drew carey stole my job. it was gonna be me in there. in 2007 i already had an apartment in vegas and i was going to be the host of The Price Is Right. bob barker was retiring. i can’t believe i haven’t told this story before today. i tried typing this up but i fell asleep before i could get it finished. i really want you to know what kind of person Drew Carey is, because all i ever hear about this guy is how great he is. here goes nothing goddamn

my wife was upset because me working on The Price Is Right meant we wouldn’t be getting this cute little bungalo in Mesa. we already picked out the kitchen appliances in this wild color that really complimented the wallpaper (freshly applied by the owner but retro in style to match the rest of the house). some of these houses are incredible. like you know how sometimes you get these cars that a little old lady owned but only used it to drive to the cardinal’s secret second house on sunday, well its kind of like that except it was an old retired couple that renovated it and they were just avid home decor people and total homebodies. i made a joke that they looked like they played pinochle. the old woman (marge) looked at me dead straight in the eyes and said “no. no. no. no, we play bridge.” i thought she was going to stab me or something she was so intense in her response. all i could muster – and my mouth was really dry so i said it even more awkward than i wanted to – was something like “i just like to play solitaire on duh computer”. she got a big kick out of that.

honestly zachtronics solitaire games are great. i know most people are probably like “didn’t zachtronics just make the most intense RTFM games and then retire to go focus on teaching highschool?” which like the answer is mostly yes to both questions but just so you know he did release a standalone of Shenzhen Solitaire, which is excellent, and his final micdrop as he retired was releasing a solitaire collection, which i have yet to check out (but own because i am an avid Zachtronics fan)

sorry. i have got WAY off track. back to the house. we had gone to the open house like more than a full year earlier but marge decided to take it off of the market because of some family issues. so like i said they had bought it in their fifties and done it up in this sort of 40s kitsch style? i’m not sure what to call it. i would ask Marge - were she still with us (RIP) - but the main thing is that it was an aesthetic that she and her husband both adored, and it was one of their things, which i didn’t understand the first time i met them but my wife and i both really cherished later on.

i don’t think this will make sense to most people but i think the journey of buying a home oftentimes is falling in love not just with the house but with the history, or in this case, the people that it came from. they were so particular about which kind of wallpaper went in that kitchen. its this kind of wallpaper you used to see a lot where its a field of cream and then these vertical stripes adorned with grapes and penguins. which i LOVED because im a big linux head, but i guess this is just kind of how old wallpapers are. the penguins are really funny too because its some kind of reproduction of this old run and the painter hadn’t actually seen a photo of a penguin, he just had to go off of the written record, so they’re all buff and shit. but so you can kind of understand, with my wife and i growing fond of the people that have taken such good care of this house, and me loving the hell out of these huge penguins, it was pretty important that we keep the energy going, so we found these appliances in this shade of magenta that would go with the grapes. we put a purchase order in for these things and we got a call like a week later from some guy in an office in delaware saying that due to an inventory error the only set was in their italian warehouse, and we’d have to have them shipped back to the states for this exorbitant fee. which like. okay. we’re in super deep with this kitsch lovefest so fuck it why not. the documentation was ridiculous because its being imported but then it says like “Destination Country: United States of America” then “Country of Origin: United States of America” like shouldn’t we just get this for free at this point? whatever. don’t get me started on customs brokerage.

inventory management is a total disaster. i can totally see how easily this kind of thing happens. i used to work for a refrigeration company just like the one that made our appliances - well, i’m getting ahead of myself - but its so common to have these two-or-three layered exceptions pop up where-- okay, easiest way is just to recount something i saw happen at my company. as a promo for every new consumer line we launch, we do a series of 50 special edition SKUs/variants. so that’s 50 special types of the thing, and we produce different quantities of each special variant depending on how well we expect them to do, or if we want to do marketing for one of them. so the Erlenmeyer (sorry, just sticking to the internal project names, no time to get into product naming conventions) my branch worked on came in 50 types including tutti-frutti, two different pinstripes (not as ugly as you might think on a fridge), starfield, strawberry. strawberry is basically a must on every product line. people ate it up. i think now they do five or six different colorways for the strawberry special editions. starfield got two produced for a trade show and that’s it, because legitimately the marketing team says “we’ll get one for the star wars guy and one for the star trek guy”. this shit drives me up the wall. i have explained SO many times we should be thinking about that customer segment in a totally different way. easily, you can break up the star TREK fans into TOS, TNG, DS9, and the “special combo” – i lump the VOY and ENT fans into one bucket - and do at least a special variant for EACH. i would have loved to see the Erlenmeyer with Terok Nor (that is the original Cardassian name for the titular space station Deep Space Nine on the show DS9) on the front of it so i can think about how much Gul Dukat sucks every time i go in for a cold one. but they really don’t get how different Star Trek and Star Wars are there. (eyeroll)

ANYWAY. so with all of these different special editions and colorways, and promotional efforts, you can see how there’s quickly a lot more to manage. we were about to close the book on the Erlenmeyer project when the guys from Partners and Promotions (just one of the marketing teams) dropped by my desk and asked me if we’d have any more Chartreuse & Champagne coming along - one of the fun colorways - i said, well no. We have only three of those units and they’re all for the North America branch (we’re in the United States but the North America branch is Canada and Mexico). he looks at me dead straight in the eyes and says “but i HAVE to have the Chartreuse & Champagne, it’s been promised to a VIP!” i’m like. okay. we have a WHOLE process and a WHOLE policy written to make sure that, if in fact we have persons that are that important that need some special product, especially those in limited quantity, that maybe we can manufacture them special, but that has to go in the planning process, not come AFTER the planning process. but he just KEEPS insisting, i say “look, this is the process we have, this is why we have it, and this is the policy, and if you have a problem with the policy, you CAN go talk to this other person about it, but i cannot help you today.” so two weeks later i get this email from … North America branch! they are asking me why their internal POs (we do purchase orders between companies for some accounting reason) for Chartreuse & Champagne is only fulfilled 2/3, where is the other one? i’m like. uh. i don’t know. (sidenote of course i DO know its this dipstick from PP stealing my SHIT again!). i gotta stop thinking about this shit because it boils my blood. like we had a whole brand promo in Mexico that had to get completely shelved because the plan we had was totally shit on by US marketing. and now you can see why i left to go into showbiz!!! ANYWAYS, back on track

so Marge is a great lady, but yeah she took the house off the market after we went to the open house because her brother Earle was having some issues with an autoimmune disorder. not sure if it was lupus or crohns or whatever, both of those are pretty awful diseases so i didn’t really want to pry by asking for more details. while Marge is telling us about this her husband, Larry, is totally quiet. now he’s normally a very quiet guy, very unassuming, so its hard for me to tell if this is suuuuuper serious or what. honestly, i don’t know what else to say about Larry. very nice, very quiet. all of my Larry stories are really stories about this life that he and Marge have built together, which is wonderful, and I’d like to tell you more, but as a person he is just so quiet. i find him kind of impenetrable. but so i guess the gist of the situation was they were not sure if Earle was going to have to stop working earlier than expected and come live with them. their whole plan was to sell the house and go to one of those retirement communities, but with this younger sibling around that’s not gonna work — i say ‘younger’, he’s in his fifties, but you know what i mean. so they took the house of the market, which kind of crushed us because we had JUST started talking about maybe buying this place.

but none of this has the glamor of showbiz or the rankness of drew carey that asshole. these were some very innocent days for me and my wife. i was just getting started presenting some smaller productions for foreign markets and i didn’t realize you could be cut into so deeply by the hooks and barbs of drew carey.

phoenix TV production is not it. like. its where i came up. they’re my people, but in the sort of way where you move out of the small town and you only come back for an occasional, drug-assisted thanksgiving. but for the time being, that was as far as i thought i could go. i didn’t think i could reach the dizzying heights of The Price is Right. so i stayed local and my wife and i kept looking. we found a lot of truly wonderful homes, but they definitely weren’t ours. don’t get me wrong, we tried, and i think some of them we could have eventually been fine with, but we were too in love with Marge and Larry’s carefully curated aesthetic. something we really wanted to carry on for them. it was not really for them, so much as my wife and i trying to prove that we could take on something that belonged to someone else and really make it ours, while still doing right by the original vision. luckily, wow-- i guess some woman Earle had known in his younger years got in touch, and they really hit it off. apparently Sheryl (that’s her name) had always pined after him, but they didn’t meet up at the right time. I guess she was too busy in nursing school and he was kind of settled into his career. but now with the two of them together - and she’s like, very okay with the medical part, being a nurse i guess. so suddenly, house is back on the market. great!

not so great, because my dumb ass was watching The Price Is Right one morning while eating some corn flakes and i bet my wife i could do the job. well, i say ‘bet’ - she agreed that i could, but i wanted to be competitive, so i called this guy i know who retired from the studio in Phoenix, and he just says, “oh dude, yeah, i know that whole executive staff! i can give you a great reference. they’re really hurting for good candidates too”

so, you know, start talking to Price people (just a little abbreviation of the title of the show The Price Is Right), started looking for apartments in vegas, started getting the wife very disappointed at the prospect of giving up our appliance import fees (its ok though because its just gonna get baked into whatever home sale we end up doing), start talking to people. can’t even begin to summarize everything that happened - it all went by so quick. it was basically a set deal, just short of the contracts.

early in '07 i had a long day talking with some of the executives in the vegas studio, so i went in to the production area to try it on. i actually saw drew carey in there, the bastard. he was in there kicking dust around the set like somebody just told him he had a week left to live or something. i looked at him dead straight in the eyes and said. “hey drew, can’t win 'em all!” like not as a dig but just kind of trying to say. hey. “good game”. i used to play a lot of dota 2, and honestly, the decorum has completely fallen out of this world. back in '07 i suppose it was all just ladder warcraft 3, i dont even think Dota Allstars had come out yet, but like even today, people just say “gg” at the most inappropriate times. like, back when i was comin up, the rule was that you should let the losers say gg first, and you should always say gg back, and if you wanted to really be polite, and you meant it, say wp (“well played”). wp to me was always kind of holy, like with gg you could get away with calling it etiquette, but because wp wasn’t expected, there was also no room to take it as sarcasm. i always really believed when people said wp. but drew carey didn’t bring ANY of that trust or sportsmanship. he looked at me - dead straight in the eyes - you know what he said to me? he said, “yeah buster. great work in there.”

yeah buster great work in there? what am I, freaking pol pot or something? i’m not half as cool or half as deadly as Pol Pot so i dont know what i did to deserve this kind of treatment. the dude wasnt even in the room and he’s opining on the great/ungreatness of my work. to this day, i still dont know how to explain why it pissed me off so bad. like. drew. come on. you’re a sexy guy, you’ve had some good TV shows, but you aren’t owed EVERYTHING. whatever. i just nodded at him and smiled and kind of walked away, leaving as politely as i could. it wasn’t until later i would get so FUCKING mad.

but so anyways i finally found the assistant director of the show, who come to think of it looked a lot like Larry. that’s one thing i can finally say about Larry after all these years: Larry looked a lot like the assistant director of The Price Is Right in 2007. so he and i are talking. i honestly mostly wanted to ask him how the coffee was in the studio. at a previous job i ended up spending a colossal amount of money on lattes because the stuff they had at the studio tasted like, i dont know… what tastes really bad… nuclear runoff? toxic oil dump water? something like that… look i’m not trying to get stuck on some big dumb long rant about coffee tasting bad, the point is that i wanted to know if The Price Is Right coffee was any good or not. he went on some BIG dumb LONG ass rant about some stupid shit like the runner would always bring in mochas instead of frappucinos which was NOT answering my question. this guy didnt GET it. i wanT TO KNOW ABOUT THE COFFEE MADE HERE IN THIS BUILDING. WHAT BEANS ARE USED. it is a light roast or a medium roast? is someone taking the time to grind them in the morning, or are they pre-ground? do we have refrigerated cream, or are we stuck with the nasa shit? i am getting PISSED off because every time i think we’re about to learn more about the state of coffee in this building he starts telling me about SHELLY

SHELLY IS A BAD RUNNER BECAUSE HER BREATH SMELLS BAD. WHY DO I CARE ABOUT THIS? he says something about it ruining his appetite and he cant enjoy the croissant she brings him. i AM NOT EVEN GOING TO GET CROISSANTS BROUGHT TO ME AS THE PRESENTER OF THE SHOW! this is something i didnt mention yet. he is talking all this stuff about this shelly lady not getting orders right – well the orders wont be including ME, THE PRESENTER. only the director, assistant director and some fucking guy named “CRAIG”. CRAIG is getting TWO frappucinos delivered to him. the runner is bringing them in one of those cardboard things that only holds four drinks, and she REFUSES to carry a second. well shit. now i’m starting to agree!!! you’re telling me Shelly won’t DEIGN to carry a fifth fucking cup or god forbid find some other carrying system to bring me a god damned latte??! i don’t even know why i’m getting mad about this SEVENTEEN YEARS LATER. i just want to know about the stuff we’re making in the building. christ. never found out! he just kept going on about this runner of his

so i give up. i say. screw it. alright well. thanks for the chat, I’ll see you next month when the ink is dry. he goes, “hold on,” and he jumps behind the camera and pretends like he’s filming me, and he goes “get up on stage and pretend you’re giving us the close. I can’t give my sign-off without knowing about your close” - thats industry lingo for the last address the presenter gives to the audience as we’re about to finish the recording. well this does perk me up a bit because i actually have thought long and hard about how i want to approach this part of my work, so i set down my bag - its a pretty nice bag, i got it when i went to Berlin the previous year but you probably don’t wanna hear about that - and i hopped up on stage and found the spot - you can’t just stand anywhere. sometimes contestants or their families will be blocking the shot from certain spots, or the models will be walking around doing whatever the FUCK it is THEY’RE doing - mostly getting in the presenter’s way - and i looked dead straight in the eyes of the camera and said:

“and please remember to get ME spayed and neutered!!!”

the assistant director peaked out from behind the camera and he said “what the fuck are ya talkin’ about?” and i said i didn’t want any lip about it. he just said the exact same words again. pressing me. needling me. but i stayed strong; i said “no, no, i am serious, i really don’t want to talk about it, my mind is made up. That’s my close. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and there’s no need to talk about this. definitely not with YOU” i fucking walked away. that guy is a fucking asshole

anyways. for some reason. they never called me back up. my agent just calls me randomly like a week later. out of NOWHERE and says they’re giving it to Drew Carey. that FUCK