This past Tuesday, Gabrielle and I went and taped an audition to host our own TV talk show. If we got the gig (highly unlikely), it would be called the Jim & Gab Show (or as she likes to say, the Gab & Jim Show).

Was I excited? You betcha. Optimistic? A little, unreasonably so. But I couldn't shake this feeling that the whole thing was really a reality TV show.

It would be too easy to say "life doesn't have a script." Actually I believe it does; I am constantly writing scripts for every scene that I live. More to the point, reality TV has created a new awareness of "life as fiction" -- the structured impromptu.

It goes like this: here's what we're going to talk about, unless we decide to talk about something else. That's what our audition script looked like.

I'm not a professional actor. And so what I like to get from experiences like this is not "how can this improve my acting?" but "how can this improve my reality?"

The answer is to achieve a greater awareness of "the camera." During our taping, Gab and I exchanged a few quips that I thought were charming and a little funny. My line about virginity being "so last season" and Gab's comment that Lindsey Lohan and Ashlee Simpson should settle their differences by mud wrestling were greeted with laughter from the wings. Call me self-centered, or perhaps all my social skills comes from growing up in bars and not on set, but when I heard the laughs, I turned to make eye contact with the funny man. What I really did was break eye contact with the camera.

I'm not saying the audience is not important -- either in live TV or in social circles -- but don't forget the camera is not just a person, but an important person. The camera is the person.

You would do well to always find the camera.