Apparently, I managed to sneak another 30 seconds into my 15 minutes of reality TV fame. The Glass House has a live web feed that runs for a couple hours after the show airs on Mondays, then one hour on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I wasn’t watching it today, so when I got a call from my friend Marie this afternoon, I was completely shocked to hear that I was a topic of conversation during their live broadcast.
A little twist the producers developed for the show is its social media presence. People vote online for different stuff, but there are also a bunch of Twitter hash tags they’re using so you can contact the contestants and/or producers. One of those hash tags is #AskThePlayers—during each live feed, one or two questions are chosen online by the viewers and presented by Ori (a faceless voice that gives instructions, reveals the results of online polling and occasionally drinks during the live feeds… she said so herself).
When #AskThePlayers first started, I tweeted a question about if the contestants could have any super power, what would it be and why? You know, one of those things I didn’t take very seriously, but thought, “What the hell, why not?” As it turned out, the producers took the question more seriously than I did because that was their question today. (If you want to go straight to the question, skip ahead to minute 43. If you want to see a Tom Cruise impersonator who looks kinda like Tom Cruise and kinda like Edward Norton, start from the beginning.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc779nYpOM8&list=UUNPnv5zxz-CXdQITiNkjoLA&index=1&feature=plcpOri said the audience was voting on two questions and the first one was mine. After she introduced both, Steph asked what the name from the first one was. I make a point to conceal my identity on Twitter as much as possible, so my username is @shawnbakken. (I think my favorite part of that whole exchange was how Ori did a decent job of pronouncing my name the first time, but when Steph asked her to repeat it, Ori mispronounced “Shawn”. Yep, definitely drinking on the job.)
When Steph realized it was me, she started getting excited, everyone was asking if I was a friend and she told them that I was in Mensa and on Season 1 of Beauty and the Geek. Steph was waving at the camera to say hi, but of course, they still had to tally the results of the online poll. (The consensus of the contestants was to talk about super powers, but those damn audience members…) After a long, quiet moment—very long and very quiet—my username and question popped up on a giant TV screen. Stephanie found it particularly awesome, which made two of us, and eventually all of the girls started saying hi to me on a live web feed. Yep, definitely awesome.
Sad to say, Steph messed up when she gave her answer. The superpower she wanted was telekinesis so she could levitate, move stuff around and… read minds. She wanted to go all “Jean Grey” on it (a character from Marvel Comics also known as Marvel Girl and Phoenix), but Jean Grey’s mental abilities include telepathy, the ability to read minds. Yay for comic books, boo for stumbling over super powers!
Once everyone had answered their questions, a bunch of people said thanks again, the big gay guy said “I love Mensa, too!”, the big black guy said “I’m not gonna flirt with you, but I’ll say ‘What’s up?'”, some of the girls were happy to flirt with me… yep, definitely awesome. And I missed it. Thank God for someone posting the clip on YouTube or I would have been reeeeeeally depressed.
And remember what I said about the social media presence? Earlier tonight, there were two tweets from The Glass House with my name on them: one was a shout-out from Steph; the other was a thank you from Joy, a girl who’s posed in Playboy six times (and was also happy to flirt with me). Lemme tell ya, seeing my name on a live web feed today was a pretty cool thirty seconds of fame, but after reading tweets like theirs, those thirty seconds seem way cooler.
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Addendum: In retrospect, I want to mention something about Erica since her “super power” was to be a tween vampire so she’d have great skin, sparkle in the sunlight, etc. I imagine this elicited one of two responses from home viewers: “She likes Twilight!” or “What kind of a crappy answer is that?” Combining said crappy answer with the stuffed cat that she carries all over the place, she seems like kind of a ditzy blond who isn’t really a threat to anyone on the show, which is exactly what she wants you to think.
According to her bio on The Glass House’s website, Erica graduated from Ohio State with a 4.0 GPA, worked in finance for three years, got good grades in law school before dropping out at the beginning of her second year… she’s a smart girl. Really smart.
Alex said he was going to try to be the most evil reality TV star ever before getting kicked out of the house. Apparently, his interpretation of “evil reality TV star” was to be a major dick to everyone, meaning he should have done some research about reality TV beforehand. No, the best evil people are quiet, work behind the scenes and are very manipulative. Kinda like… what Erica is doing. I’m not trying to say that she’s going to become more malicious over time, just noting that her super power should have been something more like a master of disguise.
