Humiliation at It's Best
I have betrayed the god of coolness, I deserve to be punished! I would consider myself jologs, on occasion though, not frequently. But now I believe I journeyed beyond the jologs line, where no jolog has ever been before. Call me shallow, call me corny, I DON'T CARE!
The incident started with a simple call from my friend Vernice. Innocent, welcoming, exciting. She told me that her mom chose 5 people from my school including me to appear on-air, rather, to participate in a dance contest. Wow! I was flattered although not surprised 'cause I know I dance well. She told me the competition was to be held at the ABS CBN studios. With that given, a couple of things ran through my mind. One, I couldn't picture myself competing in those silly TV dance competitions with opponents having different jologial characteristics such as the usual anak-araw colored hair and over-sized hip-hop jogging pants. No. I was better than that. But Vernice is everything to me. She is a dear friend and I love her. Besides, she said there was no competition between us and those who would audition too. We were FAR better she assured me. Well then, with that given, it wasn't that difficult to agree. Ok. A trade of when, where and how soon began. We were off to the ABS CBN studios.
The day started off excessively early. I was still tired and deprived of sleep from our ONE NIGHT practice. Only ONE NIGHT. No polishing, no mistake pointing of steps, just ONE NIGHT. The practice was uber lame. I knew from the start that we wouldn't win but who the hell cares? Lets just do this for experience. Meeting place was in Vernice's house. I was LATE as usual. They all expected me to be. We headed off to ABS. They made us wait for, let me see, about 5 hours? With nothing to do but to gawk and stare at the passing celebrities. Celebrity hunting is not my thing, believe me. Nothing too special about them but appearing on TV. We're all people. You're no special than those janitors who you pass by and eye-roll along the ABS hallways. Anyway, enough of the artista hatred, where was I? Ok. We were off to the studios. A middle-aged man met us along a never-ending hallway studded with gigantic doors providing entrance to numerous studios. The man asked us for our troupe name. We all paniked. To make matters worse, someone shouted, "STARS! We're the STARS from ROSARIO, PASIG!" I'm really not quite sure who made this unforgivable mistake. STARS was too lame for a dance troupe name. TOO LAME. I cannot be known worldwide with a dance troupe named STARS. I just can't. I still have my dignity you know? Fine, it's only a name, at least we dance well! Inside the studio were A LOT of people. I mean a lot. I started to feel my heart beat. I'm usually not embarrassed when about to perform on stage. These people were professionals. They were psyched up, in COSTUME (which we didn't know we needed), and ready to go. The group names were called. Named ranging from "SUMISID" which was a group dressed in swimsuits and VHOYZ ATTRACTION (over accentuated version of Boy's Attraction, ARGH!), an over jologs group composed of, umm, jologs with leather jackets and anak-araw hair.
First group was on and man were they good! They threw like almost 1500 degree frontflips and backflips in the air and they did it without effort! Right then and there I was ready to backout. We were good but not THAT good! These people know what they're doing and clearly we didn't know what we were! I wanted to back out but it was too late. Our name was called, "STARS FROM ROSARIO PASIG!". I wanted to curl and make like a tree from embarrassment. We approached the stage with a seemingly plastic cheerleader smile on our faces. The music played. I didn't know what I was doing. I made mistakes. HUGE ONES. One you'll never forget even after a year. Our dance consisted of only 3 different 8-count steps repeated 3 times and then finished. T'was too lame. A camera was present for later reviewing of the judges. I just wanted to finish this hell then move on with my life. There were no more dance steps left but the music played on. We weren't really supposed to finish the dance. The judges had disgust written all over their faces. "Tapos na kayo?" they said. We agreed. Off the stage we go with our heads down. I have never been so humiliated before in my life. Count this as my most embarrassing experience. A form will be given to those who impressed the judges. They will be appearing on TV for the first competition. The audition continued with each group seemingly better than the last. The competition ended after all the groups performed. One by one accepted groups were called unto the stage until none but four groups were left sitting on the audience chairs, INCLUDING US. The winners stared at us and grinned. I wanted to die. Hit myself with a chair or something, I DONT CARE!
I will never go through that hell again ever. I was lucky we didn't get accepted. The competition had JOLOGS tagged on it. Sorry the story got too long. I just had to stress each situation.
