Come on Down!

I went to The Price Is Right today. The show is for crazies. To get your spot on the show, you have to line up by 3 am, thus guaranteeing that the sane do not even bother to show up.

At the front of the line was Ben, who showed up at 7:30 the night before. It was Ben’s seventh time doing this, and this time was going to be his big chance! But Ben will never be chosen. You see, he’s ill in the head. They screen people ahead of time, and it’s not difficult to determine that he’s deranged. He kept demanding an $80 fee from us for reasons we couldn’t determine.

There were many young women wearing hoochie shirts with messages to Bob on them. Only old women proved to be more distasteful, as one group wore pink shirts declaring, “Mom’s with Rod, I’m with Bob.” (Rod Roddy was the sequenced announcer who recently passed away from being too flamboyant.)

In line, we met a guy with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome who explained that he’s already been on TV before for some medical segment on his condition on the news. His friend from church had some eye disfigurement going on, but was excited to sit in the front row because he came with his crippled grandmother. Unsurprisingly, all three were ultimately seated in the back row.

People who have won the show before are ineligible to play again, but seem to show up anyway. One woman previously won a skateboard package, and decided this made her a “Price Is Right” expert, so she gave advice to other wannabe-contests on the ins and outs while bragging excessively. She was too fat to even ride a skateboard. Another previous winner, some guy still disturbed after being in Iraq, seemed to get his sole validation in life from sharing that he won a living room set.

You’d think with an audience full of these people, we’d have an easy time getting chosen as contestants. Alas, “The Price Is Right” rewards the wrong people in life. The people they pick are the same you meet every day that are just so damn perky you want to slap them across their smiling faces. The people who randomly scream words during normal conversation. The people who will jump with the same enthusiasm for a box of snack cakes as they would a car. The people who want to appear on TV to boost their DOA acting career. The people who claim they not only want to act, but direct!

After making everyone stay awake in line for nearly twelve hours by the time the taping starts, the people who can still maintain this level of perkiness are clearly on speed. Or retarded. And I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say a good twenty percent of people in line had some form of mild retardation. For one long night/morning, I was one of them.