fakery for fun and profit

like a jury, we are twelve, sequestered, forced to subsist on nothing but stale donuts and broken dreams. unlike a jury, we have the potential to do some real good. for ourselves. in the form of winning cash and/or prize like items, in a televised setting.

on paper, we're a diverse and dynamic group- hailing from far flung burgs- utah, west virginia, pittsburgh, brigadoon. we are party planners, spinning instructors, teachers of shakespeare, skydivers. but really the towns, the jobs, are a clever ruse, designed to make us look (to the at home viewer) like a random sampling of americana. underemployed actors and writers from la, that's what you're getting folks. oh, and one young artisty dude from downey.

this is my fourth official game show. also rans- (ben stein's money (lost), chance of a lifetime (won close to $40,000, met a boy who told me he came home from college to discover his dad making homemade porn in his bedroom, boy became best friend), cram (won, spent the night locked in close quarters with corey feldman)

the folks at the temp agency won't tell you this, but there's a semi lucrative career to be had, as a fake game show contestant for pilots and run-throughs. you get to spend the day under an assumed name, having fake witty banter, winning prizes you can never claim. and all for dope pay (is $75+ per day cosidered dope?) add to that the fact that you get to see some of the worst ideas ever brought to life on a garishly decorated set with an orangey tanned, past his heyday host, and you've got a recipe for magic. who can forget 'the fence'- a show where you 'buy' stolen objects from a seedy underworld type? i can't. i wish i could.

back to the current show. mostly, we're hanging out in the green room (not green), people are casually competitive, but with forced energy and charm. i'm chafing under the weirdness of it. but then, john (an 'x-ray tech' from 'tuscon') takes his shot, a story ending with "i drank so much i peed all over the bed." and now i feel responsible for the guy. it's not bad enough that he's under thirty and already sporting a bad combover? now the men think he's a pussy bedwetter and the girls think..well you know what the girls think.

but i don't have too much time to worry about him because i have to pee. where i walk in on a woman- pretty and five months pregnant- giving herself a shot. she tells me, matter of factly, that she has a blood clot in her brain. and she strikes me as impossibly beautiful and brave.

you can give it a shiny coat of paint, change it's name, set it to cheesy music, even send it home with a case of turtle wax. but life will be. messy and bizarre and deadly and good.

and i won.