Chinese gong."
"If you can find one, I'll authorize the expense," I said, sliding another DVD into the machine. "Mario from Colorado."
I reached for another slice of pizza as I heard the disc whirring in the machine.
I didn't hear anyone call for a gong.
"Hello there, Mario," said Jillian, with a little lust in her voice.
The monitor was filled with a lean, rugged face that sported dark brown hair and eyes to match. The man's voice was pure dark silk pouring from his mouth, a deep baritone you wouldn't expect from someone under thirty. Kind of a Sylvester Stallone type, without the accent.
"No gongs?" I asked.
"He's a possible," said Jillian. "What's his story?"
I glanced at his resume. "Three years anchoring in middle-of-nowhere Colorado."
"Put him in a box," said Rica.
"Which one?" asked Neely.
"I think he goes under doable," said Rica.
"Agreed," said Jillian.
I slid the tape down the table. Neely grabbed it and gently put it in the appropriate box.
Rica turned toward Neely. "Would you explain exponentially cute again?" she asked, as I popped another DVD in the machine. "I'm still a little confused."
"It's a guy who is beyond cute," said Neely, sipping her beer. "Cute to the tenth power. Not scorching hot, but incredibly good looking with an underlying boy-next-door appeal. If the boy next door regularly showed up in your bedroom wearing a Chippendales outfit, carrying two cans of Reddi-wip and a riding crop."
"And hot damn is the same as scorching hot?" asked Jillian.
Neely nodded. "One and the same. Top of the line."
"Michael from California is next," I yelled, trying to bring order.
A blonde, blue-eyed anchor in a pastel suit filled the screen. He looked more suited to a surfboard than to a news desk.
"Eh, doable," said Rica.
"I was thinking exponentially cute," said Neely.
"Doable," said Rica and Jillian in unison, as I slid the tape the length of the table.
"Let's see if we can get two in a row," said Jillian.
"Say hello to Bill from Bristol, Tennessee," I said, as the tape rolled.
"Good face for radio," said Rica, about two seconds into the tape.
"Bless his little heart," cracked Jillian, getting into the Southern spirit of things.
"Edward from Florida," I said. The screen filled with an extremely tall, extremely skinny man.
"Looks like an advance man for a famine," said Neely. "Gong."
Twenty tapes later (including one which featured co-anchors that left some doubt as to which was the man and which was the woman and was followed by Neely's tomahawk jam of it into the dumpster) I finally popped in a tape and watched a glob of pizza almost fall out of Rica's mouth.
"Whoa," said Rica.
Twenty-seven-year-old Vance Hiller's face jumped off the screen and grabbed our undivided attention. With no anchoring experience, the tape featured the reporter out doing a variety of stories in the field, one of which included him in a pair of tight running shorts that revealed tan, sinewy legs. Tall, slender but well built, nearly black hair and piercing sea-foam green eyes which peered out of a face that was all angles and planes.
"Is he real or computer generated?" asked Jillian.
"Really, it looks like someone designed him," said Neely. "He's a virtual reporter. But I wouldn't mind checking his virtual references."
"Gongs?" I asked. (Kidding of course.)
"You outta your friggin' mind?" said Rica.
I slid the DVD down to Neely and she placed it in the "hot damn" box without any argument. She patted the box's first occupant for good measure.
By eleven thirty we'd gone through more than four hundred resume tapes, two large pizzas, two six packs of beer, and had seen Neely toss tapes into the dumpster with incredible flair. (We all agreed her jump shot was impressive, but the behind-the-back swish into the trash with an anchor from West Virginia could have been a hit on YouTube.)
"Done," I said, plopping down in the chair. The dumpster at the end of the room was overflowing with DVDs and VHS tapes.
"So where do we stand?" asked Jillian. "What's the grand total of the guys who are left?"
Neely looked through each box and began counting. "There are half a dozen hot damns… four exponentially cutes…. and twenty who were considered doable."
(It should be noted there would have been twenty-one doables but Neely unceremoniously dumped the first surfer dude when she found another California anchor she liked better.)
"So," said Jillian, "Where do we go from here?"
"Fly them all in as soon as possible and get rolling on the interviews," I said.
"Hang on a minute, guys," said Neely. "I'm a little concerned."
"About what?" asked Jillian.
Neely picked up a DVD from the doable box and held it up. "There is a great deal of quality that separates the hot damns and the exponentially cutes from the doables," she said. "If I know I can have someone from the first two boxes, I don't really want anything from the other box."
"You know, she's got a point," said Rica. "If I'm stuck in the Peoria airport, then a doable is… well, doable. But if there's lobster on the buffet, I sure as hell ain't eatin' tuna salad."
Jillian nodded. "So if I've got this straight, we should ditch the doable box or our viewers will be stuck eating tuna fish instead of fantasizing about someone who is exponentially cute."
"I'm not even gonna try to figure that out," I said. "So just dump the box."
Neely took the box and sent twenty careers careening into the dumpster.
Which left us with ten guys we really liked.
To fill twelve slots.
Do the math.
We're hittin' the streets.
* * *
"I heard you had a gong show last night."
I looked up and saw that my first visitor of the morning was Scott Harry, who was standing in my doorway, hands in pockets. What a surprise, he didn't look happy. "Hi, Scott. What can I do for you?"
(Oh, by the way, gong shows are no secrets among
