Ok so just because I have a tendency to change events in my memory to ease the tremendous pain of the embarrassment I would otherwise be regularly crippled by....
I have decided to capture my day as a television star as a timeline.



5:45 am: Brett wakes me up accomplishing what the two alarm clocks blaring in my room have failed to do for the last 45 min.
We are supposed to be at the studio at 6 and it takes about 15 min to get there plus we both have to shower (separately). In retrospect it now seems like it was a bad idea to go out drinking until 2am and only get three hours sleep.

6:25 am: We arrive at the studio 25 min late and proceed to sit around for another 25 min waiting to get started. Sitting and waiting would end up being a theme for the day. We also get to meet the other "talent" consisting of Maria who is a friend of one of the backstage chefs, Shannon who is a "professional actor" (read: a bartender at rain), and Will and Nicola who both work at the downtown Mini dealership.
When they ask how I got involved I say that my agent said this would be my big break. I have to explain that I am joking but cannot come up with a good reason why I am actually there. Somebody mentions that I look kind of tired. THANKS!!!

7:00 am: we meet Dan who is an associate director and will be in charge of talent management for the day. I have to tell Dan if I am leaving the set to go to the washroom. He brings us some coffee and three granola bars b/t the 6 of us which I instantly eat two of.

7:10 am: The wardrobe lady approves of my new emerald green sweater from the sporting life and lets me stay in the jeans I am wearing (!). This pisses off Brett who has to wear "club-style" black cargo pants and one of those Indigo(?) blue dress shirts tucked in. I ask Brett to make sure that he doesn't get any food on his shirt just in case I have to time travel back to 1997 and need something to wear but he doesn't hear me. Will, the other guy on the show, also is put in dorky looking clothes so I feel relatively lucky.

7:20 am: Dan brings in a graphologist to analyze our handwriting. This is kind of an icebreaker designed also for us to get to know each other. The lady spends 10 min lavishing praise on Brett and says things to me like "you can really hold a grudge" in the end she dubs me "Mr. Intensity" and I am like "I don't know what that means"

7:25 am: I am pulled away from the graphologist who is currently giving an extra healthy review to Nicola (whose handwriting is freakishly small by the way) to go into makeup. I suspect that I was more receptive to make-up than the average dude sophie deals with and even had helpful suggestions for her like "make me look less hung over".

7:30 am: directly from make-up to hair where the make-up girl, hair girl and two producers all agree that my hair is perfect as it is and further suggest that the girl use a little hair-spray to make sure that the "duck-tail" at the back stays in place (this is not the tail at the bottom of my hair but a different one mid-head that is not supposed to be there. )
I explain to them that I am a cut-model but they don't really seem impressed.

7:45 am: Dan gives us our pre-shooting pep-talk. Dan is disconcertingly witty as in I think Dan is like 10-15 years older than me so I should be quicker but I am not. Suprisingly Dan suggests that we should have fun.

7:50 am: I take a massive hang-over style dump in the talent washroom. Luckily nobody goes in directly after to check there hair or something.

7:55 am: we are ushered to the studio where we meet the 10 million producers, directors, cameramen, grips, stage assts, backstage chefs etc.

8:00 am: WE ARE ON THE AIR!!!! we are all sitting around a table while Donna Dooher (who is our super-chef mentor) explains what we will all be cooking today. Donna is kind of like your friends mother when you were a teenager who always seemed sweeter than your mom (who would search your closet for booze and then claim that she was looking for an old purse when she confronted you about it) except that Donna also swears like a pirate off camera.
Brett and I are to cook pork tenderloin with treakle(?) as well and hassel-back potatoes and chutney. We clearly have a heavier workload than the other pairs who are cooking bread pudding and brownies respectively.

8:01 am: The creepy back-room directors who we cant see cut me off for the first time when I try to ask too many questions about what treakle is. I was like "I have another question Donna" and I hear an instant dismissive "NO!" come from somewhere off camera. It was actually kind of cool.

8:02 am: CUT SCENE ONE! this would be the order of the day since they are using film. I always assumed that these shows were filmed more or less in real time but apparently I was drastically mistaken. Instead we would constantly wait between 5 and 40 min between takes. Also each pair would be filmed consecutively but we all had to be standing at our cooking station at all times in case we were in the background of a shot. One of the poor bread pudding girls had to grate like 18 pounds of cheese waiting for Brett to tie the freaking roast correctly. It was a long day.
Directly after cut scene one Brett leaned over and said "you looked nervous" Thanks Brett! that should help me for the next scene!!.

8:10 am: Scene one take 5. Apparently we were not enthusiastic enough in the first four takes. If this thing actually makes it to air you will see lots of things like me saying "apple chutney!!! That sounds DELICIOUS" and I am the least cheesy of the 6 of us.

9:00 am: after getting some shots of us selecting the appropriate ingredients we are finally ready to start cooking or more accurately we are finally ready to discover that we wont really be doing as much cooking as I had originally anticipated. I discovered this when the potatoes I had painstakingly just cut "hassel-back" style were instantly thrown out between scenes and a new bowl of potatoes appeared 6 hours later when we were finally ready to film putting stuff in the oven.
apparently each of the talent pairs has doubles who are actual chef pairs in a back kitchen this is not so much a cheat but rather helps deal with the logistics of a 12 hour filming day vs 45min prep and cooking time.

9:05 am: I unload my first joke of the day when the director asks which one of Brett or Myself will be scoring the loin. The director (who apparently hadn't anticipated that there might be some joke potential in the words "scoring" and "loin") laughs hysterically and asks me to repeat the joke on camera. The joke is ruined on camera when the host lady loads up the inflection on the word scoring and then Brett does the same and then I look like a dork being the third one in on a joke (my own joke!). Me looking like a dork will eventually rival waiting around as the dominant theme of the day.

9:07 am: I get Brett back by cutting into him after he asks a stupid question about the wooden spoon I was using to cut potatoes.

9:08 am - 10:30 am: We painstakingly finish our portion of the prep stuff. The highlight of this is when I am cutting onions and Donna notes that I am teary at which point Brett suggests that I need a hug at which point I do hug the host. After our hug I wait 15 seconds and then for no reason say to Donna "You Smell Nice".....
Because god forbid I focus too long on looking dorky at the expense of looking creepy.

10:35 am: People are congratulating us on our "great" segment which I had previously assumed was the worst thing ever caught on film ever including the Magic Johnson Hour. Will suggests that we will be a tough act to follow. I am beginning to think that Emeral Lagassi might not losing be sleep over our show.

10:40 am -12:30pm: We stand around in the background while other people do their primary on air thing. The make-up girl has now had to re-touch Brett's river of a forehead twice and it is not even lunch yet. On this basis Brett suggests that she likes him more than me and I respond "only because she thinks I am gay" take that!

12:30pm - 1:30apm: Lunch! Lets smoke some freaking cigarettes. the Lunch Spread was predictable amazing and I really let lose with the stuffing myself. By the end of lunch I was kind of wheezing from eating too much and forgetting to breath. We also were given smocks so that we didn't ruin our wardrobes and I intentionally spilled some food on my smock to see how well it worked (better with the dry food then the sauces and drinks).

1:30pm - 4:00 pm: By this point I was really tired and I don't really remember what was going on so these medium hours kind of all blended in together. The highlight was during an extended break when Dan was trying to keep us fresh by playing the movie-midget game. This entails replacing one word in any movie title with the word "midget" and apparently the results are always funny. After a Luke-Warm start with "Terminator 3: Judgment Midget" I think I was really rolling with "The Midgets of Madison County" and "Full Midget Jacket". I thought these were the best but there was also some votes for Shannon who coined "Midget in a Bottle"

4:30 pm: We are still mostly waiting around and playing the Midget Movie Game. Brett looks like he is going to kill the next person who says Midget. I am also getting really tired at this point.

5:00 pm: Back on the Air! Brett and I are shooting the segment where the food goes in and out of the oven. The lead director drops by to tell us that we are the star pairing of the show and to "keep up the dry humor". We proceed to suck ass for the next 20 takes including one segment where it takes 3 takes for me to properly close a jar. Out sucking would continue for the rest of the day.

6:30 pm: we are finally shooting the segment of the show were we go to the bar and Gordon (who is the bartender in the show and also bartends at the Midtown but somehow doesn't recognize me) makes us non-alcoholic drinks- he would make up for this later. He then tells us a pretty funny pirate joke (are there any other kind of pirate jokes)

8:00 pm: We finally are eating the food on camera and it is delicious. When Donna asks Brett what he learned today he responds that he learned how to score his loin so that it is moist. SUBTLE!
I mumble something about cutting potatoes and we are done.

9:00 pm: Brett and I finally get home and I am possibly the most tired I have ever been in my life. Naturally we decide to get a bunch of beer at which point Ben and Adam appear out of nowhere like vampires.

11:00 pm: a conservative 7 beers later I am really tired and we are finally ready to go out. To get a review of how the show went we go to the Midtown where Gord says we did ok and then buys us a ton of beer. Brett as usual has a thinly disguised goal of getting everybody else as drunk as possible esp Ben and Adam who have to work tomorrow. By the end of the night I am too drunk and tired to go to Amato's which is never a good sign.


OK there you have it. My introduction into television super-stardom. And just under 35min to write too so GOOD TIMES