must mock tv

[Jay Myers]

Since nobody seems to wast their time posting and reading here, I
figure we must all have a lot more free time. So here is a suggestion
of what to do to fill the empty hours.

Jay


The Greatest Show On Earth
by Paul Jenkins

Hello, chums.  I want to start this week by apologizing for the
terrible, awful, evil thing I am about to do to your lives.  I am
about to introduce you to a habit worse than heroin: The Bachelor,
Monday nights on ABC.

Now I am not a big television watcher: that's the nigh perfect wife's
job.  To me, television is like a full contact sport: I yell at
everything that comes onto the screen.  I yell at the ads and the
idiot sports commentators. I yell at CNN, I yell at the Home Shopping
Network and I especially yell at Doctor Phil because he is sorely in
need of my therapeutic boot up his non-therapeutic arse.

Nigh Perfect, on the other hand, watches an endless stream of horrible
bloody self-improvement shows on the Learning Channel.  Back when I
was a kid, "learning" things meant studying the root causes of World
War Two after the Treaty of Versailles, or what happens when you mix
soluble starch with iodine over a Bunsen burner (it explodes and glues
your eyeballs shut).

The educational landscape seems to have shifted.  I am not sure what
my wife has learned from watching four hundred consecutive shows of
some poor bastard arriving home after a business trip to find their
living room redecorated to look like someone puked avocado soup over
it.   But I digress.

Back to The Bachelor: now you're probably wondering, "What the hell is
he talking about?  Isn't Jenkins supposed to be a man's man?  Isn't
he, like, beloved by over two thirds of the world's population?"  The
answer to all of these things is, of course, yes.  But don't let looks
deceive you, my friends.  The Bachelor is television at its finest.

My habit came about as a brief experiment with an alternative
lifestyle, as habits often do.  When I got married I promised Nigh
Perfect that I would spend at least one night per week doing something
that she wanted… kind of like a weekly date.  She chose television
over, say, ice-skating because she figured I might actually show up. 
That first fateful night I settled down with a bottle of vodka and a
cyanide capsule and prepared for the worst.

Boy, was I misinformed.

The Bachelor, as it turned out, was the most single amazing piece of
creative genius ever to be broadcast in the history of television.  It
roughly follows the same format from season to season but the general
idea goes something like this:

Lance Masterson the Third is a doctor from Illinois. Though he appears
on the surface to be a perfect man, Lance is hoping to meet a
dysfunctional fuckwit with enormous cans who lives a very long way
from his home state.  This is because the chances are the person he
chooses at the end of the competition will be a psycho.

Lance is taken to a very big mansion and made to stand on the steps to
greet twenty-four extraordinarily beautiful women and one very ugly
one as they arrive in a fleet of limousines.  The ugly one is in the
show for comedic value.  She stands about as much chance of making it
through to Day Two as Donald Rumsfeld stands of being voted Iran
Public Radio's Man of the Year.

That first night, Lance gets to hang out drinking with all of these
women and strut around the mansion like Abdul the Bulbul Emir.  During
the course of the evening he will ask them a lot of questions about
themselves.  If you watch carefully, these questions are carefully
worded to determine whether or not they would be willing to bring home
another chick for a threesome, should Lance so desire.  But don't be
fooled by this because Lance has pretty much made up his mind that
he's going home after the final show with Miss 36DD from Hawaii.  In
fact, Lance made his decision on this the moment she stepped out of
the limo and jiggled up the steps to say hello during the
introductions.

Lance is going by breast size.  He's not alone.  So am I.

Inevitably, the other twenty-four girls are unable to contain their
loathing for Miss 36DD.  I cannot tell you how entertaining it is to
watch a bunch of beautiful women bitching about each other on National
TV.  It's like being led into the secret inner sanctum of their
private thoughts.  I have learned a lot.  Did you know it is possible
to get women to catfight without paying for it?  All you have to do is
tell them you are sincere but that unfortunately you have to send one
of them home at the end of the week.

The women are great, too.  While the host always says, "This is going
to be the most romantic Bachelor ever" what he really means is, "This
is going to be the most dysfunctional."

Eleven of the girls have been betrayed by every man they ever met. 
Nine are in therapy.  Five are more volatile than soluble starch mixed
with iodine over a Bunsen burner. One of them keeps bending over to
reveal that she is not wearing underwear.  All of this on the first
show, mind you!  By the end of the evening, most of these women will
have convinced themselves that they are in love with Lance.  Miss
36DD, on the other hand, needs no convincing.  That's because Lance
has already slipped her a note telling her to meet him behind the bike
sheds for a quick grope before the Rose Ceremony.

This is where we get to the absolute best part of the evening: the bit
where the Bachelor tells half of the women on National TV that they
are going home.  The way it works is this: Lance stands near a vase
full of roses and calls out various names of girls he would like to
make whoopee with if it falls through with the chick from Hawaii.  As
each name is called out, the girl gives a little yelp of delight and
goes to accept her rose, thereby making it through to the next stage. 
At a certain point there is only one rose left and thirteen very
pissed off looking women biting their lips and getting ready to burst
into tears at the mere thought that they will never get to be the
mother of Lance Masterson the Fourth.

In a supreme moment of Must-Cringe TV, Lance steadies his nerve, holds
up his last rose and announces that Sarah B from Iowa will be his
final choice of the evening.  At this point, I like to put my Tivo
into slow motion, much to the annoyance of my wife.  You can literally
see these poor women's hearts shattering as they receive the awful
news, and their hopes and dreams are dashed on the Rocks of Rejection.
It is the funniest moment on television, and in slow motion, it is
something to behold: it's like watching the back break off a very
tightly wound clock.  Twelve million people across the nation watch
through their fingers as Jennifer from Kansas gets the bad news that
she's uglier than twelve other women.  She is not a happy camper.

The girls who were picked clutch their roses tightly to their breasts
and try not to snigger.  Everyone hugs each other to say goodbye.  And
then the fireworks begin.

Now Lance has to pay for his evening of pleasure, so to speak: he has
to say goodbye to each girl as she leaves.  Believe me, this is not a
pleasant experience.  If I were in Lance's shoes I would run to the
bathroom, or something.  I would run to Zimbabwe.  Anything to avoid
Jennifer, a Woman Scorned.

"Why didn't you pick me?"

"Well, Jennifer… it's just that you are certifiably insane.  You are
more insane than Saddam Hussein's volunteer lawyer.  To be frank, I
would prefer to sleep next to my future wife secure in the knowledge I
was going to wake up in the morning without a knife in my eyeball."

At this point, Jennifer begins to twitch.

"But I love you. We were going to have babies.  My eggs are rotting."

I am not kidding.  One of them actually said that line last night.  My
theory is that she made a drastic miscalculation of both wind speed
and what string of words might impress her intended future husband. 
On the other hand, it might have been that she was a complete nutbag. 
Lance looked like he was going to shit a brick: it was a mixture of
incredible fear and the hope that one of the show's bouncers was
standing by to remove Jennifer from the premises.

It gets better, too: after a couple of weeks the women are rejected
individually, so they can't huddle together in packs.  They have to
walk the gauntlet towards the exit under the gaze of five or six smug
bitches clutching roses, and twelve million television viewers.  And
me, laughing my arse off.

So join me, won't you, for the adventures of Lance Masterson the
Third, a true American Hero.

God knows, he needs our support.