Thursday, January 16, 2003

WILDERNESS OF REALITY TEEVEE: For those of you who cannot abide reality shows yet want to understand their cultural significance and mass appeal, or cannot get over your disappointment when they censor all-female hot tub scenes in the Real World (my own personal dilemma), there are people on the Internet willing to do the legwork for you, television-watchingwise, and all they ask in exchange is that you visit their fine websites. First up: Lang Whitaker watches Fox's "Man vs. Beast" (and Lang's post will disappear in a week or so like all of his posts do, and then you have to root around in the archive):

More monkeys! This time it's a nude chimpanzee, doing an obstacle course against 36-year-old Navy Seal Scott Helverton. The special analyst on this match is former Sergeant Major Dave Francisco, who actually has a pronounced lisp. That must have been hilarious when he was in the military, yelling at the troops: "You guysth are the sthorriest sthouldiers I've ever stheen!" Helverton talks some good trash, calling the chimp a "wannabe human."

Throughout the build-up, I'm thinking the chimp must have this wrapped up. The race has monkey bars, for goodness sakes. That's like having a crazy contest and inviting Ron Artest to participate.

It begins, and it's obvious that the chimp is in trouble. It doesn't understand what it's supposed to be doing, but by watching the Navy Seal, it's able to imitate what he's doing and stay relatively close. Still, it's obvious that the chimp is loafing, and he finishes a few second behind the pompous Seal. He's the Shawn Bradley of chimps.

BEASTS 3, MAN 2

Next up, Moxie watches Joe Millionaire:

While there are already rumors floating around the internet of a lawsuit involving Evan and one of the ladies, it was difficult to get past Heidi's horrible mutterings en Francais and the Fox network's subtitles tonight. Fox transcribed, with painful accuracy her claims of "I have no bread baggage" or something like that. I had to feel her pain, I too have no bread baggage. C'est dommage. But I'll get over it.

I suppose Heidi decided to make the best of her early departure by trying to use her rudimentary grasp of the most beautiful language on the planet. Even a horse knew she wasn't worthy to ride him. I've always said, animals are good judges of character and when her horse wouldn't cooperate, I had just an ounce of faith in the equine species. Of course when Evan eliminated her, I figured the horse and he had a long talk in the stables. Man to man, you know.

Those who were hoping that "Miss parlez vous francais" would go all the way after making it clear from day one that she wants to marry money will have to choose from another money grubbing chick. Sadly, Evan seems to be eliminating them with dead-on accuracy.

Three group dates; one shoveled horseshit, the other coal into a locomotive, and others had to pick grapes in cold so bitter we didn't even see their breath. One might wonder why the ladies in the last two sets of group dates hadn't been warned by the first group that their date was anything but romantic.

As always, Moxie is your finest source for search-for-true-love-based reality teevee analysis.

No comments: