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So in case any of you missed it, I appeared on WHHI’s “Girl Talk” recently in an attempt to present a more male, huskier point of view on things, or at the very least to sweat profusely for eight minutes.
Any of you who are fans of awkward sputtering and television guests who sit bolt upright in an attempt to hide their guts might want to check their local listings. It was a clinic in both.
It all started because Lori, Monthly’s publisher, is a regular on the program and wanted to get me on there to talk about the October issue. No problem, right? I was there for most of the October issue, I had a passing familiarity with its contents, so why not get out there and talk it up?
Aside from the fact that I had to do all this in front of a camera, a device clinically proven to make me look like Gigantor the Porkbeast, devourer of worlds. But I soldiered on, because I’m legitimately proud of the October issue, I’m excited to get out there in the community, and I was required to do so by my boss.
So it was that I found myself on set, which is actually an amazingly decorated room at the back of J Banks, trying not to recline too much on The World’s Most Comfortable Sofa between the host, Debi Cort, and the program’s other guest, Anna Ruby. Anna, by the way, is not someone you want to sit next to on television.
The woman could be a supermodel. Next to her, everyone looks bad. Johnny Depp could sit next to her and look like a hobo. (OK, bad example, since he already kind of does. But you get my drift).
Compared to my co-guest, who was actually emitting visible prettiness rays into the atmosphere, I couldn’t help but notice that I looked a lot like Jabba the Hutt’s slightly portlier cousin.
She’s just that good looking. And God help me, I am not.
Especially when, moments later, I start talking.
Debi, who is an absolutely wonderful host, kicks things off by asking me about the October issue. I respond with a verbal tsunami of nonsense that spills all over the set, stringing together what may have been a response to her question but I seem to recall as being a detailed lecture in derailing a TV show.
And then, somewhere around minute six of my rambling incoherence, a funny thing happens. My poor atrophied abdominal muscles, which have thus far been holding me upright to keep me from falling deep into the Couch of Inescapable Comfort, start twitching.
At this point, I'm feeling like a pregnant woman who’d just downed a liter of espresso. While my tiny awkward baby kicks, I struggle to both talk and keep from slouching, since that would betray my gut to the cameras (even moreso). But that just makes the twitchmonster angry.
At that point, the twitching interrupts my monologue long enough for Debi to interject and wisely steer the show away from the trainwreck I was creating. She introduces Anna Ruby (who once again proves you shouldn’t sit next to her on TV, by being criminally radiant and charming while she speaks) and I make my way to the conversational sideline.
Which leads us to the second reason I should not be on TV. It’s a question I didn’t think to ask until the cameras were on:
When you’re on a talk show, and you’re not being interviewed, where are you supposed to look? They never tell you that.
You can look at the host, but they’re pretty busy at the moment. Y’know, they’re kind of done talking to you.
You can look at the other guest, and indeed this is usually the case on talk shows, but have you ever looked at someone who’s sitting right next to you just inches away? It’s pretty hard.
You gotta crane your neck at this impossible angle to the point where you’re kind of staring, since no one casually glances at someone while tucking their chin behind their shoulder.
Do you stare off into space? Well that’s no good, because you’ll just seem bored.
Left, right, forward. What’s an unfeasibly large head to do?
Naturally, I then make the completely insane decision to do all three at once. If you fast forward through this point at the segment, you’d swear there’s a tennis match going on behind the cameras that only I can see.
You’re free to think this is just me being hard on myself, but I did get confirmation from a reader who said of my performance, quote, “I kept watching to see if you loosened up eventually.”
“And did I?”
The answer was, of course, nervous laughter followed by a complete changing of the subject.
But it wasn’t all bad. I got to be on TV. I got out of the office for a little bit.
And I got a new reason to start cutting back on the cake.
