My Obsession

I have a problem; I am addicted to video contests.

Like most of the things wrong with me, I blame my mother.

It all started last spring when my mom sent me a gChat (yes my mom gChats, isn’t she hip?) that said “This is the perfect job for you” and enclosed a link to a contest website.

She was right; it was the perfect job for me.

Well, kind of. It was an amazing job. Six months living on a vineyard in Northern California getting paid 10 grand a month to keep a written and video blog of wine tastings and picnic spots. Sweet!

How could one acquire such a job? Well the first round was determined by a video submission entry. This was my video:

There were nearly 2,000 videos entered and mine was selected to be part of the top 50. And then there was a phone interview to narrow it down even more. I did the interview and my heart was beating so fast I couldn’t even pay attention to what I was saying. I may or may not have done the whole interview in German. Who knows?

Needless to say I didn’t make it to the next round.

I did get a sweet wine opener and a set of Liar’s Dice though.

I didn’t do a contest for the rest of the year, though I did write a couple of plays.

But I didn’t do any kind of video project. I hadn’t even really thought about one until a couple months ago when I got an email. It was some commercial email and in it was an advertisement for the Cold-Eeze video contest. I told everybody and their mother about it. In case you are a Fraggle, here is that video:

And do you know what happened with that contest? I WON IT! I know right? And do you know what I won? A mystery vacation! I have no idea where or when. But I do know that I am going with like 100 strangers. The best, right?

But even before I had one that contest, the process itself had me hooked like a drug addiction. That set off a seemingly ceaseless creation process that had me and my friends enter 7 different video contests in 8 weeks.

Yea I know, I get kind of obsessive.

In this process I coerced 6 different friends to play roles in these ridiculous videos that dealt with everything from a commercial for going green:

To a commercial for Bar-B-Q sauce:

WHICH I DIDN’T WIN even though the other commercials didn’t make any sense and the narrative structure of the videos didn’t equally relate to the…. Deep breath.

Sorry, sometimes I get indignant when I don’t win enough free meat to feed a Roman army.

Anyway, I realized something. I was doing better in contests where the public didn’t vote. So I said to myself, “Self, No more public votes. We are only doing panel judging from now on.”

And immediately after I came to that conclusion something else happened. I came across a contest where the winner would get 2 business class tickets to anywhere Air Pacific flies. So essentially… Fiji.

And then I had a really good idea for it.

But I had already sworn off public voting videos. What was I to do?

Seeing as I have an iron clad will and fortitude unmatched throughout the land I did what I always do… I caved.

I shot the video.

And I uploaded it hoping that the gods of the contest world would choose it as a finalist…

And they did!

So here it is. I am one of the top 3. The voting only goes until Monday the 10^th. There is no registering. Just click the button for “Video 1” and click “Vote.” There is no personal information, no pets’ names, and no nonsense. It is easy peasy! And please, forward this to as many people as you can. I really want to win this one.

And I promise this will be the last one…

http://www.fijiwater.com/blog/2010/05/vote-two-tickets-paradise-air-pacific-video-contest/

For a while anyway.