by Steve Almond
My strangest TV experience to date had been on a show called Cold Pizza, ESPN2’s answer to the Today show. They asked me to come down to their New York studio to discuss Halloween candy. I was booked onto the same show as P. Diddy’s personal trainer, with whom I spent a good half hour in the green room and who, I don’t mind telling you, has absolutely great delts, as well as a stunning grasp of the metabolic effects of a low-carb diet, though I can’t remember his actual name. Let me be blunt: I’m not sure I ever knew it.
He got about twenty minutes on the air, in which he discussed his employer’s upcoming entry into the New York Marathon, his training regimen, his blisters, and other pressing issues within the greater Diddysphere. My appearance lasted five minutes. I was paired with a host whose on-camera persona called to mind a particularly frightening anxiety attack I’d suffered in college. At one point, he stuck his mic inside his mouth so viewers could hear the Pop Rocks he had just inhaled. I know that at least one person saw this segment, because the guy who manages the bar where I go to drink off such experiences told me his wife had seen me. This is what’s known, in the writing game, as fame.
To be clear, then: I had what I want to call a bad feeling about the request from VH1. I was almost certain it would mean a lot of time and effort, and some mild humiliation, that it would only invite stress and disappointment into my already stressed, disappointing life, that, in other words, I should delete the message, pretend it never arrived, and get back to work.
Act Two
The Things We Do for Love
Why, then, did I forward this message to my publicist—knowing that this act alone would essentially require me to appear on Totally Obsessed?
I want to say that I had hope. I want to say that I truly believed appearing on this TV show would lead viewers to seek out my work and that some of them would dig what I was up to and would tell their TV-watching pals, so that, in a sense, eventually, there would be a whole army of viewers awakened to the pleasures of literature. I want to say this. But of course it’s complete bullshit.
My reasons were sadder—more abject and narcissistic. To begin with, I was worried that the VH1 folks would eventually contact my publicist anyway and that he might get angry at me for not passing this message along, which was not what I wanted because I worship the ground my publicist walks on, because he is the only person (other than my mother) who cares passionately about the fate of my books.
That’s really a very small sub-reason, though. The main thing was that I was flattered and star-struck. I enjoyed casually mentioning the VH1 thing to friends of mine, which forced them to ask me what I meant, so I could then say, “They want me to be on this new program, the pilot, whatever. It’s such a drag.”
Yes, they needed to know that I considered the VH1 thing a drag. I was doing it only because my publicist forced me. My friends were remarkably, disturbingly, impressed. Their attitude toward me (generally one of informed skepticism) gave way to something more like awe. They wanted to know what the show was about, what I’d be doing, and especially whether this meant they were going to be on TV.
And all this helped mobilize within me a belief complex familiar to anyone who has attempted to put art into the world. It worked like this: I would appear on the show and be brilliant. I would get famous. Everybody who ever called me a loser, privately or publicly, would suddenly feel like losers themselves. I would actually travel back in time, to my childhood, and enjoy the love and regard of my entire family. All my insecurities would evaporate.
For purposes of brevity, I am excluding the more obvious, quotidian perks of fame, by which I mean the opportunity to ejaculate on Paris Hilton’s face.
Contemplative Interlude I
A Brief Discussion of My Relationship to TV
I have never actually owned a TV, a fact I mention whenever possible, in the hopes that it will make me seem noble and possibly lead to oral sex.
As we all know, TV is a cesspool of mediocrity that sucks precious time and energy from those who fall under its spell. In other words, I am an addict. Anyone who has seen me in the presence of a television knows this.
As children, my brothers and I developed a TV loyalty so fierce as to occasion its own vocabulary. The brother who turned on the set first was said to “emanate.” When another brother entered the room he would immediately ask, “Who emanates?” I should stress that we were using this word from the time we were eight years old, despite the fact that we had no idea what it meant, which, regrettably, is still the case. Most of the 1,739 fights we got into as kids related to some issue of emanation, such as whether the act of fixing oneself a banana with peanut butter constituted a voluntary surrendering of emanation and thus empowered the emanator-designate to assume control. I don’t suppose I need tell you we could have done with a bit more parental supervision.
My point is that I would have suckled the cathode tube, given the chance. I can remember in vivid detail particular sessions of TV watching, as the gourmand might recall an epic meal. At the tail end of the Candyfreak tour, for instance, after five weeks on the road, I lay down on my hotel bed and watched consecutive episodes of a show called, I think, Extreme Blind Dating, in which the girl wears a hidden earpiece so that two of the guy’s ex-girlfriends can, from a remote location, advise her as to the most humiliating things she might say or do during the date. At the end of the program, a limo shows up. If the girl is inside, he gets a second date. If he’s failed the test, his exes are in the limo and they get to jeer at him and, in a gesture that is apparently fixed Extreme Blind Dating protocol, flash him their breasts. As I watched this program I began to believe that it was my duty to contact the producers—I took down the 1-800 number—and audition. I considered which of my exes would agree to be on such a show (none), and what they might tell my date (make him dance), and whether I could muster the necessary poise (probably not), and whether I really wanted to see my exes’ boobs (yes), and which ones (any of them, actually), and would it be possible, in the absence of real exes, to hire fake ones (probably). It was, though I don’t think I’m quite doing it justice, a glorious and deeply tragic afternoon.
Let me say also that TV has—like marijuana—gotten much more powerful over the past thirty years. There is almost always something compelling on, something I truly want to watch, often more than one thing, which is why my older brother Dave, when he gets access to a TV and emanates, actually watches four or five shows simultaneously, till he reaches a point of narrative saturation (i.e. his eye sockets start to bleed). I take it as a fixed law of cable TV that one of the Rocky films is on at all times, most often the fifth and worst Rocky, which I adore.
In short, when it comes to TV I have evolved a hard exoskeleton of moral distress and intellectual snobbery, which is in place to protect the squishy, defenseless flesh below.
Act Three
Introducing the Candy Monkey
You would think launching a show about obsessives would be pretty straightforward. Find the nutbags, turn the camera on. But you would be wrong. Totally Obsessed had an elaborate casting process. I was asked to send videotapes of previous TV appearances. I was asked to send photos. And I began speaking on the phone, nearly every day, with a young woman named Rakeda, whose job it was to “pitch” my segment to the higher-ups. She had a long list of questions: Is candy more important to you than sex? Have you ever fought anyone over candy? If candy ran for president, would you vote for it? She also began to interview my friends and family. I got lots of calls from loved ones, all of whom were terribly excited, but also a little baffled by Rakeda. “What’s the deal?” my brother Mike asked. “Is she mentally handicapped or something?”
No, she was not. She was working toward a particular need: the need to supply her bosses with evidence that I was totally obsessed with candy. The fact that I had written a book about candy didn’t really count. They needed something they could film.
Weirdly, stupidly, my segment was eventually approved, which meant I
started getting calls from Simbi, the segment producer, and her assistant, Dana. I liked Simbi right away, because she seemed to recognize that her job was basically absurd and she laughed a lot and because she claimed I was her favorite subject so far. Dana I liked less. She spoke quickly, often incoherently, and tended to call at times that really weren’t appropriate, such as 10 P.M. on a Friday night. When I closed my eyes, I could see her résumé and the words associate producer in a dignified font. It made me very sad.
Simbi told me the show wanted to capture me in my native habitat. I explained to her that my native habitat involved me sitting around in my underwear, avoiding writing. I did throw chocolate parties, and brought candy to poker games, and sometimes, if I was feeling crazy, I brought a few bars to my morning squash game. Simbi tried to sound encouraging about all this, though she clearly had hoped my schedule would involve praying to a large Candy Godhead, bathing in chocolate, and the liberal use of lollipops during sexual high jinks.
She spoke about one of her other subjects, a fellow from New Jersey who was totally obsessed with professional wrestling. “What’s so great about him is that he jumps all over his furniture, kind of like a monkey, imitating all the wrestling moves.”
“How did you find him?” I said.
“He sent in a tape.”
Yes, as it turned out, most subjects had actually applied to get on the show. It was at this point that I should have realized I was out of my league. This was my competition: a guy who jumped on furniture.
But no. Instead, I concluded that there was a way for this to work. I was going to have to camp it up. I was going to have to become The Candy Monkey, a frantic, fraudulent, joyously undignified version of myself. The idea I had was that the smart viewers would embrace my shtick as cleverly ironic. They would recognize that I was actually a deep, thoughtful guy who was just playing a Candy Monkey on TV and they would admire my subversive irreverence. In other words—and here we are coming to a key factor in the ensuing failure—I developed the dangerous fantasy that I could defeat Reality TV.
Act Four
Some Initial Bitchslaps
Based on the phrase “documentary style,” I assumed the crew scheduled to arrive at my apartment in the middle of July would consist of Simbi and a camera person, who would probably have one of those little handheld digital numbers.
I had underestimated Reality TV, rather seriously. The crew numbered six: Simbi, a cameraman (Jay), a sound guy (Derek), a gaffer (Andy), a site coordinator (Charlie), and Simbi’s cell phone (Phone), by which she was in near-constant contact with the home office. We met for a get-to-know-you dinner and they ordered without regard to price, and when I asked Charlie what a site coordinator did exactly, he said, “I’m the one with the Gold Card!” then laughed diabolically.
They’d been on the road for a couple of weeks already, filming other Totally Obsessed people, and displayed the kind of forced camaraderie that derives from spending hours together in hotel rooms and far-flung bars. I liked their vibe—laid-back, eager to party, not terribly attentive. In a word: L.A.
And yet, when they arrived at my place the next morning, what emerged from their van was more like a military unit. The guys, though all impressively hung over, hauled in case after case of equipment, light stands, cameras, tripods, monitors, boom mics, dimmers, extension cords. Charlie was dispatched to fetch coffee and returned with twenty quarts and two dozen Dunkin’ Donuts.
Simbi took me aside to discuss the filming schedule. “Scene one will be the basic interview, then we’ll move to a scene in the kitchen…” I didn’t really get it. Scenes? What had happened to the poker game and the chocolate party? Didn’t they want to capture me in my habitats?
My friend Eve explained this to me later. “When I mentioned your chocolate parties to Dana, she said the only way they would be interested was if you were the only one who ate chocolate. Like, if you invited people over for the party, but you were so obsessed with candy that you wouldn’t let them have any.”
Had I known this a little earlier on, say, before the crew had occupied my home, I would have been given pause. But it was too late. I was seated on a small black chair. The camera was rolling. Simbi was asking me the first of forty-one questions, all of which I’d already been asked many times.
Simbi’s shooting script called for me to provide an extensive tour of my apartment. Fortunately, in the spirit of the Candy Monkey, I’d gone to the trouble of redecorating. I’d put Rocky Roads on the mantle, lined the wainscoting with caramels, filled my cabinets with Smarties and Neccos, taped wrappers to the walls, mounted chocolate porn on the fridge. The pièce de résistance was a thirty-five-pound Chocolate Pagoda, which my friend Karl (an engineer) had spent four hours constructing the night before. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid eyes on. In short, I had transformed a somewhat grubby bachelor pad into a somewhat grubby Candy Lair.
Act Five
Squeezing Poop
I had assumed (again, stupidly) that filming would be a breeze. But between lighting and sound, it took more than an hour to set up each shot. There was a lot of standing around while Jay and Andy had conversations like this:
JAY:
Squeeze a little more poop on the dimmer.
ANDY:
There?
JAY:
No, now there’s a bounce off the fill.
ANDY:
What do you want, a Gary Coleman?
JAY:
Try a beaverboard, maybe raise the main.
ANDY:
Good?
JAY (checking the monitor):
No, we need a dickhead. Actually, try a buttplug.
ANDY:
You want me to Dutch those barneys?
JAY:
No, just Hollywood it.
ANDY:
There?
JAY:
Yeah, that’s good. We’re speed.
I know you think I’m making this shit up, which, actually, I am. But those guys did use every single word in the above dialogue. It was part of their film production slang, a way of aggrandizing what would otherwise be grindingly dull work. They had a special term for everything. A clothespin was a C-47, or a bullet (a backward clothespin, naturally, was a C-74). The sandbags used to secure equipment were called beach, unless they were over thirty-five pounds, in which case they became ballbusters. One did not take a bathroom break but called for a 10-100 or, in more extreme need, a 10-200. (It will go without saying that I later forced Andy to make me a glossary of terms, which now hangs on my wall.)
I found the whole experience hopelessly cool—for about six hours. When it was time for lunch, Charlie went out in the van and returned with enough deli to feed the Red Army. He’d already gone to the market and brought back copious amounts of fruit, vegetables, nuts, chips, beef jerky, energy bars, soda, water, beer, and, of course, Red Bull. (The production team drank tremendous amounts of Red Bull. I’m not sure I can overstate the amount of Red Bull they drank. Over a two-day period, I would estimate a million cans.) There was about the scene something endearingly profligate.
Between shots I would wander into my kitchen and stare at all the food on my counters, the donuts, the Pringles, the soup and sandwiches, the coolers brimming with Cokes, and I would think: This is free! VH1 paid for this! I wanted to grab someone off the street and hold up each item for him and shout: They bought this! VH1 bought this for me! I am not being had for cheap!
Act Six
Waiter, There’s a Sound Guy in My Shower
Because my bathroom was too small to accommodate more than two people, particularly if one of those people (Jay) was toting a camera the size of a small atomic bomb, Derek had climbed into my tiny shower. He stood under the spigot gamely, trying to ignore the nest of hairs clogging the drain at his feet. His fuzzy boom mic was poking over my white plastic shower curtain, which has been described by more than one friend (in fact, by every single one of my friends) as the ugliest in the short human history o
f shower curtains.
Let me say: I was embarrassed.
The bathroom was not somewhere I wanted to be filmed. I was concerned that my mother would see the segment and catch sight of the rust-stained toilet bowl and the somewhat bacterial sinktop and that she would weep.
But Simbi had insisted that I give a full tour of the apartment, and this included the bathroom. In my capacity as Candy Monkey, I had stashed some taffy in the medicine cabinet, along with a confection called Lobster Poo, which seemed, at the time, to make sense thematically. Jay called out “Speed” and I began holding forth on the need to “fortify nontraditional candy venues,” a sermon which culminated with my recitation of the couplet on the bag of Lobster Poo:
I went to the Cape and here’s the Scoop!
I came back home with Lobster poop!
It was at this point that the bloom came off the rose. Some more serious version of myself (standing behind the actual, blathering version of myself) whispered into my ear: What in God’s name are you doing?
To which I responded: I am lifting American minds from the muck of ignorance.
Act Seven
My Student, Under Interrogation
I put in eight hours as the Candy Monkey that first day, explaining why I kept candy in my laundry room and demonstrating how I ate M&M’s, while Simbi barked out helpful instructions such as “Can you open your mouth a little wider?”
Again: American minds, lifting, muck of ignorance.
Late in the afternoon, I went to do some errands, and the crew set up to interview a few of my friends. I can remember returning home at dusk and catching sight of a disquieting tableau through my bay window. My former student, a shy, brilliant kid named Simon, was sitting under a harsh bank of lights. The boom mic hovered over him. His pale forehead shone like the surface of an egg. He was sweating and blinking. I wanted, right then, to walk into my house and tell the crew to turn off the lights, let the poor guy go. But I waited until the interview was over and ushered him into my bedroom, which was the only place that wasn’t overrun with equipment.
