PLANET PEOPLE

The Gameshow mentality is something I like to think about now and then. It’s one of the only forms of massive entertainment where the audience really wants the contestant to win. We actually root for each other. On every other program we wait for the bomb to drop, but on the Gameshow we really want to see each other win.

That’s how I feel, at least. Everyone wants to see someone win a million dollars. I have no idea why.

Anyway, I was a contestant on an upcoming Gameshow called “Go for the Green.” I think that’s what it’s called. It’s an eco-conscious “think green” program that masks itself as a trivia show. This made for some minor hilarity. Tom Green was the host - solely because his last name is “Green.” Tom Brown was out of luck. Tom Silver was out of luck. Tom Green was ripe for the picking.

My friend Will brought me along to the audition. We were both accepted as contestants. At the audition we had to answer questions about ourselves. I talked about “Jurassic Fight Club.” The Casting Director liked me. She remembered me on the day of the show. It was her job to remember me. She had ocean blue eyes.

A couple days before the taping, all of the contestants were issued a memo regarding the show’s dress code. To wit:

DO NOT WEAR THE FOLLOWING:
1. NO T- SHIRTS ARE ALLOWED!!!!! Solid red, solid black, solid white, solid green, or solid beige (off-white) tops. Or entire solid color outfits are not permitted.
6. Open toed shoes (e.g. Birkenstocks, flip-flops/slippers);
10. NO RIPPED, HOLEY, SHREDDED, MUTILATED, TORN, STAINED, GROSS, ICKY, JEANS please.

Those were the three things I wore to audition the day the Casting Director decided I would be a good addition to the Tom Green Gameshow. I’ve never known anyone else to wear slippers in public.

I only own one pair of pants and they’re very well described in the tenth bullet.

I decided that if the Casting Director liked me so much in my ripped, holey, shredded, mutilated, torn, stained, gross, icky jeans, the whole world might feel the same when they watch me on the Discovery Channel. So I wore them. I also wore a button up shirt. But when I walked outside into the sunlight, Will noticed that it was decorated with a fantastic map of stains, blots, and colorful miscellany.

I looked like the Brigadier General of a food fighting infantry.

Will had an extra shirt in his car. It was a handsome burgundy brown. It had more wrinkles than a collapsed parachute. We decided that wrinkles were better than stains, so off we went to the Gameshow.

The show is designed to recycle its contestants over and over until they’ve filmed six episodes with only 50 or 75 strangers to corral. When you’re annihilated from the game you become a part of the audience. Will and I were annihilated from the first four games nearly instantly. We became audience members that root, root, rooted for the contestants. Everyone rooted loud and hard. They told us when and how to root. It was very easy.

On the fifth game of the day I made it down to the final 6 contestants. We all got our own pods to stand on. It felt very Gameshowy.

The entire wardrobe department came out and only paid attention to me. They fixed my name-tag and tried to straighten out my shirt. No one mentioned my pants. The Casting Director told me to pull my shirt down with my arms whenever I could. She laughed and said that my mother will be embarrassed when she sees me on TV. She was right. I think my mother will be embarrassed. Everyone watched while a crew of stagehands tried to make me look presentable. They all gave up and we began to tape the show.

There was a green light below me that would light up at random. There was a green light below the other 5 contestants too. It would stop at random on one person, then that person would have to answer a question or challenge someone else. Everyone knew that it wasn’t random. We all pretended it was. It was very obvious. The light stopped on pretty girls and funny people. Personalities.

If the green light stopped on you and you decided to answer the question, you would be forced to kick someone off the show. None of us knew each other. We didn’t know anything about each other. It was all based on appearances. People that looked smart were annihilated.

The green light never stopped on me. People got questions wrong and kicked each other off. No one challenged me. No one kicked me off. I watched the boat rock from my own little island. Then I went on to the final round with one other person.

His name was Michael. He was incredibly nice. The kind of nice person that makes you happy there are other people around. He chose to answer a question because he didn’t want to challenge anyone. When he had to kick someone off he tried to refuse. He said he didn’t want to. They made him. He felt terrible.

Me and Michael had to put a list of seven items in order from greatest to least. I’m still not completely sure what the thing was that we had to do. It was alarmingly confusing. No one really knew how it worked. The whole Gameshow was actually surprisingly confusing. The whole day people were making mistakes. No one was really sure how the hell to do whatever this thing was that we had to do.

I wouldn’t have known the proper order of whatever the hell thing it was that I was asked to order anyway, so I found it amusing that I didn’t know the proper way to go about ordering it. I started putting things at random. I was being timed by a huge timer on the wall. There was a buzzer for me to press when I was done. They called it a “Plunger.” I started laughing and Tom Green asked me why. I told him I had no idea what I was doing.

It turned out that I got three out of the seven right. Michael only got one out of the seven right.

Then Tom Green told me that I won a trip for two to “Eco-conscious London” in a five star hotel for ten days. The Grosvenor House.

I went behind the curtains and they had me sign a piece of paper that said “London.” Then they said I’d be contacted. I don’t know by who.

The whole thing was very strange. I got to do the Gameshow host/Contestant chatter that happens while the credits role - when they talk about the wild experience they just shared. I told Tom Green that he said “Eco-conscious London” and we laughed about it. Everyone clapped and clapped.

I smoked a cigarette outside and thanked the Casting Director for thinking that I’d be good for the show. She said that I was very good and we smiled. She was very nice. It was her job to be very nice, too.

Here’s the point:

I didn’t get picked by the green light because the producers didn’t want to force a close-up on the kid with a wrinkled shirt and holey, torn jeans.

No one picked me because I looked like a mess that wouldn’t know the answers. They were right. I didn’t know the answers.

When I was standing on the stage one of the other contestants in the audience yelled “No ripped jeans!”

Another girl flipped me off with both of her fingers. I think her name was Lily. She was engaged. Her grand prize was going to be their honeymoon. She stuck her tongue out at me, but rooted all the same. Everyone was rooting. Everyone congratulated me afterwards. They were all very nice.

So me and Will are going to London. I don’t know when. I’ll be contacted.