Click on Winona to relive our unfortunate flame-out and Last Words on VH1’s VSPOT!
Have you ever been in a situation that you know you can handle—and everybody is counting on you—only to have your body just completely disconnect from your brain? When I was in junior high, I played Dracula in the school play. It was a perfect role for a lazy ham like myself who didn’t want to memorize too many lines, but loved the adoration of a crowd. I got to play the title character whom all the other characters are constantly referencing, but with very little actual stage time. Minimum work, maximum impression—especially the way the play ended that night.When Van Helsing rushed up to plunge the stake into my heart, I saw a flash of hands clasped together. Empty. He had somehow misplaced or forgotten the prop stake.
By the time his empty fists hit my chest shouting “Die!” all I could focus on was that there was no stake, although I was probably the only one close enough to notice. I was supposed to die, but instead I stood there dazed, eyes wide. At that point, the play devolved into a comedy of errors as poor Van Helsing ran around the stage helplessly, yelling “Somebody get the stake!” It ruined the entire play and people talked about it at school for weeks. Well, I am here to tell you that the older you get, some things never change.
Ruining the junior high production of “Dracula” is nothing compared to the shame that will rain down upon me after my final appearance on VH1’s 2007 “World Series of Pop Culture.” You know when you see a game show contestant miss the easiest question ever and you think, “Where do they get these idiots?”Hi, my name is Eric Melin, and I’m one of those idiots. After months of preparation, passing a nearly impossible written test, many rounds of tournament auditions, and a triumphant first victory in match number one on the show, I choked in gloriously stupid fashion. I totally flamed out on national TV.
Let’s join the action, currently in progress. We’re onstage before our “doomsday game” actually begins, and host Pat Kiernan asks me about our strategy in the first game. It was then that it dawned on me that we really didn’t have one. We kept telling ourselves we would ask him to repeat the question if we needed to, and we would not blurt out raw answers before our brains had time to sufficiently cook them, but that wasn’t so much a strategy as it was common sense.In a misguided effort to be funny and show that nothing ever works out how you plan on this show (in a moment that was cut out on TV—thank God!), I make an ill-conceived crack. It was completely sarcastic, something to the effect of: “If our strategy is for me to eliminate the other team all by myself while the rest of my team goes and sits down, then I guess it’s working.” As soon as it came out, I knew it was the absolute wrong thing to say and that self-aggrandizing sarcasm will probably come off like straightforward boastful egotism on TV. Not only do I look like a self-centered jerk now, but I’m also totally setting myself up to look like an asshole if and when I lose. This is during the pre-game chitchat—and it now seems like light years away from the moment I completely lost my shit up at the microphone.Something strange happens to you when you’re standing alone onstage in a huge theater and everybody is expecting you to answer a question that you may not be prepared for. It’s a bit like the nightmares I had in high school about being naked onstage and forgetting all your lines. When hundreds of people and huge rows of rotating stage lights are focusing all their attention on you, it’s as if you’re at the precipice of a cliff and everyone below is just waiting for you to jump. The man with the questions is sitting at the desk at the other end of the room, and he suddenly becomes very hard to see. He is tiny. He begins to speak, but I can’t see his face. I know what he looks like, though, because I watched last season’s show, so I just plaster that familiar face onto the brightly-lit speck that’s talking to me.
When he announces that the category is called “The Strokes,” and is all about masturbation in pop culture, I’m immediately thinking of a horde of pseudo-embarrassing things I could say. Instead, I make another inappropriate joke, this one a real puzzler about J.D. teaching me everything I know about that particular subject (?). Was it homoerotic or homophobic? I don’t have time to figure it out, but I am still trying to whenGary from Three Men and a Little Lazy answers his first easy question. My first question, too, is no problem. Some nervousness fades, and the cockiness comes back. It is short-lived. After my opponent gets another one right, the pressure starts to mount again. I’m not real worried until I hear my question being read aloud, though—and it’s in this moment that
everything
begins
to
change.
I hear something like this: “Cameron Diaz Something About Mary Famous Scene Mistaken for Ben Stiller What is That?” Before he was even finished speaking, I immediately thought of the scene with Stiller at the door with white stuff hanging from his ear. I stopped listening to the question (what follows is a real time example of several important minutes, and that’s it).
I don’t know this.
I haven’t seen it in years—think, think. Stop thinking about how you don’t know this right now and start thinking about how you can come up with the right answer. What did Pat actually ask? There’s no teleprompter, so I can’t pore over the words to make sure I understand what he’s asking. Does he want to know what was hanging from Ben Stiller’s ear or does he want to know what Cameron Diaz thought it was? Normally I would have processed this question correctly in the first place, so it would be no problem. But the pressure is so intense that its blocking all rational thought. There’s Stiller, frozen in time in my mind, with semen dangling from his ear, looking stupid in front of Diaz.
Semen? That’s the answer. He wants me to say “semen?” Smitha, my opponent in the last game, said “sugar tits,” and that was the right answer. Man, they are getting racy this year. Am I really allowed to say “semen,” “sperm,” or “come?”
No. No way. There is another way to answer this. ( Just for the record—most of what follows was cut out for broadcast.) I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want me to say “come,” so now I’m trying to remember what exactly Diaz’s character thought the fluid was.
All of a sudden, I step outside of my body and see myself standing there alone by the microphone with a confused look on my face. It was inevitable. There was an enormous boulder headed my way, and I was carrying our team’s hopes in my arms like a valuable ancient relic. I will fail. I will miss this question. One wrong question and I will be out of this game. It was almost as if I didn’t have a choice.
Back to thinking about the question. Answer now. Did Pat just tell me he needs an answer, or is it just my racing heartbeat and the anticipation of a theater full of people that tells me I had better answer now? Stiller. Come. Now. Bathroom. Sperm. Answer now. Ear. White. Now. Fluid. Time’s running out. Lotion! She thought it was lotion! One track mind now, no diverting from this train of thought. I’ve got something. Leave all other inquiries at the door. The white stuff looks like lotion! But what kind of lotion? Hand lotion? Body lotion? If I say “lotion,” maybe he’ll ask me to be more specific and I’ll have more time to think about the full answer. Brilliant—I’ve saved myself! I’ve done the impossible!
“Lotion.”
One huge gasp from the audience, and I knew it was over. Or did I? How did I get that wrong? No, I didn’t get it wrong. Maybe the crowd knows it’s hand lotion and they’re worried Pat won’t give me a chance to be more specific and add to my answer. Pat starts conferring with a judge, rustling papers around. He hasn’t told me I’m wrong yet. Shit. I am wrong. I’m wrong. All that studying to lose like this? My gut reaction to the gasp was to try to take the answer back, as if I ever could.
“Did I misunderstand the question?” I thought out loud. (Again, most of this was cut out of broadcast to make it look like I came up with this answer quickly.)
Shit. Did I just say that out loud? Sure did.
Reality started to set in. My self-fulfilling prophecy had ended. I did it. I lost, just like I saw myself doing mere moments ago when I couldn’t come up with the answer right away. What has it been now, fifteen seconds? Twenty? In my mind, it seemed like an eternity.
All I needed to do was look ahead in my mind to the scene where Diaz puts the white stuff in her hair to know that she thought it was hair gel. There was the answer. Right there. In her hair. Her hair, dumbass. She didn’t rub it on her hands, she put in her hair. She did that because she thought it was hair gel, not lotion, you idiot! Everyone in the room knew it but me—the guy who everyone’s attention was focused on. My attention was now focused on the giant boulder that I had just failed to outrun. I guess I’m not Indiana Jones.
Pat broke the news that he would have to accept that answer. Duh. Were they ever considering giving me a second chance? It looked like it for a second, but no. Of course not. It was wrong. Dead wrong.
Regret. I told him that I really wished he wouldn’t accept that answer. All I could do know was accept full responsibility and the requisite amount of shame.
My opponent still had another question, but my fate was sealed already and I knew it. Acceptance. It was time to sit down, leaving only J.D. to fend off two other challengers.
Guilt. It was the breaking point of the match.
As I watched the rest of that sad little game from the loser’s bench, I couldn’t believe that I had studied that long and that hard to lose on a question that was that easy. Mountains of pop culture trivia filling up my brain and I didn’t use any of it. Not one piece. It all came down to “hair gel,” and I was the only one who couldn’t see it.
We had a “watch party” last night so that we could get lots of our friends together in one room and experience our misery collectively. That way they could all make fun of me at the same time, rather than spread it out over the next month or so—as if it would ever end so quickly. Who am I kidding?
I talked to last year’s champs, El Chupacabra, about the lasting effects of missing a question on this show. Even though they won $250,000, people still come up to them and say “How could you have missed (insert “easy” question here)?” Our reign as pop culture champs was brief—our winning episode aired Wednesday, our nightmare episode on Monday. Five days to bask in glory before it all came crashing down. Every time I see someone out in public who saw me the show, I will be the “lotion” guy. If you are one of those people, please have mercy.
Think of the road from your brain to your mouth as a highway. You pass the rest areas at top speed, despite the fact that you really have to go to the bathroom. Every time you pass an exit, you think about stopping, but you know you won’t, because you’re almost home. You realize once you arrive that you never really had a choice. You weren’t going to stop anyway. There was opportunity, sure, but you never truly considered it because you knew you could hold it until you made it home.
The exits were speeding by and I never slowed down for any of them. Home was loser’s row, a place where the pressure would be off, and I saw myself sitting there from the moment Pat started spitting out the question that will haunt me forever. I missed “hair gel.” What will people think? Probably the same thing I thought last year when I watched the show:
“Where do they get these idiots?”
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