...but you can't take the red jacket out of the man.
Today, as I casually flipped through the six channels that I get on my digital converter box I saw that The Price Is Right was starting and decided to settle there, as I sometimes do, to watch a show that I was so intimately involved with while working as a Page at CBS. It's a nice way to reflect and bring back memories, and it's always neat to see old friends and familiar faces on TV while recalling all the unseen faces that make the show happen as well.
I pay extra close attention at the very beginning of the show when they're calling out the first contestants because that's the best time to see my fellow Pages as the camera wildly swings through and pans the audience and their surroundings; not to mention that's when you usually get a really good shot of the Inside Head Page standing by the contestant stairs. As I casually looked for my Page friends today I suddenly noticed two men in the audience wearing large sombreros. A shot of adrenaline surged through me and I took two steps towards the television.
"WTF?!? Get those hats off! We're live!"
My mind was alive with activity.
"How'd they sneak those in there? Who do they think they are? They must have pulled them from under their chairs and put them on right when things went live. We've gotta get those hats off."
It was then that I noticed two girls in another section with crazy hats of their own.
"Oh my God, there's more. College punks! Probably a bunch of UF students there to see Rich Fields. How many of them are in on this? The Pages have gone soft. You can't let crazy hats and costumes in the studio."
I was aflush with the "us versus them" mentality, which kicks in when an audience member or an audience in general isn't cooperating with what we ask and what's being looked for on TV. I then noticed more costumes. Many of them. One of the contestants that was called down was dressed as a damn banana.
"Wait a minute. What's going on here? Since when are we Let's Make A Deal?"
As I tried to grasp this alternate reality I had fallen into, Drew himself came out dressed in costume. It was then that I realized I was seeing a rerun of a Halloween special. I quickly came back to my senses, at which time I had the first realization that I had fallen out of them at all. I was surprised to see how passionate I still was about a show that I haven't been involved with for over a year. For a few seconds there I was a Page again and nothing else mattered but the show itself because we were live.
Ah, those red jackets. They change a man. Once a red jacket dude, always a red jacket dude. Sharky Showbiz lives. Maybe this afternoon I'll watch the Tyra Banks Show and remember when she use to tape in Los Angeles at CBS. I'll get personally flustered if I see an empty seat when they come back from commercial, if someone yells something out at the wrong time, or if someone is standing when they're all suppose to be seated...Or maybe I'll just go up to the trailer and do some laundry on top of the mountain in another world far from that of the lights and sounds of Los Angeles and leave those memories behind like a dream.
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