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Mike: Mr. Goth

There are many forms of hell. Dante envisioned nine circles of hell where the sinful were eternally tortured in various imaginative ways according to whatever their sins in life were. John Bunyan had a vision of pitch black darkness, with an unbearable stench and the constant screams of the apostate souls that wander up and down in the air like roaring lions seeking whom they may devour. For Satre, hell was other people. For Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted Theodore Logan, Hell was a series of metal rooms filled with gross aunties, scary easter bunnies and drill instructors.

But what's MY own personal hell?

When our fearless leader announced the idea of Hell Week^tm, I gave it much thought. What would be the most torturous, indescribable torment I could possible subject myself to? It was this quandary that plagued me as I was flipping channels on my tiny TV. I went by VH1 when it hit me. Literally, it hit me -- hard. It was blow to my intelligence and very sanity, and I knew the answer.

Reality Television.

In 1992, TV execs (or I call them; the minions of the dark lord), realized that they can produce a show for a fraction of the cost of an ordinary program by casting nobodies, filming them in the same set day after day, heavily editing their behavior in order to spin a certain storyline and regurgitating it to the public. The result was The Real World, and while it wasn't real in any way shape or form (real people pay rent), people ate it up. Since that time the viewing public has been force-fed a steady diet of not-famous people being filmed documentary-style, in unreal and increasingly salacious situations. The Real World has degenerated from a show in which 90's Gen Xers contemplate their futures and deal with complex issues, to a show featuring ridiculously good looking airheads on a three month spring break, clubbing, fornicating in hot tubs, and getting into drunken fights. In response, VH1 has taken the concept and actually dumbed it down. The idea? "Celebreality" -- where formerly famous actors, one hit wonders, has-beens and also-rans say goodbye to the last shred of their dignity. E! has in turn managed to insult people's intelligence ever more by giving flakes like Anna Nicole Smith their own shows. At no point in this progression has the genre taken even the slightest step towards being more intelligent.

So I've taken upon myself in the past week or so to watch as much of these harbingers of the apocalypse as I can possibly stomach, and while I'm fairly sure my intelligence has been denigrated to the level of, say, you're average frat boy at ASU, that's the price I'm willing to pay, for you, the kids. So come with me now, but be warned: the following is not for the faint of heart, or those who wish to cling to their precious brain cells. Enjoy this tour of the TV that sense forgot, and join me...in my own personal hell.

Keeping up with the Kardashians

A long time ago, Robert Kardashian was a layer on the O.J. Defense team. Even longer ago than that, Bruce Jenner was an Olympic athlete, who in the words of the legendary ska band Save Ferris, "Never knew defeat". You should pay attention to these details because aside from the one crucial point I'm going to mention, those tenuous threads are the ONLY things granting these people any level of fame. Robert died, and his wife Kris remarried Bruce. Then Kris' daughter Kim gained fame Paris Hilton style. Yes that's right: with a sex-tape. (note: some of you might be tempted to download and watch said vid, just be warned you're going to have to deal with 3rd rate R&B singer Ray-J lecherously leering into the camera every 30 seconds or so. That's about as un-sexy as you can get.)

Sure enough, just like Paris, the reality show followed. Rather than subject only herself to humiliation however, Kim dragged along her whole clan. Older sister Kourtney, (you're gonna notice a theme of "K" names here) who doesn't do anything really except look like Kim, Younger sister Khloe (that "K" thing is starting to grate), who's sole personality trait is that she cusses a lot, Bro Robert, who seems to be the only one in the gene pool without serious personality defects, some younger kids that nobody cares about (particularly not the camera), Mom Kris and Step-Dad Bruce (who's also pretty normal compared to these self-obsessed princesses).

The show mainly consists of the family's exasperated reactions to Kim's whole "tee-hee-I'm-rich-and-know-famous-people-look-at-me!" antics. Some time is devoted to Robert Jr. and the fact that he's dating a Cheetah Girl. There's also a fair amount of camera time given to Kris telling Bruce that he's too old to hanging out with young people/dancing/running too fast and accusing him of having a mid-life crisis, right before running off to pose in swimsuit shoots and jump into pools fully-clothed. While everyone in the family claims to be shamed by Kim's home movies, there does seem to be an innate understanding that the tape is the one and only reason this show exists, as somebody mentions it in EVERY EPISODE. Meanwhile Kim goes gleefully through life, seemingly unfazed by the fact that her sole talent is having a big rear end and the ability to match outfits. Honestly, why should she when E! rewards her a TV show for being so unabashedly shallow?

I Love New York

This one was painful to watch. I literally got a headache from resisting the completely sensible and logical urge to change the channel to something, anything that's not killing off more brain cells than a night of tequila drinking, but once again, this is for you guys. So I powered through. Fans of this dismal evil genre may remember Tiffany Pollard, AKA New York, from the ill-fated (meaning it's still on the air) show Flavor of Love, in which Flavor Flav tried to find just the right girl with just the right combination of attitude problems, lack of intelligence and low standards. The break out star of the show, New York parlayed her new-found fame into her own show in which she (Lord help us all) decided to take the ghetto-fabulousness up a notch.

In what has to be the single most horrendous bastard flipper-baby spawn of The Bachelor, New York takes in twenty mimbos and proceeds to weed them out systematically. The guys themselves are of varying races, builds, and IQ's. It's fairly straight forward. The only real question here is why any of these guys are going out of their way and running through hoops for the affections of this superficial fame-whore whose eyes are so caked with sparkly make up that she can hardly keep them open, (The answer of course, is that the winner gets the most face-time). It's obvious no one is ever going to love this girl more than she loves herself, and the fact that this show has gone through two seasons would seem to testify to that.

All this, however, is not why I can't stand this show. Oh, no! The reason this show makes me want to give myself several blows to my cranium with a recoilless hammer is this woman:

Sister Patterson. New York's camera hogging, self-obsessed horror of a stage-mom. Not content to ride her daughter's fame for every single bit of distance she can get out of it, she also uses all her camera time being a reprehensible human being. When she sees a midget as one of the suitors, she acts horrified to the point of fainting. She manipulates the suitors and cheers the biggest losers to the front while berating genuinely nice guys for imagined offenses. At no point does she seem to realize that she's anything other than the center of the universe, and poor Tiffany is a chip off the old Diva. Hate to break it to you, New York, but I've seen who raised you, and you have exactly ZERO chance of ever having a normal relationship with anyone. When you're acting career falls flatter than a flan in a cuboard, and we're well into I Love New York 32, just remember I told you so.

Rock of Love with Bret Michaels

Honestly, what is there to say about this one? Former Poison frontman seeks true love, and not a groupie just looking to bed a rock star. Who can say why we went with these girls:

In the most thinly-veiled documentary of the rock star backstage life ever, Bret takes his admirers on dates, leads them through challenges, and gives them several venereal diseases before kicking them off the show. As these scantily clad not-groupies degrade themselves further and further for Bret's affections (they are not above sleeping with him to win either) and continue to snipe at each other like junior high schoolgirls, all the while claiming to be empowered independent women, I could only shake my head. I appreciate that girls in entertainment nowadays very easily confuse objectification for empowerment, but do we really have to celebrate just how low young women will go to date a rock star?

I Know My Kid's a Star

Here's the premise.

Talent show looking for the next top child star. The twist: their parents/managers are also being judged. Can they navigate their children through the perils and pitfalls of fame so they don't end up as utterly messed up as the train wreck hosting the show? Danny Bonaduce has gone from child star cautionary tale, to fully grown cautionary tale in his recent show Breaking Bonaduce. Admittedly he's an expert at what not to do, having come through the child star worst-case scenario himself and in his hosting scenes he's pretty entertaining. The kids are all cute and reasonably talented.

Here are the problems.

First, VH1 is where celebrities end up, not where they start out. The Surreal Life, Celebrity Fit Club, the list goes on. VH1 is where has-beens go to die. It's not a launching vehicle. Secondly, did anybody look at this group...

...and think anybody but this girl...:

...was going to win?

Ten minutes into the first episode of this series I knew, for an absolute fact that cute as a button Mackenzie would win, and stuck around for the whole season just to see if I was right. Forget crazy-haired flaky rocker mom Rocky who spectacularly upstaged and overshadowed her androgynous charisma-deprived daughter Haley. Forget Gigi, the meanest mom with a short fuse and delusions of being the Machiavellian manipulator, right up until she and her daughter Alai were eliminated. Hollywood is image obsessed and the idea that anybody besides the best looking contestant would win is just laughable. Which is why I was laughing hysterically during the finale when Mackenzie was rewarded the title on "Next Top Child Star" and awarded fifty thousand dollars. A little girl's dream came true, and more importantly, I was right. You see kids? There really are happy endings.

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