Published 2002-10-02T00:00:00Z”/>

<strong>Two tickets to Paradise</strong>

Because I spend half my time watching the Game Show Network, and because I had nothing better to do, I spent Friday night in the basement of the Bell Memorial Union watching the Associated Students’ own version of “The Dating Game.”

True, I am more of a “Newlywed” kind of girl, but I can accept the fact that it’s probably easier to find eight desperate students searching for a date, than it is to find four sets of recent honeymooners looking to argue, make whoopie and belittle each other in front of a live audience. So this would have to do.

Surrounded by a few dozen of my peers (and by peers I mostly mean female peers who dragged their uninterested boyfriend peers along with them), I stood and watched as the lame questions flowed from the mouths of the questioners like a volcanic eruption of cheese-laden sexual tension.

“You’re a newly invented kitchen appliance. What do you do, and how do I turn you on?” single gal on the prowl, Jessica Reitz, asked of her awaiting bachelors, who remained hidden from her behind a silk screen, cheesy-looking flowers in the background.

After an awkward pause (stifled laughs from the crowd), bachelor No. 3 came through with an appliance and an answer. “Kinda like an oven,” he muttered, shyly. “I’d kinda heat up the place.” Or give us all carbon monoxide poisoning, I said to myself.

OK, I kinda liked his answer, but apparently it wasn’t good enough to win old Jessica’s calculating heart.

Other exceedingly lame questions followed, such as, “I have a major fear of flying. As a pilot what would you do to make me feel better?” (barf bag, anyone?) And, “You and I have just been kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Why?”

In the end it was bachelor No. 2, Chris Cagle, who used some of that Cagle charm to win himself a date and possibly some future mini-Cagles.

And that is why he, and not the others, will be spending this Friday in Paradise, literally. The glorious, swank retirement community of Paradise where they will find themselves seated at the swanky Smokie Mountain Steak and Smoke House restaurant where they can eat succulent dead cow to their living heart’s content.

Yes, the lovely couple, will be picked up in front of the BMU by a real limousine driver in an honest-to-goodness Chevy. Just kidding. It’ll be a real limousine, where they will have special picture keepsakes taken. Then they will be whisked off to a film of their choice, including, but not limited to, “Sweet Home Alabama.”

<em>Erin can be reached at <a href= “mailto:[email protected]”>[email protected]</a></em>