, because my job is to make kids and families laugh. i worked with unicef two years ago and fell in love with the company and what they did and they asked me to be their youngest ambassador last year. i got to go to ghana and take a trip and it s a good feeling of having that sensation of giving back. do you ever just want to be a kid? i do, absolutely. you do? i do all the time. really? last night, i was jumping on my bed, i was so excited, with my friend, eating pizza. so, of course. morale bums on the way? yes, absolutely. we wish you the best of luck. thank you so much. you are going to do so, so, so well. thank you. thank you, selena. up next, what your doctor really wants to hear from you, be no matter how difficult it is to reveal. plus we ll talk a little bit about president clinton s procedure. time for today s health and the prescription to ensure the best possible care from your doctor. president clinton s angioplasty procedure puts heart health into the spotlight today. it absolutely does. it also reinforces it s so important your doctor know everything about you which is why health.com asked docs to spill the beans on what they really want to hear from you. dr. roshini raj is here with that list. hello, dr. raj. hello. president clinton yesterday walked out, seemed perfectly fine today. you can have chest pains, walk out and be back in business? the good news is that he didn t actually have a heart attack. he did have chest pains, which is a warning sign that something was going on with his coronary arteries. he went into the hospitals, got stents put into those arteries. people are almost talking about this as maintenance. yeah. yet when you hear the word chest pains it s hard to view that as maintenance. heart disease is not it s a chronic disease. it s not something that gets fixed just like that. even though he had the bypass operation in 2004, the heart disease can continue, the arteries can close again. about 20% of people, after bypass surgery, will need a repeat procedure of some kind. that s interesting. it s not abnormal and the chest pain was a good warning sign. luckily, he took care of it before he actually had a heart attack. ten tips, which is why you are here today. the first one is doctors say don t think you ve got every ailment out there. hypochondria is common, right? not only is it common but it could cause you to get unnecessary tests, unnecessary medication. talk about your symptoms but try not to have too many preconceived notions of what you think you have because you saw it on tv or the internet. let the doctor talk to you and diagnose the problem with you. let them do their job. we re always googling our ailments. and presuming our doctors are wrong. yes. and people doctor shop and insist on getting this cat scan, that test. it might not be necessary. next one be is to spill it, no matter how embarrassing. how many glasses of alcohol do you have per week? do you do all sorts of horrible things i could do in life? i minimize it. we all do. we re not asking you this so we can tell our friends at the next cocktail party. we want to know this because it can really affect the kind of medications, the kind of diseases we screen for. worst thing patients do, they wait for the very end after you spent an hour with them. by the way, it burns when i urinate and that s something that s going to take another 45 minutes to discuss. by the way, i m here for something else, but by the way it s embarrassing so people don t want to we do get embarrassed. but if it s burning when you urinate, it s a good thing you re at the doctor. i think guys are more open and honest. women we feel more inhibited. we feel like we have to be lady-like, we shouldn t be talking about these things. you talked about it. i hate to come back to use the example she mentioned. i m just saying. just on the way out. has that ever happen ed on the way out the door? it absolutely happens. i m here for a bruise on my knee and, by the way, i hate to run but i m burning while i m urinating? yeah. that s what we re here for. no judgment. create a list. read it off. forget what you watch on tv, don t look at every ailment on those commercials and say i ve got it, i ve got it. sometimes you hear things on tv that are experimental, haven t been proven and might not be appropriate for you. don t worry about your hairy legs. that s important. you re so embarrassed about something that doesn t even really matter but you re always apologizing. the hole in your sock or hairy legs. your doctor does not care. they re under pressure for time. they want to just get your clothes off. my shaved leg, i don t have to explain those. you shave? of course. doesn t everyone? quickly through the last ones. be honest about how much or how little you work out. do not seek medical treatments at spas. get a second opinion but not from your mom. exactly. avoid shopping for skin care advice at the mall, know the facts. and lastly ask yourself if this is a real emergency. sorry, woof got to run. that s okay. thank you for being with us. back with ambush m what a mess. limited lanes, snow removal and potholes jam traffic all morning as people finally start heading back to work after the snow. good morning, i m barbara harrison, also coming up on news4 at midday, let the games begin. we ll have a preview in just a few min announcer: today s ambush makeover is brought to you by maybelline, new york. maybe she s born with it. maybe it s maybelline. we re back on this friday with the results of today s ambush makeovers and dan abrams, is filling in for cakathie lee today. hi, there. so glad you re with me today. ivillage contribute rer and stylist to the stars, luis licari and us weekly contributor, author, today show contributor and many more things, jill martin. she s over there. they re here with the moment that i ve certainly been waiting for throughout the show. who hasn t? this is the big moment of the show, the ambush makeover. because our crew is all in vancouver, to be completely honest, there aren t a lot of people hanging outside. that s why they dragged me in today. these are stalkers. it s true. how many times have they been here? they keep coming back and back. this is actually the third time back to be picked. really? they were literally the last ladies left in dodge so they were picked. we like them. let s meet the first one. jane counselor from hellertown, pennsylvania, married to casey for 13 years, has five kids, nine grandkids. she doesn t like going shopping. she claims she doesn t have any fashion sense and the only time she goes is when her daughter makes her do it. we asked her how long she had this look she responded what look? let s take a listen to her story. all right. frum fwchlt p girl, it s your turn. why do you want this for jane? she has been my best friend for years and takes care of everybody else besides herself. she has raised five great kids and it s her turn. i want to embarrass you. look at this hair. are you ready to go? yes, i am! cannot wait to see jane. the friends and casey casey, raise your hand. that s casey. the rest are friends. keep your blind folds on until i give you the green light. this is the before picture of jane. all right, jane, let s see the new you. wow! wow, wow, wow! all right, guys. are you ready? take off your blindfolds. oh, my god. oh, my! look at you, you little glamour gal. ready to turn around? i don t know. take a spin. oh, my gosh! look at that fun. i would have never done that. luis, tell us about the hair. when she said she had no look, that was the key. what she needed was style. first way to give style is hair color and this auburn, rich, natural-looking, looks like it belongs to her, this great layered haircut. sexy. you have style. you have a look. thank you. casey, what do we think? happy valentine s day to me. what do you all think? you like? yes, yes. jill, sexy outfit. i know, right? we wanted to give her a little glitter and glamour for valentine s day. this is from macy s. she can dress it up with jeans. she put it on and said ooh, i liky. you are adorable. big applause for jane. right over there. all right. next up this is still a friend of the same clan here. all part of the group. yeah. stephanie maitlin, age 57. we have to put the blindfolds back on. keep going. keep reading. all right. 57. she has been dating her boyfriend, randy, for 14 years. she has three kids and four grandchildren. her daughter begged us to get her out of her sweat pants that she has been wearing since she opened her fitness center ten years ago. she wanted this makeover so badly, do you know what she did? what? she dug her way out of 50 inches of snow to come here. go, stephanie. her daughter, leah, and her friends are here. let s listen. they keep saying, i can t believe this is happening. but this is what i can t believe. look at this. this is them last year, try iin to get a makeover and we didn t pick you. nochlt we re pretty persistent. i would say. that s been a long year. now you have your shot. she s already crying. i am. tell me why you want this for stephanie. well, you know, eph and i have been friends for 38 years. we ve been through marriage, divorce, kids, grandkids, we re both getting a little bit gray. so, i think we need it. she s such a good person. all right. are you ready? we re going to pamper you for three hours. i am so excited. this is top of my bucket list. love it! jane and jane is turn around. she can t actually see. the rest are wearing the blindfolds. designer blindfolds, by the way. yes, they are. they re beautiful. let s have her come out. let s look at her before so we can remember. one more time. yes! that s the before shot. music, plee. stephanie maitlin. whoa! wow, wow, wow! all right, guys, take a look at her. spin around. oh, my god! you re going to die. i am? you re going to die. turn around. you have to look at yourself. oh! i love it. it s hoda, it s hoda. luis, the hair. you are so hot. i think she s more excited about hoda than she is about the makeover, you know? yeah, makeover looks good, but hoda, my goodness. this is tell us about it. you know, it s really important to consider lifestyle when you do the makeover. she owns a gym. she works out. she s actually yeah, exactly. she s got guns. she s teaching aerobics classes 24/7. a haircut that can be wash and dry, she has it. lighter and brighter. she doesn t want to wear makeup because you can t in gym class. i made her hair color brighter to give her the illusion of makeup. of course, enid put on pale lipstick and light eyes. look at her daughter busting. she s in tears. what is going on? what do you think? oh, my god! you look awesome. you re not wearing sweat pants, mom. this dress, calvin klein, available at macy s. give us a spin. she looks unbelievable. so hot. jane, where is jane? come on out, come on over, jane. you ve both been ambushed. coming up next, revealing the tiger inside of him. chinese new year and i get to do a cooking segment which is exciting for me. for all of us. i m just saying. right after this. we are back with today s kitchen and gettin saucy with chef ming tsai, helping us ring in the chinese new year. the year of the tiger, said to b lucky, vivid, lively. we get to combine the year of the tiger with valentine s day. we like that. we brought ming in from his restaurant called blue ginger. happy new year, ming. happy new year. nobody dresses up a set like ming tsai. i don t know if you can see what s going on here, but you always make it look beautiful. it s the today show crew. he took me around. yeah, we ve got to get the newbie. it s the year of the tiger. tigers are courageous, brave, little stubborn. they like people. they like to be tamed. this year masters are saying it s going to be the place where people cooperate and people get together toffer grand beginnings. haiti is a great example. everyone is coming together right now. it s going to be great. if you re born the year of the tiger it s going to an awesome year. are there different kinds of recipes you go for in different years? there is. shrimp, in a different nation means to smile. say it again. you have avocados, cilantro. you gave me like the caveman. it s the other one. someone help dan. i ve got the caveman stuff. cilantro, lime leaf and jalepeno. look at dan cooking. i feel like bam bam. oh, that s great. what am i making? pour me soda water. look at this. rice flour. what are we making, shrimp? shrimp tempura. the batter. we just want to make basically a pancake batter. how are you doing over there? i feel like you guys have the real work. give dan that big pounding thing. you re doing good, dan. you re doing awesome. you re doing good. you should come to blue ginger. yeah, exactly. we need some good cooks. shrimp is peeled and clean. we drop it in to hot oil, 350 canola oil. and these will cook be in about three or four minutes. and this is called a shrimp tempura cocktail. that looks good. we ll get those cooking. they cook quickly, you say? three, four minutes? boom, boom. three, four minutes. we have some done here already. if you do me the favor this is chipotle tomato sauce. what do i do? big spoon on half. on half? yeah. what, did you put weights in this thing? that s good. we put that like that. do that again over here. okay. grab some of those tortilla chips stick them right into the avocado. all right. that s good. we have the shrimp here. this looks beautiful. very good, by the way, putting a tortilla you guys are doing the real work. look, look, look. can i get another shot at it? try this one. i m going to do it the same way he did it. hold on. he went like this. very good. it is a 13-minute segment. very good. that looks beautiful. have this a try. shimp t shrimp tempura cocktail, my version of it. i love the idea that we get to eat and drink. oh, my gosh. isn t that good? that is awesome. couple of great dishes to talk about. chinese new year is all about wholeness. you cook whole fish, whole duck. here is one of my favorite things as a child. red roast duck. red, as you can tell, is a color that wards off evil spirits. grab that leg. this has been cooked 2 1/2 hours. cooking it the right way and right amount of time is so critical with duck, isn t it? it is. look how it falls off the bone. isn t tt amazing? these are craisins. it adds a sweetness to the duck. it s the new raisin. fantastic pinot no ir. you need to grab glasses out of the freezer. i have other work to do. i told my work and i ve already forgotten. i have a job to do that i ve forgotten. hese are so good. isn t this good? basically i m the server. here we go. here is the dessert. i thought i was getting to pour the champagne. this is a desert kind of cocktail toast. what s in the bottom? great rose champagne from france. shredded ice in the bottom and liche fruit? happy new year. happy new year. and happy valentine s day. happy new year, everybody. we ll be back with more of today on nbc. it is friday and you know what that means, ladies. our resident guys or guy, donnie deutsch, is here to answer your questions about your man. val entine s day and what men ae really thinking when it comes to your relationship. i might fact check. you can fact check. i m just saying. i m going to offer the random nonexpert opinion. all right. let s start. this is for donnie. question from amanda. is valentine s day as important to menace it is to women? okay. amanda, and everybody else out there, no! no, it s not! now, having it s not. understand. hopefully, we do the right thing but do you really want a guy where valentine s day is important to him? seriously. stop making you don t want us that way. so, no, it s not. we do the right thing but we want it to pass. don t shoot the messenger. do you just get gifts for women because it s valentine s day? i was asking women if they get disappointed because their guy doesn t give them anything. some women don t care that much. you have to know who you re with, but valentine s day is a pain to us. don t shoot the messenger. bethany, my fiance is taking me for a weekend trip for valentine s day. he has planned a wine tour, a chocolate tasting tour, dinner and movie. chocolate tasting tour? i like him. what can i do for him? surprise him sexually. in the bedroom say, what s your fantasy? say, come with a costume. that s the answer. come with a costume? come with a costume. role play. surprise him. that s the way you ll keep spicing your marriage. that s what guys want. like a nurse thing or tell us what your fantasy is. i m not the one in costume. surprise him sexually. school girl, that s yours? i m not a costume guy. school girl. school girl? overaged school girl. yeah. school girl that s been held back four years. oh, i m sorry. you ll have to do the rest of them. okay, go. from susan. yes? i ve been married for 20 years and always the more aggressive one when it comes to sex. i ve stopped going for it, so now we haven t had sex lately. how do i get him to show me that he wants me? wow, that s an interesting perspective. susan, he doesn t want you. think about what she just said. she is the aggressor. if she doesn t do it, nothing happens. that s a scary signal. she should confront him. literally. think about this. she has to initiate. if she doesn t initiate, it doesn t happen. he has an issue, either not attracted to her, he has someone else or he has some other issue. don t some guys like dominant women? no, but he doesn t basically, they don t have sex unless she initiates it. so, there s an attraction there s an attraction problem? i can t say it can t be fixed and i m not here to blow up your marriage but that the problem. aren t there some guys that just aren t that into sex? tell us, dan. any way we can help you, try the school girl. stop it. overaged school girl. what s the next one? my cards are on the floor. we have to go? real quick. how can i get my super manly man husband to understand that a little scaping is necessary? instead of saying you re not groomed,ay i would like to show you something and take the shears. you do it? i groom myself. we ve got to go. so fun. always a pleasure. how did i do? you did amazingly well. i turn to for all my advice. those who can t do teach. happy valentine s day. dan, hoda. because i love you so much. dan, yours are coming. we ll be back. we ve got to thank patrick for ou lady in red drinks. thank you, pat. we ll be i m joe krebs with some breaking news. just as metro was trying to get all of its trains and stations operating again after the blizzards, we have this. a metro train has derailed underneath the underground at the farragut north station. this is at connecticut and k, near the station. what we know so far is that one metro rail car has come off the track, about several hundred feet from the station. it is in the tunnel, near the station, several hundred feet, though. there are no injuries, there were passengers on board and the passengers are being off-loaded andill have to walk to the farragut north station. on the telephone right now is pete perringer with d.c. fire and rescue. pete, thanks for join us. what can you tell us about what happened and what is going on right now? well, we re still trying to [ inaudible ] but we do have one trail derailed, and we are controlling the tower, moving some of the trains through the area right now. we are at farragut north, which is in the 17th and k street northwest. we are moving all of the trains out of the area and getting down to the people. it looks like we have several hundred people we ll have to move out. not sure of any injuries at this point. don t appear to have any traumatic injuries or serious injuries, but we re still assessing that situation. right now, you can, aboveground, anyway, you can expect some major traffic issues in and around area of connecticut halve and k street as we bring many fire rescue units into this area. do you have an idea how far the passengers are going to have to walk underground in that dark tunnel to get to the safety of the station? well, i m not down there, so i can t give you a firsthand account, but we do have fire and ems people down there, trying to get the people out. and we are, continually, bringing resources in to assess the situation, but we are trying to move them out of here as safely as possible and as quickly as possible. so, again, none of the injuries, if there are any, appear to be serious at this point, but we still have a lot of work to do.s incident. pete perringer with d.c. fire and rescue. thanks so much that. now let s two to lisa farbstein, with metro, the spokesperson for metro. leeka, can you tell us what you know about what happened, how it happened, and what the situation is at this moment? the six-car red line train has derailed near the farragut north metro rail station underground. fortunately, we have reports that there have been no injuries. we have our officials and local first responders at the scene to investigate and o get the customers off the strain and to the station. the incident took place at 10:13 this morning. the front wheels of the lead car of the train came off the tracks and we do not yet know the cause. well, how would that happen? these were the front wheels of the lead car. so the very first wheels on the car, would that indicate that the train perhaps hit something or was there some problem with the track? it s a little early for us to know what exactly has happened. that will be clearly part of the investigation. well, can you tell me, give me a rough idea of how many people were on the train at that time? no, we do not know how many people were on the train. we re hearing reports of several hundred. can you confirm that or not? i have no way with of knowing how many people would be on any given train, however, because the federal government opened late today, it seems that it would be likely there would be many people aboard that train, correct. okay. and tell me the process. what are the procedures when something like this happens for getting the people off of that train into the station, if that is what, in fact, you do. well, it would be the first thing we do, is we would turn electricity off on all the tracks. we would then, most likely, do what we can to start a very orderly exit from the train with escorts on to the track bed itself, again, with the electricity turned off. and we would walk them to the platform and they would be able to leave from th