It was a great day to take the day off -- great weather, puffy clouds -- but I wasn't sitting around looking for animal shapes in the clouds. I took this picture from a bus window heading for New York City. You see, I had an appointment for an audition to be on "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire." I thought it was about time I put to use all of the useless trivia I have stored in my brain, and believe me, it's cluttered up there -- it's full of old phone numbers, abandonded ZIP codes, song lyrics, Civil War trivia -- it's a mess.
The day starts off calmly enough when I catch a Lucky Star Bus at 11:00 am for New York. I was thinking about taking a Greyhound Bus since it lets off at the Port Authority terminal which is closer to the ABC studio but the line was long so I opted for Lucky Star -- an auspicious choice, I thought.
I was very calm throughout the ride: I slept a little, mostly looked outside the window admiring the clouds. I read a little bit of Schott's Miscellany 2008. I thought I might do some last-minute trivia cramming but we all know that you either know it or you don't. I read it mostly for fun. In my preparation I did leaf through Jon Stewart's America: The Book which is a fun and surprisingly effective way to brush up on US history and civics.
The trip took longer than the normal 4 hours on account of the traffic getting into New York. But I arrived with plenty of time to spare and found a nice little bakery in The Bowery and had two Chinese Pork Buns and a Coke to fortify myself. Afterwards, I grabbed a cab and hung on for dear life as we careened down Park Avenue narrowly missing several pedestrians along the way. I got in line for my audition and about a hundred twenty of us were herded into an ABC facility for the timed, written test. At this point I wasn't really nervous. I was more irritated with some people sitting with me whose reaction to a stressful situation is to talk incessantly. To quote Woody Allen, "What I wouldn't give for a large polo mallet!"
I was a few questions into the test when I realized I was shaking. My adrenal glands decided it was time to dump adrenaline into my bloodstream. At that point if part of the test was to lift a jeep, I would have been able to do it on the first try. I finished early and checked my answers. The folks running the test tabulated the results right there and called out the contestants who passed. I PASSED!
There was a little interview and now I basically wait to hear back from them to see if I'm going to be a contestant. I don't know their selection criteria so I can't even hazard a guess as to my chances. I'm glad I took the test and passed. I've played along with the TV program so many times, it was nice to have an actual interaction with the game show process.
I met up with my friend Barbara who very graciously took me to dinner at Shun Lee -- a somewhat upscale Chinese restaurant. I mentioned to Barbara that it reminded me of the kind of restaurant I'd see in a Woody Allen movie -- very old New York. A few minutes after I said this she spotted our celebrity sighting: Michael Rapaport who has actually been in a few Woody Allen films. We were going to get desert at a nearby bakery but it was closed so I hightailed it back to Chinatown and caught the 10 pm bus back to Boston. I slept like the baby Jesus and woke up to find the bus pulling into South Station a few minutes ahead of schedule. It was 1:52 in the morning.
And that was what I did on my day off.
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