Beauty and the Geek

Someone has to be the first to go.  On season 5 of Beauty and the Geek, that someone is John English.  He is a recovering Microsoft addict, and was a child genius, but he just wasn't quick enough with the buzzer to survive the elimination round.

John spoke to BuddyTV today about his thoughts on the new format of  Beauty and the Geek, about his secret techniques for getting phone numbers at a bar, and what it means to be a recovering Microsoft addict.

Below, you will find an audiofile and a complete transcript of the interview.

Hey everybody. This is Debbie at BuddyTV, and I'm talking to John from Beauty and the Geek. Hey, John, how's it going?

It's going great. How's it going, Debbie?


Pretty good. So, I have to ask you, what happened to you at elimination? After you found out that you got eliminated, you sort of, you know, had a little breakdown. What was going on?

It wasn't really a breakdown. We were sleep-deprived and food-deprived. They hadn't fed us all day, and I think with everything else, it just kind of hit me all at once, and I swooned a little bit. I had had very little to eat, and with the low blood sugar. I think I was fine going into elimination, but after the whole process, that's when everything hit me at once and it just kind of took the wind out of me a little bit. But I recovered quickly, and I was back on my feet and I was laughing for the final interview. So it didn't knock me down for long.


Do you think your low blood sugar affected your performance at the elimination? Like, maybe you would have been quicker with the buzzer?

You know, it might have. It might have affected me. I do think I was a little bit slow on the draw there with all the questions and everything. But yeah, that and the sleep deprivation probably affected me a little bit. I think I was running purely on caffeine that day.


This is a new kind of elimination, different than in the past. And what did you think about that?

I thought it was interesting. I was actually really excited to see the elimination process. You know, I think I would have been a little disappointed if I hadn't gone in to the elimination room that day because I was really excited to see what they had in store for us. We had no idea. They told us that the elimination process was totally changed, and when they told us they were picking five geeks going to the elimination room, we were all looking around at each other, going, "What's going to happen?" We were expecting whirling blades or giant hammers coming down from the ceiling or something. We really didn't know what to expect. But I was kind of impressed by the setup and by everything that they threw at us in there. I actually kind of appreciated being able to be a part of it.


What about the new format for the show, having the beauties and the geeks battle it out against each other instead of in pairs?

You know, I don't think anybody really liked that at first. It was kind of a shock to everyone. The girls were very competitive, and they started out really trying to have these little meetings to try and figure out how they were going to beat the guys. As time went on, we all looked at each other and went, "You know, this isn't really what we signed up for." And the geeks, right from the start, were like, "Oh, we're never going to have any interaction with the girls." But I think all of us tried to make the most of it and tried to bring everybody together and see if we could find ways of interacting on our own. At least the portion of us that I saw, you know, I tried to bring people together, and I'd like to think that they continued that throughout the season. It'd be interesting to see if they did.


Did you get a chance to make any close connections with any of the other contestants while you were there?

Oh, absolutely. I'm close with everybody. I still talk to all of them on a daily basis. Cara and Amanda are actually here in Phoenix, so we hang out occasionally. Cara and I talk almost daily. We're pretty close. She's a fun person to hang out with, so we have spent some time together. The nice thing about being the first one off the show is that I didn't have time to make any enemies. So I'm still friends with everyone, I still talk to everyone on a daily basis, and I still stay in touch.


That's great to hear. I want to ask you about the challenge that you had, when you had to get phone numbers from strangers. How did you personally do?

I don't know. I thought I did alright. I got a fair number of phone numbers. There were a couple guys that did better, and a couple guys that did worse. But I was in the middle of the road, and I wasn't too terribly disappointed with my performance, but I was more disappointed that ... I don't know. I wasn't really disappointed with anyone's performance, to tell you the truth, but I did expect the girls to win because girls have boobies and boobies take all.


[laughs] Yeah, that's true.

It doesn't matter what they look like, boobies win.


Yeah. I didn't think they were actually that much uglier.

None of us did either, and I think that was the entire point of the challenge. They were absolutely horrified. They thought it was completely unfair. These are girls that look in the mirror and pick at every imperfection on a good day. And, you take them and you add a little acne scarring or give them a mustache or black out a few teeth and all of a sudden, it destroys their entire world. So, I think it was a good lesson for them to learn that beauty is not just skin deep and that they can still interact with people and get guys' phone numbers no matter what they look like. And it was a lot harder for us because they were more socially prepared for the experiment than we were.


Did you have any special tactics for getting phone numbers?

You know, when I went into it, I wasn't really sure how to go about it. I think my original tactic was just to approach people and try and chat them up and try and get a few numbers. But of course, we didn't have a lot of time, so I had to come up with some kind of strategy. While I was out there on the floor, I realized while I was talking to people, hey, I'm wasting all my time talking. So, I think I switched strategies a little bit and I decided, it just kind of hit me that the best way for a guy would be to say, "Hey, I'm having a party. It's a beach party. Let me get your phone number. I'll call you and you can come on by." I wish I had thought of that idea earlier, and I might have gotten more numbers. But, you know, that's what this entire thing is about. It's a learning experience, and we all learned from it.


Cool. And let's talk about your background. What does it mean to be a recovering Microsoft addict?

[laughs] They actually showed that part, I think, in the casting portion of the episode. That was originally a joke that I had told to the casting guys. I played it off like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, you know, "I've been completely Microsoft-free for over ten years now." And I guess they liked the joke because they used it as my little tagline. I thought that was pretty funny. I'm not sure it means anything. I've been Microsoft-free for over ten years. I don't use Microsoft any longer as a computer scientist. I stick mainly to Linux and Mac OS X.


Cool. Okay.

Hey, you asked.


Oh, actually. Just an aside. I made predictions about the geeks and the beauties before the season and I was hoping that you would "suckle at the teat of Linus Torvalds."

Was that you who wrote that? I saw that. That was the most insulting article, seriously. [laughs] That was funny. I actually did see that online because we were looking at some of the blogs and stuff. That's really funny.


I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to be insulting. But, anyway, back to the interview.

What was really funny about that whole thing—somebody linked me to it, and I read the whole thing and I'm like, "They didn't get anyone right." So, you're going to have an interesting season.


Really? Okay, cool. Looking forward to it. Also, on the show, the little caption describes you as a child genius. Can you explain that?

I think they probably got that from the fact that I was in college at 15. They asked me if I considered myself a prodigy. I'm not sure I ever considered myself anything. I've always just been me. But I think other people definitely considered me a prodigy and I'm not sure how to deal with that as an adult. It's like, "Have I lived up to everyone's expectations? Am I doing as well as they all hoped I would?" You know, there are always moments of self-doubt that you go through whenever you grow up and everybody has these high expectations of you. You wonder if you did as well as they hoped. But I'd like to think that getting on a national network television show might at least put me somewhere in that category.


What did you hope to get out of being on Beauty and the Geek?

I hoped, more than anything, that I would be able to learn better social skills. The clothes and shoes and hair, that stuff you can change overnight. The stuff that really matters is who you are, what you stand for, how you interact with people. Because, at the end of the day, nobody's going to remember what you looked like. I've never been to a single funeral where somebody says, "Wow, remember Rachel? She really was pretty." You know? People don't miss you because of what you look like or how pretty you are or how good-looking you are. People miss you because of who you were. And I really felt like that was the one message I wanted to give to the girls: when you're gone from this house, when you're gone from this world, the only thing that's going to matter is how have you treated people? I really hoped that I could gain some experience in interacting with the girls—and interacting with girls in general, frankly—and grow a little bit and learn some of those social skills that maybe I didn't get as a child in my academic pursuits.

-Interview conducted by Debbie Chang
(Image courtesy of the CW)