REALLY?!
Tuesday was the taping of Fox Reality Channel’s 2007 Really Awards, and for the second year in a row I got to host the event that brought the most unlikely meeting of reality minds and bodies together at one bar. All I remember from last year’s event was Chyna Doll yelling at me from the audience for three hours, flashing her boobs and vomiting on herself, and this year I knew we were in for a treat because Fox Reality promised to up the voltage and the bar tab.
The event was held at Boulevard Three, one of Hollywood’s hottest clubs, and being centrally located and well known we knew it would be well attended. I started rehearsing at 11am and there was a giddy anticipation – the unknown lay ahead and the caustic mix of booze, cameras and narcissism promised to be a well shaken cocktail of chaos. They brought in a hot tub this year and the arm chair odds makers were trying to gauge who would go in. The hookers from HBO’s Cathouse? Definitely. Charm School girls? Probably. Guys dumb enough to think the hookers were average model/waitresses who were really interested in them for their looks? Hopefully. Being a germaphobe I gave myself an invisible 20 foot radius around the bubbling cesspool. I didn’t want to wander into any collateral flotsam and jetsam that would inevitably include bodily fluids one normally finds isolated in Pumkin’s underwear.
The reality stars started showing up at 3 and immediately I locked in on Sanjaya sitting at a table with his manager and another facilitator. He is a sweet boy who has lost the annoying “welcome to the universe of Sanjaya” swagger that turned me off during Idol. Instead I saw an eager and hard working smiley face who was approachable and genuinely excited for the night. We apparently couldn’t get the right transmitter for his headset so I didn’t get to hear him sound check before the show.
A group of three girls walked in with more silicone than a Beverly Hills surgeon’s supply closet and I thought to myself, “Oh! The Cathouse girls are here!” Then I saw the telltale black BRET tattooed in the back of the ringleader’s neck. Yes! It was Heather, Cristia and the blonde Brandi from VH1’s Rock of Love. I knew Bret himself would not be at our awards show; this event is too chaotic for his weave. But seeing the first runner up and hearing her story was almost as good as meeting the once glorious god of glam himself.
Heather’s face was sad the whole time. She has clearly not gotten over the rejection of coming in second after she emblazoned the guy’s name in a place only slightly less visible than her forehead. She made no attempt to cover his name, and in fact she wore her brassy stripper hair pulled off to the side in a ponytail that showcased her bad decision for all to see. Heather was quick to tell me Bret and Jes are no longer together and she has a clever idea for VH1 that will save her money on tattoo removal: she wants to do a bachelorette style show with all guys named Bret (or Brett presumably) so when she finally meets her prince she can keep her tattoo, dignity be damned.
Jonny Fairplay. He is Jekyll and Hyde personified. When he’s sober he is an insecure and unassuming fawn eager to engage people and desperate to be liked. He actually comes off a little needy. When he drinks he drinks too much and becomes all too eager to show off his a-hole side at all cost. He came up to me before the show and basically begged me to be nice to him and not make fun of him from the stage. I felt bad for him but I couldn’t make him any promises.
Our show had a lengthy stop down because of a blown generator so we had a good hour or so in the dark with working mics, so a host of drunken reality stars were onstage fighting for the microphone and a little extra attention. We had a walk off among the biggest drunks: Cao Boi from Survivor, Howie from Big Brother All Stars, Solitary 2.0 winner Phu Pham and Amber from Big Brother 8 (who wasn’t drunk but I wanted to see her walk after she made such a big deal about wanting to be a model) and believe it or not Amber won! Even though she may have been as sober as a nun the audience felt she was more impaired than her well-lubed counterparts on stage. Phu’s great display of the night was his PHU PHAM California license plate, which I lovingly gave to Amber as the winner of the walk-off. Sorry Phu.
Eventually the show resumed and we got to the Jonny Fairplay/Danny Bonaduce portion of the evening. Jonny was clearly drunk backstage as he waited to give out the award he won last year, the audience favorite award we call the Golden Realitini. I was waiting backstage where I entered and exited the whole night (and where I remained delightfully sober as not to compromise an ounce of rationality and brain power I knew I’d need to stave off the drunks and keep my sanity) and we didn’t have a TV monitor so I couldn’t see the show. All I heard was a thud and a collective gasp and I instantly knew something bad had happened.
There was a lot of murmur and pointing and Jonny Fairplay ran off stage humiliated holding his mouth as a stream of fresh blood trickled into his hand. At that point I still could not figure out what happened. The thud was too dull to be Jonny hitting the ground after Danny hit him so I assumed he had fallen from a riser or had climbed the balcony and blew the landing. I walked to the side of the stage and saw a sauced and shaken Alexis Arquette adjusting her man parts and railing against Bonaduce for his alcoholism and roid rage. I stood there for a second with my boss trying to figure out what had exactly just transpired as a producer pushed me toward the stage to get her off and get the show back on track. Now, I am a faithful employee and am willing to go into a shitstorm for anyone, but there is no way I am getting Alexis off. She can finish herself.
There was a lot of scrambling backstage as Jonny whimpered and bled, and all the onlookers were torn. He was clearly not gravely injured other than his missing teeth and bloody mouth, and you never know if a guy like that has hepatitis. As he bled in a heap you could see people weren’t falling all over themselves to help him either because they didn’t want to get bloody or they didn’t want to make his injury worse by poking around in a mouth of missing and broken teeth.
I didn’t see Danny after the incident and Jonny was quickly surrounded by some of LA’s finest firefighters and paramedics. He did pull the ultimate dick move by ripping a camera out of the make up artist’s hands and smashing it on the ground. When you straddle and dry hump a man onstage in front of thirty cameras and hundreds of people you have momentarily compromised your right to privacy. Dr. Jekyll’s diva fit was oddly timed and mostly ignored by the crowd of numb onlookers who weren’t sure if they had stumbled into a weird bit or a bad dream.
My favorite part of the night came from an unlikely unreality source. During our stop-down I was onstage talking to the crowd and at one point a very drunk (even by his peers standards) JP Palyock (from Survivor and Solitary 2.0) stumbled on stage and was hell bent on touching me and my dress. He would not take the hint that I didn’t need his ham handed caresses, and finally I told him if he didn’t stop I’d punch him.
I looked just off stage and a concerned older gentleman was watching our exchange and asked me, “Do you want me to take care of him?” I cocked my head, strained a bit and realized my knight in shining armor was none other than Saved By The Bell’s Mr. Belding. And that's reality, folks -- my reality.
