I Got On TV Because I Wrote About Uber For Thought Catalog

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On a Tuesday night back in July, Hoboken police kicked my fiancée and I out of an Uber car. The policeman who pulled the car over told us that the UberX car we were in was an illegal cab and we’d have to take a taxi with livery plates to get home. The situation annoyed me so much that I wrote a piece for Thought Catalog about it. Straying from my usual razor-sharp wit and Onion-level satire, the article was a straightforward retelling of the night’s events with some commentary about how much I love Uber. The article was published, some people shared it on Twitter, and that was the end—or at least I thought it was the end until last week.

Tamara Laine, a reporter from Chasing NJ @-replied me on Twitter and asked if I would do an interview with them about what happened. I ended up meeting her the next morning near the Hoboken Path station. You can watch the interview here.

My performance while squinting in the early morning sun is sure to please fans of sweaty men squinting in the early morning sun. I like to think of myself as a pioneer of the “chubby man on the street” interview. Perspiration aside, I really like how the segment came out.

You can imagine how surprised I was when, the day after filming the interview for Chasing NJ, another reporter contacted me. I met Jessica Schneider from CBS News that night after work for another interview in the exact same spot as the last. You can watch that slightly less sweaty interview here.

One thing you might notice if you watch both clips is that my last name is different in each one. This wasn’t done intentionally and the reason it happened is pretty simple. Chasing NJ chose to use my real name for the story, while the reporter from CBS News asked me which name I’d prefer. I wanted people to find my piece if they Googled me, so I told them to use the moniker you know and love, Marcus Escritos.

You also might pick up on something else that’s strange about my appearance in both segments. I’m a 30-something man, not a 20-something girl. Weird, right? You might be wondering how someone as old and male as myself contributes to Thought Catalog. It shouldn’t take you too long to figure it out.

Skill.

So there you have it. I was on two different news stations on the same night. I got my 15 minutes of sweaty fame, and it all happened because I write for Thought Catalog.