"You know who I am?" "I've seen you before. You're the asshole on T.V." "That's funny, I was gonna say the same thing about you."

A while back a friend and I were talking about something, I'm not exactly sure what but I think it was the Truman Show, when we began to discuss what kind of shows our lives would be if they were really TV shows. Like Truman's.

The Icon figured that his was most likely The Osbournes, complete with random cameos (albeit non-celebreties- with the exception of Bruce Campbell), new seasons & re-runs (where the same thing just seems to keep hapening), "sweeps week" where all kinds of crazy shit happens to him to draw ratings, and an obscene amount of cussing. There was inevitably a cross over between our 2 shows.

Which brings me to mine.

Mine was the stuff of legend. It still comes up to this day, and I still point out things that happen to me and are a direct correlation to my show. "Screw Big, Dumb American!" was the name of my little ratings winner. It's a mix of The Running Man, the aforementioned Truman Show, and a bat shit-crazy Asian game show.

I'm pretty sure that my entire "world" is manufactured a la Truman: my friends, job, town, life, etc... are all there just to interact with me and keep me from really discovering what exactly is going on.

But somewhere there is an entire audience (maybe all over the galaxy), that partakes in throwing in new obsticles, experiences, events, people, etc... in order to try and really screw me over. And all of this is presided over by a couple of asian game show hosts who REALLY enjoy their jobs. They're a combination of Damon Killian, the host from the Running Man (Richard Dawson at his best), and Vic Romano and Kenny Blankenship from Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC) on Spike TV.

There are no seasons. There are no re-runs. There aren't even any real "sweeps weeks". Just a show that keeps going every hour of every day of every year. Kind of like The Price is Right or wrestling if they went 24-7.

So audience members take turns picking what to do with me (or "to me" to be more precise), and then have a howling good time watching me bumble my way through everything. There's probably even a betting window for them to place bets on what I'll do when faced with whatever wonderful concoction of shit that they throw at me. Like Vegas or the track. Speaking of Vegas, I've never been there, so it stands to reason that they may actually have that huge TV screen and betting boards and windows there for everyone to participate. I wonder what the odds are for me to get through the rest of the day without getting overly pissed off at something. I have a couple of bucks on "Not so good."

They have all kinds of usual tricks they like to pull, but they absolutely love to introduce new characters all the time. Especially ones that I like. Then they pull them off the show. "Oh! We bring in old friend Chris to make work and everything better! Just when he get comfortable and starting to have fun again...BOOM! We make Chris 'move away' and then make girlfriend dump him at same time! That will REALLY piss him off! Hahahahaha stupid, fat American."

For a while life was so crappy that I was convinced this was true. I was having a crappy day (the ratings must have been good that day) when I was sitting at a traffic light and I looked in the rear-view mirror. Who did I see? Two Asian gentlemen who were laughing hysterically and pointing right at me. I swear to God. They would laugh and look at each other and then point to me, as if they were saying "Look! It's Big, Dumb American! We should ram his car. That will REALLY piss him off!" So I was freaking out and floored it when the light turned green to put a little distance between myself and the two guys who unwittingly had a brush with their favorite TV star and accidentally became short term cast members.

So there's a not so brief overview of my life as a game show. "Screw Big, Dumb American!": ratings machine, media darling, Nielson family favorite. What'll they do to me next?

D

Vic: "Here's Craig Simmons, creator of Weightnessless Watchers".
Ken: "Yeah, for fat astronauts."
Vic: "Right you are, Ken."
Ken: "Ass-tronauts."
Vic: "Kenny?"
Ken:"Ass-tro-nauts."
Vic: "All right, Kenny, let's get back to the action."