The New Rules of Reality TV
I am a fan of scripted television and here is why:
TV characters, reading from scripts, have much funnier lines than real people, stuck on an island or in a house, who don’t have scripts. And even if the real people do have scripts (I’m looking at you, “The Hills”), professional actors tend to do a better job delivering those lines.
But let’s forget how boring most reality TV is for a moment and remember instead how oppressively annoying the people on reality TV are.
I meet real people all the time and most of them are nice to be around. They’re funny or they’re serious or smart or dumb or lots of other things, but mostly, they are real. They have no big audience to lie to.
There are no real people on reality TV. They are all playing a character based on themselves (or even a character based on another character they saw once) and most of them do a poor job at it.
But that’s fine. If people still want to watch that crap and people still want to be on that crap, then let that crap go on existing, so long as I don’t have to watch it.
What I will not abide, however, is when reality TV contestants try and exist in the real world. They can be annoying on their own shows — but they need to stay away from appearing on shows that I want to watch.
Which is why I’ve come up with a couple of new rules for reality TV. I hope you will help me enforce these rules with hefty fines and heftier baseball bats.
1. As soon as you become “famous,” you can’t be on TV anymore. Jon and Kate Gosselin, the Kardashians, anybody who was on “Survivor,” you can stay on your own show, but the second you start appearing in tabloids or on “Entertainment Tonight,” your show is canceled and so is your fame. Sorry.
2. No more murderers. I’m kind of surprised this has to be a rule, but apparently nobody thought to do this before, so we’ve had a bunch of thugs and criminals on TV. You’re out.
3. If you’re a former star and have become a “reality star,” then your show at least has to be about why you were famous in the first place. Flavor Flav wants to put out a new album? Fine. Flavor Flav wants to get his G.E.D.? No way. Ideally, you’d do both of those things privately, Flav, but if you insist on being filmed, you better be making a record.
Won’t Somebody Please Think About the Children?
I don’t know about you, but I cannot stop worrying about kids. Are they eating right? Getting enough sleep? Do they know the exact number of seconds to wash their underbits so that they’re clean without starting to enjoy themselves physically?
And, most of all, are they reading? Because if they are, slap the book out of their hands! Reading is the most dangerous activity around!
It’s just like the parents in Norman told me — reading is destructive and awful. Well, they didn’t “tell” me that so much as they showed it to me by keeping author Ellen Hopkins away from their school.
After all, Hopkins wrote a book about her teen-age daughter who got hooked on meth and ruined her life. This isn’t the sort of thing for teen-agers to read about! What if those printed words about the evils of drug use somehow got into their brains, but the kids were confused and started using drugs?
Better to keep them away from all books, I think. The parents at Whittier Middle School know best. Kids who read do drugs, or something. Stick those kids in front of the TV set instead where they can learn from doctors (like on “House, M.D.”) or police officers (like on “The Shield”) about right and wrong.
In other news, I’m pretty sure the Internet is bad for you, too. And since it used to be transmitted by telephone lines, it’s a safe bet we shouldn’t use phones either. I’m not sold on houses, for that matter.
Just so we’re agreed — we’ll live in caves, not communicate, ban reading and just watch TV. That’s how you strengthen America!
Kanye West is a Jerk? Total Shocker…
I am really enjoying how unhappy people seem to be this morning after Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to give props to Beyonce. Not because I think Kanye was right or Taylor Swift (who?) shouldn’t have won, but because…this is news?
Kanye West acting like a jerk in a very public and inappropriate manner is about as shocking as putting a dollar into the vending machine, pressing the button marked “Coke” and getting a bottle of Coke.
He’s an ass. He only has two jobs. 1. Perform music. 2. Be an ass. Last night, he did his job. There should be no more controversy about that than when the guy at Krispy Kreme hands you a free glazed when you come inside or when the lady at Wal-Mart greets you.
Stay tuned next week when Donald Trump unexpectedly says something mean about Rosie O’Donnell. And then, prepare to be amazed as Michael Moore makes an un-even documentary.
An Open Letter to the Dude in the T.O. Jersey at the Bar
Dear Sir,
First of all, let me say how happy I am that the professional football season is here once again. I enjoy the camaraderie with friends, spending long, lazy Sunday afternoons at the local sports bar, watching multiple games while drinking multiple beers. I assume you, also, enjoy the NFL, because you routinely return to the bar on Sundays. Granted, you seem less inclined to watch the games and more apt to jump around and shout epithets at your friends and the TV, but this is one of our many differences.
Another point of departure is that you are always clad in your Terrell Owens 49ers jersey and your…how to put this?…douche hat, while my friends and I wear jeans and T-shirts. I like to think what you wear has little bearing on anything, except that your choice of jersey (and hat) seem to reflect your personal lifestyle.
And it is that lifestyle that is at the heart of this letter. I do not know that you are gay or straight, nor do I care. I have no idea about your religious affiliation, if you have one, and that doesn’t matter to me one bit. The only thing I really know about you is that you seem to enjoy standing up, often blocking the TV screens, and shouting a derogatory term for “homosexual.” Over and over and over again.
I certainly don’t wish to impede your right to free speech, but do you think you could stop doing that? If you are trying to make a political statement or even an artistic one, I think you are failing. The only point that is coming across to my friends, or to the many tables surrounding yours, is that you are a loud, obnoxious jerk.
If that is your aim, then I say bravo, sir. You have certainly found the sweet spot.
But, now that we all know you’re an inconsiderate jackass, I think it’s safe to stop getting drunk at 2 p.m. and screaming insults. Point made. Move on to the next point, which we’re all hoping is rehab, or at least a different sports bar.
Sincerely,
Every Single Person Who Had to Endure You Last Year
Ban the Asterisk
As a semi-literate writer of things, like blogs and sentences, I love punctuation. Periods are great, period. Exclamation points are vital to hyperbole, such that I would die without them!
And question marks? Do you even have to ask?
Even semi-colons are important; I should learn to use them someday.
But there’s one bit of punctuation with whom I am very cross: The Asterisk. I’m not saying that little hanging star isn’t useful, but it almost never contains any good news.*
(* Exception that proves the rule: Those must be space pants, because your butt looks out of this world. That seems like pretty good news.)
An asterisk in sports always involves cheating or some other scandal. Barry Bonds hit 71 homers* (while he was juicing). Michael Phelps won 14 gold medals* (despite a goofy grin on his face).
It’s even worse when you’re buying stuff. Nothing like purchasing floor wax that claims “Great on Floors*” only to read “* Not for use on tile, hardwood, laminate, marble, dirt or carpet.”
And sales are always ruined by the asterisk. “20% off all purchases*” isn’t much use when the disclaimer tells you “*purchases must be $800,000 or greater and include a yacht.”
Rather than hide behind the asterisk, I think we should put everything out there. Let people know the deal up front.
Think about how many bad marriages could be avoided if everything was out in the open? Too many people say “I do” without looking behind their soon-to-be spouses to see a big, fat asterisk, just waiting to screw up their lives.
I say we do away with the asterisk once and for all. And I’m looking at you next, parentheses.
(Oh, crap.)
TV is my year-round sport
I stopped playing soccer in elementary school. Quit baseball in middle school. Wimped out on basketball in high school.
And since my body went directly from frail and skinny to dumpy and bloated, I was never in “football” shape. Though I guess I’m kind of shaped like a football these days.
I didn’t stick with sports for two reasons — one, I suck at sports, and two, I was way better at watching TV. In fact, I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve kind of honed my body into the perfect TV watching machine.
Still, even I have my limits. TV used to be a fall sport. New shows, new seasons, new stories. Occasionally, you’d get a mid-season replacement, but mostly you finished up well before spring and could play a few pick-up games with reruns, if you were bored.
Nowadays, the new shows never stop. And I’m not talking about “reality” TV, which sucks at being a genre as much as I did at baseball, soccer, basketball and track — the summer has real, honest-to-God scripted fare.
I used to be able to rest up for the fall, get my trainer to check out my remote control hand, buy new pillows for the couch, but now I’m watching “Burn Notice” and “True Blood” and “Warehouse 13.”
My volume thumb is aching. I’m adding padding to my butt as fast as possible, but it’s never enough and BOOM — the calendar says we’re a month away from the fall season. All new shows. And I don’t know if I can handle it.
Maybe it’s time to just watch TV recreationally — it’s a younger man’s game, these days. But, Favre-like, I keep coming back.
Why didn’t I stick with basketball? I was awful, but at least nobody makes you play when it’s snowing outside.
Another year…
Despite fervent protestations from my readers and several noted judicial scholars, I have once again been allowed to live another year.
Turning 31 was not as big a deal as turning 30 was, which was (in turn) not as big a deal as 29 had been.
Thirty-one is no 21 or 25, that’s for sure. Those years held some significance, if only because they held new opportunities for me. At 21 I could (legally) drink. At 25, I got married.
At 30, I worried a bit about my reaction to turning 30, not realizing that my worrying was the reaction.
It was 29 that punched me between the eyes. That was when I started to panic that I would not, in the last year before 30, accomplish all those things that I thought I would do. And my panicking was well thought out, as I proceeded to not accomplish anything.
It’s a tradition I’ve kept up ever since. I’m reading no great novels, nor writing any. I’m certainly not trying any harder at this job. My back lawn is still a mess (and no, that’s not a euphemism) and I can’t grow a tomato to save my life.
And so, another year. Here’s to mediocrity! Wooooo–*cough*cough* ooo!
…another year.
God Bless Texas
I hope you’re not expecting me to be funny today. Those storms last night had my dog and my wife (and by extension, me) awake when we should have been sleeping. I’m too tired for funny.
(Editor’s note: Then how do you explain the rest of the crap you write?)
With that in mind, I hope you enjoy this video of a Texas deposition. WARNING: Some of the language in this video is foul and very, very humorous.
I know they have two pro football teams and access to the Gulf of Mexico, but I think this video puts Oklahoma and Texas about even. (They may still be a little ahead of us if you count Rep. Sally Kern.)
I’ll Care About Health Care When I Get Cancer
If you’re like me, then you’re a devastatingly handsome 6′2 white man with a weakness for gyros and The Kinks. (If these things are true, congratulations on leading an awesome life.)
But another way you might be like me is that the current health care debate has you bored out of your skull. And that is because you, like me, are not dying of anything at this particular moment.
I’m sure if I had cancer or AIDS or a burning desire to teach interpretive dance to Hell’s Angels, I would care about universal health care. Those people care because they need it. But we’re young and invincible — we’ll never need a doctor or surgery or a flu vaccine.
And so we can’t be blamed for ignorance and apathy — well, we CAN be blamed, we just don’t care enough to do anything about it — because that’s for somebody else to worry about.
So, you know, let’s let old people decide. I mean, surely they’ll be as invested in keeping us healthy as they are in getting hip replacements and being kept alive by increasingly expensive machines.
Or let’s leave it up to rich people. Certainly they care more about making sure we can get health coverage despite a pre-existing condition than they do about saving a few bucks on their taxes. I mean, there’s no question, right?
And don’t forget the religious nutbags! We shouldn’t worry that they’ll try to collapse the whole thing because it doesn’t outlaw abortion — which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled is legal — because they care so much more about helping the poor.
Everybody cares about poor people. It’s why their lives are so great.
No, if you’re like me, you’re just going to sit back and enjoy “More to Love,” the fat-friendly “Bachelor” rip-off with a big pint of ice cream and a bucket of corndogs.
Because we’re young and invincible. I’m sure everybody else is looking out for us. Right?
I would also like to apologize to Rihanna
Rihanna,
Girl, I know a lot of people are apologizing to you right now, like that guy you used to date, Chris Brown. Of course his apology is kind of vague, talking about “the incident” and “what happened.” I’ve used super new technology to embed it below, in case you’d like to watch again.
But unlike Chris, who savagely beat you in a car and then waited six months to say “sorry” as part of his community service, I’d like to make my apology very clear.
I am sorry that I don’t know who you are. Really, really sorry. I heard there was some song about an umbrella you did? But all I can think of is this song from the ’50s or ’60s they’re always playing on KOMA, and I don’t think that was you.
The fact that I only know you because Chris Brown beat you up is not cool. Then again, I though Chris Brown was a running back for the Detroit Lions, but I don’t think that skinny dude in the video could play in the NFL — even for Detroit.
So let me sincerely beg your forgiveness. I will try and figure out who you are beyond police reports posted on the Smoking Gun. And after that, I’ll get to work on the mystery of who gave Tyra Banks a damn talk show.
Sincerely,
Greg
p.s. Seriously? Who gave Tyra a talk show? Were you worried America was getting too smart?
