Fever Pitch

A very interesting thing happened to me once. I went to the mall to eat some food-court Chinese food, when i was stopped by a woman asking me if I'd like to participate in a marketing survey for three movies that were coming out on DVD. She offered me some meaningless trinkets for my time, and it being Saturday afternoon with nothing to do, I accepted. I was led into an office that was to the side of the food court, where a middle-aged man named Frank greeted me.

I was shown the DVD covers of three as-yet-unreleased-to-DVD movies: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, The Longest Yard, and Fever Pitch. I was asked if I had seen any of these movies, to which I replied that I had seen the first two, but not the third. This, of course, was a lie, as I had NOT seen any of the movies...I just wanted to see where this was going. This is where things got interesting.

I was shown the trailer for Fever Pitch three times in a row, after which I was asked some questions about what I thought. For those of you who don't know, Fever Pitch is a worthless romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon, about a hardcore Boston Red Sox fan and the girl trying to woo him. Each time Frank played the trailer on the little TV I had to watch, I felt brain cells dying; I could actually hear my brain cells commit suicide as they ran down my ear canal and jumped out of my ear, splatting on my shoulder.

I was asked such insightful questions as:

• After watching this trailer, would I be inclined to purchase this movie?
• What are my feelings about Drew Barrymore / Jimmy Fallon ?
• Am I a Boston Red Sox or baseball fan?
• How do I feel about Drew Barrymore?
• Do I own a VCR / DVD player?

Basically, it was an absolute waste of my time. Once I found out what I had gotten myself into, I proceeded to sabotage their survey with untruthful answers. I told them that, as a gay man, I absolutely would buy this movie just for Jimmy Fallon, that he is extremely popular in the gay community. I told them that fans of the New York Yankees were already organizing a boycott against this movie, for picking the Red Sox as the backstory for the movie, since the Red Sox is a totally unworthy team to be featured. I told them that the trailer was "edited too fast" and that I couldn't remember anything about it, and that might not play well to their demographic of completely brain-dead teenage girls who can barely remember who they had sex with last week, much less the contents of this vapid advertisement.

By the end of this excercise in marketing, Frank just wanted me to get the hell out of his office. I told him that he had really nice teeth, and that I wish him luck in conducting his surveys.

In case you were wondering, No, I am not at all gay.