Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs - Dave Holmes Page 0,55

eleven people I’d been brought in with went out the exit. Wait, I thought, is this some kind of a callback?

It turned out to have been some kind of callback. In the room were three people I would come to know as the Talent Executives: Rod, Caryn, and Amanda. They welcomed me with warm smiles—it was still early in the day; my plan was working—and we chatted about my favorite bands, what I liked to do on the weekends, what kind of show I would like to host. Again, I have no recollection of what I said, but I know I tried to tell them exactly what they wanted to hear. A lifetime of anticipating people’s needs and changing my personality to meet them was once again revealing itself as a job skill.

Amanda told me they’d be picking a top ten the next day and that if I made it, I’d be notified by phone by midnight. “And then the rest of the show will start on Wednesday.”

The rest of the what now?

What the post on billboard.com failed to mention—because maybe it hadn’t been decided yet, who knows—was that once the auditioners for the VJ job got boiled down to ten, the rest of the job application process would take place on live television. First, a panel of on-air talent, former VJs, and celebrities would narrow the field to five on Wednesday’s MTV Live, and then in live events Thursday, Friday, and all Saturday afternoon, MTV viewers would cast their votes. My fate would be decided by stoned children. That this all made sense in the moment speaks to how deeply in shock I was to be in the MTV studios, gabbing away with talent executives and watching Carson Daly be all strong-jawed ten feet away, like it was all perfectly normal. “Great,” I said. “Hope to hear from you soon.”

I left 1515 Broadway and went straight to a phone booth to call in sick for the next day, so that I could devote my full attention to fixating on this. I called home to tell my parents about what I’d just done, and what Dad thought was probably whatever someone thinks when their twenty-seven-year-old son calls and says he has called in sick from work to stand in line to try to be an MTV VJ. But what Dad said was, “I have a good feeling about this. I think you’re going to get that job.” I have a good Dad.

That evening, I went online and checked my e-mail, which in 1998 was a thing you did a maximum of one time per day, and there was a message from my high school friend Ned, who had started a job at a magazine in 1515 Broadway that morning. “Dave—I work above MTV and they’re doing some kind of audition to be a VJ. It is full of children and weirdos. I feel like I have to tell you this: If you’re thinking about doing it, don’t. The potential for embarrassment is high.” He wasn’t wrong.

I was living in a railroad apartment with Aimee and Louise—the one who had started all of this by making the wild suggestion that a person should love what they do for a living—at the time, and they were traveling for work, so I had the place all to myself. I bought a bottle of red wine, grabbed a full pepperoni pie from Original Ray’s Pizza, and rented Wings of Desire, as I recall, so that if anyone asked if I’d seen City of Angels, I could say: “No, but I have seen the original German version.” (If you run into the twenty-seven-year-old version of me, you have my permission to punch him.) I took the phone off the end table and put it in my lap. If anyone were to call, I decided I would give it two rings. No, three. Three seemed cooler.

By 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, nobody had called.

I’d had two whole days—and an entire German art film I wasn’t paying attention to—to get accustomed to the idea that nobody would be calling, so it wasn’t a shock, but rather a dull ache. A hunger pang. But somehow, I still felt inspired. I pulled out my purple MacBook, opened Word, and began a journal entry about it.

Because here was the thing: I wanted the job—of course I wanted the job, who doesn’t want that job?—but having been there, even for just fifteen minutes or two hours or whatever it was, had lit a