The moderator had clearly never seen "Big Brother." She made it seem like each installment was filled with excitement and intrigue.

She was no Julie Chen.

"How did it feel to be trapped inside that tiny, claustrophobic house for all those days and days?" she asked the group, encouragingly.

"It wasn't bad," replied Curtis, sensibly. "It had a pool. It was a decent-sized house."

The moderator looked deflated. "What emotions did you feel when you got kicked out of the house? Mega?"

"I felt I would have done everything the same way. I felt the housemates thought I was their greatest competition."

The others groaned. Mega always tried to mask his utter failure on the show by acting as if it was some sort of badge to have been ejected first.

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Then, thrillingly, he added, "When I got out, a friend of my mother's said, 'That Brittany girl? She's a virgin whore!'"

The room crackled with something like liveliness, and I found myself liking Mega immensely.

"Imagine being the only black man with a bunch of white folk!"

The other houseguests sat, mouths open in shock.

Especially Cassandra.

The awkwardness didn't stop there. Mega on why he christened George "Chicken George":

"Did anyone see 'Roots'? On 'Roots' they gave their slaves derogatory names. And I saw this as my chance to humiliate a white man on national television, so I thought, 'I'll call him Chicken George.'"

This was what "Big Brother" could have been!

Genial George looked up, stunned, and said, "Hey, it's all entertainment," a phrase that he repeated intermittently throughout the evening as though it explained everything.

"So, Brittany," the moderator said, trying to wrench attention away from Mega, "what do you feel about George's hometown voting you off of the show?"

This is of course an unproven charge. (In one show George's wife was seen rounding up the troops in Rockford, Ill., George's hometown, but she never did seem capable of organizing much more than a car pool.)

George attempted to stammer a rebuttal, but Brittany topped him, venting her acrimony for the evil people who voted her mutant ass off of national TV.

"A lawyer was trying to get me to sue CBS?" she said bitterly. "But the reason I didn't was because I felt I was lucky to be picked?" After all these months, she seemed remarkably sour. "I think people are kind of sue-happy these days anyway?" she added philosophically.

The moderator asked Cassandra why she seemed so delighted to be booted. She explained, "I felt the show was sinking to a level that was far below us. I was concerned that humiliation was the name of the game."

"Despite the pressure, she maintained her individuality," said the moderator. "That was nice."

I noticed that the elderly couple sitting to my right had slipped out of the auditorium.

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