One of the interesting things about America is that it can still have subcultural movements that become enormous without anybody else noticing until way after they generate more money per year than Central America. Sometimes this is a racial thing. My mom has no idea who Tyler Perry, the world’s richest man, is. Maybe you remember when the movie, The Original Kings of Comedy came out, and every review began with something like, “apparently, the highest grossing comedy tour in history happened last year and it was headlined by such African American stars as Bernie The Entertainer. What makes this even more incredible is that black people won’t even cough up money to eat at restaurants with waiters or go to basketball games–but this thing packed those same arenas to the rafters.” This also happens with stuff for kids. Somehow every child and parent in America finds out about a musician who never performs in mainstream media, and one day you read an article about how some guy named Race Car Steve made $86 Million last year. It’s pretty impressive that these social networks  can function at least somewhat independently and build something that huge. Similar social networks exist among many groups, including people who are actually retarded. Occasionally, you’ll learn about some guy who you have never seen or heard of, like the late, unlamented Danny Gans, who has a $20 million a year contract in Vegas to do impersonations of Jack Nicholson, Elvis and Richard Nixon. Most of these people eventually break through to the mainstream by sheer volume. But someone like Dr. Laura was already well known in the retarded community and mega-rich before she really showed up on the radar of sentient beings.

The horrible reality of Jeff Dunham hit me when I learned from Dan, an Armenian degenerate, that Dunham’s new show was Comedy Central’s biggest debut ever, carrying the channel to ratings victory over all other cable channels.  Unfortunately, I decided to look for some of his act on youtube. It is possibly the worst act I’ve ever seen. Also, Dunham has really odd, fake hair. Let me couch that by saying I’m not a big fan of stand up in general and therefore, not the least bit snobby about it. While it is a legitimate craft, and very difficult to do well, I hate comics who think they are serious business and get all upset about Dane Cook being more popular than Brian Regan. I don’t give a shit. To me, Dane Cook is just kind of a generic, mildly amusing comedian who (apparently) possesses a lot of charisma. I found Caliendo’s Madden and Barkley impersonations to be kind of funny, the first few hundred times. Bill Hicks, allegedly on the other end of the spectrum, was also pretty funny but I don’t think he was a genius just because I agreed with some of his political views and he got cancer. So my standards for stand up are about on par with a Night Ranger roadie’s standards for one night stands. And it is from this perspective that I say, “The Jeff Dunham Show” is an abortion sandwich.

I’ve seen two of his puppets in action. I watched the old man puppet, Walter, again on youtube and it was just agonizing. Like, I have literally never seen anything less funny on TV. Dunham enters a massive tie with a bunch of other things that were not funny at all, like the “Dateline” report on Matel having union organizers murdered in it’s Malaysian factories, and the Bears’ losing the Super Bowl, but behind things that were just the slightest bit funny, like the Geico Cave Man Sitcom. For example, the old man puppet–get this–complains about his wife!! While watching this video, I was honestly taken aback and, almost confused, as the audience laughed hysterically at jokes that were barely jokes and certainly not at all funny.

Walter: I could get a real job.

Jeff: Yeah, what would you do?

Walter: I could be a greeter at Wal-Mart.

Get it? Because he’s old. Dunham actually had to stop for laughter, then delay resuming the bit  as a second wave of laughter swept over the audience. I was dumbstruck. People find this hilarious. Apparently the way to revive ventriloquism was to somehow come up with cornier, more worn-out and boring material than the guys used during the seeming death farts of the genre. Not, “how can I do something creative with this old approach,” but “how can I come up with something lamer than the dummy calling the ventriloquist a dummy.”

The other Dunham puppet I’ve seen, both on youtube and in a clip from the new show–more than enough self-sacrifice to qualify for writing a review–is of Achmed The Dead Terrorist. This routine is vaguely right wing, but not as much as you would think. It’s too bland for that. What Dunham has done here is discover the territory that people who are actually retarded believe to be edgy. Achmed is a dead terrorist, which is vaguely un-PC in itself. The puppet tells a couple of jokes about Jews and Catholics, and a joke about Michael Jackson being a pedophile. Runs something like this. Two Jews would fight over a penny. Two priests would fight over a little boy. But they’d have to fight over the little boy with Michael Jackson, who also likes little boys. All of this is doubly hilarious because foreigners have funny accents, and therefore, so does Achmed. But don’t tell the PC police! I bet they would be outraged!

Nothing this guy does even brings a hint of a smile. If I just saw the act without the audience reaction, I would actually feel horrible for the guy, imagining him to be bombing in historical fashion after putting so much work into making those puppets. But this is a major crossover hit, breaking Dunham free of the retarded subculture once and for all. So now I hate Dunham and hope the swine flu kills everybody on earth. If you think I’m exaggerating, watch this youtube clip of Dunham’s act.  Note that this clip is closing in on 100 million views.

Actually, I couldn’t bring myself to link to the Dunham clip because it really is that terrible. Hope you enjoyed that one.

The Ultimate Fighter is the UFC’s answer to reality TV and, given how the UFC is martial arts’ answer to cockfighting, you can imagine the grace and sensitivity with which they’ve risen to the occasion.

For its ninth season, TUF pitched a team of UK fighters against counterparts from the US. The program was broadcast on both sides of the Atlantic, but the producers lacked the cultural sensitivity to bother taking out the subtitles under the British fighters when it arrived over here, buried on Virgin1, with each episode playing several days after it had been broadcast in America. Also, if you’re watching Virgin1 at 11pm on a Sunday night there’s a good chance you can’t read, so it was doubly offensive.

Not as offensive as Team America, though. Making fun of Americans is easy, lazy, racist, and ignorant, but that’s no reason not to do it when they really deserve it.  The American team excelled at chanting USA! USA! and, well, not much else, it turned out. Holed up in a Big Brother-style house with their opponents, when they weren’t praying, crying, talking obsessively about themselves or blandly about nothing in particular, the cracks soon started to emerge and the in-fighting promptly began. The resident black sheep was Jason Pierce, who took issue with his teammates’ occasional beer-drinking and revelry as well as their inability to be pious, humorless pricks like him. I mean, just look at him:

By the quarterfinal stage, this band of foster brothers were lining up to kick each others’ asses, rather than those of their enemies from across the sea. Which is just as well, really, as the best fighters on (shudder) Team UK mopped the floor with them every time they were asked to do so. Pierce withdrew due to a mystery injury, asked to be re-instated in time to fight, had his request denied. Skip forward a few more cut scenes of 30 grown men sitting around dressed like retarded gangbangers and he’s feeding his teammates’ British opponents notes on how the Americans plan to fight. Brilliantly, he denied this to camera, despite being filmed cutting his bros’ balls off earlier that day. The levels of idiocy and anti-climax were then jacked up as Team USA leader, UFC ‘legend’ (it says here) Dan Henderson, failed to react or stamp any kind of authority on the situation. Instead, he continued to walk and talk like Robocop on a diazepam bender, as he had done for the whole series.

Team UK, in contrast, seemed like a riot. Ignoring the terrible name and half-arsed attempt at getting their own chant going, this was a bunch of guys from a variety of cultural and class backgrounds, from regions of the country that are a world away from each other, who simply turned up and got on with it, having a good time and making some new friends in the process. All the things that Team USA should’ve done, if they’d bothered to learn their own ideology and, well, the tournament rulebook. The only arsehole in the UK pack was their leader, TUF 3 winner and now established UFC fighter Michael Bisping, and he was more of a good-natured maniac, truth be told.

Brilliantly, all the best aspects of British culture unfurled themselves before Team USA’s nonplussed eyes. They had accents that didn’t sound like a Hugh Grant or a Guy Ritchie film, they ran riot around their side of the house partying on their nights off, and for their final meal they dressed up nicely with a range of shirts that seem to span Moss Bross to Burtons, sat down for a meal together and had Bisping give them a 30-second speech at the end of it about how proud of them all he was, delivered with the mumbling grace of a emotionally-repressed tough guy. A real man, in other words. Then one of them threw a teammate into the swimming pool and got dragged in and then coated in flour for his troubles.

To be fair, not all the Americans were wankers. Californian army kid Frank Lester was allowed the only credible breakdown on their team, when he subbed for arch-bottler Pierce, won his second chance bout and then fell at the last hurdle for qualifying to fight in the finale. Seeing a twenty-five year-old man with a kid to support learn that he is not quite good enough to do something for a living that he’s worked harder for than most people will ever work for anything was stirring stuff and, mercifully, the producers didn’t milk it. Lester’s admission in the final episode to one of Team UK that the only reason he didn’t like him at first was because his teammate lost to him was typical of his likable, candid honesty, too, and handily emphasized the problem with most of the arrogant tossers with whom he shared a camp. Likewise, Alaskan rube Richie Whitson stayed on good terms with eventual Lightweight champion Ross Pearson, even after Pearson had accidentally spread Whitson’s nose across his face with a late blow in their bout.

The only American to make the pay-per-view finale was DaMarques Johnson who, when he wasn’t wearing his baseball cap at a ridiculous angle and talking about what a badass he was and how the strength of his faith inspired him, got a squirt of water up his nose from Bisping’s water bottle for being such a prize dickhead. When Bisping went to apologise 30 seconds later, Johnson was too busy brooding in the car park and rushing to find a camera to tell that he’d kick Bisping’s ass, given half the chance. He also had a king-sized bug up his arse about the other Welterweight finalist, James Wilks, presumably because Wilks had the temerity to be well-spoken, polite and really quite good. Johnson earned his spot in the final with some impressive bouts but was promptly found out at the PPV and ended up tapping out in the first round, with implicit recommendation that he not let the octagon’s door hit him on the arse on the way out.

Next up is TUF 10 which, for the sake of diversity will feature only heavyweight fighters. It will definitely lack the peculiarities of 9 that gave it great moments of unintentional comedy and cod sociology, so we’ll just have to go back to enjoying watching half-naked men beating the crap out of each other, which is where we came in…

With a timeline in the billions of years and a choice of vistas from the highest mountain peak to the deepest ocean trench, Nature is the greatest of cinematographers. Even the most routine of moments possesses tremendous beauty and commands our attention  as a crucial component to an elegant system. With the changing of the seasons, key elements converge to create massive spectacles that stagger the imagination. For six of our planet’s most impressive events, David Attenborough is there to highlight not only the exquisite artistry, but also the fragile constitution of the system that makes these events possible. As always, the spectre of human intervention hangs heavily over the proceedings, as climate change, consumption of habitat for farm and industrial land, and outright extermination of species threatens these and other events across the globe. If you appreciate visual pageantry, or if you want to give your Blu-ray system a serious workout, this is the documentary series that will do the trick.

Two episodes in particular are standouts, and both take place on the African continent. ‘The Great Tide’ refers to The Sardine Run, taking place every few years off the coast of South Africa, where a shoal of sardines numbering in the hundreds of millions is lured from the cool ocean depths to the African coast where the world’s largest army of predators has gathered to ambush them. The sardine groups are drawn into cold water, as warm water tends to exist along shallows and coastal areas where their numbers cannot protect them from predators. As the cold Agulhas current pushes up along the coast during the winter months, it pushes back against currents coming from the north; this creates an abnormally frigid coastal artery that attracts and then traps the sardines.

The documentary spends ample time developing the characters of this mighty clash. Cape Gannets, remarkable in their stark beauty and their aerial dexterity, breed off the coast in enormous numbers, but the chance of survival for an individual chick is slim. Once they are strong enough to fly, their parents abandon them, and they have ten days to learn to fly or starve; if they successfully achieve flight, there is a chance they will falter in the breakers (hundreds are battered to death in the waves) or be killed by a seal. One gannet, thoroughly beaten by the relentless waves and rocks, hauls itself upon land and dies, the moment containing all the gravity of Shakespearean tragedy. If they survive, the gannets will form an integral part of the Sardine Run spectacle. They are joined by common Dolphin, who expertly hunt down and round up the sardines into small ‘bait balls’ that allows for easier hunting of individual fish. Various sharks, from Ragged-Tooth to Great Whites, take advantage of the dolphins’ work. Lastly the Bryde’s (pronounced Broo-duhs) Whale dives in to take ten thousand sardines in a single gulp. Once the predators find the shoal, the attack begins and is sustained with impossible intensity. The roiling sardines, expertly moving dolphins, and the divebombing gannets form a stunning visual poetry that transcends wildlife filmmaking and drifts into the realm of ageless elegance.

The other episode is less visually intense, but documents the violent and rather abrupt change that occurs in the Okavango Delta after intense rains fall upon the Angolan highlands and spill into a river that terminates not into a lake or ocean, but into the driest desert on earth. The Kalahari is almost devoid of plant life during its dry season, but the camera crew finds a herd of elephants struggling their way through this lethal setting. The matriarch is there for a reason, however, as she knows that the rains will fall, and the parched sands will come alive. Still, the tension created by this narrative is quite real, and most involving as you follow them into an uncertain future. When the precious water finds its way through dry river beds into the sands, the entire vista is transformed into a lake. As elephants, lions, cape buffalo, and various other savanna animals enter the fresh waters, we notice that the land itself seems to have come alive; fish explode from a distant marsh, and many species of frog actually live permanently in this desert, using the brief presence of water to exit hibernation, eat, breed, and reenter hibernation in an endless cycle.

Despite the triumphant moments the animals share, there is no guarantee that the life-providing cycle will continue. As the climate changes, water supplies dwindle, and the natural habitat that the flora and fauna require to replenish their numbers continues to be destroyed, these remarkable events may cease abruptly. Very little is understood about how these and most wildlife ecosystems really work. And therein lies the black-box warning: unless research into the intricacies of the planet’s ecosystems accelerates and serious effort is made to properly fuse the habitat of the human with the rest of its fellow species, disaster is guaranteed.

Nature films represent a body of work very much under threat in a society that has come to see intellectual pursuits with utter contempt, if not outright vilification. March of the Penguins was adopted by the Christian right in the US, its anthropomorphizing of the yearly journey of emperor penguins in the Antarctica played for an ‘aww shucks’ effect with Morgan Freeman’s softly-softly voiceover and practically no violence shown between the animals, paternalistically and puritanically omitting anything that might offend a conservative family audience. After all, the truth occasionally hurts.

Still, amongst the ‘documentaries’ that feature nothing more than repetitive subjects, uninspired photography and a voiceover from an ignorant celebrity or some asshole prattling about the “ex-treeeeeme predators!”, there is some golden wheat in all the chaff. David Attenborough’s work continues to stun, Walking With Dinosaurs is impressive, as is the oddly affecting Meerkat Manor.

Still, all nature programs remain important for the same reason: no matter what the intellectual exercise that one is embarking upon, the destination invariably involves learning something about ourselves, our intellectual limits, and our species as a whole.

This is particularly true of evolutionary theory. Overly-sensitive religious types would rather sacrifice their first born to their local sky god than subscribe to it, the one thing they all have in common being their desire to discourage a questioning mind. Evolution is a purely intellectual exercise, as it doesn’t have a product to market. It simply asks where we came from and where we are going. Darwin supplied some suggestions about the former. The Future is Wild examines the latter.

The Future is Wild was the brainchild of a team of animators, wildlife photographers, and scientists to construct what the world will look like 5 million, 100 million, and 200 million years from now. The first step was to consult geologists to predict how continents will continue to move based upon how landmasses have moved in the past. Next, climatologists built the plants and ecosystems onto the future maps. Biologists completed the picture by pairing flora with the fauna based on how species have evolved in the past to world changes. The result is disorienting, surprising, and occasionally disturbing. Rule one was that the human species is extinct. Five million years seems far enough to assume this is the case. People are rapidly losing their adaptive skills thanks to a combination of overpopulation beyond resources and increasingly rigid social systems. Herein lies the fascinating part: what happens once humans are out of the picture?

Five million years from now, the advancing ice age has decimated the rain forests. The animals resemble what inhabits the world today, with some adaptations. Mammals still dominate the surface, though predatory birds have taken over the savannah. Volcanic eruptions become common, and the planet warms up.

One hundred million years from now, the planet is steamy, and the air is packed with carbon dioxide and oxygen. The animals have become huge compared to their modern day equivalents; insects are measured in meters. The atmosphere is volatile, and the Earth’s lava core even more so. At the end of this period, massive pan-global volcanic activity fills the skies with ash and carbon dioxide for a couple of decades. This is a relatively brief period, but enough to kill the phytoplankton in the oceans and decimate the land plants, which in turn causes mass extinctions of virtually anything large and/or unable to survive on minimal food intake until the sunlight returns and the plants and plankton rebound in numbers. Life is challenged periodically by these catastrophic events to come up with a solution rather quickly, and some lifeforms can adapt to survive a lack of food, sunlight, or drastic changes in the weather. After these events, such as the meteorite strike that killed the dinosaurs, or the massive land devastation caused by human industry, the organisms that remain proliferate, and continue to adapt to the new circumstances.

Two hundred million years from now, nearly all life has been wiped out, and the survivors evolve into increasingly bizarre creatures like terrestrial squid the size of elephants, and sharks equipped with neon directional signals for hunting purposes.

To be honest, the animated effects are somewhat dated, inferior to what we see on Hollywood movies, but TFIW compensates by not featuring any Transformers or scantily-clad Spartans. Its dazzle is in the ideas behind the effects, and how they came to be.

TFIW performs best when it comes to these ideas, the challenge put to living beings to survive, and their response. The socially awkward scientists in bow ties who invented these strange conditions and creatures look like excited children as they explore the possibilities, creating empathy for anyone else wandering ‘what if?’ The apocalypse is its staring point, looking forward to what might be, and testing the limits of our ability to understand the fluid life form that is the planetary ecosystem.

This is more than cerebral wanking – this is an unadorned picture about the relentless struggle for survival, every species affecting a careful balance between their resources and their niche rivals. Each snapshot places you in the center of predator-versus-prey relationships that have been ongoing for millennia, and as such hold a unique tension. The action is raw, and proceeds without a shred of sentiment. Giant airborne insects armed with razor sharp forelegs spear birds in flight, monkeys fall prey to giant meat-eating birds, and massive intelligent squid are torn to ribbons by swift moving sharks. All species are doomed to extinction, and perhaps the process of life itself is doomed. They – we – only exist for a brief period. Perhaps one species will have an adaptation that will allow it to be one of the few to survive a cataclysm, and life is allowed to exist for another millennia.

One episode in particular struck a nerve, taking place 100 million years from now. Spiders work to weave giant webs that span an entire canyon, the purpose of which is to collect… seeds. Strange. The spiders amass hills of seeds in their cavernous nests, but spiders are carnivores. Out of the shadows emerges a small rodent. Whilst surrounded by carnivorous spiders, these mice-like creatures eat the seeds, occasionally being killed and eaten by the spiders. The mice are being farmed, you see. The rodent presented here is the last mammal on earth, reduced to hiding in a cave, livestock for a spider colony. Having slowly lost the competition for resources to birds, reptiles, and insects, the mammal is to be the first major group to vanish. This seems sensible, as mammals are one of the fastest-disappearing groups anyway, occupying most of the spots on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s endangered species listing. Currently, the pace of extinctions of plants, amphibians, and mammals are at their greatest since the Cretaceous period, all due to human action.

I am quite used to the idea of humans going extinct. We seem incapable of making intelligent decisions, despite intelligence being our only advantage (cue Clarence Darrow monologue). It gave me a chill, however, to think that any animal that even resembles us would be wiped off the face of the earth. This affords a unique chance to come to terms with one’s own morality in the grandest existential way.

Every form of life has a desire to preserve and perpetuate, and the human race is no exception. This, however, is the uncompromising world, and nature is presented as the stern, ruthless cunt that she is. Among its many strengths, it’s this calmly combative reality check that The Future Is Wild does best of all.

The Travel Channel’s Man v. Food just might be the cure for what ails us. At a time when jobs are being lost by the thousands, Wall Street is in the shitter, and the housing market is dripping along with all the confidence of an exposed Ponzi scheme, what better way to feel that last twinge of pride than by watching a young man inhale ridiculously gluttonous piles of food, all for the sheer thrill of eating? His name is Adam Richman, and unlike other culinary aficionados whose personalities tend to range from suffocatingly pretentious to blindingly arrogant (Mr. Bourdain, I’m looking at you), this New York kiddo actually understands that the best way to ensure a loyal audience is to make sure people don’t want you to choke to death during the pilot episode. Richman’s more than likeable; his attitude is positively winning, with a careful blend of charm, wit, and silliness that avoids the expected smug sense of superiority. While you dash about the globe sampling caviar and the latest overpriced wine, he’s in the corner with the world’s hottest curry, or a plate of hot wings designed to bring on advanced coronary artery disease. But with a smile, of course.

Sure, there’s a gimmick – Adam tackles a few hot spots of a city’s local cuisine, as well as accepting a challenge (the hottest, the biggest, the greasiest, what have you) – but it’s a race you’d actually like to see him finish, unlike other food/travel programs that tend to work hand-in-dull-hand with the Chamber of Commerce. Adam is blue collar without the aw-shucks idiocy; he won’t use a napkin and isn’t above a high five from the crowd, but when he actually sits down to a meal, he’s smart as a whip and all business. He’s like a crude, masticating hardhat at the egghead’s buffet. And it’s standing room only. Though not a professional eater, he has held jobs at all levels of the restaurant business, a simple fact that means little, but might set the more high-brow at ease. But fuck ‘em. This is a low-brow, no-account, pigs-in-the-trough shitfest, and no one’s apologizing for the stained t-shirts. Remember when eating used to be fun? You know, before the calorie counters and protectionist scumbags interfered with a guilt-free bloodbath? Adam has resurrected the entertainment value of digging in face first, and there isn’t a low fat menu in sight. If it can’t possibly send you to the emergency room, it’s best left in the freezer.

So far, Adam’s been to
Amarillo, TX, where – expectedly – he tackled the 72-ounce Big Texan at the Big Texan Steak Ranch. Can he finish the massive slab of meat, complete with baked potato and salad, all in an hour’s time? As always, it’s less about the destination than the slobbering journey. Who hasn’t wanted to race against the clock and quite possibly vomit all over a few strangers to boot? To make matters worse, you’re set above and apart from the rest of the patrons, with all eyes on your disgusting, unholy self. When everyone’s a hero and merely showing up a cause for a party, thank fuck we’ve found a justifiable means by which to spotlight the gods in our midst. You thank the local fireman or cop on the beat; I’m shaking hands with anyone who can finish this fucking steak. And then there’s Memphis, TN, home to some of the best BBQ on planet earth, where the Sasquatch Hamburger awaits at the Big Foot Lodge. Jesus Christ, this 7 ½ pound burger just about breaks the table, and it’s one of TV’s greatest moments when it’s brought out from the kitchen. We anticipate the damn thing the whole show, and when it finally arrives, it’s like Harry Lime smirking from the shadows. Is it sick when people are starving? Damn right it is. And fuck
Africa.

Adam also visits Pittsburgh, PA for a Primanti Brothers sandwich (and those hellish hot wings, served up at a Quaker Steak & Lube, to ensure maximum trashiness); Columbus, OH for a 2 ½ pound Dagwood sandwich; Austin, TX for the infamous Don Juan El Taco Grande Challenge; the Windy City to partake of dipped beef sandwiches at Al’s Beef; and Atlanta, GA for chicken n’ waffles (with Gladys Knight), as well as the insane Carnivore Pizza Challenge, which proves to be poor Adam’s Waterloo. Between meals, he shows us a snapshot of the cities in question, all in the name of celebration. We rule the roost not because we lead the world in eating disorders or diet fads, but because we alone perfected adding bacon to everything not nailed down. Or extra cheese. Or stuffing with chili, deep-frying, and coating with whipped cream. We’re all-you-can-eat with a bottomless stomach; always open, licking our fingers, and rounding it off with a sweat-inducing dump. Adam’s too classy to end his adventures with a trip to the john, but understanding our hoo-ya lust for sports metaphors and allusions, he closes the book on each challenge with a “press conference,” where he responds to dippy questions from the crowd with earnest jocularity. A rousing finish for a grin-worthy event. Food, fat, and the need to have one’s name immortalized on the wall of some seedy rib joint. America, more than ever.

The San Francisco Chronicle, the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Sun-Times,
the L.A. Times, and USA Today, along with other various media outlets
have reported on the lengths the U.S. military has gone to reach
recruiting targets in order to provide additional grist for the mills
of Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2004, the Pentagon published a “Moral
Waiver Study,” whose seemingly benign goal was “to better define
relationships between pre-Service behaviors and subsequent Service
success.” That study, along with lowering the bar on educational,
medical, and physical standards turned out to mean opening more
recruitment doors to potential enlistees with criminal records, no
education, possible mental health issues, and general fatness.

Between 2004 and 2005, there was a significant increase in the
number of recruits with what the Army terms ’serious criminal
misconduct’ in their background” — a category that included
“aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen
property and making terrorist threats.” In this one-year span, the
number of those recruits rose by more than 54 percent, while alcohol
and illegal drug waivers, reversing a four-year decline, increased by
more than 13 percent. The military’s own data has indicated that the
percentage of recruits entering the Army with waivers for misdemeanors
and medical problems has more than doubled since 2001. Under these
revised standards, the Army recruited 80,635 soldiers in 2006, roughly
7,000 more than in 2005. Of those, 70,000 were first-time recruits who
had never served before and 3.8 percent of them scored below the bottom
aptitude percentile level. In previous years, the Army had allowed only
2 percent of its recruits to have scores that low. Shockingly enough,
the limit has since been raised to 4 percent, the maximum allowable
level under Department of Defense rules. Of course, the Army, taking a
page out of the teacher’s union and other educational quality
apologists’ playbook, has maintained that good test scores do not
necessarily equate to quality soldiers and that test-taking ability
does not measure loyalty, duty, honor, integrity or courage.

It is within this context that HBO’s new documentary, The
Recruiter, is set and it is within this context that it must be viewed.
While the filmmakers go to great lengths to provide an apolitical,
non-ideological framework, the Dumb-ocles Sword of recent U.S. foreign
policy hangs heavy over the proceedings, which are punctuated by
sporadic radio and TV news stories concerning troop injuries and death.
Nowhere is this more poignant than an incident that claims the lives of
four reservists from the New Orleans town of Houma, where the
documentary takes place. It is in this rural, bursting at the seams
patriotic hamlet where we meet both the recruiters and the recruits
they “close” using tactics right out of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Chris – A quiet, overweight kid who, like John Candy in Stripes,
appears to be enlisting in the Army so he can get in better shape,
although it would not be a stretch to picture him as being more like
Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket. Not much is known or shown about
Chris beyond this point, other than the fact that he’s a child of
divorce with a stepfather who may or may not be abusive and/or engaged
in any manner with his stepson’s upbringing. Chris is perhaps the
saddest one of the bunch – a lonely, fat nerd just looking for
acceptance and perhaps a little payback.

Lauren – A lesbian, gothic/emo, wigger basketball player, who says she
wants to join so she can earn money for art school. Her obese and
borderline abusive mother encourages her enlistment in hopes that the
Army will cure her daughter’s lesbian tendencies. Lauren likes to draw
pictures of dead things and people, chain smokes, dresses and talks
like a character from The Wire, and probably couldn’t find Iraq on a
map. Of Iraq.

Matt – Mr. All-American football player and all around jock with
daddy issues who, like his equally clueless teenage fiancé, appears to
be sold more on the prospect of creating an instant family courtesy of
free military housing and getting his truck paid for than recognizing
the grim possibilities of war. Matt is a true believer, through and
through, and a poster boy for Army recruiters.

Bobby – The Honor Student, with a school teacher mother and a
lawyer father. The only recruit from what appears to be an intact and
non-dysfunctional home. Bobby’s motivations are completely unknown, but
are speculated on by his father (bored at school, needs time off, wants
to serve like his father, grandfather, and other family members). Bobby
is quiet, reserved and has been pre-selected for Special Forces
Training. I found myself constantly asking why in the fuck did he
decided to go this route when in a sane world, he would be headed off
to college and four years of beer and easy pussy.

These kids, and their futures, are doggedly and relentlessly
pursued by Sgt. First Class Clay Usie, the Ricky Roma of Army
recruiters. Usie spends the vast majority of his time staking out high
schools and high school gatherings like a modern day Wooderson. But
Usie sells death and dismemberment instead of organizing beer busts and
runs to Austin to pick up Aerosmith tickets. Usie is the A-number one,
biggest cock on the block, soldier of the year who believes in God,
family, and country – in that order. His job, apart from conning dumb
kids and their friends into joining the Army with promises of relevant
training, good pay, and exotic adventure, is to prepare the suckers he
reels in for the rigors of basic training. But make no mistake, Usie is
a salesman first and a soldier second. And the first rule of being a
good salesman is that you never sell the product, you sell yourself.
Usie is the kind of guy who will meet you at 5:00 a.m. at the gym to
work out, will talk endlessly about himself and his accomplishments,
will cajole you into inviting your friends to your little workout
sessions, will serve as your big brother, your father, your uncle, and
your best friend, if it means that you will sign away your life on the
dotted line.

I had a friend who, shortly after graduating college, somehow
became involved with Amway and was immediatly ostracized by our group
of friends because we didn’t want to hear a sales pitch every time he
was around. It wasn’t that we didn’t like him it was that he just
couldn’t help himself. He had been totally brainwashed into the
American dream of earning vast amounts of quick money by pitching to
his friends and family – the soft targets. It is this search for the
soft target that drives Usie and his fellow recruiters. The normal,
educated, ambitious, and well-adjusted need not apply. Like the Moonies
or Heaven’s Gate, the Army cult seeks out the maladjusted, the lonely,
the ones seeking any kind of guidance and direction as long as it comes
with a sense of belonging and escape. They target the ones with family
problems, especially the ones from single-mother homes. They target the
disaffected, the directionless, the angry, and the outright dumb.

That these kids don’t fully understand what they are getting into is a
theme you hear repeated throughout the documentary. You hear it from
their parents, from some of the recruiters, and from the instructors in
basic training. You even hear it in the way these recruits repeat the
military propaganda that glamourizes military service. All of this begs
the question why, if these kids can’t or don’t fully appreciate what
they are getting themselves into, are they allowed, or in some cases,
encouraged, to enlist in the first place? Bobby’s father tearfully
tells the camera that he would feel like a hypocrite for discouraging
his son’s enlistment since he, himself, served. But harsh reality and
truthfulness is what these kids need, particularly during a time of
war. But in today’s context, preying on a seventeen or eighteen
year-old’s naïvité is the only way to fill the ranks.

However not all of Usie’s recruiters have the brass balls required for
such a high powered human sales position. One recruiter who appears to
have fallen victim in the past to the same line of shit that he’s
selling today, is Willie Loman to Usie’s Ricky Roma, but without the
delusions of grandeur. While he never explicitly admits it, he
obviously knows that what he’s doing is wrong and does everything he
can within reason to sabotage himself and his recruitment efforts. The
only honorable man present, he can no longer cope with the guilt of
selling young men and women a coffin disguised as money for school or a
trade. His heart just isn’t in it anymore after seeing the horrors that
await these kids in Iraq.

The last part of the documentary follows three of the four recruits
through basic training (Chris was shipped out earlier than the others
due to high casualties). Whether or not it was the intention of the
filmmakers to “rush” through this part of the feature is unknown, but
it does capture the almost hurried process of basic training, with an
emphasis on the word, “basic.” Recruits do calisthenics, march,
wrestle, fire guns, graduate, and are then shipped off to die, that is
if they don’t succumb to a panic attack when being issued their
uniforms and skivvies and coming to the realization that life as they
know it is now over. Only Bobby appears to receive anything remotely
approaching combat training. After graduation, Matt and Lauren return
to Houma on a one-month leave before shipping off to Iraq. Matt spends
his month getting married, with Usie as his best man and substitute
father. Lauren returns to her rural shack, her lesbian lover, and a
month of moping and complaining over her ill-advised decision to enlist
and expressing genuine surprise that the Army doesn’t offer art
classes.

A concluding epilogue tells us the fates of these characters, but I
will conclude with an epilogue of my own from the San Francisco
Chronicle:

In the latter half of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military started to
crumble from within and American troops began scrawling “UUUU” on their
helmet liners — an abbreviation that stood for “the unwilling, led by
the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.”

With a growing majority of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq and
even ardent hawks refusing to enlist in droves, new policies creating a
lower-quality officer corps and the Pentagon pulling out ever more
stops and sinking to new lows to recruit and train troops, a new
all-volunteer generation of UUUU’s may emerge — the underachieving,
unable, unexceptional, unintelligent, unsound, unhinged, unacceptable,
unhealthy, undesirable, unloved and uncivil — all led by the
unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.

Only two great, fictional shows survived television’s first few decades. One is, “The Honeymooners.” It suffers from some of the formulaic stories that make a show like “I Love Lucy” unwatchable to a sentient being in the present day. But you can kind of forgive this because the show is so stagy. The primary set actually looks like the stage for a medium budget play. Virtually every minute is set in the Kramden (crammed-in, if you never noticed) kitchen/living room/dinning room. You can really feel that the show is live and working with a limited format.

As is usually required in the theater, the actors carry the play. This is as good a cast as has ever been on TV. I believe that 90% of success in a field like acting is luck. There’s a Jennifer Aniston working at every mall in the country, and if the pilot for “Friends” had been botched, you probably wouldn’t know her name. That’s why Hollywood careers come and go, come back, and then go again. Were Patrick Dempsy, Rob Lowe, Michael J. Fox, and the hundreds of others on the list, good actors who suddenly became shitty actors for 20 year periods, then regained their talent due to acts of wizardry? Maybe even they believe this. It’s not surprising that you’ll find no greater consumers of naked charlatanism than entertainers, be it Scientology, Tibetan Buddhist cultism or Kabbalah No, it’s just that there are a lot of interchangeably, talented, charismatic and (often) hardworking people who have varying success in branding themselves and landing the right roles.

But once in a while, there is a Jackie Gleason. After seeing him for two minutes, you’d pay to watch him light up and pick his ass during a cigarette break. He’s a 900 pound man, and yet you want to be him (Gleason, not Ralph) almost as you want to be Magnum PI (Thomas, not Selleck.) Gleason outshines the rest of the cast but you can put it as either amazing that Gleason outshines such wonderful actors, or that they are such wonderful actors that Gleason doesn’t eclipse them.

The writing is sharp and much smarter than most sitcom writing to come after it. 180 years after it was written, the show can still make most of us laugh out loud. I’ll go out on a limb and say that nobody who does not live in a home for the mentally retarded will be laughing at “8 Simple Rules” or “According to Jim” after we are all dead. But “The Honeymooners” will probably still be showing in some format. It might be even a greater part of our culture if it had run more than 39 episodes. That’s just not enough for a full year of syndication anymore. On the other hand, the show never had a chance to grow stale.

As per usual, the brilliance and, more importantly, the profitability of “The Honeymooners” formula inspired decades of imitation and devolution. The wacky neighbors became special ed freakshows. The head of the household as portrayed by Gleason, frustrated with his powerlessness and struggling for a shred of domestic authority, became the benevolent, omniscient father or the goofy but ultimately lovable dad. Now sitcom characters with jobs paying far less than “bus driver” resided in sprawling Manhattan apartments and five bedroom suburban homes. Oddly enough, as successful as “The Honeymooners” formula has been, the only obtainable show to really follow the spirit of its example is “Luckie Louie,” a show that came out on HBO 50 years after “The Honeymooners” and was even more shortly lived than its ancestor.

I don’t want to get too carried away. “The Honeymooners” was largely about Gleason and Art Carney mugging for the cameras and delivering well written, but not especially sophisticated jokes. The main reason the show is so good is that this is executed brilliantly. But the realism of the show is important too. Work, money and dissatisfaction with the lot one has drawn are important to the framework of the show. A blue collar job means a cramped apartment and not having nice things. Get rich quick schemes are a means to escaping a claustrophobic, starkly limited existence. In most sitcoms since, the protagonist might be a successful doctor or he might be a plummer, but there will be no discernable difference in the day to day lives of the characters. The realism of “The Honeymooners” makes everything else work so much better. Failing in a get rich quick scheme, then falling back into your five beds, 3 baths, 2 cars, and loving family because, hey, family is great! That’s one story. The same failure in “The Honeymooners” is falling back onto almost nothing and finding that your partner is the only positive thing you can cling to. I mean, it’s not The Bicycle Thief, but the realism makes the show ring true, and without the authenticity, it wouldn’t be so funny, endearing and memorable.

I know there’s a certain reactionary type who will always favor the original or early version of things because it makes them feel more avant garde. Which is kind of a weird combination. A band’s first album is always their best album, especially if they hit it big a few years later. You’ve been following Miike since he was did some slideshow in a basement while you were teaching Engrish in Japan. Audition sucks, and if it must be reviewed, at least the title could be listed in Japanese charachters. Blah, blah, blah. Open a comic book shop.

As Michael, Steve Carell’s performance has opened the door for him to be a gigantifuck star, putting out like five, crappy films per year. And he too deserves it. The comedy in Michael is nuanced, even when it is obvious. He is a weak man who has fallen into a small position of power that he overestimates. He is always striving to be liked, and
thus goes unliked. And his conformity to his misconceptions of what might make people like and respect him has left him oblivious to social convention. Then, finally there are these strands of a real person who values loyalty and cares for those around him. More sucinctly, Michael is a boob who you can laugh at and simultaniously feel sorry for.

Having said all of that, the best character on the show is Dwight, the all purpose, authoritarian supplicant. Part of the brilliance of “Dwight’s Speech” is that, although it was lifted from Mussolini, it is an assemblage of all purpose, authoritarian platitudes with no real ideological force. So, naturally it is a home run with a corporate audience. In any authoritarian system Dwight would thrive as a second or third tier official. Yet, he too is sympathetic. His rare moments of success and joy are delightful because he is such a simpleton heel. The product of a beet farming family, whose world view is so informed by action/adventure films that he can be tricked into believing that he is revieving faxes from “future Dwight.” I think another reason we can feel for him is that his absurd moralism is at leasted rooted in vague principle, rather than selfishness. He might be an authoritarian, border-line lunatic, but he’s no Pat Robertson. And all of this wraps back around because those Faxes are coming from Jim and similar pranks are collaborated with Pam, the king and queen with a combined income of $65,000, toying with their subjects. Without even  touching upon the half dozen other great characters and performances that create even more interactions, the elegance of the program should be obvious.

Learning. When we see this word, it conjures up images of people
slumped over books or staring glassy-eyed at some droning professor
long bereft of any passion for the subject matter. But learning
encompasses everything, whether it is the fascinating complexities of
the natural world or the knowledge that there exists sentient
individuals that eat their own poop for others to masturbate to. The
Learning Channel and Discovery Channel (henceforth collectively
abbreviated as TLCDC) acknowledge the general theory that the spectrum
of “learning” is essentially limitless, as is exhibited by a large
portion of their current programming focusing on the re-introduction of
the world to all matter of flawed humanity in the form of the
Freakshow, albeit now slathered with a thick layer of cuddles that
obscures it’s inherently exploitative nature and the
Thank-Fuck-That’s-Not-Me sentiment that dwells in the heart of even the
most sanctimonious asshole.

TLCDC has the perfect visual snare for those of us who wander through
channels like an Israelite lost in a mall parking lot—Freaks! Just
think about it. You’re flipping through the wasteland of reality shows,
dull sports and reruns of terrible syndicated comedy when suddenly, you
blast by TLCDC, pause for a moment as the brain processes the flashed
image, cautiously flip back…Oh My. It’s the classic car accident
infatuation, but TLCDC figures that as long as they frame these
tortured individuals in a positive light, they’re free to parade them.

Now I’m not going to digress into some “Ruthless” rant about how
people like this should be spiked off the delivery room floor,
corralled into catacombs or be gifted to the Mengele Institute of The
Dubious Sciences because I must say that I really feel for many of
these individuals, being that life is difficult enough for Normals,
much less for somebody dealing with some of these truly perplexing
deformities and maladies. Yes, most of them have my genuine sympathy,
but that doesn’t mean I want them to have a grand stage where they or
their parents can crawl up my ass with a bullhorn and bellow about how
awesome and triumphant they are and how their God isn’t a total dick.

So step right up, Folks! Come stare in awe at Nature’s Forgotten
Children! All Manner of Impossible awaits caged behind these heavy
curtains to toss your senses like a cork on New Year’s! Ladies and
Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Children of All Ages! It is my distinguished
honor to present you with…

The Two-Headed Girl:

They’ve been on the scene for quite some time. Hell, I recall them
being on Oprah over a decade ago, back when a fella had to roll the
dice that the talk show scene would provide him some oddity because the
internet was still a mighty mystery. Most recently, we got a glimpse
into their daily life as teenage girls, meaning two heads or not,
they’re bound to be vapid, superficial bitches. As expected, we follow
them through their snotty day, only pausing here and there so they can
explain to us whatever neurological juggling act they have to do when
it’s time to whack a softball, drive a car or prevent a modern-day
Hercules from checking off #2 and #12 from his Labor List. Then, the
sick makers of the show have the audacity to ask them about boyfriends,
meaning they’re forcing us to ponder the intricacies of sex with
somebody of such “unique” design who also happens to be sixteen. They
are not simply satisfied with our marveling, they want us to intrude
well beyond good taste because the mind-boggling semantics make it seem
ok. It’s not. Don’t go there, Mr. TLCDC Producer, uh-uh.

Exploitation Level: High. These girls function very normally, so the
real story has been left to our tacky imaginations where tasteful
boundaries do not exist.

The 200 Flavors of Midget and Dwarf:

For the run-of-the-mill variety of these “little people,” I say eat it.
You’re short and have the forehead of a telekinetic without the
perks…big fucking deal. Your life is a series of mild inconveniences
and your overcoming of them is barely remarkable. You might be on the
receiving end of a casual double-take from a passerby every now and
again, but the odds of you really freaking somebody out, even a kid,
are slim as your stunted forms are so well-entrenched in our culture;
and in cute ways to boot. There is however, a strain of small that
really breaks my calloused heart—the Primordial Dwarf. These people are
normally proportioned, but tiny—we’re
talking like sub 3-feet here and weighing barely in the teens. There
was this poor little girl who was around nine years old or so and
weighed about twelve pounds. Instead of charging at life with her tank
brimming with overcompensation like in those shows where midgets bitch
about there not being midget-specific clothes, she cried endlessly and
just begged aloud for normality in her hauntingly high voice. Watching
that was sad because here was a person that would forever be treated
like a child while oddly, her more larger, more disproportioned peers
seem almost commonplace in our minds as they hammer out our Christmas
gifts and their effigies pepper the lawns of our White Trash. Really
though–If 98% of the obstacles in your life can be obliterated by a
stepstool, you don’t have it so bad.

Exploitation Level: Low. Very Low.

Tumor Kids:

An unexpected glimpse of these poor kids will have your mind doing
somersaults as you alternatively mutter “Oh my God” and “Get in here”
to whoever happens to be nearby. There was this kid named Novemtree who
was from somewhere in SE Asia…it was almost impossible to make out
facial features beneath the massive amounts of tissue that had
ballooned his head to the size of a baby elephant’s. On another show, I
caught an eyeful of a girl whose entire face was basically a massive
nose—not to be cruel, but my first thought after “I’m not fucking
watching this” was Opus from Bloom County.
There wasn’t much well-spoken English in these stories, so aside from
the visuals, I probably know more overall about whatever child got the
lead in that Christian Children’s Fund ad…by the way, I wonder how
Raquel is doing?

Exploitation Level: Low. Could be higher, but the Third World is two full worlds away from me.

Harlequin Babies:

Yowza. This might be the 9-2 off-suit hole cards of genetics.
Fortunately for these babies, they typically die very early, sparing
them a life of amazing discomfort in every form. There was one show,
however, that followed the life of a now-teenage boy stricken with this
horrible disorder where his skin is constantly sloughing off like that
of a microwaved Irishman. To compensate for this, he must eat a massive
amount of food throughout the day and night simply to maintain his body
mass. When he’s not doing this, or making it snow epidermis, he’s
slathering himself in lotion to keep his skin moist and less prone to
the infections that normal skin would stiff-arm with ease. All in all,
he perpetually lives the life of a burn victim that will never properly
heal and his every action might lead to the demise that he’s ducked
since birth. Again, points to him for surviving this long, plus his
innocence makes me admire him because he’s never had to be anything but
strong, so he doesn’t possess the bloated pride that might sour his
struggle.

Exploitation Level: Medium. It would be higher, but the kid’s
dignity saves him, much to the chagrin of whatever PT Barnum descendent
developed this show.

Litterers Will Be Prosecuted:

Couples wanting a child perpetually find themselves throwing up gamete
airballs and going bankrupt buying pregnancy tests, none of which will
turn black and read “God Says: Give It Up, Bitch,” and end the futility
once and for all. So they flee to God’s arch-nemesis, Science, to
correct their traitorous plumbing. Now there’s probably some wonderful
natural mechanism that has doomed these people to a DNA dead-end, but
sadly, Science can be used to unwind the order of things and often well
beyond the intended point. So suddenly, Infertile Turtles find
themselves simultaneously prego with enough kids to bring a smile to
Joseph Smith’s lips. Now this is when the real nuisance comes in—we’re
supposed to feel bad for them because they have all these fucking kids!
Now their life has more screaming, shitting and puking in it than the
Alabama State Fair and we’re supposed to feel bad that they purposely
forsook their clean, selfish lives and decided to let some low-paid lab
tech create a frappe out of their fluids and blast it into the woman’s
uterus with whatever force was necessary to best her mate’s impotent
dribble. Honestly, inbred farmers do the same thing to cows and with
more dignity. Also, thanks for shitting six kids into the world that
you can’t afford to take care of…I’m sure my taxes will somehow make it
into their college funds, preventing me from buying a Porsche the
second my own, singly-born children leave the nest. If you can’t pop
one over the fence after hundreds or thousands of sexual encounters
where the foreplay solely involved checking the woman’s temperature, go
check out an Adoption Agency…there’s probably a reason why humans
beings only have two nipples.

Exploitation Level: Low. These people are actually exploiting you into sending them free diapers.

The Girl Without a Face:

Mel Gibson starred in a similarly-titled film where he played a
super-handsome man with a half-scarred face and Billy Idol had a song
called “Eyes Without a Face,” which is a pretty apt description of how
this girl began her life…The Girl Without a Face would happily say fuck
you to Mel Gibson and Billy Idol, presuming she can speak. Possibly the
most horrific facial deformity I have ever seen, GWAF had to literally
have a face built for her by doctors from virtually nothing, the
original structure being so extremely minimal that it resembled a clam
shell with googly eyes glued to it like a souvenir you’d find along any
trashy boardwalk. I have no doubt that best effort was made all around
and the lofty goal of a ballpark face was achieved,
unfortunately–please forgive me–it approximates the face of a Tusken
Raider. Now this is the type of deformity that freezes unprepared
people in their tracks. This deformity blows minds, crushes courtesy
and practically demands explanation for the sake of one’s sanity. It is
also one of the most glaring examples of why TLCDC can eat my
properly-encoded ass.

Exploitation Level: High. Difficult visuals with a narrative that
might as well be a sermon. If they had openly forsaken their God
instead of sucked up to him even more, things would’ve been way
classier.

Fatties:

If there’s anybody I don’t feel so bad for, it’s these people. If they
somehow violated the laws of matter and gained 100 pounds every time
they had a bite of a rice cake, I might pity them, but we all know this
is not the case. If you eat 20,000 calories before you get out of bed,
which is never, and burden some poor caretaker with your
hyper-gluttonous lifestyle, you’re kind of a Dick. Hell, I’ll spot you
up to 500 pounds, but the moment you realize that you are no longer
able to move and it’s not due to a spinal cord injury from a stray Crip
bullet, your humanity fades and you essentially become a giant tapeworm
that will scream like a withdrawing junkie when shorted a dozen donuts.
So we get to see these Meat Mountains cry salty tears from atop their
mashed, fetid mattresses or the couches they’ve literally grown intowhile
they rattle off their staggering daily intakes and we are somehow
expected to feel for them. We see them struggle their weight down “low”
enough so that they can get their traitorous stomachs clamped down to
the size of an egg, a laughably medieval means to damn the caloric
river that flows during their every waking moment. Then, in the end,
we’re expected to applaud their bravery when they waste away to a
still-obese individual wearing a jumpsuit of hanging skin. Out of any
of these stories, these are the least tragic because frankly, I’d
rather have to meter every bite and exercise like a maniac if I was
dealt that bad genetic hand, but it’s still a hell of a lot better than
having two heads or no fucking face.

Exploitation Level: High Fructose Corn Syrup. There’s not much to
the story but “I’m fat.” The viewer points and wonders “where does the
poop go?”

In general, the above examples aren’t meant to be objects of ridicule;
rather they are intended as evidence to indict TLCDC for their
exploitative programming. I can only speak for myself, but as I’ve
watched these programs proliferate over the last few years, I’m left
wondering about their necessity. What, if anything, do I learn from
them? What merits do they possess?

After spending many hours deciphering my awkward reactions to these
tales of woe, I find myself a little annoyed because these programs
bait you into uncomfortable mindsets. At face value, they are
chronicles of triumph over adversity and tests of faith and, if you
even possess a shred of decency, you’ll feel uplifted when the credits
roll. On the other hand, if you’re like me, you’ll skip the feel-good
schmaltz and look for the bad… and what you’ll find is that yes, you
are watching this primarily due to morbid curiosity, you’re watching it
to learn the answer to the unanswerable question “What the fuck?”
Countless people suffer every day from injury, disease and poverty, but
they don’t suffer in a sensational way and therefore, do not entice a meandering audience into the Venus Fly Trap of TLCDC.

So maybe this isn’t precisely a bunch of Victorian onlookers with
rotten tomatoes ready in hand, gawking at a shackled Lobster Boy in
blatant disgust, but then again, substituting a packaged sense of
concern doesn’t suddenly make it acceptable to stare at people whether
it is because of harmless amazement or genuine horror. I say leave
these stories for the medical community, charitable institutions and
others that could help alleviate these people’s suffering leaving us,
the useless masses, oblivious for we have nothing to offer but pity at
best, scorn at worst.

In the end, don’t watch these shows…it’s nothing but Rotten.com with
saccharine storylines and a bunch of self-righteous people trying to
make lemonade out of Chernobyl Lemons. So thanks, TLCDC, for reminding
me of the inherent foulness of my own humanity. And oh yeah—“Thank Fuck
that’s not me.”

American Gladiators 2008 is the greatest and most necessary remake in the history of television. Not only because it allows Laila Ali to pretend she’s a woman, but because it gives us common American folk a second chance to root for the everyman, the weekend warrior, the true American heroes like shark fisherman, Adam Levin. In order to fully comprehend the spectacle that is American Gladiators 2008, one must be familiar with the original version that aired twenty years ago. The show was more or less a culmination, no, wait, an explosion of the Reagan-inspired misogyny, racism, violence, and sweaty homoerotic fervency that saturated the movie and television industry throughout the 1980s.

Let’s be realistic, nobody watched the show to see the women compete and nine times out of ten, a black contestant was pitted against a white contestant. Hell, the only original black gladiator was portrayed as an untrustworthy two-face named Gemini who happened to suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder. And remember Malibu? Kip Winger’s gay surfer brother from California? At its heart, the original American Gladiators was truly a shameless celebration of stereotyping, homosexuality and mullets, rather than a competition of any real substance or prestige. Reruns air every weeknight on ESPN Classic.

American Gladiators 2008 borrows many of the “events” from the original version but provides us with bigger sets, brighter lights, better looking contestants, better looking gladiators, and the opportunity to masturbate to Hulk Hogan’s mammoth biceps. Not surprisingly, as this is American Gladiators we’re talking about, all the sexism and stereotyping from the original version has carried over into 2008. Now, because Hulk Hogan is not at liberty to call the black contestants ‘lazy niggers,’ the viewer is forced to pick up on more subtle discriminatory cues. For instance, just after the women’s Gauntlet event, Hogan said “Okay, now we’re gettin’ serious because the men are up next.” What, the women’s events aren’t to be taken seriously? Is that what you’re saying, Hulk?? Agreed. In another segment, Crush says the Joust is her favorite event because it’s fun. Immediately afterward, the announcer seductively says “I wonder what else Crush does for fun.” Like, what?! This show is amazing.

The gladiators this time around share all the inflated stereotypical characteristics as the original batch, only somehow they’re less gay. Crush, for example, is totally hot, which you simply can’t say about any of the original female gladiators, who were all roaring, roid-addled berserker dykes. And what’s going on with Toa? Must he have the bone necklace and lavalava over his spandex? Apparently he’s The Rock’s cousin but he’s certainly one of the worst gladiators on the show. Also, his eyeliner is super duper gay. Fury is the one I’m iffy about. Is she a lesbian? She certainly looks like she hates men. How many tortured cocks have bled under the callous tip of her pugil stick? Hang Tough is apparently her favorite event— the only event, mind you, where she has an opportunity to wrap her legs around another woman. Justice and Mayhem are clearly the token, ugly black guys and don’t even get me started on Hellga. The only solid, undeniably intimidating gladiator is Wolf, who whips his mane around and howls every time his name is mentioned.

Let me take a moment to talk about the contestants. If anything can be said about the original American Gladiators, it’s that the contestants— mainly rednecks, lesbians, and poor blacks— were, for the most part, serious competitors. AG 2008 offers up lazy, heartless dregs of the lowest quality. What a sorry bunch of fucking pussy-footed amateurs. Chad Knight, the professional skateboarder, might have put on the most dismal performance of the opening night, scoring, what, two points? And Jessie Foster, the toilet paper saleswoman , injuring herself?? Pure comedy. Still, the contestants can’t be blamed entirely as two crucial things have changed since the original. One, it’s not the 1980s anymore; Paul Kersey is dead and Rocky is washed up, people. Rambo, on the other hand, is not. Two, virtually all of the events are lesser knock-offs of their previous molds. The Pyramid is now half its original size and the Power Ball goals are wider than Sequoias. Don’t these people know that only serious challenges like, say, a black gladiator or a more attractive woman, bring out the real American spirit to compete and conquer?

All in all, with gratuitous flexing still very much a part of the show, AG 2008 is 100% entertainment. Hopefully, if it lasts, they’ll introduce different events or revamp some more of the archaic ones. I also wouldn’t mind if some of the female gladiators were, well, less feminine. Zap never confused me the way Fury does. They must promptly fire Laila Ali because her interviews with contestants are worse than some of the performances. Unless she’s absorbing punches, she has no right to be on television. Honestly, I’d rather have her father hosting the show.