I Was A Super Hero On...

THE DATING GAME

by Howard Hallis

My friend Vince and I were out in Santa Monica in the tourist hell that is the 3rd Street Promenade when a cute industry-type girl came up to me and asked if I was married. I said no and she replied: "Great! Would you like to be on The Dating Game?" Well of course I would! It wasn't for the slim-to-nil chance of actually meeting a potential fuck partner on television that had me excited about the show, it was the thrill of pulling a goofy prank in front of a nation of housewives and dim-witted morons that tune in to the program on a regular basis that made the gears in my head start turning. The Dating Game theme had been looping in my brain for months before I was asked to be on it. I have no idea why. Maybe my subconscious mind can foresee game-show experiences in the same way that religious mystics used to receive visions of coming famines or bountiful harvests. The annoying jingle with all of its retro-horn blandness and white-bread sterility had latched onto my cortex with a vice grip that could only be broken by the firm handshake of Mr. Chuck Woolery himself.
The first step in getting yourself onto a game show after you have been approached by a talent scout is to go to an audition. These are basically cattle-calls for all the men and women selected at random from the malls, movie theaters, porno shops and other various haunts to try their luck at being spontaneous and interesting in front of an audience. The room was filled with quite a few run-of-the-mill actor types and a few weirdoes like myself (including Satanic High Priest and fellow Cacophonist, Father Larry Wessel, who not only made it on to the show, but actually began working there as a producer after his appearance. Hail Satan!) Each of us took turns going up in front of the room and talking about our most embarrassing moments. This was supposed to let The Dating Game staff see how comfortable we would be talking in front of a crowd and therefore get an idea of how we would be when the cameras were turned on. Most people described the time they got so drunk they puked all over their girlfriends or the bad date where their zipper was down all night. I described the time I was standing in a bucket of mashed potatoes in my mother's dress on a cross wearing a three-foot-long latex penis in a knight's helmet when my friend Michael Gump began hitting me really hard with a dead coyote he had picked up on the road that evening and had turned into a marionette puppet. Then I talked about the time we had beaten each other with dead fish buck naked in the bathroom of an all-night diner. This seemed to shock most of the room and I heard nervous giggles from the staff and wondered if I had freaked them out or impressed them. Sure enough, they called me that week and said I was on the show.
But one thing had to be cleared up: My profession. I was doing freelance digital design and stocking the bar at The Viper Room at the time, but I always told everyone who asked the perennial LA question "What do you do?" that I was a professional super hero. This seemed to confuse people and give them an abstract image of what my intentions were. It sure as hell seemed to confuse The Dating Game staff when I put "Professional Super Hero" down as my occupation. "What do you REALLY do, Mr. Hallis?" they would ask me. But I was adamant that my true profession was a bona fide crime fighter right out of the pages of a comic book, and they finally relented. They said they would let me dress like one on TV. (This made me wonder why there was such a taboo over saying that "Super Hero" was someone's job. Is it because Marvel and DC own copyrights on the title? Is it because they don't want to mislead the public into thinking there are actually individuals out there with the delusions that they possess powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men?) They asked if I had a super hero suit I could wear for the show and I said yes (I actually have a few.) They wanted me to wear a cape but I told them, "I'm not that kind of super hero," but I would wear somethng copyright free and really cool.
They agreed to let me do my thing, so I dyed my hair blue and rented a blue and silver space suit from Ursula's Costumes in Santa Monica. I figured they would let me go on TV like that because anyone just casually flipping channels who happened to see some blue-haired space boy as one of the bachelors on The Dating Game would have to stop and tune in for a while just to see what the hell was going on. Sure enough, the staff loved my outfit and put me in a room with the other two guys I would be going on with. The first bachelor was an actor who had relocated to Los Angeles along with every other waiter in town. He was really into Pearl Jam (AAAHH!) and was nice in a big lug kind of way. The second guy was a nationally ranked line dancer from Oklahoma City who worked in the computer industry. Both guys were put off by my outlandish appearance at first, but gradually warmed up to me and thought it was pretty funny. Now, on The Dating Game, the bachelors and bachelorettes all get to hear the questions they will be asked beforehand. This is absoulutely necessary or all you would see would be people going "Uhhh... Ummm... Uhhh..." every time they needed to respond. Getting the questions first enables us to give quick, witty responses in the short amount of time allotted for our game.
Does this mean the game is rigged? Not at all, because the main point is that the guy or girl asking the questions has to pick from the bachelors or bachelorettes on their answers alone, and I'll go on record saying that the production staff takes incredible measures to make sure the person asking the questions doesn't see any of the dorks answering them before they decide which one wins. We, for that matter, don't get to see the questioner either. As we are getting ready for the show, a "fluffer"came in to get us all excited and boost our confidence so there would be lots of "energy" once we got in front of the cameras. "Fluffers" for game shows are not as friendly as they are for porno movies (not that I would know, but I'm just assuming) and the one we got was a cherry-lipped model/actress who was wearing my favorite Designer Impostors perfume in mass quantities and came in pretending to fawn all over us. She said stuff like: "You guys are great! You look great! You're gonna knock 'em dead! Boy, I bet you guys get all the babes!" I just sat in my space suit patiently awaiting the moment of truth. When we finally got out to the soundstage and took our seats, the audience started to laugh at the way I was dressed and my blue hair but was quickly told to quiet down by the production staff. They could give the poor girl asking the questions no hint as to what was in store for her if she picked me. The questions she asked us were stupid and I decided beforehand to answer everything with the most surreal response I could think of: Q: Bachelor Number Three, I love sushi. What would you do if we were on a date and all of a sudden my yellowtail were to get up and start dancing around on the table? A: Well, it's moments like that that I like to pull down my pants and start singing karaoke renditions of Lionel Richie songs in Spanish. Q: Bachelor Number Three, In The Wizard Of Oz, Dorothy was welcomed to Munchkinland by the mayor. I have just arrived in Bachelorland and you're the mayor. How would you greet me? A: Hello! This is Baron Boris Bon Big Berries! Welcome to Bachelor Land! We're gonna go on over to Hollywood and get some Borsht Stew! (I was cut off by a commercial before I could say any more.) Now the funniest moment of the show was when I was censored right in the middle of filming.
Apparently my answer to one of the questions was a big no no for daytime TV. Here it is: Q: Bachelor Number Three, we're on a date and both of us realize we have no money. Where do we go and what do we do? A: Well, I know where that guy Screech from Saved By The Bell hangs out and I figure we could go stalk him all night. We won't get too close... just close enough! After I said this, the director yelled "Cut" and the production assistant came up to me and explained it's against the law to threaten cheesy celebrities on lame-ass game shows because we might actually inspire someone to really go out there and fuck with Desmond Diamond or someone even worse (gasp!). When we reshot my answer, I couldn't think of a witty response so I said, "We could go back to my house and reenact scenes from Miami Vice," which was a really lame lame lame response. Since I didn't actually get to see the entire show when it aired, I only have other people's accounts of what they decided to put in the broadcast. Apparently I say something like "Well, I know where that guy Screech from Saved By The Bell hangs out and BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP BEEP BEEP!" Which is sooo much better because that seems to imply I was saying I wanted to have sex with him (or something in that ballpark). Well, the girl who was picking her bachelor decided to go with the line dancer instead of me. Her reason? His response to the question about going somewhere with no money was to take her home to meet his parents. She liked that. I guess the naked karaoke singing just wasn't her thing. Oh well. Fuck her. She was fugly anyways. I still got to run down and meet Chuck Woolery, who shook my hand firmly and was probably thinking to himself: "This guy's a freakin' weirdo!"

Yeah, it was too bad I didn't get to win that all-expense paid vacation to Arizona (w00-hoo!). After the show wrapped, I went with the other two bachelors to The Spaghetti Factory across the street. The Line Dancer bought us drinks (I guess he felt sorry for us since we lost) and started telling us about his life. He was a nice enough guy (I guess) until he started saying stuff like "I'm not a racist or anything, but boy those niggers really get me going sometimes!" As I sat drinking my beer with my blue hair and space suit still on, I kept thinking about the reasons shows like The Dating Game and Love Connection never have racially mixed dates happen. It's probably because this guy, the winner of our little journey into the minds of the dimwitted boob tube masses, represents the typical viewer of these kinds of shows. The dumb-as-you-wanna-be young urban professional closet racists and conservative "professional moms" who tune in to see those happy couples ride off into the sunsets. It made me glad that for at least half an hour when our show was finally aired that some of them out there thought it was all going to hell. That the cloud of normality and decency and racial segregation was so ever briefly infiltrated by a blue-haird space-suit wearing Super Hero.

Howard Hallis tried to get into Corey Feldman's Acting Naturally class but it got canceled at the last minute for lack of interest (we think he was the only one who signed up).