The opportunities to practice shooting two revolvers at once are few and far between. Competitions that require participants to engage their targets upside down after going through the equivalent of permanent press cycle can be counted on the fingers of a boxing glove, which kind of gets to the crux of the whole Top Shot philosophy. This isn't about excelling at one particular facet of the shooting sports. It's all about survival. It's about getting through the competitions where you're weakest in order to make it to the point where you can send the other guy home, be it in the first episode or the last. When the original 16 competitors were assembled in an L.A. hotel the night before we headed off to the house, we were all ushered into a room and seated opposite roughly the same number of executives, producers and other powerbrokers. The head of the production company explained in a torrent of expletives that this wasn't going to be like any competition any of us had been in before. It took most of us a while to adjust to the idea, but he was right.
March 23, 2011
