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June 15, 2007
The Trip Out West Part XXIV: Joker! Joker! Joker!
If you are just coming in to the story, and you want to read all the good stuff about my stint in jail, you should really start at The Beginning.
When we last left off it was my 24th birthday and I was asleep alone in the tent. Tom was asleep alone in the Firebird. I was sleeping the sleep of a man who had just finished playing snugglebunnies with a blond gal. Tom was sleeping the sleep of a guy sitting straight up in a bucket seat — periodically he'd wake up, give the wheel a panicked white-knuckled squeeze, slam on the brakes and think "what the hell am I doing in a car," before realizing that he was parked outside the tent.
At some point we packed up and left Vegas. And it was likely August 24, but only if August 24 was a weekday.
Our next stop was to be Los Angeles and Tom was going to try out for The Joker's Wild. We had to be in LA and at wherever it was people were screened for Joker's Wild by a certain time.
The drive from Las Vegas to LA is something over 4 hours and we left Vegas with me behind the wheel. Tom eventually dropped off to sleep (if you refer back a couple of paragraphs you'll understand why it is Tom wasn't as rested as he could have been).
Tom awoke several hours later.
"Where are we," he asked groggily.
"About an hour outside of San Diego," I said.
"Aaaakk," he exclaimed, now fully awake. "We're going the wrong way."
And all of a sudden we went from having plenty of time to make the Joker's Wild screening gig to being in a position where we were cutting it close.
We eventually made it to our desired destination, but we were more than 10-minutes late.
Part of the screening process involved taking a test and the screeners were more than happy to, at Tom's suggestion, let me take the test as well.
When it was all said and done I'd be eliminated as I uh, failed the test. (I'd like to point out that being late didn't do anything to help with my test-taking confidence. I'd also like to point out that I know a lot more useless bullshit today that I did then and I'm sure I'd do much better.)
Tom was eliminated due to the fact, and the only way I can think to say this, is that he wasn't enough of a character.
If the people at Goodson-Todman Productions only knew.
Posted by delmer at June 15, 2007 3:19 PM