Pre-Makeover Slob
Thank you very much to everyone who watched me on the TV and told me I did well. Kind words are such an easy way to make someone feel good and y’all did that for me and I appreciate it. As promised, here is part 2 of the story of how I ended up on your boob tube.
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I landed in New York Sunday night and called for information about a car service; information I used my special Ben powers to promptly forget, allowing me to spend the next five minutes or so doing what every child is instructed never to do: Approaching strangers in strange cars, asking if I’m supposed to go with them. Eventually, I either found the right car or was kidnapped and held at a very convenient location, the Millennium UN Hotel, but a few blocks from the Rachael Ray Show studio.
The “UN” in Millennium UN Hotel Stands for United Nations, just as you’d expect, and they treat me like Secretary-General from the the first moment, despite pre-makeover Ben looking like the UN Ambassador for Junkietown. Upon arrival I approached the deftly-dressed desk attendant and tiredly spoke, “Check in for Ben Axelrad,” displaying all the charm and warmth of a frozen bag of peas. Unswayed by my coldness, the desk attendant looked up at me and enthusaistically said, “I’ve been waiting for you.” Unclear on whether them was fighting words, I prepared myself to stab him if push came to stab. It didn’t go down like that. It went down like this:
HIM
I’m gonna hook you up. You feel like swimming?
ME
Uh…no?
HIM
Want room service?
ME
Not really.
HIM
Need access to the fitness room?
ME
What? Look at me.
HIM
I’m gonna hook you up.
ME
Okay…Why?
HIM
Didn’t your mother teach you not to look a gift horse in my mouth?
ME
My mother never let me keep gift horses.
HIM
Haha. You’re funny. That’s why I’m gonna hook you up.
I’m gonna move you from the East Tower to the
West Tower so you can use the swimming pool,
room service, and fitness center.
ME
But I don’t…okay, thank you.
Though I had no use for the extra amenities, the upgraded room he placed me in was PIIIIIIMP. When I lived in New York I slept on a futon mattress, had no television, looked out the window and saw homeless women urinating on park benches. At the Millennium UN I slept on a king-sized tempurpedic, had a big screen TV, and gazed out upon a sprawling city of majestic light. I wouldn’t trade the humble experience I had living there, but this wasn’t too shabby either.
Sadly I spent little time in the lap of luxury as the good people at Rachael Ray had a busy schedule for me that included very little take-a-bubble-bath time. I woke up bright and early and was in a cab to Brooklyn by 8:30am to film the cooking portion of my segment. It started with a short interview in which they would ask me a question, I would give an unusable answer, they would feed me a line, and I would say it. To say the interview was scripted is not entirely accurate. To say those were my words isn’t entirely accurate either. It was somewhere in between, like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with less Jewish neuroticism.
Once that was complete it was time to make TV chili. I call it TV chili because cooking it for television added about two extra hours to the process as they filmed me from every angle as I fumbled my way through each step. The first fumbled step was the chopping of the onions, which I handled with such culinary grace it inspired the field producer Dan to remark, “It looks like you’ve never held a knife before in your life.” Yes, Dan, yes it does. The more I cooked the more it became clear I can’t cook, so the more the segment became about me being a slob. A “big, burly bro’s broseph” as I apparently called myself. And we had fun with it. A lot of laughing and overeating and chili-smearing, all the best things about the chili dog experience. Chili dogs are a goofy food that you eat with your hands and get on your clothes and the finished product showed that. So good work, guys!
From there I was shipped in a cab back to Manhattan for a 2pm shopping “spree” at Macy’s with Mandie. After about 100 phone calls, Mandie and I were set to meet for the first time, so I called her when I arrived, but for some unknown reason my phone service was shut off. I can only assume service was discontinued in the same way the credit card companies occasional decline service due to suspicious activity. Probably Verizon Wireless became suspicious of too many calls to Mandie and intervened. But eventually this all got worked out and Mandie and I spent the next two hours discovering that human clothes don’t come in my sizes and that I look like a remarkable douche in 90% of outfits. Mandie was a trooper so I was a trooper, but I considered running for my life a few times. I must’ve tried on fifty different combinations – without the benefit of a speedy montage! I was forced to try on those outfits in real time!
But all that time paid off I suppose as we did happen upon some threads that fell in the 10% of non-douchey outfits and after receiving approval from the Macy’s publicist who decides whether you look good enough in Macy’s clothes to appear on television in them, I was back in a cab and headed to Cutler Salon to complete the follicle portion of my physical transformation. My stylist was a guy whose name I can’t remember who I want to call Jason though I realize that’s only because he looked a lot like Jason Bateman. I was secretly disappointed my stylist was a guy but also secretly excited he looked like Jason Bateman. There isn’t much I can say about the haircut other than that I liked it and the device he used to dry my hair made it look like I was sitting in an electric chair, which was awesome.
By the time I got back to the hotel with some of this famous New York pizza and infamous Russian vodka I’d been hearing so much about it was 8:30pm and I was zonked. I plopped down on the tempurpedic, turned on some basketball, ate a slice of pizza and passed out. Being made presentable for television, like Spring Cleaning, is a lot easier if you’ve been tidying up all year.
The next morning I checked out of my UN headquarters, said goodbye to all my new UN friends in 70 different languages, and headed out for the television studio to put a face to all the new friends I’d spent so much time talking to over the phone. To describe my three hours in the studio in great detail would do disservice to the blinding pace of hair and makeup and notes and cues and primping and preening and miking that followed. Before I knew it I was being shoved out on stage to reveal my pretty new face and duds to the adoring, middle-aged, female crowd. I’ve said it a few times now in retellings of this story and it’s wholly true: The on-camera experience was like a fistfight in that it felt like it took an eternity but was actually over before I knew it. However, unlike a fistfight, I did a very minimal amount of bleeding.
A question I’ve been asked: How was her chili dog? It was good. I ate it after the segment ended. But it was much spicier than I anticipated and I actually choked a bit after the cameras stopped rolling. Also, there were no napkins so I was covered in chili sauce in my new outfit and the motherly audience didn’t like that. You couldn’t tell on television but they were terrfied for the safety of my ensemble. Rachael was nice enough to grab me a napkin though and the outfit was spared! I waved goodbye to the audience who showed me love in return and that was that.
Other than to say a few heartfelt goodbyes I didn’t stick around after filming my last segment and instead found an Irish bar and got drunk with old Irishmen. I intoxicated them with tales of Los Angeles and they intoxicated me with glasses of whiskey. Fair trade. This experience, for all its good times, definitely needed to be washed down with whiskey, and these old Irishman who had never heard of Rachael Ray, or television for that matter, happily obliged. Properly langered, I stumbled back over to the studio, picked up my luggage and left for the airport to begin telling this very story for the first of one million times.
People have been asking what Rachael Ray is like in person, and I can’t really say. She seems very nice, but I always thought she seemed very nice on TV. I didn’t have a lot of interaction with her besides what you saw on the screen, but the one thing I can say that isn’t obvious from your couch at home is that she smells wonderful. Especially given that she was cooking kielbasas before I came out. God sometimes makes terrible people smell enticing, but not enticing enough to withstand kielbasa. So by that line of fuzzy logic I’m assuming she’s a pretty good lady. She gave me a trip to New York and a bunch of free clothes, so screw me if she’s not aces in my book. I’ve liked people for a whole lot less.
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Thank you very much to everyone who made this possible for me. I really had a great time doing this and I hope the story tells that. I hope you had a great time reading this two-part-telling of my daytime TV saga. But more than anything, I hope no one ever asks me to tell it again. Though I know that won’t be the case. This is going to become my new “babysitting joke.” If that reference means something to you then you’re well aware of what I mean. And if it doesn’t, please don’t ask me to tell it again.
Post-Makeover...Slob
My name is Ben and I have run out of words on this subject.
