I spotted them as I crossed Sunset. They were lined up against the studio’s outer wall on Bronson, mingling and enjoying the warm spring morning. There was Gwen Stefani, Jerry Lewis, Jack Nicholson, Ann Margaret, Jim Carrey and Michael Jackson, among many others. Even by the normal Hollywood standards, this audition was notable and surreal and I felt honored to be included in such elite company.

These were not the real, actual celebrities, surrounding me on the sidewalk outside KTLA studios, but rather something a bit more fascinating and bizarre. These were celebrity impersonators -- many of them professional -- auditioning for a new ABC reality/contest show created by the producers of Last Comic Standing and MAD TV. The Next Best Thing aims to do for celebrity impersonators what LCS does for comedians, American Idol does for singers and what The Apprentice does for people who work in offices. And on this day, I was one of them. I was a celebrity impersonator.

In the past decade I’ve probably heard at least seventy five times that I resemble Adam Sandler and on a couple of occasions people have actually mistaken me for him. How much I look like him probably depends somewhat on my weight and haircut at the time and the optical phenomenology of the moment -- the lighting, the angle and the eye and brain of the beholder -- but I’ve had enough evidence over the years to know that I bear a healthy resemblance to the guy.

As a comedian myself, I realized many years back that I could do a decent Sandler vocal impersonation and loosely cop some of his idiosyncratic gestures and facial expressions. Around that time a comedy show producer I knew was putting together a night of performers impersonating famous comedians rather than doing their regular act, and she recruited me. I wrote a Sandler parody tune entitled “The Ramadan Song”, got my guitarist friend teach me the three or four chords and then I rocked out the M Bar crowd with such snappy lyrics as “Get out your old Koran…it’s time to celebrate Ramadan…the head of the Afghanistan Taliban…celebrates Ramadan.” There were also mentions of such Muslim celebrities as Mike Tyson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Cat Stevens and Everlast from House of Pain.       

A few years after that I resurrected my long dormant Sandler for a sketch I wrote and performed in entitled “Celebrity Russian Roulette”. In the self-explanatory-titled, Vegas-set sketch I captured the jauntier, cockier side of Sandler’s persona and voiced such lines as: “Growing up in New Hampshire, me and my friends used to get fucked up on Schlitz and pass a six shooter around in the woods. I’m not braggin’, but I know how to plaaaayyyy!”

When I received a notice about out the Next Best Thing auditions in L.A., I remembered this skill in my back pocket and felt I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by the endeavor. At worst, it would be an opportunity to practice high-stakes auditioning and extreme character acting and at best it would offer me exposure on a major network. As silly and seemingly odd a show about impersonating celebrities may be, I think there is a lot of truth to the old Hollywood adage: “Any exposure is good exposure.” While I don't think that absolutely any exposure is good, most of it is, and this, I figured, was justifiable because it pertained to my joint pursuits of writing and acting.

The writing was necessary because we were legally prohibited from performing any of our subjects' actual material. I sat down to compose lyrics and rudimentary music for an Adam Sandler style tune and was suddenly inspired by his giddy and whimsical Hanukkah Song, one of my personal favorites. I figured if he wrote about a semi-important Jewish holiday, I could parody that by writing about a semi-important patriotic holiday -- Presidents Day.

We impersonators waited up against that outside wall for a few hours, as show producers and P.A.s occasionally strode by to check out the talent pool, command the mob to form a  more orderly line or urge us to look lively for the cameramen they'd send down the sidewalk for the obligatory “reality contestants patiently waiting on the street, goofing around/showing off for the camera” shots.

I was fascinated and even impressed by the dedication, professionalism and downright verisimilitude of many of the impersonators around me. At the highest end, there were people like the Elizabeth Taylor, who really bore a strong resemblance to the legendary semi-English actress and had plied her act for years in Vegas. The Austin Powers had not only the wig, threads, prosthetic bad teeth and outlandish accent, but he pulled up to the studio gate in a customized Cooper Mini with his character's name painted in giant, groove-a-delic letters. The Christopher Walken, with whom I chatted for several minutes, could easily have been mistaken for the creepy-eyed, strange-speaking actor.   

There was a fairly believable Johnny Depp in glasses and normal clothes, and a second, equally effective Johnny Depp in full-on pirate regalia. There was a Jerry Lewis, who tenaciously captured the funnyman's relentless, manic, cloying energy and a Jim Carrey-as-Ace Ventura, whose big, angular face and pointy, cartoonish haircut were lifelike almost to the point of being disturbing.

Of course, there were many others who missed the mark -- either subtly or by a country mile -- and those failures and imperfections were equally entertaining. I counted no less than three Michael Jacksons and they ranged from a white guy to a person I'm pretty sure was a woman. There were at least a half dozen platinum blond bombshells, and it was nearly impossible to make a positive ID on any of them. “Marilyn Monroe? Jayne Mansfield? Anna Nicole Smith? A fat Gwen Stefani?”

The Paul McCartney did not bear very much facial resemblance to the famous ex-Beatle, but he did maintain jokey banter in a Liverpudlian accent, all the while holding a severed mannequin leg, a black humorous reference to Heather Mills.

Two busty older gals sporting big hair and pink dresses had the ingenious idea of portraying twin Dolly Partons, as if the generously-bosomed singer had gone and cloned herself. They called themselves the Double D's and upon request would belt out a comedic little ditty. At the bottom extreme of celebrity impersonation were those cases  where you had absolutely no idea who the hell they were. If the surrounding talent on the sidewalk were totally stumped, and throwing out random, desperate guesses -- Schneider from 'One Day At A Time'! Former surgeon general C. Everett Koop! The pirate from the Captain Morgans bottle! -- then that impressionist probably stood very little chance with the judges.

Camera crews from a few other TV shows -- including local broadcast news and David Spade's Showbiz Show -- came around and shot footage and brief interviews with many of us, which seemed to me like bonus on-camera experience and exposure.  

Finally, after several hours, they admitted us all onto the studio property, put us in a another line to have our initial paperwork processed and then separated us into groups and into different waiting tents where they eventually brought us snacks and drinks.

A big part of what made this part of this lengthy process tolerable was the friendliness and  ample conversational skills of my fellow impersonators. It was in the waiting tent that I bonded with a Donald Trump, a seasoned, middle-aged guy with a comforting been-around-the-block vibe about life and the biz and a Jack Black, a young, wide-eyed kid from Seattle who had basically no previous entertainment experience. The attitude was open and supportive and they even offered me some solid advice on my Sandlerisms.       

Also in our tent were a George Bush who was insanely accurate in look, speech and mannerism and who I later found out prepares with multi-layers of plastic facial prosthetics, and a Trace Adkins, a country western singer who I knew nothing about, but whose doppelganger was pretty nice guy.

After another few hours, I was finally called by a producer and sent up into one of the colossal studio buildings. In the corridor outside the audition room there was more waiting time, during which I had some conversation with a really friendly P.A. who took a genuine interest in my act, urged me to run my bit for her a few times and offered what seemed like heartfelt encouragement and a prediction that I would do very well on the show.

And then it was time for me to go in. First I had to give an on-camera pre-interview to an easy going, down-to-Earth female producer in the hallway just outside the audition room. Then I was introduced to the ridiculously hot and suitably energetic host of the show, Michele Merkin, who asked me a few questions, also on camera. Then it was show time.

I walked through a curtain into a large, dark space and onto a stage. The three judges -- Elon Gold, Jeffrey Ross and Lisa Ann Walter -- sat behind tables in front of me. I introduced my song -- in character -- and sang a few verses and a couple of choruses before getting cut off.

Warren G. Harding/ Was good at farting/ And he got caught up in a scandal/
He was large and commanding/ Like the guy from Knotts Landing/ And he had sex with younger women like Tony Randall.

It was at this point that my audition got really interactive and riffy, with me responding in character to random questions of theirs and Jeffrey Ross coaxing me to do a Sarah Silverman impression. Although the judges had liked my Sandler impression, I suddenly realized that all of this unscripted improvising risked diluting my prepared performance and chances of moving on in the show.

The judges had given me a few obligatory quips and digs -- like when Elon Gold said I sounded like Carol Channing -- but they also gave me positive feedback and an overall thumbs up, saying I passed on to the next level. I jumped off the stage -- probably not a second too soon -- and gave a brief, triumphant post-audition interview to the awaiting Ms. Merkin.
 
After filling out over a solid half hours' worth of legal documents, I drove off into the night with the mildly intoxicating feeling that I'd sort of, kind of just done something perhaps tenuously related to huge TV stardom.

Several weeks later I watched the first episode of the show as it aired and was immediately struck by the aggressive, pointed editing. They portrayed my audition -- along with many, many others' -- in almost the worst possible light. It looked as if I'd been promptly “gonged” off the show, when in fact I'd been told I was one of thirty out of eighty at the L.A. auditions who had been green lighted to be potential “semi-finalists”.

But I wasn't terribly distraught and it didn't surprise me at all. Vicious, manipulative editing in reality shows should be as widely known a cliché as steroids in pro sports or dangerous preservatives in your food. Overall, I had a fun time that day hanging out with the counterfeit stars and it inspired me to take my Sandler onto the live stage more often. I also learned a good life lesson: It's important to be yourself. But if you can't be yourself, you can always be someone else.