This weekend I caught a marathon of the new WB show, Beauty and the Geek. I'd heard about the show before. It's the new thing that Ashton Kutcher came up with. The idea is they pair up hot girls with nerdy guys and make them compete to not get voted off and ultimately win money in classic reality TV style. When I first heard about it I thought it was going to be really shallow and crappy. When I watched it though it wasn't as bad as I had thought. There were definately clashes where the girls and the guys weren't used to each other's worlds. Overall they ended up getting along better than they had thought they would and the people leaving the show really did seem to have learned something.

The whole brains tradeoff for beauty thing isn't as balanced as they'd like you to believe. The guys are trying to learn things like massage, women's fashion, and asking for girls' numbers. Theses are things that are very hard for them on an emotional level but things they'd like to improve. They had the women doing math, car repair, and "rocket science". It really wasn't that hard, even for them, and it wasn't like they cared. I don't think they were really learning anything or improving. They did benefit from hanging out with the guys.

Anyway, I was thinking about going on the show. I've thought about going on reality TV before. I watch Survivor a lot recently and I always think, "what would I do in that situation". I like the idea of actually playing the game. Showing what I could do in those challenges (I'd be good at any that involve staying under water a long time). I think of myself as pretty strategic and diplomatic, so I might fare ok at the politics as well. Finally, I'd like to see how I do in that environment, lighting fires, sleeping outside, climbing trees, cutting coconuts. Ultimately I think I'd have food or rain related problems. Anyway, I was thinking now about Beauty and the Geek because I think I could do well and that I'd learn something, $250K or not. I am a nerd. I identify a lot with some of the issues some of the guys had. When it said Richard had only kissed 1 girl, well I'm not as nerdy as him, but I also have only kissed 1 girl. The things they had to do were genuinly scary to me. The fact that I might hate them is why I want to do them. More of my "Doing the thing that is hard" philosophy. I know I'd try hard because I need to do something. Moreover, I think I'd do well because I try to think of myself as balanced. I'm working on not being so nerdy and in some aspects I've made some progress, which would help, as I work on the others. The real issue is do I dare go on TV. I'm just afraid that you can't get away with the same stuff if you have been seen on TV. Anything I might have done wrong people, strangers that know secrets about me that I thought didn't matter, they might come out. Who knows what would be revealed. Maybe that's stupid but it's a fear of mine.