Chris Willie Williams (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} disclaimerwill) wrote,@ 2008-04-14 16:40:00 |
|
Evil Dr. Willie Wins HOH!
I continue to fall back into my bad habit of social isolationism. I haven't been returning phone calls or answering e-mails or communicating with people I love, let alone strangers. Human interaction is getting scary again.
To offer an ongoing example, way back on Valentine's Day, Bev was out of town and I went out to see the excellent local band Feel It Robot by myself. Unbeknownst to me, Bev had prepaid for the band to give me a T-shirt and an adorable Feel It Robot felt doll, but I missed them calling my name during the show because the sound was so poor. (It was in a bowling alley.) Ever since, I've made a few aborted attempts to connect with the 'Bots and collect my goodies, but have yet to meet them because I am cowardly. I've gotten as far as their front door, but they were in their studio and apparently couldn't hear me knocking. The woman who lives downstairs encouraged me to really pound on the door, but I blanched at the thought of making myself so noticeable and slunk back down to the street. The band has courteously held off on cashing Bev's check until I pick up my stuff, and I've just been too much of a hermit to make everyone's life easier by actually making an effort to coordinate with them and go downtown and say hi.
What I'm getting at is that I really need to be proactive about socializing again because I fear I'm losing what few skills I have, and I do not want to relive my days as a teen so self-conscious and introverted that I couldn't even bear the thought of making small talk with a cashier who was ringing up my purchase.
So the interest of proactivity, I auditioned for season ten of Big Brother.
On Saturday, Linnehan's car dealership in Bangor hosted a Big Brother casting crew from noon to 4:00. I had no pressing engagements on Saturday, so I decided to go further blur my personal distinction between TV and reality.
Not that I thought I had a chance of being selected. The Linnehan's event is one of 26 casting calls currently listed on CBS's site--and none of the 26 are in L.A. or New York, so I can't think it's an exhaustive list--and from what I can gather, most contestants who ultimately get cast do so on the strength of homemade audition tapes rather than open calls. Those aren't great odds. Furthermore, I am well aware that I am so untelegenic that my appearance on a single Big Brother episode would cause CBS's overall Q Score to plunge to a level below even Brazil's widely reviled Shitting Clowns Network. Needless to say, a big part of the audition's appeal to me was simply to see how such things work, and my expectations for success were low. ("Wow, free balloons for everyone who enters!")
That said, I really did try my best. I didn't go in with a plan to punk the show or anything, like Aaron Song was rumored to have done with Hell's Kitchen. I have no idea whether I'd actually do well on a reality show, but I watch enough of them that I think I'd have a fighting chance as a Rob Cesternino-style schemer. So I made the decision to sincerely go for it. Before leaving the house, in fact, I spent a couple of minutes in honest-to-goodness contemplation of how I should present myself in public, which I haven't done for years. "Unshaven, clean-shaven, or goatee?" Goatee. It's a timeless crowd-pleaser. "Hat or no hat?" No hat. Top Chef's Spike has ruined hats for the season.
The parking lot was full when I arrived at 11:30, so the dealership had arranged for a limo to shuttle applicants from a furniture store's more ample parking lot a quarter-mile up the road. The front of the lot held a miniature revival tent in which Mr. Linnehan had hired a gospel rock band to perform and preach. (Mr. Linnehan has never seen Big Brother, so he can be forgiven for not realizing that it's kind of a godless show.) There were also free donuts and hourly cash giveaways. Around back of the shop, you were given a queue number. I was 85th in line to audition. 150 people ultimately showed up, which I think is far fewer than Linnehan's was expecting. I felt kind of bad that they'd put in so much effort for such a crummy turnout, but 150 was nevertheless about all the casting folks were equipped to handle, since it was nearly 4:00 by the time I finally got to audition.
After being assigned a number, we were made to sit at cafeteria tables set over a drainage grate in a chilly garage and fill out a 12-page application that took me 45 minutes to complete. ("Do you have a temper? How often do you lose your temper? What provokes you?" "What are you most ashamed of, either now or in your past?" "Have you ever been to a nude beach? If so, what was it like?") I think it might have gone quicker had I been less wordy, but I had plenty of time and enjoy filling out surveys, so I wrote a lot.
For instance, one of the final questions was, "Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself and why you think you'd make a great Big Brother participant and housemate?" I wrote, "Reality show contestants always say they expect to be underestimated for one reason or another, so I plan to be the first Big Brother winner to be consistently overestimated throughout the game. My opponents will throw themselves into fits of confusion and fear, worrying about what this Williams boy will do next, while I'll be hobbling hopelessly around with each foot stuck in a wastepaper basket... across the finish line!!!"
I'd brought along my medical transcription textbook, figuring I'd get some studying done as I waited. Instead, though, I made myself be social and spent most of the wait hanging out with a very funny girl named Erin, who looks like Maggie Gyllenhaal and who works as an "equine collection specialist" at Bangor's racetrack. "That means I catch horse piss," she said. She collects urine samples from racehorses and sends them to be analyzed, I guess for evidence of performance-enhancing substances? She told me that the secret to getting a horse to pee is to whistle. I hope to be able to employ this knowledge for practical joke use in the future. Erin was the very first person who got to audition at noon because she'd won a radio contest bumping her to the head of the line. She hung around as moral support for her friend Kim, who was 99th in line. Kim had never watched Big Brother and asked Erin and me, "What's the point of the show?" We weren't sure what to tell her.
Also met a guy who looked so much like Donnie Wahlberg that Erin asked if there was any relation. The guy said there isn't, but he gets it a lot. He was once on a subway and a girl refused to believe that he wasn't Mark Wahlberg, so he signed Mark's name on a napkin to get her to go away.
A woman from a local paper interviewed us about the process and asked if I'd like to make a faux "audition tape" for the paper's video blog, so I'd have a chance to practice selling myself to the camera. I'm thankful for the opportunity, because it gave me a chance to get a thoroughly lame response out of my system. However, I hope she does not use my tape on the website, because I came across like a complete tool. I'd planned on using a poorly-thought-out gag about how guys who look like me generally don't get to be on television unless Judd Apatow or the word "makeover" are involved, har har. It's a dud line, and I botched it on top of that, so my stammering final product made it sound like I wanted to go on the show specifically so I could say snide things about the pretty contestants, like the above-it-all alterna-kids who populate The Amazing Race and whose heads I always want to clonk together.
The weather was cloudy and cold and my nose was drippy, and I did feel typically out-of-place waiting in a garage full of style-conscious pop tarts, so I'm proud of myself for sticking out the four hours and not just saying, "Okay, lark's over," and heading back to my comfy, familiar house.
The audition numbers were called in batches of 20, and those called were then made to sit in a green room disguised as a smaller garage. As I waited there, a young woman approached me and said, "I just have to tell you: do you know who you reminded me of when I was squinting just now?"
"Weird Al?" I sighed.
"No, the guy from Numb3rs!" (Presumably David Krumholtz, also of Serenity, Addams Family Values, and Slums of Beverly Hills.)
I graciously accepted that.
When my number was finally called, some guy wrote my name on a whiteboard and handed it to me. I was then led into a teensy office in the back of Linnehan's in which chairs and furniture had been pushed aside to make room for a camera and a lighting rig. There was a guy behind the camera whose face I never saw, and a bald dude in his late thirties who was acting as facilitator. He took my paperwork, warmly shook my hand, and told me to hold the whiteboard up to my chest while he took a couple digital pictures, mugshot-style. I let the obvious Mike Boogie jokes drift through the room unspoken.
The facilitator then told me to look right in the camera and say my name, why I want to be on the show, and why I think I'd be a good Big Brother houseguest. After a brief introduction, I said, "I've just been told that I look like the mathematical savant from the CBS program Numb3rs if you kind of squint, so there may be some crossover potential there for viewers who squint." The cameraman and director both laughed. So even if nothing else comes of the experience, I'm glad I got to momentarily brighten their day. Judging from the wordless shrieking I heard from the audition room a few minutes before my turn, by a woman who evidently hypothesized a correlation between decibel level and favorable memorability, I suspect their day needed a little brightening.
Upon leaving the audition space, I wandered back into the holding pen to say goodbye to Erin and Kim. I was immediately mobbed by waiting 21-year-olds who wanted to know all about what happened in there. With terror in his voice, one guy asked, "Were they old and mean?" I don't know who gave this kid the idea that he'd be judged on the spot by, like, Don Rickles and Andy Rooney, but I had to reassure him a couple times that the whole thing was very much the opposite of intimidating.
Strangely, that same kid had been sitting across from me as I filled out my application, and was boasting to his friend about the cocky, fey comments he'd written. In the blank asking for your swimsuit size, for example, he wrote, "Perfect." I was nonplussed to see this mussily-coiffed guy who clearly intended his "hook" to be pseudo-Christian Siriano confidence and cattiness consumed with stage fright in what I considered to be a very casual setting. In fact, there was a tangible feeling among this little cluster of applicants that this--this reality-TV audition being held in a Bangor garage--was their one shot at fame and they daren't blow it. It made me feel a little sorry for them. Maine is a land with so few entertainment choices that cops amuse themselves by tasering each other at parties, so I well understand why these folks want out, but without dumping on their starry-eyed, fluff-brained dreams, it's flat-out delusional to pin all your hopes on a two-minute introductory audition. I realized, as I rode in the limo shuttle back to my car, next to an adrenaline-fueled young man in flip-flops who was chattering breathlessly on his cell about his audition accomplishment, that I do not understand the thirst for fame of the reality contestant hopeful.
We've all seen footage of the fauxhawked throngs that camp out in urban centers for a chance at an American Idol slot. (Oh, you have too.) Given how listless I became waiting a mere four hours, I think a person would have to want that slot desperately to brave crowds that size. Especially for a show like Idol, where you know that your best, most heartfelt effort could wind up as William Hung-lite comic relief on one of their nasty "talent"-search episodes. It's an odd contradiction: on the one hand, you'd have to believe wholeheartedly in your own talent or appeal to expect to stand out among uncountable thousands of applicants. On the other hand, you'd also have to harbor the far sadder belief that appearing on a reality show is your only possible way of showcasing that talent or appeal before the world, or else why wouldn't you strike out on your own path that doesn't require you to eat bugs or submit to the capricious whims of editors or listen to Tyra Banks nattering about Lord knows what? You have to simultaneously think the world of yourself and think very little of yourself, it seems to me.
To put it another way, I saw firsthand this weekend that even the most arrogant, judgmental people I see on reality shows have so little faith in themselves that they live in fear of being judged unworthy to be on reality shows. So I think I'm ready to talk to people again, free from worry about being judged myself.
CURRENT MUSIC: The Power of Pussy by Bongwater. I've become somewhat addicted to this album.
CURRENT MOOD: Famewhorey.
CORA'S CURRENT FAVORITE SONG: "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" by The Flaming Lips. It makes her want to hump her blanket. Thankfully, I do not like "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" so will not feel deprived when I never play it ever again.
I continue to fall back into my bad habit of social isolationism. I haven't been returning phone calls or answering e-mails or communicating with people I love, let alone strangers. Human interaction is getting scary again.
To offer an ongoing example, way back on Valentine's Day, Bev was out of town and I went out to see the excellent local band Feel It Robot by myself. Unbeknownst to me, Bev had prepaid for the band to give me a T-shirt and an adorable Feel It Robot felt doll, but I missed them calling my name during the show because the sound was so poor. (It was in a bowling alley.) Ever since, I've made a few aborted attempts to connect with the 'Bots and collect my goodies, but have yet to meet them because I am cowardly. I've gotten as far as their front door, but they were in their studio and apparently couldn't hear me knocking. The woman who lives downstairs encouraged me to really pound on the door, but I blanched at the thought of making myself so noticeable and slunk back down to the street. The band has courteously held off on cashing Bev's check until I pick up my stuff, and I've just been too much of a hermit to make everyone's life easier by actually making an effort to coordinate with them and go downtown and say hi.
What I'm getting at is that I really need to be proactive about socializing again because I fear I'm losing what few skills I have, and I do not want to relive my days as a teen so self-conscious and introverted that I couldn't even bear the thought of making small talk with a cashier who was ringing up my purchase.
So the interest of proactivity, I auditioned for season ten of Big Brother.
On Saturday, Linnehan's car dealership in Bangor hosted a Big Brother casting crew from noon to 4:00. I had no pressing engagements on Saturday, so I decided to go further blur my personal distinction between TV and reality.
Not that I thought I had a chance of being selected. The Linnehan's event is one of 26 casting calls currently listed on CBS's site--and none of the 26 are in L.A. or New York, so I can't think it's an exhaustive list--and from what I can gather, most contestants who ultimately get cast do so on the strength of homemade audition tapes rather than open calls. Those aren't great odds. Furthermore, I am well aware that I am so untelegenic that my appearance on a single Big Brother episode would cause CBS's overall Q Score to plunge to a level below even Brazil's widely reviled Shitting Clowns Network. Needless to say, a big part of the audition's appeal to me was simply to see how such things work, and my expectations for success were low. ("Wow, free balloons for everyone who enters!")
That said, I really did try my best. I didn't go in with a plan to punk the show or anything, like Aaron Song was rumored to have done with Hell's Kitchen. I have no idea whether I'd actually do well on a reality show, but I watch enough of them that I think I'd have a fighting chance as a Rob Cesternino-style schemer. So I made the decision to sincerely go for it. Before leaving the house, in fact, I spent a couple of minutes in honest-to-goodness contemplation of how I should present myself in public, which I haven't done for years. "Unshaven, clean-shaven, or goatee?" Goatee. It's a timeless crowd-pleaser. "Hat or no hat?" No hat. Top Chef's Spike has ruined hats for the season.
The parking lot was full when I arrived at 11:30, so the dealership had arranged for a limo to shuttle applicants from a furniture store's more ample parking lot a quarter-mile up the road. The front of the lot held a miniature revival tent in which Mr. Linnehan had hired a gospel rock band to perform and preach. (Mr. Linnehan has never seen Big Brother, so he can be forgiven for not realizing that it's kind of a godless show.) There were also free donuts and hourly cash giveaways. Around back of the shop, you were given a queue number. I was 85th in line to audition. 150 people ultimately showed up, which I think is far fewer than Linnehan's was expecting. I felt kind of bad that they'd put in so much effort for such a crummy turnout, but 150 was nevertheless about all the casting folks were equipped to handle, since it was nearly 4:00 by the time I finally got to audition.
After being assigned a number, we were made to sit at cafeteria tables set over a drainage grate in a chilly garage and fill out a 12-page application that took me 45 minutes to complete. ("Do you have a temper? How often do you lose your temper? What provokes you?" "What are you most ashamed of, either now or in your past?" "Have you ever been to a nude beach? If so, what was it like?") I think it might have gone quicker had I been less wordy, but I had plenty of time and enjoy filling out surveys, so I wrote a lot.
For instance, one of the final questions was, "Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself and why you think you'd make a great Big Brother participant and housemate?" I wrote, "Reality show contestants always say they expect to be underestimated for one reason or another, so I plan to be the first Big Brother winner to be consistently overestimated throughout the game. My opponents will throw themselves into fits of confusion and fear, worrying about what this Williams boy will do next, while I'll be hobbling hopelessly around with each foot stuck in a wastepaper basket... across the finish line!!!"
I'd brought along my medical transcription textbook, figuring I'd get some studying done as I waited. Instead, though, I made myself be social and spent most of the wait hanging out with a very funny girl named Erin, who looks like Maggie Gyllenhaal and who works as an "equine collection specialist" at Bangor's racetrack. "That means I catch horse piss," she said. She collects urine samples from racehorses and sends them to be analyzed, I guess for evidence of performance-enhancing substances? She told me that the secret to getting a horse to pee is to whistle. I hope to be able to employ this knowledge for practical joke use in the future. Erin was the very first person who got to audition at noon because she'd won a radio contest bumping her to the head of the line. She hung around as moral support for her friend Kim, who was 99th in line. Kim had never watched Big Brother and asked Erin and me, "What's the point of the show?" We weren't sure what to tell her.
Also met a guy who looked so much like Donnie Wahlberg that Erin asked if there was any relation. The guy said there isn't, but he gets it a lot. He was once on a subway and a girl refused to believe that he wasn't Mark Wahlberg, so he signed Mark's name on a napkin to get her to go away.
A woman from a local paper interviewed us about the process and asked if I'd like to make a faux "audition tape" for the paper's video blog, so I'd have a chance to practice selling myself to the camera. I'm thankful for the opportunity, because it gave me a chance to get a thoroughly lame response out of my system. However, I hope she does not use my tape on the website, because I came across like a complete tool. I'd planned on using a poorly-thought-out gag about how guys who look like me generally don't get to be on television unless Judd Apatow or the word "makeover" are involved, har har. It's a dud line, and I botched it on top of that, so my stammering final product made it sound like I wanted to go on the show specifically so I could say snide things about the pretty contestants, like the above-it-all alterna-kids who populate The Amazing Race and whose heads I always want to clonk together.
The weather was cloudy and cold and my nose was drippy, and I did feel typically out-of-place waiting in a garage full of style-conscious pop tarts, so I'm proud of myself for sticking out the four hours and not just saying, "Okay, lark's over," and heading back to my comfy, familiar house.
The audition numbers were called in batches of 20, and those called were then made to sit in a green room disguised as a smaller garage. As I waited there, a young woman approached me and said, "I just have to tell you: do you know who you reminded me of when I was squinting just now?"
"Weird Al?" I sighed.
"No, the guy from Numb3rs!" (Presumably David Krumholtz, also of Serenity, Addams Family Values, and Slums of Beverly Hills.)
I graciously accepted that.
When my number was finally called, some guy wrote my name on a whiteboard and handed it to me. I was then led into a teensy office in the back of Linnehan's in which chairs and furniture had been pushed aside to make room for a camera and a lighting rig. There was a guy behind the camera whose face I never saw, and a bald dude in his late thirties who was acting as facilitator. He took my paperwork, warmly shook my hand, and told me to hold the whiteboard up to my chest while he took a couple digital pictures, mugshot-style. I let the obvious Mike Boogie jokes drift through the room unspoken.
The facilitator then told me to look right in the camera and say my name, why I want to be on the show, and why I think I'd be a good Big Brother houseguest. After a brief introduction, I said, "I've just been told that I look like the mathematical savant from the CBS program Numb3rs if you kind of squint, so there may be some crossover potential there for viewers who squint." The cameraman and director both laughed. So even if nothing else comes of the experience, I'm glad I got to momentarily brighten their day. Judging from the wordless shrieking I heard from the audition room a few minutes before my turn, by a woman who evidently hypothesized a correlation between decibel level and favorable memorability, I suspect their day needed a little brightening.
Upon leaving the audition space, I wandered back into the holding pen to say goodbye to Erin and Kim. I was immediately mobbed by waiting 21-year-olds who wanted to know all about what happened in there. With terror in his voice, one guy asked, "Were they old and mean?" I don't know who gave this kid the idea that he'd be judged on the spot by, like, Don Rickles and Andy Rooney, but I had to reassure him a couple times that the whole thing was very much the opposite of intimidating.
Strangely, that same kid had been sitting across from me as I filled out my application, and was boasting to his friend about the cocky, fey comments he'd written. In the blank asking for your swimsuit size, for example, he wrote, "Perfect." I was nonplussed to see this mussily-coiffed guy who clearly intended his "hook" to be pseudo-Christian Siriano confidence and cattiness consumed with stage fright in what I considered to be a very casual setting. In fact, there was a tangible feeling among this little cluster of applicants that this--this reality-TV audition being held in a Bangor garage--was their one shot at fame and they daren't blow it. It made me feel a little sorry for them. Maine is a land with so few entertainment choices that cops amuse themselves by tasering each other at parties, so I well understand why these folks want out, but without dumping on their starry-eyed, fluff-brained dreams, it's flat-out delusional to pin all your hopes on a two-minute introductory audition. I realized, as I rode in the limo shuttle back to my car, next to an adrenaline-fueled young man in flip-flops who was chattering breathlessly on his cell about his audition accomplishment, that I do not understand the thirst for fame of the reality contestant hopeful.
We've all seen footage of the fauxhawked throngs that camp out in urban centers for a chance at an American Idol slot. (Oh, you have too.) Given how listless I became waiting a mere four hours, I think a person would have to want that slot desperately to brave crowds that size. Especially for a show like Idol, where you know that your best, most heartfelt effort could wind up as William Hung-lite comic relief on one of their nasty "talent"-search episodes. It's an odd contradiction: on the one hand, you'd have to believe wholeheartedly in your own talent or appeal to expect to stand out among uncountable thousands of applicants. On the other hand, you'd also have to harbor the far sadder belief that appearing on a reality show is your only possible way of showcasing that talent or appeal before the world, or else why wouldn't you strike out on your own path that doesn't require you to eat bugs or submit to the capricious whims of editors or listen to Tyra Banks nattering about Lord knows what? You have to simultaneously think the world of yourself and think very little of yourself, it seems to me.
To put it another way, I saw firsthand this weekend that even the most arrogant, judgmental people I see on reality shows have so little faith in themselves that they live in fear of being judged unworthy to be on reality shows. So I think I'm ready to talk to people again, free from worry about being judged myself.
CURRENT MUSIC: The Power of Pussy by Bongwater. I've become somewhat addicted to this album.
CURRENT MOOD: Famewhorey.
CORA'S CURRENT FAVORITE SONG: "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" by The Flaming Lips. It makes her want to hump her blanket. Thankfully, I do not like "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" so will not feel deprived when I never play it ever again.
