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“I,” Guillermo tells the camera crew over a muffled hip hop beat, “am in hell.”
They’re in the blue room with the door closed, a special circumstance with the music so loud. Nandor threatened to eat the sound guy when he was asked if he could turn it down — not even off, just down.
“It started four days ago,” Guillermo continues, “when Colin Robinson asked if we could watch the American Song Contest on television. He claimed he wanted to celebrate the rich diversity of America — if this was Colin Robinson before he was reborn or whatever, I would have said he was trying to drain us, but now that he’s, like, a fourth grader, I think he actually means it.
“Anyway. We put it on, Nadja complained about why they weren’t asked to represent New York, and Laszlo claimed that he had a story about the time they were in Eurovision but he couldn’t share it ‘due to the presence of young ears.’ Thank you, Colin Robinson.
“The show was fine, except that I had to try to explain where most of these states were located since Nandor only knows the Northeast, Laszlo knows like five states, and Nadja really doesn’t care. Colin Robinson helped me with that part since he had to study it in school recently. So everything’s going well enough, except the second-to-last state comes on, Wyoming, and as soon as the song started, I could see that Nandor was going to get obsessed with it.”
At that moment, the door to the blue room flies open and Nandor sashays in, wearing a cowboy hat and a hideous pair of snakeskin cowboy boots with his typical warrior garb.
“LOOK, GUILLERMO!” he yells over the full-blast country-rap stylings of Ryan Charles. “I AM NEW BOOT GOOFING!”
Guillermo’s look to the camera will be passed around by the crew later as a meme template.
“CAN YOU MAYBE SHUT THE DOOR, MASTER?” he yells to Nandor. “WE’RE JUST FINISHING UP.”
“PLEASE COME TO THE FANCY ROOM WHEN YOU ARE DONE, GUILLERMO,” Nandor says, two-stepping back towards the door. “AND DO NOT BE TOO LONG.”
When the door clicks closed, again muffling the sound, Guillermo breathes a sigh of relief.
“Nandor was…very upset when it didn’t qualify for the next round,” he continues. “I had to talk him out of going to 30 Rockefeller center to hypnotize the NBC executives.” He huffs a laugh. “But then Colin Robinson explained the wildcard system and streaming media to him, which he didn’t understand beyond ‘Guillermo can help.’ So he’s commandeered my Spotify account to play it 24/7, as you can hear. I’ve tried to explain that we could play it on mute and it would count the same, but he truly believes the volume matters.” Guillermo shrugs. “RIP my stats, my recommendations, my year end wrapped…if it doesn’t get through to the semi-finals, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Thankfully, he thinks TikTok is clock related, so I don’t have to deal with that.
“Oh, the thing Nandor wants in the fancy room? He’s trying to teach himself line dancing. ‘For maximum boot goofing,’ he says.” He does the air quotes and accent to make it clear he’s repeating what Nandor has told him. “So I’d better go help him with that. I’ll text you when the house is at a normal volume again. If you guys could maybe throw a few streams at it too, I’d appreciate it.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”