Reality TV

Dance Dance Dance.
Did you know that Dancing with the Stars is actually not filmed live?? They pre-tape the dancers, and during the "live" airing, they have an audience sit there, watch the video, and clap for an empty stage. I feel deceived.

Food food food.
So I'm watching Top Chef on Bravo - a very interesting show with a pompous bunch of people claiming to be good chefs who insult each other while working with sharp knives and skewers and large spoons and whatnot. A dangerous combination, if you ask me. I'm waiting for one of the competitors to throw hot grease on another because they insulted their escargot or told them their fork was too small or something like that. Or maybe there will be a brawl where several eyes are gouged out using soup spoons or ladles (yuck!). That would make it MUCH more interesting. I mean, they're just waiting for some exsanguination, especially when they eliminate someone at the end of the show and tell them to "Pack [their] knives". Good idea, producers, give the upset wierdo chef who just got insulted and embarrassed a set of extremely sharp knives. Like 9 of them. One being a hatchet. Then they have to go say goodbye to the people who just sold them out...they have a full arsenal and are angry that people didn't like their goose-liver pate with a side of squid juice on a bed of shredded eggplant and strips of leeks...GOOD THINKING.

The elimination "pause"
The root of reality TV is that after about 40 minutes of silly drama, commercials and somewhat fake button-pushing from the hosts, someone gets eliminated. Did you ever notice that the longest part of the show is them figuring out and saying who's booted from the show?? They've tried to put so much drama into the "moment" that it's more of a dramatic "quarter hour". There's 15 minutes of commercials and 5 minutes of interspersed chatter (and silence, for that matter). After each statement...we are told that we'll hear who's off "after this". Except "after this" doesn't necessarily mean immediately after this particular commercial break, it means "whenever the hell we want to tell you and it will be 1 minute before the show ends so shut up and keep watching our commercials and we'll continue to trick you into thinking you'll get some results 'after this.'" Then along to the actual elimination pause................................ the 15 second time lapse of deafening silence to build up to the announcement, in the hopes of getting you to actually shimmy to the edge of your seat, when in reality (haha), we think they've had a stroke and can no longer speak the words. Just when we're getting ready to call the network or 911 - they spit it out with an increasingly louder shout "the winNNER is emmITT SMITH!!", for a bit better emphasis and to add to your viewing enjoyment. This is in an effort to get you to either jump out of your chair with excitement, fall on the floor with disappointment, or hang up the phone because it wasn't a stroke after all. I think the networks must be in cahoots with the government - a conspiracy to try and get the public to increase its attention span to 17 seconds. Ever so slowly, they are building on it. Now it's a 15 second pause, next year it will be worked up to 28 seconds, and in about 3 years, we won't even know what the show is, we'll stare into the TV screen like zombies while they feed us subliminal messages to "Drink Coca Cola Original Formula," "Ask your doctor about Cialis" and buy your children Fisher Price toys that send death rays if you try and turn off the TV. Ok....off on the conspiracy theory tangent. We'll get to the end fo this post..."after this". But before "after this" occurs....we're going to take a 15 second pause to increase the anticipation of the arrival of my mentioning "after this"....................................... Stick that in your toaster and toast it.