Behind the Birthday Dares

Many thanks to the talented Kevin for joining me on SecondHand Radio last Thursday night. If you missed the show you can download it either on the Talkshoe page or at iTunes. I’ll be announcing this week’s guest in the next day or so.

So, the Birthday Dares. Thank God they’re over. Don’t get me wrong, they’re tons of fun, but they require a lot of planning. And the video editing? Let’s just say I’m far from well-versed in that neck of the woods. Each one takes hours.

I thought I’d talk a little bit about some of the behind-the-scenes stuff for each video.

Dare #1: Diet Coke and Mentos

After my first experiment two years ago, drinking Coke Blak and eating two packets of Pop Rocks, this dare seemed a natural follow-up. We’ve all seen the infamous Diet Coke and Mentos fountains on Youtube, so the possibility of my head exploding on video was too good to pass up. In retrospect, perhaps I should have scheduled this dare for last, just in case I DID die. Oh well.

I had to go to three different stores to find regular ol’ Mentos. Weird…the first two had sugar free Mentos but none of the regular ones. Since I’d never even tried Mentos before, I was afraid that the sugar free version wouldn’t have the same effect as the regular kind when exposed to Diet Coke. Finally found the Mentos at a corner store.

As it turns out, there wasn’t nearly the type of reaction I was hoping for. I was thinking at the very least I’d have foam shooting out my ears and eyes, but no. It was pretty tame, actually. Yeah, there was some foaming, but not explosive in any way. Maybe I should have chewed and swallowed the Mentos and THEN drank some Diet Coke. I thought about it, but was worried that it’d be something I couldn’t take back. My version was safer, since I could easily spit everything out.

Dare #2: Adult Diaper

I filmed this dare BEFORE Dare #1. Actually, the first FOUR dares were all filmed on the same day, my actual birthday, September 18.

I sprung this on my Mom at kind of the last minute, worried she wouldn’t help me out with it. She did the camera work for both of the first two dares. As it turns out, she was rather nonplussed about it. I think the exact words were something along the lines of “Of course you want to ride through Burger King in a diaper.” I guess that means she’s getting used to my crazy stunts, though she really wishes I’d quit showing my dick to the world.

Had to film the garage-door opening scene twice…once before we set out for Burger King, and then again after we got back. I downloaded all the films from the camera to my laptop after we got back home (and I had changed into clothes again) and noticed that the garage door opening scene hadn’t filmed. So…back into the diaper, back outside – fortunately, no one was outside other than Mom and I – and refilmed.

My mom doesn’t think she’s funny, which is what makes her all the more funny. And if you notice during the drive-through sequence, the Burger King employee doesn’t react in the least little bit, even though it’s almost a certainty she had to have seen what I was wearing. Mom was sitting beside me, trying NOT to film the woman in the window…”You can’t film her without her permission.” Bah, legalities. That only applies if you’re planning on  putting someone on television or in movies. That’s what I say, anyway. It’s not like I walk around with film releases in my pocket.

I have to say the whole diaper thing? Wasn’t as comfortable as I imagined. I mean, if I actually had to wear those under my clothes? Wouldn’t feel very good.

Dare #3: Hair and Dare #4: Back

I drove up to Orlando to Britt’s place Thursday afternoon, knowing full well what my next two dares were going to be. I picked up the hair dye the day before…the back waxing stuff (for Dare 4) I bought just before hitting the road for Orlando.

When I initially emailed Britt about helping me with the hair thing, I could almost hear her screaming a resounding “Yes! Yes! Yes!” I kept the other dare under my hat, so to speak, until I showed up on her doorstep. Naturally, I swore her to secrecy.

We filmed both Dare #3 and Dare #4 simultaneously. We started with the hair dye, of course. And while that was sitting there, burning my scalp (and my eyes), we moved on to the back waxing. We had to do both at the same time because we started around 9pm and I had SecondHand Radio to do at 10pm. Since the hair dye had to be left in for 45 minutes, it was pretty easy to do. I just split the video into two parts.

It was difficult editing these two videos down to under 10 minutes. There was a lot of funny stuff, mostly Britt and Adam laughing their asses off at my expense. 10 minutes is the limit for Youtube video, so that’s why I had to get it down under that time.

I honestly thought Britt was going to pee herself during the backwaxing part. Foreseeing that, I made sure I went to the bathroom before the dares. I knew I’d probably be laughing my ass off, too. And I did, in between the screams.

Originally, I was going to do a similar but different dare…getting my legs waxed. But that would have taken far too much time. Thank God we didn’t do that one. The small section of my back was bad enough. Having both legs done? I shudder at the thought.

Dare #5: I Kissed a Girl

This was, naturally, the hardest of all the videos to edit. Getting the lipsyncing in sync with the actual music was a bitch for my amateur skillset. My original vision for this would have been phenomenal. I imagined shooting the video at Britt’s place, dressing in a wig and dress and all that. Britt would have been in it, maybe another female friend. Then, for the last verse, I wanted Adam to come in wearing a wig and dress. We would have done a slinky dance together and then, at the very last moment, kissed.

But Adam said no. I begged, I pleaded, I did everything short of blowing him. Not that I was looking forward to kissing Adam. Ugh. But for the video? It would have gone VIRAL.

So I had to reenvision the video. It took time to think of what I wanted. I nearly went to a local bar to ask them and all their hot waitresses to star in it with me, but chickened out. Instead, I asked my friend, Mindy, to help out and she agreed in a heartbeat. She’d laughed like crazy at the first 4 dares and was happy to help. I also wanted to get her hottie next door neighbor, but her schedule didn’t permit it.

It was a  good thing Mindy had the little skirt because none of her dresses – or her daughter’s – would have fit me. I set up my web cam on one chair and my digital cam in the other corner of her living room and had no freaking idea my kibbles and bits were showing until I was uploading the finished video to Youtube. And that’s not the first time I’ve unintentionally showed myself online.

The inadvertent flashing happens more than just on the couch. You can also see a quickie while I was on her bed during the bridge. And who was filming that? Mindy’s daughter, Maddie. She’s 11 or 12, I think. So yeah, very decent. Not embarrassing in the least.

All in all, I’m very pleased with this year’s dares. I’ll be emailing the winners today to arrange for their prizes.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I think I just lost a filling. Wonderful. Guess what I’ll be doing today? Going to the dentist, where I haven’t been in a long, long time. Ugh.