The Price is Right, Final Frontier.

(Or “I’m smelly, tired, sick of clapping and screaming, and Bob Barker looks like a wax mannequin of himself”)

Pt. III of III (See Pt. I here and Pt. II here)

We met handfuls of interesting people in line. My most memorable line encounter was with an elderly couple that had lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. If I could have given them the new car, trailer camper, et al, I would have.

And then there was Earl. Earl has one of those inherently tough-but-adorable faces. He got in line at 11:30pm, and spent the following 12 hours campaigning and charming the pants off of everyone in his line vicinity, including TPIR talent scouts.

Yes, talent scouts. I had mistakenly assumed that contestants were chosen randomly, giving me a 1 in 200 or so (0.5%) chance of fulfilling my childhood dream of playing Plinko (or at very least the stupid golf game). Sadly, for my mostly shy demeanor, we were expected to perform, in groups of 10, after staying awake for over 24 hours and sitting in the rain for over 10 hours, for two dry-faced CBS Polo-Shirt Wearers with clipboards. We were asked, in drill sergeant fashion: Name, Occupation, Hometown?

Jen & Steve did a cute honeymooning-Canadians performance, Elliot was a cuddly, witty engineer from Silicon Valley, and I….froze. “Uh, I’m a photographer. From Canada. But I actually live in California. And I’m a student. Of finance.” Frig. I think I even smelled as boring as I sounded. When I saw the tell-tale flicker of “Boring, next.” Pass over Clipboard #2’s otherwise emotionless face, I realized I blew it. No Plinko.

 

Why did Mom have to raise such an honest And trustworthy daughter? Why can’t I be a better liar? I could have adopted bubbly southern Delta Smelta-Phi daughter’s shtick, jumped around, cheered and punched the air a few times, and I probably would have been picked. Maybe we should have laced our 4am coffees with something stronger than half & half.

 

In order to honour the blogger’s (note: I prefer bloviator’s but it hasn’t caught on just yet) code of brevity and succinct, witty posting, I will point-form the remainder of my TPIR observations:

 

• Making crowds of 500 order themselves into numerically organized lines is a really good way to waste an inordinate amount of time.

• Having a single person handwrite all studio audience (and possible studio audience) members name tags is another great time-waster.

• After 12 hours in line, in the rain, it doesn’t matter how funny your t-shirt is, you do not make an attractive audience member (by sight or smell).

• Because of the tired and smelly factor of those who make it into the first few rows of the audience, CBS hires a group of nice-smelling, make-up-wearing actors to fill the only row that is consistently visible on camera throughout the show.

• Having someone yell at you to clap and cheer, louder & louder, for 45minutes of taping, regardless of how ruggedly good-looking he is, is not an effective motivator after about 5 minutes.

• Especially if the guy yells “Oh YEAH!” in a porn-y voice every time a new item comes up for bidding. Side note: your impression of Oh YEAH! will be the most memorable thing you take away from the longest/most exhausting 24 hours of sitting/shuffling/waiting of your life.

• TPIR set looks much smaller in real life than on TV – miniature, even.

• And finally, Bob Barker has to wear a lot of make-up to still appear TV-presentable at 83.

 

 

If Bob has a little place in your heart, despite the sexual assault allegations and chauvinistic fan kissing, tune in on May 16^th, 8pm.

All in all, it was a very tiring, but very fun 24+ hour adventure. Here’s the proof:

Before:
After:

See…still happy, and relatively unscathed.

 

Oh yeah, to tie this back to finances (the purported reason for this site) – gambling and game showing are freakishly similar pursuits. In a word or two: Don’t bother. The chance of a decent return on invest is damn near nil. Unless of course your name is Earl, you manage to charm the pants of the clipboard guys, and as as “thank-you for making our audience go bonkers”, one of the CBS guys rigs the great wheel to land on $1.00 and 5¢ consecutively during your turn. These two spins net Earl $1500 (before taxes, of course) and a standing ovation from the audience (despite their net loss on the day) for a cool 18 hours of work.

Feeling lucky? Go sign up for your company’s 401(k), or open a Roth IRA account. More details in the next post – it’s already half-typed.

And remember, help control the pet population; have your pets spayed or neutered.