Ihave the easiest job in the world. For two minutes each week, I review movies for The X Show. Yeah, when I first heard the name I thought porno, too. But the truth is, The X Show is a cable TV-grade production -- one of those "guy" programs invading the airwaves, and I jumped at the chance to have a regular TV gig. "Hell," I told the producers, "I'll do pretty much anything except for anal."
Now, I have to admit that I do the least amount of work on the show -- see a few movies (for free), write two minutes of material and read off the prompter. Simple. But until now I've been a writer, not an "on-air talent" guy. So for the first time I have to be concerned with trivial things, like how I look. This becomes even more of a concern once you get a look at the bevy of beautiful babes that appear daily on the show. They are all drop-dead, jaw-droppingly gorgeous. And the worst part is they are always around. Always. I'm constantly surrounded by perfect, tight asses and every size of boob imaginable. It's torture. What's worse is that the studio is always kept at a bone-chilling 60 degrees -- all in the interest of keeping our girls with constant THOs (That's Titty Hard Ons, for those unfamiliar with the term.) On more than a few occasions I have been innocently speared by nippleage. My elbows have never been happier.
Facing the dangers of freezing nipples on a daily basis are The X Show hosts Mark DeCarlo, Derick Alexander, Justin Walker and John Webber. Sure, they make it look easy, but here's what a typical day looks like: A 7:30 a.m. call time, into hair and make up and taping until noon, then after-lunch rehearsal for the next day's show until about 6 p.m. Suffering through legions of hot chicks -- day in and day out.
Meet the Guys
Mark DeCarlo is the veteran, the mentor, the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the group, having gained so much experience on the infamous Studs television show. DeCarlo admits he's never actually made the 7:30 call time. "It's as close to just hanging out in somebody's house as you can get, I think."
DeCarlo is also a guy's guy -- he comes fully equipped with the kind of knowledge all guys should know, and he spouts it like it's in his genes: Everything from how to win a bar fight to how to correctly tip a stripper. Luckily, he has a very understanding girlfriend. "The funny thing is, I'll talk to her at the end of the day, she'll go 'what did you guys do today?' and for the life of me I cannot remember." After quizzing DeCarlo further, I realize that he's telling truth -- each day is a blur of boobs.
Derick Alexander is no stranger to beautiful women. He grew up with two sisters who are both cheerleaders for the Oakland Raiders. It's Alexander's smooth talk with the ladies that landed him the dream job talking to them for a living. Alexander plays it slick on the set, but he's very close to his family, including his grandmother Eula Mae, who watches her boy on TV.
Justin Walker, an actor who co-starred with Alicia Silverstone in the movie Clueless, seems to be the "go-to" guy when it comes to advice on women. On one segment about how to kiss, Walker was forced to lock lips in the interest of passing knowledge on to the viewing audience. "That was hot," Walker recalls. "Jessica, that was Jessica of Perfect Ten magazine. She is by far the hottest model we have on the show."
With such an array of half-naked women on the set on a daily basis, something is bound to happen that just can't air, even on cable. The show features a popular pageant each week in which women model men's clothing, underthings, lawn mowers, whatever. It's inevitable that, well, accidents happen. Walker elaborates, "I would have to say that on at least a couple of occasions during our 'girls in guys' segments there has been a little extra nippy-flashing that was conveniently edited out."
John Webber, the only married man among the hosts, faces his own set of challenges. "You know, my ten years of monogamy with my wife have been a piece of cake, a walk in the park compared to the last two months of hell!"
Webber readily admits that his life before The X Show included a healthy dose of daily self-pleasuring. "My 'self-reliance' normally would take place in the private hours at the end of the day. However, I've got to get up really early for this job so I go to bed really early when my wife does, giving me a witness. Combine that with the fact that women from the pages of adult magazines and from adult films, the women whose jobs are to be hotties, are marching around me at every given moment. That is a killer combination … I'm ready to explode!"
How does Webber's wife deal with her ability to basically turn on the tube and point a spy cam at her husband's work? "I'm kind of disappointed by this," he admits. "We were doing a health sequence and when I tried to reassure her, 'Okay, I was looking at that girl's butt, but we had to because we're trying to tell if that beauty mark on her butt was, you know, melanoma that needed to be looked at by a doctor.' The whole time she's going, 'You don't have to explain, you don't have to explain.'"
Webber puts the show in perspective, "Men are hunters, men are gatherers, men want to go out and gather the biggest herd of women they possibly can. That's prehistoric man at work. Whereas women are shoppers."
One thing to remember is that the women on the show are human. They come with all the same flaws we all do -- except for the fact that they are all incredibly hot. This fact was never clearer than when I entered the bathroom after one of the models had clearly taken a dump. The thought of this stunning angel in the midst of this very human act somehow reminded me of some strange German videos I have tucked away in my collection. But it drove home the point that The X Show is a job. The women are hot but human, and everybody's shit stinks. Even a model's.
Chris Gore is the editor of Film Threat and can be seen Thursday nights on The X Show on the FX Network. When he is not reviewing movies, he solves baffling crimes as the costumed vigilante The Weasel.