JOHN ON JOHN™: America's Got Talent Chicago Auditions (Part 1)

In the interests of better serving our 3 to 7 regular readers, JohnEats.com announces the beginning of a new column, John On John™, wherein our two resident Johns (John Eats and Psychictoad) comment on each other's interpretations of a particular event or story. Our inaugural John On John™ feature presents the story of what happened this weekend when the Johns travelled to Chicago's Navy Pier for the open casting auditions for the smash hit NBC David Hasselhoff television show America's Got Talent. First up, the story as told by John Eats himself...

What a magical day this was, dear JohnEats readers! After an early morning rendezvous at the Belmont stop, Psychictoad and I made our way to the pride of Chicago's tourists, Navy Pier, on special assignment: to interview the people in line for the America's Got Talent open auditions, and hopefully a meeting with none other than David Hasselhoff himself (we would have settled for Brandy too, but we didn't really want to have to talk to the British guy). What began as an exercise in man-on-the-street journalistic coverage became a match made in heaven, like an episode of Blind Date where everything just goes right.

We arrived at Navy Pier and decided to warm ourselves up with a few non-journalistic activities just to make sure we would get along, since this was the first time the pair of us had done something outside of work alone together. Our first stop: Pretzelmaker, wherein we discovered a mutual love for hot, steaming pretzels and cheese sauce. We were like two peas in a pod--except we were really human beings eating pretzels.

After our special snack, we proceeded to blanket Navy Pier inside and out with the special JohnEats.com business cards I'd prepared. We passed those things out in so many spots it's only a matter of minutes before we get contacted by some interested investment capitalist who saw one of our cards, took a look at the site, and liked what he saw so much he's decided to give us a $500,000 development grant!

But all that business card leaving is enough to work up a powerful hunger, and eventually we settled down for an actual meal. Psychictoad purchased one of the World's Biggest Hot Dogs with Cheese Fries, while I opted for a build-your-own pizza that was somewhat magical: I order mushrooms and tomatoes, and after the pizza was put in the oven the man who made it asked for confirmation of my order.

"You said mushrooms and green peppers, right?"

"No," I said, "I wanted mushrooms and tomatoes."

"Oh, snap," the man replied. But he never removed the pizza from the oven, or made another one. Yet somehow, my pizza was topped correctly. It was an America's Got Talent miracle!

While eating our lunch, we also got to commune with nature...a colony of small, adorable birds cohabits with the tourists inside the food court at Navy Pier, and we were ever so happy to sit with them--Psychictoad was acting like a regular Saint Francis of Assisi! Everyone there loved the birds, and it was plain to me that the people who run Navy Pier want nothing but the best for those cute little darlings.

But even that wasn't the most fun we had. No, we then went for a lovely ride on the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel! And having our picture taken by the photographer from the Department of Homeland Security before boarding our private gondola wasn't enough to dampen our spirits!

We went round and round on that ferris wheel...the weather was absolutely gorgeous! Psychictoad had never been on the ferris wheel before, so I made sure to make the experience as pleasant and gentle as possible for him. Because believe me, we had a lot of hard work ahead of us covering that America's Got Talent audition!

Finally, we made our way to the audition line. What a treat! There were so many different kinds of people there. It was like the living embodiment of a Sly & The Family Stone song! I couldn't wait to start talking to people...I started snapping pictures like crazy, and had just found a pleasant-looking pair of young lads playing guitar and singing a joyful song together that I was going to begin interviewing, when suddenly a commotion burst out.

Psychictoad had approached one of the America's Got Talent crew members and began asking them about how we could get in to speak to David Hasselhoff. Well, something about the way he asked this rubbed the crew member the wrong way, and before I knew it we were both being forcibly dragged from the audition area. They escorted us down the escalator and told us to never return. And it was all Psychictoad's fault! Things had been going so well before that, I just didn't know what to think!

Even with that little setback, I still think we had a great time together. I would definitely go out with Psychictoad again, there were definitely some sparks there!

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Tune in later this week for Psychictoad's side of the story in Part 2 of John On John™.