…and he shall redeem us, Amreeka.
As many of you may recall from the “Aviyal” post, I am fascinated by Facebook, and once again, I must insist that it’s not for the usual reasons (though I do enjoy throwing sheep at several of you). No, when I’m not discovering groups which specifically support inter-religious, inter-regional desi relationships, I’m reading this about Giuliani or planning to restock my iPod with these choons. I’m also discovering potential reality TV stars, via my News “feed”:
The show that Sam is auditioning for is called Tontine (Achtung! Pseudo-mystical yodeling awaits you, if you click that link…and you wonder why I went with wiki…wiki is silent AND it lets me copy text…take that official site!):
A combination of Survivor and The Amazing Race, Tontine follows 15 contestants as they travel to all seven continents and contend for the $10 million prize. Contestants each begin with a key, the final contestant who posses all 15 keys unlocks the prize. The show is hosted by “Boston Rob” Mariano, who was a contestant on both Survivor and The Amazing Race before signing on for Tontine. [wiki]
Doesn’t that sound like something our Abhi should have done? 😀
Here’s what the show’s casting director wrote in an email to Sam (and perhaps a few others):
I’m excited that for this show, I’m going to have the public helping me choose some of 15 contestants selected for Tontine! So, if you’ve been asked to submit a personal video to YouTube, that means that we like you and want to get to know you better, while giving you the opportunity to demonstrate to us that the public likes you too.
Go Sam! I thought he was just randomly auditioning; I didn’t realize he’d survived a “first cull” and been asked to participate in a nearly-impossible popularity contest. 😉 Hmmm…maybe I’m being harsh about that last part.
The focus of the contest seems to be on the video’s ratings and comments, so you’d be helping me out by leaving them. You may need to register to do that, but it only takes 30 seconds. [link]
Nope, YouTube popularity contest it is. Well, for those of you who want to see more brownz on the teevee…we can either wait for everyone to get roles as terrorists/cabbies/cornershop staff or we can stuff the ballot box and invade Hollywood via reality television. Which would you rather do? Check yes or no and pass it back.
Samir’s story is cute:
Somehow, I’ve found myself somewhere in the second round of the casting process for a new network reality show called Tontine. By chance I stumbled upon their casting setup in NYC when I visited in June. After I told the casting director, Tad, that the premise of the show was morally ambigious (he told me the goal may be to win a kitty comprised of the contestants’ bank accounts) and that I wasn’t sure that I was comfortable with it, he told me that he hadn’t heard that from anyone before and that he thought I’d go to the next round. Irony. [link]
Oh, that alone got my vote. Good luck, Sam. And if you don’t win this thing, save your energy for a bigger challenge– run for office. I’ll vote for you (and blog about you) then, too.
Try UberDesi. 🙂 They’re covering it.
Damnit. Should have hit refresh. Oh vell.
ANNA said:
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That guy is an utter and complete TOOL.
i did try to watch ANTM, but i’m not that interested in whatever this particular program shows about the modelling industry or in tyra’s egomania. i also watched a few episodes of flavor of love but then i realized i was just contributing to such stupidity being on tv in the first place, plus i didn’t find it THAT entertaining. i guess if you count the stuff on HDTV like Divine Design, Clean Sweep, etc. I technically do watch reality tv. but the competitive reality shows (like Trading Spaces) generally bore me. oh and i watch my super sweet 16 if i’m bored and it’s on tv, or those ridiculous mtv dating shows like Next. i never actually make a point of setting aside time to watch a reality show like i do for scripted dramas that i’m interested in though (like Lost).
what makes you say you’re repressed??
RE: guys heh, i was just talking about this with my brother! he brought up how he thinks a certain female celebrity is hot and got all defensive when i said i don’t see it, so i went through a list of both hollywood and bollywood, male and female celebrities and asked him if he thought they were good-looking or not (though good-looking is admittedly different from hot). we really only agree on christian bale and clive owen being attractive.
…what, this isn’t how you spend YOUR quality family time??
i have fairly conservative life habits…
i do too actually, but i think there’s a difference between refraining from certain things and being ‘repressed’
how much vanity does it take to do something like this?
also, i dont doubt his sincerity in believing he’s working for positive change, but self-promotion + morally sentimentalist ‘do-gooder’ is a generally a really uncomfortable combination.
how does one promote his own humility?
On topic, people…and by that I don’t mean insults to either him or his girlfriend.
sonu sez:
I’m sorry you feel that way, but given that pretty much everyone who gets into politics has to be a self-promoter to at least some extent, and that many people who get into politics do so in the hope of affecting positive change, this combination isn’t that rare. That’s the combination I saw when I saw Sam’s YouTube clip.
I also get the sense that you missed out on the humor of the whole thing — you know, like much of his talking about politics is set to “SexyBack.”
P.S. to #59. I guess I should add that I’m not one who thinks poorly of all politicians, and certainly don’t think that combining a desire to do good with a certain amount of self-promotion, as Sam appears to be doing, is a bad thing at all.
I don’t know if it’s fair to say Sam is self-serving. I don’t know the guy, so I have no clue, but he’s pretty up front about saying that he’s Type A (and by extension, a bit extreme) but also committed to the public good. I think politics tends to draw people with both those characteristics, although it also seems to draw in a lot of dynastic, ne’er do well lazy types as well. At any rate, don’t hate the player, hate the game 🙂
It is silly to assume that someone is not a good person just because they self-promote. The more reach Sam has, the more good he can do. So if he truly wants to help people, he would be preventing himself from doing so if he were too humble.
Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy both had big egos. If they didn’t, they couldn’t have possibly believed that they deserved the power they attained (which they needed to do to attain it).
The notion of an artist needing to starve to be an artist is false. Just as the notion of a charity worker needing to toil in obscurity is false.