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I missed the first half of the show last night because Candyce and I were watching The Hills on Tivo. (More about The Hills later.) Once Spencer moved out of Heidi’s apartment and the show was over, I skipped over to MTV to schedule a recording of the Real World thingy at 10 PM, and what do you know? The show is on right now…at 7 PM Pacific time (duh). After feeling stupid for a half second, I pressed record and Candyce snuggled in close for the main event.

Me on the red carpet at The Real World Awards Bash.
“29 and married” is the new “22 and famous.”

Party Like it’s 1999

We filmed the show a few weeks ago in Los Angeles. I had an absolute blast at that night, despite the fact that I was the only cast member who showed up from RW New Orleans. I was really looking forward to seeing everyone again. All day my heart was giddy with the thought of the seven of us being together for the first time in several years. When I got to the party Jonathan Murray, the creator/owner of show, told me I was the only one from my cast who showed up. I was so disappointed.

It was a rush to spend time with casts from the shows that aired before ours…all the people I met at the 10-year reunion. It was also a blast to be re-united with everyone from The Gauntlet too. I talked to a couple folks from that show and we made peace with our past. It was good to hug and makeup.

The show was filmed in a cool modern house perched on a hilltop in the Hollywood Hills. This made for a glamorous backdrop for the show, but it created many problems. First of all, there was no place to park. The homes are packed on top of each other because Real Estate is so premo. And the steep, winding streets that connect these lux homes are very narrow. So if you lived in LA and wanted to show up whenever you wanted to, you had to have a friend drive you there like a soccer mom and drop you off.

I got there in one of several vans full of out-of-towners that were staying at hotels in the area. It was a lot of fun to be in a van for 45 minutes with 10 other kids from different seasons. Although most of us had never met one another, we had a strong connection because we’ve all been through the same dramas that comes with the show.

Flashing Lights

The red carpet experience was amusing. When you see “red carpet” photos, you usually see glamorous people looking glamorous. If you watch some video footage of the passage over the red carpet, you’ll see that person sparkling from the flashes from cameras. I suppose every red carpet has unique circumstances, but of the handful that I’ve been a part of, it’s never been totally glamorous, especially at this event.

You basically have 100+ people trying to make their way from one end of the carpet to the other. Once you’re on the carpet, you’ll have your picture taken, you’ll be interviewed by lots of people with microphones standing next to people with cameras. You don’t hurry because you want the media to get a good look at you so they will talk about you once the event is over. Everyone uses this same playbook, so the line is slower and longer than at the DMV. But nobody really cared. The people who crossed over the carpet were having fun at their party…the people still waiting for their time to shine had their own party 100 feet away. Good times.

What’s Wrong Here?

It’s hard to write about all of this because there’s so much to say. So I’ll just get to the point. The awards categories were ridiculous and humiliating. The word “honor” is no where near any of these categories:

1. Steamiest scene
2. Person you love to hate
3. Best meltdown
4. Best brush with the law
5. Best fight
6. Best phone call gone bad

I’m not surprised that these were the awards categories, because the show has gotten so raunchy over the years. The early seasons were a creative mix of unique individuals placed in a cool house in a cool city. The content of each show slowly evolved until the ratings spiked with the raunchy drama of RW Hawaii (season 8.)

When they chose people for season 9 (my season), they purposely tried to re-created the essence of the earliest seasons. Our ratings were high, but I suppose they weren’t high enough. Every season after us gets more scandalous than the season before.

I don’t blame Bunim-Murray or MTV for letting the show spiral down like it has. They will tell you that they are a business, and this is the stuff that sells. “We give the viewers what they want.” They’ll explain that MTV is a part of Viacom, a publicly traded company whose share holders expect high returns. So who do you blame? Is it MTV? Is it Viacom? Is it the thousands of Dads around the country who own stock in Viacom but won’t let their kids watch RW? Or should you just blame the stupid kids on the show who make stupid decisions?

I don’t believe that nobody is to blame just because it’s a complicated problem. We are all at fault. We’ve allowed public indignity and self-exploitation to pass as entertainment: pornography, Girls Gone Wild, Jackass, cage fighting, and half of the videos on YouTube. The history books will not judge our society kindly.

You don’t have to look far to know that something is not right here. Two people from The Real World are dead. Frankie from RW San Diego died of cystic fibroses. Pedro from RW San Francisco died of AIDS. When it came time to remember and honor these two souls, how could viewers take their deaths with any sincerity? Can one person be entertained by the raunchy drama of RW for the first hour of the show, then pause for three minutes melodramatic mourning, then flip the switch back to gorging your eyes with the footage of the threesome in a hot tub?

Life Goes On

I was inside saying my goodbyes when I stepped up to the window to see that the two hosts standing on stage reading lines off their Teleprompters into the cameras. Except for a handful of kids waiting for their awards, the only people listening to them were from production crew holding cameras and microphones. It was pitiful.

The irony was inescapable. We were invited to this hilltop in Hollywood to be congratulated for our achievements, yet everyone lost interest before the night was over.

The reality is that each person at that party was a fragile soul. We all know what it’s like to be famous and what it’s like to be ordinary again. We know what it’s like to be humiliated and exalted on national television. We know criticism and praise. We know that this big and exciting thing we are apart of us not as big and as exciting used to think. It’s easy to leave the crowning party when you stopped caring years ago.

Life goes on. People get old.

I love my life. I am blessed. I married the girl of my dreams. Later this year we are going to have a baby, the most miraculous promise that’s ever been made to me. I have never been more excited about a new chapter in my life.

I have to stop traveling at so much. In 2004, I was in the studio 50 hours each week for 52 weeks. That might seem like an unimpressive time sheet for an over-achiever, but consider that I spent 43 of 52 weekends on the road. That’s a lot of work. I am proud of these numbers, but I’m beginning to feel stunted by the grind.

In the three years since I’ve graduated college, I have been in a creative gridlock. I have tremendous creative freedom at lifeteen.com, and I love every pixel of it. I have creative freedom when I travel and speak. So what’s the problem? I have no time or energy to be creative with other projects. I could keep doing this work/travel thing, but I will inevitably keep doing the same thing. I’m ready for something new.

Maybe all kids from “The Real World” deal with this problem–the inability to see beyond the present “good life”. In a society that adores fame and fortune, most people wouldn’t think twice about going on a TV show. You just do it. And that’s what I did. If you have a chance to do another show, you better damn well do it. What could be better?

I meet random people on the street, and they are always ready to tell me who’s on the new Road Rules Challenge. It’s fun for me to hear, because a lot of these people are my friends, and it’s always good to hear what friends are up to. But when you see the same people going back on yet another show, I can’t help but wonder, what are you doing with your life? Will you be doing this when you are 30? 40?

It seems like the Road Rules Challenge has become a career for some people. For other kids from reality shows with no sequels, the thing to do after your show is to travel and speak at universities. This is the ultimate affirmation for someone who’s trying to sort out their identity. When you have a booked speaking schedule, you know that you were cool on television. People like me, they really do! But you’re not just an airhead celebrity, you are smart and eloquent. You are worthy of standing behind the podium at a university, commanding the attention of academia.

And that’s what I’ve done for the past four a half years, and I am ready for something different. After clocking in over 225 talks, I am ready to slow down. That means only two weekends a month. This is a difficult decision, because speaking is a ministry, something I love and share with my whole heart. It’s not just a gig. It is my passion! But, it’s time to have a little faith and stop a good thing.

With two weekends free each month, I can make nomoho.com and kustoms.com into very big websites. On the other two weekends, I’ll travel and speak, and have some cool sites for people to check out when I leave.

Whenever things get crazy in my life, I’m just thankful I’m not dealing with the stress of being on The Real World or the Road Rules Challenge. I supposed in hindsight, going on those shows was fun…or something. It’s just not healthy to live like everything you say and do will be criticized by millions. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be the president.

I am thankful that I can go to sleep at night. In college, I was always up late studying and working on projects. I averaged five hours of sleep a night, and it was miserable. So every time I set my alarm clock for eight, it’s a beautiful day.

I’m thankful that my car works. Through most of my childhood, our family van was always broken. No vacation was complete without a day spent on the side of the Interstate. I feel so confident and proud when I hop in my car and trek 300 miles across the desert to the beach.

You never know what other people are thankful for. My uncle has chromes disease,; and he told me that any day that he is not in pain is the best day of his life. Soldier come back from war, and suddenly being stuck in traffic isn’t that bad. For some people, it’s a thrill that their hand works again, so using a pencil or throwing a baseball is a thrill.

Candyce and I pray each night, and we’ve made sure to share things that we are thankful for. At first we were thankful things in our life, then we started to be thankful for random things. Candyce is always thankful for her eyesight. I thought this was a little goofy at first, but if you think about how your life would change if you went blind, you quickly become grateful.

My brother thinks he is losing his hair. He’s in his early 20s and it’s freaking him out. I don’t think he’s really losing that much, but one hair is too much. He thinks its because he stresses out to much. So today I recommitted myself to a stress-free life. I like my hair and want to keep it. But it’s more than that.

The Bible says that worrying is useless because it ruins today, and it doesn’t change anything. It never adds a day to your life. So worrying does absolutely no good. Even if I do go bald, that’s no big deal. When I think about kids with cancer, they are bald and they could also die. I could be bald and live.

I’ve thought a lot about my image this since I’ve been on The Real World. In high school, I learned to be confident with myself and accept who I am. But I went on a huge show on MTV, there are millions of people who pick me a part. Most people grow up and out of that drama, but I’ve been smothered by it for the last four years. Again, I learn to be confident with myself and accept who I am.

But it was hard to go on the Road Rules Challenge and be compared to the other cast members. The show forced us to be very critical of each other so we could decide who deserved getting voted off. So everyday, my physical strength, personality, leadership, and charm was being measured against a dozen very impressive people. We all woke up each morning wondering, “Am I valuable to these people? What am I worth to them?” It’s not fun.

You can spend your whole life trying to change who you are. People spend billions of dollars each year trying to feel better about themselves. It seems like we can never get enough. There’s always someone we can compare ourselves to, someone who’s better at something. At what point are we happy? It’s not enough to be talented, funny, good looking, and successful. You wonder why you can’t be smart and charming too.

People always admire someone with a good self-esteem. Young people need to know that everyone can have a good self-esteem, not just people with pretty body parts. So through it all, I just have to be thankful for how God made me. He didn’t make any mistake when he made me. (Or you.)

I am more at peace now that the whole Real World thing has smoothed out. I put a lot of pressure on myself during and after the show to do the right thing and to make something happen. I was in a tizzy trying not to screw the whole thing up. It’s been a long few years.

We lived in a house that was a televisions studio. We woke up each morning knowing our day would become entertainment for thirteen to thirty-five year olds. For better not worse, all that is done now. The episodes will continue to rerun, and I can relive the success of five months of my life.

But the reality of my life is what I do each day, not what I did.

“The race is long, and in the end, it is only with yourself.” I’ve written another journal entry about those words of wisdom. When we get stuck in cliques, rivalry is the only way to announce yourself to your small world.

In the bustle and glitz of the Real World experience, I felt frustrated because so much of me was wasting away. I am a designer and a painter a writer. –But that doesn’t matter now. Smile for the camera.

I was flying to Philadelphia my freshman year of college and read an article about Tony Bennett. I’d been a big fan of Tony, and was interested to learn more about the guy. He spoke about being an entertainer, but all he wanted to talk about was being painting. His work was colorful and expressive.