For Love or Fun : Belligerent, Bizarre and Lascivious Come Courting for ‘Love Connection’

COSTA MESA —  They could be denigrated and humiliated on national television. Their dates might tell the world that they kiss sloppily, dance cloddishly or dress nerdily.

But that risk did not deter 87 gutsy souls from tossing their hats into the ring last week at a local audition for “Love Connection”--a matchmaking TV program on which, according to its boast, “you hear all the intimate details of a first date.”

Interviewers made the trek from West Hollywood to set up shop at the Maxi’s Lounge nightclub. For seven hours, from 5 p.m. until midnight, a constant trickle of hopeful romantics visited the “Love Connection” booth.

Some approached the challenge tentatively: “Uh, what do I do? Just sit down and talk?”

Others were bold. “O.K. I’m here to fall in love,” announced Gilbert Andrews, 37, of Anaheim.

First, prospective guest stars filled out questionnaires about their likes and dislikes in dating. Then they faced the firing squad.

“I want someone smart and witty and attractive--the ones who are usually married,” said Roxie Smith, 28, of Irvine.

“You think that all the good ones are married?” asked her interrogator, Kimberly Abendroth.

“Oh, no, I don’t really think that ,” Smith apologetically backpedaled.

She didn’t need to worry that she had flubbed the test. As Smith exited the stage, Abendroth privately rated her a good candidate. “She’s outgoing, she talks a lot, she’s opinionated,” Abendroth noted. “We look for people who will answer the questions with more than just a ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and without a lot of prompting.”

Back at their table, Smith and her girlfriend Maeva Garrett sipped cocktails and analyzed their performances. “Now I’m suddenly remembering all these things I forgot to say . . . “ fretted Smith, an office manager for an investment firm.

Trying out for “Love Connection” was Garrett’s idea, inspired by a blurb about the audition on the previous night’s show. “I thought it would be fun. They usually get good-looking guys,” said the 26-year-old Santa Ana resident, who works for an import-export business.

And besides, if she makes the cut she will get to meet “Love Connection” host Chuck Woolery. “He’s extremely cute,” Garrett raved.

Guest coordinator Jacqui Pitman explained that she and her staff of interviewers occasionally venture south to rustle Orange County dwellers. “A lot of people want to be on the show but would never get around to driving to West Hollywood for an audition,” she said. “So we come to them.”

When Sherry Wright heard that the show would be screening candidates in Costa Mesa, she deemed it “an omen.”

“Someone was trying to tell me something--the Lord put ‘Love Connection’ right in my neck of the woods,” she laughed. “I could no longer procrastinate. I could no longer say that Los Angeles was too far to drive. I could no longer say that I was too old.”

Wright, divorced 10 years, has decided that she is past due for another husband. “I’m shopping, like you would shop for a dress at Nordstrom’s,” said the 45-year-old marketing director who lives in Lake Forest. “I’m looking at it almost academically.” Her buddy, Marilyn Rogers, refused to audition because: “I pass out on TV” and “I don’t understand the format of the show.”

The Newport Beach interior designer objected to “Love Connection’s” notorious free-for-alls, during which mis-connected couples bombard one another with accusations and insults. After going out with a date they select from videotaped interviews, participants tell on the air their feelings about the rendezvous.

“I’ve only watched the show once, and people were really ripping each other apart,” said Rogers, 52. “I thought, ‘This is enjoyable?’ ”

If he appears on “Love Connection,” he will “try to be civilized,” promised Ted Popely, 21, of Corona del Mar.

“But half the fun of watching the show is hearing people say, ‘What a scumbag. He had the worst breath I’ve ever smelled,’ ” Popely added.

A recent transplant from Michigan, Popely told his interviewer that he sincerely hopes to meet his “dream girl” through “Love Connection.” And just what is his dream girl?

“I want a girl who’s not afraid to call herself a girl,” Popely stated. “I just got out of school, and it was like all the women at the University of Michigan were members of NOW. Feminists are O.K., but they’re not my dream girl.”

Popely also insisted upon an attractive date, as did many of the auditioners. “Call me shallow, but the perfect girl has got to be a looker,” he said.

Meanwhile, his friend sat at the bar drinking beer and scoffing at the whole scene. “I do fine on my own,” Vista resident Craig McDonald, 21, asserted. “If you’re so hard up that you have to go on television to get a date, you shouldn’t be dating.”

Stretches of down time throughout the night left the four interviewers with little more to do than tap their pencils to the beat of loud dance music. Behind them, a banner featuring Chuck Woolery’s chiseled face forlornly beckoned.

As the evening grew later, the encounters grew stranger.

There was the woman who listed on the application “hedonist” as her occupation and Chuck Woolery as her reference. Under the question, “What do you hate to do on a date?” she wrote, “Kiss.” Then during her interview she said she didn’t know her age and bragged that “Love Connection” is beneath her intellectually: “I only watch ‘Jeopardy’--O.K.?”’

There was the “psychic and clairvoyant” who handed the interviewers a flyer about his extrasensory powers and requested that they pass it along to Woolery.

There was the man who took a liking to interviewer Paula Freeman-Bert and refused to vacate her corner of the table unless she promised dinner with him. She didn’t. The “Love Connection” selectors were expert at giving hope but promising nothing.

Despite the belligerent, the bizarre and the lascivious, overall the night was a success, said guest coordinator Pitman. She estimated that about 50% of the interviewees would qualify.

Auditioner Ted Popely summed up his chances thusly: “I don’t know if I made it. I’ve seen a lot of dweebs on the show, so maybe.”