(THIS is reality tv I can get behind. If only the rest of the format had such obvious… talent.)

I know I said that my festering, moldy faith in humanity was entirely extinguished when Argentinians were sending death threats to a psychic octopus in Germany over soccer. There was no recuperation time between the words in that sentence for my species empathy to deal with the rapid-fire asinine. Every facet, every syllable of that collection of utterances, contained so much wrong that I saw no recovery for us as a people. My belief in the essential goodness of man flat-lined then, and I assumed all was lost, and I would spend the rest of my life waiting for the day we all worked in tandem to drown the human race in something that would really embarrass us throughout the galaxy, like Mrs. Butterworth’s or melted popsicles. But over the weekend, people began to puzzle me again. An aspect of human behavior actually made me think, and against all sound reasoning – selfless and with no thought to my personal safety – I followed my brain cramp down the badger hole as far as it would take me.

Like all great lines of reasoning, mine starts at People Magazine, where Hills star Kristin Cavallari offers, without even the courtesy of a spoiler alert, the biggest shock of, perhaps, this modern age post-Christ. Second, of course, to when I learned that Woody Harrelson is getting way more tail than any of us combined:

“Nothing you see on TV is real,” Cavallari, 23, tells PEOPLE. “Fans need to understand it’s all entertainment. It’s all in fun. I would never put my close friends or a real relationship on a show.”

Let’s get this straight: if you ever watched five minutes of The Hills and thought a millisecond of it wasn’t meticulously scripted, sponsored, planned, airbrushed, and filmed… If you thought you were experiencing life and love, joy and suffering with these people – and this is no judgment on your character – you should start fund raising, because you are uniquely qualified to board the short bus, express to Elected Official Town. You’re that special kind of mongoloid they keep in padded basements because you are a danger to yourself and others. And to those with the capacity to believe literally anything people tell you, I have only this to offer: Icy Hot feels really good when you rub it on your balls and/or clit. Of course The Hills isn’t real reality teevee! They’re all too genuinely pretty, and i could spend the rest of the day berating you, but that brings me to the part that seriously confuses me. What the fuck is up with reality TV?*

I know its a question that’s plagued intelligent people for coming up on 20 years, but I want to make a confession. Some time ago, I made my peace with reality television. Something finally clicked for me, and while it never became my cup of strange urine, I got it. With the advent of The Real World and Road Rules came television for morons-by-choice, that species of dingleberry that can afford to be willfully ignorant of book-learnin’ and the world around them. It was either because they were rich, or because they were so strikingly attractive that people bought things for them, or both, which really is just the true crime of the century. And they deserve entertainment too, which is why reality television came along, so that the dumb jocks, the ditsy assed cheerleaders, and the insufferably boring could relate to the characters they saw without having to waste their precious few braincells on useless minutia like symbolism, plot structure, meta-details, etc. Fat chicks could pretend that, if they cared deeply enough about these real people, that they had popular friends. Closeted teenagers could experience all the drama they so desperately craved without coming out and risking becoming walking hate crimes everywhere they went (this was the early nineties, after all). No matter what, this shit was solidly marketable, even into the sticky, sulfurous depths of over-saturation,  and that commercial viability relied one very important factor: everyone was slammin’. Topics like taint-rash (clinically: grundelous itchysaurus) and barely alcoholic anise liqueur, things that would alternately bore and disgust any other human being, sounded downright interesting out of the mouth belonging to the fake double Ds you were staring at. Viewers would pay rapt attention to a man talking about how he does his hair because he was pretty and because, frankly, Murphy Brown was way too confusing. Oh, let’s face it, these people would need the Cliff’s Notes to an episode of Designing Women or Full House.

So, wait, is the black guy banging Delta Burke? Why is he always there? Does he like floral upholstery?

So, that was all good. Without The Real World, MTV would have ended up showing C-Span reruns with color commentary by Carson Daly, since music was out of the question, so you were going to be flipping past that channel anyway. Let the D students have their fun, and if you happened to catch some masturbation fodder on your way past it, so much the better for everyone except the angels you killed. As predicted, the virus spread, because it was cheap as hell and required no effort to make, a formula that dollar signs are attracted to like maggots to the improvised amputee experiment in my basement. Soon, every channel had reality shows, even the supposedly educational ones like History and Oxygen, and the beautiful people you were replacing your spouse with when you closed your eyes during relations were spewing their beautiful absurdities across the airwaves.

But, reality fans, now that it’s 2010, what is the fucking deal with your chosen format? Look at this objectively for a minute. These are the people you’re glued to your television over in this, the third decade of rtv’s existence:

This is not, in fact, a collage from arts & crafts time at the home for the deranged.

I know you don’t like to do this, but try to concentrate. What do all of those people have in common, beside fake tans? If you guessed, “They are all insurmountably, devastatingly fugly,” you should buy the Scumbag Style home version game, because your friends will be impressed that you’ve finally found something you’re good at besides getting herpes and pounding energy drinks.Yes, those people are genuinely aesthetically unpleasant,* and suddenly reality stars rutting indiscriminately, trading VD and hair gel with each other like bubblegum cards with each other loses a bit of its luster. The truly befuddling part of this is that reality fans don’t see it. To make up for the fact that these people couldn’t get past the bouncer at a Chick-fil-A, they paint these people up with tans and makeup, and give them damaging perms and eyeliner Marilyn Manson would call a tad whorish. They are literally wearing masks! If you think these people are actually attractive, you probably thought Alf was a fucking documentary.

Have we truly run through all the beautiful people with no self respect? Have we, with our insatiable thirst for vacuous pap, deflated the nation’s supply of superficial narcissists to shells of their former hollow selves, resembling a pile of used condoms more than actual people?  Or did we just lose them to the titty bars that can offer more dignity to the aspiring attention whore? Every day a new crop of reality shows enters the pseudo-entertainment landscape, pushing up the corners of our television consciousness like mutant weeds on a stone tiled patio. But – and I genuinely want to know this – what pillar of shallow callousness have you invented to support it, now that all your hot sluts are used-up dish rags for Paco to sweep off the floor of Lot 8? Because the industry must be doing well, it’s everywhere! Look, as an example, this piece about the “winner” of The Bachelor was in the real actual news:

Vienna Girardi’s ex-boyfriend Lee Smith has once again cashed in on their on-again, off-again relationship–that he says overlapped with Vienna’s engagement to Bachelor Jake Pavelka… “We were in my truck hooking up, her shirt was off and Jake just kept calling over and over again,” Lee told Radar. “She said, ‘I can’t just ignore his calls or he’ll freak out and call every minute.’” (HuffPost)

So she’s a whore. The show is months over and she is still using her cooch for money and fame.  That was news when the girls on these shows looked like the girl next door you spied on when she did camel-toe pilates in the back yard,

Spoiled because nobody ever told her, "Hahaha no thanks."

operating the binoculars with one hand, and not like some baggy eyed emaciate that fell face first off the train to Auschwitz. There might have been some anthropological interest in deciding why a 10 might have low enough self-esteem to put herself through the gynecological rigors of a reality season and its aftermath, but everyone knows dogs need physical intimacy to replace the real emotional connections they feel incapable of creating with anyone other than their many cats. They do anal on principle and the second date. No amount of hair and makeup doctors can hide the fact she’s not good looking, and yet we all seem to be pretending she is. So I ask you again: how do you, the fans, justify this? What the hell is so interesting about this that you will sit through a half hour of product placements and corporate brainwashing to see it?

It certainly isn’t the writing, which in true reality television means concepting, I suppose. Not only does the viewer have to look at someone they could see walking down the street on any given day in rural Tennessee, they have to deal with the most insufferable, from-concentrate, packaged loutishness out of the mouths of these fugmos. Do you genuinely give two shits about the nuptials of the middle-aged third banana from a spin-off of another reality show based on a terrible menstrual drama no sane person ever watched? Because that’s what you’re getting on Bethenny Getting Married. Why should I care about the cat fights and infidelities of rich old cunts (Real Housewives of Orange County) who have to create adversity because life isn’t handing them enough? Why do I have to see how they do it in different towns (Real Housewives of Everywhere Else)? I literally hate you for populating the earth with 13 small versions of you, and you think you can bitch at me about how hard it is to raise them? Drown the little bastards, and put some fucking Star Trek reruns on. The Bachelor seems to me to be less of a contest than a game of Russian Roulette with the bullet being a towering stack of illegible divorce papers to wade through in three months. Tila Tequila is not, in fact, hot; she only lasted because you all thought you’d see some lesbian shit on basic cable, when, if you throw down for Cinemax, you can see actually attractive chicks go at it nightly. If throwing a bunch of tards in a big apartment isn’t holding your viewers like it did in ‘92, and your solution is to grasp at flimsy devices – devices like  “Who has the constitution to blow Flava Flav” – then maybe you should go back to being a Bon Jovi roadie.

Jersey Shore would be an incredible metafictional exploration of the limits of the reality subculture, a sociological experiment worthy of the attention we give the drug culture from 50 years ago, except for one thing: The target audience. You can meticulously arrange your elements so that the true-to-life action you capture on camera is a vivid criticism of reality television from the POV of an avid and honest fan, but as long as you put it on MTV it will be like serving vichyssoise to a starving homeless guy. The apparent star of Jersey Shore, Snooki, is the walking summation to this entire argument:

The smallest Jersey Shore guidette told the senator’s daughter [in an interview that could only have been conceived from the dastardly mechinations of Satan's masturbations when he's on pot] that she voted for McCain in 2008 because, “he was really cute and I liked when he did his speeches.”

Indeed. I wonder, if Elizabeth Cady Stanton could see forward in time, would she put a revolver in her mouth before or after Seneca Falls? Assuming Snooki’s motivations were even slightly defensible – and assuming she could name one thing about how he “did his speeches” outside of lulling her to sleep like a grandpa with a worn copy of Goodnight Moon – assuming all this, McCain was the cuter of the candidates? I thought you reality girls all feel a terrible emptiness inside when a big black cock isn’t lodged firmly in your derrieres. Maybe she has a thing for stubby arms and comb-overs, but these considerations all become moot when you see a picture of this bitch.

They don't make enough watery Bud Light for anyone to call this any more than a 2

Oh, I’m sorry, were you talking? I was just spacing, thinking about a culture that glorifies shallow idiots that aren’t even remotely attractive. You know, the kinds they used to put in homes as the malfunctioning piles of hardened genetic stew that would never be of any use to society whatsoever. We treat our mentally challenged people better nowadays, but we don’t need to be putting them on television when shows like Arrested Development get the ax. We already redefined talent to include “being hot,” we really don’t want to have to open the books for you dumb assholes again. As long as you, the reality tv fan, continue to absorb this schlock like a musty sponge in red wine vomit, it will never be commercially viable to bring intelligence and wit to people who like to use their brains. And that’s fine, we’re good to go read a book, but if this shit is going to continue to exist, conquering cable and network wholecloth like the machines in The Matrix, we’re really going to have to ask for just one damned good reason.

*I’m not even talking about the fashion ones or the singing ones or the cooking ones. At least an argument can be made that those showcase some kind of talent.
**That’s not even the worst of it, I just don’t know the genre enough to look up pictures of specific painted up monsters I’ve surfed past recently.

That new acronym stands for “Not Safe For Brains,” a moniker that could safely be applied to an ad in Miami Living Magazine that’s causing more of an unjustified uproar than Snooki getting her well-deserved knuckle sammich. Turns out EstablishedMen.com, a dating site seemingly designed to cut out the middle (class) man, slipped what prudes and the humorless are calling a bit of not-safe-for-workery into their ad space in the popular magazine. See if you can spot it…

Um, excuse me, miss, you have a little uh... nevermind.

Oh, for crissakes FOX News! It isn’t enough that you are the leading supplier of termites to the foundation of our rapidly crumbling Fourth Estate, you have to be the asshole neighbor kid that comes over and circles all the instances of Waldo in our books? Trust me, I can bloodhound a dick joke, I don’t need your help.

“”Did they not see this, or have magazines become so desperate for ad space that they’ll ‘overlook’ something like this?” media and publishing expert Penny C. Sansevieri asked FoxNews.com. “But I find that every time something like this happens it elevates the exposure, good or bad – and issues will get snapped up very quickly.” (HuffPost)

I feel like these are the questions you ask after the really glaring ones are addressed. Such as: “What exactly is the marketing angle here?” Is this a dating site for men with unfortunate, God-despises-you type birthmark fetishes? Is God a fifth grader with an infantile sense of humor? Or were these two young ladies taking turns mammorially pleasuring this disembodied member at the exact moment of nuclear holocaust, and the image of a cock was permanently nuclear shadowed on the blond’s chest?

When the aliens discovered the devastation of WWIII, a grave misunderstanding would forever label Chicago "City of Trannies" across the Galaxy.

I’m just saying, how is the image of another dude’s pecker – a pecker belonging, presumably, to an infuriatingly well-endowed professional penis model – going to persuade me to bring my “gold digging slut” dollar to your company? Perhaps the ad illustrates the porn training all of the site’s female members received at some kind of Trophy Whore finishing school on how to look at the camera, no matter what, despite an impending money shot. I could see how that might intrigue me enough for a closer look, it’s a valuable skill. If that’s not the case, what are they looking at, his wallet? I don’t want my menage-a-trois to dissemble into shouts of, “I’m over here ladies!” The least you could do is pretend the most fascinating thing in the world to your girls is my manhood.

So, the issue isn’t how the ad got into Miami Living with a sexually suggestive image, or even why the Uptight Republican Brigade has their secret crotchless panties in a bunch over an ad that shows less than a high school anatomy text, but what the agency thought the site would get out of it in the first place.

“When we created the ad, we never imagined a magazine like Miami Living would approve it, but judging by the amount of sign-ups we received since the magazine has come out, this ’shadow penis’ ad seems to work and might become a staple of our campaign,” the [Established Men] rep said.

Atta boy! When life gives you lemonade… um, Sharpie the hell out of the advertising landscape until it resembles the bathroom at a home for sex addicted middle-school boys? Proverbs and adages were never my gift. He continued: “This ad is definitely a true reflection of what EstablishedMen.com is all about – connecting professional men with beautiful women for mutually beneficial relationships.” Fuck eHarmony and their 27 levels of compatibility! That sciencey shit is for short-sighted suckers with scruples about putting the same pair of white-haired, wrinkly nuts in their mouth for a couple of years for the big pay day on the horizon. Personality breeds congeniality, but fellatio is faster… io. Whatever, I’m not your rhyme monkey.

Oh! … but anal is fiscal? Or facile. You know what I mean.

(The Blind Side, written, directed by and starring things you’d normally have to go to the zoo to see. And I mean Bullock, not the black people, so shut up black people.)

If you put a bunch of monkeys in a room with a typewriter, they’ll throw poo at it because even they know nobody uses that shit anymore. But the BBC seems to be hoping for some free Shakespeare – - nay, counting on it – - and gearing those same monkeys up to take over on the next step, so all of Western civilization can attribute artistic merit to something else while not doing any of the work, or even pay anyone for it. As the story goes:

Around 11 of the [Chimps] at Edinburgh Zoo spent the last 18 months filming each other as they carry around a special ‘chimpcam’ device. The results will be aired on The Chimpcam Project, which airs tomorrow night on BBC2.The footage is part of a BBC documentary about the work of behavioural scientist Betsy Herrelko, from the University of Stirling.

Documentary, my ass. Even outside of the disappointment when you learn that “chimpcam” isn’t nearly as deliciously filthy as it sounds, does any of this remind you of the landslide on bullshit mountain “The Real World” caused some millenia ago? A show made by monkeys for the cost of bananas, about monkeys who will work for said bananas and the chance to show just how little evolution has actually gotten around to making the race as a whole fit for survival outside of crowded night clubs and elaborately comfortable condos nature enclosures? Shit, Snooki barely made it out of that club with her whole face on, and the world salivated for more comically real blood (and that from someone who looks more like an ape herself than a fake reality tv celebrity). Hey Betsy, how do you feel about your life’s work being reduced to a project that amounts to nothing more than a “Jersey Shore” that’s cheaper to make?

The chimps were introduced to video technology in a new high tech enclosure and a new chimp-proof camera [with a large viewfinder so they could see what they were filming] was put in with them… ‘We were dealing with an average group of chimps, but they worked with us very well and gave it their best. I’m pretty sure they understood the filming… They never got bored of filming unless the monitor died.’

Didn’t take them long to understand that they were filming, eh? Can’t wait to see what happens when they realize what passes for television these days and they start having affairs to get attention and getting into fights over who gets to play with the tail-less kitten. And god forbid they are ever exposed to porn and realize that their daily habits closely mirror several niche fetishes. They’ll start throwing poo for money instead of for fun, which will totally ruin the once magical experience for us because then it will seem kind of rote and unimaginative. A penchant all primates share is selling out at the earliest opportunity*. Not to mention that it is only a matter of time before they give the little beasts webcams; you used to have to go to the zoo to see a chimp jerk off into its food before eating it, and now it will be on pay sites. In no time we’ll be inviting the chimps on Larry King and local weather reports, and the only differentiation between a chimp and The Situation in our MTV-dulled minds will be the capacity for intelligent verbal communication how long they spent on their blowouts.

The situation isn’t all bleak, however, unless you’re a film student. There are several upcoming projects that might benefit from the eye of a less evolved mammal. Miley Cyrus is now philosophically qualified to write, direct, and star in Girls Just Want To Have Fun, now in pre-production, so the little girls who like Amanda Bynes but hate originality should be happy about that. Or how about Brother’s Keeper starring John Cena, who will probably be able to sign one of his relatives, or the (count ‘em) four new releases set to feature simian ex-stripper Channing Tatum. It is just too damned bad this study wasn’t done before Insane Clown Posse wrapped on Big Money Rustlas, a comedy western featuring the horrifyingly white, foul mouthed rappers in clown makeup (fantastic trailer after the jump).  Monkeys with licenses to film would be excellent for any of those projects, and far far cheaper than, say, a DP with a masters and 12 years experience under his belt. This is the same thing that happened to voice acting after Robin Williams contributed his talents to Alladin and film studios realized they could make more money billing huge celebrities in commercials and animated films, and told practiced, experienced voice actors like Billy West and Frank Welker (whose films, just by the way, “have grossed more money than those of any other actor in history”) to go fuck themselves. I’m only recommending we stick to the plan, here.

In the end, I say we give chimps control over still more aspects of media. They have to be at least as qualified to accept illegal payola as the DJs on our Top 40 and “Alternative” stations, and they definitely couldn’t have made a worse move than the wigs over at Twentieth Television who signed exclusive syndication rights of greatest show ever “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” over to Comedy Central so it can be run into the ground like so much black dude in American History X, and ruined for any future viewings like “Scrubs” and “Futurama” were. The fun doesn’t end with chimps either:

Four hours of footage was filmed and now Mr Capener [producer] said he is looking a further projects like this with different animals.

Oh, shit, if they do horses, nobody tell Liv Tyler.

*Seriously, Green Day, there is only so much your fans will take before they fall into a Dead Kennedys reversion and clinically forget 1988-now ever happened; we are not Jonathan Larson, Billy.
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