For those of you out of the proverbial loop, I’m in lovely (read: freezing) Austin, Texas right now. The ostensible reason for the trip was to try out of VH1’s World Series of Pop Culture, but I also have a friend who lives here and I’d never been to Austin. Now that I think about it, I actually haven’t been to any part of Texas at all, unless you count the airports in Ft. Worth and Houston.

Things started out well, as I was on a plane to Phoenix with the UCLA softball team. Now, seeing this immediately made me re-think all my preconceived notions about lesbians, fatties and high school softball players. Talk about a major paradigm shift. Of course, as I was waiting to get on the plane to take me from Phoenix to Austin, the Northwestern softball team disembarked.

I immediately realized that the phrase “the exception that proves the rule” isn’t just something that old people say to annoy you when they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Softball teams aside, I made it to Texas safely. As I’m sure you know, they say everything is bigger in Texas. I guess we’ll see when the show actually airs, but from a cursory look around at the other people in our “audition”, it would seem to be the case. Apparently no one believes in exercise here. Or if they do, it somehow involves jogging to the bacon store or something. Or, perhaps, Los Angeles has screwed with my tub-o-meter. Either way, it was surprising — but wonderfully refreshing! — to see that Jeffy, Lacey and I were easily the most attractive people in the room.

(A word — no pun intended — on nomenclature: When I first told people I created a team and was going to try to be on the show, I used the normal term for that sort of thing: “try out”. As in, “Oh, I’m going to Austin. We’ve got a ‘try out’ for the World Series of Pop Culture”. It seemed to be an apropos term. I assumed some sort of meritocracy was in effect here. The more I thought — and read — about the process, the more I realized that probably wasn’t the case. Hence usage of the word “audition”. I guess in reality it’s a little of both, and obviously only the producers know for sure, but it still seemed more like an audition than a try out.)

So, with that process reaching its anticlimactic conclusion, it’s time to see what the lone star state has to offer. If nothing else, I’ve already gotten good mileage out of asking people, where, exactly, in Austin the “Sam Houston Institute of Technology” is located. So I have that, as the man says, going for me.  Which is nice.

Hopefully we’ll have a lovely evening seeing downtown Austin, getting drunk, and wondering why we don’t give the whole damn state back to Mexico.