electric mist

monster house...

My brother's going to be on Discovery Channel's Monster House... but with a very cool twist.

Typically, Monster House has homeowners who've volunteered their homes for a remodel, and the Monster House people pick a theme (which gets approved by the homeowners) -- then they take one week, house the homeowners in a Coachman RV in front of the house, but where they can't see what's being done, and do the interior house in the theme. You can click on some of the episodes on that web site linked above and see some of the before / afters / descriptions of the houses and the themes.

There are usually five workers picked to do the actual construction, and they get paid a sum (I think the general amount is $1,000) for the week, plus if they make the deadline, they win a bunch of tools.

All of which is kinda fun in a flashy reality show / contest / HGTV sort of way, but this time, there's a very important twist -- this time, the show has been contacted by a charity which gives wishes for kids who are very seriously ill. In this particular case, there is a local boy who is suffering from leukemia, and all he wanted was a fort with a glass roof because his greatest love is to go outside and look through his telescope at the stars... but he can't do it here because of the mosquitos and bug bites because the chemo he's on makes him very susceptible to any type of infection, no matter how small -- even a bug bite -- and he'll be on the chemo for the next four years. His family couldn't build (or afford or maybe just didn't have the know-how) a fort with a glass ceiling.

Well, his mom got the national charity involved and they contacted Monster House, who just came down last week and filmed the build -- a huge fort in the back yard with many multi-levels, trap doors, an interior slide, and a telescope which was donated (along with the computer software to operate it remotely from his "control tower" and a plasma TV to see whatever the telescope is pointed toward... and this is a very impressive telescope). My brother had heard about the tryouts for the show at the last minute and since he happened to be nearby, he went for it. He's got alot of years of construction experience, plus he is super kid-oriented in that he's a fourth degree Master in Tang Soo Do and has his own school and over the years, has taught probably thousands of kids. He was picked for the build (which meant giving up going to the national Tang Soo Do Karate championships where he's the defending champion from last year, but in his heart, it was no contest).

The build went well -- they met the deadline (so the guys and one woman doing the build got nice prizes), but in this case, it was awesome seeing the family and the boy's response.

His episode airs November 22nd on the Discovery Channel. (His only regret / concern was that in one particular part of the build, the guy who designed the whole impressive thing -- and wow, it is pretty stunning, I promise -- measured where some concrete had to be poured, marked the area with paint and then left when the cameras turned on. Mike, my brother, thought it wasn't in the right place, and he adjusted it a little, but not having the plans, he didn't want to adjust too much... but it turned out that it was definitely in the wrong spot and they ended up having to break out the concrete and move it. It's going to look on camera like it was his fault for not putting it in the right place, but he was following the off camera instructions. I hope they don't edit it to make him look at fault, because he's talented and very cool, and there were a lot of alpha males on the set... I could see the show people manipulating something like that just to create conflict and "good" TV.)

Anyway, y'all watch it -- he's the one in the Zachary Karate t-shirts. (I'll post a reminder when it's closer.)

Posted by toni at August 20, 2004 10:01 PM