The Eighth Page

A Day in the Life of… An Unemployed Game Show Host!

1:34 PM: Hi, I’m Chip Parker, former host of Antonym Extravaganza on A&E. Let me ask you something, folks. Have you ever woken up and felt the urge to eat two full cans of Hormel Chili? Perhaps it was just an isolated incident, or maybe I was still wasted from last night/this morning, but that was the first five minutes of my day. I grabbed my two cans of Hormel Chili from the pantry and literally drank it out of the can. No microwave. Just lukewarm chili. With beans. Tepid, room temperature beans. Not cool beans, mind you, just… beans. They ran ads for the stuff all the time on my old show. I’d be watching the ads during the break, and it’d come on the screen, all steamy and chili-y. It looked good, sure, but I wasn’t saying to myself, “Man, I can’t wait to enjoy that directly from the can when I’m wearing a bathrobe in mid-afternoon in my filthy studio apartment!” God, I hate myself. Beans. 3:46 PM: Just watched the TiVo of The Price is Right from this morning. Drew Carey looks good as usual, but his cadence was way, way off. You can just tell he’s distracted. Might be the dime-piece in the front row. My GOD, she’s hot. Not even her personalized “I Came All The Way from Arkansas to See Drew!” t-shirt can hide that figure. And to think, all I got on the old show was the occasional decent-looking cougar or a 19-year-old holding her grandmother’s oxygen canister. Because the chicks just can’t get enough of antonyms, right? “Oh my God, Chip, ‘sordid’ is the opposite of ‘reputable!’ Do me!” As if. 5:12 PM: Can you get high from sniffing Pine Sol? 5:14 PM: Nope. Although it does smell good. And I’m out of shampoo. 6:35 PM: I just realized that my wardrobe consists solely of brightly colored suits. I don’t own sweatpants, or t-shirts, or those Wrangler jeans that sex nugget Brett Favre sells on TV. Just day-glo suits. They’re going to crack the hell up at the Pawn Shop when I hand these in. Although I did see a guy surrounded by prostitutes with a fedora and a cane walking down Main Street the other night wearing a suit that looked a lot like this one. Maybe he’ll have a use for it. 8:15 PM: Just went outside. A dog peed on my leg. Apparently he thought I was a pine tree. Not the first time I’ve been peed on. 8:16 PM: I was not supposed to disclose that. 10:35 PM: How exactly was Howie Mandel famous before he got Deal or No Deal? He looks like a human penis. Actually. Like if I were shown a picture of one in a suit next to Howie Mandel, I would have a damn difficult time telling the two apart. Sure, Howie has arms. And legs. And a kickin’ soul patch I’ve been trying to grow for months. And a wife. And kids. And friends. What a jerk. 11:56 PM: Watching my old Hollywood Squares tapes. I don’t think there’s any pair who worked with each other better than Tom Bergeron and Whoopi Goldberg. Their banter is just top notch. Good banter is tough to find on game shows these days. If you want some true banter, just look at what Trebek does on Jeopardy. I mean, I’ve met the guy. I know he came out of the womb with a few disadvantages. He looks like he owns a windowless, unmarked van. He’s one of those guys you can tell is poorly endowed when you first see him. He’s Canadian. But, dear lord, he can talk about useless crap like no one else I’ve ever seen. He should run for Senate! Ba-ZING!