Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Joining the Mob

A few weeks ago a certain female acquaintance convinced me to trying out for the game show 1 vs. 100 — “coerced” might be more accurate; I can still here the crack of the whip reverberating in my mind. She was positive I could not only make it on the show, but make big money doing it. Now, it's true that I did win a couple of times on Jeopardy!, but that was way back in the 20th century, when I was younger and smarter than I am now, and I had been watching that show since the Art Fleming days (so I must not have been that young), whereas I've never actually seen an entire episode of this one. By the time I finally caved in and drove down to Culver Studios, the auditions were almost over. I didn't even have time to complete the entry form, and when they whisked me in for the personal interview, questions such as “What was the funniest thing that ever happened to you?” and “What interesting thing about you should we know?” were still left blank. So I realized I had about 30 seconds to convince a stranger that I was actually an interesting person worthy of being on the show (kind of like a commercial audition, actually). After a few words back and forth, she wrote “3.5” on my application and turned to the next person on line. I'm a 3.5? Someone looked at me, talked to me, and summed me up as 3.5? Hopefully that's not out of 100. Then we walked on to the set of “Deal or No Deal.” Had I mixed up my game shows? No, turns out the same production company does both and for some reason they had at the DoND set. No models were present on the staircase, however. We took a written test, which seemed to me very heavy on pop culture. (Apparently, everyone but me knew Hannah Montana is Billy Ray Cyrus' daughter.) So I wasn't too surprised when I wasn't asked to stay for the next part of the audition, but my dark muse seemed rather disappointed when I notified her via cell phone. Anyway, yesterday I got a call on that very same cell phone. Although my incomplete application form, 3.5 rating and ignorance as to which reality show was produced by Heidi Klum may have disqualified from being the 1, I am apparently good enough to be one of the 100. So I guess I better watch the show this Friday, and study up on my recent Grammy winners.

No comments: