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By Root 831 0

in L.A., anticipating that I wouldn't be able to pay for the tuk-tuk otherwise, the office had thought ahead and given me a wristwatch, to be used for bartering. With Rith's help I exchanged this in the market for thirteen dollars, which for an object with such profound sentimental value doesn't seem like a lot, but by Cambodian standards it's a fortune. I went in with nothing and came out as the new Bill Gates. Flush with cash, I bought a hat with a brim to protect me against the thrashing heat of the sun, as well as some weird sticky rice and bean banana-leaf burrito thing that Rith recommended as a local delicacy but which was disgusting. Ever eaten warm cavity wall insulation? Or laplap straight from the ground? It was like that.

4 How much worse can things get than that? You're a limbless beggar confined to the gutter in Cambodia and now your cup is broken, so the money drops out. Seriously, is there a God? You tell me, because I'm not sure any more.

5 Yes, he was still with us! He followed us around everywhere like a stray dog, mesmerized by the whole TV thing. Try as I might, I couldn't shake the guy off. Indeed, Sir was all for calling the cops—until I discovered he was now doubling as our translator, and I'd be doing the show a disservice if I went out of my way to have him arrested.

6 Before you say it, I know fifteen dollars is more than I made from selling the watch in the market. And yes, I've also bought a hat since then, plus that slimy burrito thing and a tuk-tuk ride, out of the original money, leaving me with about two dollars. “So how can you afford fifteen dollars for an elephant ride now, then?” you're asking. “It doesn't make sense.” To which I would say, “Good point. Well spotted. But this is TV. Let's not ruin it with logic.”

7 Probably.

8 Two hundred and twenty in this area alone. It's all people did in those days, apparently. That, and tear them down again.

11

A Gift from the

Network!

When a reality TV show is set to launch, a whole bunch of extra last-minute duties are piled on the host. One of these, I discovered when it was already too late to wriggle out of it, is called “attending the up-fronts.”

The up-fronts are a blast. Almost every network has them. It's an annual shindig where nervous TV executives, anxious to know whether they'll still have a job in a year, fly to key cities throughout the United States to parade their latest programs before potential advertisers and the press. Of course, left to me it would be a very simple affair indeed. Everyone would receive a DVD in the mail, and maybe a Starbucks voucher for a free latte to prove we're not cheap, and that would be it. If they liked the shows on the DVD, great; if they didn't—pah, screw 'em! And quite honestly, you can't get more up-front than that!

Trouble is, advertisers love junkets. It's their Achilles’ heel. Their financial affections must be wooed, teased out of them. They want glamour, they want to be fêted and plied with free booze and snacks. So, with that end in mind, what in most industries would amount to a routine twenty-minute PowerPoint presentation with a leaflet to take home at the end, gets fleshed out into a splashy two-day bonanza in a big expensive theater filled with TV stars, musical numbers, and skits, anything in fact that might persuade world-weary marketing people to reach for their checkbooks and reserve a bunch of advertising spots “up front.” In other words, before the new season begins.

And so it was with our little effort. Since the series was to be a linchpin of the network's summer schedule, I was sent a first-class ticket to the East Coast and told to break off from whatever I was doing—which happened to be making a TV show; duh—and go peddle my wares like an Edwardian knife grinder at the up-front in New York.

The hotel the network booked me into, the Trump International on Columbus Circle, turned out to be a very classy place indeed. One of those high-end hotels where the staff nannies you and fusses with almost obsessive enthusiasm. For instance, they all remember