The judges were actually really nice. They laughed at my jokes for the most part (the Pamela Riddle person was the closest to stony faced, but even she cracked a few of her own), they seemed genuinely interested, and considerate. After I finished my pitch they asked what I did and a couple questions like how I would flavor the gourmet lipstick. I responded by asking if they’d read the chapter in Fast Food Nation about the artificial food flavors and how sophisticated they’d gotten, and they had. I was kind of tempted to drag it out, just because I'd waited so freaking long and they were nice, but that seemed like a poor way to reward their friendliness. The funny thing was, no one seemed to be keeping time or anything, so I'm not sure what they would have done if I droned on for too long -- I think I was in the room for 15 minutes, total. At the end they did say I’d made their night, but I suspect they said something similar to everyone. Earlier I’d heard one person ask another who was leaving a judging room: "so what did they say?" and she replied, "They said, 'Thank you.'" And that was about it.

I still can't decide if the whole scene strikes me as hopeful and inspiring or poignant and pathetic: Whether the degree of optimism it gives participants for their possibility of success in our system of corporate dominated capitalism is a good thing or a bad thing is beyond my ability to decide. I see that Make and BoingBoing’s interest in the event came under a small bit of criticism by one commentor at Make. I'm not so worried about ABC stealing the profits from any of these inventions, but from my perspective, on the one hand, you've got false hope, and it's kind of depressing seeing what some people had invested kind of dumb ideas. The contract is pretty suspect, I don't really think reality shows have much of a track record for improving humanity, and Pamela Riddle’s ties to Walmart are not encouraging. And as I do with the lottery, I feel genuinely sad for anyone who really needs this break. Also, most of my ideas are intended as a kind of a sideways critique of consumer capitalism (kinda -- I have to admit, I sometimes forget that myself), and I loose some irony points for getting as into this as I was.

On the other hand, I am sincerely happy to see creativity, ingenuity, and technological know-how rather than looks or pop music celebrated by network television, and there was no cynicism in the excitement that a lot of us felt just being there.

Anyway, the upshot for me is I’ll hear back from them in 6-8 weeks if I’m going further, and if I hear nothing, nothing’s happening, so check back in January for possibly nothing!!