California had the first-ever Hollywood governor when Ronald Reagan was elected and then decades later sent action star Arnold Schwarzenegger to Sacramento. Now Hollywood has arrived in Oregon. The state has its first reality show congressional candidate in right-winger Alek Skarlatos who is challenging longtime Rep. Peter DeFazio in the Nov. 3 election.
Will Skarlatos win? Weirder things have happened in American politics (as we don’t need to remind you), so here are five of our favorite Skarlatos TV moments.
‘Math is so hard’
Remember when Andrew Yang was on the campaign trail as the Democratic presidential hopeful and said the opposite of Donald Trump was an Asian who loved math?
Well, it turns out Skaratos is like Trump when math is in the picture. While on a “Hometown Heroes” episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Skarlatos tries to figure out how many meters are in the phrase “the whole nine yards.”
Skarlatos struggled and declared “math is hard.”
Luckily his train buddies Spencer Stone and Anthony Sadler were there to do the math, but we doubt they’d be there for him if he’s elected to Congress. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire also misspells Alek’s last name as “Scarlatos.” Is there another Alek we don’t know about or maybe spelling his name is “so hard,” too.
Single and ready to mingle
While on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the host Chris Harrison (not the delightful Regis Philbin), says two of the three guys were single. Skarlatos interjects to say he’s “very” single.
Harrison also hosts The Bachelor, which has one guy go on a series of dates with two dozen women, eliminates someone every week and proposes to a woman at the end of the season.
Being the ever-selfless man, Skarlatos says he’d be willing to take one for the team and be a “Bachelor.”
“I would sacrifice myself for that cause,” he says.
In one segment of the game show, Skarlatos’ brother shows up as a lifeline to help the guys out on a question about the origin of the word “catamaran.” Maybe the wrong Skarlatos is running.
Sexy Hot Salsa
During his fairly successful bout on Dancing with the Stars, Skarlatos had trouble being sexy for a salsa dance. “I’m just not a sexy guy normally,” he admits on the show.
Don’t worry, Skarlatos’ dance partner Lindsay Arnold and a few other ladies encouraged him to show some skin. But first, they had to work through the hair.
“He’s a pretty hairy dude,” Arnold says. If they were going to get Skarlatos to wear an open red suit jacket while shirtless, he would need to be waxed.
This entire process was shown in detail on the show.
After the waxing, Skarlatos was good to go. “On a scale of one to Channing Tatum, how sexy do you feel?” one of the girls asked.
“Probably Channing Tatum,” Skarlatos replied. He went on to win third place in the competition, no doubt in part to his willingness to get his chest waxed. But it makes us wonder, how hairy is Peter DeFazio?
America the Beautiful
What dance could be more fitting for an American veteran and hero than a waltz to a jazzy rendition of the classic song “America the Beautiful?” Skarlatos and Arnold waltzed away on Dancing with the Stars in three-four time while a large American flag rippled in the background.
One of the judges later commented that Skarlatos and Arnold “captured the smoothness of a gliding eagle.”
Doesn’t get more patriotic than that, right?
The 15:17 to Dunder Mifflin
After stopping a terrorist attack on a train in France, Skarlatos, along with buddies/fellow train heroes Stone and Sadler, starred as themselves in a Clint Eastwood movie version of the incident called The 15:17 to Paris. People from the actual train attack even played extras on the train in the film.
But too bad Skarlatos’ mom didn’t get the movie job. Jenna Fischer, known for her role as Pam in The Office, stars as Skarlatos’ mom, despite only being 18 years older than him in real life. Sorry to the real Mrs. Skarlatos for not winning this role.
The movie itself was not critically acclaimed, receiving a measly 28 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But keep in mind that Skarlatos said on Ellen that if he could have anyone play him in a movie, it would be Zac Efron. We are looking forward to this possibility in the movie version of Skarlatos’ congressional race.
If this roundup of screen moments doesn’t fill you with confidence, we’re right there with you. But it’s also 2020, so the election’s not over until the last lawsuit is settled.
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