It took someone dying for me to admit that I have a serious personal problem that I need to address. Like any addiction, it started out casually enough, something I would just indulge in on days off, never more than twice a week.
Then, suddenly, it became a regular daily habit. Before I knew it, I was actually scheduling my regular life around my habit.
The addiction? Reality television. The dirtiest and most self-deprecating vice of all to possess.
Like I said, it started so innocently. I seem to remember catching the first episode of Rock Of Love with Bret Michaels on VH1 out of truly morbid curiosity. Twenty years ago, I couldn't imagine any female wanting to be in a relationship with this douche, and that was when he had a steady job. But, in 2006, I had to check out what type of bottom-feeder would admit to a nationally televised audience that this was her type of man. I was expecting the type of chick I saw at hair metal shows. 45, leathery skin, fried hair from using the same bleach for three decades, unable to read the memo forbidding the showing of stretch marks in a rock club.
You know the type.
Of course, every woman who ended up on the show was 20 to 30 years old, and semi-glamorous but in the stripper/bad horror movie actress kind of way. And of course, I watched the whole season because the TV trainwreck just could not let me out of its Kung Fu Grip.
Suddenly, I'm watching not only the following Rock Of Love seasons, but I am even getting sucked into the VH1 vortex of spinoff shows, like "I Love Money" and "Charm School". These shows don't even have a real payoff. The contestants are people who basically sucked so hard they got booted from other reality shows. And I actually watched these people week after week.
It would be like following Gary Cherone's career closely just because your favorite band is Van Halen and he was in the lamest version of it for two weeks.
Before I realize it, I'm watching shows with chefs. I'm watching shows with drug addicts, some of whom used to be famous. I'm watching shows about people stuck in a house for three months. I'm watching shows about guys trying to wade through a sea of strippers to find the love of their lives. I'm waking up in a cold sweat at night fearing that a show about fashion models is coming on and I can't find the remote in time to shut it off.
My dependency ended when the murder-suicide of Ryan Jenkins and Jasmine Fiore broke last week. Jenkins was a contestant on Vh1's latest time-waster, "Megan Wants A Millionaire" which was essentially twenty douchebags vying for the affections of a retarded woman in a bikini who was actually too stupid for Bret Michaels' tastes.
It was the same thing I would see in Vegas nightclubs if i actually wanted to dress up and stand in a line for four hours.
Anyway, Jenkins was briefly married to an actress-model from Vegas named Jasmine Fiore, whose severely mutilated body turned up in California a couple weeks ago. Jenkins, it turns out had murdered her. He tried fleeing back to his native Canada, only to be found dead by hanging.
VH1, in a rare show of taste and compassion, immediately yanked any and all episodes of "Megan" as well as another unaired show Jenkins participated in, "I Love Money 3". I could not have been happier. I just knew that I would somehow give in and let my brains and my self-esteem get teased, violated and discarded once again by those date-rapists at VH1.
I am just so sorry somebody had to die to get me off this visual junk food.
I'm pledging now to catch up on the quality TV I keep hearing about. Sons Of Anarchy, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, True Blood.
If not for the current season of Rescue Me, I would have forgotten there was such a thing as thoughtful, emotionally charged series with these things called ACTORS!!!! And they're all tangled up in PLOTS!!!! Which were created by SCREENWRITERS!!!!
I'm gonna put more effort into my new addiction. I can't promise I'll give up crap TV forever. I will have to make an occasional concession here and there. But if you hear about me getting so down in the emotional hole that I am on pins and needles waiting for the results of a televised dance-off or karaoke contest, you have my permission to put me in the ground like a sick dog.
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We both know that it is my fault you have ever watched any of these shows and that it is the only mind numbing device I know of to aid in my relaxation since I quit drinking and drugging.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should quit too, and my new drug could be Todd Kerns shows (same effect). If he only had commercials so we could talk about each song as they happen, instead of trying to remember the barrage of happenings (mistakes, big boobs falling out or down, and people that kiss Karen) until the end of the show.
LOL G - you are hillarious...
ReplyDeleteNow you see, in October, I was going to go to a TK show and Kiss YOU, not Karen...and there was heavy drinking involved...
Booo me...I don't think that will happen:(