Hanging with McCain

Did you know that I had a short-lived TV show in college?

We called it "Cody's Cookie Time", and Will, Paddy, and I all collaborated on it during our freshman year. It was sort of a variety show, where we did a bunch of different stuff with me serving as the host. Campus TV has a pretty low bar already set for it, and we glided under it week after week.

We didn't have any money, we didn't put much time into it, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but people actually did watch the show. I attribute that to one thing: Will's graphic skills. Any segment we did where Will made some graphics always blew everything else out of the water completely; I'm certain that people watched the show on mute, just to see the awesome graphics. I remember one of those graphical segments well.

During the 2000 primaries, John McCain was making quite a run at George W. Bush. I was minorly obsessed with him during that period. Around this time, we started thinking that it'd be kind of funny if we did a photo essay where John McCain showed up at Trinity and I showed him around campus.

There were a few pictures of us in the dorm, the library, the cafeteria. There was a picture of me and McCain working on my homework. Then I explained that McCain and I really hit it off, so we decided to vacation together for the weekend. Then we showed pictures of me and McCain in our bathing suits at the beach, and another shot of us snow skiing. I'm telling you, the Secret Service themselves would've looked at those images and thought that McCain and I were on the bunny trail.

After those pics, I said that unfortunately, John and I got into a big argument at the beach. The next picture had me punching John McCain's head off in front of Will's dorm room. There was blood and body parts all over the parts: a veritable political explosion. People loved it.

We only did a couple of really good shows, but hanging at the beach with McCain was one of the best. In retrospect, we definitely should've done more of these. Anyway, I'm thankful to say now that the Secret Service never got involved and I did end up getting an autograph request solely based on that one segment.

We had another recurring segment called "Who Wants to Win a Jar of Taco Sauce?", where we did a Regis Philbin/Millionaire sort of thing. If I can find any of those images, you can expect a lengthy, lengthy entry. That was the best game show I've ever seen centered around a big jar of taco sauce purchased at Big Lots.

Posted by Cody at October 16, 2007 8:36 PM