You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers… I think…

I got a phone call from the WB’s publicist earlier last week—she told me that I’m not supposed to talk about anything until some undisclosed length of time that I couldn’t tell you even if I knew. (Curses! Foiled again!)

Still, I should at least be allowed to provide some inside info once the series is over, so here’s my plan: I’m going to jot down a little summary after each episode plays on TV. If you’ve got questions that I might be able to answer, write them in the comments section of that entry. Once everything’s done and I can spill my guts to all my faithful readers (and those of you who stumbled upon this site looking for naked pictures of Ashton Kutcher as well), I’ll fill in the blanks to the best of my ability.

Hope you enjoy watching Beauty and the Geek! (I hope I do, too.)

What else is there to do on a desert isle?

On a group of beautiful deserted tropical islands in the middle of nowhere, the following people are suddenly stranded by, as you might expect, a shipwreck:

    2 Italian men and 1 Italian woman
    2 French men and 1 French woman
    2 German men and 1 German woman
    2 Greek men and 1 Greek woman
    2 English men and 1 English woman
    2 Bulgarian men and 1 Bulgarian woman
    2 Japanese men and 1 Japanese woman
    2 Chinese men and 1 Chinese woman
    2 American men and 1 American woman
    2 Irish men and 1 Irish woman

One month later on these same absolutely, stunningly beautiful desert (and deserted) islands in the middle of nowhere, the following things have occurred:

One Italian man killed the other Italian man for the Italian woman.

The 2 French men and the French woman are living happily together in a menage-a-trois.

The 2 German men have a strict weekly schedule of alternating visits with the German woman.

The 2 Greek men are sleeping with each other and the Greek woman is cleaning and cooking for them.

The 2 English men are waiting for someone to introduce them to the English woman.

The 2 Bulgarian men took one look at the endless ocean, another long look at the Bulgarian woman, and started swimming…

The 2 Japanese men faxed Tokyo and are awaiting instructions.

The 2 Chinese men have set up a pharmacy, a liquor store, a restaurant, and a Laundromat and got the Chinese woman pregnant in order to supply employees for the store.

The 2 American men are contemplating the virtues of suicide because the American woman keeps endlessly complaining about her body, the true nature of feminism, how she can do everything they can do, the necessity of fulfillment, the equal division of household chores, how sand and palm trees make her look fat, how her last boyfriend respected her opinion and treated her nicer than they do, how her relationship with her mother is improving, and at least the taxes are low, and it isn’t raining….

The 2 Irish men have divided the Island into North and South and set up a distillery. They do not remember if sex is in the picture, because it gets sort of foggy after the first few liters of coconut whiskey. But they are satisfied because at least the English aren’t having any fun.

Define “provocative”

Beauty and the Geek ads have been popping up all over the place. They’re on the WB website, of course, but I’m starting to find them at the top of my “My Yahoo!” page when I log onto the Internet, too. The ones I usually see are a picture of a woman (at chest level, as would be expected) wearing a pink bikini top with some black horn-rimmed glasses hanging down the middle. I enjoy the view myself, but I just discovered that the promotions people developed an alternative banner that’s… not as popular within the media.

According to the New York Post (as summarized by some other website), “ads for an upcoming reality TV series, Beauty and the Geek on the WB network, were rejected by two weekly magazines at Time Inc.—People and Entertainment Weekly—apparently because they were too sexy and provocative.” I don’t understand why they’d think that…

Too sexy and provocative?

Someone loves me!

I was using Google again to check out the buzz on the Internet and found a website called LiveJournal.com where someone had started a discussion about Beauty and the Geek. While the masses didn’t seem impressed with the beauties, well, this quote made me smile:

Can I have those geeks, PLEEEEEEEASE!!?? Shawn looks yummy. :)))

The rise before the fall

The Gen-X Mensa group was meeting for dinner tonight, but I missed a change in the street address (Cleveland Avenue South instead of North). Consequently, I showed up at the restaurant a couple minutes late to find a pretty large group already sitting around the table.

“Shawn, we were just talking about you.” Normally, hearing that sentence would be a prelude to bad news—you’ve been fired, your parents found your stash of [insert illicit item(s) here], you’re the father. In this case, it was about Beauty and the Geek.

I’m not sure how I feel about the attention. Okay, that’s a lie—I enjoy the attention. (Part of the reason I ended up on the show in the first place was because I was on the outskirts of attention unless “we were just talking about you.”) I think it’s just because I’m unsure about the aftermath. Or the during-math, for that matter.

Garnering so much attention from others is like getting a massive dose of endorphins—SUPER EGO BOOST! (Technically, the endorphins create happy feelings more than anything else, but so do handjobs… hoo boy. Take that analogy in as many directions as far as they can go and you won’t be able to sleep tonight. Well, maybe the endorph—NEVER MIND!)

But my point was about SUPER EGO BOOST! I’m special, I’m important, yee-haw! And soon the show will play on the air. Will these happy feelings stick around or will my ego shrivel up like a prune? Will I still be pumped up or will it feel like someone slashed my emotional tires? What will “Shawn, we were just talking about you” mean? Just to be save, I better go hide my stash somewhere else…