One Shot, One Dream, One Destiny

I stopped kidding myself a long time ago about having a career. I work at jobs not careers and that’s that. Ideally I’d like to be a writer and perhaps I can pay bills with that someday but in the meantime, I’m content to punch a clock or swipe a magnetic strip. My professional skill set is vast, from technical writing, to Power Point presentations, to one on one mentoring; I’ve got a bag full of tricks however none of them exactly set my professional desires a fire. In truth, the skills that I’ve always wanted to utilize in my “career” have been my knowledge of pop culture, and my sarcasm. As you can guess, other then writing, there are not many places where those skills can be utilized in a professional (ie money making) manner. At least that was the case until I was exposed to VH1’s 2006 World Series of Pop Culture, this past summer.

Finally, here was a game show where I not only knew the answers but one where I consistently bettered the contestants, all be it in the comfort of my own home. I promised myself last summer that if there was a 2007 WSPC I’d do my best to gain entry. Of course, as I tend to do, my mind wandered and after searching for info for about a month after the 2006 finale I forgot about my new goal. Thankfully the Pop Culture Gods were smiling on me as I paged through my latest Entertainment Weekly and saw a call for entries to the 2007 WSPC wild card team. For those unfamiliar with last year’s event, the WSPC is made up of teams of 3. The majority of the teams were formed ahead of time by friends and family, however one team was made up of wild cards that applied and tested online and then got thrown together at the actual event. I had decided last summer that this was the best way for me to go because while many of my peeps are pop culture savvy, I wasn’t sure if we could form a team that would cover all the categories, especially music.

The online test for the team is being held next Wednesday, February 14th. Yes, the test is on Valentine’s Day. One has to admire the sense of humor of the VH1 execs who are well aware that the majority of people that will be applying for this gig won’t have any plans. The test consists of 60 questions over 36 minutes, then VH1 will randomly interview 50 people that score in the top 5% to determine who’s ready for primetime. Last night I tried out the sample questions to get an idea of what the test will be like. The samples were easy except for the last question where I’ve got a Clavin-esque bone to pick with the magnificent bastards at VH1. The last sample question was an example of the math portion of the exam: (# of children on The Cosby Show) X (George Costanza’s perfect child name) – (the number of nipples Chandler had before his operation) = ___.
The answer according to the site was 32; 5 Cosby kids multiplied by Seven minus 3. I argued the answer was 39. After all the question was not how many kids did Cliff and Claire have (5) but how many children were on the Cosby Show. I count six, Sandra, Denise, Theo, Vanessa, Rudy, and Denise’s step daughter Raven Simone herself, Olivia. Man if I miss out on some question like that I’m sending a whole list of people who were not in my kitchen to the execs at Viacom.

And so my journey begins. For the next few days I’ve got some intensive training to do. I figure practicing on 90’s Trivia Pursuit, and Scene-It will be a good start. Maybe later in the week I’ll try some online music trivia games to toughen up my weakest category. The blog posts might be a bit sporadic for the next week and for that I apologize but there comes a time in a man’s life where he’s got to take a chance and prove that he’s the best at knowing incredibly useless trivia and for me that time is now.

To join me in this pursuit, take the test next Wednesday February 14th at 6pm or 9pm CST at pciq.vh1.com