Day 138: The Contenders!

Today was definitely a day that I'll never forget! Today was the day when all of my stardom dreams came true and I made my television debut!! Okay, I wasn't actually on TV *TODAY* but it was filmed today and will be on air next week. Today was the day that Steve and I competed on 'Quiz Show: The Contenders!'

The Contenders is Korea's most popular game show and is a trivia-based quiz show where contenders compete in pairs in several rounds against each other, with the winners being awarded with great trips! The show is a huge hit amongst both locals (well, those who understand English) and of course the foreigners' community. Ask any English Teacher in Korea and they'll know about The Contenders!

Steve and I went down to the studio for 11:30am and as soon as we arrived our nerves really went wild! We were excited to be on the show, and have been talking about it forever, but now it was actually going to happen. FOR REAL! No more joking around and imagining cool scenarios about what would happen if we actually won - this was the real deal. We had to fill out a bunch of paperwork first, and then were given coupons for a free lunch in the cafeteria downstairs. I was way too nervous to eat so I just nibbled on a banana and tried not to overthink things. Hey man, I was about to be filmed on a game show - you'd be nervous too!!!

They were actually filming two episodes of the show today and Steve and I were scheduled for the second episode. This meant that we had to sit around and watch them film the first episode, which proved to be both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because it allowed us to watch, firsthand, how the show plays out and what's expected of contestants, but it also allowed even more time for our nerves to build up to inhumane levels!

After that we were brought back upstairs to prepare for the show and - *giggle* - get our hair and MAKE-UP done!!! I've never 'had my make-up done' before and it was fun to sit in the special chair and have some Korean woman apply make-up to my face to help make me look hot for TV. She didn't actually apply all that much - just some powder (?) to help reduce my skin's shininess, some colour for under my eyes to reduce darkness, and some extra red colour for my lips. Too much fun! Steve got a laugh out of the whole make-up deal too!

And then next thing we knew we were being 'miced-up' and it was time to get behind the stage...and away we go!!!! We stepped out onto stage and it was SO BRIGHT with all the lights in our faces and it was completely surreal to stand at our podium, a dozen cameras panning all around us and a live audience cheering no more than five feet behind us. CRAZY!! ;-)

Steve and I were competing against a pair of Korean university girls who were under the name of Team Buddier (lame if you ask me!) We were under the guise of Team Hotboyz (thanks to Andrea for picking our team name!!!) and we were so convinced that we were going to whip those girls' asses! This proved to be a harder challenge than we imagined...

Round 1 consists of each team being presented with 10 multiple-choice questions, in the same style as 'Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire?' When each pair gets an answer right they're presented with the next question for an additional ten points. Well Steve and I didn't do as well as we hoped - we got stumped on question #7 and so were stuck with just 60 points. DOH! Then THOSE GIRLS actually beat us and got seven questions right for a total of 70 points. WE WERE BEHIND!!!???

Round 2 was an absolute blast! This round is modelled after the board game 'Taboo' where one team member has to try and get the other person to guess a specific word using descriptions. You're given your category in advance, and for Team Hotboyz that was the TV show 'Friends'! You have to guess 20 words in only 100 seconds and the key to this round is clarity and speed! I was the one who had to describe the words and Steve had to guess. Well we did smashingly well on this category!! We whipped through 17 of those words and I was so proud of little Steve (who's never really watched the show but has been studying really hard up on it!) Despite our breath-taking performance on Round 2, in the end THOSE DAMN GIRLS were still 10 points ahead of us!!! WHAT THE...???!!!

Alright! This was it! No more Mr. Nice Hotboyz! You wanna play dirty, girls? Well then let's get DIRRTY! Round 3 is a simple question-and-answer trivia where each team tries to 'buzz in' first to answer the question. This was the round that should be described as "How Team Hotbozy Got Their Groove Back!" cause Steve and I ended up kicking major ass!!! We blew those chicks right out of the water!!! The Hotboyz were ON *FIRE*!!! (If you touch my ass right now you'll STILL get burned - we were *that* hot!!!) Our score flew right past those little Korean bitches and we took the trophy! Team Hotboyz were the official champions of The Primary Rounds!

"Oh Yeah!!!"

After this is when things got really hot and heavy on that studio...

Round 4 is where you have to compete against the fear-inducing "Last Week's Defending Champions!" There's no prize for winning the first part of the show - this is when you get the chance to win cool trips and really, truly become famous superstars in Korea! ;-) LWDC were a team under the stupid name of 'WhoAWe' but stupid they were not - they had won 3 times in a row and were definitely smart cookies! But Steve and I were pumped from our initial victory and were ready to take them on!

Round 4 is set up exactly like 'Jeopardy' where there's 5 categories to choose from with questions ranging in points and corresponding difficulty levels. Our categories were: BORDERS, INVENTIONS, FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO DIED YOUNG, DISASTERS, AND ART. The defending champions got to pick our first question and Borders it was. Being that this was a category based on GEOGRAPHY Steve and I totally thought we had it in the bag. (I mean come on, I have a frickin' degree in that subject, and Steve's a Geo buff too!)

Somehow, however, WhoAWe blasted right out of the cannon and ran circles around us. Before I could even blink they had answered 3 of those borders questions leaving us eating their dust and sitting at a lovely ZERO points! Holy shit! Time to get our asses in gear!!! Steve and I gathered our numbed senses and jumped right on in, finishing off the Borders category with two wins. After that we were an unstoppable answering machine, and went on to win another five or six consecutive questions!
WOW!!! 'Take that, you WhoAWe bastards!!! Not so cocky now, are we???'

I think that this sudden, surprisingly long run of wins for Steve and I caught them off-guard! They totally seemed speechless and were practically peeing their panties up their on stage. We shattered their ill-fated confidence like a non-existent weapon of mass destruction through one of Bush's non-sensical addresses of fiction to the nation! 'OHHHHHHHHHHH BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who's your daddy now??? Yeah!!'

*(insert grunting and hip-thrusting here)*

Then came what I like to describe as "The Retaliation" Those sneaky little WhoAWe motherfuckers managed to grab a correct answer and then steered us right into 'The Catergory Of Lost Hope And Desperation' - Art! Steve and I know absolutely fuckin' nothing about art - NOTHING! Time and time again we tried desperately to grab back our winning spotlight but it was all to no avail. WhoAWe may be scruffy mingers who smell bad, but DAMN they sure as hell know their art!

After that it was a back and forth battle between 'The 2 Cocks' team and "The Cock & Tits' team and let me tell you, it was a feverish, flailing, fantastically orgasmic neck-and-neck race for the finish line. In no time at all the gap between the two teams were closing - the much-coveted lead that Steve and I had held was disappearing before our very eyes, one leap at a time...

Suddenly we were at the end of the game with the Hotboyz only leading by 30 fragile points. The Final Question was worth a whopping 50 points... Whoever won this last question would win the game and take home the prize of a free trip. Who would steal the gold medal for the last time, and who would go home with their tail between their legs? It literally was anybody's game...

The last question, in a category I don't even remember, was about some 'famous' (let's use that term loosely here) poet. The question was posed, and I had no fuckin' idea what the answer was!!! I looked at Steve and his face was as blank and as white as mine!!! OH NO!!!!!!!!

But, the gods of luck were shining down upon us that fateful afternoon in that tense, nerve-wracking studio...

I looked over to WhoAWe and their faces were just as blank and white and dumb-founded as ours....

NOBODY KNEW THE ANSWER!!!

The hosts prodded and pushed us, desperately anxious for somebody - ANYBODY - to answer the friggin' question, but we all just sat in silence....

And so, by a matter of default on that last question, Team Hotboyz kept their lead and

WON THE GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Steve and I were actually more shocked than we were excited! We honestly did not expect this to happen!! Who would've thought that a couple cocky bastards from Ilsan like ourselves would actually win the game? Not me! WOW!!!

So we both win a trip to Jeju Island, and a chance to come back in 2 weeks to maybe trade the trip up for one to Japan (if we win again!) The only problem with this is that Steve leaves Korea before that time, so most likely this spells the end of Team Hotboyz' unstoppable winning streak. Ahh well. It's disappointing that I'm losing my partner to Mongolia and won't be able to compete again, but it sure was fun while it lasted!

The episode with our magnificent performance will be aired next Friday nation-wide across the whole of Korea and I plan on gathering all my friends together for a big Viewing Party. Steve and I decided not to tell any of our friends in Korea about our win so as to build up anticipation amongst the gang. It's gonna be great fun to watch it all play out on TV!!!!!

Fame and fortune, here I come!

;-)