How Did That Happen? Chapter 3

“Yeah, how are you doing, by the way?”

“I’m good. T.O.M. came by for a visit.”

“Tom? Who is…oh, I got it. Wait, why you telling me? I’m all the way over here.”

“Just incase I happen to flip out for no apparent reason, you know?”

“Yep. My sister would always warn me up front whenever Tom came around. That always let me known that I had to be careful of what I said and do.”

After I talked with her, I tried to go back to sleep, but then I got a text message saying that I was invited to a dinner party and I had 15 minutes to get ready. Welcome to the high life Brian, I thought to myself. I went to the refrigerator and grabbed an energy drink. I then hopped in the shower, grabbed my best suit, and made sure m hair looked decent enough. Being from the south, I had the mentality that as long as my hair looked decent enough, I was ok.

I got picked up by the person who was throwing the party, who happened to be one of the judges of the competition. We pulled up to his house. I saw the producer that got me the job along with other people working on the show. I never was to type to go party or anything like that so this was a new thing for me. I got my plate of hors-d’oeuvres and stood along to the side to myself. As I was eating, I looked around at people laughing and smiling. I took a sip of my water and noticed that Kevin, the producer that hired me, was motioning for me to come to him.
I walked over to where he was and he introduced me to a couple of people that were there. Most of the people were agents, music and movie producers, movie directors, etc. Then I met Lisa Anderson. She was an up and coming artist that was expected to go huge. When she walked over and introduced herself, I was getting another helping of food.

“Mr. Howard is it?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said turning around.

“I hear you’re the vocal trainer on the show.”

“Yes ma’am I am.”

“Well, I’m Lisa, Lisa Anderson. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” I said extending my hand. “You’re the new artist everybody’s talking about, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me. How you liking LA? It’s different from South Carolina, huh?”

“Definitely, but I’m slowly getting used to how things go here.”

“Great. Well I’m going to go mingle with more people, be free to call me sometime. Here’s my card,” She said handing me her card.

I took the card and nodded my head. The rest of the night went pretty smooth. Some of the people were stuck up. They had the fakest laughs I’ve ever heard in my life. The kind of laughs you see on TV shows when the characters try to act rich. That made me laugh a little for real, and when the stuck up people looked at me, I stopped and acted like I was mingling. I got a ride home from Kevin.

I only got about 4 hours of sleep before I had to get up to get ready for the studio again. That day began with listening to the playback sessions I did with the contestants the day before. Then the contestants came in and were told that they had to sing a song as a group to open up the first show, and I was the director. I have background in directing. I was the main director of my church’s choir before I got this job. So, I split the contestants into three different sections: tenor, alto, and soprano.

I’ve never dealt with such hard headed people in my life. I’d teach the parts, and then the “know-it-alls” did their own thing and messed up the whole sound causing the day to drag on and on. Some people kept complaining and complaining, while others were trying to one up one another. It got to the point where I almost lost it. I opened my mouth to rant on all of them, but Cindy beat me to it.

“Everybody shut up! We should be lucky we got this far. I worked hard to get here, and I’m not going to let any of you ruin this experience. It’s 9:00 at night, so I don’t care if you guys hate each other, but let’s at least work together to get this done so we can go home and get some sleep.”

“Yeah!” I said pointing at them, acting like I was going to say that in the first place.