Party of One

by Dave Holmes

  It was so stupid I had to do it.

  It is important to know yourself, and what I knew about myself was that I wasn’t going to blow them away with my outsized personality. I wasn’t going to overwhelm them with my looks. I was a chubby, average-looking guy who could hold a conversation, and while people like that are likely to be in short supply at an open call for MTV VJs, people like that ought to arrive early, before the casting people get sick of faces and voices. For an average person to make an impression, it is important to get there before humanity becomes a giant, irritating blur. I set my alarm for 4:00 a.m.

  My alarm went off at 4:00 a.m. I rolled over and looked at the giant red numerals. Blinking, screeching: 4:00. My first thought that morning was What the fuck are you even thinking? Perhaps this is a thing you’ve done yourself: you make a plan to get up and hit the gym before work, or to run around the park, or to surf as the sun is rising. At night, warm and energetic and lit from within by a few beers, it seems like exactly the right thing to do. “We’ll go together,” you tell your friends. “Meet you there at five.” You agree. You rejoice. It’s so simple to live the right way! And then your alarm goes off, and you remember that neither you nor your friends are this kind of person at all, and you reset it for your regular waking time and go back to sleep, secure in the knowledge that all of your friends have done the same thing. So it was on this morning: I stared at those numbers, my eyes burning with the desire to re-close. Seriously, what the fuck are you even thinking, showing up to an open call like some kind of jackass. Lining up to introduce videos to a demographic you have aged out of. It’s embarrassing. How dare you?

  And then one thought saved me, and one thought only: On the other hand, you hate and are terrible at your job.

  I got up and showered.

  As now, my wardrobe was very “aging prep-school boy”: lots of Brooks Brothers button-downs, lots of khakis. I put on the closest thing I had to a hip outfit: a navy sweater with one red stripe through it, blue jeans, and my one pair of John Fluevog shoes. I was as on trend as I was ever going to be.

  Four-twenty a.m. is the only time when there is no traffic in New York City, so I hailed a cab with ease and made it from the Upper East Side to Forty-fourth and Broadway in less than ten minutes. The official auditions wouldn’t start until 9:00, but the line wound around the building. I was #168. The 167 people who beat me there were exactly what I expected: showbiz fellas with big smiles and too-firm handshakes. Long Island girls with loud, trumpety voices and all of the makeup. A couple of metal guys who agreed they should go in there and tell MTV to play some real shit. And just a few people ahead of me, a very tall gamine with ratted hair and a tattered army jacket covered in punk buttons. Well, she’s interesting, I thought.

  The thing about any kind of audition is that most people think the waiting room is the real proving ground. Dazzle your fellow hopefuls with your talent and personality; that’s their motto. Get in their heads so that when they make it into the audition room, they’re feeling inadequate in the sparkle department. The secret, I have learned, is to simply let these people tucker themselves out. Having had the foresight to bring my Discman along, I popped my headphones on and let Whiskeytown’s “Strangers Almanac”—the first we would hear of a young Ryan Adams—drown out some desperate attempts at psychological warfare.

  At around 8:00, some production assistants came around with forms to fill out, including a questionnaire, to which a Polaroid would be stapled. How would your friends describe you? What’s the last CD you bought? In high school, you were voted most likely to…I wrote in “…introduce the latest Savage Garden video.” I had had extensive comedy training, you guys.

  Just before 9:00, they started letting people in, and once we got in front of 1515 Broadway, the line began to snake back and forth, like we were waiting for a ride at Disneyland. As the line moved, I kept passing the beautiful androgyne in the army jacket—this way, then that way, then this way. She was a foot taller than anyone else in the line, and she seemed in a very real sense to be in her own atmosphere. Her face was serene and hopeful. Or just completely blotto. It was hard to say.

  At 9:15-ish, I got through the doors, up the escalator, and down the hallway full of backlit promo posters of shows (Singled Out! The Real World! Dead At 21!) and artists (Madonna! The Fugees! Hanson!). Shit was getting real.

  Finally, I walked into the 1515 Broadway studio. The studio was, I would later learn, actually three studios that could be turned into one massive one, like a hotel ballroom. And if this were a movie, which in my memory it is, the camera would do a full 360-degree circle around my head before settling on my dazzled face as I took it all in. It was huge and humming with activity. Twelve audition stations ringed the room, against floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Times Square, a part of town I’d always done my best to avoid, but with which I was suddenly, deeply in love. Production assistants hurried to and fro, toting clipboards and following instructions their bosses gave them through their earpieces. The big wigs, who in this case were a maximum of thirty-two years old, sat along the periphery and surveyed the action. Carson Daly, handsome as on TV and somehow taller, prepared to do a VJ segment from the middle of the action, just as I might do someday. There was a palpable sense of joy in the air. The MTV gang was busy, but busy doing something they loved and were happy to do. Following their bliss, even if their bliss stressed them out a little. It was a world where people devoted all of their energy to all of the silly things I loved, and it was right here, eight blocks down from my office. It had been here, right under my nose, the whole time. Like Narnia.

  We were called up to the audition stations twelve at a time. I went to station #5, where a guy named Joe sat me down on a stool and talked me through the process: “ ’Kay—we’re gonna just talk for a minute, so just be natural and be yourself and don’t worry about it, ’kay? And then we’ll read some shit and then that’ll be that, ’kay? S’gonna be fun.” ’Kay. I was ready. He bent down to grab his clipboard of questions and his T-shirt rode up, revealing a tattoo of two cherries, like you’d see on a slot machine, just above his ass-crack. I loved Joe immediately. I have no idea what we talked about or what I read or how long I was there—I remember it the way one would remember a really fun car crash—but apparently Joe saw something in me. He pulled a yellow slip of paper from his clipboard, signed it, and handed it to me. “ ’Kay, girl—here’s what you’re gonna do next: you’re gonna go over to the Downtown Studio and you’re gonna talk to the people there, ’kay? Just ask one of those bitches with a headset how to get there. You got it?” I had it. “Go. Now!”

  I went, then. There were two more auditioners waiting by the door of the Downtown Studio, two young, fabulous types, whom I could immediately picture on MTV. I looked back at the audition area and watched as the other 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 celebr
ities 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 fire under me. I had somehow reached the age of twenty-seven—four years of which I’d spent in New York City—without meeting very many people who loved what they did. I’d somehow heard the phrase “show business” a million times without hearing the word “business.” It had escaped my understanding that if you have a passion, even if that passion is pop culture or music videos or doll clothing or whatever thing you love that the world tells you is frivolous, there is a business built around it. People make money doing it or planning it or writing about it. There is a place for you and for me. Being in that studio had jolted me to life. I felt like Gonzo after having visited the stratosphere via balloon. I was going to go back there someday.

  “So I didn’t get a call,” I wrote. “But I’ve decided that it’s okay because starting right now, I a…”

  The journal entry ends right there. At literally 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday night, I got a phone call. I picked it up after one quarter of a ring.

  It was Amanda. “Dave? You’re not going to believe this, but you made the top ten.”

  Holy fucking shit.

  I was to report to 1515 Broadway the next morning at 11:00 a.m. and expect to spend the day in the studio. There would be interviews, more things to fill out, and then a live show full of challenges after which they’d choose the top five. I walked ten laps around my block trying to get tired enough to go to sleep. No dice.

  First thing in the morning, I called my boss and came clean. I had not been sick; I had been interviewing—I said “interviewing,” like it was a normal thing and not a giant circus I’d willingly joined—for a job at MTV. “I’ll be there all day tomorrow, but if you need me to come in at night and get anything done, let me know,” I told her. “Oh, no,” she said, “We really, really do not need for you to come in.”

  Gigi, the maternal MTV receptionist, greeted me at the door to the studios and took me to the green room, where the top ten were gathering. They included a red-haired skater kid who called himself “Ducci,” due to his resemblance to a young Danny Bonaduce; a beautiful blond pixie named Kiele who had answered on her questionnaire that she was voted most likely to become an MTV VJ, and brought in her high school yearbook to prove it; Danielle, an African American girl next door; a handsome guy named David who worked at Kim’s Video downtown and loved to talk music, and who I recognized as my direct competition.

  And then I heard the voice.

  “Heeeeeyyy everybahhhhdy…”

  It was the tall, emaciated model from the line on Monday morning, and she was a dude. She was a dude with a variety of scarves tied at various places on various limbs, with outstretched toothpick arms, with a voice like the child of Carol Channing and an automatic pencil sharpener.

  “What’s up? I’m JESSE.”

  Well, I thought. We have a winner.

  I decided that my goal would be to roam the studio as much as they’d let me. To talk to as many people as I could. To see who does what and where I’d be useful. To treat it like a job interview that just happens to air live on MTV.

  At 3:00 p.m., the live show started. Carson, Ananda Lewis, and a British guy named Toby Amies were the hosts. The ten of us lined up across the studio. At the beginning of the show, we went down the line, introduced ourselves, and told Carson our favorite songs. Mine was “Philosophy” by Ben Folds Five. I think it was true, but more important, it felt on-brand.

  The entertainment for that day was a new pop group that had had some hits in Germany, and whose single “I Want You Back” was just starting to get some radio play: NSYNC. They were in oversized jeans and sweater vests with nothing underneath, as fashion dictated. Chris Kirkpatrick looked like a rasta pineapple. Justin Timberlake’s hair was a blond Jheri Curl confection. I looked out onto Times Square, where two small pockets of fans stared up: a pair of German girls holding aloft a piece of posterboard on which they’d written “ICH LIEBE NSYNC,” and a few older women with a sign that spelled the band’s name out with the last letter in each member’s first name: JustiN, ChriS, JoeY, LanstoN, J.C. (Lanston? I thought. Lanston is not a name. And indeed, it turns out one of the band moms determined that this last-letter-of-the-first-name-spelling-out-NSYNC thing would only work if Lance pretended his name was short for Lanston. So for the sake of a cool logo gimmick, sweet Lance changed his name to a name that doesn’t exist. We gays are eager to please. Apologies to any actual Lanstons reading this book.)

  The challenge, as I recall, was for each of us to interview Chris Kattan, and I’m not sure if he was trying to be difficult or if he was just on drugs; as I recall, it was rocky at the start but seemed to right itself by the end. John Norris was asked for his opinions after we all finished, and I think he mentioned me, but again, this is a happy, candy-colored blur.

  Looking back, what is astonishing to me is that I didn’t have a full-scale panic attack on live television, the way I almost definitely would now. I think the truth is that the situation was just too bizarre for me to react the way I should have.

  Carson read off the names of the top five: Jesse. Ducci. Kiele. Danielle. And then…Dave.

  Oh, dear God. I called the office and my boss said: “We saw.” There was joy in her voice. In the moment, I thought she might be happy for me, but she was probably giddy at the prospect of finally hiring someone who knew what he was doing, and not having to pay me a severance besides. We all h
ad a big night that night.

  Thursday and Friday, we were the guests on MTV Live again. I remember something about a shopping spree at the Virgin Megastore across the street. I remember them pulling a postcard out of one of those sweepstakes wind-up barrel things, and calling the name of a viewer in Texas who would be the wild-card candidate, and thus flown in to start competing with us on Friday. I remember giving some kind of campaign speech on a podium in Times Square, which I had written over beers with a couple of friends from my improv group the night before. I remember world-premiering “Push It,” the first video from the second Garbage album. Mostly, I remember spending the day with production people, all my age or a year or two younger. Cool. Smart. Obsessed with pop culture and gainfully employed. It was possible to be all of those things at the same time. I was learning a valuable lesson the hard and weird and televised way.

  Throughout, people treated Jesse like the alien being he was. He was eleven feet tall, he weighed eighty pounds, and he spoke in another language, for he was from the mythical land of St. Mark’s Place. He was, in short, exactly what a stoned teenager who had the afternoon to kick it in front of MTV and vote for the next VJ could ever want. I wanted to win, but I wasn’t going to, so the safe plan was to lose well.

  At last, the time came for the big Saturday event, the four-hour live show. I talked about De La Soul with Dr. Dre and Ed Lover, calling their beats “stupid fresh” (to which they replied, sternly: “Don’t ever say that again”). I practiced awards-show podium banter with Pauly Shore. I did a thing where I interviewed Kathy Griffin and she pretended to flirt with me, having told Carson that I was her type. Having woeful self-esteem, I assumed she was joking, but having seen the guys she’s dated since, I actually might have had a pretty decent shot at Kathy Griffin.