There was nothing to say about the competitors except that they seemed to have been drawn at complete random. There were three categories: concrete  Automatic brick machinery, modeling, and acting. The singing category, though the ultimate winners were hardly the best, was at least plausible.

In fact, Dan of Buffalo won second place with a fetching tune from Garth Brooks. But the modelves and axtors who won that day were shams. It seems that the night before, the judges got wasted in a tavern downtown. They then burned the few notes they had taken, and instead put all the numbers in hat. (Each modelf and axtor was given a number at the time of the initial competition the day before.) The then randomly pulled forty-eight numbers, and those were the finalists. (The few who opposed this method were promptly consumed by the tarp-wearing judge.)

In fact, one of the finalists announced for the acting category seemed very surprised. When he got up to the stage and gave his name, he confessed his shock was due to the fact that he hadn't even auditioned for the acting portion of the competition. He was promptly eaten by the tarp'd judge.

The axtors were atrocious, and to watch them was to snort anthrax. Jesse conceded that he knew little of modeling and so could not truly judge. although he could not see the method in the madness. But as for the acting he knew poo when he saw it. And what he saw was poo after poo after poo. In fact, a very acute logic struck him. See if you can follow along.

There were six different rooms with different judges in each one. The auditions weren't recorded. So how did the judges determine the top 12 male and female actors. And so on and so forth? If each panel of judges convened (which is doubtful) and agreed on their top 12, that's 36 of the best guy axtors. And if they picked the top two in each room, who is to say that the third pick of one room wasn't actually better than the first pick of another room?

Whatever the logic, whatever the circumstance, those axtors picked didn't seem to know what a stage was, let alone what to do on it. But at last, the torment ended. The winners were declared and the mass was dismissed for call backs.

Callbacks

And so begins the shortest chapter in this tale. Jesse The Gray had to stand in line under the letter "G" for his callback. By no random twist of fate, it happened to be the longest line in the whole alphabet...dwarfing even "A" and "B". All 3,000 modelves and axtors got callbacks, guaranteeing that no one would leave consciously feeling pillaged.

After an hour, Jesse got his callback envelope. He had a total of four-three of which were the ones every mother's son and daughter got. He made his way upstairs and waited in the main line for two and a half hours. Then he went into the different rooms, where the callback lines wound around and through each other like the many snakes of Madusa's hair. Another two hours.

Reaching the front of the line, Jesse was given a card, and a lady behind the fold up table said: "Here, o' victim of perilous scams! Take this card and visit my website. Send me a headshot and we'll talk. Farewell."

And thus ended the callbacks for Jesse The Gray.

Epilogue

Thus the quest ended for Jesse The Gray. He left the Conference hotel a good four hours later than he had planned on-and empty handed at that. He made his way back to the coast, stopping and slowing and accelerating sporadically as he went.

His Bird O' Fire began to sound very worn out and all 175 ponies heehawed in protest. Upon reaching the main road, he spent a good two hours sitting in traffic. As luck would have it, there were three different accidents several miles apart involving young guys who had modified rims, lowered bodies, and windows that were tinted black. It may very well have been that they were painted black, for that at least would have given just cause for why their drivers couldn't drive.

Jesse could not make it back to his little home in Spotsylvania in time, and so had to make an unplanned stay in dump that passed for a hotel only because someone charged people to stay there. The room reeked of cigarette butts and human butts, and was falling apart in countless places. Jesse mused that the inn must have been built when the Earth was very young...perhaps on the eighth day of creation. But he weathered the night, and finished his journey home in fifty-degree weather.

Upon arriving at home, he took off his One Ring and threw it in the fire to feel like he had accomplished something, but then regretted it because it was very precious to him.

The next day he fell ill with ear infections and bronchitis, and so lay on his back for a week.

Thus ends the merry quest and adventures of block machine, who traveled through four states (twice), paid $240 for gas, oil, and inns, put another 3,000 miles on his Bird O' Fire, and caught a horrible cold and then had nothing better to do but write it all down in a mostly non-fictional third-person narrative.