Transmissions from Reality Hell

Once, in my younger days, I visited the North Carolina State Fair and watched a goat take a shit. It was nothing short of fascinating, the Dippin' Dots-shaped turds dropping gently into a tidy pile. I remember thinking, "I wish my bowel movements could be like that." If humans shat like goats we wouldn't need to use toilet paper, therefore, our Earth wouldn't be in the state that we find it in currently. But I'll let the hippies expound on that.

I often dog-sit for my sister when she goes out of town and one particular weekend not long ago, about an hour after taking Roxy outside to drop a deuce, I noticed Maltese-sized dookie logs tangled in the fur around her hindquarters. So ensnared were these stink-nuggets, I had to cut them out with scissors, a disturbing activity to say the least.

Why all the poop talk? Well, reality television is a lot like animal crap. Don't believe me--here's the evidence.
This Memorial Day, the E! Channel showered America with a load of shit of the "tangled in the fur" variety. You know, the kind of stuff that stays with you, taints your usually happy dreams, causes you to curl up in the fetal position, rocking and babbling "why God" quietly to yourself in some desolate corner of your basement.

From the network that gave you The Anna Nicole Show and Ryan Seacrest Productions comes Denise Richards: It's Complicated. You know what, Denise, it's really not that complicated. You need money. Hell, you've got ten dogs, three cats, and a corral of sex-crazed pigs. Denise Richards spends most of her days (if we're to believe the reality show about her life, of which she is an executive producer) searching for herself on the internet. For this, she needs two (TWO!!!) assistants. The first episode has Denise going on a date with a "normal" guy (i.e. not a "bad boy with a big dick," Denise's favorite kind) who is more interested in reviewing her sad film career then getting to know the "real" Denise ("a Mid-west girl who lives with ten dogs and her father on a farm."). And when that gets boring, how 'bout some pig sex?

E! followed this Memorial Day treat with another Marmaduke-sized turd, Living Lohan, the ongoing story of award-winning mother Dina Lohan and her brood. Lindsay's three-train pile-up of a family is going to kill her career quicker than the booze and STDs. What a shrill, obnoxious pack of celebrity wannabe jackals. Dina spends the bulk of the first episode calling tabloids and threatening them with lawsuits, which made one thing abundantly clear to this viewer: if Lindsay ever cleans her act up, Dina's out of a job. I won't say Ms. Lohan is happy that her daughter seems to be in a perpetual alcohol-soaked downward spiral, but those all-night exploits and stints in rehab seem to give Dina's life some kind of sick meaning.

Vh1's Celebrealty line of programming exemplifies the "goat turd" variety of realty television: it's crap, but it's cute, bite-sized, and fun to watch. Watching Flavor Flav take a never-ending line of skanks (65 over three seasons) on wacky dates is perpetually entertaining; seeing D-levelers who've let themselves grow fat and unhealthy climb towers and run up mountainsides is intriguing; and witnessing Bret Michaels miraculously avoid contracting herpes week after week sends one's spirit soaring on the wings of well-endowed eagles. Vh1 has cornered the market on what I like to call "goat-turd programming," and E! could learn a lot from Public Enemy's diminutive hype-man when it comes to consummate mindless entertainment.