All the ugly people to the back

For the last two days I've been attending tapings for a 6-video series on ethics. There were 35-40 of us in the audience, and each of us received some monetary motivation to behave in our seats, and the chance for 10 minutes of PBS fame.

Attempting to get on TV is a one of my pastimes, so when a friend told me about this opportunity, I said sign me up.

When I first got there I met Chuck Coalsin (spelled phonetically because of the power of search engines), a friendly guy. I also recognized another panelist from years of watching the nightly news, and it turned out to be Britt Humme.

Everything was carefully orchestrated including the seating arrangement. We were driven like cattle to different seats; it was interesting to try to figure out how they decided where to put us. They could have saved a lot of time if they had simply announced "all the ugly people to the back." We made it there eventually.

Nonetheless, I did have the chance to get on tape. I quickly realized that a medium-paced head nod at a 15 degree angle made the camera whip in my direction, somewhat like Rebekah's head when she sees a squirrel. Sometimes, he would zoom in for a closeup, and I found out it's hard to act natural when someone's filming your nasal cavities.

The content was interesting; it's tough to talk about ethics because of all the gray areas involved, so in the end we left with more questions than answers. Some of us also left with stomach aches because of the complimentary bags of chips. Groan.