Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs - Dave Holmes Page 0,70
He would go on to run for mayor of Cincinnati, which explains why 98 Degrees always looked like three guys from a boy band and one mayor of Cincinnati.)
In one of the Celebrity Dream Date challenges, five teams of four girls would ride an inflatable life raft down the bunny slope to the picnic area, where they would grab a token or answer a question about Nick Lachey’s ab regimen or something. I don’t remember, but I do know this: when the production team rehearsed this segment, the bunny slope wasn’t nearly steep enough for the life raft to pick up any speed. This rehearsal took place about twenty minutes before the show was scheduled to start, so we needed solutions and we needed them fast. A production assistant suggested spraying the bottom of each life raft with WD-40, and with the clock ticking, it was decided that that was absolutely the way to go. The teams of four girls ran to their rafts, hopped in, and with a tiny push took off exactly like greased lifeboats. The packed-down snow of the bunny slope and the dependable lubricative powers of the WD-40 proved to be a dream team, as five teams of four girls screamed downhill at speeds almost too high for our camera crew to capture, stopping not so much near the picnic area—studded with metal tables and benches that were bolted to the ground—as in it. They made impact in a cloud of snow, limbs, and ski hats that looked like a bar fight from an Andy Capp strip. Paramedics were called; bandages and splints were applied; and Nick Lachey was dispatched to the area to give hugs, defuse tensions, and gently suggest that nobody contact a lawyer. And the show went on.
The higher-ups at MTV especially wanted a talent and variety show, wherein contestants could show off their strangest skills, scored to the hits of the day. (And the stranger and more dangerous or repulsive the skill the better, this being the dawn of Jackass.) As with The Gong Show, a panel of celebrities would judge these performances. And should they deem one especially awful, they would pull a chain, activate a sound effect, and the act would be removed from the stage while the audience chanted the show’s title: Dude, This Sucks.
Here is the story of Dude, This Sucks, as I remember it.
A bunch of producers had gone up to Big Bear early, to mix among the local youth and try to find acts for the show. Pickings were pretty slim: Lots of pretty girls who could Hula-Hoop and white boys who could freestyle. Nothing outstanding. No must-see act. And then they got an idea.
A month or so before, we had held our annual Sports & Music Festival in Lake Elsinore, a desert city where the extreme athletes would have plenty of room to do their tricks. I had hosted a special edition of Say What? Karaoke there, and among our acts were two filthy, bony desert rats whose names I don’t remember, but for our purposes, let us say they were both named Cody. Cody and Other Cody wore bleached-blond Eminem haircuts and A. J. McLean facial hair. They wore very baggy party trousers, had piercings in their faces, and had tattoos in semicircles over their navels, phrases like “Only God Could Judge Me” or “Thug Life” or “Who Farted,” in calligraphy. I don’t remember what they sang, but I am confident in my assumption that it was Papa Roach’s “Last Resort.” Cody and Other Cody were the reality behind the character of Jesse Pinkman, and they frightened me, but they made for good television. (I was approaching my thirtieth birthday by this time, and things that frighten old people are by definition good television.)
Lake Elsinore was just a short drive from Big Bear, so a smart young producer named Kelly (names have been changed, for reasons that will reveal themselves long after any sensible person will have stopped reading) called one of the Codys to see if they’d be interested in doing an act for the show. “Do you have any crazy talents?” she asked.
Cody demurred, “Not really, yo.”
“Are you sure?” Kelly said.
“Nah, I mean…”
“You could do anything. Be crazy!”
“Well…” Cody confided, “sometimes I do this thing where I put my asshole on the water jet in a hot tub and I fill my ass up with hot tub water and then I shoot the water out, and I can hit a target.”