Crash Test Girl

by Kari Byron

  Swerving to avoid a fox in the road and totaling the best Toyota pickup truck ever. Fuck that fox!

  Pretending not to like it when Nicky kissed me in the sixth grade during spin the bottle.

  Giving away band T-shirts and weird clothes that could have been repurposed.

  Stopping my travel journals when I stopped traveling.

  Not writing more letters to my Aunt Betty.

  Eating fish tacos in Las Vegas.

  Sparkle blue eye shadow in the first few seasons of MythBusters.

  Attempting to rock a bindi and lace fingerless gloves in my midtwenties in San Francisco. Scratch that, I still have the gloves.

  Not learning to play guitar or to skateboard.

  Any time I didn’t stand up for myself.

  * * *

  For example: I was a vegetarian, and yet I took on tasks with animal parts on a weekly basis. I once repurposed a pig spine, sewing skin to it as a stand-in for a human neck so that I could try to demonstrate decapitation with a sword. My gag reflex shivered with every stitch. I was spared from participating in the “Tastes like Chicken” challenge, when Tory and Grant had to eat gator and rattlesnake, but I had to both prep the samples and watch them eat. I did participate in a gross eating experiment about the myth that you get cold hands and feet when you’re afraid—the theory was fear rushes your blood to your vital organs. To test it, we had to create a scary situation and then use a thermal camera to take our temperature. I sat down at a banquet of disgustingness: chicken feet, rotten intestines, and fish heads—scary foods, to be sure. I figured the lab-grade bugs were the cleanest and chose a cricket. I put it in my mouth, and made the mistake of not chewing before swallowing it right away. It grabbed onto the back of my tongue and top of my throat while struggling for dear life against my uvula. I wound up puking. There was a bucket under the table for just this outcome, how thoughtful. Since they’d rigged it with a camera at the bottom, I have to assume this was the outcome they’d hoped for.

  Every time I puked, or almost did, it was caught on camera and I was known for the intensity of my reactions. I got less grossed out by meat over the years, but sometimes I played it up anyway. It became my schtick and it made the producers and crew so delighted to torture me.

  I did manage to swallow a maggot, though. (Pro tip: If you have to swallow a bug, look for soft, legless creatures like mealworms.)

  FYI: A production assistant in charge of cleaning up didn’t know what to do with all the gross food from the cold feet banquet, so he shoved it in the workshop fridge. The power went out over the weekend and, on Monday, when someone opened the fridge door, the stench was so overwhelmingly putrid, everyone in the shop started dry heaving. We had to evacuate the entire place and the poor assistant had to clean out the fridge and scrub it down with bleach. Ah, the good old days of being underpaid for the most vile jobs. I felt for him, but I was sure glad I’d already paid my dues.

  IF YOU KICK ASS AT WORK, REALLY GIVE IT YOUR ALL, YOU MIGHT HIT SOME BUMPS BUT YOUR JOB IS SAFE

  I never took sick days because too many people relied on me to be there. I showed up, no matter what. I worked through sickness and injury, smiled through migraines and sniffles. Once, we were doing an episode about guns and needed a ton of ballistics gel blocks (a gelatin-based material that you make like a Jell-O mold). We had to mix it in five-gallon buckets and let them set overnight. We were in a rush, and I skipped lunch to get them finished. In my hurry, some spilled on the floor. I slipped in the warm puddle, fell down, and dislocated and cracked my knee on the floor (my bad knee). I screamed and rolled in pain, covered in gooey, gelatinous ooze.

  * * *

  TOP TEN WORST SMELLS IN GLAMOROUS TV

  The rancid fridge was bad. These were worse:

  Wolf urine

  Goat horn on the sander or band saw

  Large graduated cylinder of week-old saliva

  Shark skin curing in urine

  Rendering plant where we took bullet-ridden pigs

  Blended cow brain

  Shop tools with embedded decaying pig carcass

  Vat of emulsified cow manure

  Lion poop in jar

  Human poop in a beaker

  (Luckily, I was on maternity leave for the human earwax experiment, otherwise it would top the list.)

  * * *

  A crew guy called out, “Call an ambulance!”

  I said, “No, just drive me to the hospital.” I couldn’t afford the ambulance ride! The look of horror on the faces of the Australian crew that came from a country of socialized medicine? Priceless. I was back later to finish the episode on crutches and a knee immobilizer.

  This was my life. Some days, you ate a maggot. Some days, you slipped on ballistics gel and broke your knee. Most days, I couldn’t believe how cool and strange it all was.

  In the world of adventure TV, there’s a phenomenon called “Kodak courage.” It’s when you agree to do things on camera and take big risks that you would never let happen otherwise. Like when we did a show about injecting an RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip in your arm and seeing if an MRI would rip it out, I said, “Let’s do it!” and rolled up my sleeve. What if the myth were true? I didn’t know that I’d need surgery to get it removed, so that chip stayed in my arm for years—and totally freaked out the foil hat–wearing conspiracy theorists.

  We had to be vigilant with safety specialists because, as soon as the camera went on, they’d be more lenient with their recommendations—and they were the experts. Sometimes, I look at episodes and can’t believe we kept filming. On an episode of Thrill Factor (a show I did for the Travel Channel), Tory and I rode Falcon’s Fury, a theme park ride that takes you up 335 feet on a freestanding tower and drops you in free fall straight down, face first. The ride is so intense, they don’t let you ride it two times in a row because they’re afraid the effects might make you pass out. I didn’t find that little fact out until we’d done it four times in a row, and my legs gave out below me. I asked, “Why did you let us do it?” and they said, “Because you are on TV!” I fake laughed to cover my concern, punched blood back into my legs, and strapped in for one more time, as if we were immune to the laws of physics and the normal constraints of the human body (*smiling, eye-rolling*).

  On White Rabbit Project, for the episode about “Tech Before Its Time,” I road tested (literally) an early form of in-car navigation in a 1933 Packard. The producers sourced a vintage mint condition car. For whatever reason, I’d never learned how to drive a stick shift, a dirty secret of mine. I had informed the producer but he was sure the car didn’t have standard transmission. I was pretty sure he was wrong and after one Google search, my heart dropped. It wasn’t just a stick, but an old-timey one, with no instruction manual to explain the gearing. We were on a tight schedule, and there was no going back on the Packard, so I had to crash test drive it by studying YouTube videos and taking a one-hour lesson with this little old man who had an ancient, beat-up Toyota—on the day before shooting!

  Nervous as I was, I walked into the workshop to a vintage car collector polishing the hood. “How’s your stick game, lady?” he asked. “You’re driving a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car.”

  I actually did drive that car through downtown Los Angeles rush hour traffic, grinding a few gears along the way, in a complete panic, thinking, “This is your fucking job. Let’s go!” I sat up straight and kept a smile on my face. Every time the collector grimaced, I told him my modern car shifted a bit differently but not to worry, “I got this.” Thank goodness I didn’t crash this crash test. At any job, where someone is paying you money to work, coasting is death. You have to dazzle, daily. Slacking off is not an option.

  Being a good sport, playing hurt, not crying, never phoning it in, working through migraines, pain, and depression, I did it all. After about ten years, I started to feel confident that I was safe at MythBusters. But I wasn’t. Safety on TV is an illusion at best.

  In 2014, the show had bee
n running for over a decade while the TV landscape changed around us. The network had new leadership and they wanted to bring in their own vision. MythBusters had survived eight different network heads over the years, but this new one came from TLC, which was heavily into Honey Boo Boo–style reality. Our numbers weren’t as strong as they once were, and our budget was cut dramatically. The producers did everything they could to keep the show intact, but it just wasn’t possible.

  The build team was offered a deal to work only three weeks per year doing some mini myths but with an exclusivity clause, which meant that we couldn’t work for anyone else during the contract time. I’d be living under a bridge, feeding my daughter cat food (remember—my biggest money fear of all time?) if I only worked fifteen days out of 365. We asked them to strike the exclusivity so we could stay a part of the show, but they said no. It felt like an offer we had to refuse so it would look like we quit. If they fired us, our super-loyal fan base would have been up in arms.

  That was that. We couldn’t agree to their terms and it was over.

  It was such an unceremonious, perfunctory ending. Instead of coming back from Christmas vacation, our crew and staff were let go. Our shop was shut down and the locks were changed while we were away. I had to schedule a time to get my stuff. While I packed up my toolbox, a staffer followed me around to make sure I didn’t steal anything. It was kind of like, “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.” I’d grown up on MythBusters, and this was a sad, sorry end.

  I felt disrespected and undervalued by the production company. They didn’t realize how much we shaped the show, the way things were tested, how we came up with the myths. Even the logo was a shop design. I can’t speak for Tory and Grant, but my feelings were hurt by how they dismissed us. Now I know that this kind of thing happens all the time. But I didn’t know this side of showbiz back then. I’d never been fired from a TV job before. It felt like I’d been dumped and I took it personally.

  Out of loyalty, Tory, Grant, and I publicly toed the line about the circumstances of our leaving for the sake of the show. Then a producer implied in a magazine interview that, in diva fashion, we’d demanded too much money and they had to cut us loose. A revisionist history! At the news of our leaving, the fans had been up in arms, starting petitions and taking to Reddit. I guess the producer felt attacked, and changed the narrative. I was annoyed as hell and commiserated with the guys. But what could we do? Get in a Twitter war over it? I let it go.

  When the show got canceled soon after we left, the fans blamed it on our exit. Not sure that is true but it warmed my heart that they loved and appreciated us so much.

  Tory, Grant, and I were asked to return for the final episode, and I found it extremely hard to come back, make nice, and pretend like they hadn’t treated us shabbily. In the end, I didn’t agree to appear in the finale for the network or the producers, or for myself. I did it to give closure to the fans, the millions who watched MythBusters and were supportive of us. If they hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be here. Our show was very collaborative with fans that supplied us with myth ideas, sent letters that we read in recap shows, and engaged with us at conventions and promotional events. The final episode was my goodbye to them.

  I cried during the filming—breaking my own rule for the second time! (more on that in the next chapter)—and felt the magnitude of what the show had meant to me, and everyone involved with it. It’d become so much bigger than any of us could have imagined and we’d made an impact that extended beyond the show itself. During the show’s run, at college events and conventions, young women would come up to me, hug me, cry in my arms, and tell me that watching me on TV was the reason they were engineering or chemistry majors. I was so fortunate to have made an impact on other people. I was just having fun doing my job and didn’t realize I was creating an echo in a canyon that eventually girls heard and acted on.

  During low moments post-MythBusters unemployment, I thought of those women, dried my tears, and psyched myself up. I’d have to push myself to do something else, something just as cool and impactful. This couldn’t be the last thing I contributed to the world. I had a responsibility to those young women, and to the very young girl at home (Stella was four then), to carry on, be a good example, and not mope. I would push on, because I wanted all of those fans to persevere. I’d crash test into the next job, whatever that might be, and show them, and my daughter, that taking calculated risks and being brave pays off.

  EXTENDED QUASI-EMPLOYMENT

  Our firing wasn’t known immediately after it happened. We were asked not to talk about it until episodes without us started to air months later. We were under a gag order, essentially, which I honored.

  But, since people in the position to hire me didn’t know I was available, they weren’t calling me. I missed a whole season of shooting pilots for the following year. The frustration of not being able to make calls and contact people about future employment was agonizing. It felt like I was never going to work again. I’d cultivated a set of skills that were only useful for a mythbuster, or maybe a secret agent. What was I going to do next?

  When our ousting was finally announced, I got some phone calls asking about my availability. I was overcome with relief that people wanted to work with me. I’m going to get another job, I told myself.

  I started setting up meetings with production companies and networks in my area—Nat Geo, History, Travel—to pitch ideas or just to say, “I’m here!” I talked to everyone I could, pimping my proverbial ride. I pitched the same idea, slightly adjusted for whatever network I was talking to, and I got shot down a lot. You don’t like that one? I got a million others! A computer full of concepts! Let’s talk! It’s intimidating to go into a room of network execs and convince them to spend serious cash on your idea. But I’m not the type to rest on my laurels and wait for my future. I will write my own life . . . and maybe even a book (spoiler: you’re reading it right now!). Even if you get an “I love it!,” it might still be a “We decided to go in a different direction.”

  In a fit of unemployed madness when I hadn’t gotten a solid offer right away, I thought, You’re going to have to get a real job. That would require a grown-up wardrobe. I went straight to Theory and purchased black slacks for my future “normal” employment, whatever that might be. I brought them home, hung them in my closet, and expected to wear them at some office, in a cubicle or at a desk maybe, answering the phones, as my science/build dreams withered and died on the hanger.

  * * *

  EXPERIMENTS FOR THE UNEMPLOYED

  When MythBusters ended, I got very depressed. I needed to use my protocol not to sink into a long bout with it. What worked:

  Mountain biking. A physical adventure was a ready excuse not to think about work. I’d say to myself, “When the ride’s over, I’ll start stressing again.” So I’d just keep riding across the Golden Gate Bridge, up Hawk Hill into the Headlands, and back home—some serious hill climbs along the way. It took hours and killed me, and yet, I live. The endorphins kicked in and nothing seemed so bad anymore. When my anxious mind went to sleep, my creative mind woke up.

  Taking a mental health day. Sometimes, I’d take a day to breathe. Life can mow you down, and the impulse is to get back up. But occasionally, it’s better to stay down and regroup first. I’d been so strong, for so long, working long hours and taking care of my family. It was okay to give myself a day not to do anything but take a walk, have a long lunch, watch Netflix, draw with Stella. The next day, I’d be ready to do battle again.

  Baking. I dove into baking, and learned the chemistry of it. No one can touch my caramel corn. I made some crazy cakes, whipping the eggs separately and folding them in to make fluffier batter. I can decorate with fancy flowers and make cakes into sculptures, never using a bit of fondant. (IMHO, fondant is cheating, and it tastes horrible.)

  Cooking. I even learned to cook food I won’t eat, like crispy bacon and a perfect roast chicken. I approach it all like a myth
. I research all the “best” ways to cook on the web. I combine and try all the methods I find and test the product on my family and friends . . . and even neighbors.

  Combing. I would go to flea markets and collect odd things: old gears from broken watches, rusted keys, tiny roller chain. Then I cast them in resin for pendants or make them into earrings. I love to repurpose the beauty of wabi-sabi forgotten pieces and make them important, like resurrecting ghosts. My husband used to collect vintage photo albums full of lost memories and make them into paintings. I think this is a subconscious way of battling mortality on an artistic, esoteric level. So, yeah, I did a lot of deep thinking, too.

  * * *

  My optimistic side thought, Oh, please. Don’t be so dramatic. People are going to start calling. Right . . . now.

  I spent a lot of time staring at my phone, willing it to ring.

  Okay, I did make some pilots that sadly no one will ever see. I was hired for some one-shot specials, guest host gigs, and speaking engagements. It’s not like I sat around binging TV. I called people for information interviews and asked them what was going on, and how they handled setbacks in their careers.

  I just wanted to keep going, and the only way to do that was to put myself out there. I practically wrote my name on bathroom walls, saying, “Kari. Secret agent. Available for hire. Here’s my number. Call me anytime!”

  Anyone who can stay calm between jobs has my respect. Me? I go nuts. I’ve had one job or another since I was fifteen, and I didn’t know what to do with myself without a place to be. I’m good at vacation, too, don’t get me wrong. But this was different. I had a house and a family to support, and no serious offers were landing at my feet.

  Tory and I teamed up and landed a series called Thrill Factor on the Travel Channel about amusement parks and the science of thrill rides. I love roller coasters, which might not come as much of a surprise since I live as if I were on one. (I actually got my period for the first time, in white culottes, on the Tidal Wave roller coaster at Great America during our eighth-grade field trip. I started wearing a lot more black immediately after. Damn centrifugal force and puberty hormones!)