Karina of Spoutblog fame asked for it in the comments on my first post on the subject, so here it is…a blow by blow description of what happened when I participated in the auditions for “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” Movie Week last Monday.

I showed up, not as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I could be, at 4:30 a.m. Why?

I’m no early riser and I would ordinarily consider arriving so early an act of madness given that the first audition was not to be held until 9:00, and they were scheduled to continued through 4:00 p.m. However, I was a bit concerned. I mean, who knew how many people were willing to drive out to an Indian casino near San Diego for a shot at a million smackers?

Even scarier, the security guys I buttonholed the night before had made it clear they weren’t going to shoo people away who showed up before the official line-up time of 6:00, damn them to hell. Worse, earlier in the evening I spoke to my sister who seemed convinced that showing up anytime before, say, 5:00 a.m. meant that I was basically throwing a million smackers and a chance to plug this blog right in front of an audience of millions right down the drain.

Now, I make it a point to never agree with any member of my family about anything important, but this was really important — so my plans for a 6:00 a.m. wake up call were starting to cause me some worry. Then, at 8:30 p.m., I popped by the waiting area and found myself speaking to a lone, extremely committed auditioner sitting cross-legged in front of a Millionaire standee.

That was it. I got back to my room as quickly as possible and set the alarm for 3:30 — the resort portion of the casino complex being actually about a ten minute drive from the casino where the auditions were taking place, and I’d have to check out in case I was stuck there after check-out time, so I needed to give myself a full hour. Fortified by an enormous buffet dinner (not bad) but also having learned the unpleasant truth that Indian casinos do not have bars, I tried to get to sleep at about 9:30, but it wasn’t easy and I slept fitfully.

Waking up at that hour in a strange room had a surreal feeling. And shaving off three days growth of my beard at 3:45 a.m. on a Monday while listening to Karl Rove tell David Gregory that he’d never told a lie in his entire life was downright Bunuelian.

So, it was with some consternation that I found on my arrival that only about fifty or sixty people had arrived before me. Considering the first stage of the process was going to be in theater seating a few hundred people, there was no doubt not only that I’d get in, but that I’d be in the first group. Still, my hotel room was history and there was nothing else to do but get in line.

There, I chatted with a few fellow hopefuls. There was the scraggly, mildly embarrassed, Republican school teacher chap with a copy of a David Mariniss sports biography, a Washingtonian nurse related to a moderately famous liberal politician of the 1970’s, and a guy I’ll refer to simply as “the Shoo-In” — a young Ph.D. in the sciences who came wearing a suit because he’d read that looking good might help him stand out from the crowd.

The Shoo-IN, who looked like a cross between a young Tim Hutton, Jimmy Stewart and the former Boy Band member of your choice, hardly needed to dress up to look better than most of this crowd. The rest of us hoi polloi was comprised mostly of thoroughly ordinary middle-aged folks, with a smattering of geeks of all ages and few odd refugees from a Shock Corridor remake. Still, I’m sure the recruiters will appreciate the effort. Being personable, brilliant, and looking like a young Tim Hutton, etc. probably won’t hurt either. (This is why it’s a good thing that likable people like the Shoo-In are likable, because if they weren’t so likable, we’d really dislike them.)

Fortunately for me, however, the Shoo-In’s specialty was general trivia, not film trivia (though he knew more than most folks). The same for the scraggly Republican and the Washingtonian nurse. This provided me with some (false) hope that maybe not too many people would pass both the general trivia quiz AND the film trivia quiz, even if I hoped to accomplish as much.

So, there we sat, chatting, sometimes getting on each other nerves (well, not the Shoo-In, being all likable and good-natured and such) but too polite and too antsy to turn to the books we’d all brought. Eventually, someone from the hotel came by and said there’d be coffee and donuts. She didn’t mention they’d be charging for both at the line, even though you could get the same coffee for free inside the hotel. Clearly, they casino wasn’t going to be happy with the money they’d make from us foolish gamblers later on. No, like everything else in a modern casino, we were a profit center. I went inside for coffee and bought a donut, even as I resented having to pay for it. It was okay, not 75 cents okay, but still okay.

Then, someone came by with a #2 pencil to complete the trivia test, and lengthy forms to be filled out in pen…but no pens. I, of course, had not thought to bring a pen. Woe unto me?

NEXT: The Thrilling and Utterly Inconclusive Conclusion