“ 'Oh, we're just, you know, like, recuperating.' ”
TWoP caught up with Team Guido by phone while they were in Aspen, covering Gay Ski Week for Rosie O'Donnell. They were kind enough to give us quite a chunk of time, as you will see.
(But I didn't start off by asking for a thousand dollars, because I thought they might not think it was funny.)
Guido phone:
[Ring, ring.]Bill: Good morning.
Miss Alli: Ciao, Team Guido!
Bill: How're you doing?
Miss Alli: I'm doin' fine, how are you?
Bill: Oh, we're just, you know, like, recuperating.
Miss Alli: Yeah?
Bill: We always have late nights here.
Miss Alli: Oh, really?
Bill: Oh, yeah, but it's fun.
Miss Alli: What have you been up to?
Bill: Oh, there's lots of events...I've got a three-page event calendar. This thing is...schedules, andnot that we're doing for Rosie, but the ski week itself. It's just, like, eight o'clock this, nine o'clock that, all the boutiques in town -- Kenneth Cole, Prada, Gucci, have all been having parties every night.
Miss Alli: Woooow.
The Guido Interview, Part One
“ 'I mean at some point, it gets old, and Real World I think is getting a little bit there, you know? They've done it for ten years.' ”
Bill: We've been doing all those, and it's just...it's been fun, but it's just, at some point we've got to get some sleep.
Miss Alli: [laughs]
Joe: Yeah, really, then we get up early to go skiing.
Bill: Yeah, we love to go skiing, so...it's hard not to do both.
Miss Alli: Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you making some time to do this.
Bill: No, thank you.
Joe: Yeah.
Miss Alli: Everybody will be very excited to hear from you.
Bill: Well, we've enjoyed it, and thanks again for letting us do it.
Miss Alli: Absolutely. So, okay. Now I have read that you, Bill in particular, had watched a fair amount of reality TV and had been interested in a variety of different shows before you got involved in this one. What was it about reality TV in general that attracted you?
Bill: That's a very interesting question. I have no idea. [laughs] It's one of those things where you just get sucked in, like a soap opera, really. You know, Real World was the show that really got me hooked on reality TV.
Miss Alli: How interesting! Me, too.
Bill: And I just, I just thought it was fascinating. And I mean at some point, it gets old, and Real World I think is getting a little bit there, you know? They've done it for ten years. But that was the show that in the beginning, it seemed like each time, it was amazing how they could get all these different personalities, throw them together, they would come out with a completely different set of circumstances every time, and I guess maybe relocating to a new city each time helped. That kind of thing. 'Cause that was fascinating too, just to see the house each time, the dynamics that developed...it was just like watching a soap opera, I guess, it's the same kind of attraction.
The Guido Interview, Part One
“ 'We were all actually riding on, like, a three-hour bus from the New York City hotel to Central Park, all around Manhattan and Brooklyn and everything else, because they were trying to throw us off pace and try to not [let us] figure out where we were and stuff.' ”
Miss Alli: And you just thought it would be interesting to be part of that.
Bill: Yeah, and it was weird, because I thought, you know, "I'm too old for this -- MTV will never cast somebody that at the time was, um, like 35 or something. It's never going to happen for me, and then Survivor came along, and then Amazing Race, and I thought, well, Amazing Race, I really thought that was a possibility, because it was a relationship show.
Miss Alli: Yes, it certainly was. So tell me what the first day was like. The first day when you left New York. 'Cause you guys were kicking butt all over the place that day.
[They laugh.]
Bill: Go ahead, Joe.
Joe: Um, it was exciting. It was confusing, it was the opportunity to actually get to know all these people. We were all actually riding on, like, a three-hour bus from the New York City hotel to Central Park, all around Manhattan and Brooklyn and everything else, because they were trying to throw us off pace and try to not [let us] figure out where we were and stuff. We still were not allowed to speak to anybody at this time, so we're staring at one another, trying to figure out who they are, and --
Miss Alli: Really?
Bill: Oh, yeah, and everybody was pushing the envelope, kind of giggling, and making comments just in general, in the air -- poor Sammi...the gal that was taking care of us, she was like our chaperone, or whatever you'd say, like our babysitter, was reprimanding us every five minutes for people to shut up, you know. 'Cause we're all, like, Type A people, trying to get our words out there.
Miss Alli: Well, who was talking?
Bill: Just everybody.
Joe: Frank kept lifting up the curtains of the windows of the bus and peeking out.
Bill: I did, too, actually.
Joe: The bus actually had, like, Venetian blinds that we couldn't see out the windows.
The Guido Interview, Part One
“ 'After about an hour -- 'cause we were getting a little bit rambunctious, like, starting to talk more and more -- the executive in charge of production kind of came back and gave us a little lecture, like, "Shut up and sit down."' ”
Miss Alli: It WAS the Amazing Bus!
Joe and Bill: Yeah!
Joe: And we had, like, rolls and fruit and coffee and everything else on the bus or whatever, and you still couldn't talk to anybody but your partner, and you really shouldn't have even been talking to your partner, because everybody would have had conversations going, but actually...Frank kept looking out, lifting up the curtains and trying to peek out underneath the crack to see where we were. We didn't know it at the time, but he knows Manhattan like the back of his hand. So he's trying to get the one-up on everybody else. So naturally, we started trying to peek out or whatever else, and [see] what's going on.
Bill: The teachers were in the back...they were probably the most vocal. I think they started throwing things, because it was just a long, narrow bus and we weren't allowed to really get up and walk around or anything, either. They would have to pass these breakfast rolls...so they started throwing them to us. It was getting kind of funny, and then finally, after about an hour -- 'cause we were getting a little bit rambunctious, like, starting to talk more and more -- the executive in charge of production kind of came back and gave us a little lecture, like, "Shut up and sit down." I mean, in a real nice tongue-in-cheek way, but you could cut that excitement with a knife. Everyone was just on pins and needles wondering what was going to happen .
Miss Alli: Fabulous. So at JFK, that first day, did you tip YOUR cab driver?
Bill: [laughs] Oh, yes.
Joe: Oh, yes, we did. I can remember, actually, it was a thirty-three dollar cab ride, and we gave him thirty-eight dollars, so we tipped him five bucks.
Miss Alli: Very interesting.
Bill: I'll tell you another thing we did. After that Thailand temple thing where we won the Fast Forward, we actually even put some money in the -- as we left the temple, they didn't show it, they taped it, but it wasn't on the show, but we put money into the little donation jar. 'Cause outside every Buddhist temple, there's like a place to put money. We just felt like we had been in there racing, and kind of...not really desecrating it, but being, you know, a little bit less than respectful, so we thought we should at least leave a donation.
The Guido Interview, Part One
“ 'We all determined that we would go in in a line. It was a sacred or religious site, and we would not be running around causing a big commotion and making ourselves unwelcome on French soil.' ”
Miss Alli: I understand that. So did you have as much fun foiling Frank at the beginning of the race, as I had watching you foiling Frank?
[They both laugh.]
Bill: Absolutely.
Joe: We didn't realize the comments he was making, or whatever, but we knew that it just had to be driving him crazy to see us standing at the ticket counter at South African Airlines when they pulled up. It must have just, it had been driving him berserk or whatever. And you could tell when we were introducing ourselves how [frustrated] Frank felt that he wasn't first, or whatever. The funny part about it, according to what they say, the working moms said that they were actually the very first people at the airport.
Bill: Physically, at the...
Joe: But Pat had this walking stick...sort of like an old Swiss man would carry in the Alps, or something?
Miss Alli: Yes.
Joe: With a metal tip on the bottom of it -- that she was going to carry throughout the race. And they wouldn't let it go through the metal detectors. She got stopped at the metal detectors with this thing, she was getting into a big discussion about how it's not a weapon, et cetera, et cetera, and eventually she just gave it to the guy who was running the metal detector. Like, "Here, keep it," or whatever. So during this process, we got our backpacks and cameras and everything else through the metal detectors and security, and we actually arrived at the ticket counter first. I'm sure to this day, Pat and Brenda absolutely insist that they got to the airport first. [They both laugh.] We didn't see them, but this is the story that they told us, and she did have this walking stick in the beginning and she did not have it afterwards.
Miss Alli: Okay, so now I have to run through some of my, uh...Tell Me What Happened There questions. What was the thing at the Pantheon? Because I kind of sided with you guys on the one about walking past the entrance, yakkety-yak...what was the deal?
Joe: The simple fact of the matter is, they got there before us. We all determined that we would go in in a line. It was a sacred or religious site, and we would not be running around causing a big commotion and making ourselves unwelcome on French soil.