In pursuit of the dream, 'Average Joe' finds reality

You make the long trek to Hollywood, to the back lots at studios where you beg for bit parts in movies, hoping that you can make more of an impression on an audience than does the furniture. You go to acting school. You learn about cold reading. You study sitcom techniques. After three years, your resume lists bit parts in "ER" and "Providence" and a couple of movies, including "Oceans Eleven," but as you admit, you're like a bush in the background.

You land a small part in "The Majestic" and you tell friends that the cover of the videocassette shows half your head. You also land a part in the pilot of an unsolved mystery series, "Murder Reopened," on the Discovery Channel. In the role, you rape and kill two young girls. It doesn't pay much, but as you say, "everybody's got to start somewhere."

Then one night, while surfing the Web looking for work, you get the Big Break. NBC is looking for people who think they're the life of the party.

You answer the ad. They telephone and invite you to an interview. Being the life of the party, you promise to bring your hula hoop, and while you gyrate, they ask you about your career.

You are hired, although you're not sure of the role. They instruct you to pack for a European vacation. You decided to bring along the hula hoop. You report to a motel in Burbank, and they bus you and 15 other guys to a mansion in Palm Springs.

Congratulations, Dennis. You've won a role in this year's most humiliating reality show, "Average Joe," in which 16 guys described as geeky and freaky all compete for the affections of a 25-year-old former NFL cheerleader and beauty queen. Now, you're not the handsomest man in the world, and at 35 you're not the youngest. Critics say you remind them of Don Knotts, but when you see your competition -- they range from 5-foot-2 to 6-foot-8; one weighs 350 pounds -- you call your father to say, "I've got a shot."

Reality shows are chock-full of actors hoping for a break, but as you tell friends, there's no script. "I'm not role playing," you say. "It's just me out there."

You're there for 11 days, and alas, last week, in the second episode, in spite of your hula hooping -- or perhaps because of it -- Miss Cutie Pie eliminates you as she trims the field of suitors from 12 to six. Bye bye. Everybody on the show says you're sweet, and she lets you down easy, but the rejection is filmed at 3:30 a.m., when you are physically exhausted and emotionally spent, and you weep on television. You will not be around for Episode 3, which airs tonight at 10.

You get a lot of response.

You are interviewed on the "Today" show and "Access Hollywood" and by People magazine and Entertainment Weekly and the New York Post and US Weekly and Star magazine. People telephone your mother in Massachusetts to say she should be proud of her son. You confide to a reporter: "I got e-mails from girls in Oregon and Texas saying things like, `You looked great on the show and you are cute. Keep up the good work.' " One signs her name "Average Catherine."

But now you are home in Sherman Oaks, Calif., and back at your 9-to-5 job as an accountant. You did not win the heart of Miss Cutie Pie. No one wanted to date you. No one offered you a job. You received no money from NBC. You lost two weeks' pay.

And yet, you say, you're a lucky guy. And why?

"I've got a place to live out here, and I've got a job to sustain me while I chase the dream."