I guess the production people liked the home tape of me talking and making funny faces for 4 ½ minutes since they’ve been keeping in touch with me. And it’s not just calls in the middle of the night, laughing maniacally because I’m such a loser. (Which wouldn’t be that big of a deal—I’m usually awake anyway…)
“Congratulations on making it to the next round for the WB’s newest reality show. We’re very excited to be working with you through this next level and look forward to the posibility of having you participate in this adventure.”
Yep, I was right. Megan’s phone call to tell me that very few people made it so far was not actually the “finals” nor was that the final step before getting shipped out to sunny CA (instead of sitting in the house and curling up in a blanket during the winter, hoping I don’t freeze my nuts off if I go outside to walk the dog…).
But like I said, there was a lot of paper. Along with another background questionnaire (23 pages this time around), there was a contract. A 31-page contract. With lots of terms that I should have remembered from law school. Thankfully, for the sake of everyone involved, they provided us with a little comfort:
WHAT IS UP WITH THIS CONTRACT?!?
DON’T PANIC!!!! Much of the language in this agreement is intimidating and difficult to understand. Read through it and feel free to ask us any questions. A LOT OF THIS LANGUAGE SOUNDS FAR WORSE THAN THE ACTUAL CIRCUMSTANCES YOU WILL ENCOUNTER ON THE SHOW.
(I hope that’s the case, especially given clause 9—acknowledgement and assumption of risk.)
9. I AM AWARE THAT THE ACTIVITIES IN WHICH I MAY PARTICIPATE IN CONNECTION WITH THE SERIES MAY BE HAZARDOUS ACTIVITIES, AND I AM VOLUNTARILY PARTICIPATING IN THE SERIES AND RELATED SITUATIONS AND ACTIVITIES WITH FULL KNOWLEDGE, APPRECIATION, AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE DANGERS AND PERSONAL RISKS INVOLVED AND HEREBY AGREE TO ACCEPT ANY AND ALL RISKS OF PARTICIPATING IN PARTICIPANT SELECTION AND/OR IN THE SERIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ILLNESS, SERIOUS PERSONAL INJURY, NON-CONSENSUAL PHYSICAL CONTACT, DEATH AND/OR PROPERTY LOSS.
With all the potential for getting the crap kicked out of me, I started thinking about quality family entertainment like… American Gladiators. I could get bludgeoned to death and, by signing the contract, I just gave them permission to do it. They couldn’t provide more information about the content of the show in the letter, so for all I know, they might be trying to weed out a bunch of smart people and level out the intelligence level of the nation, thereby aiding George W.’s “No Child Left Behind” program. And of course, it’s nice to know that these people have their priorities straight—the final and most important risk is that of property loss. God Bless
So I went through and answered the questions, filled out the forms and signed the contract (but didn’t offer any of my unborn children… yet.). I personally enjoyed questions 61 and 62:
– – 61. Have you ever been employed or “appeared” in any pornographic movies, including “soft” porn and Playboy©-style videos?
– – 62. Have you ever been employed or “appeared” in any adult movies or photo exhibitions that involved fetish themes (i.e., masturbation, incest, bondage, sadism or masochism, to name just a few)?
“Just a few”—has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? And it just occurred to me that if people are doing a random search for porn on the Internet, I may have just tricked a whole bunch of them into reading this blog entry. Heh heh heh…
Once everything was done, I shipped it all out so that it’d get there by Nov. 22, the date they wanted everything back due to those imaginary deadlines I talked about earlier this month. I say “imaginary” because on Wednesday the 24th, another envelope arrived at the door.
It was my questionnaire with a bunch of Post-It notes attached to various pages, thus demonstrating that “smart” does not always mean you read everything you’re supposed to. In the initial package, there was a page of “Background Form Instructions” and I managed to overlook something rather important that they wrote twice:
“3: You must fill out the entire application. DO NOT LEAVE ANY QUESTION UNANSWERED. If any question does not pertain to you, write N/A in the space provided, or if no space is provided, next to the question. Failure to answer any question may be grounds for not considering your application…
“PLEASE ANSWER EVERY QUESTION. Do not leave any question unanswered. If a question is not applicable to you write N/A in the space provided, or, if no space is provided, next to the question.”
Naturally, there were a bunch of open questions that didn’t have a N/A next to them. Lessee if I can figure out how many… I think I skipped about 15. Oops. Still, the fact that they sent the questionnaire back to let me fill in the mistakes—it apparently wasn’t grounds for not considering said application and didn’t meet the imaginary deadline—I thought it was kinda nice of them. So I went through, pulled off all the Post-It notes, wrote N/A in all those spaces and shipped it back.
And hey, I can understand why they’d want to know some of that information. Sure, anyone can have credit refused or not own a car, but would you want someone on a reality TV show who had to fill in the “explain below” portion of #99?
“If you are now, or have ever been, a member of any organized association, movement, group, or combination of persons that advocated or advocate acts of force, violence or terrorism against the
Seriously, wouldn’t it be cool to have Osama bin Ladin on a show like Fear Factor or The Apprentice? Yeah, I think so, too.
I’d like to add a side note here. I’ve been making a recent effort to wake up at a reasonable hour—I frequently stay up ‘til the wee hours of the morning (going to sleep at the time some people crawl out of bed for work), so I sleep on a pillow that’s just uncomfortable enough to make me wake up every hour or two. I’m nearly overwhelmed with the desire to take a nap in the afternoon when I do that, but at least I’m getting up during the daylight hours.
…Okay, I lied—that wasn’t a side note. I was both giving myself a pat on the back (yay, me!) and use it as a lead-in to a phone call I received around
Anyway, tomorrow afternoon at
I guess if talking on the phone weeds me out of consideration, I can take comfort in one thing—I won’t have to worry about being beat to a bloody pulp with a giant Q-Tip by some musclehead named Apollo.
