NYLON - September 2008 - (Page 166) Exactly what does it take to get on The Amazing Race? After 10 attempts, Diane Vadino might just have the answer. Illustration by Stephen Slattery I am a 10-time Amazing Race reject. This is the worst failure of my adult life. There are so many others to choose from, including but not limited to an abandoned college degree, unmanageable credit card debt, and an absolute disinterest in sunscreen. Of them all, though, the Amazing Race is the one that hurts the most. Rewind eight years: it’s right before the first season premiere, and I see a story about it in the Daily News. If you can experience love at first sight with a television show, this is it. We’re too late for that season, and I try to avoid watching it when it airs, but I eventually do with my roommate Brandon. We high-five when our favorite teams do well, and discuss how our strategy would be superior when they perform poorly. Our other roommate yells at us and tells us we’re losers. We get another friend to record our audition tape: a low-concept affair with lots of nonsensical asides. We wait for the call, and when it doesn’t come, we strategize. In Brandon, I have someone more devious, more scheming, even lazier than myself, but equally devoted to the task. We apply twice more, going first for “old friends with mysterious, previously unnoticed sexual tension” and then “Ebony and Ivory”—he’s black, I’m not. Nothing. For the next round, we FedEx them a VCR with a tape affixed to the top: Surely no one else had sent them a VCR. We make another tape, portraying Brandon as a gone-to-seed college athlete (true) and me as an emotionally unsteady narcissist (equally true). We wait, scouring message boards, looking for signs of first-round callbacks. None come. “The race starts here,” we tell ourselves, each time ignoring the proviso about not reapplying with the same partner. We both work in media; surely we know someone who knows someone—and it turns out, we do: a film director I’d once worked for has a friend on the production staff, and he is willing to put us in touch. We talk to the friend, embarrassed but insistent, and he advises us to go as high concept as possible. We aren’t dwarves, though, or cowboys or soccer moms—we are New York City journalists, three for a penny. We go with the theme of “failed promise” and make a tape making fun of our lack of high-concept options, portraying ourselves as a hip-hop duo, pimp and whore, the driver and Miss Daisy, and the hula-hoop champions of North America. We wait. Nothing. “It’s like sleeping with someone over and over and being, like, ‘Just like me a little bit,’” I say. This strategy proves to be as unsuccessful as it usually is. We keep reapplying, once in person in Philadelphia. Nearly a decade after we’d started, it becomes clear that our run as rejects will come to an end whether or not the show relents: Brandon is about to propose to his girlfriend. We make one final tape, and it is my favorite of them all: low concept again, just the two of us sitting in my kitchen, talking about how this is our last go at the brass ring. Brandon leaves for a trip to Japan with his application and promises to e-mail it back before the deadline. Nothing shows. He returns and apologizes. I ignore him for three weeks and then try to make peace with the fact that some things just don’t work out, and of all of those things, not getting on a reality TV show is not the most devastating. Then I e-mail that now-old friend, the one who’d advised us on our high conceptuality years before, to see if I can send him some questions for this story, about why Brandon and I never made the cut. ‘Why give up now?’ he writes back. Turns out the show is looking for two-girl teams. Before Brandon’s betrayal I never would have considered it, but I do have a possible replacement: Katie, sweet social-working Katie, who I will pummel into being devious and scheming if need be. She’s in Tanzania at the moment, making children’s lives better, but she’s coming home in a couple of days. She speaks Spanish. She cannot, as far as I know, drive a stick, but she can learn, and she has tremendous breasts I will force her to display in low-cut tops if necessary. The dream, such as it is, lives on. ALL-AMERICAN REJECT AMERICAN DREAMS 1. Likeability (it also helps if you’re good looking). 2. Dedication to your art. SHARON OSBOURNE’S TOP 10 TIPS FOR WINNING AMERICA’S GOT TALENT. 5. You must be able to endure the inevitable harsh criticism from Piers Morgan. 8. Don’t rely on a hard luck story. 9. Don’t kiss up to the judges (and definitely don’t accept a date from David Hasselhoff). 10. Above all, have a unique talent. 6. Have an act that would be 3. Passion (and I don’t mean able to hold an audience’s the sexual kind). attention for at least an hour. 4. Have confidence, even if 7. Versatility is very you’re not very talented. important. Don’t be a onetrick pony. nbc photo: mitchell haaseth
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